White House: US Needs a Stronger Social Safety Net To Help Workers Displaced by Robots (recode.net)

The White House has released a new report warning of a not-too-distant future where artificial intelligence and robotics will take the place of human labor. Recode highlights in its report the three key areas the White House says the U.S. government needs to prepare for the next wave of job displacement caused by robotic automation: -- Fund more research in robotics and artificial intelligence in order for the U.S. to maintain its leadership in the global technology industry. The report calls on the government to steer that research to support a diverse workforce and to focus on combating algorithmic bias in AI.
-- Invest in and increase STEM education for youth and job retraining for adults in technology-related fields. That means offering computer science education for all K-12 students, as well as expanding national workforce retraining by investing six times the current amount spent to keep American workers competitive in a global economy.
-- Modernize and strengthen the federal social safety net, including public health care, unemployment insurance, welfare and food stamps. The report also calls for increasing the minimum wage, paying workers overtime and and strengthening unions and worker bargaining power.

The report says the government, meaning the the incoming Trump administration, will have to forge ahead with new policies and grapple with the complexities of existing social services to protect the millions of Americans who face displacement by advances in automation, robotics and artificial intelligence. The report also calls on the government to keep a close eye on fostering competition in the AI industry, since the companies with the most data will be able to create the most advanced products, effectively preventing new startups from having a chance to even compete.

Comments

We already have one.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called education, and self motivation. Unfortunately, we seem to be lacking in those qualities as a nation these days and the more nimble and aggressive third world countries are hammering it home. This is a problem that the free market could easily solve, given an opportunity to do so.

Re:We already have one.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's fine for the intelligent among us, but what will those in the bottom half of the bell curve do?

Re:We already have one.

[JoeMerchant]

You know what worked really well for like 50 years? The Iron Curtain. We can do that, we can build a wall, keep the stinking filth in the sewer where it belongs. Anybody who doesn't like to work for the company, deport 'em. The beatings will continue until morale improves. MAGA!

Re:We already have one.

[Lumpy]

Or they rise up and kill the rich.

Holding the poor's feet to the fire worked really good in France. Oh and it worked so well in the USA when it created the work unions.

Re:We already have one.

[jellomizer]

Education != intelligence
I think the real issue isn't formal education but vocational towards jobs that are needed and offer a formal retraining when such jobs go out of date.

The fact is you can't do the same job every day for the rest of your life. Even us software developers workers over the past 40 years (full career) needed to move from COBOL to C to Perl to what ever is new now Python/.Net/Java/Node.JS.

To survive today you need to be well trained. Formal education is valuable because such people know how to teach themselves. However for many we need continued training on new ways to do things to keep our skills up.

Re:We already have one.

[dywolf]

few things:

- trumps education secretary wants to eliminate public education, turn everything into for profit private schools. ie: the poor kids get to go to work while the rich kids get an education.

- the free market has never actually solved this problem, despite many opportunities to do so. in fact its what creates it in the first. this idea that the free market can eliminate the need for social programs if given a chance only shows a vast ignorance of history. all of history.

Re:We already have one.

[Ol Olsoc]

Fear is the motivator, fear of homelessness, fear of starvation - people who are motivated by that will jump when you tell them to jump.

I'm going to assume you are being a Poe here Joe, because fear turns to hate, and hate can only be controlled for a short while before it eats itself.

Even an absolute dictator has to provide something that the general public accepts

Re:We already have one.

[ranton]

It's called education, and self motivation. Unfortunately, we seem to be lacking in those qualities as a nation these days and the more nimble and aggressive third world countries are hammering it home. This is a problem that the free market could easily solve, given an opportunity to do so.

I'm curious if you have any examples of the free market creating nationwide scale positive changes to education in modern history. You mention aggressive third world countries hammering it home, but that is with massive government spending on education and research. The US catapulted ahead in education because of massive government spending after World War II. Various European countries with great school systems also relied on strong government investment. South Korea is one example where there is massive private spending on education, but this is merely an example of how the free market can pervert a government's earlier successes in education.

While I overall agree that education is the key to America's future economic success, it seems naive to think there would be a free market solution when every single historical success story was built on massive government spending.

Re:We already have one.

[Kierthos]

And his Secretary of Energy pick got a D in a class called Meat Science.

And his pick to run the OMB questions whether we need publicly funded scientific research.

