Brexit, Trump, Italian PM resigns, etc these all point at a wake up call for the government to do something to get the economy working for the working class. When this movement goes to China it would be like a huge wildfire that even the Chinese government will have to do something to mitigate against the large populace of the unemployed.
China does not have entitlements or hand outs like Europe or America. When people lose work they will do whatever is necessary to survive. Just watch. Apple could become the poster boy in China.
China has to worry about civil unrest if people lose their jobs, otherwise the communist system will topple. The #1 goal for chinese govt is social stability. The govt. will give them jobs.
Funny how the GOP has fucked the middle class up the ass for 50 years with trickle down and they just voted for more of the same crap because again because they got distracted by someone telling them someone else was stealing their lunch (the poorest, the immigrants and women) as they were setting up more large scale thievery.
The GOP plays you and all their voters like fiddles.
The US has enough money right now to retrain, better educate this middle class for future jobs (not 1950s jobs), but has consistently decided not too; that's especially the case in GOP controlled states.
The reason the US is the way it is is because of asswipes like Trump, that's the ultimate irony of this vote.
Well obviously the last 8 years of policies hasn't exactly resonated with the rust belt judging by the last election. I guess you can blame it on GOP, or poor salesmanship on the left.
Robots aren't consumers or taxpayers, so there's a point where automated work becomes self-defeating economically: the increased efficiency and savings have no purpose if there aren't enough consumers or a stable society.
Might be a good time to start the conversation on Universal Basic Income.
"I was born, so I must be paid."
The worst outcome of this is that people become lazy. The alternative of not being paid by default is that people die or live destitute as can be seen in poorer parts of the world. Guaranteeing a minimum standard of living is a requirement for a properly functioning society, not the end of it. It's almost what exists now but there's no incentive to sustain the system beyond encouraging people to be greedy, which encourages people to look after their own interests at the expense of everyone else.
Being paid also means being paid with fiat currency, which was at some point printed into existence and is completely artificial. All the money that exists is an artificial duplicate of all the inherent value in material goods that people need to exchange the money for. If someone grows a piece of fruit that they value at $1, in order for someone to be able to pay for that fruit, $1 had to be created out of nothing yet some people think that the $1 has some inherent value that no one is entitled to. Nobody is entitled to assign pieces of paper arbitrary values either but it happens and is needed for trading to work.
A minimum standard of living requires housing, food, sanitation, healthcare so there will always be some amount of jobs in these fields and there will always be demand for entertainment but it's still going to be the case that people can only pay for things if they have money to pay with. If not enough people can pay for things, companies can't hire people and it can very quickly result in a bad situation for everyone, even the wealthiest people.
There can't be a situation where large amounts of people are supported for doing literally nothing and similarly there can't be a situation where millions of jobs dry up and people are left to starve. There has to be a new economic model that (just like the system we have now) is man-made but is designed to be self-sustaining. I think that a start would be for governments to pay portions of salaries. Rather than just giving people money directly, they'd give people money through established businesses. This means that businesses don't have to worry so much about hiring people and people can be trained at the same time.
That's not necessarily by choice, if businesses aren't hiring then there's little other option. Average freelance incomes according to those figures would be ~$17k per year, just above minimum wage. If the government was to pay $10k/year of every worker's salary by default, that would be $1.6t per year. That's about 50% of the current spending:
Most of people's income eventually goes back to the government. Income tax first then sales tax on goods bought and income tax from businesses selling goods and so on. Low incomes will be spent almost entirely every year. Money just cycles around all the time, it shouldn't be treated like a possession but a facilitator of trade. When people treat money like a possession, they hold onto more and more and that damages the overall system. The reason that people hold onto it is out of fear that they won't be able to sustain a certain quality of life. That's not necessary, there can be a system that is designed better. It doesn't mean that there has to be an end to people being wealthy, it's about finding a better balance, a more sustainable ratio between what it means to be wealthy and what it means to be poor and this doesn't happen naturally. The natural tendency is greed, which produces what we have now with diverging incomes. The outcome of a more balanced and controlled system is simply something stable and sustainable that won't be affected by automation because it doesn't depend on the requirement of employees for a job to exist.
I pretty much agree on most things you mentioned, especially regarding balance. Balance is sth we initally very rarely pay attention to, but sooner or later we come to know it is in fact quite essential to our success. There's a man Braco from Zagreb, Croatia, in whose presence many claim to have regained balance they had lost somewhere along the road. Check it out on braco.me. I feel when having balance all things are so much easier to be accomplished, more balance is what we all need, in all aspects of our lives. Thank you for bringing that to the fore.
Comments
Well obviously the last 8 years of policies hasn't exactly resonated with the rust belt judging by the last election. I guess you can blame it on GOP, or poor salesmanship on the left.