Basic Income: A Sellout of the American Dream
▻https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601499/basic-income-a-sellout-of-the-american-dream
Schemes for giving everyone a guaranteed income are gaining momentum in #Silicon_Valley and throughout Western Europe. It’s a great idea, until you look closely.
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... there’s little convincing evidence that large-scale technological unemployment is actually happening or will happen in the immediate future. Advances are changing the types of tasks and skills in demand, displacing many workers from jobs that have become obsolete. But the massive, automation-fueled job displacement cited as the prime justification for a basic income won’t actually reach us for decades, assuming it does come. [...]
Proponents say a basic income is a way to liberate those who have struggled to find acceptable work: currently 7.4 million people are unemployed in the United States, another six million want full-time work but can only find part-time jobs, millions more have given up looking, and perhaps tens of millions have settled for jobs with low wages, skimpy benefits, or poor working conditions. But it can also be argued that the idea is a way of buying these people off, making it easier to avoid developing the education and training programs that would actually help alleviate income inequality and reverse wage stagnation. Could it just be a way to give up on providing the wide access to decent jobs that has long been considered an essential element of a healthy society? Or, to put it more bluntly: at a time when the tech economy is generating huge amounts of wealth, is Silicon Valley just attempting to appease those left behind?