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What Happens to Society When Robots Replace Workers?

 
 
 
Poverty is indeed relative, however, so is wealth. People tend to see themselves in a higher status than they may actually belong. This is way the waitress at the diner who lives in the cheapest apartment you can get outside of Section Eight Housing and has to take the bus to work because she can't afford a car will still refer to herself as middle class. Back when I was growing up, we had one family in welfare in our block and you would have a fight on your hands if you told Mrs. Washington that she was poor. People, if secure, generally do not begrudge the rich their wealth. It is when the gap grows so large you can not help but see it for what it is, when the checks are unreliable or simple insufficient, when food and shelter are doubtful month to month or year to year that people begin to feel threatened and anxious. Then they begin to see themselves are impoverished. A universal benefit that made people feel secure would actually eradicate much of the perception at least of poverty.
 
dystopian said:
Whatever they want. That's part of the point.

there will still be a segment who have nothing better to do than drink alcohol and make babies.
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First of all, this is really just a rightwing strawman along the same lines of arguing against welfare by pretending most people on it are lazy parasites. In reality that's almost a complete non-issue, just like it would be with a UBI. People who do nothing but drink alcohol and make babies don't exist for one; and people who do *almost* nothing but drink alcohol and make babies do so for reasons completely unrelated to whether or not they get a government paycheck every month. If anything, if everyone gets a generous enough amount of money from the government, these kinds of people might use that money to improve their conditions in life to the point where they discover that there's more to it than drinking and fucking after their 9-to-5 mindnumbing factory job.

Secondly; even if they still just drank and made babies; that wouldn't actually be a serious problem for the economy at large. After all, they'd be spending substantially more money on alcohol and food and what not; and even if they'd quit their job and live off just the UBI, well I certainly don't think you're inclined to believe these people hold highly productive jobs essential to the economy to begin with.
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Wow. Couldn't comment on the nice things I said like changing our education system so people could pursue their natural talents or all the artists that may result. Had to go for the negative and make a wrongheaded assumption at the end.
Remember, a main point of the story is fully a third of the population will not be employed. Understand though, I think we look at this differently. I spent 23 years in the navy, 13 on sea duty, and 7 years of that actually out at sea in a little tin can with samplings from all segments of society and you can't help but interact with many of them. I am glad to have the experience. My casual experiences are worth what you pay for them but at least I've had them. Many people have little experience outside their own socioeconomic group and when they do it's usually limited. It has been my observation that many people will sit on their asses and do nothing, party, play, etc. when food and shelter are assured. It is my opinion, some people will not go to school if you paid them.
Beyond that, though I think there will be more issues than you probably do, I do support the idea of a UBI and believe it will come to be a necessity in as little as ten years.
 
We are going to have to take some long hard looks at how we see people, human nature, and what the goals of life should be. There will need to be shifts in the thinking about the morality of cooperation and competition, charity and solidarity, not to mention punishment, reward, and entitlement. You can not shift to a society where you have a universal income that actually is enough to take care of your people and continue to think of those people as only being good enough if they pass the "right" tests and measures, only if they earn the right to have rights including the right to live.
 
DBT said:
The only questions are: how is UBI to funded? And:is there sufficient Political Will to implement it?
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No problem, we'll just add it to the debt. I figure the Political Will might come from the evil corporations when they figure out they need someone to buy their products. The big retailers are making moves to get more welfare for the people.
 
NobleSavage said:
DBT said:
The only questions are: how is UBI to funded? And:is there sufficient Political Will to implement it?
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No problem, we'll just add it to the debt. I figure the Political Will might come from the evil corporations when they figure out they need someone to buy their products. The big retailers are making moves to get more welfare for the people.
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The big retailers only have interest in getting welfare to the poor, not everyone. Besides an UBI would mean they would have to start paying their own workers more (until they are all replaced by robots anyway). I don't think they can be counted to push for UBI, but they might support it if gains enough political momentum otherwise.
 
NobleSavage said:
DBT said:
The only questions are: how is UBI to funded? And:is there sufficient Political Will to implement it?
Click to expand...

No problem, we'll just add it to the debt. I figure the Political Will might come from the evil corporations when they figure out they need someone to buy their products. The big retailers are making moves to get more welfare for the people.
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So wait.

Now you're concerned about the national debt?

You didn't seem concerned when we put future generations trillions in debt to pay for tax breaks and corporate handouts.

You didn't seem concerned about the debt when we talked about raising the minimum wage so that corporations can stop mooching off the taxpayer.

Oh. Right. It only counts as adding to the debt if we spend it on commoners. If we give millions to commoners, that creates a crushing burden for future generations, but if we give billions in handouts to the aristocracy, that extra money is created by magic and therefore does not count against the national debt. Sorry, but I forgot about the details of conservative economic beliefs.
 
DBT said:
The only questions are: how is UBI to funded? And:is there sufficient Political Will to implement it?
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A mister Mark Walker Proposes a 14% Value added tax on all goods and services to give a guaranteed $10,000 basic income to everyone. It sounds like it would work but of course it would impact the middle class the hardest so I think this is the wrong way to go.

http://jetpress.org/v24/walker.htm
 
Underseer said:
NobleSavage said:
No problem, we'll just add it to the debt. I figure the Political Will might come from the evil corporations when they figure out they need someone to buy their products. The big retailers are making moves to get more welfare for the people.
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So wait.

