Ask Lemmy

Tax the rich people so the unemployable people can live the comfortable lives they deserve

Unemployed people are not a negative on society. People don't have to be employed. That's a capitalist misconception.

Assholes are a negative on society. They actively reduce the experience for everyone else. Even productive assholes are a negative on society.

Wtf is this question??? You about to drop your own rendition of A Modest Proposal? The answer is the same as we should do with anyone else: they should be housed, fed, clothed and provided with any other practical necessities to participating in modern society. What they do with that is their own fucking business??

Useless eaters rhetoric has no place on the fediverse.

Basic Income.

Now someone always has to ask how to pay for it.

Years ago a study was done about basic income in Canada. It was determined that the country would save billions by discontinuing most of the government handouts (there was 60+ at the time) and replacing those with a single payment. Consider how many offices are in each major city for welfare, employment insurance, etc. Save money with reduced wages, rent, power, insurance, so on and so forth.

How would he live or what would he do in life? More importantly, what should be done with him to make him useful or at least neutral rather than being a negative on the society?

Are you a tool, or an object yourself? Can I throw you away because you're broken, or because a newer version of yourself has been released, or because I don't like the way you age?

Probably not because, at least in your own eyes, you don't consider yourself a tool or an object. You're not something, right?

Why is that? Because you're a person. You're a human being.

Well, good for you and, also, nice to meet you my dear fellow human being.

The thing is that with or without skill, we all are human beings too. We're persons, we're not tools at the disposal of some 'owner' who is free to break it and throw it away when not needed.

Given that, one realize that the fact of being alive is not about being 'employable' or 'useful'. It never was. Believers would say it's a miracle or a gift, I'm not a believer myself but I kinda understand that idea: it's... so much more than all we can understand.

Sure, each of us may need to be able to get food and shelter, true that, but then your question instantly stops being about 'what should we do with unemployable people' to become the, imho, much more interesting 'why is that civil society (aka, all of us) is allowing a handful of its own members, the billionaires and corporations, to decide they have the right to destroy the way society works for all of us and to render a lot of us unable to earn their living, just so that handful of billionaires and corporations can make more money? And why is that we should not object to their decision?'

Now, since I answered your question, allow me to ask you mine.

Why do you think people should be categorized by their 'usefulness'? And, if we were to accept your premise (which I obviously don't want to), would you happen to consider yourself one of those 'useful' that would still deserve a place in that new AI and robotic-powered society?

edit: typos + my usual poor English

This post is based on a false premise. These people aren't unemployable, they're being actively rejected so that the available labor pool remains sizeable and desperate. The automation hype is just that, hype. Just like the gig economy, it's merely a way to devalue labor and exploit it while selling the idea as innovation. Some evidence: if automation was really going to make so many people unemployable, then why is the news freaking out over the declining birth rate? Surely if automation is going to take over so much work, we wouldn't have to worry about who will take care of the elderly.

Life itself has value. We are not here to have the maximum value extracted from ourselves. Things can be discarded but people should never be. Universal Basic Income.

And the same goes for all the freeloading animals. They say there are species still left undiscovered in the rain forest, if that is true then surely the fact we dont know they exist means they are not contributing and don’t deserve those trees they live in that could provide real tangable profit. Getting rich by cutting them down that is real value /s

Seriously the notion you need to earn to live, especially in the context where that only means economic labor is toxic and the true negative.

I will remind you that “the economy” itself is increasingly negative towards society, destroying the future for a profit. And that people without jobs still provide plenty of positives if not, less negatives then “successfull” people like board directors and ceo

Why do humans have to have a job to be useful?

Post scarcity we can just live.

The AI job crash is not going to be handled well so I assume we all will starve.

UBI/freedom dividends is a solution well before mass AI driven unemployment. It disempowers rulerships/oligarchy towards empowering people. It eliminates crime. Gives people the opportunity/time for education and entrepreneurship.

It is far better than corrupt hierarchy that fights over centralized socialism vs corporatist supremacy.

to make him useful

Your question is horribly ugly and disgusting. Some people are unemployable due to dissatisfaction with society, or a tax structure that encourages investment instead of employment. When you consider "making people work" you are considering enslaving them/their time to eat this week without letting them use their time to contribute to their/social prosperity over their lifetimes. People need a money guarantee. Not a job guarantee. The former is even more productive for successful tax payers.

Prepping a little bit of "undesirables" rhetoric.

Lemmy is fucking swimming in shit propaganda

Three Words:

Universal Basic Income.

Why: If this generation builds a machine that forever generate resources, then their decendant (meaning, all humans from this point forward) should deserve to have the results of the machine that their ancestors have built using their hard work.

Maybe if the machine break, people then take turns to fix the machines, but then everyone should just enjoy existence.

People under Capitalism dread automation.

People under (Democratic) Socialism will embrace automation.

Ideally, transition away from determining the value of a human life based on whether they can perform labor.

Realistically, slow degradation of quality of life while increasing stress to a boiling point until either some form of revolution is attempted, or Orwellian "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever."

Take out back and sh--

--own a great time with a BBQ cookout and given a big plate of delicious food while friends brainstorm how to help get them back on their feet!

public execution

For me the big question is self-driving vehicles. No one seems to worry about job losses anymore, but that was one of my big takeaways from when that was hot. I seem to recall them giving 3million as the number of people who drive for a living in the us. Imagine 3 million people suddenly out of work, jobs gone. Where else could that many people go? Driving doesn’t require college, so I have to imagine that few of these people do, so where else can they even get hired?

That's when the Soylent Green factories open. Are you hungry?? Mmmmm... crackers.

Build indexes on countries and allow the public to rate their accuracy based on how well they care for their elderly, children, temporarily and chronically sick, prisoners, minorities and social outsiders, etc comparing lifespan and medical outcomes and then shove it into politicians faces every time they try to talk to anyone with a microphone while also boycotting their own PR attempts. I want those old fashion press passes sticking out of hats but with the country's rating and who is better. Or just go with some form of UBI.

High-protein slurry.

What's if we look at it like a lottery,

If the job you go into as a trained professional is automated away after 10 years in industry, your wage is covered for the rest of your life by the company that replaced you.

Plenty of problems here with my idea, but it's a great solution if the kinks are worked out.