Covid 19 and the move to a Basic Income payment system. Is Universal Credit dead?

 

The way we work is changing - 

in the future, less jobs are going to be available....

So, where are we going? A Basic Income system is the answer

Where are we going? Good question. 

Covid 19 is going to cause unemployment, it is also a means for us to re-evaluate what we do for work and how to pay people that won't have a job.

The old unemployment benefit system is out of date, so is education. They are two ends of the same scale, it is criminal to keep pumping out sausage machine style education, for students who may not be qualified for anything in the future.

Sure, they will have a piece of paper, but in a few years, that paper may be worthless in their search for employment.

Automation and robotics are taking jobs, many menial and boring ones. That is as we were told in the 1950's going to free us up for any manner of leisure activities. It is moving us into a new phase of human activity. We must manage and plan it properly.

We as humans waste a lot of time working for other people to profit from our endeavours. Human jobs are being lost at an alarming rate year on year, we see industries automated and fewer humans in the workplace. We see people displaced by age, it is illegal but it happens.

So a new approach to work and social security is required. 

Universal Credit has been less than successful to be polite. To throw another 8 Billion at it is a moment when we need to say 'stop and think.' UC is not the answer. It is not the future we deserve.

We need to move to a Basic Income system, where everyone from age 16 until their demise gets paid by the government. 

Say for sake of argument we pay anyone in this bracket £14k a year. Most of us can get by on that. It is an improvement over the measly £3,500 a year from Universal Credit if you are unemployed. That is if you don't get hit by sanctions which cut your benefit without warning. 

Give people money and they often will spend it, this money goes back to the government as taxes, money spent in businesses that creates wealth, people with a guaranteed income and a financial safety net are able to start new ventures that will enrich their lives and others. It avoids the net loss of Universal Credit where some people may be on it for decades.

Basic Income is what we should be doing, encouraging entrepreneurship and self-starting, not hobbling people into finding work that isn't likely there and not allowing them to train to get a better job which is the current system.

This is complete madness but is how the system currently works. But this is the sort of Kafkaesque 'reality' of the current system which is a shambolic failure and no one has the ability in Government to do anything about it, it seems? Why? It is an obvious failing, if people can get new skills, they might get or create a new career, what's not to like?

Universal Credit if you are unemployed pays out a 'minute' existence allowance of less than £100 a week, it does not help you get back to work, afford to run a car to get to a job, if you can get one in many situations. It helps exacerbate the 'Catch-22' scenario of being unemployed. This helps no one.

As the job market shrinks, a new strata of society opens up for those without a job - this is the means to create work which you can do, maybe as a carer, a helper of people, start a new business venture for example, if a co-ordinated and organised strata is established, people will be able to enrich their lives and of others. It will also benefit the government in financial terms through GDP growth, skills, national wealth and in collected taxes. What isn't to like?

With Basis Income, people can start businesses with a financial safety net, the nation will prosper from this, this is the way forward, it just needs someone to grasp the nettle and boldy do something about it and dump the failing Universal Credit system.

With Covid 19, just asking  people to go back to offices isn't going to do much to re-populate cities.

The government don't get it or are trying to tell us we are better off in offices. No thanks, many of us have seen the light. We don't like the office, many of us prefer home working, a basic income system would allow many of us to do that when the robots have moved in even more than at present and taken more human jobs.

We hate wasting our time travelling to work and paying massively for it, we hate the stupid pratts and the stress of the office, we like working at home, free of this and we have more time to do our own things. Living in a rural location, it has massively reduced my stress levels.

Our human lives could be so much richer, where jobs are lost we can grow our own jobs under this new system. We live in a consumer society that is 'oversubscribed' with things we don't actually need.

We must move forward and embrace the future, not piss about trying to put a sticking plaster on something that is becoming no longer viable, long after this situation is declared over.

Get a job they say... 35% of all jobs will go in the next 20 years

So it goes....

So, you think I am being unrealistic?

The great Norbert Weiner, the father of modern cybernetics knew early on after WW2 that the computer was going to be the one machine that would result in the loss of human jobs.

As early as 1961, General Motors had installed robotic units on the production line, this had the effect of not only taking human jobs but also once the low-skilled worker was replaced by an automated 'fetch and carry' operation, this would knock on to elsewhere in the workplace.

The jobs market is shrinking and more so since the 2009 crash. The 'useless' regarded degrees such as Golf Course Management and the like have created a wash of graduates who will not find work easily.

The future human worker will need transferable skills and skills that a robot finds difficult. A 4 year old child has more dexterity than current robots, what the human can do easily, the robot can't and vice versa.

The modern employer seeks the least cost option, typically employing young, inexperienced and cheap labour. They look to pay the least on offer from a job application advert they post, but it is a false economy.

Having been studying the job market since the 2009 rupture, I have noticed two things, firstly that the 'least cost option' has led to another phenomena, that of the same job coming up about 1-3 months later because the post holder was not the right choice.

The employment agencies acknowledge that the employers want the least cost option, so think about that when you build a CV, how will you conceal your age if you're worried that may be a discriminatory factor?

Another things I notice from reading the job descriptions is the 'job and a half' syndrome, which tends to dovetail with my earlier point. Rather than create a job that is doable and would take one person and create a second part-time job in conjunction with that job, the employer tries to ram a 'job and a half' onto the one person.

This far from solves the job remit situation of employing staff to do a job in a company, what it does is foster mediocrity, with people too busy to really do the job properly, leading to stress and the person either going off on long-term sick leave or quitting.

The creeping tide of cybernation is coming, but it is not all bad news. The US Treasury has run an investigation into social security and they report that a base payment of 10 thousand USD to every person of working age and over would be cheaper than paying social security.

For us, this could be a good thing. The future could be that we buy or lease a robot that works elsewhere on our behalf and we charge the company and get paid for the robot working. Then we can do the worthwhile things we should not being slaves to society!