A Practical Question On Technological Unemployment

A Practical Answer to Technological Unemployment

Many people who think about the future believe that robots will take most of our jobs, while many other futurists believe the advances in technology will transform work and create a net increase in jobs. Neither of the aforementioned camps can agree on a set timeline for any of this so we end up with the conclusion that at some point in the future, perhaps starting today or perhaps decades away, we may or may not see an extreme spike in unemployment due to advancements in technology and automation. Furthermore, we may or may not be able to find gainful employment for these people at some point in the rest of their lifetimes. The solutions to these extreme positions range from a Universal Basic Income (UBI) on one end, to business as usual on the other. What we need is a practical solution that does not break the bank with unneeded entitlements if unemployment does not skyrocket and yet accommodate the needs of millions of unemployed and obsolete workers if it does.

I think it 's safe to say these viewpoints represent the polar extremes of opinions on the subject and that the reality will no doubt fall somewhere in between. The one end of the futurist’s spectrum looks at self-driving cars and trucks, industrial 3D printing, expert AI systems, advances in robotics, automated restaurants, etc. and comes to the conclusion the millions, or worldwide, perhaps hundreds of millions of jobs could be made obsolete in less than ten years. To further compound that, generally speaking of course, the workers in the types of jobs that will likely go first, do not have the required skillset to immediately find work from the remaining jobs available. They would point out that It 's unrealistic to...

... middle of paper ...

...nd thus would garner resentment from people who do work, while a UBET would be an incentive for all people to work and contribute to society and therefore the cost would be much more tolerable.

The final scenario is that the future will be somewhere in the middle of these extremes. Maybe there is greater unemployment than there is now for periods of time or maybe permanently. Maybe some jobs go away forever and their former workers never find new employment but other jobs evolve. The arguments still remain for doing nothing and for implementing a universally applied solution, the only difference is the scale of the reason neither of these actions is the best solution. Maybe the job market will remain as it has been for many years or even decades but on a far enough timeline we can see where human work will not be required for society to function and another method o