I have to get at this the long way around, so bear with me…
My mother, who was born in 1915, worked for the same company for most of her life. After WWII, and me, she started in the typing pool of a company in Chicago, rotated into switchboard duties, became a secretary to a group of their salespeople, and eventually ended up as executive secretary to one of them. Forty years, with never a doubt that as long as the company was there, and she could work, she’d have a job.
The man who I sold me the house I live in came back from a hitch in the Navy after WWII, and went to work for a company in his home town. Eventually ended up supervising the production line he worked on, raised a family, and lived a moderately comfortable life both before and after retirement. Another 40 year man.
I job hopped a lot, taking time off in between to dig into a long term project that’s fascinated me forever, but I can’t remember ever thinking that I wouldn’t be able to find something that would support me whenever I went to look for it. And for the most part, that was true. The economy went up and down, but there was always something I could find that would keep me going. And in the background there was always family, should I need them. Mostly, I didn’t.
My parents’ generation worried about the war, mine worried about Mutually Assured Destruction. The business cycle, though, was long term, and stable, and you could count, mostly, on the jobs being there.
It’s changed now. Yang pins the blame on the increasing rate of technological change and automation; I blame it on the rise of the MBA degree and philosophy, which has led more and more toward people being seen as interchangeable units.
Whatever the cause, one major fear for a growing number of workers is: “I’m going to lose my job.”
It has very little, if anything, to do with the state of the economy, and everything to do with the current tendency of a lot of management to see employees as a fungible commodity.
Whether the economy is booming or sliding into a pit, that attitude tends to prevail, and so the fear, rather than following the rise and fall of the economy, simply keeps on rising. (And yes, this is very definitely my opinion rather than something I can call proven. I invite you to think seriously about it. If you have cites that back it up, I’d be delighted to see them.)
This is what the Republicans have been making use of to fuel their campaigns; recognizing the fear and giving it targets. Both white nationalism and immigration policies have been used as scapegoats to focus the anger the fear generates. How much of both might simply disappear if the focus changed, I leave to your imagination. Mine is cautiously optimistic.
What Yang’s campaign has done is to give this fear a neutral target. Automation and AI, not immigrants or minorities, are the culprit of choice, and it’s inevitable in the natural order of things. Yes, you should be afraid you can lose your job, but we can put a cushion in place that will help you survive while you’re not earning a living wage. And you don’t have to hate anybody while you’re at it.
So it’s no wonder people are interested. Most people would much rather not hate; it’s stressful, it makes the world seem much less worth living in, and it usually doesn’t get us anywhere. I expect to see the campaign keep attracting Republican voters, simply because it speaks to their fears without demanding that they become haters.
It doesn’t matter whether the scenario pictured is correct; it might be, and it offers at least a palliative against those fears. And it’s one I think a lot of Democrats would be happy with at least seeing as a future possibility, no matter that the economics of such a solution are untested.
We need this, or something like it. Dealing with climate change is a necessity; we are going to have our hands full coping with the earth’s ecosystem rebalancing itself for a generation or six, even if we manage to hold atmospheric carbon at a manageable level. Doing it with a host of willing volunteers is going to be hard enough; doing it with people who are looking over their shoulders wondering when their ability to earn a living is going to disappear, along with the job that provided it, is going to be damn near impossible.
I’m not advocating Andrew Yang as our next President; there are too many parts of governing that I think he needs experience with, and the job tends to be overwhelming even for someone with political experience. This piece of his platform, though, whether as a simple UBI or a variation on the concept, is something we need to recognize that we need. If you agree, promote it to anyone who might have influence with the other candidates, or with their major supporters; I think it could end up being critical to being able to achieve both a solid win in 2020 and our long term goals.
Hmm — it’s Thursday…
Oh, well, what the hell, publish anyway. ;)
My thanks to users wubh, davem0820, royalfino, and a number of other members of the YangGang, for making me pay attention to them.