 Was everybody familiar with universal basic income? I'd imagine that's the case, yeah? All familiar? Here, how many people are for the idea of instituting a policy of universal basic income if we did lose 50% of jobs? Raise your hands. Okay, so we'll do that. Say that's about half and half, maybe? What do you think? 50%? I'm sorry. Maybe after the discussion, we can figure that out. For universal basic income. And how many against? How many? So significantly fewer. And how many did anybody abstain? They're going to wait. Yeah, not sure. So the end of the discussion, we'll see if more people think for or against either one. First, I'd like to introduce our panelists. So I have Dr. Hillary Cotton, who's a social entrepreneur from the UK. She's also recently written this excellent book, which I've had the pleasure of reading an early copy called Radical Help. It's about revolutionizing the welfare state. To my right is Governor Lee Jae-myung. He's a former mayor of Songnam City, where he ran a basic income experiment in the city in Korea. He's now the governor of Jangji Province, which is the most populous province in Korea. So thank you for coming. We have John Hawksworth, who's a chief economist, the chief economist at PWC, and has recently authored a very interesting report on AI and jobs in China, which we'll be discussing. And of course, we have Minister Polson. Trolls Lung Polson is the Minister of Employment from Denmark. So it's fantastic to have you guys all here. Welcome. And Hillary, we'd like to start with you. Each panelist is going to have five minutes to explain how they see this discussion going. Hillary, please. OK, so I mean, my perspective is historical, which is that every time we have an industrial revolution, we're on the fourth. Some people say the fifth. We have a huge panic about how jobs are going to disappear. The boys usually is the boys, cry robot, and everybody panics. And actually, this very rarely happens. However, because we're in a what-if scenario, I'm going to take it as read that we are in a what-if scenario and that it is about losing 50% of tasks, I think, and 5% of jobs. And I think what is very different about this fourth industrial revolution is the speed at which things will change and the collective nature of it. And I think that is true. And so I suppose the question is, if roles are going to change, how are we going to manage this transition? Because I think it's certainly true that with the current forms of support that exist in most countries in the world, the transition is going to be bloody at best. It won't work. And we need to reinvent collective forms of support. So I just want to briefly suggest four things that I think we should undertake in this scenario. The first is I think we need to reinvent social and labor institutions quite radically. This is what happened after the Second World War. It's what oiled the wheels of the last industrial production. That we had different financial setups. We had very agile ways of moving. What was then, there was a big panic at that time of agrarian migration to the cities in Europe. And we kind of invented the welfare state to kind of ease that transition. And we need to do the same again, but we need to do it in a much more agile way so that people have passports. They can carry different benefits, different skills. They can have kind of different forms of kind of moving from one job to the other. Because I think the other thing that's going to happen is it's not going to be a once-off job loss. It's going to be a continual process of transition and change that's going to be part of this industrial revolution. So we need to kind of think about continual change. The second thing I think is really important is that we need to emphasise different soft skills. So I think that what's going to matter, what increasingly seems to be the case already, is that it's not so much your hard skills, it's your soft skills. Because even if the work needs hard skills, you can't deploy them without soft skills. By this I mean things like empathy, teamwork. And one of the things I've been doing as a social entrepreneur is I've been inventing a new form of support for people who are out of work, in between work, who can't progress in the modern economy. And what we do is we take apart, we don't ask them what their CV looks like, we take apart their skills and we kind of rearrange it horizontally and we look for those things that are parallel, that can be applied in different ways. And our service costs one-fifth of standard approaches and is extremely successful in supporting people, often older people actually, whose skills are already redundant, but also young people who have got a mismatch and can't start work. And so I think we could kind of build on ideas like that about thinking very differently. The third thing is I think we need to think about relationships. We shouldn't just think economically. Already eight out of 10 jobs are found through who we know in the modern economy. And it looks like already with the changes that are happening that this is only going to increase. And of course people who are at some distance from the labour market usually have the weakest and the less diverse social ties. So we need to think not just about slotting people into this production line of work, which was the old economy, but much kind of more cohesively about this is a big collective problem and how we kind of increase the relationships between people. And then fortunately I want to say that we need to kind of think about data differently. So at the moment with the exception of this rather great PWC report that WEP has commissioned, we've only got backwards looking data. So we keep counting what's missing and it's very hard to kind of see where the opportunities are opening up. And so we need different forms of data collection that focus on what's happening, what's opening up and how all of us might connect to it. So I think I don't actually think there'll be a doomsday scenario. I think it's possible. But I think we have got plausible case for hope, but only if we radically restructure the kind of collective social institutions around us that can help us all transition. It's not an individual or an individual's problem in this next industrial revolution. Do you see a time frame, the critical time frame that we have is this a case of five or 10 years, 10 to 20 years? Well, I mean, of course, because I don't think it's actually going to happen and I think the new jobs are going to come along. But I do think it will be kind of slower than we think, and it will be. And because I think actually what's going to happen is that tasks are going to move rather than jobs are going to disappear, although of course some jobs are going to disappear. This does give greater