"Yang ran on the "freedom dividend"-his proposal for a universal basic income of $1,000 a month for every American. Many wrote him off as a futuristic Chicken Little because of his predictions of mass job loss driven by automation and AI. That part of his message, at least, is now mainstream. According to a recent MIT study, nearly 12 percent of tasks in the American labor market-representing $1.2 trillion in wages-could be performed by AI today."
"But few people, and even fewer politicians, seem to be talking about UBI. Maybe there are better solutions, more effective policies-but no one is talking much about them, either. Did Yang come a few years too early-or did he just have the wrong idea? Yang was a political outsider who had never run in an election before, yet with his UBI platform and bro-friendly delivery, he earned a spot in the presidential debates."
""My design was to raise the alarm around AI and mainstream universal basic income." People stop him, Yang told me, "on the street, every day" to say: "You were right on AI, and we need universal basic income." Or they tell him, "You were right. Run again.""
Andrew Yang’s 2019 campaign promoted a $1,000-per-month universal basic income called the "freedom dividend." Yang warned of mass job loss from automation and AI, a concern that recent research now echoes. An MIT study estimates nearly 12 percent of U.S. labor-market tasks—about $1.2 trillion in wages—could be performed by AI today. A Senate committee warned the U.S. could lose nearly 100 million jobs to AI and automation within a decade. Technological change is outpacing government, companies, and workers, while public and political debate about universal basic income remains limited despite mounting displacement risks.
Read at The Atlantic
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]