Capitalism is not sustainable over the long term.

[HughBeaumont]

65. Capitalism is great at creating wealth. It's absolutely shit-horrible in DISTRIBUTING that wealth.

It's problematic that people on a Democratic board are thinking that an individual solution is going to solve a long-standing and complex STRUCTURAL economic problem. This isn't the same as the Industrial Revolution in that when technology improved, there was still a large supply of labor that migrated to each improvement. And it's not only automation, it's lack of economic dynamism combined with automation. Far different animal than the 20th century industrialization, where labor wasn't cancelled out of the picture completely and had time (and more importantly, money) to adapt and learn a new profession or the changes within their own.

A 50 year old laid-off worker can theoretically go into debt and get a degree/cert for 1-2 years. Problem is, they're still 50 and they have an employment gap. Those are two wet carpet mountains they cannot overcome. Corporate America has changed the game; their hiring practices have become ever more selective (as has their resume screening process), technology is moving far too fast for the already-shopworn human to catch up with and there aren't as many new occupations/businesses cropping up. Since 2000, we're merely making existing products better rather than creating game-changers.

With layoffs, ageism and permanent closure to consumption, the displaced worker's participation in Capitalism stops; thereby gumming up the works as American Capitalism demands consumption. With something like a UBI (and a drastic lowering of the retirement age), consumption and Capitalism doesn't have to stop.

The only thing mass automation is going to free up is a person's ability to earn income. And no, we're not all going to "become coders". Unless you do this for fun and really, really love STEM, you're not going to compete with the people who would do this even if they didn't get paid to.