Some have suggested, on this blog and elsewhere, that I do not suffer fools gladly. Maybe that's true. But don't read too much into that. I am more than happy to deal with incomprehension. Explanation, teaching, advancing debate; call it what you will, all such things are well worth spending time on, and I enjoy them. So what I am really irritated by are three things.
The first is people who ask but do not listen to the answer.
The second is those who shout but who never want a response because their minds are closed.
The third is those who know but carry on with misrepresentations when they clearly know better.
The first are lazy, and I admit I am not good with that.
The second are trolls and I am worse with them
Of late the third is represented by Michael Gove. Let me offer an example.
In the last couple of days Gove has claimed that the UK's population might increase by 5 million vy 2030 as a result of immigration. This may, or may not, of course be true, but it is possible. I am not arguing with that. But he then went on to claim that the NHS could not cope with such an influx. This is where he deliberately misrepresents the truth.
Implict in what Gove said is an assumption that all these 5 million people will sit around all day doing nothing. Implied is the possibility that as a result of their boredom they will head for the NHS for a day's entertainment.
I have to presume Gove is more intelligent than his analysis suggests. I have never met him, but people tell me he is a competent man. In that case the case he makes must be knowingly wrong to him. The reality is that if 5 million people come to the UK two things will happen.
The first is that they will work. I can be sure this is true. People want to work. What is more, they will need to work. The existing working population cannot provide for another 5 million capable people without expecting them to engage in the process. And, you can be sure that some of these people will work for the NHS. That is not just because the NHS is already a big employer of migrant people, but will also be because many of those people will bring skills the NHS wants.
That brings me to my second point. What most politicians, most economists and come to that most people ignore is the fact that the whole of the economy is, ultimately, a mechanism to meet each other's needs. And in truth, many of those needs are met locally. This is why even when a town or region loses its main industry employment does not, by a long way, cease altogether. Most of what an economy does is ensure that people can service each other's economic needs, and most of those are local. Of course that is not true of everything: a place, to be economically vibrant and long term sustainable has to be able to trade with other communities to secure those things that local people cannot or do not make for each other; I do not pretend otherwise. But the point I am making is important and is that most people work in some way to meet need in the community in which they live.
This is important in the context of the current debate because 5 million more people does not mean that the existing NHS will be overwhelmed. A different NHS, fuelled by the growth that these 5 million people would bring in terms of tax revenue, their work effort, and their demand, would react to the new situation. To put it another way, these people would generate most and, maybe even given the data on migrant tax and employment contributions, more than is needed for the NHS to react to their needs, including funding the new and necessary infrastructure that will be required and whose creation will boost the rest of the economy.
In that case Gove's case is not just wrong. It is, I presume, deliberately wrong. Even stupidly wrong. And I am really bored by crass politics of this sort.
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You may be right but WHAT IF….. these 5 million people realise that living on 60 GBP a week plus some additionsl bennies if they have learned to finesse the welfare system plus a bedsit plus a spot of under the counter activity during their paid days of sloth is miles better than the ordure-kicking hellhole existence from which they originated ..and are happy to wallow permanently in this state of affairs.
What then ??
You may choose to be stupid here
But that does not require me to engage with you
YoungCobber1986. I bet your pals in BritainFirst & the EDL really laugh at your banter, don’t they?
I always remind my boys, because I think its very important to do so, that there are people like you in this world. Some might call you bigots, racists or nazis. I would rather say you are scared, ignorant, unemployable &, frankly, as thick as pigsh”t. And yes you’ll vote “leave” & no, you won’t win, & you’ll get even, god forbid , nastier.
Spot erogenous, on that’s exactly what I wanted to say.
“This is why even when a town or region loses its main industry employment does not, by a long way, cease altogether. Most of what an economy does is ensure that people can service each other’s economic needs, and most of those are local.”
Which is one the main reason I support the MMT Job Guarantee.
It is a myth that jobs can be guaranteed unless hole digging is the order of the day
Better to deliver universal basic income and let people take the risk on their own work creation
‘unless hole digging is the order of the day.’
I’m not very knowledgeable regarding the MMT Job Guarantee scheme but I would think that areas like the Swansea Valley could benefit from it. How would a basic income allow you to train yourself to develop the skills and knowledge to take those ‘risks.’
Also as far as I understand it, the JG scheme functions as a ‘buffer stock’ which gives a floor to the price of Labour.
‘let people take the risk on their own work creation’- that sounds very Libertarian for you, Richard!
