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From: tim@isrnix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Robots and Employment
Message-ID: <259@isrnix.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 1-Jul-83 00:44:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: isrnix.259
Posted: Fri Jul  1 00:44:41 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 2-Jul-83 06:48:11 EDT
References: utcsstat.731
Lines: 45

I agree with Laura that robots and automation COULD be a wonderfully
liberating development for humanity.  However that is going to involve
incredible changes in the system of work,production, and income 
distribution that we have at present.  So far those changes don't seem
to be coming- we are so stuck in the "Protestant Work Ethic" mentality
that grants for even very productive things like scientific research
are getting axed on the grounds we can't afford it. And any idea of
a Negative Income Tax or some such-we've got to get those cheaters off
the welfare rolls! I do not think our current system of welfare is
fair and I agree that it should be changed--because it is such a
hodge-podge of this program and that program it is fraught with
contradictions-one person could be just above the income line to
receive benefits and thus gets absolutely nothing. On the other hand
somebody else may be below that line and get subsidized housing,food
stamps,etc,etc,etc all of which add up to much more income than the
person just over the income line.  If Reagan truly wanted to reform
Welfare why didn't he propose a Negative Income tax-just say you make
so many $$$ you get so many $$$-and get rid of the current morass of
umpteen programs which result in the inequity I described above.
The reason he won't propose such a thing is because conservatives would
howl about a "Guaranteed Income" and how terrible that is. That is how
far we are from giving people grants to 1)live with minimal food,
clothing and shelter OR 2)for their own creativity.  Scientific American
last October had an interesting issue focussing on processes of 
automation-how they work, their results and their history.  One interesting
point was that made by Wassily Leontief, one of the developers of 
input-output analysis who pointed out that the work week went steadily down
from 60-70 hours a week to about 40 hours a week in 1933.  But since that
time the work week has scarcely changed at all! Why should some people
work 40 hours or more a week when there's other people who can't find
work at all? It shows how stuck we are in a certain mode of thinking
that we cannot even cut down the work week let alone make other changes
in the way we perform or allocate jobs.  The best book I have ever read
on the likely effects of automation in this society as it is presently
constituted is "Player Piano" by Kurt Vonnegut.  Everything has become so
automated that even the engineers who originally designed the system are
being put out of work by computers to figure out their jobs for them.
This leaves an incredibly wealthy leisure class elite that owns all this
prodigiously productive capital and two other strata of society-
to find work everybody else either joins the Army or the "Reeks and Wrecks"
The "Reeks and Wrecks" are people who stand in the middle of the road leaning
on shovels all day pretending to be busy. 
But at least they work 40 hours a week!
     Tim Sevener
     decvax!pur-ee!iuvax!isrnix!tim