those without a job.

IMO, I believe that the true unemployment level is reaching that level.

Raising the cap wont come close to paying for that.

This proposal would double social security costs overnight and bankrupt social security.

it wasn't truly a long term plan just a reaction to the general business environment and my "profession/trade" becoming a dinosaur/distorted to negate the whole reason I chose it. I loved doing what I did for a living and still do it today. as much as I can, without compensation.
I was able to make that choice primarily from the income of selling my home and scaling back my lifestyle. In that respect, I consider myself part of the 1%. I was more than lucky in that respect and it also gave me the opportunity to care for my parents until they were done here.

I wish all the others out there in their 50's or better could retire whether or not they earned or put away enough to keep them until they are done with this world.
Look at the upside of getting us old folks out of the "productive economy" in the most direct sense. All those jobs would have to be filled by younger workers who are trying to build a life that is satisfying and if not good, at least does no harm to the rest of the world.

People like me who don't want to retire could be a valuable resource
(I hate referring to people as a resource) to share our knowledge and skills to those following after us. Even if the technology has changed there are many skills that are valuable in affecting perception and judgement.

As far as the true unemployment rate, the only number that is true is % of working age population to those actually working for compensation. Even that doesn't address the problem of compensation rates that provide a liveable income. How do you think the general population would react if they knew how much they were paying to subsidize huge profitable corporations by assistance to those that can't make enough to survive otherwise?

I had the advantage of being raised by Depression era parents but even that skill and knowledge base is lost through decades of relying on paying someone else to do something that I couldn't do without cutting my income that paid their wages.

"WHAT IS AN ECONOMY FOR?"

Which of our candidates is going to discuss this fundamental question? My bet is on Sanders.

to Congress.

So POTUS candidates need to be visionary but they cannot do anything without Congress.

If any candidate for any elected office can't address that issue and discuss it with supported information or has an alternative that has at least some realistic support they should STFU!

Didn't the Luddites try something similar to that a while back?

Who do those automatons work for?


--imm

with any country using automation too. That's not going to happen.

Automation is one reason for lower employment in a given sector ( of which automation might affect )

I'd say a better solution is not to export jobs overseas. ( in search of lower wages and regs )

as the problem. Also why are 1/2 of college grads unemployed or in MacJobs?

We have to start learning how to live while not having a defined job or a scheduled life, without killing each other.

I see the arguments over unionizing fast food workers. It's a joke. The robotics revolution is coming for all of us. I wish us all good luck. Nothing to stop it.

We are in en evolutionary stage like the the bronze era, agricultural, industrial and now robot revolution. It's here.

Personally I'm working to replace the so called health care professionals, if ever a class needed disruption.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/03/the-robot-will-see-you-now/309216/

Thanks‼️

There are other solutions, but it doesn't look promising that they would be taken seriously. One such solution is for government to reassert currency creation, take it away from bankers, and send all adults a check sufficient to cover modest needs of food, clothing, and housing.

It could be called the Welfare for All plan.

All that follows is therefore pointless speculation.

Most of the manufacturing worldwide is of items that absolutely require automation. Every sort of electronic device is made of components that are impossible to make by hand. Without automation, you could not type on DU. So much of our technology would be impossible without automation. No human being can make a microprocessor or memory chip. It simply cannot be done. People put those parts together in the final assembly. That's it. And even that is becoming more automated.

How about automobiles? Every component in today's cars and trucks is made on automated equipment. Every component. Workers are needed to operate that automation, but an individual or even a group of individuals cannot manufacture those components by hand, from tires to the parts of an engine or transmission. There are a few cars that are assembled by hand and even with some parts made by hand. You cannot afford any of them. They are limited production luxury vehicles.

What about food products? Have you ever seen a food packaging line in operation? Automation does everything, from opening packaging and filling it with products to packing those packages in cases for shipping. Even the preparation of the actual food products is automated. If it weren't, you wouldn't be able to afford any of your favorite foods.

You want to eliminated automation? If so, you want to return to the 19th Century. That's not going to happen. It can't happen and still have the goods and technology we use every day.

nobody will propose doing that. It's too silly even to contemplate.

Whoever advocates this position will get the ridicule they deserve.

I see the latter. Like a frog in the pot doesn't know it's boiling. It's here it's coming and it's unstoppablele.

Still makes sense to bring it to the forefront and I applaud the OP for bringing it up.

So many discussions about labor, unionization, the economy, the military, the middle class, etc are ignoring the current technology revolution underway.

Its an amazing time, and also scary for what it represents a fundamental shift in the way our societies are structured.

what are your suggestions when a million truck drivers are out of work over the next ten years?

