2018 TheWaronNormalPeopleTheTruthAbo
- (Yang, 2018) ⇒ Andrew Yang. (2018). “The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income is Our Future.” Hachette.
Subject Headings: Technological Unemployment, Universal Basic Income, Venture For America, National Universal Basic Income, Reshaping Humanity to Meet Markets Demands, Human Capitalism, American Labor Market, Normal American.
Notes
- It mentions research into the possible connection between video game playing and unemployment - likely (Aguiar et al., 2017)
Cited By
2020
- (Wikipedia, 2020) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_on_Normal_People Retrieved:2020-10-13.
- The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future is a 2018 book written by Andrew Yang, an American entrepreneur and Venture for America founder, who would later run as a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate on policy strategies discussed in the book. It was published by Hachette Books in the United States on April 3, 2018. A paperback edition was released on April 2, 2019. Yang narrated an audiobook version released on YouTube in September 2018.
Focusing on domestic issues, the book discusses technological change, automation, job displacement, the U.S. economy, and what Yang describes as the need for a universal basic income (UBI). Yang argues that "as technology continues to make many jobs obsolete, the government must take concrete steps to ensure economic stability for residents of the United States," including the provision of a UBI, which is one of three central policies of Yang's 2020 presidential campaign.
- The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future is a 2018 book written by Andrew Yang, an American entrepreneur and Venture for America founder, who would later run as a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate on policy strategies discussed in the book. It was published by Hachette Books in the United States on April 3, 2018. A paperback edition was released on April 2, 2019. Yang narrated an audiobook version released on YouTube in September 2018.
2019
- (Hoynes & Rothstein, 2019) ⇒ Hilary Hoynes, and Jesse Rothstein. (2019). “https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/Hoynes-Rothstein-annurev-economics-080218-030237.pdf Universal Basic Income in the United States and Advanced Countries].” Annual Review of Economics 11
- QUOTE: ... Universal basic income (UBI) proposals are getting a lot of attention in high-income countries. A wide range of proponents, from Charles Murray, a political scientist and scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, to Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union, have backed the idea. We count six recent, high-profile trade books — including those by Murray and Stern — reguing for various forms of UBI as solutions to the problems faced by first-world economies (Murray 2016, Stern 2016, Van Parijs & Vanderborght 2017, Hughes 2018, Lowrey 2018, Yang 2018). Using a metric of mentions in New York Times articles, “universal basic income” appears 30 times in 2017 and nearly as many in the first six months of 2018. The termn ever appeared before 2014; even the more expansive search term of “basic income” averaged only two uses per year from 1945 to 2014 …
Quotes
INTRODUCTION: THE GREAT DISPLACEMENT PART ONE: WHAT’S HAPPENING TO JOBS
…
There's no malice in it. The market rewards business leaders for making things more efficient. Efficiency doesn’t love normal people. …
…
The future without jobs will come to resemble either the cultivated benevolence of Star Trek or the desperate scramble for resources of Mad Max.
…
1. My Journey
…
2. How We Got Here
…
3. Who Is Normal in America
…
The racial statistics make my head and heart hurt. There are also consistent differences between men and women.
Women-led households have 12 percent less wealth than male-led households, and women on average make 20 percent less than men. This is also painful. However, women are pulling ahead of men on the education front—much more on this later.
We tend to use the stock market’s performance as a shorthand indicator of national well-being. However, the median level of stock market investment is close to zero. Only 52 percent of Americans own any stock through a stock mutual fund or a self-directed 401(k) or IRA, and the bottom 80 percent of Americans own only 8 percent of all stocks. Yes, the top 20 percent own 92 percent of stock market holdings. This means that the average American benefits minimally from a rising stock market beyond the wealth effect, which is that the rich people around them spend more money and the economy is more buoyant.
So what’s normal? The normal American did not graduate from college and doesn’t have an associate’s degree. He or she perhaps attended college for one year or graduated from high school. She or he has a net worth of approximately $36K — about $6K excluding home and vehicle equity — and lives paycheck to paycheck. She or he has less than $500 in flexible savings and minimal assets invested in the stock market. These are median statistics, with 50 percent of Americans below these levels.