flexibility for people. But if we don't, I think what's more important is in a much shorter time frame, we rethink our education systems which aren't equipping people for kind of constant movement as some countries are doing in the world, but certainly my country is not that agile at and Europe may have challenges with. And that we also think, as I say that we have, we stop trying to kind of fix our out of date welfare systems and we kind of radically invent new ones. So I would try and focus a time frame on that rather than what's happening with work. And very quickly, your opinion on universal basic income, yes or no? No, okay. John Huxford. Can everybody hear okay or do we need to speak louder? Louder. Okay, louder. Oh, sorry. So thanks very much. And thanks to Hilary for her remarks. I agree with a lot of what Hilary says about this. Probably we won't see this kind of doomsday scenario. Our own analysis suggests that in the UK you might see 20% of jobs displaced over the next 20 years and roughly 20% created. So broadly balanced for China in the report we published yesterday, actually launched without, well not commissioned by the massage but launched here. We predicted, yes, more than a quarter of Chinese jobs might be displaced, but actually we think that the likelihood is that even more than that, more than 30% might be created. So the net effect could be positive. Having said that, you know, more than a quarter of Chinese jobs is 200 million people potentially having to move jobs, move careers, possibly move locations. So that is a huge disruption, even if it's not 50%. Secondly, when we break the analysis down by sector, for example, in our UK analysis, we find that in areas like transport and logistics, as autonomous vehicles roll out across the economy, you know, you could see 50% or more in that sector. In some areas of low value manufacturing in China or agriculture, you could see that kind of displacement. So in certain sectors, you could see that kind of displacement and it may be very difficult to reskill people to find jobs within that sector. So they'll have to move to other parts of the economy of where we see job growth in healthcare and education, in technical scientific areas. So I think, you know, while it's, it may be a relatively unlikely that 50% of this place there is going to be big disruption coming, not immediately. We don't think it'll happen over the next few years. I think we've got a window of opportunity of maybe five to 10 years to get ready for this before it really starts to happen on a big scale later in the 2020s and into the 2030s, as these technologies mature. So what could we do to try and, if you like, mitigate some of these costs if it does get anywhere close to this sort of 50% doomsday scenario? Well, I think one thing, you know, is that we do have to start investing seriously in lifelong learning. And you know, I think if you look at countries that we see as being good at this, like Iceland, you know, it has such a higher employment rate in the UK or any other Oasty country, New Zealand also very high. I think some of these countries are trying to invest in this seriously. I think, you know, really do act as best practice. In the UK, unfortunately, we've actually been investing less in adult education, further education, with austerity we've had over the last eight years. And actually that's been run down. And I think in future we're going to have to think about higher education much differently. Instead of doing three years of university when you're 18, you might do a one year intensive course when you're 18, another year when you're 38, and the third year when you're 58, as you have to retrain again. What kind of subjects do you think people will be studying in that scenario? Well, you know, who knows, you know, it could be some sort of advanced, you know, genomics or something when you're 38 and something out of a science fiction book when you're 58. But so, you know, you have to remain, as Hilary said, agile and, you know, teaching adaptability to children and teaching the ability to be adaptable as perhaps as important as teaching them, you know, knowledge that they can, you know, pick up as they go along through their life experience and their work experience. I think another important area is actually that I think that you need to look at competition policy. This might not seem obvious, but one of the key ways this technology benefits society is it improves productivity, reduce costs, and therefore allows lower prices. Therefore consumers have higher real incomes to spend on other things. And as they spend them on other things, things like health, education, other areas as well, that can actually then lead to extra jobs and other types of services. And so that traditionally has been the way over the last 250 years, this price mechanism that a lot of these benefits have filtered through to the rest of society. So I think if competition doesn't work, then you might actually get these profits being hoarded by sort of monopolists, you know, whether in the technology sector or whether in other sectors. So having an effective competition policy, well, we have seen that concentration ratios that, you know, have increased in economies like the US and the UK recently. It's not just technology, it's also other sectors. To some degree, that's a natural feature of the technologies that some of them have economies of scale and scope that lends themselves to a few people winning a few winners. But I think you do have to make sure that markets are still contestable so new people can come in and challenge them. And you also have to, you know, make sure that they're not sort of being anti-competitive in some way. So I think competition policy should make sure that these benefits are passed on to consumers and to spread through society that way it's really important. I think a third area is, I think you do have to strengthen the social safety net. You know, like Hillary, I wouldn't personally go for the universal basic income in its pure form, although I think it's interesting to see the trials that are going on. But I do think something, for example, like some sort of conditional income support built into current systems that would not just sort of reward people that are in work on low incomes, but would also perhaps reward people who lost their job and were trying to retrain or were doing something socially useful in terms of looking after grandparents or children or who were volunteering with an approved charity. So somehow contributing to society, I think the idea of some sort of income support for people in that category might be more politically acceptable and might be more affordable. So I think you have to sort of rethink to a certain extent the conditionality around these things and try