Recently, writer, researcher and activist Cory Morningstar posted the following thoughts and promps on how the ruling Establishment is leveraging the current coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic crisis to rapidly push forward with their technocracy agenda…
The crushing of the disposable working class by design.
The arrogance and brutality of the ruling class – is nothing less than breathtaking.
Let’s begin.
Business Insider, April 9, 2020:
“Many Americans will not have jobs to return to after the coronavirus pandemic ends…
“We’re going to see something like 10 years of change in 10 weeks.”
“The fact is right now this virus is the perfect environment for companies to get rid of people, bring in robots and machines, and figure out how they can operate more efficiently.”
“Universal basic income is going to become the topic, not just here in the United States, but Spain’s adopting a version of a minimum income. Legislatures around Europe are all very, very much focused on this.”
“We’re going to see the progressive Amazonification of our economy as Amazon’s one of the only businesses out there that’s hiring more and more. You’re seeing more robots are in grocery store aisles cleaning after we all supposedly go home…”
“One thing I’ve been saying is that we’re going to see something like 10 years of change in 10 weeks, because businesses are being put in a position where it makes sense to speed up a lot of the automation that they were considering investing in.”
“The fact is right now this virus is the perfect environment for companies to get rid of people, bring in robots and machines, and figure out how they can operate more efficiently.”
“My kids are at home just like everyone else’s kids and they’re getting taught online…. they’re going to be many, many families that actually make a different determination where they actually say, “Hey, this online thing is working well.”
“If you can find a way to, frankly, make yourself useful from afar, that’s going to be something that unfortunately we all have to think about more and more.”
“I think at this point it’s actually going to need to be a bit higher than that, because the $1,000 a month is enough for baseline needs for at least most of us, but the economy is going to become even more inhuman and punishing, both during this crisis and afterwards.”
“… I’d be looking at something higher than $1,000 a mo. that would be more robust & helping people not just be able to meet their needs, but also have a real path forward.”
[Let’s see Klaus Schwab or Yang live well on 1k a month. The rich are dangerous and insane hypocrites.]
“We’re going to be dealing with the consequences of this crisis for years to come, and we need a Marshal Plan style initiative to rebuild the country… helping create that vision for what America in 2022, 2023, is going to look like after we have a vaccine in place.”
April 12, 2020, Business Insider:
“Pope Francis says it might be ‘time to consider a universal basic wage’ in Easter letter”
Feb 28 2020, Business Insider: “The pope has joined forces with Microsoft and IBM to create a doctrine for ethical AI and facial recognition. Here’s how the Vatican wants to shape AI.”
Oct. 18, 2019:
“Yang likes branding. He calls his marquee policy idea—a UBI of $1,000 a month—a “freedom dividend.” … And lately, he can’t stop talking about “the fourth industrial revolution.”
“The fourth industrial revolution [4IR) is the shorthand Yang now uses to describe the wave of massive technological change that he believes has decimated manufacturing employment and will soon automate away millions of American jobs.”
“The fourth industrial revolution is now migrating from manufacturing workers to retail, call centers, transportation, as well as to white-collar workers like attorneys, pharmacists, and radiologists,”
“In a World Economic Forum video from 2016, experts offered up predictions such as ‘Our bodies will be so high-tech we won’t really be able to distinguish between what’s natural and what’s artificial,'”
“It’s self-serious, Star Trek–style sci-fi for people who wear expensive suits and maybe have an endowed lab at Harvard. These are the intellectual waters Yang swims in, and that’s disconcerting. Aside from the fact that these conferences tend to be pretty intellectually bankrupt”—even JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has joked that “Davos is where billionaires tell millionaires about what the middle class feels”—they by definition reflect the interests and values of the global capitalist class.”
June 20, 2019: “UBI would strengthen & even create financial markets, particularly for consumer credit, mortgages, & pensions. Far from [] a revolutionary route to freedom from the whip of the market, UBI may end up yoking all citizens to rentier capital through indebtedness.”
Jan 31, 2019: “If UBI is implemented in the current climate of austerity, economic precarity, and social entrepreneurship, you can be sure payments will be linked to digital identity to track “impact.”
That $1k a month…. just enough to scrape by.”
March 26 2020: “Keep it quiet, but universal basic income is coming”
“You think that after six months or a year of this we will just go back tamely to the old economic rules? I rather doubt it.”
The rise of fascism & the 2nd World War required the creation of the full welfare state… The current emergency may be fostering the rise of ideas previously seen as too radical to contemplate…”
July 31, 2017, World Economic Forum:
“As developments in artificial intelligence and robotics advance, there is going to be a severe and swift disruption of many working classes.”
“UBI, an economic proposition in which a sum of money is regularly paid to a population, could be a vital bulwark against the unintended consequences of automation in the workforce.”
“Companies will profit significantly from workforce automation, so the private sector will be able to afford shouldering this burden, while at the same time still making greater profits.”
“After all, a full-time human has needs: 30 minutes for lunch each day, vacation and sick time, toilet breaks, and health benefits, to name a few. Meanwhile, an automated worker would only require an initial installation and the occasional repair or upgrade.”
“The BCG report stated that a human welder today is paid around $25 an hour (including benefits) versus the equivalent operating cost of around $8 for a robot.”
“In 15 years, that gap will widen even more dramatically,” the report states. “The operating cost per hour for a robot doing similar welding tasks could plunge to as little as $2 when performance improvements are factored in.”
“This trend will only continue to accelerate. McDonald’s, an early pioneer of automation, is already replacing human workers with automated kiosks. They expect a 5% to 9% return on investment in just the first year; in 2019 they expect this return to balloon to double digits.”
“And this is only one sector: PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that 38% of US jobs will be in danger of being replaced by automation by 2030.”
McKinsey (in 2020) puts this number at close to 50% by 2030.
“Companies that automate their workforces should be taxed on these new massive profits, and some of the resulting capital given back to workers by the government in the form of UBI.”
“While the idea of a UBI is popular—Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates have all championed it—how exactly would a universal basic income be engineered?
“Large swaths of laborers are going to lose their jobs, leading to unprecedented levels of unemployment.”
That moment has arrived.
April 7, 2020:
“Spain to become first European country to introduce Universal Basic Income”
Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World Global Agenda, Davos, Jan 2018, World Economic Forum:
“… with some economists suggesting that automation could potentially replace over half of all jobs by 2055.”
“the disruption to workers’ lives will be significant”
June 20 2019: “UBI would strengthen & even create financial markets, particularly for consumer credit, mortgages, & pensions. Far from [] a revolutionary route to freedom from the whip of the market, UBI may end up yoking all citizens to rentier capital through indebtedness.”
April 7 2020, CNN:
“Grocery stores turn to robots during the coronavirus”
“Walmart, the country’s largest retailer & private employer, will have Brain Corp’s self-driving robots in 1,860 of its more than 4,700 US stores by the end of the year.”
“Workers manually picking, bagging and delivering is costly for grocers, and employees picking orders can clog up aisles.”
“Takeoff Technologies… has seen a double-digit increase in orders since the crisis began. “Robots handle a majority of the leg-work when fulfilling orders, meaning there is limited contact with grocery items… The process is “well suited” for social distancing.”
“In the retail industry, “margin pressure has made automation a requirement, not a choice,” according to McKinsey. ‘Automation will disproportionately disrupt retail.'”
April 10, 2020: “Pandemic strengthens the case for universal basic income”
“Coronavirus hysteria provides cover for introducing UBI, a grand theft from the working class.” “Notorious fraudster Johann Hari is now touting the UBI scam as an “anti-depressant.”[Cordeliers on Twitter]
“Subsidizing low-wage work depresses wages by essentially allowing employers to pay less than a livable wage, so EITC-type benefits are at least in part a transfer to employers, rather than workers.”
Henry Kissinger, The Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2020: “The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Forever Alter the World Order”:
“Kissinger: Democracies need to sustain their Enlightenment values. Without balancing power with legitimacy, social contract will disintegrate. Yet the issue of legitimacy can’t be settled at same time as this “plague”. “Priorities must be established.””
When we all start to literally starve, perhaps then we will eat the rich. Do you still believe that these people actually care about your health?
The future, now on our doorstep: The human population to be controlled, “via digital identity systems tied to cashless benefit payments within the context of a militarized 5G / IoT [Internet of Things]/ AR [augmented reality] environment.The billionaire class has built and is rapidly putting the finishing touches on infrastructure to run human capital social impact markets that will securitize the lives of most people as data streams. The tech that underlies this 4IR automation will hasten the death of the planet. WEF is advancing a technocratic system of control and domination of humanity and the planet… Why should we agree to this? It is a profound sickness of Western culture. Hubris. Sick. And totally ignoring the impact our actions have on the natural world around us.” – Alison Hawver McDowell
Links:
https://socialistproject.ca/2017/01/b1350/
https://socialistproject.ca/2016/11/b1330/
https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-ibm-pope-francis-push-for-ai-principles-2020-2
https://www.businessinsider.com/pope-francis-it-might-be-time-to-consider-universal-basic-wage-2020-4
https://www.businessinsider.com/andrew-yang-changing-job-market-need-for-universal-basic-income-2020-4
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/spain-become-first-european-country-introduce-universal-basic-income
Dyer: Keep it quiet, but universal basic income is coming
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/07/business/grocery-stores-robots-automation/index.html
https://slate.com/business/2019/10/andrew-yang-fourth-industrial-revolution.html
Good Guy in Davos? Not So Fast
https://www.newsday.com/opinion/coronavirus/pandemic-coronavirus-covid-19-universal-basic-income-ubi-1.43776695
https://www.henryakissinger.com/articles/the-coronavirus-pandemic-will-forever-alter-the-world-order/
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