"Raising the Floor confronts America's biggest economic challenge - the fundamental restructuring of the economy and the emerging disruptive technology that threaten secure jobs and income. Andy Stern convincingly shows why it is time to consider a universal basic income as the nation's twenty-first-century solution to increasing inequality. (...) The sobering assessment that emerged from his research-across the political spectrum, from libertarians at the CATO Institute to the leaders of the progressive left-is that this time is different: there will be meager benefits that come with full-time work and fewer good jobs overall. Facing such a challenging moment, Stern's solution is fittingly bold: to establish a universal basic income by eliminating many current government programs and adding new resources" (daqui)

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"This is not just about drones that deliver goods to our doorsteps or the advent of driverless cars, although these innovations alone could revolutionise haulage and put HGV drivers out of work. The changes will affect blue and white collar jobs alike. When my daughter was born less than a decade ago, I was convinced she’d spend her school years learning to code, but coding is now being done by algorithms. Citibank estimates that a quarter of Wall Street jobs will be done by computers by 2020. Will ambitious parents still be pushing their children towards medical school when AI can diagnose illnesses and robots can dispense drugs? Computers can already screen for some cancers more effectively than human radiologists. That’s good news for all of us — except the radiologists. (...) Predicting the future can make fools of us all, but a politician who doesn’t try to understand where things are headed is guilty of negligence. The stakes are high. Globalisation and the financial crash have created a populist backlash, but these are small social tremors besides what could happen if the robots destroy established jobs and ways of life. To put it bluntly, low paid workers who currently face competition from immigrant workers at home or cheap labour overseas may soon wake up to discover their rivals are machines who don’t need to sleep or take holidays, and will never demand better pay" (aqui)