Why We’ll Need a
Universal Basic Income
By
Robert Reich
To
watch this video on YouTube, CLICK HERE.
Imagine
a little gadget called an i-Everything. You can’t get it yet, but if technology
keeps moving as fast as it is now, the i-Everything will be with us before you
know it.
A
combination of intelligent computing, 3-D manufacturing, big data crunching,
and advanced bio-technology, this little machine will be able to do everything
you want and give you everything you need.
There’s
only one hitch. As the economy is now organized, no one will be able to buy it,
because there won’t be any paying jobs left. You see, the i-Everything will do
… everything.
We’re
heading toward the i-Everything far quicker than most people realize. Even now,
we’re producing more and more with fewer and fewer people.
Internet
sales are on the way to replacing millions of retail workers. Diagnostic apps
will be replacing hundreds of thousands of health-care workers. Self-driving
cars and trucks will replace 5 million drivers.
Researchers
estimate that almost half of all U.S. jobs are at risk of being automated in
the next two decades.
This
isn’t necessarily bad. The economy we’re heading toward could offer millions of
people more free time to do what they want to do instead of what they have to
do to earn a living.
But to make this work, we’ll have to figure out some way to recirculate the money from the handful of people who design and own i-Everythings, to the rest of us who will want to buy i-Everythings.
One
answer: A universal basic income – possibly financed out of the profits going
to such labor replacing innovations, or perhaps even a revenue stream off of
the underlying intellectual property.
The
idea of a universal basic income historically isn’t as radical as it may sound.
It’s had support from people on both the left and the right. In the
1970s, President Nixon proposed a similar concept for the United States, and it
even passed the House of Representatives.
The
idea is getting some traction again, partly because of the speed of
technological change. I keep running into executives of high-tech companies who
tell me a universal basic income is inevitable, eventually.
Some
conservatives believe it’s superior to other kinds of public assistance because
a universal basic income doesn’t tell people what to spend the assistance on,
and doesn’t stigmatize recipients because everyone qualifies.
In
recent years, evidence has shown that giving people cash as a way to address
poverty actually works. In study after study, people don’t stop working and
they don’t drink it away.
Interest
in a basic income is surging, with governments debating it from Finland to
Canada to Switzerland to Namibia. The charity “Give Directly” is about to
launch a basic income pilot in Kenya, providing an income for more than 10
years to some of the poorest and most vulnerable families on the planet. And
then rigorously evaluate the results.
As
new technologies replace work, the question for the future is how best to
provide economic security for all.
A
universal basic income will almost certainly be part of the answer.
ROBERT B. REICH is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at
the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center
for Developing Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton
administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective
cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fourteen books,
including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of
Nations," and "Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent,
"Saving Capitalism." He is also a founding editor of the American
Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary,
INEQUALITY FOR ALL.
