Whether we like it or not, an automated workforce is coming. The question is how do we approach it? It’s predicted that by 2020 robots will replace 5 million jobs in the US alone. We cannot shy away from this issue. We need a clear position on this, and one which we shout about so the public know what it is. There seems to be only two options offered by the two other parties (universal basic income, that nightmare that won’t die) and to erode workers’ rights so that only big businesses will benefit from it.
We need to offer a third option. We need to embrace change; after all, liberals are progressives. By adopting an approach that works for both workers and business we can be at the forefront of the convocation and ensure we strike a balance. I am not saying what these policies should be, I am merely saying that we should have some and be vocal about them.
I can see three advantages of why we should be at the forefront of the conversation. The first, like I said previously, we can lead the debate and ensure that there is a liberal and progressive view on the matter.
The second is voter perception. In a time of uncertainty and turmoil, people are worried about losing their jobs. If the Lib Dems can show that we have a plan and we can handle what the future hold, we can appeal to these very people, while also not resorting to protectionism. By having a clear plan of how we will deal with it, we can both appeal to the people who want the benefits that automation can bring and the people who are worried and want a clear plan on how a government will deal with it.
The third is we can plan. By discussing it now, we can ensure that in 20 years’ time we have a more automated society but also one where people are employed and prevent more people being pushed into poverty. We are lacking in IT skills at the moment, in some areas, meaning that jobs don’t get filled or are moved overseas. But if we come up with a robust plan for education, we can make sure that the next generations will have the skills that they need. We could help drive the high tech jobs market, limit the damage of job loss and provide people with the skills that businesses will want. This way we will also create more jobs offsetting some of the jobs lost.
All these reason I believe will drive us towards a success with the electorate. In a time of Trump and Brexit, the next 20 year look uncertain. But automation is clear part of our future and it is up to the government to know how to deal with it. I think voters will respond well to a party that is looking forward and a party that has ideas and a plan in place for the future. This will also be better for society as a whole, automation will cause disruption to society’s already fractured equilibrium, but by debating about how we will deal with it now, we can, keep any disruption to a minimum and reach a new equilibrium quicker. After all, we came back from the industrial revolution.
* Matthew Phillips is a member of the Islington Liberal Democrat exec.
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61 Comments
How does free movement of Labour impact on this? Don’t tell me we need to do two opposing things at the same time and who gives a shit about the workers?
I agree it is time we talked seriously about the impact of automation and AI on work, the economy, the environment and society. Like the issue of an ageing population and pensions and health, politicians across all parties sometimes seem to slip into a panic-blinking mode at the enormity of the problems. However, some policies can be implemented now that will address some aspects of the changing nature of work. Universal Basic Income is one that should be seriously considered by us LibDems. It is not just a policy of the left and has sound economic support. Labour is dithering over UBI and it is something we could easily pick up. (Forgive me if I have missed out on the discussion of this already elsewhere: just point me in the right direction to catch up.)
“There seems to be only two options offered by the two other parties (universal basic income, that nightmare that won’t die)”
I was under the impression from other threads that a lot of Lib Dems like this idea.
Great piece, and the final part of the jigsaw that has convinced me to join the Lib Dems. The challenges and opportunities coming in the next 20 years are far greater than anything around at the moment. I’m interested in a party that looks to the future not ones obsessing over policies for a world that’s gone.
History tells us that in the long term increased productivity leads to greater overall wealth not unemployment.
The issue is re-training and educating people for the constantly changing world. In particluar people need to accept that they have to be adaptable. Transferable skills and all that.
Timely commentary, we need a plan. Universal Basic Income, coming from e.g. dividends from competing sovereign wealth funds should not be off the table. Sovereign wealth fund could participate in early stage tech companies which are currently out of reach to average investors (these companies increasingly prefer to stay private). If labour is no longer a wealth creating factor than society should be able to participate in the rapid capital accumulation that will happen from tech innovations. It’s important that this capital accumulation is democratised through redistribution to the population at large.
@Matthew Phillips – “I am not saying what these policies should be, I am merely saying that we should have some and be vocal about them.”
I agree, but that’s the difficult bit.
