IN-DEPTH: TRANSCRIPTION - LONGWave - 05-10-23 - MAY - The End of the Cubicle Class
SLIDE DECK
TRANSCRIPTION
SLIDE 2
Thank you for joining me. I'm Gord Long.
A REMINDER BEFORE WE BEGIN: DO NO NOT TRADE FROM ANY OF THESE SLIDES - they are COMMENTARY for educational and discussions purposes ONLY.
Always consult a professional financial advisor before making any investment decisions.
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I entitled this video “The End of the Cubicle Class?” because of the profound changes about to likely unfold in today’s work environment. To make it clear, I don’t see cubicle workers becoming extinct but I do see a significant reduction in this type of worker in over the next 10 years. There are obviously still a lot of ‘unknowns’ and that is why I added the question mark.
SLIDE 4
I most recently addressed the changing work force underway last September in an UnderTheLens video entitled “US Labor Market in Productive Decline”. In that video I focused on three main points:
- The precipitous drop in US and overall Developed Economy’s Productivity,
- The shift to Working-from-Home that Covid-19 launched, and
- The Generational change within the over 70M Millennial and 70M Gen Z generations of their attitudes regarding work.
I encourage you to review the video if you haven’t seen it because I won’t have space in this session to do that.
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What I hope to achieve in this session is to focus on additional developments which are now occurring that are going to have parallel impacts that will undoubtedly further alter the workplace landscape.
As such I want to cover the items outlined here.
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I want to start with what I see as the precipitous point we have now reached which I believe is going to rapidly accelerate change in the traditional Urban Center workplace.
SLIDE 7
American worker productivity is presently declining at the fastest rate in 75 years!
The U.S. has now had five consecutive quarters of year-over-year declines in productivity, according to data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is unprecedented and has never happened before, in data going back to 1948.
U.S. productivity plunged 2.7% in the first quarter of this year compared to last year.
That’s a 0.9% year-over-year drop. Concurrently, quarter-over-quarter output grew slightly (0.2%), and hours worked grew 3%.
That means people are working longer hours and barely putting out more products, because they just aren’t as productive as they used to be.
The drop in productivity is now exacerbating compensation pressures and pushing up unit labor costs.
The difficulty is that there is no magic productivity wand and cost-cutting via layoffs and wage growth compression has become viewed to be 'easier' and faster to execute.
Unfortunately Productivity is only solved with a longer term view than most CEO’s don’t have the luxury or often funding to adequately and effectively address.
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… and this is not just a US problem – it is Global!
When you have an environment in which output is outpacing labor growth, that’s an environment of stronger productivity. When you have the opposite, when output growth is sluggish but labor growth is strong, you have a weak productivity environment.
A rebound in productivity is critical to solving many of the developed economies current issues since it would lift supply and thereby reduce inflationary pressures.
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- Over the past five or six quarters economic activity has been sluggish, even as the US has seen a resilient labor market and continued job gains.
- People are working longer hours so labor utilization has also been higher.
- Unit labor costs grew 6.3% this quarter, while compensation grew 3.4%.
- That combination has created conditions for the perfect storm with
- Weak productivity for five quarters straight, for the first time since post-World War II.
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- Over the past 18 months, the churn of labor has been “tremendous.”
- The recent BLS and JOLTS reports, which have found that the number of job openings, hire rates and quit rates have all reached record highs.
- It’s been very difficult for employers to, essentially, train their employees and bring them up to par with the productivity levels that would have been deemed normal pre-pandemic,
- When the pandemic hit, it brought a combination of early retirement, a mass exit from the workforce, and an avalanche of job-switchers, a phenomenon alternately called “the great resignation” and “the labor shortage.” Taken together, it created a dearth of productivity.
Because people were job-hopping so regularly, there wasn’t really a chance to bring them up to the speed, or productivity, that a former worker would’ve had. In other words: the outsize rate of churn has been a key, if under-appreciated, factor in sluggish productivity.
