TY - BOOK
T1 - Inequality in the digital economy
T2 - the case for a universal basic income
AU - White, Andrew
N1 - Andrew White is a Senior Lecturer in Cultural Policy in the Department of Culture, Media & Creative Industries at King’s College London. He has worked for many UK universities, including the University of Nottingham’s China campus where he was a Professor of Creative Industries & Digital Media. He has published his research in the form of journal articles, book chapters, newspaper articles and a single-authored monograph with Palgrave Macmillan in 2014 entitled Digital Media & Society: transforming economics, politics and social practices; a Portuguese translation of this book, Midia Digital e Sociedade, was published in 2016. His previous research on the universal basic income has been published in The Conversation, The Guardian, and in a special journal issue for Ethics & Social Welfare.
PY - 2024/10/22
Y1 - 2024/10/22
N2 - This book will make the case for the introduction of a universal basic income (UBI). The structural logic of the digital economy as presently constituted widens inequality and, through its use of automation for increasingly complex, as well as mundane, tasks, threatens jobs. The book will investigate the extent of this disruption to traditional labour markets and of individual livelihoods, and argue that alternative means of supporting people financially, like UBI, can mitigate the digital economy’s most baleful impacts. The book will also highlight the positive social and environmental benefits that would accrue from the introduction of UBI, as unconditional financial support would reduce workers’ anxiety in insecure labour markets, and the expending of valuable resources would be lessened if energy consumption was determined by society’s needs rather than by the requirements of labour markets tasked primarily with maximising employment. An explanation as to why arguments against its introduction on the grounds of cost and its supposed encouraging of idleness, are, while superficially compelling, ultimately without foundation, will form the centrepiece of the concluding political argument for UBI.
AB - This book will make the case for the introduction of a universal basic income (UBI). The structural logic of the digital economy as presently constituted widens inequality and, through its use of automation for increasingly complex, as well as mundane, tasks, threatens jobs. The book will investigate the extent of this disruption to traditional labour markets and of individual livelihoods, and argue that alternative means of supporting people financially, like UBI, can mitigate the digital economy’s most baleful impacts. The book will also highlight the positive social and environmental benefits that would accrue from the introduction of UBI, as unconditional financial support would reduce workers’ anxiety in insecure labour markets, and the expending of valuable resources would be lessened if energy consumption was determined by society’s needs rather than by the requirements of labour markets tasked primarily with maximising employment. An explanation as to why arguments against its introduction on the grounds of cost and its supposed encouraging of idleness, are, while superficially compelling, ultimately without foundation, will form the centrepiece of the concluding political argument for UBI.
M3 - Book
SN - 9783031697173
SN - 9783031697203
T3 - Palgrave Studies in Digital Inequalities
BT - Inequality in the digital economy
PB - Palgrave Macmillan
ER -
