Robots and their effect on modern government funding issues

[Seperallis]

I know, it's such a fun, hip, catchy title, innit?

Anyway, I was listening to NPR on the road today, when a caller brought up a very good point about the impact robots in the workplace have had on our current problems with social security and other welfare funding. Apparently, back in the 70's when robots were first making a large impact in the workplace, especially in manufacturing, he tried to warn his congressional representatives about the impending issues (obviously to no avail, because of course).

Basically, the idea is that so many of our current problems either begin with or are exacerbated by robots supplanting humans on the job...obviously not all of them, but at least a sizable reason. Now you see, robots used to tend to replace high risk, high repetition jobs of the kind that made up the bulk of the lower-middle class. These jobs tended to be lower skilled jobs that took little time to learn but a longer time to truly master, and whose repetition often caused injury from complacency and physical strain (repetitive motion injuries being common). As time has gone on though, robots are built better and able to do more skilled labor and replace more highly trained and paid workers, the kinds of people with vocational skills but often limited "higher" education.

The problem, though, is that the robots are unpaid and these workers are left with two options: try to get/finish a "higher" education (which is hard after you've lost your income), or - and most likely to happen - enter the much lower paid service industry. In the meantime, the company that replaced the workers with robots gets big gains in savings both in wages, taxes, benefits, etc. The net effect is that more wealth is generated in the economy as a whole, while median wages and purchasing power for the people stagnate or even depress, as they're more often forced into lower-paying sectors with a glut of labor (which, as known in the laws of supply and demand of labor, further stagnates wage growth).

We've already seen these effects play out over the last 40-50 years, with the middle class shrinking and mean/median/whatever wages not only not growing, but actually dropping over time when adjusted for inflation, even when you discount the effects of the recession.

But what does this have to do with the current welfare crisis in the US ( and maybe abroad too, idk)? Well, robots don't earn wages and, as stated, the people they replace earn far less on the whole than they once did. However, they still eventually pay into and often draw from our country's welfare systems at some point or another, and the costs for those systems (Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, et al) aren't exactly going down... yet these programs are all funded either in whole or in part by payroll taxes. You know, taxes that aren't being paid by robots and their owners; taxes that are being paid in lesser amounts per person as workers get shifted from decent-paying skilled labor jobs into lower-paying service sector work.

So now we're having debates on how much to cut welfare payouts to people because we "can't afford" them because we don't have the revenue streams the people who set up these welfare programs thought we'd have because the demographics of the workforce have shifted and eroded the middle class and shifted them into lower paying work with little help in getting the skills for higher paying work. People don't buy as much because they can't afford to spend like they used to, so now "economic growth" slows, while those same people don't get healthcare because they can't afford it anymore and their new service job employers don't offer it, and the health of our nation suffers as a result as people die from preventable shit.

I'm the meantime, companies using the robots make big gains and savings, you could almost say off the backs of the people and government.

What's the point to this thing that's growing more and more ranty with each line I type? I don't know. Just exploring a line of thought inspired by something interesting I heard on the radio today.

Maybe I'll add onto it or respond to my own thoughts when I'm no longer typing this all out on my phone.

** Edit: I guess my point is that, when we talk about these things, it's not "just jobs" or whatever one thing, but one piece in a large and interconnected wan of cause and effect that impacts all aspects of governance and society. Yeah.

[Nentsia]

I believe this is precisely the reason why they've begun in some countries experimenting with the basic income. People are no longer required to have a fulltime job anymore, because jerbs are so 20th century. Besides, robots - combined with renewable energy - will make production/services so immensely cheaper in the future, that we dont need much money to run it.

People are given a basic income that enables them to dedicate themselves to other things (develop talents), which they can sell and then become rich if they want. A ''job'' then basically becomes the developing and selling of your unique skills, rather than working 8 hours a day on the same thing because your boss wants you to.

Many experiments are being conducted, also in my country, to actually see how people spend their time if they're given a basic income.

[Seperallis]

Yeah, but where's the basic income going to come from? The main problem in the US, as I said, is that a large chunk of government revenue comes from payroll taxes, which don't get paid from robotic labor. One idea that was floated about but obviously crushed by the powers of lobbying was to tax the use of robotic labor in some capacity, either in a per-robot or production-per-robot basis. That has its own problem, mostly competitiveness abroad in markets that don't do that, etc...

But a different idea, and one that is probably more viable in the future (but might be harder to get started the more we wait) is the idea of people owning the robots. As we know, the biggest attraction to the use of robots despite their high initial cost is their low cost over time. They're a capital asset, used to generate wealth and income.

Currently, all the capital is raised and owned by the company itself, making the company the sole beneficiary of the robots'...uh, "labors," and leaving out all the former workers and other people. However, if people owned the capital, owned the robots and more or less "rented" their capital to a company, or otherwise investing in that capital some other way, it could effectively do the same thing as a basic income.

Robot take your job? Own the robots that took your job.

On a slightly related note, why is it that the people championing both the use of robots and the idea of a basic income both assume the erroneous lie of the poor, oppressed, slavish laborer who goes to work at his soul-crushing job that he'd give anything to leave if he could, but simply can't. This falsehood keeps getting perpetrated by white-collar corporate interests that seek to gain from their use of robots, and readily believed by "better educated" people that can't possibly see how anyone could want to do back-breaking labor.

I'm looking at you, Bill Gates.

Maybe this was the case of the teamster or assembly-line worker in the 60's, but it's not the case today; the sorts of jobs being lost now, and the ones to be lost in the future, are highly skilled jobs, jobs people trained to do and quite often like doing. They're told robots or basic income will "free" them to do things they actually like doing...yet they're already performing rewarding and fulfilling work. It's highly presumptive and pretentious to assume that someone doing sweaty manual labor isn't doing what he loves, or takes pride/passion in his craft.

I never know where I'm going with these thoughts. I also never know how to end them, so this'll do.

[Jamzor the Jaxxor]

Damn robits took me JERB.

[Seperallis]

It certainly wasn't brown people.

But that's not the issue being discussed. Robots replace human workers, this much is obvious. What's not often discussed, and what was being touched on here, is the issue of government revenues falling because robits don't pay payroll taxes, and its link to modern budget issues.

*Edit* also, moving this to the proper area.

[Jamzor the Jaxxor]

Sorry, I just don't have much enthusiasm for this particular topic.

Although I will say that, robots or not, current spending levels on the US federal level are unsustainable for the long term. At the heart of this issue is entitlement spending, which takes up something like half or more of the federal budget and will only increase as the years go by. The population is growing older due to a decline in fertility (in comparison to the baby boom), which will lead to more and more entitlement spending with fewer and fewer taxpaying workers supporting it. Serious reforms must be considered.

The idea that robots will significantly negatively affect government revenue will no doubt exacerbate the situation.