The Threat Of Automation-- A New Tool For Political Targeting

There was a fascinating report from Brookings last week about the political implications of automation. The authors begin with a warning: "If economic anxiety is a factor in the nation’s backlash politics, the spread of automation is likely an important context for understanding it." Short version: low-skilled Trump voters in backward states are the ones who have the most to lose. It's all about "routine jobs most at risk of automation, something suitable for someone stupid enough to support Trump two years in. The study attempts to "estimate occupational vulnerability and, essentially, worker precariousness or anxiety about the future-- hence their political relevance."

For example, at the state level, all but one of the ten states most heavily exposed to future job market changes cast its electoral votes for President Trump in 2016.

Specifically, Heartland states like Indiana and Kentucky, with heavy manufacturing histories and low educational attainment, contain not only the nation’s highest employment-weighted automation risks (48.7 and 48.2 percent of tasks vulnerable to replacement, respectively), but also registered some of the widest Trump victory margins. By contrast, all but one of the states with the least exposure to automation, and possessing the highest levels of educational attainment, voted for Hillary Clinton, perhaps reflecting greater comfort with tech trends that have most benefited these same states. The strong association of 2016 Electoral College outcomes and state automation exposure-- leaving aside questions of deeper causality-- very much suggests that the spread of workplace automation and associated worker anxiety about the future may have played some role in the Trump backlash and Republican appeals.

Turn now to the 2018 midterm election, and it’s clear that the finer-grained evidence of congressional district voting reinforces the impression of automation-driven job precariousness and Republican voting. To be sure, no single factor such as tech-driven worker anxiety determines local political behavior. But there’s no mistaking that districts that voted Republican in the 2018 election are subject to higher levels of automation exposure, reflecting GOP voters’ lower education levels and higher involvement with factory, transportation, and lower-skill service-sector jobs.

The average automation potential of Republican districts is now 47.5 percent of all tasks compared to the 44.7 percent figure for Democratic areas-- revealing a modest but noticeable gap that also reflects Republican dependence on higher-exposed smaller towns and rural communities in the Heartland.

Such places in general tend to have lower education levels and greater relative exposure to manufacturing, transportation, or other “routine” activities.

With that said, the party contrast on automation exposure becomes much more dramatic when we look at the range of individual congressional districts’ levels of susceptibility. Now the differences look much larger than they did across states or in aggregate. Specifically, only 4 of the 50 most automation-exposed congressional districts are represented by Democrats, while every one of the 50 least-exposed districts is represented by Democrats.

The members who represent these districts and the percentage of Trump's winning vote in 2016:

• AL-04- Rob Aderholt (80.4%)
• GA-14- Tom Graves (75.0%)
• IN-02- Jackie Walorski (59.3%)
• OH-05- Bob Latta (59.7%)
• OH-04- Gym Jordan (64.3%)
• KY-01- James Comer (72.4%)
• IN-03- Jim Banks (65.1%)
• IN-04- Jim Baird (64.3%)
• WI-07- Sean Duffy (57.7%)
• OH-07- Bob Gibbs (62.5%)

The members who represent these districts and the percentage of Hillary's winning vote in 2016:

• CA-19- Zoe Lofgren (72.9%)
• VA-11- Gerry Connolly (66.9%)
• NY-07- Nydia Velazquez (86.9%)
• NY-12- Carolyn Maloney (83.3%)
• NY-08- Hakeem Jeffries (84.6%)
• NY-13- Adriano Espaillat (92.3%)
• NY-10- Jerry Nadler (78.3%)
• NY-09- Yvette Clarke (83.5%)
• NY-15- Jose Serrano (93.8%)
• VA-08- Don Beyer (73.5%)

What’s more, the differences of automation risk across geography and community type are revealing. The 10 least-exposed congressional districts to automation driven task displacement include big, Democratic high-tech and professional-services oriented districts as Virginia’s 10th and 11th districts (covering Arlington and Fairfax counties in the northern-Virginia tech hub); New York’s 8th, 9th, 10th, 12th, 13th, and 15th districts around New York City; and California’s 19th district encompassing much of Silicon Valley. Other low-exposure districts around the country include Massachusetts’s 7th reaching into downtown Boston, Colorado’s 6th in suburban Denver, and Pennsylvania’s 3rd in central Philadelphia.