It’s probably inevitable, but I’m not sure you should be embracing (greater) automation if you haven’t worked out what it’s effects will be yet.
an approach that works for both workers and business
Is that not the same ‘trying to be all things to all people’ that has got the Lib Dems in trouble in the past?
IT jobs are going abroad because the wage bill is cheaper, not because there is a lack of skills. When I ring my internet provider with a problem and get say an India based tech it’s not because that’s where the skills are. In fact I’m invariably told it’s an area problem and if it isn’t I’m invariably just given a refund or put through to someone more local. Any major fault in my actually gear either involves me calling some out to look at it or taking it to someone local who can repair it. The reality is that if you give them the go ahead companies will always chase the lowest overheads and lowest labour costs. Hence I a global market they move to the cheapest place. Also there is no way of keeping a competitive edge on skills because those skills are quickly learned elsewhere. So actually the sensible thing is a certain amount of protectionism.
in relation to dav’s comment. That would only seem to be the case in the Anglo Saxon business model of low productivity, low skills, long hours and dreadful industrial relations. That is a model that does not seem highly viable now or in Trump’s USA let alone in the future. A shift to a higher skilled more productive economy is not all things to all men (or women) but necessary to any viable economic and political model.
Many of the IT jobs will also be automated away, whilst other IT jobs are already migrating to low wage economies.
All roads point to a Basic Income, a policy that the Lib Dems supported 25 years ago. If there is a plan that proposes new jobs, then it probably isn’t going to include IT.
The point is that politics is, often, about working out a compromise between competing interests.
To begin by promising that you are going to come up with a way that no compromise is necessary because you are going to have a plan which means everybody will get what they want and nobody will have to lose out seems… ambitious would be one way of putting it, setting yourselves up for failure when you actually have to implement the plan and it turns out that in fact it isn’t possible for everybody to get everything but there are going to be some compromises after all would be another.
@Glenn “IT jobs are going abroad because the wage bill is cheaper, not because there is a lack of skills.”
Totally agree.
@Nick Baird “policies … but that’s the difficult bit.”
More agreement.
@Geoffrey Payne “If there is a plan that proposes new jobs, then it probably isn’t going to include IT.”
I fear that there is a lot of truth in that. I believe/hope that there will still be many opportunities in the UK for IT work at all points between conceptual design and routine maintenance of hardware and software, but increasingly we see increasingly skilled jobs being outsourced to countries with lower labour and living costs.
In IT and elsewhere, I expect that employment growth will come in careers where the customer/end-user must be physically close to the provider. But I’m no economist and I don’t know how what sounds like a very closed system is economically sustainable without some sort of wealth generation (despite the appearance of high streets, surely there’s a limit to the number of people who can sell each other cappuccinos!).
Actually several shoe producers like Adidas have been planning to build automated factories in Europe.
Another question is that could automation be embraced in several tasks in NHS? Currently NHS is facing a serious staff shortage. In Japan, robots are actively used in caring for old people.
And I think that Libdem should include a clear automation embracing strategy in the next manifesto.
@Thomas “I think that Libdem should include a clear automation embracing strategy in the next manifesto.”
The Brexit referendum (amongst other things) highlighted that there are genuine concerns (no matter how unfounded they may or may not be) amongst voters about a perceived middle-class metropolitan liberal elite that cares nothing for them. Such a strategy, embracing automation, could fuel that unless it explicitly addresses the (very difficult) challenge raised in the original article, namely to find “an approach that works for both workers and business”.
Pro automation is good, but let’s come up with something that sounds a bit more cautious. We can’t abandon workers who get made redundant and this is what some will feel if we sound too enthusiastic about it. I agree that we shouldn’t just tell the workers to compete with the technology by working more cheaply.
I find that some people become a bit obsessed with new technology, but new technology that has been rushed to the market, unready, can harm businesses, institutions and ultimately societies, so let’s maintain a bit of caution. 🙂
I don’t see much merit in this article; it touches on a number of points without pointing to any answers. Some of the predictions concerning automation and Artificial Intelligence are quite alarming and even if they do not turn out as bad as predicted they still present the UK with massive challenges. And they might not be entirely bad – one of the advantages of automation in manufacturing is that it matters less where a factory or plant is built, low wages count for less and being nearer to the market and reduced transport costs would count for more. The competitive advantage of low-wage economies is reduced.
