by Karl Widerquist | Feb 21, 2018 | Opinion, The Indepentarian
This essay was originally published in the USBIG NewsFlash in December 2006.
Four basic income advocates died in November 2006. Noble-Laureate Milton Friedman (Nov. 16), Brazilian economist Antonio Maria da Silveira (Nov.21), former director of the Citizens Income Trust (Britain) Richard Clements (Nov. 23), and inventor and philanthropist Leonard Greene (Nov. 30). Below is a short discussion of the role of each in the debate over the basic income guarantee.
MILTON FRIEDMAN
Milton Friedman, the economist who most popularized BIG in the United States, died November 16, 2006. Friedman was on the most influential economists of the Twentieth Century. His work has been influential in diverse areas of economic theory, but most particularly in the area of monetary economics. Although his proposal of a strict rule for increasing the money supply each year by a given percentage has been largely discarded, his critical work on the mistakes made by the central bank that led to the Great Depression and other economic downturns has simply become part of common knowledge.
More than his contribution to the science of economics, Friedman is known for popularization of free market libertarianism in numerous books, articles, and a television show on the Public Broadcasting System. He opposed government regulation of industry and the privatization of state-owned industries right up to and including the Post Office. He was an early advocate of public school choice and of the privatization of Social Security. Thus, he became known as a spokesperson for conservative republicanism, but his libertarianism was never quite in line with traditional American conservatism. As early as the 1960s, he opposed the military draft and supported the legalization of drugs. None of his proposals seemed more out-of-line with the 1980-2006 conservative revolution than his advocacy of the basic income guarantee under the name of the negative income tax (NIT).
Welfare state policy in the United States, and to some extent across the industrialized world, has been dominated by an uneasy marriage of the liberal desire to help the poor with the conservative desire to force the poor to become better people. So, we have a hugely complex system that is stingy with some of the people who need it most, generous with people who fit into arbitrary categories, and makes everyone jump through hoops to meet the conditions of eligibility. One might expect a free-market libertarian to oppose using the tax system either to help or to improve the poor, but to a free market libertarian it is clear which of the two is the greater danger.
To a libertarian, government interference, control, and humiliation of the poor is a waste of time and money and whatever it might do to improve the poor, it does not make them more free. Through this kind of reasoning, Friedman became a supporter of the basic income guarantee.
“He believed that if you wanted to fight poverty you should give the poor more money and let them figure out how to use it,” as Renée Montagne of National Public radio summarized his thinking. He, therefore, advocated BIG in the form of the NIT: a small in-cash grant to everyone who had a low income with a low “marginal tax” rate that would give them plenty of incentive to earn money on the private market if they could.
Friedman did so much to popularize BIG that many BIG supporters today tend to forget that he never lost his free market attraction to the idea that perhaps the government should do nothing for the poor. Friedman’s support for the NIT almost always came with the disclaimer to the effect that as long as we are spending money to help the poor, we might as well use the most efficient method to help them. He even sometimes described the negative income tax as a transitional program toward the complete abolition of all government assistance to the poor—not quite what most BIG advocates hope for.
Nevertheless there is good reason to think of Friedman as a champion of the BIG movement. Friedman’s NIT was broad and generous to those who needed it most. Daine Pagen, of the Caregivers Credit Campaign complained that many recent articles on Friedman treated the NIT as the precursor to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Although the EITC is a form of negative tax that was an outgrowth of the NIT movement, it is actually a very narrow and water-down alternative. Friedman’s NIT was a comprehensive solution to poverty aimed at everyone, not only at low-income workers as the EITC is.
Under the NIT, the government would make no judgment about why a person was poor. It would help everyone in need, and create an incentive system so that everyone who worked more had more a higher take-home pay. It would leave it up to the individual to decide whether that was in their best interest. This kind of thinking is diametrically opposed to “welfare reform” under Temporary Assistance to Needed Families, which is designed to force ever single parent into the labor market whether or not she believes the needs of her children make that impossible.
Friedman wrote extensively on the NIT between 1960 and 1980, but he paid less attention to the topic in the last 25 years of his life. However, in an interview with Brazilian Senator and economist Eduardo Suplicy in 2000, Friedman reiterated his support for BIG. When Suplicy asked what Friedman thought of basic income as an alternative to the NIT, Friedman responded, “A basic or citizen’s income is not an alternative to a negative income tax. It is simply another way to introduce a negative income tax.”