If you’re reading this, this probably doesn’t describe your life or those of your friends and family. It may be shocking to you that this is statistically totally normal. It’s only somewhat less surprising to me because of my travel and work these past years. When jobs start to disappear in large numbers due to technological advances, the normal American won’t have much to fall back on.
…
4. What We Do for a Living
…
5. Factory Workers and Truck Drivers
…
6. White-Collar Jobs Will Disappear, Too
…
7. On Humanity and Work
…
There’s a big distinction between humans as humans and humans as workers. The former are indispensable. The latter may not be.
…
I’ve heard women say, “Why don’t men just adapt and take on more ‘feminine’ roles?” That’s a lot easier said than done, and I’m not convinced asking people to go against type because the market demands it is the right response. The market doesn’t care what’s best for us — trying to reshape humanity to meet its demands may not be the answer.
…
Whether work is good for humans depends a bit on your point of view. We don’t like it and we’re almost certainly getting too much of it. But we don’t know what to do with ourselves without it. Oscar Wilde wrote, “Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.” Unfortunately that may describe the vast majority of us.
The challenge we must overcome is that humans need work more than work needs us.
8. The Usual Objections
…
The test is not “Will there be new jobs we haven’t predicted yet that appear?” Of course there will be. The real test is “Will there be millions of new jobs for middle-aged people with low skills and levels of education near the places they currently reside?”
…
In reality, studies have shown that retraining programs, as currently practiced, tend to show few, if any benefits.
…
... The problem is that the unemployment rate is defined as how many people in the labor force are looking for a job but cannot find one. It does not consider people who drop out of the workforce for any reason, including disability or simply giving up trying to find a job. …
…
... The unemployment rate also doesn’t take into account people who are underemployed—that is, if a college graduate takes a job as a barista or other role that doesn’t require a degree. …
…
... The proportion of Americans who are no longer in the workforce and have stopped looking for work is at a multi-decade high. There are presently a record 95 million working-age Americans, a full 37 percent of adults, who are out of the workforce. In 2000, there were only 70 million. The change can be explained in part by demographics — higher numbers of students and retirees — but there are still 5 million Americans out of the workforce who would like a job right now that aren’t considered in the unemployment rate. …
…
PART TWO: WHAT’S HAPPENING TO US
9. Life in the Bubble
…
Life in the Bubble
…
... Intelligence and character aren’t the same things at all. Pretending that they are will lead us to ruin. …
…
10. Mindsets of Scarcity and Abundance
…
11. Geography Is Destiny
Where Jobs Disappear
When jobs leave a city or region, things go downhill pretty fast.
…
In places where jobs disappear, society falls apart. The public sector and civic institutions are poorly equipped to do much about it. When a community truly disintegrates, knitting it back together becomes a herculean, perhaps impossible task. Virtue, trust, and cohesion—the stuff of civilization—are difficult to restore. If anything, it’s striking how public corruption seems to often arrive hand-in-hand with economic hardship.
…
Change can be a Four Letter Word
…
12. Men, Women, and Children
…
13. The Permanent Shadow Class: What Displacement Looks Like
…
14. Video Games and the (Male) Meaning of Life
…
That said, I still understand and appreciate video games on a visceral level. I even imagine that I could get into them again. They speak to a primal set of basic impulses — to world creating, skill building, achievement, violence, leadership, teamwork, speed, efficiency, status, decision making, and accomplishment. They fall into a whole suite of things that appeal to young men in particular—to me the list would go something like gaming, the stock market, fantasy sports, gambling, basketball, science fiction/geek movies, and cryptocurrencies, most of which involve a blend of numbers and optimization. It’s a need for mastery, progress, competition, and risk.
As of last year, 22 percent of men between the ages of 21 and 30 with less than a bachelor’s degree reported not working at all in the previous year—up from only 9.5 percent in 2000. And there’s evidence that video games are a big reason why. According to a recent study based on the Census Bureau’s time-use surveys, young men without college degrees have replaced 75 percent of the time they used to spend working with time on the computer, mostly playing video games. From 2004 to 2007, young, unemployed men without college degrees were spending 3.4 hours per week playing video games. By 2011 to 2014, the average time spent per week had more than doubled to 8.6 hours.
