As Our Jobs Are Automated, Some Say We'll Need a Guaranteed Basic Income
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Re: As Our Jobs Are Automated, Some Say We'll Need a Guaranteed Basic Income
#2The Altman quote is on target "I think it’s good to start studying this early. I’m fairly confident that at some point in the future, as technology continues to eliminate traditional jobs and massive new wealth gets created, we’re going to see some version of this at a national scale."
However, it will likely be called something different in the near-term in order to gather momentum. Often the argument focuses on the concept as opposed to the practical benefits. Putting it in different terms could serve to reframe the argument to focus on the benefits.
These are interesting as well: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/universal-basic-income/ https://salon.thefamily.co/enough-with-this-basic-income-bul...
Re: As Our Jobs Are Automated, Some Say We'll Need a Guaranteed Basic Income
#3I seriously doubt it could be realistically implemented. More probable outcome is ballooning law enforcement costs due to significant fraction of population becoming unemployable and resorting to crime, and almost endless, Japan-style economic stagnation in all developed countries. Sorry for sounding pessimist.
This time it gets serious and software is going to really eat the world. By the way in some countries (like Belarus) there is already significant public backlash against programmers because people see their incomes as unfair profiting at the expense of others.
Re: As Our Jobs Are Automated, Some Say We'll Need a Guaranteed Basic Income
#4So we can all play more video games: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/09/23/why-a...
"Most of the blame for the struggle of male, less-educated workers has been attributed to lingering weakness in the economy, particularly in male-dominated industries such as manufacturing. Yet in the new research, economists from Princeton, the University of Rochester and the University of Chicago say that an additional reason many of these young men - who don't have college degrees -- are rejecting work is that they have a better alternative: living at home and enjoying video games."
Re: As Our Jobs Are Automated, Some Say We'll Need a Guaranteed Basic Income
#5I seriously doubt it could be realistically implemented. More probable outcome is ballooning law enforcement costs due to significant fraction of population becoming unemployable and resorting to crime, and almost endless, Japan-style economic stagnation in all developed countries. Sorry for sounding pessimist. This time it gets serious and software is going to really eat the world. By the way in some countries (like…
This is a bit of a Luddite viewpoint. There will be some ups and downs as people adjust to the need for different skill sets however, automation won't simply wipe out any need for human labor. There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate.
Re: As Our Jobs Are Automated, Some Say We'll Need a Guaranteed Basic Income
#6I haven't heard a good political-economic explanation of how a universal basic income that actually finances the living expenses of a large portion of the population avoids spiraling into yet another welfare program.
The point of a UBI in the academic literature is to enable dismantling of high-overhead welfare state in favor of a low-overhead and higher-level grant (check out eg the overhead of Social Security Retirement income vs Social Security Disability income), but that tradeoff is somehow never actually offered.
Re: As Our Jobs Are Automated, Some Say We'll Need a Guaranteed Basic Income
#7It's worth looking into in advance, but not writing about every week. It's a bridge we'll cross if and when we come to it. So far, automation has displaced some jobs and created others. Will it start doing the former more than the latter? Only time will tell - we are not there yet.
Re: As Our Jobs Are Automated, Some Say We'll Need a Guaranteed Basic Income
#8I seriously doubt it could be realistically implemented. More probable outcome is ballooning law enforcement costs due to significant fraction of population becoming unemployable and resorting to crime, and almost endless, Japan-style economic stagnation in all developed countries. Sorry for sounding pessimist. This time it gets serious and software is going to really eat the world. By the way in some countries (like…
Gregory Clark's work on tracking English class mobility in the 1700s-1900 (The Son Also Rises & A Farewell to Alms) indicates that this isn't the first time this has happened (ie, the obsolescence of a large portion of the labor force), and that it's possible to manage the transition with a fairly minimal amount of law enforcement resources.
Re: As Our Jobs Are Automated, Some Say We'll Need a Guaranteed Basic Income
#9I seriously doubt it could be realistically implemented. More probable outcome is ballooning law enforcement costs due to significant fraction of population becoming unemployable and resorting to crime, and almost endless, Japan-style economic stagnation in all developed countries. Sorry for sounding pessimist. This time it gets serious and software is going to really eat the world. By the way in some countries (like…
This is a bit of a Luddite viewpoint. There will be some ups and downs as people adjust to the need for different skill sets however, automation won't simply wipe out any need for human labor. There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate.
> "There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate."
What did you have in mind?
Re: As Our Jobs Are Automated, Some Say We'll Need a Guaranteed Basic Income
#10I seriously doubt it could be realistically implemented. More probable outcome is ballooning law enforcement costs due to significant fraction of population becoming unemployable and resorting to crime, and almost endless, Japan-style economic stagnation in all developed countries. Sorry for sounding pessimist. This time it gets serious and software is going to really eat the world. By the way in some countries (like…
This is a bit of a Luddite viewpoint. There will be some ups and downs as people adjust to the need for different skill sets however, automation won't simply wipe out any need for human labor. There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate.
I'm worried that the jobs that will be left to us at some point in the future will either be outside the capabilities of most people, or wholly undesirable.