and provide a stronger social safety net. And in places like China, I think maybe part of that is also reinvesting the proceeds of this growth, which will boost tax revenues for government in trying to move towards more of a universal free healthcare, universal free education, and then people actually won't have to spend so much of their income as they do in China at the moment on those things, which in the UK we might rather take for granted. So I think there's a range of things you can do. I wouldn't personally choose universal basic income, but I think there's some other things you can do to strengthen the social safety net. What I wouldn't do, like I mentioned, one thing is put up borders and try and shut out people or trade or ideas. So I think that might seem like a solution to some people in the short term, but in the long term, it's just a recipe for economic stagnation. I mean, it all sounds very utopian so far, I have to say, universal healthcare and fantastic education systems. Well, it's something you move to over a period of decades, but look at the 19th century in the UK and the 20th century, we had the same phenomenon, we had the Industrial Revolution, that produced massive growth, but also massive income inequality. And Marx was writing about revolutions in 1848 or something. And they got round that by introducing things like, gradually introducing universal pre-education, the welfare state in the 20th century, things like the NHS in the UK. So that way you had a sort of social democratic solution that narrowed the inequalities. Maybe we're at another sort of political inflection point where you have to start looking at that again. Maybe I'll come to you, Hillary. I'll just get Mr. Paulson's thoughts. What do you think about this? It sounds all very good that we're having quite a nice future with our robotic friends that are going to be helping us get universal healthcare, fantastic education. Do you see the same situation in Denmark? Yeah, I'm quite optimistic. I must say, I in fact agree quite much with the remarks. Yes, I agree quite much with the remarks from Hillary. When we look in the history of Denmark, going 50 years back, almost 10% of the workforce were employed in the agricultural business. Right now it's below 2%. And at that time, people also discussed what about all these persons who they have a job in the future. And we have managed in fact to create a lot of new jobs. Also jobs, if you go 50 years back, nobody knew should be a job in the future. So I'm quite optimistic as I was saying in the beginning. But what if, I think we have to work with the vocational training and also lifelong learning. We have seen that in Denmark. That has been quite successful. A year ago, we just managed to make an agreement, a three-part tight agreement between the unions, the businesses and the government. And the focus for that agreement was how to invest in upskilling the workers. And especially people with low skill or no skills at all. So I think that's a crucial part of the future that is to invest and also to create opportunities for people that will lose jobs, to create new jobs and also give them some more advanced possibilities than they have today. And universal basic income, is it something that you could see happening in Denmark? No, not in the future. But we have also, I must say, a quite well-known welfare state system in Denmark. So we have social benefits in Denmark. But I'm not in favor of universal basic income. And how come? Because I think it's a failure to give up people. I think we should demand that people are a part of the society. And we have seen in Denmark that our employment rate now is the highest ever. So that's also a quite unique position. That even though we have authorization robots and that kind of thing, we have the story right now in Denmark that we have so many people employed. It's the highest level ever. So Governor, we've heard three people on our panel saying 30 years old for universal basic income. We're discussing beforehand that actually this youth credit that you gave in Songnam, 96% of the people who received it thought it was a very positive thing to have received. Can you tell us about your experience? I'm sure everybody here would love to hear about this. First of all, I think, well, when you look at our history, well, the world has been changing and it has been revolutionized. Well, once in the UK, well, a long time ago in UK, both people, they actually destroyed the whole equipment machinery. But well, it's inevitable that we are changing. Our world is changing and it's been revolutionized and automated. And then a lot of the countries, they are, they try to solve this problem, by shortening the labor hour, so that in the distributing more people to work. But what if in the future, in the near future, if we lay labor on the 50% of the people lose their job, I think what people would go very violent. So I think we should be well-addressed to the problem that human caused. So, well, some in the policy wise, well, some countries, they shorten the labor hour, but in some other countries, they also come out with other policies. But when you look at the social changes that our world is changing, it's been automated. So 20 or 30 years from now, the robots or AI would replace a lot of our work. But I think, I think it should be dealt in a policy wise because people have their own individual desires and then they have they, so and then it's the world is very competitive. And well, in some case, the winners, well, we say that winners take all. So I think that we, in this case, so that the government should play some initiative. We should balance the things up. So if some people, the minority people, take too much of the wealth, then the government should take the initiative to, well, they have more tax to them. Or so the two leaders distribute the values or the revenues to the whole people. So that's why, so in this world of forced industrial revolution, I think that universal basic income is an inevitable part of our life and it's an inevitable path that we should go for. So we have seen a lot of welfare policies. And well, the welfare policies that we have until now, well, they are kind of like minimized, well, safety net. So because we do not offer the universal benefit. So it's like, it's more like selective. So those who are given the welfare benefits, well, it's, well, sometimes it symbolize those people. Oh, because I am poor, because I am not good enough. That's why I am receiving this kind of benefit. So it's, and then, well, for some people, if they receive those, say subsidies, then, well, for some people, they do not wish to work anymore. So if we can provide the entire people the basic income and then if we levy more tax to those people who earn more money, then