Finland to test 'universal basic income' for the unemployed

Yourself isit · 30-12-2016 02:19AM

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Introducing longer working hours does appear to be very counter-intuitive in a world of reducing employment opportunities, but business and finance often goes off on a tangent when faced with situations like this.

The old joke used to be "how do you shorten the dole queues?"
Make them stand two abreast!
In reality, two 30 hour jobs, plus UBI could solve the employment issue as well as preventing a rebellious underclass from forming. It also has the bonus of possibly providing for extra public transit jobs as there will be two rush hours each morning and evening.

Keynes predicted a 3 day week by now. Didn't happen.

Your Face · 30-12-2016 02:20AM

I don't like it personally but I think that will be the way of the future.
Sounds horribly boring.

30-12-2016 02:29AM

Yourself isit wrote: »

Keynes predicted a 3 day week by now. Didn't happen.

The UK briefly had a three day working week, but it was in response to an energy crisis caused by a miners strike.

DEFTLEFTHAND · 30-12-2016 02:41AM

Kind of thing doesn't react well to human nature though.

Mass social assistance doesn't lead to a good economy.

Personal responsibility and self agency play a huge part in every individual. We're not owed anything in life, we work hard and and we make things for ourselves.

You will be rewarded if you put in the graft. A working life makes a life.

30-12-2016 02:55AM

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

Kind of thing doesn't react well to human nature though.

Mass social assistance doesn't lead to a good economy.

Personal responsibility and self agency play a huge part in every individual. We're not owed anything in life, we work hard and and we make things for ourselves.

You will be rewarded if you put in the graft. A working life makes a life.

All honourable comments, but what if there is simply not enough work to go around?
This is the situation that we will see in the near future (again), these days most families require both parents to work full time to provide a decent standard of living.
Back in the 1960s only the man was expected to work and support the family, in fact women were sacked when they got married back then.

Having a UBI would allow women (or men) to stay and bring up their children if they choose to do so without feeling that they must work to support the family.

doolox · 30-12-2016 04:09AM

Many people pontificate about working hard and getting justly rewarded without taking into account the disruptive effect of technology and evolving human organisation of working practices and peoples future lives.

A long time ago I subscribed to the theory that you got a job, worked hard, were rewarded and only lazy, shiftless people who lacked motivation ended up on the dole.

My first job closed shop after 14 happy fruitful and fulfilling years of work and might I say it....fun.

I went back to education after a few fruitless job interviews and feedback that my qualifications were insufficient.

The extra year study paid off and a buoyant jobs market kicked in to land me a permanent job with a good Company and I thought all was well.

I hadn't taken into account differing corporate cultures, increasing foreign competition both individual and corporate, decreasing demand for my skillset and increasing inability on my part as I grew older to adopt quickly enough to ever faster rates of change in the workplace.

I stuck the second job for 13 years and left on voluntary severance hoping to get another job elsewhere, after a year of dole and FAS training schemes I landed my third job which lasted 6 months, replaced by a foreign worker in my own country who was half my age but better fitted to the new workplace.

I had to seek help at this stage leading to the near break up of my marriage, my mental health and my means of survival. I was lucky to be able to turn a hobby into a part- time self employed role on a free lance basis which has provided me with a modest income for the past 6 yrs.

I am now 58 yrs of age and I do not see anyone hiring me in a conventional full time role in what I had been qualified to do. This happened through no fault of mine but I would strongly advise any people out there to devote some time through all there lives in re skilling and retraining and trying to get a job as independent from being a small cog in a big multinational as it is possible to be.

Do not believe the lies about "permanent" jobs or security of employment. These do not exist. Any one is just a few paychecks away from the dole queue....even public sector employees can be pushed out if their physical or mental health is not up to the job, especially for the weaker members of the over 50's. There are too many hungry, ambitious and grasping middle managers in BOTH public and private sectors quite willing to discard non performing members from the ranks of their subordinates. Two of my sisters worked in public sector jobs and were pushed out earlier than planned on reduced pensions due to health issues and performing to ever increasing standards in their jobs....nobody is immune from the risk of unemployment and having to survive on the dole.

People today need a strong grasp of self marketing, survival, more than one job sector working and being able to work a variety of roles in order to put bread on the table. Resilient systems require strong partnerships, I find that the future society may have to accept long periods of unemployment and retraining and reskilling among some of its members who will be increasingly be more likely to be let go after shorter job tenures than we were used to.

More and more it is becoming obvious that strong family ties and alliances will become increasingly more important in the future. We in the West have very poor and sometimes non existent family structures to tide us over difficult times. I could not have survived without the support and help of my wife and family and this is often what makes life bearable and possible in Eastern countries such as China and the Phillipines...their people seem to work longer hours, work together in close family groups etc.. something the Irish have lost since the 50's.

