Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future and says money
Speaker 1: don't get everything. It's true, but what it don't get
Speaker 1: I can't use. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And today we're gonna be talking about a
Speaker 1: topic related to economics, something that we have I would
Speaker 1: say we've brushed up against it before on this show
Speaker 1: when we talked about Star Trek economics, some some other
Speaker 1: issues related to automation. But today we thought it would
Speaker 1: be a good time to jump headfirst into the topic
Speaker 1: of the basic income. Yeah. I almost think of this
Speaker 1: as like a a stepping stone, if you will, toward
Speaker 1: that Star Trek future where money no longer is a
Speaker 1: thing except when the plot requires to be right right
Speaker 1: or I mean for Ferengie who just really like it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the latinum, the press latinum. Yeah. Yeah. And it's been
Speaker 1: a topic of our conversation because as artificial intelligence and
Speaker 1: robotics become more advanced and less expensive, robots are going
Speaker 1: to take our jobs and specifically our tedious dangerous and
Speaker 1: damaging hard labor type jobs, especially those those will happen
Speaker 1: first question about it, others will follow. That's that's kind
Speaker 1: of the scary thing, isn't it. Like one of the
Speaker 1: things I want to talk about later in this episode
Speaker 1: is a paper that I've referenced in a couple of
Speaker 1: things I've written for how Step Works that came out
Speaker 1: in by the Oxford researchers Carl Benedict Fry and Michael A. Osborne.
Speaker 1: And this paper is essentially a big look at where
Speaker 1: the future trends in automation are going to be, what
Speaker 1: jobs are going to be taken over by machines and
Speaker 1: by computer software. And as we record this podcast, Lauren
Speaker 1: and are actually preparing to fly to Austin, Texas to
Speaker 1: attend south By Southwest two thousand sixteen. Yeah, by the
Speaker 1: time you hear this, it will have already happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we're giving you the future of the past right now.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that we both noticed as
Speaker 1: we looked at the different track programming, uh you know
Speaker 1: lists on south By south West, which is an enormous
Speaker 1: conference that's interactive, film, music, tons of different stuff going
Speaker 1: on there, but one of the really big topics that
Speaker 1: we saw coming up again and again was this idea
Speaker 1: of automation. How is that going to impact the job
Speaker 1: market and how is that going to impact things like income?
Speaker 1: And so that's very much in line with what we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about today. Yeah, So if you want
Speaker 1: to listen to a couple of those prior episodes that
Speaker 1: we've done, tune into one from December called will Robots
Speaker 1: Steal Our Jobs? Um? And then two from July called
Speaker 1: Hailing the Robotcab and Robot Taxis and the Future of
Speaker 1: Cab Drivers. Uh. And I don't have the the the
Speaker 1: episode title and date for the Star Trek Economy episode
Speaker 1: right in front of me, the Star Trek Economy, Okay,
Speaker 1: so just google Star Trek Economy. I have faith in you. Um.
Speaker 1: But but to summarize what we said there, you know,
Speaker 1: in the long term, this is great, like what an
Speaker 1: incredible future, y'all, Like no one has to clean toilets,
Speaker 1: or drive cargo trucks, or turn and burn burgers or
Speaker 1: like mine, toxic heavy metals unless they're really psyched about it. Um.
Speaker 1: In the short term, this is going to lead to
Speaker 1: so many growing pains and stands to specifically disenfranchise the
Speaker 1: people who are already living below the poverty line, even
Speaker 1: though they're working full time, because those are the kind
Speaker 1: of jobs that are going to go first, right, Yes.
Speaker 1: And one reaction to this trend, and I should say,
Speaker 1: it's not just a reaction to the automation trend, but
Speaker 1: it's a it's an idea that is bigger than a
Speaker 1: reaction to automation, but may specifically come into play because
Speaker 1: of automation, is the basic income, what's known as a
Speaker 1: guaranteed basic income. So I want to start with a
Speaker 1: little news story that was the basis of a of
Speaker 1: a house Stuff Works Now video I shot earlier this
Speaker 1: week about the Ontario provincial budget. So. Ontario is a
Speaker 1: province of Canada. It's their largest province. It's home to
Speaker 1: almost fourteen million people. And they release their budget online
Speaker 1: and it in chapter one, Section E Towards a Fair
Speaker 1: Society they write, and I'm just gonna read a longish
Speaker 1: quote here, but bear with me for a minute. One
Speaker 1: area of research that will inform the path of comprehensive
Speaker 1: reform will be the evaluation of a basic income pilot.
Speaker 1: The pilot project will test a growing view at home
Speaker 1: and abroad that a basic income could build on the
Speaker 1: success of minimum wage policies and increases in child benefits
Speaker 1: by providing more consistent and predictable support in the context
Speaker 1: of today's dynamic labor market. I like that term dynamic.
Speaker 1: That seems kind of euphemistic, but I like that they
Speaker 1: spell labor with a U A supposed to volatile or
Speaker 1: something like, Yeah, it's so dynamic it's terrifying. Yeah, would
Speaker 1: be another great work with this rickety old roller coasters dynamic.
Speaker 1: But anyway, continuing with the quote the pilot, and they're
Speaker 1: referring to the basic income pilot project. The pilot would
Speaker 1: also test whether a basic income would provide a more
Speaker 1: efficient way of delivering income support, strengthen the attachment to
Speaker 1: the labor force, and achieve savings in other areas such
Speaker 1: as healthcare and housing supports. The government will work with communities,
Speaker 1: researchers and other stakeholders in sixteen to determine how best
Speaker 1: to design and implement a basic income pilot. And this
Speaker 1: seemed really interesting to me because essentially, with this budget statement,
Speaker 1: the provincial government is announcing it's intentions. You might note
Speaker 1: that there aren't a lot of specific series, so we'll
Speaker 1: have to see what actually comes of this, but they're
Speaker 1: at least announcing their intention to do science on the
Speaker 1: governmental level. They want to run an experiment to see
Speaker 1: what happens when you try this new form of economics
Speaker 1: and find out whether or not it actually is efficacious.
