The age of the Internet grants anyone who can access it an
opportunity to learn a great deal about virtually anything in a short
amount of time. Unfortunately, the published information can be
incorrect. Anyone who Googles "The John Birch Society" will see this
problem demonstrated almost immediately. From the slanted view given of
the Society at Wikipedia to the crazed rantings of detractors, much of
the information provided is either distorted or downright false. Thus,
we offer this page where we seek to set the record straight.
Myth: The JBS is a radical organization full of right-wing extremists.-
Fact: The JBS is dedicated to restoring the Republic according to the
vision of the Founding Fathers: limited government, individual liberty,
and the rule of law. Along with America's Founders, we believe that
governments are instituted to protect individual rights and liberties,
and are not formed to provide for the wants of individuals. To label JBS
radical or extreme for agreeing with our nation's Founders is to place
that same label on them.
Myth: The JBS message is hate-filled.-
Fact: There never has been any hate in our agenda and it will never
be employed as a tactic. From the outset, membership in JBS has been
strictly denied to haters and, should any member adopt a racist or
anti-Semitic attitude or behavior, the membership of such a person will
be permanently revoked.
Myth: The JBS Founder Robert Welch called President Dwight Eisenhower a Communist.-
Fact: Originally detailing some of Pres. Eisenhower's history in a
1954 letter sent privately to a few friends, Mr. Welch's research grew
over several years into a full-length book entitled The Politician
(1963). Once the book was published, its very existence was ignored
while critics continued to dwell on only one of several possible
conclusions offered by Mr. Welch.The book provides 300 pages and 150
pages of footnotes and documentation, including covering one of Mr.
Eisenhower's most immoral and despicable acts of authorizing "Operation
Keelhaul"; which used American soldiers to repatriate anti-communist
Poles to their certain death or torture. Read the book for yourself and
discover what Mr. Welch did say and learn the role played by Mr.
Eisenhower over his many years as one of our nation's military and
political leaders.
Myth: The JBS considers public water fluoridation part of a Communist mind-control plot.-
Fact: While the JBS doesn't agree with water fluoridation because it
is a form of government mass medication of citizens in violation of
their individual right to choose which medicines they ingest, it was
never opposed as a mind-control plot. If citizens want to add fluoride
to their diet or daily routine, there are plentiful opportunities for
them to do so. It’s a choice they should make, not their local
government. Furthermore, opposition to fluoridation was never a major
action item of any JBS campaign.
Myth: The JBS is nothing more than a group of conspiracy theorists.-
Fact: The John Birch Society reports on those that create and
influence public policy and the motivations behind their actions. JBS
directs members to counter unconstitutional actions through peaceful,
educational means, including supporting or blocking legislation, setting
up relationships with key elected officials and local leaders, and
holding elected officials accountable to their oath of office. By
definition, a conspiracy exists when two or more persons work secretly
for an evil or unlawful purpose. Given the state that America is in
today, one could argue that an unconstitutional agenda is no longer
secret, but in the open for all to see. Those that continue to work
against the Constitution do so brazenly, continuing to make promises and
entitlements to citizens that the country cannot afford while
committing future generations to crushing debt and ever decreasing
prosperity at the expense of liberty.
Myth: The JBS was booted out of the conservative movement by William F. Buckley.-
Fact: In the mid-1950s on more than one occasion, John Birch Society
Founder Robert Welch financially helped an up-and-coming conservative
leader, and recommended that others do the same, so this rising young
star could get his new magazine off the ground. That newcomer was
William F. Buckley and his magazine was National Review. A few short
years later, Mr. Buckley attacked Robert Welch in a lengthy article in
his magazine. Over the past several decades, Buckley carried out a
campaign of attacking or disparaging Welch and the Society. On numerous
occasions, he boasted to friends that he intended to destroy The John
Birch Society. He didn't succeed. Read more in John McManus' book,
William F. Buckley: Pied Piper for the Establishment.
Myth: The JBS is against civil rights because it opposed several Civil Rights acts.-
Fact: Correcting civil rights abuses that do exist should be
accomplished at the state and local level, something The John Birch
Society members - of all races, colors and ethnic backgrounds - have
always supported. Civil rights legislation should have come from the
states and the communities rather than being used as a steppingstone
toward our present-day out-of-control federal government.
Myth: The JBS is nothing more than controlled opposition,
pretending to be a friend to the cause of liberty. Robert Welch sold his
candy company to the leftist, internationalist Rockefellers.-
Fact: Robert Welch was out of the candy manufacturing business
(retiring in 1956) when his brother (for whom he used to work) sold the
James O. Welch Candy company to Nabisco in 1963. JBS has never been
funded by any Rockefeller money. Nelson Rockefeller publicly attacked
JBS, and JBS has exposed the Rockefeller support for the United Nations
and its goal of a new world order more than any other organization.
