A Future With Universal Basic Income: Will We “Work” A Few Hours Every Week, While Robots and AI Do All The Work?
“The Future If,” a global community of business leaders, authors and futurists who explore what our future can look like IF certain technologies, ideas, approaches and trends actually happen. The community looks at everything from AI and automation to leadership and management practices to augmented reality and virtual reality, the 4th industrial revolution and everything in between. This article is this week’s discussion topic that is open to member participation. Visit TheFutureIf.com to learn more.
The first thing we need to do is to look at what we mean by saying “a future.” This can mean anything from next year to something 100 years in the future. For this scenario to be possible I think we need to look out at least 20–25 years.
Let’s first look at some trends which might enable this to happen (can you think of others?):
1) Technological progress continues to exceed expectations and evolve rapidly
2) Universal Basic Income pilot projects currently being tested prove to be a great success
3) We are not able to re-skill existing employees at a fast enough pace and are not able to create enough new jobs
Imagine what the world would look like if this scenario actually happened and let’s see if we can answer the following questions:
1) What would you do with all of your spare time?
2) Would this impact income inequality with some people going above and beyond to make more $ even though they don’t need it? (I think of the tv show Incorporated here)
3) Would we all just become slobs sitting on our couches watching TV all day?
4) So many people get meaning and purpose from their jobs, how will this impact that?
5) Would people try to game the system and try to take advantage of it?
Really curious to hear your thoughts, what else would you add? Are there any other scenarios you can think of here? Visit TheFutureIf.com to join this community of 700 business leaders and participate in this discussion.
Jacob Morgan is a best-selling author, speaker, and futurist. His new book, The Employee Experience Advantage (Wiley) analyzes over 250 global organizations to understand how to create a place where people genuinely want to show up to work. Subscribe to his newsletter, visit TheFutureOrganization, or become a member of the new Facebook Community The Future If…and join the discussion.