Speaker 1: If so, does it make sense considering the the amount
Speaker 1: of investment required to make it happen? Sure, and and
Speaker 1: what kind of less numbers based qualifiers wind up coming
Speaker 1: out of it, like like how do how does it
Speaker 1: impact people's happiness and people's productivity? Right? Good points. So
Speaker 1: we we shouldn't start with the definition. I guess what
Speaker 1: is a basic income? And how is it different from
Speaker 1: all the other types of welfare and social security that
Speaker 1: that are already in place in governments all around the world.
Speaker 1: So there are a few different details and qualifications you
Speaker 1: could run variations on, you know, they're there are different
Speaker 1: ways to slice the pie. But in essence that the
Speaker 1: idea of a basic income is there's a government payout
Speaker 1: that's awarded to all citizens, without restrictions on use, without
Speaker 1: means testing. And it's these latter two parts of it
Speaker 1: that make it so different from most social security type
Speaker 1: programs today. So governments already have a lot of programs
Speaker 1: that a ward financial assistance. But maybe you're only supposed
Speaker 1: to spend it on certain types of food items, like
Speaker 1: you you're only really supposed to spend it on food
Speaker 1: like food stamps. Or maybe you only get it if
Speaker 1: you're over a certain age, or maybe you only get
Speaker 1: it if you're under a certain income, or if you're
Speaker 1: unemployed but actively seeking work, or you know, any number
Speaker 1: of conditions. Family structure is a certain way. The basic income,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, is it strips away all of that.
Speaker 1: It is an unconditional direct payout of money that every
Speaker 1: citizen receives, and anything on top of that you would
Speaker 1: get based upon your employment or lack thereof. So you work,
Speaker 1: you get it. You don't work, you get it right.
Speaker 1: You're young, you get it, you're old, you get it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. Every citizen gets the basic payout right.
Speaker 1: And ideally the basic payout is somewhere in the level
Speaker 1: where you can see two very basic necessities at least
Speaker 1: at the very least um not necessarily some basic income
Speaker 1: things I've seen. It's more along a small stipend that
Speaker 1: could offset your expenses, It doesn't necessarily take care of
Speaker 1: the basic needs even at that level. And in some
Speaker 1: cases I've seen people argue for advocate for a basic
Speaker 1: income that goes above what you would need for the
Speaker 1: the most essential necessities had to get you above the
Speaker 1: poverty line, right, which I believe in the United States
Speaker 1: study rate equals a little bit over eleven grand a
Speaker 1: year right now, I think it. It can be calculated
Speaker 1: different ways depending on how many dependents you have, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and and honestly I didn't look up the most recent
Speaker 1: number right in two thousand and twelve, it was somewhere
Speaker 1: between eleven and twelve thousand dollars for and that will
Speaker 1: come into play in a little bit later in our
Speaker 1: our conversation as well. Right. So, obviously, as I've said,
Speaker 1: you can tinker with the idea, you can offer different
Speaker 1: variations on it. There's no one idea everybody agrees on.
Speaker 1: But that's the basic idea. It's a direct, unconditional payout
Speaker 1: of money that you can spend however you want, and
Speaker 1: everybody gets it. But there are questions you can mess with,
Speaker 1: like should the payout be graduated according to your other income?
Speaker 1: Like should the poorest people get a bigger payout than
Speaker 1: people who have more money. I don't know. You might
Speaker 1: be able to argue one way or another. Uh do
Speaker 1: you give the payout to adults ownly adults? Yeah? Or
Speaker 1: only to or to everybody including dependent children? Uh? And
Speaker 1: you know you mentioned this new idea. It's really the
Speaker 1: interesting thing is it's not that new of an idea.
Speaker 1: It's just it's one that we're starting to hear a
Speaker 1: lot of. Yeah. So if you want to look at
Speaker 1: maybe the origins of this idea are people who are
Speaker 1: advocated for something similar in years past. You can look
Speaker 1: all the way back to the sixteenth century early Dreds
Speaker 1: with Thomas Moore. What a guy. You know, this is
Speaker 1: not the place we want to go if you're trying
Speaker 1: to make the case that the universal basic income is
Speaker 1: not necessarily utopianism, because Thomas Moore was explicitly utopianist. Yes. Yes,
Speaker 1: in fact he wrote on the subject quite extensively. He
Speaker 1: was a humanist and uh. He advocated an idea similar
Speaker 1: to basic income, though specifically intended for the poor, as
Speaker 1: opposed to a universal basic income that would go to
Speaker 1: every single citizen of whatever country. He was specifically looking
Speaker 1: at England, but also did numerous uh He wrote a
Speaker 1: lot about the various countries in Europe at the time
Speaker 1: and talked about the idea of this minimum income. He
Speaker 1: argued that the minimum income would minimum income let me,
Speaker 1: let me enunciate properly, would create a greater social benefit
Speaker 1: than it would create a burden for the the state,
Speaker 1: the government to pay this out. His argument was that
Speaker 1: if people are not making enough money, they end up
Speaker 1: turning to theft in order to meet their basic needs,
Speaker 1: and then we end up spending resources capturing them and
Speaker 1: punishing them, often killing them, which removes them from being
Speaker 1: able to make any sort of social contribution at all.
Speaker 1: If you are curious about that set of situations, you
Speaker 1: can go listen to our Future of Burials episode which
Speaker 1: was just last week. So he argued that with a
Speaker 1: minimum income, you remove the the necessity for theft, and
Speaker 1: you remove the necessity for punishment and removing people from
Speaker 1: the possibility of contributing to society, and everyone benefits. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and for furthermore, you know, if if you really
Speaker 1: care about human life, you you remove the necessity of
Speaker 1: the state at that time to you know, kill people
Speaker 1: to commit murder. He also he also admittedly said, maybe
Speaker 1: killing people for what amounts to petty theft is a
Speaker 1: little excessive. That was a radical idea at the time
Speaker 1: of Thomas Moore. Uh Now, the notion evolved over time.
