Versus robots. "No! Demo-GRAPH-y!" The flood of low cost Chinese labour will ebb, according to Goodhart and Pradhan in "The Great Demographic Reversal", leading to: higher inflation. manufacturing elsewhere becoming more competitive. ( un-paywalled from Nikkei Shimbun ) Apparently good news for those in developed nations who have long clamoured for fair prices and fair wages, and who blame globalisation for undercutting them. But when? And for how long? Well, not right now . China labour costs are stagnant, not rising. source: tradingeconomics.com Even as China's working age population loses 5 million a year, assuming the baseline scenario. (Source: Reserve Bank of Australia .) One may scoff at the suggestion that these lost workers could be - or are being - replaced with robots or other automation, such as AI. Robots have been around for decades but opinion on how they impact workers vary, from ' a little ' to 'responsible for 50-70% of i...
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