Basic income is going to be tested in Germany. The setup of the experiment will be similar to the one now ending in Finland, which means there will be an unconditional cash transfer to 250 randomly selected people among those already receiving benefits (250 others will act as the control group), and evaluate the impact in terms of labor market behavior, health and social relations.
Behind this initiative, to be initiated in May 2019, is the Sanktionsfrei organization, a non-profit managed by volunteer professionals from administration, IT-tech, communications and law. Sanktionsfrei (meaning “free from sanctions”), with headquarters in Berlin, specializes in helping sanctioned citizens by the Hartz IV social security system in Germany. It will conduct this experiment in Berlin, for a 3-year period, accepting volunteers who may apply for it through their website.
The basic income pilot, named HartzPlus, will be conducted as a scientific experiment, led by professor Rainer Wieland, from the Bergische Universität Wuppertal. The Sanktionsfrei team and professor Wieland are about to test a different approach to social security than the one applied in Germany at the moment (Hartz IV system), which has been reported as intrusive, bureaucratic and aggressive (sanctions). Those characteristics, contrary to what is considered by the system’s defenders, do not lead to increased willingness to pickup paid work (the objective of the program), but to resistance, decreased motivation and a generalized discredit in the social security system. Throughout the experiment, people will be checked for variations in mental health, life control, self-efficiency, sociopolitical values, among other indicators. No initial hypothesis will be considered; the experiment aims to offer scientifically informed insights to future social policy in Germany.
As for financing, Sanktionfrei is relying on private donors as the sole financing mechanism. Participants will receive unconditionally the amount from whatever sanctions they will be subject to by job centers (e.g.: by not responding to certain job offers or refusing to get suggested training actions); Sanktionsfrei will always try to recover the sanction money through legal action, and if it does, the participant will transfer the contested amount back to Sanktionsfrei. Otherwise, each participant gets, for the whole time period of the experiment, the full amount of their social security benefits, no questions asked.
The City of Pavlograd, in Ukraine, has decided to perform a basic income experiment, in order to measure the effect (on the individual level) of unconditional cash transfers on the labor market, objective and subjective well-being, financial health, changes in mental and physical health, among other social indicators. This decision was made on the 29th of November 2018, the day when the Head of the City, Mr. V. Movchan, proclaimed: “The city administration is interested and supports the proposal of the social organization “Basic income” (Ukraine) on the joint implementation in [the] city [of] Pavlograd a pilot project for the introduction of basic income, the purpose of which is to ensure a decent standard of living for the city’s residents”.
The experiment is presently in the beginning of its preparation phase. A working group is being assembled, comprising elements from Pavlograd executive bodies, social society, sociologists from several countries, public organizations and researchers. The plan, for the experiment, is to disburse the equivalent to a 100 €/month to each of the 2000 randomly selected Pavlograd adult citizens (the average monthly salary in Ukraine is around 9000 UAH, or 286 €), for a 24-month period.
City officials have communicated that the City is not yet capable of contributing to the experiment’s financing, but will cover the immediate costs of communications and announcements, physical work spaces and guaranteeing crucial human resources to start the experiment assemblage. For now, the money for the cash transfers themselves is being considered as a fund-raising initiative among public and private charitable organizations in Ukraine, as well as foreign organizations.
Basic Income is a radically different and yet elegantly simple notion that has been around for decades: all citizens should have an income and be allowed to maintain their dignity, simply because they are citizens in a society that is prospering. In social policy terms, this idea can be put into action by giving unconditional cash payments to citizens. In the 60s and 70s, there were several long-term Basic Income policy experiments in the USA and Canada. The goal of these experiments at the time was to see if giving people money would be a disincentive to workforce participation. In the end, there was only a very small reduction of work participation among the subjects. In the USA women worked fewer hours per week, an understandable consequence is given that there were on average 4 children per family in the study group. Young men in Canada reduced their work participation, but high school completion rate increased, with stipends enabling the pursuit of higher levels of education. Furthermore, there was an increase in divorce rates, which was the main motivator to take BasicIncome off the table at the time, but looking back seems like it was not such a bad result, Basic Income was shown to empowered women in difficult situations to be able to exit those situations.