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PRODUCTIVITY IS CRITICAL
Productivity is the key out of this mess we’ve been in since the current environment is one of CONSTRAINTS:
- Supply-Chain constraint,
- Labor Constraint, and
- Capital Constraint.
Increased productivity would alleviate each of those concerns as well as cost pressures.
One of the reasons sluggish productivity hurts the economy is not just that it limits supply; it leads to inflationary pressures.
Think of it like: a working employee has a cost. They have to be paid. That wage is offset by their productivity. What matters to an employer is how much they’re paying per unit of output. That’s unit labor cost.
Generally, it’s difficult to ascertain how flexible work will impact productivity, and in turn, unit labor costs. But the whole idea of remote work and flexible work is to allow people to be more productive.
Granted, that hasn’t always worked out according to plan. Workers have been using flexible hours to do things they otherwise wouldn’t have time to do during the workday—like laundry and grocery shopping—or would have had to delegate to someone else—like childcare or elderly care. Those are circumstances Jamie Dimon (CEO of JP Morgan) has pointed out to argue remote workers are less productive because they’re doing chores instead of working.
Hopefully we are moving towards equilibrium, where all sides are trying to be as efficient as possible to get work done in their desired amount of time. That would mean a gain in productivity – but I am skeptical!
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Wall Street’s worries about Corporate America’s dwindling profit margins appear to be very real based on the earnings calls I have been listening to.
A few themes are already becoming clear:
- Cost and job cuts are in,
- Spending and expansion are out.
Fears of the impact of rate hikes and a looming economic slowdown have US corporations rushing to divert to efficiency from growth mode.
Buzzwords like “personnel costs” and “spending on hiring” in earnings calls plunged 80% from last quarter. The decrease in such mentions is a sign that hiring has come to a halt and reflects the workforce reductions now underway which I have been highlighting about in my weekly newsletters.
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It has become more about rightsizing to revenue growth. The cost cuts are out of necessity in an attempt to preserve operating margins. Spending will return when revenue growth reaccelerates.
The cuts were incredibly effective with most companies significantly exceeding earnings expectations, and with the stock prices generally going up, management has to see that investors are rewarding profitability rather than pure growth, so we can expect the belt tightening to continue for a while.
And while tech names have been the most bloated after splurging on hiring during the pandemic, it’s certainly not the only sector working to reduce expenses as economic conditions change.
Corporate America is great on the front end in terms of staying ahead of the competition with robust hiring, but they’re also quick to counter that trend and lean down to support and protect the bottom line of their margins. We’re seeing a lot of that play out in the earnings calls we’ve seen in recent days.
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What is becoming clear to me is we are about to experience the concept of Logarithmic Decay.
Logarithmic decay is like how Hemingway famously described going bankrupt in The Sun Also Rises– “Gradually, then suddenly.”
The idea behind logarithmic decay is that something declines very, very slowly at first. But, over a long period of time, the rate of decline becomes faster… and faster… and faster.
If you look at it on a graph, logarithmic decay basically looks like a horizontal line that almost imperceptibly arcs gently downwards. But eventually the arc downward becomes steeper and steeper until it’s practically a vertical line down. There is a lot of academic social and physical theory behind his which I will leave you to explore but it is likely what is ahead.
Why?
Because corporate CEO’s have found themselves in a position that if they don’t fix productivity their jobs will soon be gone as corporate boards can’t answer shareholder questions adequately concerning falling margins revenues, profits, buybacks and dividend payouts!
Hey have been nibbling at the problem as opposed to a full frontal attack.
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Corporate Boards and CEO’s have brought this on themselves because they have expediently spent their free cash and balance sheet leverage on stock buybacks and increased dividend payouts over the last decade versus Capital and Employee Investment.
The focus is about to change! We will get to how and likely why that will occur in a moment. First however let’s talk further about how the US has been failing to adequately invest in itself!
