As to my understanding of the background behind this and the greater context:
Economic growth on Earth is slowing down significantly; that is because quantitative growth is not possible without damaging the planet, and qualitative growth (such as infotainment, IT) are slowing down as well (consider “enshittification” as a symptom of poor vision for the IT industry).
For one, that is why people want to go to Mars. I’m definitely not a Musk fanboy, but people have wanted /thought about going to Mars before Musk. (consider Robert Zubrin 2000 “The Case For Mars”). If it is doable, and it probably is considering there’s enough water on Mars to sustain a civilization, they are hoping/predicting that it might become a booming market. I don’t want to be a “lunatic” or whatever you’d call me; but i’d argue i’ve done more research about this project than you, in case you’ve watched a YouTube video that says “it’s dumb/impossible”.
But back to the article:
Since growth of Earth’s economy is slowing down, demand for human labor is decreasing. Since the labor market is a market, less demand at equal supply leads to lower prices (wages). That is why “cost of living” appears to be skyrocketing. Food prices have not gone up in the recent years (because the means of food production did not change much in recent years), but real wages have gone down, if you subtract inflation. That is how it should be looked at.
Lower wages lead to a significantly lower quality of life for workers, as they are arguably one of the most decisive factors for quality of life. That is why “everything seems to get more difficult” over time.
I honestly don’t see a solution for this; demand for human labor could not easily be stimulated more than has already been tried in the last 15+ years. If automation still replaces labor, it will not lead to mass unemployedness (such is a thing of the past, when people were either employed or unemployed), but instead to drastic drops in wages (which makes it more attractive for companies to employ people or keep them in employment). I know laborers are proud of their labor, and are going to feel it as a “shock” that wages go down. I still think it’s necessary for the Quality of Life (which is very important, maybe the most important thing that politics should talk about) to introduce some sort of subsidy (like Universal Basic Income). I know some people are gonna be against it (notably without giving a good argument); but i do deem it necessary. That would give more buying power to the people and people could more easily deal with the rising cost of everything, including education.
oh yeah my dad told me his mechatronics thesis was about building a robot that has legs and moves like a spider … so, almost centipede. he told me they also looked at centipedes just for reference.