Why we need to plan for a future without jobs

The future of work in America is uncertain. What we know is that things are going to change. Technology will upend countless careers, workers across fields will be displaced, and it’s not entirely clear how many jobs will be replaced.

When driverless trucks are manufactured at scale, which will happen far sooner than many realize (as soon as five years), America’s 3.5 million truck drivers will be dispensable. That doesn’t mean the profession of truck driving will disappear overnight, but it will shrink considerably.

According to Morgan Stanley, autonomous technology will save the freight industry $168 billion annually, nearly half of which will come from staff reductions.

What is true of the freight industry will be true of many others. We will enter what the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson called “an era of technological unemployment,” in which machines render human labor useless and inefficient.

Andy Stern is the former president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which today represents close to 2 million workers in the United States and Canada. He resigned his post in 2010 and accepted a position as a senior fellow at Columbia University’s Richard Paul Richman Center for Business, Law and Public Policy.

For the last year or so, Stern has argued that a universal basic income (UBI) is the best response to the social and economic disruption caused by technological change.

UBI is a form of social security in which citizens receive an unconditional wage from the government. In his new book, Raising the Floor, Stern says a UBI will become essential as automation wreaks havoc on the labor market.

I met Stern last month at the Vox Conversations conference, where he discussed the challenges ahead for workers.

Read more at the full article here: http://www.vox.com/conversations/2016/10/17/13245808/andy-stern-work-universal-basic-income-technology-artificial-intelligence-unions

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