Is the need to work, fundamental to the Human psyche?
If we didn't need to work, would our Human capital be squandered or would most of us redirect our energy toward accomplishing more lofty goals?
Is the current model of providing for our basic needs through income derived from work, becoming obsolete?
These, among others, are the questions being raised in the debate over something called "Basic Income". While the concept is not new, it is gaining favor among an unlikely coalition of economists, politicians and social scientists.
The idea imagines a world, in the not too distant future, where unequal wealth distribution, lack of access to education and healthcare, and the shrinkage of employment opportunities resulting from computer and robotic automation are dealt with by providing everyone with a check.
Yes, a check that would cover all or most of an individual's basic needs, such that the idea of work and income would be uncoupled.
But what might be the unexpected consequences
of such a move, if it could work at all?
Perhaps, more importantly, what might be the fate of society if the current system remains in place? A system in which many, if not most, jobs will disappear due to computer automation. A system in which skilled and unskilled workers cannot find work or are critically underemployed. A system in which the gap between rich and poor is widening across the globe, giving rise to populist movements like that of Donald Trump in the United States, Jean-Marie Le Pen in France and Evo Morales in Bolivia, among many others.
Conflicts are either now raging or incubating locally and across the globe with entire, races, religious groups and economically disadvantaged classes rising up against a system they perceive as walling them off from opportunities for a safer, healthier and happier existence. And the conditions giving rise to these sentiments show no signs of abating.
But what do we know about how humanity might be positively or negatively effected if the concept of work became obsolete? Detractors warn of rising alcohol and drug abuse, droves of wandering youth with nothing to do but cause trouble, an increase in occurrences of neurosis arising from lack of structure and excess time spent obsessing over problems.
Please read this excerpt from an article by Andrew Flowers: "What Would Happen If We Just Gave People Money?"
[The closest research we have to how a universal basic income could work comes from a small town in Canada. From 1974 to 1979, the Canadian government partnered with the province of Manitoba to run an experiment on the idea of providing a minimum income to residents. The result was MINCOME, a guaranteed annual income offered to every eligible family in Dauphin, a prairie town of about 10,000, and smaller numbers of residents in Winnipeg and some rural communities throughout the province.MINCOME remains one of the most influential studies of basic income in a rich-world country.
Families receiving MINCOME had fewer hospitalizations, accidents and injuries, Forget found. Mental health hospitalizations fell dramatically. And the high school completion rate ticked up during the years of the experiment, with 16-to-18-year-old boys, in particular, more likely to finish school. Younger adolescent girls were less likely to give birth before age 25, and when they did, they had fewer kids.
The program brought most recipients above Canada’s poverty line. And the employment effects in Dauphin were modest. “For primary earners — those with full-time jobs — there was virtually no decline” in work, Forget said. “Nobody was quitting their jobs.” Cash from the government eased families’ economic anxiety, allowing them to invest in their health and plan over a longer horizon.
MINCOME is now serving as inspiration for basic income’s comeback in Canada. The Liberal Party, which recently swept to power behind Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is seriously flirting with the idea. There are several popular petitions to add it to the party’s platform, and a Liberal-dominated committee in Parliament is recommending that the federal government study the idea. In its 2016 budget, the provincial government of Ontario announced plans to conduct a basic income pilot this year.]
Could a program like this work in the United States or other countries that are divided over the morality of concepts like "The Welfare State", "Entitlements" or "Socialism" as they are derisively called by its detractors?
No one knows. But one thing is for sure, current economic, political and social policies are not sustainable.
Politicians promise jobs, knowing full well that many areas of employment are disappearing. Oppressed peoples from violent and or poor countries are migrating in droves to richer lands, where they hope to find a better life.
Efforts to keep them out have not slowed the diaspora, they have only intensified the suffering and death of those affected. The images of that suffering appear on televisions around the world, softening isolationist policies which eventually allow the assimilation of individuals who will need years to learn a new language and a skill that might earn them a basic job.
How will these people realize their dream of a better life if their host country is unwilling to provide some form of financial support?
How many great minds are being squandered in "bullshit jobs" flipping burgers or assembling widgets. Minds that might otherwise choose to study about and strive to slow or end global warming. Not because they are getting paid, but because, now freed from the drudgery of work, their valuable time can be spent on issues that truly matter, for the betterment of humanity and our environment.
Call it liberal, socialist, even communistic. Call it whatever you want, but also take a moment and restrain your reflexive diatribe to look around you. Our social fabric is unraveling and our way of life is on a collision course with several undeniable realities: climate change, the uneven distribution of water and food, the increasing income gap between rich and poor and the automation of many of today's low income jobs. Taken together, their effect promises to be synergistic and catastrophic if some actions are not taken now to anticipate and deal with their consequences.
I am not advocating this approach. I am not even sure it would work. I just know we must confront the realities of our changing world and society and begin talking in earnest about lasting solutions that will address the looming prospect of global unrest and the resulting economic collapse.
What would you do?
And while you're at it. ask: What would I do with my life if I didn't have to work? For better or for worse, that may be a question either you or your children may need to ponder one day.
-Shane Eric Mathias
