Will Robots Make Us Poor? Universal Basic Income And The Robot Tax [Automation, Pt. 3] | AJ+ Docs 

I am definitely no socialist but when A.I. and automation take 2 thirds of the world's jobs then Universal Basic Income shouldn't even be a discussion, we have no choice it HAS to be implemented

We as a society need to change how we think as a whole. The old days of everyone needs/should work need to go out the window. Or at the very least the definition of what work is. Arguably the only thing computers wont be able to replace is human contact. We need to focus more on taking care of the elderly. Helping our communities, and frankly helping the human race become better. Taking away income/wealth in the traditional sense is the only way to really move forward as human beings. We are going in that direction whether by choice or not. But hopefully we can find ways to fix it without anyone suffering in the process.

no, they won't make you poor, they will totally remove you from all employment opportunity

UBI doesn't hurt motivation to work. UBI would/should cover basic living costs like food and utilities. The drive to work comes from wanting to better one's living standards. Sure, some would be content with living off of just what UBI would bring them, and there's nothing wrong with that. But to assume that people are inherently lazy is demonstrably false

Instead of trying to maintain the status quo, we should be trying to adapt to the changes that the automation will bring. Think ahead, not backwards!!!

10:35 that tear just broke my heart

who will buy the products if humans are all umemployed? Why would we need automated factories producing goods 24 - 7 if everyone is broke?

With the amount of guns in America. it is a scary scenario.

Well. Guess I'll go to school to learn how to fix robots. Oh wait... They might build robot mechanics to make and fix other robots.. Smh. Just can't win for losing. 😔

This is why we need Andrew Yang’s UBI

This doc doesn’t at all give UBI justice. They don’t explain or even analyse the main talking points for and against it. UBI won’t damage motivation, because the amount given for UBI shouldn’t be enough to live an enjoyable and luxurious life, it should be enough to survive. By our own human nature, we find little contentment with just surviving. We like to acquire more than we need, and aspire to higher goals. As a result, UBI won’t remove the motivation to work, it will only give people the tools necessary to develop the skills required to access higher paying jobs.

When you give people free money it might give them "no incentive to work", but remember, the robots HAVE all of our "jobs"!! Where is the work for those who ARE incentivized??!!

Supply and demand. No work no money. No money no demand. That's the bad economics.

I find our obsession with work ridiculous. Don't give people jobs just for the sake of it. We need people to do what needs to be done to run society. When that's taken care of, let people live their lives. Replace most of our welfare with UBI, $1000 a month for the lower and middle classes, let's get it done. If people want nice things they will have to find a second source of income, but eating and paying rent should be a given.

I just want a simple robot that can take orders like "robot, get me a glass of water" or "message my balls"

Andrew #Yang2020 is the only candidate talking about this!

We should be asking ourselves one fundamental question. Why is the loss of a job a source of chaos and violence in the lives of people, _especially_ when their task is being done by better technologies? This brings us slowly to the source of the problem: people don't work to produce, or even to innovate. Most people work for survival value. This means any form of change is itself a form of violence. Look at coal country; coal is dying -- it's dying faster under Trump than Obama -- with fracking and solar, with a sprinkle of automation taking it all away. They all ran to Donald Trump solely because of a jobs restoration campaign. Suffice to say, even allowing people to fall for such cons emphasizes people will do anything, and fall for anything, so long as we say "lol here are da jobs lol". The fundamental problem technology shows us is so long as we demand jobs for survival value, the future is a game of musical chairs, and people who don't have a seat get tossed into a ditch. And every session of this game happens faster and faster. "If you have no job, you have no life" is the toxic mantra we live by. It is quite literally squandering lives. This "liberation" for labor is anything but.

unabomber was right!

One tech guru said " It's going to get ugly ".. cause millions of people will lose their jobs and fall back jobs will no long exist either and anybody who thinks 1K a month of Yang money or UBI will come even close to offsetting lost wages , you're living in a dream world.

AJ+, Thanks for making this series of videos. Great documentary. Informational and unbiased, and that's damn hard these days. Great work!

10:28 Love is hard to explain. Only a handful of the greatest wordsmiths have been able to evoke powerful, loving emotions. Hence, history has proven that words rarely do it justice. Love is an action that can be displayed in so many ways. Working long hours, sacrifice of the body, holding hands, and so many other displays. In this case, love came falling from this man's eyes.

