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Universal Basic Income Programs Arrive (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Y Combinator will give 100 randomly-selected families in Oakland between $1,000 and $2,000 each month as a test, continuing the payments for between six months and a year. And The Guardian reports that Finland and The Netherlands also are preparing pilot programs to test Universal Basic Income, while Switzerland will vote on a similar program this week. One Australian site is now also asking whether the program could work in Australia, noting that currently the country spends around $3 billion on their Centrelink welfare system, "so simplification can offer huge potential savings."
The Guardian sums up the case for a Universal Basic Income as a reaction to improving technology. "In a future in which robots decimate the jobs but not necessarily the wealth of nations...states should be able to afford to pay all their citizens a basic income unconditional of needs or requirements... In an increasingly digital economy, it would also provide a necessary injection of cash so people can afford to buy the apps and gadgets produced by the new robot workforce."
I'd be curious to hear what Slashdot readers think about the possibility of a government-run Universal Basic Income program.
The Guardian sums up the case for a Universal Basic Income as a reaction to improving technology. "In a future in which robots decimate the jobs but not necessarily the wealth of nations...states should be able to afford to pay all their citizens a basic income unconditional of needs or requirements... In an increasingly digital economy, it would also provide a necessary injection of cash so people can afford to buy the apps and gadgets produced by the new robot workforce."
I'd be curious to hear what Slashdot readers think about the possibility of a government-run Universal Basic Income program.
I think that universal basic income is inevitable, and probably sooner rather than later.
Simple fact of the matter is, that you're not going to be training an average 45-year-old factory worker in how to write the AI for the robot that took his job. And even if you did, after the AI's in place, he might not have much work. While some people have cited that every technological revolution has ended up producing jobs to replace the ones lost to the automation, they are increasingly other jobs, for other people, and "other people" will often include people who are not in a position to acquire the necessary skills.
I'm pretty certain that there would be very negative consequences for society overall if the population is left to starve because of increasing automation. As such, basic income will be required just to keep the country stable and productive.
NOTE: I am generally conservative in my views on a lot of things. and I am definitely not a socialist. But this is how I see things playing out, and I can see that there may be some very negative consequences that accompany it. But still, at this point it seems inevitable.
(...) I'm pretty certain that there would be very negative consequences for society overall if the population is left to starve because of increasing automation.
I'm definitly not accurate on History things, but at some point in the past there was an event in Britain's history called the Luddite's revolution, featuring a (finally failed) anti-machinism attempt...
Maybe we could gain something by looking at what happened at the time, although I fear the relative dimension of the event was different from now (a much smaller population among others)
Herve S.
I wonder how this is supposed to work. A lot of the prices people pay are set by the market. Let's assume the rent in a city is at a specific level. Now suddenly everyone in in this city gets +$1000, so people can 'afford' more. As a consequence, landlords will be able to ask for more and prices will rise and the benefit of the pay rise will disappear.
In the end the benefits from the basic income will disappear through inflation and in the process the existing incomes and savings lose in value.
As a former academic (i.e., from a system where money was handed out based on `membership in a club', at least theoretically), I find it highly doubtful that this is going to happen on a large scale. I do think that it would be a great experiment-- the benefits of being able to eliminate toxic elements of the workforce without having to worry about their livelihoods alone might more than pay for this, from the perspective of improving the world we live in, and I also believe that we need a new economic model to deal with a world in which either technological progress outpaces the learning abilities of the average human, or otherwise the capabilities of `artificial intelligence', divided by cost, exceed those of the intelligence of a substantial subset of humans in economically important areas.
However, my impression is that the majority of people in power do not model the world in this fashion, but instead on ideas of power dynamics: who can decide what for whom. The prestige that comes with power is important to many members of that class, and (abstractly speaking) it needs to be reflected somewhere to satisfy their needs.
Universal basic income now has the problem that it substantially reduces the power inherent in today's real-life hierarchies. For technology people and artists, this sounds great, but for managers, politicians, and other "power people", this is worrisome, if not downright terrifying, as it reduces their leverage and prestige. Thus, I rather expect that anti-universal basic income propaganda will start reasonably soon if the idea is ever adopted on a larger scale (Finland and the Netherlands seemingly being the most likely candidates for that, at present, since the Swiss proposal seems a bit too ambitious to pass the voters' filter).
