UR says it best: > All subterfuges and evasions to the contrary, the basic economic problem faced by 20th-century governments (somewhat less in the 19C; far mo

UR says it best: > All subterfuges and evasions to the contrary, the basic economic problem faced by 20th-century governments (somewhat less in the 19C; far more in the 21C) is unemployment. The cause of unemployment is simple: in an industrial economy, most human beings are economically useless. They are not productive assets at all. They are liabilities. For a brief transitional period, they could still be used as industrial robots. This period is close to its end. [..] > as the Singularity nears, the future of work becomes clear - there is an IQ threshold below which any human, no matter how cheap to feed, is a liability. Classic unskilled manual labor remains productive in some domains - gardening, housecleaning, and so on. Perhaps this will be true for another decade or two. It will not be true indefinitely. It's a big problem all right, and we'll start to face it for realz by the end of this decade, IMO.