The recent banking problems at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) brought into focus for me the serious issues unfolding in America's rate of creation of viable small businesses.
Having been in Venture Capital and Private Equity I am acutely aware of the pre-IPO funding process and the rigorousness that goes into each round of the funding cycle. A well crafted process that assures sustainable competitiveness and viability of a future publically trading company.
Because of nearly two decades, following the Dotcom bubble implosion, excessive, fast and easy money has become unrecognizable and dangerously "financialized".
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PATENTS
To identify the problem it is a simple as looking at the number of patents being filed in the US. If your competitive offering and intellectual property that the company is founded on doesn't merit a patent, what do you really have but a product that will be copied and sold at a cheaper price?
The US leadership in this area was previously seen to be insurmountable. That is no longer the case!
The red areas on this Visual Capitalist chart not so long ago would have represented the US. Today the red area is China! In second place is the US shown by green areas yet if you break it down by type you will see in many cases the US falls even more dramatically.
What it is being replaced with in the US is a new form of "Misallocation of Capital".
We are funding cute ideas, readily adaptable to clever marketing slogans and capture the imagination of quick riches by fast money artists.
We have witnessed apparently sophisticated Investment professions who didn't have the intelligence to see the very evident risks of the SVB funding and capital model. Geniuses they are not - or at least no longer?
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In 2021, out of 1,608,375 patents across multiple fields, 87% were granted to innovators from just the six countries highlighted here.
After rapidly increasing its patent output in recent years, China topped the chart in 29 out of 36 total fields including computer technology, electrical machinery, and digital communication. The Chinese government’s focus on innovation led to the nation’s applicants receiving 38% of the 1.6 million patents granted in 2021.
The United States—home to the world’s largest tech companies—came in second with 286,205 granted patents by origin. The U.S. also topped four fields of its own: medical technology, engines and turbines, basic communication processes, and unknown (for inventions that can’t be assigned to a specific field).
Not far behind is Japan with 256,890 granted patents. It dominated the other nations in the fields of semiconductors, optics, and furniture and games, cementing its well-earned reputation of technological innovation.
“Unknown” origin applicants, for whom the nationality or country of residence couldn’t be determined for the inventor(s), accounted for 24,677 of granted patents.
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When assessing which technological fields inventors are pursuing in 2021, it’s not unexpected that digital and electrical technologies are in the lead.
There are also many patents granted mainly in infrastructure-related fields, which have become all the more important following the COVID-19 pandemic and an increasing focus on trade.
These include medical technology, transport, civil engineering, and semiconductors.
A Tech-Savvy Future
The number of patents granted in 2021 is a testament to the growing importance of innovation around the world.
While a select few nations have dominated the patent landscape so far, there are many others making significant contributions to innovation and intellectual property.
As technology continues to advance and the global economy becomes more interconnected, the importance of intellectual property rights will only continue to grow.
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This is all about: PRETTY PACKAGING FOR SUCKERS!
SPACS
A Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) , also known as a "blank check company", is a shell corporation listed on a stock exchange with the purpose of acquiring a private company, thus making it public without going through the traditional initial public offering process and the associated regulations thereof. SPAC's have become a preferred way for "so called" experienced management teams and sponsors to take companies public.
If a SPAC raises capital through an initial public offering (IPO) for the purpose of acquiring an existing non-public "start-up", why wouldn't the target company just take itself public and reward the founders and investors who know the company and took the risk?
The answer is tweo fold. First, the money is made in the IPO investment banking fees and the peddling of of the 'well wrapped' package - not in the time consuming diligence of actually building something of sustainable substance. This is the epitome of "Buyer Beware"!
Secondly, and the unvarnished simple truth is that it avoid regulations that can land players in jail! Sarbanes Oxley regulations were put into place to protect investors. SPACS avoid these and other regulation or makes it almost impossible for the SEC to effectively monitor and enforce. A knowing Congress has chosen to look the other way as campaign donors' contributions a have become just too significant to be avoided.