BasicIncome has recently returned to vogue, and Canada was, until recently, conducting an experiment in the province of Ontario, led by the of the Liberal government. It was a pilot program guaranteeing an income to 4000recipients in the region an and was supposed to last three years, but it was abruptly canceled in July 31st 2018, by the newly elected Ford administration. There have been many reactions to the cancellationof this pilot program, including a class action suit filed by fourLindsey residents, represented by lawyer Mike Perry. The Basic Incomerecipients in this class action are arguing that they “made plans to improvetheir lives when they signed up for the pilot in April last year, providing thegovernment with detailed personal information to be approved and expecting thepilot to run its three-year term.” It also seems like a breach of basic socialresearch ethics and complaints have been filed to Veritas, the company the previous government hired to ensure ethical standards are metin the conduct of research involving human beings.
On the aftermath of the cancelation, and as a reaction to it, photographer JessieGolem, also a recipient in the experiment, started a portrait series named Humans of Basic Income, depicting photos of Basic Income recipients displaying placards with their stories handwritten on them. We spoke to Jessie about her experience as a recipient of the Ontario Basic Income trial and about her own experience as a recipient and her perspective on the Basic Income pilot that gave rise to her portrait series.
Can you tell me a little bit about your background?
I
grew up in the small town of Hanover, Ontario. I’m quite lucky and privileged
that I’m actually quite close with my family and had a stable childhood. My
parents are still together, and I grew up in the same house and attended the
same elementary school and high school. We were not rich, but we were always
provided for, and my childhood was happy, stable and peaceful. I went to school
at University of Waterloo, majoring in Religious Studies. I was also quite
religious at the time and lived at a bible college in Kitchener, but I don’t consider
myself religious anymore, and actually have an article published on the
Huffington Post on the reasons behind that decision. Later, I moved to
Hamilton, and while in Hamilton I went to school at George Brown College in the
Assaulted Women’s and Children’s Counselling and Advocacy program. I explored a
number of careers, including youth pastor, piano teacher (I’m a classical
pianist) and social worker, but I currently work as the Operations Manager at
Photographers Without Borders, and hoping to expand my career as a
photographer, storyteller, and writer.
What was your work life like before Basic Income?
I’ve had numerous jobs in my life. I have worked as a cleaning lady, I’ve worked in retail, I’ve ran kids programs and day camps and worked as a dog walker. I’ve always worked/volunteered for not-for-profits in different capacities my entire adult life. Prior to receiving Basic Income I was working as a dog walker in the mornings/afternoons, teaching piano in the evenings, and in the time in between, working at Photographers Without Borders, and working to book photography projects and grow my own freelance photography business. I had no free time. I often wouldn’t be able to get home to cook myself dinner, and I’d often find myself up until late in the night working on projects and applications.
What is Photographers Without Borders?
Photographers Without Borders (PWB) is an international non-profit that amplifies the stories of grassroots organizations all over the world by sending volunteer photographers and videographers to document the work they are doing. The organization is able to receive this footage to build their own capacity, while PWB also brings awareness to these issues through a robust social media, a print magazine and online magazine, and a video series. I have volunteered at PWB for two years, and we are on the brink of realizing some tremendous growth which would expand our capacity as an organization, and potentially offer paid positions to staff. BI gave me the time to devote to PWB full-time in order to realize that vision. Losing BI means I will have to reduce my capacity at PWB.
How did your plans get foiled by the cancelation?
I had plans to work full-time at pursuing photography and building my business to a point where it’s self-sustaining, as well as develop my capacity at PWB and help to grow the organization. I will now have to return to having multiple jobs.
Even though it was canceled, do you think that there were positive consequences for you personally from having participated in the program?
Yes. I have now experienced what living and pursuing photography full-time feels like, and I’m very excited about this life, and don’t want to return. I have used the cancellation to pursue a portrait series, and I believe this experience has made me bolder, and less afraid of taking risks in order to succeed. I threw myself into the portrait project without a lot of thought, andI’m lucky for all the miracles along the way that has kept this project alive. I’m less afraid of the consequences, and more passionate about amplifying the stories of the people I have met on this journey, who have become friends.
What do you say to critics who accuse you and others in the project of being “parasites”?
