Are we headed for recession?

[Carmelo Lopez]

After 2 years of unsustainable growth, do you think the United States is headed for recession? In June, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates and outlined a plan to shrink its $4.5 trillion balance sheet! Sign of a tightening cycle?A tightening cycle is a cycle of interest rate hikes. The Federal Reserve tightens its monetary policy by raising the federal funds rate to curb inflation if it is rising too quickly.  Historically, tightening cycles lead to recession! Some might argue that unemployment levels are at historic lows, they're right. But the use of artificial intelligence (AI) has increased yearly. How long before even more jobs become automated? I'm interested in reading everyone's opinion on the matter, thank you in advance!

[Adam Anstatt]

Automation doesn't destroy jobs.  Every piece of automated equipment is conceptualized by marketers, developed by a myriad of designers and engineers, assembled by workers and production support staff in factories, who source components from countless companies employing their own workers and raw materials sourced by purchasing and logistics.  The automation has to be sold by salespeople and distributed and delivered by shipping companies.  Then once the automation finally makes it into the field, it must be supported by maintenance technicians and all the logistical support to coordinate their efforts.  

We focus on the loss of visible labor jobs without examining the small unseen benefit to countless people, and we end up walking into this trap of thinking that automation destroys jobs.  The trap not looking for the unseen effects would lead us to the same thinking that automated textile factories would put out of a job everyone who used to weave fabric by hand.  I doubt we have less employment in this industry than we did 200 years ago.  All automation does is multiply the our productive efforts.