Jeebers, I hate explaining these things. First, I suck at it. Second, a few seconds on Google gets folks a better explanation than I could ever come up with. Still, here goes...
A Universal Guaranteed Basic Income would work pretty much along these lines: Suppose the Federal Government decided to start making monthly payments to every person in the United States 18 or older with no strings attached and the Feds kept it up for the life of the individual. To be sure, the checks would go out to everyone regardless of the usual suspect categories. e.g. sex, race, religion, ethnic group, politics, and so forth.
Next, people getting the checks would have the option of working if they wanted to, and could find a job. The checks would be for 'get-by' sums. Enough to cover living expenses and maybe a little bit more for a movie, game, or book now and then. Say, $2000 per month in the U.S. these days.
Essentially, that's the idea of a Universal Guaranteed Basic Income. Naturally, the details could vary.
The idea has been around for years, but recently gained a boost in recognition when Andrew Yang made it the core of his policy platform in the 2019 primaries. It has been endorsed by a whole lot of people, such as Bill Gates, but who for the most part are not politicians, nor billionaires.
The usual reason economists, futurists, political scientists, policy wonks, and even Gates get behind it is because it is hoped that a Universal Guaranteed Basic Income will prevent Gotterdammerung. I doubt most people are plugged in to the news about our approaching Gotterdammerung, so I'll explain.
It's largely the consensus view these days that sometime within the next few decades robots and artificial intelligences will leave tens of millions of people without a job in the U.S. alone. Billions of people around the world. No one really thinks that is unlikely to happen. I guess robots and AI are pretty certain to be our future now. Here, there, everywhere in the end.
Billions of out of work people present a problem, naturally. People like to eat, they like clothing, they like to have a roof over their heads, and other things too, such as health care. From a political standpoint, the worst part of that is, people notice when they do not have those things, and cannot have those things. Such will become the reality in, say, 30 years at the most, but most likely sooner.
Gotterdammerung is a word borrowed from Norse/German mythology, and nowadays is sometimes used to mean a violent and catastrophic collapse of civilization. It originates in mythology, but if you listen to people who have spent some time looking into these things, it's a genuine down the road threat to sooner or later every nation on the planet. Again, if a third or more of your working age adults are starving, you have a problem.
There have already been experiments with UBGI. Whole towns in places like Canada, the Netherlands, and elsewhere have been placed on it for periods of up to five years to see what happens.
One big concern that is now laid to rest. Most people do not become lazy, as just about everyone feared at first. Some do. But somewhere around 90% or more of them use their new found time available to them to do anything they want to do by seeking out one of the few remaining jobs, going back to school to learn more, taking up a serious hobby, volunteering at a nonprofit organization, etc. Its shocking, but it seems most people like to work. Especially if they get to pick what kind of work they do.
How would they be paid for? Best idea I've heard is what Gates came up. Tax the robots. That is, send a tax bill to the owners of robots, taxing them on a per robot basis.
So? What do you make of it all?
A Universal Guaranteed Basic Income would work pretty much along these lines: Suppose the Federal Government decided to start making monthly payments to every person in the United States 18 or older with no strings attached and the Feds kept it up for the life of the individual. To be sure, the checks would go out to everyone regardless of the usual suspect categories. e.g. sex, race, religion, ethnic group, politics, and so forth.
Next, people getting the checks would have the option of working if they wanted to, and could find a job. The checks would be for 'get-by' sums. Enough to cover living expenses and maybe a little bit more for a movie, game, or book now and then. Say, $2000 per month in the U.S. these days.
Essentially, that's the idea of a Universal Guaranteed Basic Income. Naturally, the details could vary.
The idea has been around for years, but recently gained a boost in recognition when Andrew Yang made it the core of his policy platform in the 2019 primaries. It has been endorsed by a whole lot of people, such as Bill Gates, but who for the most part are not politicians, nor billionaires.
The usual reason economists, futurists, political scientists, policy wonks, and even Gates get behind it is because it is hoped that a Universal Guaranteed Basic Income will prevent Gotterdammerung. I doubt most people are plugged in to the news about our approaching Gotterdammerung, so I'll explain.
It's largely the consensus view these days that sometime within the next few decades robots and artificial intelligences will leave tens of millions of people without a job in the U.S. alone. Billions of people around the world. No one really thinks that is unlikely to happen. I guess robots and AI are pretty certain to be our future now. Here, there, everywhere in the end.
Billions of out of work people present a problem, naturally. People like to eat, they like clothing, they like to have a roof over their heads, and other things too, such as health care. From a political standpoint, the worst part of that is, people notice when they do not have those things, and cannot have those things. Such will become the reality in, say, 30 years at the most, but most likely sooner.
Gotterdammerung is a word borrowed from Norse/German mythology, and nowadays is sometimes used to mean a violent and catastrophic collapse of civilization. It originates in mythology, but if you listen to people who have spent some time looking into these things, it's a genuine down the road threat to sooner or later every nation on the planet. Again, if a third or more of your working age adults are starving, you have a problem.
There have already been experiments with UBGI. Whole towns in places like Canada, the Netherlands, and elsewhere have been placed on it for periods of up to five years to see what happens.
One big concern that is now laid to rest. Most people do not become lazy, as just about everyone feared at first. Some do. But somewhere around 90% or more of them use their new found time available to them to do anything they want to do by seeking out one of the few remaining jobs, going back to school to learn more, taking up a serious hobby, volunteering at a nonprofit organization, etc. Its shocking, but it seems most people like to work. Especially if they get to pick what kind of work they do.
How would they be paid for? Best idea I've heard is what Gates came up. Tax the robots. That is, send a tax bill to the owners of robots, taxing them on a per robot basis.
So? What do you make of it all?
) a salary for doing damn-all.