Karl Marx, 𝘊𝘢𝘱𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭, 1867: "The division of labour develops this labour-power in a one-sided way, by reducing it to the highly particularised skill of handling a special tool. When it becomes the job of the machine to handle this tool, the use-value of the worker’s labour-power vanishes, and with it its exchange-value. The worker becomes unsaleable, like paper money thrown out of currency by legal enactment. The section of the working class thus rendered superfluous by machinery, i.e. converted into a part of the population no longer directly necessary for the self-valorisation of capital, either goes under in the unequal context between the old handicraft and manufacturing production and the new machine production, or else floods all the more easily accessible branches of industry, swamps the labour-market, and makes the prices of labour-power fall below its value...When machinery seizes on an industry by degrees, it produces chronic misery among the workers who compete with it. Where the transition is rapid, the effect is acute and is felt by great masses of people."

It should be a tax on corporations; give them no financial incentive to automate, where it displaces a lot of workers. So when the corporations that rub their hands together thinking "we can save a crapload of money by sacking all our workers and replacing them with robots." they will be making an improvement of maybe 10% instead of the 60-70% they were hoping for. As a truck driver, the thought of being displaced by an AI pisses me off

Great series, thx for this!

EPA forever. Great to see a spotlight on my town!

The increased displacement of workers by robotics and AI will begin a deflationary cyclic due to a decrease in aggregate demand and consumption. And then what? A dystopic , subsistence agrarian society?

This will go down the middle of next decade when everyone is zoned-out on VR and legal pot. They'll see it on the news one day and be like, "Duuude...wait, what?"

Great series. Thanks! :D

blade runner dystopia here we come !!!

Andrew Yang is the man of the hour #yang2020.com

Great job on the whole series Joel and team. Looking forward to what's next.

Just because we CAN implement a new technology doesnt mean we HAVE to implement it!

I HAVE A SOLUTION: Decrease the work time to fit the lesser demand. Then we can all start enjoyin life, be less stressed and have more time for family, friends and creativity.

I just realized that at some point in the future the humans may not apply at all.

Excellent documentary. Thanks!

The problem isn't technology. It is people who don't want to change. A 75% surcharge on corporations, and a flat tax of 6% for small business and private workers - with no exceptions - no tax credits and no subsidies could allow us to get through this quite easily - but as always - everybody is self interested instead of cooperating.

We can’t simply re-train 300 million americans, we can’t even pay for free college...

We should pay teachers more, then pay everyone else based on their level of education. There should still be a base income for everyone with options to make more from there. This way human beings still have incentive to be active and practice self development. Otherwise we'll just be livestock. If you've been to a zoo recently you know the tole a life without work can take on the psyche of a creature designed for work. They sit there looking lethargic and unengaged. I imagine depression, stress, and anxiety would go through the roof. These conditions are already running rampant in younger generations due to the conveniences of our modern lives. This education should not be purely academic, but knowledge in all fields so we don't lose our ability to be self sufficient. Once labor is taken care of by machines, we will be able to focus on social development in other areas. We can devote our best minds to improving spiritual, physiological, emotional, and moral issues. We will also retain the skills necessary in case of a global catastrophe, whether natural or man made.

One person said there are not enough people to do the work. Retail has a high turn over, low pay, not much room for upward mobility. Plus, where inventory is concerned, you need to prevent losses and aim for accuracy. Therefore, robots and computers solve the problem. They don't demand a high pay and the reduce mistakes. And where inventory is concerned, mistakes mean money. Dare I say, "Follow the money or follow the robots to the money?"

Another problem is that robots aren't consumers, and businesses will invest in robots only if they can receive returns on their investments, which means higher sales expected from consumers who buy using money earned from jobs where robots might be used.

We already have the technologies that will allow us to make this transition successfully and create a social structure for the future that is on the horizon. Resource based economies and techno socialism created through the utilization of block-chain technology (cryptocurrency, distributed platforms, smart contracts, etc...) now we just need to create the organizations to spread and implement this across the world. One thing you can do right now is get off of RU-vid and start using Steemit. its like Facebook , RU-vid, or reddit except it is a distributed platform where people get paid for the content that they create.

"gave up" his job at Yahoo :D

So sad to see that man cry.

10:18 made me really feel chills in my back.....

Taxing innovation WILL NOT stop innovation! What an idiotic thing to suggest. As stupid as "trickle down economy!"

Robotics and AI experts are going to become the new "rockstars"

IF THEY CAN CREATE ROBOTS THAT ARE CARING ,UNDERSTANDING AND LOVING, MAKING THE PEOPLE FEEL LOVED. IT WILL BE VERY GOOD.