Myth: The John Birch Society played a role in the assassination of President Kennedy.-
Fact: This is perhaps the most despicable myth. The truth is that The
John Birch Society has always lived by the age-old adage that foul
means can never be employed to accomplish a goal, no matter how
important that goal. While JBS and its members called attention to the
many dangerous and unconstitutional acts and programs promoted by
President Kennedy, it has always been the Society’s position that
anything harmful to our country emanating from the White House should be
countered by congressional or judicial action urged upon our nation’s
leaders by concerned American citizens. Immediately after the
assassination, founder Robert Welch canceled the “For God and Country”
rally that thousands had committed to attend in Boston the following
day. He then sent a telegram of condolences to Mrs. Kennedy. In that
brief message, published by the Boston Globe on November 23, 1963,
Robert Welch stated: “On behalf of the Council of the John Birch Society
and myself, I wish to express our deep sorrow at the untimely loss to
our nation of its youngest elected President and to convey more
particularly to you and all members of President Kennedy’s family our
sincere and heartfelt sympathy in your overwhelming personal loss.
Found off a wiki thats not wikipedia. All the far-left information available. Vote Republican to keep 2 party system
Rev. Dr. Raphael Gamaliel Warnock has been the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta since 2005. He is running for the U.S. Senate in Georgia.
Raphael Warnock was born in Savannah, Ga., "the 11th of 12 children born to two Pentecostal-Holiness ministers." Raphael Warnock served as a "youth pastor for six years and assistant pastor for four years" at the Abyssinian Baptist Church of New York.
Bio
Raphael Warnock has served, since 2005, as the Senior Pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, spiritual home of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The son of two Pentecostal pastors, Dr. Warnock responded to the call
to ministry at a very early age, and became, at age 35, the fifth and
the youngest person ever called to the senior pastorate of Ebenezer Church,
founded in 1886. Yet, before coming to Ebenezer, “America’s Freedom
Church,” Dr. Warnock was blessed to study and serve within the pastoral
ranks of leading congregations also known for their deep spiritual roots
and strong public witness. He began as an intern at the Sixth Avenue
Baptist Church of Birmingham, Alabama, where he was ordained by the Rev.
Dr. John T. Porter, who himself had served many years earlier as Martin Luther King, Jr.’s pulpit assistant at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama and later under the tutelage of Martin Luther King, Sr. at Ebenezer. From there, he served for six years as the Youth Pastor and four years as Assistant Pastor at the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church
of New York City – also one of the nation’s leading congregations.
Finally, before taking the helm of Ebenezer, Pastor Warnock immersed
himself further in the challenges of urban ministry, in the 21st
century, while serving for 4 ½ years as the Senior Pastor of Baltimore’s
Douglas Memorial Community Church, also a spiritual base of social activism.
The Rev. Dr. Warnock graduated from Morehouse College cum laude in
1991, receiving the B.A. degree in psychology. He also holds a Master of
Divinity (M.Div.) degree from Union Theological Seminary,
New York City, from which he graduated with honors and distinctions.
Seeing his pastoral work as tied to the ministry of scholarship and the
life of the mind, Rev. Warnock continued his graduate studies at Union,
receiving a Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) degree and a Doctor of
Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in the field of systematic theology.[2]
Activism
Rev. Warnock has a long history of backing leftist cause celebres and legal cases:
As a pastor, Rev. Warnock sees the whole community as his
parish. Accordingly, he has defended voting rights in his own state of
Georgia. And when, in 2006, the State of Louisiana failed to protect the
voting rights of recent Katrina evacuees, he led a “Freedom Caravan” of
citizens back to New Orleans to vote. Dr. Warnock has addressed his
ministry to urban men through a barbershop ministry called “Cutting Thru
Crisis” and through a series of Bible Studies held in a local car wash.
Newsweek magazine covered this example of his unconventional approach
to ministry in an article entitled, “For Those Who’ve Fallen, Salvation
Amid the Suds.” Dr. Warnock has taken on the contradictions in our
criminal justice system through his preaching and through his fierce
public advocacy. Along with many others, he stood up for Troy Davis,
Trayvon Martin and Genarlow Wilson, a high school student ensnared by a
poorly written law and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Wilson was
released on appeal and has since graduated from Morehouse College. His
bold and visionary leadership has been further demonstrated through his
public policy work with The National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS
and his ongoing efforts to provide tuition support for young people
pursuing post-secondary education. Dr. Warnock is a graduate of the
Leadership Program sponsored by the Greater Baltimore Committee, a
graduate of the Summer Leadership Institute of Harvard University and a
graduate of Leadership Atlanta.
