Get Out and Vote!! Vote for the Person, Not the Party!
This message is paid for by the Pennington for County Council committee.
The Platform
Serving The Community
Prices are up, rent is ridiculous, and the roads are crumbling. If you vote me onto the Wayne Co. council I will do everything I can to put a light on the money coming in, going out, and most importantly who benefits from county money. In my opinion, there are too few people benefitting from the hard work of most of us who are having a hard time making ends meet. You pay money in a lot of ways; property taxes, sales tax, gasoline tax, wheel tax, and now they want to tax you even more, but what do YOU get in return? That's the question I want to ask if you give me a chance and vote for me!
VOTE FOR THE PERSON, NOT THE PARTY!!
Things to Remember
I'm running for office to accomplish one thing above all: I want people to start voting for an individual and not for a party. Straight ticket balloting has put too much control in the hands of too few people. And that's not Democracy. We need to trust the voting process and hold individuals accountable with our vote. Have they done a good job? Is my county better off with them, or not? Running for elected office is a job interview. You want the best person for the job, not someone who just has the right connections and says what they think you want to hear so they can ignore you after they get into office. Your vote is your voice, use it wisely!
The Risk of Artificial Intelligence to the Workforce!
Additional Information
The Risk of Artificial Intelligence to the Workforce
To say the world is changing rapidly is an understatement. To say that artificial intelligence, AI, will change the way we work is a gross understatement. We are at a juncture where we must decide whether people are important, or profits are all that matter.
More and more we are hearing researchers, business leaders, and scientists saying that AI may “take over and possibly completely eliminate some jobs”, or at least some variation of that statement. Elon Musk has even gone so far as to say we will need universal income to make up for the loss of jobs. Here is where we need some historical context.
As a union member in the 1980s and 1990s I can clearly remember when the business leaders, researchers, and scientists then told us that “automation will only raise your standard of living. Robots won’t take your jobs.” It was a promise that no one would ever put into writing, no matter how hard we tried to get them to commit to that promise. And we lost jobs. Thousands of them. “But we will retrain you and take care of you.” That was the other great promise that was only partially true and never fully fulfilled.
In the early 1980s under Ronald Reagan, we were told that we no longer needed unions to protect our rights as workers. I was in Washington during the protests. But we did not prevail. The unions were downsized through massive layoffs (when workers can’t work, they can’t pay dues, so by eliminating jobs the people in power took away the money and crippled the unions.) “Right to Work” laws further crippled the union’s ability to have enough money to fight back against these drastic changes. But the people who really got hurt were the workers, the folks depending on their paychecks and those good union benefits.
Another historical note here; that’s also when the standard of living in the U.S. began a steep decline and has led to the virtual elimination of the middle class.
My intention here is to sound an alarm. Before we are all swept up by investment money and the promises of untold wealth without any human toil to earn that wealth, let me ask you a question; When was the last time a wealthy person showed up on your doorstep and offered you a basketful of free money?
If the answer is never, then join the club. The rush for AI is a rush for dominance. The continual fear that “If we don’t get there first then we’ll fall behind and we’ll suffer.” The age-old clamor for more, and when is enough going to be enough? Let me tell you, it never will be.
Adam Smith and his damn Invisible Hand have set us on a course where more is never more and enough will never be enough. We have a market driven outlook that leaves people in the dust. AI will be used not for the betterment of humankind, but for more and more profits for the people who control the AI. I’m not going to get into “What happens if the machines take over” argument, that’s scary enough in its own right. But if we look at what people call Socialism and Communism these days, we see that it’s nothing more than Capitalism in a different set of clothes. Political leaders have fallen so much in love with “the market” that they care less and less about the people who are adversely affected by “the market”. No matter where you are on the socio-economic ladder, if you take time to step back and look at the whole picture, you can see this is a race to the bottom for the majority of the world’s population with only a select few coming out on top. And even those who do come out on top have forgotten something important; who will be left to buy the crap all these machines will be making? What does the world economy look like when we move from a consumer driven market to a machine driven market?
I am quite sure that everyone investing and looking forward to the AI age of development thinks that they will be fine. They even say things like “Sure, they’ll be winners and losers” in the new economy. Never once thinking or believing that they, or someone they care about, will be one of the losers. Let’s be clear, if AI gains the kind of foothold that we see coming, there will be lots and lots of losers, billions of them. The odds are not in humanity’s favor.
We are at a decision point. We can continue our ill-fated love affair with “the market” or we can stop, regroup, and start putting humanity before profits. It is no longer a catch phrase. People Before Profits is no longer something nice to put on a sign and march in the street. It’s a philosophy upon which our survival as a species depends. We need to change the way we think. Chasing profits and power and control have gotten us into a terrible place. AI should be a tool for all of us to use, not a tool for us to use against each other.
Choose humanity, choose a decent, safe and kind quality of life for all human beings. End the violence and war and the endless chase for power, profit and control that is killing the planet, and the people who live on it. Choose People over Profits.
Respectfully,
Tom Pennington
Centerville, IN
