Naturally, the seers among us like to ponder our future.
Yesterday, Joel
Kotkin, an interesting thinker on such matters, offered some reflections
about the arrival of the post-work society. (via Maggie’s
Farm) He opens ominously with a quotation from Martin Luther King, Jr.
If a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither
life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely
exists.
From there Kotkin advances the notion that we may be
entering an epoch where only a select few work, but where most people become
wards of the state, receiving a universal basic income and the means of
subsistence.
As for what they would do with their time, he seems not to
have pondered the question. We might suggest that the workless masses might
very well form organized criminal gangs, the better to steal the higher priced
items that their universal basic income does not allow them to afford.
If you think that these huddled masses are going to sit idly
by while their betters indulge all manner of decadent overpriced luxuries, you
are living in a dream.
Of course, Kotkin is keying off of the fact that large numbers
of Americans, laid off or resigning during the pandemic lockdowns, seem not to
want to go back to work. The worker shortage has been dubbed the Great
Resignation, and surely it is concerning.
And yet, among the reasons, Kotkin points out, is the fact
that today’s young Americans, and even today’s not-so-young Americans cannot do
many of the tech jobs now on offer.
Consider this point:
Many of these problems are of our own making. Pundits
have long been predicting the demise of factory jobs, and by now, according to
Rifkin, factories should be “near workerless.” Yet as automation kicks in,
American factory managers increasingly complain of a distressing lack of
skilled workers. Due to an aging workforce, as many as
600,000 new manufacturing jobs are expected to be generated this
decade which cannot be filled. The current shortage
of welders could grow to 400,000 by 2024. Amid a mild recovery in
the US, by May, an estimated 500,000
manufacturing jobs were left unfilled.
We have been keeping you abreast about these developments on
this blog. We all like to complain about the jobs that have been flying out of
the country, but we rarely note the fact that our educational system and our
family structure is not producing enough skilled workers. You know well that a
school system that wants to produce more social justice warriors is not going
to be producing welders or even people who can manage automated factories.
By contrast, China is. Note well the observation by Apple
CEO Tim Cook about America’s ability to produce tooling engineers:
In contrast, our non-Western competitors, notably China,
are building a skilled workforce that can operate sophisticated automated
facilities. As a report
from American Compass noted, “Only five percent of American college
students major in engineering, compared with 33 percent in China; as of 2016,
China graduated 4.7 million STEM students versus 568,000 in the United States,
as well as six times as many students with engineering and computer science
bachelor’s degrees.” Meanwhile, in the US, Apple
CEO Tim Cook has observed, “you could have a meeting of tooling
engineers and I’m not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill
multiple football fields.” This helps explain why the company maintains
virtually all its production in the Middle Kingdom.
You can blame this on politics, but there is more to life
than politics.
Anyway, while Asian countries are producing the workers of
the future, Western societies are eliminating manufacturing and industrial
jobs. You might consider this to be a good thing, good for the environment,
that is, but surely it does not bode well for America’s future.
While Asian countries are focusing on future work,
Western societies seem determined to eliminate gainful employment for
blue-collar and middle-management workers. Many jobs that could support
families have disappeared, and most new opportunities tend to be low-wage
service work. One widely cited reason for the
recent labor shortages relates to a post-pandemic reluctance to
accept low wages, including those in the “gig” economy, where pay
and hours are often uncertain.
In short, we are creating jobs in service areas, from
restaurant servers to household help. But these are low paying. It is not easy
to support a family on dishwasher wages.
Some low-paid workers have also found state
support during the pandemic to be, in some cases, more profitable
than work, and a way to remove the risks associated with crowded offices and
public transport.
Yet, although the pandemic was the trigger for this
withdrawal, high levels of public welfare delinked from work have also been
associated with the persistently
high unemployment that has plagued countries such as Italy and
Spain.
Not everyone sees mass idleness as an unalloyed negative.
“Post-work” fits neatly with the de-growth
philosophy pushed by climate activists today. This notion seeks to ratchet down
consumption among the masses by reducing the size of homes, cars, air travel,
and air conditioning.
Particularly hard-hit would be millions
of working-class people, particularly those in well-paying
manufacturing, construction, and energy jobs. UBI would provide the basics for
a properly austere ecological lifestyle.
Again, the post-work society would resemble something like a
return to the state of nature. Less production means less pollution. Less
pollution means a greener planet-- or so people believe.
De-industrialization means depending on foreign countries
for our basic needs. Have you noticed that we are now facing a shortage of
pharmaceuticals? I trust you understand that we import something like 90% of
our pharmaceuticals from the Middle Kingdom-- point that tells us that no
matter how much we enjoy the sport of China bashing, it is not necessarily a
great idea to trash your major pharmaceutical supplier.
