On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 06:17:25PM +0000, Bruce  Johnson wrote:
> > On Jun 22, 2016, at 10:25 PM, Tim <xxxxxx@little-possums.net> wrote:
> > Even in just the last 10 years, proportion of income spent on
> > physical goods has decreased from about 26% to 20% of household
> > expenditure in the UK, and similar figures seem to apply in other
> > developed nations.  This has corresponded with a comparable rise
> > in spending on services and non-material goods.
>
> I think you are confusing cause and effect here.

No, not really.

The topic of conversation is about what happens to the surplus wealth
generated by automation.

I read the original premise as saying that falling production costs
through automation would lead to increasing profits and therefore
increased concentration of wealth with the owners of the means of
production.  It would also lead to decreasing opportunities for
employment.

My counter-claim was that this surplus is not primarily going to
owners of increasingly automated factories.  The primary effect of
increasing automation is falling prices, not rising profits, and we
are choosing to direct most of the surplus toward suppliers of
services and non-material goods.  The latter sectors are typically
labour intensive, and so this leads to increasing opportunities for
employment.

> People are spending less on physical goods because physical goods
> are *cheaper*, and there’s a limit to how much physical goods you
> need to buy (or can fit in your home).

That's exactly what I was stating: the demand for physical goods is
increasing more slowly than that for services and non-material goods.

- Tim