Yesterday I described the case made in Daniel Susskind’s new book, A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond, that we are headed toward a future in which there will be many fewer paying jobs than there are people to do them. Today I’ll discuss the proposals Susskind makes for ameliorating the effects of that scarcity of jobs.
If we assume that the world Susskind describes will, in fact, come to pass — that the economy will continue to produce goods and services, but a decreasing number of human beings will be required to keep that economy humming — then it’s impossible to argue with Susskind’s high-level premise that redistribution of income and wealth will be required. Even today, the fruits of the economy are increasingly going to the most wealthy at the expense of everyone else. Mitigating that increasing inequality is not only a matter of social justice, it is an economic and political imperative. If the great majority of people have no way of making money, they will have no way of participating in the economy. How does the economy sustain itself if most people can’t afford to buy anything, and how long would an electorate tolerate a situation in which a decreasing few enjoy ever-increasing wealth while everyone else struggles to survive?
So notwithstanding the anguished cries of those who insist that wealth redistribution is a gateway to tyranny and privation, there really will be no alternative. The question is not whether wealth will be redistributed, but how.
Susskind provocatively argues for what he calls “the big state.” But he clarifies that he is not proposing a state takeover of the means of production, but rather a state-sponsored system of taxation and redistribution.
Susskind advocates taxing both income and wealth. His proposals may be controversial but they’re not new. More novel are his proposals for how to distribute the proceeds.
Susskind discusses at length the idea of a Universal Basic Income, or UBI. I was disappointed that he allocated only a single paragraph to making the point that redistribution does not need to be in the form of cash payments. He notes that, in England, health care and both primary and secondary education are free to everyone who wants them. But after that brief hat-tip, he goes on to devote several pages to the subject of cash payments. He argues that proposals for a flat UBI fail to address two important questions: who is eligible for such payments, and what they would need to do to qualify for them. For these reasons he advocates what he calls a CBI — a Conditional, as opposed to Universal, Basic Income.
The first of Susskind’s two distinctions between a CBI and a UBI — that a UBI is available to everyone who wants it — is specious. No one who advocates a UBI presumes that there would be no restrictions on who is eligible for them. There may be differing views on what those restrictions should be — Would U.S. citizens living abroad be included? How about illegal immigrants? — but no one would argue that they wouldn’t exist.
But the second distinction Susskind makes between a UBI and his CBI is a real one: a fundamental assumption of UBI proposals is that no one who is in-scope for a UBI would need to do anything else to qualify — they wouldn’t need to be looking for a job, or going to school, or taking care of their grandmother. Susskind doesn’t agree with that approach. He suggests that for a UBI/CBI to be sustainable, it would need to ensure that those who are paying into the program are satisfied that those who are benefiting from it are making some kind of contribution to society even if it’s not in the form of working for a living and paying taxes. He writes, “Most workers would, and correctly in my opinion, see [an unconditional UBI] as a recipe for exploitation of the industrious by the lazy.”
I appreciate the problem, but I am not at all sure that Susskind is correct that “a big part of the answer must involve membership requirements attached to the basic income.” Maintaining social solidarity, he writes, “will require those without paid work to spend at least some of their time contributing to the pot in other, non-economic ways.” He continues:
We can speculate about what those required activities will be. Some communities . . . might be satisfied if those without work spend their time in pursuit of artistic and cultural ends: reading, writing, composing beautiful music, thinking deep thoughts. Others, channeling the ancient Greeks, might ask people to take their roles as citizens more seriously; to engage in politics, to support local government, to ponder their obligations to others. Beyond recreational and political activities, I believe that educational, household, and caregiving activities will be recognized as important as well. No matter how capable machines become, we will, I imagine, want human beings to have a role in preparing others to live purposeful lives, and in supporting them during hard times and ill health.
This list, again, is speculative, and no doubt incomplete. In the end, it will be up to future communities to decide what counts as a contribution and what does not. Different societies will be drawn to different conclusions. But all of them, engaged in the same exercise, will be forced to say what they consider valuable and what not.
