8 ms·

We Need a New Deal to Address the Economic Risks of Automation

64 points by danvideo 10y ago

behnamoh 10y ago
Automation is the natural consequence of computer technology, which is a natural consequence of human intelligence. Any effort to fight or control automation is doomed. Believe it or not, the future is gonna be much different and you either accept it, or get crushed by the power of The Machine.
- deelowe 10y ago
  Ok. What do we do during the transition while millions of blue collar workers take to blaming brown people for job losses? EDIT - seems I could have done a better job with the satire here. There have been several reports that Donald Trump's Mexican wall is misguided and that the major driver of job losses these days is increased effeciency due to automation.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - rhapsodic 10y ago
    Yes, Democratic Party, please keep insulting working-class American citizens by calling them vile names. The Republican Party will be happy to receive their votes.
    - deelowe 10y ago
      First, I'm a conservative though I lean heavily towards libertarian. That said, who called anyone names? Would you have felt more comfortable with my statement if I had substituted xenophobia for brown people? I don't think racism is as huge a factor as simple scapegoating and opportunism by politicians. The public is being misled and comments like the parent's ignore the very real impact automation is having on society.
      - rhapsodic 10y ago
        > That said, who called anyone names? You said: > while millions of blue collar workers take to blaming brown people for job losses Which is effectively calling millions of blue collar workers racist. That is a vile and disgusting and baseless insult which is right out of the playbook of the Democratic party, whether you're a Democrat or not. And it's also signalling your own virtue to the world. By decrying the racism in others, you're announcing to the world how properly non-racist you are. This has started to backfire on the Democratic party. Their hectoring and name-calling is not nearly as effective as it used to be. If it were, Clinton would have won in a landslide, because that's the main way she argued against the need to control the US's borders. I really hope they keep it up though.
        TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
        It also really dismisses the effect of illegal immigration on lower-class labor work and acts like they're crazy for even suggesting it. 10 million immigrants is a lot of people, and if a lot of them are doing lower class work, that suppresses wages for American workers.
    - dang 10y ago
      Please don't use HN for partisan battle. It's not good if an account veers into using this site primarily for politics. We eventually have to ban those (regardless of what their politics actually are) because it's destructive of the things HN is really for.
- Kurtz79 10y ago
  I don't think in the article is suggesting that we should "fighting or controlling" it, but, taking it for granted that is going to happen, find a way to address its consequences.
  - itchyjunk 10y ago
    "Bill Gates suggested we tax the robots in order to slow the progress of automation and re-direct money toward human-service jobs that require a level of empathy and compassion that artificial intelligence cannot yet offer." The article does hint at the possible need for control though.
itchyjunk 10y ago
I think i've read one too many articles on the "oh no, the robots will flip our burgers. Let's make burgers that's unflippable by robots so we can keep doing it." Even people who don't mind working, maybe loves working will be okay with automating things and moving on. They will have other things in their hobby list/ bucket list/ garage that they have been meaning to work on. I understand these articles are still needed/useful for people not yet aware about this issue so it's not a criticism of the article but of myself.
- TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
  You're assuming that this is a rising tide that will lift all boats. What I'm afraid of is that the world will be split into capital owners who own all the robots, and the perpetually poor, who can't get jobs because they've all been automated and the only jobs remaining are minimum wage "service" jobs. And that's assuming there will be enough service jobs to go around. We're already seeing this split occur in USA. The middle class is basically gone at this point, and the majority of people are either upper-middle class or lower class. This is not a just or equal society at all right now.
  - itchyjunk 10y ago
    No, I see your point. And its valid. But I was getting at something slightly different. I don't think the "tsunami" prophecy will come to be true over night. Speaking in terms of average rate of change would be over valuable rather than instantaneous rate of change. Ofcourse, the average might equal the instantaneous at some point if mean value theorem hold true, but just talking in terms of instant change makes it sound all doom and gloom when it's really not. Even the Earth might not go out of orbit instantaneously if the Sun were to suddenly disappear.
  - pavlov 10y ago
    What's wrong with service jobs? If the problem is not the nature of the work but rather the pay, then that seems solvable by various forms of wealth redistribution. Universal basic income can be a good component in that.
ganfortran 10y ago
Tax the robot
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