He is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., the 100 Black Men of Atlanta, Inc. and a Lifetime Member of the NAACP.[3]
Honors
Rev. Warnock’s activism was honored in 2016, as his footprints were
placed on the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame. Among other
honors, Rev. Warnock has been recognized as one of “Atlanta’s 55 Most
Powerful” by Atlanta magazine, one of the “New Kingdom Voices” by Gospel
Today magazine, one of “God’s Trombones” by the Rainbow Push Coalition, a “Good Shepherd” by Associated Black Charities, one of the “Chosen Pastors” by The Gospel Choice Awards, “A Man of Influence” by the Atlanta Business League,
one of The Root 100 in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 (TheRoot.com a
division of the Washington Post), one of the “Top 10 Most Influential
Black Ministers” by Loop 21, one of the “20 Top African American Church
Leaders” by TheRoot.com and he has received the Reverend Dr. William A.
Jones Justice Award from the National Action Network. He is a National TRIO Achiever Award recipient and has been honored by induction into the Martin Luther King, Jr. Board of Preachers.[4]
Raphael Warnock Pastor during Fidel Castro Visit
Calvin Butts sits next to Marxist Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in Abyssinian Baptist Church
In an article headlined "Georgia Senate candidate Warnock was
assistant pastor of church that hosted, praised Fidel Castro in 1995,"[5] it was revealed that Raphael Warnock was a pastor at the Abyssinian Baptist Church when Cuban Marxist dictator Fidel Castro visited in 1995. Raphael Warnock's campaign spokesman distanced the Senate candidate from the Marxist dictator.
“Twenty-five years ago, Reverend Warnak was a youth pastor and was not involved in any decisions at the time,” said campaign spokesman Terence Clarke. Warnock declined the campaign to provide further comment on whether or not he attended that particular event.
The article revealed that "In C-span footage At the event, Head Pastor Calvin Butts praised Castro, saying, “Alluding to Fidel’s mantras!” Fidel! Fidel!" Further, it was explained that Calvin Butts
"defended the decision to invite Castro, arguing that 'our tradition is
to welcome those who are visionaries, those who are revolutionaries,
and those who want the freedom of all people around the world.'
"Early in the evening, about 1,300 people sat shoulder to shoulder in the pews of the Abyssinian Baptist Church,
waiting for Mr. Castro. A diverse crowd, including whites, blacks and
Hispanic people, had spent hours on line for the ticketed event. Many
said they were there to show support for Mr. Castro's efforts to derail
the Helms-Burton bill in Congress, which seeks to tighten the economic
embargo. Many blacks, in particular, said they admired him because they
believed he had created harmony between the races in Cuba.
"I was here the last time when he came to the Theresa Hotel" in Harlem, said David Brothers, 76. "I felt I had to come again. He's a principled man and he doesn't bow down. He did a whole lot for Africans."
Asked whether he expected to see a firebrand mellowed
with age, Mr. Brothers said: "He's still the revolutionary. The suit
don't make the man."
Mr. Castro entered the church at about 7:45 to roars of
"Fidel! Fidel! Fidel!" The crowd chanted, "Cuba, si, bloqueo, no." Mr.
Castro strode to the podium, relishing the boisterous show of support,
which lasted for 10 minutes.
He smiled and nodded at the politicans [sic] and leaders seated in the balcony above, among them Representative Charles Rangel, Representative Nydia Velasquez, Representative Jose Serrano and Angela Davis,
the 1970's black radical who is now a professor of philosophy at the
University of California at Santa Cruz. Ms. Davis smiled at him and gave
him a fisted salute."
Butts speaks at Warnock's church
Raphael Warnock Mar 19, 2011.
The Rev. Calvin O. Butts III of New York's The Abyssinian Baptist Church will be the speaker at Ebenezer Baptist Church.
The Rev. Calvin O. Butts III
of New York's The Abyssinian Baptist Church spoke at Ebenezer Baptist
Church as it celebrated its 125th anniversary in August 2012.
Rep. John Lewis
, D-Atlanta , who recently received the Presidential Medal Of Freedom,
will receive a special honor for his dedication racial equality. Also
being honored is state Sen. Leroy Johnson, who is chairman of the church's board of trustees.