well, then those people who do not pay much tax, then they would work harder. And then also for those who earn a lot of money, but at the same time, they receive the basic income, but at the same time, they will be levyed a lot of tax. So, well, up until now, we have dealt with the unemployment issue by providing, well, shortening the labor hour. But if we shorten the labor hour, and then, well, in that case, well, that would maybe, that would let people work and then somehow increase the productivity, but if we provide a universal income, then we can, well, people can spend some of their time, well, to do, to reskill themselves, to operate their skills, or to invest themselves in more cultural aspects than others. So I think that the economy should go virtual cycle. So what they say, this capital world is facing, is that I think we should use the new revenues, resources, and then we try to find out the ways to redistribute them to the entire people. And for some people, and would wonder, why do we have to distribute the common wealth, or the wealth that some people, well, some people would say that I earn more, then that's why I want to have more. Then why do I have to share this with some poor people? Some people would say something like this, but some, when you think about, they look at a lot of the manufacturers, there are un-earned incomes. So let's say, let's take an example of Alaska. So some people would use the fuel, oil fuel, but that's an un-earned income. That's the kind of work, the kind of income that's not really come from work. It's just from the common property. And also, the technology, let's say, some person, there was a one inventor, one person invented something, and then the technology has been distributed, well, and that is used by so many people. I think that that kind of thing can also be the common wealth, and also the infrastructure that we all have, and that if we get some kind of revenues from those common wealth, common infrastructure, then, well, if we can levy the tax on them, and also, I think that everyone has owns a right to the common property. When you look at the case of the Alaska and Namambia, they tested on the basic income policy, and then according to the report, they say that those countries, they have seen the reduced unemployment rate and the reduced poverty rate and et cetera. So some people may say that some wonder that what if we do not, if we offer universal basic income, then people would not have to work. Some people will do not find the need to work, but if we just pay them the minimum amount, then, well, we can encourage them or motivate them to work. And then because we are just offering them the minimum basic income, so that, well, if they want to earn more, if they want to upgrade their life, then I think they would work more. Well, well, it was not provided to everyone, but actually it was an experiment. We offered about, so, 860 USD, so it's slightly less than $1,000. It was offered to the people of 24 years old. So, people of all ages across all income brackets and being successful. So because we have limited resources, so we cannot really offer the universal income. So that, but in our province, we are trying to increase the amount and then also the many, we are trying to expand it to many different age groups and because we have the very limited amount, but both since, but based on what I have experienced, a lot of people found it very satisfactory and then it was, yeah. Lots of different experiments that you go through in your book, in some of these areas. I personally thought that you would be for this kind of experiment, but why are you against it? So can I just say one thing built on before I go to the earlier, which is that I don't think we should think that the kind of welfare state is going to be expensive, that the future welfare state, the current might be, but of course technology also helps us to deliver services in a completely different way, so future health, future education. So health care could be delivered remotely through telepages. Well, yes, and that we can kind of think about different ways about supporting people with different conditions and so on. So actually technology is a kind of, can be a benefit and we can have much better, cheaper welfare states. It's not just on the negative side, but anyway to come to, well, one thing I'm realizing from listening to Governor Lee is that the language of universal basic income is being used for many different things. So I think the idea of a youth credit is incredibly powerful and very interesting. I think that's different from what we call in the UK universal basic income, which basically means that everybody in the nation will get a benefit. And even those who are most in favor of a universal basic income policy in the UK who've modeled it, show a level of income that would be very low. So there would be no fear of people not working, everybody would have to work. It would just give you a benefit. So my concern is that we cannot have a society where we accept that technology will just have winners and losers and we'll give the losers an income. That this is going to- We're talking about giving everybody an income. Yeah, but the thing is, is that everybody will have the income, but those people without jobs will have an income that they can barely survive on because it's so low. But in the same way as Minister Paulson said, it sort of allows society to think, oh well, it's fine because we've given people an income. So that's for me a very big argument, which is that we need to, you know, after the Second World War, people didn't say, oh, there's going to be winners and losers. They said, look, we're having an industrial revolution. We're going to think about how we build societies and how we build welfare states that spread the gains. And that's what I'm interested in. And I don't think universal basic income will deliver that. But I do think the idea of a youth credit is very interesting. But to go to the experiments in my book, for instance, one of them is that I work with families who are dependent on multiple levels of welfare that have up to 73 professionals in their lives. And that would be a very good example. Many of those families, of course, are part of illegal economies. So they're earning six times any universal basic income. It's not going to help them. But more importantly for me is that they suffer from multiple disadvantage, health, mental health, violence, abuse. And these are complex problems, which again, are not going to be solved just by giving those families some kind of income and then pretending it's all gone away. But solved by technology, do you think? Well, one of the things, so if I can give you an example, just very concretely, is that when I work ethnographically in British public services, I see that 80% of all the resource available is spent on bureaucracy, is spent on filling out forms and very complex industrial systems. 