Prof. Katharina Nieswandt on Automation, Income and Merit at Fillosophie

Prof. Katharina Nieswandt will present a lecture on "Automation, Income and Merit" at UQAM, hosted by Fillosophie on April 12, 2019.

Abstract: A recent wave of academic and popular publications say that utopia is within reach: Automation will progress to such an extent and include so many high-skill tasks that much human work will soon become superfluous. Some of the prospective gains from the highly automated economy, authors suggest, could be used to fund a universal basic income (UBI). Today's workers would live off the robots' products and spend their days on intrinsically valuable pursuits. I raise two questions regarding this prediction, and I answer both in the negative: (1) Is an increase in automation likely to cause a permanent decrease in the overall number of jobs or work hours and, thus, likely to create the need for UBI? (2) If such a decrease were to occur, would life on UBI in the automated economy be fundamentally different and better than life today? My answers will also provide a rough overview of theories about how income effectively is allocated and how it should be allocated (normatively).

The lecture will take place Friday, April 12, from 1 to 3 p.m. in W-5215 at UQAM, located at 455 Boulevard René-Lévesque Est.

For more information, visit the Facebook event.