Great video, I once as a little boy had thought of the idea similar to universal basic income so it was a very valueable video to watch. Please, keep on making videos such as these related to the fourth industrial revolution in order to warn the population about the upcoming future.

I have been pushing idea's this one among them , but it doesn't reach many people. UBI should have been implemented 15 years ago. Philosophers give input and it takes up to half a century sometimes at the latest for the idea/thought process to travel into society. Governments really need to have a position for us philoshopher's. Sure your technology is good but you're behind socially. Year 2000s but still conducting 1800s-early1900s social wise.

who's going to be able to buy the products from your automated factories when everyone is automated out of a job? I guess just the 1 percent hopefully they buy a lot of stuff to keep your companies in business

I still have a job. I am German and live in Germany. Germany might be a step behind the U.S., I don't know. But this film shows what is coming. What am I to do when unemployment will strike me too? Shall I also buy a motorhome? Live in warmer states of Europe? Will automation cause turmoil and riots of unprecedented strength?

Eye opening!

The old fellow means well but is living in the past.

Alot of people don't like their jobs. If you got paid without the hassle of having a job you could spend you're time achieving other things like a hobby and the more you perfect your hobby what ever it may be you could earn extra cash by passing on your knowledge or selling things you make like music - video games - art the list is endless anything you enjoy doing their would be others that enjoy the same thing or would like what ever it is that you make. Even if you don't charge for what ever it is you have to offer you could still profit from it from advertisement. You make a youtube video you could earn money from the companys that pay to have their adds on youtube same thing could be done with spotify etc if you don't want adds you pay a small fee and say on youtube a percentage of the profit will go to the people who make the videos. and thats just bonus money also as technology improves all living costs will reduce. It's pure freedom to achieve your dream without the hassle of working your whole life earning money for someone else doing something you don't want to do

I think the only real solution to the robot problem is that people will have to own or lease the robots from the companies that do the work otherwise there will literally be no one to buy any of the products they move around

great documentary.

I wonder how Qatar is fighting inequality, specially with the construction industry workers within their borders...

A robot tax wouldn’t stop innovation. It would provide revenue to give a universal basic income to those displaced by robots. Companies still make HUGE profits, but people aren’t left to starve. What kind of monster would put a little profit over thousands of lives?

Everything I find depressing in this documentary except AI replacing lawyers lol that I find funny

Your job should not define who you are.

UBI as proposed by government or rich people is not a solution. It's a prop for a failing socioeconomic system. Unless UBI is excessive, like in the 60 to 80K a year range, it won't work. People need to get this notion that everyone has to work out of their heads. We need to elevate our infrastructure and culture to the level of our technology and focus on eliminating jobs. People will still work, we like to work when its meaningful. But not everyone needs to. In my opinion, the solution is to eliminate the monetary system in its entirety. A socioeconomic system based on access abundance for everyone would have no need for money. Once money goes, we wouldn't need politicians, there would be no poverty, wars would become a thing of the past, crime would vanish, eventually we wouldn't even need laws. Think about all the negative behaviors driven by the monetary system. Now think about all of that gone.

Automation, efficiency and productivity are the goals, not the worst case scenarios,... but for capitalism and greed. When we have tuition free education, universal healthcare and a livable universal basic income, making capitalism relatively irrelevant, we will be free to embrace the automation revolution. It may be (and should be, of course) the great equalizer, despite the fears of the opposite. This is an #EqualityRevolution!

I totally agree with mayor Asa Akira that measures that can rebalance the inequalities of wealth distribution are needed and we should be having this conversation now as automation starts to gather steam and not tomorrow when the landscape has completely changed

When I was in high school, I thought to myself, I don't want to be a factory worker only to be replaced by a machine. Instead I will be the one fixing the machine. I thought this when I was in middle school in 1986. If you don't think you don't live. If you don't educate your self you will not see what is coming. I thank my mother that bought me a technological encyclopedia when I asked for it. And I thank God for giving me the wisdom to listen to my intuition and lastly to Mazinger Z and Robotech who inspired me to go into robotics.

its coming

A robot took my job, and then it took my dog.

Our parents don’t understand whatsoever. When bowling alleys are fully automated they will continue to say anyone can get a job, meanwhile no one is having kids because they know opportunity is not given, life is not fair. Corperations have dodged their civil duty to help everyone meanwhile everyone has supported them in their greed.