There are myriad things to be done and as Henry George pointed out (contra Malthus) immigration is good when human tasks have no numerical limit. I’m sure our creative imaginations would come up with quite a lot before we reached the ‘hole-digging stage.’
I would argue a UBI would work so much better
“It is a myth that jobs can be guaranteed unless hole digging is the order of the day”
It’s not. There is tons of stuff we can do. You just to expand the definition of ‘work.’ For example open source programming, teaching assistants, social care, environmental work, street art, looking after allotments, dial-a-ride, maintenance of parks and museums, even looking after your own children. We would have to sample local areas and see what needs doing, and then create jobs fitted to people near where they live.
The myth is the free market will magically come up with things for people to do.
‘Job’ then becomes something you do to fill your day that *others* consider to be a useful use of time.
Regardless of the productivity increases, people still need something to fill their day, still need structure in their lives and still need to show to themselves and others that they are useful.
That’s what jobs are for.
“Better to deliver universal basic income and let people take the risk on their own work creation”
Basic Income is a great idea and we should go there (here is the suggested path from JG to BIG/JG hybrid):
http://heteconomist.com/job-or-income-guarantee-jig/
Tell me what you think of it.
But I can never understand the income guarantee concept in terms of helping the poor. Here in the UK the best income guarantee is the state pension which is targeted at £155 per week. The BBC is reporting that over a million pensioners are in poverty in the UK at income values higher than that:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36297605
A living wage at £10 per hour is £375 per week. Even at the current minimum wage it would be £270 per week. Or nearly twice the insufficient ‘basic income’ of the state pension.
So a Job Guarantee gives the poor over twice as much income as even the best income guarantee the UK has been able to offer, and of course competes all other wages into line by definition.
Private business can still hire people of course because the job is fixed price. If you offer £1 more and better conditions than the government wage then you can bid people away from the programme. It doesn’t compete back.
It’s a simple buffer stock system that ensures people have enough money to buy food and shelter, and that minimum standards are kept.
In other words its like the minimum wage, but requires no enforcement, reaches everybody and works automatically to stabilise aggregate demand in remote areas.
So let’s have a UBI instead and let people work out what needs to be done
What about repairing holes though – plenty of those in the tarmac round here still!
Let me be clear, I am not opposing job creation. I am 100% for that
But I think a guarantee can easily become a form of slavery – work for benefits
A UBI will work better – and is gaining traction
Although a strong believer in state participation in the economy – owning and planning the natural monopolies for example, I have always regarded the notion of a job guarantee as ludicrous.
Can anyone really imagine the likes of job centre staff or council employees organising any endeavour of worth for a mixed bag folks without operator licences for machinery and frequently lacking basic fitness?
Reading Randal Wray on Minsky’s proposals for a job guarantee did nothing to change that opinion. All fine in theory until one considers what exactly are they all going to do?
It would all end in litter picking, displacing otherwise employed workers, resentful hanging around a “training centres”, boot camps type operations and as Richard points out, and it’s not something I had thought of, but slavery to government of various stripe.
My best suggestion would be to put Job Centre and local government clerical positions on six month rotations so that personnel would swap sides of the desk from time to time. This would boost self esteem (for some) and teach some (very) basic skills without risking accidents.
All this because many seem to have some sort of moral panic; terrible fear of others choosing not to work! I suspect this has much to do with their own loathing of cutting their own grass, cleaning their own homes or doing their own basic maintenance.
I’m totally with Richard on this one. Leave it to creative individuals to discover what needs doing with an unconditional basic income. Some might take the opportunity to raise their own children as opposed to farming them out to pre-school whilst putting in time at some utterly pointless job.
I think it is time for a “Believability Index” for all UK politicians, based on a scientific and non-political analysis of all their predictions, claims and actual actions since taking office.
This is not to say that they are always liars or always honest, just how believable they should be considered by the public based on what they have said and done in the past.
As there is no single “truth” in almost everything political or economic, we are all subject to the persuasiveness or otherwise of the arguments and allegations made by people who take a “fact” and twist it into a statement of “inevitability” for an entirely political or economic purpose.
Time to call out some of these soothsayers for what they are, modern day witch doctors and snake oil salespeople, selling their grubby wares to any fool that will buy them.
And a Media Believability Index, based on all the political and economic stories they run and the real world outcomes.
I heard Gove yesterday.
I would call his usual contributions to the EU debate as ‘colonic irrigation of the mouth’.
