Democratic Presidential Debate

[andreasdevig]

UBI seems good in theory, but in practice I remain skeptical of it. The main reason Yang proposes UBI is because he fears automation will eventually take over a chunk of jobs and many will end up on the streets. If we don't use UBI to deal with that then an alternative solution is required to deal with automation, but we can't do nothing.

The fact that the vast majority of 1st world countries let in mass immigration instead of controlled immigration for cheap labor that automation will eventually replace is incredibly short sighted and makes zero sense in the long run. So controlled immigration is needed sooner rather than later because of looming automation.

What about raising the minimum wage? Wouldn't that keep businesses from exploiting immigrants for cheap labor?

I like what Richard Wolff is suggesting here (starting at 5:50)..



He's saying that, instead of, say, firing half the workers, you give everybody half the day off. So everybody is now working half day (and the robots do the other half of the work). Nobody gets fired, and everybody still makes the same amount of money they always did.

[Raver]

What about raising the minimum wage? Wouldn't that keep businesses from exploiting immigrants for cheap labor?

The way I see it, there many different ways to skin a cat. Possible solutions to a looming automation crisis are: UBI, minimum wage increase and other ideas that have not been proposed yet.

I think increasing minimum wage does the opposite. It incentivizes companies to illegaly hire cheap illegal labor over expensive legal labor. The solution is keeping illegal immigrants out of the country, period.

I like what Richard Wolff is suggesting here (starting at 5:50)..



He's saying that, instead of, say, firing half the workers, you give everybody half the day off. So everybody is now working half day (and the robots do the other half of the work). Nobody gets fired, and everybody still makes the same amount of money they always did.

Ideally, I would like this to happen. Unfortunately, in practice corporations will try to save as much as possible expense wise so laws will have to be put in place to enforce it, unless he was entailing that.

[andreasdevig]

I think increasing minimum wage does the opposite. It incentivizes companies to illegaly hire cheap illegal labor over expensive legal labor. The solution is keeping illegal immigrants out of the country, period.

Good point. Though in my opinion, keeping aliens out, "sending the jobs back to America," etc.. These things are kind of band-aid solutions. If the immigrants would rather come to America and get paid really shitty wages, than to stay where they came from.. then it's probably not gonna help to keep them out, as they're probably even worse off where they came from. I think our concerns must be global, with countries working together, to improve everyone's lives, globally. This would help everybody, and then the immigrants wouldn't need to flock here either (if that's what they're doing, and if that's something that concerns people).

]Ideally, I would like this to happen. Unfortunately, in practice corporations will try to save as much as possible expense wise so laws will have to be put in place to enforce it, unless he was entailing that.

Yeah. I'm not sure how it would be implemented. Perhaps there does need to be laws to enforce it. Maybe a compromise could be reached so that the CEOs and what not could save some amount of money.