Infinite Quack

Andrew Yang on Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) Of all the Democratic presidential hopefuls, Yang is the only one who seems to fully understand this. I heard him speak on NPR not long ago, and agreed with everything he said. In terms of his likelihood of securing the DNC slot in the general election, among that wide field of candidates Yang is pretty far down the list -- Business Insider puts him at #9 , just ahead of Jay Inslee. The most likely picks currently appear to be Biden, Sanders, and Warren. Biden rejects the idea of UBI. Sanders is in favor, but seems to think it's too soon to talk about it. Not sure what Warren believes. ( Democrats Tiptoe Around Universal Basic Income ) Sure, education is great; free college and forgiving student debt are fabulous ideas and could shift more of the workforce into the high-paying high tech job sector. It just isn't going to be enough, not by a long shot. You won't get a majority of those millions of 50-year-old truck drivers, havi...

Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two Still beating this drum. People need to understand this dynamic because Trump and his followers either don't have that understanding, or are deflecting, when they blame it all on immigrants. John Oliver recently did a piece on automation -- also worth watching. Let me try and explain what I'm doing in my current job. I work for Amazon (standard disclaimer: I don't speak for them). Amazon used to make all its money from selling to customers, but now makes billions from AWS, Amazon Web Services. This is a tech company leasing its tech to other companies. What for? So those companies can do their own buying and selling online, and whatever else they do. It's safe to assume that part of what they're doing is automating their own processes. Netflix is a well-known AWS customer. If you're on  Netflix, go find Hasan Minhaj's excellent show Patriot Act . There's an episode about Amazon, in which--to turn the whole thi...