By contrast, the most automation-exposed districts in the country include rural or small-town districts such as Alabama’s 4th district; Georgia’s 14th; industrial and nearby rural locations like Indiana’s 2nd and 4th districts or northern Ohio’s 4th, 5th, and 7th districts; and the agricultural area of Wisconsin’s 7th district. Other high-exposure Republican-voting districts include political backlash examples such as Iowa’s 2nd in the southeastern part of that state and Minnesota’s 1st, south of the Twin Cities.

The story told by congressional-district voting very much confirms that jurisdictions exposed to the most automation-based dislocation are some of the most likely to vote Republican. To be sure, as Jed Kolko has noted, it’s nearly impossible to fully disentangle automation from other economic and demographic factors, because “demographic characteristics and economic conditions are themselves related.” But even so, it is clear that to the extent that places experiencing high automation threats are experiencing greater economic stress, that stress is a factor in their voting behavior.

Which suggests two takeaways. One is that automation, and the worker anxieties associated with it, appears to be a subtle, real, and far-reaching factor in voting behavior that may be triggering even more anxiety in red America than blue America, with more stress to come. Such trends underscore the importance of problem-solving to help mitigate the transitions ahead and suggest that it would behoove the presidential candidates to begin describing their responses.

The second takeaway is that while the two Americas are experiencing somewhat different trends, automation is impacting both realms, with large pools of lower-skilled production, transportation, service, and clerical workers at risk across red-blue lines. That means there may be room and reason for cross-party cooperation on efforts to facilitate smoother transitions and reducing hardships for displaced workers and communities affected by automation.

There are only 15 districts with Republican congressmembers that have average automation potentials of 45.2% or less. They should be looked at as red to blue targets. Lowest risk to highest risk:

• CO-05- Doug Lamborn
• NJ-04- Chris Smith
• VA-01- Rob Wittman
• GA-07- Rob Woodall
• TX-03- Van Taylor
• AZ-08- Debbie Lesko
• AZ-06- David Schweikert
• AZ-05- Andy Biggs
• NY-02- Peter King
• NC-02- George Holding
• AL-05- Mo Brooks
• UT-03- John Curtis
• MO-02- Ann Wagner
• NY-01- Lee Zeldin
• CA-50- Duncan Hunter

Similarly, there are only 13 districts with Democratic congressmembers that have average automation potentials of 48.0% or higher. They should be looked at as potentially vulnerable seats. Lowest risk to highest risk:

• MI-05- Dan Kildee
• IA-01- Abby Finkenauer
• OH-13- Tim Ryan
• NV-04- Stephen Horsford
• NV-03- Susie Lee
• NV-01- Dina Titus
• MN-07- Collin Peterson
• OR-04- Pete DeFazio
• CA-16- Jim Costa
• WI-03- Ron Kind
• CA-10- Josh Harder
• IN-01- Pete Visclosky
• IA-02- David Loebsack

It's Good If We Have A President Who Is Grounded In The Current Century... Unlike You-Know-Who

John Oliver: "The truth is, from employers' point of view, a big selling point for automation is that it increases productivity and it maximizes profits. And, for displaced workers, that has caused immense main throughout history-- and not just in factories. For instance, in the 90s, as voice recognition technology improved, phone company operators were rightly worried for their jobs... A job automated is not necessarily a job lost. Frequently, machines don;'t replace jobs so much as tasks... Fear of [ATM-related] job losses turned out to be completely overblown; bankteller employment actually increased over the next 30 years. What happened was, ATMs took over the job of dispensing cash and tellers were then freed up to do sales or other work. Jobs didn't go; they changed. And when automation does lead to job loss in certain sectors, historically, it also actually created jobs... Fifty years from now, people will be doing jobs that we can't imagine right now..."

