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Altman and Yang are a natural fit because they’re both very invested (Altman literally so) in the narrative that automation is coming for huge numbers of jobs. But the economic statistics just don’t back this up. Total factor productivity, a (rough) measure of the technological contribution to economic production, is growing considerably more slowly than it was during the early 2000s, and much more slowly than during the 1930s, when the Second Industrial Revolution really came for the masses (and helped catalyze a huge labor shift away from agricultural work—but didn’t put all former farmers out of jobs).

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Labor productivity is a very simple calculation. It’s real GDP divided by total labor hours. Do you see the problem already? Let’s leave aside for a second that even the creator of GDP thought that, as a top level economic metric, it was useless (yes, useless). But, yeah...have the benefits of GDP been spread around evenly in our society? Of course it hasn’t. Our national GDP has probably been, mostly, generated by a small number of people. It’s impossible to tell how, but income inequality is probably a good proxy (though not an extrapolation) of how uneven GDP generation has been.

It is impossible to know. GDP is a team effort, but if you think through some of the examples in tech I think you will realize that the labor productivity metric is lying to us.

A lot of paid labor going on in the US right now is probably not actually all that important to the overall economy, or unevenly important.

Ironically, a lot of the unpaid or highly under compensated labor in our society (teachers, social workers, stay at home parents) are probably adding economic value. One of Yang’s main points is that we need to start valuing this labor.

Even if automation isn't coming for people's job, isn't it time we moved away from this idea that every single person has to work for 40 hours a week for 50 years of their life just to survive?

What about spending time with family, or learning a new language or just enjoying one's time?

When do we reach that magical future where we actually have leisure time and can enjoy the fact we're more advanced than we were a hundred years ago when everyone worked hard?

I'd like to get there now.

You can have that. Acquire more assets.

yeah, and if you are lucky, you'll only have to work 40 hours a week for 50 years to acquire them.

Which brings up his quality of life stance.

It honestly feels like we're paid slaves waiting until we have enough to buy ourselves from our owners.

I find this perspective problematic. I understand it feels like a lack of freedom—indeed you are constrained from doing whatever you want.

As an example, imagine you are on your own, completely outside of society, out of contact with others. You’d need to build and maintain shelter. You’d need to forage or grow food. You’re not free to do whatever you want, until you have accumulated enough resources to not need to do the work to provide what you need for everyday survival.

I don’t think we’d call this slavery, yet it has the same shape as what you describe. Slavery implies coercion or violence limiting freedom, which certainly still exists in the world, but isn’t an apt description of what you describe.

That's a horrible comparison. If I didn't need to have a job I would be volunteering helping the elderly, doing construction work, helping with animal rehabilitation, inventing things (I'm a mechanical engineer), etc. I can't contribute in any of these ways I would enjoy because they either don't enough or are risky.

I think we may be talking past each other. My intent is to explain why I think phrases like “slaves” and “buy ourselves from our owners” is ill-suited for what you’re trying to convey. Indeed, I’m struggling to find the connection between your comment I first responded to and your response here. I think you’re trying to distinguish between what you have to do to live and what you would choose to do if you didn’t have to worry about making a living. That’s certainly a worthwhile point to make, but again, I don’t think that in and of itself is slavery. (I wasn’t at all implying that what you would choose to do was separate yourself from society, given the opportunity—if that’s how you read the example.)

My example may miss the mark, but it wasn’t intended to. Can you help tie them together for me?

>As an example, imagine you are on your own, completely outside of society, out of contact with others. You’d need to build and maintain shelter. You’d need to forage or grow food. You’re not free to do whatever you want, until you have accumulated enough resources to not need to do the work to provide what you need for everyday survival.

This is true, but it's not the only perspective, and it misses out on a lot of normative social theory. J.E. Roemer would argue that because we are part of society, measurements of wellbeing should be taken relative to the wealth generated by society. The question is not if someone would be better off if they withdrew from society with only their own wealth, but if they'd be better off if they withdrew with a per-capita share of society's productive capacity.

