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Is It Too Rational for Americans?
By lindamuralidharan on 2018-03-09 04:19:29
Several years ago, it occurred to me that we are a sufficiently rich country to be able to guarantee a specific annual income
to all people in the country. We could quibble here....to all citizens? to all legal residents and citizens? To all people over
the age of 18? Anyway I thought of it as important, effective, decent, logical....and probably unrealistic given prevailing
attitudes within our population and the desire of so many who are elite or wealthy to keep redistributing wealth upward and
not downward. There is not even much evidence of a willingness to undo some of the damage of the last few decades as
profits and Wall Street manipulations pile up wealth for some while folks who either need more help or are the ones working
in the restaurants and factories and airlines and so forth to actually produce the wealth that they are not getting a decent
share of. Wages may be edging up slightly just now but overall such things as wages and salaries have stagnated and needed
services such as foster parenting have not been funded to current costs of living levels. Social Security incomes are not
usually adequate to deal with rising housing and health care costs, and so some officials and policy wonks have called for
significant increases. Little to no action on these fronts has occurred. I believe I wrote a while back about a delightful spate
of news I learned of from countries such as Finland and Switzerland which have seriously studied and discussed a
government policy of providing a universal basic income for all. Switzerland actually had a national vote, a referendum in
effect and the idea lost by a small margin. Last I heard Finland has a pilot project in effect now. Wow, I said to myself.
"I'm not so far ahead of the times after all!" The positive side of discussions in Switzerland covered issues such as some
people want to do more volunteering and that would free them to do so. The types of red tape associated with various
welfare benefits (whether of subsidized housing, food support, cash payments or other is expensive and degrading). With a
base guaranteed income there would be cost savings for society as well as other benefits for recipients. The red tape is
somewhat different in different countries but the majority have a bureaucratic cost. And ultimately such an income policy
would mitigate the serious decline in the number of available jobs that is a consequence of automation and the increasing
use of robots. [caption id="attachment_10988" align="alignright" width="210"] Small town
in Finland.[/caption] In Finland it is not a "progressive" or "liberal" concept and the pilot is quite limited. For two years,
people unemployed at the beginning receive a flat fee on top of existing unemployment payments. The goal would be to
increase employment by making it easier for people to go back to work. Some out of work people worried that working
would put them in a painful tax bracket without being really lucrative. Some have found the reoccurring paperwork (every
time they finish temp or contract jobs they have to reapply for unemployment all over again) discouraging them from work
opportunities. The project may or may not determine a reduction in depression and anxiety as unemployed people do worry
about paying bills and when a job may open up. Unemployment is relatively high in Finland so the conservative decision
makers hoped to get more people off he unemployment roles. Meanwhile anecdotal evidence indicates that some
individuals are developing small business projects and the like because having money with no strings attached has given
them a great deal of psychological freedom. [caption i ="attachment_10989" align="alignleft" width="590"]
1 in 3 Hoosiers is underwater
and can't afford basic needs.
Food insecurity in America.
[/caption] Liberals and progressives and some think tank style moderate conservatives are very supportive of the larger
concept of ubi.
"Appealing both to the left (who believe it can cut poverty and inequality) and, more recently, to the right (as a
possible way to a leaner, less bureaucratic welfare system), ubi looks all the more attractive amid warnings that
automation could threaten up to a third of current jobs in the west within 20 years. Other basic income schemes
are now being tested from Ontario to rural Kenya, and Glasgow to Barcelona."
The above quote comes from The Guardian newspaper of January 12, 2018. The big concern in many countries is the
looming shift to job killing automation, as we lay people have been accustomed to calling any experience of some type of
machine doing work heretofore being done by humans. Definitely jobs have been lost as companies and organizations find
it cost effective and sometimes more productive to automate. There is evidence that a lot of the problems for workers or
former workers in the coal and steel industries in America are attributable to animation. [caption id="attachment_10990"
align="alignleft" width="650"]
Kenya has a large ubi
experiment.[/caption] At a more professional level, there is increasing talk of robots being the specific human replacements
in the next few decades and that after that artificial intelligence will remove so many "jobs" from the economy that there will
really not be anywhere near enough jobs for all able bodied, mentally competent persons of employment age. Recently I
read a Mother Jones article that said the robots are taking over much faster than we realize. I must say I notice this myself.
My local newspaper now has a mainly automated way of having customers call in to report when you have some issue or
problem with your paper delivery. Other articles I read recently stated that jobs you might think require a human will not as
the robots get more and more competent. For example, for invalids and seniors living at home, fewer home health aids will
be needed as robots will be able clean floors much better than our "rumbas" do now. The future robots will manoevre
around all kinds of furniture and around scatter rugs and back and forth from carpets to hard surfaces all on their own. They
will also do other chores people now do although I do believe some time will be needed for personal care....some folks
cannot bathe themselves safely and it seems unlikely that will be a task for a robot. [caption id="attachment_10991"
align="alignright" width="480"] - Too many
Americans need food subsidies.[/caption] However in 40 to 50 years when artificial intelligence will be doing much
more...all bets are off! We already have some long distance medical practices via computer and Skype and the like. It is
predicted that artificial intelligence will do much more of the diagnosing and follow up treatment totally on its own for many
conditions. True, predicting the future is risky business. We were told some decades back that "automation" would give us
much more leisure time. The predictions did not take into account the skillful efforts of conservative and greedy elites to
manipulate laws and the financial system so that the money saved makes some people richer while others work longer hours
for less. All the more reason for us to be vigilant at this time in history. The Mother Jones article pointed out that we are
seeing a lot of misery among white men in many states because their jobs are gone and the ability to retrain for new
ones.....even if such exist...is limited. Suicides are especially high in some areas..... in some Southern states in particular.