80%. So what we do is that we use technology to actually take all of that burden off front line workers, which means that the admin side takes 20% of time, which frees up people to work in a completely different way, lower cost, bringing humans back into the equation, and those families' lives are transformed. They do move out of the welfare state, they move into work, their children flourish. But that's about human relationships and putting in new technology platforms to free up those human relationships. It's not about basic income. Families then earn their own income, stand on their own feet, participate in society and feel a lot better. So just to clarify, Governor Lee, do you, you've experimented with the youth credit. Could you see a scenario in Korea where you would have a universal basic income where everybody in the state is given a certain amount of money if we see 50% of jobs lost because of advances in technology? Well, if that really happens, if like 50% of jobs really lost, then I think, well, the country will be one of the, well, everyone would go crazy and it will be very violent. They're constituent. We have seen situations in London. I know obviously it's not the same situation, but we've seen riots in London. We've seen, I have to say, there's a desperate inequality in the UK that surely will only get worse when we have scenarios like this in the future. If more jobs and more jobs are being automated, do you really think, John, that we're gonna have time to reskill people? Well, I think there's certainly no time to be lost. I don't think this will happen overnight. At the moment, our employment rate is at the record high. The problem is lack of productivity, not employment. Which is what I think the governor is saying. Which is precisely what you want to use these new technologies to boost productivity, because it's only if you can boost productivity that you can increase average earnings levels and try and make up for the sort of relearning squeeze that we've seen over the last 10 years. So I think this is sort of key to addressing the problem. I mean, in terms of, yes, of course, if you were to have 50% unemployment sort of very quickly, that would completely have all sorts of social implications. But I don't think there's, I would say, I think that just giving people a basic income wouldn't really solve those. You would need to find some way to get people to actually do something. I mean, I think what you could, I don't think that's gonna happen nationally in a conceivable scenario. But let's say it could happen in a certain region, for example, we've seen examples of this before when you've had steel industries, coal industry breaking down. And now I think one of the lessons in the 1980s in the UK is that if you just let those market forces to try to revive those communities, it doesn't really work. Market forces will not automatically bring in new investment. And the government has to play a sort of facilitating role working with local business and others to try to support that. And there are lots of areas where we need a lot more work done. For example, house building in the UK, we have a huge housing crisis, I think maybe. And we need hugely more homes to be built. And that's still, I think, while the summer automation possible, it's not gonna be quite a labor intensive process. And actually it's the secret to making housing more affordable and beaming to sort of bridge some of the huge wealth inequalities which are linked to this housing crisis. So I think in those of the areas, there are certain areas where the government can sort of pump prime that kind of activity through some sort of public private partnership to try to work with private house providers to actually build affordable housing. And you can also do that in areas that can help to create growth. So similarly with transport infrastructure, which in the UK is sorely lacking if you compare it to China now. So I think there are ways in which government in that sort of scenario can try to respond if unemployment in the particular area went to a high level. But I think one has to sort of put this in the context. And I think that sort of the governor, as he says, is saying that in practice, you can't pay universal basic income to everyone. And they're just not affordable at a meaningful level. Well, I think he said that it would be necessary if there was a 50% unemployment. But I still don't think that they would address the kind of social unrest that you have just doing that. I think you would have to find some way to, if you like, give people a purpose in life and give people something to do and just simply handing out income in a relatively small way. Because if unemployment was that high, then tax revenues would also be collapsing, businesses would be collapsing. The government wouldn't have money to hand out in the first place. Well, this is the thing. And so I think there would be all sorts of old problems. But if we think of it as a more sort of a focus problem in a certain area that you have to deal with, and I think you could try and think about these kind of solutions of focused investments to try to pump prime and kickstart economic activity as well as trying to use government investment as a catalyst to get private investment or so to be brought into areas that might otherwise be depressed. But I think that's more likely to be a localized problem rather than an actual problem. I mean, you mentioned what it means to be human. Do you think this sort of scenario would change fundamentally the way that we spend our leisure time or the way that Hillary, we've discussed this as well. Do you think this is something that we have to think about carefully? Maybe even restructuring our economies, our societies fundamentally? Well, I think it would be really important to kind of have, as John was suggesting actually, an education system which is much more flexible and also focuses on leisure time and how we might use our leisure time. I mean, the 21st century welfare state, I propose, is one built around kind of functional and foundational capabilities. And that's a much broader view of what it means to flourish, which means that we have good work, we have good lives, but also we do have time to care, time to pursue other interests. I think that that would also be important. It would be wonderful if that was delivered, but in my lifetime, there's also been a lot of promises of that that haven't come, but I think it would be really important actually to think about how we educate young people for mental health and everything else, as well as enjoyment of life, that that's a part, once again, an