In the comments, there has been concern expressed about job loss due to automation. Many are afraid when a new technology causes us to lose jobs. But that's what technology does, and it's what makes our economy more productive. For most businesses, labor is 40% of their cost. Reducing that cost is a very big deal.

Let's think about this, I live in Michigan. We used to take our pop bottles to the grocery store, the clerk would check and count them, and then give us cash, 10 cents for each pop bottle that we recycled.

Now, I just go to the supermarket feed the bottles into a machine, which automatically separates the bottles for the cans, counts them, and gives me a receipt which I take to the cash register.

Do we really want to go back to the time when we took our bottles to the corner store and waited in line for the clerk to count our bottles? I think not.

Growing economies is about creative destruction. We find new, cheaper, easier, less labor-intensive ways to do things. When I took college accounting courses, we wrote the numbers on green ledger paper and did the math with calculator, Now I just plug the numbers into a spreadsheet that does the math for me.

Do we want to go back to green ledger paper? I don't think so.

Also, keep in mind that creative descrution of capitalism, while eliminating some jobs, creates new ones. I don't need to hire someone to add up numbers on a spreadsheet. There is no longer a need for accounting clerks. Those jobs are lost. But new jobs are created for the people who design the spreadsheet program, and for the people that manufacture the computer that I use.

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