As usual the chorus will be something along the lines of: "Nothing to see here. We've had these shifts before and more jobs will be created than lost and people will transition to new jobs etc..." To which the response is, yes that's true, however never have we seen it at such a pace. Shifts are now likely to happen multiple times in a single working lifetime, as opposed to once a generation (1960-2000 - Solid State & industrial automation) or once every third generation (1800-1920 - Industrialization). From years 0-1800 you could expect that your children would probably do the same job you and your grandfather did (more than likely farming). From 1950's on, children would likely go into a different line of work than their parents were in. Now it's common for a parent to have multiple careers with completely different skill sets and so on for their children. This would be all well and good if one of these options were true: 1. People could adapt as quickly as advances in machine processes are changing (the outcome of which obviates machine efficiencies) 2. There was flexibility in the system which would allow people the time to adapt The only other way to keep people around and not in poverty conditions would be to decouple human needs from business processes - which is effectively what UBI is trying to do in a roundabout way. I think has interesting long term outcomes, namely that a few dominant machine organizations would feed, clothe, house and train the population.
- falcolas 10y ago
  Tiny nit: generations are measured in 20 or 25 year increments, an "average" of how long it takes one group of humans to grow up and begin reproducing themselves. I've found that the media tends to use 20 year increments, even though 25 is a bit more accurate for an "average time for two people to have two children". This would change your figures to around 2 generations for the current automation revolution, and industrialization to between 4-6 generations.
  - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
    Thanks for that. I wrestled with using generational vs life span for that exact reason, but decided it was pedantic and not worth going into. So thanks for doing that math for me :)
bsmith 10y ago
I disagree with the author here on UBI. The root of the issue goes deeper than deciding to prop up job markets so that there is enough supply of jobs to meet the demand. Based on the arguments in the article, this can only be a temporary fix; eventually automation will take over too many jobs for every person to have one—or at the very least, human labor is a commodity that eventually becomes so cheap that the laborers cannot survive. The author seems to be solidly in the 'work == virtue' camp and argues that UBI decreases the incentive to work. While partly true, the REAL work we want done is not menial, but innovative, and leads to the next big breakthroughs that increase productivity and eliminate even MORE jobs. This is capitalism, no? UBI is there so everyone still survives to have a crack at it, if they want to. This becomes an ethical question quite quickly: does being born make you worthy of survival?
- UweSchmidt 10y ago
  Um, yes? Being born makes you worthy of survival. Where is the ethical dilemma? Otherwise I agree with your post.
  - bsmith 10y ago
    It's meant to be rhetorical; of course being born makes you worthy of survival! But what if working doesn't provide you enough sustenance? And what if you don't even have the opportunity in the first place, once the demand for human labor is low enough?
    - devoply 10y ago
      We have more than enough resources. If working does not provide enough sustenance then we need to replace the government. These are political issues not economic ones. We can solve the problem of production with automation, however the problem of distribution remains and if the government is not distributing resources to you then you need to take that government down and replace it with one that does. That ultimatum hopefully makes politicians understand that they are no longer serving their corporate overlords but the people. They have been ignoring the people so long that might get some getting used to. Most innovation done today I would say a good 99% of what constitutes the job market is trivial and can be automated away in the next 50 years. What remains is the 1% of scientists and engineers that actually make shit happen and strive to change the game. It's fine with me if these people live like kings and the rest of us have enough resources and all the free time in the world to do whatever we want and not be encumbered by trivial work. Maybe we can bring back hunting gathering civilizations or other microcosms of civilization and ways of life.
peacetreefrog 10y ago
this guy needs a little more humility. as dan boudreaux writes: "It’s called “history.” Since humans first controlled fire and carved arrows, history is a long tale of the invention and use of labor-saving techniques and devices. Domestication of oxen and horses. Pulleys. Levers. Irrigation channels. Metal saws. The printing press. Concrete. The wheel. All save labor, yet none has led to permanent increases in unemployment. "It’s true that the pace of introducing new labor-saving techniques has magnificently quickened in the past two hundred years. This fast pace continues today. Yet still we encounter no evidence that labor-saving techniques permanently increase unemployment. "You’ll reply “This time is different!” Perhaps, but I doubt it"
- RobertoG 10y ago
  There are strong arguments in the "this time is different" side. When jobs are lost because technology, the new jobs are created in fields where technology can't compete. Until now that was intellectual work.
  - peacetreefrog 10y ago
    To me, it's a lack of imagination -- not the ability to imagine the kinds of work people will be doing in 100 years (which is very difficult), but the lack of empathy/ability to get out of the here and now. In 1800's over half of US workers were in agriculture, today it's under 2%. If you were to tell a farmer that in 1900 they'd freak out, very similarly to how this guy's freaking out today.
d--b 10y ago
You don't really have to speculate. Automation is going to do to the service industry what globalization did to manufacturing. Manufacturing got "automated" away by sending work to places where labor costs next to nothing. Did the offshoring of manufacture jobs create joblessness? Actually I'm not sure what the answer to that is. According to statistics the US is running at full employment. According to pretty much every other source of information, regions where manufacturing used to happen are devastated by joblessness, drug addiction, and violence... I don't know why there is such a disconnect.