But he also warns that "it might not be easy for displaced workers to transition into them. For instance, right now our economy is creating lots of jobs in the tech sector. At the same time, we have 3 and a half million truckers possibly facing unemployment due to driverless technology... So the big question is, how do you harness what is good about automation while minimizing the damage to those hurt by it? Well, the best thing would be, if America were in the hands of someone nimble and forward-thinking."

That, of course brings us back to Trump, who is neither nimble nor forward thinking. Oliver goes on to discuss what a luddite Trump is and how he's doing none of the things he could and should be doing to help displaced workers. He obviously doesn't understand what's going on around him, nor, more fundamentally, does he or the people around him understand the role of government in these kinds of upheavals.

Just yesterday, Jonathan Swan wrote for Axios that Trump hates "crazy" driverless cars. In his view, "self-driving cars are a menace to society. A skeptic of cutting-edge technology-- as his tweets about Boeing's 'complex' planes emphasized-- Trump has privately said he thinks the autonomous vehicle (AV) revolution is 'crazy' and that he'd never let a computer drive him around.

Why it matters: Most Americans share Trump's view: 71% of U.S. drivers would be afraid to ride in a self-driving vehicle, per AAA. Yet his own administration is encouraging AV development by removing barriers and issuing voluntary guidance instead of regulations. And we see no evidence Trump has imposed his personal views on the policy process... In conversations on Air Force One and in the White House, Trump has acted out scenes of self-driving cars veering out of control and crashing into walls. He's said he doesn't think autonomous vehicles make sense, according to four sources who've heard him discuss the subject. 'You know when he's telling a story, and he does the hand motions,' said a source who has heard Trump talk about hypothetical accidents involving self-driving cars. 'He says, Can you imagine, you're sitting in the back seat and all of a sudden this car is zig-zagging around the corner and you can't stop the f---ing thing? He's definitely an automated car skeptic,' the source said. Another source said Trump told him self-driving cars 'will never work.'"

In one of the early 2017 meetings with CEOs in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Elon Musk and Trump shared a lighthearted exchange about Tesla's "Autopilot" technology. Trump told Musk he preferred traditional cars, according to a source who was in the room.

And in the summer of 2017, at his Bedminster golf club, Trump was chatting with club members when one raised the subject of AV technology. The club member was "excited" about a new Tesla he bought, recalled a source who was part of the conversation. "And [Trump] was like, 'Yeah that's cool but I would never get in a self-driving car. ... I don't trust some computer to drive me around.'"

The world is moving forward, even if Trump isn't. Relatively saner elements inside his administration are trying to keep up, even if Trump is gumming top the works wherever he can. Swan wrote that "A source who has discussed autonomous vehicles with Trump says he thinks it wouldn't take much for the president to rapidly reverse his administration's hands-off approach to hands-free vehicles. Trump already calls self-driving cars out-of-control death traps, so any news fueling that fear could jolt him into action."

So which candidates are way, way, way more forward-thinking and nimble than Trump? The obvious ones are Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Beto, Tulsi, Kamala, Cory Booker, Mayor Pete, Andrew Yang, Julian Castro, Marianne Williamson, Jay Inslee... In fact, most anyone other than Status Quo Joe-- who might be a little less of a luddite than Trump... but not enough to qualify as a 21st Century president.

Stephen Hawking on What Killed the World of the Jetsons. Prelude to Thoughts on a Guaranteed Jobs Program

The Jetson's life in one is which so little work is done by humans that leisure time has expanded exponentially and no one is poor. In the image above, even the robot maid has robots to serve her. What's the unspoken assumption behind the Jetson's world?

by Gaius Publius

the swarthy Furies stalk the man
gone rich beyond all rights
–Aeschylus, Agamemnon

I'm about to start writing about the new proposal from Stephanie Kelton and her colleagues at the Levy Institute on the guaranteed jobs program, a proposal, by the way, that's starting to get some serious notice.

But ahead of that work I want to consider an extreme case, but not an unlikely one. What if, in the future, there simply aren't enough jobs for everyone? What then?