However, we still face a rather scary prospect – the population of this country is growing by half a million a year, we already have a lot of low-paid jobs soaking up as much employment as possible and if we add to that many millions of jobs lost we face the prospect of millions of unemployed, including many who might never get a job. In this scenario automation will be seen as making a bad situation worse whether it does or not.
By contrast Japan’s population is falling, leading to a labour shortage. In this situation automation, AI and robotics are more likely to be accepted as helpful. The difference is that the UK is accepting historically large numbers of immigrants and Japan is not. I don’t think the Lib Dems have thought things through.
@Peter Watson – I agree with concerning Brexit and would go further to suggest that, given the determination of the government to pursue Brexit, UK nationals, regardless of how they voted in the referendum will be expecting the government to rapidly implement policies that put rank-and-file UK citizens first. So if the Libdems are to adopt a pro-automation stance, they are going to have to square it with the demands of UK nationals, or be seen as the party of the “middle-class metropolitan liberal elite”…
Imagine that the UK tried to stop the internet and the world wide web being used in the UK to stop people’s jobs being made redundant. The rest of the world would have adopted it and UK products and services would be uncompetitive on both costs and speed of fulfillment.
The tide of technology can not be stopped and why would we want to when it raises overall wealth. We all benefit from phones, computers etc which are only available because of new technology and the automation of their manufacture.
One shouldn’t forget perhaps the key flaw in UBI – that many people find dignity, purpose and fulfilment in work, not just a wage.
Any plan – and one is definitely needed – should put that emotive point front and centre. We have the foresight to acknowledge this problem, and our guiding principle in solving it will be to creatively secure new sources of work (and fulfilment) for those cut adrift, while maintaining a safety net.
If we’re looking at a post-employment world (or at least a post-“employment-as-currently-conceived” world), then we’re also looking at a post-wage world (or a least a… ditto).
The problem is that the jobs market is developing and shrinking faster than the populace can adapt and re-skill to ‘keep up’ (or at least, a large enough proportion of the populace for the problem to remain). I fear that UBI will exacerbate the divide between ‘the 1%’ and the rest, by making salaried work (i.e. work paying more than UBI) the exclusive purview of those few who are elite and fortunate enough to attain it.
UBI is a cute idea which will address the superficial problem of people needing income other than via work, without addressing any of the underlying problems of people needing confidence in their own agency and worth in society other than via work, which leads to the malaise I outlined above, and which is being seized upon by the alt-right currently.
Where all this is going is that we’re going to need to completely revise our priorities, particularly re: value. Some things are worth doing even if they’re financially loss-making, and I’d argue that allowing human participation in institutions and the economy is one of them (if nothing else, the collective productivity of humanity will still be considerable, even if it won’t be as efficient as the automated sectors). What I’d like, at least as a stop-gap, is the creation of a ‘two-speed’ system whereby the (huge) profits from the automated sectors are enabled to remunerate people properly for roles we currently see as part-time or voluntary in nature.
What I suspect is that we’ll never quite get there, and that elements of society are able to ‘keep up’, reskill and develop and so on, while others aren’t, mostly dictated by fortune of birth, means and location. Either those who aren’t will be well-treated and provided for, and everything will be fine, or they won’t be, and will tear the whole system down with extreme prejudice, and those who were able to ‘keep up’ will be lined up and shot. If we’re lucky, that will only be metaphorical.
The Rasperry pi has caught the interest in computers at school. Is it not possible to do the same with a basic robot? Retraining and education should start in schools. We have about 15 years before the robot onset will be upon us.Not only will industry be a target but also care. Workers can work alongside robots. Being a machine they will break down, a human companion could repair them. We will work in unison with them, teamwork. In the past the onset of automation caused problems but enriched us in time. The same can happen with the new revolution.
So, going to try to respond to as many as I can. Some, just speak for themselves.