- daliwali 10y ago
  Because the unemployment rate is a lie. It is denominated by the "labor force", which, if one excludes those who are no longer seeking work or chronically unemployed, it's basically being dishonest with statistics. One does not have to feign ignorance as to why there is a disconnect between the statistics and the reality.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    It's not a lie, it's a technical measure that people misinterpret. If it was a lie you'd expect suppression of the further data. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
    - daliwali 10y ago
      There is no need to censor the data, as long as one can present it in a way that is favorable to a particular viewpoint. The fallacious argument being made with the unemployment rate lends itself to misinterpretation.
    - BearGoesChirp 10y ago
      Why would we expect such? The best lies are the ones that provide deniability, have enough truth to satisfy some, and yet mislead to the extent desired. Creating a measurement that gets blasted on the front page of news that is largely misinterpreted, while keeping the actual figures out of public view enough so that only a small fraction of the population sees it seems to not be too different from a lie.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
huffmsa 10y ago
We just need to accept Marx was right, but he got the timescale wrong. I say this as a staunch Randian. I just can't not see the obvious trend towards the future. Pixar's WALL-E is the Marxist utopia we'll soon be living in. No one wants for anything.
zip1234 10y ago
I'm totally onboard with UBI if it is actually needed. The problem is people PROJECTING that it will be needed. In the current world human labor is very much in demand. Maybe people won't be able to use the specific degree that they went to school for but that just means a bit of retraining and/or a bit of mindset shift. If there is a massive outflux of jobs in America, then there are many questions that need to be answered before even approaching UBI as a solution. For example, "are all countries suffering the same job losses? If not, then why not?"
- rhino369 10y ago
  And even if they are right that we are less than a decade away from a sharp permanent decline in employment, it's still too soon for this kind of political change. You couldn't get the new deal passed during the roaring 20's. Society has to actually realize that the old way no longer works. Radical change never happens without a great need already being present. And we can't even really begin to guess how our society would be altered by this. Trying to predict the issue and fix them seems folly.
- TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
  > In the current world human labor is very much in demand. If this were the case, wages would be rising. Supply and demand is what kept unions around in the 60s, there was enough demand for labor that they could demand higher wages and better treatment. Now due to globalization and other things, the return on labor is incredibly low and still declining.
  - zip1234 10y ago
    Wages are rising significantly in the China, India, etc and are catching up. Nobody really knows what will happen once all of the labor that is extremely cheap now is not as cheap. We can conjecture that their will be some upheaval, but nobody really knows what the effects will be.
    - TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
      Wages are rising for them regionally, but the return on labor is lower than it was before. Previously, a laborer working 9-5 could afford a middle class life with a house, car, and nuclear family. Can a laborer in India or China afford that now? I doubt it.
digitalzombie 10y ago
Automation is going to happen anyway. There are several ways we can deal with it. 1. We can set up a social safety net to transition displaced workers to a new trade/career. 2. Protectionism. 3. We do nothing. 4. basic income --- Doing nothing is silly. Basic income isn't going to pass in USA, universal healthcare haven't even pass yet. Protectionism goes against capitalism and it doesn't help in the long run. It just extend a dying market like coals. We chose to become specialized a long time ago and not specializing is crazy. So the most sensible thing is a safety net.
- RobertoG 10y ago
  The elephant on the room, the old question that it seems nobody wants to mention is, in a totally automated economy, "who owns the means of production?". I don't think we are going to arrive nowhere in the discussion until we face that question.
jmmcd 10y ago
> UBI reduces the incentive to work, and risks stranding millions of people in a subsistence living trap, able to just about get by, but cut off from the opportunity for upward mobility, as this essay details well. The claim is prima facie false, so I looked at the source provided ("this essay" is [1]) and it doesn't support that claim AT ALL. [1] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601499/basic-income-a-sellout-of-the-american-dream/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601499/basic-income-a-sel...
- dmichulke 10y ago
  I think the reasoning goes like that: If you give 100k people each 10k$ each month, chances are that some of them stop working because they consider it enough. The same holds for 1k$ but to a lesser extent. Still, UBI reduces the incentive to work.
  - RobertoG 10y ago
    So, they give money to people because there are not enough works and then complain because the people don't work. I get lost somewhere in the reasoning.
  - jmmcd 10y ago
    I can accept the claim that it reduces the incentive to work (a bit), but not the claim that there is any trap that prevents upward mobility.
adynatos 10y ago
"There’s been downward pressure on jobs since the Industrial Revolution due to leaps in productivity brought about by human ingenuity and lucky discoveries." [citation needed] there were never more jobs

