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comment by AlderaanDuran
AlderaanDuran  ·  4001 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Basic Income Means Basic Freedom

There will never be enough jobs to go around again. Driverless cars, more robots/automation in manufacturing, drones delivering pizza and packages from Amazon, brick and mortar retail failing, tablet ordering, self checkouts, etc. There will always be jobs, but a lot of the backbone jobs will just continue to disappear as automation takes off even more. To me, a basic income is going to become a thing, or governments will have to face insane unemployment rates which comes with high crime, and eventually full scale rebellions. If they want to keep people comfy and quiet, basic incomes WILL be a thing in the future.

I'm a huge proponent for a basic income for all, but we're not there yet. But eventually it's going to be a thing that has to happen, otherwise as the have-nots grow to even large numbers, a lot of bad things will happen that outweigh just paying some people to do absolutely nothing. And those of us that want to work and make more, still can.





user-inactivated  ·  4001 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm with you on employment. I don't have the expertise to back it up (yet), but I've long held that what we consider "full employment" is an anachronistic number in today's economy. It doesn't account for the unprecedented levels of structural unemployment we're seeing, or for the increasing idea that work isn't our default setting.

I'm not sure we'll ever go back to pre-2008 levels. The economy is evolving.

Rascale  ·  3985 days ago  ·  link  ·  

agreed, this exchange of labour for wages is out dated and increasingly irrelevant every year due to automaton, robotics and a host of other advancements occurring at an escalating rate every year.