As Richard alludes above, the artificial reduction of capacity and performance in the NHS that is worrying everyone has been caused wilfully by this Government because in coalition I understand that all they did was maintain spending at PREVIOUS levels and did not adjust for inflation – call it what you like but it is an equivalent to an underspend in my view.
It may have put more money in since 2015, but if so, funding is only just beginning to catch up? And then we have a strike caused by a member of Government who apparently wrote a book in support of the privatisation of the NHS to further create panic.
It is very simple.
(1) If you want to keep voting for crap politicians who tell you that they can cut your taxes and NI contributions and still have excellent public service like the NHS then do so at your peril. All that needs to happen is that you fund the service (any service) to meet need – just like they do in the private sector. This Government has not done that because it wants the NHS and other services to fail in order to get the public to agree to further privatisation and more profiteering.
(2) As for those who instantly start to blame immigrants, I do not wish to be rude but you really are just cannon fodder for people like Gove and Boris.
They love people like you YoungCobber1986 . And they’ll use you to vote for what THEY want and when its all over, they’ll drop you like a hot potato and leave you to flounder in underfunded services or privatised ones that are now more expensive than before.
Believe me, you’ve read the future right here, right now.
Even worse,what you say must be true about any significant amount of immigrants, and why so many brexit arguments suggest the numbers are unsustainable to maintain public services like schools and hospitals.
The disenginuity of the UKIP argument is that the very people we’re expected to repatriate are the funders if not suppliers and builders of these resources. The reason Gove and co ignore this inconvenient truth is that while they’re happy to accept tax paid by immigrants, they’re unwilling to use this windfall to fund what the indigenous expect in return for paying their tax (or even not, in some cases!).
Well put, Richard. You may well be right that there is a part of Gove that is more literate and better educated (or maybe not) but if so this makes him part of the ‘dumbing-down’ mechanism that has plagued Politics for at least 2-3 decades. Thatcher was the first ‘great’ down-dumber with her simplistic view of economics and since then there has been a vertiginous drop to where we are now which must surely form the base.
In reality, politicians are treating the populace like idiots and the populace, many of whom are so filled up with myths, poor media representation of economics and market fundamentalism subliminally flooding the mind don’t notice it. Nor do they notice the One Party State they live in (something Ron Paul in the U.S has been trying to point out to Americans).
At the risk of invoking Godwin’s Law, it as if the whole culture needs an economic ‘de-Nazification’ process.
My image (I’m indebted to Mike Parr here) of politicians (particularly Tories but also some Labour) is of then prodding an ant’s nest watching them scurry manically about whilst guffawing to each other and drinking dry sherry whilst simultaneously checking their ‘put options.’
Gove will have his rentier bread well buttered and will know that given no change in the system he’s on the ‘right side’ of the bargain -they are all like that (including much of Labour of the Balls/Cooper ilk).
Not to mention the crass politicians and their advisers who thought it clever to overspend in key marginal seats and treat the costs as national rather than local expenditure.
Cameron’s lame excuse that they did nothing “wrong” but may have made a “mistake” is rating high on my Unbelievability Index!
The SNP have now written to the police adding some political weight (at last) to Channel 4’s worthy campaign. Whatever the outcome of the police investigation into whether a “crime” took place, there seems already enough information in the public domain to demand a re-run of all local and national elections where the Tories used the battlebus to help win their seat.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/scottish-national-party-call-for-met-police-to-investigate-tory-election-fraud-a7042396.html
The 5 million figure is based on Turkey joining the EU by 2020 and also the UK not imposing any transitional controls. It’s completely impossibly for Turkey to join the EU by 2020 and also the UK would almost certainly impose transitional controls. So the 5 million figure is basically total baloney and hence a completely egregious example of crass politics.
As an explanation of crassness, I heard Tim Stanley of the Telegraph on the Radio the other day. I’m not a fan of his at all, but he made a good point. Politics has become more tribal over recent years where rather than seeking to attract the centre ground, politicians have been appealing to their own tribes.
I think this feeds into crass politics a lot as it means that Politicians will make totally unrealistic/awful/untrue/borderline racist claims just because they think it will resonate with their electorate (and increasingly not worrying whether their claims stand up to scrutiny).
This seemed to happen a lot in the Tories approach to the 2015 election (ie. hyping up the threat of SNP holding miliband to ransom.).
Unfortunately I think that the weakness of the left over the past 5-10 years has been a big reason why the right has been able to get away their ever increasing crassness.