Speaker 1: Lots of other people ended up contributing to this idea
Speaker 1: and and tweaking it or adding different ideas that ended
Speaker 1: up kind of being folded into the concept of basic income.
Speaker 1: Later on, in the eighteenth century, we started seeing the
Speaker 1: idea of basic endowment, which was sort of a precursor
Speaker 1: of life insurance. The idea being that, if, for example,
Speaker 1: a the the person who provided for a family were
Speaker 1: to die, would there be a system in place in
Speaker 1: order to keep that family sustained now that the person
Speaker 1: who was responsible for providing has passed away. That kind
Speaker 1: of concept. Then in the nineteenth century, utopian socialists began
Speaker 1: to argue for what would become basic income. It was
Speaker 1: still a very early version of that. At that time.
Speaker 1: The notion was that people were really moving into cities,
Speaker 1: and there was this kind of this this idea that
Speaker 1: the earth is there for all of us, right, that
Speaker 1: we all have an equal share of the earth, but
Speaker 1: we don't all have equal ability to reap the benefits
Speaker 1: of our share, especially if we're moving into cities and
Speaker 1: therefore you know, can't hunt or farm or exactly right,
Speaker 1: so we might not be able to benefit and someone
Speaker 1: else may be able to benefit well beyond their quote
Speaker 1: unquote share of the earth. And so it was kind
Speaker 1: of an argument that there need to be this redistribution
Speaker 1: in some ways just for basic survival. Again, not meant
Speaker 1: to have someone thrive at the expense of someone else,
Speaker 1: which actually is what was going on already, but but
Speaker 1: to to make sure that people who were having difficulty
Speaker 1: meeting their basic needs could in fact meet them through
Speaker 1: this philosophical argument, and that was really interesting. Then moving
Speaker 1: on to the twentieth century, philosophers began to argue for
Speaker 1: a more refined approach. Bertrand Russell and Roads to Freedom
Speaker 1: suggested that a secured minimum incomes sufficient for meeting the
Speaker 1: basic necessities for a person survival should be available to everyone.
Speaker 1: Larger incomes would be available to those willing and able
Speaker 1: to do more work, so those who contribute more to
Speaker 1: society get more out of it. So it's not People
Speaker 1: sometimes equate basic income with concepts like communism, but that's
Speaker 1: not what Russell was arguing. He was arguing, no, if
Speaker 1: you if you do work, you should be rewarded for
Speaker 1: that work. We're talking about a baseline income everyone gets
Speaker 1: beyond that. It. Yeah, It's all comes down to your
Speaker 1: willingness to actually work and contribute to society, and those
Speaker 1: who do more earn more. Uh So that's kind of
Speaker 1: an interesting idea that I think appeals to a lot
Speaker 1: of people on a very basic level. Now, as we
Speaker 1: go into discussing more about basic income, you'll understand that
Speaker 1: things that intellectually sound very simple in reality turn out
Speaker 1: to be insanely complicated. In reality. There is no such
Speaker 1: thing as simple. That's sort of what reality means. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess so. Uh. Nonetheless, there are several places that
Speaker 1: have been experimenting with implementing a program like this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we mentioned that the the Ontario Budget statement has
Speaker 1: announced that it has intentions to look into it. But
Speaker 1: there's also there are also activists in Switzerland who have
Speaker 1: managed to get a version of basic income sort of uh,
Speaker 1: at least up for a vote. I mean, if it
Speaker 1: has any chance of actually becoming the law, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's on the table, right Switzerland. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it's also i know, been discussed in Finland and
Speaker 1: in communities in the Netherlands, and you mentioned in your
Speaker 1: now video that that Quebec has also been thinking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's been discussion about it. Okay, Yeah, So so what's
Speaker 1: the appeal of having a basic income today? Well, as
Speaker 1: we've kind of been discussing, there's a lot of social
Speaker 1: issues that could potentially be alleviated by this, you know, homelessness, hunger,
Speaker 1: petty crime, maybe even connected issues like criminal violence, gang
Speaker 1: and mob activity, substance abuse, poor mental health, and you know,
Speaker 1: related issues like domestic abuse, uh and the general a
Speaker 1: gory of like citizens lack of health insurance, creating this
Speaker 1: undue taxpayer burden through the overuse of emergency medicine rather
Speaker 1: than the healthier and cheaper preventative medicine that people with
Speaker 1: you know, money can access um It can also potentially
Speaker 1: boost the economy, like a kind of canes in perspective
Speaker 1: there sure, sure, the you know, the effects of this
Speaker 1: kind of thing on economies are always unpredictable because there's
Speaker 1: just so many factors at play. You know. The economy
Speaker 1: is is like a like a version of the weather
Speaker 1: that for me is a lot less fun to think about. Um,
Speaker 1: But you know, it seems likely that there would be
Speaker 1: a stimulus effect short term as people receive new spending power,
Speaker 1: and there's certainly a possibility that the effect would continue
Speaker 1: long term. And one of those people have money to spend,
Speaker 1: they spend it. Businesses make more money, they hire more people.
Speaker 1: One of the arguments specifically about boosting the economy falls
Speaker 1: down on that that not falls down but is specifically
Speaker 1: directed at the homelessness problem, saying that it is extremely
Speaker 1: difficult to to break out of that problem of homelessness,
Speaker 1: that this would address that, and that people who were
Speaker 1: homeless would have the money to uh end up getting
Speaker 1: a roof over their heads, and from that baseline, they're
Speaker 1: much more likely to succeed in becoming a contributing member
Speaker 1: of society. Uh That Without that, the the cards are
Speaker 1: so stacked against them. It's it's incredibly remarkable when someone
Speaker 1: is able to emerge. Yeah. Sure, you know, because because
Speaker 1: if you can't take a shower, it's harder to get
Speaker 1: a job and etcetera. Um, But all of our our
Speaker 1: personal like quasi socialism, fuzzy wuzzy feelings about all of
Speaker 1: this aside there are also lots of conservatives who have
Speaker 1: been talking about this as a as a potentially good plan.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean this idea actually does have conservative supports.