I believe this kind of dehumanizing language is extremely dangerous and opens up the opportunity for violence. With language such as “parasite” it strips a person of their humanity, saying they are only human if they contribute to the economy financially. If they are unable to do so, they aren’t human, they are parasites. In history, when dehumanizing language is used against a group of people, it allows for the justification of violence, because this person is seen as “the other” or “less than human” and therefore less of a person than the one holding the prejudice, and this allows for violence. It’s this dehumanizing language that has, historically, caused genocide and holocausts. Furthermore, this was a pilot project, and even those opposed to BI would benefit from the results of the project, so they can use the facts and data obtained to justify their opposition. And 70%of the people on the pilot project had/have jobs, myself included. Anyone who wasn’t working wasn’t doing so because they were lazy but do to physical and mental disabilities that prevented them from working.
Do you think a pilot that included more income levels and a more gradual take back rate could avoid this accusation?
I’m not sure. I think the stigma against people in poverty is only really growing, especially in this area where political views between the left and right are becoming so far divided. You still see name-calling and dehumanizing language used to describe people of opposing political views, and you see this from both liberal and conservative-minded people. It would be interesting to see what a pilot focused on a wider range of income could do and how it would affect people. I did like that Ontario focused on low-income people, because it was a study attempting to address and come up with a solution to a social service system in Ontario that I now know is deeply broken, and keeps people in poverty. It would be interesting to see a pilot focused on a wider range of incomes, however. A multi-faceted, nuanced approach would be really great to see, where different income levels in different areas, and different types ofpilots are examined. We do see this right now – there are Basic Income studiescurrently taking place in small communities and pockets all over the world.
What do you think is the main purpose of the pilots?
There are so many purposes for the pilots, but one of the bigger ones I see is that we need to examine the future of economics in our society, as the rise of AIand technology changes the future of work, and in many cases, increasingly replaces the need for human work. This is an economic change as big as the Industrial Revolution that will be realized in our lifetimes. Humans don’t need to work in a factory if a robot is doing the work, online banking has replaced the need for bank tellers, self-serve check-outs in grocery stores and kiosks in fast food restaurants have replaced cashiers, thus many industries which were so heavily reliant on human work are increasingly no longer needing humans. The question of how one works, and how one derives an income and contributes to the economy is a tremendous question to ask – it is imagining a new world. Increasingly, the issue of climate change and globalization will also affect the future of economics. A Universal Basic Income is just one idea, but it’s worth examining. Right now we are only in the stages of speculation, but research and pilot projects would be able to drive the conversation forward, answering important questions while unearthing new ones. The pilots can absolutely measure the cost benefits – how much money is saved in healthcare costs if people have access to good healthy food and don’t develop long-term health problems? What is the cost benefit if a person is avoiding committing crimes and the ensuing consequences because they have all of their basic needs taken care of? And I think it’s important to analyze different models of Basic Income because the economic needs of communities all over the world are vastly different from one another. I think what a Basic IncomeProgram in Ontario looks like can’t and shouldn’t look like what a Basic Income Program would look like in another country, or even in another part of Canada. Different areas have different economic needs, which is why I’m glad to see so many projects taking place all over the world that are trying out different models of Universal Basic Income.
In your opinion, was the pilot working in getting people to improve their situations, including your own experience?
Having a Basic Income improved my life. Everyone I’ve talked to were improving their lives, and these improvements were small, but noteworthy steps to living better lives out of poverty – lives with dignity. Small things like the ability to afford to buy new clothes, or buy healthier food at a nicer grocery store, or be able to pay bills on time. The amount was small – if someone wanted to use Basic Income as a disincentive to work, they could, however, they would not be living a nice life. It was enough to get a leg up out of poverty – move into safer housing, get a better job, and live better lives, contributing to the economy. The cost of poverty on a person’s mental wellbeing is staggering – the amount of mental energy it takes to survive will actually reduce a person’s IQ. If all their mental energy is concerned with how they will pay the next bills, where they will find food, how they will pay for health care, etc. there is no time for one to dream of bigger pursuits. I saw Basic Income buying people that precious time. To give that to someone, and then take it away with no warning, and little information, and no reason based in fact, is simply reprehensible.