There is an old Soviet joke, "We pretended to work, and They pretended to pay us". These days the UBI drops even the pretense of work. This is the wet-dream of Collectivist 'elites', the guys with massive salaries and power who 'look after' the 'common man' (who these elites look down on as unable to run their own lives).
This same 'UBI' system is just a rebranding of what didn't work for the Soviet Union, didn't work for China and North Korea and is now causing oil-rich Venezuela to starve.
The promise of "something for nothing" is not only unsustainable, it is deeply immoral and State force must be used to extract resources from the productive and give to the politically favored indolent in return for power. Yes, it can work very temporarily as the stored wealth of previous generations is consumed, but then the Second Law of Thermodynamics takes over and everyone lives in equal misery.
Of course, many of the rich and smart have already foreseen the triumph of Collectivism (achieved through Fabian Socialism and propagated via Cultural Marxism) in both Europe and the USA. The Cold War was won by Collectivists over the Individualists. Thus, many of the rich are fleeing places like Chicago for places like Texas, and the mega-rich have been quietly building bolt-holes in Free Market Chile and my own New Zealand.
The UBI is really about power. People adapted to the end of agrarian society to industrial society by changing skills - but the elites believe you are not competent to prepare for the future in a Free Society based on voluntary exchange and charitable works for your fellow citizens. Their contempt for you shows in their lack of confidence in your abilities, all of which justifies their increased power and massive gouging of the taxpayer (in the EU, over 10 thousand bureaucrats are paid more than the British Prime Minister, for example). The UBI is simply another way to turn Free Citizens into slaves subsisting on the breadcrumbs handed down by the State when the bureaucrats have had their fill.
The UBI is merely a rebranding of Marxism, and inevitably leads to the increasingly powerful State oppressing citizens to try and sustain an unsustainable economic model that fails to understand two things:
1) people can never be equal as they are UNIQUE, with unique goals and desires and tolerance for deferred gratification.
2) wealth is created. It is created through innovation and perspiration, and in the Internet Age someone can get rich without someone else being poor by creating value through ideas (software). The old industrial era idea of Marxist inequality only arising through exploitation is as antiquated as the steam engine in the Internet Age.
10 PRINT "Hello world!"
20 GOTO 10
I thought that already worked anywhere.
A lot of Basic Income schemes also propose a flat tax and/or a VAT (for simplicity, the UBI itself isn't taxed as income). The regressiveness of those taxes is offset by the UBI.
The UBI offers a good way of managing the money supply. You're putting money directly into the economy, then adjusting the tax rate to control the inflation/deflation rate.
I've heard one of the justifications for a Universal Basic Income as: if there is a huge welfare state paying out entitlements, there may be such a huge overhead cost for administrating the programs that it may more efficient to eliminate the administration and use the money instead to simply pay out the Universal Basic Income. Everyone will get $X each month for rent/food/medicine. What happens if someone spends their money poorly, such as blowing it on drugs or gambling, and then they have nothing left at the end of the month to eat or pay their rent. As a society what do we do then? Do we just shrug and let them die in the street? Or do we restart the bureaucracy and have a UBI plus an extra welfare program for irresponsible spenders?
That's the idea.
The UBI is a response to a feared future where there just aren't enough jobs to go around due to increasing automation. Fast food places are already introducing automated ordering systems so they don't need to hire cashiers, and just think how many drivers will be put out of work once self-driving vehicles are introduced on a large scale. If there aren't enough jobs, then some people by necessity will have to sit around doing fuck-all. The options are either to shame them with welfare payments and demands that they go apply for some jobs along with the thousand other candidates, or not pay them and see them forced into crime to keep food on the table, or try some sort of universal basic income scheme.
So UBI is just a new name for money redistribution. You take it away from people who have it (tax) and give it to people who don't (assuming that the number of tax payers is lower than the number of UBI receivers, the tax payers will lose money even after accounting for UBI).
My bet would still be on inflation. Let's stay with the rent example. Today, there are some rich people who could afford to pay more for rent but as they are few this does not increase rent prices for everyone. If everyone has more money there is no reason why rents should not increase overall.
