Well for starters you can stop giving tax breaks and kick backs to the very companies that benefit from automation.
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As Our Jobs Are Automated, Some Say We'll Need A Guaranteed Basic Income
- Thread starter GusBus
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TDLink
Member
Advances in our appliances so they can self-repair/self-unblock themselves. And/or new sorts of appliances that can just do that work for us instead of having to call in a person.
Abstruse Moose
Member
You could absolutely leave the trucks unattended. How does one steal a self driving truck? It could automatically lock down its cargo and contact authorities if it detects any kind of tampering.
As for refueling, I can see transport trucks going all electric and being able to self charge at a station. Any industry involving driving is going to be automated, and soon.
Shake Appeal
Member
Again, teachers are like 2% of the population.
Meanwhile, transportation, warehousing, manufacturing, extraction, construction, agriculture retail etc. are about one-third of the jobs in this country, and they are all ripe for automation.
They're already starting to automate lawyers. A lot of the routine stuff that lawyers used to do -- wills and things like that -- are DIY jobs for most people now.
Nanomachines will make human doctors obsolete someday, although admittedly probably not in our lifetimes.
TDLink
Member
Well yeah it is going to be a couple decades before this problem reaches a critical point. But it is very clearly being foreshadowed and automation is happening. Food industry automation is increasing rapidly. Automobile industry automation is coming fast in the very near future (5-10 years). Other transportation industry automation and factory automation has already had a large effect on the workforce.
Shake Appeal
Member
Meanwhile, the U.S. produces about 17+ trillion every year.
The debt is bad, but not for the reasons your uncle on Facebook is frothing about.
frankie_baby
Member
Teachers will still be needed but probably a lot less, may take a while but at some point instead of one teacher teaching a class of people there'll be personalised one to one teaching from an AI program
Saucycarpdog
Member
So we're going to overhaul every single gas station in America, even the ones in the middle of nowhere that some truck drivers rely on getting through Arizona? How much will that cost? Got an idea how we're going to do that?
Shake Appeal
Member
Presumably with the money they save on wages and benefits.
Anyone who has ever taught knows the chances of this happening are near zero.
Manmademan
Member
as more things are automated and done online, there's going to be a lot less need for plumbers, HVAC techs, and electricians since things like brick and mortar locations for education and retail will end up going the way of the dinosaur.
Or to put it simply, say a university ends up moving the vast majority of its coursework online, say 70 or 80%- anything that doesn't need a physical lab (which is most things really).
No need for dorms, no need for large lecture halls, no need for libraries, everyone is doing their work from residential locations. The tradesmen that typically maintained these places along with janitorial and sanitation are out of a job. Most of the minor HVAC/Electrical/Plumbing work that needs to be done in your typical house or apartment is DIY- and isn't going to increase enough to offset the job loss from big university campuses, malls, and big box stores just vanishing.
Glendemonium
Member
Well guess I need to go back to school and major in automation repair... unless that will be automated as well.
Scary that tech is slowly killing so many jobs, we knew the writing was on the wall back in the 60s but it's still something to consider when going into a career.
Scary that tech is slowly killing so many jobs, we knew the writing was on the wall back in the 60s but it's still something to consider when going into a career.
frankie_baby
Member
Its inevitable, probably not anytime soon but it will happen
If being a teacher meant all you had to do was take the information from a book and put it into their heads then yeah, sure. To the surprise of many, however, way more goes into it than that.
Goro Majima
Kitty Genovese Member
I agree but you're going to get a lot of pushback on the internet about this.
The insurance companies will keep those jobs viable if nothing else until the software becomes bulletproof and widely accessible on all rural roads. Liability and exposure to risk is going to be a major issue with this tech going forward.
It's a logical conclusion but not a foregone conclusion that all trucking will be driverless at some point. There are several hurdles that have to be addressed along the way and new challenges might come up from that. For instance, we still have airline pilots (despite the tech being there to fly them entirely by computer) because of what could happen if the plane crashed. There are way more trucks on the roads than commercial aircraft so even if the loss of life and property is decreased in a trucking accident, across the fleet there may be more total loss of life and property. Further, when you have a pilot or a driver everyone gets someone to blame in case of an incident which is generally what people are looking for in those cases. Taking the driver out of equation makes it easier to sue all the companies involved which increases insurance rates and risk.
