Politicians and Experts Debate UBI Amid AI Job Loss Warnings
Germany faces up to 800,000 job losses over the next 15 years as artificial intelligence is introduced.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz faced questions about whether the government should introduce a universal basic income to soften the economic blow during the German government’s Digital Summit in early November, dw.com reported. Merz did not dismiss the idea outright, despite his market-friendly political background.
“I’ve always been a bit cautious about this issue in recent years,” Merz said, as reported by the news outlet RND. “However, I’m also well aware that the issue of AI will change our working world so fundamentally that we’ll have to give serious thought to many of these issues in the coming years — including the question: Is our productivity not good enough?”
Since taking office last year, Merz has pursued pension reforms involving a raised retirement age, announced a crackdown on sick leave in July, and criticized the concept of work-life balance.
Employment agency warns of impending job losses
Andrea Nahles, head of Germany’s Federal Employment Agency, warned this week that artificial intelligence will eliminate up to 800,000 jobs over the next 15 years. While Nahles said that the technology could eventually create a comparable number of roles, the transition promises severe socioeconomic disruption.
Karsten Wildberger, Germany’s minister for digital transformation and government modernization, shares these concerns. Wildberger told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung in March that an unconditional basic income could help cushion labor market shocks.
Campaigners have welcomed this high-level shift in tone. Kirsten Herrmann, a board member at the nonprofit Mein Grundeinkommen, told dw.com that the debate needs to center on economic stability.
“It shows that in the face of technological transformation we also need to look differently at the question of how we need to secure people’s economic stability,” Herrmann told dw.com.
“But I also think that individual statements by politicians don’t amount to a political change, of course. It just means that we need to enter a serious and constructive debate about what kind of a role a basic income can play.”
Executives debate basic income cost
Elon Musk predicted in 2017 that basic income would become inevitable. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI founder Sam Altman have also voiced support for the model.
“The basic income that people from the tech business talk about is a kind of neoliberal basic income: They talk about what to do when there are no more profitable jobs for people, because they still actually do need people to do certain things, whereas we talk about a basic income that is meant to give people a secure economic base — before the crisis in the job market happens,” she said.
Mainstream German economists remain skeptical of the price tag. Dominik Enste, director of the democracy, society, and economic ethics department at the German Economic Institute in Cologne, dismissed the feasibility of the plan in an email to dw.com.
“Many economists have calculated that implementing this in many countries is financially unfeasible — in Germany, for one, simply because of the need to fund commitments that have already been made (including pension payments),” Enste said. He added that the country will likely need conditional social security reforms and potential taxes on AI-generated income.
Maximilian Kasy, an economics professor at the University of Oxford, argued that basic income could succeed if designed so that lower-income earners remain net recipients. The International Monetary Fund predicted in 2024 that artificial intelligence will shape roughly 40% of global employment, and up to 60% of jobs in advanced economies.