PEOPLE GET READY! THE FIGHT AGAINST A JOBLESS ECONOMY & A CITIZENLESS DEMOCRACY, McChesney & Nichols
Co-Authors Robert McChesney & John Nichols presentation talk on their significant new book, "PEOPLE GET READY: The Fight Against A Jobless Economy and A Citizenless Democracy" at the Town Hall Seattle, Washington on March 9, 2016.
Video, 1 hr. 25 mins. *Make a NOTE to view this compelling discussion of the situation we now face, based on the authors extensive two-year research on recent ongoing automation & technological advances in AI/Artificial Intelligence, robotics & driverless vehicles which will create 50 percent unemployment in the US in the next ten to thirty years and serious political & social challenges.
BOOK REVIEWS OF: "PEOPLE GET READY: The Fight Against A Jobless Economy and A Citizenless Democracy" 2016, by Robert McChesney and John Nichols.
*DEMOCRACY COLLABORATIVE: Humanity is on the verge of its darkest hour—or its greatest moment.
The consequence of THE TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION is about to hit hard: employment opportunities will collapse across the board as new technologies replace labor. Moribund capitalism and talk of market solutions won't answer this crisis. In this brave new world, the power of the people to demand a smarter and more humane economic and environmental policy will be diminished as fear trumps reason and surrender replaces hope.
Unless the tremendous benefits of technological progress are employed to serve the whole of humanity, rather than to enrich a handful of MONOPOLISTS, the SOCIAL CONTRACT will not be undermined—it will be broken. Americans cannot let corporate CEOs and billionaire campaign donors define their future. "PEOPLE GET READY: The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy" reveals that the choices made in the next few years will decide not just how technology is utilized and how economies are organized, but whether democracy will cease to function in any meaningful sense.
This book, by two of America's leading champions of Net Neutrality and efforts to close the digital divide, links an URGENT CALL FOR ACTION with an outline of what must be done TO MOVE FROM CRISIS TO HOPE. John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney argue that the United States needs A NEW ECONOMY in which the benefits of revolutionary technologies are shared by everyone, applied to effectively address environmental and social problems, and used to rejuvenate and extend democratic institutions and practices.
Traveling the world, meeting with top innovators in the tech industry, and moving from the cloistered confines of Google’s Mountain View complex in California to the city streets where fast-food workers march for a living wage, the authors chronicle the effects of the tech revolution on the ground and in real time. With fearless analysis and their typically clairvoyant predictive powers, they propose A BOLD STRATEGY FOR FIGHTING BACK AND DEMOCRATIZING OUR DIGITAL DESTINY—BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.
http://democracycollaborative.org/content/robert-mcchesney-and-john-nichols-present-people-get-ready-fight-against-jobless-economy-and
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*KIRKUS BOOK REVIEW: An energetic if grim discussion of INEQUALITY and the COMING ERA OF UNDER-UNEMPLOYMENT, viewed through the lens of the forgotten American progressive narrative. MCCHESNEY (Communications/Univ. of Illinois; Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy, 2013, etc.) and Nation Washington, D.C., correspondent NICHOLS bring clear urgency to this sprawling polemic, which encompasses politics, the cybereconomy, the decline of critical journalism, and historical movements beginning with America’s founding.
They describe the POST-2008 RECESSION ERA as a “MAELSTROM” of inequity, pointing toward worse times in the labor market: “the debate about where technological change is headed is already settled in the circles of those who intend to profit from that change.” This pessimism is linked to what the authors convincingly portray as the DECAY OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNANCE. Both parties, they argue, have pursued TAX AND TRADE POLICIES that have stealthily undermined blue-collar jobs and MIDDLE-CLASS STABILITY. “This is the means,” they write, “by which UNELECTED BANKERS AND BILLIONAIRES most effectively and steadily define the popular discourse.”
Such dire chapters contrast with A VIVIDLY RENDERED HISTORY of the development of a NOW-TATTERED “DEMOCRATIC INFRASTRUCTURE,” beginning with the state constitutional conventions of the late 18th century, more populist than what ultimately became the U.S. CONSTITUTION. The authors follow this thread through THE PROGRESSIVE ERA and Franklin Roosevelt’s NEW DEAL, portrayed as the precursor to an ambitious “SECOND BILL OF RIGHTS” forgotten at the dawn of the Cold War.
Similarly, a fascinating chapter documents A FORGOTTEN PROGRESSIVE COALITION poised to achieve great gains during the 1970s, only to be thwarted by the RECESSION and a cunning PRO-BUSINESS LOBBY: “There was a tenfold increase in corporate federal lobbying by the 1980s.” McChesney and Nichols conclude with a lengthy proposition for how the ranks of the underemployed could similarly regroup to protect workers’ interests. “Economic planning needs to be democratized and popularized and made accountable,” they write. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/robert-w-mcchesney/people-get-ready/
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*CANADIAN PROVINCE ONTARIO PLANS TO TRIAL UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME: 'As Ontario’s Economy Grows, The Government Remains Committed To Leaving No One Behind*, Independent, UK, March 7, 2016.
Ontario has announced it could soon be sending a monthly cheque to its residents as it plans to launch an experiment testing the basic income concept. While officials in the Canadian province are yet to release any specific details of the project – including how much will be given to residents who participate – the finance ministry has published a report confirming the government’s intention to roll out the experiment.
The general concept of basic income involves a government handing out a flat-rate income to every single citizen within a country, either by replacing existing benefits or to top them up. Proponents of the idea say it would save on welfare administration costs, reduce the poverty traps of traditional welfare states, be fair to people who have jobs, and give people more autonomy in general.
Read more:
-Universal income not as important as targeting needy, Stiglitz says
-Basic income may be needed to combat technology, AI expert says
-Labour to consider universal basic income policy, McDonnell says
In BRITAIN, the think tank Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce has proposed a system of universal income that would give a basic amount to fit, working-age people that it believes would still give a strong incentive to these people to work. *READ MORE: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ontario-to-pilot-a-universal-basic-income-experiment-a6916571.html
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by the Technological Revolution are being explored now mainly in Europe. Governments and the best thinkers and leaders need to really begin collaborative efforts to address this massive transformation before it's too late, as the authors say.
The US is a fiercely free market, neoliberal capitalistic country where the money ethic is deeply ingrained so alternatives will be a certain challenge, unless major innovation takes place. We have many bright people, tremendous resources and are the wealthiest nation on earth as Bernie often says, so there's reason to hope that feasible ideas and plans will develop..
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**WHAT WOULD SOCIETY LOOK LIKE WITH UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME? It may seem blasphemous to neoliberals, but a universal basic wage may be the only choice we have.*, by Laurie Penny, The New Statesman, April 15, 2016.
What would you do if somebody gave you a few hundred pounds each month to spend on whatever you wanted? Would you quit your job? Retrain and look for a better one? Spend more time with your kids? Get those vital repairs done on your house? Eat better food?
I’m not trying to taunt you. Asking anyone who has to work for a living to contemplate a society in which they have proper economic choices feels like asking a friend on a doctor-enforced diet to describe their favourite dessert. But it’s the question being raised by a growing chorus of thinkers and campaigners, from Silicon Valley businessmen to conservative philosophers, who believe that the answer to a snarled web of economic problems – wage inequality, automation and the gender pay gap, among others – is to institute an “unconditional basic income”.
>Basic income – the proposal to give a flat, non-means-tested payment to every citizen – is an old idea. It has been around for centuries, and for centuries its proponents have largely been dismissed as utopian, or insane, or both. This year, however, that insanity is gradually becoming a political reality. FINLAND is considering giving its citizens an unconditional stipend of €800 a month and the DUTCH CITY OF UTRECHT is carrying out a similar experiment. SWITZERLAND will hold a referendum on basic income in June.
>Campaigns to get the idea taken seriously are sprouting like mushrooms around the world. In the US, the tech start-up funder Y Combinator is earmarking money to test the theory. In GERMANY, a crowdfunding initiative called Mein Grundeinkommen (“my basic income”) to give a basic wage to as many people as possible has attracted over a quarter of a million contributors. *“Basic income is about power, about letting it go,” Michael Bohmeyer, a former entrepreneur who runs Mein Grundeinkommen, told me. “It’s about trusting people. It gives them the freedom to say no and to ask the question: how do I really want to live? Basic income is not a left-wing idea, or a right-wing one. It’s a humanistic idea. It strengthens human beings against the system and it gives them the freedom to rethink it."
That is the sort of freedom that sounds like blasphemy to conventional, liberal, “free-market” economists. In today’s understanding of the economic facts, individuals have the freedom to choose how they are exploited – but they cannot choose to escape exploitation, unless they are born wealthy. Basic income seeks to change that, not just because it is the right thing to do but because the coming labour crisis may soon leave world governments, whatever their orthodoxy, with with no other choice. “If we don’t disconnect work and income, humans will have to compete more and more with computers,” Bohmeyer explains. “This is a competition they will lose sooner than we think. The result will be mass unemployment,” he says, “and no money left for consumption.”
..The notion of an economic system based on trust and mutual aid rather than fear, shame and suffering still sounds like a fairy tale. But as more and more jobs are automated away, as mandatory wage labour collapses as a method of organising society, even the most conservative governments may find themselves with no other option. We have a choice, not just as a society, but as a species. We can choose to let fear and suspicion run our lives as we all struggle harder each year to survive in a collapsing economic system on a smoking planet. Or we can choose to trust each other enough that everyone can share in the rewards of technology. It is blasphemous, unthinkable – but it may also be the only practical choice we have.~ Read More: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/04/15/what-would-society-look-universal-basic-income
*FINLAND is planning to provide 800 euros per month to all citizens as a new form of benefit called national basic income. The Finnish government is planning to present the plan by November 2016. (Photo: Flickr/ Euro Note Currency)
