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We could protest against the robot take over. Protests work, but people are too lazy for them these days. Refusing to shop or do business with a company that is fully automated is a quick way to make them change. There could be a law that says 90% of employment has to be people or robots are only used as back up in emergency situations when employees call in or are fired last minute.
Just because the government and the 1% WANT us to be a world of robots with no salaries so they can sit on their ever growing pile of money, doesn't mean we have to let it happen. Money out of politics is this first step to solving this and most other problems.
Oh I see. You're not against the "right" sort of people having kids. In other words you're OK with the kinds of kids who can support any child free folks who'd rather not work. Why would anyone bring a kid into the world just to work so they become slaves to those who don't want to work? I sure wouldn't.
Whatever bro. Everyone knows that welfare has turned into a generational handout which is never what it was intended to be. If you can't support yourself, then you shouldn't be having kids.
I'm living in utopia here. I believe I prefaced my statement saying I know it would never happen...
Example: Many people on the right are against a welfare state but don't understand that if abortion were illegal, there would be many more welfare recipients because those babies that are aborted are disproportionally aborted by people without the means to support their children.
Solution One: Universal Basic Income. Everyone, young and old, gets a guaranteed income for life, set at a level to live a reasonably comfortable life.
Solution Two: Make Everyone a Trust Fund Baby. The government finds a way to gin up a couple hundred trillion and gives everyone an "inheritance" which they can use to live on, either by way of investment or founding their own company.
Solution Three: Building Pyramids.
Solution Four: In my opinion, this has the greatest chance of actually working, and would probably the most politically feasible. This proposal would provide jobs subsidies to companies and non-profits, paid for by heavy taxation of the job-destroying robots.
Solution One: where does the government get the money to fund the guaranteed income? The closest modern equivalent would be the various welfare programs, and they are funded through taxes on earned incomes. If no one is earning an income, then "poof" goes the revenue to fund the programs.
Solution Two: same as the first one, only worse. First of all, again, where does the government get the money? But even beyond that . . . at least with the first solution, people could be sustained through their lifetimes (in theory). This one gives everyone a huge one-time windfall, and then what? People who are irresponsible now will be even more so with their new-found pile of cash, and there will be a lot of people who will still be destitute -- albeit surrounded by luxury consumer goods -- in a shockingly short amount of time. Then what?
Solution Three: not a horribly bad idea on the surface, but instead of building something of no practical use, why not put the people to work building something that we can actually use, such as highways, bridges, dams, sewer systems, etc.? Of course, here the problem is that the people would be reduced to being near-slaves of the government. If your only source of employment is the government, and you somehow get them mad at you, then what? Do you think that our government -- ANY government -- would be able to wield such awesome power and not become a tyrannical dictatorship?
Solution Four: if the robots are taxed enough to make it more economically viable to hire real-live people to do the work, then that is what will happen. The automation revolution that is posited to lead to the employment crisis will never happen, and life will go on as before. If one believes that the future of human employment is as dire as the OP suggests it will be, this is certainly the best of the four solutions offered, and probably the only practical one.
Though I'm not at all convinced that any of these "solutions" would work (with the possible exception of Number Four), or not make the problem worse, I applaud the OP for thinking ahead and seeing a possible crisis in our future, and trying to work out some ideas to mitigate the problems.
1. Cut the global human population in half across the board.
2. Eliminate the use of electricity for any purpose.
3. Eliminate the use of any non-human-muscle powered weapon of any kind or type for any purpose.
Given those above we probably would be too busy surviving the elements to bother much with stupid stuff like trans-gender-self-identifieritis or some Hollywood bay-bay bump or what the Kardashians are up to......
.....back to really basic basics.....
Last edited by Happy Cells; 05-28-2015 at 08:03 PM..
Reason: perhaps cut population by 4/5th's.......better.....
My God... can people not see what is happening? These one percenter megalomaniacs want to GET RID OF at least half the human population by whatever means are necessary and to cultivate their own little "master race" of carefully selected humans to tend the utopic "garden of eden" of the future.
Totally.
At least if they have half a brain, the oligarchs figured this out a long time ago (~40 years ago). They've been running this country a lot longer than that. We had prosperity up until the '70s because it was in their interests, and since then it's been in their interests to drain capital from the US and go global. Soon the robotic revolution will begin, and extreme population reduction will be in their interest.
Coming up with a government scheme to deal with the problem is trivial. The real issue is getting a government that serves the public. All the trends from the Patriot Act, NDAA, militarized police, Citizen's United, fraudulent electronic voting, etc are not looking good. What we need to do is get the ignorant public organized to fight for freedom. Good luck with that.
$700 a month for exactly who? Everyone? No way can a family of 4 live on $1400 a month assuming you're including only adults. If children of non-working parents would also qualify, then they would receive $2800 a month. Would they also receive things like section 8 housing, food stamps and EIC on top of this income?
Children would get it too, and no if there was universal income I don't think those programs would be necessary except perhaps for people with disabilities that prevented them from working.
1. Cut the global human population in half across the board.
2. Eliminate the use of electricity for any purpose.
3. Eliminate the use of any non-human-muscle powered weapon of any kind or type for any purpose.
Given those above we probably would be too busy surviving the elements to bother much with stupid stuff like trans-gender-self-identifieritis or some Hollywood bay-bay bump or what the Kardashians are up to......
.....back to really basic basics.....
It's not humans who are destroying the world, it's a small percentage of humans who are very wealthy and wasteful.
Solution One: Universal Basic Income. Everyone, young and old, gets a guaranteed income for life, set at a level to live a reasonably comfortable life. People can still work of course, but it would not be needed to survive. In a world of few jobs, this could be the lifeline for the majority of the populace, although I see an awful lot of bored, unfulfilled individuals out there. I can smell the marijuana smoke already...
I'd go for this one because as long as it remained "fair and equitable" (and I try not to be pessimistic, but how long before someone usurps the system or upsets the balance for his own good)? But in utopian terms, this would be ideal, along with the same applied to health care (or socialized medicine, that "dirty word.")
In this world of fewer jobs, it would soon become very clear that robots would not be able to take over completely, and people would then rejoin the work force for less because they're already getting UBI. (I can't speak for everyone, but I'm just not greedy that way.) They'd also be able to work fewer hours, which would lessen stress and create more free time to spend with families or on hobbies, etc.
As an addendum to this plan, I would set up a mandatory Prisoner Clean-up Work Force in response to every natural or man-made disaster (hurricanes, floods, oil spills, transport accidents, and the like). Again, if the government could be trusted (stop laughing) to set this up just short of a totalitarian state, we'd save millions on one tornado clean-up alone. The rule: You go to prison, you work, and this is your job description.
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