Category: Basic Income

Far-right and anti-establishment parties will govern Italy led by a scandal-plagued little-known lawyer after stunning elections.

Giuseppe Conte was approved as prime minister by President Sergio Mattarella with a mandate for form government with his rag-tag coalition on Wednesday.

The 53-year-old won election despite a brewing scandal about his claims to have studied at some of the world’s top universities including Cambridge. Far-right and anti-establishment parties will govern Italy led by scandal-plagued little-known lawyer Giuseppe Conte after stunning elections Far-right and anti-establishment parties will govern Italy led by scandal-plagued little-known lawyer Giuseppe Conte after stunning electionsDoubts about his CV almost derailed […]

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“Universal basic income (UBI) is so silly on its face,” begins reader Roger A, “even a middle school kid would at least know to ask, “What’s the catch?””

Yesterday’s reckoning on universal basic income drew a heavy mail… and we thank you for your participation.

Ron B said: There are a lot of jobs that would not be done if UBI is adopted, and there will be serious problems eventually… UBI is a big, big, big mistake! Adds Maria R: When I first heard the term I thought it meant the lowest annual wage salary to survive on. But having read […]

Full Post at dailyreckoning.com

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– Oli Scarff/Getty Images Being paid to do nothing at work might sound like every employee’s dream, but it can also bring shame and depression.Anthropologist David Graeber at the London School of Economics has written a book, " Bullshit Jobs: A Theory ," on the subject of meaningless work. He cited a survey that showed nearly 40 percent of United Kingdom workers were quite sure their jobs made no significant contribution to the world at all.While economist John Maynard Keynes once predicted that we might be able to work 15-hour workweeks , in many cases, […]

Full Post at www.marketplace.org

In 2011, a group of five entrepreneurs and designers led by advertising veteran Alex Bogusky got together in Boulder, Colorado to launch a startup accelerator called COMMON . The idea behind the accelerator was to build out an online community in which companies and individual entrepreneurs alike could share knowledge and tips for growing their ventures. Each member would pay $99 a month for access to the community, and the main criteria was that whatever company or initiative they were launching had to be geared toward social good. “We wanted to address a new kind of capitalism,” says COMMON […]

Full Post at www.fastcompany.com

ROME: Italy’s president on Wednesday (May 23) approved little-known lawyer Giuseppe Conte’s nomination to be prime minister of a government formed by far-right and anti-establishment parties.

Conte’s appointment could herald an end to more than two months of political uncertainty in the eurozone’s third-biggest economy – but the coalition’s eurosceptic and anti-immigrant stance has alarmed senior European officials. Advertisement President Sergio Mattarella met on Wednesday afternoon with Conte, "to whom he gave the mandate to form a government," said Ugo Zampetti, General Secretary of the Italian presidency.

The talks with the president had been delayed amid a furore over claims that […]

Full Post at www.channelnewsasia.com

The first rule of leaving the euro is you do not talk about leaving the euro.

That’s because, if you do, you’ll not only alienate the vast majority of voters who all want to stay in the common currency, but you’ll also be blamed for the resulting bank run that will cripple your economy. Nobody, after all, wants to see their euros turned into, say, lira that wouldn’t be worth anywhere near as much, so everybody would try to get their money out of the banks before that could happen. And that’s why the best way to actually exit the […]

Full Post at www.washingtonpost.com

Eakinomics: The Single-Employer Proposal

Having accepted single-payer health care, the political left has a new proposal to consider: guaranteed (government) jobs. Specifically, as the authors themselves outline (and in their words): The permanent establishment of a National Investment Employment Corps (NIEC). The NIEC will provide universal job coverage for all adult Americans. The permanent establishment of the NIEC would eliminate involuntary unemployment.

The elimination of poverty wages through the pay structure of the NIEC. The federal job guarantee would provide a job at a minimum annual wage of $24,600 for full-time workers (poverty line for a family of four) […]

Full Post at www.americanactionforum.org

No. Here’s why.

First, let’s rule out the usual argument for rising inflation. Many people assume that if everyone was running around with an extra $20,000 in their pockets, companies would just raise their prices to soak it up. This is called demand pull inflation . Supply and demand theory says that when demand rises, supply will rise to meet it. In the short run, prices may rise, but once supply rises, the market will reach a new equilibrium and prices will stabilise at the new, higher production rate. The period of demand pull inflation can be avoided by starting […]

Full Post at www.quora.com