Author: automata

A Billionaire Is Helping Fund a Massive Universal Basic Income Project

Techpreneurs Love UBI

Tesla and SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk and Y Combinator president Sam Altman have already come out in support of universal basic income (UBI), and now another tech billionaire is joining their ranks: eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

His philanthropic investment firm, the Omidyar Network, is stepping up its support of UBI by funding a basic income experiment in Kenya. The experiment is being implemented by charity organization GiveDirectly, which is currently running the small pilot project in a few Kenyan villages. When the program lunches fully in a few months, it’ll be the largest UBI experiment […]

eBay founder Pierre Omidyar is financing a universal basic income experiment

eBay founder Pierre Omidyar is financing a universal basic income experiment

The idea of a universal basic income, a guaranteed minimum payment for all citizens, is gaining momentum as a potential solution for an increasingly stratified society—one in which technology and other forms of progress generate enormous wealth for some and unemployment and economic despair for others.

Despite trials in the 1960s and 1970s in the US, Canada, and India, we still don’t know if it reduces poverty while enhancing the quality of life. The earlier experiments, although promising, were incomplete and inconclusive.

The latest benefactor to invest in proving out the idea is eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. On Feb. 7, the […]

Before Universal Basic Income, We Must First Get Social Spending Basics Right

Before Universal Basic Income, We Must First Get Social Spending Basics Right

Providing a UBI in place of existing schemes will not change the fundamentally unequal income distribution in the country. The way to resolve the crisis is a redistribution from the rich to the poor.

Representative image. Credit: Reuters The Economic Survey 2016-17 devotes a chapter to the provision of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), describing it as a “raging new idea,” a “radical new vision” and “the shortest path to eliminating poverty”. While warning that the UBI “should not become the Trojan horse that usurps the fiscal space for a well-functioning state,” the survey says a de facto UBI […]

Universal Basic Income: What Would Mahatma Gandhi Do?

Universal Basic Income: What Would Mahatma Gandhi Do?

India’s Ministry of Finance recently released a whopper of an annual Economic Survey . Don’t let the boring title fool you: this is a magnum opus on contemporary development. (Full disclosure: the lead author is Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian , a friend and senior fellow on leave from CGD.) The Survey contains the usual detailed analysis of the Indian economy. Yet the parts of most interest to developmentistas are likely to be the special chapters on demonetization, low-skill manufacturing, fertility puzzles, urbanization, and more.

“Universal Basic Income: A Conversation With and Within the Mahatma” (Chapter 9) is the one […]

Conservative Carbon Dividend Proposal is a Welcome Development for Introduction of Partial Basic Income

Conservative Carbon Dividend Proposal is a Welcome Development for Introduction of Partial Basic Income

The Climate Leadership Council just put forth a proposal for a carbon fee and dividend , as a key policy to combat climate change. The authors are conservatives, including Republican former Secretaries of State James Baker and George Schultz, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and two Chairs from the Council of Economic Advisors in the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations. While there are some aspects of the proposal to question, progressives should get behind the main idea: a steadily rising carbon fee and dividend.

First, the proposal is a very welcome development for the effort to fight climate change, and […]

Universal Basic Income in Israel?

Universal Basic Income in Israel?

There’s a lot of buzz around UBI these days and it’s being tested in various countries, and previous tests appear to have been successful.

Would it work in Israel? Should it be tried? I think it would work well here and the benefits are potentially huge for society and the country.

The most common objection is that it would be too expensive and how would the country pay for such a thing? Giving free money to everyone? Crazy! Nobody would go to work ever!However I think that is shortsighted. I came across a quote somewhere recently that went something like "Somewhere […]

How The Coming Wave Of Job Automation Will Affect You

How The Coming Wave Of Job Automation Will Affect You

Submitted by David Galland via The Passing Parade

One of the more interesting mental exercises related to predicting the future involves trying to fathom the impact the rise of robots will have on humanity.

We can be quite sure that in the proverbial blink, robots will be doing all the war fighting . After that, what’s the point? But does that then lead to the sort of robotic apocalypse so well envisioned in Terminator ?I also suspect it’s only a matter of time before the idea of sex bots goes from being an “eew” sort of thing to a […]

Robots can’t solve the crisis in the NHS – we still need workers with empathy

Robots can't solve the crisis in the NHS – we still need workers with empathy

Nurses on the frontline of the health service have empathy with patients. Could ‘chatbots’ really replace them? Images of trolleys laden with suffering people in corridors, old people hooked up to drips on beds in cupboards – not pictures emerging from Syria, but the latest crisis to hit the NHS .

Waiting times in A&E are unacceptable, with hospitals operating at full capacity; dozens of beds are occupied by people who have nowhere else to go. When even the Health Minister – the normally unflappable Mr Positive, Jeremy Hunt – admits things are problematic, it’s probably not the best time […]

Technobabble: Automation and the modern worker

Technobabble: Automation and the modern worker

Technobabble is our look at the weird, wonderful and wildly creative aspects of technology and the tech industry. If you have any babble, feel free to email directly or reach out on Twitter .

For decades, pundits have discussed the plight of the American worker. Without fail, as technology has advanced and become more automated, some workers have been displaced.

Take the assembly line, for example. Workers en masse were employed to ensure every part of the manufacturing process kept up with industry standards. But as machines entered into the assembly line, work became automated and fewer employees were required, […]

How Robots Helped Create 100,000 Jobs at Amazon

How Robots Helped Create 100,000 Jobs at Amazon

amazon robots Accelerating technology has been creating a lot of worry over job loss to automation, especially as machines become capable of doing things they never could in the past. A recent report released by the McKinsey Global Institute estimated that 49 percent of job activities could currently be fully automated —that equates to 1.1 billion workers globally.

What gets less buzz is the other side of the coin: automation helping to create jobs. Believe it or not, it does happen, and we can look at one of the world’s largest retailers to see that.

Thanks in part to more robots […]