Is a robot about to take your job?

Given the fact that a universal income – at anything but the stingiest level – would involve redistributing untold billions in taxation from rich to poor, this seems less like "socialism with an iPad", in McDonnell's phrase, and more like socialism plain and simple. Which is perhaps why Swiss voters gave the idea a gigantic raspberry in a referendum at the weekend. Experts are increasingly convinced that computers will soon be able to do many human jobs in less time and for less money – in other words, that the pace of technological change will outpace the labour market's ability to cope. The same factories in China that undercut the West with their low labour costs are already replacing those same workers with even cheaper robots; soon, middle-class professionals in Brighton or Boston could find that they are just as vulnerable to being given the P45 by their PC.