That's the universal argument against ever paying people more, and for the last hundred years it hasn't been born out once. Hell minimum wage used to be over $10 an hour in today's money and a middle class life was vastly more affordable than today. It's time that tired old corporate socialist myth was put to bed, it's little more than a scare tactic to convince people to continue socializing corporations' losses and low wages while allowing them to privatize profits.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Except that only happens in a very small portion of cases. Basic income is just that. Basic. Just because I can "live" without working, doesn't mean I want such an incredibly shit-house "life".
Appeal to authority: I'm actually already in that position. I could quit my job tomorrow and be just fine from various investment income, but just fine doesn't get me to Vienna to visit my sister in July, or to the tip of Norway for a hiking trip like I'm doing in September. Fine doesn't let me go out to a wonderful Brazilian steakhouse for dinner. Fine won't upgrade my shitty video card which is struggling under the weight of Fallout 4, assuming that fine even pays for Fallout 4.
Yes there are bottomfeeding leeches in the world content with poverty and blowing all their welfare on booze while watching their shitty all TVs on a couch that smells of beer, sweat and vomit. But they are insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
Now a question for you: Would you quit your job and live your life with a $24000 /yr income?
The benefits are reduced costs to administer support services, eliminating negative incentives to work (UBI doesn't decrease when you work), increased mobility, improved economy. People can take more risks starting businesses or going to school or trying something new.
Maybe rents go down because people can move to less crowded places, which increases building and new business elsewhere.
Everyone gets the same monthly payment, everyone pays the same tax rate. Why do you think that's not fair?
It has a long history, you might try reading about its conservative roots.
Financing UBI with VAT is still regressive and a flat tax would have to exclude UBI or it would simply be idiotic. A more rational approach would impose new taxes on capital itself, not income. The long-term trend is that labor will have ever decreasing importance in the creation of wealth as robotics and AI become more productive and widespread. The creation of wealth will largely be a function of capital alone, directed by a tiny minority of the world's population. While UBI may offer some short-term efficiencies compared to current disjointed redistribution programs, its main advantage is that it addresses the long-term problem.
They ran an experiment many years ago in Canada, called Mincome. Some of the results:
"Doctor and hospital visits declined, mental health appeared to improve, and more teenagers completed high school."
http://motherboard.vice.com/re...
Yes, a slight decrease in people in the workforce, but that were the young generation that attended school longer and mothers that stayed home longer to take better care of the children.
If those are be the results on a largest scale we've tried it so far then I don't see the problem (yet).
New things are always on the horizon
What part of "experiment" was unclear? You might think you know what's going to happen, based on your jaundiced, deterministic model of human nature, but in a world of network effects and unintended consequences, we don't actually know.
One caveat I do have, personally, is that people should not get extra money just for having children. We don't want to encourage procreation for the sake of money. The world is overpopulated world, people should not hve children unless they can cover the cost.
(this is not a
Good, there will be a need for people who don't want a job, as there won't be enough of them for everyone.
Most people I know always want more, nicer stuff, nicer experiences, better food, nice clothes. If they can do some work to get that, they'll do it, even if their basic needs are met.
continuing the payments for between six months and a year
How is that an experiment on basic income? Nobody is going to really change anything in their lives for getting $1000 for six months. You would have to provide a lifetime commitment for it to be comparable to the basic income situation. Even then, you would need to make it a couple of generations, to see the effect in children that grow up with the knowledge that they won't really need to work, ever.
There was, if I remember correctly, a coffee company that offered a lifetime "salary" to the winners of a raffle. That was a long time ago. Surely there are more people in this situations, with some kind of unalienable lifetime stipends of one kind or another. Finding these people and asking them about the changes in their lives would be easier and more productive, in my opinion.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
You're a slave to that toxic meme "Protestant Work Ethic".
People like to be social, and people like to be involved, and people like to accomplish things. That has nothing to do with "having a job". In many cases, "having a job" interferes with all of that. It's only this increasingly outdated idea that unless you suffer and work hard, you don't deserve anything, that perpetuates the system we have.
No, as UBI is phased in, minimum wage is phased out.
One way is to reduce minimum wage by $0.60 for each $100/month of UBI until it's at zero.