The economists conducting the study, led by the University of Chicago’s Erik Hurst, strained to figure out whether men who were already detached were playing video games to pass the time, or whether video games were actually causing them to drop out. Evidence pointed to the latter. Their research indicated that improved technological entertainment options, primarily video games, are responsible for between 20 and 33 percent of reduced work hours. The trends are different for women, who have not seen the same increase in gaming at the expense of work hours and are more likely to return to school when out of work. For many men, however, games have gotten so good that they have made dropping out of work a more appealing option.
“When I play a game, I know if I have a few hours I will be rewarded,” said one 22-year-old who lives with his parents in Silver Spring, Maryland. “With a job, it’s always been up in the air with the amount of work I put in and the reward.” Jacob Barry, a 21-year-old in Michigan, finds it easier to get excited about playing games than his part-time job making sandwiches at a local Jimmy John’s, particularly given the sense of community he finds online. He plays up to 40 hours a week, the equivalent of a full-time job.
How exactly are these game-playing men getting by? They live with their parents. In 2000, just 35 percent of lower-skilled young men lived with family. Now, more than 50 percent of lower-skilled young men live with their parents, and as many as 67 percent of those who are unemployed do so. More U.S. men aged 18–34 are now living with their parents than with romantic partners, according to the Pew Research Center.
Video games function as extremely inexpensive entertainment on a time-use basis. After one invests in a console or computer, the marginal cost is near zero. Gamers can log hundreds or thousands of hours for the cost of one game or rental subscription. Time spent gaming is what’s known in economic terms as
…
15. The Shape We’re in/Disintegration
…
... Time only flows in one direction, and progress is a good thing as long as its benefits are shared. …
…
PART THREE: SOLUTIONS AND HUMAN CAPITALISM
16. The Freedom Dividend
At this point, you may be hanging your head, thinking, “Wow, this guy’s view of the future is bleak.” One friend who read early pages said to me, “Reading this feels like I’m getting punched in the face repeatedly.” Another said, “You should change the title to We’re Fucked.”
There are potential solutions to these problems. Things will certainly be very difficult in the years ahead as jobs disappear. But there are things we can do that will make things dramatically better. They will require imagination, will, confidence, empathy, and a can-do spirit.
Peter Frase, author of Four Futures, points out that work encompasses three things: the means by which the economy produces goods and services, the means by which people earn income, and an activity that lends meaning or purpose to many people’s lives. We should tackle these one at a time, with the easiest one first. In a future without jobs, people will need to be able to provide for themselves and their basic needs. Eventually, the government will need to intervene in order to prevent widespread squalor, despair, and violence. The sooner the government acts, the more high-functioning our society will be.
The first major change would be to implement a universal basic income (UBI), which I would call the “Freedom Dividend.” The United States should provide an annual income of $12,000 for each American aged 18–64, with the amount indexed to increase with inflation. It would require a constitutional supermajority to modify or amend. The Freedom Dividend would replace the vast majority of existing welfare programs. This plan was proposed by Andy Stern, the former head of the largest labor union in the country, in his book Raising the Floor. The poverty line is currently $11,770. We would essentially be bringing all Americans to the poverty line and alleviate gross poverty.
A universal basic income is a version of Social Security where all citizens receive a set amount of money per month independent of their work status or income. Everyone from a hedge fund billionaire in New York to an impoverished single mom in West Virginia would receive a monthly check of $1,000. If someone is working as a waitress or construction worker making $18,000, he or she would essentially be making $30,000. UBI eliminates the disincentive to work that most people find troubling about traditional welfare programs — if you work you could actually start saving and get ahead. With the growing threat of automation, the concept has gained renewed attention, with trials being run in Oakland, Canada, and Finland as well as in India and other parts of the developing world.
…
The cost of $1.3 trillion seems like an awful lot. For reference, the federal budget is about $4 trillion and the entire U.S. economy about $19 trillion. But there are myriad ways to pay for it. The most sensible way to pay for it in my view would be with a value-added tax (VAT)—a consumption tax—that would generate income from the people and businesses that benefit from society the most.