During the service, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, the church's senior pastor, will unveil a work by Donald Bermudez commemorating Ebenezer's history.[7]
Praise from Calvin Butts
A September, 2001 article from the Baltimore Sun Raphael Warnock addresses Raphael Warnock's new position as pastor of Douglas Memorial Community Church
in West Baltimore, as well as his participation "in a daylong
symposium: "The Black Church's Response to the HIV/AIDS Epidemic."[8]
From the article:
The Rev. Calvin Butts, pastor of Abyssinian, said he wasn't surprised Warnock was hired.
"He's one of the brightest and most intelligent and
academically prepared young clergymen in the country," Butts said. "He
got along excellently with the church members of all ages. He's a
forceful leader, very serious about the issues that impact especially
the African-American community. He's one of the more thoughtful
preachers of his generation."
Last month, Fair Fight and Stacey Abrams
did something for the first time and something we likely won’t do again
— endorse in a contested Democratic U.S. Senate race. On January 30,
Reverend Raphael Warnock launched his campaign for U.S. Senate. Fair Fight
and Stacey endorsed his run soon thereafter, and Fair Fight is making
in-kind contributions close to the maximum limit to support his run.
I wanted to share some background on why Rev. Warnock is so
special and important to me personally, and to our work overall. Rev.
Warnock and Stacey have had a long relationship and have worked together
on many important issues through the years. The three of us worked
closely together in 2014 when we first launched the New Georgia Project,
an organization founded to register an electorate that was increasingly
younger and more diverse. SOS Brian Kemp launched a suppressive, evil
investigation into the New Georgia Project that year, trying to shut
down the largest voter registration drive the state had seen in decades,
charging us with voter registration fraud. Ultimately, we were
vindicated, and no wrongdoing was found. But those months in many ways
are the genesis of where we are today.
I met Stacey’s longtime friend and former colleague Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, and was connected with Dara Lindenbaum
— both who came on that year as legal counsel in our fight against the
investigation, and then in the Writ of Mandamus we filed against Kemp —
as we had unknowingly uncovered at the time the “exact match” law
designed to keep people off voter rolls. 40,000 of the 86,000 forms NGP
submitted that year weren’t showing up on the rolls, and so the Mandamus
action was meant to force him to register those voters. Though that
suit was unsuccessful, the issue evolved into another lawsuit filed by
the Lawyers Committee For Civil Rights Under Law,
and that lawsuit resulted in 30,000 voters being reinstated to the
rolls who had been flagged in 2014 and cancelled out of the system.
When Kemp launched his investigation that year and the
subpoena arrived and the fight quickly escalated, Stacey and I reached
out to Rev. Warnock. He jumped in and worked side by side with us to
fight back against Kemp’s attempt to shut down and criminalize voter
registration. For Rev. Warnock’s kindness and fearlessness in that
fight, I will be forever grateful. It was a very difficult time as we
expected at any moment our canvassing offices to be raided, and we had
to periodically shut the operation down because we were worried about
our canvassers being harassed or arrested. Stacey stepped down from her
role as Chair of NGP when she filed for the gubernatorial race in 2017,
and Rev. Warnock stepped up as the new Chair of the organization. Now
Francys Johnson, another fighter for voting rights and the former State
President of the GA NAACP, has become the Chair of NGP.
Rev. Warnock is the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, one of our co-plaintiffs in our nonpartisan Fair Fight Action litigation, and he with his church have fought alongside us to get relief from the courts for Georgia voters.
Rev. Warnock is also a leader on numerous progressive issues,
including gun safety, criminal justice reform, and civil and human
rights. It is an honor to call him a friend, and I could not be happier
for the Georgians we fight for every day that he is stepping up to run
for US Senate. His run has the chance to transform the conversation
about the importance of Georgia in the 2020 election.
I hope some of this lends some background as to why Fair
Fight’s PAC is taking unprecedented steps to support his candidacy — and
why we think you should join us! Please consider making a contribution
to Rev. Warnock and help him become the next U.S. Senator from Georgia.[9]
Influence
As an opinion leader, his perspective has been sought out by
electronic and print media, locally, nationally and internationally. His
work has been featured on CNN, the CBS Evening News, the Huffington
Post and in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution which hailed him “a
leader among Atlanta – and national – clergy, a fitting heir to the
mantle once worn by The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” At President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama’s
request, Dr. Warnock delivered the closing prayer at the 2013 Inaugural
Prayer Service held at the National Cathedral and delivered the sermon
for the Annual White House Prayer breakfast in March 2016.
Rev. Warnock has preached his message of salvation and liberation in such places as The Riverside Church
of New York and the International Festival of Homiletics. But he is
just as comfortable in a small, country church or an urban storefront.
