Universal basic income removes 'incentive' says analyst

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Proponents of UBI want each citizen to be given a certain amount of money each month by the state regardless of what they do. In Britain both the Liberal Democrats and Green Party have endorsed the idea.

UBI supporters argue it is needed to eliminate absolute poverty and prepare for a world where an increasing proportion of jobs are taken by automation or advanced artificial intelligence.

Scott Santens, the New Orleans based editor of BasicIncomeToday.com, spoke to Express.co.uk about why he backs UBI and looks at automation as an opportunity for humanity.

He said: “Wages have been stagnant for decades, people can spend less and they’re experiencing much more precarious lives and universal basic income is the floor that’s missing, that can really lift people up from these effects of automation that already been with us.

“I argue too we shouldn’t be looking at automation as this scary prospect.

“We are over twice as productive right now in America than we were in the early 70s.

“You would think that being twice as productive we should all be working half as much for just as much income or we should all be earning twice as much for the same amount of hours and of course none of that happened.

“All of the productivity flowed to the very top. So the problem is not automation.

“It’s just that the fruits of automation are being concentrated in a very small amount of hands.”

In the United States interest in UBI increased radically when entrepreneur Andrew Yang ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

He campaigned to give each US citizen aged over-18 $1,000 (£728) a month regardless of whether they have a job.

Whilst Mr Yang was defeated he took part in several debates with other candidates, including eventual victor Joe Biden, and attracted significant media attention.

He is currently leading the polling to be the Democratic candidate for the New York Mayoral elections later this year.

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During the coronavirus pandemic states have dramatically increased their level of economic intervention.

In Britain the Government has been paying ‘furlough’ payments to those temporarily unable to work whilst in the US citizens earning less than $75,000 (£54,691) per year received stimulus payments of up to $1,200 (£875).

Mr Santens compared job losses during the pandemic, leading to this response, with coming technological unemployment.

He commented: “We’re seeing the result of something similar like technology.

What is Universal Basic Income?

“Let’s say that we had just created some really awesome artificial intelligence and it immediately eliminated a bunch of jobs.

“The coronavirus pandemic happened then millions of jobs were just gone.

“You can’t just create new jobs, especially right now because of all the restrictions, and it’s very difficult to create new jobs if people’s incomes have been severely impacted so they’re not spending as much into the economy so governments around the would are looking at direct cash payments as this mechanism for getting out of it.”

Supporters of UBI include entrepreneur Elon Musk who said it will be “necessary over time if AI takes over most human jobs”.

Speaking to CNBC he added: “There is a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation.”

Mr Santens argued advances in AI will increasingly threaten white collar jobs.

He warned: “There are these jobs that people have long considered to be ‘oh that will never be done by a machine’ and when it comes to deep learning, artificial intelligence that’s not true.

“You absolutely can do a lot of these medical jobs, legal jobs, this stuff that was six figures [salary] and of course that makes a lot of sense to automate because those jobs are worth so much.”

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