Frankly, Trump's cabinet is worse than he is. Trump at least can be distracted by an SNL skit.

Direct from the Luddite in Chief

[Matt.Battey]

Citizens beware of the pending doom brought on by mad-scientists creating an army of robots that will take away your jobs, raise your children, sex your wife, and transport themselves in flying cars.

You must be prepared to be coddled by your government in order to survive. It is only by further relinquishing your free will and self motivation that you will flourish.

This is all, carry on.

Re:Direct from the Luddite in Chief

[EmeraldBot]

Citizens beware of the pending doom brought on by mad-scientists creating an army of robots that will take away your jobs, raise your children, sex your wife, and transport themselves in flying cars.

You must be prepared to be coddled by your government in order to survive. It is only by further relinquishing your free will and self motivation that you will flourish.

This is all, carry on.

How the hell is being payed overtime and strengthening unions "relinquishing your free will" or "being coddled by the government"? If anything, you're gaining free will by having better grounds for negotiating with your employer, giving you access to better pay, better job safety, and stronger job security.

I think some people are more obsessed with soundbites than learning any US history, because we've already had this exact scenario before, this. exact. scenario. before. Do you want the Progressive era, or the Gilded age?

Unless my sarcasm filter is broken tonight.

Re:Direct from the Luddite in Chief

[dywolf]

A Day in the Life of a True Freedumb Loving Conservative:

Joe Conservative wakes up in the morning and goes to the bathroom. He flushes his toilet and brushes his teeth, mindful that each flush & brush costs him about 43 cents to his privatized water provider. His wacky, liberal neighbor keeps badgering the company to disclose how clean and safe their water is, but no one ever finds out. Just to be safe, Joe Conservative boils his drinking water.

Joe steps outside and coughs–the pollution is especially bad today, but the smokiest cars are the cheapest ones, so everyone buys ‘em. Joe Conservative checks to make sure he has enough toll money for the 3 different private roads he must drive to work. There is no public transportation, so traffic is backed up and his 10 mile commute takes an hour.

On the way, he drops his 12 year old daughter off at the clothing factory she works at. Paying for kids to go to private school until they’re 18 is a luxury, and Joe needs the extra income coming in. Times are hard and there’re no social safety nets.

He gets to work 5 minutes late and misses the call for Christian prayer, and is immediately docked by his employer. He is not feeling well today, but has no health insurance, since neither his employer nor his government provide it, and paying for it himself is really expensive, since he has a precondition. He just hopes for the best.

Joe’s workday is 12 hours long, because there is no regulation over working hours, and Joe will lose his job if he complains or unionizes. Today is an especially bad day. Joe’s manager demands that he work until midnight, a 16 hour day. Joe does, knowing that he’ll lose his job if he does not.

Finally, after midnight, Joe gets to pick up his daughter and go home. His daughter shows him the deep cut she got on the industrial sewing machine today. Joe is outraged and asks why she doesn’t have metal mesh gloves or other protection. She says the company will not provide it and she’ll have to pay for it out of her own pocket. Joe looks at the wound and decides they’ll use an over the counter disinfectant and bandages until it heals. She’ll have a scar, but getting stitches at the emergency room is expensive.

His daughter also complains that the manager made suggestive overtures towards her. Joe counsels her to be a “good girl” and not rock the boat, or she’ll get fired and they’ll be out the income.

His daughter says she can’t wait until she’s 18 so she can vote for change or go to the Iraq War.

They get home and there’s a message from his elderly father who can’t afford to pay his medical or heating bills. Joe can hear him coughing and shivering.

Joe turns on the radio and the top story is a proposal in Congress to raise the voting age to 25. A rare liberal opinionator states that it’s an attempt to keep power out of the hands of working class Americans. The conservative host immediately quashes him, calling him “a utopian idealist,” and agreeing that people aren’t mature enough to make good choices until they’re at least 25.

Joe chuckles at the wine-swilling, cheese eating liberal egghead and thinks, “Thank God I live in America where I have freedom!”

Re:Frostipsot

[rlp]

"Why not just have a bigger army?"

But what is someone comes along and creates an even bigger army of robots (or clones) and puts them out of work?

