Robots Are Coming! Hurry Up and Steal!

Over at Investor's Business Daily is an editorial arguing against a British proposal to tax major technology companies in order to fund welfare for everyone, aka "Universal Basic Income." Insofar as their argument goes, they are on the right track, economically, but some mention of the right of someone to keep his own earnings would have been helpful. Why? Because this idea is even more contemptible than it is absurd. You may have to ponder that point, though, because the welfare state has normalized massive theft from the productive for decades.

In any event, the editorial provides the following warning just a wee bit too late:

Yet, this is how the far-left thinks. Money is magic. All you have to do is imagine a need, and you can take whatever you want from producers to satisfy that need. And don't worry: Like all bad ideas, this one will jump the pond and soon be discussed by the economically illiterate far-left in the U.S. as an "answer" to our welfare problems.

This idea has actually already "jumped the pond." Admittedly, he is a fringe candidate, but one Andrew Yang has already thrown his hat into the 2020 Democrat presidential ring on a platform of technophobic demagoguery cum goodies-for-all:

Robots will make life easier, but not to the point we can quit working altogether. (Photo by Franck Veschi on Unsplash)

That candidate is Andrew Yang, a well-connected New York businessman who is mounting a longer-than-long-shot bid for the White House. Mr. Yang, a former tech executive who started the nonprofit organization Venture for America, believes that automation and advanced artificial intelligence will soon make millions of jobs obsolete -- yours, mine, those of our accountants and radiologists and grocery store cashiers. He says America needs to take radical steps to prevent Great Depression-level unemployment and a total societal meltdown, including handing out trillions of dollars in cash. [link omitted]

This may be, as IBD put it, "an absurd idea" (just like robots wiping out all our jobs), but it has indeed arrived. Yang himself may be a long-shot, but I am sure his stronger competitors will seriously consider whether his idea -- like your money -- is worth stealing.

-- CAV