The University of British Columbia’s Henry Siu studies robots and the workplace.

The labour economist is one of many growing uneasy about what will happen to millions of jobs with the rise of warehouse robots, checkout screens, fast-food delivery gadgets, flying drones, driverless cars and ultrasophisticated professional software.

A great deal of work that requires repetitive tasks — including blue-collar jobs in manufacturing plants and white-collar work in sales, service and administration — is increasingly being taken over by machines, Siu says.

The trend may only get worse in the next recession, which is when Siu says desperate employers usually take the plunge and replace workers with various forms of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Men are proving more vulnerable than women to automation, Siu says. So are people in their twenties. Disturbing futuristic scenarios have been outlined in books such as Martin Ford’s The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future.

While economists disagree over whether computerization will put most people in the West out of full-time work, the possibility has some imagining the ways humans, and governments, could structure a society in which a relative few prosper from the marvels of technology while the rest struggle.

Before looking at scenarios for how most humans could survive financially, and possibly flourish, in a robot-dominated future — with Canada offering possible signs of leadership — it’s worth going over the evidence for whether a workplace revolution is underway.

Even though the globalization of wealth and labour has led to the loss of bargaining power for many workers in past decades, University of Chicago researcher Loukas Karabarbounis has estimated almost half of the decline in U.S. economic output based on wages is a result of workers being replaced with technology and software.

University of Oxford researchers, in addition, predict machines might be able to perform half of all U.S. jobs in the next two decades.

Another sign of the times: In the 1960s the most valuable company in the U.S. was the telecommunications giant, AT&T. It employed 758,000 people. Now the world’s largest telecommunications company, Google, is worth far more in today’s dollars, but only employees 55,000 people.

Few are immune; even non-routine jobs are under threat. Some U.S. firms are attempting to replace psychologists — and journalists — with computer programs.

In the past, except for people like Jeremy Rifkin, who in 1995 wrote The End of Work, few were offering warnings about what could be coming. But the robotic era is now being studied by mainstream economists, plus specialty publications such as The MIT Technology Review and a few thought-provoking journals, like The Atlantic.

“The end of labour is to gain leisure.” — Aristotle

What would a future with limited jobs look and feel like?

Initial signs indicate a society with less work would not be promising — since studies show many jobless spend most of their time sleeping or watching TV.

A loss of status is associated with a loss of work, especially in the U.S. and Canada where it remains a badge of honour to talk about how “busy” one is.

Studies show even those who like to complain about repetitive work feel isolated and anxious without it. The psychological downsides of not working, research shows, tend to be more devastating for males, who are even more likely to link self-pride with bringing home the bacon.

Europeans have already adjusted, in part, to a reduced need for workers. Since the booming 1950s, Europeans have been working substantially fewer hours, often developing meaningful leisure activities. But Americans and Canadians are putting in almost as many hours on the job as their parents were 60 years ago.

A recent Atlantic article outlines some options for a North American future with less work.

One hopeful scenario includes the rise of an artisan culture. Even though jobs in a robot-dominated future would be more unreliable and episodic, they could be more socially meaningful, focusing on self-expression.

And entertainment could be more purposeful. There could be less passive isolation in front of TVs and more connection, interaction and creativity via the Internet and social media.

“There is no substitute for hard work.” — Thomas Edison

But how could such an economy be financed?

With more people earning fewer dollars in a robotic society, and a small portion controlling a great deal of wealth, one response has been suggested by those on both the political left and right.

People from both camps have long advocated for a universal basic income, which goes to anyone who, for any reason, is poor. It’s simple and effective.

With a guaranteed income, even if the government took back a certain percentage of every dollar you earned in the workplace above, say, a minimum $25,000, you would still be financially rewarded for showing initiative by being allowed to earn more.

People from the centre-left support a guaranteed income because they tend to object less to government intervention to redistribute wealth. Supporters of the idea have included Martin Luther King Jr. and high-profile economist Paul Krugman.

But some of the most staunch promoters of a guaranteed income have also been free-market libertarians, including Nobel laureates Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, former U.S. president Richard Nixon, not to mention national Postmedia columnist Andrew Coyne.

The concept comes from deep in history. In the seventh century the first Muslim caliph, Abu Bakr, recommended a universal income. So did Napoleon, American revolutionary Thomas Paine and British philosopher Bertrand Russell. It’s been tried in various forms in Europe and Asia.

And Canadians are among those with a predisposition toward a guaranteed income.

(Note that a guaranteed income is much different from a minimum wage. A minimum “living wage,” an idea supported by Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, puts the onus on employers to pony up. A basic income, in contrast, comes through government distribution and is available to all.)

In Canada, a guaranteed income has been championed by the Social Credit Party, which ruled Alberta and British Columbia for many decades. And the esteemed Canadian economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who advised President John F. Kennedy, also promoted it in 1968, along with 1,200 other economists, in a public document.

The latest Canadian politician to talk up a guaranteed income is Alberta’s new NDP Finance Minister, Joseph Ceci. Even a tax-policy specialist for Vancouver’s free-market Fraser Institute said this year a guaranteed income had “conceptual appeal.”

Indeed, a pilot program, called Mincome, was instituted in Manitoba in the 1970s. It’s now being cited internationally after researcher Evelyn Forget reported in 2011 it led to only a minimal reduction in work effort (mainly by mothers), with improved health and educational outcomes.

Free-market advocates often endorse a guaranteed income because they believe it will reduce the massive public bureaucracies that oversee a host of subsidies and tax credits in regards to disability, health, welfare, investments, pensions, child care, GST, unemployment and more.

And advocates from all political camps believe a basic income would not be a disincentive to the ambitious.

If so many on the right and left can agree on the concept of a basic income, why hasn’t it been more often instituted?

The key answer is that unemployment has not yet reached crisis proportions in most of the West.

But a strong case can be made the need for a universal income could become urgent in a new age dominated by micro-robotics, Artificial Intelligence and ultrasophisticated software — when there really could be much less work to go around.

dtodd@vancouversun.com

Twitter.com/@douglastodd