Ask A Genius 11 – The Future of Wages
Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
November 5, 2016
Scott: What about wages? Things have been thrown around like Universal Basic Income and Guaranteed Income.
Rick: That will be anathema in America because that’s socialism. There have been countries that have extensive ones. Nordic ones, Finland have substantial cushions for employment and maternity leave. People that pay high taxes and get a high degree of social services.
People that seem happy, except in the dead of winter. The Sun hasn’t come up. And everyone’s drunk all of the time. They have beautiful blonde people sex and make future beautiful alcoholics. You’re going to see the functional equivalent. The Idiocracy equivalent of Guaranteed Minimal Incomes, which is food and clothing proportionate to income.
They cost a quarter of what they did 100 years ago. Our improved technology made it cheaper to make food and clothing. That trend will probably continue as with the trend of falling hours and levels of employment because of technical improvement.
It’ll be easier to get by on little or no income, though it won’t be great. That’s always been a miserable thing. More and more people will be forced into the position of not being what was once considered fully employed, which is the Idiocracy situation – except people won’t be stupid. They’ll be smarter.
They’ll be freer to pursue their own interests and enlightenment, but I don’t know. It will be less miserable to be poor in the future in highly developed countries in contrast to the 1930s, where all you had was the movies and folding up newspapers to cover up the holes in the soles of your shoes and eating casserole to get by.
Author(s)
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing
Rick Rosner
American Television Writer
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Rick Rosner 