>I don’t think we’d call this slavery, yet it has the same shape as what you describe.

Slavery isn't the word for it, but necessity is the word for it. It makes much more sense to talk of the freedom/necessity dichotomy than it does to talk of the freedom/slavery dichotomy.

"The only difference as compared with the old, outspoken slavery is this, that the worker of today seems to be free because he is not sold once for all, but piecemeal by the day, the week, the year, and because no one owner sells him to another, but he is forced to sell himself in this way instead, being the slave of no particular person, but of the whole property-holding class."

Certainly. I believe we largely agree.

That depends on your expected standard of living and your pay.

In Utah, the median wage is $15.8/he, which puts you around $32k/year (assuming 250 work days @ 8 hours/day), and the median salary with a bachelor's degree is ~$57k[1]. I'll be looking at the lower figure.

Let's make a few assumptions:

- $15/hr is take home, not gross, and we'll ignore all government programs - single, and living with roommates is acceptable - within range of mass transit, so no car needed - goal is to maintain minimal lifestyle w/o work

It looks like $1200 is a reasonable rent for a 2BR apartment, so $600/month should be doable with one roommate, less with two.

So, here are some expenses:

- rent - $600 - transportation - $85 (unlimited pass for light rail & bus, $200 for commuter rail, but I'm looking within range of the light rail) - food - $300/month (very generous $10/day, cooking for one could cut this in half) - utilities - $100/month (shared utilities)

So, $1100/month for basic expenses. $15/hr would get ~$2500/month. If we increase expenses to $1500, that still means ~$1000/month can go toward retirement. If our aim is $1500/month spending, we can estimate the amount we need to stop working using the 4% rule [2], and I'll include a range to go from 3-4% to account for a longer "retirement" (4% is for 30-year retirement, but expenses could be reduced as well).

Amount needed (today's dollars, 4% rule accounts for inflation):

- 3% - $600k - 4% - $450k

Saving $1k/month for 20 years puts you at ~$500k assuming 7% growth (average growth of stock market after taking inflation into account). This number is approximately in the middle of our range, and 22 years is $600k; monthly investment and return can vary, so 20-25 years seems like a reasonable estimate. If you start at 25, you'd be done by 50, which is way better than the average person, and you can make this less by reducing expenses, increasing income, or utilizing public services.

To make this process easy, we could also use this chart [3], which is based on savings rate. $1k/2.5k = 40% savings rate, which is 22 years according to the chart, which is in line with what I put down here.

The actual story is obviously more complex since I hand-waved medical costs, simplified assumptions, etc, but the general story is valuable. Maybe retiring at 45 isn't practical for everyone, but perhaps working significantly fewer hours is practical. If we simplify our lifestyle, we can be much more financially secure much earlier. I'm sure a savvy individual could earn a bit more (side hustles) and spend a bit less (decrease food expenses, bike instead of taking the bus, etc).

I'm sure the figures look a bit different in various areas, but the root of the matter is that the average person should have a much better outlook than we see on average. I think the solution lies in better education (I doubt the average person understands compound interest), better housing availability (reduce costs), better mass transit, etc.

- [1] https://slchamber.com/median-wage-in-utah/ - [2] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/four-percent-rule.asp - [3] https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...

Answer is: never. The average person in the West has already surpassed the comfort and standard of living of the average monarch a couple centuries ago, but instead of settling we want more: traveling, more and more advanced tech, vast amount of entertainment, etc.

Consider the multi-billion dollar media productions (games, TV series, movies, music, books, etc.) that you can access at the command of your voice vs. the same ol' jester, resident poet or occasional travelling theater company that were the only option for a monarch not so many centuries ago.

I disagree. Try to actually settle down (without winning the startup/rich parents/literal lottery first) and see how it goes. If you haven't raised a nice safety fund and you get sick, you are screwed. If you dont want to live in the middle of nowhere, land owners are going to want a huge chunk of money for that priviledge. Also good luck finding a part time job that pays much better than minimum wage. I know a lot of people who try to do this and there are definitely ways it can happen, but our society is definitely structured to make it difficult.

