by Genevieve Shanahan | Apr 11, 2017 | News
Martin Sandbu last week offered a defence of universal basic income (UBI) in his Financial Times newsletter, Free Lunch. The article is part of a week-long series on automation and its economic effects.
In this piece, Sandbu addresses the question: “which policies can help those who face reduced demand for the labour they are used to providing when robots, automation and other technology come in?” He argues against protectionist policies and those responses that would, he claims, hinder the advance of automation, like a robot tax.
He then weighs UBI against a job guarantee, citing another Financial Times article by Diane Coyle favouring the latter. Agreeing with Coyle that jobs are valuable to individuals beyond the income they provide, Sandbu argues that a UBI would in fact fare better in the long term in ensuring access to employment:
“[T]he fact that UBI leaves job creation to the private sector means it can meet the goals of the job guarantee proponents better than the job guarantee itself. It is important to recognise that one function of UBI is to create demand for jobs that serve the UBI recipients themselves — because that’s what they will be spending their money on.”
Sandbu also recently spoke about UBI on the Financial Times’ podcast, Alphachat, and has written favourably about basic income in the past.
Martin Sandbu, “Money can buy you work“, Financial Times, 6 April 2017.
Reviewed by Kate McFarland
Photo: Martin Sandbu, Financial Times, at Norges Bank Symposium, CC BY-ND 2.0 Norges Bank
by Andre Coelho | Mar 29, 2017 | News
RTP3: Fronteiras XXI (debate panelists)
On the past Thursday, 15th of March 2017, basic income was discussed for the first time on a prime-time television program in Portugal, through the recently created channel RTP3.
The program, which ran for 1hr 30 min, was framed as a group interview and debate, moderated by journalist Carlos Daniel. The program included some related reporting and excerpts from other interviews. Four participants made up the panel, and the main theme of the discussion was automation and its societal consequences.
Manuela Veloso, a robotics researcher in the United States and head the Machine Learning department of the Carnegie Mellon University, was one of the panelists. Asked if automation will be good or bad, she first pointed out its inevitability. Machines are capable of capturing much more data than human minds cannot possibly manage to cope with in order to make decisions: people will have to rely on machines for support in decision making. She also argued that although machines will naturally replace some human work, other human tasks will be created with the increasing use of automation in industry and services.
Another participant was Carvalho da Silva, a lifetime syndicalist and researcher in sociology. Carvalho da Silva pointed out certain caveats when facing what many are calling a “technological revolution”. He said that we should not be deterministic about it (casting doubts about its impact on jobs), since ultimately decisions are political. He underlined that the entire situation must be contextualized and inserted into a crisis framework, where many more jobs have been lost than those estimated to be lost to automation. Like Manuela, he also highlighted the job creation potential of these new technologies.
António Moniz, a sociologist specializing in work and enterprises, and a researcher on the impact of automation in society was also invited. António pointed out that machines are demanding higher professional standards from people tasked to handle them. He relativized the question of job destruction due to automation, believing that there is no direct relationship between introduction of machinery and loss of jobs (although the numbers shown during the program clearly depicted elimination of jobs in large swathes due to automation).
Finally, João Paulo Oliveira, an executive manager of a large paper production company in Portugal, was also present. He alerted the audience to the fact that the adoption of automation is extremely fast these days, so that all politicians must be made aware of its effects on society. According to him, an important aspect of this transformation is education, which must be more in tune with demand. According to him, the marketplace will determine what the “jobs of the future” will be, and the education system must follow suit.
The program included short pieces and interviews, inserted between presentations by the panel. One of those segments was with Gabriele Bischoff, a long time syndicalist and president of the Workers’ Group of the European Economic and Social Committee. Shocked to learn that a company in Belgium already uses chip implants in its employees, she highlighted the importance of respecting workers’ fundamental rights and the need to provide them – especially young workers – with good quality, stable jobs, which can give them, dignified life standards.
Another segment featured Guy Standing, a lifetime researcher of economic and social issues; a professor and activist defending the basic income concept. He summarized the basic income principle and, when questioned as to how the Portuguese people can finance it, he clearly stated that “It’s a matter of fiscal priorities”. According to him, if, for example, such regressive practices as the systematic saving of banks in the past decade were eliminated and the money used for the benefit of all citizens, a basic income could have been already administered in Portugal. Standing also predicted that within the next five years some country will implement the basic income concept, which will lead other countries to gradually follow suit.
Guy Standing. Credit to: RTP3
During the program, simple graphics were shown, both for briefly explaining what basic income is and to report on the estimated number of jobs likely to be lost (and gained) to automation in the next 15 years. Notably, the next Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Congress, happening in Lisbon on September this year, was also cited.
The conversation about the future of work naturally led into a debate about basic income. Each of the participants was directly asked what they thought about the idea and its anticipated consequences. Maria Veloso was quick to support it, although questioning its feasibility. She regards the idea as a freedom gaining instrument, in an age of relentless automation and ever-expanding learning opportunities. She also referred to its role as a secure financial platform that allows people to engage in activities not bound by economic viability, in such a way that work is aligned with what each person wants to do in life. Clearly against was Carvalho da Silva, despite his past as a syndicalist. According to him, basic income is against the work ethic, and he assumes that people will lose their motivation to work under that regime, hence also losing a great deal of their meaning in life. He also thinks that basic income is the perfect instrument for the far right political branch to push in neo-liberal agendas slashing the welfare state. On the other hand, António Moniz was more cautious, supporting the basic income idea in general but warning that its effects on the marketplace and especially on companies must be well understood. João Paulo Oliveira was not convinced by the basic income concept or its rationale, as presented by Guy Standing or his fellow panelists. According to him, basic income will just kill competitiveness as more and more people move away from work.
by Kate McFarland | Mar 12, 2017 | News
Robert Reich, Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and former US Secretary of Labor, recently visited Google to discuss the economic impact of automation and artificial intelligence. Reich has previously endorsed a basic income as a way to address automation in the future.