*
The Basic Income movement is still going strong, despite the Ontario Pilot’s cancelation. In Canada, activists are fighting to take the pilot to a Federal level, and to finish the research that was started. At the time of the cancelation, there was no data analysed by the pilot, all we have are the stories of the recipients as told in Jessie’s portrait series and on a website called Basic Income Voices. These stories are powerful and provide a window into how Basic Income can bear positive, life-changing benefits for its beneficiaries. The future is here and the time to explore policy solutions is now.
By Amy King, in collaboration with Basic Income Waterloo Region
Basic income is currently a hot topic in Canada. From debates across the political spectrum of a basic income and reminders of the success of Manitoba’s Mincome experiment in the 1970s, to the cancellation by the Progressive Conservative (PC) government of Ontario of the previous Liberal government’s basic income pilot, “basic income” is the subject of lively discussion among Canadians.
While this widespread attention is welcome, it has also raised the concern that the discussion of a “basic income” often conflates two distinct concepts: a basic income (BI) and a negative income tax (NIT). The result of this conflation is that the concept of BI has been marginalized in current social and political discourse, as the term “basic income” is co-opted to refer to an NIT and not a basic income as advocated for by the basic income movement. This co-optation creates confusion around which concept one is referring to when they use the term, “basic income” and, perhaps more damagingly, leaves the basic income movement without a term to capture the concept they so passionately believe in and advocate for.
NIT is referred to by Parijs & Vanderborght (2017) as a “cousin” of BI. Briefly, a basic income is distributed upfront to all individuals in the same amount, without an obligation to work or otherwise contribute something in return and without income or means testing (Parijs & Vanderborght, 2017). A negative income tax, in contrast, is distributed within an income tax scheme and is determined based on the level of income of the individual or household (Parijs & Vanderborght, 2017). A negative income tax, therefore, differs from a basic income in important ways: It is not necessarily universally distributed; it is not necessarily distributed to individuals; it is not distributed in the same amount to all individuals; and finally, the amount may be determined through income testing.
Distinguishing between the BI and NIT is, therefore, crucial, as each has a clear, and often disparate, vision of the implementation and ends of a “basic income.” Advocates of a basic income push for the implementation of a basic income program that is universally and exclusively individually distributed. Universal distribution ensures that recipients will not be stigmatized or privileged based on income or employment and does not require individual administrative oversight by public employees. Individual distribution allows recipients to manage their own financial affairs. While an NIT has poverty alleviation as its goal and it may well succeed in achieving this, BI has a robust vision of socio-economic justice that aims toward liberty and equality for all.
Ontario’s so-called basic income pilot followed a negative income tax model. Participants were between the ages of 18 and 64, with an income below $34,000/a for an individual, and $48,000/a for a couple (Ontario Basic Income Pilot, 2017). The pilot followed a tax credit model, so that single participants were guaranteed $16,989, less 50 percent of any earned income and couples were guaranteed $24,027 per year for a couple, less 50 percent of any earned income (Ontario Basic Income Pilot, 2017). The scheme implemented during the pilot therefore differed from a basic income in that it was not universal, distribution was not exclusively individual, and it was income tested.
Another example of this co-optation occurs in Mark Gollom’s article for the CBC, “Basic income finds support on right as ‘most transparent’ form of redistribution” (2017, April 25). As indicated by the title, Gollom (2017, April 25) reports support from the right for the Ontario Liberal government’s NIT trial and discusses the championing of the concept of an NIT by Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek.
In this article, Gollom (2017, April 25) offers a useful outline of arguments from the right for an NIT, which may be considered by some a “welfare” program more amenable to supporters of left-leaning economic policy. However, it also offers a helpful example of the conceptual blurring that occurs around the term “basic income”. The terms “basic income” and “negative-income tax” are employed often, but the article’s focus is a negative-income tax—there is no mention of support for a basic income. If someone unfamiliar with the distinction between the concepts of a BI and an NIT were to read the article, they would conclude that an NIT scheme is a basic income scheme. This is conceptually misleading—an NIT is not a BI—and it results in the marginalization of the concept of a basic income in the current debate.
It is evident then that there are important philosophical and political differences between BI and an NIT that are obscured when the term “basic income” is employed indiscriminately. Indiscriminate use of the term “basic income” is also problematic because it has resulted in co-optation of the term to refer to an NIT. This marginalization and co-optation of the term “basic income” is problematic for many reasons.
