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Albert Vilariño Alonso Follow

Consultant in Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainability, Reputation and
Corporate Communication,and integration of people with disabilities.
Jul 14 · 6 min read

Basic income, a solution to

automation?

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Note: This article was initially published in Spanish and can be found here.

It is absolutely necessary to find formulas that allow in the near future the
subsistence of people who can not return to work due to the automation of
their jobs.

Previously, in the article “Artificial intelligence and corporate social

responsibility”I raised some of the risks that new technologies are
already introducing in our lifes.

Today I am going to talk about another one of those dilemmas that derive
from technologies that will force millions of people all over the planet to be
unemployed for the rest of their lives.

Many people have not yet realized the threat to their current job that the
development of new solutions is causing.

Without going any further, and with all due respect for the group of workers
who defend their interests, I am surprised by the manifestations of taxi
drivers in many cities of Spain and the rest of the world against the
interference in their sector of companies such as Uber or Cabify.

And it surprises me because these transport professionals simply stay on

the surface, where other people come to compete for their work, but they
do not see under that surface that this work is destined to be done by
autonomous cars without driver at a time not too far.

Those companies simply want to get their foot in the passenger transport
business with some drivers who work for them, but this drivers also do not
seem to realize that these companies will erase them from the equation of
their business when the cars work alone and once they have obtained a
dominant position in the sector.

None of the drivers seem to observe that it is their job that is going to
change. Some attribute the blame to some “new” companies in the game
and the lack of regulation, and the others only see for now that they benefit
from its recent introduction in the market.

Maybe I’m wrong and some (the oldest drivers) have already realized and
think “for the time I have left to retire, I will continue as if nothing happens
and those who come later will really have the problems”.

Or maybe in a few years these professionals will look back thinking about
those days when they were manifesting against other companies and
workers and that will seem anecdotal when they see that the city is full of
autonomous cars and that was what they should have fought against
(fruitlessly), and for what they were not prepared looking for work
alternatives (maybe not so simple).

But, what will happen to those workers who are not yet of retirement age
and lose their jobs because of technological advances and automation, not
only in the transport sector but in many others?

The workforce that will never

work again.
The title sounds hard, but unfortunately it will be like that. It is a certainty,
it only remains to know exactly when it will happen. The worst disadvantage
of new technologies will be the large number of people who will become
hopelessly condemned to eternal unemployment.

This is the dilemma to which I refer at the beginning of the article. A

problem that must be solved before the risk materializes in a harsh reality.

Some will say that the same thing happened in the industrial revolution
and that those people ended working in another kind of jobs.

But the situation now does not seem the same as then. Those workers
“relocated” then were in jobs that could not be technified as those that had
taken their previous job. But now we are talking about even automating
tasks of “intellectual” type and very specialized, so it is absurd and/or
innocent to think of simple quick and easy relocations like those of
those times, and even more without education and specific training and
appropriate technicians .

And it is not going to be a “problem of the first world” because it is precisely

in developing countries where there are more unskilled and repetitive
jobs and in which automation still is easier to achieve and is capable of
eliminating a lot of labor if companies bet on their introduction.

The basic income, a possible solution?

Beyond the reconversion of the labor force to other types of jobs and the
difficulties already mentioned, a possible solution that is being considered
to allow the subsistence of those workers displaced by automation (or taken
to the extreme for the entire population whether it works or not) is the so-
called universal basic income.

It is a solution not without controversy and for which there are different
opinions on its convenience and effectiveness.

At present, different “experiments” are being carried out in this regard, as

can be seen from an article published in Público, with Finland appearing to
be receiving more attention from experts and governments.

The conclusions of the Finnish experiment will be known in 2019 and until
now it seems that its beneficiaries have recovered their optimism in their
situation, have been able to diversify their income and some have also
started entrepreneurial initiatives.

Other countries or regions that are testing the system to a greater or lesser
extent are Kenya, India, Uganda Oakland (USA), Ontario (Canada) or
Utrecht (Holland).

Well-known businessmen like Marck Zuckerberg of Facebook, Jeff Bezos of

Amazon, or Elon Musk of Tesla, among others, consider that the basic
income will be necessary sooner rather than later and that it will be
unavoidable to implement.

The problem is in what way this would be done and where would the
necessary money end up being distributed among the group that decides to
be the beneficiary, this last source also of divergences.

A report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

(OECD) argues that it is not possible to have systems based on basic income
without a substantial tax reform with new taxes, because if the financing
came only through the budgets of existing social assistance it would have a
very negative effect among the lower social classes.

Another study conducted in the United States by the Roosevelt Institute

states that a universal basic income could make the US economy trillions of
dollars bigger than it is now and permanently.

Among the disadvantages or problems that a basic income can bring is,
in addition to the foreseeable tax increase, the possibility that if the
amounts of the rent are high, it is being promoted that its beneficiaries do
not look for new jobs, the fact that an income in a place can make a living
but in another one in which the cost of the life is higher does not arrive to
subsist, or the generation of a sector of population that does not generate
anything for the society.

Among the benefits, apart from ensuring the subsistence of people who
can not work, would be the existence of a group of people who are capable
of devoting themselves to intellectual and humanistic tasks that help the
rest of society, or that are dedicated to cultivating hobbies and activities that
make them grow as people who could not do the jobs they were working on
before they became unemployed.

As we can see, there are different opinions on this, most theoretical since
there are not yet real, varied and solid results of the experiments that are
being carried out.

What role should companies have in

all this?
The role that companies have in all this is still undefined but, beyond the
theories that say that companies should pay taxes for machines that have
made workers end up unemployed and thereby generate money to pay the
basic income, companies should start moving, especially large multinational
companies.

Trying to leave all this merely in the hands of governments and in a solution
like paying more taxes is an entirely unrealistic solution if other measures
are not included through innovative ideas and the corporate social
responsibility of organizations.

Will we see all this? I do not really know, but I think that not studying it,
proposing it and implementing it seriously would leave millions of people
around the world in the lurch.

Basic Income Csr Corporate Responsibility Automation Sustainability

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Albert Vilariño Alonso Follow

Consultant in Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainability,
Reputation and Corporate Communication,and integration of people
with disabilities.

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