Today we travel to a future where you’re guaranteed a job, but there’s a catch: your job is assigned to you by an algorithm. 

Guests:

• Dr. Pavlina Tcherneva — professor of economics at Bard College, researcher at the Levy Economics Institute & author of The Case for a Job Guarantee.
• Dr. Kira Lussier —  historian at the University of Toronto.
• Manish Raghavan — PhD candidate at Cornell University.
• Dr. Chris Gilliard — privacy scholar & Professor of English at Macomb Community College.

Voice acting:

• Echo: Elena Fernández Collins

Further Reading:

• The Case for a Job Guarantee by Pavlina Tcherneva
• The New Deal: Putting People Back to Work
• FLASH FORWARD: Federal Project Two (a second New Deal) 
• The Federal Job Guarantee – A Policy to Achieve Permanent Full Employment
• 50 years after the Kerner Commission
• The Incredible Lost History of How “Civil Rights Plus Full Employment Equals Freedom”
• UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• 30 million Americans are unemployed. Here’s how to employ them.
• The effects of unemployment spread like a virus
• Will We Face Depression-Era Job Losses? Let’s Not Find Out
• How do our job creation recommendations stack up against a job guarantee?
• Job Guarantee FAQ
• The Hard Truth: Companies Don’t Hire Unemployed
• The longer you’re unemployed, the less likely you are to find a job. Why?
• Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination
• Young, Longer Term Unemployed Experience Health Decline
• The link between unemployment and suicide
• Polling the Left Agenda
• Why Democrats Should Embrace a Federal Jobs Guarantee
• 4 big questions about job guarantees
• Why the Green New Deal Includes a Jobs Guarantee
• Argentina: A Case Study on the Plan Jefes y Jefas de Hogar Desocupados, or the Employment Road to Economic Recovery
• The Job Guarantee: Delivering the Benefits That Basic Income Only Promises – A Response to Guy Standing
• FLASH FORWARD: Money For Nothing (Universal Basic Income)
• Beyond Full Employment: The Employer of Last Resort as an Institution for Change
• Personality, Incorporated: Psychological Capital in American Management, 1960-1995
• How Corporations Convinced Us Personality Tests Are Super Fun
• Our ongoing love-hate relationship with personality tests
• On not “giving psychology away”: the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and public controversy over testing in the 1960s
• Griggs v Duke Power Co [1971] USSC 46; 401 U.S. 424; 91 S.Ct. 849; 28 L.Ed.2d 158; No. 124 (8 March 1971)
• Temperamental workers: Psychology, business, and the Humm-Wadsworth Temperament Scale in interwar America.
• THE HUMM-WADSWORTH TEMPERAMENT SCALE
• Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory; manual, Revised
• Myers Briggs History
• The Organization Man by William H. Whyte
• Privacy, the Prospective Employee, and Employment Testing: The Need to Restrict Polygraph and Personality Testing
• All the Ways Hiring Algorithms Can Introduce Bias
• Mitigating Bias in Algorithmic Hiring: Evaluating Claims and Practices
• An Algorithm May Decide Your Next Pay Raise
• Is It Your Foreign Name or Foreign Qualifications? An Experimental Study of Ethnic Discrimination in Hiring
• What’s in a Name? A Multiracial Investigation of the Role of Occupational Stereotypes in Selection Decisions
• Should Companies Use AI to Assess Job Candidates?
• Why Diversity Programs Fail
• Does Diversity Training Work the Way It’s Supposed To?
• Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women
• Companies are on the hook if their hiring algorithms are biased
• High-tech redlining: AI is quietly upgrading institutional racism
• Digital Redlining, Access, and Privacy
• The Religion of Workism Is Making Americans Miserable
• Advice For And From The Future: should I let my boss implant a chip in my hand?

Episode Sponsors:

• PNAS Science Sessions: short, in-depth conversations with the world’s top scientific researchers. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 
• Shaker & Spoon: A subscription cocktail service that helps you learn how to make hand-crafted cocktails right at home. Get $20 off your first box at shakerandspoon.com/ffwd.
• Tab for a Cause: A browser extension that lets you raise money for charity while doing your thing online. Whenever you open a new tab, you’ll see a beautiful photo and a small ad. Part of that ad money goes toward a charity of your choice! Join team Advice For And From The future by signing up at tabforacause.org/flashforward.
• Tavour: Tavour is THE app for fans of beer, craft brews, and trying new and exciting labels. You sign up in the app and can choose the beers you’re interested in (including two new ones DAILY) adding to your own personalized crate. Use code: flashforward for $10 off after your first order of $25 or more. 
• Purple Carrot: Purple Carrot is THE plant-based subscription meal kit that makes it easy to cook irresistible meals to fuel your body. Each week, choose from an expansive and delicious menu of dinners, lunches, breakfasts, and snacks! Get $30 off your first box by going to www.purplecarrot.com and entering code FLASH at checkout today! Purple Carrot, the easiest way to eat more plants! 

Flash Forward is hosted by Rose Eveleth and produced by Julia Llinas Goodman. The intro music is by Asura and the outtro music is by Hussalonia. The episode art is by Matt Lubchansky. The voices from the future this episode were provided by

If you want to suggest a future we should take on, send us a note on Twitter, Facebook or by email at info@flashforwardpod.com. We love hearing your ideas! And if you think you’ve spotted one of the little references I’ve hidden in the episode, email us there too. If you’re right, I’ll send you something cool.

And if you want to support the show, there are a few ways you can do that too! Head to www.flashforwardpod.com/support for more about how to give. But if that’s not in the cards for you, you can head to iTunes and leave us a nice review or just tell your friends about us. Those things really do help.

That’s all for this future, come back next time and we’ll travel to a new one.