They’re coming for your jobs

By the time President Trump finishes the wall, and ends the trade deficit with China, there might be a new threat to the American Worker: Robots.

Not only are they becoming sophisticated enough to replace Uber drivers and Applebee’s waitresses, they’re also going to be able to replace most things done by unskilled labor. According to an op-ed in the LA Times:

White House economists released a forecast that calculated more precisely whom Atlas and other forms of automation are going to put out of work. Most occupations that pay less than $20 an hour are likely to be, in the words of the report, “automated into obsolescence.” (full story)

This doesn’t bode well for Donald Trump’s plan for fixing the economy, but it also makes Bernie Sanders’ idea of raising the minimum wage completely worthless. You can only raise it as high as the cost of a robot.

No one is immune. According to the article, “Powerhouse consultancies like McKinsey & Co. forecast that 45% of today’s workplace activities could be done by robots, AI or some other already demonstrated technology.” People are even working on robots to replace the worlds oldest profession.

So what’s an American worker to do? The article did propose a solution that I find intriguing:

One way to cushion the economic blow is to reclaim something from the technology realm that we’ve been giving away for free: our personal data.

Companies that sell personal data should pay a percentage of the resulting revenue into a Data Mining Royalty Fund that would provide annual payments to U.S. citizens, much as the Alaska Permanent Fund distributes oil revenues to Alaskans.

In other words: faceboook, twitter, instagram and snapchat would have to pay us royalties. I’ve been working for facebook almost full time for the last eight years. While I’m not holding anyone accountable for the decisions I’ve made, I certainly could use a little bit of those Zuckerberg billions.