To think the time is coming when a universal basic income is seen as a necessity?

[DoubtfulCat]

AI is replacing a lot of jobs which were previously highly specialised- like translation- as well as entry-level jobs into careers like law. Because the jobs which are hardest to automate seem to be those which are currently either very well paid (like senior managers, politicians, etc) or those at the lowest pay level (like care work, for example) it seems as if more and more people who would once have been gainfully employed will increasingly be competing for a shrinking pool of jobs with half-decent pay, and for those manual jobs. I see a rise in people with no job at all and a huge fall in people earning ‘professional’ salaries and following a reasonable career path. The knock-on would be falling private pension provision, falling savings, rising personal debt, and so on. Increasing hardship and wealth gap between those with and those without.

Do you think that a form of UBI would help to solve that problem?

• more people could work fewer hours each, so more people could have a job which often gives people a purpose in life
• hardship would be mitigated- no-one would be destitute or unable to feed themselves
• people might use their time on creative projects or things that are good for their health and well-being, if they have some breathing space around struggling to survive

I agree. It's not the work but the routine, being forced to see and speak to people even when you b don't want to and keeping your brain active that keeps you healthy. UBI would have to be very low in order to persuade people to top it up by doing care work or even running all the leisure activities mentioned.
OTOH the Uber rich needs to be careful because if not enough people are able to afford the stuff made by AI, they will lose money.
Finland tried it and gave it up as it was too expensive and happiness only improved for a very short time.
I agree we need to reset the social contract towards sustainability rather than continuous growth, which has broken the social contract, especially with young people who can't get training or a foothold into industry and encourage investment by the rich into their communities.

Can you explain a bit about what the book says how it would work?

I think basically yes, you would have to have global communism (which has been a Communist/Trotskyist idea for a century and has not happened). You can't have democracy because you can't risk one party in any one country winning and saying 'Im going to create a tax haven and then we can have all the money' You'd have to set it the bare minimum ( say £1000) then control rents, utility bills, basic food costs etc to make sure the ' basic' doesn't go over that. And the government would have control over what ' basic' is more than they do now- rationing for food, food vouchers etc.

We would also have to find the money for non profit making work like care of the elderly as people would have to be paid enough to make it worthwhile doing it. So then the money you take from the Uber wealthy making money out of AI not only has to pay for everyone to have £1000 but also to pay for maintenance of public services. They won't be Uber wealthy for long. Why should they be when there is no reward? China can do it because they make money selling crap to us. If we are all China where is the money going to come from?

A lot of young people are signing up to university because it's that or work part time at McDonald's. What else is there for 18 year olds these days.

I've live through the dire predictions, and actually from what I see, more of it has come to pass than some of you seem to have noticed.

It's all very well saying that other jobs will be created, but actually, they haven't been, not for the masses who would once have been on the factory floor.

As the available work becomes more and more specialised, with only the brightest able to do it (and only a few needed to do it), there'll be an employment problem. It's a trend that has actually been developing for many years.

Just because the dire predictions of the past haven't come to pass in the form imagined, doesn't mean we haven't seen any of it happen. It's one of the biggest reasons we are seeing more and more kids in university and we are having to make more and more allowances to get those who, 40 years ago wouldn't even have been considering a place, into higher education.

There simply aren't enough other options. Then we moan about Mickey Mouse degrees. It's what happens when people who aren't academically suited end up at uni because there's not much option.

I suspect it will push prices down, and a UBI will be very, very basic.

The factory floor became call centres (as more of our economic activity moved to online). The ‘masses’ are in work - we’re a long way from the unemployment of the 70’s and early Thatcher years.

The question is, what’s next?

Judging by the number of companies (and government departments) whose answerphones all say they’re dealing with a higher-than-expected number of calls and may get to yours some time in the next century, I’m not sure that call centres really are providing mass employment.

The work may be there but it’s not well paid or stimulating, and that’s kind of the point. If those jobs are the ones that are available, we will see a mass regression of living standards (which judging by the CoL and various threads on here, has already begun). Do we suck that up or look for an alternative? What alternative options are there?

Well, now you’re moving the goal posts!
The factory floor was hardly ‘fulfilling’ work either.
If you want not just jobs for all, but fulfilling jobs, I think you are searching for something that has never and will never exist.

I suppose at least on the factory floor there was always the excitement of would someone lose a limb that day.

😂😂

No, they didn't. The call centres were mostly outsourced to India.

I worked in a factory for years. Quite a few in our area closed as manufacturing was moved overseas and none of them were replaced by call centres.

The fact is, labour costs. To avoid that cost, companies used to move production to where labour was cheaper (hence call centres being outsourced to India). Now, companies are looking to technology to further reduce labour costs. It's the big driver behind the innovations. How can we produce more and spend less?