In regards to UBI, I do not think it is the answer to the issues that the world faces. While a nice idea, it will not fix much, my even cause more issue. Of course, we don’t want people pushed into poverty so they will have to be debate on how we do that.
@James – Not something I had considered, but I see free movement as a positive
@Mark Chadbourn – Welcome! Glad I could convince you to join!
@David Evershed – I agree, that’s why we should be talking about it now so we can decide a path of re training now instead of waiting until it’s an issue.
@Dav – I don’t think so, we can keep both side and come up with the best solution.
@Glenn – I don’t think so, look at Apple and Google, while big players, they scout the world for the best people and move them to the US. Also, why have all the banks not relocated to Manchester, they could pay less than the London wage and their rent will be cheaper. The skills they need are in London
@Geoffrey Payne – There will still be jobs in the IT world, if not more. For example, data science is a growing area creating jobs, an area where CIOs say there is a skills gap.
@Thomas – 2 good points, I feel that automation in the NHS, could be used as a way to fill vacant rolls and improve public perceptions
@Eddie Sammon – I too dislike how new things are pushed with very little concern, this is why I am saying we need to plan for the future, rather than wait until it is upon us
@ Steve Coltman – I never claimed to have the answers, I am just saying people within the party should start thinking about it.
@ John Grout – Fair points, I like the idea of a two speed system. My belief is that by planning for what is to come, we can remove some of the issues that you mentioned (Birth, fortune ect) while planning for how we deal with it.
@Alex Browne – My thinking exactly.
Having enjoyed watching the brilliant Charlie Chaplin movie “Modern Times” (made in 1935) just last week, I’m amused by the notion that this is anything new.
As David Evershed rightly points out, there are a few hundred years worth of economic history suggesting that this will not lead to mass unemployment any time soon.
One of the key possible future uses of this technology being talked about on the news last week was robotic care home “workers”. Can you imagine anything more ghastly? Some old soul who looks forward to the odd visit from the nurse as perhaps the best quality bit of human interaction they get in a day, suddenly being handed their pills by a robot?
Matthew,
Obviously infrastructure, desirability of location and historical precedent plays a part. London’s got the pull of being a capital city with a long history and all that implies. It’s ringed by major airports, it’s the centre of government and so on. There’s a certain kudos to living there. It’s better at attracting “skills” than producing them. Though quite frankly, I’m not convinced that most of the skills involved are that unique or that good. For a lot of visitors London pretty much is Britain. Personally, I preferred it before gentrification.
But the top three biggest user of robots (measured by number of robots used per 10000 manufacturing workers) are Japan, South Korea and Germany. All of them had lower unemployment rate than the UK.
The blithe assertion that UBI won’t solve much is invariably made by ppl who are not worried that they might be in the groups that will starve without it, IME.
Also, while it’s true that people like to feel useful, I’d posit that this is not true of the vast majority of the British workforce today, who are doing what have been pithily called b******t jobs.
UBI is not meant to solve the problem of people feeling useful. It is supposed to make sure people don’t die WHILE we solve the problem of people feeling useful.
Before accepting the inevitability of an automated workforce, we should first address the fact that the playing field is not level between people and automation.
At the moment we actually tax employers for the privilege of employing people via employers national insurance contributions. We then oblige them to provide pension schemes, maintain insurance in case any employees have an accident, and require them to provide comfort facilities. Those costs are significant.
If a company wants to invest in automation instead of people we allow it to write off the cost of the investment over several years, and possibly even give them grants to do so.
At the moment the decision to replace people with automation is skewed by these cost and accounting issues that the Government chooses to impose.
Before continuing with the wholesale replacement of people with automation we should first correct these imbalances by either abolishing employers national insurance contributions or taxing investment in automation at an equivalent level, and getting rid of the accounting advantages.
I am thinking about embracing automation to help reduce working hours per worker. British employees have low productivity partly because of too long working hours, besides any lack of skills.
