“Things can only go up from here, right?”

When something goes wrong in our society—or even when things are going right—this question is often our response.

As millennials, we grew up in an age composed of extreme technological advancement and an ever-changing globalized world.

How could someone say society isn’t getting better when an iPhone X has ten times more power than a bulky PC from 2000?

Global poverty levels are getting lower each year, and the same is true regarding violent crime.

Overall, it seems that the world is chugging along quite nicely.

But we millennials also have faced tremendous setbacks in our lifetime.

We lived through the worst economic downturn since the 30s when we were growing up.

I’m sure some of you remember your family budgets tightening and your parents stressing out over money.

Or, I’m sure some of you have heard stories from older millennials who faced the challenge of graduating at the peak of the Great Recession.

And no one can forget the election of Donald Trump, which has smashed the narrative of a civil United States that values morality on the public stage.

So, if anything, we’re resilient—not out of want, but necessity.

Still, with these horrible events in mind, why then do we still naively believe that history has some positive slope that will cause us to progress and progress?

We, of all people, should know that the engines of history can both come to a screeching halt and, in some cases, even shut off completely, sliding backwards down the hill.

This progress-orientated idealism neglects the fundamental reality that people do stupid, horrid things.

In a democracy, that can often translate into the selection of bad politicians and the later creation of bad policy.

One of my religion professors recently told me that when she was a kid, they were told that the future would consist of 20-hour work weeks due to the raging increases in productivity and technology—seemingly an idealist dream.

The prediction was right in the sense that per-worker productivity has massively improved.

However, the reason why we still work the same hours that were established in the 30s is because her generation failed to act—they failed to formulate a society in which this was possible.

Now, as we continue to look at the failures of our society and the limits of progress, we cannot fall into the same pit.

We have some decisions to make at this turning point in history, and we need to be informed about those decisions.

Society is not some external entity that moves without us—we directly control and direct our future.

If we want it to move in a positive direction, that’s on us.

Today, we’re approaching a point of technological advancement that completely eliminates the need for workers.

Automated, globalized capitalism is not an “if” but a “when.”
The question, then, is: how should we mold this system to make it work for everyone?

The answer to this question requires a pragmatic understanding of human nature alongside a compassionate perspective that all of humanity deserves dignity and a shot at life.

When the economy largely no longer requires workers but still provides goods for consumption, the best solution would be eliminating all government welfare programs and instead establishing a universal basic income (UBI).

Such a system would essentially provide every citizen with a monthly check with which people could choose to spend as they wish.

For the working class, this would provide a much-needed income boost to afford necessities.

For the middle-class, this would enable families to have more disposable income on consumer goods which acts as economic stimulus in itself.

The rich would be included as well—just logistically—but they constitute such a small part of the population that the actual cost would be negligible.

Obviously, there is much more nuance to economics than simply what was written above, but we should be discussing pragmatic, big ideas like UBI.

Our economy, and society, is undergoing a huge change, and this change will not go anywhere positive if we are not at the forefront of deciding in what direction this change should go.

In the end, hopefully we come together to ensure the train moves forward rather than backward.