In this episode I am discussing the economic impacts of the AI revolution, and whether or not it is time for UBI. AI will take over jobs and increase productivity per remaining worker to compensate. We are bound for a situation where owners will be able to squeeze more profits from a declining workforce, while the working class continues on the path to extinction and increasing hardship. Corporate profits need to keep increasing to pay shareholders, and corporations have been able to use the threat of offshoring jobs, while having to compete with more unscrupulous companies to hold wages down.
I am a proponent of some sort of UBI but I recognize that the path from here to there is not obvious. I fear that if we don’t find a peaceful means to distribute the increasingly concentrated wealth created by robotics, and AI, that the uprising is coming. People are getting restless. Despite being significantly more productive than our parents generation, we have less real wealth. Less purchasing power. Less free time. Less leisure. AI and robotics were supposed to free us from the grind. Make life easier. Instead we have to compete with robots in a dwindling job market to make ends meet. It doesn’t have to be this way. Is there an equitable and peaceful path to more widely share the benefits of automation or are we rushing headlong into upheaval?
Dr. Karl Widerquist has a Ph.D. in economics from the City University of New York. For several years Widerquist pursued both music and economics. He played in several indie bands in New York in the 1990s. He was a Hoover Fellow at the Université Catholique de Louvain. Widerquist received a second doctorate in Political Theory at the University of Oxford and then worked as a Fellow at the Murphy Institute at Tulane University and as a Visiting Professor at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom. He is a Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University-Qatar specializing in distributive justice. Widerquist has been the co-chair of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) since 2008.
Support the podcast at patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView
Support the discussion on Facebook @TheRationalView
Twix @AlScottRational
Dr. Ben Heard on environmental advocacy in a polarized world
Dr. Janet Tulloch asks if The Big Bang is just another origin story (re-release)
David Moscrop says we shouldn't fund Catholic schools
Scott Santens dispels the myths blocking Universal Basic Income
The deuterium episode controversies
Dr. Laszlo Boros reviews evidence for health impacts of deuterium
Petra Davelaar says heavy water is not healthy water
Zion Lights dissects degrowth
Humanist Joel Garreau believes humanity is poised for radical evolution
Critical Thinking Skills with Melanie Trecek-King
Dr. Chris Keefer reviews a year of nuclear successes
The Rational View 2023 year in review
Dr. Barbel Honisch tells how scientists know what CO2 levels were millions of years ago
Guilia Dominijanni talks bionic enhancements for the masses
The importance of dark skies with Rob Dick
Dark skies with Jim Goetz
How to train your brain with Andy Vasily
A rational rant about banking fees
Dr. Steven Levitsky on the crisis in American democracy
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Just Dumb Enough Podcast
Freakonomics Radio
Criminal
The Why Files: Operation Podcast
Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World