Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

Questions About Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

by Martin Ford

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Does this book have recommendations about what can be done? Which types of jobs will be least affected? Recommendations for how government/society can deal with this so there's prosperity and not economic insecurity?
Daniel The Republican Party in the United States always wants to de-fund Planned Parenthood. Evidently they think the best response to the coming tsunami of …moreThe Republican Party in the United States always wants to de-fund Planned Parenthood. Evidently they think the best response to the coming tsunami of technological unemployment is to create more babies to compete for the shrinking supply of jobs.

To answer your first question, I'm not seeing much in the book about how to solve the problem. The book is more about explaining what the problem is than how to fix it. The first step in fixing a problem is to acknowledge that it exists, and so far I haven't heard of a government anywhere on the planet that acknowledges this one. We're basically stampeding toward massive, permanent unemployment with absolutely no plan. A guaranteed minimum income is one possible policy response, but it's hard to see that becoming a reality. It might not stand up to robotic deflation anyway - as people start losing jobs, they consume less, so the economy shrinks, so the gazillionaires have less money we could tax away to fund the guaranteed minimum wage. Basically, technological progress says the human population needs to shrink, like the horse population did when horses became obsolete, There's no nice way to do that. No politician could get elected on that platform.(less)
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