The Danger Automation Poses To The Poor And Uneducated…

If you ever took a moment to think about automa­tion, you must have won­dered how are the poor and une­d­u­cat­ed and unskilled going to live going for­ward?
In just a few years, all across America, a whole slew of jobs which pre­vi­ous­ly pro­vid­ed bread, (if no but­ter), to the poor­est, least edu­cat­ed and unskilled Americans have been wiped out by automa­tion.
This is in addi­tion to the fac­to­ry jobs which had ear­li­er dis­ap­peared and min­ing jobs which had also dwin­dled as a con­se­quence of out­sourc­ing and chang­ing envi­ron­men­tal atti­tudes.
Supermarket cashiers, toll col­lec­tors, Fewer bank-tellers, Librarians, sec­re­taries, typ­ists, exec­u­tive assis­tants, and so much more, those jobs have dis­ap­peared, or, are all but gone from the econ­o­my.
As the pop­u­la­tion increas­es and jobs which requires man­u­al labor becomes few­er, the sit­u­a­tion inex­orably becomes direr.

We are once again in an elec­tion cycle, and as can­di­dates jock­ey for posi­tion in front of the cam­eras, not a sin­gle Democrat save one, (Andrew Yang), a vir­tu­al unknown or the right-wing extrem­ist in the white house has broached the sub­ject of what do to about this inevitable train wreck.
This econ­o­my has been on an upward tear after President Barack Obama avert­ed a col­lapse in 2008. Experts of all kinds have pre­dict­ed that a down­turn is immi­nent.
In fact, the job-growth tra­jec­to­ry under the present occu­pant of the white house has been low­er than what obtained under President Obama’s lead­er­ship, despite the lies and pro­pa­gan­da to the con­trary.
This peri­od of job growth will not con­tin­ue for much longer accord­ing to many experts.
In 2018 the New York Post, a pub­li­ca­tion not known to be a bul­wark of left-wing ide­ol­o­gy, pre­dict­ed that the next crash will be worse than the great depres­sion. I hope they are wrong.
In May of 2018, (Mynorthwest) warned the next major reces­sion may be just around the cor­ner. A 2020 reces­sion is emerg­ing as the most like­ly time-frame, the pub­li­ca­tion warned. 

For the seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion, which has diver­si­fied port­fo­lios or have high pay­ing tech jobs, a poten­tial eco­nom­ic down­turn may not be as fright­en­ing, as it will be for the poor­er less edu­cat­ed in the soci­ety.
What that means in a nut­shell, is that African-Americans, Latinos and poor whites will imme­di­ate­ly be impact­ed.
As the say­ing goes, black peo­ple are always the last hired and the first fired. Make no mis­take about it, the next major eco­nom­ic down­turn will be dev­as­tat­ing to African-Americans, the most vul­ner­a­ble in soci­ety are always the hard­est hit.
As dev­as­tat­ing as the next recession/​depression will be, it will pale in com­par­i­son to what actu­al­ly awaits the African-American, Latino and yes the poor white communities.

MY SHOCKING PREDICTION

Since nei­ther polit­i­cal par­ty has seen fit to address the freight train bar­relling down the track, we are left to con­clude that they already have a strat­e­gy in place which does not require input from the mass­es, the seg­ment of the soci­ety which will inevitably be impact­ed the hard­est and quick­est.
Over the years there have been many con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about the inten­tion of the Federal Government as it relates to the American mass­es. Some peo­ple deemed (kooks and cra­zies) have already built bunkers and have stock­piled food, water, and oth­er neces­si­ties they believe will allow them to sur­vive what­ev­er they deduce will be forth­com­ing.
Some have argued that FEMA, the Federal agency which is tasked with dis­as­ter relief coör­di­na­tion, has a secret agen­da which will involve hun­dreds of thou­sands all herd­ed into camps on the instruc­tions of the gov­ern­ment.
Some have point­ed to the mil­i­ta­riza­tion of the thou­sands of police depart­ments across the coun­try and the decid­ed­ly more aggres­sive stance the police have tak­en, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the black com­mu­ni­ty.
Many have scoffed at these ideas and labeled those who believe that these things are pos­si­ble, [con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists].
To oth­ers, this is no laugh­ing mat­ter. What if, just what if, this is no laugh­ing mat­ter? What if the strat­e­gy is actu­al­ly to put mass incar­cer­a­tion on steroids?
After the Emancipation of Black peo­ple from the oppres­sion of slav­ery African-Americans were to expe­ri­ence a reign of gov­ern­men­tal ter­ror many argue was worse than slav­ery itself. If one can imag­ine the indig­ni­ty of servi­tude where one can be treat­ed any way or dis­posed of as chat­tel or prop­er­ty, the peri­od of recon­struc­tion was more hor­rif­ic for black peo­ple in America.
In October of 2016 writ­ing for the Huffington Post, Aristotle Jones wrote, Slavery was abol­ished in 1865 with the end of the Civil war and pass­ing of the 13^th amend­ment. The racial caste in the United States should have end­ed as well. However, the idea of race as a mark­er of val­ue con­tin­ued. After recon­struc­tion, the major­i­ty of whites dur­ing this time believed new­ly freed African Americans were too lazy to work, which surged leg­is­la­tors to pass the black codes. This was essen­tial­ly a sys­tem of white con­trol. These codes var­ied from state to state, but were root­ed from slav­ery, and they fore­shad­owed Jim Crow laws to come. For exam­ple, employ­ment was required for all freed­man; vio­la­tors faced vagrancy charges, they were not taught to read or write, and pub­lic facil­i­ties were seg­re­gat­ed. Within Reconstruction and Its Benefits, W.E.B. Du Bois says, “The codes spoke for them­selves… No opened mind­ed stu­dent can read them with­out being con­vinced they meant noth­ing more nor less than slav­ery.” Clearly, the black code’s inten­tions were to treat and see African-Americans as prop­er­ty, not per­sons. Furthermore, the black codes were intend­ed to secure a steady sup­ply of cheap labor, and con­tin­ued to assume the infe­ri­or­i­ty of the freed slaves.

