we can hope ! Its going to break the bank over there for sure eventually.

I just meant that it takes awhile for the word to spread about the freebies such tht more and more people sign up for them. its an exponential thing as more and more people collect...

Is it? The only natural law is that animals have to find food. That can be easy or hard depending upon it's availability.

Since I make my living writing code, I'm quite a bit distant from "natural law". It amuses me to contemplate that somewhere in the midwest there is someone feeding a cow so that I can have a hamburger in exchange for writing a few lines of c code.

And, to answer some of your other comments, it would lead to a stratification of humanity where some were productive and the others were not -- unless the robots manage to replace even the most human of our tasks and then no one would be productive.

Of course, there would probably be sports. We still watch football even though it would be easy to build a machine that you could give the ball to and no one could stop. There is also the robot wars sport for those who want to go that path.

Why sterilize people? What will the robot factories do if there is no one for their goods? And population is already going to peak and start to decline.

Even the political consequence called Trump won't be able to fix it, but at least it might make conservatives more active and we can affect a change in direction. It seems activity is what changes the direction of a country, not just hope.

And if Hawaii sinks or turns over from too many people moving over there to take advantage of this new freestuff (a new word), we might even get another political consequence more aggressive than Trump after his second term.

Just because the facts don't fit with someone's sensibilities doesn't make it insulting or an intended offense. It's just the facts.

Personally, I'm retiring in 6 years at 55, I'll need to rely on our savings and my wife's (civil engineer) pension for 4 1/2 years before I can use my 401k investments, and then about 6 years after that before we qualify for social security, basically, drain out our business' assets as well slowly.

I intend to use the system too, I'm just pointing out that as a population, we do already do this quite a bit (UBI). I don't agree with it, but I would be surprised if it really costs much more than what we currently do if you total up all the social programs and safety nets.

I really 'used' the system in my career, I'm no different and not calling the kettle black. I've been a single-person corporation for a long time using the Solo 401k program, which allows $54,000 (tax free) invested a year into a 401k instead of the $18,000 limit the masses have to live within. My wife was a gov employee, we lived on her benefits & medical and instead of buying that stuff for myself, I threw all of the company's profits beyond my salary into my 401k - anything left, pay the fed tax on and keep it in the business accounts to slowly pay me a smaller salary in retirement with - albeit living in a state then with no income tax.

It was at one time more difficult to find steady employment willing to deal with a corp-to-corp situation instead of an "employee", but ObamaCare fixed that pretty readily for me - getting an executive without having to pay a ton in healthcare, minimum sick leave time, and the pile of PTO that I demand for my big game hunting & travel - worked out great for them.

I don't disagree, although, you are incorrect about SS being subject to taxation. If other forms of income drive the income above a threshold, it subjects the SS income to taxation as well. My mom actually pays a rather hefty tax rate on her social security (she has a large retirement income, maxed out her contributions for almost 50 years with the sam employer).

These types of programs always astound me. (Free) Basic Income, Free Healthcare, Free Education, even Free dom (Freedom). They all sound really great, but where does the free part come from. Who provides the Free Basic Income? I know of no doctors that provide Free Healthcare, no professor would ever "teach" (or profess) for free, and I know very well about free dom, 43 of my personal comrades “can’t” attest to that, and a lot more can.

It’s like a lot of things, it just has to get worse before it can gets better, we have to experience it in order to see how the results will affect us individually and/or as a country. Most people still think only about their personal results on all these issues (remember the draft dodgers?). It’s just too bad that we can’t divide the United States into two different entities for a while that the people could choose to participate in. Perhaps a Left Coast and a Right Coast, divided by the Mississippi. Once you make your choice you are committed for at least a decade so it can sink into your thick skull. Somehow liberals experience this but somehow turn it all around later and just blame it on those that were against it in the first place. Then they forget and just do it all over again. Most have no clue and just don’t want to discuss it. Who is more dangerous to this country, ISIS or our liberals? At least ISIS is willing to admit they want to wipe us off the face of the earth.