SLIDE 20
Unicorns are yet another "slip of hand" of the startup company process where behind closed doors a handful of investors during the latest round of funding agreed on a “valuation” of $1 billion or more. Even though these deals are confidential, the $1-billion valuation is then dutifully leaked and hyped all over the financial media. There was a time when a newly created unicorn would unleash a torrent of oohs and aahs. But by 2021, there were so many of them – 344 of them, or about 1.3 per business day – that people stopped paying attention.
So you don't just believe me, as a single source, here is how Wolf Ricter describes what is going on here .. and I quote:
During the 14-year reign of Easy Money, which started in 2008 and ended in 2022, everything became possible, and there were no limits to asset prices and valuations because when money is free, price doesn’t matter.
So the number of US-based unicorns that were created in the venture capital world each year soared from 9 in 2012 to 344 – or about 1.3 per business day – in 2021. November 2021 was the moment of peak Consensual Hallucination, as I call it. Since then, the Nasdaq has dropped 27%.
By mid-2022, the whole show started coming to an end. For the whole year 2022, “only” 185 unicorns were created, about 0.7 per business day. In 2023 through March 9, only 5 unicorns were created, about 0.1 per business day (data via PitchBook):
The total number of US-based unicorns that are still active climbed to 704 unicorns by March 2023, representing a mind-boggling aggregate valuation of $2.36 trillion, with a T.
These are unicorns where startup investors were still not able or willing to exit via some kind of sale, either by selling it to the public via an IPO, or by selling it to a company with deep pockets.
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During the Easy Money era, there was so much capital flowing into startups that they had so much funding that they could stay private for longer, despite burning profuse amounts of cash, and they didn’t have to seek a buyer or an IPO, because they could always raise new cash to burn.
This trend to more late-stage funding and staying private longer created more unicorns and bigger unicorns, that were burning more cash, and then suddenly the music stopped.
That $2.36 trillion is a lot of money to be finding buyers for. In 2019, which had already been a big year, the aggregate valuation of the 223 then still active US-based unicorns was $652 billion, according to PitchBook data. Now, the aggregate valuation waiting to go public or find a buyer is nearly four times as much.
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Late-stage funding into startups has come to a crawl. Many startups have approaching out-of-money dates. So there is pressure on these companies now to figure out how to burn less cash to extend their runway so that they can hopefully outwait this investor liquidity crunch.
For investors, cashing out is tough without Easy Money..”
One way for startup investors to cash out is via IPOs, during which shares become publicly traded, and investors can then sell their shares during the IPO and over time to the public.
With freshly minted IPO stocks and SPAC stocks crashing left and right starting in 2021 and continuing through 2022 and into 2023 it became difficult for startups to engineer IPOs, and IPO volume collapsed in Q1 2022 and has remained low ever since (IPO data above via Renaissance Capital).
The other way for startup investors to cash out is to sell the unicorn to a big corporation with deep pockets that wants to get rid of the budding competitor, or wants the technology, or the consumer data, or whatever, and they’re willing to pay no matter what for it. But that’s getting tough too.
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“Unicorns are likely to face significant challenges when sourcing potential acquirers due to limited buyer interest, and the recent decline in M&A activity coincides with the current economic downturn,” PitchBook said in the report.
“Only $39.6 billion in US acquisition value has occurred since the beginning of 2022, which makes it the least active year since 2015,” PitchBook said.
“Our data shows a mere five unicorn acquisitions in 2022, compared with 24 and 17 in 2021 and 2020, respectively,” PitchBook said.
“Additionally, many public corporations are opting to buy back company shares to appease shareholders and signal confidence in the company’s future. So far, share buybacks have been favored over M&A, with buyback announcements hitting a record high of $1.2 trillion in 2022,” PitchBook said.