Even with crime going down over­all across America the Government has con­tin­ued to build pris­ons.
According to the lat­est FBI report of Crime in the United States, the nation’s toll of seri­ous vio­lent and prop­er­ty offens­es dipped in 2017 over the pre­vi­ous year. As com­pared with 2016, the vio­lent crime rate per 100,000 pop­u­la­tion declined by .9 per­cent, includ­ing a 1.4 per­cent drop in homi­cide (which would have been a 1.8 per­cent reduc­tion were it not for the act of one indi­vid­ual last October in Las Vegas). Meanwhile, the decline in prop­er­ty crime was even more pro­nounced with a 3.6 per­cent low­er rate per 100,000 pop­u­la­tion. (USA TODAY)
According to the [Sentencing Project], The United States has the world’s largest pri­vate prison pop­u­la­tion. Of the 1.5 mil­lion peo­ple in state and fed­er­al pris­ons in 2016, 8.5 per­cent, or 128,063, were incar­cer­at­ed in pri­vate pris­ons.¹⁾Another 26,249 peo­ple ‑73 per­cent of all peo­ple in immi­gra­tion deten­tion- were con­fined in pri­vate­ly-run facil­i­ties on a dai­ly basis dur­ing the fis­cal year 2017.
And so it’s not like there has not been American prece­dent for lock­ing up black peo­ple as a strat­e­gy. The present sit­u­a­tion at the Southern bor­der of the United States and the gov­ern­men­t’s response to it may only be a test run.
Children and adults seek­ing asy­lum locked in cages and forced to live in their own feces have elicit­ed no out­rage from a huge chunk of the pop­u­la­tion.
For those peo­ple, no life mat­ters unless they are white lives. For the 35 – 40 mil­lion African-Americans liv­ing in America, a reck­on­ing is com­ing and it will not be good.
Unfortunately for poor whites, their sit­u­a­tion will hard­ly be any dif­fer­ent. As jobs become increas­ing­ly more dif­fi­cult to find, those on the low­er end of the eco­nom­ic spec­trum will be forced to resort to sur­vival tac­tics.
Simply put, crime will increase and mass incar­cer­a­tion will explode. That explains the silence on the con­se­quences of automation.

In a 2017 arti­cle for the (Intercept) Journalist, Alice Speri writes, “It is not uncom­mon for res­i­dents of America’s most heav­i­ly policed neigh­bor­hoods to describe their local cops as “an occu­py­ing force.” Judging by where many U.S. police forces get their train­ing, the descrip­tion seems apt. Thousands of American law enforce­ment offi­cers fre­quent­ly trav­el for train­ing to one of the few coun­tries where polic­ing and mil­i­tarism are even more deeply inter­twined than they are here: Israel.“
Read her arti­cle here: https://​thein​ter​cept​.com/​2​0​1​7​/​0​9​/​1​5​/​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​i​s​r​a​e​l​-​c​o​p​s​-​t​r​a​i​n​i​n​g​-​a​d​l​-​h​u​m​a​n​-​r​i​g​h​t​s​-​a​b​u​s​e​s​-​d​c​-​w​a​s​h​i​n​g​t​on/
It is not that both polit­i­cal par­ties are obliv­i­ous to these real­i­ties, they do know. The Republican par­ty which is the white suprema­cist par­ty and the par­ty of the rich and pow­er­ful have been build­ing jails to ware­house poor peo­ple of col­or. For them, it is par for the course. The increas­ing mil­i­ta­riza­tion of the thou­sands of police forces across the coun­try serves that end.
As for the Democrats, they can’t even decide on a strat­e­gy on which to con­test Donald Trump much less agree that their base, the most vul­ner­a­ble Americans are at great risk.
In the same way that Democrats man­aged to lose the so-called blue-col­lar union­ized work­ers to Donald Trump, so too will the par­ty lose its most loy­al base, African-Americans, only this time it will be for keeps.
Yang’s pro­pos­al is to pro­vide $1,000 per month ($12,000 a year) to each adult cit­i­zen. A core fea­ture of the Freedom Dividend is that indi­vid­u­als would need to choose between their cur­rent gov­ern­ment ben­e­fits and the Freedom Dividend. 
This is a con­cept which has start­ed to take root in west­ern Europe in response to the effects automa­tion and out­sourc­ing has had on their pop­u­la­tions.
It is safe to bet that this plan will not fly in America, a nation which did not use its tremen­dous wealth to uplift all its peo­ple.
Not even those to whom it owed a tremen­dous debt for their hun­dreds of years of forced servi­tude, or from those from whom they stole the land.