Implode-o-Meter News - No Overstatement: Structural Unemployment Is the Biggest Economic Threat

``The fact that the labor force participation rate is falling at the same time the unemployment rate is falling indicates that that there is a structural problem in the economy... [the] process is accelerating as technological advances are enabling the replacement of all kinds of human labor at a faster rate than new job opportunities are being created.
...
The net result is that an increasing percentage of the population is no longer economically viable. What's more, this condition is not going to be reversed by regulatory, tax, and fiscal policy changes at the federal level, intended to prevent domestic U.S. companies from offshoring jobs, as is being proposed by President-elect Trump.
... The trajectory I outlined for -- when the U.S. economic system can no longer function and thus collapses, which occurs when the percentage of the population that is employed in the private sector dips below 25% and is absolute at 20% -- has continued since then.

What we think analyses like these miss is that monetary dysfunction is as important -- if not more important -- than "accelerating technology" to the problem of an increasingly idle population. That is, the core gears of capitalism, and in particular, creative destruction, are gummed up (if not absent entirely), in our completely bizarre and dysfunctional monetary and banking system. If this were fixed, we might have little to no structural unemployment problem at all, as the market would be more able to create new opportunities. Regardless of how significantly this factor is, it seems virtually suicidal for an economy and society not to fix it before proceeding to more elaborate interventions.

Relevant:

No Overstatement: Structural Unemployment Is the Biggest Economic Threat