SOLAR INDUSTRY EMPLOYS MORE THAN COAL, OIL, AND GAS COMBINED

Although the potential workforce is declining, automation of various kinds is increasing so the forecast of productivity will increase.(see figure)  (but mysteriously decline a bit far into the future).*  I can't quite get my mind around this, but increasing productivity with a declining workforce is what we want, isn't it?  I mean thousands of jobs are just going to continue to disappear as various kinds of automation take over.

So far,consumption is very healthy, but what is going to happen as the increase of unpaid people rises dramatically?  What we are seeing is that the figure called GDP is growing obsolete.  Companies are not building new factories because relatively low-cost automation of existing factories results in great increases in productivity so the new factories are not needed.

(click on figure to enlarge)

How will people survive as jobs continue to disappear?  One proposal that is gaining strength is the guaranteed minimum income that will allow people to live a modest life.  Perhaps volunteerism will replace paid work?  But how to finance this.  Perhaps automation equipment  can be taxed as if they are people.  But this will be difficult to establish.  Will dishwashers and washing machines be taxed?  How about refrigerators and microwaves?

Assuming the above can be worked out, how high should the taxes be?  You don't want them to be so high that they discourage productivity increases.

Right now, the approach the current administration is pursuing is a modern day Luddism, i.e. keeping jobs around that aren't needed anymore.**  This sort of thing was done for many years by unions, e.g. requiring more employees on trains than were needed (maybe as many as 10).  Today many trains are operated by two people.  The first step by the present administration is to restore coal mining.  This is going out of our way to pollute the atmosphere.

But the solar industry today employees more than the coal, oil, and gas industries combined.***

Solar energy employed 374,000 people over the year 2015-2016, making up 43 per cent of the sector’s workforce, while the traditional fossil fuels combined employed 187,117, making up just 22 per cent of the workforce, according to the report.***

The rapid growth is mainly  in installers of solar equipment, a job that unemployed coal miners could probably learn plus some increases in jobs for project development.***

(click on figure to enlarge)

  I foresee a day when solar panels become common roofing materials.****
I hope as a country that we don't become modern day Luddites.

* http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/31/cboinfourcharts-fahey-170330-dc-.html
** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2016/12/modern-day-luddites.html
*** http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-solar-power-employs-more-people-more-oil-coal-gas-combined-donald-trump-green-energy-fossil-fuels-a7541971.html
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/12/us-solar-industry-employees-grows-oil-gas
**** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/search?q=common+roofing+materials

MINIMUM GUARANTEED INCOME - II

What I call Minimum Guaranteed Income* is now more popularly called Universal Basic Income (UBI).  Such income will be used as a buffer for people that are made obsolete by automation in its various forms.  At any rate, some process must be developed to find a way to support hundreds of thousands of "workers" no longer needed in the workforce.  Finland is trying this out.

The idea is that people will get some sort of minimum income (maybe something like $2000/mo.)  where you have a modest home, TV, and food, and those who want a better life can seek it in the paid jobs on top of the MBI that are remaining.

How would you fund such a plan?  The idea occurs to me that some sort of property tax could be put on each automated machine.  This idea is not as outrageous as it sounds.  Right now you have to pay state and maybe local property tax on each automobile you have.  Perhaps you would tax things rather than people.

The latest article is from CNBC:**

Meanwhile, developments in robotics and artificial intelligence have grave implications for the labor force. A report issued this week from consulting firm PwC found that more than a third of U.S. jobs were at risk from automation, upping the ante for policy makers to cushion the blow to workers.

Advocates for UBI argue that a guaranteed paycheck could serve as a way to fight poverty and uncertainty in an evolving U.S. economy, and encourage workers to take more risks in the job market if they had some extra money as a cushion.

The idea has gained prominent backers such as TeslaTCEO Elon Musk, who recently told CNBC he supported UBI — joining a growing list of tech execs who've voiced support for the concept as a solution to unemployment that will be caused by future automation — the rise of the robots. Silicon Valley's Y Combinator President Sam Altman and eBay Founder Pierre Omidyar have also expressed support for a universal income.

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2016/07/miimum-guaranteed-income.html
** http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/25/universal-basic-income-debate-sharpens.html

MINIMUM GUARANTEED INCOME

For some time I have thought that there should be some sort of minimum income for adults, enough to keep someone in a modest home, keep in basic foods, and maybe a tiny bit for extras (i.e. have a modest TV, and, perhaps,  going to a movie once a month or something like that).  The reason for this is that automation is eliminating many jobs (letting your fingers do the walking on the telephone)  and others are now turned over the the consumer (e.g. pumping your own gas) not to be spent on booze, beer, or cigarettes.   Of course there are the jobs off-shored to low wage countries, and it would be poor to eliminate the low cost products as a result. Most adults won't be satisfied with minimal living and will seek work, but if the work is not available, they have this safety net.

Well it turns out just this sort of thimg has been proposed by others:

A tsunami of economic disruption is barreling toward the United States, and, as Pimco co-founder Bill Gross observed in his May "Investment Outlook," "No one in 2016 is really addressing the future as we are likely to experience it … Virtually every industry in existence is likely to become less labor-intensive in future years as new technology is assimilated into existing business models."
A 2013 Oxford University study concluded that 47 percent of jobs in the U.S. are at risk of being eliminated due to software, robotics and machines learning artificial intelligence. A McKinsey Global Institute study delivered similar results and went further to say that, if artificial intelligence progresses and is able to process and understand natural language a little better, that number could quickly jump to 58 percent of work activities that are automatable.*
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Here's what I propose to both finally end poverty now and as insurance later to ease the difficult transition of what the experts are predicting in job loss — a universal basic income. Universal basic income may be the biggest "new" idea of the 21st century, although it traces its history to Thomas Paine, Milton Friedman and Richard Nixon, whose bill twice passed the U.S. House of Representatives.
How would it work? Each month, every adult would get a check for $1,000 — that's $12,000 a year, just above the poverty line. It's that simple. A form of universal basic income has been in place in Alaska since 1976, paid as a dividend from oil revenues from the North Shore. In 2014, that dividend provided $1,884 to 640,000 individuals using funds from a single revenue stream. By eliminating 126 current welfare programs that would be made redundant by UBI; instituting a financial transaction tax, which our country already had for 50 years; eliminating many, or all, federal tax expenditures and levying a value added tax (VAT), we could provide the funding necessary for a UBI.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/22/why-we-should-give-every-adult-1000month-for-free-commentary.html