I heard there are 7 million jobs in the U.S. that go unfilled today. There are jobs in Rowan County now that cannot be filled.

When I was in college in the ’70s, they said the growth industry would be recreation, because machines will be doing the work.

When government interferes, government always gets business wrong. We are a nation of laws. When the laws are fair and enforced fairly, business will thrive. Universal income guaranteed is the path to socialism. Beware those that call themselves progressives and offer free “stuff.”

In July of this year, Chicago Alderman Ameya Pawar told the Intercept, “We need to start having a conversation about automation and a regulatory framework so that if jobs simply go away, what are we going to do with the workforce?” It wasn’t a long chat. This summer, Mr. Pawar introduced legislation for a pilot program that would give $500 a month to 1,000 families. Think of it as a new version of walking-around money. Never mind that Chicago can’t even afford to fund its public-employee pensions. Google it.

At a February 1962 press conference, when President Kennedy was asked about a Labor Department estimate that 1.8 million jobs would be replaced by machines each year, he replied, “I regard it as the major domestic challenge, really, of the ’60s, to maintain full employment at a time when automation, of course, is replacing men.”

This is not a new subject. Sounds good, even humane. Will not work.

— John Leatherman

Salisbury