64 points by danvideo 10y ago

Automation is the natural consequence of computer technology, which is a natural consequence of human intelligence. Any effort to fight or control automation is doomed. Believe it or not, the future is gonna be much different and you either accept it, or get crushed by the power of The Machine.

deelowe 10y ago
Ok. What do we do during the transition while millions of blue collar workers take to blaming brown people for job losses? EDIT - seems I could have done a better job with the satire here. There have been several reports that Donald Trump's Mexican wall is misguided and that the major driver of job losses these days is increased effeciency due to automation.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- rhapsodic 10y ago
  Yes, Democratic Party, please keep insulting working-class American citizens by calling them vile names. The Republican Party will be happy to receive their votes.
  - deelowe 10y ago
    First, I'm a conservative though I lean heavily towards libertarian. That said, who called anyone names? Would you have felt more comfortable with my statement if I had substituted xenophobia for brown people? I don't think racism is as huge a factor as simple scapegoating and opportunism by politicians. The public is being misled and comments like the parent's ignore the very real impact automation is having on society.
    - rhapsodic 10y ago
      > That said, who called anyone names? You said: > while millions of blue collar workers take to blaming brown people for job losses Which is effectively calling millions of blue collar workers racist. That is a vile and disgusting and baseless insult which is right out of the playbook of the Democratic party, whether you're a Democrat or not. And it's also signalling your own virtue to the world. By decrying the racism in others, you're announcing to the world how properly non-racist you are. This has started to backfire on the Democratic party. Their hectoring and name-calling is not nearly as effective as it used to be. If it were, Clinton would have won in a landslide, because that's the main way she argued against the need to control the US's borders. I really hope they keep it up though.
      - TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
        It also really dismisses the effect of illegal immigration on lower-class labor work and acts like they're crazy for even suggesting it. 10 million immigrants is a lot of people, and if a lot of them are doing lower class work, that suppresses wages for American workers.
  - dang 10y ago
    Please don't use HN for partisan battle. It's not good if an account veers into using this site primarily for politics. We eventually have to ban those (regardless of what their politics actually are) because it's destructive of the things HN is really for.
Kurtz79 10y ago
I don't think in the article is suggesting that we should "fighting or controlling" it, but, taking it for granted that is going to happen, find a way to address its consequences.
- itchyjunk 10y ago
  "Bill Gates suggested we tax the robots in order to slow the progress of automation and re-direct money toward human-service jobs that require a level of empathy and compassion that artificial intelligence cannot yet offer." The article does hint at the possible need for control though.

