[gaelenh]

Last week in my robotics classes, the 4th grade students built and programmed simple "self-driving" cars with LEGO EV3's. My students are mostly 1st generation immigrants in Brooklyn. Many of their families' main source of income is through driving for a car service.

Looking at one of the charts from OP, these kids' parents are horses. What will they do when those jobs don't exist anymore? Will the new "horse" population be reduced? How will they fit into the new economy?

Other than providing childcare for upper middle class families (subsidized by sending their own kids to substandard preschools), most of their jobs will be replaced through automation in less than 10 years. Most of these families are working 40+ hour weeks on minimum wages and still need WIC and other benefits to get groceries and low end govt/city childcare for their kids. I know basic income is an (the?) answer, however I don't see the US getting on board with that idea in the next 10 years.

[winter_blue]

A basic needs guarantee (or even basic income) might be the only way to guarantee that a chunk of the population doesn't fall into total destitution.

Once so much is automated, would it not be feasible and practical to provide basic needs (food, clothing, housing, etc) to every human being?

Also, a politically acceptable alternative to basic income might be Keynesian economics:

-> In one case, the government taxes the middle and upper classes, and gives out that money to everyone -- no strings attached.

-> In Keynesian economics, government similarly hands out money to people, but requires them to do something in return for it.

Both involve high taxes and high government spending. I just realized this similarity between Keynesian economics and basic incomes, and I'm amazed by the parallel.

With Keynesian economics, the governments gets to makes people "do stuff", in return for what would've been "free money" with basic income.

If a government uses this to direct the population towards productive and meaningful endeavors, then could this be better? Government could provide "basic income" to all the unemployed arts graduates by funding the arts. Similarly, we could encourage every smart person to pursue pure research, and then instead of "basic income", fund them to do research!

[bravo22]

I agree with GBI for the interim, but one thing everyone is forgetting is that we're resource bound as a race. GBI will deal with the distribution issue but not overall consumption. And I hate to say it but the more prosperous the average family becomes, i.e. less death and hunger, the faster the overall population will grow. At the same time the faster technology grows the less need we'll have for average person to work.

The environmental problems we are experiencing are mostly an issue of our population relative to the environment. Ultimately there needs to be a population control/reduction mechanism.

It won't be easy, pretty, or likely even ethical but it will happen and it will be a source of great conflict.

The alternative is we end up space ferrying before that happens.

[winter_blue]

> but the more prosperous the average family becomes ... the faster the overall population will grow

All statistics point to the opposite. Education and higher income correlate with lower number of children.

In countries like India, the educated middle and upper classes have a very low birth rate -- most families have 1 or 2 kids. It usually the poor and uneducated families that have the most kids.

Most developed countries also have a birth rate that is below replacement. As people get more educated, the human population (for whatever reason) seems to be at risk of collapse / rapid shrinkage.

I don't know why educated people chose to have less kids, but that is what the statistics are telling us.

[petra]

I agree, this seems to be more politically easy to swallow. But i get the sense that basic income just a way to distract the people from the real political fight for a social safety net(and the work needed to get done to make the world ready for something like basic income) , while selling them fantasies that makes their day nicer(money for free, small government, etc).

[fweespee_ch]

> How will they fit into the new economy?

The reality is the social safety net will have to be expanded.

Too many people will be unable to transition this economic turmoil without serious societal problems. It will have to be paid for by higher taxes which will further anger the Republican base in the US which could be problematic.

The simple truth is a large swath of the US is simply going to be living off the dole during the transition period.

[JonFish85]

"most of their jobs will be replaced through automation in less than 10 years."

I sincerely doubt that this timescale is close to true. Even 25 years seems aggressive. Maybe some long distance trucking jobs will be replaced, but I doubt if all that many livery jobs will be replaced within your timeframe.

[timr]

I've been saying for a while now that "self-driving" is the 2016 equivalent of flying cars.

It's not that I think the technology won't happen -- it's clearly on the way -- I just think it's far more likely to happen as incremental advancements to existing auto technology (e.g. "lane assist", "self parking", etc.), while all of the various regulatory and societal problems sort themselves out. It's already becoming clear that the major automakers are deploying bits and pieces of self-driving tech faster than Google is getting to the glorious, all-robot future.

When you stop to think about all of the things that would have to change in our society to make a "sudden" transition to robot cars (of which the unemployment of a huge number of people is just one factor), it seems wildly implausible, even on a ten-year timeframe. We'll probably go through decades of refinement and expansion of car automation features before the first truly driverless cars roll off the assembly line.

[arcticfox]

But the technology for "flying cars" never arrived. It would be totally economically unfeasible to have mass market flying cars (helicopters, I guess?) today.

On the other hand, even you admit that "self-driving" tech is already being deployed one way or another.

So I don't think they're particularly comparable.

[gaelenh]

I have strong doubts too. Tech luminaries and the media that feed off them seem pretty constant with their predictions, so I think for worst case scenarios (at least in terms of the families / demo I serve, not in society as a whole).

[elchief]

What happened to our great grandparents, most of whom were farmers?

[zanny]

The great grandparents inherited farms and worked them until old age when their children would support them. They saw the value of their crop drop dramatically relative to how much they could harvest in their lifetime vs the cost of living, and almost always have to sell their farm for a retirement.

The children (probably a half dozen of them) could not afford land (nor could the parents - land prices were on the rise and was scarce for the first time ever in the states), and farming was on the decline, so they moved to the city. They worked in sweatshops that exploited them for incredible amounts of labor without any workers protections. But because their parents tilled the fields and they bought their crops with the penance from their boss, they adapted to a world without farming.

The industrial revolution was never driven by the farmers hanging up their hoes and moving to the city. That happened, but in small quantity. What happened was that a generation of farmers made a generation of not-farmers and when they died their farms were sold to megafarm corporations rather than tilled by their children because the efficiencies of farming made their plots generate too little crop to support a family.

The difference is that here, the obsoleted class does not have a store of capital to cash out on like the farmers did - when farming died, you liquidated the farm at 50 and lived off the sale until you were 60 and your kids would support you until you died at 70.

This time, the obsoleted class will be 40 year old truck drivers who have done that for twenty years - and they will be left in crisis with no savings and no viable pivot in the economy. It will be interesting.

[elchief]

But new jobs appeared right?

> the efficiencies of farming made their plots generate too little crop to support a family

That makes no sense

[zanny]

They made the same or more crop, but the market value of crops dropped through the floor during the green revolution and made it require way more scale to make a profit off agriculture.

So they would have needed a much greater quantity of crop yield to make the same relative income, and most family farms were not big enough to support it (and the farmers didn't have the savings to afford equipment).

[gaelenh]

They all successfully transitioned into industrial factory jobs, where they received living wages and benefits and weren't at all abused by the factory owners and lived happily ever after? I honestly don't know. This is where that history repeating itself quote comes into play.

EDIT to say I was being facetious.

[angersock]

Try again:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression

[MicroBerto]

This is the most important question society must face in the next 10-20 years and NOBODY is talking about it. Not a good start...

[blhack]

No offense, but yes people are absolutely talking about this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment

This is one of the major reasons you're seeing pushes for basic income. The future simply doesn't have enough jobs to support the amount of people who want them.

[MicroBerto]

I was mainly referring to this year's election and the mainstream media. Sadly, the decision-makers these days.