At one point in his talk, Reich predicts that, as we move to a “new world of technological displacement,” people will be forced into lower wage and less secure jobs. To address this problem, he maintains that, in the future, we will need to implement a new type of income supplement, such as a guaranteed minimum income. (On a terminological point: Reich mentions “guaranteed minimum income” but discusses “universal basic income” during the Q&A. There is no indication that these terms are meant to refer to substantively different policies.)
During the Q&A, Reich elaborates upon issues related to universal basic income, beginning with the question of whether giving people money would just encourage them to be lazy. Reich explains that the this outcome has not been observed in pilot studies of basic income — “people don’t just sit and do nothing” — and that, moreover, the basic income could and should be fixed at a level that covers only minimal needs, so that most people would still be motivated to seek a job. In response to the worry that work is also a source of meaning to many people, Reich points out that a universal basic income doesn’t imply that there will be no more work. Additionally, not all meaningful work is paid, and many people currently face the problem of working long hours at multiple low-paying jobs.
Reich also states that a basic income in the United States should be built on popular federal programs like Medicare and Social Security (which provide medical and financial benefits to Americans upon reaching retirement age). He says that he’d call “universal basic income” by a different name, and call it “Title V of Social Security.”
In answer to a third question, Reich turns to discuss the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) as a near-term solution to low wages and economic insecurity.
Watch the full video:
Source
Robert Reich, “Preparing Our Economy And Society For Automation & AI,” Social Europe, February 17, 2017.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Photo: Reich speaking at the Santa Rosa Unitarian Church in 2013, CC BY 2.0 ATIS547
by Kate McFarland | Mar 7, 2017 | Research
The German political foundation Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) has released a short report on digitalization in the UK and its consequences for public policy [1].
The report notes that, to this point, education and skills-training have been the central strategies to confront the effect of automation on the labor market. It concludes, however, by suggesting that it will be necessary to investigate basic income as a long-term solution:
“Education policy represents at best only a medium term solution to the problems arising from transformation. Over the long term other, much broader structural changes will have to be discussed, which will also seek to detach work from social security coverage. Whether, for example, the often mentioned unconditional basic income – above the subsistence level – could be a sustainable solution here must be subject to more detailed empirical research.”
The report was published as part of FES’s “Politics for Europe” project, which promotes the development of strong social democratic institutions in Europe. In general, basic income has not been a focus point of FES’s publications in the series. For example, a longer report on digitalization in Europe does not suggest universal basic income as a solution to the challenges presented by the changing nature of work.
[1] Markus Trämer and Rolf Frankenberger, “On the Way to Welfare 4.0 – Digitalisation in the United Kingdom,” Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2017.
[2] Daniel Buhr, Claudia Christ, Rolf Frankenberger, Marie-Christine Fregin, Josef Schmid and Markus Trämer, “On the Way to Welfare 4.0? Digitalisation of the Welfare State in Labour Market, Health Care and Innovation Policy: A European Comparison,” Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2017.
Reviewed by Cameron McLeod
Photo CC BY 2.0 tico_24
by Michael Lewis | Mar 4, 2017 | Opinion
Michael A. Lewis
Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College
In “Why a Universal Basic Income is a Poor Substitute for a Guaranteed Job,” Claire Connelly praises guaranteeing people a right to a job as opposed to guaranteeing them a right to an income. I’ve been involved in quite a few discussions, some of them debates, about the relative merits of basic income versus guaranteed jobs proposals. My position has always been that I have no problem, in principle, with guaranteeing someone a job. If guaranteeing jobs and an unconditional basic income were both financially and politically feasible, I’d be a proponent of both. But if I had to choose one of these policies over the other, I’d prefer the basic income. This is because I think guaranteeing people access to the resources they need to survive has priority over guaranteeing them the right to sell their labor. This, however, isn’t the debate I want to have here. What I want to do, instead, is raise a question about guaranteed jobs proposals: what would it really mean to guarantee someone a job? If those arguing that automation will result in a net loss of jobs for human beings are right, this question becomes especially salient.
Let me start by framing the question more precisely: under what conditions would the government, in its employer of last resort role, hire people? Connelly seems to be supporting the idea of government serving as a buffer stock mechanism. That is, it would step in to hire labor when private sector demand was low and, presumably, step aside when such demand was high. This would put a floor under the price of labor because private sector employers couldn’t, during economic downturns, use the threat of unemployment to get workers to accept lower wages.
As many readers of this site are no doubt aware, some have argued that automation is increasing rapidly and will only continue to do so. Now I’m no expert in this area. So I don’t know if these folks are right that we’re on the path to seeing robots take our jobs. But if they are, this would seem to cause a problem for the buffer stock idea.
The buffer stock approach seems based on a model of the economy where unemployment is due to periodic downturns. The public sector steps in to absorb the resulting labor surplus, but this is meant to be temporary. Once the economy starts growing again, and unemployment declines, public sector employment can contract, as those who worked in the public sector are absorbed by the private one. But automation isn’t supposed to work like that. Instead, there is a steady, but permanent, decline in many types of work as machines take our jobs. I know there’s a huge debate about whether other types of jobs will develop to replace the one’s lost to robots: but suppose such replacement doesn’t happen. Perhaps it’s premature to do so, but I wonder if guaranteed jobs proponents have thought about how their guaranteed jobs plan would work in such an environment. Would government indefinitely hire all those who’ve lost their jobs to machines?
