Give Workers 10,000 Pound To Survive Automation, British Top Think Tank Suggests (huffingtonpost.co.uk)

Britons should be able to bid for 10,000 pound (roughly $14,000) to help them prosper amid huge changes to their working lives, a leading think tank suggests today. From a report: The Royal Society for the Arts (RSA) has released research proposing a radical new sovereign wealth fund, which would be invested to make a profit like similar public funds in Norway. The returns from the fund would be used to build a pot of money, to which working-age adults under-55 would apply to receive a grant in the coming decade.

People would have to set out how they intend to put the five-figure payouts to good use, for example, by using the cash to undergo re-training, to start a new business, or to combine work with the care of elderly or sick relatives. It would be funded like the student grant system and wealthier individuals could be required to pay back more in tax as their earnings increase. Ultimately, the RSA paper suggests, the wealth fund would finance a Universal Basic Income (UBI) as the world of modern work is turned upside down by increased automation, new technology and an ageing population.

Comments

Hysterically inadaquate

[Maxo-Texas]

What workers needed is free industry funded training.

It has to be free because for the next few decades, entire job categories are going to collapse repeatedly.

Just as we have free public schooling, we need free job training or else you'll see violence.

In any case, I'm retired on a fairly tight budget and own my own house (so no rent) and that amount of money wouldn't last me one year. The only way I could survive on that would be to eat really unhealthy food, not buy anything new, walk most places, relying on public transportation only for job interviews and I'd have to go without heat in the winter and cooling in the summer.

Re:Hysterically inadaquate

[alvinrod]

There's two problems with this. First, we don't necessarily know what jobs to train them for, either because they don't exist yet or we're not anticipating demand for them. There's also a side issue that any job you train someone for may also become unavailable before long as well. The second is that it assumes that all people are equally competent and capable of any job, which isn't true either. Eventually you reach a point with any person where they're incapable of doing anything economically productive due any number of factors including age, mental capability, health, etc.

It's probably cheaper to just give them some money to live off of contingent on them not running around committing crimes. People seem to think that a basic income like this would be completely detrimental, but I think it's preferable to alternatives. First, if people are being replaced by machines, it means overall labor capacity has either increased or remained the same at a lower cost so it isn't going to economically ruin the economy. Second, I believe that people left to their own devices will do a better job of finding supplemental or new employment better than any government planning board that thinks it can predict or direct the economy. The only other policy you'd need would be similar to China's one child policy so you don't have unproductive individuals spawning large numbers of children they're probably not well equip to care for either and I don't see a problem with just subsidizing the existence of people who aren't capable of finding new jobs. Yes, some people will choose not to work ever again, but if they want to go read books in the park all day, it's better than them turning to crime in order to try to get by.

Re:Hysterically inadaquate

[ShanghaiBill]

First, we don't necessarily know what jobs to train them for

A common policy is to offer tax incentives or other subsidies to employers to hire less skilled workers and train them for real jobs. The obvious employer response is to take the subsidies and apply them to people that they would have hired anyway, or to even fire existing workers to replace them with effectively cheaper "trainees".

There is little evidence that government programs to encourage training are actually effective ... but there is also little evidence that automation is actually causing job losses, so training subsidies are a bad solution to a problem that may not even exist.

Re:Hysterically inadaquate

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Just as we have free public schooling, we need free job training or else you'll see violence.

Bring on the violence, please. English citizens don't have guns. What are they going to do? Throw rocks and Molotov cocktails at the police? British soccer hooligans are good at whipping up a wee bit of mayhem, but when the police and army return fire with SA80's . . . the hooligans will hatch a new plan and return to the Winchester for the night.

"The Crown" will have no qualms about slaughtering their own citizens if their regency feels threatened. That Prince William may have a nice smile, but he's got that true bloodline of despotic dictators in him. This experience with the Brits is why the Founding Fathers of the US decided that they needed liberal gun laws.

But thankfully won't come to this. The same thing was supposed to happen during the industrial revolution in the late 1800's . . . and none of those dire prophecies became reality. Human beings are like weeds and toenail fungus: incredibly resilient. Folks will adjust to the new environment and find new jobs.

“Man is a singular creature. He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals: so that, unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape — he is a shaper of the landscape.” Jacob Bronowski

Re:Hysterically inadaquate

[ScentCone]

No, the right to bear arms was included in the British Bill of RIghts in the year 1680.

Funny how that manifested itself as the British taking away their American colonists' guns (and swords, for that matter), and making it a crime for them to have them. You do remember that part, right? No? I see.

UBI

[AK Marc]

Looks like the answer will be UBI, or an armed revolution by the underclass. The powered elite are gauging how long they can put off the revolution, and how little of a UBI would provide bread and circuses, and not looking at how to solve the underlying equity that's been the downfall of almost every civilization that's ever existed. Maybe this time they'll put it off longer, but they can never stop it, without addressing the actual issues.

Is this once or every year

[OrangeTide]

Because if it's just a one time payout, it seems inadequate. It's not going to support someone long enough to get a 2 or 4 year degree for example.

Re:Is this once or every year

[Richard_at_work]

No. Please can we get away from the idea that a degree will solve everything - they don't.

I've worked with degree holders who couldnt string a sentence together - the fact that they had a degree didn't mean they could actually survive in the real world, it just showed that they could survive the academic world.

What we need is a populace with a good grounding in logical and critical thinking, literacy and numeracy and only then can we move forward with actual domain specific skills that can be learned during an apprenticeship.

