The future of work will still include plenty of jobs

There is now widespread anxiety over the future of work, often accompanied by calls for a basic income to protect those displaced by automation and other technological changes. As a labour economist, I am in favour of more efficient redistributive taxation through the application of refundable tax credits, which amounts to an income-tested basic income or negative income tax. But I am more skeptical about the spectre of a future without work. And if the future isn't scarred by massive, widespread technological unemployment, a basic income would be neither outrageously expensive nor the be-all and end-all of the policy measures that society needs. The reasons for my skepticism about a future without work rests in the evidence to date.