A quick web search will produce thousands of articles on Friedman. For a broad view of his career and contributions, see Samuel Brittan in the Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/cms/s/cb74eef8-7599-11db-aea1-0000779e2340.html
ANTONIO MARIA DA SILVEIRA
Antonio Maria da Silveira, professor of economics at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, died on November 21. According to his long-time friend, Eduardo Suplicy, “Antonio Maria was the first Brazilian economist who proposed the institution of a guaranteed minimum income program through a negative income tax. It was in the article Redistribuição de Renda (Redistribution of Income), published in Revista Brasileira de Economia, in April 1975.” Drawing inspiration from Economists as diverse as J. M. Keyns and F. A. Hayek, Antonio Maria argued that it would soon become feasible for the government to secure a decent living for everyone. Suplicy credits him with being a consistent voice in favor of a basic income guarantee right through the passage of a bill to gradually phase in a basic income in Brazil. Suplicy’s tribute to Antonio Maria da Silveira is in the December issue of the BIEN NewsFlash (www.basicincome.org).
RICHARD CLEMENTS
Richard Clements, former director of the Citizens Income Trust (CIT), died November 23, 2006. According to the CIT, “The Citizen’s Income Trust has been sorry to hear of the death of Richard Clements. After being editor of Tribune and running Neil Kinnock’s office, Richard was Director of the Citizen’s Income Trust from 1993 to 1996, when sadly he had to retire because of his own ill health and to look after his wife Bridget. He was a most effective Director, and we were very sorry when he had to leave. Not surprisingly, he was particularly good at raising the profile of the Citizen’s Income debate in the press.” Clements was also a campaigner against nuclear weapons and editor of the British left-wing newspaper, the Tribune. The British newspaper the Guardian article on Clements is on the web at: https://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1955580,00.html.
LEONDARD GREENE
Can you imagine a better way to make a fortune than to invent a product that saves lives? Can you imagine a better thing to do with a fortune than use to fight poverty and disease? Leonard Greene made his fortune inventing safety products for airplanes. His stall warning device (a safety feature that is now standard equipment on commercial aircraft) has saved an uncountable number of lives. After Greene was a well established business owner with dozens of patents and a multimillion-dollar business to his credit, he founded the Institute for SocioEconomic Studies, which funded research on healthcare policy and on the Basic Income Guarantee. Greene wrote two books on the Basic Income Guarantee, Free Enterprise Without Poverty and The National Tax Rebate. Greene’s BIG idea was simple: What if they United States replaced everything it is now doing to maintain someone’s income and replaced it with a basic income in the form of a tax credit or tax rebate? Greene found that the revenue currently devoted to tax deductions, welfare policies, farm subsidies, and many other programs could be redirected to a basic income large enough to virtually eliminate poverty in the United States. His ideas have not caught on with mainstream politicians, but they have continuing appeal. His idea for redirecting all U.S. income support spending into a basic income has been virtually reinvented by Charles Murray in his latest book, In Our Hands, and the idea of BIG in the form of a tax credit is very much the idea behind the BIG bill submitted in the 109th Congress by Representative Robert Filner. He is survived by eight children. He son, Donald Greene died in United Flight 93 on September 11, 2001. Leonard Greene died November 30, 2006 at the age of 88.
EDITORIAL NOTE
When I volunteered to write the USBIG Newsletter in 2000, I did no realize how many obituaries I would have to write. It is a particularly sad duty that I have never quite gotten used to. Friedman’s death, following Herbert Simon in 2001, James Tobin in 2002, John Kenneth Galbraith early this year, marks the end of an era when the great economists who seemed to disagree on everything else, all seemed united behind the guaranteed income as the best way to reform anti-poverty policy. Friedman was first among these because of long-term efforts to popularize the idea. Although Friedman considered himself a liberal (or libertarian) who believed freedom was the overriding value that should guide policy and who believed that freedom conflicted with egalitarianism and economic equality, he had something to teach egalitarians. His logic (if you really want to help the poor, give them money and let them decide how to use it) leads me inevitably to the belief that unconditional assistance, in the form of some kind of basic income guarantee, must be the centerpiece of any truly egalitarian program. It has also made me suspicious of anyone who calls himself egalitarian but advocates conditional assistance to the poor. There can’t be egalitarianism without respect for the poor, and how can we say we respect the poor if we advocate policies designed to promote “equality but…”? For example, I support equality but only for the truly needed. I support equality but only if they are willing to work. I support equality butnot one of them is going to get their hands on one red cent of my tax dollars if they’ve ever refused a job. I can’t help but be suspicious. I can’t help but come back that that idea, if you really care about the poor, if you really want to help them, you will give them money unconditionally, with no supervision, without asking for anything in return. Sometimes it takes a libertarian spot a true egalitarian.
