Your guess is as good as mine. All we know is there are a LOT of people in silicon valley putting in a lot of hours to make this a reality
This is a contradictory statement. The purpose of automation is to reduce the labor force. Why would a company pay extra money to automate a process but will have to need to hire MORE people to maintain this. SHOW US ANY STUDIES THAT BACKS THIS UP. Amazon hiring more people does not mean that all companies are doing this. Why would a labor force be a problem? MAjority of blue collar jobs DO NOT require any kind of certificate or degree. These jobs don't normally require a ton of training. Instead of making assertions, show studies that companies are having a difficult time finding qualified individuals for labor. How can you say that UGI is not a feasible solution when we have not seen it implemented on a grand scale? Do you really think that they current system is working? Its always the same argument, it will not work but offer NO SOLUTION or even acknowledging that there is a problem. S
So UbI is not currently needed, right? I am not opposed but there seems to be a bit of doom projection going on in the discussion of UBI.
It's absolutely comparable. The available jobs in the US are going away. Had we exited NAFTA, or if Trump's renegotiation had any teeth, those manufacturing jobs were not coming back. As AI advances, jobs are going away and not coming back. #selfawarewolves You seem to have a misunderstanding of how the UBI functions and this is furthering the argument for a UBI. The actual number of jobs is irrelevant for UBI since the funding comes from companies not labor. When the permanently unemployed citizenry grows by another 20-30 million UBI would remain the same. Regardless of the unemployment rate (6% or 26%) $1,000/month now is still $1,000/month* then. So, again I ask, what is your solution? How do you fix what is "wrong" with the US job market? 2nd edit: UBI is not a mean to replace jobs or fix the job market. It is intended for the citizenry to benefit from automation and ease suffering. Ideally, it will encourage entrepreneurship but that remains to be seen. *(likely adjusted for inflation) This is from 2014 so probably not applicable to the current situation. Do you have anything more recent? From the article While this may indicate people are leaving the job market, it is also a sign of robust hiring. Or, leaving one job for another. This is a factor to be considered for sure. But like the unemployment rate and total employment it, shouldn't be looked at alone. edit: this is an unofficial stat so take it for what it's worth. 6.44M job openings in the US as of the end of Sept. That's up from the prior month but down by 600,000 from LY. There's less work available. https://www.statista.com/statistics/217943/monthly-job-openings-in-the-united-states/
Wrong - the purpose of automation (and technology advancement in general) is not to reduce the labor force but to increase the efficiency and/or level of productivity. As an example, the introduction of machinery and automation to farming increased the size of lands that were farmed and correspondingly the amount of produce. This reduced the amount of manual labor that was required to till the land, but created more jobs in other areas like maintenance, processing, supply chain and logistics, etc to deal with the increased ouput. If your labor cannot adapt to the changing environment then it is a problem. Centuries ago, you did not need to be literate to work. Should we have all remained illiterate and not learn to read and write? People need to be ready and willing to learn new skills suited to the needs of the changing job market. Technology advancement is not a choice. If you remain stagnant, you will be left behind. Do you need to try it know that tying an anchor around your neck and jumping into the ocean will not help you learn how to play chess like a grandmaster? UBI is not a new idea and has been implemented in other countries and we can and should learn from their experiences. We dont need to implement it in the US to see that it is not the solution to the challenge posed by automation. Life is too short to learn from your own experiences, you are better off learning from the experiences of others. The problem is how to make the labor force more dynamic andable to adapt to the changing environment posed by automation. That requires first changing the mentality of people towards change, and also making it easier for people to be informed and opportuned to learn new skills. UBI solves a problem but its not the problem of job loss due to automation
Again they are not comparable cos one is optional and the other is inevitable, or do you think losing your car is comparable to your legs being amputated cos both can get you from point A to point B? As AI advances, some jobs will go away while new jobs will be born in other areas. That is simply how technology advancement works and nobody can change it. I am fully aware of how UBI works. When its all said and done the money will come from the productivity of the labor force or do you think Bezos (or any other business owner) will contribute their own personal fortune into UBI? You are making an argument similar to the silly argument that many make about buying a house in the US, claiming that the seller pays the agent fees or such. The truth is that when you buy a house in the US, the buyer is the only person paying, while the agents and the seller are simply sharing the buyer's money. The buyer is the one truly paying for everything Assuming a labor force of 100m, with 10m unemployed, then the productivity of 90m with have to contribute the $100bn needed for UBI. When it becomes 30m unemployed, 70m will need to come up with the $100bn, increase the burden on each person. As the employed labor force decreases, the percentage of their productivity that is required to fund UBI will only increase till the people start leaving for other countries where they are less exploited. It would be similar to what happened to detroit but on a national scale. As I have repeatedly said, automation is estimated to create more jobs than it will kil worldwide. The US needs to train and prepare its labor force to take advantage of the opportunity. The current labor force is not ready to do so, which is why the US is expected to see a job losses.
