Have you ever been asked what the Humanities are good for?

[JDPriestly]

35. Look at the history of the US from the end of slavery to the Great

Depression.

That technological revolution took a long time, and we don't even think of it as a technological revolution. But it was.

My mother rode horses and walked to her country school in the 1920s. She plowed fields with her feet holding the top of the plow in her hands. The industrial revolution had begun long before she was born, and it continued during her lifetime.

I remember the old hand wringer washers. We hung ALL of our laundry out to dry. It smelled sweet and the cotton was stiff when you brought it in to iron it. Ironing was a big job.

Industry has been moving toward automation for a long, long time.

It is going to happen. I have heard about factories in China being closed and robot factories in Europe and the US being opened in their place. That is happening. It has been announced.

The FDR era brought changes that eased the already occurring movement of masses of people from farming into industrial work and living in cities. People who remain in rural America tend to be politically conservative because they did not join that movement, that physical movement from farm to city, from agricultural work to industrial work. Before Social Security, seniors lived with their children and lived from the production and the income from their farms (or businesses). Social Security and industry pensions made it possible for seniors to survive without the farm income and production. It was a necessary social program to meet the needs of the time.

Now we are facing another huge economic revolution, moving into an era in which technology will result in big social changes. Bernie's ideas are about how we can survive as a society while dealing with a social transformation which is occurring, which we cannot stop, and which requires us to change. Corporations can produce a lot of goods with very little human labor. That trend will become commonplace. Labor costs that are incorporated into the price of goods will diminish. What will happen to the concept of "earning your living"?

That is the question we have to answer. How do we manage a service economy? How do people get the means to pay for what they need in an economy in which work is scarce?

We will need a very different approach to economics.

This is especially true because we will face enormous environmental challenges and if our human population continues to grow as it is, one of them will be quite simply overcrowding in habitable areas.

So we need new thinking to deal with our new economic and social reality.

FDR responded wisely to the changes he saw in his time. We need Bernie because he is the one politician now who is viscerally aware that this is a time of change and, yes, revolution.

Revolution does not come about because people decide to revolt (in my opinion). Revolution comes about because the economic and social reality demands change. Revolution is peaceful when the majority and the leadership realize that the status quo cannot work in the future. Revolution is violent when the majority of the people and the leaders balk, blind themselves and refuse to acknowledge the changing reality.

Political and social revolution is not a matter of choice. It is a necessary response to changes in our economy and society.