-Karl Widerquist, New Orleans, LA, December 20
by Karl Widerquist | Feb 7, 2018 | Opinion, The Indepentarian
This essay was originally published in the USBIG NewsFlash in June 2008.
What does the Stone Age have to do with modern justice? According to property rights advocates: everything; their arguments rely on two factual claims that can be enlightened by a look at prehistoric anthropology. (1) Property begins as individual property and then governments come along and impose taxes that interfere with the rights of owners. (2) A market economy with no restrictions on inequality makes everyone better off than they were befor the private property was created (i.e. when our ancestors were hunter-gatherers).
I have heard private property advocates make these claims many times, but I’ve never seen them support those claims by referring to anthropological studies of prehistory. How do we know that property began as private property? Are we sure that every single modern worker is better off than our hunter-gatherer ancestors? Recently I’ve taken a look at some anthropological studies including Stone Age Economics by Marshall Sahlins, Bronze Age Economics and How Chiefs Come to Power by Timothy Earle, and The Evolution of Political Society by Morton Fried. I found out that the claims of property rights advocates don’t hold up very well.
To examine the first claim, we need to go back to the creation of fixed property rights in the Bronze Age. Property rights advocates like to imagine land being first appropriated by individualistic pioneers who tamed the wilderness by their own efforts. But that’s not what actually happened. The transformation from hunting and gathering to a settled agricultural life took the joint act of entire bands not simply one person. The rights of land tenure in primitive settled communities were extremely varied, but it seldom if ever looked anything like the neoliberal systems that property rights advocates suppose. In the earliest agricultural societies, every individual had a right of direct access to the land, which was usually owned (if at all) by villages or large extended families. In slightly more economically advanced societies where property rights have become exclusive, the original owners are not private businessmen, but chiefs. Ownership of resources was synonymous with ownership of the government.
The reason chiefs doubled as owners is obvious: the earliest societies were too economically simple to have separate spheres of power—such as government, religion, and business. All of these powers were vested in one person. The Hawaiian Islands were first settled by human beings around the year 600 and so they provide a very recent example of the first creation of property rights. For the most part by the 1400s, each island was run by a chief who owned the land and the irrigation systems that made everyone’s efforts to farm the land viable. Local lords were employees of the chief. They doled out land to peasants only if the peasants promised the interests of the chief. In short, the chief ran his island as a wholly-owned, for-profit business.
Property rights advocates sometimes claim that only recent history matters, but taxation and regulation of property are not new. Modern governments inherited their regulatory powers from medieval kings, who owned the right to regulate their domain in any way they saw fit. Modern landlords hold titles that derive from the medieval vassals of the king. Government taxation is simply the exercise of property rights that are as old as or older than private holdings of property. Some countries went through a brief laissez faire period in the Nineteenth Century, when governments chose to tax and regulate less than before. But I know of no government that signed an enforceable contract to alienate its rights over its domain. So-called property rights advocates simply want to interfere with the property rights of kings to promote opportunities for his vassals, which has about as much to do with “freedom of property rights against interference” as redistribution from condo associations to condo owners, from landlords to tenants, or from stock holders to middle management. If the property rights system the king set up is unjust, his rights should go to the people, not his lords. If the property rights system the king set up is just, we must respect his rights and not force him to cede power to his lords.
To examine the second claim, we need to go back all the way to the Stone Age. Studies of hunter-gatherer communities that survived into the Twentieth Century show that people worked an average of three to four hours per day (including time spent preparing food and commuting). They worked at their own pace and slept more than people do today. Researchers reported that they appeared to feel extremely secure about their ability to find food and other necessities, and they never had to answer to a boss. When a hunter-gatherer is in the mood to forage for food, she sees if anyone else feels like joining her. If not, she waits or goes out alone.
