Democratic candidate for U.S. President, Andrew Yang, proposes sending every person over 18 years of age a government check for $1000 each month. Why? Human beings need food, shelter, and clothing every month. Yet, automation is expected to eliminate more and more of the ways people now earn the funds needed to provide these necessities, while corporations accumulate greater wealth by replacing employees with machines.
Already, Yang notes, big tech companies, such as Facebook, Amazon, and Google, grow rich by packaging and selling the private information millions and billions of individuals supply free of charge.
Technological changes require changes in other sectors of human life. When work requires manipulating information on a computer, the physical strength of men is unnecessary. Childcare is still necessary, but how it is provided and by whom need not be confined to unpaid natural mothers.
Not only childcare, but $1000-a-month paychecks also would provide compensation for those whose time creates an enjoyable community life: the shoppers and clerks who get to know each other, community leaders who organize groups and boycotts to solve problems, gardeners who share crops with neighbors and plant flowers to beautify walking paths, visitors who watch sports with the homebound, families who attend religious services together, friends and relatives who celebrate birthdays with homemade cakes, cards, and presents, and those who write "Thank you" notes.
Those dissatisfied with $1000 a month will innovate. Designs can be sleeker. Drugs can cure more. Experts can develop more effective teaching methods. Constitutions, standards, and collective agreements can harness, not only the temporary impulses of a mob, but also the independent actions of robots and AI. Dives can go deeper. Spacecraft can go farther. Games can be more fun.
$1000 a month is a small price to pay for a better world.
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