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Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by airstrike on Monday May 07, 2018 @12:49PM (#17014235)
> where economic gains and jobs are being automated away from the masses of low-skilled workers and up to the elite of high-skilled workers.

Just want to caveat that people tend to make an umbrella claim that automation is killing low-skilled jobs without considering:

a. the pervasive and increasingly evident effects of globalizing low-skilled jobs and the very real wage growth in poorer territories including but not limited to China

b. that the issue may well be solved by training people so that we have less low-skilled workers (which some argue to be impossible, despite there being no supporting evidence)

Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by notheguyouthink on Monday May 07, 2018 @12:58PM (#17014299)
> that the issue may well be solved by training people so that we have less low-skilled workers

For clarity, do you mean train people so that those truckers become lawyers, software engineers, financial advisors, etcetc?

If so, I feel like at best that is a statement missing a second part. Ie, I don't think existing "high skilled" job markets could handle an influx of what I imagine is at least double the staffing. I imagine it would immediately result in millions of people without jobs, regardless of qualifications.

So the second part of that is, we'd need to drastically expand the available jobs in those "high skilled" markets. And I've got no idea how we'd do that.

What are all those extra software engineers going to work on? What are those extra lawyers going to do? etc.

Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by airstrike on Monday May 07, 2018 @01:17PM (#17014512)
At the onset of the Industrial Revolution, I don't imagine people could answer similar questions if asked. If we managed to absorb most of the Western world's farming population into massive cities and created entirely new industries, who's to say the same can't be done now?

A massive part of the planet is still "underdeveloped". As these countries emerge from their eternally-emerging state, there should be no shortage of demand that high-skilled workers in developed countries can capitalize on. Creating intellectual property is an extremely rewarding enterprise and one that can be sold to other less skilled nations (as is already the case).