integrated part of life. I mean, who's paying for all of these processes? Is it up to the individual to take initiative and decide that they need to reskill because they see that their job is going? Minister, is this something that the government needs to step in and do? Yeah, I think the government should play a role. We have seen that in Denmark. We have created the Nordic welfare model, you can say. And the success of that model is that government businesses and unions are sitting together, also making agreements about the future. That has been a huge success in Denmark for many years, for decades, in fact. And I think that will be one answer in the future. I recall that that's easier to say than to deliver because we have a different tradition on how to govern. Just looking around in Europe, there's a great difference between the northern part of Europe and the southern part of Europe. But I think that people will demand in the future that politicians would take the necessary decisions also to create growth and deliver education and lifelong learning. But of course, as individuals, you should also invest in your own life and you should also invest in your own education. That's also a part of the future if I just look 10 or 15 years ahead. I mean, just out of curiosity in the room, how many people here think, and we'll get to some questions, which is great, how many people here think that their current position is under threat from automation? Is there anybody in this room that thinks that? I mean, I think potentially my job is under threat. One, maybe. And what about re-skilling? Is everybody thinking that they need to re-skill and invest more in their educations? Hands up? Yeah, so Hilary, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, so we have some questions. Gentleman in the back here, if we have a microphone. And if you don't mind, sir, saying your name and where you're from. Kumar K.S. Kumar from New York. The question is basically as per the statistics of the WHO, by 2050, the world's population will be less by 2 billion people. And most of Europe and most of Japan, for example, in other countries across the world has an aging population of more than 20%, which is people above 60 years of age. So I'm saying if you just look at the entire global population as a whole, and this whole thing around 50% jobs being lost, and therefore almost about 30, 40% of people are getting old anyway and will be out of jobs. So we'll have just enough people across the world, if you look at it, of course, they may be in the wrong countries. They might be in the wrong countries, that's OK. But if you just have enough people who are required to do the jobs, each 50% jobs are lost. So more movement between countries. Yes. More migration. Yes, questions over here. Sir. My name is Katsuyababa from Tokyo. And I'm very impressed by the optimism of the board, of the people here, because what I see in Japan is where it used to be seen as a very equal society, the difference between the rich and poor is definitely taking place in a very significant manner. And the good jobs are getting less, and there's a huge demand for the jobs that people don't want to do, like construction jobs, huge demand, but less. It's three more jobs per demand. And applicants, for example. And more jobs for the long-distance drivers. Yes. And the nursing, and all people care. Those are the jobs that are required, but it's not. It's a cheap job at the same time, in some cases. And I just wonder how, and also I've been feeling that it is very difficult to avoid competition and taking place. And just as you mentioned, and we have more and more winners taking more and hard to tax, how to get them redistributed. And so I just feel that it is not quite easy for us to imagine that, although the good measures for the retraining will be taking place, but it takes time. And people are not good at emotional jobs if they are pretty much geek and doing games, for example. Yeah, well, exactly. I mean, do you think? People can change themselves too quick. Do you think there's a difference in the viewpoints between people coming from maybe Japan or Korea where there's huge technology industries compared to maybe some European countries? Do you think there's some kind of disconnect between the points of view, the optimism from Europe and maybe more realism from Japan or Korea? I can't be simplistic like that, because I'm based on my observation and my view could be limited. But I have a more pessimistic feeling in which I can't have quite good answer yet. Yes, interesting. I could take that round if you want. There's a lady at the back there. Oh, both of you ladies, yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. Get you after. After having worked as a doctor in the United States for 20 years, during the recession, a lot of my patients lost their jobs. And the problem is once they lose jobs and start collecting welfare, they become very comfortable. Yes. And it actually becomes very demotivating for the people that are still working. And when you say these jobs are going to be lost, I don't think it's going to be overnight. It's going to be slow. And I think it's really important as a society to look at what the upward mobility jobs are going to be and to look at our education system critically and prepare people and bring in the type of jobs that will allow them to continue working. Otherwise, what's happiness not working, just collecting money and that's a good point. And this lady here, Nadine. Nadine Cousin from Brussels Global Shaper. So actually, I had a question. I'd more like to ask for an opinion to all the speakers because we've talked about income. But the WEF has been working with a group on a topic of universal rights to learn. So this idea of giving tokens to people so that they could take time off of their work later in their career and learn. So I wanted to have an opinion on what do you think is that as an alternative. Great. I might take, actually, what time is it? I don't have a watch. 