All of that might get ironed out eventually and I'm aware a lot of legal framework is being put into place. I just think we need to see the results of even a widespread adoption (more than 50% of the cars on the road) in a major metropolitan area before assuming that all the truck drivers are going to disappear.
None of that precludes my belief that a UBI is going to be required at some point. That has its own challenges from a taxation perspective because we apparently can't even afford to provide universal health care to everyone without significantly increasing taxes. Hopefully the feedback mechanism in a UBI would work to increase consumer spending which would increase incomes at the higher levels which could allow for more taxes and so on.
The same place that gave Israel 38 billion dollars this year alone, and had been giving them 4 billion a year.
Taxes. Or the 10 billion dollars for failed missile defense programs. Or any % of government waste. Could do this a billion times over.
People just don't want to help others, but are fine letting the gov bleed money for them.
Manmademan
Member
"repair" will eventually go the way of 'trash it and replace it' as the tech becomes cheaper- with the exception of the really expensive industrial tech.
Self driving vehicles are going to kill a LOT of jobs, more than anyone thinks. Bodyshops and automotive repair places are going to die very quickly, but then again so will many insurance jobs, since those things aren't anywhere near as prone to accidents. Traffic cops that make their living on writing speeding tickets to motorists that don't keep an eye out for speed traps (and these are absolutely a thing) are probably gone as well- a lot of smaller municipalities lean heavily on police writing citations to bring in revenue. That's going to have a cascade effect down to public defenders and municipal court judges.
less traffic accidents means less EMTs, and less emergency room staff. Traffic fatalities are 92 per day and 32,000 per year- and that's just fatalities. "injuries" are even higher. There were 5.4 MILLION auto accidents with 2.4 million injuries in 2010 alone.
The shift to electric vehicles instead of gasoline (and yes, this is inevitable) is going to kill still MORE jobs, since those things have no transmissions, have no emissions/exhaust system, don't use oil, and the motors are a tiny fraction of the size of a combustion engine. removing and replacing them in the case of a problem is trivial compared to a gasoline engine- repairing them probably won't be cost effective.
There's not really an area of the economy that's going to be able to expand to accomodate the automotive repair, maintenance, and insurance business collapsing overnight- or the impact on law enforcement and healthcare.
PastorOfMuppets
Banned
I am much more cynical about the future than that. I don't believe we have the political will as a society to implement basic income. I can see it happening in a country like Sweden or Finland but I think in the Anglosphere we're willing to let a big chunk of the population lose their jobs and go through life being unemployed and/or working menial jobs for low wages. That's kind of what we do already.
The country is built to give billionaires a free ride, not the people.
NervousXtian
Thought Emoji Movie was good. Take that as you will.
It's not that simple at all though. Some parts of the equation yes, others no.
Automation to fully take over things like our shipping/receiving/import/export is a ways off... there's parts that are easy to do.. but other would require massive infrastructure changes.
Also, we aren't even close to electric vehicles being able to take over for something like long haul trucking. Unless a major major breakthrough occurs.. the current tech would be really bad for that kind of use.
Marty Chinn
Member
It takes trillions to do it though. Where are we going to get enough in taxes to pay trillions? Sending Israel 38 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to how much we need to cover basic income.
Manmademan
Member
not really. Tesla was experimenting with stations that simply swapped out a battery rather than charging it, but the demand simply wasn't there for passenger vehicles.
I imagine it would be for time sensitive long haul trucking operations, combined with higher capacity batteries.
you'd obviously need some pretty serious infrastructure improvements before this would be a thing, and the swap out process would likely need to be automated to keep things running smoothly- but with the reduction in cost for fuel and maintenance that sort of thing will eventually pay for itself. Electricity is only going to get cheaper- fuel is only going to get more expensive.
