There is talk about a guaranteed minimum income for every adult. This sounds extreme except when we remember that every nation is a collection of people living within borders of a land. A nation is not a collection of money or machines or robots, but of people. The nation exists for the welfare of its people.

When it is possible to make more money by using the work of machines and robots than by the work of people, then large numbers of people become idle while the owners of machines and robots get fabulously rich. Well, duh! That is just what is happening to us right now. And it is getting worse, fast.

If no one needs to starve or live in abject poverty, we can concentrate on the values which are important to each of us and strive for the excellence that is the American Dream. And we can do it our own way. Corporations with the machines and robots get to keep doing as they do, and the rest of us get to invent better ways of competing for a good life.

Wouldn’t this be better? Must many suffer while the few benefit?

Allan deLaubenfels

Spokane Valley