The nation today is operating at a record low unemployment level. We are near what economists call full employment. And, as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show, employment is growing faster in industrial domains than in health care and in “professional and technical services.” The talk in business circles these days is about the shortage of skilled labor, and about the availability—or willingness—of enough people to fill future job openings.
But the talk amongst pundits and Silicon Valley’s self-reverential futurists is quite different. They claim that the labor-savings, about to come from algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI), automation and robots, will destroy so many jobs that unemployment will radically, permanently increase.
In response, this will require, the proponents argue, the creation of a universal basic income, not just for the temporarily unemployed, but for those doomed to be never-again-employable. We’ve seen this movie more than once.
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Mark P. Mills is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a faculty fellow at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering. In 2016, he was named “Energy Writer of the Year” by the American Energy Society. Follow him on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in 360 Review