Are We Thinking About Displaced Workers?

Today is a good day. You woke up, you come from a family that has raised you well and now you are on the first day of embarking on a seven-year college investment to become a doctor. This is something your family is so proud of, and you know, thanks to your intelligence and hard work, you will live a very fruitful and great life. It’s a given; if there are people, you need doctors, right?    

You are fully committed to making the average college investment cost of becoming a doctor, which hovers around $218,792 today. When compared to the lifetime earnings of a primary care physician, which is $6.5 million, this is a less than five percent investment into that earning opportunity. If you become a specialist, earnings are upwards of $10 million.   

Now, as an educated person, you are fully aware of technology and likely recognize the impact of AI, robotics and automation, on your life and on the world around you. But are you and many others in this very expensive medical education process predicting the possibility that you may be out of a job only three years after you graduate? It’s true, there is a belief that potentially 46 percent of all jobs may be displaced over the course of the next decade. You may believe this displacement may only affect not-so-fortunate warehouse workers, but you would be wrong. We’re talking doctors, lawyers and accountants.      

Before we begin to look around the room and wonder how this is possible, consider how truly easy it is for AI to interpret accounts (e.g., TurboTax), apply historical judicial review to law, or offer medical diagnosis possibly even more accurate than a doctor.  

When discussing this issue with a wider forum, I was presented with some pushback stating most humans would insist on a human doctor and interaction. Upon immediate consideration, this seems correct. I imagine interacting with a human rather than an AI-controlled robot would seem more humane, but when you present the fact that most people will utilize health insurance, we must begin to speculate what will be dictated to us in the future.  

If AI can provide the same care as a primary care physician at a fraction of the cost and with an infinite amount of patents, traceability and no human error, surely insurance companies will begin to dictate that this is the method a person should utilize to receive care.      

The True Concern   

My concern as the writer and a human that has existed in the job market my entire career: Are we really forecasting what this could do to our economy, and more importantly, people? Yes, the warehouse worker is probably going to lose their job, which is bad enough as the bedrock of human capital and labor, but there is a real threat here that some of the best earning individuals in the job market will be displaced. What jobs will they move into? We could say that computer science and tech may swallow them all up, but the reality is that if tech continues to develop at its current rate, we will also be utilizing platforms that have been auto generated and coded by AI.   

Where does our economy go when there is no one consuming, or their ability to consume with disposable income begins to melt away at a considerable rate of speed? Did we not learn any lessons when we saw the impact on the rust belt area of the U.S.? Look at what that level of unemployment has done to these areas, decimating an entire region of the U.S. The local and state economies, with cities that once were hugely affluent, have been left in ruin with real estate markets destroyed and locals left unemployed in high crime and drug abuse ridden areas.   

Are we not concerned that we may be lining ourselves up to the same misfortune on a much grander scale for everyone?  The difference this time is that if we weight too much towards automation, it will kill the entire economy, resulting in potentially wide-spread suffering, even if we are in jobs that have yet to be displaced by automation.     

Thoughts on Universal Basic Income   

We have reached a point in society where the fruits of all our labor and that of our forefathers and foremothers have resulted in a continuous level of income. Yield and income can be achieved. I will lay my cards down; I am pro-Universal Basic Income (UBI) at a level enabling people to live. I propose life at three financial levels: 1) survival, 2) live and 3) thrive.  

If the rate of automation continues, and if people are unable to pivot into other career paths and opportunities, an underlying level of Universal Basic Income will be essential for people to live. We must ensure that we have a level of economy sustained with consumers that have free choice on goods and services, therefore offsetting complete government control and market failure.   

You may have read about Universal Basic Income, much of which is negative; however, as a society, we must face the continuous erosion of the need for labor combined with technology growing at an ever-faster rate. We must consider if it is better to have a condition such as the rust belt on mass or create a level of federal- and state-provided income that may avoid such issues.   

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

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