Speaker 1: Certainly not among all conservatives, but there have been conservatives
Speaker 1: who backed it. One of the main reasons is that
Speaker 1: it's a government reducing plan essentially. So right now you
Speaker 1: have a whole bunch of different means tested social security
Speaker 1: and welfare measures, and you have massive administrations and bureaucracies
Speaker 1: to oversee how these funds are given out and to
Speaker 1: make sure that they're they're given to the right people,
Speaker 1: and that people aren't trying to game the system by
Speaker 1: getting funds that they're not supposed to get, by trying
Speaker 1: to falsify or commit fraud. And you know, it's there's
Speaker 1: there's massive systems in place just trying to hold everything
Speaker 1: together to meet the requirements. And what if you just
Speaker 1: get rid of all the requirements. No more means testing,
Speaker 1: no no more any of this, it's just everybody gets
Speaker 1: the payout. That that's a that is a government reduction
Speaker 1: and so it replaces bureaucracy with the simple egalitarian system
Speaker 1: of social security. And in fact, there's one instance this
Speaker 1: is not exactly basic income, but along the same lines.
Speaker 1: The Eco him as Milton Friedman, who is usually considered
Speaker 1: a libertarian or some form of economic conservative, talked about
Speaker 1: the idea of a negative income tax. And this is
Speaker 1: essentially a two way inverted progressive taxation. So the more
Speaker 1: money you make, the more taxes you pay. But also
Speaker 1: below a certain threshold that that tax tax fee inverts
Speaker 1: to a payout rather than a fee, so you are
Speaker 1: you receive money from the government rather than paying in. Uh.
Speaker 1: In In in the nineteen sixties, Richard Nixon actually proposed
Speaker 1: a version of basic income. So yeah, yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: it's We should also point out that while uh, you know,
Speaker 1: this is not this is not simply a liberal versus
Speaker 1: conservative issue, that there are supporters on both sides, they're
Speaker 1: also critics on both sides exactly, and that that's, uh,
Speaker 1: that's a very good thing to point out. So one
Speaker 1: of the most obvious criticisms but something worth talking about
Speaker 1: in a little bit of detail is how do you
Speaker 1: pay for it? Sounds like if you're giving everybody money,
Speaker 1: you need do have a lot of money to give them?
Speaker 1: And where do you get it? Well? Shared like how
Speaker 1: but how much money are we talking about? Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that's worth talking about. So here we go. There is
Speaker 1: a November twelve thirteen piece by a guy named Danny
Speaker 1: Vinnick in Business Insider that did some math on this,
Speaker 1: actually just crunch some numbers to see roughly how much
Speaker 1: something like this would cost in the United States at
Speaker 1: the time. And so he was working off of twelve
Speaker 1: numbers from the budget in the census, and what he
Speaker 1: came up with was that from the twelve numbers, if
Speaker 1: you wanted to pay every adult in the United States
Speaker 1: between the ages of twenty one and sixty five, and
Speaker 1: he excluded over sixty five because that's when Social Security
Speaker 1: kicks in, and that's a different that's a different paying pool.
Speaker 1: So they just beginning social Security twenty one to sixty five.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to pay all those people an amount
Speaker 1: equal to the poverty line, which at the time he
Speaker 1: said was eleven thousand, ninety five dollars, it would cost
Speaker 1: two point fourteen trillion dollars. That's a that's a chunk
Speaker 1: of change. It is uh And he offers a point
Speaker 1: of comparison just to say, okay, two point fourteen trillion,
Speaker 1: how much is that compared to other big chunks of
Speaker 1: the US federal budget. Well, at the time g d
Speaker 1: P was sixteen trillion, so that's the the value of
Speaker 1: all final goods and services produced in the United States
Speaker 1: was sixteen trillion, So this would be a little more
Speaker 1: than one eighth of all the value of goods and
Speaker 1: services produced in the United States. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: the US military budget was seven hundred billion dollars, So
Speaker 1: I mean the government spends a lot of money in
Speaker 1: the United States. Well wait, wait, wait, wait, Joe, that
Speaker 1: you were talking earlier, though, the conservatives were pointing out
Speaker 1: that this approach also is about streamlining government, right, so
Speaker 1: it wouldn't just be two point fourteen trillion on top
Speaker 1: of everything the government already spends, but it would be
Speaker 1: partially replacing existing spending. So I want to read a
Speaker 1: quote where he deals with this part. He says, Aggressional
Speaker 1: Research Service report found that the federal government spins approximately
Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty billion each year on benefits for
Speaker 1: low income Americans, and that rises to a clean trillion
Speaker 1: when you factor in state programs. Eliminate all those and
Speaker 1: the net figures. So there he's saying, the cost of
Speaker 1: the basic income minus the cost of the eliminated programs
Speaker 1: comes out to about one point two trillion needed to
Speaker 1: pay for a universal basic income. Still a hefty sum,
Speaker 1: and I have to agree that's still a pretty hefty sum. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a pretty uh, pretty nice understatement. So
Speaker 1: you could experiment with different payout options and sent compensations. So,
Speaker 1: for example, you could say, well, we're not going to
Speaker 1: pay people the entire all the way up to the
Speaker 1: poverty line, pay everybody almost twelve thousand dollars um. Or
Speaker 1: you could say that, well, we're gonna make other cuts
Speaker 1: to the federal budget to compensate for that that one
Speaker 1: point to trillion, Or you could increase tax revenue on
Speaker 1: the richest. Uh. There lot of ways you could slice
Speaker 1: the pie to make it work. But no matter what,
Speaker 1: somebody's going to feel the squeeze. This would be an
Speaker 1: expensive thing to pay for and somehow you would have
Speaker 1: to find that money, right, So one of the things
Speaker 1: that the Ontario pilot program will have to find out
Speaker 1: is whether or not, again the money invested into the
Speaker 1: program ends up creating a better return, not just not
Speaker 1: just financially, which obviously that would be important, but obviously
Speaker 1: in the quality of life of the people the program
Speaker 1: is meant to help. If it's not helping them, that's
Speaker 1: a huge problem. If it's helping them but it's really expensive,
Speaker 1: that that might be a problem people are willing to
Speaker 1: talk about. And uh, and and overcome through whatever means,
Speaker 1: whether it's increase in taxes or something else. Sure, and
Speaker 1: while we're talking about those kinds of sociological and psychological issues, Uh,
Speaker 1: is this going to make people just quit their jobs?
