by Josh Martin | Jun 4, 2016 | News
Tarnoff’s article argues that Silicon Valley’s interest in the basic income idea is driven by an intention to appease the public with a basic income while they reap large profits as the wealthy few who own the means of production in a world of technological unemployment. He finds the technological unemployment argument overstated and a way to establish a meritocratic view of successful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.
Ben Tarnoff, “Tech billionaires got rich off us. Now they want to feed us the crumbs“, The Guardian, 16 May 2016.
by Kate McFarland | Jun 2, 2016 | News
Research Eduardo Rodriguez-Montemayor writes about basic income in the blog of INSEAD, the Business School for the World.
After arguing that we should not fear the rise of automation, he defends basic income as a way to increase human productivity.
A citizen’s income (UBI) could become a centerpiece of social solidarity. It prevents absolute poverty while removing the stigma from state support. An immediate criticism of a UBI is that people will just not bother to work anymore, similar to criticisms leveled at unemployment insurance. But unemployment benefits are contingent on not working. A universal income is conferred on everyone, and would thus avoid that people have the interest to work less in order to meet the conditions for being eligible. Also, people would feel safer leaving employers, reskilling via lifelong learning, moving to another place or starting businesses. There is already evidence that such cash transfers increase one’s willingness to bear risk. This would encourage people to seek out the careers they desire, more in line with their skills and motivations, rather than the ones that put “food on the table”. The economy would thus become more productive by facilitating the efficient reallocation of talent.
Rodriguez-Montemayor is a Senior Research Fellow in INSEAD’s Economics Department. Additionally, he is a lead researcher of the Global Talent Competitiveness Index, and consults for the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), Inter-American Development Bank, and United Nations Environment Program.
Read the article here:
Eduardo Rodriguez-Montemayor, 11 May 2016, “How to Share the Benefits of Technology,” INSEAD Blog.
Note: There are a couple of apparent factual errors in this article. Rodriguez-Montemayor implicates, falsely, that the Finns preparing actually to enact a basic income (as opposed to running a pilot), and he states, prior to the popular vote on June 5th, that the Swiss have rejected the referendum on basic income.
This obligatory robot picture is from Phasmatisnox, via Wikimedia Commons.
by Kate McFarland | May 26, 2016 | News
In recent months, Basic Income News has covered multiple articles that explore basic income as a solution to the unemployment expected to result due to further automation of labor. (See, for example, here, here, and here.)
Meanwhile, events of just the past few days prove that worries about automation are not going away any time soon: Foxconn (a supplier for Apple and Samsung) reported that it replaced 60,000 of its 110,000 factory workers with robots, Pizza Hut announced plans to “hire” the robot Pepper (pictured above) as a server in its restaurants in Asia, and a former McDonald’s CEO warned that minimum wage hikes would spur automation in the fast food industry.
In an article published last month in Tech Insider, reporter Chris Weller weighs in on the issue of technological unemployment — drawing upon the ideas of American basic income advocates like Jim Pugh, a former analytics chief for President Obama and host of basic income “create-a-thons” in the Bay Area, and Sam Altman and Matt Krisiloff of Y Combinator (the San Francisco start-up incubator that has recently hired a researcher to oversee a basic income experiment).
Citing Pugh, Krisiloff, and skeptic Ross Baird (executive director of Village Capital), Weller concedes that basic income might not be a necessary response to automation — but it is clear that he does not rule out the possibility that basic income might be “the hero that saves American workers.”
Read the article here:
Chris Weller (April 8, 2016) “Giving people free money could be the only solution when robots finally take our jobs,” Tech Insider.
Image Source: Photo Zou
by Andre Coelho | May 22, 2016 | News
Santiago Bilinkis, at The Future of Employment IDEA Annual Conference
Although the event happened on the 22nd of October 2015, it is still relevant to take note of Santiago Bilinkis‘ presentation on technological innovation and its effect on the work market. According to Bilinkis, an economist specialized in technological issues and consequences for society, there is considerable denial in society today, which mounts barriers against the unstoppable evolution of technology. During this presentation, held at the 51th IDEA Annual Conference (titled “El future del empleo” (“The future of employment”)), Bilinkis spoke not only about basic income as a possible solution for massive technological unemployment, guaranteeing a minimum income level for all people regardless of their job situation, but also about John Maynard Keynes’ vision of almost 100 years ago; Kenyes predicted that, eventually, machines would perform most human tasks, society would be much more egalitarian and luxuries would be socially unacceptable. His vision is one of recognition of the present social situation and which presents a positive view on society’s capacity to improve its well-being, taking advantage of the exponential technological developments of today.
More information (in Spanish) at:
IDEA Argentina, “51º Coloquio Anual de IDEA – El futuro del empleo [51th IDEA Annual Conference – The future of employment]”, Instituto para el Desarollo Empresarial de la Argentina, October 22nd 2015
by Kate McFarland | May 18, 2016 | Research
Sergi Raventós (Autonomous University of Barcelona) recently completed a doctoral thesis on the topic of basic income and mental health.
In the dissertation, Raventós — who also works in a mental health foundation in Barcelona and is a member of the board of the Red Renta Básica — examines empirical evidence concerning the effects of direct cash payments (in India, Namibia, North Carolina, Kenya, and Alaska, for example) and concludes that, among other benefits, unconditional cash payments tend to lead to improved mental health in communities where they are instituted.
Plausibly, a basic income could ameliorate the social and economic inequality and insecurity that Raventós demonstrates to have a destructive effect on mental health.
Raventós, Sergi (2016) Socioeconomic Inequality and Mental Health: The Proposal of a Basic Income as a Means to Protect and Promote Mental Health, Barcelona: Autonomous University of Barcelona (Doctoral Thesis).
Abstract
The aim of this thesis is to provide a theoretical approximation to mental health and several related concepts. The social determinants of (mental) health have shown in recent years that human beings are susceptible to economic uncertainty, precariousness of their living conditions and social inequality.
This study considers social and especially income inequalities, and how they affect mental health, drawing attention to the extraordinary importance of policies aiming at social and economic protection, which are seen as essential for offering stability and security in people’s lives and health. The political orientations of a range of health-oriented institutions and agencies working to promote mental health and to reduce social inequality are considered, while critical evaluation is made of some policies being implemented by the Spanish and Catalan governments at a time of serious economic crisis and a concomitant rise of mental health problems deriving from poverty, unemployment and job insecurity. In this situation of severe economic recession and drastically increased poverty, and with everything it entails in terms of psychological suffering and mental health problems, the Spanish and Catalan governments have resorted to the same measures they have used in periods of economic growth, obsolete strategies which have proven ineffective in the long, unabating crisis. All of this has contributed towards worsening economic insecurity which, as a range of research projects have demonstrated, has serious consequences for mental health.
The study concludes with a discussion of Basic Income, a social protection measure offering economic security which has been tested in several countries. Experiments whereby unconditional cash payments made over different periods to target populations in India, Namibia, North Carolina, Kenya, Alaska, for example, have provided empirical evidence of improvement in different aspects of health and mental health in particular, together with a reduction of social inequalities and poverty, advances in education, human relations, and in the economic sphere, inter alia.