Wow. That sounds great, in exactly the same way that “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” sounds great. As the Soviet Union and other countries have demonstrated, that Marxist ideal hasn’t worked in practice, and I’m afraid Susskind’s vision wouldn’t either, for some of the same reasons.
Two major selling points of UBI — the ones that in theory make it palatable to conservatives and libertarians — are that it’s inexpensive to administer and doesn’t require that the state intrude on decisions people make about how they live their lives. With Susskind’s proposal, those selling points go out the window. In fact, the administration of Susskind’s CBI would be even more complex and intrusive than programs like welfare or unemployment insurance are today. It would require that the state make what should be highly personal decisions about how people spend their time, and engage in excruciatingly intrusive monitoring of compliance. “You say you’re spending 10 hours a week taking care of your uncle, Mr. Smith, but our records show that it’s really only 5½ hours. And you still haven’t filled out the forms proving that your uncle actually needs your help. How do we know that you and he aren’t just playing cards?”
In short, the administrative and surveillance apparatus required to implement Susskind’s CBI makes the government of Oceana in George Orwell’s 1984 a model of permissiveness and restraint.
Again, I do recognize how challenging it would be to maintain support for a wealth redistribution scheme that its payers regard as free-loading by the hoi-polloi. But I believe part of the answer to that problem is redistributing wealth not primarily with cash payments, but rather in the form of a public service infrastructure that provides, free of charge, much of what people need to live comfortably. Just as public libraries and primary schools are free, we will ultimately need a society where health care, mass transit, and a range of other services are free. There would still need to be cash payments, but I agree with those who suggest that these payments would need to be largely unfettered. The issue of ensuring buy-in on the part of high-income and capital-owning individuals would need to be addressed in other ways. I am cravenly avoiding the question of how.
The other major concern Susskind raises with an unconditional UBI is that people who have no job and no hope of getting one may become demoralized and apathetic. As evidence he cites research done by Marie Jahoda, a social psychologist, in a small village near Vienna in the 1930s. The Great Depression resulted in the closing of a factory there, which had employed most of the residents. By 1938, three-quarters of the families in the village had no one in a paying job and were living entirely on unemployment payments.
Jahoda’s researchers surreptitiously embedded themselves in everyday village life, observing the residents and collecting data. What they found was “growing apathy, a loss of direction in life, and increasing ill will to others. People borrowed fewer library books . . . dropped out of political parties, and stopped turning up to cultural events.” The implications for a future with less paid work would seem to be chilling.
But if not working for a living was necessarily a demoralizing condition, then the tens of millions of retired people in the United States would all be in the grip of despair. Like the majority of those in a future world of technological unemployment, people today who are fully retired don’t work and don’t expect to. But for most of them, assuming they have the means to live comfortably, that’s not a problem, and they have little trouble finding satisfying ways to spend their time. You’ve probably heard a retired person say “I’m so busy now, I don’t know how I ever found time to work.” (Yes, I know there are exceptions. Many newly retired people don’t immediately find their footing, and some never do, but my impression is that the latter are in the minority, and their state of mind may be as much a function of our society’s dismissive attitude toward older people as it is a result of not having a job.)
What characterized the residents in Jahoda’s Austrian village was that they had been raised to expect to work for a living and believe that they had a responsibility to do so. Their experience does not tell us how people would feel about not working when they had never been taught that they should. Retired people consider not working their due. The same was true of members of the British nobility in the 18th and 19th centuries. They apparently dealt with their joblessness with equanimity.
Susskind suggests, and I agree, that governments can “nudge” people into using their time productively by, for example, promoting civic engagement, supporting amateur athletics, and funding continuing education. I believe these efforts, combined with the natural inclination of human beings to look for ways to make their lives meaningful, will be sufficient to keep most people from living lives of dissolution and despair.
Notwithstanding my disagreements with some of Susskind’s prescriptions, I found his case for them to be well-considered and intellectually honest. And overall his book is a thought-provoking and well-written treatment of an increasingly important topic.