Category: Basic Income

UBI is the key to finding the next Mark Zuckerberg ​“Why do I exist?”: a question that has preoccupied the greatest minds, and the rest of us after a heavy night out, since time immemorial. Today, it appears the answer is to simply make a lot of money for Google and Facebook .

You and I are the raw material for these social media companies. Those baby photos, the birthday party invites and the self-indulgent status updates are the coal, iron and steel of the fourth industrial revolution.

Facebook, Google and other major technology firms harvest the raw data you produce […]

Full Post at www.independent.co.uk

The idea of universal basic income was largely ignored by Americans for forty years before it started to get traction again as a byproduct of conversations about automation and the end of the traditional manufacturing sector. Bernie Sanders popularized the pseudo-policy proposal in 2016, rallying supporters around the idea of an American social democracy. He didn’t win the primary. Which is not to say that the notion of paying citizens for being citizens is a wholly radical idea. Liberals have traditionally championed Social Security and Medicare, entitlement programs that offer state benefits to citizens in return for nothing (well, […]

Full Post at www.inverse.com

Image credit: stevendepolo, flickr creative commons Is it a viable prospect to create a direct mechanism for transferring a universal basic income to all the world’s people? Not before we bring about a huge united voice of ordinary citizens in favour of sharing the world’s resources to end hunger and life-threatening poverty once and for all, argues STWR.

The following article is an edited version of a talk given at the World Basic Income conference held in Salford, UK, in February 2017.

At STWR, we’ve long advocated the importance of sharing in relation to the world’s most pressing problems, from spiralling […]

Full Post at www.sharing.org

National

Introducing a basic income guarantee has become one of the much-debated policy issues among presidential hopefuls amid growing calls to create a welfare society.

The issue of adopting the state-provided income system, under which the government doles out payments to the people regardless of their income level or employment status, was first raised by Seongman Mayor Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party, who promises to distribute 1.3 million won ($1,136) a year for people under 29 and over 65.Lee says 28 million people would be entitled to basic income, and that it would require 43.5 trillion won to implement […]

Full Post at mengnews.joins.com

This twenty-seven-minute audio broadcast from BBC World Service is dedicated to discussing basic income, on general terms, and has been played for the first time on the 20 th of November, 2016. The discussion is chaired by Ed Butler, who has invited Louise Haagh (University of York and Basic Income Earth Network Co-chair), Michael Faye , Michael Tanner (economist, senior fellow at the Cato Institute) and Ian Gough (visiting professor at the London School of Economics).

Michael Faye starts out by saying that giving cash directly to people is more effective than all the advice and control any “expert” can […]

Full Post at basicincome.org

4 months

juice

As badly written articles go, this one is… quite badly written. Where to start?First, the entire article is based on the strawman that a basic income policy is only intended to address a shrinking job market. However, there’s far more to it than that: not only does it reduce inequality and poverty (pleasing the left) and reduce government bureaucracy overheads (pleasing the right), but it also leads to more entrepenureal activity (pleasing both). After all, if you have a guaranteed economic safety net, you’re free to experiment and take risks that would be unthinkable otherwise. […]

Full Post at forums.theregister.co.uk

In part one of a two-part series, Ida Männistö explains Finland’s Basic Income Program. Stay tuned for part two, where she explores how automatization has contributed to Finland’s high unemployment, and why a basic income program may be a good mechanism to mitigate this consequence.

The Government of Finland laid out a proposition in October 2016 to carry out an unprecedented social experiment: the implementation of a basic income program. The legislative proposal was welcomed by the majority of the parties represented in the Finnish parliament and implemented by the Government on January 1, 2017. The Ministry of Social […]

Full Post at natoassociation.ca

Universal Basic Income (UBI) and the movement towards a shorter work week is not just a solution to inequality, but one also aimed at stabilizing the environment, writes Professor Greg Marston, from the School of Social Science at The University of Queensland.

In his essay for the Green Institute, ‘ The Environmental Impacts of a UBI and a Shorter Working Week ‘, Marston outlines how the process and debate surrounding UBI allows us to confront difficult questions within our society about how we live and work now, and how we should be living and working. After all, how do we […]

Full Post at bigthink.com

2 months

Toltec

@ smartypantsDidn’t get the AC Brexit reference immediately, I thought they were just referring to people less smart than them at first. Still rather rude and insulting, but that does appear to be the level for a fair proportion of both Leave and Remain voters unfortunately.The situation the author of the article is in is one of the reasons why I don’t think UBI as a replacement for all benefits would work. One solution does not suit everyone, equality is not about giving everyone the same benefits it is about allowing them equal opportunity to […]

Full Post at forums.theregister.co.uk