15 minutes. What I might do is just take a few more questions and make some notes. And then we'll put those questions to the panel. So yes, one more. This gentleman had his hand up and then just going to stand here and see who's going to hand us up. Hello. My name is Daniyan from Turkey. I have a more optimistic but totally radical idea on that matter. I believe we value a life of human by the job that they complete and money they earn. And I believe that in midterm future it will change to what that human finds meaningful and how they fulfill their meaning making. And that change will come with the idea that not everyone wants to make money. And if not everyone wants to make money, we can contribute with values to community. And not everyone, if we have a very healthy community in maybe a much more distant future, not only when we lose half of the jobs, but when we have a new mindset that we can contribute not only by completing tests as the panelists stated, but also by giving back in some other way. So in that community, I believe standard income will be a great solution for everyone to contribute in the way that they want to contribute. So we may fundamentally change how we view roles and stuff. I'm just going to come around. Yes? Hi, I'm Poshan Lo. I'm with the Young Scientist group over here at the WEF. And I'm a mathematician at Carnegie Mellon University. So I actually want to do a mathematical calculation, which is that if you take the global GDP of the entire world and you divide it by the number of people in the entire world, the answer is approximately $10,000 US per capita. Most of us would consider yearly the annual per capita income per person on earth. If you just take GDP divide by human population, the answer is approximately $10,000 US. So now when we're talking about social safety nets, actually I want to ask a very hard question, which is in some sense almost all the people in this room are the haves because most of us live in countries for which $10,000 per person per year would be kind of difficult to get a flat in London. Very difficult. So now what I'm asking is of all of these social safety nets, to what extent do we have a responsibility to use our wealth to expand that, to extend that, to the billions of people who are not in this room? Great, thank you. Question about responsibility. Two more questions over here. Yes, this lady? Or three more, sorry. Also, Global Shaper from Los Angeles. I had a quick question regarding the universal income actually. Instead of focusing on the problem and the solution of what's going on, I actually thought it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on completely redoing the current education system because the education system is old and broken. And there's lack of adaptability quotient and curiosity quotient that is being incorporated in current education system. So I'm going to address this question specifically to Governor Lee because the suicide rate in South Korea is extremely high. And the fact that universal basic income rolled out in South Korea has reduced the number of suicide, I'm really curious to see how the government is going to intervene in specifically Korean education, which is extremely specifically focused on skills and academic focus and how the government could actually intervene in changing that bureaucracy and system. Great, thank you. And we'll put that to the Governor and then to the General. Hi, I'm Taejun. I'm from Japan. But I'm doing microfinancing for countries. The point I would like to ask you of is a corporate social responsibility because the job is not gone like magic. It is a result of our collective decision to cut the job. And I think many of the people sitting in this room are the business leaders like me. So I think now we may need to redefine the role of corporations. I personally feel like one of the most important social responsibilities for corporations is to maintain the job. So I would like to hear your voice. Great, thank you. And one more question at the back here, and then we'll have to bring it back to the panel. Hi, I'm Adith. I'm from New York. My question is also about the quality of jobs that the 50% that would have currently wages on growing. And there has been a new influx of jobs where there's less security, zero contracts, gig economy jobs. So I just wanted to know what the panel thought about the actual quality of the jobs that people are going to have in the future. Yeah, good question. Thank you very much. Thank you. OK, so quite a lot there. So what humans will find meaningful, we have also ideas about universal education tokens. There's some pessimism in the audience, which is quite interesting. I think it might reflect the vote at the beginning, which was quite high for universal basic income compared to the panel. The responsibility of the haves, which I suppose reflects most of us in the room, the gentleman's question. Redoing the whole education system, we've got the question from Korea, and also the quality of jobs. So where should we start? Governor, would you start with the question about the Korean education system? Well, you asked two questions. One was the universal basic income, also about universal basic income. Well, as I mentioned earlier, we are still in the experimental process, so we do not know the outcome yet. But when you look at Alaska's case, that if we do initiate the basic income policy, then it somehow stabilizes the people's well-being. And since it changes the people's mindset, and that it would somehow reduce the suicide rate. And the Korea, well, we do have some ineffective policies. So in terms of the policy and also education, I think we need to do a lot of the resurfacing redesigning. The universal, 아까, 교육. Could you explain again, Nadine, sorry, you were talking about the universal education token? Can you hear me? The idea was instead of having universal basic income, is to have tokens on education so that you could perpetually continue learning, taking time off of your work for that. Do you think that would be useful? No. Well, I think they can be one part of the welfare, the policy, because when we say the welfare, then, well, that one thing very important is that we want to, we need to educate or train those individuals so that they fit the labor market, so that they re-skill themselves to follow the trend of the future. I think it is very important. So I think that's one of the very good welfare policy. Jobs, would somebody like to answer what they see as the quality of the jobs that the 50% would have in the future? I mean, I think that this is more of a concern to me than the number of jobs, really. I mean, I think the number of jobs I feel jobs will be created, but it's linked to the point about income inequality. You know, the danger is you get what in UK, we might call an upstairs, downstairs society, where you have an elite who are very wealthy and then we go back to the sort of environment that we used to have in the 18th, 19th century, where you have a lot of sort of people almost like paid servants of the elite doing their gardening and looking after their pets and maybe not driving them because they have driverless cars, but doing other kinds of household services and personal services. And so we gather sort of a two-tier society rather like we used to have in the UK before the First World War. So do the people sitting in this room have a responsibility? Well, I think there are certain issues. I mean, going back to the point on corporate social responsibility, certainly in PWC, the people are allowed to take