In summary the dole or its equivalent will become more acceptable and "respectable" as more and more members of society have to resort to it in more difficult times.
People will have more and more jobs in the course of their working lives in widely differing sectors of the economy as change accelerates.
Some form of economic restructuring on a global scale will be essential to hold all these arrangements together.

uch · 30-12-2016 04:24AM

I think taking €48 a week off people might cause a bit of a kerfuffle

Stigura · 30-12-2016 06:34AM

doolox wrote: »

Many people pontificate about working hard and getting justly rewarded without taking into account the disruptive effect of technology and evolving human organisation of working practices and peoples future lives ..... Some form of economic restructuring on a global scale will be essential to hold all these arrangements together.

Please allow me to be the guy who stands up, clapping .....

suicide_circus · 30-12-2016 10:46AM

Is there anything to be said for making a concerted effort to put the brakes on automisation/robots until we figure out for sure what we're gonna do when world unemployment is at 75%? I think we know enough about ourselves to know that this is gonna lead to mass bloodshed.

Ulysses Gaze · 30-12-2016 10:50AM

suicide_circus wrote: »

Is there anything to be said for making a concerted effort to put the brakes on automisation/robots until we figure out for sure what we're gonna do when world unemployment is at 75%? I think we know enough about ourselves to know that this is gonna lead to mass bloodshed.

I can see Governments and regulators enacting legislation only allowing a certain percentage of employment to be done by robots/automation.

Example: If by 2033 we have fully driverless cars which could decimate the taxi industry, I can see regulators limiting the number of automated taxis to 10% of the total number of cabs out there.

How long you can hold back the tide though is another thing.

Phoebas · 30-12-2016 11:03AM

Has anyone got a clear explanation about how UBI is supposed to work economically? If everyone in Ireland gets a basic income of, say, €188, then:

- taxes on everybody must rise massively to pay for it (lower paid workers presumably will be net beneficiaries, but higher income workers will lose out)
- the labour market will be completely skewed, especially at the lower end, with corporations gaining massively with the state effectively subsidising all workers.

AlmightyCushion · 30-12-2016 11:10AM

Ulysses Gaze wrote: »

I can see Governments and regulators enacting legislation only allowing a certain percentage of employment to be done by robots/automation.

Example: If by 2033 we have fully driverless cars which could decimate the taxi industry, I can see regulators limiting the number of automated taxis to 10% of the total number of cabs out there.

How long you can hold back the tide though is another thing.

Something like that could be very difficult to legislate for. In some cases, like your driverless car example, it may be relatively easy but on the whole it isn't. E.g. computer programs that generate things automatically like reports or vaues. How do you quantify how much manual work needs to be done to offset those?

AlmightyCushion · 30-12-2016 11:14AM

Phoebas wrote: »

Has anyone got a clear explanation about how UBI is supposed to work economically? If everyone in Ireland gets a basic income of, say, €188, then:

- taxes on everybody must rise massively to pay for it (lower paid workers presumably will be net beneficiaries, but higher income workers will lose out)
- the labour market will be completely skewed, especially at the lower end, with corporations gaining massively with the state effectively subsidising all workers.

The idea is that the state no longer has to employ thousands of people and operate loads of computer systems to administrate our current social welfare system as it will no longer exist once UBI replaces it. This should bring rather large savings.

I don't think that will work long term though as I believe the UBI system will slowly but surely start to become more and more complicated as more exemptions and extra benefits get added and will, in time, still require loads of manpower and computer systems to administrate it.

Phoebas · 30-12-2016 11:16AM

suicide_circus wrote: »

Is there anything to be said for making a concerted effort to put the brakes on automisation/robots until we figure out for sure what we're gonna do when world unemployment is at 75%? I think we know enough about ourselves to know that this is gonna lead to mass bloodshed.

Automation = productivity gains = growth.

Why would anyone want to limit that? The real question is how you share the benefits of it with the people left behind by it. Fighting automation is just tilting at windmills.

Yourself isit · 30-12-2016 11:20AM

Phoebas wrote: »

Automation = productivity gains = growth.

Why would anyone want to limit that? The real question is how you share the benefits of it with the people left behind by it. Fighting automation is just tilting at windmills.

Too simple. The economy is a feedback loop. Mass capitalism needs well paid workers. If most people are unemployed where's the growth coming from?

Phoebas · 30-12-2016 11:21AM

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

The idea is that the state no longer has to employ thousands of people and operate loads of computer systems to administrate our current social welfare system as it will no longer exist once UBI replaces it. This should bring rather large savings.

