Gwynne Dyer: Universal basic income is not crazy and not going away

[LuckyTheDog]

Another huge chunk of the economy will start shedding jobs rapidly as online health monitoring and diagnosis take over the routine work of non-specialized health professionals. A similar fate awaits most mid-level jobs in the financial services sector, the retail sector and “management” in general.

The standard political response to this trend is to try desperately to create other jobs, even if they are poorly paid, almost pointless jobs, in order to keep people “in work” and off welfare. Unemployment is sees as a failure by both the government and the victim.

Yet this “problem” is actually a success story. Why would you see an economy that delivers excellent goods and services without requiring people to devote half their waking hours to work as a problem? The real problem is figuring out how to distribute the benefits of automation when people’s work is no longer needed.

MORE HERE: http://yonside.com/universal-basic-income-not-crazy/

[scscholar]

1. But those Republicans want to make everyone work...

so they'll never allow this to happen.

[LuckyTheDog]

2. Give it time

The Republican Party is in its death throes.

[Ohioblue22]

3. It did in sweden

[Javaman]

20. it did what? nt

[Ohioblue22]

21. Went away

[Javaman]

23. can you point me to a link?

I have been trying to find anything related to Sweden universal basic income and have found nothing regarding it's failure.

I'm not trying to refute you, I just want to know why it failed.

thanks. :wave:

[Ohioblue22]

24. Switzerland's (not sweden) voters reject basic income plan. They felt it would be too expensive

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36454060

[jwirr]

4. I have read a lot about the coming jobless economy because

the robots are going to do the work. And if this is really going to happen we are going to need a way of getting the things people need to survive without jobs.

But I grew up in the 50s when they told us how it was going to be - and believe me that story was nothing like it turned out to be.

So I have a question for anyone who knows the answer. Energy is required for production - of robots, of windmills, of food etc. When the creators of our jobless economy where planning all of this did they consider that we are at the end of the fossil fuel age?

[Hydra]

5. Nobody planned for this

Unless they were planning to kill us all.

Optimally we can have 100% renewables and passives fueling the new economies...assuming we don't fry ourselves before then

[jwirr]

6. And that is just exactly what I am talking about - being

fried before we can get this jobless economy built.

[Hydra]

7. We're at a crossroads

The technology has the potential to free us all...but we may be too far into climate change or a global dystopia to get to that.

[lostnfound]

8. 70% of food grown goes to waste

That fact alone ought to tell us that much is possible which we've been conditioned to think is impossible

[lumberjack_jeff]

9. The solution is jobs, not basic income.

Reduce the workweek to 32 hours and there will be work for people to do.

Work provides nonmonetary benefit that people can't get any other way.

[The2ndWheel]

10. I'm guessing a reduced workweek at more pay to make up the difference?

Which probably won't happen.

Give people a basic income, and they can go a little more nuts with their hobbies, which can take up a lot of time if people are obsessed enough. Maybe work isn't the right word, but meaningful activity might be the right phrase.

It's not the end of history, that's for sure. Either way we go.

[lumberjack_jeff]

14. Of course it will. Labor shortage is the only thing that raises pay.

the 40 hour workweek is the primary reason that wages are as high as they are.

I have lots of hobbies, but none of them are a suitable replacement for the social benefits of work.

[The2ndWheel]

31. I can't argue about the social benefits of work, I agree

Labor shortage raises pay, but not if people aren't needed to do the job. If you go from 40 to 32 hours per week, but the same amount gets done, who is going to pay people more for less time? If you go from 40 to 32 hours, and the increasing automation works the way the it's supposed to work, who is going to get these raised wages? How many people are going to get the raised wages?

Need is really the part that raises pay. If the automation works the way it's supposed to, there won't be a labor shortage. There will be a need shortage. The need for people to be around for 40 hours, 32 hours, 10 hours, or whatever.

It's definitely going to be disruptive. There's no telling exactly how it'll play out. The meaning of work as we know it will change. It's almost inevitable, since that meaning has always changed in some way or another, since however far back as you want to go. You look at society as a whole, and we've already been building an increasingly isolated world for people in some ways. As they say, you can have 1000 friends on Facebook, but it's not really real.

It's a question of, if automation takes away the most basic of jobs, then takes away some more advanced jobs, and on and on down the list, what do people do? How many people can be doctors, or athletes, or whatever high paying profession? People in those positions make so much money because they're rare. If the majority of people don't have the talent, or drive, or chance to do those things, and machines of some kind are doing more and more jobs, where do people go?

If we're going to have the resource concentration mechanism that we call civilization(so there's nowhere outside of it to go), and we're going to advance technology in an unrelenting way(which puts that much more pressure on people), at some point we have to pay people for simply existing. Otherwise there are going to be a lot of pissed off and/or dead people.