Vestal
Gold Member
This whole fuel thing.. We already have electric vehicles.. So by that it shouldn't be such a stretch that in the near future you could equip roads with Automatic re-chargers were the car feeds off these roads persistently. I mean we have wireless charging for phones, whats to stop us from doing that?
AngmarsKing701
Member
There's a lot of infrastructure needed to make automation happen, and this country is notoriously terrible at maintaining infrastructure.
Like I said, it's already starting to happen in finland next year.
Every human being in america isn't going to file for basic income at the same time. Society would collapse if this was the case, and we wouldn't have to worry about it. As all americans would literally be out of a job at the exact same moment.
You start things gradually. Like start enacting programs now for people, for either education or other things that you study to make sure it benefits people that are out of work by automation. There is plenty of money that we pay in taxes to do this.
We don't need to spend trillions out the gate. And we've got it when we do.
TharpDaddy
Member
I've had professors/teachers help shape how I think about the world, be mentor-like figures to me, and help give me a unique perspective on topics. I can't see an AI doing that, at least any time soon. Hell, I took a Modern China class with a woman who came from a humble upbringing in China and lived there for 40 years. The perspective she was able to give was amazing.
Manmademan
Member
1.) tires-being rubber-generally don't conduct electricity all that well. no, you aren't likely to get tires made out of anything other than rubber anytime soon. Your only other alternative would be to have something scraping the ground, overhead wires, or a rail while you drive around- friction aside, see #3 for why this is a bad idea.
2.) charging a phone even with a wired charger while you've got more than one radio going (say, the GPS for maps, and the LTE uploading and downloading data- maybe the bluetooth going to your radio at the same time) generally eats so much power that you either don't charge much at all, or even lose power in the process. Automobiles require so much more power than this it's not even in the same discussion. "Charging while driving" isn't possible.
3.) Electric trains, subways, and trolleys actually use a system like this to power themselves while running. Those lines are extremely high voltage, more than enough to kill a man if you touch one. Running an exposed high voltage line through every road in the country is not only going to be insanely expensive and a power hog, it's also going to be very, very dangerous.
not happening.
I don't think it makes much sense to try to project today's costs into a hypothetical future where there are no jobs for people.
Our present day concept of the cost / value of things is based on scarcity. The premise here is that we will have a future where labor scarcity no longer exists, so people can't find jobs. Hence you would expect costs to be much different than today.
Reagan's BR
Banned
In economics this is called structural unemployment and while it may hurt some people in the short term it doesn't last in the long term. People will recover. Think about all of the manufacturing that has gone overseas or times when technology has changed (what happens to typewriter manufacturers). In the short term those people were unemployed but that unemployment doesn't carry over 20 years later. It just takes a while for the economy to respond. One other thing to consider is that with automation jobs are created, you need repair people, sales people, the company manufacturing them will need a corporate team of marketing, finance, and legal people. Jobs simply just shift.
Not to mention the facts that 1) the richest people in the country couldn't even support every citizen with a basic income 2)redistribution of wealth at that scale actually creates more unemployment and would deny us of further technological innovation.
This isn't "trickle down" or anything else. This is Econ 101. The idea that a shift in a base wage increases unemployment is actually Keynesian.
Not to mention the facts that 1) the richest people in the country couldn't even support every citizen with a basic income 2)redistribution of wealth at that scale actually creates more unemployment and would deny us of further technological innovation.
This isn't "trickle down" or anything else. This is Econ 101. The idea that a shift in a base wage increases unemployment is actually Keynesian.
Many gas stations in Sweden are already fully automated. You swipe your payment card before fueling up, then fuel up and go on your way.
Is this rare or non-existent in most countries? Seems like a quite simple concept.
basic_element
Member
lol, We are at a major deficit every year and debt is growing like crazy. The government had to borrow money from social security fund to pay for the disability fund for another year. You would have to cut entitlement spending to get any kind of tax money. But then those relying on entitlements would now need your basic income. Where is all this tax money you talk about?
