This is well done and inspiring. I am not 100% onboard with the depth and breadth of the fear, but I do agree that it is, yet another big inflection point in technological advancement that is a crucible, for the human condition.
But I have a very straight-forward and rather obvious counter to the problems it can cause. It seems frankly asinine to me that I even need to mention it.
Today the total federal, state and local government spending on job creation and retention is about $400 billion per year. You heard that right.
The federal SBA programs exist exclusively for public policy goal. Now, the primary SBA loan programs are non-subsidy (pay for themselves with borrower fee revenue), but every year $50 - $100 billion in loans and grants are made to small business that hires.
Almost every other federal government agency has some type of economic development loan and/or grant program... generally several. State and local government do the same.
We do this while we also encourage our domestic corporations to offshore. It is idiocy.
I agree that UBI would be a terrible idea. We absolutely KNOW that the value of a good job fills human needs far in excess of just the ability to pay for rent and buy food.
What need is first an agreement that nobody has any right to be ensured a level of prosperity. Housing is not a right. Food is not a right. Healthcare is not a right. These are outcomes and we should never legislate outcomes. Instead, we should agree that every able-bodied person should have a right to have reasonable access to work and a career... basically an agreement that they require the means to earn their own outcomes.
Reasonable access to a job, should be a right for anybody that needs or wants to work.
This fits in the pocket of the ideas and expectations of our founders.
We need a new "Job Act" passed by the federal legislature and signed into law by the President. That act should include tax and regulatory carrots and sticks to encourage business to hire real human workers. There should be more funding to help business work with schools for specific job training. There should be enhancements in SBA programs and other programs to get capital to business that is supporting domestic job creation and retention. Labor surplus areas, etc., should get extra help for business that hires to locate there.
This should be a bipartisan effort. Only those politicians embedded with the big corporate and Wall Street donor pool would resist as these new directions threaten their corporate profit maximization and corporate primacy.
People having the ability to earn their own reasonably good life is the bedrock of our county's moral foundation. It is why we have been a successful diverse nation. It is why class conflict after the gilded age, when the Fair Labor Act was passed, became a de minimis social and political challenge... because everyone could see that they had reasonable access to earning their own better life.
Get everyone working and solve many, if not, most of our key social problems. Conversely, having fewer and fewer working for a living... plan on civilization decline into a dystopian hell.
The moral foundation Senators Hawley calls for produced the 13 distinct cultures of the colonies, which continue to exist today.
Without the framework of government developed by the Founding Fathers based upon their interpretation of the Enlightenment, however, these 13 cultures would reside in 13 different countries, much as they did in Europe prior to the EU.
The path to the worthy future Senator Hawley desires, as a result, requires understanding differences and making good judgements. The moral foundation he calls for, in other words, requires the capacity to work with the abstract ideas he wishes to subordinate.
Senator Hawley wants everyone to have a job not a handout. I agree. Does he support raising the federal minimum wage so that all of our full-time workers do not need food stamps to survive? Is he willing to require that all employers provide quality health insurance to their employees?
Does he think that money is speech and that the rich should be able to make unlimited contributions to political campaigns? I could go on. After reading his essay, I wonder if he wouldn't be better off in the Democratic party!
1. Less than 3% of Americans work at the federal minimum wage and they are almost overwhelmingly teens. More importantly, waging the minimum wage creates job destruction, most recently seen in California’s fast food
2. Tying healthcare insurance to employment is literally the greatest flaw in American healthcare and we should *not* do it (literally no other country does it that way)
The majority of early settlers in AMERICA were looking for opportunity to own their own land, not especially religious freedom. The former is a myth we have passed down for centuries. Today we are no longer a nation of people but a conglomerate of corporations who own our political leaders and run America by the Golden rule : he who has the Gold makes the rules. Citizens United stole the people's power. We are now in late stage capitalism, corrupted to the point that an insane incompetent grifting President is demolishing the leadership and moral reputation our forefathers died for. Trump is letting the US drift into insolvency. The tech barons hold all the power. Congress is morally bankrupt. We are heading back to the middle ages in America and techno feudalism, run by the AI mafia, is our future. Sad that no one reads history anymore.