Additionally, the current “antitrust crackdown on the tech sector has put increased pressure on large tech companies, such as Meta, which is currently being sued by the FTC for antitrust violations related to its acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram. This crackdown is likely to continue, affecting cash-starved unicorns seeking acquisition by large corporations.”
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In “the frozen exit environment” since 2022, exit value plunged by 87%, from the record $768 billion in 2021 to only $79 billion in 2022 and early 2023.
This “liquidity crunch” has limited the “return potential for investors and is restricting the flow of capital back into the venture ecosystem,” PitchBook said.
“This dearth of capital is further exacerbated by the languid pace of fundraising observed through Q1 2023, as well as an exodus of nontraditional investors that, in recent years, have played a major role in providing the large amounts of funding upon which unicorns are heavily reliant,” PitchBook said.
End of Easy Money. Hangover time.
The end of Easy Money ended many miracles and after the raucous party is now bringing them back to some sort of reality. This reality may be tough for a sector that has gotten hooked on an endless flow of money that made unicorns a paragon of this era.
SLIDE 25 – BUYBACKS
Companies underspent on capex over the past 10 years relative to history. Since the GFC, for every dollar generated through operation or borrowed, 38c was spent on capex (vs. 52c pre-GFC), 21c on dividends (vs. 17c) and 24c on buybacks (vs. 13c).
Second, companies shifted from spending on manufacturing and structures to spending on Tech over the last 20 years. Finally, Industrials spent most of the post-GFC period paying down debt, suggesting limited debt-driven PP&E investment.
Fiscal stimulus, re-shoring and green goals are secular forces that could bolster capex in spite of cyclical headwinds.
SLIDE 26 – BUYBACKS
While CAPEX may be insulated, the rising credit risks are more acute for buybacks and Tech spend. The last decade of cheapening capital and falling hurdle rates incented companies to buy back shares.
Historically, Tech, Industrials and Financials were net issuers of equity, but shifted to net buyers following the GFC.
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So if corporations haven’t been investing in CAPEX for new products, US patent leadership has dramatically fallen and the SPAC / Unicorn / IPO market is no longer the fertile M&A ground to buy a quick productivity solution what are CEO’s going to do.
If what we heard in the latest conference calls is any indication, CEO’s are banking on AI solutions to supply the silver bullet!
SLIDE 28
One month ago, to much dismay and widespread denial, Goldman predicted that AI could lead to some 300 million layoffs among highly paid, non-menial workers in the US and Europe. Goldman estimated that roughly two-thirds of current jobs are exposed to some degree of AI automation, and that generative AI could substitute up to one-fourth of current work.
Extrapolating their estimates globally suggests that generative AI could expose the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs to automation" as up to "two thirds of occupations could be partially automated by AI."
SLIDE 29
IBM beat profit estimates in its most recent quarter due to expense management, including the earlier-announced job cuts. In the past IBM had managed to manipulate its stock higher thanks to billions in stock buybacks (at much higher prices). But once its debt load grew too big, the buyback game ended, Warren Buffett sold his shares, and the stock price has languished for over half a decade. And since the company's revenue is stagnant at best, its only hope is to drastically cut overhead.
Enter AI: new "productivity and efficiency" steps - read replacing workers with algos - are expected to drive $2 billion a year in savings by the end of 2024, Chief Financial Officer James Kavanaugh said on the day of earnings.
Helping the company's imminent transition to an AI-staffed corporation will be the coming recession. Until late 2022, Krishna said he believed the US could avoid a recession. Now, he sees the potential for a “shallow and short” recession toward the end of this year, although it remains unclear just how once can determine that a recession will be "shallow and short".
SLIDE 30
The World Economic Forum (WEF) has warned that the employment landscape will change drastically over the next five years amid increasingly widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI)
According to WEF’s “The Future of Jobs Report 2023,” roughly 23 percent of jobs are expected to change by 2027, with around 69 million new jobs to be created and 83 million eliminated, resulting in a decrease of 14 million jobs, or 2 percent of current employment.