itchyjunk 10y ago

I think i've read one too many articles on the "oh no, the robots will flip our burgers. Let's make burgers that's unflippable by robots so we can keep doing it." Even people who don't mind working, maybe loves working will be okay with automating things and moving on. They will have other things in their hobby list/ bucket list/ garage that they have been meaning to work on. I understand these articles are still needed/useful for people not yet aware about this issue so it's not a criticism of the article but of myself.

TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
You're assuming that this is a rising tide that will lift all boats. What I'm afraid of is that the world will be split into capital owners who own all the robots, and the perpetually poor, who can't get jobs because they've all been automated and the only jobs remaining are minimum wage "service" jobs. And that's assuming there will be enough service jobs to go around. We're already seeing this split occur in USA. The middle class is basically gone at this point, and the majority of people are either upper-middle class or lower class. This is not a just or equal society at all right now.
- itchyjunk 10y ago
  No, I see your point. And its valid. But I was getting at something slightly different. I don't think the "tsunami" prophecy will come to be true over night. Speaking in terms of average rate of change would be over valuable rather than instantaneous rate of change. Ofcourse, the average might equal the instantaneous at some point if mean value theorem hold true, but just talking in terms of instant change makes it sound all doom and gloom when it's really not. Even the Earth might not go out of orbit instantaneously if the Sun were to suddenly disappear.
- pavlov 10y ago
  What's wrong with service jobs? If the problem is not the nature of the work but rather the pay, then that seems solvable by various forms of wealth redistribution. Universal basic income can be a good component in that.

ganfortran 10y ago

Tax the robot

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

As usual the chorus will be something along the lines of: "Nothing to see here. We've had these shifts before and more jobs will be created than lost and people will transition to new jobs etc..." To which the response is, yes that's true, however never have we seen it at such a pace. Shifts are now likely to happen multiple times in a single working lifetime, as opposed to once a generation (1960-2000 - Solid State & industrial automation) or once every third generation (1800-1920 - Industrialization). From years 0-1800 you could expect that your children would probably do the same job you and your grandfather did (more than likely farming). From 1950's on, children would likely go into a different line of work than their parents were in. Now it's common for a parent to have multiple careers with completely different skill sets and so on for their children. This would be all well and good if one of these options were true: 1. People could adapt as quickly as advances in machine processes are changing (the outcome of which obviates machine efficiencies) 2. There was flexibility in the system which would allow people the time to adapt The only other way to keep people around and not in poverty conditions would be to decouple human needs from business processes - which is effectively what UBI is trying to do in a roundabout way. I think has interesting long term outcomes, namely that a few dominant machine organizations would feed, clothe, house and train the population.

falcolas 10y ago
Tiny nit: generations are measured in 20 or 25 year increments, an "average" of how long it takes one group of humans to grow up and begin reproducing themselves. I've found that the media tends to use 20 year increments, even though 25 is a bit more accurate for an "average time for two people to have two children". This would change your figures to around 2 generations for the current automation revolution, and industrialization to between 4-6 generations.
- AndrewKemendo 10y ago
  Thanks for that. I wrestled with using generational vs life span for that exact reason, but decided it was pedantic and not worth going into. So thanks for doing that math for me :)

bsmith 10y ago

I disagree with the author here on UBI. The root of the issue goes deeper than deciding to prop up job markets so that there is enough supply of jobs to meet the demand. Based on the arguments in the article, this can only be a temporary fix; eventually automation will take over too many jobs for every person to have one—or at the very least, human labor is a commodity that eventually becomes so cheap that the laborers cannot survive. The author seems to be solidly in the 'work == virtue' camp and argues that UBI decreases the incentive to work. While partly true, the REAL work we want done is not menial, but innovative, and leads to the next big breakthroughs that increase productivity and eliminate even MORE jobs. This is capitalism, no? UBI is there so everyone still survives to have a crack at it, if they want to. This becomes an ethical question quite quickly: does being born make you worthy of survival?