Minimum wage is to prevent people from being exploited because they need a job or they and their family die. If they no longer have to worry about survival, then you can have a much more fair free market setting wages.
If many people quit minimum wage jobs, those jobs will start to pay more.
Everyone gets the same monthly payment, everyone pays the same tax rate. Why do you think that's not fair?
It isn't about "fair", it is about "will this solve the problem you're trying to solve".
If you give everyone $1,000 a month, but average rents go to $2,000 a month, what have you solved?
If you then raise the monthly payment to $2,000 a month and then rents rise to $3,000 a month, again, what have you solved?
True, just giving money won't solve; we assume a post-scarcity environment. That is there is abundance. A few landlords owning all apartments and keeping supply artificially low must be made illegal. And the items must have price controls. In countries like India, the price of petrol (gasoline) is fixed by the state - not controlled by market -- of course it tracks global oil market adjusting price every 15 days or so. Without such controls, what you say will happen. The money will be siphoned off by the rich (1% or 0.1%).
In south India, there is a state run PDS, public distribution system, which directly delivers food items like grains to families. It is near free. So instead of govt giving cash, it gives grains, fuel, even low cost housing. This way the vast majority of the poor is taken care of. Free market still runs for those who can afford. This way a stable society is maintained and there is not many without basic needs [again basic need is subjective. For someone having food and shelter is enough..for others they need running water, vehicle, electricty, internet, etc]
What do you mean by skimming? Everyone gets the same amount. The only fraud would be people who aren't supposed to get it (non-citizens or whatever) or people collecting on non-existent or dead people. Much easier than the current systems.
There's much less incentive to commit crimes. Your basic income is cut off while you're incarcerated.
new taxes on corporations
What, you mean like the current taxes on corporations that they don't pay?
The US has a 35% corporate tax rate. Remind me how many companies pay that rate?
You'll end up with no companies if you raise it, you actually need to lower it. Corporations don't pay taxes, people do. 100% of the tax that a company pays has to be collected from its customers. If it isn't, the company goes out of business.
A few landlords owning all apartments and keeping supply artificially low must be made illegal. And the items must have price controls.
Price controls just mean I'm not going to bother building new apartments.
Sure, you have them in New York City, where all the land is built on, but you won't get anything new built with those rules.
Apartments in Texas are much cheaper, and we have no price controls. If the price of rent starts rising compared to costs, more quickly get built. However, a UBI distorts this because now everyone has more money, increasing demand. Sure, people will build apartments to meet that demand, to a point, until the builders discover their costs went up due to higher taxes, higher wages (why work if you get free money, builders will have to pay far more to get people to work)
Thus rents will go up. If you put price controls in place, then builders will just not bother building.
In south India, there is a state run PDS, public distribution system, which directly delivers food items like grains to families. It is near free.
Yes, and they are all poor people. I don't think India is a great example for free crap, 500 million people there still poo outside.
Keep in mind all that "free food" distorts the market and prevents real solutions from being created.
In a future in which robots decimate the jobs but not necessarily the wealth of nations...states should be able to afford to pay all their citizens a basic income
Nations, i.e. governments only get their "wealth" from 2 sources: taxation or selling government bonds.
Any nation that doesn't want to get into hyper-inflation would never fund a day-to-day cost by borrowing, so this UBI would have to be paid for from the tax take.
However, the amount of tax: income, corporate, sales, that a government extracts from its citizens depends to a very large extent on them earning salaries and then spending their pay on the non-essential items that attract sales taxes. Also, corporation taxes are levied on the profits that companies make, generally from selling their goods and services. Once you have a population that chooses not to work, not to produce stuff and doesn't have the discretionary income from UBI to buy "luxuries", your corporate tax income takes a dive, too.
I doubt that a 1-year study is long enough to draw any meaningful conclusions. Certainly it wouldn't attract a representative enough group of subjects to be able to say how an entire country's populace would react. I'm just glad that this experiment is being tried somewhere else. Personally, I think that the money would be better used to ensure everyone had a job - that way they'd also feel like they had some worth to society, rather than just accepting handouts.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
"Unless you're suggesting we go all Soviet and have government run housing?"
