If I were a science fiction writer, I would write a story about a future world where almost all manufacturing and service work were automated.  I would imagine a world in which the little amount of human labor to make civilization run would be widely shared and the rewards for that work were also widely shared.  There would be so little difference between work and retirement that there would not be any issue of having enough workers to support the people who were retired.

If you can just imagine the possibility of such a world, then you might also imagine that one of the widely touted issues for Social Security funding would naturally disappear.  People talk about the diminishing number of the employed compared to the rising number of the retired.  They cannot imagine how so few workers will be able to fund the benefits of so many retirees. You can see from the above science fiction story that this falling ratio need not be a problem at all.

Wouldn’t it be great if the people were to elect politicians who could try to figure out how to work toward such a future instead of one in which the impoverished workers were heavily burdened to support the impoverished retirees while the wealthy few claimed all the benefits of increased productivity?

How about we start a national or international conversation about this future?

What prompted me to write this post was the thinking behind a comment I wrote on another article.  The reply to my post furthers the concept a little bit.

A hint as to how this utopian situation could play out is in the October 08, 2011 post – Norway: Lighting up Europe. One way to distribute the fruits of such an automated production system would be for the government to make certain essential services free to the citizens of the society. The greater the excess of wealth, the more services that the government could provide for free. (If I am not being clear, the government would pay for the services to be free to the recipients.)