Tell the person working two jobs, paying more than half of their income to rent/mortgage and living paycheck to paycheck that they should just relax and settle down ...

100 years ago, you were screwed if you got the wrong infection no matter how rich you were. Now we cure that with a $30 course of antibiotics.

Even just the limited healthcare you can get from free clinics and emergency treatment that hospitals are required to provide even if you aren't able to pay would be better than the best care money could buy 100 years ago.

Of course antibiotics and other things have improved since 100 years ago, nobody is arguing otherwise. The argument is that right now we could have cheap antibiotics and less working hours.

The counter argument was that the average person chooses luxury over less working hours, and my counter-counter argument was that this choice isn't actually available to most people. Also, that actually the choice most people have is to work less and live something like 100 years ago with reduced life span, etc, or work a lot and survive.

If you think you have it better than a monarch because you have things and other people are dissatisfied and you dont know why maybe it isn't more stuff that people want.

The point of being a monarch wasn't to have the shiniest toys.

So you are saying that we should feel like monarchs because we have TVs, Netflixes, Games, gadgets, toys etc.

I would argue that many people nowadays feel more like slaves than monarchs since they can hardly even afford healthcare in many cases, they probably won't have a pension due to current demographics, they have to hand over half of their salary to various land lords, tax lords, pension lords, healthcare lords and other various fee lords.

True, It does feel like Feedalism again, but for many not from position of monarchs but serfs.

> So you are saying that we should feel like monarchs

18th century monarchs, yes. (Not 21st century monarchs.)

> hardly even afford healthcare in many cases

Better than leeches though.

> they probably won't have a pension

The reason that's a problem is precisely because health is good.

> hey have to hand over half of their salary to various land lords

Most adults in the U.S. own their own home (modulo mortgage...but even very wealthy people still choose to take mortgages for yet bigger houses). And expensive housing is generally driven voluntary by urbanization.

If you offered me the choice of life as King George III or the average American, I would choose the latter.

> The average person in the West has already surpassed the comfort and standard of living of the average monarch a couple centuries ago

This comparison makes very little sense, because with change in society and social structures, human needs and desires also change. To compare today's person with someone from centuries ago ignores that doctrine. The fact is that kings had the best in society centuries ago, but the majority of people don't have the best in society today. Whether "the best" is accessible is a different matter, but kings had an excellent standard of living in their time period.

It is genuinely confusing why someone would think that saying we live better than a king lived centuries ago is some kind of argument that things shouldn't be further improved. Why, exactly, is the king's standard of living relevant today, other than as a historical curiosity?

Perhaps to put our own desires into perspective. Is an unhappy king of 1000 years past or future helpful for understanding our own path towards happiness? If it shows the futility of material reliance, I'd say yes.

You can have that right now if you’re willing to settle for a 1920’s standard of living.

Whether it’s automation or something else doesn’t really matter. I think it’s hard to argue that there’s a ton of shitty jobs out there, and those shitty jobs are most vulnerable to outsourcing, automation, made obsolete, etc. People in those jobs are the ones that could be most helped by UBI.

Of course you need to think about how to replace shitty jobs with better ones over time, but UBI smooths out societal issues created during those transition times.

those shitty jobs are most vulnerable to outsourcing, automation, made obsolete, etc

Most of those jobs will be the hardest to automate because Moravec’s Paradox. Automation will wipe out lawyers and accountants long before it reaches sewer maintenance and refuse collection.

I'm not an expert, so I may be mistaken. However, my understanding is that, as it applies to motor skills, Moravec's Paradox applies to skills that require either fine sensing (e.g. manipulating something delicate) or adapting to a complex environment (e.g. navigating a room or painting).

It seems to me, that the success of robots in manufacturing demonstrates that this does not apply to many (but not all) unskilled labor jobs.

It also seems to me that in many cases it may be possible to modify the job to fit the capabilities of a robot rather than the other way around. For example, rather than build a robot that can clean an arbitrary toilet I could either standardize the internal dimensions of the toilet bowl or give the robot a pipe-style brush that it big enough to clean any bowl.

