I think that we are all so damaged by the culture wars that none of us, especially myself, can look at any of this rationally. We’re so caught up in old constructs of thinking about the economy, Liberty, society, etc... that our mental picture of how things are and how they’re impacting the humans are not credible. The generation of Trump, Pence, Pelosi, Biden, and Sanders need to get the hell out of the way if our country is going to be successful.

"The generation of Trump, Pence, Pelosi, Biden, and Sanders need to get the hell out of the way if our country is going to be successful."

And who will replace them?

Think carefully before answering.

To paraphrase the meme, "given my understanding of linear time, I'm interested to hear what the alternative is"

Folks like Andrew Yang, less about party more about people. They're out there but it will take some serious sorting on our part.

Moderates.

the ballyhooed moderate: ain't no such animal
 

Yang: He's the one makin' noise about guaranteed universal income, right?

Ain't we got enough welfare already?

Yes.
No.

The appeal of Yang to me is the way he approaches our current political divide. He is very welcoming to Trump voters and acknowledges the economic forces which led to Trumps election. His policy ideas are all about using reason and science to address our problems. He is unlike the other candidates, except maybe Pete and Warren, someone who can unite the country. He has a very positive outlook on where we can be when the economy serves humanity.

https://www.yang2020.com/policies/

In 2016, I supported Sanders but he's losing me with his guaranteed jobs and anti-rich rhetoric.

"Yes."
 

Not my cuppa then.

It is my cuppa as I see in UT's graph the seeds of a total meltdown. This is "welfare" which doesn't have any of the onerous social manipulation Dems are often criticized for on the right. The idea is to divert some of the proceeds of efficiency back into the economy of middle America rather that into Silicon Valley coffers. This to me is a lot smarter than the Luddite stuff which will be forth-coming.

.

"The idea is to divert some of the proceeds of efficiency back into the economy of middle America rather that into Silicon Valley coffers."

Yeah, I get that. You can get mostly the same result by wreckin' state capitalism and allowing free enterprise to run wild.

We must implement UBI once we notice that automation is actually creating the described problem. Maybe 40-50 years from now.

problem or opportunity?
Timing is interesting. Do we start paying when retail dies or trucking or software development...

Innovation continuously puts entire industries out of business, and we like that. 50% of us worked in agriculture a century ago, now it's 2% of us. The typing pool used to take up an entire floor of a company; within a decade it was gone.

Those people did not just disappear from the work force. The thing is, automation has always created more jobs, and so we are not suffering at all from the jobs that were lost. We don't miss them. We have single digit unemployment, even after most of the mindless manual labor is outsourced to China.

Things will be radically different with another level of automation. It will probably require UBI or something like it. But, on the other hand, if there is no cost of labor, the price of many things will drop - a lot. So the problem that UBI needs to solve could be radically different by the time it's needed.

~ IMO ~

But we will notice the problem first. We should solve problems we have, not problems that aren't problems yet.

So, Yin now … Yang later. Attachment 68803