Now you're concerned about the national debt?

You didn't seem concerned when we put future generations trillions in debt to pay for tax breaks and corporate handouts.

You didn't seem concerned about the debt when we talked about raising the minimum wage so that corporations can stop mooching off the taxpayer.

Oh. Right. It only counts as adding to the debt if we spend it on commoners. If we give millions to commoners, that creates a crushing burden for future generations, but if we give billions in handouts to the aristocracy, that extra money is created by magic and therefore does not count against the national debt. Sorry, but I forgot about the details of conservative economic beliefs.
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Take a deep breath Undersear. I was against all the crazy conservative additions to the debt.
 
Jayjay said:
NobleSavage said:
No problem, we'll just add it to the debt. I figure the Political Will might come from the evil corporations when they figure out they need someone to buy their products. The big retailers are making moves to get more welfare for the people.
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The big retailers only have interest in getting welfare to the poor, not everyone. Besides an UBI would mean they would have to start paying their own workers more (until they are all replaced by robots anyway). I don't think they can be counted to push for UBI, but they might support it if gains enough political momentum otherwise.
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When Walmart is about to lay off 2.2 million people and replace them with robots they will be all for UBI.

- - - Updated - - -

zorq said:
DBT said:
The only questions are: how is UBI to funded? And:is there sufficient Political Will to implement it?
Click to expand...
A mister Mark Walker Proposes a 14% Value added tax on all goods and services to give a guaranteed $10,000 basic income to everyone. It sounds like it would work but of course it would impact the middle class the hardest so I think this is the wrong way to go.

http://jetpress.org/v24/walker.htm
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I don't want a damn VAT tax. We have plenty of taxes. Just raise the ones we have or cut back expenses.
 
Underseer said:
Axulus said:
Better raise the minimum wage to help them out.
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Goodness forbid we stop giving billions in handouts to already profitable corporations. I mean, how can we call ourselves "small government" types if we stop giving away billions in handouts to those who obviously don't need it?
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The decisions are not ALWAYS made like that. May times it's, "if we give a tax credit to ZYX they will do PDQ which will create 600,000 new jobs and increase the tax base and make a lot of things better."
 
NobleSavage said:
Jayjay said:
The big retailers only have interest in getting welfare to the poor, not everyone. Besides an UBI would mean they would have to start paying their own workers more (until they are all replaced by robots anyway). I don't think they can be counted to push for UBI, but they might support it if gains enough political momentum otherwise.
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When Walmart is about to lay off 2.2 million people and replace them with robots they will be all for UBI.
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It's the letter U in UBI that Walmart doesn't care about. It sells cheap consumer goods to the poor, so it would be in favor of subsidizing them, but Walmart has no particular reason to support a universal basic income. The push for that has to come from elsewhere.
 
Jayjay said:
NobleSavage said:
When Walmart is about to lay off 2.2 million people and replace them with robots they will be all for UBI.
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It's the letter U in UBI that Walmart doesn't care about. It sells cheap consumer goods to the poor, so it would be in favor of subsidizing them, but Walmart has no particular reason to support a universal basic income. The push for that has to come from elsewhere.
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It isn't just gonna be the poor people getting laid off. This is going to effect every everyone. Automation is out for all the high skill jobs as well. If you get payed a lot of money to sit in front of a computer...look out. IBM's Watson has a part time gig kicking doctor ass diagnosing and treating cancer. And Watson isn't restricted to a box in NYC, anyone can use the API http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/developercloud/ A bunch of formerly upper middle class people are going to finding themselves shopping at Walmart.
 
NobleSavage said:
Jayjay said:
It's the letter U in UBI that Walmart doesn't care about. It sells cheap consumer goods to the poor, so it would be in favor of subsidizing them, but Walmart has no particular reason to support a universal basic income. The push for that has to come from elsewhere.
Click to expand...

It isn't just gonna be the poor people getting laid off. This is going to effect every everyone. Automation is out for all the high skill jobs as well. If you get payed a lot of money to sit in front of a computer...look out. IBM's Watson has a part time gig kicking doctor ass diagnosing and treating cancer. And Watson isn't restricted to a box in NYC, anyone can use the API http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/developercloud/ A bunch of formerly upper middle class people are going to finding themselves shopping at Walmart.
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The truth is, doctors would be among the first ones to get kicked out of the job market.
People tend to think that doctors are incredibly smart but they are not, they are merely human-robots who have good memory and desire to go through years and years of filling it with pretty straightforward information. Computers are clearly better at both :)
From a computer science point of view driving a car on a street or reliable face/speech recognition is orders of magnitude more complex problem than making a medical diagnose and devising a course of treatment.
Yet taxi drivers are not paid $500k a year as doctors are.
 
NobleSavage said:
I don't want a damn VAT tax. We have plenty of taxes. Just raise the ones we have or cut back expenses.
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Who is to pay the taxes to fund the UBI given that the majority of those who normally would be employed and paying taxes have been displaced by automated systems?
 
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