The Corruption of Capitalism explains Why the future is Workless.

Dunlop quotes extensively from Standing before going on in Chapters 4 and 5 to ask "Will a robot take my Job?" and "Will an app take my job?" It takes him 71 pages to discover these are not the real question. This was the least useful part of the book for me. A redeeming feature occurred at page 148, when he wrote: "if the state genuinely believed that unemployment benefits were a temporary payment to people ultimately able to find employment, there would be no need to impose conditions" because the payment would only last a short time.

Chapter 6 examines universal basic income and he again draws heavily upon Guy Standing's work. He accepts that a universal basic income must be universal, provided unconditionally and be a supplement to the welfare state not its replacement. He could have been pre-empting a motion passed at the United Kingdom Trades Union Congress, representing six British million workers in September 2016. Dunlop concludes that an unconditional basic income would radically transform our relationship with paid work not only providing a safety net "for those who fall through the cracks, but a trampoline for everybody to launch themselves into society on terms that are much more their own."

Standing in Chapter 2 looks at the various ways corporations find ways to defraud the citizens and in Chapter 3 he examines some shonky rich corporations and politicians and the various ways they extract subsidies from the state or avoid taxes. At page 109, he states "Tax credits look like welfare payments, but they are in reality a subsidy, providing capital with unearned income. They make it easier for employers to pay low wages (and employ part-time rather than full-time staff). He suggests they are similar to the oft-criticised 19^th century English Speenhamland system.

Guy Standing on page 166 notes that:

The growth of public debt in most industrialised countries is largely due to tax cuts for the wealthy and subsidies for selected interests. Cutting public debt, if desired, could be done by raising taxes and eliminating regressive and inefficient subsidies.

In Chapter 5 Standing lists the ways in which rich people, corporations and corrupt politicians are acquiring that which we own in common whether it be land, opportunity, minerals, petroleum or whatever and removing our common ownership – he concludes that "the precariat has the most interest in recovering the commons from the rent seeker."

Both Dunlop and Standing note the phenomenal increase in the share of income going to owners of capital. Standing says that in the twentieth century it made sense to focus on wage bargaining but no longer. At page 291, in a call reminiscent of The Communist Manfesto, Standing declares "The precariat have nothing to lose but their insecurity."

Both writers conclude that if we are to solve the issue of increasing technological/ robotised unemployment, and if it is not to end in tears, then an unconditional basic income is the best method of ensuring income security for all.

Standing in his final Chapter concludes that:

Existing social assistance schemes are costly, administratively inefficient, inequitable and ineffectual in reducing insecurity and inequality… targeting and means testing do not work as intended. Still, moralistic politicians continue tightening conditions, making schemes more selective and punitive and stigmatising some of society's most vulnerable people. Workfare is inevitably dressed up shamelessly as 'reintegrating' people into society.

And Dunlop, at page 197, claims that:

In a world where technology is likely to drive either job losses, or at the very least, a rise in precarious employment, the idea that people should have to rely on having a job in order to participate in society in a decent way is an increasingly obscene idea. To maintain our current work ethic – one that equates having a job with human decency and moral rectitude – is not only anachronistic but cruel.

Should you, gentle reader, wish to read more about basic income I can recommend a 2016 Palgrave MacMillian publication entitled Basic Income in Australia and New Zealand: Perspectives from the Neoliberal Frontier edited by Jennifer Mays, Greg Marston and myself.