Transportation is not the only sector where automation is eating away jobs. Large commercial ports are also being hit hard, as recent events in Vancouver show. Workers at the Port of Vancouver went on strike last month, due to a pressing issue on automation with the employer Global Containers Terminal (GCT). According to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), pressing automation technology has the capacity “to eliminate 80 to 90 percent of the [human] labour requirements”.
McKinsey & Company consulting firm has studied global port operations and concluded that automated ports are safer, more predictable, much cheaper to operate (25 to 55%) and more productive (10 to 35%). Although significant technical hurdles still exist, it seems only a matter of time until these predictions come true, especially when, actually, a few automation efforts have already been proven successful (e.g.: fully automated port in Los Angeles-Long Beach, semi-automated facilities in New York-New Jersey, and Virginia, USA).
Worker unions in this field naturally oppose any suggestion of automation, for the obvious reason that it might displace their jobs, from which workers extract their livelihood. However, falling costs of automation technologies is quickly shortening the gap to economic implementation, and so human labour is losing ground. This shouldn’t be a problem, of course, if human jobs where not tightly linked to access resources. As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has eloquently stated, earlier this year, “our technological advancement as a society has outpaced our system for handling finite resources”, and “we live in a society where if you don’t have a job you are left to die”. Although that reality could be more sharply defined in the United States than, for instance, Finland, the link exists virtually everywhere in the so-called “developed” world, but fortunately is starting to be contested as the global discussion around basic income progresses.
But maybe there should be no content here, between ILWU members and GCT, or any other worker-employer dispute over automation. Maybe jobs should not be the sole vehicle to get the necessary money to access the necessary Earth resources to live on. As Scott Santens has put it, on a by-now famous writing: “It’s time for technology to serve all humankind. Jobs are for machines. Life is for people.”
All ten candidates at the Democratic Deabte for the United States Presidential elections.
“It is not left, it is not right, it is forward”. Andrew Yang drank from Scott Santens famous words, to finish off his contribution to the Democratic Debate to the United States Presidential elections in 2020. The political debate, held on June 27th 2019, featured all 10 Democratic Party candidates who qualified to be in the televised debate (more than 65000 donors). Yang’s Freedom Dividend was voiced, for the first time ever, on a US national debate stage, shortly described as a 1000 $/month for every adult citizen, unconditionally.
Although severely time restrained to hush in his ideas – he was only allowed 2 minutes and 50 seconds of speaking time, the lowest of all candidates present in the debate – Yang succeeded in the attempt to plant the seed of basic income among the American People. People are definitely interested in basic income, or at least the basic income as Andrew Yang conceives it, considering the spikes in views of his intervention clips, posted by NBC, which surpassed those of any other candidate. Soon after the debate, Google searches for “basic income” spiked to about 300% of the average search results for those terms.
In March, Yang’s candidacy had just surpassed the 65000-donor mark; now it has gone over 130000 donors, qualifying him to further debates, to be held in September and October this year. Also, his platform’s list of followers shows no signs of slowing down, having gained more than 100000 new followers, just for having participated in this debate. Whether or not Andrew Yang will become the next President of the United States, his candidacy has already been historical, by definitely sketching basic income on the public and political arena.
Yang’s contributions to the debate can be seen on this short video:
According to a recent report (May 2019) by UCL Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP), guaranteeing universal basic services (UBS), such as health care, education, child care, transportation and digital information, would be more beneficial to low income groups than universal basic income (UBI).
It is argued, in the referred report authored by Anna Coote, Pritika Kasliwal and Andrew Percy, that “extending public services is likely to be more effective in addressing poverty, inequality and wellbeing than unconditional cash payments to individuals”. That assertion is linked to a yet to be published article by Coote and Yazici called “Universal Basic Income, A literature review”, while the present report does not “consider the case for UBI in any depth”. The discussion defending UBS, in the report, seems then to be unilateral. However, cost considerations between the two systems, for the United Kingdom reality, have been done in a previous report (from 2017). From these calculations, the authors have reached the conclusion (stated after the 2019 report’s release) that UBS would cost around 10% less than UBI to implement in the country.
Andrew Percy, co-author of the report (supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation) and Citizen Sponsor at IGP, has said that “universal access to basic public services must be the foundation of 21st century welfare that delivers real social security, allows people to make meaningful choices about their work, and can be delivered in an affordable and practical way”, which doesn’t seem to pitch UBS against UBI. Others, like Will Stronge (Autonomy think tank) and Mathew Lawrence (Common Wealth think tank), explicitly consider UBI and UBS to be complementary in an evolving model for society.
Anna Coote. Picture credit to: Green European Journal
Anna Coote and co-author Edanur Yazici have also recently (April 2019) published another report (signing for the New Economic Foundation), entiled “Universal Basic Income: A Union Perspective”, which clearly rejects UBI in favour of a UBS. That study has been published by the global trade union federation Public Services International (PSI), financially supported by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung foundation. This particular report was analysed by UBI activist Scott Santens, who has written that it is “a prime example of a disinformation campaign designed to manipulate public opinion against the idea of universal basic income”, and a “shameless propaganda” move.