The Last Gasp Mutterings of a Lame Duck

[RobotRunAmok]

Obama will issue all sorts of feel-good proclamations and what-have-you between now and 1/20/17, just because it will look good as part of his legacy, which he is busily imagining and crafting. It's a waste of time to afford these any real discussion. He's not serious about any of this stuff at this point, why should we be?

Re:The Last Gasp Mutterings of a Lame Duck

[Anonymous Coward]

What legacy? I will admit that he was handed a crappy deck when he got into office, and that the reinvestment act did help. However, what he needed to do is stop the giant sucking sound and stop businesses from moving manufacturing to China and knowledge work to India, leaving nothing but McJobs behind in most of the country. Instead, Obama presided over more gun control laws passed in three years that ever were passed in the history of the nation (which has caused crime to rise.), a healthcare plan that insurance companies used to their advantage (I know people who are single paying $500 more a month than in 2010), a Chamberlain-esque foreign policy which caused a power vacuum and gave us Daesh (with enemy attacks on US soil every month or two in their name), and allies, for the first time since WWII, have been left to their own devices to fend for themselves, with broken promises of protection or help.

Of course, the Dems point at Wall Street and cheer. Those numbers mean jack shit for the average person because that wealth flies overseas never to be seen in the US again. In reality, unemployment is still high. Even the tech sector jobs are tenous at best. You have to completely reinvent yourself every 6-12 months or you are on your ass. Don't know what kubernates, terraform, or the platform of the hour is? Better learn now before you have to learn while unemployed.

As it stands now, there is arguments on who gets the share of the pie, but Obama's policies have caused the pie to shrink for everyone involved with the biggest disparity between rich and poor in the nation's history. You can't run a country on service jobs and expect it to survive. You also can't contract out a military's items to foreign companies and expect it to work (like US planes to India.)

We need to end college for all and replace it with

[Joe_Dragon]

We need to end college for all and replace it with an more trades like system where you don't need 2-4+ years of class room to get a job with an 20-60K+ loan.
and / or change college accreditation so that tech / trade schools get more respect and make it so that colleges can update there Curriculum faster with less bs like.

Accreditation prioritizes the wrong things. Historically, accreditation has focused on things like how many professors have PhDs, whether a college has a mission statement, and whether degree programs require a broad, general education as well as a specific major. Critics, including Margaret Spellings, the education secretary under President George W. Bush, have argued this misses an important point: whether students are learning. Most accreditors now require colleges to define the outcomes they want for their students and measure whether they're meeting them, but it gives colleges a lot of leeway on what those outcomes are.

Also make the loans be discharged in Bankruptcy so that the school and banks have skin in the game.

 

There are millions of jobs that need doing...

[CrankyOldEngineer]

but no one trained to do them. So instead of improving our educational system, POTUS wants to pay people to do nothing. Yikes! And by improving our educational system, I do not mean throwing Federal dollars at it. We already have the most expensive system in the world with pitiful results. CrankyOldEngineer believes that any child can and should learn math and science, if we hire teachers that are qualified to tech these subjects. By jobs that need doing, I do not mean current openings on the want-ads. The human race needs doctors, engineers, and all kinds of skilled people, but we've created incentives for the wrong professions.

Re:There are millions of jobs that need doing...

[dywolf]

the problem is people like you only see education as a means to an end, that end being a job.
but education is its own end in its own right.
the ability to get a job from it should be seen as a bonus, not the goal.

we've taken the reality that certain jobs require an education and turn it into "the only reason education is important is employability".
that is a perversion and it will be our downfall.

Er

[Anonymous Coward]

The report also calls for increasing the minimum wage, paying workers overtime and and strengthening unions and worker bargaining power.

Lifting the cost of humans isn't going to help them compete against machines.

Not a social safety net, please...

[bradley13]

Let's not have more people on the dole, please. We need a better answer than that.

I remember, years ago, some African ambassador was touring government housing in the UK. I suppose he was supposed to be impressed that unemployed people got houses for free from the oh-so-generous government. His comment at the end of the tour was something like "How soul deadening, these people have no purpose in life. I'd rather be poor.". Coming from an African who knew what poverty was, it was a powerful indictment of social safety nets.

People need a purpose in life. If we are going to be displaced from our jobs, then we need a different purpose. Being freed from repetitive, menial labor should allow us to do something more meaningful. Just putting ever more listless people into a lifelong holding pattern is not the right answer.

Re:Not a social safety net, please...

[Gilgaron]

How could the government give them purpose? The proposal is basically that we keep them from dying. To give them purpose in a dystopian automation future would require makework projects if there's nothing left for some ever increasing percentage of the population to train towards. You could pay them to grow a community garden, for example, but then you need money for the plot of land, and if a fiscal hawk comes around they're going to notice that it is cheaper to hand out bread.

Re:Not a social safety net, please...

[110010001000]

The US government did this during the 1930-40s using the WPA project. It employed millions and you probably use the stuff they built every day without knowing it.

Re:Not a social safety net, please...

[SlashDread]

Purpose, probably useful, sure, I however do not understand why purpose seems to equal payed labour to you (and lots of other people). Are you suggesting voluntary work, or just being social to your neighbor has no purpose? I use these examples, because it is not certain that people even have the capability to always find "more meaningful" work if the "repetitive menial" labour has been automated. And why stop there? I suggest we are entirely capable of automating even "more meaningful" work. And then what?

Figuring our what purpose people have, if they do not need to work for basic Income, is one of the goals of experimenting with it.

The Illusion of Capacity and Greed.

[geekmux]

"Invest in and increase STEM education for youth and job retraining for adults in technology-related fields. That means offering computer science education for all K-12 students, as well as expanding national workforce retraining..."

There's a valid reason we don't have a massive surplus of neurosurgeons or nuclear fission experts. The field of STEM takes brainpower.

A lot of jobs that will be replaced first by automation are not exactly jobs that are mentally challenging, so they are rather fitting for a certain portion of the general populous. That's not meant to be a derogatory statement, it's simply stating fact. You can't expect to shove the entire field of displaced laymen into a STEM curriculum and expect everyone to actually succeed, and yet that appears to be the grand plan here. Toss advanced mathematics against little Johnnys brain all you want, but if he doesn't get it then he's likely never gonna get it. Mental capacity varies from human to human. Always has, always will.

I'd also love to hear what the master plan is for human employment once AI comes along and starts doing STEM better than any human could ever dream.

In the end this political pandering really won't matter. The disease of Greed will ultimately win. Those in control wouldn't have it any other way.

Re:The Illusion of Capacity and Greed.

[hyades1]

There's a whole list of valid reasons why we're not inundated with neurosurgeons. Yours is well down that lis. The main reason is that many, many children with the intellectual capacity to become neurosurgeons never get the chance, because they can't afford the schooling.

If you've ever sat on a committee charged with the responsibility of awarding a scholarship (I have), you realize very quickly there are thousands of worthy candidates who won't get the money, and that most of them will wind up without access to post-secondary education, or access only to low-end courses that won't lead to any kind of doctorate or medical degree.

Re:Frostipsot

[Big Hairy Ian]

"Why not just have a bigger army?"

But what is someone comes along and creates an even bigger army of robots (or clones) and puts them out of work?

I find your lack of faith disturbing

Numbers don't lie

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush legacy: 2008 USA GDP: $14.7186 trillion, EU GDP $19.02 trillion (EU dwarfs US economy)
Obama legacy: 2016 USA GDP of $18.56 trillion, EU GDP $16.97 trillion (USA dwarfs EU economy)

"Chamberlain-esque foreign policy which caused a power vacuum and gave us Daesh...." blah blah blah... lots of words, and fuck all reality. An enemy so weak it's reduced to cutting people's heads off one by one because he has no major weapons. More people choke on burgers.

Trump future legacy: Strip away the lies about his businesses, and he's a bankrupt crook running an investment ponzi scheme. Good luck with that lying sack of unelected shit. But hey, a muslim, BE AFRAID AND DON'T QUESTION why Trump just asked Deutsche bank for yet another extension on a bridge loan.

Re:Outsource jobs, blame AI, bring 3rd world

[Ol Olsoc]

So its the fault of "I'm going to build a wall and stop illegal immigration" that we have more illegal immigrants?

Schrodinger's immigrant:

Simultaneously takes your job and is too lazy to work.

Wow, took long enough!

[ErichTheRed]

It's funny how these things go from a few "wackos" talking about robots taking over manufacturing, to the US government actually acknowledging there may be a problem with the system sooner than we think. I do think people are trying to lay the groundwork now, to minimize the negative effects. I could imagine some pretty bad methods of "population control" to use a euphemistic term if we tried to carry over the current system with majority unemployment being the norm.