[LanternWaste]

11. I think it's short-sighted to believe there is merely one solution

I think it's short-sighted to believe there is merely one solution when rather often, a problem is alleviated through multiple solutions, sometimes working in tandem, other times simply sharing a load of the problem.

[lumberjack_jeff]

15. I've worked long enough with the disabled to believe that work is the solution to social isolation.

[clarice]

12. Very stupid idea.nt

[HughBeaumont]

13. HA HA HA, you actually think Capitalism's going to solve the problems it creates.

Or, worse yet, you're one of those who doesn't think there's anything wrong with Capitalism as is.

[clarice]

17. Did you just laugh at me? That's not the communist way....

We must fix our eyes firmly on the glittering horizon and join together to rid the world of
running dog lackeys, while guaranteeing a future of starvation and servitude to our loyal fellow travelers.

[HughBeaumont]

18. Yyyyyyyeah, I don't speak wingnutese.

Come back to me when you're ready to converse like an adult and not some Cheeto-scarfing Glenn Beck fan

[clarice]

22. ohhhhh someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. Name calling? nt

[HughBeaumont]

29. . . . said the false-dilemma tosser calling people Communists . . .

Is Leonid Brezhnev still alive?

[clarice]

30. I didn't mean that YOU were a communist....lol

It's just that your weltanschauung seems to lean in that direction...

As far as Leo goes?....... yes, he is singing for the newly reformed Guns n Roses.

[Bonx]

25. What ?? Only the most trustworthy blog articles come with php errors

[clarice]

26. Right????? nt

[whatthehey]

16. The main obstacle is human nature

Way too many people see work as a means of self-identification and self-worth, especially in the US (the question "what do you do?" asked to people of different nationalities elicits varying answers, but in the US is always answered with a job if the respondent has one). It's how many people assert hierarchy or choose friends and acquaintances. It is also to some a genuine source of pastime when they lack the interest in finding another. The UBI is surely possible and even laudable as labor becomes less and less the sine qua non of productive endeavors, but it will be a long and wrenching road to acceptance. For me personally I'd take it in a heartbeat and be happy getting deeper and deeper into some aspect of ancient history or German philosophy of the 19th century. I'd much rather do that and live modestly than live as well off as I do and waste my time shuffling data and making widgets, but alas I have not yet amassed enough capital to make that a viable option (getting closer - I'll retire long before SSI). Somebody else could do my job and we'd both be happier. But hell people have gone back to work as meatpackers after winning the lottery so they need something to do obviously.

[LuckyTheDog]

32. A universal basic income would not lead to idleness

People would work for different reasons beyond basic survival.

[whatthehey]

34. Of course it would for some, assuming you define "idleness"

as "not working to produce anything of commercial value". Where societies have afforded this option to privileged minorities in the past, from the monied gentry in 18-19th Century Britain to the Russian nobility in pre-revolutionary times to the free citizens of Periclean Athens, the people engaged in pohilosophy, natural sciences, intellectual inquiry and yes pure hedonism for the less cerebral. Western science began because "idle" Greeks could draw triangles in sand all day and work out geometry rather than growing crops or selling wine. The theory of evolution was developed because a well to do Victorian Englishman could spend five years on a ship collecting and drawing specimens rather than being the country doctor he originally set out to be. Dostoyevsky, pre banishment, could sit and read and study philosophy because he got money from his father's estates. Crime and Punishment would hardly have been the same were he forced to become a tailor instead. None of the above "worked" in the sense it's used in our labor market, and they and millions of others were supported by unearned income. Many of those millions just sat on their duffs and did bugger all of note, and sure some "worked" by choice, managing commercial interests or launching new businesses.

UBI would create the same here. Some would sit idly, some would have the time and interest to increase the store of knowledge and art for all mankind regardless of profit, and some would be driven to amass more wealth from industriousness. None of these is intrinsically "wrong" except to a neopuritan outlook that changes the k in work to a th. When the world needs less work to provide an overabundance of its needs, which is already true and getting more so daily, you aither need to reduce work or waste it. The latter is simply insane and inhumane.

[PufPuf23]

19. 100% employment has expired as a need or goal because of technology.

The problem is how to distribute wealth and income so the unemployed, under employed, or those unsuited for employment have the assets and income for a secure and comfortable life.

I support a guaranteed minimum income by a transfer of wealth and income from the wealthy and corporations and a decrease in MIC spending.

[Agnosticsherbet]

27. Because work is becoming obsolete, I agree.

Excellent article.

[Angel Martin]

28. Gwynne Dyer is still wearing the same leather jacket he had 25 year ago

[hunter]

33. My car is older than his jacket.

[Marrah_G]

35. There is no safety net out there for adults without minor children

Except for food and medical there is nothing. Housing has waiting lists of years, not months. No welfare, even for those disabled there is nothing to live on over the years it takes to get SSDI.