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As Robots Eat Our Jobs, Fed Should 'Drop the Money From Helicopters,' Says Bill Gross (janus.com)
As technology continues to change the world -- and kill many jobs -- it may soon change the very nature of what is considered work, said Bill Gross, a renowned American financial manager in his recently released investment outlook. Gross says that in a year or so we will need to start guaranteeing income for everyone. Gross, added that the current crop of national leaders is hopelessly behind the curve, leaving it to central bankers to fix the mess. "Our economy has changed, but voters and their elected representatives don't seem to know what's really wrong," he writes. "They shout: (1) build a wall, (2) balance the budget, (3) foot the bill for college, or (4) make free trade less free. "That will fix it" they discordantly proclaim, and after November's election some unlucky soul may do one or more of the above in an effort to make things better. Similar battles are being fought everywhere." The Sydney Morning Herald reports: Central bank "helicopter money" will avoid a long recession that looms as millions of millennials face losing their jobs to robot technology, Gross says. In news that is sure to depress anyone under the age of 30, Gross says that while presidential hopefuls in the US spout mantras about how they are going to spur growth, none are addressing the reality of the future: that robots and technology are going to render "millions" of jobs redundant. "Virtually every industry in existence is likely to become less labour-intensive in future years as new technology is assimilated into existing business models," Gross writes. Transport is a visible example of this transition and millions of truck and taxi drivers will be out of a job in the next 10 to 15 years due to driverless vehicles, he says. "We should spend money where it's needed most -- our collapsing infrastructure for instance, health care for an aging generation and perhaps on a revolutionary new idea called UBI -- Universal Basic Income."
is just a bunch of robots. SKYNET drops the money as human bait.
Why does Slashdot keep running these stories about basic income? Are you stupid?
Hooray! I'm in my mid 40's and if I'm lucky I'll die of ass cancer in the next 5-10 years! Sucks to be the millenials, their future is much less bright!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Transport is a visible example of this transition and millions of truck and taxi drivers will be out of a job in the next 10 to 15 years due to driverless vehicles,
Visible? I don't see it. Nor do I see putting everyone on welfare as a good plan.
This makes me sick.
The concept of helicopter money's been making the rounds as a more effective alternate to QE money (QE gives the money to governments, who may end up spending it unwisely), but it should be noted that it's a direct response to deflationary pressures around the world that's attacking currencies and sapping credit. Helicopter money the economic concept is only meant to be applied until the threat of deflation goes away - a UBI is a social policy, not a fiscal one.
It would be interesting to explore how a UBI would affect the core consumer price index. My suspicion is that the US might be the only country that could pull it off, only because the dollar is the world's standard reserve currency.
Spilled my drink once I got to "leaving it to central bankers to fix the mess".... Smells like another scam
They will be millions of bank cards on the sidewalk, which will be pulled away any time someone stoops down to pick it up. From the air this will be quite the spectacle.
Bill Gross is a con artist and part of the 0.000001% and made billions through junk bonds. Don't trust anything he says.
Dropping condoms from helicopters would seem to be more effective.
Analysts have been puzzled why inflation has been so low, compared to a typical recovery. Economies typically do best at roughly around 2.2 to 2.5 percent inflation per year. But we've been hovering around 1.7%.
It appears our GDP capability is expending due to automation and outsourcing, yet our money supply is not expending to match. Thus, we have too many idle people and factories.
"Printing money" is one way to make them match. You don't risk runaway inflation if the capacity to produce is expending.
Many dictatorships and non-democracies willingly subsidize the cost of their nation's labor because unemployed people riot and overthrow dictatorships. Thus, they keep their population busy and fed using various gimmicks to under-price their nation's labor (relative to consumption). Therefore, they are practically giving away free labor to protect their position of power.
Robots and de-facto slaves are available to make more stuff, if only the money supply is freed up to allow them.
(The morality of such de-facto slavery is perhaps an issue to be dealt with, but for here I'm focusing on just the economy and money supply.)
Table-ized A.I.
if you don't like to do what the future has to offer then sign up for a one way trip to Mars. Crying because you got a degree in basket weaving using unobtainium is of little help or value.
I'm really sick to death of these idiots saying that hamfisted intervention in the economy (like shitting out trillions of magic rubber inflatobucks from the fed) can produce good results.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
At this point I'm pretty sure that this is all some sort of false flag type thing designed to make the idea of UBI sound so ridiculously stupid that it kills it dead then salts the earth around it and spreads radioactive shit all around in order to make sure that anyone who dares approach the carcass drops dead.
Wake me when we are ready to have a serious discussion about eliminating all of the welfare bureaucracy and replacing dozens of scattershot programs with a single check.
