Giving Compass' Take:

· Writing for Vox, Dylan Matthews jumps into the debate surrounding the implementation of a universal basic income program in America and explains that although this idea could help address poverty, it will not help those workers who continue to lose their jobs to automation and advancements in technology.

· How have technological advancements helped productivity in the workforce? What does the author claim is the real automation problem and how does he suggest it is addressed?

· Learn more about the relationship between automation and labor-displacement. 

The October Democratic presidential debate featured something that many activists would have considered impossible just a few years ago: a lengthy debate between leading presidential candidates about a universal basic income, a policy that would give all l adult Americans a basic cash benefit every month.

Andrew Yang, the nonprofit chief and entrepreneur who is currently polling ahead of senators like Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar, has made a $1,000-per-month basic income for everyone between the ages of 18 and 64 — which he calls a “Freedom Dividend” — the centerpiece of his campaign. And in the debate, he clashed with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on a core rationale for the policy: his belief that millions of Americans’ jobs are being automated away and not adequately replaced.

My colleague Alexia Fernández Campbell ran through the points of the dispute in a piece after the debate, but the basics are that Warren (backed by some recent research) argues that trade policy, which economists particularly identify with the normalization of trade relations with China in 2000, led to a swift decline in US manufacturing employment and was a more important force than automation. Yang countered with his standard argument that automation is the more important driving force and will only grow more important with time, noting: “Driving a truck is the most common job in 29 states, 3.5 million truck drivers in this country. My friends are piloting self-driving trucks.”

This is an important disagreement, but one that is likely irresolvable. As economists Teresa Fort, Justin Pierce, and Peter Schott, who have done some of the most cutting-edge work on manufacturing employment decline, write in a recent paper when considering how to divide up responsibility between automation and trade, “We think providing answers to that question is nearly impossible.”

Read the full article about universal basic income by Dylan Matthews at Vox.