Consumption and lifestyle of average joe is way beyond the average joe of other countries even relative to income. Im fine with a UBI of $800 but also putting people like EddiewasSnubbed in communal housing instead of paying mortgage on a property they can't afford. That creates a whole new series of issues. The more you give out for free the more entitlement grows. Otherwise yeah, responsible citizenship and America would easily have a much stronger safety net.
UBI is being proposed now because it will happen soon. Just to name a few, where UBI helps now - Help with childcare to allow working moms to go back the workforce (50 of working moms are no longer working because kids are home due to covid) - Climate change, folks can start saving money from UBI so they can plan to move up to higher ground - All UBI money will be spent on local businesses such as car and house repairs, childcare, donations to local charity, new cars, tv, etc.This will stimulate the local economy NOW. These local businesses can hire more people - Newly graduates won't have to find the first job being offered because they dont need to find income right away to pay for college loans - People that can't affor health care - Folks that are not retired but do not have a lot savings. - If you have 4 young adults who wants to start a business, saving all their UBI money in 1 or 2 yrs is a good amount of seed money which might help in creating new jobs If you agree that we are losing jobs like its nobody's busines, why wait until the whole roof collapses? Provide a fix NOW. UBI is suppose to stimulate the economy using trickly up economics.
hahahaha. You just admitted that automation is more efficient for production. If you are a business owner, what option would you prefer? My company will not be able to sell services if all we have to offer is EFFICIENCY. The bottom line for any automation service is to REDUCE OVERHEAD COSTS . Why would you pay software to to automate things if the you will increase your overhead due to maintaining it? The folks who produce automation services KNOWS that it is inevitable. I have provided multiple sources which shows DATA that proves this is the trend while all you do is make assertions on WHAT IT SHOULD BE rather than what it is. If the data and PERSONAL testimony does not convince you , NOTHING WILL. Provide FACTS not just what you think.
I think you're overselling the likelihood of any form of UBI. Progressives have to stop framing arguments in terms of policy benefits. You can give a million policy benefits but people vote on emotion and perception more than anything else. The battle over welfare reform isn't that far removed. Welfare was means tested UBI for families. At its core you could make a million reasons why welfare was a good policy idea but at the end of the day, all it took was a series of racist ads about welfare recipients and a bunch of talk about socialism to derail the entire program. If you want to sell the US on UBI, stop discussing policy ideas and start coming up with some marketing that actually works. Otherwise the Republicans will torpedo this in minutes with the word socialism. America hates the word socialism and anything branded with that word will 100% fail. So UBI advocates better come up with more than policy reasons to implement UBI or this will go nowhere fast.
