On Tuesday’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, host Joe Scarborough predicted unemployment may remain high, but not because of policymakers in Washington. Instead he explained that improvements in technology have increased production, decreasing the need for manpower.
“You bring up the banks. Mika and I had a discussion yesterday with a business leader who said, ‘You know, everybody is trying to blame the banks,’” Scarborough said. “And this is a liberal Democrat. I don’t think he’s ever voted for a Republican but he said, ‘Everybody is trying to blame the banks. Everybody is trying to blame Washington. Everybody is trying to blame this president, the last president.’”
“He said, ‘The fact is, we’re probably going to have 9 percent, 10 percent unemployment for the rest of our lives because we’ve become so productive. It’s not China taking our jobs away. It’s not India taking our jobs away.’”
Scarborough also noted that despite the lower cost of goods brought on by increases in productivity, fewer Americans will be able to purchase those goods because they won’t have the cash to do so.
“And he asked the question a lot of people ask,” Scarborough continued. “He said, ‘Ask me, when’s the last time you saw a bank teller? Guess what? GM used to require, let’s say, a thousand people on the assembly line to make cars. Now it’s probably a hundred. Soon it’ll be 50.’ This is basic math. We can create more products than ever for consumers to consume. But we’ve become so productive that those consumers … don’t have the cash to do it because we’ve downsized.”
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