Speaker 1: That's the other big question, isn't it. Because economists debate
Speaker 1: about this on one hand, you've got this view that
Speaker 1: it sort of makes sense. Think about this. Anytime you
Speaker 1: subsidize something, you encourage it. If you that's kind of point, right,
Speaker 1: If you pay out for something, you you are fostering
Speaker 1: more of that thing. And so the basic incomes subsidizes,
Speaker 1: according to these people, subsidizes unemployment or underemployment, and so
Speaker 1: you can just sort of expect if you subsidize that
Speaker 1: you're going to get more of it. But then again,
Speaker 1: the basic income isn't just paid to people who don't work.
Speaker 1: It's paid to everybody, even those who do work. And
Speaker 1: in most formulations, it's not a whole lot people are
Speaker 1: gonna want more. It's just enough so that people can
Speaker 1: have some kind of security, something to work with. I
Speaker 1: think if you were to argue that everyone in the
Speaker 1: United States, that's going with the example we had mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: everyone in the United States gets twelve dollars, I think
Speaker 1: the vast majority would say that's going to help. But
Speaker 1: I can't live on twelve thousand. Twelve thousand dollars like
Speaker 1: the poverty line. Yes you could, you could maybe get
Speaker 1: your your basic necessities, but it's at a level that
Speaker 1: I think most people, particularly most people who are capable
Speaker 1: of listening to this podcast. Since presumably you have some
Speaker 1: kind of yeah, you've got something that allows you to
Speaker 1: do this, you probably would not feel like that would
Speaker 1: be a quality of life you would be you would
Speaker 1: be comfortable and comfortable with. Yeah, you would definitely want
Speaker 1: something better than that. So the twelve thou dollars, I
Speaker 1: think for most people would be that's that's my baseline.
Speaker 1: I want more than that. It's hard to imagine a
Speaker 1: vast population of people who say that's gonna be enough
Speaker 1: for me, and I'm just gonna sit on my butt
Speaker 1: and not do anything. Also, I think I think this
Speaker 1: argument puts or an assumption that I don't entirely agree with,
Speaker 1: which is that most people left to their own devices
Speaker 1: wouldn't do anything if they could get around, if they
Speaker 1: could get by without it. It's certainly a widespread assumption.
Speaker 1: A lot of people think this about other people. I
Speaker 1: think most folks find at least some satisfaction in doing something.
Speaker 1: It may not be that you love your job. I'm lucky.
Speaker 1: I love the job I do. Uh, And I realized
Speaker 1: there are people who aren't in that situation. But I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people get at least some sense
Speaker 1: of satisfaction in doing something and earning something from the
Speaker 1: activity they're doing. Yeah. Well, no matter what you do,
Speaker 1: there's dignity and honest work. Yeah. There's a really excellent
Speaker 1: piece in the Atlantic from the July August issue called
Speaker 1: a World Without Work, in which the writer Derrick Thompson
Speaker 1: spoke to a bunch of psychologists who pointed out that
Speaker 1: that most people, and most Americans in particular, base a
Speaker 1: pretty large part of their identity and their social sphere
Speaker 1: and their mental health on their jobs. That like be
Speaker 1: being productive and working towards a common goal are are
Speaker 1: pretty basic things that humans like doing anecdotally. I mean,
Speaker 1: how many of your conversations with someone new have the question,
Speaker 1: so what do you do as one like that's one
Speaker 1: of the first things that you ask people. Now, all
Speaker 1: of this is to say that that the basic income
Speaker 1: is one approach to trying to uh to solve a problem,
Speaker 1: and not necessarily the right approach. We don't know yet.
Speaker 1: We'd have to see, and it may not be the
Speaker 1: right approach for all places at all times. It may
Speaker 1: be that it works for certain countries or communities, but
Speaker 1: not everyone. And we certainly aren't advocating that a basic
Speaker 1: income goes out to everybody right now, unless it turns
Speaker 1: out that, yes, this is the best best way to
Speaker 1: solve this problem and we all benefit as a result.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons we're bringing this up, this topic
Speaker 1: up is what we talked about at the beginning. We're
Speaker 1: getting to a point where there are very real concerns
Speaker 1: over a growing population about jobs being eliminated as a
Speaker 1: result of automation. So it may turn out that something
Speaker 1: like basic income ends up being a necessity not just
Speaker 1: for populations that are disenfranchised right now, but a growing
Speaker 1: population of people who were contributing to society were hard
Speaker 1: working people who have nowhere to work anymore because advances
Speaker 1: in technology have eliminated the need for people to work. Right.
Speaker 1: So we we talked about this in the episode about
Speaker 1: will robots steal our jobs? But the basic principle is
Speaker 1: that automation makes human labor sets obsolete. And this isn't new, uh.
