British Cabinet Read this Blog About Universal Income Due to Robots

May 31:  The Need for a Universal Income in America  (Ithaka blog)

June 06:  Rise of robot workers makes powerful case for universal basic income – shadow chancellor (Russia Today)

Labour is mulling the idea of a universal basic income (UBI) in response to the prospective robotization of the workforce, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has said.

Note:  refers to Labour Party in UK which is the analog for US Democrats.

We have no idea what a Shadow Chancellor does as a Cabinet minister (or whatever he is) and we're assuming he isn't just lost on the way to Game of Thrones.

In my original article the rationale behind the need for a universal basic income is for the same reason of increased robotization.  Of people who are willing to consider the idea at all, the impression is one of a long-term problem insofar as it will take forty to fifty years before robotization changes from an unemployment problem to a full-out sociological upheaval because jobs simply don't exist anymore.

We don't agree with that assessment due to the release within the last five to ten days of at least three separate reports of different corporations either in-process of converting to robot workers or will do so in the near-term.  Anything moving that fast is not going to wait forty or fifty years for the big bang since there are multiple good economic reasons for corporations to do it.

Therefore, we strongly believe this is a matter which is as important as climate change to address early for the sake of anticipation and preparation since those most likely are the only ways to mitigate the upheaval which is likely to come from large numbers of workers becoming unemployable due to disappearance of those types of jobs (e.g. Foxconn announced plans to replace sixty thousand of their workers with robots).

Yep, you can read it here first ... or wait a week to see it on the Web pages from the downtown Pros from Dover.