Thanks
There is much in that
‘Unfortunately I think that the weakness of the left over the past 5-10 years has been a big reason why the right has been able to get away their ever increasing crassness’
I would say the failure of the Left over the last 30 years (at least), although Bill Mitchell sees 1976 as the year Labour moved to the right. In France we’ve had over two months of national riots against ‘internal devaluation’ (lowering of working rights and conditions) implemented by a nominally ‘socialist’ Government -if this doesn’t illustrate the farcical and tragic nature of contemporary politics, nothing does.
I find it difficult to understand what at times you stand for. Immigration on that level will hit the poor more than any other section of society.
I just can’t get my head around the logic that we work for each others need, if that is the case, why PQE, why anything that you advocate, we must already be receiving all we need.
Of course we work to meet need. But the system is imperfect. Need is not met. Saying something does not make it happen. So the state has to intervene to make sure that opportunity for people to deliver to best effect is created. This is what a social security system, a stat investment bank, a universal basic income, an industrial, policy and PQE are all about: the aim is to ensure people have the capacity to work for each other to achieve their personal best possible outcome
James S-the problem is not immigration in my view it’s immigration+ austerity politics that is, this is the cause of the rise of the right in Europe. Governments within the EU are obsessed with it and the IMF is schizophrenically critical of it in reports whilst implementing it further. It’s as if the plan is for the rise of Fascism.
I agree, but who’s need, it’s very subjective. we need nurses and doctors, but we are adopting a short term measure, we have huge capacity within our own borders to fill these positions, but we fail to invest in our young, it’s easier to import.( similar to football clubs buying foreign players ).
Free movement of people will fail and is failing the poorest, it’s the easy, lazy option. Problem is the likes of Tim Farron fail to look beyond their fundamental liberal beliefs and offer no policy and how poor people’s wages and job security will improve with mass immigration.
We have to differ on that
Said as someone from a migrant family
‘Problem is the likes of Tim Farron fail to look beyond their fundamental liberal beliefs and offer no policy and how poor people’s wages and job security will improve with mass immigration. ‘
I agree that the ‘Liberal’ minded EU is suffering from cognitive dissonance so horrendous that I’m amazed Brussels isn’t suffering an epidemic of tinnitus. But your analysis is flawed, James S; Immigration is needed because we are an ageing population but in combinination with austerity it is a recipe for disaster. The Left continues to fail to address this so we have, as you say, a youth that no-one invests in which will be the real inter-generational debt, not the deficit which is a decoy argument.
Mass immigration I referred to. We have mass youth unemployment. The problem lies for our indigenous population is we don’t value unskilled work, and we should.
There lies the issue in your answer. My grandmother was Irish like probably most of the population will have a migrant link. Mass migration does not help the migrant.
Where Give is disingenuous is his far right have no issue with immigration, they would encourage more, from countries outside the e.u that would work for virtually nothing.
Rather mass immigration does not help the migrant country. I don’t recall there being much debate about immigration until the accession of the poor East European states. We then received not just unskilled, but highly educated and skilled workers who had the dynamism to leave their home country and often learn a new language from scratch. Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Estonia, etc. have lost their youngest, brightest and best. It is sad that these same countries are so hostile to receiving desperate refugees and economic migrants who might help to revive their economies.
Attempting to sum up here it seems that without UBI (a really good idea) and more state intervention and funding of public services, immigration can be:
1) used by big business to cut labour costs and therefore upset those already living here who will lose out.
2) used by nasty politicians like Gove to whip up anti-immigration sentiment in order to win votes.
UBI and well funded public services will mitigate the resentments felt towards immigrants in both cases.
The only risk with UBI is what big business may do to its wage rates – something that needs to be explored.
What I find chilling about the NHS debate from the Leave group is the assumption that the NHS and other public services are being defined as working to full capacity already – it denotes to me that they are already not willing to fund these services further and betrays their real intentions.
Any capacity problems there are now seem to be self inflicted to be honest by bad fiscal policy.
Thanks PSR
‘Mass migration does not help the migrant.’ it certainly does if you are having your country destroyed! As I said above, if we ditch austerity (which we can) then migration is not an issue-though it is best if the country of origin prospers and provides jobs and health care -can’t see this happening in Afghanistan/Iraq/Yemen/Syria anytime soon. America/EU/NATO proxy wars are part of this mess.
We’ve already had wage suppression for nearly 40 years, to blame this on migrants is a big mistake.
