Britain's lame duck Labour Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, thinks the benefit
system is responsible for trapping young people into unemployment. He also
thinks they suffer from a "poverty
of aspiration."
Automation and AI is likely to make a lot more people jobless and lead to displacement as machines replace workers. It will also lead to a reduction in aggregate national income as people lose their incomes. This will lead to more business closing and more unemployment. Hospitality offers a lot of entry level jobs to young people, but increased business costs is now leading to cuts in staff hours and a freeze on recruitment as existing employees are expected to do more for the same money. Pubs in Britain are closing at a colossal rate.
What I see on a daily basis in my part of Britain, is a lot of under-employment. Supermarkets with nobody working on the checkout tills because they've now introduced self-service machines and made shop lifting easier. Post offices having to close early because of staff shortages since they've been privatised. You make a phone call about a utility bill, and you could be talking to somebody in Timbuktu or an automaton. You phone for a taxi and you're talking to someone in Mumbai who hasn't a clue about the geography of the area.
Too many useful machines leads to too many useless people. If people can't make an income who is going to buy the goods that capitalist wants to sell? It's a contradiction of capitalism. What might be needed is a universal, unconditional, citizens basic income.
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