America is running out of jobs. It's time for a universal basic income.

The Week ^ | 09/09/2014 | Ryan Cooper

[cynwoody]

We should start letting robots write these opinion pieces. Would be no different than the dribble this person has written.

Can an Algorithm Write a Better News Story Than a Human Reporter?
by Steven Levy 04.24.12

[Graing]

Many machines on Ix. New machines. Better than those on Richese.

[Rockingham]

Guaranteed income proposals always seem to gain currency when job creation and employment stagnate. Yet, as the Reagan recovery demonstrated in the 1980s, pro-growth policies of tax rate cuts and an easing of regulatory burdens generate massive gains in new employment and wealth.

[JimRed]

I read about something called “feminist economics” where more money is magically produced with mouse clicks. Kind of like unicorns that crap Skittles.

Bitcoins?

[Repeal The 17th]

I wonder what would happen if the federal minimum wage laws were repealed.

[JimRed]

Small items will be made right in the home using a desktop assembler, imagine a very, very advanced 3D printer able to make everything from medicine and tools to the family dinner.

Star Trek, The Next Generation, replicator tech.

[familyop]

"People forget our borders were closed from 1929 to the mid-sixties if I remember correctly."

The northern border was not closed. It was far more open than it is now.

[JimRed]

Computer controlled automatons will be like slaves who never tire. They will both construct and drive our cars. They will build and clean our houses. They will grow, harvest and prepare our meals. They will repair our bodies at a cellular level.

And when they evaluate us and realize how illogical and useless we are, they'll exterminate us. Saw that movie, too.

[longtermmemmory]

prebate for failure.

Is this like too SMALL to fail?

[PapaBear3625]

How about you either work, pay taxes, and have kids, or you play, receive benefits, and be sterilized?

It may just need to come to that some day, before things collapse, regardless of any screams about "genocide".

[GeronL]

lol

I am pretty sure it will fail.

[Terry L Smith]

I beg to differ.

America has jobs. It is the intelligence of the potential workforce, that is in jeapordy. Social training does not make engineers. Social mathematics does not further science.

Social training does nothing but make more Communists.

When America started catering to ‘ebonics’, a made up language of nattering naybobs, and not worthy of use in the business world, the long slops was established.

[PapaBear3625]

Basically paid for by the machines. It’s an alien concept because we have never had such capabilities before. You can certainly see the beginnings of it now and it will scale up very quickly.

Machines "own" no assets with which to pay anything. Their owners own all their production, and are unlikely to want their income stripped to provide a "universal basic income".

[cynwoody]

And though it may be dangerous to bring this process under control by some kind of legislation, not doing anything about it will not just be dangerous, but will be a disaster.

Doing nothing about it is the free market option. And, no, it will not be a disaster, except for those who are unfit or unwilling to adapt. A century ago, farmers were 31% of the labor force. Today, they're less than a percent. But the country as a whole is far richer.

Trying to solve the "problem" via legislation will impoverish the nations that try it. Unless, of course, we "achieve" the libtard dream of world government, in which case the whole world will be impoverished but just won't know it, having no standard of comparison.

[Bobalu]

Yes, and one day the replicators will be able to replicate themselves... so the tech will be so cheap it will almost be free.

It will be the very creative who will become the superstars in the world of 2050. They will create new tasks for the automated machinery to carry out. They will create everything from new entertainment to new vehicles.. and every other thing that will be possible.

Automation is an amplifier for the human mind and body. What now takes a million workers to do, a single person will be able to have done for him. A single person could create a city or dig a canal or whatever.

Everything will quickly trend toward zero cost in a fully automated world. The only real limits are raw materials and energy.

[PapaBear3625]

The only real chance is to hook up with a few different local agencies in your area (those that haven’t been quietly bought out by foreign agencies, and who don’t have a branch office overseas) and then hope you can swim upstream against the flood of H1B applicants who are really just economic refugees from their own failed countries.

The only real chance is to network with lots of people in your field, so that you can find out about openings and chat with the manager who needs the job done, and completely bypass HR and the "recruitment agencies". That's how I've found most of my work for the last 40 years.

[cynwoody]

Good reason to end immigration

No need.

If you automate away the jobs Americans won't do, there will be no jobs for the illegales! They'll stop coming, and most of the ones already here will self-deport (assuming we keep them off welfare, that is).

[PapaBear3625]

As for Monster and the others I really can’t figure out what the purpose for them is. One thing is for certain there are many, many listings of the same job on the internet and in many cases jobs are listed for months or years and never filled.

My experience with Monster and the rest, is that for job seekers they are a waste. I think their purpose is to allow companies to pretend they are looking for Americans, before getting an H1B.