- In the future,
will you draw a salary just for being you?
(air whooshing)
(techno music)
Here at Forward Thinking,
we've taken a look at some pretty disruptive technologies,
like 3D printing, artificial intelligence, automation,
all of these have the potential to revolutionize our world,
but revolutions aren't always smooth
and painless. (plane whooshing)
One of the big questions we have to answer is,
how will we make money in a future
where more and more of our jobs
are taken over by the cold, unfeeling robotic hands
of automated machinery?
In a previous episode of Forward Thinking,
we talked about a future
where there is no such thing as money,
it was the Star Trek economy.
But if we're to get there,
there's going to be some major changes
that'll have to happen,
and between now and then,
one of those changes might be a guaranteed basic income.
Now the concept is pretty simple,
a government will guarantee a certain amount of money
to every eligible citizen.
And generally speaking
it tends to be the amount of money
that's around the poverty line for that country.
The idea being that all of your basic needs
like shelter, food, clothing,
would be met by this basic amount of money,
and anything else you would want,
you would have to go out and earn.
This could be a huge help
to people who are living below the poverty line.
I think you can imagine that if you're homeless,
it's very hard for you to get back on your feet
if you don't know where you're going
to be spending the night tonight.
Imagine having just enough money
so that you can cover those basic needs,
that could give you the ability to go out
and seek more work,
and in fact studies have bared this out.
A study out of MIT and Harvard
showed that giving money to people in impoverished nations
in no way discouraged them from seeking out more work.
So the fear
that this would somehow create
an entire population of lazy people
seems to be unfounded.
Other studies have shown
that giving people money instead of money substitutes
like food vouchers
gives those people a sense of dignity and empowerment,
so they do continue to try
and seek out jobs or more education,
and it frees you up to pursue other things,
like passion projects. (typewriter typing)
In fact, a lot of technology enthusiasts
envision a world with a guaranteed basic income
that leads to an era of unprecedented innovation.
But we have some big questions,
the biggest being, will it work?
Another being, how do you pay for it?
How do you administer it?
How do you make sure that the eligible people
are actually getting the money they need?
And the answer is, we don't know.
Because we haven't really tested it out yet.
But, in the next year or so,
several different regions
are going to be launching pilot programs
to explore the possibility of basic income.
They include Canada, Finland,
Switzerland is having a referendum on the subject,
and a non-profit organization
is looking to provide 6,000 Kenyans with basic income
for between 10 and 15 years.
This could be a long term experiment,
to see what the ultimate impact is.
And we have to keep in mind that
even if basic income works in these pilot programs,
it might not work everywhere.
But, we'll never know until we try.
And the truth of the matter is,
we still have to think about this question,
because like it or not,
one day automation is really going to displace
a lot of people from the job market.
So that leads me to a question for you guys this week.
How would you address the problem of poverty in the future?
I wanna hear your most forward thinking ideas
in the comments below.
Thanks to Toyota for sponsoring this show
and making it possible.
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(techno music)
(air whooshing)