I’m sort of skeptically agnostic about the end of work. Yes, this has been predicted before, and never arrived. On the other hand, history is full of stuff that was predicted and didn’t arrive, until suddenly it did. So maybe this time is really different.
And what do we do if it is? I don’t know. I don’t think UBI [Universal Basic Income] is the answer. We have a fair amount of data about what places look like where large numbers of people are subsidized not to work. The answer is “like nowhere you’d want to live”. The predicted flowering of artistic and community endeavor does not arrive; people are depressed, less social, and spend a great deal of time on activities like watching television.
To this, UBI advocates rejoinder “But what about trust fund babies and old-style aristocrats! Everyone admires their lives of leisure!” To which my answer is “Heck no, I don’t”. The lives of the idle rich are better upholstered than the out-of-work poor, but suffer the same absence of meaning and community. They are not a model to which anyone should aspire.
Megan McArdle, “Ask Me Anything”, Reddit, 2017-04-10.
April 10, 2019
QotD: UBI and the “end of work”
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