How long before the elites decide the unemployed underclass shouldn’t have the right to vote?
Finland has been testing a basic income for 2,000 of its unemployed citizens since January, and UBI proponents say the Nordic country is providing an example for the U.S. It will be interesting to see the Finnish results, but Americans shouldn’t read too much into the outcome of a small-scale, early-stage trial. Look instead to Saudi Arabia, which for decades has attempted the wholesale replacement of work with government subsidies. Perhaps more than half of all Saudis are unemployed and not seeking work. They live off payments funded by the country’s oil wealth... Regular citizens lack dignity while the royal family lives a life of luxury. The technocratic elite has embraced relatively liberal values at odds with much of the society’s conservatism. These divisions have made the country a fertile recruiting ground for extremists... At the heart of a functioning democratic society is a social contract built on the independence and equality of individuals. Casually accepting the mass unemployment of a large part of the country and viewing those people as burdens would undermine this social contract .... It would also create a structural division of society that would destroy any pretense of equality... UBI supporters would counter that their system would free people to pursue self-improvement and to take risks. America’s experience over the past couple of decades suggests that the opposite is more likely. Labor Department data show that at the end of June the U.S. had 6.2 million vacant jobs. Millions of skilled manufacturing and cybersecurity jobs will go unfilled in the coming years.This problem stems from a lack of skilled workers. While better retraining programs are necessary, too many of the unemployed, or underemployed, lack the motivation to learn new skills. Increasingly, young unemployed men are perfectly content to stay at home playing videogames.
.. Perhaps it could work as only a supplement to earned income.
..In the same Harvard commencement speech in which Mr. Zuckerberg called for a basic income, he also spent significant time talking about the need for purpose. But purpose can’t be manufactured, nor can it be given out alongside a government subsidy. It comes from having deep-seated responsibility—to yourself, your family and society as a whole.
When Technology Sets Off a Populist Revolt
If you think globalization, immigration, trade and demographic change have contributed to displacement and political anger, wait until robots take away millions and millions of jobs, including those requiring the use of a well-trained brain.
.. “It seems likely that the top 10 to 20 percent of any profession — be they computer programmers, civil engineers, musicians, athletes or artists — will continue to do well,” he told me. “What happens to the bottom 20 percent or even 80 percent, if that is the delineation? Will the bottom 80 percent be able to compete effectively against computer systems that are superior to human intelligence?”
Others in Silicon Valley, most notably the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, have dismissed this concern as Luddism, assuring people that new jobs always replace the ones that vanish.
.. And it is hardly surprising for stalwarts of an industry to claim it won’t harm anyone. What is more notable is what sometimes is called “argument against interest” — people criticizing a thing from which they stand to benefit.
.. The only answer, he believes, is massive economic redistribution via something like a guaranteed minimum income. The idea has been gaining ground.
“Does capitalism need to be reinvented for modern technology? I’m absolutely convinced it does,” he said.
.. To be plain, Mr. Khosla and others of like mind in the valley are not radicals. They are speaking of a new social contract, in which an undisrupted few assume new obligations to the disrupted many, in order to be freed to go back to their disruptive works.