@Jennie
The problem with UBI is its cost. If you want to pay all adults at a level just above JSA and protect adults who already receive more than this in benefits, then you need to raise an extra £160bn in tax (or about the total revenue from income tax, the largest source of tax for the Government). The Green Party’s consultation document on UBI has some very detailed calculations that explain this:
https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/Policy%20files/Basic%20Income%20Consultation%20Paper.pdf
The question that no proponent of UBI will answer is: How do you sell this to the voters?
With even a small part of this increase in taxation we could set the NHS back on its feet, fund social care properly (increasing the number of jobs in both cases) and end tuition fees. There are many other demands on our taxation revenue; why should we be giving money to the majority of people who don’t need it because there are a minority who do, and then clawing it back in increased taxation which only disincentivises work.
Laurence, the question that no-one who argues *against* basic income will answer is a much simpler one — how do we prevent people actually starving to death if there are more people than there are jobs, without an unconditional benefit?
As for disincentivising work, only *income* taxes do that. Taxes on property (capital gains tax, land value tax, and so on) don’t.
And Nick, personally I think that there *should* be an incentive to automate work rather than have human workers do it — so long as we have a benefits system in place that ensures people can live decent lives without jobs. Most jobs are unpleasant and tedious, and freeing up people’s time to live their lives how they want should be an absolute priority. The only problem is that at the moment every job automated away is one more person in poverty. A decent benefits system, rather than the one we have now, would solve that problem.
If UBI is taxed away net for people earning above a certain level (which is the intention), then it seems to me that there are only two possible reasons it could be more expensive than the benefits system:
1. Benefits don’t give people enough to live on.
2. UBI gives people more than a basic income – at which point, well, it’s not “basic”, is it.
So if you want to justify opposition to UBI, you need to argue that some people don’t deserve to have enough to live on, which isn’t really something that I’d hope many people in the Lib Dems support.
As for automation, it’s great. It means people don’t have to work any more. If you want to work, you can work for nothing, can’t you? Like a hobby.
It does seem that some people want to retain economically unproductive jobs and then lie to the people doing them, saying that their jobs are necessary and they are doing something essential. If those jobs can only exist through subsidies – subsidies paid for by the people doing actually productive jobs, which, let’s be honest, are mostly jobs that involve sitting in offices – then they’re not jobs. They’re subsidised hobbies. And if we’re going to subsidise a hobby, can we please pick one that’s less dangerous and economically damaging than a factory!
People don’t want to work in coalmines or steelworks. They want to do something useful and get paid properly. Forty years ago, that meant a coalmine or a steelworks (or pouring float glass if you grew up where I did). But pretending those jobs are still useful and subsidising the working class to do them because it makes the poor dears feel useful. Well, it has the ring of Remploy about it to me!
Why not just hand the subsidy to them direct and let them choose what to do themselves? Admit that, in the modern world, most people won’t actually have a job because we can get everything done with less than half the people. Heck, we could even implement that 14 weeks leave the Brexit White Paper accidentally mentioned.
Bother, that should be “environmentally damaging”, not “economically damaging”. Oh for an edit button!
@ Richard Gadsen “subsidising the working class to do them because it makes the poor dears feel useful. Well, it has the ring of Remploy about it to me!”
Would you like to re-phrase that in a less patronising way ? As the grandson of a line of coal miners (one of whom died at the age of 28 from miner’s lung) I can tell you they weren’t ‘poor dears’ but men sweating their guts out to feed their families in the only jobs available at that time in County Durham.
David. I agree, let’s not patronise the working class by thinking the only thing they’re good for is being forced to do a job we don’t need doing.
40 years ago, we needed coal miners because we needed the coal. We don’t need it any more, so we could either subsidise people to go down the pit because we think it’s good for them to feel useful, or we could subsidise people not to do down the pit. Personally, I prefer the second option.
UBI [a bit like QE], seems to be one of those ideas which looks reasonable on paper, but doesn’t account for human nature’s ability to use [and abuse], it beyond its original intentions.
Making sure no family starves, is one of the justifiable objectives, but what about some of the unintended consequences.? A Basic Income for every adult and child, could give a perverse incentive for large families. How would such a UBI policy avoid the future headlines of ‘Single mother and her 15 children, getting £70,000 in UBI benefits.’?