Wage depression over forty years is simply untrue and to deny the amount of immigration we have had over the last fifteen years has not affected wages is simply absurd. Let’s be clear I’m not talking about those fleeing persecution here, that’s a totally different matter and I’m not at all in tune with Gove, to believe he wants no immigration is naive, of course he does, if he can’t force our young to work for sod all.
Sorry – evidence, please
NIESR would not agree
NIESR’s study gets the null hypothesis wrong. It fails to separate out those who would get a Visa with those who wouldn’t.
Leaving the EU is only about the latter category of worker – those who compete directly with our remaining unemployed and under-employed.
So unless you provide a study on that category, then they are useless in evidence. Because the issue is not migrants *as an aggregate* as the whole EU debate is about migrants who wouldn’t get a Visa.
Unlimited immigration of *unskilled* workers may well suppress the wages, housing and public services available to equivalent skilled workers in the UK.
The trick the Portes of the world use is to aggregate the skilled and unskilled immigrants together and *refuse to talk about that set of people that would be excluded outside the EU* – those who wouldn’t otherwise get a work visa.
I don’t really know Portes but I think this representation inappropriate
I have no statistical evidence, they rarely offer truth anyway, there compiled to fit an agenda. Isn’t it obvious that without all the policies in place that you want, immigration on mass will and does depress wages.
No
It is not obvious
If migrants add value and we have appropriate changes to minimum wage and trade union laws that is not obvious at all
James S, you’re argument is too simplistic as it only considers the effect of immigration on wages in isolation of all other factors and assuming that nothing else changes in the supply/demand and nature of work and labour.
But in the real world, the supply/demand and nature of work and labour is constantly changing. The global changes of technology/outsourcing/offshoring and neo-liberal policies during the last 30-40 years have had a devastating effect on some sectors in some countries while other sectors and countries have seen massive growth.
It is in my view correct that (with hindsight) New Labour made a fundamental error in allowing uncontrolled migration from the new EU countries instead of applying transitional controls as most other EU countries did. What caused them to do this I do not know, there must have been some thought and logic to their decision but I haven’t seen it.
The problem we’ve got as far as this EU referendum is concerned is that we are only considering migration in the context of EU membership, whereas it should really be considered as part of the wider supply/demand and nature of work and labour in this country.
The lack of a strategic plan for UK population taking into account the changing supply/demand and nature of work and labour, is to me the missing piece in all of this debate. Whether we are in the EU or not is irrelevant, if there is no long term plan that the UK people, financial capital and business agree to follow.
It will only take a small leap in technological progress and vast numbers of working people will be (or could be) unemployed in a matter of a few months or years. That is the really big danger we face here in my view.
I agree entirely, I was making the point that immigration has been a factor, some appeared to reason it had no bearing at all.
But what trumps some of your concerns is that there has to some modicum of wealth for the majority of us as whatever technological advances there may be in the future it’s pointless if there is so few with disposable income.
But I’ve often pondered that we may have to completely change the way we manage society in the future.
We will
We will have to heavily tax capital
And have high universal basic incomes
Can that be done with a constant supply of cheap labour. Are you actually saying that the levels of immigration we have had has not depressed wages?.. During the boom years wages for most did not go up in relation to that boom. I’m an electrician, people in my line of work have certainly had wage deflation.
I am saying wages did not rise because of the power of capital, the destruction of union rights and the demise of collective bargaining in the private sector
I do agree with you James S regarding many trades people suffering from (amongst other things) the impact of immigration on their specific trades in their local areas. I don’t think this can be denied across many parts of the UK during the past 15 years or so.
The question is whether this was the only factor at work, or whether other forces of private financial capitalism were also affecting the supply and demand for workers in your trade. I would be interested for your thoughts as to what else has compounded the wage deflation for people in your line of work?
My point is that immigration is the easy and obvious target for some to target, and it no doubt does have some effect on supply and demand, but is often used by politicians and the media to deflect public attention away from the other causes which have compounded the problem (perhaps to a greater extent than immigration).
It would of course be interesting to see the reaction of the political class if there was an uncontrolled flood of barristers, solicitors, senior civil servants, accountants, bankers, stockbrokers and other such professionals into the UK depressing the wages of such classes. Perhaps their has been – but I haven’t noticed it?
To be honest not sure immigration played a major role in my personal wage deflation, I’d rather place the blame on Osborne and his economic policies. My main concern has been for the unskilled worker where the effects of mass immigration have been most felt. Would companies like sports direct and asos exist without cheap foreign labour
“Would companies like sports direct and asos exist without cheap foreign labour”
No – but neither would they exist if there hadn’t been a pathological “race to the bottom” in both wages and prices for consumer goods, driven to a large extent by private financial capitalism’s constant search for a profit at any expense.
