What did the Technical Alliance discover about the trends facing the economy?
The Technical Alliance studied such things as industrial output, man-hours of labor, and kilowatt-hours of energy used in all industries. What they found was a trend consistent to all these industries. In each case, they found production increasing at a rate never observed before, and that the man-hours per unit of production were in decline. The result of these two trends was an increase in man-hours of labor at first, but then a decline after 1919. This is illustrated in Technocracy’s Three Curve Chart. What this meant was fewer people working, and hence less consuming power in the way of wages. This is what caused the demand to decrease while dramatically increased production caused supply to increase sharply, thus resulting in the Great Depression. They also determined that these trends were irreversible, that people would continue to be replaced by the more efficient, cheaper, and harder working machines, and they were right. Even today jobs are lost as computers take over many of
