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Comment by wdn | Hacker News Reader

I see this as another welfare program and we already have too many welfare programs.

If we all see that automation is or will be a problem for the labor market, isn’t it makes more sense to get the labor market ready to embrace the automation era?

Instead of making our youth going through college, why not have them sent to learn a craft or skill set?

I personal think only those who are good with school and like school should go to higher education. For the rest of us, a 4 years experience with no debt is far better 4 years education with 50 to 100k in student loan debt

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What are these jobs that you think will resist robotic automation, and how many of them will there be? Realistically a small percentage of people will ever be programmers in our society; we just don't need that many.

Look, we're entering a period of history where the number of tasks requiring human labor will only keep decreasing. This will lead to a growing class of people for whom the labor market cannot provide a basic standard of living.

If a stronger welfare state isn't the answer to that problem, I've yet to hear what is, exactly.

> we're entering a period of history where the number of tasks requiring human labor will only keep decreasing

I think we have been in that period of history for almost 100 years now.

> "What are these jobs that you think will resist robotic automation, and how many of them will there be?"

Trades like plumbing, electrician, lineman, P&C technician, mechanic, power plant operator, transmission/distribution operator, welder, etc...

How many more plumbers and electricians do you think we need? I see no reason to think that the supply of those trade jobs in the labor market would increase to match the demand caused by automation layoffs. (Also, what makes those jobs impervious to automation?)

How do you embrace an era where there will be no jobs. Even doctors, lawyers, accountants and callcenters will be automated -- let's plan for the automation era send everyone to med school if they want to... oh shit... we don't need doctors anymore, oh well - you still have to pay your student loans...

I'm a web developer, and learning ml/ai so I can automate myself out of one of the last existing careers.

We can move to a post-scarcity world where all menial tasks are done by collectives of robots who work for all mankind... it is possible and would be cool, I just don't know how we begin to get there.

By the way most academics/economists agree that in 12 years there will be a minimum of 40% of the current jobs gone. Not replaced by new jobs in ai/ml - completely just gone. As in those 40% of people have no use for society at all.

Would love to see a source for that last paragraph. 12 years isn’t long at all, and there are a bunch of industries with projected shortages, so will net 40% of jobs be gone by 2030?

https://www.pwc.co.uk/economic-services/ukeo/pwcukeo-section...

38% of jobs could be gone by 2030 according to this report.

How do we feed/clothe/house a populace when half of the people can't work? We'll need to go back to a 1800's era system where people basically own/live/work off their own land and farm their own food, or something communal possibly? I'm curious to see how it plays out... 2020s will be pretty eventful though if robotics goes as planned over the next decade.

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