Humanity first
Dear editor:
A.I. (artificial intelligence) is already smarter than humans. Sophisticated algorithms are taking over our future. They will be running the stock market and world banks. A.I. and robotics are replacing human jobs. Regular workers are becoming irrelevant. Here are just some of the workers A.I. and robotics will be replacing : 1) call center jobs 2) retail jobs 3) fast food jobs 4) truckers 5) accountants 6) financial advisors 7) journalists ... and it goes on and on.
What can we do to protect families and average workers from losing their jobs? Fighting progress is not the answer.
I would suggest that since a democracy is supposed to serve the people, we need to reorganize the way our current economy is working. Right now it is primarily serving only those at the top. With A.I. and robotics replacing so many workers it is time to reconstruct and replace our economy with a system that protects regular workers.
Amazon is an amazing success story. Jeff Bezos' current net worth is at about $137 billion. But Amazon is putting malls and regular retail stores out of business. People that were working these jobs are out. And then we find that Amazon is basically not paying taxes. Something is wrong here. There has got to be some way that Amazon and other such corporate giants with such huge profits can afford a dividend to help the workers they've displaced.
For the first time in many years, people in the U.S. are living shorter lives than in the past. Some of this, I'm sure, is a consequence of the irrelevance workers are feeling. They are feeling depressed and inconsequential. Couple depression with cheap drugs and you can deduce the fatal consequences. Drug overdoses and suicide rates are at an all-time high. The Sackler family cashed in and made over $14 billion selling Oxycodone, a narcotic, to hurting people. There is something obscene about this.
We need an economy that moves us forward with a bottom up, humanity first approach. Washington, D.C., has become a self-serving grab bag. The oligarchy that rules is a merger of corporations, politicians and lobbyists. They write laws that serve and protect only their interests. The abandoned normal worker needs to be brought back into the economic fold.
Donald Trump was an attempt to find change in 2016. We were desperate. We wanted change but got crazy. In 2020 we will try again. Our country has never been richer. With our opulence, let's find a leader who will use our technological advancements to create an economic system that works for us all.
Bill Wiedmann
Hot Springs
Editorial on 06/24/2019