Of course, this is a parting shot from the outgoing administration -- given Trump's cabinet picks, I foresee some pretty nasty congressional fights and an eventual dismantling of most social programs. The Social Security system may be handed over to hedge funds and banks for safe keeping, Meidicare may become a voucher system that just enriches the insurance companies, and what little welfare there is left may be taken away. I'm happy the current administration is getting it on the record that we've been warned...it could be an interesting historical footnote or maybe a wake-up call.

The fact is that even though "AI" isn't nearly as thrilling as the pundits claim, it is good enough at this point to displace a huge number of very vulnerable people. People aren't working assembly line or fast food jobs because they love the work...they're doing it because it's the only thing they're capable of. That's the first problem -- a lot of people are poorly educated, and a great number of those won't benefit from additional education resources getting thrown at them. Median IQ is 100 -- there's a lot of people at or below that. Unless you want to start engineering society to model "Brave New World," you either need to find something for these people to do, or allow them to do nothing and stop complaining.

The next iteration is what I'm worried about -- professionals could easily have their roles reduced. Doctors and lawyers are a good example -- most of medical and law school is designed to select for people with photographic memories and dump volumes of information into their brains. When that knowledge doesn't need to be kept in someone's brain anymore, the status of the professional holding it is reduced. Same thing goes for IT -- I'm in systems architecture so I'm designing stuff and coming up with procedures, and it's obvious where things are headed. Hands-on IT work is almost at the point where we just need to tell someone to plug in cables, remove hard drives, etc. Development is moving offshore and increasingly done as a series of pre-formed code components and microservices. Note that this also goes for almost every office job out there too. Working in corporate IT, I see so many generic C-strudent business majors from Big State University performing an updated version of a 40 year old process. It sounds like a good idea to increase productivity by automating and replacing them, but I haven't lost sight of the fact that these people are having kids, buying products and living in communities. Take them out, and no one's around to buy the things your company is making in their fully automated factories.

Lots of people are saying this will never happen and that anyone who suggests it will is a Luddite. Maybe so, but I don't see anywhere for most workers to go -- there's no retraining for jobs that don't exist in the modern AI world. It's going to require a radical rethinking of how we define work, wealth, etc. And if it isn't done very carefully, it will lead to a very bad end. Imagine the uproar when you tell everyone that the retirement savings they worked for all their lives won't need to be saved up by future generations, or that we have to enact more social safety programs for the 80% and rising unemployed people out there. If this is done badly, it will lead to the owners of businesses hoarding everything for themselves or calls to control the population in certain ways.

Re:Outsource jobs, blame AI, bring 3rd world

[ranton]

So its the fault of "I'm going to build a wall and stop illegal immigration" that we have more illegal immigrants?

By looking at previous actions instead of campaign rhetoric, you can easily see Trump gleefully supports outsourcing. There are plenty of business owners who have found ways to make money supporting US manufacturing and jobs, including in the apparel industry, and you will not find Trump among them. He cares about making money and stroking his ego.

Trump has no interest in anyone but Donald Trump, and the more people I talk to who are oblivious to this fact the more clear it is how demagogues gain power.

You are insane

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy who worked a deal, by making a phone call, to save 1000 jobs at Carrier is the one who doesn't care. While the CURRENT president who couldn't be bothered to make that call at ANY TIME before was too busy playing golf?

You also are delusional. I don't think its possible to have adult discussions on relevant topics with liberals anymore. You all are literally making shit up that is the complete opposite of what we see.

Trump is for more illegal immigration according to you.
Trump doesn't care about keeping jobs in the US according to you.
The literal TOP TWO things he campaigned on and has already done something about without even being inaugurated yet. Yet you support Obama, who has been in charge for EIGHT years and hasn't done anything about these issues that you say are important to you.

Yes, Trump's election is now obvious. I don't see how anyone could have doubted his win at this point. Just listen to a liberal blame a guy not in charge of anything for what their hero has failed to do for 2 terms. You all are completely insane.

Re:You are insane

[Kierthos]

The actual number of jobs 'saved' is around 730. Trump was claiming about 300 jobs that weren't going to Mexico to begin with.