Speaker 1: You know, in previous centuries farm workers were replaced by
Speaker 1: farm machinery, and traditional weavers were replaced by the mechanization
Speaker 1: of the textile industry. But it does appear to be
Speaker 1: accelerating now. And it's not only accelerating, it's making different
Speaker 1: types of human skills less and less comparatively valuable. So
Speaker 1: there used to be this set of skills you could
Speaker 1: separate off from all of the mechanical and menial labor
Speaker 1: and say, you know what those are safe. Like, you
Speaker 1: might worry that a job welding parts on an assembly line, think, well,
Speaker 1: you're doing a kind of routine task that's the same
Speaker 1: motions over and over again. I think a robot could
Speaker 1: probably do that job. Um. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you'd say, well, you know, a person answering service calls
Speaker 1: for a tech support line or something like that that
Speaker 1: needs to be a human, of course, because that you know,
Speaker 1: they've gotta have language skills and stuff like that. Turns
Speaker 1: out it probably doesn't have to be a human. A
Speaker 1: human might be better at it in certain cases. But
Speaker 1: you can design a computer program to handle lots of
Speaker 1: different kinds of tech support calls well. And until recently,
Speaker 1: I would argue that having a robot UH working within
Speaker 1: a warehouse environment to retrieve one of thousands of different
Speaker 1: types of products, to bring it in and pack it
Speaker 1: up and send it out would have been impractical because
Speaker 1: because you think about the different range of skills there.
Speaker 1: You've gotta you gotta recognition of the item you're looking for.
Speaker 1: You've got to be able to move around and pick
Speaker 1: things up, different types of locomotion and manipulation. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of different skill sets that robots aren't very good
Speaker 1: at or very good at up until now. Is yeah,
Speaker 1: And if you see an Amazon warehouse now you you
Speaker 1: will probably see a lot of happy, go lucky robots
Speaker 1: running around and not so many humans anymore. Most of
Speaker 1: the robots are actually robotic shelves like the like the
Speaker 1: products are on the robot, the robot comes to the
Speaker 1: area where the product needs to be moved off of
Speaker 1: the shelf onto like an assembly for for packing and shipping.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's amazing. And we're seeing things also in
Speaker 1: all other industries, like we're seeing a growing concern and uh,
Speaker 1: and things like the trucking industry. Yes, that that's a
Speaker 1: very possible automated job in the in the not too
Speaker 1: distant future. Huge number of human beings practice professions that
Speaker 1: involved driving cars. That's the main part of their profession,
Speaker 1: transportation logistics, trucking, cab drivers. Once you see how good
Speaker 1: Google's driverless cars are, you can quickly begin to see
Speaker 1: the problem when these millions of people are suddenly out
Speaker 1: of work because replaced by self driving cars. And it's
Speaker 1: and it's easy for for people like us to sit
Speaker 1: around and go like, well, it's better for you in
Speaker 1: the long run, because the types of wear and tear
Speaker 1: that your body goes through when you're when you're sitting
Speaker 1: in a vibrating piece of machinery all day are are terrible. There.
Speaker 1: It's it's honestly not good for you. That's cold comfort
Speaker 1: to a person, but exactly exactly food on the table. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So Anyway, at the beginning of this episode, I mentioned
Speaker 1: that study by by Fry and Osborne, the Oxford researchers
Speaker 1: who who essentially they took a huge list of occupations,
Speaker 1: basically a comprehensive list of US occupations, and tried to
Speaker 1: characterize the skills that are required for each of those
Speaker 1: occupations according to how easy they would be to automate
Speaker 1: in the near future. And specifically, this is with reference
Speaker 1: to advances in three different fields machine learning, big data,
Speaker 1: and mobile robotics. And these are three fields that where
Speaker 1: it seems that automation is pushing the limits of what
Speaker 1: types of skills are available to machines that only humans
Speaker 1: could do before. Well, I mean, and we see news
Speaker 1: every single day about new developments and artificial intelligence that
Speaker 1: end up telling us well, sure, in this particular case,
Speaker 1: it's something very specific. I'm thinking right now of Google
Speaker 1: defeating top Go players. That go as a game that
Speaker 1: for a long time people thought humans are going to
Speaker 1: be the best at this game. For a really long time.
Speaker 1: It's just so complicated. We thought it was going to
Speaker 1: be another twenty years. Wasn't it cute when when people
Speaker 1: were saying, well, yeah, now computers can beat the best
Speaker 1: human chess player free time, but they won't do it
Speaker 1: with Go well, because there were just so many more
Speaker 1: possibilities of moves and GO compared to chess. That the
Speaker 1: thought was that if in fact everyone continued with the
Speaker 1: brute force approach, yeah, it's a lot less linear than
Speaker 1: something like chess. Yeah, it just it was just one
Speaker 1: of those things, the number of possible moves is so
Speaker 1: great that that brute force will never work. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's easy. It's easy for a human and difficult for
Speaker 1: a machine. And it was based upon a presumption that
Speaker 1: brute force was going to be the way of right.
Speaker 1: Machine learning was not necessarily something that people were thinking
Speaker 1: about at that point. So, but that that illustrates that
Speaker 1: things that we previously thought were completely outside the domain
Speaker 1: of machines may not be. Uh. And and I think
Speaker 1: it was in that Oxford paper that that Oxford paper
Speaker 1: was mentioned in the Atlantic piece that that I was
Speaker 1: talking about. Uh. They said that that some fields that
Speaker 1: we would be very surprised to find can be done
Speaker 1: by machines, like like like psychology. As as it turns out,
Speaker 1: people can sometime even be more honest talking to a
Speaker 1: robot psychologist than a human psychologist or an AI psychologist. Rather,
Speaker 1: I should say, but because they're not afraid of human judgment.
