[tharne]

> The problem becomes that eventually all these people who are laid off are not going to find new roles.

> Who is going to be buying the products and services if no-one has money to throw around?

I've wondered about this myself. People keep talking about the trades as a good path in the post-AI world, but I just don't see it. If huge swaths of office workers are suddenly and permanently unemployed, who's going to be hiring all these tradesmen?

If I were unemployed long-term, the one upside is that I would suddenly have the time to a do a lot of the home repairs that I've been hiring contractors to take care of.

The other thing I worry about is the level of violence we're likely to see if a significant chunk of the population is made permanently unemployed. People bring up Universal Basic Income as a potential, but I think that only address a part of the issue. Despite the bluster and complaints you might hear at the office, most want to have the opportunity to earn a living; they want to feel like they're useful to their fellow man and woman. I worry about a world in which large numbers of young people are looking at a future with no job prospects and no real place for them other than to be made comfortable by government money and consumer goods. To me that seems like the perfect recruiting ground for all manner of extremist organizations.

[Bilal_io]

> The other thing I worry about is the level of violence we're likely to see if a significant chunk of the population is made permanently unemployed.

No worries, they'll just make AI robots to shoot people.

[JumpCrisscross]

> If huge swaths of office workers are suddenly and permanently unemployed, who's going to be hiring all these tradesmen?

"Professionals were 57.8 percent of the total workforce in 2023, with 93 million people working across a wide variety of occupations" [1]. A reasonable worst-case scenario leaves about half of the workforce intact as is. We'd have to assume AI creates zero new jobs or industries, and that none of these people can pivot into doing anything socially useful, to expect them to be rendered unemployable.

> if a significant chunk of the population is made permanently unemployed

They won't. They never have. We'd have years to debate this in the form of unemployment insurance extensions.

[1] https://www.dpeaflcio.org/factsheets/the-professional-and-te...

[johnnyanmac]

>We'd have to assume AI creates zero new jobs or industries

Zero American jobs, sure. It's clear that these american industries don't want to invest in America.

>They won't. They never have.

not permanent, but trends don't look good. It doesnt' remain permanent because mass unemployment becomes a huge political issue at some point. As is it now among Gen Z who's completely pivoted in the course of a year.

[Auracle]

Increased production has always just lead to more stuff being made, not more people unemployed. When even our grandparents were kids a new shirt was something you’d take care of, as you don’t get a new one very often. Now we head on to Target and throw 5 into our cart on a whim.

Were there less weavers with machines now doing the job (or whatever?). Sure. But it balances out. It’s just bumpy.

The big change here is that it’s hitting so many industries at once, but that already happened with the personal computer.

[johnnyanmac]

>The big change here is that it’s hitting so many industries at once, but that already happened with the personal computer.

The PC was pre-NAFTA, and since then we've had at least 3 waves of tech trying to outsource tech jobs (let alone actually impacted jobs like manufacturing) to cut costs. We're now on the current wave.

More stuff can be made... just not in the US.

[LtWorf]

But nobody can afford stuff.

[panick21_]

And yet in the real world people buying labobous at insane rates.

[LtWorf]

The very same people that 40 years ago would have bought a home instead yes. Now they can no longer do that so might as well blow the money on stuff.

[DenisM]

I heard Spain has 20% unemployment among the young and the violence problem did not happen. Didn’t check it though.

[lagosfractal42]

Instead of checking and sharing it with us you've decided to pass on the burden of proof to us?

[DenisM]

Sorry, I was being lazy and on a phone. I checked now - it’s closer to 25%. Low crime is anecdotal from my personal connections.

[janalsncm]

UBI correctly identifies the problem (people can’t afford housing/clothing/food without money) but is an inefficient solution imo. If we want people to have those things, we should simply give them to them.

[JoshTriplett]

How much of them, which ones, to who, at what price, who is forced to provide them, how much do they get, what about other needs...

Or we could just give people money and let them do as they wish with it, and trade off between their needs and wants as they see fit (including the decision of whether they want to work to obtain more of their wants).

[janalsncm]

How much money should everyone get?

[mitthrowaway2]

The right answer to this is not a number, but rather a feedback loop that converges on the right number. When everyone is laid off without production of goods slowing down, the result is deflation; when everyone gets too much money relative to production of goods, the result is inflation. So that means you can use the CPI inflation as a feedback variable, and adjust the UBI amount until the CPI is stable.

[marcosdumay]

I'm all for using a UBI to stabilize inflation (it's way better than giving the money to rich people like we do today), I don't think you got the sizes of things correctly.

Any UBI that avoids people getting poor will have to come mainly form taxes, and will mostly not make any bit of inflation.

[mitthrowaway2]

Why would it come from taxes, rather than simply from being printed?

The typical answer is "printing money causes inflation", but in the context of this feedback loop, it only causes exactly as much inflation as is required to cancel out the deflation caused by automation-induced layoffs and productivity increases. That's the magic of feedback.

But if it's because the resulting UBI would still be insufficient for welfare, we could also use taxes to fund a secondary "revenue-neutral" layer of UBI that taxes the rich and redistributes to everybody, but probably it makes sense to go in slower steps, seeing what level the primary UBI stabilizes at and then adding a secondary tax-funded one if the primary one isn't sufficient for both welfare and sustaining economic demand.

(The secondary UBI would probably still be somewhat inflationary, even though it's funded by taxes, just because poor people spend more of their money on things that are highly-weighted in the CPI, but the feedback loop will balance that out).

[Dylan16807]

If the plan was to give people the full set of housing/clothing/food then use the poverty line calculation for amount of money. Or the social security calculation.

We can iterate on the exact amount. There are difficulties with UBI but figuring out the amount is a pretty minor one.

[boxerab]

the main problem with UBI is it makes people even more dependent on the state, and therefore more easy to control by said state.

[Auracle]

Well, that and the utterly insane cost (and therefore inflation).

[azinman2]

Or the fact that everyone is now on welfare? And poorer?