Put more simply, what's the underlying assumption behind the world of the Jetsons? The late Stephen Hawking, in his last Reddit AMA appearance, has the answer.

Technological Unemployment

Here's what was asked of Stephen Hawking in that last AMA session by one Reddit questioner (emphasis mine):

I'm rather late to the question-asking party, but I'll ask anyway and hope. Have you thought about the possibility of technological unemployment, where we develop automated processes that ultimately cause large unemployment by performing jobs faster and/or cheaper than people can perform them? Some compare this thought to the thoughts of the Luddites, whose revolt was caused in part by perceived technological unemployment over 100 years ago. In particular, do you foresee a world where people work less because so much work is automated? Do you think people will always either find work or manufacture more work to be done? Thank you for your time and your contributions. I’ve found research to be a largely social endeavor, and you've been an inspiration to so many.

A fascinating question. But first a note: Technological unemployment is the term for exactly what we mentioned at the beginning, "the loss of jobs caused by technological change." As Wikipedia explains, "Such change typically includes the introduction of labour-saving 'mechanical-muscle' machines or more efficient 'mechanical-mind' processes (automation)."

Wikipedia continues: "Historical examples include artisan weavers reduced to poverty after the introduction of mechanised looms. During World War II, Alan Turing's Bombe machine compressed and decoded thousands of man-years worth of encrypted data in a matter of hours. A contemporary example of technological unemployment is the displacement of retail cashiers by self-service tills [automated checkout machines]."

It's hard to imagine a world without enough jobs if you're living reasonably comfortably in the U.S. But consider India, to pick just one example. What could possibly happen in the Indian economy that would allow its 1.3 billion people — a population four times the U.S. population — all to live "reasonably comfortably"? India already doesn't have enough good jobs for its people — and that's before considering the the pressures of automation.

Considered globally, there are already not enough jobs in the world for all the people in it.

But the problem posed by job-killing automation (robots, in the popular imagination) still needs a solution. What if, even in developed countries, the average number of working hours available is fewer than eight per day, perhaps far fewer?

This is Stephen Hawking's answer, and it's the same solution in the future case of mathematically too few jobs as in the present case (emphasis mine):

If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.

In a world where more and more people are squeezed by fewer jobs, lower-paying jobs, and the relentless flow of newly created wealth into fewer and fewer hands, the only solution is, as Hawking says, "wealth redistribution." The alternative is stark: organized society will simply crumble into poverty — and in my view, rebellion.

The Most Dangerous Time for Our Planet: How Will Elites React?

I've been saying that both the U.S. and the rest of the world are in a "pre-revolutionary state." Hawking, in an earlier Guardian article, says something similar. He calls the increasing inequality "socially destructive," and for that and other reasons names this "the most dangerous time for our planet":

The concerns underlying these votes [Brexit and the election of Donald Trump] about the economic consequences of globalisation and accelerating technological change are absolutely understandable. The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining.

This in turn will accelerate the already widening economic inequality around the world. The internet and the platforms that it makes possible allow very small groups of individuals to make enormous profits while employing very few people. This is inevitable, it is progress, but it is also socially destructive.

We need to put this alongside the financial crash, which brought home to people that a very few individuals working in the financial sector can accrue huge rewards and that the rest of us underwrite that success and pick up the bill when their greed leads us astray. So taken together we are living in a world of widening, not diminishing, financial inequality, in which many people can see not just their standard of living, but their ability to earn a living at all, disappearing. It is no wonder then that they are searching for a new deal, which Trump and Brexit might have appeared to represent.

Hawking identifies the solution. He does not call for reaction and resistance by the ruled, since he considers the Brexit vote and the election of Trump already to be reactions to inequality. He calls instead for intelligent response by those with actual power, the elites themselves:

What matters now, far more than the choices made by these two electorates, is how the elites react. Should we [he considers himself, correctly, one of the "cultural elites"], in turn, reject these votes as outpourings of crude populism that fail to take account of the facts, and attempt to circumvent or circumscribe the choices that they represent? I would argue that this would be a terrible mistake.

