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Bernie Sanders says that if AI makes us so productive, we should get a 4-day work week
(techcrunch.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
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- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
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There has been a study done in 1970 called The Limits to Growth that predicted that exponential economic growth would come to a halt necessarily, because you cannot have infinite growth in a finite system. It took many decades more than predicted, but I suspect that we're actually at this point now.
Workplaces mostly exist nowadays to grow the economy. It takes rather little work to maintain the world nowadays. That is why we're facing a declining demand in human labor.
Since the labor market is a free market, it is regulated by Supply and Demand. That means, if supply is high, prices drop; if demand is high, prices rise. On the labor market, that means that a declining demand for human labor leads to lower prices for that labor, a.k.a. wages.
That is the crisis that the US is currently facing: Declining wages, a.k.a. inflation, a.k.a. Cost of Living crisis.
That crisis cannot be tackled by technology alone. We need socialism, i.e. the basic decency to treat humans well because humans deserve to be treated well; independent of economic output.
That is what i'm advocating for: UBI (Universal Basic Income), which means that everybody gets enough resources to live.
However, that UBI has to be financed somehow. Printing new money doesn't work because it leads to hyperinflation. So, the money must be collected through taxes. It is straightforward that only the rich can pay these taxes, because they are the only one who has a lot of money to actually give.
To end this article, i'd like to point out that further economic growth is not possible inside Earth's limited space, but it is possible in outer space, because there's infinite space above. Humans just have to go there.
I don't disagree with anything that you said, but my point was simply to address the notion that existing jobs are irreplaceable. It is true that technology automates away jobs, but it also creates new onee. Industries and jobs that make up the economy change all the time and that's okay. Thinking that a new technology like AI is going to doom us is, well, just doom posting.