What will happen to all the robots producing fluorescent lights that will lose their jobs once all the other industries are taken over by robots that can work in the dark? How will they afford hydrolic fluid replacements and filter cleanings?
The simple solution is to move to a 20 hour work week.
But it'll never happen.
40 hours is enough to enslave us. 20 will let us explore on our own free will and surely will cause trouble for the illuminati.
You must understand that Bill Gross was speaking in jest. He's a lifelong bond investor and the inflation he predicts from this strategy is anathema to bonds. Now he wouldn't mind some inflation if it meant the net interest rates would rise as a result (ie, interest on bonds minus inflation) but he doesn't expect that from the strategy he proposes in the article. Again, it was written in jest.
the 8-year-old-girl Nike shoe-making model that operates for 18-cents a day will be released for purchase
at those rates I won't need money, I'll have minions
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Not anytime in this century, or maybe EVER.
Slashdot: Please stop posting these alarmist, FUD-spreading articles, please? While you're at it, stop posting these bullshit 'UBI' articles, too; none of this is going to happen. Seriously, nothing to see here, folks, just more trolling, FUD, and nonsense. For fuck's sake, are we in an Irwin Allen or Michael Bay film?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
transition and millions of truck and taxi drivers will be out of a job in the next 10 to 15 years due to driverless vehicles,
How long have we been saying driverless vehicles will be 10-15 years away?
As H-1Bs continue to change the work force -- and kill many jobs -- it may soon change the very nature of what is considered work, said Jim Bryan, a simple network admin. Jim says that in a year or so we will need to start guaranteeing income for US Citizens. Jim, added that the current crop of national leaders is hopelessly behind the curve, leaving it to central bankers to fix the mess.
Central bank "helicopter money" will avoid a long recession that looms as older workers and millions of millennials face losing their jobs to H-1B contract labor. In news that is sure to depress anyone under the age of 30, Jim says that while presidential hopefuls in the US spout mantras about how they are going to spur coding, none are addressing the reality of the future: that H-1Bs and technology are going to render "millions" of jobs out of reach of the middle class and new college graduates. "Virtually every technology industry in existence is likely to become more dependent on H-1B contract labor in future years as new jobs are assimilated into existing business models," Jim writes. Coding is a visible example of this transition and millions of software engineers, server admins, and network admins will be out of a job in the next 10 to 15 years due to driverless congressmen, he says. "We should spend money where it's needed most -- our collapsing K-12 education system for instance, boot camps for lazy, whiney, millennials, and perhaps on a revolutionary new idea called PAF -- Put Americans First."
Picture of Bill Gross as he was writing this article
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I am all for a basic income, but 10K is not going to get people off the streets. Beggars on the streets make more than that based of donated pocket-change. 10K is an eat-shit-and-die income. It should be a LIVING WAGE. Not extravagant living, but you shouldn't have to eat cat food and live in a toxic trailer on it. Printing more debt-based currency will only set us up for a larger fail further down the road. The people need to take control of their currency again and END THE FED.
This guy is a complete moron. He manages largest privately held bond fund, he wants his bonds to be propped up by printing, he wants to be 'made whole' when his fund goes belly up (and it will). What he does not seem to understand or care about is that bonds are promises to pay dollars in the future. Well, his idea is leading towards destruction of the dollar itself. He mentions Ron and Rand Paul in his idiotic piece there as well, saying that 'they would be good at it', at what? At dropping dollars out of helicopters? He is a complete nincompoop, Ron Paul stands for sound market money, he is 100% against fiat and fiat printing and always argues against easy money.
Bill Gross proves this: in the age of fake money even a braindead zombie can 'manage a fund'.
You can't handle the truth.
Someone or something has to manage the supply of money. It doesn't manage itself. And always keeping it the same can create problems. Capacity and population typically expand over time, not always at the same rate. Keeping the money supply the same doesn't make sense under such changes.
The gold standard has been suggested to force a consistent standard, but there are a boatload of potential problems with it. Experiment on a smaller country first.
And why not try to patch the holes in the business cycle (boom/bust cylces)? The business cycle has been happening for 400 odd years, and so is not caused by Keynesian economics.
Keynesian economics done right is a form of common sense: save up during the good times so you have spending money for the bad times. I see nothing really wrong that.
Politicians often spend during the good times instead of save up, but they'd do it also without Keynes. You can't blame Keynes for stupid politicians (and stupid voters). If humans don't plan, don't blame the few who attempt to plan.
Table-ized A.I.
It boils down to who can afford it. A basic income is impossible to afford for any country.
Look at Venezuela to see what fuck-ups that type of socialistic thinking brings.
Maybe he should drop himself from a helicopter?
Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Neo-Luddites are always right. I mean, they've always been right with their predictions before, right? And surely, they fully understand economics too, because greater productivity, i.e. greater efficiency, which leads to specialization of labor, has made us all starving brutes.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
The people who shout "build a wall" are not the same people who shout "pay for our college" as the article implies. Some out of touch moron wrote it, and some out of touch moron threw it up on slashdot.
The Fed helicopters don't fly over normal people. They only have the ability to dump money on banks via mechanisms such as rates so low that the banks can arbitrage. None of that money goes where it's needed to stimulate the economy.
AFAIK, only Congressional helicopters could deliver money to you and I, like they did with the stimulus checks a few years ago. It's almost certainly a fool's errand anyway, since it would screw up the dollar economy via runaway inflation if you did it too much.
IMHO, it would be better to simply extend services like food stamps and housing subsidies to people who would usually be in higher income brackets. Particular sectors of the economy might be weakened, but you wouldn't destroy the monetary system wholesale. People who wanted something better than government cheese would still be encouraged to innovate, strive, and keep progress and productivity humming.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Dropping young people into volcanos has a history of not being all that sure after all
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There are two ways to get rich in the stock market:
* Win the lottery
* Rig the game
Please tell us which of the two you find more likely and why.
productivity would be rising. It is not. The US economy is currently strangled by a foolish tax code, burdensome regulation, explosive growth of entitlement spending for illegals, and the drag of Obamacare. It is a wonder we are growing at all.
an ill wind that blows no good
People have been worried about losing their jobs to automation for at least a couple of hundred years. Is there some reason it's suddenly a hot topic? (Is it going to be for real this time?)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Politicians often spend during the good times instead of save up,
Yep, it looks like we Aussies are at the end of a 30yr long mining boom driven by the expansion of China's infrastructure, it is the longest continuous growth streak for any economy in modern times and we have very little to show from it. Successive conservative (hah) governments pissed it away on tax breaks to miners and cuts to the top tax income tax rate. We are now wondering who's going to pay for lunch tomorrow?
Norway is a counterexample to that very common boom/bust scenario. They taxed the hell out of oil companies during the North Sea oil boom (knowing the boom would end one day), they reinvested the taxes in health and education. The boom is long gone but they were left with a world class health/education system, an educated workforce, and are still regularly at the top of standard of living charts.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I think Mr. Gross should look up the definition of hyperinflation. Sure, you can have free money, but you'll need a wheelbarrow full of it to buy groceries.
How long will it take to do away with the trade system as we know it? I envision a future where production is fully automated and 100% robotic. ALL the jobs are gone. There is a fleet of robots whose sole purpose is to maintain the robots. The robots make more better robots. Goods no longer cost any human time to produce.
Soon the burger factory will have burgers piled to the sky, the car factory will run out of horizontal space and start stacking them and the breweries all over the world will finally have more beer than we can all drink. The owner will stand between these burger mountains/car stacks, and the starving people, rightly demanding payment for his investment.
The big question is: How many will die for the mountains of food and beer and shit before everybody realizes that the only things scarce enough to merit payment anymore are time and human companionship? Will the whole system crumble, or will we finally usher in the golden age of humanity.... or something completely different?
I just removed 9/10 of this post, I really started rambling like an even more crazy person towards the end there...... Boy! Its an exciting time to be alive!
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Wow. He looks just like one of those Republicans. They're so hateful. So hateful. Their hate is expressed from their humours onto their skin and makes them be this way. It's why Cruz looks like hate. So much like hate. It's how he be.
I knew he was bad even before he raped me.
That's how they be.
And eyes. You can always tell conservatives by their eyes.
Their kind rapes constantly.
I find it funny that we are still doing the 2009, "Obama took our jerbs!" argument, when a simple google search could disprove that republican fantasy right away.
It unfortunately doesn't help when the republicans in question, don't want to change their views in the face of new evidence. This is why Trump is dominating the republican nomination. The GOP is literally falling apart!
I've held this as a fun talking point for years. It's a fantastic way for a liberal like myself to break down barriers to discourse with hardcore conservatives about socialist ideology. It's clear that the jobs we are losing to automation are not being replaced by new industries at a fast enough pace to keep our ever growing population at full employment. We need to re-imagine the core of our society in much the same way as we changed during industrialization before the problem comes to a head, or we face the same or even greater pains many of the industrialized nations felt the last time society underwent such massive restructuring.
Which is how they have so many children.
I see nothing really wrong that.
