"This will always happen." I am dubious. It seems a lot of econ people hold this notion with almost religious faith. And I may be mistaken in my doubting and you may be correct. But I wonder if a paradigm shift is on the horizon that will wash some old truths away for good.
I see new kinds of jobs being created all the time. For example, look at the explosive growth of the entertainment industry. How about the car customization industry? People pay a lot of money for personalized cars. The fashion industry. Comic book conventions are a big industry. Sports, sports equipment, trainers, etc. How about that minor industry to escort hundreds of amateurs up Mt. Everest each year?
The increasing wealth of society and the decreasing costs of food/shelter enable all these more frivolous demands.
> The increasing wealth of society and the decreasing costs of food/shelter enable all these more frivolous demands.
Where do you live? Real wages haven't changed, spending power has dropped significantly, and inflation has multipled quite a few fold the costs of basic goods over the last 30 years. At least in the US.
The inflation adjusted wage hasn't gone up. Housing and food have gotten tremendously more expensive due to land scarcity and the dramatic inefficiencies of housing and food distribution. We have superfluous tech advantages because they are untapped resources, like silicon transistors and graphene, but until we have automated farms, or skyscraper farms with artificial lighting, or molecular fabrication to such a degree that printers could print proteins and aminos, it is a real problem.
Land scarcity? Where do you live? The EU population density is something like 4x the US, admittedly we don't have inhospitable desert wastelands but there's a lot of space still left.
America has laws that restrict you from building dense European-style or Asian-style apartment buildings, effectively forcing everyone into quarter-acre land plots in the suburbs. This is actually considered a major driver of inefficiency and waste in the American economy.