The publication of the 2019 report on universal basic services, by the IPG, has also spurred a reaction in Guy Standing, a lifelong researcher, economist, author and activist for UBI. According to him, in an article published in Open Democracy, “there is no contradiction between having some public quasi-universal basic services and a basic income”. He adds, concluding, that these systems “address different needs and stem from different rationales. But having cash enhances freedom of choice, is potentially more empowering and can be more transformative. I plead with those advocating ‘Universal Basic Services’ to stop juxtaposing the idea of more and better public services with giving people basic income security.”
A new website was created, and just launched, to provide updated news and information about UBI (Unconditional Basic Income), with the goal of furthering the discussion about how UBI impacts purpose, identity, and dignity. It will convey content from general news and include original material from the editor-in-chief and UBI activist, Scott Santens. The website is called Basic Income Today.
Editorially, Basic Income Today will focus on seven broad themes:
Workforce Automation: How technology and artificial intelligence (AI) built to accelerate economies can displace human workers and how individuals and economies cope and evolve.
Social Justice: Centered around the relationship between UBI and those affected by the results of workforce automation, mitigating a new vision for society to re-imagine this social contract for the 21st century.
Income Inequality: Today, many people must work several jobs they do not enjoy, just to keep a roof over their heads. We discuss the ramifications of wealth distributed so unevenly, and its effects on those not sure that they will be able to meet their families’ basic needs.
The Basics of UBI: Not familiar with the concept? This type of content is designed to demystify the noise and false information surrounding the idea of UBI, bringing you a clearer, less biased picture.
Success Stories: Evaluating the results where UBI is instituted and how people, paid and unpaid work, business, and the economy benefits.
The Social Debate: There is certainly no lack of opinions on this as yet unimplemented policy. A balanced view of the arguments, pro and con, is shown. Also, the journal is open to all reader’s ideas, as an interactive platform.
Pilots & Experiments: Who’s adopting UBI, where it’s happening, and how it’s progressing.
Finland’s famous “basic income experiment” is now over. The analysis program is being rolled out, and was scheduled according to the following timetable (from Kela (Finnish Social Services)).
At the end of 2018, a phone survey was made, involving all participants (2000 experiment subjects and 5000 people forming the control group), to check on “the impact of the basic income on employment, taxable earnings, take-up of unemployment benefits paid out by Kela, and enrolment in employment services”. This survey was done according to international standards on questionnaires (e.g.: European Social Survey, International Social Survey Programme, European Union Survey). Furthermore, interviews are planned to be performed in early 2019, in order to “interpret and shed further light on some of the unanswered questions and unexpected results”. To contextualize the registry data collection, phone survey and interviews, a thorough look will also be directed to public debate and popular support (or lack thereof) for basic income. This clearly means that the investigators did more than just try to answer the overarching question posed by the Finnish government at the start of the experiment: “could basic income increase employment and simplify the social security system?” (video)
Now that the experiment is over, and while the data treatment and deep analysis is being performed, BBC put together a short video piece entitled “Did Finland’s basic income experiment work?”, asking the corollary inquiry “How free money changed people’s lives?”. In a couple of interviews with experiment participants, the message coming through is that the experiment brought promises of a better, more secure life, with less governmental bureaucracy, but unfortunately it had to end (with no prospects of expansion, let alone implementation by the current government). One of those participants, Tania, told BBC that “basic income changed my life”, since it allowed her to “stand on [her own] two feet”. Another participant, Thomas, referred that the same difficulties remained, during the experiment, for getting into paid employment, which might be related to the fact that the experiment had a very small target group of people (2000), spread along the whole of Finland. That level of scattering doesn’t allow for community effects on the introduction of a kind of basic income allowance, and so the marketplace does not adjust accordingly. This seems to be aligned with one of the preliminary conclusions just published: that the experiment did not result in higher levels of paid employment for the participants.
However, the referred published report does include important (preliminary) results of other (less objective than hours in employment) analysed variables, such as Life Satisfaction, Trust, Confidence, Physical and Mental Health, Concentration, Depression, Financial Security, Stress and Attitudes Toward unconditional basic income (UBI). International basic income activist Scott Santens has summarized these results in a convenient way, which might be put into an even more succinct list (percentages refer to differences between averages of the experiment’s treatment group and the control group, over each variable):
Trust – observed an increase of 6% in other people, 5% in the legal system and 11% in politicians;
Confidence – observed an increase of 21% of confidence in one’s future, and a 22% increase in one’s ability to influence society;
Physical and Mental Health – observed a 17% improvement;
Concentration – observed a 16% improvement;
Depression – observed a 37% reduction (measured through qualitative answers);
Financial security – observed a 26% improvement;
Stress – observed a 17% improvement (over the number of people who responded they felt “little or no stress at all”);
Attitudes Toward UBI – observed a 38% improvement over the number of people who strongly agree that a nationwide UBI would make it easier to accept job offers, and a 24% increase over the number of people who think Finland should now adopt a UBI.
It should be made clear again, if two years of the pilot itself and another of preparation were not enough to explain the real important parameters of the experiment, that what happened in Finland was not exactly a basic income (implementation) experiment. It was, as Santens put it, “a test of slightly reducing the marginal tax rates experienced by the unemployed, and also slightly reducing the amount of bureaucracy they experience”. From this to a basic income as defined by BIEN goes a long way. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that such a limited experiment, both in scope as in depth, could generate such positive preliminary results on human (generalized) wellbeing.