Whatever worthy policies you devise,.. never underestimate the ability of human nature to maximise their access to ‘free money’.?
On automation, I think it was Henry Ford who first realised the social limitations of mass production. He understood that the workers on his assemby line had to be able to afford, [or aspire to afford], the cars that were coming off the end of the production line. Following his logic to its conclusion,.. as capitalism reaches the Nth degree of total robotic industrialisation, who will buy the cars, TV’s and toasters, build solely by robots, if no-one has a job and a salary to be able to buy them.?
If,.. through a lack of money [disposable income], you take ‘the consumer’ out of the [capitalist], equation, I frankly see no business logic in a handful of mega corporations owning * the means of robotic automation *. Put simply ~ To what ‘capitalist’ end is there for any industrial venture, when there is much production, but with no affordable consumption, and hence no profit motive for the activity?
I doubt UBI is the answer, and I’m not yet clear how a solution to automation will come about,.. but somehow, society will have to derive,..some level of ownership, or ‘skin in the game’, when it comes to full robotic automation in the process of industrialisation.
I’m sorry, I know I’m an old hippy, but I think if people have a roof over their head and food to eat that’s a good that outweighs the tiny minority who might take advantage. But then I really believe all that stuff on the back of my membership card about nobody being enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.
Perhaps I’m odd.
“Making sure no family starves, is one of the justifiable objectives, but what about some of the unintended consequences.? ”
Don’t care about them, if it means no-one starves. If someone can suggest a way of making sure that no-one goes without food, housing, and other basic necessities that avoids those “unintended consequences”, I’ll listen, but I’ve been listening a long time and no-one ever has. Unless you’re offering solutions, all you’re doing is arguing that we have to let people go hungry.
(Incidentally all the research shows that people have fewer children, not more, when they are financially secure and able to make meaningful choices for themselves).
And note I said “no-one”, not “no family”. Far too much of the rhetoric around the current benefits system accepts that it’s a bad thing for *children* to starve, but not for single or childless adults. Our constitution says we’re working for a world “in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity”, not “no child” or “no family”.
In relation to the fifteen children, we have a birth-rate marginally below replacement, so why do you want to lower it anyway?
“In Japan, robots are actively used in caring for old people.”
Oh, great, let’s embrace advanced depersonalisation and isolation of the generation least acclimatised to the new technological age, in the name of utilitarian efficiency.
Admittedly, most local authorities and NHS trusts are currently forced to employ humans to work and think like robots, so there might not be much difference, but… .
All this emphasis on people having to get with the programme and accept that robotisation of society is just going to happen makes me suddenly come over all stubbornly William Morris (or, as Jennie says, ‘hippy’).
Jennie
I too am a greying haired aging hippy. Still remember my first attempts at tie-dyed T shirts, and putting extra flare in the bell bottoms.
I understand your point, but policy however well intentioned, doesn’t live in a vacuum. For example :
If we say to society, we can pretty much make and produce much of what we need using robots, and thus don’t need your input or employment,… so here is a basic income,,.. go and do,.. well, whatever you want. Sounds good so far.
Fast forward a decade :
How do future parents get their children to go to school, take their studies serioiusly and learn stuff.? “Awe Mum,.. whats the point in learning Maths, History, Geography,.. the robots will sort it all out for me. We don’t need no flipin educashunn…”
Sound familiar.?
H.G. Wells wrote in his novel The Time Machine, about a future society, split into two species,.. The Morlocks and the Eloi.
The Eloi were young beautiful people, with a simple child-like attitude, who saw no reason for education, had no idea how food appeared on their plates, or where their clothes came from. Their workless everyday lives, had a single motive, which was to play all day. Stuff appeared when it was needed, so why trouble yourself, as to the how it came into being.?
Ironically the Morlocks, lived in the shadows, and provided the magicaly appearing food for the Elioy, and when the time came,..fed on the Eloi like cannibals from their [Corporate??], underground lairs.
My broader point is that,…if human nature CAN,.. it WILL,.. bugger-up, any good intentions, unless we think it through, in as much detail as possible.
