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It's not semi-literate peasants who are taking your jobs, people. It's machines, owned and operated by the billionaires you idolize. The "job creators," I think you've been trained to call them.
As another poster said, it is both. But you are right, the billionaire/job-creator worship needs to stop.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. In-Between
You're at war, Americans. You're in the middle of a full-scale class war, and most of you aren't smart enough to understand it. And you will lose, because you're not even smart enough to understand who the enemy is.
I wouldn't call it a war, but the vast-majority of Americans are definitely losing, and they are incredibly-stupid.
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Originally Posted by StillwaterTownie
Not much will get done in response to what automation is doing to the economy until it brings on a Great Depression. It will be caused by so many people getting laid off by automation that they they won't be able to afford the many products and services automation puts out. You can't walk in a store, just use your phone to grab everything you want and walk out without having money in the bank or sufficient credit. When automation brings on a Great Depression, a lot more people will want to talk seriously about starting a Universal Basic Income to overcome it.
I agree with your last point about UBI, but I don't think we will get to Great-Depression levels before it happens. The entire welfare-state is just Keynesian multiplier/stimulus economics. UBI is no different than food stamps, housing-assistance, social-security, medicare, etc. Except that those others are targeted-spending, while UBI is just a general market stimulus.
UBI was originally presented as a "negative income-tax" which would replace the complicated bureaucracies of the various government programs.
But I think they would rather raise the minimum-wage, expand targeted benefits, and increase the earned-income tax credit before they have to resort to UBI. You're talking at least another decade.
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Originally Posted by Buckeye77
lol - the Luddites have been wrong about the evils of automation in the work place for at least 200 years.
The Luddites weren't wrong at all. Machines have definitely been an evil. They have completely disrupted and displaced society, and worsened inequality. But they have also made us materially-richer.
Technology will continue to improve in the future. But I think the material-benefits of industrialism will likely slow down, and may even reverse in a few decades, because of limited-resources, overpopulation, and environmental concerns.
This time it's different. Robots will be able to fix and produce themselves. A tractor couldn't do that.
We are still many years away from humanoid, bipedal robots, that can perform all sorts of tasks better than humans can.
Even when those are fully functional, I doubt it will be a huge change, Govt still relies on all the middle class people to go to work everyday,pay their taxes, spend their money, borrow money from banks, etc etc.
So, if "automation is taking jobs from Americans"-just why in the F are we importing 100,000 unskilled, uneducated "migrants" every month? We sure as hell don't need them to do jobs...that can be done by automation.
Now, the OP and others are promoting the same "the sky is falling" panic concerning automation and robotics that I've been hearing since high school-in the 1970s. The greater the degree we implement automation-the more demand there is for highly skilled workers. Those that design, build, operate and service that automation. Automation makes high-labor rate nations competitive in the manufacturing field. Perhaps more important-in developed nations with a low replacement birth rate and aging population-automation provides "services" that otherwise might not be possible.
Maybe "Learn to code" wasn't such an insult after all.
For awhile anyway...until humans are no longer needed to write code though.
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