2014 AreTechnologicalUnemploymentand
- (Hughes, 2014) ⇒ James J. Hughes. (2014). “Are Technological Unemployment and a Basic Income Guarantee Inevitable Or Desirable?.” In: Journal of Evolution and Technology, 24(2).
Subject Headings: Technological Unemployment; Basic Income Guarantee
Notes
- Are Technological Unemployment and a Basic Income Guarantee Inevitable or Desirable?
- BIG and Technological Unemployment: Chicken Little Versus the Economists
- Technology, Unemployment & Policy Options: Navigating the Transition to a Better World
- A Strategic Opening for a Basic Income Guarantee in the Global Crisis Being Created by AI, Robots, Desktop Manufacturing and BioMedicine
- A History of the BIG Idea: Winstanley, Paine, Skidmore and Bellamy
- Workers and Automata: A Sociological Analysis of the Italian Case
- Technological Growth and Unemployment: A Global Scenario Analysis
- Technological Unemployment but Still a Lot of Work: Towards Prosumerist Services of General Interest
- Sex Work, Technological Unemployment and the Basic Income Guarantee
Cited By
Quotes
The question is a simple one: if in the future robots take most people's jobs, how will human beings eat? The answer that has been more or less obvious to most of those who have taken the prospect seriously has been that society's wealth would need to be re-distributed to support everyone as a citizen's right. That is the proposition we used to frame this special issue of the journal, and the contributors have explored new and important dimensions of the equation.
Mark Walker begins the discussion in “BIG and Technological Unemployment: Chicken Little Versus the Economists by reviewing the argument for impending widespread technological unemployment and reasons to be skeptical of economists' reassurances that it will not occur. Then he briefly reviews the fiscal demands for a minimal basic income guarantee (BIG) and proposes a value-added tax as a way to pay for it. He notes however that a fuller discussion of BIG as a solution to technological unemployment requires a fuller consideration of the many other policies that are and will be proffered as solutions.
In “Technology, Unemployment & Policy Options: Navigating the Transition to a Better World Gary E. Marchant, Yvonne Stevens and James Hennessy take up the challenge of outlining the many policy options that could be attemptedto address technological unemployment. These run the gamut from marginal tweaks to radical reforms of political economy, and from unattractive to attractive: protecting employment by slowing innovation, mandating human workers, or imposing other regulatory speed-bumps; re-distributing employment with job-sharing, lower mandatory retirement ages, more vacations, or a shorter work week; making new work with public employment, national service or tax incentives and regulatory support for employers; public investment in re-education for high skill jobs; and some expansions of the social insurance system such as national health insurance or a basic income guarantee.
Perhaps the two most radical proposals that they discuss briefly are creating alternative, non-monetary economic systems to recognize social contributions, a theme addressed at greater length by Katarzyna Gajewska, and the cognitive enhancement of human beings to allow them to stay a step ahead of automation. They argue that a basic income guarantee would have “corrosive effect on the social fabric, would not address the need for people to have a meaningful purpose to their lives, and would likely be politically infeasible in this era of government cut-backs and retrenchment. In my essay “A Strategic Opening for a Basic Income Guarantee in the Global Crisis Being Created by AI, Robots, Desktop Manufacturing and BioMedicine I argue that widespread technological unemployment is not only inevitable, but that these measures that will be proposed to shore up or create employment will only provide a temporary moderating influence on the rate of job loss. If machines do jobs better and more cheaply than human beings, and that advantage doubles every two years, political support for job programs, regulations or tax incentives that provide or protect employment will erode over time. Nor is human enhancement, with education or drugs or brain machines, likely to keep the majority of humans ahead of machines. Given that this is the case, some form of expanded social wage such as a negative income tax or a basic income guarantee is inevitable, although its achievement will nonetheless take quite a struggle.
I then expand the future context of that struggle to include the growing ratio of retired seniors to tax-paying workers throughout the industrialized world, and the various battle fronts of intergenerational conflict being fought as a result, from “entitlement reform to raising the retirement age. Although longevity medicine breakthroughs may reduce the health and nursing cost burden of the growing senior population it will also oblige societies to push even harder to raise retirement ages and force more seniors into the shrinking job market. So simp
References
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| Author | volume | Date Value | title | type | journal | titleUrl | doi | note | year | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 AreTechnologicalUnemploymentand | James J. Hughes | Are Technological Unemployment and a Basic Income Guarantee Inevitable Or Desirable? | 2014 |