Author: automata

Basic Income for 100 Stockton Residents will be smaller than Oprah 276 car giveaway

Basic Income for 100 Stockton Residents will be smaller than Oprah 276 car giveaway

The City of Stockton went bankrupt in 2012 and it now has a budget of $626 million.

A random sample of the 300,000 residents of Stockton, a port city in California’s Central Valley, will get $500 per month ($6,000 a year) with no strings attached.

It’s the latest test of the basic income policy. It is funded from philanthropy. The first $1 million in funding comes from the Economic Security Project, a pro-basic income advocacy and research group co-chaired by Facebook co-founder and former New Republic publisher Chris Hughes and activists Natalie Foster and Dorian Warren; Hughes provided […]

FCA finds millions have no idea what pension they bought

FCA finds millions have no idea what pension they bought

By Damian Fantato A quarter of people who have accessed a defined contribution pension in the past two years do not know how they did so, according to a survey by the Financial Conduct Authority.

The Financial Lives survey, which was based on research involving 13,000 people, assessed the attitudes people have towards the financial services sector.

The research examined behaviour and attitudes towards pensions accumulation and decumulation.It found three in 10 people had bought an annuity in the past two years while one in five had bought into some sort of income drawdown arrangement. One in six took their whole […]

Universal basic income and correspondence with Scottish Greens: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/17/02092
Date received: 17 September 2017 Information requested

Information on ‘any policy work undertaken by the Scottish Government into universal basic income and any correspondence with the Scottish Greens and the Common Weal on this.’ Response
I enclose a copy of most of the information you requested.While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance some information has been redacted from the enclosed Ministerial briefing on Citizens Basic Income because an exemption under section 29(1)(a) (policy formulation), of FOISA applies to that information. The reasons why that exemption applies are explained below. Reasons for […]

3 years ago, Stockton, California, was bankrupt. Now it’s trying out a basic income.

3 years ago, Stockton, California, was bankrupt. Now it's trying out a basic income.

Next year, a random sample of the 300,000 residents of Stockton, a port city in California’s Central Valley, will get $500 per month ($6,000 a year) with no strings attached.

It’s the latest test of a policy known as basic income , funded not out of city revenues but by individual and foundation philanthropy. The first $1 million in funding comes from the Economic Security Project, a pro-basic income advocacy and research group co-chaired and bankrolled by Facebook co-founder and former New Republic publisher Chris Hughes. Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs hopes to launch the basic income project as early as […]

Science must examine the future of work

Science must examine the future of work

Automation will take away jobs, but a bigger question is how many it will generate. In 2014, the Los Angeles Times began beating its rivals to report earthquakes, using an algorithm to convert announcements from the US Geological Survey (USGS) to breaking news within a few minutes. This June, it announced that a magnitude-6.8 quake had shaken Santa Barbara, California. That was certainly news to the distinctly unshaken residents of Santa Barbara; the earthquake the newspaper was reporting on had actually happened in 1925. The paper’s Quakebot had misinterpreted an update to the USGS seismic database and published its […]

Nicola Sturgeon’s plans to give everyone in Scotland a basic income would cost £12BILLION a year and lead to huge tax hikes according to her Government’s own analysis

Nicola Sturgeon’s plans to give everyone in Scotland a basic income would cost £12BILLION a year and lead to huge tax hikes according to her Government’s own analysis

NICOLA Sturgeon’s plans to give everyone in Scotland a basic income would cost £12BILLION a year and lead to huge tax hikes – according to analysis by her own Government.

A paper prepared by civil servants for the First Minister is warning people would face a colossal 50 per cent increase in the income tax rate to fund the idea – which is unlikely to be accepted anyway.
Reuters Nicola Sturgeon’s plans to give everyone in Scotland a basic income would cost £12bn a year
It comes after Ms Sturgeon revealed a Citizens Basic Income (CBI) would be trialled by […]

Sturgeon knew citizen’s income plans would cost £12.3bn before launching pilot

Sturgeon knew citizen’s income plans would cost £12.3bn before launching pilot

Nicola Sturgeon pressed ahead with plans to trial a basic income for everyone – despite civil servant briefings showing her it would cost taxpayers £12.3 billion a year.

Documents obtained by the Scottish Conservatives through Freedom of Information have revealed the briefing on Citizen’s Basic Income (CBI) handed to the First Minister in March.

It warned the plans would cost billions extra every year, and lead to every income tax payer in the country having to cough up a rate of 50 per cent.The briefing stated: “It is a very costly policy that is unlikely to gain public acceptability and ultimately […]

Why Universal Basic Income Is a Pipe Dream

Why Universal Basic Income Is a Pipe Dream

There are so many better ways to help people out of poverty.

One future-related proposal getting a lot of attention nowadays is the Universal Basic Income. The idea is to give everybody some money every month — typically something like $1,000 a month. That is not enough for everybody to live luxuriously, but enough for everybody to get by without needing to work. Supporters say it’s needed because the robots will take all the jobs, plus they hope it will raise entrepreneurship. While others say robots are a false alarm, that we’ll have a surplus of jobs so why pay […]

FCA report points to significant confusion about retirement options

FCA report points to significant confusion about retirement options

Many consumers are not well-informed on decisions they make about their income in retirement and are baffled by many aspects of the process, according to a report by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

The report Understanding the financial lives of UK adults pointed to some alarming data on how uninformed and baffling many consumers find pensions.

It found 3% of all UK adults did not know if they had a private pension provision or not, and of those aged over 50 without a pension, 10% had never considered why they did not have one.The report also found some six million people, […]

Money for nothing? Why a universal basic income.

Money for nothing? Why a universal basic income.

‘What would you do if your income was taken care of?’

It’s a compelling question that gained worldwide attention when a pro-Universal Basic Income group in Switzerland unveiled a 8000 square metre poster in the middle of Geneva asking just this. The basic premise of UBI is that it should fall to government to provide a fixed living wage to all people regardless of income, job title, or inheritance — but adjusted for age — to secure the necessities of life. Not only to help cope with change, but to abolish poverty all together.

The idea has a rare bipartisan support. […]