a certain number of days off to work for charities, to work on a pro bono basis on some sort of social enterprise thing or to do other things and people are encouraged to do that and that seems a positive thing when it comes to year-end assessments and we also, you know, try to encourage social mobility, both through working with young people in particular in described areas, in the city areas, but also through trying to take on more people, school leavers without graduate degrees than perhaps we used to do, offering more sort of professional apprenticeships for people who perhaps, you know, haven't had the family background and so that makes it easier to go to university but may still have the capabilities to be very successful in their careers. So, yes, I think, you know, both companies and individuals have responsibility, but ultimately, you know, there's a limit to how far that will solve the problem if the government doesn't provide the overall framework that sort of pushes people in that direction. I think as far as retraining is concerned also, I think companies, you know, in some areas have a responsibility for retraining, you know, where they can just sort of reskill someone. So the truck driver who's replaced by driverless vehicle, you know, maybe he could get a job repairing that vehicle, maybe he could sit in a control room, you know, acting like an air traffic controller, but some people, you know, there won't be enough of those jobs to totally replace all the truck drivers gone. So maybe you need to have, you know, therefore at that point, you can't just put it on an individual company, maybe there's some sort of industry sector solution in some cases where industry sectors are whole, you know, the first trade unions could work together. From Turkey, he was saying that basically we need to make more meaningful jobs or free time, maybe we have to fundamentally reorganize society. I think that would be great, but, you know, it sort of reminds me of what Keane sort of said in about 1930s where he said, you know, we're going to be eight times richer in the hundred years time and we'll have to therefore work a lot less. And he was about right about being eight times richer in GDP per capita, but we worked less until the late 70s and then since then in the UK, we seem to be working more, particularly actually better off people seem to be working more. So I don't know, somehow we've lost that sort of life of leisure that seemed to be, you know, on the horizon when I was a teenager and somehow we're all working even harder. So maybe we need someone to sort of switch us away from this workaholic mentality, but it seems to afflict the better off people as much as anyone. So how you switch that, I don't know, you know, have compulsory Buddhism as a religion or something, I don't know, but that really does take you into a more utopian area maybe. Hilary? Well, I want to answer all the questions. They were so great and I know there's not time. I think that one of the things is that, you know, from a historical perspective is that the reason that kind of new forms of organization were created after Second World War was because otherwise the industrial revolution would misfire. So to the question here about mathematics, I mean, I think that if we don't create consumers for the next industrial revolution, that, you know, it's not just altruism. We really, really need to think about how we link jobs. And so that's why I'm kind of very taken with the Danish idea of, you know, modern forms of union. They're not adversarial. They give a role to corporations that are way beyond people giving just a few days of their time, which is just not enough. They think about how in a kind of multi-stakeholder way we genuinely do work to kind of ease this transition. But maybe I can talk about the optimism question since I am one of the optimists on the plane. Absolutely. Or perhaps I shouldn't just say. By the way, I just want to say that the aging is great because that's a whole new care economy that, again, is kind of new work. That could also be taken over by robots. We've seen that. Well, no, because empathy, people don't want robots. But that will be a question about income as whether you get a human or a robot. But that's nothing. But I think about optimism is, look, I think that this is, we are facing a dramatic choice. And the reason that I kind of work on welfare reform and I've written the book is because I think we are at a moment of decision, really. And so it's not that I kind of assume that everything is going to be OK, far from it. But I do think we do actually have a choice and we do actually have the possibility to build new forms of institution, new cultures, new ways of working that can support from where we are now into a better future, that can spread the gains because actually the possibilities of future technology for us in our lives are immense for rich lives if we kind of think about how we do it. I think we have an actual choice and we have to grasp that choice and work on it. Thank you. Minister, how do you feel after hearing the questions from the audience, is it a little bit more pessimistic or optimistic still? No, I'm still optimistic. But I'll say it's very difficult questions. Very difficult. Yeah, yeah. And it also reflects, I think, where people has their home and grown up because we have different societies around the world. I think that's also necessary to say here in this discussion. In Denmark, it's for free to take a university degree. You don't have to pay for that. And in other parts of the world, you have to pay a lot of that. And that's a great obstacle for many people if they don't have the money to go to university. But that's also the model that you have created. So it depends on the politicians that are in government in your country. Because even in the European Union, there's a great difference between the countries. And then going around in the world, I don't think we can fix that here today. No, sadly. I think we have to have more time to deal with that. But I think that the future would give us more possibilities than the past. I think technology would give more growth around in the world. And I think that we should, of course, discuss how to spend these growth issues or how to define the money that has been given to people who should then have different benefits. And that's a crucial question. Great. So we're running out of time now. We're just wrapping up. The show of hands, after hearing the panelists discuss this, are you for a universal basic income now? Yes or no? Yes first? OK. Yes, OK. And no? One, two, OK. I think he got a few more noes. Any abstentions still undecided? Still undecided. OK, well thank you guys so much for listening and joining in the discussion. Thank you to the panel.