Posted on 03/03/2018 2:08:08 PM PST by blam
As automation and AI destroy millions of middle-income jobs, permanently forcing (primarily male) workers from the workforce, Americans are beginning to reconsider their attitudes toward a radical policy tool that’s popular among some segments of the left: Universal Basic Income.
According to CNBC, a recent poll conducted by Northeastern University and Gallup found that 48% of Americans support the measure. In an association that’s hardly a coincidence, the poll also showed that three-quarters of Americans believe machines will take away more jobs than they’ll generate…
Unsurprisingly 65% of Democrats want to see a universal basic income and 54% of people between the ages of 18 and 35 do. In comparison, just 28% of Republicans support UBI.
While proposals for universal basic income programs vary, the most common one is a system in which the federal government sends out regular checks to everyone, regardless of their earnings or employment. That system is being tested in Canada and Finland, as well as Stockton, California, which recently emerged from bankruptcy but remains mired in poverty.
Support for UBI and wariness about automation/AI have become closely linked in the public consciousness. The movement has even inspired America’s first “anti-automation” presidential candidate: New York businessman Andrew Yang is launching a “longer-than-long-shot bid” for the 2020 Democratic nomination, on a platform of adopting a “freedom dividend” (a fancy term for UBI), to help offset the impact of automation.
Advocates say all of the UBI-focused experiments being conducted are an opportunity to show that the policy could boost both productivity, as well as individual happiness and overall wellbeing.
“The claim is often made that if you give people a basic income, they’ll become lazy and stop doing work,” said Guy Standing, co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at newzsentinel.com ...
Anyway, the conversation moved on to robots and what we'd do for income when the robots had all the jobs. My son volunteered, "the government will send everyone a check from the money they get from taxing the robots."
Today I'm a retired chip-maker and he's a physicist.
Who was polled?
If true, shows just how stupid we are.
“According to CNBC”
Didn’t have to read past this to figure out who was polled.
Get to F’n work....then you get some stupid money.
Americans show enormous increase in stupidity.
Don’t we already have something like this, in that, people on public assistance get a combination of cash and noncash benefits; the so called “social safety net”???
Are we going to get rid of food stamps, section 8 housing etc, and just give people a basic cash stipend?? Or is this cash going to be over and above all the noncash benefits provided to poor people now????
Employers can’t find good help or any help yet Democrats need to fantasize about giving away your money and mine to win votes from the lazy.
Watch out. Soon they will be doing it. Hide your wallet.
Dear Grandchildren,
I did all I could to pass along to you a relatively free country. Now it’s up to you to do what you want to do. And live with the consequences.
Everything os free comrade! What could go wrong?
>>Today I’m a retired chip-maker and he’s a physicist. <<
He was a futurist!
Why are we importing millions of illiterate third worlders if they are going to made redundant by automation ?
>>As automation and AI destroy millions of middle-income jobs, permanently forcing (primarily male) workers from the workforce
White males are the voting bloc* that resists socialism, so society finds a way to make them vote for it—take their blue collar jobs, ruin marriage, and make education uncomfortable for them. Give them no other choice.
*Yes, not ALL white males and yes, not all minorities and females are in favor of socialism. No anecdotes are necessary.
FDR was concerned about being challenged in a primary, and, at the time, the concept of a universal income from the government was gaining such traction he felt he had to hit back with something else. Even FDR declared that a universal income provided by the government would be a disaster. So, they came up with social security. They made a bunch of promises, which they immediately broke. If you didn’t pay into the system you wouldn’t get anything out of it. Shortly after it was introduced they put people who were old enough onto the dole. The social security number would never be used for identification; it was my student number throughout school. Nothing but “retirement” would ever be funded by social security. But once the mechanism existed politicians used it as a means to funnel money to everybody for everything. The money collected would be held in a “trust fund.” LBJ wanted the money to fund his Great Society, so they conformed the budget and began issuing IOU’s to the “trust fund.” There is no money in the social security system. It is broke...perpetually, with no hope of ever being solvent.
Imagine what would become of the universal income idea in fifty years.
(ahem) They have to have someone to give all the robot money to, eh?
Yep, the Kingfish's "Every Man a King" idea. Thank God Mr. Weiss got to him, or we may have ended up with Fascism here.
Haha!
Your son is a visionary.
Despite the stabs at socialist Bernie Sanders, this AI evolution/revolution is going to make the future unrecognizable from what we take for granted today.
I would think the robotics engineers and their software programming counterparts will command the upper strata of prosperity rewards.
One thing I am seriously contemplating and predicting is the obsolescence of banks as we know it. I see the entire financial system becoming more decentralized and taken care of by AI Bots using P2P networks and BCT. The NSA, or whatever future form the NSA takes, will always have backdoor access with AI bots monitoring for financial crimes, so central bankers will have absolutely no basis for being involved in a P2P transaction.
Getting rid of bankers will drive their inherent greed and debt enslavement schemes into other arenas. Other than extortion, covert loan sharking, illicit drugs, contraband, prostitution, murder for hire, and politics, I can’t think of what to suggest as a career path for bankers who find themselves out of work when BCT and AI take over.
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