Labor Day 2028

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

02 September 15

n 1928, famed British economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that technology would advance so far in a hundred years – by 2028 – that it will replace all work, and no one will need to worry about making money.

“For the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem – how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.”

We still have thirteen years to go before we reach Keynes’ prophetic year, but we’re not exactly on the way to it. Americans are working harder than ever.

Keynes may be proven right about technological progress. We’re on the verge of 3-D printing, driverless cars, delivery drones, and robots that can serve us coffee in the morning and make our beds.

But he overlooked one big question: How to redistribute the profits from these marvelous labor-saving inventions, so we’ll have the money to buy the free time they provide?

Without such a mechanism, most of us are condemned to work ever harder in order to compensate for lost earnings due to the labor-replacing technologies.

Such technologies are even replacing knowledge workers – a big reason why college degrees no longer deliver steadily higher wages and larger shares of the economic pie.

Since 2000, the vast majority of college graduates have seen little or no income gains.

The economic model that predominated through most of the twentieth century was mass production by many, for mass consumption by many.

But the model we’re rushing toward is unlimited production by a handful, for consumption by the few able to afford it.

The ratio of employees to customers is already dropping to mind-boggling lows.

When Facebook purchased the messaging company WhatsApp for $19 billion last year, WhatsApp had fifty-five employees serving 450 million customers.

When more and more can be done by fewer and fewer people, profits go to an ever-smaller circle of executives and owner-investors. WhatsApp’s young co-founder and CEO, Jan Koum, got $6.8 billion in the deal.

This in turn will leave the rest of us with fewer well-paying jobs and less money to buy what can be produced, as we’re pushed into the low-paying personal service sector of the economy. 

Which will also mean fewer profits for the handful of billionaire executives and owner-investors, because potential consumers won’t be able to afford what they’re selling.

What to do? We might try to levy a gigantic tax on the incomes of the billionaire winners and redistribute their winnings to everyone else. But even if politically feasible, the winners will be tempted to store their winnings abroad – or expatriate.

Suppose we look instead at the patents and trademarks by which government protects all these new inventions.

Such government protections determine what these inventions are worth. If patents lasted only three years instead of the current twenty, for example, What’sApp would be worth a small fraction of $19 billion – because after three years anybody could reproduce its messaging technology for free.  

Instead of shortening the patent period, how about giving every citizen a share of the profits from all patents and trademarks government protects? It would be a condition for receiving such protection.

Say, for example, 20 percent of all such profits were split equally among all citizens, starting the month they turn eighteen.

In effect, this would be a basic minimum income for everyone.

The sum would be enough to ensure everyone a minimally decent standard of living – including money to buy the technologies that would free them up from the necessity of working.

Anyone wishing to supplement their basic minimum could of course choose to work – even though, as noted, most jobs will pay modestly.

This outcome would also be good for the handful of billionaire executives and owner-investors, because it would ensure they have customers with enough money to buy their labor-saving gadgets.

Such a basic minimum would allow people to pursue whatever arts or avocations provide them with meaning, thereby enabling society to enjoy the fruits of such artistry or voluntary efforts.

We would thereby create the kind of society John Maynard Keynes predicted we’d achieve by 2028  – an age of technological abundance in which no one will need to work.

Happy Labor Day.

Inside Clinton's Emails: Boehner, 'Parks and Rec' and Gefilte Fish

By Julian Hattem, The Hill

02 September 15

he more than 7,000 Hillary Clinton emails released by the State Department late Monday provide an inside look at the jet-setting life of a global diplomat.

Mostly, it’s pretty tame.

In an email to an aide on Jan. 3, 2010, for instance, Clinton asked for a copy of a Human Rights Watch report as well as “skim milk for me to have for my tea.”

She also asks for the broadcast times of two network TV shows: “Parks and Recreation” and “The Good Wife.” 

“Parks and Recreation: NBC Thursday at 8:30pm,” the aide dutifully responded. “The Good Wife CBS Tuesdays at 10pm.” 

Though 125 of the more than 4,300 emails released by State contained information that is now considered classified, the vast majority of the documents made public by the government contain little more than scheduling notes, check-ins and the copy-and-pasted text of recent news stories.

“Remember, you’re on vacation!” Clinton scolded one aide in an August 2010 message about the Senate’s schedule. 

“Your iPad has arrived!” close staffer Huma Abedin told Clinton in another email from that June.

“This is exciting news,” Clinton replied. “do you think you can teach me to use it on the flight to Kyev next week?” 

A March 2010, email with the subject line “Gefilte fish” asked merely: “Where are we on this?” The message was related to a dispute about gefilte fish shipments to a plant in Israel.

Other messages are somewhat revealing.

While Clinton herself declined to offer up any salacious gossip on her political opponents, longtime confidant Sidney Blumenthal sent a memo in 2010 dismissing Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) as an “alcoholic” and a “louche” who is “lazy, and without any commitment to any principle.” 

“His hold is insecure. He is not [Newt] Gingrich, the natural leader of a ‘revolution,’ riding the crest into power. He is careworn and threadbare, banal and hollow, holding nobody's enduring loyalty,” Blumenthal wrote on Nov. 2, 2010, the day Republicans won back the House.

“Thx, as always, for your insights,” Clinton wrote back to him.

Long-time aide Cheryl Mills passed along an October 2010 New York Times column from Maureen Dowd but made sure to include a subtle jab at the left-leaning writer. “[N]ot that I like her...” she wrote.

The existence of the classified information is likely to do the most political damage to Clinton, whose front-runner presidential bid has been tested by the fallout surrounding her private email setup. The reports about classified material in her email inbox has contributed to the drop in her poll numbers and created new anxieties about her campaign among Democrats.

Clinton is included on one February 2010 email chain about Iran that is severely redacted both because of national security concerns and to protect inter-agency discussions. 

Anne-Marie Slaughter, then the State Department’s director of policy planning, passed along details of European foreign policy head Catherine Ashton's talks with then-Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman which have been entirely redacted. 

Much of the other redacted material concerns classified information about foreign relations and foreign governments, according to government coding.

The State Department has maintained that none of the information was classified at the time it was sent but has been “subsequently upgraded” based on new information.

Clinton was emphatic at a press conference earlier this year that classified material never passed through her server.

“There is no classified material,” she said at a news conference in March. “I’m certainly well-aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material.”

Lately, she echoed the State Department’s line that information in the emails was never classified when it was sent and was never marked as classified.

“I’m confident that this process will prove that I never sent nor received any e-mail that was marked classified,” she said in Iowa last week.