I agree with his last statement above. I've been putting it this way:

It's up to the rich to stand down. It's up to police to stand down. It's up to the predators to stop feeding on us, eating our money, our labor — and in the case of the torturers in our "security" community — our pain, which they give us to please themselves.

If the rich are determined to extract the last drop of blood ... expect the victims to put up a fuss. And don't expect that fuss to be pretty.

When all power belongs to the state and the rulers who guide it, the people can only make their needs known. And if those needs are ignored, all they can then do is destroy the world of their betters, prior, perhaps, to taking power themselves, an event which often never occurs. In the face of elites resistance, especially extreme resistance, only destruction of the old will allow the powerless to create the new, if that's indeed what they do.

Prise de la Bastille, Jean-Pierre Houël, Bibliothèque nationale de France (source; click to enlarge)

The most orderly modern form of "taking power for themselves" occurred in 2016 — the electoral rebellion against the Clintonist-Obamist neoliberal rulers of the Democratic Party by people supporting Bernie Sanders. That revolt was put down, as Party elites pulled every lever available to retain control.

There may be one more orderly, electoral attempt in 2020 — or not; the choices may be miserable. But if it does occur, unless elites stand down, unless the next electoral rebellion is permitted to succeed, the popular response to failure won't be electoral and could be decidedly disorderly.

Hawking, the "enormous optimist," puts the problem faced by the elites more politely: "We can do this, I am an enormous optimist for my species; but it will require the elites, from London to Harvard, from Cambridge to Hollywood, to learn the lessons of the past year. To learn above all a measure of humility."

I, the less-than-optimistic, nevertheless agree with him. It does indeed take "enormous optimism" to think that a class defined by their hubris will learn "a sense of humility." Jamie Dimon, beware.

GP
 

Next Big Primaries: North Carolina And Indiana

Building a team for real change starting in 2019- Jenny Marshall with Randy Bryce

On Tuesday, Marie Newman gave Blue Dog Dan Lipinski a run for his money. With over 92,000 votes cast, just 2,000 separated them. In the end, Lipinski won the primary, 51.2% to 48.8%, although losing the suburban parts of the district where the Cook County Machine was unable to tamper with results. The next primaries up are on May 8 in Indiana and North Carolina, where we have two outstanding candidates, Dan Canon (IN-09) and Jenny Marshall (NC-05). Both are running strong, issues-oriented grassroots campaigns and both need help with the final 5-week lap. I asked Jenny and Dan what good campaign contributions do this late in the game. Here's what they told me-- Jenny first:

Our campaign has been running a strong field program, but with 263 precincts spread out over 3200 square miles we need to ensure that we reach as many voters as possible. We have been out knocking doors for a month and calling voters for the past 12 weeks, but we have many more people to reach. We need to send out 20,000 mailers to those people who live in more remote and rural areas, hire 10 additional field canvassers for those areas we can walk so we can talk to people at their homes, and purchase campaign materials including 10,000 more door hangers, 20,000 4x6 handouts highlighting our campaign, 700 yard signs and to support our digital advertising in the district.  We expect to have 41,000 people turn out and vote in the primary. We estimate it will take $30,000 to secure the Democratic nomination on May 8th.

Jenny and her team have been running a bold progressive campaign to unseat arch-villain Rep. Virginia Foxx who has turned herself into a virtual rubber stamp for Trump and a terrible representative of North Carolinans. Jenny told us that while she's been out on the campaign trail, she's "talked to thousands of people who tell me that they are struggling to make ends meet and are afraid they are going to lose their health insurance. This coupled with those who just can't afford to use the insurance they pay for is just unconscionable!  Rep. Foxx has ignored the needs of the people for far too long. She voted no on raising the minimum wage back in 2007 when it was just $5.85 an hour. She voted to strip healthcare away from millions of people with her vote to repeal the ACA. She just doesn't care about the daily grind the vast majority of us are going through. Our campaign speaks up for those who have been ignored and dismissed. We are here to fight for them."

