Universal Basic Income.

I can't even find a human to replace me, much less a machine. I painted myself into a corner, and retirement will come when the last nail is in place in the coffin.

But as a generalization, westernized societies should start NOW to get used to the idea. Not just factories. The way things are going, cashiers, taxi drivers, so many of the service-oriented jobs that we thought were low-paying-but-safe will indeed be replaced by machines that will do the job cheaper than people, and will never strike for shorter hours or more pay. It is coming, and unemployment rates will not stay at under 5% forever (or even for long, I'll bet).

but I only speak English and Truck Driver.

Only an EU work permit plus French, Catalan, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Dutch, German, Schwyzerdüütsch and Russian stand in your way. The TruckDriver is a plus, granted--if I had that, I might even be able to ask for a raise.

And if I mash enough consonants together, the German too!

The rest? A time machine may help

Maybe he'll tell you about the contraption he built in his cellar. It worked for him, anyway........

?w=800&h=600

Truly. I've laid a herringbone brick walkway. It's tons of work, but very satisfying when it's done. That machine just took all the fun out of it.

Oh, never mind found a video, not that complicated LOL- You still have to arrange and cut/do patterns. You just get to stand up while doing it now

and all things GOP. AND we got focused on "bashing" instead of "boasting." Throwing away a solid history of fighting for the "little guy" and the working men and women in favor of bashing each other, bashing the 1% among us, bashing the pragmatist among us, bashing the poor among us, and bashing the moderates among us was not and still is not the way to go.

A huge segment of us refused to show any gratitude for anything positive that President Obama tried to do and instead the loud and divisive discontent carried over into the atmosphere all around. Those negative vibes in the ether are picked up by others and become the air we breathe. The difference between us and them is that the negative vibes divide us but negative vibes unite them. Once we understand that there will be no way to stop us.

Automation will eventually happen. But in the interim the place where i work is looking to send all functions that are repeatable--so simple procedure based functions--to India. The last place I worked for off-shored much of the IT staff. And to be honest, the off-shore group was wonderful to work with. The were very pleasant to work with and as long as you wrote good business requirements, they wrote solid code.

But a number of good paying jobs were sent out of the country.

Maybe a destabilized India would be good for our country.

30 hour work week. 8 to 10 weeks vacation plus holidays.
Of course the Oligarchs running this country will fight it tooth and nail but, it can be done.

political people have no clue.

And getting worse.

I think they have a better counting system and IMO I think we should be about 12% now and it will be going up.

A Michael Moore movie goes into more detail explaining my suggestion.

and isn't that the most important thing?

Uber CEO Kalanick Relinquishes Power After an Investor Mutiny
By Eric Newcomer
June 21, 2017, 6:12 AM EDT

Five investors said to have called for his resignation
His departure comes after a series of self-inflicted scandals

Read more:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-21/uber-ceo-kalanick-relinquishes-power-after-an-investor-mutiny

See Charlie Chaplin movie "Modern Times." Don't overestimate the effect of automation, or underestimate it. Progress can't be stopped. It shifts what we do for a living from one area to another. Computers took a lot of jobs away from the masses, replaced by jobs related to computers, software, digital media, etc.

America is never going to be a commune, where we provide for everyone and all are expected to contribute to the extent they are able, but get to receive according to need. We are struggling to remain a capitalistic Democracy with some social programs. At this point I just hope we KEEP Social Security and Medicare. Those programs are in trouble under this regime, as are food stamps, housing assistance, and the like.

Modern Times: Charlie Chaplin's political statement on the industrialization of America.

Photo of Jack Lemmon in movie The Apartment, sitting in large room of desks that clerks & typists worked at back then.
Those jobs no longer exist, thanks to the computerization of business.



Before then, tractors and other equipment replaced mules and hand tools and farm hands.

One poster had it right in an earlier thread last year:

"The people saying we will just plow through this with grit and determination are part of the problem, because they are insisting on an individual solution for a structural problem. Individuals who say that automation is exactly the same as industrialization are also incorrect and economically as well as politically illiterate. The problem with this position is twofold: First, automation is distinct from simple industrialization in that industrialization multiplied productive efforts but still demanded a large body of labor, automation has no such problem as the core phenomenon of automation is exactly the removal of this body of labor while simultaneously multiplying productive efforts. Secondly, even if we grant that humans will still have a large place in an automated economy the question of what to do with the wealth generated by these productive enterprises is entirely a political one. On average, life got much worse for most people after industrialization and it was only through organized resistance and violent action that gains were made to make the economy more livable for people. We have no such resistance today as the left has been broken and the post-left liberals have essentially signed on to the same economic theories as the right wing. That itself bodes ill of harnessing automation in a positive way and, at this point in time, suggests a greater likelihood that things will get more Darwinian and the elite will double down on the existing ideology that preserves their power.