How About No
Member
Absolutely. If robots take our jobs, how will we buy the stuff the robots make?
I look forward to a Star Trek-esque future where people only work cuz they feel like it
I look forward to a Star Trek-esque future where people only work cuz they feel like it
JHoNNy1OoO
Member
Manmademan
Member
krameriffic
Member
There are 4.1 million miles of roads in the United States alone. It costs millions to rebuild even a few miles of road with conventional methods.
These are all true things but everything about education reform is a grift and the big money is in online high school right now. Even local schools are pushing a big online component to class to the point where eventually teachers will have automated themselves out of a job bu creating modules that districts own.
I would put money in half of all teens going to online school by... 2035?
Vestal
Gold Member
Famous last words at the bolded. We are talking about the future. 30-50 years down the line.. Less than 30 years ago the smallest hand held phone was the size of a brick, and its battery weighed as much. That same brick sized battery was good for 2 hours at best. Compare that to now.. Try to wrap your head around the advancements in technology we have had over the last 50-60 years. How can anyone sit there and say something is not possible?
50 years ago we still thought putting a man on the moon as impossible, we had computers the size of warehouses doing very simple math. The number of advances in science and technology are astonishing and will continue to change the way we live.
The same place we always get it, from taxes or borrowing, or anything else. We have all the money to spend/waste on everything else besides people. If we made an effort, I mean our government, We could afford to do it. But no one is going to make the effort due to excuses and well, americans don't really care about one another that much. Our nation would never be able to actually do it, Republicans won't agree to it, and I don't imagine a lot of liberals would either.
But the money is there to start a staged program. I don't get the delusional world where automation goes from 0 to 1 in a day to where you need trillions immediately. Programs take place over years.
In an ideal world, your'e charged a tax for automation. But since we are all fine with GOOGLE/APPLE etc not paying any taxes, and care much more about welfare fraud.. This wont happen.
Abstruse Moose
Member
I would imagine that the companies that save enormous amounts of money by having higher efficiency and not having to pay people would have to foot the bill. If they don't it means total collapse as no one has any money to spend.
Manmademan
Member
Because I understand the scale of something like this and the physics involved? Your phone example is also laughable, because it ignores that smaller batteries were also made possible by a drastic increase in cell tower density. Phones 30 years ago had to hit fewer cell towers from much farther away.
LOL. 50 years ago was 1966. The first man made object to land on the moon was 1959. We understood how to put a man on the moon in the 1940s and 1950s, the only obstacle was cost and political will. We could have put a man on mars decades ago, but there simply wasn't the drive to do it.
Something like converting the nations roads to charge cars while they drive around is in a completely different category. The physics isn't there, the money isn't there, the time isn't there. Building a single high speed train from DC to Boston costs tens of billions and is estimated to take decades, and that's ONE train over the smallest fraction of the country's distance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_–_Washington_D.C._Maglev
I just don't want people starving or have to sleep outside like a stray dog because there weren't enough jobs. I don't think any society should allow for that outside of it being someone's choice.
I'm not an economist, so I'm sorta confused by the concept. My first fear would be - wouldn't real estate prices quickly be driven up, with higher mortgages and rents eating up most of the new foundational wages? Thus putting a lot of this money in the pockets of banks and landlords?
I'd really appreciate if some clever person could explain this to me
I'd really appreciate if some clever person could explain this to me
PdotMichael
Banned
Well, the future is sure interesting.
But the amount of jobs only increased in developed states.
But the amount of jobs only increased in developed states.
You're off a bit in your estimate. The military budget is around $600 billion dollars per year. Divided amongst the 240 million adults in the US, that's about $2500 per person.
Not that we should cut defense spending to zero. I just wanted to correct the underselling of how much we spend on the military.
Additional money could come from replacing welfare and health care programs with a guaranteed income, but even at about 1 trillion dollars spending at all levels of government that still would fall short of a ten thousand dollar goal, adding only $4167 per adult to that total.
Oh, I misread the post you were replying to... never mind.
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