Research Eduardo Rodriguez-Montemayor writes about basic income in the blog of INSEAD, the Business School for the World.
After arguing that we should not fear the rise of automation, he defends basic income as a way to increase human productivity.
A citizen’s income (UBI) could become a centerpiece of social solidarity. It prevents absolute poverty while removing the stigma from state support. An immediate criticism of a UBI is that people will just not bother to work anymore, similar to criticisms leveled at unemployment insurance. But unemployment benefits are contingent on not working. A universal income is conferred on everyone, and would thus avoid that people have the interest to work less in order to meet the conditions for being eligible. Also, people would feel safer leaving employers, reskilling via lifelong learning, moving to another place or starting businesses. There is already evidence that such cash transfers increase one’s willingness to bear risk. This would encourage people to seek out the careers they desire, more in line with their skills and motivations, rather than the ones that put “food on the table”. The economy would thus become more productive by facilitating the efficient reallocation of talent.
Rodriguez-Montemayor is a Senior Research Fellow in INSEAD’s Economics Department. Additionally, he is a lead researcher of the Global Talent Competitiveness Index, and consults for the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), Inter-American Development Bank, and United Nations Environment Program.
Read the article here:
Eduardo Rodriguez-Montemayor, 11 May 2016, “How to Share the Benefits of Technology,” INSEAD Blog.
Note: There are a couple of apparent factual errors in this article. Rodriguez-Montemayor implicates, falsely, that the Finns preparing actually to enact a basic income (as opposed to running a pilot), and he states, prior to the popular vote on June 5th, that the Swiss have rejected the referendum on basic income.
This obligatory robot picture is from Phasmatisnox, via Wikimedia Commons.