Modern capitalism is a very productive system with great potential to produce goods that could benefit everyone, but as we practice it, it has extreme inequalities. People live on the street and eat out of garbage cans. Others work long hours in sweatshops at the edge of their physical ability and still face the possibility of hunger and malnutrition. Most modern workers have more access to luxuries and better medical care than hunter-gatherers, and on the whole they live longer. But many work longer and harder; they have to follow the orders of a boss; they have less economic security; and do not forget the some individuals die young (and younger than many hunter-gatherers) because of malnutrition and other complications of poverty. In short, the transition from hunter-gatherer society to modern capitalism has not been an unequivocal gain for the working class. It has been a tradeoff. But a tradeoff is not good enough to meet the standards that property rights advocates set for themselves.
I am not the one who put forward the standard that the poor must be at least as well off as their Stone Age ancestors. Property rights advocates chose that standard because they thought it was easy to meet. It is. A society, as productive as ours, can easily make everyone far better off than they would be as hunter-gatherers, but we have failed to do so. The minimum we can do to justify our property rights is to make sure that every single human being has more freedom and economic security our Stone Age ancestors. To make sure the standard it met, we only need to make sure that everyone can have some minimal level basic necessities without having to submit to a boss.
We don’t, I believe, largely because we, the better off, have convinced ourselves that we have the right to boss around the poor. We have property and they don’t; and therefore, supposedly, we have the right to make them do what we say 40 hours per week. Yet, studies of societies without property rights show that our property rights are the only thing coming between the poor and their ability to meet their own needs with less effort and without following anyone’s orders. It is we who owe them, not they who owe us. Perhaps we can make the poor work for us if they want to share in the luxuries of capitalism, but we have no right—even by the standards set by property rights advocates—to force them to work for us just to meet their basic needs.
-Karl Widerquist, New Orleans, LA, May 2008
by Micah Kaats | Jan 16, 2018 | News
As many as 375 million people may have to switch jobs as a result of automation by 2030. This is according to a new report published by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), a private sector think tank and the business and economics research arm of McKinsey & Company.
According to MGI researchers, “the transitions will be very challenging – matching or even exceeding the scale of shifts of agriculture and manufacturing we have seen in the past.” Such dramatic shifts in the global labor market will demand proportionately dramatic responses from governments, businesses, and individuals. Specifically, the MGI report emphasizes the importance of providing transition and income support to workers.
The report, entitled “Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained: Workforce Transitions in a Time of Automation”, builds on previous MGI research suggesting that 50% of global work activities could theoretically be automated by modifying existing technologies. While only 5% of jobs are at risk of disappearing entirely, 6 in 10 of jobs have 30% of constituent work activities that could be automated. According to MGI researchers, the question is not whether or not automation will alter the nature of work, but how long it will take.
Their analysis model potential net employment changes over 12 years for more than 800 occupations in 46 countries, focusing particularly on China, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, and the USA. The report also accounts for several factors that could affect the pace of automation including technological and financial feasibility, demographic changes to labor markets, wage dynamics, regulatory responses, and social acceptance.
The report finds that 75 million to 375 million workers, or 3 – 14% of the global workforce, may be displaced by automation by 2030. These effects will be particularly felt in high income countries. In the most extreme scenario, 32% of American workers (166 million people), 33% of German workers (59 million people), and 46% of Japanese workers (37 million people) will be forced out of their jobs by 2030.
However, there may not be any shortage of new jobs available. MGI’s researchers note that new jobs will need to be created to care for aging societies, raise energy efficiency, address challenges posed by climate change, provide goods and services to the growing global middle class, and build new infrastructure.
Automation itself may also have the potential to create at least as many jobs as it destroys. Historically, transformative technological advancements have often led to significant jobs growth across industries.
The real challenge will be to ensure a smooth and stable transition between jobs. According to MGI research, automation is likely to disproportionately affect workers over 40, and sustained investments in retraining programs will be necessary to prepare midcareer workers for new employment opportunities. The report notes that this will require “an initiative on the scale of the Marshall Plan…involving collaboration between the public and private sectors.”
The MGI researchers also emphasize the need for increased financial support during transitions. Workers will need unemployment insurance to compensate for lost wages, as well as supplemental income to offset wage depressions typical in transitioning economies. A universal basic income (UBI) may be capable of satisfying both needs.
The report points to completed UBI trials in Canada and India, which showed no significant reduction in work hours and demonstrated increases in quality of life, healthcare, parental leave, entrepreneurialism, education, and female empowerment. The report also references ongoing and planned UBI experiments in the United States, Uganda, Kenya, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands as programs to watch in the years to come.
The worldwide spread of automation may be inevitable, but according to researchers at the McKinsey Global Institute, the demise of human labor is not. Whether or not we can respond effectively to the needs of a changing economy will depend largely on our ability to ensure a secure and stable transition for displaced workers.