I rarely use Facebook - I opened an account in 2007 and never used it, never posted etc. Since moving to a new country, I started using Facebook groups to access the local "buy and sell" markets. Jesus H Christ, I wasn't prepared for the dross I encountered.

Here on Slashdot, if you browse at above 1 or 2 then you generally get fairly decent literacy - decent spelling, good use of paragraphs and layout, sentences that are well developed.

I hate to sound elitist, but we are not the norm. The norm reads like it was written by 5 year olds. It was seriously shocking to see just how poor these posts on these groups were - and it never ends.

So no, we don't need degrees - IMHO most people wouldn't be able to achieve one because they don't have the basic literacy and numeracy skills they need in the first place, so thats what we need to pivot to.

As an aside, give out a chunk of money and a large proportion of the British public simply won't use it to improve themselves, or pay off debts or anything similar.

Several years ago the benefits system changed, and the change was designed to "empower" the benefits recipients - housing benefit no longer went directly to the landlord, it was paid to the benefit recipient so they could feel "in control".

Today, most private landlords won't take tenants who are reliant on housing benefits, because a huge proportion of those recipients simply stopped paying the rent - they got starry eyed with the numbers in their bank accounts and went and bought TVs, cigarettes and alcohol instead. They got into huge arrears, were evicted and the landlords never got their back rent paid, so nowadays anyone on housing benefit is pretty much excluded from the private market.

Top British Think Tank.

[Nutria]

LOL

They're expert at thinking how to suck more from the government teat.

Re:let student loans be dishcahnged in bankruptcy!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a better idea.

Let's just stop letting kids take out fifty thousand dollar loans to get a degree in women's studies as expressed through dance.

Put them through a trade school instead.

Re:let student loans be dishcahnged in bankruptcy!

[alvinrod]

They could be if the government would stop subsidizing them. Banks shouldn't be required to lend people money and I suspect if student loans didn't have government backing the banks would be far more picky about who they loan money to. Of course, everyone needs to go to college these days, even little Timmy who had a 2.3 GPA in high school and plans to major in philosophy. That's just as good of a financial risk as little Suzy who was the class valedictorian and wants to go into biomedical engineering.

Re:let student loans be dishcahnged in bankruptcy!

[AmiMoJo]

We need a lot of graduates. There are skills shortages. Okay, there are problems with employers not wanting to pay enough, but at the same time if the available supply is too expensive to make the business case for hiring... And especially in the UK we want to stop most of the immigration so can't rely on that.

We also can't expect children to make great life decisions at that age, and can't realistically expect them to dedicate years of their lives to subjects they have little interest in. That's not necessarily a problem if we recognize that a philosophy degree is valuable for the skills it teaches - writing, rhetoric, self study, time management, project management, self motivation. Being able to convey ideas and convince people of your arguments is a pretty useful skill in many businesses.

Education is a lot like infrastructure. Universal service is a good thing, we want everyone to be able to get post or have a phone or have access to a public road, within reason. If our society becomes about nothing more than the corporate bottom line it will be even more awful than it is already.

Re:let student loans be dishcahnged in bankruptcy!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised you didn't choke on the dust and die while constructing all those strawmen.

Re:let student loans be dishcahnged in bankruptcy!

[alvinrod]

You're assuming that you can just take any particular person and turn them into a doctor, engineer, or other highly skilled profession. There are some people who lack the intelligence, aptitude, or desire to participate in any of those fields. Devoting resources towards getting blood out of a stone is wasting them when they could be better spent on those who are capable and willing.

I also think you're assuming that all degrees are capable of producing value which I don't believe is this case either and I don't believe that a degree is philosophy necessarily imbues skills in self study, self motivation, time management, or project management any more than any other degree. Subsidizing degrees in philosophy, art history, religious studies, etc. is not going to provide the taxpayer with a good return on their investment. Wanting those degrees to be useful doesn't make them so, and allowing the large number of individuals to who choose to major in them and end up in a cycle of perpetual debt due to lack of job prospects is pure folly on the part of society.

If you removed government subsidization of student loans, banks would figure this out in a hurry and would largely stop loaning money to people who try to major in those fields. much like they're not going to provide a home loan to a crack addict with a history of arson. This naturally drives people towards the fields of study where there is a possibility of doing something economically viable and prevents people who are always going to end up working as a cashier, builder, or some other job that requires no college education from running up six figure loan debts that they have no real hope of paying off. Instead they can entire the workforce sooner, begin earning sooner, start acquiring job skills sooner, and likely be able to afford a house and build up capital that they would not otherwise be able to do if they're taking out expensive student loans.

Re:Sounds Like Something ...

[AmiMoJo]

"Arts" in English refers to science and engineering too. That meaning is less common today but the RSA was founded in the 1750s. In fact it's full name is the "Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce."

They should be popular with the Slashdot crowd, having previously worked on projects like re-thinking intellectual property rights from first principals. Their membership includes Tim Berners-Lee and Steven Hawking.

Re: let student loans be dishcahnged in bankruptcy

[rtb61]

As a principle education is required to be free, else the citizenry is extorted with access to knowledge being denied which prevents them from any kind of equal access to democracy or justice. By the principles of Democracy, the State is required to educate the electorate in ALL facets of Democracy. A country is not democratic when that democracy is based upon ignorance and lies, it is an autocracy controlled by the tellers of those lies, hmm, much like US Democracy, which is probably why you don't recognise anything wrong, you are an American. Perhaps you will be more informed now but probably not. One comment does not a quality education make and you need a quality education to properly participate in Democracy.