Finland and the Basic Income experiment

[I1L2T3]

56 minutes ago, Cyclone said:

Probably not, but we don't have to save that much because lots of money is already spent on a huge variety of benefits, all of which would be rolled into the budget for the basic income.

Someone has to program the robots, design the cars, and so on.

It's the type of work that changes, it shifts towards tertiary employment rather than primary (coal mining) or secondary (manufacturing cars).

The automation we looked at used machine learning. For example it worked out that a hundred people at the client were doing the same repetitive task several times a day, using the same sequence of clicks and keystrokes. It worked out how to execute the clicks itself, distilled to a single request and 100% accurate every time. No human error.

 

20 jobs potentially gone

[Cyclone]

Very low skilled jobs.  And someone had programmed the software that could learn to do that, someone else built the hardware (maybe more robots involved), someone delivered and installed it, etc...

 

The plow put a lot of people out of work, so did the combined harvester, but we managed to get by.  We no longer employ people to run in front of cars waving a flag, and what happened to all the coach drivers (that's horse and coach, not the motorised version).

[tinfoilhat]

2 hours ago, I1L2T3 said:

I’ve never seen so many people argue against something that is to their benefit because of the unfounded fear that a tiny section of the workforce - the section that will be unemployable in any economic system - will get something for nothing.

 

Excellent posts from cyclone and Anna B above that explain the benefits and need for a systemic change very well.

It's not unfounded though. When Cameron decided that housing benefit goes to the tennent rather than the landlord, non payment of rent went through the roof.  It's an idea that's worth kicking about socially - and I'd like £10k as much as the next man - but don't kid yourself that it will brake even by getting rid of few pen pushers, it really won't.

[I1L2T3]

1 minute ago, tinfoilhat said:

It's not unfounded though. When Cameron decided that housing benefit goes to the tennent rather than the landlord, non payment of rent went through the roof.  It's an idea that's worth kicking about socially - and I'd like £10k as much as the next man - but don't kid yourself that it will brake even by getting rid of few pen pushers, it really won't.

How would you measure if it broke even?

[tinfoilhat]

Just now, I1L2T3 said:

How would you measure if it broke even?

You'd better ask cyclone that one, but binning the buracracy and a whole bunch of benefits seems to be the idea. I explained above how I don't think you'll be able to bin all of them. Feel free to show me how, not only will I better off but the country won't be worse off.

[I1L2T3]

24 minutes ago, Cyclone said:

Very low skilled jobs.  And someone had programmed the software that could learn to do that, someone else built the hardware (maybe more robots involved), someone delivered and installed it, etc...

 

The plow put a lot of people out of work, so did the combined harvester, but we managed to get by.  We no longer employ people to run in front of cars waving a flag, and what happened to all the coach drivers (that's horse and coach, not the motorised version).

It only took a handful of us to get the software trial in. A couple of business sponsors. Automated delivery of the agent to desktops, install server and database, some network config. 

 

The potential impact on jobs was 20x the number of us at least. 

 

The biggest issue was employee relationships. The agent sat watching everything all day. Every single interaction with the computer. Staff didn’t like that.  The reports generated told us who the best workers were. The software told us who was the most active, who spent the most time away from the computer, who worked quickest. Then it ranked everybody on the trial in a league table - dynamite for HR types when staff numbers are reviewed. It started to dehumanise the workplace experience.

 

They backed off.

[I1L2T3]

4 minutes ago, tinfoilhat said:

You'd better ask cyclone that one, but binning the buracracy and a whole bunch of benefits seems to be the idea. I explained above how I don't think you'll be able to bin all of them. Feel free to show me how, not only will I better off but the country won't be worse off.

It’s more than a simple sum around spend in a handful of departments. 

 

It might cost £20bn more for example but then there may be benefits to the economy in terms of health and well-being

[Cyclone]

But someone wrote that software in the first place, someone will maintain it and an entire company exists to create, update and sell it.

