Can't wait till this happens in North America. I hope we realize shorter work days and basic income in the next couple of decades. Then we will truly have a golden age.
At a country level it is much more difficult for people to come and go and countries have some control over who does come and go. It would be better tried by some European country.
I'm inclined to disagree. It'll be easier to implement in a place like say Canada or a northern European country where there is already wide acceptance of social support structures.
0-hour workweeks for everyone, the second robotic slaves are economically advantageous!
- Significant other or child dies -- too bad, so sad, go without pay.
- Having a kid? Hope you enjoy not being paid while you have that extra medical expenses, or being marginalized. Worst case? You get fired.
- Sick? Sucks to be you.
(More of an aside, but I never personally understood the reason why the economy doesn't better support having children. An every-increasing supply of future consumers is what drives a lot of economic expansion in this country.)
What do you mean by "the economy"? It is not clear (to me) why employers should pay fertile people more than sterile ones, or those who dislike contraception more than those who use it. Incentivizing child-bearing as a means of increasing future sales is not a good investment, even if we assume that said company will be a going concern by the time the child becomes financially independent.
The solution to most of your issues seems to be increasing the number of opportunities available to people; this would provide them options, and additonal competition between employers would improve treatment of employees. We already see that in-demand employees are treated very well; the key is to make everyone more productive, and increase demand for labor services. How this can be achieved is, of course, a topic of great debate.
You're entitled to that opinion, as am I to the opposite one. Thankfully it would appear the United States as a whole is on my side.
And then firing the bottom 20% consistently of the people who work the least.
Ultimately, this serves the employer's purposes more than the employees', but it's better than the bad old days of clock-in, clock-out. Imho, most managers [at least in tech companies, but not just the big name tech companies] operate this "just get your job done" way.
This is especially common in the Bay Area where a fair number of folks have 1.5-2hr each way commutes.
The scope of the problem is that we have about 1.5 years worth of GDP in debt. So, with yearly payments of 10% of GDP, we could pay down the debt in 15 years. Suppose through automation we increase productivity by 50%. We could shorten the work week by 25%, add a tax to pay down 10% of the debt each year, and still maintain exactly the same standard of living while paying down the national debt in 10 years.
Point being, the United States has no shortage of money to pay down our obligations.
Long story short, you MIGHT be right, but if the economy is depressed by all the newly jobless, it seems a stretch that prices would skyrocket, or even stay flat so long as automation provides more wiggle room at the margins.