Work is changing rapidly in the United States.
The unemployment rate presently is somewhere around 4%; but that’s deceiving. Many are working at minimum or low wage jobs, or working two or three part-time jobs to survive. Many are driving part-time for Uber or Lyft, or living two or three families in an apartment in big cities where the rents have gone through the roof in recent years.
Automation is increasing, and in another ten years perhaps, supermarkets will be fully automated throughout the store; Uber and Lyft will no longer need drivers; somewhere around a million middle-class truck drivers will have their jobs eliminated by self-driving trucks; and the list goes on. New automation will even eliminate many of the robots and people that are now doing the automating.
The old way of life, the old solid middle-class jobs have gone away, and they are not coming back. Anyone who promises that is a thief and a liar.
We are witnessing the hollowing out of the job market as jobs are destroyed, wages remain stagnant or decline, and profits from business and the stock market gravitate more and more to the mega-corporations and to the one percent.
So where are we, and where do we go? What are we to do?
Even now, the shift has begun, and the change is showing up in small ways, in out-of-the-way places, in ecological farmers going back to small plots of land; in a husband and wife starting a restaurant in a small town and growing and hiring on a small scale to become an integral part of the community; in small and large cooperatives owned by employees that eschew the profit-at-any-cost motive of doing business. Small things, but they are beginnings, and they are pointing a way to the future.
But new, big ideas are beginning to sprout also. One of these is universal basic income.
Basic income is a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all individuals, without a means-test or work requirement. The idea has been gathering interest worldwide, including actual test implementations in cities like Hamilton, Canada; Stockton, California; Barcelona, Spain; Macao, China, and many others.
One young man is even running for president of the United States in 2020 on a platform of Universal Basic Income. His name is Andrew Yang, someone who has already been highly successful in creating several technology and education companies.
He was drawn to the concept of a universal basic income after realizing that automation is destined very soon to displace millions of workers, direly transforming our economy for the average person, and that there is too much “human and financial capital flowing to just a handful of places”, as he states, “doing things that are speeding the machine up rather than fixing what is going wrong.”
As part of his platform, which includes a Medicare-for-all type of national health insurance, he proposes that each American be paid $1000 a month, or $12,000 a year in addition to and independent of other benefits such as Medicare and Social Security. His way of financing such a proposal would be through a VAT, or Value Added Tax, although others argue that a basic income could be financed through other means, such as a tax on stock market transactions, a wealth tax on individuals, the elimination of tax loopholes for corporations, etc.
This idea is not just some pie-in-the-sky concoction. It could definitely become deliverable.
What is most required, though, is a deep and revolutionary shift in our priorities as a nation, as a people. We have a country and government that is wedded to the idea of infinite upward expansion of profit and money – a country now harnessed to technology, the stock market, business exploitation, and unbridled capitalistic instincts, while being myopic when it comes to the real needs and welfare of ordinary people.
We need a deep transformation in our government – one that prioritizes people.
How is this to be achieved? By people changing. By becoming aware of their own power of united action and becoming deeply involved in the political process, and in supporting and implementing new solutions such as that proposed by Andrew Yang and others.
But behind all of this also is the need for an even deeper transformation – one, you might say, on a spiritual level.
Who are we? How do we view ourselves, our own worth and potential and our true relation to other people and the world around us, and to the very heart of the universe itself?
We are greater than we have ever imagined. We are the gods we have bowed down to since the beginning of time, never realizing our own image in the mirror.
The deepest transformation coming now is the realization of the sanctity of all life, the interconnectedness of all life, and the limitless potential existing within each man, woman, and child on the face of the planet – the potential to expand the reach of our hearts to match the compassionate heart of the universe itself.
The Buddha is coming to America.
Nam Myoho Renge Kyo.
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James Hilgendorf is a filmmaker, speaker, poet, and the author of ten non-fiction books that are opening the way to a new vision of ourselves, a new dream of America, a new religion for the world. His latest book is “Traveling to a New America“.
Follow his journey, “Traveling to a New America”, on Facebook.
To arrange talks and conversations, contact the author.