The huge question that hasn't been asked in this documentary is this. With all these jobs being handled by robots and the huge jump in productivity that will result, for example a factory making 50,000 tv sets every day with say, 1500 workers, will produce 200,000 sets with 20 workers and every other product you can think of from food to transport to healthcare will be automated. So the question is with this super automated world producing so much output, far in excess of what humans can do, who is going to buy all this stuff? I doubt if people can buy at the levels they buy today on a basic universal income. This is the real weakness of this system. It may happen, but just as there have been revolutions like the French Revolution overthrowing and destroying the elite few, this will happen again. The cycle of change, wealth creation, wealth concentration amongst the few along with corruption followed by the complete and often bloody overthrow of those in power will happen again. Just study history, it's cyclical, and we will soon be back to those revolutionary times. Just look at the rise of of right wing parties in Europe and South America. A universal basic income is a leftwing communist idea and communism doesn't work. That's why leftwing socialism as espoused by the bureaucrats in Brussels is causing the fracture and destruction of the European Union. The robotic society will not work. It will be like the Terminator movie. The machines themselves will be overthrown. 😉

This is incomplete. You need a followup video where you actually discuss positives and negatives of various setups including Open Source technologies, socialism, and UBI.

Its a robots world NOW... if you look at it .. 😣😣😣😣😣🌐🌐🌐🌐🌐

There's flaw in reasoning. Already installed manufacturing capabilities are capped only by possible demand. But even zero cost labor won't mean that energy, materials and LOGISTICS will miraculously become free.

Don't invest in the company making the robotic butler. They're a losing proposition already. You won't even need a robotic butler if no one else has the jobs.

As technology improves, productivity increases. This happened in first and second industrial revolution. Problem is that this wealth isn't distributed equally. It isn't that robots will make us poor. Capitalists will make us poor. Abolish capitalism. It's time for workers self-management.

They don't have any choice but to give universal basic income because business will still depend on consumerism so they need to spread the wealth because if they don't the economy will collapse. Universal basic income, universal free education or brain data transfer, a lot of things will change for better or for worse. We might survive or not but we should not be scared of the future, we should face it with courage.

Without Universal Basic Income, the wealth disparity and poverty would become extreme, this could stabilize in a dystopia of poverty for most with luxury for the few or fall into civil chaos, also without UBI, the economy would stagnate as the consumer base shrinks. However, how should UBI be deployed? Should it be unconditional or conditional, should it simply be the same income for everyone or adjusted by the region people live in, should it even be funds or tokens for residence, food, clothes and transportation? Should UBI be funded by strictly corporate taxes or targeted to the level of automation? Should the taxes be scaled to corporation size? Should minimum wage be dropped where UBI is provided? Should UBI be just the bare minimum or should there be enough of a surplus to fund entrepreneurship? Should our process of identifying people be strengthened to minimize abuse, should biometrics be recorded or people chipped, should ID cards be encrypted smart cards like they have in Europe? Should there be outreach programs to identify people who would otherwise slip through the system. Should there be inspections and evaluations by social workers on those who appear to be demotivated? How will the taxation and the UBI affect investment by corporations? The job loss due to automation has been with us for 6,000 years ever since agriculture created cultures of those with resources and those who work for resources to live but the job loss has been increasing exponentially, the hourly wage to cost of living ratio peaked in 1974, although our population has increased since the 70's, the number of secured jobs in the US have not, yes there has been job growth but in ever more precarious jobs. If you think there will always be jobs that can not be automated then you are in denial, if you believe that new jobs would be enough to replace jobs lost then you are just fooling yourself and others. I think that we will probably wind up with some minimal and unfair version of UBI resulting in a stable but more dystopic future of poverty greater than what we have now. It would take remarkable leadership both in government and large corporations to strive for less poverty than we have now even though overall prosperity, and productivity would be higher both for the working public and the corporations themselves. I really think we'll just shoot ourselves in the foot through resistance to the UBI concept instead of working out how it could be done.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote about this eventuality in "Player Piano".

What happens when people use UBI to stay at home and produce more children? Eventually there won't be enough UBI to sustain a higher population. Also, what happens when more people come into the country both legally and illegally? There won't be enough UBI to go around.

UBI is the future and humanity will be better for it but we must vastly reduce the population on this planet. Not by force of course but by preparation with education specially in developing countries. Developed countries already have a high aging population and low birth rates but this needs to spread to the rest of the world for the impact of automation and Ai to be more manageable.

