|
Paradoxish posted:It's getting a little bit outside of the bounds of this thread, but "how do we deal with a not insignificant number of people being permanently unemployed?" is almost certainly a question we're going to need to answer as a society within our lifetimes. I'm starting to think this is going to be one of the central "civil rights" style questions of the next twenty-five years or so, especially in the developed world. I mean, hell, they're automating McDonald's now. quote:By the third quarter of next year, McDonald’s plans to introduce new technology in some markets “to make it easier for customers to order and pay for food digitally and to give people the ability to customize their orders,” reports the Journal. Mr. Thompson, the CEO, said Tuesday that customers “want to personalize their meals” and “to enjoy eating in a contemporary, inviting atmosphere. And they want choices in how they order, choices in what they order and how they’re served.” A guaranteed minimum income seems like the only morally acceptable answer, but even with that, we're dealing with thousands of years of cultural inertia; "work ethic" is a phrase for a reason, and that reason is that our culture tends to view work as inherently ethical and non-work as inherently unethical. This isn't just an external opinion either; most people probably have it internalized to one degree or another. So it seems like over the next twenty-five years or so we're going to see two major societal forces run into each other: the moral objection to unemployment and the (unfortunately, I fear much weaker) objection to letting the long-term unemployed sink into neglect and decay and the abyss of stifled hope and choked opportunity. After all, it's not like the unemployed and poor have much voice in our political system. I worry.
|
#
¿
Oct 28, 2014 14:24
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 19, 2024 04:24 |
|