A universal basic income won’t solve the AI unemployment problem—here’s what will

AI job loss is not happening in a bubble. It’s taking place in an economy thick with structural issues and marked by inequality. AI is poised to destroy good jobs, i.e. high-paying with benefits, which in the US economy are too rare. All of which is to say: The fear of AI can be mitigated if we stop leaving the bottom of the labour market behind.

Not all jobs are created equally. The obvious difference between good and bad jobs is pay. On average, the top 10% of workers earn about $250,000 a year, and the bottom 90% of workers earn about $45,000. That spread is increasing. Today it’s almost 6-to-1; before 1980, it was less than 4-to-1; in 1950, it was 3-to-1.

And the lower the pay, the less likely that the job will offer non-wage benefits. Retirement, health insurance, paid family leave, paid sick days and so on—a lot of employers leave employees to fend for themselves to pay for these benefits. That means workers have less money for housing, utilities, childcare, transportation, eldercare and other necessities.

As if lower pay and no benefits weren’t enough, lower-income households have the added misery of unstable income. According to a survey by the Federal Reserve, among households with less than $25,000 in annual income, 42% reported their income is different each month. Among households with income between $25,000 and $50,000, that figure is 32%.

Falling from an elite position to a non-elite one is a steep drop in security in all three ways—pay, benefits and predictability. That’s enough to make anyone terrified.

Fortunately, there’s a lot that can be done.

Labour standards could be strengthened so that wages are higher and basic benefits like sick days are universal. Laws and regulations that make it difficult to unionize could be repealed and relaxed, and the federal government could return to its practice of supporting the right to organize and fostering sectoral bargaining agreements.

It could also expand access to retirement savings for all workers via government-managed accounts. The US could establish a federal, universal paid family-leave system. It could fund free, universal childcare.

If that made you do a spit-take—so much government, my word!—maybe you can find some comfort in these statistics: There are 34 states or territories with a minimum wage higher than the federal rate, 19 states with mandated paid sick days, 13 states with a public paid leave system, 17 states with public retirement accounts, and seven states aggressively expanding free childcare.

All of these states continue to have economies, including jobs and businesses. None of them, last I checked, has fallen to communism.

And put that drink down—I haven’t even gotten to the part about how every American needs be enrolled in Medicaid by default.

In this context, it is clear that the preferred solution of many leaders of AI companies—to use the wealth windfall from the technology to fund a programme of universal basic income—is both deeply conservative and profoundly inadequate.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI and a proponent of universal basic income, has written that AI will render millions of workers non-employable. His insight: “The obvious conclusion is that the government will just have to give these people money.”

In fact, that conclusion is neither obvious nor correct. It merely perpetuates the underlying assumption that AI will put millions out of work and there’s nothing we can do about it.

We have a choice. Rather than throw money at the disaffected, the US can build an economy that has a place for everybody, that affords all Americans a decent standard of living even if they’ve lost their job. The reality is that AI, and the prospect of mass job loss, exposes weaknesses in our economy. The obvious and correct solution is to fix them. ©Bloomberg

The author is a labour economist and independent policy consultant.