His first book is entitled, The Divided Mind of the Black Church;
Theology, Piety & Public Witness (NYU Press, 2014).[10]
SONG connection
June 2018 Ebenezer Baptist church and partners raised money to bail
out folks out of jail next week — in time for Father’s Day and
Juneteenth. For the church, the bailout was part of a larger focus on
mass incarceration.
“We who believe in freedom cannot rest until we dismantle mass incarceration,” said Rev. Raphael Warnock from his pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church on Wednesday night, kicking off the Freedom Day Bailout Campaign.
“Part of how that happens is we criminalize poor people. We have effectively made being poor in America a crime,” he said.
He and other critics nationwide want to change how the criminal
justice system treats people who don’t have the cash to pay bail or
fines or fees.
For the same charges, it’s a different outcome for a person who
has $1,000 to pay bail and someone who doesn’t have that money. Without
money, people wait for trial in jail.
Or when someone can’t pay a fine, more, unaffordable trouble piles up.
Several times, Warnock referred to the Ferguson report, the
scathing product of a federal investigation of the Ferguson, Missouri
police. The report documented systemic racism among officers, a pattern
of excessive force and other violations of law, plus the effect of fees
and fines on folks who can’t pay them.
“As we saw with Ferguson report, poor people get caught up in the
system, with fees and fines and then they end up in jail. If they have
employment, they end up losing it, if they have children, their children
end up in trouble. So this is a serious moral issue,” said Warnock.
Warnock said they hope to bail out a couple dozen people — and
that there are similar campaigns going on across the country to address
the cash bail system.
The new city rule, which had Ebenezer’s support, eliminates bail for some cases that come up in Atlanta’s Municipal Court.
And a new state law requires judges to consider a person’s ability to pay bail on misdemeanors before setting it.
High-profile bailouts in opposition to mass incarceration have
already been happening across the country, including national events
like Black Mamas Bail Out, set up in time for Mother’s Day. In Atlanta, one of the organizers was Southerners On New Ground, which is also a partner in this campaign, among many other organizations.
Warnock said the church’s ongoing work on ending mass
incarceration has included helping people restrict arrest records from
public view. That can be done if the arrest didn’t result in a
conviction. Those arrest records can prevent people from getting jobs or
apartments, Warnock said, even if the person was never convicted of
anything.
He also said that in the spring, the church is hosting an interfaith conference on mass incarceration.[11]
Raphael Warnock
is not “new to this” he’s “true to this”. I remember organizing with
him in 2014 through #MoralMondays Georgia, to conduct civil disobedience
at the Georgia Capitol to demand lawmakers #ExpandMedicaid in Georgia.
He was 1 of 39 arrested fighting for healthcare for Georgia’s most
vulnerable. I trust him to take that same fight to the US senate. I
could not be more excited to stand with him.
Let’s get him there 👇🏾
MMGA
In Georgia, organizers from Occupy our Homes Atlanta, DSA, and other groups that had worked together began talking about a Moral Monday Georgia (MMGA) coalition in August of 2013. The new state NAACP president, Rev. Francys Johnson,
led the first rally, for Medicaid expansion, which attracted 500 people
and significant media coverage. He also brought Rev. Barber to speak in
Atlanta that day.
A core group of 100-200 activists from 40 Georgia organizations,
including DSA, held weekly rallies on a variety of issues drawn from a
12-point platform. On three of the rally days, groups sat in at the
Capitol and legislative offices, resulting in 73 arrests of 61 people,
10 DSA members among them. During the last week of the session in
mid-March, MMGA—joined by Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock
of Martin Luther King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church—drew national and
international media attention. This summer, groups of arrestees
participated in a 16-city “Jailed for Justice” tour of the state, hoping
to spread MMGA outside of Atlanta.[12]
An Open Letter to Governor Nathan Deal
An Open Letter to Governor Nathan Deal from Moral Monday GA By Moral Monday Georgia, April 30, 2014
As of last night, at the stroke of midnight, the clock of human
progress turned back decades. You have caused unfair, unjust and harmful
consequences for regular everyday Georgians with the passage of HB 990,
HB 772, HB 714 and SB 98.
Sadly, your inaction has and will continue to cost real lives and
hardships for Georgians who are already struggling. You have chosen
politics over principle, a short term view of narrow self-interest over a
long term vision of what's actually best for Georgia, making public
policy turns that further marginalize our most vulnerable citizens while
also crippling the state's prospects for economic recovery and
prosperity...
Reverend Raphael Warnock, Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church
Nearly 40 Moral Monday Georgia
activists were arrested Tuesday March 18, 2014, for interrupting
proceedings throughout the Georgia Capitol in an effort to urge Gov. Nathan Deal to expand Medicaid - and block legislation that would strip him of the authority to do so.
