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Herke Boglárka (TK SZI) Vicsek Lillával adott elő az ESPAnet (European Network for Social Policy Analysis) éves konferenciáján. Az előadás címe "Young Citizens Attitudes towards Universal Basic Income in the Context of Automation – A Qualitative Study" volt.

Az előadás angol nyelvű absztraktja:

"Universal Basic Income (UBI), an unconditional benefit paid to every member of a political community, is quite an old idea, which, however, received serious attention as a possible policy proposal only in the past decade. One of the prime reasons to raise UBI to the sphere of political debates was the concern whether UBI could serve as a good response to the negative consequences of automation on employment. Connected to this debate, it is also a relevant question whether citizens would accept UBI as a solution to technology-driven job replacement. While a growing stream of literature investigates public attitudes towards basic income, most studies ask citizens’ opinions regarding our present and do not explore attitudes related to a future labour market, where the use of artificial intelligence and robotics are assumed to be much more widespread.

In this paper, we especially focus on such circumstances and investigate the attitudes of young citizens regarding the introduction of a basic income scheme in the context of a hypothetical scenario of their future (in the year 2060), where the level of technological unemployment is high. We conducted qualitative interviews with 30 university students in Hungary and asked their arguments for and against introducing UBI in this future scenario. This way it is possible to receive an in-depth characterization of opinions regarding UBI in the context of automation.

In general, students expressed their preference towards creating new work opportunities instead of providing UBI to citizens, and they emphasized that technological development should not endanger people’s opportunities to work. Their reasoning contained two major aspects. First, they shared their views that people would get lazy and become useless members of society by not working. In this regard, the narratives of the young strongly echo the Hungarian government’s discourse on the work-based society. Second, the importance of work as a personal value was also present in the narratives, as respondents emphasized that life would be meaningless without work. Consequently, they supported UBI only as a short-term benefit that people would receive while they re-educate themselves for new jobs, and with an amount that motivates people to find a job. The narratives of the respondents show a traditional understanding of work, within volunteering and caring are not even considered as alternatives of paid work. These findings suggest that advocates of UBI might face barriers in gaining social support because of the traditional understanding of work."

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