What is the future of human employment?
Do you enjoy home working, is this the new future for many?
And where do we go from here?
Covid 19 has in my view changed human employment markedly and may be ushering in a step-change in society that has been expected for sometime. In 2009 I worked for a company that was changing hands, prudently I checked the jobs market, I was ok in the end and was able to continue thus.
Even then, I was surprised at how the job market had changed in the last 6 years since I had last been on the job market.
In 2016 a job ended and I spent sometime looking for work. What struck me was that the quality and quantity of work situations on offer had changed for the worse, markedly since 2009.
The DWP was trying to get me to take zero hours crappy retail jobs, the problem was then that 20 retail shops a day were closing and there were far better qualified, newly unemployed retail workers on the jobs market with those skills. With Covid, many businesses that shut are not to reopen, which will have a big hit on those looking for work. We have too many 'niche' consumer actors that provide things we don't actually need, Covid is acting as the Grim Reaper in destroying many of these 'industries.' Fashion, Coffee shops etc. take your pick.
Why the demise of the human worker?
Robotics and automation had taken many jobs since the 1950s, the new human normal is to get transferable skills you can take from job to job that is still true. Preferably skills that a computer can't currently do but you can, things with your hands for example.
In 2016 I asked my MP about Basic Income - the reply was then 'that the government wasn't even considering it'. Step to 2019 and a civil servant 'was looking at it'. Suddenly, someone realised the potential impact of the non-human future of employment and how it would change.
The loss of jobs to machines tends to then create new jobs for humans, but this is now a scenario that is changing in this current industrial revolution. Humans are being bypassed this time, Robots are the future. We are at present just adjuncts of them or maintain them. How long before they achieve that situation where they do not need us?
The Covid 19 factor
Working from home or being paid to just be at home by the state is the recent norm. I see this as being part of the human work future. Many now prefer home working and a form of 'Basic Income Payment' in the form of the furlough scheme was the only answer to unemployment because the risible benefit payment from Universal Credit would possibly have led to anarchy and public disorder ,when people had no money and no jobs.
For those thinking that the Universal Credit payment would be 'enough to tide them over' would have been in for a nasty shock had they had to endure it at the old level of payout. It is a very measly payment even with the bumped-up Covid 19 era increase.
The quiet high street is impacting the real high street trade because the walk-in trade is gone and on-line retail is becoming king. I expected this to happen a while back. In 2016, 15 high street retail shops closed a day and this has largely not reduced.
Back in 2016 I suggested that with employment falling, the state would have to pay a set Basic Income payment amount of say £14k a year to anyone over 16 and not dead, over a strata of say six status conditions - 16, Student, Employed, Unemployed, Pensioner and Disabled. You would transfer from one to another as required. Easy, no nasty DWP rules or sanctions.
This payment would be regardless of being employed or not. The beauty of this is that people would still spend money and the high street would survive because people would be shopping if not working, that is spending in pubs, restaurants, other interests and hobbies areas etc.
So the state would quickly get their money back in a 'money-go-round' situation - in the main, this would have had many aded benefits, the care sector costs for example could have been curtailed because people could look after children and the infirm instead of work if they had a payment instead of jobs if those were lost. It would increase the economy and tax revenues to the government.
People would be less reliant on being wages slaves and be able to start their own ventures, with the benefit of a financial safety net. This was what I saw as stage 2 of human work development. Until this current situation of Covid, which has in some ways accelerated the change to the work environment this seemed a way off.
The Covid 19 work future
The new work normal is likely to be many working from home through choice - this has many benefits : it alleviates overcrowded commuting in high density areas, people may prefer home work, people may prefer not having to encounter stress or idiots at work, we have more time to do things because of less demands from needy people and we have time saved not commuting - maybe 2 plus hours a day to do things with for themselves, the public transport system is not overloaded. And we are calmer.
Plus the big one, you save money not travelling. And that's another bonus, the environment is better for us too - not jetting off to Malaga and other places over Covid, there are more Bees, better air quality and quieter roads. Why fly quarter full airliners to the same place at the same time? Maybe 1 or 2 full ones a day rather than say 10 or 20 underused ones?
Brutally, why is it necessary for 100,000 people to go to a football match for 90 minutes of activity and then travel home? How much environmental damage does that do? I am not a Greeno tree hugger but I do believe in minimising our impact on this planet and this situation should make us rethink our future.
What is the future?
Back in 2016 it was the same level as it is now. We move away from the current work or now historic work situation, to one where we use machines to 'do' for us. We build a society where humans get value from life and expand their own abilities, not slog away at meaningless work just to exist. And wonder at 65 'what was that al about?'
We need to build the sort of utopia that scientists were enthusing over 50 years ago, where machines work for us, we then have time for leisure and personal advancement - otherwise what are we here for, what is our purpose?
Just biological computers that consume the planet's resources, being enticed to buy things we don't need, run up needless credit card debt and ultimately die, presumably wondering if there is an afterlife and 'what the hell was that all about'?
Have we considered the lemming-like lunacy of racing into workplaces everyday, putting up with idiots we detest just to get money to pay for expensive houses and perhaps aspire to lifestyles beyond our means whilst racking up serious debt on credit cards?
The future could be very good, we need to plan it and learn from the mistakes of the present.
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