I don't think that will work long term though as I believe the UBI system will slowly but surely start to become more and more complicated as more exemptions and extra benefits get added and will, in time, still require loads of manpower and computer systems to administrate it.

Reduced costs in social welfare administration would appear to be a very marginal benefit.

I presume the idea of UBI is more than a simple productivity gain. Robots will replace many civil servants in due course anyway.

GreenFolder2 · 30-12-2016 11:38AM

There's actually a problem brewing though. You can see it in the USA, France, the UK and elsewhere with the rise of a very disgruntled blue collar sector of society that isn't able to achieve the lifestyle they could in the 1970s and 80s.

Jobs are becoming more and more specialised and a % of the population can't achieve the kind of educational levels to get them. There's only so much retraining people are willing or able to do. Then they start voting for Trump or Marine Le Pen or blaming all their woes on EU migration and vote Brexit.

The work environment is changing rapidly and something definitely needs to change to protect us from all ending up as freelancers in the "gig economy". That's the way things are headed and it's as much about lack of policy and over pushing the idea of flexible work forces as it is about technology.

The reality is flexibility = no commitment from employers, being able to lay staff off at will without consequences.

There's a notion that we have to constantly self market and compete for jobs. A lot of people can't do that and that's where things are starting to become politically nasty. I predict it'll get a lot worse before anything changes.

When you undermine someone's ability to keep themselves in decent circumstances, possibly risking homelessness etc etc a lot will either get very angry or very depressed.

Universal income might be a solution but it's unlikely to bring back the good old days where a basic, stable job guaranteed a fully good standard of living.

Phoebas · 30-12-2016 11:50AM

Yourself isit wrote: »

Too simple. The economy is a feedback loop. Mass capitalism needs well paid workers. If most people are unemployed where's the growth coming from?

Growth ultimately comes from increased productivity. The economy doesn't care if this productivity comes from a person using a tool or a tool on its own.

suicide_circus · 30-12-2016 11:54AM

Phoebas wrote: »

Automation = productivity gains = growth.

Why would anyone want to limit that? The real question is how you share the benefits of it with the people left behind by it. Fighting automation is just tilting at windmills.

Growth for whom?

Phoebas · 30-12-2016 12:02PM

suicide_circus wrote: »

Growth for whom?

Well, that the challenge to society - to make sure that the benefits of the economy/growth get to the right people.
I don't know if UBI is a good mechanism for that, but I'm pretty sure that deliberately limiting growth isn't a good idea. It sounds like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

KyussBeeshop · 30-12-2016 12:12PM

The Basic Income is a Trojan Horse policy - it is really a business subsidy, not an income subsidy, because businesses are just going to slash the wages they pay workers over time, until they soak up the gains workers make from the Basic Income.

All that has to be done to transform it from an income subsidy to a business subsidy, is to slash wages.

The Basic Income will also legitimize politically, the destruction of the entire welfare system - because the purpose of the Basic Income, is to replace all other forms of welfare payments, and unify them into one easy to attack target: The Basic Income.

So, once a big enough economic crisis hits, and the deficit scaremongering reaches its height, the first policy on the chopping block will be the Basic Income - and when that is slashed down to a pittance (without any discrimination between different types of welfare recipient, like there is today - making it much harder to justify cuts in todays system), it will pretty much take out the whole welfare system with it.

The Basic Income is also a Trojan Horse policy aimed at destroying progressive taxation. It is almost always paired with a policy aimed at introducing a Flat Tax system, which means that when businesses undermine the Basic Income by slashing wages, and when deficit scaremongering leads to a slashing of the Basic Income, we will be left with a Flat Tax system where lower income people pay more taxes than before, but without the Basic Income redistributing those taxes back to lower income people.

Effectively, once the policy is implemented and then slashed, it will lead to a massive reduction in tax for higher income people and the wealthy, and a massive increase in taxes for lower income people and the less-well-off.

The Basic Income is easily the most dangerous Trojan Horse policy that exists right now - and people generally seem to be completely blind to that.

In addition to that, we are nowhere near a level of automation advancement, that there will not be enough jobs for everybody - it should be obvious to people, just by looking at the massive amount of work we need to do to stop climate change, that there is no shortage of urgent work left to be done, in massive infrastructural redevelopment and R&D aimed at stopping climate change as soon as possible.

The entire automation argument, is aimed at fooling people into believing that long-term-unemployment is an acceptable state of affairs (despite there being no end of urgent work that needs doing), and for supporting a push to a Basic Income.

GreenFolder2 · 30-12-2016 12:17PM

Yup that's a major risk ... You could however tax the companies to a level that it funds is but, let's face it, too many vested interests around the world will ensure that never really happens.

