Being an unemployed student (there's no friggin' jobs out here in the outback
) this Basic Income system seems to only hurt me.
How so? Basic income specifically addresses your situation*, while the current welfare systems (in the US anyway) don't. So long as you're a citizen and meet whatever the age minimum is set at (if there is one) then you'd get the $5000/yr.
Whether you have medical issues or not is irrelevant. Whether you're employed is irrelevant. You still get that $5000/yr. Everybody does.
(*My phrasing is ambiguous. To clarify: yes, you would need to be a citizen of the country in which basic income is implemented. A basic income implemented in country A would not give money to citizens of country B. Please understand the the intended meaning rather than playing semantic games. You being an unemployed student...you would still receive that money.)
My "solution" (which is more just a speculative solution to a future problem, I wouldn't want to implement it now) at the very least doesn't require eliminating medical coverage for those on low/no income.
Can we clarify this? The "your solution" that I was referring to was
I would imagine as automation is phased in, it would be best to reduce the working hours of everyone, rather than have some people work full time and others completely unemployed.
...reducing working hours such that everybody can have a little bit of work rather than having some people working 40 hours a week while lots of people are unable to find work at all.
I already acknowledged this as a valid solution to the technological obsolescence issue:
That's certainly a valid solution. It would work. There are other solutions that would probably also work. For example, somebody mentioned basic income schemes earlier in the thread.
Why would you not want to implement that now? I routinely read about recent college grads still not able to get even jobs at McDonald's fully 1-2 years after graduating. Shifting to a 30 hour work week would help solve a good number of those sorts of problems in the short term. I don't think it's a long term solution to technological unemployment, but it could certainly mitigate a sizable portion of problems we're having right now.
In your post you linked to, half the links are to Wikipedia, helpfully informing us of what Earth and New York is.
Do you realize how much you're exaggerating? Read your own post that I'm replying to. Read the section of my post that you're quoting. Look at page 7 of the thread. I gave 27 links.
Half of them were not to wikipedia informing you of the earth and new york are.
Two of them were citing the source for the population density numbers I was giving.
2 is not equal to half of 27.
Your argument on resources is that technology will improve to extract more resources, and that non-economically-viable resource deposits will become available in the future.
That was one aspect, yes. There was more to it. For example: the way "reserves" is defined only includes known deoposits. If you already know where 50 years worth of something is, there isn't much financial incentive to go look for more. "50 years supply" does not mean "in 50 years we run out." It means "out of an unknown quantity, we've located 50 years worth." The original projections were that oil would have run out ~40 years ago. And yet here we are 40 years later with 50 years worth of known reserves. The original estimates were
at a minimum off by 90 years, and there's no particular reason to assume that the the current 50 years figure are magically the end because we've magically looked in all the places where oil is and none of the places we haven't looked have any oil.
And...even if that's so
Now, yes, I'm focusing on oil in this particular response. But these issues largely do apply to other materials even if the specific numbers are different. And in the case of some of those other materials, like platinum...it's really not a huge problem even if they do run out. Platinum is not a terribly important material.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum"Platinum is used in catalytic converters, laboratory equipment, electrical contacts and electrodes, platinum resistance thermometers, dentistry equipment, and jewellery. "We're not talking end of the world if this stuff runs out.
Your point on recycling is contradicted by the very link your provided.
Which point? I made a couple, and provided a couple links. Your quote does not specify.
vertical farming now, despite the fact that "A commercial high-ris
farm such as 'The Vertical Farm' has never been built".
...did you not see the picture I provided in that post? Vertical farming exists regrdless of whether or not specifically "high rise" implementations do.
*
Example in chicago *
Example in Tokyo *
Example on Miyagi *
Example in KoreaAgain, in case you missed it, here's a
picture of one: