Scott Santens Profile picture
Dec 11, 2017 21 tweets 14 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
There's a new book coming out in April with an urgent call for Universal Basic Income. It's titled "The War on Normal People" (@WoNP_Book) and the author is @AndrewYangVFA. It's a must-read! Stay tuned to this thread for excerpts.

Pre-order: amzn.to/2iRRByv #BasicIncome
Here's the Table of Contents to get an idea of just how many important points this book covers, and the fact it also offers real and entirely necessary solutions like Unconditional Basic Income as America's Freedom Dividend. Make no mistake, we need UBI ASAFP.

#BasicIncome #UBI
"A wave of automation and job loss is no longer a dystopian vision of the future - it's well underway. The numbers have been telling a story for a while now that we have been ignoring… this is the most pressing economic and social issue of our time."

Exactly.

#BasicIncome #UBI
Markets don't want to provide for unemployed truck drivers or cashiers. Uber is going to get rid of its drivers as soon as it can. Its job isn't to hire people - its job is to move customers around as efficiently as possible.

It's time to rethink working to exist.

#BasicIncome
"We are already on the edge of dystopia... We need to establish an updated form of capitalism... We must make the market serve humanity rather than humanity serve the market." -@AndrewYangVFA

#BasicIncome
Technological unemployment is already here and it is decimating local economies and cultures across the US. The market is turning on us, and it's up to us, to make technology work for all of us instead of against most of us. We need Unconditional #BasicIncome, and we need it NOW.
If you were born in the 1940s, your odds of doing better than your parents was 92%. Decades later, with productivity more than double what it was then, with incredible new tech, if you were born in 1990, flip a coin to find out if you'll do better than your parents.

#BasicIncome
"The share of GDP going to wages has fallen from almost 54% in 1970 to 44% in 2013, while the share going to corporate profits went from about 4% to 11%."

Those who think #BasicIncome is "free money" need to look up, not down, to see that work isn't paying, but owning sure is.
"Although the seriousness of the situation has not reached the mainstream yet, the average American is in deep trouble. Many Americans are in danger of losing their jobs right now due to automation. Not in 10 or 15 years. Right now."

#BasicIncome
There are already people in homeless shelters whose jobs have been automated, and this is only the beginning. The "automation tsunami" is coming and without unconditional #basicincome, we are not even remotely prepared. We must make automation work for all of us, not just the 1%.
More department store workers lost their jobs over a span of 7 months than the total number of people still employed in the coal industry. Even the peak of the financial crisis did not see this many retail locations shutting their doors.

And now there's Amazon Go…

#BasicIncome
It's estimated that 400 malls will fail in the next few years, with hundreds more on the brink, where each lost mall means about 1,000 lost jobs leading to $22 million in total average lost wages to its local community. This is a result of both technology and insufficient income.
Many of our communities are going to have giant holes blasted in them by a level of technological progress never before seen, and if the answer is to turn everyone into software engineers, there is no hope but for the fortunate few. We must build a floor upon which all can stand.
BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: The first candidate to run for President of the United States in 2020 on a platform of Universal #BasicIncome is the author of this thread's book, @AndrewYangVFA. He believes it's time we put humanity first. As a human, I agree.

"We're not trying to schedule our workers more efficiently. We're trying to replace them altogether."

"The robot arm is only going to get cheaper and more efficient, while the fast food wage has nowhere to go but up."

Automation is here. Think about it.

#basicincome
Despite manufacturing more stuff now than ever, more than 5 million manufacturing workers have lost their jobs since 2000 and 80% were due to automation. Did they all get new better jobs?

Nope. In reality, most exist now outside the workforce.

#BasicIncome #ReadAcrossAmericaDay
Self-driving trucks will save so much money in fuel savings, reduced labor costs, fewer accidents, and increased productivity that truck drivers could be given their current salaries on the condition they stop driving trucks, and we'd still save around $100 billion.

#BasicIncome
Self-driving trucks will be hugely disruptive. Millions of jobs exist because of humans driving around in trucks. Entire local economies depend on the consumption spending of truckers. In Nebraska, 1 out of every 12 jobs relies on the trucking industry. #BasicIncome is necessary!
I interrupt this tweet thread to urge you to pre-order this book coming out on April 3rd about automation and universal basic income (UBI).