More information at:
James Manyika, Susan Lund, Michael Chui, Jacques Bughin, Jonathan Woetzel, Parul Batra, Ryan Ko, and Saurabh Sanghvi, “What the future of work will mean for jobs, skills, and wages”, McKinsey Global Institute, November 2017
by Aleksander Masternak | Jan 10, 2018 | Opinion
One of the most common objections to Universal Basic Income (UBI) states that the policy will disincentive individuals from working. There is an apparent fear that a UBI will bring widespread idleness. While we should be optimistic that basic income (or Negative Income Tax) experiments, which have recorded relatively low reductions in labour effort while decreasing poverty and increasing well-being, the devil’s in the details (and caveats) [1]. Instead, let’s take a step back and reflect on whether we should be working the long hours we still do and whether a hardline approach [2] to incentivising employment is necessary and effective.
Historical increases in productivity since the start of the 20th century developed predictions that citizens will not need to work as much as they had in the past. In the 1930s, Bertrand Russell remarked at the great productive capacities of the British economy during WW1 and detested the continued obsession with work for its own sake[3]. Nowadays, the need for basic products and services is adequately met and producing more does not mean working more. We need not be working the long hours we are required to for our societies to continue to grow. As economic historian Robert Skidelsky put it, “with our post-machine standard of living, we can afford to shed some of the Puritan guilt that has, for centuries, kept our noses to the grindstone” [4]. As such we should not worry about UBI earners enjoying more leisure time.
Increased leisure time allows individuals to pursue several goods in life, be it developing skills, learning something new, caring for the elderly or children, or just watching their favourite show. Shortening working days has been shown to increase productivity, promote well-being, reduce sick leave, and allow for a better work-life balance [5]. What should one do in their leisure time is up to them to decide. Long hours of work, however, seem to exhaust the worker as to prevent him from enjoying leisure time actively. Picture an “average Joe”, slumped in his armchair, watching a game of football with a beer in his hand. Admittedly, when a UBI is first introduced, the belief of many may be akin to that of “average Joe”. Long working days and passive evenings is what we’re used to after all.
Bertrand Russell thought, “…the wise use of leisure […] is a product of civilisation and education. A man who has worked long hours all his life will become bored if he is suddenly idle. But without a considerable amount of leisure a man is cut off from many of the best things.” [6]
If there are many slackers, we shouldn’t worry about them. With no requirement to work they should be able to pursue ends they would have attempted to do anyway. This may still be work, albeit in a different form, or training for a job for which you were previously thought unqualified. Many people may have waited for these activities or efforts until they had earned enough income. UBI reduces concerns of financial stability. We are not used to a society where individuals do not have (serious) personal financial concerns. It may take a generation or two for us to get used to it and be able to make wise use of our leisure time. A lot of people choose to spend their leisure time being productive, while others are happy to sit and play PC games all day long. In the meanwhile, many will be bored with the extra time they have on their hands and that might be a good thing.
Individuals work for reasons far exceeding the need to earn subsistence. Unfortunately, despite years of technological development and raised standards of living, individuals are still thought only capable of being motivated to work through the deprivation of their physiological needs. Empirical evidence suggests people care about their work for more than just earning a wage [7]. When the labour market does not offer a sufficient supply of meaningful work that a labourer can take on, earning subsistence seems to take precedence. Systematically denying individuals meaningful work, however, could be detrimental to the individual’s capacity of devising and pursuing their conception of the good life.
It is difficult to conceive of alternative ways to sustain oneself and pursue a good life. It is arguably easier to find meaning in the responsibilities placed upon you by virtue of employment rather than to find yourself bored, seeking meaning, deciding upon a pursuit, and motivating oneself to do it. A new field of psychological research, developed by Ryan and Deci, called Self-Determination Theory (SDT) should raise optimism.
SDT posits “human nature […] is deeply designed to be active and social and which, when afforded a good enough (i.e. basic-need-supportive) environment, will move toward thriving, wellness, and integrity” [8]. Humans achieve optimal functioning when managing their physiological needs, their psychological needs are often achieved as well. These needs include autonomy – when one’s behaviours are inline with one’s authentic interests, competence – feeling mastery in significant life contexts, and relatedness – when you feel cared for or significant in front of others. “People’s curiosity, creativity, productivity, and compassion are most robustly expressed” in social contexts in which their psychological needs have been taken into account.