Nonroutine physical: short-order cook, home health aide
Nonroutine cognitive: teacher, doctor, CEO
Routine tasks will be the first to go—and thanks to advances in
robotics engineering, both physical and cognitive tasks will be
affected. In a recent paper, a team from Oxford and Yale
surveyed a large number of machine-learning researchers to produce a
“wisdom of crowds” estimate of when computers would be able to take over
various human jobs. Two-thirds said progress in machine learning had
accelerated in recent years, with Asian researchers even more optimistic
than North American researchers about the advent of full AI within 40
years.
But we don’t need full AI for everything. The machine-learning
researchers estimate that speech transcribers, translators, commercial
drivers, retail sales, and similar jobs could be fully automated during
the 2020s. Within a decade after that, all routine jobs could be gone.
Nonroutine jobs will be next: surgeons, novelists, construction
workers, police officers, and so forth. These jobs could all be fully
automated during the 2040s. By 2060, AI will be capable of performing
any task currently done by humans. This doesn’t mean that literally
every human being on the planet will be jobless by then—in fact, the
researchers suggest it could take another century before that
happens—but that’s hardly any solace. By 2060 or thereabouts, we’ll have
AI that can do anything a normal human can do, which means that nearly
all normal jobs will be gone. And normal jobs are what almost all of us
have.
2060 seems a long way off, but if the Oxford-Yale survey
is right, we’ll face an employment apocalypse far sooner than that: the
disappearance of routine work of all kinds by the mid-2030s. That
represents nearly half the US labor force. The consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers recently released a study
saying much the same. It predicts that 38 percent of all jobs in the
United States are “at high risk of automation” by the early 2030s, most
of them in routine occupations. In the even nearer term, the World Economic Forum predicts that the rich world will lose 5 million jobs to robots by 2020, while a group of AI experts, writing in Scientific American, figures that 40 percent of the 500 biggest companies will vanish within a decade.
Not scared yet? Kai-Fu Lee, a former Microsoft and Google executive who is now a prominent investor in Chinese AI startups, thinks artificial intelligence “will probably replace 50 percent of human jobs.” When? Within 10 years. Ten years! Maybe it’s time to really start thinking hard about AI.
And forget about putting the genie back in the bottle. AI is coming
whether we like it or not. The rewards are just too great. Even if
America did somehow stop AI research, it would only mean that the
Chinese or the French or the Brazilians would get there first. Russian
President Vladimir Putin agrees. “Artificial intelligence is the future,
not only for Russia but for all humankind,” he announced in September.
“Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the
world.” There’s just no way around it: For the vast majority of jobs,
work as we know it will come steadily to an end between about 2025 and
2060. So who benefits? The answer is
obvious: the owners of capital, who will control most of the robots. Who
suffers? That’s obvious too: the rest of us, who currently trade work
for money. No work means no money.
But things won’t actually be quite that grim. After all, fully
automated farms and factories will produce much cheaper goods, and
competition will then force down prices. Basic material comfort will be
cheap as dirt. Why Elon Musk Is Sounding the Alarm on Artificial Intelligence
Still not free, though. And capitalists can only make money if they
have someone to sell their goods to. This means that even the business
class will eventually realize that ubiquitous automation doesn’t really
benefit them after all. They need customers with money if they want to
be rich themselves.
One way or another, then, the answer to the mass unemployment of the
AI Revolution has to involve some kind of sweeping redistribution of
income that decouples it from work. Or a total rethinking of what “work”
is. Or a total rethinking of what wealth is. Let’s consider a few of
the possibilities. The welfare state writ large: This is the simplest
to think about. It’s basically what we have now, but more extensive.
Unemployment insurance will be more generous and come with no time
limits. National health care will be free for all. Anyone without a job
will qualify for some basic amount of food and housing. Higher taxes
will pay for it, but we’ll still operate under the assumption that
gainful employment is expected from anyone able to work.
This is essentially the “bury our heads in the sand” option. We
refuse to accept that work is truly going away, so we continue to punish
people who aren’t employed. Jobless benefits remain stingy so that
people are motivated to find work—even though there aren’t enough jobs
to go around. We continue to believe that eventually the economy will
find a new equilibrium.
This can’t last for too long, and millions will suffer during the
years we continue to delude ourselves. But it will protect the rich for a
while. Universal basic income #1: This is a step further
down the road. Everyone would qualify for a certain level of income from
the state, but the level of guaranteed income would be fairly modest
because we would still want people to work. Unemployment wouldn’t be as
stigmatized as it is in today’s welfare state, but neither would
widespread joblessness be truly accepted as a permanent fact of life.
