] Look at the "jobless" economic recovery in the United States.
] Productivity growth has outstripped production by a percentage
] point, so while GDP goes up, employment does not. And that's
] just due to increased efficiency from the application of
] information technology.

Ultimately this means that the cost of products goes down. Eventually you reach a point where people begin to consider cutting hours, because you can make ends meet with less money and would rather have the freedom.

I have a friend in Austin who works three days a week. She would much rather have the time then the money. I'd honestly like to do the same. Having time to work on projects like MemeStreams would be well worth a significant cut in salary. I know a lot of people who feel the same.

The barrier to this, usually, is employers. If they can have two people working half time instead of one person working full time, ultimately this is the same deal for them, but its hard to convince them to change the way they operate. So difficult, in fact, that the last time this occured it took a widespread social movement to make it happen.

I'm talking, of course, about the 30 hour work week. Which has a precident, the forty hour work week. I think this is where we are headed.

This is also another place where I think this author is wrong. The fact that this doesn't work for minimum wagers is basically a policy problem and not an economic problem. Minimum wage should be livable, based on a standard work week. Arguements to the contrary from well meaning conservatives are simply short sighted. To devalue labor is to devalue people. This is a barrier to automation. Its the cost of people that moves us toward robotics. Making people cheap mires us in the status quo. Look at China. A lot of the automation we use in construction and manufacturing simply doesn't exist there because the people are too cheap. Higher minimum wage spurs innovation which increases productivity and ultimately lowers the price of goods.

RE: Robotic Nation, by Marshall Brain