J Dunn — I absolutely agree, and as soon as there is any sign at all that technology is being used to create a race of underground cannibals to eat us all, I will be the first to oppose it. In the meantime, though, your argument from fictional evidence isn’t really helpful.
…going back to my cave to gnaw bones…
@Andrew Hickey
I should have expected that someone in this party would bring up LVT as the answer. OK, let’s talk about raising £160bn from LVT. There are 23.4 million households, so that is £6.8k per household on average. In London and the south-east where house-prices are higher, you can probably double or treble that. It is no good saying that it only affects householders and not tenants because the landlords still have to pay it and they will either raise rents, if they can, or sell the houses, reducing the number of houses for rent and increasing the number of householders who will have to pay it. Note that if (when) house prices fall as a result of this, the LVT rate has to rise because the same amount of money has to be raised. Unlike income taxes, there is no relation between LVT and the ability to pay and it is no good saying that people can defer paying it until they die, because we need the money now (£160bn is more than twice the budget deficit so even a small percentage deferring payment has a serious effect on the country’s finances).
I repeat what I wrote above: How do you sell this to the voters? Because if you cannot sell the idea to the voters that they need to pay much higher taxes to fund society, then you are wasting your breath discussing it as it will never happen.
I didn’t “bring up LVT as the answer”. Rather I pointed out that the objection to higher taxes — that they disincentivise work — only applies to income tax and not to any other form of tax, and named LVT and capital gains tax as two forms of tax to which it doesn’t apply.
Andrew Hickey
Not caring about the unintended consequences is just about the dumbest strategy that any politician can take when drafting policy. Politicians too lazy, or too slow in the head to bother to think policy through, can lead to death at one end of the spectrum,.. or waste of resourses and misery at the other.
For example, if Arlene Foster in Northern Ireland had had the wit to sit down with a blank sheet of paper, and go through the figures, she would have noticed within minutes, just how utterly bonkers the unintended consequences, of her Renewable Heat Incentive was.
I only hope some of our elected representatives, have a less hand-waving,.. and more astute attitude to the possibility of unintended consequences, or we are truly lost.?
If the worst consequence you can imagine for not letting people starve is that some people might have some extra money, and you’re not willing to suggest a better system that *doesn’t* have that oh-so-terrible consequence, then no, I don’t care about that.
Name an *actual* problem, not a hypothetical thing which isn’t even a problem, or name a system that solves the same problems basic income does but doesn’t have your not-actually-a-problem of people having kids in order to get money, and I’ll listen. But no, I really, really, *really* don’t care that a consequence of people having enough money to live means that even someone with more children than you think is an acceptable amount to have can feed them.
I feel like this article could have said something interesting but instead makes a poorly developed attack on welfare and reminds me why I strongly dislike the concept of “economic liberalism”.
To answer the question directly, of course Liberals should embrace the automation of the workforce.
@Andrew T “To answer the question directly, of course Liberals should embrace the automation of the workforce.”
And also the workforce.
This thread is a fascinating break from the LDV Brexit echo chamber. It demonstrates that behind the overwhelming consensus on opposing Brexit, there is still a broad spectrum of views within the party about what the UK should look like (whether inside or outside the EU). It also suggests that the divide between economic liberals and social liberals is still alive and kicking even if it is muted by other concerns. Given the recent increase in members, voters and supporters that may have come to the party with a shared reaction to the referendum but goodness only knows what else in common, it will be interesting to see the effect of that on the direction of Lib Dem policy in the coming months.
A great article, thanks for posting. I recently organized a discussion on “The Future of Work” for Cambridge Lib Dems. I agree with your call to arms, we have to discuss this and agree policy. Automation and AI will take us on the road to serfdom if we are not careful.
@Andrew Hickey re: “J Dunn — … In the meantime, though, your argument from fictional evidence isn’t really helpful.
But we already have some form of the fictional Morlocks and Eloi, namely: those who come from working backgrounds and those (albeit small in number) who come from backgrounds of little or no work but lots of welfare and seem to have totally unrealistic expectations about their capabilities and monetary worth.
A major challenge, which J Dunn refers to, of UBI, will be to minimise the growth of the ‘welfare’/”society owes us” mentality.
