Category: Basic Income

On March 22, 2017, the popular debate program Intelligence Squared U.S. (IQ2US), hosted and moderated by ABC News correspondent John Donvan, held a debate on the question “Is the universal basic income the safety net of the future?” Specifically, the panelists debated the proposal of a $12,000 per year UBI for Americans.

On the “yes” side, Andrew Stern, former President of the Service Employees International Union and author of Raising the Floor , partnered with libertarian author and scholar Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute. Their opponents were two leading economists of the Obama administration: Jason Furman (Chairman of […]

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The CFR (Council on Foreign Relations), on March 30th 2017, live streamed a panel discussion predicting that artificial intelligence and industrial automation would create massive middle class job losses and would require governments create massive welfare systems for the “under-employed” work force.

Essentially this push would usher in a system of social control wherein all means of production are owned my a close knit group of corporate overlords in partnership with government oligarchs completely ending “Upward Mobility” and pushing everyone in to the lower class. This would force the average citizen in to a welfare system meant to control and […]

Full Post at orwellianchronicle.net

"President Trump makes strong statements. They are not always positive statements but then he has backed off from so many of them." Martin Feldstein , professor of economics at Harvard University and president emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research , sounds a word of caution about any move towards a universal basic income programme. In an interview to TOI on the sidelines of the ET Global Business Summit, the eminent economist talks about the prospects for the economies of India and China. Excerpts:

How do you see the state of the world economy?
The US economy […]

Full Post at economictimes.indiatimes.com

Biological Case for UBI

At the end of 2015, after a year-long journey, I achieved the realization of an idea with the help of about 140 people that has already forever changed the way I look at the very foundations — or lack thereof — upon which all of society is based. I now firmly believe we have the potential through its universal adoption to systemically transform society for the better, even more so than many of those most familiar with the idea have long postulated because, for me, the idea is no longer just an idea. It’s […]

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There are a little over 150 million employed people in the United States: about 3.4 million drive trucks, taxis, buses or delivery vehicles, meaning that more than one in every 50 workers in the U.S. operates a motor vehicle.

Within ten years, many will be out of a job, for self-driving vehicles will become cheaper than paying humans. This inevitable displacement of human workers means a radical change is necessary.

Given that capitalism is unlikely to go away anytime soon, I propose a humane and efficient way to address this problem: a universal basic income (UBI).The idea of a UBI is […]

Full Post at www.dailytarheel.com

The UK think tank Compass , which published the 2016 report Universal Basic Income: An idea whose time has come? by Howard Reed and Stewart Lansley, recently launched the blog series on the topic of basic income (“ Universal Basic Income: Security for the Future? ”).

Two pieces in the series are “ Coming off the fence on UBI? ” by Ruth Lister (chair of the Compass Management Committee and Emeritus Professor at Loughborough University) and, in reply to Lister’s contribution, “ Basic Income and Institutional Transformation ” by Louise Haagh (co-chair of the Basic Income Earth Network and Reader […]

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PM Modi is not one to be hesitant about funding innovative ideas in the public interest. Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (Photo: PTI) Irrespective of its economic virtues, demonetisation — an aggressive, unprecedented initiative of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, brought rich dividends for the BJP in the Uttar Pradesh election. Above all, voters were impressed with his determination to punish those who have become fat on black money. That the move also “punished” those who had no black money — via extended inconvenience, loss of business or employment — was collateral damage. An incredible 41 per cent of voters gave […]

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Johan Nygren, a basic income activist, is currently exploring if basic income can be implemented using cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency are digital currencies whose value and number of units are regulated by encryption techniques, outside of any central banking system. A cryptocurrency-based basic income will be funded with taxes

A cryptocurrency-based basic income will be funded with taxes grown within a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. P2P is an architecture for building computer networks that’s focus is on equality and sharing among peers, each user consuming and supplying information to the network. Nygren’s experiment aims to use decentralized ‘swarms’ of users to distribute a […]

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