And the extent to which the opiod epidemic relates to despair is difficult to gauge. A key point of the article is that there will
be much misery over the next few decades. People, families, devastated communities....some will obviously suffer in
private but what about increased hospital admissions for depression, stress related diseases, and addiction? I just heard a
new bulletin suggesting that the recent decline of life expectancy in the United States is the result of opiod overdoses.
[caption id="attachment_10992" align="alignright" width="1024"]
Helsinki, Finland[/caption] Eventually, it is predicted, the rich and famous with all their factories and businesses will notice
fewer and fewer people are buy buying their products and services that make them rich. Then they will be the driving force
behind a universal basic income so that more people will actually be able to "buy stuff". Sometimes we get good results for
the wrong reasons. However, it is predicted that such "enlightenment" will come several decades in the future. I do not want
us to wait that long through so much avoidable suffering. Training people for different jobs is certainly important. Various
economic stimulus packages may be truly helpful. However, we can boost everything from financially stable caregivers of
the elderly to volunteerism to personal dignity to lowered stress levels to more purchasing power to people feeling better
about being in control of their lives if we actually begin planning now. We could have a target implementation date for
making sure everybody has food clothing and shelter without insulting bureaucratic hurdles and for enhancing the ability of
some to pursue more education/entrepreneurship, education, research, public service. How we actually agree to implement a
universal basic income...if we do..is going to be very significant. You may want to check out some of the concerns
expressed in the following book. "Inventing the Future" by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams. I recently read that the
country with the highest suicide rate is South Korea. The second highest is Japan. for the most part these societies
emphasize very hard work and material success and up to now the countries have prospered fairly well. On the other hand,
the Scandinavia countries which also have thriving mixed economies report very high rates of happiness and contentment
and there is clearly less pressure there to strive very competitively. Surprising to me since years ago we understood the
suicide rates there to be high under the somewhat judgmental older North European values...much like the Protestant ethic
that is still somewhat common in the US. Now, it seems people manage to work hard enough but have little to worry about
when it comes to health care as that is universal, and pensions and housing seem to be established by the government in
ways that produce security in the present and in aging years. I seem to remember that Norway and Sweden...maybe
Denmark also...were at some time were near the top for rate of suicides. Perhaps I am thinking of many decades ago before
they implemented the equity based reforms to their economic safety net systems. [caption id="attachment_10993"
align="alignright" width="600"]
Another view of Helsinki.
[/caption] People in our country are still hung up on the myth that all people are poor because they are either undeserving or
just not capable of improving their lot in life. Facts, of course, show otherwise as research shows children raised in
dysfunction often lack the skills to succeed in the modern era or have developed habits of thinking and behaving that leads
to mental illness and substance abuse and under achieving. Not always but with a higher statistical average than children
who receive "good enough" parenting. We need to stop judging. We need to give all a base line of financial well being and
keep providing as many avenues as we can to more education, vocational training, job retention counseling, substance abuse
treatment and so forth. The Protestant Ethic influenced my upbringing and has its good side. I believe the concept of
delayed gratification is a building block of the capacity to cope with modern industrial society, get an education whether
technical or academic, and establish security for one's old age years. (This can be insufficient if society puts up institutional
road blocks as it currently does for certain subgroups of its citizens.) It is taught in various types of rehab programs.
However some aspects of the Protestant Ethic have always been overdone e.g. the vilification of the poor, and more recently
the glorification of the rich as ipso facto "superior" or morally good. We need to be careful how we proceed, but proceed we
must. The rich in the thirties woke up to the fact that continuing with the depression and the excessive differences between
the gilded class and the masses could easily lead to violent revolution. We can see that possibility, and I am guessing that in
America we will just continue to have the degrading of our quality of life both materially and in civility. Unless we take
radical action in the near future while recognizing it will be a slow and arduous learning process at best. Time to study
seriously the issues of artificial intelligence, the disappearance of millions of jobs, excessive income inequality and the
degradation of our safety net under the present right wing and right of center political propaganda. In other words, we need
to stop the extremely mean policies of modern Republicans, but we cannot forget Bill Clinton's retro look. If you recall, he
masqueraded as a Democrat. There are bipartisan aspects of advocacy for a universal basic income, and some advocates just
want an excuse to diminish our existing safety net further and some want to enhance it as we enter the major changes of the
science fiction future come home to roost. The process of moving forward may make for strange bed fellows which is okay
so long as we distinguish between those who wish to continue punishing the poor and those who really do want to lift all
boats regardless of ideology. Can we be rational enough as a nation to begin sooner rather than later to establish some kind
of guaranteed income for all?
