On October 4, The New York Times published a symposium called “Easing the Pain of Automation”, which raised the issue of universal basic income among other strategies for managing the prospect of technological unemployment.
Contributors included Arun Sundararajan (New York University), Dean Baker (Center for Economic Policy Research), Maya Eden (World Bank), Andy Stern (former President of the Service Employees International Union), Jerry Kaplan (author of Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know), and Andrew McAfee (MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy).
Stern, whose short article is titled “A Universal Basic Income Would Insure Against Job Loss”, argues that the United States should institute a universal basic income now as “insurance against the difficult transition to new jobs or future job losses” (the main thesis of his recent book Raising the Floor).
Other contributors also bring up UBI in passing.
Sundararajan, for instance, mentions UBI as a possible part of a package of policies designed to ensure that the benefits of automation are shared (including also, for example “investments in physical and social infrastructure”):
Fashioning and funding a next-generation social contract, perhaps as a new partnership between the government, the individual and the institution, or maybe even as a universal basic income, may be instrumental in preventing modern-day versions of the Luddite rebellions that accompanied the Industrial Revolution.
Meanwhile, McAfee thinks that our present strategy should be to “give the economy every possible chance to create new types of good jobs”. He sees UBI a possible long-range solution–although one not yet in demand:
We might someday have a super automated, labor-light economy that requires large-scale wealth redistribution via something like a universal basic income. But it’s not here yet, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There’s too much work to do right now.
Read the full symposium:
“Easing the Pain of Automation” (October 4, 2016) The New York Times.
Reviewed by Ali Özgür Abalı
Photo CC BY-SA 2.0 Matthew Hurst
Regardless of automation, a union leader is concerned with getting the best deal for his workers. His ally is the ‘strike’, the size of his ‘strike’ fund and unemployment insurance. His nemesis is the ‘scab’, non-union outside replacement employees and an unreasonable employer. The longer he can stay on strike without the fear of his nemesis getting the upper hand, the better is his bargaining position. In any case, he has to face his workers with either triumph or defeat. The revenue neutral choices for helping to fund a strike and look out for his workers are:
– 320mn population X $3750/year UBI = $1.2tn welfare spending
– 45mn below poverty level X $12k/year individual tapering citizen’s Income = $540bn welfare spending *
If there is a $1000/month poverty-level unemployment insurance for his workers (including potential ‘scabs’) and non-union outside replacement workers versus a $300/month UBI, I don’t think he would hesitate about which one to pick and when. Raising an UBI to $1000/month would cost this much extra in taxes:
– 320mn population X $8350 = $2.67tn
* The remainder of the $1.2 would go toward any extra income tapering, medical goods & services plus some extra funding for expanding and enhancing residential education facilities that already exist for orphans to include children of single parents)