Speaker 1: I'm just imagining a robot psychologist saying, tell me about
Speaker 1: your toaster. Well, one thing they definitely point out in
Speaker 1: their paper is they they quote previous research in economics
Speaker 1: that had essentially looked at the same problem, but from
Speaker 1: a few years earlier, and these earlier researchers had said, well, look,
Speaker 1: there are a few things that are not going to
Speaker 1: be done by machines anytime soon because they just require
Speaker 1: you know, basically human human intelligence that cannot be substituted
Speaker 1: by machines. And examples they gave were recognizing handwriting and
Speaker 1: driving cars. Oh goodness, my gracious, and what do you know,
Speaker 1: just just a few years later. Now, that is hilarious
Speaker 1: that somebody said that, and they weren't dummies. These were
Speaker 1: very smart people who made those kinds of statements. Again,
Speaker 1: you can I know, our show is all about talking
Speaker 1: about the future. As it turns out, really knowing what's
Speaker 1: going to happen in the future is uh is next
Speaker 1: to impossible. In fact, I should just say it's impossible
Speaker 1: because you cannot anticipate what is what? What is? What
Speaker 1: will happen? I mean, yeah, there will be there will
Speaker 1: be things that happen where whether it's an enormous Aha
Speaker 1: moment or just a series of developments that reached to
Speaker 1: this point where you didn't have any way of anticipating
Speaker 1: that when you were making your predictions that happens. Uh
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily always happen for for good either. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: happens and things you were accounting on are now impossible.
Speaker 1: So here's the question. Assuming that this this set of
Speaker 1: circumstances continues, and we see growing automation, and we see
Speaker 1: that fewer and fewer people are able to work jobs
Speaker 1: to get money, what does that mean in a big
Speaker 1: picture kind of way. Yeah, that that's a good question,
Speaker 1: And that's sort of why we brought this up in
Speaker 1: this episode. It's how we get back to the basic income.
Speaker 1: Because a number I'm sure you've you guys have encountered this.
Speaker 1: A number of experts in robotics, artificial intelligence sort of,
Speaker 1: computer scientists and other technologists have talked a lot about
Speaker 1: the basic income. And when I first started noticing this phenomenon,
Speaker 1: I thought it was kind of weird. But now it
Speaker 1: makes sense to me, and I think it makes sense
Speaker 1: because they're the people doing the research that is going
Speaker 1: to make something like this possibly necessary in the future.
Speaker 1: Just one example, there was a February interview with Huffington's
Speaker 1: Post with the AI expert mosche Vardi from Rice University,
Speaker 1: and I've already said this. Our current economic system requires
Speaker 1: people to either have wealth or to work to make
Speaker 1: a living, with the assumption that the economy creates jobs
Speaker 1: for all those who need them. If this assumption breaks down,
Speaker 1: and progress in automation is likely to break it down,
Speaker 1: I believe, then we need to rethink the very basic
Speaker 1: structure or of our economic system. For example, we may
Speaker 1: have to consider instituting basic income guarantee, which means that
Speaker 1: all citizens or residents of a country regularly received an
Speaker 1: unconditional sum of money in addition to any income received
Speaker 1: from elsewhere. Uh And and I think that's one example
Speaker 1: of this general trend I talked about. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: guys have observed this absolutely, And like I said, you
Speaker 1: know this is if you think this sounds like a
Speaker 1: kind of a stepping stone towards the star Trek economy,
Speaker 1: that's exactly the way I think of it too, is
Speaker 1: that ultimately, if you continue down this road far enough,
Speaker 1: you eventually come to the conclusion of, well, if all
Speaker 1: work is being done by machines, and all things that
Speaker 1: once we're scarce are now relatively easy to access, what
Speaker 1: is the point of money? And if there's no way
Speaker 1: to get it and there's no real expense and you know,
Speaker 1: no real reason to spend it, do we need it anymore?
Speaker 1: And then what happens next? And that's what we kind
Speaker 1: of explored in our Star Trek episode. This one is
Speaker 1: more of a all right, well, let's look, let's look
Speaker 1: at that period of of of chaos between now and
Speaker 1: what could be one possible future. Not you know, of course,
Speaker 1: the Star Trek economic future may never come to pass.
Speaker 1: We may never see that particular version into anything resembling reality.
Speaker 1: But it seems like a nice stick And and I'll
Speaker 1: say again as I have said before, that you know,
Speaker 1: if it leads to to fabulous jumpsuits for everyone, that
Speaker 1: I'm into it. Um. But okay, so, so there's there's
Speaker 1: that period of chaos that we're talking about. There there
Speaker 1: are so many unknowns in this in between time, um,
Speaker 1: But there are a few historical precedences that we can
Speaker 1: kind of look at, Like during the Depression era here
Speaker 1: in the United States, the National Works Progress Administration hired
Speaker 1: some forty thou artists and writers to produce cultural work. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, know, anything from from films to two paintings
Speaker 1: to uh to travel brochures and all kinds of stuff
Speaker 1: like high Yeah. Yeah, of course performance are highly offensive. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and and also a little bit more on the
Speaker 1: on the end of that chaos UM in Youngstown, Ohio,
Speaker 1: the dismantlement of the steel industry in the nineties seventies
Speaker 1: has created this, uh, this this long term, kind of
Speaker 1: terrifying space in which a struggling but but increasingly strong
Speaker 1: community has come together to create um, to create art,
Speaker 1: and to create a four higher workforce. And and and
Speaker 1: it's fascinating. It's a fascinating case study. Yeah. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's I think the the what the takeaway here is
Speaker 1: that we are seeing people come up with potential um,
Speaker 1: if not solutions, at least measures to try and offset
Speaker 1: some of the problems we currently have and ones that
Speaker 1: we know are on the horizon. There's no denying that
Speaker 1: it is going to happen. The question is how do
Speaker 1: we respond to it? Basic income is one of those strategies,
Speaker 1: not necessarily the one that's gonna win out. So I've
Speaker 1: got a question I want to ask you, guys, and
Speaker 1: it's pretty much the same question I asked in my
Speaker 1: house Stuff works now video, But I think it's an
Speaker 1: important one. Let's let's say you're in a middle camp
Speaker 1: on your opinion about the basic income. You can see
Speaker 1: the appeal in the technological obsolescence future, So you accept, Okay,
Speaker 1: if robots can do of human jobs better than humans can,
Speaker 1: and most of us cannot find paying work, yet there's
Speaker 1: all this wealth in the world because the robots can
Speaker 1: do all the labor for us, Yeah, then of course
Speaker 1: basic income makes sense. So you accept that. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, you say, well, now, right now, we
Speaker 1: do not have justification for such an expensive system. How
Speaker 1: do you know when it's time, when it's your job?