Or doing something that doesn't exist at this time.

I'm all for the revolution, don't expect their not to be casualties,

worthy of discussion..right? I applaud the OP. Excellent suggestion in the thread to tax robots and automated drivers. agreed?

Think of all those people who used to be employed totalling up numbers for banks and companies on paper ledgers.

Also, traffic lights need to go. They are just automated traffic signalers.

And cars. Think of all the blacksmith jobs and horse trading jobs lost.

Don't forget about electricity. All those electric applicances probably cut the number of people working as maids in half.

Then there is medicine. Most children never made it to adulthood, how many grave-diggers could now be employed if we ended that?

would be to tax the robotics to pay into the SS system?

If you're looking for corporations to solve jobs problem and there is no role for government.

We are always looking at how to win at "competition" and "the economy" and bailing out big businesses in order to preserve the capitalist system. That's why we'd rather give millions to a guy who is already rich than help a family starving on welfare. The millionaire is (ostensibly) making the system go, while the family is a loose cog that fell off that wheel. That no longer even fits in the wheel. The problem is that the rapid pace of technological change means that wheel is always changing shape, so government "services" (training, resume polishing) can't fit those cogs in fast enough anymore.

There has to be a way to (slowly) rebuild the economy around people having jobs - so they automatically continue to receive their livelihood income and smoothly get retrained to do whatever is needed - rather than catering to the system itself. IMHO we should somehow try to discourage specialist job descriptions: that's one of the drivers of economic inequality. Instead have very broad educational categories: "Science", "Humanties", etc. People should be considered qualified to do any job within those categories. Instead of being laid off, workers should be traded/moved to other companies. Emphasis should be placed on society keeping the productivity/value of the worker, not the benefit of a particular capitalist.

If people can be billed continuously for rent/mortgage, student loans, child care, elder care, etc. then they should be able to DEMAND a continuous, regular source of income throughout their lives. I'm sure I'm a commie heretic for thinking my generation was betrayed by being subjected to regular work "gaps" and savings depletions that made it impossible to match all the rent-seeking demands. But it's my firm belief that the two sides need to be balanced with stability of livelihood for the individual so they will be able to shell out for all the rent-seekers throughout their lives.

"Economic productivity" as it is defined today is a direct measure of the damage we are doing to the earth's natural environment and our own human spirit.

Automation in itself is not a bad thing, but the benefits of it are not fairly distributed.

I would tax the uber-wealthy oligarch class entirely out of existence and implement for everyone free education for life, free appropriate medical care, guaranteed safe housing and good food, a generous welfare system, and satisfying employment that improves both our human society and the natural environment.

Subsidized employment and educational opportunities would compete directly with the crappiest underpaid jobs and abusive employers.

Why take a minimum wage job from an abusive employer when you could be going to school, or taking care of children or frail elderly people, or be out restoring natural wetlands, or be increasing the energy efficiency of housing... and many other nearly unlimited and entirely positive occupations???

The "free market" would be held to very high standards. Those employers who abuse employees and damage the natural environment would simply not be viable. Nobody would answer their "help wanted" ads, and whatever employees they had would say "take this job and shove it!"

A "work or die" economy is slavery.

Agriculture used to employ well over half of American workers. Do we want to go back to an era when most of us work on farms doing manual labor without machines? I am not sure most of us want to go back to the "glory days" of the early 1800's. There was little if any automation but neither life nor the working world was not a paradise.

If we ever get to the point very few are involved in manufacturing and machines/robots make everything we will survive, just as we survived the transition to very few working in agriculture. What will we do? What most of us do now. Help each other in one form of service job or another.

But our pay will be low? Why? If the economy is producing as much stuff, profits and income as it is now, is it not up to us to make sure that that income is divided up fairly? That may force us to look at our income inequality which is horrible now (and was horrible when agriculture was king) and do something about it. But we are helpless in the face of the economic forces arrayed against us? As long as we think that way things will be terrible no matter how stuff gets made.

Last I looked, the birth rate for the middle class here was about 1.67, or something like. We import labor to make up this critical shortage.

The transition to a shorter work day and working life will require meeting many challenges (including an effort by some to create waste classes of people by just paying them off until they die, or moving them aside to live or die as in China), but before anyone says it can't happen, please remember that business profits don't begin with sales, they begin with demand. Demand requires people with money to purchase.

Henry Ford, even though a strong conservative, understood that very well when he decided to pay his factory workers 3 times the going rate so they could afford to purchase their own product. Quite a shock to all those who never even began to imagine the future he helped bring about, but inevitable as we see it today.