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The report (pdf) surveyed 803 companies collectively employing more than 11.3 million workers in 27 industry clusters and 45 economies from across the globe, on macro and technology trends and their impact on jobs and skills, as well as the “workforce transformation strategies” that businesses plan to implement between now and 2027.
It found that clerical or secretarial roles, including bank tellers, cashiers and ticket clerks, data entry clerks, postal service clerks, and administrative and executive secretaries will likely see the fastest decline in roles over the next five years relative to their size today, with roughly 26 million fewer jobs by 2027.
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Meanwhile, certain tech jobs, including those focused on AI and machine learning, sustainability specialists, business intelligence analysts, information security specialists, and fintech engineers, are expected to see an increase in employment.
Overall, the biggest job growth will likely be seen across the fields of education (10 percent, leading to 3 million additional jobs), agriculture (30 percent, or 3 million additional jobs), and digital commerce and trade (4 million additional jobs), according to the report.
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Many are now beginning to name this the new bull market
What are the odds that this new bull market (lead by a few) that started in late 2022 will be named and known as "the great AI bull"?
Tech leaders such as Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, and Andy Jassy mentioned AI a total of 168 times during their recent earnings calls and who is leading the way in this new bull....?
Visualizing the AI Bull
AI and it's older buddy Large Language Models are driving 53% of performance in the S&P 500 YTD. So far in 2023 we've had just 7 mega caps account for 90% of the gains in the S&P 500 YTD.
Who wants to short AI here.....?
SLIDE 34
Do you spell sustainable using AI?
Apple and Microsoft account for 39% of the S&P’s gain so far in 2023. Add in NVIDIA and Meta and it’s 60%.
Productivity growth (AI will change the world)
Productivity growth — making more with the same inputs — has been anemic for over a decade. Since 2005, the quarterly labor productivity growth rate has been 0.3%, half the average of 0.6% over 1947-2004. However, data shows that productivity is cyclical, and research ties it into economic conditions.
Historical evidence shows that tight labor markets and technology adoption are closely linked. We are likely to see tight U.S. labor markets continuing for years and is encouraged by resilient demand in the face of Fed tightening. The diffusion of new technologies, AI in particular, can fuel productivity growth.
All in all many see strong evidence that his Data Era thesis is intact and believes tech diffusion can contribute to productivity gains over the next 5-10 years.
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When the next generation of AI was introduced as ChatGPT with a free Beta download the response was over truly whelming! Almost immediately Ithaca over 500 million downloads. People I would never have thought would be aware of it had it downloaded and were trying it for all sorts of creative and imaginative ideas. It has been awhile since I saw something catch people’s imagination like ChatGPT
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Only few months later ChatGPT currently has 1.16 billion users. It crossed 1 billion users in March 2023.
Despite all sorts of issues in the initial Beta version, the potential is clearly there.
ChatGPT, it’s follows on competitive offerings and rapid overall AItechnologies to soon unfold these will form a platform for application innovation tat Wil rival what we saw “apps” do for tablets and phones.
I expect app developers will quickly explode with commercial offerings that will spread like a wide fire across corporate service areas.
I suspect the worker in an office cubicle or working from home will be prime casualties of this new wave of productivity tools.
SLIDE 37 – WHAT HISTORY TELLS US
The question we must finish on is whether AI will realistically significantly disrupt the labor market. Will it begin the process of reinventing the middle class while collar worker and what I have referred to as the Cubicle Class?
SLIDE 38
There are several historical examples of times that people wrongly predicted emerging technology would significantly disrupt labor markets, including:
- The Automated Teller Machine (ATM): When ATMs were first introduced in the 1970s, many people thought they would replace bank tellers. However, while ATMs did automate some banking functions, they also made it possible for banks to offer more services and expand their hours of operation. As a result, the number of bank teller jobs actually increased.