Some European countries are moving toward a welfare state with cash
assistance for everyone. Universal basic income #2: This is UBI on steroids.
It’s available to everyone, and the income level is substantial enough
to provide a satisfying standard of living. This is what we’ll most
likely get once we accept that mass unemployment isn’t a sign of lazy
workers and social decay, but the inevitable result of improving
technology. Since there’s no personal stigma attached to joblessness and
no special reason that the rich should reap all the rewards of
artificial intelligence, there’s also no reason to keep the universal
income level low. After all, we aren’t trying to prod people back into
the workforce. In fact, the time will probably come when we actively
want to do just the opposite: provide an income large enough to motivate
people to leave the workforce and let robots do the job better.
Silicon Valley—perhaps unsurprisingly—is fast becoming a hotbed of
UBI enthusiasm. Tech executives understand what’s coming, and that their
own businesses risk a backlash unless we take care of its victims. Uber has shown an interest in UBI. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg supports it. Ditto for Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Slack CEO
Stewart Butterfield. A startup incubator called Y Combinator is running
a pilot program to find out what happens if you give people a
guaranteed income.
There are even some countries that are now trying it. Switzerland rejected a UBI proposal in 2016, but Finland is experimenting
with a small-scale UBI that pays the unemployed about $700 per month
even after they find work. UBI is also getting limited tryouts by cities
in Italy and Canada.
Right now these are all pilot projects aimed at learning more about how
to best run a UBI program and how well it works. But as large-scale job
losses from automation start to become real, we should expect the idea
to spread rapidly. A tax on robots: This is a notion raised by a draft report to the European Parliament and endorsed by Bill Gates, who suggests
that robots should pay income tax and payroll tax just like human
workers. That would keep humans more competitive. Unfortunately, there’s
a flaw here: The end result would be to artificially increase the cost
of employing robots, and thus the cost of the goods they produce. Unless
every country creates a similar tax, it accomplishes nothing except to
push robot labor overseas. We’d be worse off than if we simply let the
robots take our jobs in the first place. Nonetheless, a robot tax could
still have value as a way of modestly slowing down job losses. Economist
Robert Shiller suggests
that we should consider “at least modest robot taxes during the
transition to a different world of work.” And where would the money go?
“Revenue could be targeted toward wage insurance,” he says. In other
words, a UBI. Socialization of the robot workforce: In this
scenario, which would require a radical change in the US political
climate, private ownership of intelligent robots would be forbidden. The
market economy we have today would continue to exist with one
exception: The government would own all intelligent robots and would
auction off their services to private industry. The proceeds would be
divided among everybody. Progressive taxation on a grand scale: Let the
robots take all the jobs, but tax all income at a flat 90 percent. The
rich would still have an incentive to run businesses and earn more
money, but for the most part labor would be considered a societal good,
like infrastructure, not the product of individual initiative. Wealth tax: Intelligent robots will be able to
manufacture material goods and services cheaply, but there will still be
scarcity. No matter how many robots you have, there’s only so much
beachfront property in Southern California. There are only so many
original Rembrandts. There are only so many penthouse suites. These
kinds of things will be the only real wealth left, and the rich will
still want them. So if robots make the rich even richer, they’ll bid up
the price of these luxuries commensurately, and all that’s left is to
tax them at high rates. The rich still get their toys, while the rest of
us get everything we want except for a view of the sun setting over the
Pacific Ocean. A hundred years from now, all of
this will be moot. Society will adapt in ways we can’t foresee, and
we’ll all be far wealthier, safer, and more comfortable than we are
today—assuming, of course, that the robots don’t kill us all, Skynet
fashion.
But someone needs to be thinking hard about how to prepare for what
happens in the meantime. Not many are. Last year, for example, the Obama White House released a 48-page report
called “Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence.” That
sounds promising. But it devoted less than one page to economic impacts
and concluded only that “policy questions raised by AI-driven automation
are important but they are best addressed by a separate White House
working group.”
Regrettably, the coming jobocalypse has so far remained the prophecy
of a few Cassandras: mostly futurists, academics, and tech executives.
For example, Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google’s parent company, believes that AI is coming
faster than we think, and that we should provide jobs to everyone
during the transition. “The country’s goal should be full employment all
the time, and do whatever it takes,” he says.
Another sharp thinker about our jobless future is Martin Ford, author of Rise of the Robots.
Mass joblessness, he warns, isn’t limited to low-skill workers. Nor is
it something we can fight by committing to better education. AI will
decimate any job that’s “predictable”—which means nearly all of them.