:>)

"...technically, you are living on the current-day contributions of workers,"

All insurance works only because more pay in than is paid out.

"...showing the 50% that don't pay much or any income taxes are usually including a large chunk of Social Security recipients."

They don't pay much or any because they are retired and, under current tax code, do not have the type of income that is subject to taxes. And, in many cases, the $$ they receive in retirement was taxed before it was squirreled away. BT

Damn straight!!! And it was a trust fund until the pols & Lyndon Johnson looted it and never looked back..........and my employer was me, so I paid both sides!!!!!!!!! BT

Neither do I. And the only solution I come to is the Universal Basic Income. To a degree I find the idea as repugnant as most.

Our morality that you must work to eat is based on the truth that it takes the labor of people to make the food and thus you must do your share. But when that isn't true, what is the basis for insisting that people work when there is no labor that they can do at a lower cost than a machine?

The other thing I wonder is "Who owns the labor of the robots?" Clearly if I build a robot, I own its labor. If it builds another robot, I'm pretty confident that I still own its labor. And if it builds one and it builds one and ... at some point does my labor in building the first one become so diluted as to be insignificant?

Why would they hire you when robots do the job better and are cheaper? Clearly even now the construction of robots, like cars and iPhones would be heavily automated. Even now repair of computerized equipment depends heavily on other computerized equipment. The only advantage we have in repairing stuff is hands, eyes and mobility -- all of which are emerging technology.

To my mind, the key skill is cleaning a hotel room. It requires interacting with unknown situations and dealing with a wide variety of different items in non-standard positions. Once robots can do that then a lot of the routine jobs will be theirs.

I actually think robots are the only way we are going to be able to care for an aging population (The Japanese think so too). With nursing home care going in excess of 75K a year, the budget to pay for a device which can provide care in your home for another few years is high.

It's a first step alright. A first step in the wrong direction. Doesn't Mr. Lee understand where the money comes from?

I guess Hawaiians cannot see beyond their tourist's money.
They never learned:
In the land of the sunburn, the man with lotion is king.

I'm not calling it a hand-out, although, technically, you are living on the current-day contributions of workers, the system was never 'pre-seeded' with money.

I'm saying that if someone is getting SS, they don't get a "universal basic income" on top of that, and statistics showing the 50% that don't pay much or any income taxes are usually including a large chunk of Social Security recipients.

Hawaii probably feels 'enabled' to do something like this, by just soaking the mainland real estate owners that have properties in Hawaii by cranking up the property taxes higher, taxes on tourism, and sales tax.

We spent about a week in Waikiki last fall, I have to admit, I wasn't really that impressed. The first night we paid around $90 for a very mediocre meal by our normal standards, only edible because we were hungry. And I don't think we really ever had a memorable meal there - if anything, it was some awesome fresh pineapple while cruising the north end of the island in a Mustang convertible I rented. Compared to our RV vacations in Idaho / Utah / Arizona / New Mexico / Colorado - it was a total let-down.

I felt like a human ATM machine while riding on Hawaiian Airlines.

Get a job building and servicing robots

Don't include social security in your list of government hand outs. I and my employer paid into it for 45 years I sure as hell want it back.

Yes. That's what I meant by "third-rail entitlement."

Up to now automation has replaced repetitive work and people have moved to tasks which are not easily automated. But one can see on the horizon the ability to have a general purpose robot which can cook a meal, clean a hotel room, pick fruit, pick up garbage, mow lawns, frame and drywall a house. In essence anything that 95% of the population can do.

And they will be far less expensive to employ than people. They will even repair themselves.

The answer to this problem has always been, "new jobs have always emerged". But that's an observation about relatively limited automation, not a law of nature.

What solution do you have to this?

Once cash payments are started, they can never be stopped without HUGE political consequences.

Not sure I knew this was attempted before.