THREAD Listened to @AndrewYang on audiobook. Many of the workers we are celebrating today in this crisis - drivers, cashiers, sales/retail & more will lose their jobs over the next decade as a result of automation. The social contract will need to change and UBI introduced 1/10

How to stabilize our economy amid rapid technological change and automation is central to the post covid response. It must offer the chance to do things differently. For as Yang states “automation and the lack of opportunity yield a legacy of social ruin". 2/10

This is not science fiction, it’s already happening. Millions of jobs have been automated away in the manufacturing sector. Thousands are disappearing in the retail sector, partly due to in-store self-service and partly due to e-commerce. 3/10

The effects of automation are self-reinforcing. Think the high street spiral of decline. Gone in recent weeks - Debenhams. Cath Kitson, Oasis, Warehouse. In the US with 1,300 shopping malls, analysts predict 400 will close in the next two years. 4/10

Wales is being hit particularly hard by the crisis and unemployment will rise. Wales saw the biggest percentage hike in businesses going bust across the UK in March with a 140% increase in dissolutions. 5/10 https://twitter.com/dylanjonesevans/status/1253023730583900162?s=20

Yang is no communist. He is a successful tech entrepreneur and was a presidential candidate. His book is based on "responsible alarmism". His solution paints a portrait of a revitalized state rebuilding a robust safety net. 6/10

At the centerpiece of this safety net is a universal basic income for the benefit of society. No one pretends this is simple, or without issues. it is one solution amongst many. It must also be set in the overriding context of climate change 7/10. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-47169549

It's easy to describe resistance to digitalization as Luddism etc. But remember E P Thompson's observation about "the enormous condescension of posterity". While industrialization created progress it also destroyed people's lives, saw child labour, the workhouse, disease etc 8/10

Yang's 'The War on Normal People: The Truth About America’s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future' is one perspective. There are many others. Max Tegmark in "Life 3.0" asks what happens when humans are no longer the smartest people on the planet"? 9/10

As he states 'welcome to the most important conversation of our time" 10/10