Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income
by JoeAltmaier on Monday May 07, 2018 @11:50AM
(#17013705)
In some countries, rising automation means there are no jobs to be had, or that skilled persons fall down the ladder until they're working unskilled jobs. We pretend its 98% employment, but folks with degrees are working food service.
A 'jobs program' in this environment is doing no good. There are already 30M people in service jobs (The lowest paid), and they're being automated away right now. We can't retrain them all to be engineers; we don't even need 30M more engineers. What are we to do? The solution won't be 'do what we did before' because, we've never been in this situation before.
Oh, wait, in England they were in this situation when weavers were replaced by textile mills. Their solution: let the weavers starve and die. Maybe not the answer we want today.
Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income
by josefresco on Monday May 07, 2018 @11:56AM
(#17013752)
"In some countries, rising automation means there are no jobs to be had"
Source on this claim? Interested in the topic and would like to read more.
Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income
by JoeAltmaier on Monday May 07, 2018 @04:38PM
(#17016296)
In the US, automation is growing explosively. When factories 'come back to the USA' from India or China or wherever, its not because they're paying enough to attract Americans; its because they automated and don't need (hardly) anybody.
Further, bank teller and fast-food worker are the next to be automated away. Its happening everywhere, with touch-panel counter service.
Anyone who needs work can get it at $15 per hour and up, depending on what the job is.
There is a whole lot we need doing. If we do that, we are worth more, and we get something meaningful in return for a direct economic stimulus.
Our infrastructure needs refurbished. Our homeland needs a cleanup, and could really benefit from some care and feeding. Our parks can be improved, making them attractive in the same way we did before.
I don't feel UBI makes sense. It's just a payoff, and it's real value will be diluted. Too easy to just adjust it up or down to throttle work needs, buying power.