Inequality in the Digital Economy

Andrew White has brought together expertise in the digital economy and in Universal Basic Income to create a scholarly discussion of the relationship between Universal Basic Income and the digital economy that concludes that a smaller unconditional income would be a useful step towards an unconditional income sufficient to live on. Scholars in both the digital economy and Universal Basic Income should read this book, and so should policymakers." – Dr Malcolm Torry, Visiting Fellow, Institute for Policy Research, University of Bath, and Treasurer, Basic Income Earth Network. 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. Andrew White is a Senior Lecturer in Culture, Media & Creative Industries at King's College London. He has previously worked at Queen’s University Belfast, the Ulster University and Oxford Brookes University. From 2007 to 2020, he worked at the University of Nottingham’s China campus, serving as the head of the School of International Communications from 2016 to 2019.