Elon Musk Calls For Universal Fixed Income After Robots Take Our Jobs

Trending News: Here's Elon Musk's Plan For When Robots Take Our Jobs

Why Is This Important?

Because A.I. is coming, so we better be prepared.

Long Story Short

Elon Musk says with artificial intelligence taking up more and more jobs previously done by humans, the best thing we could do would be to implement universal fixed income. Essentially, that means you'll get paid a wage without doing any work.

Long Story

Sorry truck drivers of the world, but robots are coming for your jobs. And it's not just truck drivers. Taxi drivers, factory employees and even sex workers in cafés are soon going to be completely performed by robots and that means fewer jobs for you and me.

But Elon Musk's got a plan. Well, he's got a lot of plans including saving the human race, providing internet for Earth and Mars, making your home run on solar energy and building cool cars that drive you, but yeah, another plan. Musk told CNBC in an interview that when artificial intelligence takes our jobs, we'll need to hand out money to everyone, so they can afford to live without having to work.

"There is a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation," Musk said. "Yeah, I am not sure what else one would do. I think that is what would happen."

The genius entrepreneur is far from the first one to call for universal fixed or basic income. Switzerland voted on providing citizens with $2,600 of guaranteed income every month, but it didn't pass. It's also a popular belief in places like Silicon Valley and even the White House.

"Now, whether a universal income is the right model—is it gonna be accepted by a broad base of people?—that’s a debate that we’ll be having over the next 10 or 20 years," President Barack Obama said to Wired. "You’re also right that the jobs that are going be displaced by A.I. are not just low-skill service jobs; they might be high-skill jobs but ones that are repeatable and that computers can do."

So, would we just sit around and twiddle our thumbs all day without work?

Musk says that in lieu of a job to slave over, "people will have time to do other things, more complex things, more interesting things," like "more leisure time."

The problem I have with this whole universal fixed income thing is not that we need to work — we don't — it's that if we can't even get people to fund healthcare, how can we expect them to pay for our breakfast cereal? Also, where will the money come from? Will we rely on these tech companies and the few who still have jobs to give the rest of us money? It's just hard to see it happening. Although, we may have no other choice.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

Should we implement universal fixed income?

Disrupt Your Feed

Being able to truly do what you want to with your time doesn't sound bad at all.

Drop This Fact

The average employed American with children works about nine hours a day, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's nine hours a day you could have to invent something, spend time with your kids or learn something new.