UweSchmidt 10y ago
Um, yes? Being born makes you worthy of survival. Where is the ethical dilemma? Otherwise I agree with your post.
- bsmith 10y ago
  It's meant to be rhetorical; of course being born makes you worthy of survival! But what if working doesn't provide you enough sustenance? And what if you don't even have the opportunity in the first place, once the demand for human labor is low enough?
  - devoply 10y ago
    We have more than enough resources. If working does not provide enough sustenance then we need to replace the government. These are political issues not economic ones. We can solve the problem of production with automation, however the problem of distribution remains and if the government is not distributing resources to you then you need to take that government down and replace it with one that does. That ultimatum hopefully makes politicians understand that they are no longer serving their corporate overlords but the people. They have been ignoring the people so long that might get some getting used to. Most innovation done today I would say a good 99% of what constitutes the job market is trivial and can be automated away in the next 50 years. What remains is the 1% of scientists and engineers that actually make shit happen and strive to change the game. It's fine with me if these people live like kings and the rest of us have enough resources and all the free time in the world to do whatever we want and not be encumbered by trivial work. Maybe we can bring back hunting gathering civilizations or other microcosms of civilization and ways of life.

peacetreefrog 10y ago

this guy needs a little more humility. as dan boudreaux writes: "It’s called “history.” Since humans first controlled fire and carved arrows, history is a long tale of the invention and use of labor-saving techniques and devices. Domestication of oxen and horses. Pulleys. Levers. Irrigation channels. Metal saws. The printing press. Concrete. The wheel. All save labor, yet none has led to permanent increases in unemployment. "It’s true that the pace of introducing new labor-saving techniques has magnificently quickened in the past two hundred years. This fast pace continues today. Yet still we encounter no evidence that labor-saving techniques permanently increase unemployment. "You’ll reply “This time is different!” Perhaps, but I doubt it"

RobertoG 10y ago
There are strong arguments in the "this time is different" side. When jobs are lost because technology, the new jobs are created in fields where technology can't compete. Until now that was intellectual work.
- peacetreefrog 10y ago
  To me, it's a lack of imagination -- not the ability to imagine the kinds of work people will be doing in 100 years (which is very difficult), but the lack of empathy/ability to get out of the here and now. In 1800's over half of US workers were in agriculture, today it's under 2%. If you were to tell a farmer that in 1900 they'd freak out, very similarly to how this guy's freaking out today.

d--b 10y ago

You don't really have to speculate. Automation is going to do to the service industry what globalization did to manufacturing. Manufacturing got "automated" away by sending work to places where labor costs next to nothing. Did the offshoring of manufacture jobs create joblessness? Actually I'm not sure what the answer to that is. According to statistics the US is running at full employment. According to pretty much every other source of information, regions where manufacturing used to happen are devastated by joblessness, drug addiction, and violence... I don't know why there is such a disconnect.

