UBI picking up steam?
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To the rest of America, a U.B.I. may seem like a pipe dream, but from my vantage point some form of it seems inevitable.
This is a statement that comes from many on the west coast. No, this is not a liberal versus conservative point. Instead, it is those who are around technology and the digitization of our world. Anyone who follows this trend tends to draw the same conclusion.
We saw similar statements out of the likes of Richard Branson and Elon Musk, two individuals who are investing heavily in technology that is going to eliminate millions of jobs. Following this trend to its logical conclusions brings out statements about how it is inevitable.
The Manna Project was started, in part, on a similar belief. There are two overwhelming factors that regularly gets our attention. The first is that half of the children in the world live in poverty. This makes it a human rights issue.
Our other concern is what is opined in this article. We see a world where technology is moving ahead at an unrecognized pace.
Over the second half of the year, the Manna Team is going to be rolling out some projects that will move us closer to the day when people will have a fall back option. Using cryptocurrency enables us to overcome the conversation of how to fund the project. We are already doing it.
Thank you to all who assisted us so far. We are excited about the progress that is being made and what is coming up later in the year.
To get your weekly distribution of manna, go to https://www.mannabase.com to sign up.
For more information about the Manna Project, go to https://www.peoplescurrency.org/
I would like to think that anyone with even just three brain cells to rub together would be at least peripherally aware of the facts that (a) thousands of jobs simply disappear every day as machines replace humans... and that's on a collision course with (b) a system we have built, within which everything we do, have and consume "costs" money, which we have to get from somewhere.
Since it seems unlikely that the robot-makers and job "stealers" are going to start giving us stuff for free, some sort of "bridge solution" has to be created. Maybe we'll eventually progress to a "Star Trek World" where nothing "costs" anything, but that'll be several hundred years. In the meantime, we have to be able to live, to survive, to thrive.
And so, UBI seems the most viable way to address the issue. And that's purely from the functional angle, not even going to touch the moral/philosophical angle.
US employment stats:
Jan, 1950: 57,365,000 jobs employing humans
June 2018: 155,576,000 jobs employing humans.
Huh. Steady increase in jobs since 1950. Wow, even with all those jobs disappearing!
US population 1950: 152 million
US population 2018: 326 million
huh... jobs tripled while population doubled...hmmm.
Damn job stealers! I know, let's create a pretend problem and enact socialist programs to "solve" it!
Yea, that's the ticket!
Past performance isn't always a good predictor of future outcomes.
Just as an example, Forbes (a right leaning publication, coincidentally...) doesn't paint a very rosy future for the US job market: https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/11/30/automation-could-eliminate-73-million-u-s-jobs-by-2030-infographic/#48603351773d
You did NOT just go there!
A right leaning source?!?
No soup for you....two weeks!
From US Dept. of Labor statistics:
Annual job growth 2006-2016: 0.5% per year
Projected annual job growth 2016-2026: 0.7%
Whaaaaaa????? Faster job growth in the future? How is that possible with all these robot thingies stealing people's jobs left and right?
Seriously? You are taking away my SOUP???
Maybe our best bet is to each take the approach we believe will serve us best, and then sit down in 2030 and see how it actually turned out.
The funny/amazing thing about numbers is that they can be spun to mean absolutely anything you need them to, according to the agenda of the spinner. And that's part of what makes the whole game so entertaining!
Well, the trend for the past 70 years is a steady increase in jobs. That is an entrenched trend during a period of great automation when pretty much all robots have been built. I am going to go out on a limb and say this trend will continue.
I just create a new job on Steemit
https://steemit.com/microfinance/@chrisaiki/peer-2-peer-steem-micro-lending-3
Is it a job ? I am not paid to do it. What is your definition of a job ?
I'll go with the standard definition of: a paid position of regular employment.
But you didn't compare those numbers to the projected population growth for the same periods, for some reason...
Well, I just did that by a little jiggering. The USA 2016 population is estimated to grow by about 26 millions by 2026, according to US Census Bureau. That's 1.3 million a year, or 0.4% per year...roughly.
You can't just count the total number of jobs. How many of those jobs are full-time versus part-time? How secure are they? What sectors are they in? The story of "jobs disappearing" isn't so much of more people being out of work; it's one of people desperately trying more and more transient and unstable make-work jobs, sometimes two or three per person, to replace the single stable career job they might have had back in the 50s.
Remember also that when you're comparing numbes fron the 50s, you're looking at a time when very few women were actively seeking jobs to today. That's a difference that can mask any effect of technological unemployment.