A sustainable future? What jobs?

In the first chapter of this book, Bernard Lietaer asserts that  four gigantic trends are converging in the next few years. Our reactions to them will determine whether we create wise growth and a sustainable future, or not. The four trends are global aging of populations, instability of the world financial system (he wrote this in the nineties!), climate change, and the revolution in information and communications. I'll devote a blog to each of the four.

Since the financial collapse of 2008, there is over 9% unemployment in the US. Depending on how that is calculated, some people say the true figures are closer to 17% Once upon a time, unemployment was a problem for "third world" countries, but it's not only them any more. Arguments rage about "outsourcing" by corporations of "our" jobs to southeast Asia. Companies are able to get the work done abroad more cheaply than it can be done by Americans, Europeans, and the citizens of other comfortably developed countries.We seem to be half asleep to the results of our ongoing revolution in information and communication (computers and the internet). Output of businesses has been multiplied,  jobs have not. In the twenty years before William Greider wrote "One World: Ready or Not" in 1997, he reported that the world's 500 largest enterprises had increased their production 700 times while reducing employment.

In the early twentieth century, many economists predicted that multiplication of productivity by automation would lead to a world of general leisure. A twenty hour work week would be sufficient for the production of all humankind's need for stuff. Medieval serfs worked less than four hours a day. In our time, only the remaining "hunter-gatherer" societies match that level of leisure. Mostly these days we have workaholics and the unemployed. When engines replaced horses for power at the beginning of the twentieth century, the horses became rare. To-day less manpower is needed to make all the stuff we can ever want. There may not be enough jobs, but there's no shortage of work that could be done. Edgar Cahn, founder of Time Banking, says "We've got what we need if we use what we've got".  Bernard Lietaer says that by becoming conscious about money, we can make wiser choices. Sounds like that's worth checking out.