I appreciate your continued engagement on this topic @biina Regardless of method (optional or inevitable) the result is the same. Jobs are gone and that employment is not coming back. Do we agree there? Agreed. This is the traditional economist view. New tech erases old labor and new opportunities pop up. However, this time will be different. More on that below. In some ways this is correct. Similar to closing costs or even the tariffs placed on imports, the end user is going to pay. So, will Bezos pay out of his personal fortune or simply pass the costs down to the customer? Obviously any wise wealthy person isn't going to pay more. But this isn't how UBI is funded and why I think you're not understanding it. UBI is not paid for via wealth or income tax. It's primarily financed with a VAT or consumption tax. Essentially, an additional sales tax on high end goods. Yang does propose a removal of the SS cap so high earners would pay in beyond the $137,000 but this is minimal, especially for those with 7 figure wages and beyond. This is where you have another misunderstanding. Your scenario above is irrelevant because the UBI isn't funded through labor but production. Production generated from automation and free of human input. Also, you continue to bolster the pro-UBI argument when you quote the US job losses and the worldwide gains. The US population and eligible work force is going to continue to grow while the number of job openings will continue to shrink. I don't see how more worldwide workers helps the unemployed in the US. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the invention of tractors eliminated manual field jobs but created new opportunities in other fields. Arguably the replacement in prior advancements wasn't 1:1 and this time the eradication of jobs will be much greater. An estimated 30% of jobs are going to go away and the replacement level with won't be anywhere near that. So, I do think it's worthwhile to focus on training the next generation for whatever new job openings are coming. You're completely glossing over the millions of current workers and what to do with them. Some can be re-trained but most will have to be written off. That's a harsh reality. They're incapable of adapting to the new, smaller, more competitive labor market. I agree with what some have said on here that government can't and shouldn't try to coddle these individuals. I'm not for the nanny-state. UBI does not usher in a new nanny. It puts money in the hands of consumers without limitation. Need to use it for essentials? You're good to go. If it's just extra spending cash then feel free to buy the next frivolous consumer good.
Now you sound like you dont even know the basics or are simply being disingenous. Automation improves efficiency i.e. i can produce same with less, or produce more using same. With the saving from automation, businesses can grow their operations and thus employ more people. You asked for data and already gave the example of Amazon, who despite increasing use of robots in their warehouses, have grown the number of their employees from 80k to 800k in the last decade. But just to humor you, what is your proposed solution?
The process and the results are not the same, and thus are not comparable. - Automation will 100m+ create more jobs world wide and there is nothing any country can do to stop the process - NAFTA is an agreement between countries. Depending on the details negotiated, the internal policies and actions of participating countries , and the actions of business owners, the outcome could be positive or negative. There are also many factors that affect such trade agreement that are outside of the influence of the agreements themselves. For example, it is unfair to blame NAFTA for the rising cost of living that makes it difficult for US workers to accept lower wages, leading business owners to seek alternatives. Trade agreement are such an involved issue with so many interacting factors (political, economic, social etc) that you simply cant compare to the simpler effect of automation or any technology advancement. EDIT: if you want to discuss NAFTA or trade agreements in general, we can create another thread for it, so that we dont derail the current You are still makingthe same flawed argument. Changing the presentation does not change the principles and we will still have the same outcome. Its one of the big flaws of capitalsm and why a lot of the tax schemes fail. (Excluding the special cases of financial instruments like the stock market, where the value generated can be independent of the true value of the underly asset). In simple form, the wealth (productivity) generated by an entity is the revenue less the non-human operating costs. These non-human costs (like raw material, machinery etc) are usually beyond the control of the business owner. What the business owner controls is how he shares the leftover between the compensation of the employees and the compensation for himself. In the true sense of capitalism, the business owner will always maximize his share and net value. So no matter which means you aim to extract from the business and/or business owner (income/wealth taxation, profit taxation, VAT etc), he will always pass ihis losses onto his employees. For example, a business owner has a productivity of $1m that is currently shared with $400k to himself and $600k. If a new policy increases the cost of his lifestyle by $100k, his primary recourse will be to reduce his employees' compensation to $500k to make up for the increase. This is done by either paying same employees less or having less employees (or both).So no matter how hard you try to go after the rich, you often end up hurting the middle class more. The only things (that i can think of) that checks this problem is either you have a policy that limits what share of the productivity a business owner can take, or the environment is engineered to have a labor shortage, (and thus the business owner is forced to pay a premium for his employees). The former is easier but undermines the essentials of capitalsim, while the latter is very difficult to achieve (particularly in a global economy where he can move his caputal elsewhere) Every country in the world has is facing the same challenge of job losses due to automation. The first question you need to answer is why is the US seeing job losses due to automation while the rest of the world is seeing job increase due to the same automation? To simply accept the job losses without fixing the underlying problem, while looking to UBI (or any other scheme) to paper over it, is a recipe for disaster.