 

How the analysis was performed is neither here nor there to this topic.  You can't argue that progress has throughout history caused a change in the work that is done by people.  And yet, we have a population higher than ever and a pretty high % are employed.

We don't have out of work scythes experts (for harvesting), we don't have out of work flag wavers (for cars), we don't have out of work blacksmiths, horse/coach drivers, wheel makers, coach body makers, stable hands, grain delivery people, and so on.

[I1L2T3]

20 minutes ago, Cyclone said:

But someone wrote that software in the first place, someone will maintain it and an entire company exists to create, update and sell it.

 

How the analysis was performed is neither here nor there to this topic.  You can't argue that progress has throughout history caused a change in the work that is done by people.  And yet, we have a population higher than ever and a pretty high % are employed.

We don't have out of work scythes experts (for harvesting), we don't have out of work flag wavers (for cars), we don't have out of work blacksmiths, horse/coach drivers, wheel makers, coach body makers, stable hands, grain delivery people, and so on.

I can guarantee that the numbers of jobs impacted by the software massively outstrips the numbers of people who create, maintain, configure and install it.

 

Its the entire point of it. Without that there is no product. It’s quite simple.

 

The real question is what replaces those jobs that are lost. There are multiple factors there. If a company that implements it does  it want staff to do more and become more efficient. An ethical and dynamic company would grow roles so that people could move into them. A more cynical company might use it to support massively reducing staff numbers.

 

Then you have the issue of whether the economy can reinvent itself to grow new industries and new types of companies to take up the slack. I think we are near the end of the line, unless there is a dramatic breakthrough say in energy generation.

[Cyclone]

49 minutes ago, tinfoilhat said:

You'd better ask cyclone that one, but binning the buracracy and a whole bunch of benefits seems to be the idea. I explained above how I don't think you'll be able to bin all of them. Feel free to show me how, not only will I better off but the country won't be worse off.

What drives spending? The cost of running DWP was £6.2 billion in 2016-17.1 This spending is easier to plan for and manage than spending on benefits and pensions. It is known as spending on the Departmental Expenditure Limit.

 

10k was always only an example (and not even my example), but obviously the government has all the facts and can actually do the maths.

 

£173.1 billion total spending on benefits and pensions for around 18 million people, of which:

£106.4 billion paid in State Pension and pensioner benefits, including 12.9 million people receiving £91.6 billion of State Pension.

£17.1 billion paid to working-age claimants in the form of housing, unemployment, maternity, bereavement and other benefits.

£49.6 billion paid in benefits to adults and children with disabilities and health conditions, and carers, including £11.4 billion to people of pension age.

 

If we make some huge assumptions, like pension won't exist and all adults from 18+ until death will get the NI (thus replacing pension).  10k is actually an increase above the existing state pension (and so arguably is too high a value).

 

There are about 35 million adults in the UK.  So we have a budget of 173.1+6.2billion/35 million.

 

That's £5122/adult/year as it stands, assuming that the DWP is disbanded entirely.  And that's totally flat, so there's no child benefit, no disability benefit, nothing extra for anyone, just a flat £5k/annum for every adult.

2 minutes ago, I1L2T3 said:

I can guarantee that the numbers of jobs impacted by the software massively outstrips the numbers of people who create, maintain, configure and install it.

 

Its the entire point of it. Without that there is no product. It’s quite simple.

 

The real question is what replaces those jobs that are lost. There are multiple factors there. If a company that implements it does  it want staff to do more and become more efficient. An ethical and dynamic company would grow roles so that people could move into them. A more cynical company might use it to support massively reducing staff numbers.

 

Then you have the issue of whether the economy can reinvent itself to grow new industries and new types of companies to take up the slack. I think we are near the end of the line, unless there is a dramatic breakthrough say in energy generation.

Yeah, just like the combined harvesters replaced jobs and so on.

You've not shown any reason why this is any different to all the progress that's occurred over the last 2,000 years.