The Boy Who Cried Robot: A World Without Work

[Maximus]

Also computers will never think.

Your brain is a computer that can think.

Ok, bad example perhaps, but computers can think.

As for the OP, a guaranteed minimum income would be most likely to smooth the transition to whatever we come up with IMO.

[Tonitrus]

Where will all of this magical, free money come from?

All of the profits from automation will be going to corporate bosses, and you they'll being doing their hardcore best to tax shelter that shit...or just building all the automated factories in places that don't care about your Euro/American tax base. 

[The Minsky Moment]

Didn't vote.  Can't rationally vote in the absence of a actual phenomenon.

I don't see why not.

Because circumstances matter.

The article makes the point that capital tends to replace labor more during recessions.

It can unless it doesn't.  But let's say it's true.  So?

[The Minsky Moment]

See, this is why I'm glad I didn't go to a better law school, because apparently in the T1 they gouge out your fucking eyes.

Data. Facts.  Evidence.
Everything else is cheap talk.

[jimmy olsen]

Didn't vote.  Can't rationally vote in the absence of a actual phenomenon.

Throughout the developed world the key post-GR economic trend is declining productivity and unemployment.  I.e. the opposite of one would expect to see if automation was displacing vast swaths of the work force.  As for the three reasons:


• "Labor's losses"- this was the key takeaway of Piketty's book.  The share going to capital is not historically unusual. The outlier was the relatively low capital share during the postwar Trente Glorieuses.

• "The spread of nonworking men and underemployed youth "- employment ratios are also not unusually low given demographics (the persistence of boomers) and the extension of benefits during the GR.  The article focuses on the decline in prime male employment rate, which it correctly dates back many decades. Of course, as women enter the workforce and men take on more caretaker roles one would expect convergence in employment rates by gender . . .

• "The shrewdness of software." More like the shrewdest of software companies, whose bug filled releases and planned obsolescence drive continued sales of "upgrades" and services.

You may have a point with number one, however the data clearly shows to be wrong about number two. The percentage of women in the workforce peaked around 2000 and has declined from 59.9% to 57.7% since then. In that time the percentage of men in the workforce declined from 74.8% to 70.2%

http://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/facts_over_time.htm

The third one is incredibly snarky dismissal of technology with no data to back it up.

[Ideologue]

See, this is why I'm glad I didn't go to a better law school, because apparently in the T1 they gouge out your fucking eyes.

Data. Facts.  Evidence.
Everything else is cheap talk.

The trouble with your commitment to arch-empiricism is that it'll take 50% U-3 unemployment for you to admit, "Oh, maybe I was wrong about automation."

[jimmy olsen]

Employment in every single cohort is down since 2000. Interestingly, Hispanic Men have the highest employment rates for the last 40 years.

[Monoriu]

Employment in every single cohort is down since 2000

That's what we have observed.  There could be different reasons to explain the reductions.  Does not necessarily have to be automation. 

[Martinus]

Minimum guaranteed income seems to be the most mainstream response from the today's left. Surprised it is not in the poll.

[Martinus]

this scenario will never happen. just like malthusian theory and all the others.

The reason why the malthusian outcome will not occur, the continued advancement of technology, is the reason this scenario will occur.

Is the "Malthusian outcome" something about people being too poor, living on their double academic salary, to afford enough $2000 strollers for their ever growing number of offspring?

[The Brain]

Supposedly there's work for robots. Give everyone a robot. PROBLEM SOLVED

[The Brain]

Btw, in South Africa they have robots everywhere. What's their experience?

[jimmy olsen]

Minimum guaranteed income seems to be the most mainstream response from the today's left. Surprised it is not in the poll.

That's basically what a negative income tax is.

[The Brain]

Minimum guaranteed income seems to be the most mainstream response from the today's left. Surprised it is not in the poll.

That's basically what a negative income tax is.

[Martinus]

Minimum guaranteed income seems to be the most mainstream response from the today's left. Surprised it is not in the poll.

That's basically what a negative income tax is.

I don't think so. Guaranteed minimum national income means that the state pays everyone the same stipend each month.