>Jonathan Reynolds MP, Labour's shadow Treasury minister, said: "This new report from the RSA raises the right questions about the future of work and the long-t

>Jonathan Reynolds MP, Labour's shadow Treasury minister, said: "This new report from the RSA raises the right questions about the future of work and the long-term challenges we face, including making sure automation and the changing nature of work deliver a fairer, more prosperous society." Instead of pretending that our iPhones were all just built by magic Chinese robots (or soon will be), the UK could instead decide to enact policy changes that grows rather than bleeds our manufacturing sector. I don't think policymakers understand the long term risks associated with trade and currency policy pushing manufacturing to places like China. Building a dense industrial ecosystem - exhibited in all its glory in markets like Huaquingbei - is simply impossible in the UK under current "free" trade policy. This means startups like OnePlus (which grew out of Huaquingbei) won't and can't work in the UK - which should worry people. One day we're going to wake up and find out that China can switch off the flow of hi tech goods to the UK overnight - components and finished goods alike - and the rude surprise will be that industrial ecosystems take decades to build. Neoclassical economic models buries this problem in assumptions, so most economists are just as blind to this risk as they were to 2008. The fact that we let our industrial ecosystem rot while they steadily built theirs up will come, if we get cut off, in the form of a highly inflationary shock and ultimately a shortage of hi tech goods. Perhaps then the notion that trade and currency policy created to appease banks and landowners ('unfettered trade'), rather than companies that actually make things and created jobs ('protectionism'), wasn't such a great idea. Enacting basic income (which will, by its nature, also be very inflationary) with those kinds of medium term risks hanging over us seems unwise when its impetus - the shortage of good jobs - was artificially driven by bank friendly trade policy that can't last forever.