Crisis- 2038

by Gerald Huff

  “Yes, you remember the cave. That’s part of the disinformation campaign, convincing people that if they only worked harder, they would be successful.”

  “So what do we do?” asked Tenesha.

  “You just need to keep trying. Every time you talk to a person, you plant a seed.” Sara smiled. “Tell me something positive that happened today.”

  “Well,” said Tenesha, “we did hit the three percent mark today for student sign-ups. A couple more weeks and I think we’ll be at five percent.”

  “That’s great!” said Sara. “I would love to come out and meet you IRL.”

  “Oh, that would be so fantastic! As much as I love our chats here, I really, really want to meet you in person.”

  “I hear you, Tenesha. Just keep getting the word out there. It can be painful. It’s not glamorous. But it’s essential. The more people are exposed to the message, the more potential we have to make something big happen.”

  “Okay, Sara. I will. Thank you!”

  “No, thank you, Tenesha. You are doing the hard work out there.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  WASHINGTON - NOVEMBER 17

  While the Senators were out during lunch, Michele called the service robot up to the meeting room.

  “Yes, how may I help you?”

  “I’d like these two tables to be replaced with a single round one about six feet in diameter.”

  The bot swiveled to examine the two tables, then turned back to her. “As you can see, Ms. Rodriguez, I don’t have the necessary equipment to carry out this task. My makers did not provide me with any arms for moving furniture. May I use a task management platform to request human assistance?”

  “Of course. That would be fine.”

  It only took fifteen minutes for a casually dressed man in his mid-twenties to arrive. He quickly folded up and removed the rectangular tables. When he returned and set up the round replacement, Michele introduced herself, got his name, and asked if he would stay for a few extra minutes. He shrugged and said “sure.”

  When the senators filed back into the room, Michele found their mood to be far more collegial. They noted the change in furniture and obliged her obvious manipulation by alternating Democrat and Republican in their seating.

  Michele saw that they were curious about the young man standing nervously beside her. “Welcome back, senators. I’d like you to meet Daryl Jackson, a neighbor of ours here in Washington. Daryl responded to a task posting by the building attendant AI to change the furniture in the room today. I was hoping he could bring to life some things we were discussing this morning.

  “So, Daryl, tell us about yourself. Did you grow up here?”

  The young man shifted from side to side, hands in his pockets. “Sure did,” he replied, looking only at her. “Right in Anacostia.”

  “What about school? Did you finish high school?”

  “Oh yeah. I got my diploma and got an online certification in software engineering.”

  “Have you been able to find any jobs in software?” Michele asked.

  “Nah. They got these recruiting AIs that do interviews, and I never get past the first test. They’re looking for super-experienced people, since you got bots that can do all the basic stuff now.”

  “So, Daryl, how do you support yourself?”

  “Well, it’s like I’m still living at home with my mom. I’m a tasker—so mostly I do jobs like this furniture one. I’m on all the sites. TaskMaster, JackRabbit, HotTaskIt.”

  “And how much do they pay?”

  “Well, it depends on the job. There’s lots of us bidding for these jobs and usually it goes to the lowest bidder, unless you’ve got a really bad rep. I’m gettin’ ten bucks for this.”

  Esteban half raised his hand. “Hi Daryl. I’m Esteban Hernandez. I was wondering how steady these jobs are. Can you stay busy all day?”

  Daryl shook his head. “No way, Mr. Hernandez. Some days I might get two or three jobs, but I can go for days sometimes without gettin’ one.”

  “Hi, Daryl,” Rebecca said. “I’m Rebecca Matheson. Have you tried to gain more skills to get a more stable job?”

  “Well,” he said sheepishly, “I tried taking those online courses. But you know, there’s thousands and thousands of people taking those free online courses. So everyone comes out with the same skills. Doesn’t help none. You either got to be a superstar to get past the recruiting AIs. Or…”. He paused uncomfortably.

  Michele said, “Please. Keep going.”

  “Well, or you got to know someone. You know, connections. I grew up in Anacostia. I don’t know anyone in those tech companies and none of them know anyone like me. You feel me?”

  Esteban asked, “So, Daryl, have you tried putting your skills to work creating some apps?”

  The young man’s face lit up. “Oh, yeah. I created some really cool apps, like this one to track your favorite sports teams and players.”

  Esteban looked knowingly at his colleagues. “Great! What happened?”

  “Yeah, so I got a bunch of my friends to use it. But it never took off. Turns out there were hundreds of similar apps. Some dude in Kentucky had an app, I swear it wasn’t better than mine. That thing took off and he made serious bank, twenty K a month, well, for about six months. Then it faded. Apps are like the lottery, man.”

  “Do you get any government assistance, Daryl?” asked Dylan.

  “Yeah, sure. I get the earned income tax credit once a year, and I get food assistance and health care.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “Well, sure I’m grateful. But it’s embarrassing, you know? I’ve got some education, right, how come I can’t be on my own? And I jump through all these hoops with social workers and caseworkers and case managers, and they all make me feel like a loser, you know? And then…” The young man paused glancing uncomfortably at some of the senators.

