Friday, May 17, 2019
Stage 8
In one of my classmates recently posted an article attempting to address the issue of Texas's underfunded and poorly financially structured school system( "A Change for the Next Generation" ). I agree with the general idea and intention of modeling our system after Massachusetts' school system, but have reservations about whether or not such an plan is implementable. For one, Texas and Massachusetts differ massively in there tax systems. If you look back at my early blog posts I discuss how schools in Texas actually struggle to pay the very same property taxes that are supposed to fund them. Also, applying this system fails to address the possibility of having a high population but not nearly enough tax money collected to fund the district. This could mean that the state is effectively paying for the maintenance and existence of a portion of the entire school system. Therefore, I suggest that the solution to school funding isn't to reallocate funding to schools, it is first and foremost to remedy our broken taxing system.
Tuesday, May 7, 2019
Stage 7
I recently read Andrew Yang's new book "The War on Normal People", which discusses the displacement of a large portion of our citizenry through automation, and I wanted to delineate how automation may affect Texas, how Austin is contributing to it, and some potential solutions.
Over the course of the last 100 years the socioeconomic trends set forth by the Industrial Revolution have been rapidly manifesting themselves as an increasing emphasis on hyper-specialization and cognitively complex occupations. In other words, our current system rewards mainly those who are extremely educated and capable of tackling novel problems on a day to day basis. This is not currently much of a problem because the U.S. is a service based economy that is in large part comprised of menial labor markets. But, with the unrelenting progress being made in artificial intelligence research, a large portion of our workforce is facing certain unemployment. I can not overstate the importance of this issue. It will cause an unprecedented economic shift on a global scale.
The same catastrophe will eventually befall Texas as it befalls the rest of the world. So the question remains, is there a way to stop it ? Well, the most we can do is mitigate the potential ramifications is by ensuring a certain amount of economic stability for our populace as they learn to transition to new occupations. I recommend UBI, that is universal basic income, as a potential solution. The money for such a program can be garnered via a value added tax on the use of automated systems by companies. Thus, we can gain the financial resources necessary to abate poverty and economic hardship while increasing our populations chances of success in multiple domains. For a multitude of further information on the topic I suggest reading the book.
Over the course of the last 100 years the socioeconomic trends set forth by the Industrial Revolution have been rapidly manifesting themselves as an increasing emphasis on hyper-specialization and cognitively complex occupations. In other words, our current system rewards mainly those who are extremely educated and capable of tackling novel problems on a day to day basis. This is not currently much of a problem because the U.S. is a service based economy that is in large part comprised of menial labor markets. But, with the unrelenting progress being made in artificial intelligence research, a large portion of our workforce is facing certain unemployment. I can not overstate the importance of this issue. It will cause an unprecedented economic shift on a global scale.
The same catastrophe will eventually befall Texas as it befalls the rest of the world. So the question remains, is there a way to stop it ? Well, the most we can do is mitigate the potential ramifications is by ensuring a certain amount of economic stability for our populace as they learn to transition to new occupations. I recommend UBI, that is universal basic income, as a potential solution. The money for such a program can be garnered via a value added tax on the use of automated systems by companies. Thus, we can gain the financial resources necessary to abate poverty and economic hardship while increasing our populations chances of success in multiple domains. For a multitude of further information on the topic I suggest reading the book.
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