For example, rather than build a robot that can clean an arbitrary toilet I could either standardize the internal dimensions of the toilet bowl

Sure, this is an argument often made by self-driving car enthusiasts, let’s just remake all the roads, ban all pedestrians and non-self-driving vehicles and so on. But it’s another instance of the same paradox, instead of radically underestimating the computation involved in actions that nature has given us dedicated hardware for, underestimating the vast cost of doing so.

In this case not only would you need to standardise the toilet bowl, but the route through the house to get to the bathroom and what to do about any unexpected obstacles...

The paradox in general applies to everything that humans take for granted that we can do without fully appreciating that it took us a billion years of evolution to get here.

My town went from, I believe, 3 trucks with 3 people each to 2 trucks with 1 person each for garbage collection. The last step will take a long time, but the amount of labor has already been dramatically shrunk.

>there’s a ton of shitty jobs out there, and those shitty jobs are most vulnerable to outsourcing, automation, made obsolete, etc

Shitty jobs are not must vulnerable, quite opposite in fact. Automating some 400K/year quant job at hedge fund makes morse sense than automatng MCjob that pays 40K/year. More to that, shitty jobs are hardest to automate (we are nowhere close to good janitor robot, for example).

Also, you can not outsource cleaning toilets or hairdessers, but you can software development or building trading models.

There are "1000's" more 40k/yr jobs than 400k/yr ones. Automating a 40k/yr job that 1000 people do makes more sense than 10 400k ones. In aggregate, there is more money to be saved automating the 40k jobs.

Also, typically lower paying jobs are physical labor jobs, trading time for money, not "thinking" jobs that deal with exceptions to the rules.

Robotics are suppose to automate lower labor physical positions, AI is suppose to replace our thinking and mental positions.

Are there a significant number of physical labor jobs (in high-income countries at least) that do not require 1) intelligent human interaction or 2) detailed visual inspection and fine motor control?

There appears to be a huge hump in difficulty of robotic “automatability” caused by the fact that humans are just so much better at these two tasks than machines are.

“Thinking” jobs that essentially entail transformation of one type of data into another seem no more difficult to automate (if not perhaps even easier) than most manual labor that has not already been automated.

My uninformed guess is that we will automate low- and mid-level “thinking” jobs and the remainder of physical jobs at around the same time, because both require near-human perceiving, communicating, and manipulating capabilities.

Yes, McDonald's automates tasks across a massive labor force, they aren't trying to automate everything that a given employee might do.

Automating bureaucracy could be something that actually creates more jobs. We had to wait 8 months to get a permit to build a deck!

I think your facts are debatable https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1184499999406776326

Yeah but I think Yang knows that , and he uses UBI as a symbolic image of the fact that good jobs are going to become increasingly hard to find and that makes most people anxious. It's sort of how trump used "the wall" to appeal to the anxieties of people with insecure jobs. It's a good focus point though, that appeals to reasonable people more than "just tax the rich" (which is shortsighted anyway; what 's the plan when the rich are no more?). My current bet (as a non-american) is that if the democrats manage to select Yang, he will win, otherwise it's going to be a much worse trump 2nd term

Even if that is the case, jobs now change at much more rapid pace than in the past. It used to be that if you trained and worked as a blacksmith (or whatever), you could die a blacksmith. It was their kids that would have to do something else. Which isn't too much of a shock to the system.

This is no longer the case. Now someone within a single lifetime can go through multiple job creation and destruction cycles. So it'd be helpful to have a floor to help deal with the transitions and provide a buffer.

Yeah - the only thing I can think of worse than not having a plan in place for a future world where all work is automated is implementing that plan before all work is actually automated.

I think we should be looking at it at the micro level. Every time automation is introduced at the employee level the employee is going to find (or make up) other work to do because otherwise they lose their job.

So we just aren’t going to see the effects of automation. But I bet if you tracked percent of work time used for internet surfing you’d see it going up 5-10% per year.

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