Deficit Owls | The Job Guarantee: What About Automation? @deficitowls5296 | Uploaded June 2017 | Updated October 2024, 7 hours ago.
Professor L. Randall Wray, on with Steve Grumbine at Real Progressives, discussing automation and the Job Guarantee. One of the arguments sometimes made against the Job Guarantee is that, "well we don't need jobs. Automation is coming and it will destroy all jobs. Trying to give people jobs is clinging to the past."
It's true that automation destroys jobs. But this should be a good thing! If automation eliminates boring and grueling jobs, then this frees up people to be able to do things that are more fulfilling and creative.
"But this time is different," they say, "the automation will destroy all jobs, even creative ones."
Firstly, just look outside your door: how much stuff needs doing that's not being done? Sure, we can imagine robots making human labor unnecessary on a wide range of tasks, but the idea that it will become impossible for any person to meaningfully contribute to society through effort is ludicrous. There has always been more work to be done than people available to do it, and there always will be, because every time we become more technologically sophisticated, our standards and expectations about what quality of life should be like go up proportionately too.
What's more, the problem with automation is that it eliminates **paid** work, not the possibility of working. This might be an imperative for the private sector, to maximize profits, but it's not for society as a whole. There are many reasons why society might want humans to do jobs that robots could do, even if the robots could do it more profitably: perhaps consumers prefer interacting with a human (like doctors); there are some jobs that people enjoy doing and would rather do themselves than delegate to robots (like playing music, or teaching). The government, through its power to issue currency, can enable this.
Bottom-line: criticisms about automation generally mistake what the purpose of an "economy" is for: the economy exists to serve people, not the other way around. If something happening in the economy is not making life better for people, then we don't have to do it.
Watch the whole video here: youtube.com/watch?v=OCNXfNTAez0
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Professor L. Randall Wray, on with Steve Grumbine at Real Progressives, discussing automation and the Job Guarantee. One of the arguments sometimes made against the Job Guarantee is that, "well we don't need jobs. Automation is coming and it will destroy all jobs. Trying to give people jobs is clinging to the past."
It's true that automation destroys jobs. But this should be a good thing! If automation eliminates boring and grueling jobs, then this frees up people to be able to do things that are more fulfilling and creative.
"But this time is different," they say, "the automation will destroy all jobs, even creative ones."
Firstly, just look outside your door: how much stuff needs doing that's not being done? Sure, we can imagine robots making human labor unnecessary on a wide range of tasks, but the idea that it will become impossible for any person to meaningfully contribute to society through effort is ludicrous. There has always been more work to be done than people available to do it, and there always will be, because every time we become more technologically sophisticated, our standards and expectations about what quality of life should be like go up proportionately too.
What's more, the problem with automation is that it eliminates **paid** work, not the possibility of working. This might be an imperative for the private sector, to maximize profits, but it's not for society as a whole. There are many reasons why society might want humans to do jobs that robots could do, even if the robots could do it more profitably: perhaps consumers prefer interacting with a human (like doctors); there are some jobs that people enjoy doing and would rather do themselves than delegate to robots (like playing music, or teaching). The government, through its power to issue currency, can enable this.
Bottom-line: criticisms about automation generally mistake what the purpose of an "economy" is for: the economy exists to serve people, not the other way around. If something happening in the economy is not making life better for people, then we don't have to do it.
Watch the whole video here: youtube.com/watch?v=OCNXfNTAez0
Follow Deficit Owls on Facebook and Twitter:
facebook.com/DeficitOwls
twitter.com/DeficitOwls
And follow our sister page, Modern Money Memes:
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twitter.com/ModernMoneyMeme