I will also note to everyone saying it is "not that bad" because some jobs will exist: Look at how much we were hurting with 10% unemployment. Now imagine 20% permanent structural unemployment and, at best, a diminished welfare system marked by perennial lockdowns, controversies, instability, and an increasing amount of gatekeepers to ensure only the "worthy poor" are getting their pittance. Let us extend that further to 30 or 40% structural unemployment and combined harried temp work. It does not matter if some people can find work, obviously this is the case, but as a society we will be torn apart by an automation that is not being managed by political forces, rendering any individual solution simply a mix of desperation, blindness, and the same individuated greed that enables this phenomenon."

Oh, and some say "we're all going to be coders"? Ask your average Joe Sixpack to diagram an "if/then" statement. Ask him what a string variable is. Why is "try/catch/finally" important?

That's what I'M wondering: is there some magic formula as to how Capitalism continues if no one has any income to buy anything or the prospect to earn it?

Historically, people who have said "change is good" weren't the ones negatively affected by it.

Past industrialization still required people to think and actuate. Modern automation combined with AI has the machine thinking and actuating. My guess is smart machines will eventually replace 85-90% of workers over the next 30 years. The only safe jobs will be ones that require constant creative content that never before existed.

useless eaters simply die out. That leaves more room on the planet for them. They have NO intention of giving us a UBI -- we're to die in place like good little slaves.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/21/alibabas-jack-ma-says-people-will-work-four-hours-a-day-in-30-years.html

may involve just sitting there.

LOL

Very consistent on their need to spread fear with little to back them up.

Shouldn't you be requesting more trade schools instead?

Many democrats have been working for and talking about just that.

Just like the "safety net income". The op is talking about that as a future necessity. Yet it is often a topic of conversation here. Not about its need in the future, about its need today.

I work for one of the top robotic automation companies in the world. Everyday my job requires me to help others create machines that take jobs away from real people. I gotta tell ya, from the stuff going on here it's honestly amazing that any people still work in factories at all. We have a robot for absolutely everything. It's only a matter of time...

an article in the New Yorker several weeks ago that went into how Case Farms (who processes live chickens into nuggets and tenders) abused undocumented workers with lousy treatment, low wages, and calling ICE whenever union activity was suspected.

The article finished up with the author being shown a machine that would debone chicken parts, and was told that it would replace about 70% of the jobs in the factory. Cheap and docile labor has prevented a lot of jobs from being taken over by robots.

immune. Everyone, everything is replaceable by robotic technology. Carbon or silicon based or mix. Genetic engineering will play a large role.

Luckily my role is creating documentation and training guides so people know how to use the robots and software, people will always be stupid and that's my niche, trying to make them smart enough to operate the machines. I don't see my specific role being replaced anytime soon.

I feel like a mole on the inside right now

I'm not advocating anything but just wondering if the robots you are familiar with are vulnerable to any kind of sabotage by a potential hacker group maybe similar to Greenpeace or Russian hackers.

Any device can be reversed engineered and faults in design can be found and exploited. For the branch of my company responsible for the next gen fighter and next gen stealth bomber, this poses a massive threat. However 70% of the company works with automotive manufacturers who use the arms for assembly line production. I could imagine someone could hack bmw's control computers and make the bmw logo upside down on vehicles or whatever the hacker wanted. The insane threat to me would be one of these giant robot arms being hacked and then simply swinging at people and crushing them to death.

And, yes, by the time warp drive is here, we might have machines that can fix and maintain other machines, but it still takes human intervention to diagnose and repair nearly everything, including the computer you're reading this on.

I suppose that is somewhat of an argument for being involved with tech, but right now a lot of tech jobs are off-shored. I imagine more local tech people would be needed as dependence upon automation increases. I have that sort of job, but I wouldn't recommend it to my own children. I'd rather see them go into a job in the health care field. There will always be a need for people caring for people.

industry leaving the north has been a work in progress since the 1960s. when they moved south and left union workers back north the companies were called runaway shops.

Their next destination was Mexico, and then they set up shop in Asia-now China is setting up contract shops in Africa.

The real issue for the last decade is automation and it is upon us and at this point focusing on the playing out of the runaway shops is reactionary.

Minimum wage laws are just a stop-gap issue. They are trying to address the fact that the economy does not work for all of the people.

Economic systems are not magic. We have it in our power to tweak, them re-design them, or change them completely. Our "capitalist" economy is certainly not some pure, natural system.

The guiding principle has to be that in a democracy the economic system must be equitable and serve all of the people.

when we can no longer grow food crops in the massive quantities needed to feed our current population.

Perhaps, just perhaps, imminent starvation due to climate change is a more real problem.

all with how great he is. A total clusterfuck is leading us down the tracks to the cliff.