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While for the individual, this may seem true in the short term, fostering a perpetually desperate underclass tends to have quite negative long term consequences
by alphonsegaston 10y ago
While for the individual, this may seem true in the short term, fostering a perpetually desperate underclass tends to have quite negative long term consequences for everyone's health and safety. From what I've seen of California, the well-off are fine with this tilt towards Central American-style stratification. But at some point, this trajectory comes at the cost at allying themselves with some grotesque form of thuggery (corrupt police state, rule by organized crime, etc). Maybe that's what we're inching towards.
- zimablue 10y agoDisintermediation itself isn't tied to the creation of an underclass, rapid technological innovation destroying jobs might be but that's something we need to solve with welfare (and Americans are really going to have to get over their brainwashing that accepting government aid makes you scum). Literally the alternative to redistribution is making everyone poorer and manipulating the system so that factory workers can feel like they're worth the money they're paid. Eg. Brexit/Trump - protectionism.
- alphonsegaston 10y agoWhat constitutes "rapid technological innovation" these days is just exceptionally bright people acting as middlemen to concentrate wealth into a new class of financiers. It's not structurally different from Wall St. UBI is just a story being peddled to keep the engineers on board because they're (right now) more moral and science fiction optimistic than their investment banker counterparts. Americans will gladly embrace (maybe have) authoritarianism before they'll abandon the just world fallacy of Capitalist individualism.
- pnathan 10y agoI'd like to see a Gig Economy Union myself. Sure I can hire an Uber, get my laundry handled, my shopping done, but I want to know the poor s.o.b. doing the work has benefits and a decent wage, and isn't being screwed over by the app-company-of-the-month.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago> I'd like to see a Gig Economy Union myself. This is called "labor law". I'm personally looking forward to the IRS reaping its pound of flesh from Uber for contractor misclassification and the hundreds of millions of dollars in employer payroll back taxes and penalties that will be due.
- jMyles 10y agoIs it irony that, if this comes to pass, the government will use that money, made on the backs of mostly poor people in the USA, to drop bombs on mostly poor people on the other side of the world?
- toomuchtodo 10y agoI'm hopeful the money will end up having to shore up social security or Medicare.
- ticviking 10y agoDream on...
- toomuchtodo 10y agoI don't dream, I do. I apply political and financial pressure against my Congressional reps, and have even threatened (with someone else's financial backing) running someone against them (which secured their vote for a socially progressive bill I wanted passed). But you do you. I enjoy applying pressure in the political space, and I play a long game.
- jMyles 10y agoI'm not disagreeing about representative pressure. Listen, I've been in almost every congressional office building on the hill and participated in several house campaigns, including a successful one. But I also don't kid myself: this kind of action is not playing the long game. The agenda is set such that congress really doesn't even get to vote on the important matters directly. For example, there will never be a vote directly on the matter of whether to spend money gleaned from taxing gig economy companies on shoring up services or bombing brown people. But that's not even the point. Government is not the long game. The state is temporary and its time is nearly over. The long game is human evolution, especially what we today call "technology."