First, in Canada, as we’ve seen, NIT currently serves as the default against which basic income programs are measured. The argument is made that the differences between an NIT and a BI are negligible, or that they do not make a substantive difference. The argument is also made that an NIT is more politically feasible than a BI. These factors, along with NIT’s support from vocal advocates, has positioned NIT at the forefront of the discourse around a basic income. However, the discourse does not often refer to an NIT as an NIT. Instead, an NIT is referred to as a “basic income”, and even sometimes, a “universal basic income” (for example here). Because the concept of a BI has been absorbed in the discourse into the concept of an NIT, BI advocates struggle to describe and argue their case.
Second, when we envision a just society, where people are not prevented by socio-economic barriers from realizing their potential, where people do not face insurmountable obstacles to breaking the cycle of poverty and where people are not discriminated against, oppressed or stigmatized because of socio-economic factors, it is clear that only a BI holds this transformative socio-political promise. Why not measure proposals against a vision of a society worth striving for, rather than ignoring the differences between an NIT and a BI and limiting our vision to considerations of political feasibility? BI’s transformative potential is obfuscated when NIT-based proposals are referred to as BI proposals and the discourse centres around these NIT-based proposals. The potential of BI is dismissed and marginalized from the discourse.
Third, because the language to describe a BI has been assimilated to an NIT, BI advocates must resort to using clunky and obscure terms such as “demogrant” to describe the concept, or else engage in lengthy explanations to describe what could otherwise be summed up in the term “basic income.”
Fourth, internationally, the term “basic income” is still used to refer to a universal, unconditional and exclusively individually delivered basic income. Because of the co-optation of the term “basic income” in Canada to refer to an NIT, there is a discrepancy between the understanding of the concept in Canada and in the rest of the world. This not only creates confusion, it can create a sense of deception in supporters of a basic income when they learn about a “basic income” pilot in Ontario, where the basic income is not universal, unconditional or exclusively individual. These supporters may question their involvement in the movement when the basic income they advocate for is so different from what is implemented in a “basic income” pilot.
This is not to underestimate the importance of the NIT concept to the basic income movement, nor to set it up in opposition to BI. Because of their appeal across the political spectrum and amenability to current income tax schemes, advocacy for, and implementation of NIT schemes, may be a crucial step toward realizing the aims of the basic income movement. NIT schemes are considered by Parijs & Vanderborght (2017) to be the most appealing of basic income’s cousins because they do not exclude people who do not perform paid work from being recipients, offering a step forward in terms of liberty and equality, while also reducing the stigma against people who do not have paid employment.
Distinguishing between BI and NIT is critical at this time as support for and dialogue around the idea of a “basic income” has reached critical mass. The hope is that clarifying the distinction between the two concepts will unite supporters of both negative income tax and basic income to form an inclusive movement based on their mutual recognition of overlapping aims. The strength in unity is especially critical now as a bulwark against current and future government policies that target and punish the least well-off in society.
Lowrey, A. (2018, July 13). Smart money: Why the world should embrace universal basic income. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved from: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-smart-money-why-the-world-should-embrace-universal-basic-income/
Ontario Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services (2017). Ontario Basic Income Pilot. Retrieved from www.ontario.ca/basicincome.
Parijs, P and Vanderborght, Y. (2017). Basic income: a radical proposal for a free society and a sane economy. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP.
What does the future hold, an unemployment ridden wasteland or a leisure based post-work society?
Whereas Harari’s former works were focused on the past of humankind or toward its future, “21 Lessons for the 21st Century” investigates the most pressing issues of our times. Professor Harari finds 21 topics which embody the plethora of uncertainties surrounding our present and immediate future, and then, with the past history of our specie well in mind, suggests his thought-provoking vision about them. His unique timeliness is due to his unparalleled ability to reframe the past in order to investigate the present.
In the second lesson, “Work,” Harari talks about automation, Artificial Intelligence, machine learning and the impact they will have on the labor market and society as a whole. In order to avoid collapse, deep change is required, a true renovation of our social models.
And Universal Basic Income (UBI) may be one of the answers.
The pace of automation
It is unclear how the labor market will look in the long run. What is certain is that it is undergoing change. The advances in Information Technology (IT), machine learning and robotics will bring on a wave of automation, the author said.
