Technological Unemployment, Basic Income, and Well-being

Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003309529-1

The problem of technological unemployment, which once loomed large in theoretical debates, has regained importance in recent years with the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the rise of Artificial Intelligence. According to a number of recent contributions,¹ the new wave of technological unemployment, which began to affect the economy at the beginning of the twenty-first century, will be radically different from the old waves. The first wave (1765–1980) corresponds to the First and the Second Industrial Revolutions and mainly relocated workers from one sector to another, while the second wave (1980–present) corresponds to the Third Industrial Revolution and brought wages down for unskilled ...