Third Modernity and Social Policy

Abstract

This paper identifies the onset of Third Modernity with the coming of artificial intelligence and its applications, as well as enhanced digitalization, back in the year 2016. This article emphasizes its effects on human employment, which are truly devastating in the years and decades to come. The social policy solutions to the multiple conundrums of artificial intelligence, societal aging and climate change are to be fundamental and systemic in nature. Building on decades of normative social policy research, this article puts forward three new fundamental social policy strategies that focus on (i) incentive mechanisms in social security and social assistance provision, (ii) health education and early diagnosis, as well as (iii) 'smart' targeted universal benefits and services. And in addition to that, the author predicts the coming of universal basic income schemes, in numerous developed and fast developing societies alike.