Self-Driving Trucks Are Going to Hit Us Like a Human-Driven Truck
All of this is absolutely true. But what we need for the idea of basic income to take off is a positive rationale for it, as opposed to a negative one of the 'if we don't we're fucked' kind. The reason this matters is that the disruption won't be overnight, so you're looking at more of aobiling-frog scenario where the pace of job loss is slow enough that politicians can blame it on other sources for a while, like whoever is in the White House at the time, furriners taking our jawbs, workers being too lazy to retrain...basically the same bullshit we've heard over most of the last decade as an excuse not to engage with the deeper structural problems in our economy. Politicians excel at this; look at how Japan has been in an economic stall for 20 or so years, with politicians tinkering round the edges and shying away from fundamental change, because opportunist opponents can leverage change to mobilize political power by making empty promises.<p>The problem is that a basic income to (say) the 150m people in the civilian labor force x the ~$23k poverty line income would be about $3.4 trillion, which is not far off the entire federal government budget. That's (very roughly) $10,000 worth of redistribution for everyone in the country, which is going to be an <i>incredibly</i> tough sell politically, for reasons that I hope are obvious.<p>People in general are terrible at doing sensible things to stave off a distant-seeming catastrophe, <i>viz</i> the relatively poor progress on lowering/mitigating/managing the effects of climate change (whether or not you believe it's humanity's fault) or any number of other topics.<p>I do agree with the writer's conclusion and reasoning, I'm just pessimistic about our ability to manage the accelerating pace of disruption.