[jstx1]

> And don't get me started on Humans Need Not Apply.

Well now you have to tell us. :) Many of the concrete examples in that video are exaggerated and/or misunderstood but the general question it asks - what to do when automation makes many people unemployable through no fault of their own - seems valid.

[musicale]

> what to do when automation makes many people unemployable through no fault of their own - seems valid

Unfortunately the video doesn't answer its own question directly.

The answer for the past 40 years or so seems to be "move them to lower-paying service jobs, or out of the job market entirely."

[robotresearcher]

Another part of the answer over the last 40 (or 200) years, is to repeatedly create totally new industries that employ lots of people, including a large fraction of HN readers.

[ketzo]

Yeah, but what does the Venn diagram look like there?

Yes, new technologies create new jobs.

But it’s not usually the people from the old jobs who are taking those new jobs.

[musicale]

> it’s not usually the people from the old jobs who are taking those new jobs

https://news.mit.edu/2022/automation-drives-income-inequalit...

[robotresearcher]

That can be terribly hard on people, while great for other people. What would you suggest would be better?

[dragonwriter]

A progressive income tax that does not exclude or favor capital income, so that funding ideally targeted transitional assistance, UBI (with a rate ratcheting up with sustained increases in per capita revenue), or, ideally, both so that the adverse effects of labor market shifts which shuffle or concentrate labor demand or shift from labor-intensive to capital-intensive methods are buffered.

[robotresearcher]

How do you prevent UBI being captured by landlords in rent, and similar non-discretionary spending?

[vkou]

Tax robots. At a minimum, at the highest income tax rate bracket.

[mikewarot]

How? What should a Roomba owner have to pay? Or a dishwasher owner? Or someone who has a calculator?

Computer used to be a job description, do we all owe?

Where would you draw the line?

How would you enforce it?

Edit/Append: Also, how do you calculate the income to be taxed?

[robotresearcher]

Robots don’t have income.

Are you going to pay this tax for your washing machine, dishwasher, car, word processor, electric lightbulbs? The first two are robots, and all of them put a lot of people out of work.

[j33zusjuice]

I find this discussion fascinating, but YouTube is one of the last places I’d go for that discussion, unless it’s a debate between two highly-regarded minds on the topic (like Chomsky vs Foucault back in the day). I’m not very interested in listening to random people tell me their ideas without any good pathways for critiques or questions.