It’s true that America is in a downward spiral of selfish greed and corruption but we will recover. Americans will persevere. Democracy will survive and advance.
The entire world is moving through a major inflection point of history caused by advancing automation approaching the singularity — the point in time that our machines become better workers than humans. Welcome to the end of labor capitalism. The solution is a UBI (Universal Basic Income).
Like the rise of modern democracy, the end of slavery, and voting rights for all citizens, big social changes are chaotic, messy, and slow. This is one of the largest social changes in the history of man and it will be messy, but we will get through it. This change, however, comes with a time limit. Advancing automation will force it to happen and happen soon and fast.
Capitalism doesn’t work like it used to and it will never work that way again. Rents are replacing wages, and with it, the fruits of our society are being stripped from the working man and given to the 1%. The working man sees the wealth of society going to the cities, to the rich, to the elites and they are upset. They want their jobs back — they want the power of a good wage back. Trump is their revolution. It was a bad choice, just as throwing rock through a window is a bad choice, but sometimes, a statement needs to be made.
The good paying jobs aren’t coming back. No matter how much Trump tells the working man their power will return, it won’t return through labor, because labor income is dying. Welcome to the end of “working” for a living.
We must share the investment wealth of our economy, and not allow the 1% to hoard it. The 1% are not evil, they are just making wise investments that are critically important for the continued operation of our economy and society. But capitalism, is failing us by grossly overpaying investors for their work. We don’t need to pay anyone a billion dollars to make them a good investor. Even a million dollars is overpay. We can pay them the same level of income everyone else gets for good work, and we will still have plenty of talented people willing to step up and do the work.
If our society fails to care for everyone, then the society will fail. People will not support a society that helps others but ignores their needs. Our society is failing, because it’s failing to care for everyone. The root cause of that failure, is a deep rooted faith in the power of capitalism to care for everyone. That faith comes from 100’s of years of experience with labor capitalism. Under labor capitalism, the hard working man is well rewarded. But labor capitalism is dying, and it’s being replaced by the rise of wall street, and investment capitalism. This shift is supported by the rich who benefit, but it’s not controlled by them. It was not created by them. It was created by the rise of technology and automation that devalues labor, as it inflates the value of non-labor economic resources, like land, and oil, and manmade resources, like machines, and corporations.
This is an old problem we have been fighting for over 100 years. It’s why we needed to create these “moral universals” like roads, and public schools, welfare, and a progressive income tax to survive the economic damage created by the shift from farm labor, to factory labor. Now we must cope with the end of labor income all together as wages continue their freefall. There is not new class of labor to catch us this time. Wages have been in freefall for 40 years and nothing is stepping up to replace it.
America failed to cope with this in the 80’s when the nation choose to put its faith in capitalism and trickle down economics. The rise of Reagan’s neoliberalism was the mistake that sent American into this downward spiral.
The rest of the developed world has chosen wiser by offering universal health care and stronger welfare programs, but we all must cope with the fact that an endless march of new free government services is not the correct path forward. We choose free services because we have a long misguided belief that a man must work for his money. This work ethic foundation is fine for labor capitalism. But it must evolve. We must understand that our fair share of the economic wealth of our society, can not be defined by the value of our labor or the wealth of our parents. Our fair share of the wealth, starts with a UBI — our citizens right to a fair share — and grows with our ability to contribute useful labor. It can no longer be defined by our labor value alone. Capitalism doesn’t value human labor enough to operate a society on this idea any longer.
The path out of our downward spiral of growing inequality is to share the expanding investment wealth of our economy as a UBI. Once enough people are able to understand this, and implements this, the downward spiral will end, and a new age will begin.
