I really don't see a nearby future with no jobs at all. Immigrants surely aren't our biggest concen. Those who complain that they are, are a far bigger concern. Because they are detached from reality.
What I do see is a not to distant future with fewer jobs, with jobs taken by robots and AI's and a few people. Times are changing and we can either get on the bus to the future, or we get run over by it. As things are now most of us are about to get run over by it because of the (allowed) greed of corporations, and an inability to change quickly by government and the electorate.
Foolishness in politics and a lack of proper priorities is major a part of our problem. Politicians trying to point everyone in one wrong direction for their own benefit is another problem.
I have said repeatedly before that we need to pay workers more. Why? Because they have been kept back from receiving the increases they have earned and deserved now for decades. And those in charge merely argue reasons why it is okay, rather than reasons why it is not.
Worker need to be working less days per week, less hours per day. Not more. That then would not only give us more workers in the workforce , but would prepare us for when robots do more and more take over our jobs.
We also need to start preparing now for a future of people living longer while there are fewer jobs available.
If we don't make that connection soon, not only will we have shirked our duty as a nation, to increase the quality of the lives of our citizens as we have been doing (or not doing) for years in pushing workers to work more days and longer hours for less money, but we will be unprepared when we find that we really do not need these workers either to to jobs having moved out of country, which isn't as bad as we make it if we had handled things in the ways I'm pointing out, or robotics having replaced our workers.
Having fewer jobs or some day, no jobs, is NOT really a bad thing, We have merely made it that seem that way due to a lack of vision, planning, and proactivity. At the very least we have allowed it to have been made that way.
If we had built our economy properly, if we had other things for people to do, if they had been oriented to consider that once freed from slaving at their jobs, they can move on to higher ideals, things such as the sciences, inventions, the Arts, of bettering humanity's existence both on this planet and off, then the quality of life in general for all would be increasing now and not following a path that is no where near that kind of a consideration.
Now, if you think none of this is possible then you are simply considering the wrong things, and looking at all this in old fashioned, anachronistic ways. You are taking the tact that it's not possible, rather than considering how it is possible. And we need to be considering how things like this ARE possible. If you like, we need to "think outside the box".
But I would argue, we are currently living an existence that is outside of that box already. We have merely be deluded for so long that we can no longer see it, beyond the status quo that has been sold to us as just, "how it is", when really we have all been "sold down the river" just so the rich could become richer, and powerful, more powerful. All at our expense.
I'm not even arguing a national or global conspiracy here. It's just how it is, has been, and those who can, have jumped on the bandwagon in order to further their own agendas, bettered their own lives. It has replaced the American Dream with the Dream of the Rich and Powerful.
And no one seems to have noticed! Though I suspect they are finally now beginning to.
Central to all of these things is not despondency among the masses so much as poor education. In cutting our benefits over the past decades, at letting our infrastructures go, to devolve, we have dumbed down our population and made it easier for some of the stupid beliefs that are going around and have been governing our nation. We need to change that.
We need to be thinking through a new paradigm shift in preparing for it to allow it to happen. We need to be living it and moving on into the future. We need to do it, ourselves. We need to vote for those who should be running things. Those who want to end big money in politics. Those who will oppose the ignorance and stupidity in politics and in the voting public.
As with others knowledgeable in the topic, I do not so much worry about the resiliency of people but in the inability of the lumbering giants of government, business and finance. We will have to kick them repeatedly in order to give them a consistent and hard myocardial thump to the near cadaver of those who have been handed over the charter to protect us. We need to push through to their central cores, to their hearts if you will. To restart it to once again beat for us and not just as they seem to do so well and so often, merely fend for themselves.
Robots, AI's, Immigrants? Could a Future with no jobs be a good thing?
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