"How the internet is making us poor" by Christopher Mims at Quartz

[bhikkhu]

10. Technology eliminates jobs - but it doesn't make us poor

Though the uncertainty of it isn't much fun for plenty of people.

In material goods we are much richer than people were 200 years ago; much much richer than people 100 years ago; and richer still than people were in the 60's and 70's. Just as a quick example - look at the difference in the size of the houses we live in, along with the difference in the number of people living in an average house, then consider how many people back then had to rent storage units to keep the stuff they couldn't fit in their house?

Technology makes it cheap to manufacture very large quantities of stuff.

Of course, there's much more to life than stuff, and most people would rather have a decent job than a houseful of stuff...