But it is not the first time in human history that society measures itself with automation, as we already faced similar events, most notably with the industrial revolution. And the fear of mass unemployment was proven unjustified. Thus, in Harari opinion, we have to ask whether this time will be different.
Are our concerns about a jobless future legitimate? Or are we exaggerating the magnitude of the phenomena? Do we incur in the risk to act like modern luddites?
The situation of the nineteenth century was different, Harari mantains. When industrialization hit, it is true that many jobs were appropriated by machines, but at the same times many new jobs were created and the quality of life was profoundly improved.
As humans have two kinds of abilities, physical and cognitive, during the industrial revolution machines competed for only one share of the things humans could do, the physical one. When jobs in the industrial or agricultural sectors were automated, they opened the door to jobs requiring a cognitive skill set, the category of jobs we commonly associate with the third sector.
What is happening is due to the fact that the AI revolution is not just embodied by the evolution of computers, becoming faster and more “intelligent,” but it’s closely related to other fields; the momentum of the revolution is shouldered by advances in biology and social sciences, Harari said.
As more is understood of the underlying biological mechanisms controlling the emotive dynamics of humans, the more computers become able to analyze human behavior, foresee human decisions, and take their place in a number of jobs. In addition to delivering results, these AI tools tend to keep other significant processes in mind as well. In many cases, managing IT services effectively and improving them requires more than manpower alone. There are times when IT professionals might take time to learn what is CMDB in ServiceNow or other relevant topics. Nevertheless, an AI-specific tool can decipher complex terms and provide results quickly. .
Advances in neuroscience and behavioral economics revealed that our choices do not depend on free will as much as on the calculations of the neurons in our brains, assessing probabilities at enormous speed, the author writes. Human intuition can be considered “hacked” as it was revealed to consist of pattern recognition, the ability to identify recurring patterns and use them to create models and make predictions. And AI can become very good at pattern recognition. If intuition is no more than assessment of probabilities and creation of predictive models, it should not come as a surprise that machines can take our place, given that our very functioning is imperfect and prone to errors: it relies on circuits created through the evolution of our specie, in contexts far in time and place from those in which we try to apply them –the savannah is nothing like today’s cities.
Automation will not impact the entirety of fields, as some jobs are more susceptible to it than others, Harari writes. Jobs based on repetition will be more prone to automation, so if you want to stand out with your applications, consider working with an executive resume writer. Multifaceted activities and unexpected scenarios are still a no-go zone for machines. Where the jobs of many doctors, requiring diagnostics and prescriptions could be expected to be a no-brainer for AI, the job of nurses would prove more problematic, requiring a mix of personal relationships and physical activity. Caretaking will probably be one of the most difficult task to automate, and could very well be the activity in which most humans will be occupied in the future, Harari suggests.
The future of jobs
Harari sustains that talking about a jobless future is premature, as automation will allow for more time and resources to be invested in study and research, with the potential to develop new treatments, drugs and deepen our understanding of the biological world. There are jobs where machine automation is not desirable, such as many law-related jobs. Furthermore, there will be a place for human-machine cooperation.
Drones require many operators to work them, driverless vehicles require some form of supervision, and cybersecurity and maintenance will be needed. Some of the top cybersecurity threats aren’t simple to defeat – you can’t just set up a firewall, you need to actively fight against any hacks or viruses. With this being said, as we advance in technology the requirement for human intervention will become less stringent.
But the jobs we are talking about are knowledge intensive, which means that even if they were numerically sufficient to limit unemployment (and they are not), we would nonetheless be left with the problem of unemployment due to under-specialization. In Harari’s opinion, one of the main differences of this technological revolution from the precedent is the degree to which professions are interchangeable. When jobs are less specialized, it’s easier to switch from one profession to another, its often the same for machines. What we may find then is that jobs that machines will not be able to do interchangeably are most likely going to require a high degree of specialization from people. This alignment could pose the risk of facing “the worst of both worlds”: mass unemployment and lack of qualified workers.
And professor Harari notices how, even for those who are able to pursue a new career like in the example shown above, the rapid pace of technological advance or societal changes could make it obsolete in the matter of years. Not just professional development, but jumping from a field of study to another will become the norm in a volatile job market, as the ephemeralization of work will make the idea of formation for a career as an one-off effort laughable.