All these things are linked, trying to get to the real source of the problem is like Livingstone’s search for the source of the River Nile. It’s a capitalist jungle out there – really!
Just read this post so wading in a bit late. But, for what it’s worth, nobody appears to have mentioned the social consequences of AI and robotics. There can be little doubt, surely, that the nature of the workforce will change dramatically over the course of the next generation, with potentially worrying consequences (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/20/silicon-assassins-condemn-humans-life-useless-artificial-intelligence). There will be huge implications for immigration. If, say, 30% of unskilled and semi-skilled work can be better accomplished by robots there is no way business will not take advantage. And it’s not just these jobs either (http://fortune.com/2016/03/09/baidu-robots-ai).
If the future does indeed pan out in this way then all the above arguments are irrelevant – other than the need for UBI. We won’t need any immigrants except maybe those with advanced scientific qualifications. Already in the US crops are harvested by robots, so no further need for controversial seasonal pickers in East Anglia (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/01/japanese-firm-to-open-worlds-first-robot-run-farm). Any Google search will throw up thousands of articles and academic papers on the topic.
The bizarre thing is that no political party is factoriing this into their economic planning. At least not that they’re going public with anyhow. They’re probably too scared. Richard, you’re close-ish to John McDonnell. Has he ever raised it as probably the most immportant single economic development since the steam engine and computer?
Clearly there is need for short, medium and long-term strategies. But when people are involved – and in such large numbers as we are currently experiencing with northward immigration – it’s a recipe for chaos and social unrest that feeds into the burgeoning fascist agenda. We may need some immigration now to compensate for our ageing population but if we (or any nation) give long-term residency to hundreds of thousands of people who won’t be needed in (say) 25 years then the only answer will be to give them a UBI or unthinkable deportation. Wow. That’s some scenario to get one’s head around isn’t it?
As mentioned above, there’s no doubt that the prevailing austerity economic ideology is making an already difficult situation unnecessarily worse. But how will governments educate the public to accept that maybe a third of the working population will have to be paid to do whatever they chose … write poetry, look after the family, sit around at the local café with their mates, or whatever while robots will be digging holes, picking apples, driving buses and,yes, even dealing with insurance claims. Seems to me that George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and J G Ballard got it about right – as authors often do. There’s trouble brewing at t’ mill.
This is deeply relevant, I agree
Why would we need robots, they have to have purpose. They build cars, but someone has to buy them, if they eventually sell us insurance then someone has to buy it, how can this happen if no one has jobs to earn money. So in the end I don’t see that scenario ever playing out.
You are in a very small minority then
James s, I sense your struggle to see the logic of this direction of travel but you have to realise that we have all actually been on this journey for a very long time but most have either not realised it or not cared to think too much about it. Debt is capitalism’s only current solution to this contradiction you have rightly identified. But there is only so much debt that people on low or modest incomes can bear. Which is about where we are now!
So what next? That’s what some of us are trying to work out! You’re welcome to join this confusing club.
What usually gets ignored in the AI debate is that the ‘robots’ don’t drop out of the sky, they have resource implications in the use of minerals which implies Labour and Labour conditions in the extractive industries. So someone will be doing the dirty work and it will be probably badly paid and environmentally dodgy and damaging to the health of those workers.
If we are to have more AI within a moral framework then it would need to become more expensive if we want people to work in decent conditions and not shorten their lives by decades in order for us to ‘sit around in cafes with our mates’ while the ‘bots’ dig holes and serve us our Latte.
Given that our present computer industry relies on mineral mining in appalling conditions and disposes of techno-junk by creating highly toxic garbage recycling ‘hells’ in West Africa I’m not hopeful that AI will develop in a moral framework. This is the real debate for me.
An extremely relevant point
Thanks Simon
I will bear it in mind
I can’t imagine capitalism providing any solution to what it’s created. Im much in line with contributors to this blog. I tend to believe that we must have a greater responsibility to one another while accepting responsibility for ourselves, there has to be consequences for our own actions while at the same time society providing structure for the ability for us to do the right thing.
The current form of capitalism cannot solve our problems
But let’s not be polar: privately owned business has a clear role in the economy
Don’t worry, TPTB have thought of that: WWlll will sort out the problem of an excess unproductive and non-consuming population.
Those 85 wealthiest individuals and a workforce of robots will be all that’s needed.
