1999 there were 16,893,700
2025 there were 16,233,360

https://www.statista.com/statistics/199983/us-vehicle-sales-since-1951/

US population
2000 - 281+ million
2020 - 331+ million
These are US Census numbers
I suspect that with 50+ million more people in this country, all other things being equal, the number of sales should reflect, even if imperfectly, the roughly 16% increase in the population size over that 20 year period. The fact that it doesn't, that it actually shows a very small decrease might well indicate that the poster you were responding to is closer to being correct than you are.

According to the post I replied to, they should have been going down if increased use of automation destroyed customer demand as speculated. The data doesn't support that assertion.

If sales tracked population, we would have seen a steady increase annually in the preceding 20 years from 1976-1996, which isn't the case as sales were relatively flat.

In the real world, it means palaces behind armed gates for the winners and poverty for everyone else.

Bernie had it right. Billionaires should not exist. It’s just wealth-hoarding. I think it really is a mental illness.

In March to sign deals allowing them to build their own power plants for their AI data centers. How many jobs will be lost when that happens? Where are they gonna go for the power grids and water supplies? Are we gonna be a society where technology is the norm and people will no longer be needed to run the country? No human ingenuity? Cameras everywhere..even in the Can?

If not, why not?

Right?

A good idea of how to handle this.

...for the middle-class and working-class in this country to put aside the bigotry and stupid types of self-interest and start raising some hell against the exploitative ultra-rich.

and figured out it ain't trans folk or immigrants causing your misery

And it isn't enough for these pieces of shit. They want it all. And they will leave us in the dust to get it. They can all go get royally fucked.

And that has been my profession for over 25 years now. Its my career. I borrowed money for the degree. I paid it all back. I'm 46 years old and starting over really isn't something that is an option unless we (my wife and myself) sell our house and move outside of the city we've lived in this entire time, which would put her at a disadvantage travelling to her job, which might get replaced with AI too, who knows.... she audits business loans . Her only saving grace the notion of introducing AI to sensitive banking data has a lot of legal hurdles.

I've seen what some of these AI tools can do for software development. I've had to study them and learn them. With all my experience, I know exactly how to use it to make it generate quality code under my own guidance. And its really good at figuring out bugs if you give it the right info. Its scary. Right now, it still needs human guidance and knowledge of whatever you are guiding it to do but there may come a day where that isn't the case.

We need to be cracking down on it somehow. The data centers and their environmental impact, the models that are trained on stolen data and any part of it that threatens our economic stability. There have to be regulations and there needs to be legal enforcement of copyright laws and there needs to be targeted taxes on certain models that are used do certain things that could blow a whole through our jobs economy.

This country is headed for disaster, all fueled by greed and the desire for power.