If the poor are revolting, find out the reason why

Following up on yesterday’s blog, is there a solution to the social inequality debate?

Well, there are many that have been tried, but they were all fatally flawed.

Communism led to dictatorships and autocracies; taxing the rich to give to the poor sounds good in theory, but fails in practice (just look at the number of millionaires leaving Britain since Labour gained power); it’s not increase state benefits, as that just attracts the unwanted, which is a large part of the reason Britain is suffering from a huge migrant population crisis; and it is not a Universal Basic Income, or UBI for short.

On this last point, many governments have experimented with the idea with Finland, Kenya and even the USA in Alaska, trying out such schemes. The results are variable. On the positive side, UBI reduces poverty, improves health and education, and provides greater financial security, allowing people to seek better jobs or start businesses. Negatively, funding a meaningful UBI is extremely expensive, and there is no consensus on how to fund it, with debates over replacing existing welfare systems or adding new taxes. Others believe that a guaranteed income might reduce the motivation to work, impacting economic growth.

Overall, opinion is divided and even the leading-edge countries like Finland have found their trials failed. Finland's UBI trial (2017-2018) showed mixed results: it significantly improved participants' mental well-being, happiness, and confidence but did not significantly increase employment when the whole point was to get more people into work.

So, what is the solution?

UBI is the closest we have right now but, going back to inequality, the answer is not to tax the rich or make everyone equal. I just finished reading my children Animal Farm by George Orwell, and you and I know we are all equal … just that some are more equal than others.

The answer has to be coming back to basic human rights: food, shelter, health, education and work.  Human rights go further than this. The rights not to be abused or tortured; the rights to have freedom of speech; the rights to be respected; the rights to life, liberty, equality and dignity.

It would be interesting from a government perspective to work out how you can provide these basic human rights through a funding system that does not involve punishing the rich to give to the poor, which then raises the funding question once more.

Well, how about this?

In the next decades, millions of people will lose their jobs to machines. Machines that are both physical and digital, powered by AI. Self-driving cars and trucks put all the human drivers out of business; AI agents put all the call centre agents out of work; accountants, compliance managers and most back-office staff in banks are no longer needed as all they are doing is box-ticking and button-pushing.

The solution therefore is for all countries to consider something unimaginable. For all those companies that operate in their countries to tax the robots to give the core human rights of shelter, education, health and security to every human being.

Tax the robots and let everyone be free.

Just my thought for the day.