- The Internet: When the internet became widely available in the 1990s, some people predicted that it would lead to massive job losses. It didn’t take long before this proved to be a false narrative.
- The Industrial Revolution: In the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution led to the mechanization of many jobs. While some workers did lose their jobs, the Industrial Revolution created many new jobs in manufacturing, transportation, and other industries. Wages at factories were higher than what individuals were making as farmers and, as factories became widespread, more managers and employees were required to operate them, increasing both the supply of jobs and wages.
SLIDE 39
Today, a similar story is unfolding in the labor market. Take two real-world examples from the frontlines of business and technology:
- Copywriting and marketing: ChatGPT and other generative AI technologies such as JasperAI have swiftly changed the way content is created. For example, at the technology company I founded, our copywriter used to take several days to produce an article, which had to be edited before distribution. In total, the end-to-end process took about a week which meant the company was producing 4 articles per month. Since beginning to leverage JasperAI, the company now produces 3-4 articles per week. That translates into more leads, which translates into more customers, which turns into higher revenue growth, and more hiring. Is our copywriter’s job safe? You bet. Using AI technology doesn’t replace the need for her or her role, it supercharges it and helps the company scale faster, leading to more hiring, not less.
- Autonomous delivery robots: Starship Technologies is a high-profile technology company that has successfully completed over 4 million deliveries using its autonomous fleet of robots. It’s true that these robots have put humans out of work by replacing the need for people to physically deliver items. It’s also true that this technology has created hundreds of new, specialized, higher-paying jobs for technicians, managers, operations, and logistics specialists that ensure these robots get from point A to point B as intended. Plus, it’s helping solve a very real problem for retailers that unlocks growth and margin: last mile delivery.
Slide 40
While nobody has a crystal ball, AI has already been used to automate routine, repetitive tasks in fields such as manufacturing, data entry, and customer service. This has led to job losses in some industries, particularly in low-skill, low-wage jobs. As businesses continue to implement new AI technology, it’s reasonable to expect more of the same.
However, conversely, AI will continue to enhance productivity and drive efficiency, leading to economic growth which results in the creation of new jobs.
Looking back at history, every time there have been concerns over the displacement of jobs due to technological advancements, new jobs have ultimately been created. It’s important to note that the impact of AI on the labor market will not be uniform across all industries and skill levels. Some industries and job categories will likely see significant job losses. However, it will be important for businesses and policymakers to prepare for these changes by investing in re-skilling and up-skilling programs to help workers transition to new industries and job categories.
SLIDE 41
So, could AI steal your job?
The answer likely depends on your profession and industry. But just like previous technological inflection points, this disruption will create new opportunities as AI transforms work as we know it.
SLIDE 42
- PRODUCTIVITY= LAYOFFS + AI
- NOW THE SUDDENLY – An Answers to a seemingly insolvable problem
LIKELY TO BE SEEN & ADOPTED AS:
- A Strategic Imperative,
- A New Competitive Weapon,
- A Sustainable Competitive Advantage in the offering for the most Innovative!
SLIDE 43
As I always remind you in these videos, remember politicians and Central Banks will print the money to solve any and all problems, until such time as no one will take the money or it is of no value.
That day is still in the future so take advantage of the opportunities as they currently exist.
Investing is always easier when you know with relative certainty how the powers to be will react. Your chances of success go up dramatically.
The powers to be are now effectively trapped by policies of fiat currencies, unsound money, political polarization and global policy paralysis.
SLIDE 44
I would like take a moment as a reminder
DO NO NOT TRADE FROM ANY OF THESE SLIDES - they are for educational and discussions purposes ONLY.
As negative as these comments often are, there has seldom been a better time for investing. However, it requires careful analysis and not following what have traditionally been the true and tried approaches.
Do your reading and make sure you have a knowledgeable and well informed financial advisor.
So until we talk again, may 2023 turn out to be an outstanding investment year for you and your family?
I sincerely thank you for listening!