Theory and practice are two different things. Do you see anything wrong with spending all of your money on frivolous things during the good times and then be the stuck with a bill during the bad times? How do you enforce discipline on something that has resisted it for millennia? Maybe we should figure out that problem first.
I've been trying to think why suddenly there's all these stories about the government giving out handouts. I didn't clue into why till just now. It's the stupid bankers thinking that their jobs are going to be outsourced. So of course they want another bail out. You didn't hear all this whining about give me money when manufacturing jobs were either being automated or going over seas. Then most of the ivory tower types were claiming that people needed to go back to school and learn a new career.
Where the fuck is this magic money supposed to come from, and if every single person has $10,000 new dollars to spend how does that stop everything from increasing that much in price?
The problem is that we're running up against the limits of the ability of resource utilization to keep up with population growth. The more of us there are, the less resources there are for each of us. Everybody is ignoring this fundamental fact because there's no way to address it with out current economic models. The market needs growth. It cannot function with a static or shrinking economy because nobody would invest in capital for zero or negative returns.
....you really *would* think somebody like Gates would understand how the economy works.
But I guess not.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
http://www.bls.gov/dolfaq/bls_...
No really, aside real estate, and maybe internet or phone, I am seeing actually a quite wide slice of items. So can you precise exactly what you mean is missing ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
In fact I pity millenials because they do not have it as easy as I am getting it, and again I have not gotten it as easy as boomers. They are cominc at the end tail of estate boom, and therre has been not enough re-adjustement toward lower estate prices in many area booming with jobs. Hello rental until the end of your life.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Lack of discipline per voters and/or politicians is not something Keynes or non-Keynes will solve. If a group of people fail to plan out of sloth, shit will happen.
But I'm for some form of balanced budget amendment whereby the debt can't get too high during boom years, barring some big war or threat. Whether it will work is hard to say.
Table-ized A.I.
Robots are nowhere close to meeting our needs in ecologically sustainable manner. If anything, agriculture needs more labor intensive but less polluting human touch. Then we got to cleanup the cesspool we left on the planet. Spaceports, high speed trains and wind farms also do not build or maintain themselves at the moment.
Once all of this is done, working 3 days a week on long term average is very healthy to allow folks to take care of children and parents as well as have interests other than work. After all of this done, some future generation can discuss dropping cash, crypto currency or whatever from helicopters.
The Basic Income idea is a trojan-horse. It's a trap. That's why you mostly see wealthy people and e.g. tech CEO's/high-ups promoting it.
The Basic Income can be transformed from a worker subsidy, into a business subsidy, just by slashing wages over time by the same amount as the Basic Income.
The Basic Income can be used to completely destroy Welfare entirely, by consolidating all Welfare payments into the Basic Income, and then either slashing it or destroying it outright, once a big enough economic crisis hits (just claim it is unsustainable, and then kill it).
Automation is not the cause of unemployment and the lack of jobs, neither will it be in the future - the amount of work to be done, is effectively infinite - because fields like scientific research, will go on FOREVER - there will never be a lack of work to be done.
The real alternative to the Basic Income, is the Job Guarantee - a government 'employer of last resort' program, that is specifically used for managing inflation levels, while keeping full employment - putting that helicopter money into a Job Guarantee, can keep the economy at full employment (and remember, there's no lack of work to be done...), while also preventing excessive inflation.
Why is 'helicopter money' for the rich and banking/financial industry ok, in the form of QE? Or ok in the form of a wage-turned-business subsidy like the Basic Income? Yet not ok, in the form of funding a government Job Guarantee program, or other public funding measures?
It's because the first two send money to rich and already powerful - and the third is the means of destroying their power over workers/society/politics (which is why the third is always scaremongered as hyperinflationary, and why the first two are suddenly considered neutral inflationary, despite being funded in precisely the same way...put two and two together, hyperinflation scaremongering is bullshít, and elites are more than happy to use money printing in their own favour).
...helicopters drop YOU!
Someone or something has to manage the supply of money. It doesn't manage itself.
How do you think it worked before 1913?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
400 years? Sounds about the time fractional reserve banking started. Difference is back then lending what you didn't own was illegal, and hidden.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
This has been explored in fiction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riders_of_the_Purple_Wage
I am changing my name to Finnegan
"a revolutionary new idea called UBI -- Universal Basic Income."
I'm not sure I'd call The Way Things Are Supposed To Be revolutionary but ok, if you say so. I suppose.
10% minimum, ideally much higher.
How do you earn enough to afford the latest gadget?
Produce something worth enough to trade for it. You know, like a responsible person.
It used to be that 'workforce productivity' was a major metric in macro economics.
