Prepare for Change

http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/30/14128870/foxconn-robots-automation-apple-iphone-china-manufacturing "The first phase of Foxconn’s automation plans involve replacing the work that is either dangerous or involves repetitious labor humans are unwilling to do. The second phase involves improving efficiency by streamlining production lines to reduce the number of excess robots in use. The third and final phase involves automating entire factories, “with only a minimal number of workers assigned for production, logistics, testing, and inspection processes,” according to Jia-peng. The slow and steady march of manufacturing automation has been in place at Foxconn for years. The company said last year that it had set a benchmark of 30 percent automation at its Chinese factories by 2020 . The company can now produce around 10,000 Foxbots a year, Jia-peng says, all of which can be used to replace human labor. In March, Foxconn said it had automated away 60,000 jobs at on...

http://financeography.com/millennial-home-ownership-shrinks-as-student-debt-grows/ "Between 2005 and 2015, those under 30 went from owning their home at about a 34.5% rate down to 27.7%. Over the same decade, we went from owing $350 billion in student loans to over $1.3 trillion by the end of the first half of 2016. It’s likely that graduates coming out of school with a significant amount of debt are putting on buying homes out of necessity, at least for several years after they are done with college." My generation used to brag that we needed to make sure that the next generation was better off than us, just as our parents had done for us.  Phht.  What a joke.  We let the 1% soak up all the money and left you all in horrible debt.  I apologize.  And I hope this can be reversed somehow.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/38675-stop-fixating-on-economic-growth-let-s-talk-about-quality-of-life "Therefore, as we try to reform the Democratic strategy, it's necessary, as Herbert Marcuse once said, to promote a values transformation, away from the cruel, competitive performances and unrestrained expectations of consumer capitalism and toward a simpler, less hurried, more cooperative way of life, where work sharing is at least as important a strategy to reduce unemployment as federal jobs programs. It's necessary to understand that the values of affluenza , about which I have written at length , spur endless competition for scarce resources, and result in the overwork Bernie Sanders criticizes, as well as our declining health, our lack of social purpose, our lack of enough leisure time to be good, informed citizens and volunteer in our communities, and a host of other ills. To begin, we need to make the case that we need a new measure of well-bei...

http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-go-grocery-store-future-photos-video-2016-12 "The idea is that Amazon's machine-learning technology can automatically identify when a product is added to your cart, so you don't have to do it yourself. When you leave the store, Amazon automatically charges your Amazon account." We keep making jobs obsolete but still haven't planned what to do with employment.  Universal Basic Income would go a long way toward fixing that. When I was a kid the coming robots would make for more leisure time for all workers, while their salary supposedly stayed the same.  Instead, corporations just pocket the savings and fire the workers.  That is not a long-term solution for anything, including corporate profits, which require someone with an income to buy their products or services.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/23/503129818/study-finds-students-have-dismaying-inability-to-tell-fake-news-from-real "Middle school, high school and college students in 12 states were asked to evaluate the information presented in tweets, comments and articles. More than 7,800 student responses were collected. In exercise after exercise, the researchers were 'shocked' — their word, not ours — by how many students failed to effectively evaluate the credibility of that information. The students displayed a 'stunning and dismaying consistency' in their responses, the researchers wrote, getting duped again and again. They weren't looking for high-level analysis of data but just a 'reasonable bar' of, for instance, telling fake accounts from real ones, activist groups from neutral sources and ads from articles." So what happens when the news is no longer dependent on fact?  What happens to our society when we believ...

http://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/11/14/13513066/universal-basic-income-crowdfund "Perhaps the most transformative effect of basic income I’ve personally experienced is the power it gives in any negotiation. For many people, this will be experienced as the power to refuse to work for insufficiently low wages ( potentially nullifying the need for minimum wage laws ), or unacceptable terms of any kind, be it work conditions, hours, benefits, etc. For freelancers like me, it means asking for what I’m worth, and also being able to choose to work for free on anything I consider important enough. When I didn’t have a basic income, I’d accept a writing assignment for $50 even if it took me an entire week to research and write, because $50 is better than $0. If someone wanted to publish something I’d already written, I’d worry about asking for any compensation in case asking meant not only not getting paid but not getting republished. I don’t think I’m alone in these w...

http://fortune.com/2016/11/06/elon-musk-universal-basic-income/ "Musk’s Tesla Motors is leading the way to self-driving cars, while also pushing factories to new levels of automation . And he thinks that workers displaced by those and other forms of automation will need help permanently, and on a broad scale. 'I think that there’s a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation,'  Musk said. 'I’m not sure what else one would do.' The Universal Basic Income concept has gained broad traction in recent years, particularly in the tech community. The idea is that all citizens would receive a small regular stipend—enough to cover basic housing and food needs, but little more." This is gaining traction but is still years away.  We also need to switch to single payer insurance like the rest of the world, and cheaper higher education.  Maybe if we didn't spend as much as the rest of the world on ...