Category: Basic Income

Could free money for everybody make people unhappy? Sam Altman, president of startup accelerator Y Combinator, is worried that a universal basic income may not be the magic bullet Silicon Valley makes it out to be. Some of tech’s biggest names believe the policy would help people who lose their jobs through robot automation, making sure everyone has enough to get by without fears over cut working hours.

Altman is not totally convinced this will lead to a better world. “What’s unclear to me is will people be net-happier or are we just so dependent on our jobs for meaning […]

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In 2015 Claire Williams left her career behind in Vancouver to volunteer at an orphanage in India. When she returned to Vancouver six months later, the issue of homelessness in her city preoccupied her. She wanted to make a lasting impact in the lives of others.

With her co-founder, Frans Tjallingii, the New Leaf Project was born. New Leaf is a simple concept. A one time cash grant of $7,500 is awarded to a person who is homeless, with no strings attached.

In Vancouver the pilot project will run in association with UBC and The Lookout Society next Spring. Fifty participants […]

Full Post at www.basicincomecanada.org

What happens when

Few things are more divisive than ideas that are perceived as radical; ideas that push against what we consider to be normal, against the social or political boundaries that we have grown up and lived within.

As Chris Mellor’s recent article demonstrated, when the powers that be put forward divisive ideas it doesn’t take long for the population to fall in to one camp or another: For! Against! All with very little middle ground to be found.Universal Basic Income (UBI) is simultaneously a simple and difficult concept to grasp. Simple: Everyone receives a basic level of income […]

Full Post at www.theregister.co.uk

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LDS

One big issue is where the money come from. It would mean that taxes will be higher and higher on people creating value, while transferring money to people who don’t. When taxes becomes too high, you stop creating value, it’s not worth the effort – or, if you can, you go elsewhere. Printing money won’t lead anywhere – just to turn a country into a very cheap labour ones. Rich people will stay reach and become even more, the other will get poorer and poorer.The second big issue is it puts people right into the […]

Full Post at forums.theregister.co.uk

In an experiment aimed at establishing whether or not a universal basic income scheme would reap more benefits than disadvantages, Finland will be giving out free cash to a number of its citizens.

While the country has a relatively high unemployment rate due to the number of jobs lost as a consequence of Nokia’s discontinuance of its mobile phone production — only a few of Finland’s unemployed are in a rush to score new jobs.

The bizarre trend in the country is due to an unemployment benefits system that effectively discourages citizens from seeking income-generating work for fear of losing the […]

Full Post at vanguarddaily.com

Thirteen soldiers were killed and 48 more were injured when a car bomb hit a bus transporting buy online quick delivery off-duty military personnel in the central Turkish city of Kayseri on Saturday. Rough Cut (no reporter narration). Our second female PM, the BBC’s political editor and John Lewis’s first female MD all make the list. EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW Tom Davies’ prodigious talent has not gone unnoticed by Everton’s fans. He is one of their own, a boyhood Blue born in Liverpool and a product of the club’s academy. A new visualization from NASA illustrates the concentration of carbon dioxide […]

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Sam Altman is putting a lot of faith in the idea that giving people free money will make them happier and healthier, but that doesn’t mean he’s betting it all.

Altman is the president of Y Combinator , Silicon Valley’s largest startup accelerator. Beginning in 2017, he and a group of YC researchers are launching an experiment in Oakland, California, where roughly 100 families will get $2,000 a month.

The goal is to capture data that reveals if free money on a regular basis (known as a basic income) really does help people escape poverty and live healthier lives.Enormous piles of […]

Full Post at www.businessinsider.sg

The Economic Security Project (ESP), a US$10 million trial of a basic income guarantee over a two year period, will seek evidence that a universal basic income can help solve problems ranging from poverty to middle class stagnation. The rise in trials, pilots, and studies of a basic income guarantee seems to be mirroring the emergence of the election of alt-right authoritarian leaders across the West.

Driven by a coalition of technologists, investors, academics, politicians, and social activists, ESP founding signatories agreed to a simple belief statement: “We believe people need financial security, and cash might be the most effective […]

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Sylvia Pantel, CC BY-SA 4.0 Foto-AG Gymnasium Melle Sylvia Pantel , Member of the German Parliament from the Christian Democratic Union (the party of Angela Merkel), has introduced a proposal for a fixed monthly payment for parents with children younger than school age. The amount (not yet fixed) would be tied to child care costs, and all parents would receive the same benefit regardless of means.

Pantel’s “family pact” has some similarities with basic income: it is paid in cash, at a fixed rate, without means-testing or other conditions. Moreover, it is universal for parents .

However, Pantel herself does not […]

Full Post at basicincome.org

No one would confuse this frigid corner of northern Finland with Silicon Valley. Notched in low pine forests just 100 miles below the Arctic Circle, Oulu seems more likely to achieve dominance at herding reindeer than at nurturing technology start-ups.

But this city has roots as a hub for wireless communications, and keen aspirations in innovation. It also has thousands of skilled engineers in need of work. Many were laid off by Nokia, the Finnish company once synonymous with mobile telephones and more recently at risk of fading into oblivion.

While entrepreneurs are eager to put these people to work, the […]

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