I pointed out earlier that without the Industrial Revolution wages would have collapsed and agricultural unemployment would have soared. What makes things different today, however, is the country's capital structure. Market economics teaches that so long as there is sufficient land and capital to employ those willing and able to work, persistent widespread unemployment will not emerge. If, however, the capital structure shrinks or population expands faster than per capita investment the result is not a rise in unemployment but a fall in real wages, unless real minimum wage rates are enforced. Those who point to information technology as evidence of an emerging knowledge-based economy are making a grave error.
Every economy is in a sense knowledge-based.
What these people fail to recognise is that technical knowledge, has to be applied through capital. Computers, for example, need chips, mother boards, cards, monitors, memory, hard drives, etc. Each computer component involves an incredibly complex chain of manufacturing processes. In other words, a staggering production structure which in turn requires an enormous range of vital complementary services. And this goes for every production structure.