[WillAdams]

This is a discussion Jimmy Carter wanted to have when computers were just becoming mainstream --- the idea was the taxes on the sales of computers would be used to fund worker re-training --- cue old news stories about the compositor unions bargaining for sinecures and the last compositor retiring after decades of punching in and sitting in the breakroom all day.

LLMs and robotics look to be the first mainstream technological development in a long while which not only reduces the number of workers needed, but also doesn't have a commensurate increasing of the size of the economy in terms of increased wages through efficiency and profits being paid as wages --- instead, it is the concentration of profits by those who own the means of production as Karl Marx warned about and the Luddites feared.

If less work is needed to keep society running, why not have a reduction in the work week, and either pay folks overtime (in keeping with the increased efficiencies/profits) or have more workers (to reflect the added efficiency and spread out the workload).

Or, perhaps it's time for universal basic income?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45590900

[MisterTea]

> Or, perhaps it's time for universal basic income?

Funded by Carters idea where we tax corporations for job elimination. For every head you reduce with automation you pay a tax to help support that head in their time of unemployment. Then we tax the automation products.

Of course with the current government situation this isn't happening. Ever.

[mgraczyk]

Sounds unironically great, this way only startups that have nobody to fire will grow let GM figure out how to file the paperwork and another company can replace it

[smileysteve]

To jump in on the political, in minimum wage "debates" the conservative side was always that higher minimum wage will encourage automation.

But as we look at post-pandemic automation (the counter operator is mostly replaced by an app) or automation (China's robots per capital), or tax policies that encourage capital spending (2018 tax bill, depreciation) it becomes obvious that automation will happen and is in many ways good. But our policy makers, media, and therefore average voter miss the forest for the trees.

[johndhi]

>LLMs and robotics look to be the first mainstream technological development in a long while which not only reduces the number of workers needed, but also doesn't have a commensurate increasing of the size of the economy in terms of increased wages through efficiency and profits being paid as wages

What is your evidence of this?

[WillAdams]

https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/ai-is-wiping-out-...

[johndhi]

This article (with limited data I'll note) only talks about the first part -- that it's eliminating jobs. It doesn't say that it isn't also creating jobs.

[WillAdams]

News story on jobs created by LLMs?

[hello_moto]

Look around you: middle class is shrinking all over the world despite hi-tech advancements.

Adjusting with inflation and everything else, are people better off today than in the 80s?

[johndhi]

LLMs have only been a big deal for 2 years. are you saying that all of this middle class shrinkage arrived because of that specifically? the original comment was saying this is an LLM-specific issue.

[mgraczyk]

Yes, pretty much no matter how you measure it

[mgraczyk]

Good thing we didn't do this, considering the core thesis ended up being completely wrong

[bigyabai]

The core thesis was unproven. It meandered for a while, and now we're staring down a world where blue-collar job retraining is fairly necessary.