here we go again with this... What's wrong with such jobs ? AS mentioned by Amazon you don't need to work 9 to 5, you can just work for extra if you need. Even if you HAD basic income this kind of part-time job could make sense to make a bit more money that the nothing you would get to survive on your own.
It certainly isn't the worker, whose labour becomes cheaper every year (there hasn't been an increase in real wages for over a decade now in the US). The consumer certainly benefits from lower prices. However who arguably benefits the most is - as always - the proprietor of the production factors: ie. Amazon, which supplies the jobs, the technology, owns the storage facilities, etc.
Now: As a net result over the whole economy, the efficiency gains achieved with these new work contracts are beneficial. However these gains are unequally distributed between the proprietors (ie. Amazon and it's shareholders) and the employees. While incomes for many employees have stagnated for over a decade, the shareholders of Amazon keep getting richer (https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&...) creating more inequality. This is why we need a universal basic income policy. To allow everyone at the very least dignified living conditions.
Who benefited from Ford making cars more efficiently ? Their employees as well, since they could buy cars on their own at cheaper prices than the then available cars.
Productivity gains improve life for EVERYONE, even the poorer ones. There's so many examples I don't even know what kind of point you are trying to make here.
Improvements in agriculture make food cheaper as well, which makes it possible for even modest household to have 3 smartphones on top of food of the table, and go on vacation more than 0 times a year.
Sometimes when I read comments here, I get the bizarre impression that nobody has noticed the massive increase of purchasing power that society got in the past 100 years. I must be living in a bubble.
Do you own any shares in a fund that tracks the S&P 500? Congrats, you too are an Amazon shareholder getting richer at the expense of said employees.
Basic income is a method to prevent wage slavery* as well as many other negative side affects of having to work to try and provide even the basic necessities (shelter and food). This job would be awesome in the world of basic income because people wouldn't have to worry about how they are going to feed themselves, but would be able to work extra to be able to afford the quality of life they prefer. Basic income is about rebalancing the power structures between employer and employee, and giving the power back to the people without it (the employees.)
this is not the place for discussing this here, but the inherent problem with this basic income idea is that there's no way to provide such money in developed countries which are already indebted to the bone. Unless you decide to seize savings and declare the country a communist dictatorship or something.
Basic income is wealth redistribution function. There is a massive income inequality problem in the US (a trivial google search will reveal, if you aren't aware of already), and a basic income would rebalance taxes as well as replace some other social programs in order to pay for it. See this reddit post for more info about income inequality and taxes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/comments/3mqnyg/how_inc...
People who predict extinction of jobs are usually wrong.
It's only a matter of time, for example, until Domino's pizza production is automated. The only reason we haven't seen this yet is because hiring humans is cheaper than solving the complex automation problem this presents. But technology continues to get cheaper. When that swings the other way, your pizza will get made by robots. Pizza delivery by robots is already a solved problem, just waiting for the costs to skew the right way. In short: at the speed at which technological problems get solved, it's unlikely we will have even adequately discussed the ramifications of the problem before it arrives on our doorstep.
You grab a scanner at the entrance, scan all your purchages and then you put the scanner away and pay at a terminal. The terminal prints out your receipt, which you can scan to open the exit. You will sometimes (this has never happened to me, but I've seen it to other people) be picked by the system for a random check to see if you're not stealing anything.
It is a really pleasant system.
The supermarkets I go to have greatly reduced their cashiers. In most cases by at least half, especially in small shops (3 cashiers has become 2-3 machines and one human).
As for bakers, they don't just make bread and cake.
Excellent video on the subject: CGPGrey - Humans Need Not Apply: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
You must be (un)lucky to have avoided the wave of self-service checkout points :). As for bakers, I don't remember when was the last time I saw a bakery that acutally baked anything - the ones I see all have bread and cakes delivered several times a day by whoever owns the franchise.
Also, automation is not a binary proposition - if your central bakery uses big dough machines and industrial baking ovens, it already counts as half-automated, as it employs much less personnel per unit of output as bakeries used to few decades ago :).
As a believer in capitalism, I see UBI as equalizing the labor side of the equation without economy-smothering alternatives like unions or excessive labor regulations.
It does by decoupling the need for a person to have a stable job. I think the effects of this would be almost as big as the shifts that happened during the Industrial Revolution. Once workers are truly free to choose their employers, we will see a massive shift in workplace norms.
What's wrong with such jobs ?
You've got cancer? Partner just died? Unplanned pregnancy? Not your fault, and in a regular job needing a week or two off won't leave you destitute.
Workers in the gig economy are still going to have these things happen - the expenses don't go away. If the employer isn't doing their bit, the expense will be borne by family, charities or the taxpayer. Good for Amazon's bottom line, bad for you and me.