by Denis Flinn | Sep 27, 2015 | News
This article discusses the ongoing and accelerating pace of automation in Australia, with 5 million jobs expected to be replaced in the coming decades. Both the benefits and risks of this change are presented, with unemployment and protecting the living standards of all citizens chief among concerns.
Basic income is raised as an increasingly popular possible solution to allow for the ongoing adoption of technology to ensure everyone “a dignified existence and participation in society”.
Mark White, “The robots are stealing our jobs: could a basic income system save us?”. The Sydney Morning Herald. September 18, 2015.
by Josh Martin | Sep 4, 2015 | News
Santens article eloquently discusses a recent report by David Autor of MIT on the history and future of work, highlighting realities that may not be common knowledge. For instance, low-income jobs have consistently grown throughout the past forty years, but there has been an erosion of middle-class, manufacturing jobs and a slowing of high-skilled, high-paying jobs. When academics claim technology creates jobs as much as it eliminates them, they often ignore the fact that these jobs often are low-quality work that leaves people worse off. Further, Santens cites the Oxford study that found that 47% of jobs are at high risk of automation in the next two decades. Those low-income jobs may shrivel up as well. Considering all of this information, Santens implores policy-makers to consider a basic income as a means to combat the future of technological unemployment.
Scott Santens, “Everything You Think You Know About The History and Future of Jobs Is Likely Wrong” 19 August 2015.
by Josh Martin | Aug 3, 2015 | News
Schiller’s article serves largely as a summary for Martin Ford’s 2015 book Rise of the Robots, in which Ford argues that this time ‘really is different’ when it comes to technological automation’s effects on future labor markets. Technological automation looks set to alter higher education and health care, as well as many other areas usually considered human labor-dependent. Schiller and Ford both recommend a basic income guarantee as a protection for humans as we enter a future where there are simply not enough jobs available.
Ben Schiller, “Yes, Robots Really Are Going To Take Your Job And End The American Dream”, Co.Exist, 19 May 2015.
by Citizens' Income Trust | Aug 2, 2015 | Opinion
Peter Barnes, With Liberty and Dividends for All: How to save our middle class when jobs don’t pay enough, Berret-Koehler Publishers, 2014, 1 62656 214 1, pbk, xii + 174 pp, £13.99
There are not enough well-paid jobs to sustain a large middle class, and Peter Barnes offers as a solution to this problem the idea that co-owned wealth could pay dividends to everyone. The Alaska Permanent Fund is the model, and the inspiration is Thomas Paine’s Agrarian Justice, in which Paine proposes an equal distribution of the income generated by the property which belongs to all of us. This is the ‘co-owned property’ that is at the heart of Barnes’ proposal; and he extends the meaning of the economist’s term ‘rent’ to include payments made to all of us in recognition of the uses that are made of our co-owned wealth.
Drivers of the changed outlook for the United States’ middle class – and the middle classes of all developed nations – are globalization, automation, and deunionization. The effect of all three of these is to reduce the proportion of the proceeds of production going to labour, and to increase the proportion going to the owners of capital ( – the main point made by Thomas Piketty in his book Capital). Economic stimulus, education, and job creation, might ameliorate the situation slightly in the short term, but automation, globalization and deunionization will defeat them in the end, as will the fact that the economic system quickly magnifies small differences in wealth into sizeable inequalities. As Barnes suggests, the system needs to be fixed, not the symptoms. One particular change that is required is that means-tested benefits need to be replaced by universal ones, but the most important change is that the rent that owners extract from assets that belong to all of us (‘extracted rent’) should be distributed to everyone (‘recycled rent’) as a Citizen’s Income
Barnes suggests several types of co-owned wealth that could be made to generate the income to pay for a Citizen’s Income: the money infrastructure, the electromagnetic spectrum, sovereign wealth funds generated by extraction royalties (as in Alaska and Norway), and the atmosphere ( – rather than ‘cap and trade’, Barnes recommends ‘cap and dividend’, in which anyone who pollutes the atmosphere has to pay, and in which what they pay is redistributed as Citizen’s Incomes).
This is a very American book, and the context in view is always the USA. For Barnes, it is the middle class that needs to be cared for, and, by implication, not the rest. The situation looks very different in the UK. Here we have a generally more egalitarian society ( – compare the universal NHS with the United States’ differentiated health systems), and the ways in which a Citizen’s Income would benefit everyone will be higher up the UK’s agenda than would be the protection of the middle class. But having said that, this is an engaging introduction to a Citizen’s Income and to how we might pay for it. Something similar for the UK and for other European countries would be welcome.
by Jenna van Draanen | Jul 20, 2015 | News
New research referenced in a Wall Street Journal article shows just how much the world of routine work has collapsed, citing that over the course of the last two recessions and recoveries (since 2001), the economy’s job growth has come entirely from non-routine work. This comes at a time when an increasing number of scholars, politicians, and citizens are talking about basic income as a solution to what some see as an inevitable job loss from technological advancement. Sources note that we no longer need to all humans to work, as we once did, for everyone to live comfortably and that we need to adjust our expectations and values accordingly.
For more information on technological job loss and basic income, see:
Josh Zumbrun, “Is Your Job ‘Routine’? If so, It’s Probably Disappearing” Wall Street Journal. April 8, 2015
Matt & Mike, “Episode 153 – Basic Benjamins” Robot Overlordz. March 5, 2015.
Scott Santens, “Yes, it really is different this time and humans need not apply” scottsantens.com, January 15, 2015.
Alan Watts, “Money, Guilt, and the Machine” via ScottSantens.com.No date.