  “Yes?” asked Dylan.

  “Well, it’s like some politicians, you know, and news channels, they’re all like, ‘We’ve got these moochers,’ and man that makes me mad. I’m not a moocher; I want to contribute.”

  Daryl’s wrist panel buzzed. A pained expression crossed his face. “Ms. Rodriguez, sorry, I’ve got another task to bid on.”

  “Of course, Daryl. One last question. You told me you had a steady girlfriend. You think you might move in together soon?”

  “Yeah, well, like I said, I’d really like to get out of my mom’s house. But like the landlords, they don’t like taskers like me. And Vanessa, she’s a home health care attendant. She’s making minimum wage now part time, but I saw there’s this new robot coming that can cook and clean and help out with the old folks. So I don’t know how we’re going to swing it.”

  Michele smiled. “Thank you so much for staying, Daryl. I just sent you some heavy juice on JackRabbit, so hopefully that will help out your rep.”

  Daryl smiled broadly. “Oh, that’s great, Ms. Rodriguez. That’ll be a big help.”

  The senators added their thanks as he left the room, then turned to face each other around the table.

  “Well,” said Rebecca. “Here’s someone who’s reasonably intelligent and articulate, and he’s got some education. Yet he’s stuck living at home, feeling like a loser who’s looked down on by his society.”

  “Welcome to the real world,” said Dylan. “Don’t you think Georgia is filled with millions of people just like Daryl?”

  Harry said, “We’ve got robots and AI taking jobs, leaving people scraping by. So they’re not fueling the economy. It’s a recipe for stalling out.”

  “What do we do about it?” asked Zach.

  Michele noted that this was the first time anyone had asked that question with an honest sense of not knowing the answer. She said, “First, I want each of you to give me one word or phrase that summarizes Daryl’s situation.”

  “No way out,” volunteered Harry.

  “Preca
rious,” said Esteban.

  “Hopeless,” said Emily.

  “Oppressed and marginalized,” offered Dylan.

  “Unstable,” said Rebecca.

  “Insufficient resources,” concluded Zach.

  Michele looked at them one by one. “So now you understand your mission here today. We need your combined strengths to help Daryl and tens of millions like him. How do we liberate him from this trap? What does Daryl need more than anything else?”

  “He needs money,” answered Emily. “And we need him to have money.”

  “Yes,” agreed Rebecca. “He needs a stable job so he can earn stable money. This gig and app economy is too perilous.”

  “We keep coming back to jobs, jobs, jobs,” sputtered Harry. “You guys have got to get this. Traditional stable jobs at the massive scale of two hundred million people are gone. They’re gone and not coming back. The answer is not jobs like we’ve had for the last three hundred years. We need something new.”

  “Oh no, here it comes,” laughed Esteban.

  “It’s not funny, my friend. You all know I’ve been pushing for a basic income guarantee for years. And you’ve all laughed at me. But maybe, just maybe, I hope today has shown you why it’s necessary.”

  “We’ve been over this before,” started Zach.

  “Hear me out, please,” interrupted Harry. “For a few hundred years, market capitalism has proven to be a magic formula. Businesses sold goods and services and paid people for their labor. In the process, they created their own consumers. A great virtuous cycle was born.

  “Then machines started taking over some jobs. It wasn’t a big deal, because the percentage of tasks the machines could do was tiny compared to the work that needed to be done. But the last thirty years have been totally different. With smart big-data-driven AIs, distributed energy and manufacturing, and advanced robots, the need for human workers is decreasing rapidly. Jobs are scarce. Wages aren’t being earned. And consumers aren’t being created. The virtuous cycle is breaking down.

  “There’s an apocryphal story from the 1980s, of a Ford executive touring a factory with recently installed robots with union boss Walter Reuther. The executive says, ‘Walter, how are you going to get those machines to pay union dues?’ The union man says, ‘The problem I’m wondering about is how you’re going to get them to buy your cars.’

  “We need to break our assumption that the only way to create consumers is by paying them a wage for the labor they contribute. Instead, the most straightforward and obvious way to do it is to simply pay everyone a basic income just for being a citizen. It’s universal, it’s unconditional, and it addresses the foundational point we all agreed to. It’s the only way to maintain the ongoing circulation of money among consumers and businesses and investors.”

  For several seconds there was silence. Then Zack said, in a conciliatory tone, “I understand the sentiment. But, Harry, you know the numbers just don’t add up. Giving everyone a basic income would explode the size of the federal government overnight.”

  “You’re thinking in an old mindset,” replied Harry. “Our economy was more than capable of handling this when nearly everyone got wages. How could it be impossible now? What happened to all the money that used to go to wages?”

  Zach didn’t respond. Michele saw that he was thinking hard about this question. “Well,” he said finally. “Some of it went to purchasing computers and robots. Some of it went to profits. Some of it went overseas.”

  “Most of it went to executive compensation and shareholders,” offered Dylan.

  “Don’t think of this as a government program,” said Harry. “Think of it as businesses creating their own customers, just like they used to.”

