Most JOBS will be gone in 20 years. Jobs as in permanent employment with benefits and a regular paycheck.
We already see a slump in people buying stuff in the west. Many are opting out of owning a car altogether, so there will be less incentive to go deeper into automation. There is a slow trend to locally produced merchandise, that is more expensive at the onset but will last way longer, saving thus money, time and hassle. “Going shopping” is not the teen thing to do in many western countries anymore.
Restaurants?
Home cooking is the in-thing to do, and there is an increasing number of working poor not able to afford even Mc Donalds.
All this will do away with most of those service-industry jobs.
The end result of all this could be that we will do a lot more directly ourselves, not spending money and working only for a few extras.
With our advanced state of science, in 20 years we should be able to prevent most chronic diseases, making a health care industry obsolete. Or making it at least way smaller.
So in 20 years, we would:
not be commuting
not be living in a suburb
almost never have to go to the hospital
never set foot into a nursing home
not believing that being a consumer is the only reason for being alive.
stop wanting to be an employee.
Outlandish nonsense?
Maybe. But here in Europe we have paid good money for some “futurists”, who came up with such note worthy predictions for the year 2000:
The war against cancer will be won.
No more world hunger.
People would commute to their jobs using flying cars.
Space travel would be seen as normal.
I still want my flying car! Wrong on all 4 counts!
Of course, the Club of Rome predicted:
No more oil by the year 2000.
No more canned foods, for tin is running out by 1990 at the latest!
Overpopulation is going to be humanity’s demise! No way we would be able to feed 6 billion people.
Wrong again! We have more oil than we can safely burn, they came up with a way to make food tins without using tin and we are able to feed 6 billion people. Even more than that. But we are 7 billion - and even when having enough food for 9 billion, many of them have not enough money to buy it.
So let’s put up another prediction:
Capitalism as we know it will be gone in 20 years!