This should also be seen as an emotive cost for workers, the uncertainty causing a great strain in terms of mental health: if the unstable job market of the first decades of the twenty-first centuryproduced an explosion of work-induced stress, mental resilience to change will be among the factors skimming the employment market.
Societal change
Looking back at the history of the industrial revolution, Harari considers how the new social conditions – great industrial metropolis and the dynamic nature of the arising economic markets – could not be accommodated by the existing political, economic and social models. Institutions such as religion, monarchy and feudalism were no longer apt to direct society. A whole century of social unrest followed before an equilibrium was found, with liberal democracies, fascist regimes and communist regimes on the playing field. What automation will bring rests in the realm of speculation, but Harari highlights how there is potential for great societal disruption, and we cannot afford complacency at the risky of bloody revolutions following systemic unemployment, given the great destructive power of modern warfare.
Universal Basic Income
The author then goes on investigating the role governments will have to assume as technology advances, saying that they will necessarily have to intervene, both via the creation of a dedicated structure for permanent formation, and by providing a safety net for people as they face transitions between jobs. The mantra should be the one which Scandinavia is already applying: “protect workers rather than jobs.”
Universal Basic Income (UBI) is one of the potential models that could respond to the technological and economical revolution we are expecting, Harari says. Its focus on the provision of means to satisfy basic needs is aligned with the necessary imperative of protecting people and not jobs, and could help to preserve the social status and self-worth of humans in a work-lacking future.
Financed through progressive taxation, an UBI would act as a redistributive instrument in a world which sees growing polarization between the riches and the poor. An alternative idea, in the author’s opinion, is to rethink the meaning of work by taking into account the education of children and caretaking. Considering caring for others as work which should deserve a monetary compensation would help foster informal safety nets and strengthen communities. Doing so would help preserve the social fabric which could be disrupted by the upcoming AI revolution. Since it would fall upon governments to pay for such activities, this would not ultimately differ from UBI.
Given that UBI could prove itself a valuable instrument to build a model for the society of the future, Harari calls for a better investigation of its possible application; that is, minimum and universal need to be defined.
In a globalized world, where market and industries are interconnected and delocalization is the norm, the meaning of universal need to be ascertained. UBI experiments have always been of reduced geographical extension, and it is usually thought, in its largest declinations, as a country specific measure. But if it was applied at the national level, its locality would create a problem, as its redistributive effects would not affect those who need it the most. As the wealth appropriated through the world is concentrated in a few nations, a progressive taxation used to fund UBI would then redistribute wealth not globally, but to a lucky minority.
Ideally, a global government could work out a functioning form of global UBI, but at the cost of its feasibility: redistributing wealth globally could very well prove impossible, in the opinion of professor Harari.
If a minimum income has to be enough to accommodate one’s basic needs, we have to decide which needs are basic, and this could prove to be a difficult exercise: homo sapiens needs food and water to survive, everything else may be considered superfluous, the author says.
Today we may consider also shelter, healthcare and instruction as basic needs, but there is no certainty about what is going to be included among them in the future. Human needs depend very much on expectations, they are far from being objective, and so the definition of minimum will remain a fluid concept as society changes through time, Harari forecasts. This means that the mere access to an income will not per se suffice in making people happy, but UBI will have to be integrated with activities which makes people satisfied, from civic engagement to sport.
Harari suggests that his country of origin, Israel, could be thought of as a testing field for a satisfying life in a post-work world. There, half of the ultra-Orthodox Jews do not work, but spend their lives praying and studying the sacred tests, while receiving government subsidies and a share of free services. They derive their happiness from the strong ties they develop with the community they live in and from the fulfillment gained via their investment in religion, Harari mantains.
Even as they are looked at with contempt from the laic citizens of Israel, which see them as freeloaders, their example may very well provide a model for the society of the future: life will be spent in the search for purpose, which could be found through the development of a strong sense of community and by investing time studying and in the construction of social relationships. Those activities, combined with the economic safety net provide by UBI, can maybe provide a picture of the society of tomorrow.
Written by: Daniele Fabbri
More information at:
Yuval N. Harari, “21 Lessons For the 21stCentury”, Jonathan Cape, 30 August 2018
Yuval N. Harari, “Yuval Noah Harari on whatthe year 2050 has in store for humankind”, Wired, 12 August 2018
