I watched the Klaus Martens doc about the future of work the other day. Normally I don't sweat the future too much, preferring instead to put my faith in the biblical maxim; "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof..." and so on.
But perhaps I've got my head up my ass. Sixty percent of all jobs gone within a generation?
Hmm...
There are some inherent contradictions in this vision of "progress." In their zeal to promote maximum efficiencies in the manufacture of anything anywhere, the prophets of progress seem to forget one important factor, namely, once robots are building everything and nobody has a job, just who is going to buy all that stuff the robots are building?
That's exactly why the proponents of a universal basic income are proponents of a universal basic income. To keep this gigantic Titanic of consumer-driven capitalism alive, we MUST HAVE CONSUMERS! Therefore, whether you disguise it as a tax-the-rich re-distributive model or some sort of socialism, it is still grounded in consumer capitalism.
Ironically, it's small-minded free-market politicians like our own Doug Ford who are most vehemently against the basic income concept. That's the same crowd who will tell you with a straight face that raising the minimum wage only hurts the working poor.
There'll be some interesting times ahead for our grandchildren...
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