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It's interesting to think about whether California had a higher homeless population than their proportional population of the US. Because it seems like every st

by rnk 4y ago

It's interesting to think about whether California had a higher homeless population than their proportional population of the US. Because it seems like every state says they have too many homeless people, with various ideas of the expected number. I'm in Washington State and we definitely think we have "too many" homeless people and I've heard the same thing about Portland. As the weather extremes increase, I think that fewer and fewer people will be able to survive in poverty stricken areas and they'll be pushed into homelessness. I just don't see the US ever really dealing with the situation, plus we're going to keep automating jobs out of existence, so universal basic income is actually needed. My parents generation does not understand the challenges today and they've managed to effectively block changes in government.

amateuring 4y ago
what jobs have been "automated out of existence" recently in the US or elsewhere?
- rnk 4y ago
  Travel agents is a nice, easy example. Everyone buys their own airplane flights now. Of course, it's complicated because there's a lot more accountants today than there were before electronic spreadsheets were invented. We needed more of them. I think first level customer service agents have already been replaced by not very good chat agents, they should get better with AI.
tomcar288 4y ago
UBI in itself won't help anything without many other changes. I've run the numbers many times: there simply isn't anywhere near the amount of wealth needed. In order to help people we need to find ways to drastically cut costs on housing. First start with the land: there's more acres of land in CA than people. the problem is just we're not allowed to build anything, anywhere. Secondly, we need to remove all the regulatory roadblocks that prevent markets from solving the housing crisis. if 3rd world countries can afford to build housing, we should be at least be able to do so as well.

by rnk 4y ago

amateuring 4y ago

what jobs have been "automated out of existence" recently in the US or elsewhere?

rnk 4y ago
Travel agents is a nice, easy example. Everyone buys their own airplane flights now. Of course, it's complicated because there's a lot more accountants today than there were before electronic spreadsheets were invented. We needed more of them. I think first level customer service agents have already been replaced by not very good chat agents, they should get better with AI.

tomcar288 4y ago

UBI in itself won't help anything without many other changes. I've run the numbers many times: there simply isn't anywhere near the amount of wealth needed. In order to help people we need to find ways to drastically cut costs on housing. First start with the land: there's more acres of land in CA than people. the problem is just we're not allowed to build anything, anywhere. Secondly, we need to remove all the regulatory roadblocks that prevent markets from solving the housing crisis. if 3rd world countries can afford to build housing, we should be at least be able to do so as well.