One day robots and machines will do the bulk of unpleasant labor. As we speak, a burger-making robot has been invented. I call it “McRobot.” The inventors claim that the machine would pay for itself over the course of a year. Of course, as development goes on the prices will probably drop even further.
When 3-D printing becomes better and more affordable my prediction is that a very large number of the hardware and other goods we use will be made ultra-cheap, and will destroy the sweat shops in China.
The bulk of physical labor will probably be done by machines in the future. What will this do to the economy? Naturally, this will eliminate most jobs.
It will also make everything super cheap, guaranteeing that those who still have jobs will basically be rich. Unless we want to let 95% of our entire population starve, the only option remaining would be a welfare state on a grand scale, like “Negative Income Tax” or Guaranteed Basic Income. What’s that? Simple: you earn no money, the government gives you some basic amount to live on ($10,000, let’s say). What do we do with people who make, say, $6,000 a year? If we cut their government income down to just $4,000, then they have no incentive to work. So, basic income proposes that for every dollar they make at a job we lower their basic income by 50 cents. So the guy who makes $6,000 from a job loses $3,000 of his basic income (making the government earnings just $7,000) and comes out with a grand total of $13,000 earned. So low earners still have an incentive to work, but they no longer have anything to fear by partially going off the welfare program (they can always go back to it if something happens).
It sounds like a lavishly expensive program. It is, and it could be instituted when our society has robots doing all our work, because at that point our society will have incredible wealth on an unprecedented scale.
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