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Comment by sphinxpy | Hacker News Reader

I am in the same boat with my unease of the situation. Entitlements are already putting the US in crippling debt, however, I am worried that automation will destroy so many jobs that we need a universal basic income.

Which I am personally not advocating. I am unsure of how I feel about it.

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The only entitlements that have any real budgetary impact are Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.

The former will only result in crippling debt due to mismanagement of the funds.

The latter could (should?) be replaced with universal healthcare.

The rest of the budget is mostly defense spending and debt servicing.

Universal basic income seems to be the only viable way forward. So far I have not heard any other good solution to the societal problems automation is causing. The other alternative would be to slow the progress, but that’s even worse. We need to let people learn new skills, and universal basic income makes that possible. There will be obviously freeloaders, which is the main issue with this approach. This is extremely difficult problem to solve, and the current political climate makes it even more difficult to find acceptable solution Are there any other viable alternatives? How can we help people who don’t have marketable skills get back to work and contribute to the society?

The other solution I've heard is shorter work weeks.

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