hey everybody it's your quick step for this week if my voice is a little
nasally it's because I have a cold I recorded Thursday's video when I wasn't
even worse shape so next video I get a little bass anyways today is a talk
about automation unemployment all sorts of fun stuff one of the things I suggest
you do is click on the Oh no card cards go here and you will be linked to
the CGP grey video on the oncoming problem of automation and you can if you
haven't seen it yet it was very popular when I came out but it's definitely
worth a watch anyways CGP Grey's video is good but it's not complete it's very
good though so very recently the United States announced that its unemployment
numbers have actually been dropping it's the lowest that has been in 17 years
this has more to do with the fact that they keep tweaking the way that they
define unemployment but you know whatever namely that unemployment
figures look at participation by people who are actively looking for jobs in the
last few months and counts all employment as employment what this
doesn't factor is that it only checks for people who have been looking for
jobs in the last few months so doesn't count those who have dropped out of the
workforce in place of finding a job when they wanted to it also doesn't count
under employment people who have jobs but work insufficient hours to make ends
meet or are working outside of their field of expertise so their skills are
being underutilized it also doesn't say anything about wages something that has
been stagnant since the 1970s and has been in many countries this is important
because of inflation money becomes worth a little bit less every single year some
years more than others but it's important to know that if wages don't go
up every year by about a percent you are effectively taking a pay cut this is
what's really making everybody feel like they're poorer every single year but for
some reason we blame taxes because reasons now I could say all sorts of
things like that Trump just like Bill Clinton when he claimed good job numbers
17 years ago actually that these are more trying to weasel out of answering
the problem of unemployment they are finding low-skilled underpaid work that
you really can't survive on and claiming that that is somehow the solution to
unemployment because then they can say unemployment is low and people who don't
look at the numbers or who don't pay attention to how crappy things are in
the world seem to take that as a bonus and Donald Trump is all about lying to
look good I mean that's basically his entire career he actually became
president that way that and you know stoking the fires of racism but you know
people say I have too many opinions on this channel they're giving me the shut
up and sing message very often I'm not ready to make nice I'm not ready to back
down that's the second time I've sang this song on step back and also the
second time they did it in response of people getting mad at me for yeah you
know what I'm gonna stop why I am talking about unemployment and why I'm
talking about CGP grey is because both of them are
signs of the beginning of the end neoliberalism is a late capitalism which
is a term you probably heard on the internet but don't know exactly what it
means late capitalism is this term that to
actually phrase a pretty history learned person I was very surprised to find out
Matt Chrisman it's capitalism eating itself because it's ran out of things to
expand into so as returns get smaller and smaller every year capitalist
countries need to basically devour themselves another word that has been used
as endocolonization and basically start to prey off themselves by doing things
like reducing wages and cutting rights for workers and all sorts of fun stuff
in order to keep profits up that can only go for so long before these things
that are basically internal contradictions and capitalism which
we'll talk about in a bit start to come to full circle and we don't have a
solution because we can picture the world ending easier than we could
picture the end of capitalism capitalism by the way I'm going to define in this
video as the private ownership of now this is gonna sound real jargony the means of
production which means the things that make the things
so the factories the ships the trucks companies all the things we need to do
to make the things that we need and we have this contradiction where we have a
lot of people under a capitalist system who can't own a means of production of
their own they can't own a business so they must work for somebody who does own
a means of production that means that they need to trade their time of their
life for money so we need money to buy food and pay rent yes paying do not get
kicked out of the home you live in and also capitalism requires infinite growth
in order to be successful if you look there's always talk about the economy
growing year-on-year and if it's not growing that's considered very very bad
unfortunately we have a finite population a finite planet and finite
resources which means that infinite expansion is a suicidal farce anyways
people sell their time for money to get things that they need to live in order
to make money to get the things on stores people need to have money to buy
things so companies need people to have money but also are incentivized because
of you know efficiencies and things like that to have as few workers being paid
as little as possible those are both we like to call in Marxist economics a
contradiction because there's a third aspect technology Automation all of a
sudden the amount of work needed to make the products that all humans need
actually was surpass about maybe 50 years ago but even so it's getting even more
crazy in order to make all the products that everybody needs to live in luxury
forever the amount of time required to do that is going down we've already
passed the point where we can give everybody pretty much everything they
need to be happy but Jeff Bezos needs to go to space so we can't distribute it
evenly sorry guys but it means that the more automated things gets the more
available commodities are the price goes down but there are
fewer and fewer people making money because most people work for wages to
buy the things that are being sold which means you hit a breaking point
when you have nobody who can afford the things that they are then working to
make or that there's so many people who can't work because there's not enough
jobs left for them see the CGP grey video about the whole thing about horses
and people that all of a sudden capitalism kind of doesn't make sense
anymore it is like literally a nonsensical economic system it would
just break it's already been breaking for over 40 years but it's going to like
finally break its spine and this is a part where capitalism will either have
to end or radically change its form and that's where people will say like oh I I
I'm sure just go down there and click and you're gonna see the word universal
basic income or just basic income or ubi cuz that's the first thing that came to
mind to some commenter who didn't watch the end of this video
basic income is a idea that's been pitched by both conservatives and social
well not socialist socialists don't like you know so
right-wing people to Center right-wing people so you know liberals and
conservatives alike and some socialists like it because it is in many ways a
step forward but basically it is money for everybody whether or not you worked
whether or not you did anything as long as you lived for a month you get money
it's a good idea it is definitely better than not having it but it is definitely
a stopgap in order to keep this going remember what I said about inflation
earlier that money that you get every month from the government will go down
every year because that money is not gonna be tied to inflation so it's not
tied to politics or living expenses so the first things you will probably see
is these poor slums of people who live outside the city who are unemployable
and because of living expenses they are forced to live in parts of the country
that don't have any work and have low cost of living so trailer parks trailer
parks for miles and then the you know the cities are going to be a place for
the professional classes and the hyper rich for those who have the highest seat
on the Titanic as it's going down so basic income will probably do something
like that it'll also get rid of pretty much any Union rights or any unions
labor ability to work basically the power to strike is not gonna mean
anything because if you get fired for no reason you could just build basic income
so workers protections would go away real quick so it has its problems it's
better than not having it but it has its problems what is the solution
hmm if you have one please write it to the nobel economics division because i
imagine they have an award for you but that is definitely going to be in my
opinion the central issue of our time as we come into the end of capitalism's
ability to function what are we going to do how are we going to treat each other
we've already figured out two options one is to get rid of capitalism and make
things equal for everyone you know the Sanders option or the other option which
is to ignore the systemic problems that are making things worse and instead
blame it on people who have darker skin than you that seems to be the one that
is the most popular these days but it is one that I think does not work and
should probably be stopped posthaste anyways everybody May 19th 7 p.m. at
disgraceland in Toronto there is going to be a youtuber meetup between myself
Mexie and thought slime and I want to see lots of stepback fans come out to that
because it's gonna be a fun time it's gonna be raucous it's gonna be off the
wall I don't know why I'm so hyper but anyways this has been Tristan this has
been step back this has been quick step big new video format I'm changing the
video format a step back on Thursday check it out I'm very excited peace out