Labor Day[note] may as well be called No Labor Day or No Work Day, as we celebrate it by not working. We glorify labor, extol its value, and cherish its fruits. And yet we have labored steadily less in the past few hundred years. People used to work from sunrise to sundown almost every day throughout a year and still occasionally suffered from hunger or even famine. But technology has improved. People have worked less and lived better. In the second decade of the 21st century, even the number of people needed to work for the benefit of all the people has sharply dropped. We celebrate this progress as if humanity has finally crossed the threshold of work that meets the demand for sustainable existence.
Except that humans are unhappy again, with the too-good-to-be-beneficial advancement of science and technology. With high efficiency and productivity but with not much more people than in history, some people are bound to be idle, not producing wealth for the nation. Unemployment is a great achievement of sophisticated civilization, and at the same time is a bane to the people affected. What should a moral, responsible, civilized society do to those unemployed people who are largely not needed to produce wealth?
When Andrew Yang ran for US president, he argued that America’s decline of manufacturing industry and loss of jobs was primarily due to automation, not, for instance, unfair trade relations with other countries. His solution was Universal Basic Income (UBI). At that time I didn’t give much thought to it. Now it seems to be a logical corollary from the realization that high productivity by minimum human labor inevitably leads to surplus workers, given relatively unchanged population. To achieve maximum happiness for the people in the country, a sufficiently wealthy nation ought to distribute wealth to all the people in the country. To achieve maximum fairness with the least controversy, UBI may be the best choice. Allocation of a fixed amount to a rich person makes little difference to his life. But that same amount to a poor man greatly raises his standard of living, with desired collateral consequences such as less property crimes, higher social stability, among others.
I frequently travel to Kuwait (for personal reasons), a small oil rich country at the corner of the Arabian peninsula. Kuwaitis appear to live a happier life than Americans and yet work much less. Some people simply do not have a stable job. While there is no UBI per se, significant government subsidies on energy and other essential goods and social welfare make life so easy that even without a stable job, you can live a life almost considered luxurious by the standard of a large part of the world. The country is extremely safe (maybe not due to car accidents, I’m not sure). Burglary or robbery is unheard-of. No shooting deaths. No DUI (DWI). It would definitely not be so without extensive aid to the people from the government. If America cares enough about its own people, UBI is the solution. Critics may say, Why should people who work share the wealth they created with those who do not? The answer is the same as that to the question Why is tax payers’ money used to build highways a poor citizen not paying taxes can also drive on? Poor people need money, rich people need safety. UBI is one stone to kill two birds.
Having said that, we shouldn’t celebrate unemployment with no regard to its cause. Misalignment of business needs and job candidates’ skill sets is one true problem among others. But no matter how much we optimize the management of this issue, high productivity, now aided by AI, will increasingly be a factor contributing to surplus man power or unemployment, and UBI is one of the most important solutions that are both humane and responsible.
Happy No Labor Day!
[note] For those not in the US, Labor Day, September 1 for this year, “is a federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the first Monday of September to honor and recognize the American labor movement and the works and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements in the United States.” (Wikipedia)
August 2025
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