Is America getting to a point where there are many more people than jobs or money to go around? Are times better or worse than 50 years ago? [closed]

Question

Is America headed to a point of too many people, not enough work? Is life for an average American better than 50 years ago? I have asked about automation in my first question. Then I've asked a couple of others but I guess I am asking too general? I read it should be more precise. America was a strong nation for many for a long time; now it looks like it just going that way for a few. think so?

50 years ago would being us to 1965. My Aunts and Uncles are very old, I'm 22, and they all say the same thing about people as young as me; "What future will they have?" In some countries population is lowering so much they actually want people to have more kids because of not enough jobs being filled. In America, over 300 million people and most already in poverty. If this was 1965 people would be more optimistic. Now, this decade, technology has come so far in what it can do, not as many humans to none are needed to do certain things anymore.

In the last 50 years taxes are higher, jobs are outsourced to other nations instead of being done by Americans here, automation is increasing so rapidly it is expected that by 2025, even truck driver jobs will start to diminish. Retailers are already shutting down due to online competition from Amazon and restaurants are getting there too with tablets being placed at tables to take orders. Another bad factor facing the nation is the rise of income inequality. Standard cost of living has raised high while wages have stagnated in some places or lowered in others. The rich are richer than ever, but most of us apart from them have such a small portion of the wealth of America for the work we do or investments we've made.

Answer 1

A few points to note.

1.) With more labor comes more goods that need to be produced. This can be in the form of goods, services, or capital needed to augment the production of labor. If we are talking about whether there are enough raw/natural resources needed to make these things as population increase, note that your worry is not new. As population increases, we create more efficient ways of using the resources we already have. Think of our usage of resources/labor as a transversality condition. As time approaches infinity, the population will not grow faster than the rate of our technological efficiency, simply because of the need to survive. In the meantime, we'll be utilizing additional labor.

2.) I noticed that you had said,

In America, over 300 million people and most already in poverty.

You could make the argument that more than 150 million Americans are in poverty, but that measure of "poverty" is going to include a lot of well-off Americans. I'm not exactly sure what idea of poverty you have to reach this conclusion.

The US Census Bureau's measure of poverty has been hovering around 15% for a while. That's not great, but that's not necessarily worsening rapidly by any means.

automation is increasing so rapidly it is expected that by 2025, even truck driver jobs will start to diminish

I'd like to see exactly who said this as well, if you have the citation. Otherwise it's just hearsay.

I think your uncles and aunts have been influencing you with a little bit of their hindsight bias.

3.) You noted that,

Retailers are already shutting down due to online competition from Amazon and restaurants are getting there too with tablets being placed at tables to take orders.

Does this necessarily decrease labor or displace labor into other jobs that value human labor more? A quick example: Line workers in the United States have been declining steadily over the last decade, and many of them are reaching retirement age. It pays well and is manual labor, but there simply aren't enough interested young workers. If we were to see too much labor in technology-heavy industries, we could say that eventually the labor market would clear and go into well-paying jobs like this one. There are still opportunities out there for Americans.