  “I don’t like this idea at all,” said Rebecca. “Universal and unconditional just means people won’t work. There has to be an incentive to work, like the earned income tax credit.”

  “But work in traditional jobs for traditional companies is disappearing,” said Emily. “Think of this from a freedom perspective.”

  That got Rebecca’s attention. “What do you mean?”

  “Not to put too strong a point on it, but right now the masses of people are enslaved either to corporations for meager wages, or to the government for meager handouts, which are layered with rules and paternalistic bureaucracy. And they’re a disincentive to work—a welfare trap. But a universal basic income like Harry describes is liberating. Everyone becomes free to pursue their own conception of happiness, to make their own choices. No more government telling them what to do or how much to spend on this or that.”

  “I do like the sound of that,” said Rebecca.

  “Why don’t you outline a proposal, Senator Paxton?” suggested Michele.

  “Sure. Here’s the big picture. Every adult citizen gets an unconditional basic income paid to them regularly into a spending account. Could be weekly or monthly. Children might be included, too. That’s a detail to be worked out. The income is the same for everyone, although there could be supplements for the disabled or other special-needs citizens. People are free to spend this money on whatever they want. Married couples or people living together can pool their money—it’s not reduced in any way. It’s an individual grant, not a household grant.

  “The money is enough to cover the essentials of housing, food, clothing, education, and health care. That last one is complicated, so we may not want to address it at the same time. Just to be clear, no one is going to be rich, or even comfortable, just from basic income. But no one will be in poverty. Everyone can supplement their basic income with whatever skills, talents, and motivation they possess. The money they earn does not impact their basic income. Of course, any extra income they earn will be subject to taxes, just like now. But there is no penalty, no welfare trap for earning additional money.

  “Because the money is universal and identical, people will find it goes much further in some places than others. We’ll probably see a reverse migration back to smaller towns and cities, because the basic income will go much farther there, and the biggest reason people abandoned them was because the lack of jobs led to no incomes at all. Small towns and cities will now be able to flourish with small businesses and community organizations, because everyone will receive the basic income.

  “Now we get to what gets eliminated,” Harry continued. “This is the grand bargain.” He looked at each of his Republican colleagues. “First, there are no more government social welfare programs. The thousands of federal, state and local programs shut down. Of course, local community groups, churches, and so on can still provide human services. There’s nothing to stop that.

  Second, there is no more minimum wage. We let the labor market clear without an artificial floor. People now have negotiating leverage with employers. They don’t have to take awful jobs in poor working conditions because they’re desperate to survive. Terrible jobs will now have to pay more. Attractive jobs that people enjoy doing, and computers and robots still can’t do, will be able to pay less. Businesses will be able to make rational decisions about how much to pay to attract human workers and when to automate, knowing that everyone will still be taken care of, and they will still have customers. Everyone can spend and save knowing with certainty that they can always rely on the basic income grant.

  “How will this basic income be funded? Many economists have looked at this, and they believe the numbers do add up, especially with all the wealth that is generated through technological innovation.

  “The first pool of money is from all the government social welfare programs that have been eliminated. The second pool is from closing tax expenditures like the mortgage deduction. But that won’t be enough. We’ll also need to transfer some money from businesses to their consumers, so consumers can buy things and give it back to the businesses. For centuries, we did it through wages. Now we’ll need to do it with some kind of customer creation fund. Maybe this is a tax on the gross margins of every business. M
aybe as businesses automate, not all the savings will flow to lower prices or higher profits. Some will flow to the customer creation fund, so the money can continue circulating in the economy.

  “And, yes, I expect we’ll also need to tax the very wealthiest a little more to get more of their accumulated savings back into the economy. They simply don’t spend enough of what they make to keep our economy going.”

  Harry paused. “Okay. I’m done.”

  Michele saw how relieved Harry was to finally tell this story. She was not surprised to hear the first objection from Dylan, the liberal from New York.

  “You’re talking about dismantling the entire social safety net! You want to replace it with a single grant, subject to change at Congressional whim, with a single vote. There will always be pressure for that grant to be as tiny as possible. We fought too hard for every one of those programs to throw them all away.”

  “I understand the concern,” said Harry. “I think the basic income amount needs to be set by an independent bipartisan or non-partisan commission. It will consider the cost of living—which, by the way, should decrease over time as new technology makes material objects, education, and health care less expensive.”

  “But you’re talking about tripling or quadrupling the size of government,” complained Zach. “I just don’t trust government with this, and don’t think most Americans do, either.”

  “I don’t think this is government in the traditional way we’ve thought about it,” said Emily. “It’s just a pure pass-through of funds collected through various means and distributed to hundreds of millions of bank accounts. There’s a little bit of validation up front for each citizen, but after that there’s no bureaucracy, and no administrative costs. The operating budget for this function would be tiny.”

  “That’s right,” said Harry. “If you look at the operating budget for all levels of government, you’d see a massive decrease in spending and employment. Basic income will dramatically reduce the size of government. It’s true that the flow of money into the government will be much higher, but a lot of that will simply be distributed to the people directly.”