Amazon is hiring more jobs because people are no longer going to malls. 30% of malls in America are closing down because it is much easier to shop online. The people in retail who got laid off may have found jobs in Amazon stuffing boxes. You have still NOT ADRESSED the FACT that more people lost their jobs to automation than new jobs being created. Pouring water in a bucket that has a large hole. Amazon is just one company so it is NOT and indicator of the whole US economy. Try again. I presented you with what happens whenever you order anything in Amazon. In order for you any business to process this 20 yrs ago, they would have needed tons of labor force to be able to process the number of orders each second. All of those jobs have been almost eliminated due to automation and the only reason why they are hiring more people is that that they dont have an AUTOMATED solution YET for warehouse jobs. Wooptidoo, I wonder what kind of future you will have boxing stuff up and once they are able to replace these unskilled workers with robots, what type of work will they be able to find? I am sure you have tried calling customer service to just keep selecting 0 (to get to a live person). The reason why we dont like it is because the current technology is still not capable of providing all the answers. AI and machine learning will fix this problem. You have only provide Amazon compared to the number of scientific unbiassed research on the topic yet you fail to provide a solution to what is clearly a compounding gap increase between jobs loss to automation to new jobs being required. https://techjury.net/blog/jobs-lost-to-automation-statistics/#gref https://www.usnews.com/news/economy...replace-20-million-manufacturing-jobs-by-2030 https://www.forbes.com/sites/amysterling/2019/06/15/automated-future/?sh=1d164ad779d8 Keep you head in the sand. If this does not convince you, nothing will. This is the reason why we need UBI and if you don't agree with it, there is nothing more to discuss as you dont seem receptive to FACTS
and what you are claiming is not true. Automation has allowed Amazon to be successful and grow their business, hereby employing more people If Amazon automates box packaging, their business will grow further and they will still employ more peple. We never had retailers that could process the volume of transanction that Amazon process today. Technology advancement has been happening for centuries and it has not created the mass unemployment that you are prophesying. But left to you we should have remained in the stone age so that people could keep their jobs as hunters and gatherers. You can check the bls data provided earlier for areas with job growth. In addition the forcast by Mckinzie project 100m+ job increase due to automation by 2030. Even from your own link (https://techjury.net/blog/jobs-lost-to-automation-statistics/#gref) 75 million will lose their jobs but 133 millions new jobs will be created. Net gain of 58 million jobs. Those are the facts and it doesnt support your claims UBI will not create jobs and trying to use UBI to solve unemployment problems is just stupid.
Its a nice deflection isn't it? We cannot talk about UBI if we cannot acknowledge that there is a problem. You keep stating the jobs are created but no mention of how many were lost. When you analyze your financial status, do you just consider what is going in and don't care about how much is going out? The only jobs that AMAZON creates are warehouse workers and drivers. What about those other jobs that use to be manual that is now automated? It is not difficult to think that LABOR will be a thing of the past based on what humans can do. Our ancestors 200 yrs ago had to do everything manually and compare that to the plush life you have lived. Humans are constantly making things easier for ourselves and to somehow think that we will not keep doing this is a HUGE DENIAL. The article does not say net gain. We will lose 350 M jobs and it will only generate 58 M. You math is off by much. Get this on your head.. ROBOTS replace human labor. If you will have to employ more people to maintain that robot/machine, why would you even invest? Your LOGIC fails on all aspects.
Compare and contrast: a discussion of the similarities and differences between two or more things. Comparison: People have historically lost jobs during economic changes such as the economic revolutions (1760s,1870s, 1970s, 2000s) and will lose jobs due to automation (2035 range). Contrast: The previous changes ushered in new employment opportunities where as automation with eliminate more jobs than it will create. This is how you can learn from the past and avoid those mistakes in the future. If that is how the VAT was implemented you would be correct. Herein lies your mistake. Neither the business nor the business owner is being taxed. They would collect the tax at the point of sale; however, VAT is levied on the good when it is paid for by the end consumer. It does not financially impact the supply chain, the business' bottom line, or the owner. Agreed. Neither of the two above policies are desirable within a free market. We're going in circles here. We agree on the problem: Jobs are going away due to automation. We partly agree on the solution: Train the workforce for the jobs that will be created. This misses the people who aren't able to adapt to the new job market. The Forrester stat that you quote is 10 million people will lose their employment and be unable to replace it. Yang is saying that number is more like 50 million. What is your proposal for them?
this will soon be an academic debate, as UBI will not be possible under a universal bitcoin monetary standard
