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Should Everyone Get a Basic Income?

Should Everyone Get a Basic Income?

In 1776, Tom Paine helped to start a revolution with Common Sense. Twenty-one years later he took the next step with a basic income proposal. His reasoning? Because everyone owned the earth in its natural state, we are all due its bounty.

Where are we going? To current opinion of the guaranteed basic income. Switzerland

Perhaps the one economic idea that appeals to the left and the right, a guaranteed basic income helps the poor and decreases government intervention. But still, voters in Switzerland rejected it.The Swiss proposal included a monthly basic income of 2500 Swiss francs (close to $2560) […]

India considering universal basic income to fight poverty

India considering universal basic income to fight poverty

Residents walk in an alley in Dharavi, one of Asia’s largest slums, in Mumbai. The world’s second most populous country is considering cash handouts to people in an effort to eliminate poverty. India’s initiative comes in the middle of a cash crisis caused by the government’s crackdown on "black money."

The Ministry of Finance said it could replace the country’s welfare programs with the so-called ‘universal basic income’ which guarantees everyone enough money to cover their basic needs.

The "radical option" of universal basic income "may simply be the fastest way of reducing poverty," said the ministry. The assistance program will […]

AI could eliminate 250,000 public sector jobs within 15 years

AI could eliminate 250,000 public sector jobs within 15 years

We keep hearing about how robots or AI are set to replace humans in employment roles as we move into the next decade, and another claim has popped up on this front, predicting that almost 250,000 jobs in the public sector will get this treatment.

According to Reform, a think-tank organisation, over the next 15 or so years a massive amount of admin staff could be replaced by switching over to websites and AI chat bots (of the sort which have become much talked about over the last year or so – for example with Skype ).

The prediction for the […]

AI could eliminate 250,000 public sector jobs within 15 years

AI could eliminate 250,000 public sector jobs within 15 years

We keep hearing about how robots or AI are set to replace humans in employment roles as we move into the next decade, and another claim has popped up on this front, predicting that almost 250,000 jobs in the public sector will get this treatment.

According to Reform, a think-tank organisation, over the next 15 or so years a massive amount of admin staff could be replaced by switching over to websites and AI chat bots (of the sort which have become much talked about over the last year or so – for example with Skype ).

The prediction for the […]

Automation’s Positive Effect: 90% Automation In Chinese Factory Results In 250% More Output, 80% Reduction In Defects

Automation’s Positive Effect: 90% Automation In Chinese Factory Results In 250% More Output, 80% Reduction In Defects

One of the first lessons which a business learns via hard way is that it exists for one sole purpose: making profits. A hardcore business is different from a social service, and providing employment is not it’s main objective of creation, but a means to achieve its business goals.

If automation leads to more productivity, reduction in errors, then is there any real reason for opposing it, even if it means a reduction in employment? A recent case study from a Chinese factory forces us to ask this question, in a hard way. Automation’s Positive Side-Effect in A Chinese Factory

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Universal Basic Income: The Master Plan to Destroy Social Welfare in India

Universal Basic Income: The Master Plan to Destroy Social Welfare in India

The Economic Survey 2016-17 , released by the Union Finance Ministry of India has proposed a Universal Basic Income or UBI for 75% of India’s population. This income will amount to 7620 Rupees per year or INR 635 per month which the government will deposit into people’s bank accounts directly. This plan will require the government to spend something around 4.9% of India’s GDP and this money according to the Economic Survey will come from abolishing all the welfare schemes and subsidies that we Indians currently get from our government which amounts to 5.2% of the GDP. [i]

Yes, […]

Robots taking over jobs: Underwriters most at risk

Robots taking over jobs: Underwriters most at risk

Japanese insurer replacing its staff with artificial intelligence If the news of a has made you think of job security, then these new research findings might also shake you up.

Oxford University director Carl Frey, the author of a 2013 study on the impact of automation on future employment, has followed up his work by analysing which middle-class jobs are most likely to be taken over by robots.

Frey looked at office jobs that pay more than £40,000 and made a list of occupations that are most likely to disappear due to the threat of automation.“While low-skilled jobs are most exposed […]

The inevitability of a universal basic income as society automates

The inevitability of a universal basic income as society automates

I have posted before on the idea of a universal basic income which is looking to become more of a political reality all the time as politicians along with related think tanks around the world work together to consider what the consequences of such an income would mean on society. Since putting that post up there has been increasing news of different countries experimenting with the idea of a basic universal income. There was an excellent discussion also done in Basic Income: Prospects for a Radical Idea in a Transforming Welfare State for the country of Japan that highlighted […]

India weighs up the return on cash handouts for the poorest

India weighs up the return on cash handouts for the poorest

“No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come,” the former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh famously said in 1991, alluding to Victor Hugo, as he announced the market reforms that are credited with improving the lives of hundreds of millions of Indians.

Last week, India’s chief economic adviser used the same language to laud a policy that promises to shrink poverty rates even further.

A universal basic income (UBI) – in its simplest form, the idea of paying every citizen a no-strings wage – was also “an idea whose time has come”, said Arvind Subramanian. Although in […]

Opinion: Canada’s economy can thrive in automated future

Opinion: Canada's economy can thrive in automated future

World Economic Forum founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab: The consequences of job automation were a reoccurring theme. In 2017, the United States government will attempt to revive industrial jobs from the 20th century — and we in Canada might be tempted to follow suit.

Employment in manufacturing and resource extraction continues to decline even though a majority of the companies in the Toronto Stock Exchange Composite Index still belong to those sectors.

Yes, it’s frustrating that these companies represent so much of Canada’s economic value yet employ fewer and fewer people. But no, they cannot revive jobs that technology is […]