Except it is not Soviet the only ones that had government running housing: it was also Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Finland... just as they used to run telcos, healthcare, education, basic industries... and it didn't end up so bad as that was how they went out of the WW2 disaster in just two/three decades.
Moreover, people working the minimal wage jobs often ARE the most hard-working employees. Yet somehow conservative are against minimal wage increases...
Now a question for you: Would you quit your job and live your life with a $24000 /yr income?
I could live pretty well on that if it weren't taxed. I'd stay busy, have stuff, enjoy myself. I mean, with the two of us, and after taxes and whatnot, I don't make much more anyway.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Low-paying jobs will disappear unless UBI is set really low..."
If it's very low, then UBI it is not. But then, compare to the current situation where one can not stand a basic living standard out of a full time minimal wages job.
"People will probably stay unemployed for a longer time between jobs while trying to find the best one out there."
Probably yes. Given Maslow's pyramid, once I have basic needs covered I won't go looking for shitty jobs to cover my basic needs, right?
"Wages .. If someone has a "free" income... what would the required salary be for the person before he starts working?"
Look around you: people already do a lot of things not only for very low wages but even for free -given that they like what they do: social services, open source code, hobbies... What will need to rise salaries will be shitty jobs. In fact, that's a very capitalist way to look at it: it is not free market if one of the parties is not free to engage the deal. Currently, shitty jobs can stay at very low wages basically because the employee is not free to engage the deal (as in basic survivancy is not something you cannot freely engage or disengage into). Once the employee is free to engage these kinds of jobs, just as the employer is free to offer them, their wages will rise to their true free market price.
"Who would ever want a low-paying and boring/repetitive or nasty job?"
Machines. That's the whole point of it: machines gladly take low paying, boring, repetitive and nasty jobs, no only uncomplaining, but doing it better and cheaper than humans.
Paying people not to work...so we get more people not working....sitting around idle. Now, do they use their new found freedom to educate themselves, by essential things they haven't been, or start new businesses? Or do they sit at home and watch TV, buy toys they do not need, or start new drug habits?
If it is the latter, with 5 years of that lifestyle, they are unemployable. So if you are wrong about human nature, you have just signed on for their keep for the rest of their lives.
So could you please register yourself with the IRS for this program. If it turns out as I think it will, then the IRS can make sure your and your like-minded buddies will be the ones paying the bill. You shouldn't mind, because you are correct, yes?
The idealist sees this kind of future as obvious: the Star Trek economy, where there's no money and people 'work' to better themselves (lol). This sounds great but does not account for human nature, namely greed and to a lesser extent, cruelty.
The pessimist (realist?) sees the future as it was depicted in the 2013 movie 'Elysium', where the ultra-rich have just about everything, are completely corrupt & nearly completely useless, and walled off from the majority of the population. Meanwhile, 99.999% of the population lives in squalor. Sound familiar?
It's possible we'll have both realities, but unfortunately we'll need to get through the 'Elysium' economy before arriving at the 'Star Trek' economy. TBH, I don't think anything resembling a Star Trek economy is possible because of human nature... As bad as this sounds, I'd put my money on 'Elysium'...
"you assume that companies will just accept a lower level of profit."
Freely? Of course not freely. Of course they fight nail and teeth for that not to happen. What I say is that they *can* absorb it, so they can't do it is not an argument. And they certainly do, or else you'd see corporations closing doors instead of corporations reporting increased profits quarter after quarter.
"a net profit margin of only 5.5%, which isn't very interesting to investors."
Given that bonds are below 5.5%, such a profit margin is still a decent one. Of course I'd move my money wherever I can get a 6.5% instead, but that's beyond the point since the point is that you can take out 1% all across the board (i.e. by taxing) and money would still be invested because it still would make sense.
The protestant work ethic is responsible for the current wealth of our nation. Don't knock it too casually.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
If there are 150M American adults eligible for this, and you pay them each $2000/month, that's $300B per month. Over a year, that's $3.6T.
No, its not going to cost that much because if you introduce UBI you raise income taxes so that, above a certain income threshold, what you gain in UBI you lose in tax. Preferably, you integrate UBI with the tax system so that most of UBI money never changes hands. The trick is tuning the tax system so that people in the transition from 100% UBI to 100% wages always have an incentive to earn more. But then (a) most countries already have a sophisticated redistributive tax system with various rates and thresholds and (b) existing welfare schemes already create "poverty traps" whereby people lose more in benefits than they would gain from a job, usually because of multiple, inter-dependent welfare schemes that suddenly cut off.
You're right, though - you can't just drop UBI into an existing system on its own and expect the invisible hand to sort everything else out - you have to consider the effect on everything - taxation, housing policy, healthcare, immigration, education. Lots of government intervention required - but then most countries (including the US) already have lots of government intervention, and it isn't going away. Remember - any government assistance to workers on low wages is an indirect government subsidy to businesses paying low wages.
NB: Welfare budgets are already a big chunk of GDP although its hard to find clear figures that unpick what we actually mean by "welfare". Certainly not your 20%, but that was a massive over-estimate anyhow. In the UK, this site puts "social security" at 6% GDP - that doesn't include the health service but might include other irrelevant things.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Not more in absolute terms, but more as a percentage of income. Most of the rich do not spend all of their income; all of the poor do. So if the VAT is, say, 10%, the poor are paying a 10% tax on their income, while most of the rich are paying less (in VAT). That's why I claim it's a regressive tax.
I could live pretty well on that if it weren't taxed.
You could. Yet even if it were tax free that wouldn't cover the rent for many people living in many cities. $20000 / yr is close to break even point for me. The problem with any arguments on a fixed basic income is that some people may even be better off (the poverty line is something like $12000 in the USA and 10-20% of Americans live below it), while others that kind of money wouldn't even cover their yearly rent.
Birth rate !== growth rate... just saying,
In the modern world, high birth rates equal high growth rates. Childhood mortality has drastically declined everywhere, even in very poor countries. Niger has a lower overall death rate than most rich countries, because of their very young population. If you look at a list of countries by population growth rate, all of those at the top are very poor except for a few small countries with very high rates of immigration.
I have been reading a lot of thoughtful posts about this issue, but I fear the reality is that it will turn out to be like our attempt to reform the mental health problem.
Remember when we were going to eliminate the horrors of the mental health warehouses by shutting them down and opening up smaller, local homes for the mentally ill? We shut down the hospitals, then never opened the local homes. Those who needed help ended up on the streets with the homeless population.
Now we propose to taper off our hodgepodge of social safety nets and eventually replace them with a basic universal income. What I forsee happening is the taper, as that is politically viable, but then they never get fully replaced with an equivalent cash income, as that is politically too easy to oppose.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
On top of that, there are already lotteries where the prize is life-time annuity, or who have a stable unearned income from a trust, so the experiment is already being done. It's just a matter of tracking the participants down.
And also the real questions about a universal income are about the long-term impacts. If I quit my job, and in five years decide I'm no longer happy with the minimal standard of living and want to return to the workforce, what will potential employers feel about five years of idleness? Will the number of people wanting to work be high enough that employers can drive down wages, or low enough that workers can drive up wages?
Change that to "income from capital" rather than "capital itself" and you have the real solution. Tax rent and interest income increasingly until it is impossible to actually profit just from owning things, and watch those worthless investment properties be sold off for cheap to whoever actually needs them for their intrinsic usefulness, and bam, you have a society of all owners.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Some one has to fix the robots and kiosks when they break. Some one has to write the base program, someone has to key in the inventory and set the prices, someone has to debug and QA test it to make sure it does not give out free stuff. The problem you have is that none of those are unskilled minimum wage labor. I guess you dont think that people can better themselves, or learn new skills that will be in demand.
The Car eliminated the horse as transportation, thus eliminating the blacksmith, farrier, and may other jobs related to horses as transportation. Yes, they were put out of work but new jobs came in, such as auto mechanic, machinist, production workers for the auto plants, part houses, and tire manufacturers.
throughout history new inventions and methods have been created to replace old ones and for all of history it has created more work and new positions. If you think that paradigm has changed, then I say extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I have seen nothing that would even suggest we are loosing more jobs than the ones being created.
The concern is not that there will be zero jobs or that people cannot improve themselves. The concern is that there will be too few jobs period.