Automated trucks: Blue-collar disaster or economic win? | Andrew Yang

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Why Silicon Valley wants to automate 3.5 million blue-collar truck drivers out of existence.

- There are 3.5 million truck drivers in the U.S.; it's the most common job in 29 states. Yet there is a $168 billion financial incentive for Silicon Valley to automate truck drivers.

- The pros? Automation will lower the 4,000-person annual death toll caused by truck collisions, and it will save companies and consumers money.

- The cons? Truck drivers with families to support and loans to pay will soon have to compete with a robot truck that doesn't need to sleep. That kind of economic hardship doesn't exist in a vacuum; it will ripple outward in unexpected ways.

Andrew Yang is an entrepreneur and author who is running for President as a Democrat in 2020. In his book The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future (https://amzn.to/2YRhW6l), he explains the mounting crisis of the automation of labor and makes the case for the Freedom Dividend, a Universal Basic Income of $1,000 a month for every American as well as other policies to progress to the next stage of capitalism.

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