Many of us might not like to hear this, but Ford is unsentimental about
the work we do. “Relatively few people,” he says, are paid “primarily to
engage in truly creative work or ‘blue sky’ thinking.” Roberto Parada
All this is bad enough, but it’s made worse by the fact that income
inequality has already been increasing for decades. “The frightening
reality,” Ford says, is that “we may face the prospect of a ‘perfect
storm’ where the impacts from soaring inequality, technological
unemployment, and climate change unfold roughly in parallel, and some
ways amplify and reinforce each other.” Unsurprisingly, he believes the
only plausible solution is some form of universal basic income.
So how do we get these ideas into the political mainstream? One thing
is certain: The monumental task of dealing with the AI Revolution will
be almost entirely up to the political left. After all, when the
automation of human labor begins in earnest, the big winners are
initially going to be corporations and the rich. Because of this,
conservatives will be motivated to see every labor displacement as a
one-off event, just as they currently view every drought, every
wildfire, and every hurricane as a one-off event. They refuse to see
that global warming is behind changing weather patterns because dealing
with climate change requires environmental regulations that are bad for
business and bad for the rich. Likewise, dealing with an AI Revolution
will require new ways of distributing wealth. In the long run this will
be good even for the rich, but in the short term it’s a pretty scary
prospect for those with money—and one they’ll fight zealously. Until
they have no choice left, conservatives are simply not going to admit
this is happening, let alone think about how to address it. It’s not in
their DNA.
Other candidates are equally unlikely. The military thinks about
automation all the time—but primarily as a means of killing people more
efficiently, not as an economic threat. The business community is a
slave to quarterly earnings and in any case will be too divided to be of
much help. Labor unions have good reason to care, but by themselves
they’re too weak nowadays to have the necessary clout with policymakers.
Nor are we likely to get much help from governments, which mostly
don’t even understand what’s happening. Google’s Schmidt puts it
bluntly. “The gap between the government, in terms of their
understanding of software, let alone AI, is so large that it’s almost
hopeless,” he said at a conference earlier this year. Certainly that’s
true of the Trump administration. Asked about AI being a threat to jobs,
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin stunningly waved it off
as a problem that’s still 50 or 100 years in the future. “I think
we’re, like, so far away from that,” he said. “Not even on my radar
screen.” This drew a sharp rebuke from former Treasury Secretary
Larry Summers: “I do not understand how anyone could reach the
conclusion that all the action with technology is half a century away,”
he said. “Artificial intelligence is transforming everything from
retailing to banking to the provision of medical care.”
So who’s left? Like it or not, the only real choice to sound the
alarm outside the geek community is the Democratic Party, along with its
associated constellation of labor unions, think tanks, and activists.
Imperfect as it is—and its reliance on rich donors makes it
conspicuously imperfect—it’s the only national organization that has
both the principles and the size to do the job.
Unfortunately, political parties are inherently short-term thinkers.
Democrats today are absorbed with fighting President Donald Trump,
saving Obamacare, pushing for a $15 minimum wage—and arguing about all
those things. They have no time to think hard about the end of work.
Nonetheless, somebody on the left with numbers, clout, power, and
organizing energy—hopefully all the above—had better start. Conventional
wisdom says Trump’s victory last year was tipped over the edge by a
backlash among working-class voters in the Upper Midwest. When
blue-collar workers start losing their jobs in large numbers, we’ll see a
backlash that makes 2016 look like a gentle breeze. Either liberals
start working on answers now, or we risk voters rallying around far more
effective and dangerous demagogues than Trump.
Despite the amount of media attention that both robots and AI have
gotten over the past few years, it’s difficult to get people to take
them seriously. But start to pay attention and you see the signs: An
Uber car can drive itself. A computer can write simple sports stories. SoftBank’s Pepper robot already works
in more than 140 cellphone stores in Japan and is starting to get
tryouts in America too. Alexa can order replacement Pop-Tarts before you
know you need them. A Carnegie Mellon computer
that seems to have figured out human bluffing beat four different
online-poker pros earlier this year. California, suffering from a lack
of Mexican workers, is ground zero for the development of robotic crop
pickers. Sony is promising a robot that will form an emotional bond with
its owner.
These are all harbingers, the way a dropping barometer signals a
coming storm—not the possibility of a storm, but the inexorable reality.
The two most important problems facing the human race right now are the
need for widespread deployment of renewable energy and figuring out how
to deal with the end of work. Everything else pales in comparison.
Renewable energy already gets plenty of attention, even if half the
country still denies that we really need it. It’s time for the end of
work to start getting the same attention.
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