Fact #1: The US unemployment rate is 15.8%.
Fact #2: There is no forseeable way to reduce the unemployment we have now. Donald Trump pitched the idea of “bringing back jobs from China and Mexico,” but as the Washington Post explains, he can’t do that, because most of those jobs weren’t lost to people overseas, those jobs are now done by machine.
Fact #3: More people are going to lose their jobs to machine in the near future (think less than ten years).
Example: Google presently has several driverless, automatic cars running the roads in California. As soon as the technology gets developed, taxi cab and truck drivers are out of work.
Example: Amazon is working right now on automated delivery by drone. They’re serious about this: they are plotting the air maps now. They have a prototype drone up and running now. Post Office, Fed-ex, and UPS workers: look out!
Example: Mcdonald’s is flirting with the idea of ditching cashiers for kiosks, and the cook jobs are soon to be eliminated too, because it is possible to automated fast food cooking.
Fact #4: It’s cheaper to give people enough money to live on than to have them homeless, and more humane too. This has proven again and again. It costs a city 20 to 30 thousand dollars per homeless person per year to arrest them for trespassing, public intoxication, etc. However, the government can provide these people with housing for around ten thousand dollars a year.
So, here’s what we do: give every adult $10,000 to $20,000 per year regardless of whether they work or not, regardless of how much they make. If the adult becomes homeless, redirect the money they receive from the government into a program that automatically pays for their housing.
This extra $10,000 – $20,000 would even out the income inequality that is crushing our middle class, and it would give people on the bottom a boost without taking away their incentives to move forward in life, which is what previous welfare programs have done.
If you want to know where to find the money for this: tax wealthier individuals and large companies to get it. Those companies have laid off lots of people, and I have no doubt that it is economically sound for us to get the money for a basic income that way.
Last but not least: this problem will only get worse. Even if you don’t think we should do this right now, we definitely should develop a solid idea for how to do it if push comes to shove and we have to implement it in 2040 because unemployment has skyrocketed to 50%.