Pre-order link: amzn.to/2Ag76Iw
Author's feed: @AndrewYangVFA
Presidential campaign's feed: @andrewyang2020
Book's feed: @WoNP_Book
Internal projections at Uber/Lyft predict that half of all rides will be automated in just 4 years. Meanwhile, 5% of Gulf War veterans work in transportation and 10% of truckers bought or lease their own truck. What happens when the anger of increasing economic insecurity builds?
If you think the level of automation made possible by AI advancements will only affect those in jobs like car/truck driving, you're in for an inconvenient truth. Everyone, yes even you, will be affected. AI will compete in the labor market against even the most skilled among us.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Scott Santens

Scott Santens Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @scottsantens

Sep 26, 2018
I just walked into a store, picked up something to eat, walked out, and automatically paid for it. No lines. No cashiers. No human interaction whatsoever. Relatively cheap prices. And in my 9 mins of shopping I created valuable data based on what I looked at. This is the future.
Something I want to stress here too is that I created data even by NOT buying things. What did I do? What did I look at? What did I almost buy? What did I pick up and put back? I could have bought nothing and still enriched @amazon with my ambient data.

basicincome.org/wp-content/upl…
I included the above link for a reason, because I recommend reading it. The point here is that with pretty much everything you do, you're creating data and metadata. This data feeds and trains AI. AI starts doing your job. You just trained your own replacement. UBI is your right.
Read 9 tweets
Sep 7, 2018
You know how those who don't know any better can hug something to death? That's what those who love capitalism but hate #BasicIncome remind me of. Automation is here. We must now decouple income from work. Not implementing UBI means capitalism eats itself. Capitalism *needs* UBI.
Meanwhile, those who hate capitalism and want it to die, and who subsequently don't like UBI because it will save capitalism, are like butterfly lovers who hate caterpillars who believe caterpillars should die. Yes UBI will save capitalism, but from UBI postcapitalism can emerge.
So again, #BasicIncome is not left or right, it's forward. If the right prevents UBI, the economy will become starved of currency for market exchanges. If the left prevents UBI, they may get revolution, but mass suffering will occur, and fascism may result instead of socialism.
Read 13 tweets
May 10, 2018
"It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages."

Money is meant to circulate through economies. Customers buy stuff. That money becomes wages. Those wages buy stuff, etc.

Here's a diagram of how this works.
As factors of production become machines, factor incomes are reduced, which in turn reduces personal consumption, which in turn further reduces factor incomes.

Automation breaks this system without the provision of income external to the loop, aka unconditional basic income.
If you love the idea of decentralized market economies and hate the idea of unconditional basic income, you've got a real problem on your hands because the former requires the latter. Markets require customers who require money. As money goes to fewer hands, markets break down.
Read 9 tweets
May 1, 2018
Today is #MayDay and #InternationalWorkersDay and #LabourDay and beyond recognizing the past victories of the labor movement in achieving milestones like the 8-hour day, we really need to talk about the future of the labor movement in a world increasingly automated by machines...
As automation continues, potentially eliminating 1/2 of all existing jobs by 2030, eroding security & buying power through the growth of part-time jobs, low-paid work, temp labor, gig labor and freelancing, unconditional basic income represents the ability to empower ALL workers.
The ability for everyone to say NO to any & all employers would have an undeniable effect on bargaining power. It'd mean greater profit sharing, higher wages, shorter days/weeks, improved working conditions, more flexibility, etc. UBI can even function as a universal strike fund.
Read 16 tweets
Apr 27, 2018
Yes, an unconditional basic income sufficient to start everyone each month above the poverty line will most likely require more taxes in some form, BUT the amount YOUR taxes will increase is unlikely to be larger than the amount you receive in UBI, unless you're in the top 20%.
And that's exactly what makes the most sense because it's only the top 20% that have been gaining a larger and larger share of the US economy as a result of the technological advancements that have been transforming our economy for decades. UBI should reduce 80% of tax burdens.
One of the most important things to understand about the US economy is that it pretty much stopped working for you back in ~1973, no matter how hard you may have never stopped working for it. Where is your share of our ever-rising productivity? It certainly isn't in your wages…
Read 5 tweets
Apr 24, 2018
"Why should the rich who don't need it get Unconditional #BasicIncome (UBI) too?" asks the person who would never think of suggesting that public K-12 schooling and access to police & fire protection only be made available to those households earning less than $100,000 per year.
Don't worry about the rich when it comes to UBI. They will all be net payers, paying more in than they get out, just as they already do with schooling where they pay for public school but instead opt to pay even more for private school. The universality of UBI is its strength.
It is not wasteful to provide UBI to those who don't need it. First of all, who are you to say who needs it and who doesn't? Secondly, trying to save money by doing so creates stigma and divides the population, weakening the program. Programs for the poor are poor programs.
Read 6 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(