Flight 93 on 9/11 shows us the way. They followed the same plan given to us by our founders. Hijacked and doomed, the next step they undertook is nothing short of astonishing. As many passenger related on phone calls with their family, “the passengers were voting on whether to storm the cockpit and retake control of the plane.”
The passengers on Flight 93 didn’t just follow the loudest, strongest, or most forceful person. Faced with circumstances that almost certainly meant death, they chose their course of action by voting.
If you want to support "the dignity of work" and end "government handouts", the minimum wage must allow a worker to live in dignity. Do you think that the current federal minimum wage supports that? Doubling the federal minimum wage would affect millions of adults. What studies on California fast food workers are you citing? The ones I have read (e.g. by Michael Reich) say that the rise in the California minimum wage had NO EFFECT on fast food employment in California.
Do you think our current federal income tax law which taxes labor more than capital supports the "dignity of work"? Do you think the current level of income inequality is good for our country?
As for health insurance you and I are in agreement that tying someone's health insurance to employment. I would much prefer the "handout" of government health insurance for all. How would you provide health insurance? Or is it acceptable for a significant portion of our population to have no health insurance?
That Silicon Valley abandoned its historical roots in the Democratic Party the moment they became troublesome, and was then able to buy its way into the good graces of the Trump administration provides evidence to support Senator Hawley’s concerns about AI.
The Democratic Party, however, was also wrong to blame the new mass media industry for its political problems, which were rooted in Liberalism and its support for market fundamentalism.
Senator Hawley in response calls for moral fundamentalism to prevail over the market.
The great unifying power of idealism is that it recruits the imagination to bridge differences of opinion that truth cannot.
And in this case, even though I don’t share the Senator’s religious views, I can still imagine a place for myself within the story he tells.
There is simply no alternative to having a legislature able to debate, discuss, and find a way to the center rather than to the extremes.
This is well done and inspiring. I am not 100% onboard with the depth and breadth of the fear, but I do agree that it is, yet another big inflection point in technological advancement that is a crucible, for the human condition.
But I have a very straight-forward and rather obvious counter to the problems it can cause. It seems frankly asinine to me that I even need to mention it.
Today the total federal, state and local government spending on job creation and retention is about $400 billion per year. You heard that right.
The federal SBA programs exist exclusively for public policy goal. Now, the primary SBA loan programs are non-subsidy (pay for themselves with borrower fee revenue), but every year $50 - $100 billion in loans and grants are made to small business that hires.
Almost every other federal government agency has some type of economic development loan and/or grant program... generally several. State and local government do the same.
We do this while we also encourage our domestic corporations to offshore. It is idiocy.
I agree that UBI would be a terrible idea. We absolutely KNOW that the value of a good job fills human needs far in excess of just the ability to pay for rent and buy food.
What need is first an agreement that nobody has any right to be ensured a level of prosperity. Housing is not a right. Food is not a right. Healthcare is not a right. These are outcomes and we should never legislate outcomes. Instead, we should agree that every able-bodied person should have a right to have reasonable access to work and a career... basically an agreement that they require the means to earn their own outcomes.
Reasonable access to a job, should be a right for anybody that needs or wants to work.
This fits in the pocket of the ideas and expectations of our founders.
We need a new "Job Act" passed by the federal legislature and signed into law by the President. That act should include tax and regulatory carrots and sticks to encourage business to hire real human workers. There should be more funding to help business work with schools for specific job training. There should be enhancements in SBA programs and other programs to get capital to business that is supporting domestic job creation and retention. Labor surplus areas, etc., should get extra help for business that hires to locate there.
This should be a bipartisan effort. Only those politicians embedded with the big corporate and Wall Street donor pool would resist as these new directions threaten their corporate profit maximization and corporate primacy.
