Universal Basic Income

At this moment robots and automation are starting to take over jobs, and quickly. Some estimates talk about full half of (human) jobs being gone within US (or Europe) in twenty years. At this moment unemployment of 10-20% is bad news, but with these projections we're talking unemployment of about 40-50%! (of course, assuming that no other jobs materialize to replace these that are lost. Estimates of that vary, from none to all - but let's just assume that just about one third to half of the jobs lost are replaced with new jobs.)

Now, one might argue that progress is slower than this and robots can't really take over all those works, but even half or quarter of that figure will be pretty disrupting.

This is where UBI - Universal Basic Income, or perustulo as it is called in Finnish - comes in. Society with that many people with no income really can't function properly. And this is putting it mildly. Note that I used word income here - people with no work not may not be very happy, but if they don't have unemployment benefits or other income either... well, that is the point where things turn ugly. Bread and circuses have been benefit to rulers since days ancient, but when population can't afford them, they (and modern equivalents) lose their calming effect pretty quickly.

And people really expect about half of the current work force to be unemployed without society experiencing a serious meltdown? Not gonna happen.

UBI will be necessity. Yeah, there are problems, very serious ones, starting with the one where there isn't sufficient amount of government income anywhere (read: taxes) to fund any serious UBI scheme. Not even close. Now. But it is doable, but many people (I suspect myself included) will balk at the tax figures (both personal and corporate) that needs to be implemented.

And I'm completely ignoring the other problems raising the corporate tax rate will cause. Like corporations moving elsewhere. Or just moving their money elsewhere, at least on paper. But then again, that is exactly what they are doing now anyway...

But still, I do think that this is something that absolutely must happen, or the nice societies we have here will experience one serious cataclysm that will turn things very, very unpleasant. We do have the means to make it happen. We can - nay - will make it happen eventually.


But that being said, want to hear the really bad news?

US, Europe and similar countries have maybe total of 1 billion people, out of total world population of maybe 10 billion (estimated; now the figure is 7B but it will go up yet) when proverbial shit really starts to hit the fan.

So, assuming no major changes elsewhere, total of maybe some 10% of world population would enjoy the benefits of UBI. Remaining 90% of population would still be out of reach of any such plans, realistically. So they will have no jobs, no income and pretty much no hope either.

You think the current situation in middle east is bad?

I fear we haven't seen anything yet...