Speaker 1: You know, Like, how do you know? How do you
Speaker 1: know when you've reached the threshold of of technological wealth
Speaker 1: and human skill obsolescence? After we high after we elect
Speaker 1: our first artificially intelligent representative to the House or congress
Speaker 1: person or president, I think at that point we're all
Speaker 1: going to have to agree with Okay, we we need
Speaker 1: to fix this for for people, or else we won't
Speaker 1: be around for much longer. It is an interesting question
Speaker 1: like what is what is the you know, when does
Speaker 1: the thermometer fill up with red and you say let's
Speaker 1: throw the switch? Um, Honestly, I that that's an impossible
Speaker 1: question for me to answer. I I honestly don't know enough.
Speaker 1: And being the person I am, I'm probably more likely
Speaker 1: to throw that switch earlier than other people are. Uh.
Speaker 1: That being said, I also recognize the monumentally difficult task
Speaker 1: of actually providing for this approach, and that it's one
Speaker 1: that would require some people to potentially make some pretty
Speaker 1: hefty sacrifices, uh, in order for other people to do well.
Speaker 1: And that's not kind of a system that we have,
Speaker 1: Like our system doesn't reward altruism. We have people who
Speaker 1: are very altruistic, very charitable, who are great philanthropists, but
Speaker 1: that's kind of outliers and the system exactly. And then
Speaker 1: I don't I don't fault the system necessarily for that.
Speaker 1: I don't think that our system is is good or bad.
Speaker 1: I think of it as mostly a moral uh not immoral,
Speaker 1: but a moral and a moral systems. They run the world, man,
Speaker 1: they do, And it's just a question of where do
Speaker 1: you where in your philosophy does this idea makes sense? Well,
Speaker 1: something I think I can, or I can at least
Speaker 1: hope we all agree on, is that it does make
Speaker 1: sense to run test cases and pilot projects absolutely like
Speaker 1: what it sounds like Ontario is proposing here. So you
Speaker 1: might not say, well, uh, it's time to throw the
Speaker 1: switch and put the entire country on this plan, but
Speaker 1: to test it within some communities and see what happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if even if it doesn't turn out, well, it's
Speaker 1: good to have that knowledge and understand how it plays
Speaker 1: out in front. And it could also lead to two
Speaker 1: better policies about uh, like like vaguely related issues like
Speaker 1: like increasing um, increasing the minimum wage. Yes, so it
Speaker 1: may be one of those things where after after a
Speaker 1: pilot program has run its course, financial experts take a
Speaker 1: look at it, sociologists take a look at it, and
Speaker 1: they all say whether or not there was a net
Speaker 1: benefit or a net net detriment to this program, And
Speaker 1: then from that point forward you could say, all right, well,
Speaker 1: if based upon the results here, do we want to
Speaker 1: run another pilot program somewhere else, find out if in
Speaker 1: fact this is something that is common to all areas.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's one of those things that we see works
Speaker 1: well in one region but not in another. Then if
Speaker 1: it doesn't work, what are are all What are the
Speaker 1: alternatives that we can look into, Because we still have
Speaker 1: a problem. So if that's not the solution, it may
Speaker 1: not be we need to find something else that is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in direct answer to your question, Joe, I would
Speaker 1: I would say that there's probably a particular percentage of
Speaker 1: the population, a percentage which should be chosen by people
Speaker 1: who are way better at economics than I am, um
Speaker 1: at which like like beyond which, uh, we're going to
Speaker 1: need something like this, a percentage of our population losing
Speaker 1: their jobs to automation. Okay, So maybe you could say, like,
Speaker 1: if we reach a point where there's x per cent
Speaker 1: of the people who are unemployed actively seeking work and
Speaker 1: cannot get it, then time for us to realize, yeah,
Speaker 1: flip that switch. I guess. So, yeah, I mean, at
Speaker 1: least to see if it in fact will work. If
Speaker 1: it's one of those things words it all right, So
Speaker 1: we're gonna be strapped for cash for a little while
Speaker 1: because we tried this program and it didn't work, so
Speaker 1: we had to figure out something else. I mean that's yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, let let's let's do the testing
Speaker 1: now while we're still at a relatively low percentage of
Speaker 1: people who are directly losing their jobs because of ribots.
Speaker 1: But let's work towards it, right. And also, remember, don't
Speaker 1: blame the robots. They're just doing their jobs. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: they're just doing your jobs. Built They're just trying to
Speaker 1: do what they're told. Yea. And eventually if you do
Speaker 1: blame them, they might say I'll show you why you
Speaker 1: created me. So on that cheerful note, let us conclude
Speaker 1: this episode of forward thinking. I'm curious to hear what
Speaker 1: you guys think. Do you think there's some alternative approach
Speaker 1: that works better? Are you all for basic income? At
Speaker 1: what level would you argue that would be an effective, uh,
Speaker 1: you know measure or is it just one of those
Speaker 1: things that you think will never work. I'm curious to
Speaker 1: hear what you think. And also, if you have any
Speaker 1: suggestions for future episodes, write those in and send it
Speaker 1: in an email. The little address thing that you can
Speaker 1: put in in the two field is FW thinking at
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com, or you can drop us
Speaker 1: a line on Twitter or Facebook. At Twitter, we are
Speaker 1: f W thinking. Just type FW thinking into Facebook search
Speaker 1: bar and we'll pop right up. You can leave us
Speaker 1: a message there and we will talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. For more on this topic in the future
Speaker 1: of technology, I'll visit Forward Thinking dot com h brought
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