THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

International Labor Organization labels job stress 'a global
phenomenon'. The harsh reality is that the post-industrial global
economy does not need - and therefore cannot and will not provide -
jobs for the six billion people on the planet today, not to speak of the
eight billion forecast for 2019. Jobless growth for major corporations
worldwide is not a forecast, but an established trend. The extent to
which the writing is on the wall can be comprehended from statistics
quoted by William Greider: the world's 500 largest corporations have
managed to increase their production and sales by 7000/u over the
past 20 years, while at the same time reducing their total workforce.
Economists will correctly argue that productivity improvements in
one sector tend to create jobs in other sectors, and that therefore 'in
the long run' technological change doesn't matter. However, nobody
can claim that technological shifts are not generating massive
displacements of jobs, fundamental changes of the qualifications
required to perform a function. If the changes are rapid as is the case
with Information Technology such job displacements are just as
destructive as permanent job losses. How many steelworkers can
realistically expect to be retrained as computer programmers or
corporate lawyers, however strong the demand is in these sectors.
William Bridges, an expert on the future of employment, has
concluded that 'within a generation, our scramble for jobs will look
like a fight over deck chairs on the Titanic.
To add insult to injury, the only societies in the world today that
work fewer than four hours a day are the surviving 'primitive'
hunter-gatherer tribes, living roughly as they have done over the past
20,000 years. Similarly, the common agricultural laborer in 10th to
13th century mediaeval Europe spent less than half of his waking
hours at work. Are we going wrong somewhere~
Wassily Leontieff, Nobel Prize-winning economist, has summarized
the overall process as follows: 'The role of humans as the most