From a very high-level view, if you replace a worker over here, you can free them up to do something over there.
The lag time, of course, might be inconvenient. But the only reason a UBI makes sense is if we run out of productive work to do, and for socialists, that is a very low bar (everybody except the 'elite' political party members has equally (bad) food, education, and healthcare).
In a capitalist system, we, en masse, should just be reaping the rewards of total higher productivity: cheaper necessities, cheaper luxuries, and less physical labor in return for more intellectual labor.
I have on numerous occasions ranted about exactly the same thing on Slashdot. It is not bad that people will be freed from work. But it is going to be hell on Earth if society does not accept certain very basic changes to accommodate that which is already happening. Yes, income will come from the government. taxation will be applied to the businesses. And a basic income will not work. The public will have to be paid enough not only to meet their needs but also enough to have spending money not needed for survival. And the funniest part is that only some sort of socialism can survive in a society in which machines perform all of the work. Whether people love it or hate it capitalism must to a great degree vanish as it can not meet the needs of society any longer. And here is the ultimate crossover point. Or perhaps I should call it a toggle point. You can bet that machines can set up a business such that profits are used to increase the technology within the totally automated company. In other words, the great barrier is ownership. machines could own 100% of the company. And these companies could exist as some sort of mutual insured conglomerate such that if one company started to fail the other robotic companies would step in and get the business running smoothly again.
Better to spend $50,000/yr/person to keep people in PRISON than $30,000 for education. (or just to keep 'em out of trouble)
Of course, you'd have to stop putting people in cages for things that aren't crimes, like smoking dope.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Seriously - when a machine comes into the factory to replace works, you have a few choices.
Be better than the robot (a few will be)
Find another job that hasn't automated yet
Change careers and become the robot overlord.
Maybe someday the robots will repair the robots. But that doesn't look like it'll happen anytime soon (see articles about recent firings of robot Waiters in China).
And if you want a weird movie that takes a different look at the problem watch Automata starring Antonio Banderas. B movie at best - but interesting.
How is it that the people who are supposed to be among the most intelligent cannot come up with any solutions?
Is it because you don't understand the technology whatsoever? Haven't you had indicators for years that this was coming, and yet you haven't studied up on it at all?
There's this bright shining lie (with apologies to Sheehan) in America that one can only achieve salvation -or something- via long, hard work. It's a lie.
There is no reason anyone should work long hours, or even any hours at all (see The Diamond Age) once robotics proliferate. There are plenty of ways to be happy while not having a "job," and it's foolish to think that we should have to pay for goods and services that are produced at little to no cost.
Part of the transition to a truly money-free society is the guaranteed minimum income, or similarly named government distributions to all citizens. It sure would be nice if the next step were to make the "standard' work week 30 or 25 hours. It's certainly doable.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Will be hilarious to see. Then the robot dispatcher will send a robot tow truck to help which will also be jacked up and put on cinder blocks.
I can imagine all kinds of funny stuff to do with driverless vehicles.
Actually, robots create more jobs that are higher payed, and educated.
The only difference is that robots produce more product per time.
Make the poor fight for the sport of the rich.....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Not really, the Oljefondet continues to grow from oil money and is being treated as a pension fund. It is the largest pension fund in the world, nearly a trillion US$. That wise investment will ensure Norway's financial future for future generations.
Man, you really need that seminar!
But he's come around about one thing: helicopters.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Money it just a token that represents added value.
When a business pays an employee to bolt part one to part two, it pays that employee because the employee has added value to the two parts by sticking them together properly. When a company pays a miner to bring minerals out of the ground, it pays him because his act of bring the minerals up to the surface has added value to them. When a company pays a highschool kid to flip burger patties on a grill and then jam them into buns with lettuce, tomatoes, etc, it pays him because preparing those burgers added value to the components.
What value are people sitting there awaiting the helicopter-drops of cash adding?
These sorts of un-serious proposals always sound great to stupid college kids who are still in the phase of life where mommy and daddy are showering them with all the stuff they need for free, and while they are listening to leftist academics who live in ivory towers payed for by money poured in by mommies and daddies and by government loans to stupid college kids who have not yet felt the sting of bills.
Back in the real world, this stuff can easily be seen for what it is: a destroyer of the value of currency, and an underminer of responsible economics and politics.
The US is currently over $19,000,000,000,000 in debt - TWICE as far in debt as when Obama took office. Every single American alive today will be paying interest on this debt for the rest of his/her life (and NOT with money dropped from helicopters).
I believe the Treasury Dept. managed it then.
Table-ized A.I.
Your education is lacking. Go look up what a "bank note" is.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."