The number of adults who are “not in the labor force” (NILF) surged to an all-time high in June to 105.8 million, according to figures from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

With AI becoming increasingly integrated into “white-collar” industries, raising fears of mass job cuts, there have been calls to bring in a so-called universal basic income, or UBI — which pays people for merely existing.

However, Eberstadt warns that this would only worsen the number of dropouts in American society.

“Disruptive technologies in the past have been really great for people who have had skills,” he said. “Their productivity and incomes have gone up a lot.

“They’ve also displaced a lot of labor for people who don’t have skills. It looks like we’re going to be on that same track with AI, wherever it goes in the next 18 months or 10 years,” Eberstadt said.

“When Henry Ford came down the road, I don’t think that anybody had any idea what a combustion engine was going to do in mass-produced cars,” he said.

"But I would not like to see a guaranteed income, a UBI. Because I look at how men who are neither working nor looking for work say that they are spending their days now. And it is very depressing to see what they say they are doing. And I wouldn’t like us to be buying more of that,” he said.

“They are not engaged in civil society, not helping out around the house, not getting out of the house. Spending 2,000 hours a year in front of a screen. That’s a great warm-up act for becoming a statistic in deaths of despair,” he said.

This is basically a third of our population

  • InvalidName2@lemmy.zip
    8·
    3 days ago

    There’s so much I could say about this topic. It’s obvious that the “unemployment” numbers, like so many metrics, don’t reflect the reality of our economic situation even if those numbers are accurate & to be believed. This is a statistic born of anecdotes, as everybody involved has their own story, but I personally don’t find that number shocking or surprising at all. In all my life, I’ve never known this many “working aged” people who are unemployed all at the same time.

    Obviously the boomer and older generation being such a large cohort and largely being retired weighs heavily in this number. But even those folks have a story. Many of them expected they would get a post-retirement job “just to get out of the house” or “for some fun money”, only to find out that they aren’t healthy enough, the jobs are too risky for their health, the jobs don’t pay enough to be worth it, their healthcare access and quality has declined, and so on. Better to stay home and just try to live off whatever they already have.

    For me, I had a great job with a purpose, then DOGE destroyed all that. Then parents’ health declined and I found myself in a position of having to be a caretaker. The job market for my skill set is abysmal and I live in a rural area so local job market is even worse and I don’t think I can juggle a 1+ hour trip to work each day (and back) on top of everything else right now. Fortunately I saved for a rainy day and boy is it ever rainy. Obviously not everyone is/was able to.

  • Lumidaub@feddit.org
    50·
    4 days ago

    There is a BIG difference between being neither working nor looking for work without UBI and being neither working nor looking for work with UBI and that difference is knowing that you’ll be able to pay bills next month too. If you’re scared and depressed and can’t afford basic shit, of course you’re less likely to be “engaged in society”, to be “helping around the house” (what house?), to be “getting out of the house”. Amazing that some people cannot understand that.

    • Cosmonauticus@lemmy.world
      15·
      4 days ago

      Never forget, Greed >>>>> EVERYTHING. Even common fucking sense. People argued against feeding kids in school. If certain other ppl benefit the masses will turn against it. Even if it benefits themselves

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
    20·
    4 days ago

    Yeah, I’m sure all those people have dropped out of the workforce entirely on their own choice, because living without an income, without healthcare, without a future is such a vacation. Imagine how many would choose this if they also didn’t have to worry about starving.

    NOT

  • Binturong@lemmy.caEnglish
    16·
    4 days ago

    So the NYPost is now gonna point out that it’s bad that AI is openly sold as an idea that will take jobs from people and make them obsolete right? Right? Next they’ll have some empty piece on how nobody can afford to buy things and the economy is teetering on the brink of collapse but it can’t be the fault of the handful of individual hoarding all the money. It must be the poor people’s fault, they should just git gud.

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    3·
    3 days ago

    “Disruptive technologies in the past have been really great for people who have had skills,” he said. “Their productivity and incomes have gone up a lot.

    Ehh.

    I mean, I do think that people tend to underestimate their ability to adapt using their existing skillset. And it’s certainly the case that if you know, say, statistics, to grab one skill, there are a wide range of fields where you might use that knowledge.

    But you can clearly also find examples where that’s not the case, where a skillset wasn’t very easy to repurpose.

    When the horse was phased out as a means of transport, a lot of people had a skillset around dealing with horses, and as demand for horse-related work declined, people need to switch careers, and some of that skillset isn’t going to be terribly transferrable. And because there were many jobs with that skillset that were phased out at one time, there will have been a glut of people on the market with that skillset all looking for new jobs. Not much call for even more expertise in dealing with horses when the existing few slots are already allocated to people who really know their stuff.

    That said, it might be that there can be interesting perks for society as a whole, even if it’s not great for the people who are unemployed. I do remember being frustrated a while back as to why there were so few good technically-sophisticated late Cold War milsim games out of the West. Most of the good stuff came out of ex-Warsaw Pact states. I went digging. Finally found some discussion on it. Basically, when the Cold War ended, Soviet defense spending dropped precipitously. That meant that you had a lot of people with a lot of knowledge about military hardware looking for work (this is also, incidentally, why the US purchased Russian space launch services for some time, to subsidize the industry, because the US didn’t want a lot of unemployed people with a skillset in doing things like making ballistic missiles running around on the global job market). But, anyhow, a lot of military simulator video game developers were able to hire really outstanding ex-Warsaw-Pact defense people as consultants for a while, who really knew their stuff. That’s a rare situation. I doubt that we’ll ever have a period with that level of quality milsim video games again, not short of another breakup of a huge military power. :-/

    • Sunflier@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      The phasing out of using horses drastically limited the need for horse riders, but it basically killed off horses. Beyond derbies and some shows, they’re nowhere. But, where we have no social net and will be left to starve and die in a ditch, at least the now surplus horses were put out of their misery.

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
        1·
        3 days ago

        But, where we have no social net and will be left to starve and die in a ditch, at least the now surplus horses were put out of their misery.

        Not in a lot of places. The farms went under, and the horses were let loose. Eastern Kentucky has a real problem with wild horses maiming themselves

  • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
    7·
    4 days ago

    We should have it because of that. Some will not work but shouldn’t. They are likely incompetent. Some might actually start businesses or get involved in charity or good works. They don’t because they see no future. Stability can really change people.

  • Jaysyn@lemmy.world
    5·
    4 days ago

    I.e. the low unemployment numbers that the Trump regime have been releasing are complete fabrication.

    • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
      5·
      4 days ago

      Some of it is, yes. People are living longer, so more total people are retired. There have also been a lot of layoffs the last year or two. I’m sure some of it is also people who aren’t here legally deciding to keep their heads down.

  • Pacattack57@lemmy.world
    12·
    3 days ago

    I don’t believe in a UBI but I definitely people we are not getting paid fair market value for our labor. UPS is proof of that. They negotiated a massive wage increase in 2024 and still making billions of dollars in revenue/profit.

  • Sineljora@sh.itjust.works
    13·
    4 days ago

    UBI in America is just a Trojan horse to turn social security numbers into social credit scores to deny non-magats banking and services. It’s why the trump accounts creation is pushing to be automatic and retroactive.