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

This is a key problem. What is the annual income and will it vary by location? Some posters are suggesting £1000 a month - you'd struggle to live on that in many cities (assuming all other benefits were withdrawn).

From 1980 onwards I worked as a writer, or toward becoming a writer. My degree is a BSC Econ from a Russell Group university that was even in 77 extremely selective. I learned my trade in New York and while I think I was liked, if I had not been up to scratch I would have been blown out without a thought.

But without the government intervening in the market in the form of benefits it would adjust. You'd still get expensive areas because there would still be jobs that paid well you just wouldn't get the artificial inflation that comes from the government intervention. If a business can't make a profit without its staff getting a UC top up its not a viable business, and without a UC top up a business would have to pay all its workers a wage suitable for where it is located so the lowest paid for example cleaners would earn more as the need for cleaning wouldn't disappear but you'd have to pay people well enough to do it.

I think businesses would fail. The NMW increase in April this year meant that businesses would have to pay £1500 per year extra per person. A lot of small business struggled with that. Alternatively, goods and services would go up, which slightly defeats the object of us all having free money to live on.

A lot of you are still talking about this as though it's about handing free money out to people who choose not to work.

The current discussions around UBI in the wake of increasing developments in AI technology are pertaining to the possibility that there simply won't be enough work. That's it. Not giving people more free time to pursue their interests, etc, but supporting the population that simply doesn't have work because the work isn't there any more.

We've become dependant on working to make money to buy what we need, as opposed to working to grow our food and build our own shelters, etc. We don't work to survive, we work to earn, to enable us to buy to survive.

There won't 'always be work' whilst we still pursue the desire to have machines do more and more for us. There WAS always work when to have hot water we had to build a fire and boil it ourselves. To have food, we had to grow it, pick it or hunt it. To have clothes we had to make them.

A variation of this theme has been present since early man. It's only really been relatively recently that the majority of us have not had to do so much for ourselves. If we went back just 50 years, we'd find ourselves having to do more 'by hand' as it were.

The only real way out of this is to go back to doing for ourselves, not for the 'middle man' of earning enough to pay someone or increasingly something enough to do it for us.

It's like we have all have servants now, just not human ones. Jeez, we don't even have to turn a light switch on now if we don't want, we just ask Alexa.

@ObelixtheGaul Yes I think this may happen and I think this may be the thing that will stop the untrammelled march of AI. That if so many people can't work and only have the bare basics to live on they can't buy stuff which AI makes, therefore reducing the profits made by the people at the top. I suspect this may be the only thing stopping the Zuckerbergs and the rest. Their inability to sustain their business models if they put everyone out of work. What would be the point in AI making Teslas for example if only 3 people can afford to buy one?

The population needs to decrease if there is not enough work to go around.

Well, that’s quite the statement. How would that be managed?

Hunger games?

1 child limit with people being able to earn the right to have further children through a points system.

What scares me about an UBI system is the level of control that could come with it. Starting with vouchers for the appropriate amount of alcohol and restrictions on the wrong kind of food and ending up with penalties for wrong behaviours and thoughts.

Can’t see that happening. People already dislike the two child cap.

What happens if the UBI is around for many years, a lot of people are generations removed from anyone in their family, or anyone they know, ever having worked, and then because the money runs out or a change in government and the UBI is abolished?

I suspect that once UBI has been in for a while, it will morph towards government supplying what they consider needs - food, shelter, entertainment to keep people occupied and not revolting.
It won't be more productive to put people back to work after AI and automation has taken most of the jobs.

Those people already exist... and they cost the government a fortune in means testing for benefits, chivvying back to work, processing them again when they fall out of work... over and over.

I don't think the 'what if it works for years then ends' is a valid arguement, if it was, we wouldn't have a welfare system at all, we'd never do anything because 'what if the next government changes it all'.

Over 150 years ago Karl Marx looked at the rise of capitalism and delevoped his theory of alienation. He identified the fundamental tragedy of capitalism whereby humans were cut off from what he called their creative essence. He argued that humans are social beings who fulfil themselves through their "act of labour" regardless of how it is concieved. Physical, intellectual or artistic. That is because we contribute our talents to the community abd in this we feel connected to one another. There is something deep inside most of us which draws upon this need to work. Our identity is rooted in what we do. Under capitalism work itself becomes a commodity to be bought and sold. It is owned by someone else and no longer by the worker. Robbed of the ability or necessity to work humans become alienated from their need to contribute and therefore from themselves.

Done well, it would have the potential to improve the economy because the actual wages people earn would be spent on buying things (ie paying more VAT back to the treasury) rather than most money going back to banks and landlords all the time and making the few richer and richer.

Yes I think this it's what it will be. It would be akin to training ( which to be fair led to a much healthier population). Not sure about 'wrong behaviours' but definitely it could easily lead to state provided food vouchers and accommodation.

Sorry that should say rationing.