daliwali 10y ago
Because the unemployment rate is a lie. It is denominated by the "labor force", which, if one excludes those who are no longer seeking work or chronically unemployed, it's basically being dishonest with statistics. One does not have to feign ignorance as to why there is a disconnect between the statistics and the reality.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  It's not a lie, it's a technical measure that people misinterpret. If it was a lie you'd expect suppression of the further data. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
  - daliwali 10y ago
    There is no need to censor the data, as long as one can present it in a way that is favorable to a particular viewpoint. The fallacious argument being made with the unemployment rate lends itself to misinterpretation.
  - BearGoesChirp 10y ago
    Why would we expect such? The best lies are the ones that provide deniability, have enough truth to satisfy some, and yet mislead to the extent desired. Creating a measurement that gets blasted on the front page of news that is largely misinterpreted, while keeping the actual figures out of public view enough so that only a small fraction of the population sees it seems to not be too different from a lie.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

huffmsa 10y ago

We just need to accept Marx was right, but he got the timescale wrong. I say this as a staunch Randian. I just can't not see the obvious trend towards the future. Pixar's WALL-E is the Marxist utopia we'll soon be living in. No one wants for anything.

zip1234 10y ago

I'm totally onboard with UBI if it is actually needed. The problem is people PROJECTING that it will be needed. In the current world human labor is very much in demand. Maybe people won't be able to use the specific degree that they went to school for but that just means a bit of retraining and/or a bit of mindset shift. If there is a massive outflux of jobs in America, then there are many questions that need to be answered before even approaching UBI as a solution. For example, "are all countries suffering the same job losses? If not, then why not?"

rhino369 10y ago
And even if they are right that we are less than a decade away from a sharp permanent decline in employment, it's still too soon for this kind of political change. You couldn't get the new deal passed during the roaring 20's. Society has to actually realize that the old way no longer works. Radical change never happens without a great need already being present. And we can't even really begin to guess how our society would be altered by this. Trying to predict the issue and fix them seems folly.
TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
> In the current world human labor is very much in demand. If this were the case, wages would be rising. Supply and demand is what kept unions around in the 60s, there was enough demand for labor that they could demand higher wages and better treatment. Now due to globalization and other things, the return on labor is incredibly low and still declining.
- zip1234 10y ago
  Wages are rising significantly in the China, India, etc and are catching up. Nobody really knows what will happen once all of the labor that is extremely cheap now is not as cheap. We can conjecture that their will be some upheaval, but nobody really knows what the effects will be.
  - TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
    Wages are rising for them regionally, but the return on labor is lower than it was before. Previously, a laborer working 9-5 could afford a middle class life with a house, car, and nuclear family. Can a laborer in India or China afford that now? I doubt it.

digitalzombie 10y ago

Automation is going to happen anyway. There are several ways we can deal with it. 1. We can set up a social safety net to transition displaced workers to a new trade/career. 2. Protectionism. 3. We do nothing. 4. basic income --- Doing nothing is silly. Basic income isn't going to pass in USA, universal healthcare haven't even pass yet. Protectionism goes against capitalism and it doesn't help in the long run. It just extend a dying market like coals. We chose to become specialized a long time ago and not specializing is crazy. So the most sensible thing is a safety net.

RobertoG 10y ago
The elephant on the room, the old question that it seems nobody wants to mention is, in a totally automated economy, "who owns the means of production?". I don't think we are going to arrive nowhere in the discussion until we face that question.

jmmcd 10y ago

> UBI reduces the incentive to work, and risks stranding millions of people in a subsistence living trap, able to just about get by, but cut off from the opportunity for upward mobility, as this essay details well. The claim is prima facie false, so I looked at the source provided ("this essay" is [1]) and it doesn't support that claim AT ALL. [1] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601499/basic-income-a-sellout-of-the-american-dream/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601499/basic-income-a-sel...

dmichulke 10y ago
I think the reasoning goes like that: If you give 100k people each 10k$ each month, chances are that some of them stop working because they consider it enough. The same holds for 1k$ but to a lesser extent. Still, UBI reduces the incentive to work.
- RobertoG 10y ago
  So, they give money to people because there are not enough works and then complain because the people don't work. I get lost somewhere in the reasoning.
- jmmcd 10y ago
  I can accept the claim that it reduces the incentive to work (a bit), but not the claim that there is any trap that prevents upward mobility.

adynatos 10y ago

"There’s been downward pressure on jobs since the Industrial Revolution due to leaps in productivity brought about by human ingenuity and lucky discoveries." [citation needed] there were never more jobs