Billy86 · 30-12-2016 12:24PM

I think it's a great idea to test out. It might work, it might not - but it's at least looking for solutions against the changing world. Finland seem to generally be very good at this approach, another recent example being their overhauling their school curriculum for the same reason (Finland is pretty much always at or near the top of the charts on the education front). It's a far more thoughtful and mature response than we're seeing in other parts of the world, and credit to them for it.

MrPudding · 30-12-2016 12:38PM

Yourself isit wrote: »

There's nothing new in this sort of automation. Factorys have been roboticised for years.

This is true, but I genuinely this is a whole new level. Something like 10% of all job in the USA involve driving. How many of them will survive? I have been reading about a potential option for Tesla cars. While you are at work they will go out on their own and pick up taxi fares. So we are even talking about form with automated cars, it simply anyone with a car capable of driving itself taking work away from traditional taxis.

I was at a seminar in London recently and saw a presentation from Starship. They build automated delivery drones. They now have a partnership with Mercedes who will build a "mothership" van which will carry a bunch of their robots to location so they can deliver to the door. The entire supply chain will disappear as a source of employment for humans, aside from a small number of specialists monitoring fleets of automated devices.

There is so much more going on with machine learning. This really does have the potential to be a big problem. I'm not a Luddite, I love this stuff, I just think we need to be ready for the time when a lot of jobs, low skilled initially, disappear.

Phoebas wrote: »

Has anyone got a clear explanation about how UBI is supposed to work economically? If everyone in Ireland gets a basic income of, say, €188, then:

- taxes on everybody must rise massively to pay for it (lower paid workers presumably will be net beneficiaries, but higher income workers will lose out)
- the labour market will be completely skewed, especially at the lower end, with corporations gaining massively with the state effectively subsidising all workers.

I had an interesting discussion with seomone about this. One of the idea being floated is that the government charges businesses that use robots or AI a kind of national insurance. So, for example, if you replaced 10 workers with a robot you would need to pay a certain amount each month into the government. Employers (or ex-employers) would likely make massive savings by getting rid of human workers. Even after paying this robotic national insurance the saving from automation would still be such that it was worthwhile. An interesting idea, I think.

MrP

30-12-2016 12:44PM

Who is manufacturing, maintaining, and programming all the new robots and automated machines plus will they be able to cook a 5 star meal or nurse a terminal ill person or deliver a baby.

Yourself isit · 30-12-2016 12:45PM

Phoebas wrote: »

Growth ultimately comes from increased productivity. The economy doesn't care if this productivity comes from a person using a tool or a tool on its own.

God's sake man. Try and abandon econ 101 and think about the problems here.

Why would anything be produced, or the economy grow if unemployment is destined to increase over time.

PopePalpatine · 30-12-2016 12:51PM

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

Sure...if pack animals had a Luddite movement when the internal combustion engine was invented.

Wanderer78 · 30-12-2016 12:51PM

We got to seriously start questioning all this growth and productivity, who exactly is this benefiting as all I'm seeing is increased stress and environmental issues!

Billy86 · 30-12-2016 12:53PM

mariaalice wrote: »

Who is manufacturing, maintaining, and programming all the new robots and automated machines

I would assume other robots and automated machines.

plus will they be able to cook a 5 star meal or nurse a terminal ill person or deliver a baby.

My guess is, very much so - and more consistently at an optimal level than humans. Only a few years ago the question of if a robot could drive our cars as well as humans would have been scoffed at.

Oh hey, kind of topical for the thread - who wants to see something awesome and terrifying!?

Phoebas · 30-12-2016 12:55PM

MrPudding wrote: »

I had an interesting discussion with seomone about this. One of the idea being floated is that the government charges businesses that use robots or AI a kind of national insurance. So, for example, if you replaced 10 workers with a robot you would need to pay a certain amount each month into the government. Employers (or ex-employers) would likely make massive savings by getting rid of human workers. Even after paying this robotic national insurance the saving from automation would still be such that it was worthwhile. An interesting idea, I think.

MrP

Its an interesting idea, but an 'innovation tax' just doesn't sit right with me.

I don't see much difference between robots and AI and good old fashioned technologies like the steam engine or payroll software or the spreadsheet.
Robots have been around in manufacturing industries for decades, the only difference now is the scale and the depth (i.e. robots are now reaching into white collar jobs and higher up the food chain).

I just don't know how you would levy this charge. How would you differentiate between a new software robot doing a mundane task and, say, email? And once you came up with a definition, wouldn't providers just repackage the robots to fall into a different category?

Finland to test 'universal basic income' for the unemployed

Comments