  Jenny is eager to take on Foxx but she's got to win the primary against a centrist primary opponent first-- that's the May 8th election. Her opponent is an establishment Dem who doesn't believe in raising the minimum wage beyond $10 per hour, who doesn't support tuition free public colleges and universities and who stated that our public education system is broken and would use her knowledge of the business world to "fix it." In other words, she is all about doing just enough to look like she is on our side, but not enough to actually help our families and our communities. Jenny is committed to raising the wage to $15 an hour and tying it to inflation and fighting for healthcare for all.

Dan's turn:

There’s an old adage in politics that "field wins campaigns." That is why this campaign has invested in a robust field program that has been up and running since mid-September. We have three offices open across the 9th District and have made over 125,000 (and counting) contacts thanks to a dedicated base of supporters who have been calling voters, pounding the pavement, and attending countless events since last summer. In the final month of the primary, the money you donate will be spent heavily on our field efforts to mobilize supporters and G(et) O(ut) T(he) V(ote)! By helping us keep our offices running full steam ahead through May 8th, as well as funding direct mail and digital advertising targeted to likely voters, a donation to this campaign is an investment that will help us build a movement here in the heartland. 

Throughout this campaign, Dan has been a strong proponent of a guaranteed public jobs program, a national UBI pilot program, and the abolition of ICE. "I am proud to say I am the only candidate in my race discussing these ideas that are crucial to creating jobs, investing in our workforce, and ensuring the dignity of all people. Hoosiers (those of us from Indiana) are tired of the duck-and-cover rhetoric that other campaigns use, and with your help we are going to prove that progressive candidates can take bold stances that offer real solutions for real people."



No one is going to be able to accuse Dan Canon of being another garden variety status quo Democrat. He's been on the cutting edge of social and economic issues for far longer than this campaign-- and his campaign has been engaging the folks in Bloomington, Martinsville and Bedford and from the suburbs south of Indianapolis to the suburbs north of Louisville in discussions from marijuana legalization to the impact of automation on job markets.

Recent estimates show 73 million jobs are on the line due to impending automation. These changes could come quickly and shifting labor demands will force many people into new fields.

On the high end, more than 54 million people may have to change jobs by 2030 if technology is adopted swiftly. That equates to roughly a third of the total workforce nationwide. What’s more, automation is expected to lead to depressed wages and a drastic reduction of jobs available to people with less than a four-year degree. Almost no industry is exempt from facing these changes and the impact will be massive.

Why aren’t more politicians talking about this?

First off, there is little political will to change this trend. Tech is sexy. Think about the frenzy of cities competing to be chosen as the next location of huge tech companies’ headquarters. Second, special interest groups donate millions to keep the downside of job automation out of focus while they work to further it and push for ever-greater profits.

I am proud to be the only candidate in this race who has worked to offer solutions on this issue. When in Congress, you can expect me to stand tall for workers every day, even when it isn’t a popular position. There are things we can do now to set people up for success in the future.

• We can create a guaranteed public jobs program that provides meaningful work to people who are willing and able to take it. Let’s focus this program on rebuilding and improving American infrastructure, energy grids, and rural broadband access for starters.
• We can raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour (allowing for regional variance) to help fight against impending wage decreases.
• We can invest robustly in career training and transition assistance, including union apprenticeships, technical schools, and public education systems to better prepare workers to move into other fields.
• We can pilot a Universal Basic Income (UBI) program to develop a foundation for providing people with basic financial security.

The problems of tomorrow demand that we invest in solutions today. We cannot wait even until the next election in 2020. An estimated 5 million jobs could be gone by then.

Economic Climate Change-- A Guest Post By Bob Poe

By now, everyone knows we need to focus on climate change. The threat is real, the science is clear, and the effects are happening now. Combating climate change will take action from Congress, and from people willing to hold them accountable.

But there’s another threat facing our nation that’s just as serious. One that could swallow a generation of American workers, like climate change threatens to swallow our coasts. And one that comes with a great opportunity for the future.

I call it “economic climate change.”

With a median wage of $29,781, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says my hometown of Orlando, Florida has the lowest wages in the top 50 metro areas. Sadly, it turns out, that might be the good news.