Furthermore, Carrier is getting paid $7 million to keep those jobs in the U.S. That's not exactly a sustainable method of retaining a U.S. workforce. Nor is it necessarily a desirable one. How many more companies are going to line up for a payout to keep jobs in the U.S., now that they know it's an option that the President-elect could take?

And let's get something straight. Trump doesn't give a shit one way or the other about illegal immigration. It was a talking point, nothing more. He's already been backing off the proposal for a border wall AND he's already been backing off full deportation of illegal/undocumented immigrants.

Illegal immigration numbers have been going down for years. Current estimates have it at the lowest it's been since 2003.

Re:You are insane

[rgbscan]

You can't have it both ways. When Obama bailed out the largest automaker with a *LOAN*, you trumpettes cried foul and pledged not to every buy anything from "Government Motors" or those greedy unions. Trump comes by and saves like half of the jobs that Carrier is sending to Mexico by *GIVING AWAY* taxpayer money and it's all "he's a genius deal maker" and "MAGA" with you folks. The hypocrisy is astounding.

Re: Frostipsot

[Immerman]

And? The rich have been lounging in gilded hammocks built by the poor for millenia, why shouldn't the poor get in on the action as well?

Re:Translation

[Maritz]

What you mean is, you succesfully prevented him from doing anything for 8 years. Well done

Re:We need to end college for all and replace it w

[Maritz]

what happens when that jumps to 15% or higher?

Slums and shanties will crop up/grow bigger. I don't see any kind of 'safety net' helping those people out. You're the US, and helping people is commie bullshit.

Re:Outsource jobs, blame AI, bring 3rd world

[Immerman]

The Tesla auto plant for one?

And I seem to recall hearing hat McDonalds, etc. are looking to automate their fast-food "assembly and sales factories" as robots are reaching the point that they can replace minimum-wage serfs at cooking and assembling standardized "food" while simultaneously saving costs and never sticking their dicks in the mayonnaise.

American manufacturing has been growing for several years now in terms of goods produced; however, the new plants employ far fewer humans than the old ones, almost entirely skilled labor maintaining the machines, so there's not really much point building them in expensive, heavily taxed cities where people will notice them. Even if the urban expenses were the same, It's probably often still cheaper to build a new robotic factory than trying to refit an existing human-centric one that probably built something else anyway.

And yeah, there's China too - they're beginning to heavily automate their factories as well, as robots are becoming cheaper than even the poverty wages their factory workers typically earn.

Forget factories

[Weaselmancer]

The next big hit will be the trucking industry. Everyone thinks Google's self driving cars are pretty cute, right? Fewer accidents, vision impaired people can get to the grocery store, your car can drive your drunk ass home from the bar safely? All good, right?

Two things about that. First thing, they want this for the trucking industry. Don't tell me they're not working on it because they absolutely are. First article, second article.

Second thing. Truck driver is the most popular profession today. First article, second article.

The USA is set to lose 3.5 million jobs, just as soon as we get this tech ironed out. And it doesn't matter who the president is. Trump, Hillary, Vermin Supreme - it'll happen no matter what. It has nothing to do with politics, NAFTA, any of it. It's progress, it's capitalism, and it's going to happen.

People need to look a little farther afield than simple manufacturing to see how automation will affect the economy.

Re:Outsource jobs, blame AI, bring 3rd world

[__aaclcg7560]

He used the laws to his advantage while operating a business? Wow, color me surprised.

It's hypocritical for Trump to demand that other companies put America first and then excused himself from doing that himself because everyone else is doing it.

Do you take advantage of any/all tax deductions you can claim? If you do I think that makes you a greedy self serving hypocrite.

Yes. But I'm also not publicly advocating that the rich should pay more in taxes while using the same legal strategies that the rich use to reduce my tax bill.

Re:Outsource jobs, blame AI, bring 3rd world

[bfpierce]

So you think, somehow, that Trump is going to implement laws that will make his businesses less profitable?

All you guys in the rust belt bought into the big con, hook, line, and sinker.

Re:Outsource jobs, blame AI, bring 3rd world

[ranton]

He used the laws to his advantage while operating a business? Wow, color me surprised.

