Abstract
An unprecedented wave of innovation is sweeping through the world of work. There are different views on how to deal with it. According to the most optimistic one, technological innovation—as it has happened throughout history—will open new cycles of development with positive consequences on employment. In the more pessimistic view, human labour will be largely replaced by machines. In the first case, the main challenge is to manage the transition. The second scenario is more complex and several alternative paths emerge. Setting aside the Luddite choice of stopping the rise of machines, some believe it is inevitable (even desirable) to delegate work to robots and increase free time for humans. At the other extreme, others argue that the state should guarantee everyone an occupation. There is a third path: accepting the challenge of an intelligent coexistence between humans and machines, harnessing technological innovations to improve workers’ performance. The idea is that humans can create more value by interacting with machines than by working without technology or by letting machines operate on their own. In this scenario, technology allows workers to focus on those tasks within each profession that generate added value, usually based on skills that are difficult to mechanize such as empathy, creativity, decision-making and interaction. The way forward is tortuous but still depends largely on humans and their choices.
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Notes
- 1.
In some cases, such as AI or driverless cars, the diffusion of technology could be slowed down by the complexity of ethical choices.
- 2.
The Greeks were the first to celebrate idleness (scholé), which was considered a gift of the gods and was associated to freedom because idleness is possible only if one does not depend on others. Work, on the other hand, was despised and linked to servile conditions. In Plato (Republic) the primacy of contemplation over work—which is considered a forced and unworthy activity for a free man—is evident. For Aristotle (Politics) “we need idleness”—and not work—“to develop virtues and political activities”. Similarly, for the Romans otium was the time free from negotia (public affairs), and it was dedicated to domestic care or studies (school).
- 3.
Universal basic income (UBI) is sometimes also referred to as unconditional basic income or citizen’s basic income. Experiments have been made at the local level in various countries, including Finland, The Netherlands, South Korea, Namibia, Kenya, Ukraine and India.
- 4.
One of the first ideas of universal basic income emerged in Agrarian Justice (1795) by Thomas Paine, one of the founding fathers of the United States of America. Faced with rampant poverty in France, Paine proposed a land tax to establish a fund that would provide all citizens with a substantial sum upon reaching the age of majority, followed by an annual payment from age fifty.
- 5.
In practice, a universal basic income experiment conducted by the Finnish government in 2017–2018 did not show a significant increase in incentives among beneficiaries to seek new employment.
- 6.
In 1932, Senator Hugo Black (a Democrat representing Alabama) introduced the Thirty-Hour Work Week Bill—drafted by the American Federation of Labor with the expectation of creating 6 million jobs—to “prohibit, in interstate or foreign commerce, all goods produced by establishments where workers were employed more than five days a week or six hours a day”. On 6 April 1933 the Senate passed the bill by a vote of 53–30. However, the bill remained in the House of Representatives committees for five years and when the Fair Labor Standard Act became law in 1938, the thirty-hour work week provision was not included.
- 7.
In the 1970s Giovanni Agnelli’s grandson—often referred to as “Avvocato Gianni Agnelli”—was the Chairman of Fiat and as president of Confindustria (the main association representing manufacturing and service companies in Italy) defended similar arguments to those of his grandfather.
- 8.
As a young journalist at the end of the nineteenth century, Einaudi had followed the struggles of the Biella wool workers for the reduction of the working time (from sixteen to ten hours a day!) and in his reports he pointed out the risk that diminishing the working time could make companies of the Italian district less competitive than their foreign competitors, causing a capital flight.
- 9.
As labour economist Pietro Ichino (1996) well summarizes in his Il lavoro e il mercato (Work and the Market), “in the vast majority of cases the unemployed suffer from a position of disadvantage in the labour market, compared to those already employed, which the reduction in maximum working hours is certainly not enough to eliminate”. At the opposite extreme, workers with greater abilities, faced with the cut in working hours, generally do not accept the reduction in income and pursue more overtime, second jobs, or the start of self-employment activities.
- 10.
The title of the book—that can be literally translated in “work for free, work for all”—well summarizes the author’s proposal.
- 11.
In Performing Arts. The Economic Dilemma (1966), the American economist explains the “cost disease”—also known as “Baumol effect”—using metaphors from the live performing arts: Puccini's Turandot cannot be staged with less than ten singers, a Vivaldi quartet cannot be performed live without at least four musicians and in less than an hour and a quarter. In some cases, replacing people with technology does not increase productivity but it rather decreases the quality of the result.
- 12.
It is important to distinguish between guaranteed minimum income (GMI) and guaranteed minimum wage. The former is a form of welfare, independent of the existence of an employment relationship; the latter is the minimum remuneration—on an hourly, daily or monthly basis—that the employer must pay to employees by law.
- 13.
The idea of a negative income tax was originally proposed by Juliet Rhys-Williams, a British writer and Liberal Party politician, in a government report (the Beveridge Report 1942) but it was popularized by Milton Friedman in the 1960s.
- 14.
In recent years the dividend distributed in Alaska (750 thousand residents) has been between $1,000 and $2,000 per capita, including children; in Macau (650 thousand people) $1,200 per capita ($700 for non-permanent residents).
- 15.
Intellectual monopoly rights (such as copyrights, patents and trademarks) would also contribute to the fund in order to socialize some of the intellectual property.
- 16.
OTT are companies that sell products (such as Amazon and Alibaba), content and services (such as Netflix and Apple through Apple TV and iTunes) or advertising space (such as Google, Facebook and Twitter) over the Internet.
- 17.
In addition to issues of tax fairness and free competition, the digital economy raises concerns regarding privacy, copyright protection and, ultimately, the proper functioning of democracy.
- 18.
The reference is to two ongoing initiatives: AEOI (Automatic Exchange of Information), an exchange of financial information between tax authorities concerning non-resident citizens to reduce international tax evasion, and BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting), a package of measures to combat tax avoidance by international groups.
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Magnani, M. (2022). Many Proposals, Few Resources: Difficult Choices for the Future of Labour. In: Making the Global Economy Work for Everyone. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92084-5_6
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