The only consolation will be that, even then, they won’t be satisfied, and one of them will then want it all for themselves.
Whether that last surviving individual will be human or AI remains to be seen!
I have to say that I do not even remotely share your thinking
I’m just taking Stephen Hawkins to extremes.
“The outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.”
Why would the psychopaths in charge even need the rest of us?
I think the question is valid
They will assume, of course, that their new wealth will all be due to their own efforts
At some point they will also realise that without other consumers their own consumption trends will not be possible
That is why things will not develop as you fear
Hawkins is of course right, he has thought this particular social problem through from a logical scientific perspective.
And he understands that what stops “everyone enjoying luxurious leisure” is the innate lust for power and wealth that some individuals inherit at birth or develop along the way in life.
The integral link between the legal rights of “ownership” and the financial rights of “beneficial interest” are in my view at the heart of this human dilemma.
Private property rights and the ability of the owner of such private property to extract wealth from it, are well overdue for fundamental review and reconsideration in my opinion.
You only have to consider the world from the perspective of any indigenous people invaded by foreign colonisers and exploiters to understand that the “law” has been used to justify and enable massive wealth re-distribution from the already poor to the already rich.
The same happens within any modern society today based on “western style” property rights and beneficial interest laws.
And you wonder why “western democracy” has become so demonised and debased in some parts of the world – no surprise at all when you look at what has been done its name!
The AI debate was spurred on by this gem:-
http://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/
I think we are coming up to a turning point, which will decide the fate of humanity.
If you want to be part of the future or you would like your children or grandchildren to be part of the future, then you need to fight for a free and democratic society before it is too late.
There is no choice no power of “billionaires and the corporate borg” must be curbed and turned back.
I agree, the reasons for asos and the like are multiple, but I just can’t get around the fact that it’s cheap labour that facilitates all the mechanisms, like oxygen, it’s the key element that interacts and makes the whole thing work.
And the supply of cheap labour to facilitate the destruction of union rights and the rest
I foresee computers being able to help humans make the right decisions for the good of humanity, free from the flaws that we have.
@James s – I respectfully suggest you’re missing the point. AI & robotics are already part of the economic model. Advanced technology has a momentum all of its own. That’s the lesson of history. The difference in the future will be that it will function with minimal human input, supplying society with many of its material and intellectual needs at lower cost and more efficiently than humans. But, as you point out, consumers need wealth in order to consume. Hence the necessity for UBI. I believe it will, in fact, have to be more than simply basic. But in theory this won’t be a problem because the productive economy will be more profitable. Theoretically this could be hugely liberating for the world’s population but there’s a potential dark side – as articulated in the Guardian article about the ideas of Yuval Noah Harari. There will be a struggle to gain control of the AI. I think that’s the basic argument, unscientifically explained I’m afraid. I’m no scientist or futurologist!
There is nothing wrong with technological advancement per se, and in most cases many very good things that come about from it. We as a species would not progress without it.
But the link between technology and private financial capitalism (and national state power) is where many of the real dangers lie. Hence why the wrong technology is often developed for many of the wrong reasons – private profit and state power. Often with little or no regard to the externalities, risks and consequences.
Instead of technology developments driven by the requirements of human, social and environmental progress. Private financial capitalism really struggles with that – because the profit motive is far too short sighted!
I do not believe that robots will replace human labour for the foreseeable future, perhaps never. An increasing number of jobs are in the personal service sector and what about works of the imagination and art? We certainly should be able work shorter hours and weeks. To be thinking about UBI now is premature. The economy as we know it is based on paid employment and work is good, if it’s good work. It should be hoped that all bad work will be done by robots. We should be more concerned about making work enjoyable.
Carol-‘enjoyable’ work is, in my view, most enjoyable when it has ‘meaning’. The 1% (o.oo1%) get their meaning from power and the libidinous aspects of money and control this destroys the ‘meaning’ of those who are not on this trajectory (i.e. most of us).
people enjoy helping and supporting each other, finance capitalism makes that harder because it forces people to think of’number one’ as rentier pressure puts downward pressure on wages and forces people to look inward.
The economic myths about individuals striving towards utility maximisation has had it’s time and been found wanting. Meaning and purpose is what we must look for and that is one thing that cannot be monetised though it needs ‘money’ to enable it.
Carol I’m afraid your prediction may come true – but bad work means survival for far too many people on this planet!
As for Macdonald’s burger flippers and cheery counter staff, the writing is already on the wall for them. Their billionaire bosses would rather replace them with robots than pay a decent living/minimum wage.