As for environmentally friendly lower emissions standards,
they are de-industrializing the West while allowing Asia, especially India and
China to corner the market and to force us into dependency:
By the time China, India, and other developing countries have to embrace lower emissions, likely with nuclear power, the largely self-driven de-industrialization of the West will likely be all but complete.
So, Kotkin asks whether we should institute a universal
basic income, a UBI, even if it required everyone, including the middle class
to pay higher taxes. One might note, as Kotkin did not, that UBI will be
especially attractive to the hordes that are currently invading the nation over
our Southern border:
In our era, a broad-based UBI would necessitate high
taxes, particularly on the already beleaguered middle class. The question will
then be who gets what and who pays? Democratic presidential candidate Andrew
Yang’s campaign was built around UBI, and his plan was estimated to
cost around $2.8 trillion annually, paid for by a national value added tax, and
higher capital and social security taxes. But some on the Left see even UBI as
inadequate, and seek to seize tech wealth and commandeer their technology to
create “fully
automated luxury communism”—a leisure society paid for by Apple and
its counterparts.
Unsurprisingly, much kneejerk opposition to UBI comes
from the
Right. But Damon Linker, a liberal writing for the Week, describes
UBI as the road to “spiritual ruin,” particularly for those most
dependent on it. Some on the Left even see it as the construct of a neoliberal
“income
scam” to hasten the end of productive work and upward mobility. Most
voters, according to an October Morning
Consult poll, also oppose permanent income supports. Yet Democratic
strategists realize that such largesse, once offered, will be likely
accepted by recipients and so want to continue it ad infinitum.
UBI, dare we say, infantilizes people. It deprives them of
the dignity that they gain from a job well done. People thus infantilized will
either need to be controlled by a police state or else they will rebel against
their condition.
In many ways, the post-work society will be decadent and
demoralizing.
The alternative system, particularly under the de-growth
regime, offers a different prospective future. This society may be secure in
the basics, but it will be parasitic and stagnant, much like the last centuries
of the Roman Empire or the Ch’ing Dynasty. It is a society in which young
people can look forward to subsidized schooling, housing, and perhaps part-time
work, but may never buy a house, raise a family, or start a significant
business.
In short, for reasons that differ slightly from mine, Kotkin
explains why the post-work society is a formula for civilizational decline.
In a post-work world, the whole diverse character of our
lives—the last remaining vestiges of autonomy—would disappear. It may be true
that artificial intelligence will deliver goods and services efficiently, but
would they be able to provide personalized service, or allow for human
creativity? We may exist in a digital age, but the analog is where we live, and
without it our lives will be very bleak indeed—our democracy will be
functionally dead as we go from contributors to permanent dependents. In our understandable
desire to eliminate poverty and raise basic living standards, we need not
embrace a system that turns most people into quiescent drones. The price of
security must not be a new and cushy kind of slavery.
6 comments:
Sorry, Stuart, I got nuthin'.
People often talk about automation as if it were something new. It is not. See my series of three posts Attack of the Job-Killing Robots for some historical perspectives.
Part 1 https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/54252.html
Part 2 https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/54256.html
Part 3 https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/55293.html
What is going on today with robotics & AI is a continuation of long-running trends rather than a sharp break, as can be seen by taking a look at the labor productivity statistics. People are indeed needed to do work, and the failure of the education establishment has done serious harm to both skills and to the attitudes required for productive and satisfying work.
Regarding today's situation in which so many open jobs are unable to attract workers, see the post & discussion thread here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/66893.html
During the 2020 presidential campaign, I thought Andrew Yang was on to something--at least in terms of identifying the problem, even if advocating a disastrous policy recommendation for its solution.
We don't need UBI, but we do need to recognize that the demand for labor (of all sorts, including large numbers of yuppie jobs) is shrinking, and that's a good thing. This will require a corresponding reduction in the supply of labor, which can be accomplished via tax policy.
Rather than increase capital gains taxes to "tax the rich", or especially on unrealized gains, as idiot Sen. Ron Wyden proposes, we should be taxing labor income at high rates and income from capital (interest, dividends, rents, etc.) not at all, with the provision that labor income saved/invested will not be taxed either. This will encourage people to earn more of their income from capital and less from labor. At the top, this will result in shorter tenures for managers and executives, making room for those immediately below to move up, and so on. Thus the Ph.D. economist driving a cab gets to be an economist, and someone unemployed gets to be a cab driver.
Don't expect this to be taken seriously any time soon.
Ah, yes, bless us with UBI. The left can finally claim victory and realization of their vision for humanity: Nothing to admire nor aspire to, all envies pacified, all ambitions mollified, all behaviors sanctified, all filth normalized.
Ahhhh, Ron Wyden! I haven't thought of him since I left Oregon.
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