The Brave New World of Robots and Lost Jobs
12th August 2016
Sky is falling. Film at 11. Women and minorities hardest hit. Voice of the Crust … you can fill in the rest.
The deeper problem facing the United States is how to provide meaningful work and good wages for the tens of millions of truck drivers, accountants, factory workers and office clerks whose jobs will disappear in coming years because of robots, driverless vehicles and “machine learning” systems.
Note the immediate ‘progressive’ cannonball into the Aggretation Fallacy: Somehow this is a problem ‘facing the United States’. Uh, no it isn’t — except in the minds of those who see every problem as a problem ‘for all of us’ (i.e. for government to solve).
Note the immediate ‘progressive’ assumption that ‘meaningful work and good wages’ are something that need to be ‘provided’ (i.e by government, because who else could do it?).
And, of course: government by ‘progressives’ — because (a) they’re smart enough to see the problem, as you are not, and (b) they’re smart enough to figure out a solution, as you are not (or at least their intentions are good, and that’s all that really counts).
The political debate needs to engage the taboo topic of guaranteeing economic security to families — through a universal basic income, or a greatly expanded earned-income tax credit, or a 1930s-style plan for public-works employment. Ranting about bad trade deals won’t begin to address the problem.
Another thing that the ‘political debate’ needs to ‘engage’ is who is going to pay for all this. ‘Progressives’ seem to assume that the money is just out there somewhere and will show up when it’s required.
They actually pay people to write this crap.