Is COVID Pushing Us Toward Universal Basic Income? — TECH AND WORK Newsletter #10

I wanted to take a moment to pay tribute to a friend and amazing entrepreneur, Tony Hsieh, who passed away tragically last month. Tony was a true visionary who understood the power of pairing digital platforms with a human touch. His approach to customer service propelled Zappos to exceptional success and continues to define ecommerce to this day. And he was just an incredible person who built a culture of “fun and a little weirdness” wherever he went. He will be dearly missed.

Thought Of The Week — The never-ending stimulus package

The economic downturn during the crisis has made a couple trends apparent. 

First, with unemployment still at worrisome levels, there simply aren’t enough jobs to go around right now. About 10 million more Americans are unemployed now than would typically be. 

Second, massive government stimulus programs can help to sustain individuals (and the larger economy) when jobs are in short supply. While the S&P 500 isn’t a great gauge of conditions on Main Street, the fact is that the index is near a record high, in the midst of a global pandemic. 

This got me thinking: What if economic conditions during Covid aren’t an aberration? What if they’re a sign of things to come? 

We’ll win the fight against the pandemic, of course. And jobs will return. But a bigger threat looms: automation. The verdict is still out on whether AI will add jobs or take them away, but I think it’s a no-brainer to say that certain sectors — from taxi and truck drivers to warehouse workers — stand to suffer serious losses.  

I think we’ll also see reductions in work weeks as technology makes jobs more efficient. Right now, a four-day workweek sounds like a nice idea. But one day, working part-time — with a corresponding reduction in pay — may well become a new norm.  

So what’s the fix? Andrew Yang’s proposal for universal basic income — a $1,000 per month payout to all citizens over the age of 18 in response to job displacement from automation — was widely derided during the 2020 campaign cycle as pie-in-the-sky. But is it really? The stimulus packages deployed around the world during the crisis look an awful lot like UBI, just under a different name. And they’re working. 

Flash poll: Do you think the widespread use of stimulus packages during the crisis will increase support for universal basic income? Click here to vote on LinkedIn. 

I know what you’re saying. Those same stimulus packages are driving unprecedented levels of national debt and aren’t at all sustainable. Agreed — at least in their current form. But that’s where the robot tax comes in.  

AI and smart robots are already enabling extraordinary efficiency gains in sectors as diverse as warehouse fulfillment and accounting, with a corresponding impact on the bottom lines of the companies that use them. (I’d argue it’s no mere coincidence that Amazon deploys more than 200,000 robots in its warehouses … and also happens to be worth more than $1.5 trillion.) 

But those gains inevitably come at the cost of human jobs. That means less tax revenue for governments at the same time that there are more people pushed out of work. That gap needs to be filled. Not to mention, taxing robots also levels the playing field for businesses that still employ people, and have to pay all kinds of taxes for their human workers. 

In short, a robot tax can be a way to make UBI more sustainable, especially as robots grow more commonplace (and jobs less so). This might not be the future we want; but it may be the one we get. And, as the crisis has shown, it needn’t be accompanied by economic disaster, provided we make the right interventions. 

Importantly, this doesn’t mean we’ll all just be sitting at home and collecting government benefits in the future. This crisis has shown that UBI doesn’t have to be — and shouldn’t be — a binary proposition. It’s not a matter of working or getting a stimulus check. It’s about working and using stimulus funds to fill the gaps.    

Articles Worth Skimming

What 1.7 million people say about remote work Since May, I’ve been trying to capture attitudes and predictions about remote work using a tool very close to my heart: social media. I have a community of nearly 2 million passionate professional followers on social media. Every few weeks, I’ve surveyed them using polling features. I’ve summarized the results — some of which are pretty eye-opening — in this article on Medium.

WeWork goes on-demand Another sign of the remote-working times here: WeWork is now embracing a “hot desk” approach to coworking. Through the app, users in select locations can book a desk in a shared workspace for $29 a day or private meeting rooms for as little as $10 an hour, according to Axios. Bigger picture: while WeWork has been hit hard by the crisis, I think it may find an important niche as we move toward a hybrid future of work. Remote teams will need to occasionally converge for in-person meetings. Not to mention individual workers may just need to get out of the house from time to time. 

AI solves an unsolvable problem Protein folding has baffled biologists for half a century. How a protein folds determines what its function will be — and incorrect protein folding is believed to be behind diseases as diverse as cancer and Alzheimer’s. But proteins can fold themselves into a nearly infinite variety of shapes, which made prediction impossible. Until now. DeepMind researchers now claim to have used custom-build neural networks to solve the mystery, as Morning Brew explains. 

Feedback From Readers

I got some great responses to my poll last week asking whether people would support a 5% tax on remote workers in order to offset the economic impacts of empty offices and downtowns. (If you’re curious, 79% of respondents said no, 14% said yes, and 7% said it depends.) I wanted to highlight this comment: 

I think people are naturally social creatures. It's in our DNA. When the pandemic passes people will be back in the office much more than we think. We tend to see our immediate situation and think it will remain. 

— Justin Williams, CEO of Williams and White

This is an important reminder, Justin. It’s so easy to get tunnel vision when it comes to the current crisis and the conditions it’s created. I think we’re all guilty of this to a degree. I’m a big fan of zooming out and taking more of a historical perspective, whether we’re talking technology, society, politics, etc. While the pandemic doesn’t really have a recent historical parallel, it’s hard to argue with the proposition that people are social by nature. With a vaccine on the immediate horizon, the reign of remote work may be limited.  

Dad Joke Of The Week

Why did the cowboy have a weiner dog? … wait for it … 

Someone told him to get a long little doggy. 

Thanks, everyone. Please reach out with any comments, suggestions or feedback, and tell your colleagues to subscribe here. Until next time!