The bad news is that advances in technology-- automation, robotics, 3D printing and Artificial Intelligence-- that are specifically designed to eliminate whole categories of jobs may mean there won’t be enough of those already low-paying jobs to go around.

This isn’t theoretical. It’s already begun. Just as rising sea levels from global climate change will be disruptive to our safety and security, rising unemployment levels from economic climate change have the potential to be equally disruptive to every aspect of life as we know it.

Want proof? Visit your local home improvement or neighborhood grocery store--chances are, you’ll find fewer live cashiers, and more self-service checkout lanes. Head to the airport, and you’re directed to the self-service check-in kiosk. At the bank, ATMs began replacing tellers years ago.

Need more? Just this month, Wendy’s announced the introduction of automated, self-service ordering kiosks across 6,000 restaurants. Some distribution warehouses already have driverless forklifts. And Uber and Lyft are testing driverless cars that will soon send your friendly taxi driver the way of the blacksmith and his horseshoes.

The stakes are high. As Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan put it recently:

Let’s further assume that automation begins eliminating large numbers of jobs not just in the restaurant industry, but in all sorts of service industries. Millions of lost jobs. Millions of workers that no longer fit into our modern economy. Millions of families without a way to pay the bills. Automation may be an opportunity for corporations and shareholders, but it is a threat to the American middle and lower classes.

But, just as the horse and buggy made way for the automobile, new technologies that eliminate some jobs will also create a whole host of new jobs. Jobs that require an entirely new set of skills. Skills that many in today's workforce don’t currently have.



As we moved from an agrarian society to the Industrial Revolution, people could take their skills from the farm to the factory. Moving from the plow to the lever wasn’t a career-ending leap. But those same skills aren't as easily transferred from the factory to the Digital Age.

This is where the opportunity to write America’s next great chapter begins. But it won’t happen without political and policy leadership to get it done. So how do we do it?

As our economic climate changes, we need an all-of-the-above strategy to make sure everyone has a chance of getting in the economic lifeboat. Here are a few ideas:

Increase the minimum wage to $15

I’m a businessman. I’m fortunate to have built some wonderful businesses over the years. And I get what higher wages mean for a business. But I also get what those wages mean for working people. A decent living wage means more money in a family’s pockets-- and that means more buying power for businesses and their products. It’s also the right thing to do.

Reinvest in infrastructure

It’s not hard to see-- America’s infrastructure is crumbling. Our roads, bridges and other infrastructure is falling apart. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives our nation’s current infrastructure a D+ grade, citing a “significant backlog of overdue maintenance across our infrastructure systems, a pressing need for modernization, and an immense opportunity to create reliable, long-term funding.”

Quoting Gawker’s Nolan again:

This is an unusually good time for the government to spend a great deal of money rebuilding our national infrastructure. This could create millions of jobs for people automated out of work, at least for a while. And the money would be well spent. We should do this no matter what.

Provide tuition-free career training

Guaranteed public education ending at the 12th grade isn’t enough anymore, if we want to stay globally competitive and stave off economic climate change. The effort is already underway to provide tuition-free community college through state and federal partnerships. We should make sure that includes tuition-free training for the careers of the future.

Expand Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid

What’s one of the best ways to ensure a basic standard of living, as we cope with the coming upheaval from economic climate change? Expand three of the most successful American ideas ever-- Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. These programs have kept millions of Americans from suffering the indignity of crushing poverty and lack of access to healthcare. They need investment and expansion to keep working for the most vulnerable of our society-- seniors on fixed incomes, and low-income individuals and families.

Of course, conservatives will howl and say we can’t afford it. I don’t believe that.

The greatness of America is that we've always been able to do what we put our minds to. And the truth of the matter is, as we face the specter of economic climate change, we simply can’t afford not to.

Bob Poe is a progressive Democrat, businessman, husband and proud father running for Congress in Florida’s 10th Congressional district. Join his fight for fair wages, equality and economic opportunity for all at BobPoeForCongress.com. You can contribute to his campaign by tapping on the thermometer below: