Workforce Automation Endgame

Technology has been progressively automating more and more of the work. Whether it is creative work (sidenote: Creative work was thought to be immune from automation. But GenAI has changed that!) or mundane repetitive work, technology-driven automation is eating the world.

One of the ways workers participate in wealth creation is by getting paid for the work they do. This is one of the ways wealth has been distributed. Back in the 1960s, the average factory worker in the US could afford to buy a house and provide for their family. However, over time, the ruling class at the top has been taking a larger share of the pie. Now, we are in a situation where the average worker can barely afford to buy a house (and at the lowest end of the income spectrum, they can barely afford to even rent).

As more of the work is automated, fewer workers are needed to produce the same amount of goods and services. This means that the ruling class at the top gets to take an even larger share of the pie. In other words, the workers do not benefit from technology-driven productivity gains (sidenote: At least not as much as the few people at the top benefit from productivity gains. i.e. this makes wealth inequality even worse!) .

Now let’s imagine a world where all work is automated. That appears to be the endgame from the ruling class’ perspective. What will happen then? Well, the ruling class will be able to keep all of the profits, and the workers will not get to share in the wealth creation.

Possible Solutions

A few possible solutions I have come across on the internet (not all of them are mutually exclusive):

1. Universal Basic Income (UBI)

Universal Basic Income (UBI) where the government gives everyone a basic income, regardless of their work.

In this solution, the ruling class will have the vast majority of the wealth, whereas everyone else will have a very similar amount of wealth (i.e. whatever UBI provides)! This essentially means pushing the current upper-middle and middle class into the lowest level of wealth and bucketing everyone in the same lowest income level.

So instead of lifting the lowest economic class to the higher classes (sidenote: That's how it should be, at least!) , this does the opposite!

2. Higher taxes on the ruling class

The idea is that government takes a larger share of the wealth from the ruling class, and re-distributes it to the general population. However, because of the incentive structure (and many other factors), the government is not always best positioned to execute this. There are countless examples of government mismanagement of funds.

This solution also suffers from the same problem as the UBI solution of not lifting the lowest economic class to the higher classes, and instead bucketing everyone in the same lower economic class.

3. The pie will get larger

One idea is that with advancements in technology, the pie becomes larger, and therefore it is not a zero-sum game. Would this be true when most if not all work gets automated though?

Pie getting larger may (or may not) help slightly in the long run, but it is definitely not a solution in the short/medium term!

So what can we do?

I am not sure what the solution is! I am not sure if there is a solution that is (1) fair to everyone, and (2) sustainable! (sidenote: These are some of the tradeoffs we may have to make!)

What I do know is that we, as the worker class, should be up pushing for a solution to this with enough intensity, urgency, and relentlessness. Otherwise, it will be too little too late!