As the cost of the technology that is already available comes down, more businesses will use it because it will reduce their long term overheads. People aren't in business to give us jobs. They are in business to make themselves money.

As I mentioned before, comparing unemployment now to in the past based on government figures isn't giving an accurate figure. For a start, the age of leaving full time education has been raised to 18 and over 50% of young people will go on to higher education as opposed to barely 10% in the 70s. That's a large chunk of people who no longer appear in unemployment statistics.

We've got more pensioners now, who also aren't counted as unemployed. We've also much more of a gig economy. Whilst zero hours contracts aren't new, they are much more prevalent across the board than they were 30 years ago.

I don't think we are as far away from the early eighties as you might think in terms of adults between the ages of 18 and 65 in consistent full time employment.

So you’re saying that, because the jobs available are boring, we need to find a solution so that nobody has to do them?

If nobody does the boring jobs, everybody’s standard of living will plummet dramatically.

Most boring jobs can be automated. It's just a cost benefit analysis as to whether it is better to employ people or invest in tech. The problem with the government enforced minimum wage is that it swings the balance to tech. It might has made sense to spend X on paying someone to glue stuff together but when X moves to Y it makes more sense to invest in a machine.

Most of us didn't used to expect work to be stimulating, though. I spent over a decade packing bits of plastic. It paid the bills. Now a machine can pack bits of plastic quicker than me and it doesn't need time off.

There's only so many 'stimulating' things that you can do that earn a crust. That's why most people aren't doing what they love and never have, because what they love doesn't put food on the table.

This isn't really about stimulation. It's about the loss of those unstimulated jobs that the majority used to do to enable themselves to have a house, raise kids and maybe have a bit of money over to do some stimulating stuff.

Modern discussions around UBI aren't about the idealistic Ragged Trousered Philanthropist notions of everyone have time to pursue other interests. It's not about nobody having to do 6 days a week of dull, repetitive stuff, it's about the possibility that the dull, repetitive stuff that used to keep the majority fed, clothed and sheltered will now be done by a machine that doesn't need any of that.

So how will those who once relied on those unstimulating jobs earn money to survive?

Thank you, yes, this is the problem. I think the stimulation argument is a red herring, and isn't what the modern conversation about UBI is about. It's about the increasing possibility of there not being enough jobs full stop, stimulating or otherwise.

I agree. Just its not like not working is more stimulating unless you are going to plug everyone into a matrix style entertainment hub.

With 'home entertainment systems', 24 hour TV, online gaming, etc, we are already not far off that, TBF. It's the romantic notion that we'd all spend our time off reading shakespeare and painting masterpieces. We honestly wouldn't.

No we'll watching AI generated TV that's specifically tuned to our interest by yet more algorithms!

I can’t compute…..

Doing hobbies, being creative - oh, wonderful. Meanwhile, who is doing the grunt work? Delivering your craft materials to your house? Wiping your aged parents’ bottoms in a care home? Digging up vegetables? Driving said produce to a depot? And on and on and on.

There was a referendum on UBI in Switzerland. It was judged unsound as you would have to have 100% closed borders as unless every country offered UBI then a place with “free” money for all would be a huge magnet.

Via implants in our brains...

The topic of entry level jobs becoming obsolete came up in a work meeting this week. The government and employers need to consider the jobs of the future and help people become skilled or re-train in those areas.

There will always be boring jobs I think - that’s the nature of jobs: stuff you have to be paid to do or you wouldn’t do it otherwise. Stuff that needs doing but is a bit of a chore.

I imagine the next generation of boring jobs will involve staring at a computer all day fiddling with code, or ordering up replacement parts for automatons which are glitching. Personally I’d rather work in a call centre.

I've already said I'd do a day or two of 'grunt-work'. I just don't want to do 40 hours a week of it.

You’re right about the stimulation- my brain wasn’t finding me the words I needed this morning. I suppose I’m saying that ok- there’s always been boring jobs, but for some people there have been more interesting ones (and I keep listing some of those that are being replaced by AI) and that’s been an incentive for some to train and study, while others either prefer to work in jobs which need less training, or their circumstances force them into that. But if those “more interesting” jobs disappear, if the only jobs that exist are the boring ones, the incentives to train or study vanish. The goal of having a better/financially easier life than your parents is already wobbling for many and vanished for others. We need other ways to find stimulation, fulfilment, and (possibly) some sort of compensation for declining living standards. Not necessarily financial. If people see no point in striving and no hope of something better, then we end up like tigers in a zoo, pacing back and forth, neurotic, depressed, or dangerously angry.

If UBI is not the answer, can anyone suggest something else? I’m not an economist, so I won’t see all the pros and cons of an idea, but I do find the discussion to be interesting.

Yes that’s the other problem isn’t it. Unless the whole word doesn’t at the same rates or we close boarders properly.

Loads of people would just come for the money.