Social Interaction, Envy, and the Basic Income: Do Remedies to Technological Unemployment Reduce Well-being?

IF 1.6 Q3 ECONOMICS

Basic Income Studies Pub Date : 2022-02-21 DOI:10.1515/bis-2020-0001

Fabio D’Orlando

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引用次数: 2

Abstract

Abstract The present article aims to utilize some insights from behavioral and happiness economics to discuss the consequences that the introduction of an unconditional basic income to cope with technological unemployment may hold for well-being. The impact of 21st-century technological progress on employment has only just begun to make itself felt and it will take time to realize its full extent. However, the main innovation is already common knowledge: robots (and artificial intelligence) are finding their way into the production process. According to several recent (although controversial) contributions, the phenomenon is radically different from past technological revolutions and could generate high levels of unemployment, calling for innovative redistributive public policies. The present article, building on Keynes’ (1930) short essay (“Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren”) and referring to some of the principles and models of behavioral and happiness economics, focuses on the best-known of these policies, namely provision of an unconditional basic income. A series of factors – loss aversion and hedonic adaptation, the impossibility of escalating to higher-grade consumption behaviors, social interaction in the form of active and passive envy, loss of self-esteem and social stigma – are all likely to have a negative impact on well-being if an unconditional basic income that remains unchanging over time is implemented. A policy mix combining a rising basic income with other measures is therefore proposed.

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社会互动、嫉妒与基本收入:对技术失业的补救措施会降低幸福感吗?

本文旨在利用行为经济学和幸福经济学的一些见解来讨论引入无条件基本收入以应对技术性失业可能对福祉产生的影响。21世纪的技术进步对就业的影响才刚刚开始显现，要充分认识到它的影响还需要时间。然而，主要的创新已经是常识:机器人(和人工智能)正在进入生产过程。根据最近的一些(尽管有争议的)贡献，这种现象与过去的技术革命截然不同，可能导致高失业率，需要创新的再分配公共政策。本文以凯恩斯(1930)的短文(“我们子孙的经济可能性”)为基础，参考行为经济学和幸福经济学的一些原则和模型，重点关注这些政策中最著名的，即无条件基本收入的提供。如果无条件的基本收入长期保持不变，那么一系列因素——损失厌恶和享乐适应、升级到更高等级消费行为的不可能性、主动和被动嫉妒形式的社会互动、自尊的丧失和社会耻辱——都可能对幸福感产生负面影响。因此，提出了将提高基本收入与其他措施相结合的政策组合。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Basic Income Studies ECONOMICS-

CiteScore

2.40

自引率

18.20%

发文量

期刊介绍： Basic income is a universal income grant available to every citizen without means test or work requirement. Academic discussion of basic income and related policies has been growing in the fields of economics, philosophy, political science, sociology, and public policy over the last few decades — with dozens of journal articles published each year, and basic income constituting the subject of more than 30 books in the last 10 years. In addition, the political discussion of basic income has been expanding through social organizations, NGOs and other advocacy groups. Internationally, recent years have witnessed the endorsement of basic income by grassroots movements as well as government officials in developing countries such as Brazil or South-Africa. As the community of people working on this issue has been expanding all over the world, incorporating grassroots activists, high profile academics — including several Nobel Prize winners in economics — and policymakers, the amount of high quality research on this topic has increased considerably. In the light of such extensive scholarship on this topic, the need to coordinate research efforts through a journal specifically devoted to basic income and cognate policies became pressing. Basic Income Studies (BIS) is the first academic journal to focus specifically on basic income and cognate policies.