Not every business owner exploits every person they can to make as much money as possible. There are others who still take advantage of every tax incentive, but vocally lobby politicians to change the rules. Trump on the other hand has done nothing in his life to fix any of the problems be claimed to care about on the campaign trail. It was all just campaign rhetoric; he was just doing what it took to win. While all politicians do this to some extent, you can at least see people like Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton walking the walk in their professional and personal lives. Trump on the other hand is a pure opportunist.

Do you take advantage of any/all tax deductions you can claim?

Yes, but I also vote for candidates who will almost certainly raise my taxes because I think it's the right thing to do. You can play by the rules to ensure you are on an equal playing field as everyone else but still publicly try to promote a better way. Many wealthy people, like Warren Buffet for instance, do just that.

Trump visibly flopped all over the place even during the campaign season because he had no convictions backing up any of his positions. He has been vocal during his "thank you tour" that many of his statements were just tried out during campaign rallies and he stuck with the ones which gave the most applause. He is a con man through and through, and unfortunately we currently have a climate where it is very hard for the common person to identify misleading rhetoric or even complete lies.

Don't keep on trucking

[Cajun Hell]

All good, right?

Yes!

Not-having-to-work (i.e. losing jobs) can be viewed as our goal within all economic systems. No matter where you are on the spectrum of Adam Smith to Karl Marx, our time above-ground is a scarce resource. Every-fucking-thing that is expensive, is ultimately expensive because it used up someone's time, where that person sighed and walked a few more steps toward their dusty, eternal grave, working on your whatever, instead of living their life. The dollars are just a measurement of how much life you asked someone else to give up. It's a count of the grains of sand that fell to the bottom of someone's hourglass.

Jobs are bad. When a politician says he's going to create or save jobs, he is offering you a quicker, more intimately-embracing death. The more he envisions you toiling, the less you should envision yourself skipping through fields, rocking out to great bands, performing science experiments, climbing mountains and skiing down them while drinking Mountain Dew as explosions go off behind you, reading novels, or flying around in starships to go find green-skinned women to bang.

People become truck drivers for the money. If you want to spend your life driving around, there are vastly more pleasant ways to do that than driving a fucking truck. They are ticking down the limited seconds of their life, working instead of doing what they want to do. Good riddance to those jobs.

What should we do about the consequences of increased leisure time, in our legacy-saddled economy? Shit, I didn't say I have all the answers (sounds like Obama is proposing one idea, though). But can't we all at least get to where we agree that it's basically a good thing?!? Until we realize that increased leisure time for humans is a good thing, of course we're not going to figure out how to handle our victory, because we'll be putting all our effort into undoing or preventing it! It's disgraceful that people are using words like "blame" for the lost jobs, instead of "credit."

I'll be happy that my widget didn't cost some trucker (and yay, the trucker wasn't me!) two days of his life to transport, and instead it only cost some maintainer 12 hours to keep the robot running. And then eventually I'll feel bad about those 12 hours of maintenance being too many. Can't a robot maintain that other robot?

Re:You are still insane

[khallow]

$7 million for 1000 jobs over 10 years, about $700 per job per year in a TAX CUT not spending.

I'll note when it was the fad to boast about jobs "created or saved", the Obama administration was routinely bragging about projects that had costs in the tens to several hundred dollars per job per year range (for example, this bragging about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 which had $250k spent in stimulus per job "created or saved" for jobs that lasted from a few months to a few years, until the stimulus went away). That's two to three orders of magnitude better than anything the Obama administration does.

Re: Frostipsot

[Immerman]

Yes, class warfare has been rampant for millenia, and is alive and well today - mostly perpetrated by the rich. Or do you think it's a coincidence that the ratio between the highest and lowest paid employees in large companies has exploded from ~30 to 1 to well over 600 to 1 in the last century?

More to the point, I'm not talking about punishing anyone. The simple truth is that every dollar in a rich person's wallet was put there, directly or indirectly, by a poor person's labor. What is wrong with the poor demanding a larger share of that wealth?

Re:Outsource jobs, blame AI, bring 3rd world

[Ol Olsoc]

You do realize that BOTH could be going on by different illegal immigrants? If you're going to make a smug comment... better to not be one that makes you look like you have cognitive level of a gold fish.

And you have the sense of humor of a chapped ass. If you cannot get a simultaneous joke relating Schrodinger's cat, and two of the most popular memes about immigrants, then you are in the wrong place.

Funny how the alt right pepe's and the left wing Social Justice Warriors are so damn identical.