People having the ability to earn their own reasonably good life is the bedrock of our county's moral foundation. It is why we have been a successful diverse nation. It is why class conflict after the gilded age, when the Fair Labor Act was passed, became a de minimis social and political challenge... because everyone could see that they had reasonable access to earning their own better life.
Get everyone working and solve many, if not, most of our key social problems. Conversely, having fewer and fewer working for a living... plan on civilization decline into a dystopian hell.
The moral foundation Senators Hawley calls for produced the 13 distinct cultures of the colonies, which continue to exist today.
Without the framework of government developed by the Founding Fathers based upon their interpretation of the Enlightenment, however, these 13 cultures would reside in 13 different countries, much as they did in Europe prior to the EU.
The path to the worthy future Senator Hawley desires, as a result, requires understanding differences and making good judgements. The moral foundation he calls for, in other words, requires the capacity to work with the abstract ideas he wishes to subordinate.
Senator Hawley wants everyone to have a job not a handout. I agree. Does he support raising the federal minimum wage so that all of our full-time workers do not need food stamps to survive? Is he willing to require that all employers provide quality health insurance to their employees?
Does he think that money is speech and that the rich should be able to make unlimited contributions to political campaigns? I could go on. After reading his essay, I wonder if he wouldn't be better off in the Democratic party!
1. Less than 3% of Americans work at the federal minimum wage and they are almost overwhelmingly teens. More importantly, waging the minimum wage creates job destruction, most recently seen in California’s fast food
2. Tying healthcare insurance to employment is literally the greatest flaw in American healthcare and we should *not* do it (literally no other country does it that way)
So most of your suggestions are pretty terrible
The majority of early settlers in AMERICA were looking for opportunity to own their own land, not especially religious freedom. The former is a myth we have passed down for centuries. Today we are no longer a nation of people but a conglomerate of corporations who own our political leaders and run America by the Golden rule : he who has the Gold makes the rules. Citizens United stole the people's power. We are now in late stage capitalism, corrupted to the point that an insane incompetent grifting President is demolishing the leadership and moral reputation our forefathers died for. Trump is letting the US drift into insolvency. The tech barons hold all the power. Congress is morally bankrupt. We are heading back to the middle ages in America and techno feudalism, run by the AI mafia, is our future. Sad that no one reads history anymore.
Flight 93 on 9/11 shows us the way. They followed the same plan given to us by our founders. Hijacked and doomed, the next step they undertook is nothing short of astonishing. As many passenger related on phone calls with their family, “the passengers were voting on whether to storm the cockpit and retake control of the plane.”
The passengers on Flight 93 didn’t just follow the loudest, strongest, or most forceful person. Faced with circumstances that almost certainly meant death, they chose their course of action by voting.
If you want to support "the dignity of work" and end "government handouts", the minimum wage must allow a worker to live in dignity. Do you think that the current federal minimum wage supports that? Doubling the federal minimum wage would affect millions of adults. What studies on California fast food workers are you citing? The ones I have read (e.g. by Michael Reich) say that the rise in the California minimum wage had NO EFFECT on fast food employment in California.
Do you think our current federal income tax law which taxes labor more than capital supports the "dignity of work"? Do you think the current level of income inequality is good for our country?
As for health insurance you and I are in agreement that tying someone's health insurance to employment. I would much prefer the "handout" of government health insurance for all. How would you provide health insurance? Or is it acceptable for a significant portion of our population to have no health insurance?
That Silicon Valley abandoned its historical roots in the Democratic Party the moment they became troublesome, and was then able to buy its way into the good graces of the Trump administration provides evidence to support Senator Hawley’s concerns about AI.
The Democratic Party, however, was also wrong to blame the new mass media industry for its political problems, which were rooted in Liberalism and its support for market fundamentalism.
Senator Hawley in response calls for moral fundamentalism to prevail over the market.
The great unifying power of idealism is that it recruits the imagination to bridge differences of opinion that truth cannot.
And in this case, even though I don’t share the Senator’s religious views, I can still imagine a place for myself within the story he tells.
There is simply no alternative to having a legislature able to debate, discuss, and find a way to the center rather than to the extremes.