QuestionerYou sure that we can keep up, given everyone a job when so much technology is doing so much? Is it still a reason to be optimistic about the future?
Joe KernenWell, Joe, wouldn't it be wonderful if someday we got to the point where there were robots every place, they were running farms, they were running Apple, they were running Berkshire Athaway, and all you had to do was one person could punch a button at the start of every morning and all the goods and services that we're getting now would be turned out by robots or whatever. And we'd have the goods. We'd have 18 million cars a year. We'd have a million one housing starts. We'd have all the iPads being sold. And if all of that came from one person pushing a button, would that be a tragedy? I mean, just think how well we'd live. Now we'd have, instead of having to work 35 hours a week, we might work an hour a week or something of the sort.
WarrenNo, I mean, basically, the more output you can get from people, it frees them up to do other things. And one of the things it frees them up to do is work less. We work less than people did 100 years ago. And what we've elected to do is bring down the work week to some extent, but also have a huge abundance of goods beyond what we had at that time.