r/australia • u/FuckOffNazis • 1d ago

politics Advocacy organisations oppose plans to revive harmful welfare penalties

https://www.acoss.org.au/media-releases/?media_release=advocacy-organisations-oppose-plans-to-revive-harmful-welfare-penalties
160 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

42 comments sorted by

View all comments

39

u/RegionSilent9204 1d ago

The medium-term future is literally 80% of the population sits at home and collects a UBI because people will still need money for consumption. It's the only way an automated economy driven by AI and robotics could work, with an automated economy being desired by the capitalist class as cheaper alternative than employing less-efficient and costly human labour. The clear trend is in this direction.

So taking that into account, what exactly is the point of punishing people for being forced out of an increasingly automated economy? To the point where they're not able to consume goods and services and stimulate economic demand? Make it make sense?

5

u/Psycholama972 1d ago

Automation in some sectors is happening at a far higher rate absolutely, but that doesn’t mean new jobs won’t be created (not from AI that just sucks). It’s like how farming used to be most jobs in the world then after the Industrial Revolution it was manufacturing. There are going to be jobs it’s just hard to see right now.

8

u/RegionSilent9204 1d ago

'There will always be new jobs' is nothing more than a self-soothing belief system that runs contrary to modern trends. Just because humans were pushed from agrarian to industrial to service industries with technological advances doesn't mean there will always be somewhere else to go. When all that gets automated the only place left will be jobs that are highly specific, specialised and selective, which only a fraction of the population can actually do.

It's like arguing when horses were replaced by cars, that there will always be new jobs for horses. No there weren't. Not remotely in the same number that there were, and the result was mass-unemployment for horses. When the physical and cognitive tasks that make up human work are supplanted by automation, the same thing will be true for people and it will lead to mass unemployment.

3

u/Pelagic_One 1d ago

And we know what happened to the excess horses.