Automation isn't cheap either. We see very real divides today where it is still a lot cheaper to have people in a sweatshop do things for basically no pay rather than get a multi-million dollar robot to do the same.
In societies like America which fetishize hard work and hustle culture, and where tremendous struggle is still present or a vivid recent memory in the minds of people, UBI and guaranteed basic quality of life are a tough sell.
Honest question: why aren’t the USA and Canada continuing to do this? If we are still enjoying the fruits of that effort today, was it not well worth the investment? Would it not serve the economy in the short term as well?
Or perhaps this does still happen, more or less, and I just don’t understand government programs well enough.
It seems we have countless environmental initiatives worth throwing people at for living wages. Is the problem maybe that these initiatives require labour that’s too sophisticated today?
Further automation destroys jobs.
The very top gain efficiencies of production and immense wealth, while the bottom lose more and more opportunities without magical, handwaving "better" or "other" jobs.
Unfortunately, there is no solution to (peaceful or agro) reformation from within because of entrenched forces: the prostitution of power through campaign financing and lobbyist). Nonviolent but disruptive means are essential to attain such changes that cannot be had through voting or pleasant requests. Those with large piles of money will defend it and plausibly order the state to commit violence against those who dare challenge their established order of things.
(Predominantly) Americans have to stop being so individualistic, push back against aspirational billionaire and popularity seeking, and start finding respectful discourse between different views and take deliberate, collective action. National strike perhaps.
it is benefiting across society - the availability of goods that would not otherwise have been available is the benefit, not direct financial gain.
The people who do get direct financial gain are the ones that invested their capital into producing the automation and tools.
As for why isn't everyone doing 3-day weeks, the answer is that almost everybody still has wants that could not be fulfilled by automation, and that as basic wants are fulfilled, they get higher and more wants that aren't just basic essentials, which leads to more work to fill back up the work week.
Doesn't help much when so many are working full time or more just to afford food, clothing, and shelter. And sometimes not even all three.
> they get higher and more wants that aren't just basic essentials
Key word: wants. Which takes us back to the problem of why people who have fulfilling, rich lives are socialized to feel the need to have 'more'
Assuming that their vision was well-intentioned (insofar as having the government subsidize GPS development was well-intentioned by selling them the fact that it could not be extended to support commercial use), those predictions were fundamentally flawed without understanding the cynical side of human nature.
Now comes the AI, or really LLM, revolution. All the mental gruntwork humans are still stuck doing, underutilizing their brains, can now be done by computers, so the hype says.
Between the massive reduction in the need for physical labor and the removal of the need for mental labor, why shouldn't people be living a much more leisurely life? Why should the fruits of labor reduction only accrue upward, while billions are still chained to jobs producing those fruits?
there are 20 million millionaires in the USA. tons of success, tons of people investing in the companies creating this wealth..
what.
"Wealth Inequality in America" politizane
The differences between 1. what people think wealth distribution looks like, 2. what people think distribution should be, and 3. what it is. These are 3 very different histograms.
"How Wealth Inequality Spiraled Out of Control" Robert Reich
Flip that and you can argue that the first half (half!) of the population lives in a way that would be viewed as leisurely less than a century ago.
If anything, that makes the polarization even bigger, because the other half has every right to ask "why not me" and resent.
I think GP's comment however had a tone of "despite all those luxuries, people are actually wasting their lives", which is another angle to the whole situation.
And once you secure shelter, water, and food, you move on to trying to secure education, healthcare, and legal/political protections. And once you have that, you move on to securing it for your children, family, and further members of your tribe.
In any case even if you were correct it does not mean we had ought to act as such. That is the naturalistic fallacy in whole.
The automation and technology did make it much easier to achieve a high quality of life from 1980, but we are now aiming for a high quality of life of 2023.