Make Universal Basic Income America’s Ultimate Goal
The Race to Zero Labor, and Rethinking The American Way of Life: III
I.W.W. Hat Card, Bain News Service, April 11, 1914
A day late, a dollar short; my apologies for this newsletter’s delay.
When do you know you are living in an important moment of history?
Is there some revelatory spark that informs the world to pay attention and take notice? Radical shifts happen at glacial speeds, eroding our country’s imperfections, and we’re often surprised when we note the new sheen—though it’s often already scuffed and dirty from the tumultuousness of society.
I don’t think the universe is so caring in keeping us informed of its intentions, though it’s difficult to deny that 2020 is trying its best to feel like one of those moments. America, and the world, is on the brink of a monumental shift. Which way? Who knows, but it’s up to us to help decide what could be. There is an opportunity to shape tomorrow into something that can fulfill our Founders’ long-held promises scrawled into the Declaration of Independence.
Our country is on the cusp of something, but we have no idea what lies on the other side, and uncertainty left unchecked is terminal. We’re agitated and angered at our apathetic political class, and the promise of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness has never been fulfilled for all Americans.
But our nascent democracy strains from divisive and demagogic leaders, hurtling our country toward a reckoning our ideals may not survive. Social unrest continues to show our country has a long road ahead in achieving fundamental equity before we can begin to decouple America’s myth from its complicated history.
Automation and artificial intelligence are coming, but instead of fearing and shunning the technological revolution, we should embrace it, using it to fulfill our country’s idea of true liberty.
As jobs disappear, likely never to return, there’ll be impassioned demands for a universal basic income that’ll descend into a bloody political fight that America will not win. As we attack ourselves over an inevitable future, our allies and enemies will surpass us in global superiority, investing in their people with the profits of mechanized corporations.
We must not only do that here but lead the world in doing so. A universal basic income should not be a solution to a coming problem, but our country's goal, decoupling life from the necessity of labor as the need for labor disappears.
However, the idea of eliminating every job is fantasy. There’ll still be a need for the human hand to guide our automated future, but it will be much more bespoke and equitable than before.
The idea of needing no job is a nearly impossible notion to wrap one’s head around, but we must put ourselves in those coming conversations and envision ourselves in that future, for our own sake and our country’s.
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Next post publishes on Friday, December 11, 2020.