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SaxoBank Predicts Universal Basic Income For Europe
jones_supa writes: Saxo Bank, an investment bank based in Denmark, has released a list of its outrageous predictions for 2016. Among these predictions, economist Christopher Dembik claims that Europe will consider the introduction of a universal basic income to ensure that all citizens can meet their basic needs in the face of rising inequality and unemployment. This will come on the back of increased interest in basic income from Spain, Finland, Switzerland, and France.
Automation is replacing human labour, but its not free - the cost is being passed back onto the customer.
Automated grocery checkouts have *you* scan and bag groceries while machines weigh and cross-check everything. McDonalds ordering touchscreens have you enter data entered by employees earlier. The bank phone line has you authenticate ID and passcode while on hold - versus employees in a branch checking IDs.
Instead of augmenting humans, big capital is getting greedy and opting for replacing them. There's only so much clerical rubbish the customer will accept before pushback. I eat better and shop at farmer's markets now.
The difference with a basic income is that you would be paid the income as well. It would not be charity or negated by profits via working. It is simply a more equitable distribution of profits from automation and outsourcing. After all, tech workers are currently being asked to work/develop themselves and their peers out of the job. It used to be that automation created new more skilled jobs to replace the old jobs. That is no longer the case, automation replaces workers or dumbs tasks down to the point where less skilled third world workers can perform the tasks leaving perhaps one skilled worker where there used to be 20. And these are high five well into six figure positions not factory workers.
Here in the US the need for this is pretty clear. Fiat currencies including our depend on inflation to function. Currently we can't manage to create inflation even with an effective zero interest rate (the fed creates money on demand and effectively gives it to banks for free or even at a loss should there be inflation over the loan term). Basically, as a nation our wealth is growing so fast we can't inflate the dollar despite refinancing virtually every mortgage, student, and auto loan in the country but the growth is not at the middle or the bottom (think 0.001% top not 1%).
This is not charity, this is a transition step on our path to a world where people no longer need to work. The "first world" has developed and advanced the technology. The elite class who largely no longer HAVE to work or need do so minimally would be expanding from a small sliver of the first world population to a small sliver of the global population, which is essentially the entire current first world. We developed and built all the technology for the foundation but we can't compete with the sheers numbers of the third world to build on the technological foundation we built for them. It's time to pass the labor on to the third world and let the first world enjoy the benefits of what they've done.
The minimum income shouldn't be paid for with taxes though, it should paid with new inflation dollars from the Fed. Normally we'd be terrified of out of control inflation but this provides no danger as I said before as we are actually at risk of numerical economic stagnation due to a tangible risk of deflation. The only result is those with entrenched wealth have to assume slightly more risk on investments but the resulting inflation rate is highly unlikely to be higher than at most times through the last 20 years. In fact, we could completely fund universal healthcare alongside this without much risk of that.
You don't object to some people getting enjoy retirement? Think of this as earned retirement for the collective workers of the first world. Eventually the class who need not work will grow to include currently developing nations as well until everything is automated and people work to pursue goals they want and occupy their time rather than because they need do so to fulfill basic needs.