If the current generation is afforded a UBI many who reduce their time at work will become bored. A well-implemented UBI policy guarantees one’s physiological needs are met and frees individuals to fulfill their psychological needs. When these same individuals recognise their boredom they will seek to alleviate it. Initially, this may take the form of passive entertainment (and some may stay here) while others will try and fulfil their psychological requirements through meaningful activities (congruent with their psychological needs). Those that never make an effort to improve themselves likely already have this inclination under the current social system, and this should be rare anyway. Figuring out one’s intrinsic interests is difficult and takes serious reflective deliberation. While instinct leads us to the fulfilment of psychological needs, we may not have these clearly defined ourselves or be properly aware of them. As such, in order to ease the existential burden of the first generation of basic income earners the public should be educated about their psychological needs and ways to pursue them.
About the author:
Aleksander Masternak is a freelance writer and web developer based in Berlin.
He holds an MSc in Political Theory from the University of Amsterdam and an MA in History and Economics from the University of Glasgow. In the past, he worked as an archival research assistant to the Great War Project in Glasgow, a TEDx conference event organiser, an English language teacher, a marketing manager for a start-up, and Centre Manager of a language school.
[1] Widerquist, Karl. (2017, November 28). The Basic Income Guarantee Experiments of the 1970s: A Quick Summary of Results. BIEN.
Weller, Chris. (2017, May 10). Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Is Already Lowering Stress Levels – and It’s Only 4 Months Old.
Widerquist, Karl. (2017, November 21). Basic Income Experiments-The Devil’s in the Caveats. BIEN.
[2] stick-approach: when one is incentivised to act through the threat of punishment and coercion rather than through the promise of reward (carrot-approach).
[3] Russell, Bertrand. (1932). In Praise of Idleness.
[4] Skidelsky, Robert. (2013). Rise of the Robots: What Will the Future of Work Look Like? The Guardian.
[5] Bernmar, Daniel. (2017, January 06). Ignore the Headlines: A Six-hour Working Day Is the Way Forward. The Guardian.
[6] Russell (1932).
[7] Gheaus, A., &; Herzog, L. (2016). The Goods of Work (Other Than Money!).
[8] Ryan, R. M., &; Deci, E. L. (2017). Self-determination theory basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness. New York: Guilford Press.
by Albert Joerimann | Jan 4, 2018 | News
Michael Strobaek, Global Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of Switzerland’s second largest bank Credit Suisse (CS), is interviewed in the December 2017 issue of CS’s “Bulletin“, dedicated to questions around aging. According to Strobaek, it will be crucial to secure the livelihood of the millions of people who will be unemployed through technological development, automation and robotization, and that this has to be done through some sort of unconditional basic income (UBI). Although Strobaek has not provided any specifics about UBI, he is clear that it is required by future unemployment. This future unemployment, however has not been proven as a fact. Despite often cited reports, there is still no proven link between automation and net job loss, since these reports focus on job destruction, not job creation. For an alternative view, that finds that new technology will create new jobs as well as destroying old ones, see Ursula Huws’ article.
Asked who would be supposed to pay for the UBI, Strobaek answers: “The taxpayer. But the question then becomes just what is being taxed? Bill Gates proposed a robot tax to replace the income tax and social security contributions that will be lost through automation. As a society, we still need to find answers to this question.” But according to Strobaek the main challenge relates to future possibilities for human activities when there is very little paid work left. He suggests that “the structures of the world of work will need to be replaced by individual and self-selected structures. Intrinsic motivations will replace extrinsic ones. (…) When people have material security, then they will be able to become involved in the care of older people or of children”. This, however, seems to be in conflict with a deep job-centered logic that he defends throughout the interview, alongside a defence of large families, fearing for population and social security system decline.
Although Strobaek’s interview supports UBI, there is no information indicating whether this is the view of the CS board of directors, or of CS in general. Big banks do not usually publicize particular positions or make their own proposals, except about taxation and regulation within their own framework or on behalf of their clients, since they are doing business with a wide variety of clients, who support all political orientations. There is also no evidence in the interview of an alternative view to Strobaek’s support for UBI. This is consistent with the fact that large financial institutions are generally not criticized in any way in Switzerland, except at times by the political Left.
More information at:
“The New Old Age“, Credit Suisse Bulletin 4th Trimester 2017
Ursula Huws, “The future of work“, personal blog, January 29th 2017
This article was updated by André Coelho and reviewed by Malcolm Torry.