QoL trumps SoL

Anyone reading the business press nowadays would think the great panacea for productivity improvement – AI – the GPT (General Purpose Technology) to beat all others  – had not only emerged but was already a raging success.

Yet productivity growth, as defined, is sclerotic in most developed nations  and abysmal in most others.

Readers will know we believe GDP and so productivity growth rates in G7/ G20 and other ‘developed’ nations may not ever return to past burgeoning days. In our view, their economies combine two ways of living – materialism and mentalism:

• Materialism – Most of their populations already have most of the material stuff they need for an acceptable SoL (Standard of Living) – any new stuff on offer usually does the job needed better and cheaper than before thanks to creativity and productivity – so their GDP output is likely to stay flat, being more and more to meet home demand for merely replacing, not adding to, their material needs – hence the need to increase exports if national profits, pay levels and tax-take are also to increase significantly.
• Mentalism – With WFH (Working From Home) reducing hours in the office and now AI reducing time-consuming drudge work across the board, more and more people will have more time for more mental well-being – more leisure and pleasure i.e. a better QoL (Quality of Life) – already, many have given up chasing more and more money or power and seek to get much more out of their own lives.

Hence our concern when we note our leaders and best all seemingly focussed on partial SoL measures when, at the same time, they appear to have no QoL measures.

The days of the god materialism may be reluctantly subsiding whilst emerging mentalism has the potential for exponential growth worldwide.

Hence we were delighted to read an article by Mariano Torras of basicIncome.org and published by the UN Chronicle which chimed well with our musing.

Extracts follow – see what you think.

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• Nobody questions ─ or should question ─ the goal of economic productivity.
• Yet, when we emphasise productivity without a clear end goal, we run into complications.
• We never desire productivity for its own sake – it is always an instrument to help us meet social goals.
• What, then, are (or ought to be) our goals?
• For too long, economics has equated productivity gains with growth in income or gross domestic product.
• It is increasingly evident, however, that such a perspective is at best limiting and at worst harmful.
• Our social goals should not amount to material comfort on its own, rather the satisfactions it affords:
  • Freedom, dignity, pleasures, diversions, new challenges.
  • These are but a few of the constituents in our “quality of life”.
• Now it is undoubtedly the case that gross domestic product growth is vital for most countries in the global South.
• To the extent that income enables people to meet their fundamental survival needs and to enhance their life capabilities, its importance cannot be overstated.
• Yet it is more reason to institute a modest UBI (Universal Basic Income) even in the poorest countries, if nothing else as a means of keeping populations out of precarity (precarious living I assume).
• Unwarranted emphasis on income is of far greater import in the case of countries in the global North.
• Here, most people have met or exceeded the basic requirements for a dignified life; many, indeed, did so long ago.
• There has never been any question that, beyond a certain income level, we all encounter what economists call a “diminishing marginal utility of income”. The more money we earn, in other words, the less it matters in relation to our time ─ the time available to engage with family and friends, take up hobbies or engage in creative pursuits.
• Unfortunately, our Western culture of work and productivity rails against such a view.
• Consumerism has individuals in the global North continually striving for more – and our penchant for hard work naturally makes many of us recoil at the suggestion of a UBI, since it could signify “rewarding” those who do not work.
• Such a view is seriously misguided.
• A materially comfortable existence is, in many cases, not worth the trade-offs it entails.
• As the late David Graeber noted in his research on paid office work, employment in industrialised countries is increasingly soul-consuming, with a growing number of professionals questioning their own contribution to society.
• Graeber encourages us to think, in contrast, of the legions of artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers or even competitive athletes who would gladly accept the near poverty-level wages implied by UBI so that they might devote their lives to their passion.
• Liberating creative individuals in such a way would surely produce positive externalities for society ─ something easy to miss, unfortunately, as we continue to privilege quantitative values over more meaningful, albeit less tangible, benefits.
• Employing UBI to help us escape the consumerist treadmill would likely produce other indirect benefits.
• Substitution of intangible social achievements for material consumption would most likely, for example, be associated with responsible consumption and production, potentially helping the world achieve its goal of reducing the most adverse effects of climate change.
• In addition to promoting well-being, the increased leisure time that would result from a UBI could lead to more innovation as people would have more time to pursue diverse and creative interests instead of languishing in an office.
• Objections on financial or budget grounds must, however, be taken more seriously. Granting everyone an unconditional stipend, however modest, would surely be extraordinarily expensive. It is, indeed, difficult to envisage such a scheme in the absence of substantial tax increases.
• But such a policy shift is warranted in today’s world.
• Inequality, both within and across countries, has arguably reached intolerable extremes.
• There is no question that the world’s wealthiest people could finance much of the shift to a UBI.
• The fact that it would be “universal” ─ i.e. everyone would receive the stipend ─ could help make the idea more politically palatable.
• As John Maynard Keynes presaged almost a century ago in his essay, “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren”, the truth is that, at least in a simple technological sense, the global North has largely “solved” its  economic problem. Yet technology is, always has been, and will continue to be neutral. Even if humanity possesses sufficient specialised knowledge to liberate itself, a gravely and persistently unequal social structure continues to hamper all the world’s countries.
• What can be done?
• A new model that more evenly balances quantifiable “productivity” and intangible “quality of life” is as indispensable as it is overdue.
• As even luminaries such as John Stuart Mill long ago suggested, the global North at least ought to privilege leisure and quality of life over the drudgery undertaken to pursue a material living standard.