There is also the flipside challenge with automation, that if we do have a society where a few effectively create the wealth for the many, of creating a society where the few workers don’t develop a “we create the wealth, the rest of you are passengers” mentality.
A major challenge, which J Dunn refers to, of UBI, will be to minimise the growth of the ‘welfare’/”society owes us” mentality
This is my problem with the idea: it seems to elevate ‘the world owes me a living just for being alive’ from a whine to a policy.
Roland — both of those assume that the only work that is of value is work that’s done for wages, when wages have basically no correlation with the value produced. Raising children, community volunteering, and so on are among the most important work you can do, and definitely create wealth, but are not financially rewarded.
And no-one’s talking about “a society where a few effectively create the wealth for the many”. What we’re arguing for is a society where as far as possible people are freed from the need to perform tedious, repetitive, tasks that are often physically or mentally harmful, and instead put their time and energy into things they value more. Yes, for some of those people that would just be lounging around watching TV. But for many — I think the majority — it would be doing some useful task that doesn’t get financially rewarded as it should.
Thomas comments: ” Currently NHS is facing a serious staff shortage. In Japan, robots are actively used in caring for old people.”
For me, this is illustrative of the kind of idea that worries many people regarding automation and AI.
There seems to be an essential ingredient missing: humanity.
If such technology is going to come on stream in the future – and is inevitable, as we keep being told by the medi – then we must not lose sight of essential human elements: that each person has the right to the dignity brought by meaningful work: that each person has the right and entitlement to dignity at each stage of their lives.
Fobbing elderly people off with a domestic-carer robot to fill gaps in social care, or giving each person a basic income to compensate for no work, is not sufficient.
“In Japan, robots are actively used in caring for old people. ………There seems to be an essential ingredient missing: humanity.”
Point taken :
What say, we program the robots in care homes to steal the odd £20 note from a wallet, punch and slap our elderly relatives for refusing their medication, or wetting the bed twice per night,.. and ignore dehydrated patients asking for a jug of water.
Is that the kind of humanity you were speaking of.?
I’ll take my chances with the robot,…. programmed to make a nice cup of tea on request,… you keep the low paid care worker, with an attitude.
I’ll take my chances with the robot,…. programmed to make a nice cup of tea on request,… you keep the low paid care worker, with an attitude.
The laugh is that if we put a similar amount of money and effort into human care workers as is being put into robots, the humans would probably not be so low paid and not have the same attitudes…
“What say, we program the robots in care homes to steal the odd £20 note from a wallet, punch and slap our elderly relatives for refusing their medication, or wetting the bed twice per night,.. and ignore dehydrated patients asking for a jug of water.”
Sorry, but I feel that human workers are far more likely to do so. After all, they all face the problem of mental stress and exhaustion after extreme long working hours (current situation of British workers in general and NHS workers in particular). Unlike robots, they can be angry.
Using robots would mean that NHS workers no longer have to, say, stay at the hospital 12-14 hours a day.
What about tasks like cleaning trash and garbages on streets, or…police?
Oh, maybe a limited automation on farming could improve productivity and . The only problem is how limited to avoid further decline in rural life.
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/feb/18/automated-farming-food-security-rural-jobs-unemployment-technology
Finally in manufacturing, currently the UK lagged far behind Japan, Germany, US and South Korea in automation. You can search the number of robots used per 10000 industrial workers, the UK only ranked 19th in 2012 at around 66 units, while it was nearly 600 in South Korea and 300 in Germany, both of which had lower unemployment rate then the UK.
Barclays had completed a report in 2015
http://www.newsroom.barclays.com/r/3273/investment_in_manufacturing_robotics_could_boost_british
It said that by investing an additional £1.2bn in automation technologies over the next decade, the UK manufacturing sector is forecast to create an additional £60.5bn of economic output and safeguard more than 105,800 jobs throughout the wider economy. Pharma and food sectors will benefit the most.
Oh wait, some more ideas about NHS. The task of cleaning wastes in hospitals can be toxic and infectious, and this could be done by robots.
More about treatment, if the patient is infected with things like Ebola, then using robots would limit the spread of the diseases to workers.