After watching this entire series I have to say you definitely put enough thought about the short term. No thought at all about the long term implications. We are about to enter the age of techno-abundance and what you are warning about is only the beginning of job losses. We now have the ability to end inequality world wide. We have the technology and the resources today to supply every man woman and child on earth a life of absolute luxury. The only thing standing in our way of achieving it is this antiquated economic monetary system that was invented to solve the issues of scarcity. We must evolve past this antiquated notion of material worth if we are going to successfully navigate into this future of abundance. A Resource based Economy is a workable solution to this issue.

good docu, but why is there no link to part 1 and 2? Gotta ramp up your game aj+

The most dire labor crisis possibly in history and you couldn't bother to speak with a single socialist? The answer is not new job training or more government welfare. The answer is for this new technology to be under the ownership of the people, not capitalists or the state. Automation should make our lives easier, yet everyone in this video is warning of social collapse. Why? The issue isn't the technology -- it's who has ownership of the technology. If we continue to allow wealthy individuals or powerful governments to be the sole owners of the machines we use to survive, we will be heading towards disaster. But, if we the people organize and unite, we can take control of these machines so they serve us, not the government or a few wealthy individual. Or, like my comrade said below, let's seize the means of production! Let's built communism!

Whatever Elon Musk says, we should follow

We currently have under worked and over worked people. Reduce the work week to three days a week and get rid of income tax. Just make a consumer tax. Tax luxury goods at a higher rate. Tax corporations based on profit and stop giving them unfair loop holes.

A robot took my job two years ago, I've been unemployed since then

Robot tax hahahha! Free humans from taxes. Let the robots pay. How about you make robots that clean up faeces from San Francisco streets.

Better solution: Stop prolonging the inevitable and *drop capitalism already!*

Steve Cousins of Savioke: taxing innovation does not equal stopping innovation. Steve Cousins of Savioke: taxing robots IS "redistribution in a way that makes sense."

three choices so far: make all people capable of holding an irreplaceable job; eliminate people who cannot hold an irreplaceable job; institute universal basic income.

It's scary to see the number of communism supporters in the comment section here. UBI is the worst you can do for this situation. That woman running for mayor in SF is all that is wrong about the political system. Tax innovation. Tax anyone who's doing good. All this does is reduce the incentive for doing well. They want us all to be equal ie equally poor.

i have a crazy idea, but stop to have kids! we are overpopulated

when 90% of people are out of a job, what will automation produce if nobody has the money to buy anything?

3:46 (checks video date) Yep seems about right, explains a lot

I managed a Robot company until 2007. Looking closely at what my wife and I must do on a daily basis, retired, nothing is close to being possible with robotics anytime soon. Taking care of our elderly is not close to being automated. Unfortunately.

What are schools and colleges doing to redirect people to new job choices in the immediate future?

hypothetical scenario: you need to build a bridge to connect two cities that are on opposite sides of a river. neither city has the resources to pay the upfront cost for such a bridge, but the bridge has a potential to enhance the economy of both cities. so you're only left with a) borrowing money and pay high interest to the bank or b) robots build the bridge and you only have to pay the cost of the material.

great video

I think people are overlooking a possiblity. The labor jobs will most likely be replaced by machines, but a lot of white collar office jobs will be replaced by computers. Who needs a human resource department, just download a program with an algorithm. Marketing? Algorithm for that. Financing? Algorithm for that.

The Robot Tax makes perfect sense and does not tax innovation, but taxes the astronomical profits of the single owner that will replace millions of jobs & people's ability to feed their families. Even if that robot tax is 50%, the profits of that business will be so immense that the owner will still be a multi-billionaire.

The real issue is not the innovation or the automation itself. It's that the benefits that the tech brings remains within private hands. If governments are smart, then they will bring the critical necessities for a respectable human life under government control and spread the benefits to the civilians. In other words, deploy automation for food production, housing, energy generation, heat generation, etc. and make sure that these are all government controlled. The benefits should then be distributed among the populace, serving as a universal basic income that is not monetary, but in nature.

i'm self employed. Just had a terrible Feb. I gained weight. I feel frustrated, aggravated, bored, maybe even slightly depressed. I could do some stuff to my house to kill the time but no work means no money. no money means no home improvements so.......I won't lose my job to a robot in the near future as i am in the home improvement business, and i expect things to pick back up, Feb always a tuff month........but I don't feel like UBI is a solution ( mentally ) for those who won't be able to get jobs