Here’s the challenge: We need to extract more of the value from automation in order to pay for public goods and support displaced workers. But it turns out that “automation” and “robots” are very tricky things to identify or tax. If a CVS replaces a cashier with self-checkout and an iPad, is that considered automation? Or if a bank replaces 200 call center workers with a software program, what do they pay? Assuming appropriate staffing levels is impossible. Plus, you actually don’t want to tax automation too heavily, because you don’t want to discourage it too much—you need the value it’s creating to pay for things.
Another thing to keep in mind—technology companies are excellent at avoiding taxes. Apple, for example, has $230 billion in overseas earnings it’s holding abroad to avoid paying taxes. Microsoft has $124 billion and Google has $60 billion. Our current system of taxation will have a hard time harvesting the gains of automation from both the giant tech companies that will be among the biggest winners as well as from the small tech companies, which often aren’t hugely profitable. Even taxing human income will become increasingly problematic as more and more work gets done by machines and software—hence Gates’s suggestion that we should start taxing robots.
The best way to ensure public gains from the automation wave would be a VAT so that people and companies just pay the tax when they buy things or employ services. For businesses, it gets baked into the cost of production at every level. It makes it much harder for large companies, which are experts at reducing their taxes, to benefit from the American infrastructure and citizenry without paying into it. The biggest companies, like Amazon, would pay the most into the system because a VAT gets paid based on volume, not profits. It also would make it so that we’d all root for progress — the mechanic in Appalachia would feel like he’s getting a stake every time someone gets rich.
Out of 193 countries, 160 already have a VAT or goods and services tax, including all developed countries except the United States. The average VAT in Europe is 20 percent. It is well developed and its efficacy has been established. If we adopted a VAT at half the average European level, we could pay for a universal basic income for all American adults.
A VAT would result in slightly higher prices. But technological advancement would continue to drive down the cost of most things. And with the backdrop of a universal basic income of $12,000, the only way a VAT of 10 percent makes you worse off is if you consume more than $120,000 in goods and services per year, which means you’re doing fine and are likely at the top of the income distribution. Businesses will benefit immensely from the fact that their customers will have more money to spend each month—most Americans will spend the vast majority of their money locally.
…
…
Believe it or not, the Freedom Dividend is the easy part of the transition. Money is easy. People are hard. For all of the immense good a UBI will do, it is just the first step. The ongoing challenge will be to preserve a mindset of growth, responsibility, community, humanity, family, and optimism in an era when so many bastions of the past are going to topple into obsolescence and so many ways of life will be changed irrevocably.
…
We’re trying relative deprivation and it’s not working. Half-measures are wasting time. Scarcity will not save us. Abundance will.
Before I get carried away with my argument for UBI, let’s look back at the history of the concept — and how versions of it are already a reality.
17. Universal Basic Income in the Real World
…
... Are we not, as the citizens of the United States, the owners of this country? …
... The idea that poor people will be irresponsible with their money and squander it seems to be a product of deep-seated biases rather than emblematic of the truth. …
…
18. Time as the New Money
…
19. Human Capitalism
…
... There is limited or no market reward at present for keeping families together, upgrading infrastructure, lifelong education, preventative care, or improving democracy. …
…
The Next Stage of Capitalism
…
20. The Strong State and the New Citizenship
…
21. Health Care in a World without Jobs
…
22. Building People
Education in the Time of Automation
…
People (Still) Learn from Other People
…
Perhaps the best thing about AltSchool is that it focuses on character skills. In an age with less and less employment, the abilities to self-manage and socialize will become the new keys to success in life. We should recognize that the majority of high school students will not go to college,and that their ability to function should be independent of further education. Grit, persistence, adaptability, financial literacy, interview skills, human relationships, conversation, communication, managing technology, navigating conflicts, preparing healthy food, physical fitness, resilience, self-regulation, time management, basic psychology and mental health practices, arts, and music—all of these would help students and also make school seem much more relevant. Our fixation on college readiness leads our high school curricula toward purely academic subjects and away from life skills. The purpose of education should be to enable a citizen to live a good, positive, socially productive life independent of work.
…
Education Starts at Home
…
College isn't Always the Answer
…
New Schools
…
Recovering Ideals
…
CONCLUSION: MASTERS OR SERVANTS
…
References
;
| Author | volume | Date Value | title | type | journal | titleUrl | doi | note | year | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 TheWaronNormalPeopleTheTruthAbo | Andrew Yang | The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income is Our Future |