Capitalism is totally heartless at the sharp end, I have no idea why unions expect anything else from these lunatics.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/25/former-mcdonalds-ceo-threatens-replace-employees-robots
All very interesting.
What I find fascinating is that in the past we were told (warned?) that increases in automation would mean that we as a species/sciety would have more leisure time in the future!
Well, here we well on the way to that future and I would sum up the situation in the following way:
1) We still do not want to pay people for doing nothing. Even if it is not their fault (no jobs, disablement, long-term sickness) – we still either don’t want to pay them anything, or pay them far too little to take part in wider society.
2) We still highly value (over-value?) work even though there is much more less of it about than there was and it some cases there is less to do as well within work itself.
3) Rather than creating more leisure time and the income to consume leisure, we seem (by the harsh removal of benefits and income support) to be on the way to creating less people instead? Malthus would approve of course. But is this fair? I fear not.
4) Some people have far too much work but less money; others have far less work and too much money. If we value work so much, why is work divided up so badly?
It seems to me that the concept of work is deeply ingrained in society but that it has not caught up with the realities of what is actually happening to work.
Work or being seen to be working is a form ‘value judgement’ that has held its value in people’s minds but certainly not in the economy nor in terms of human progress.
Many of us need to catch up. We need to come to terms with this issue fairly and effectively.
Agreed and when you say ‘Many of us need to catch up. We need to come to terms with this issue fairly and effectively.’
of course it is this that requires time and educational facilities. Neo-liberalism hates leisure because time to think and learn means time to question.
I have an admission to make, I hold a BA Hons degree in the study of Leisure, Recreation and the Environment taken in the 1980’s when such things could be explored without fear of whether one would be ever employed at the end of it!
After 3 years of some academic and much practical exploration of the subject, I understood a few key things which have so far remained fairly intact throughout my subsequent diversion into the world of work and business:
1. Real “leisure” has only been enjoyed for any length of time by a very small proportion of the human population throughout history. It is ultimately what most of the rich and powerful crave, that freedom from having to do anything other than what you enjoy, whenever you want to do it.
2. In order to gain real “leisure”, others must be denied it. It is the same principle as in order get wealthy, others must be poor. And therefore began the division of society into the “classes”, be that slaves, working class, middle class, upper class, leisure class or whatever other divisions have been construed.
3. The emphasis on the values of “hard work” and “striving” and “aspiration” amongst many others, are tools that the already wealthy and leisured elite have always used to ensure that everyone else works hard to ensure that they do not have to.
4. Money in the form of wealth (and to a lesser extent income especially if this has to be earned by work) is the mechanism by which the above social order is controlled and perpetuated across the generations.
Nothing I have seen in my 25 years since completing my studies have changed my views on any of the above, and much has reinforced them. “Leisure” has sadly been increasingly financialised, commercialised, packaged and sold to “consumers” just as any other product or service is.
But real leisure is a state of mind, as much as anything else. In fact it becomes increasingly enjoyable as I get older to avoid all forms of commercialised leisure and get back to the most rewarding things in life that need little or no money and can be enjoyed with little more than time and effort alone.
I am one of the fortunate few, I know, for whom the divide between work and leisure is hard to define because I am paid to do what I would chose to do if given the leisure time to do it
But I see a lot of logic in your analysis
With regard to UBI, it seems that Howard Reed has been busy;
http://www.compassonline.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/UniversalBasicIncomeByCompass-Spreads.pdf
Also here is a thoughtful first reaction from Prof Paul Spicker:
http://wp.me/p6x0MC-1eG
I’ve had a quick glance at the report. The table on page 8 representing the two schemes gives payments of £61 for adults over 25 and £71. I assume this is IN CONJUNTION with the present ‘applicable amount’ of £73.10 making a UBI of £134.10 and £144.10 respectively.
Not sure why Howard and Stuart haven’t just included the ‘applicable amount’ and given the above figures. But I only had a quick glance so may well have missed the reasoning.
Another interesting reflection on the risks of UBI increasingly loneliness and isolation https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/max-harris/will-universal-basic-income-make-us-lonely#
‘Secondly, the Universal Basic Income is a public investment without accompanying public infrastructure to underscore the value of community. ‘
That’s a good point. I think we need to make sure their is access to learning and creative facilities. Not sure the RSA ‘public contribution contract’ is a good idea-sounds like Blairspeak to me.
That’s the RSA
increasing!