Category: Basic Income

Initially it’s easy to be opposed to the idea of UI, but it actually starts making sense when you think about it.
-Without a UI the masses of unemployed workers will just turn to crime or riot, and society will need to spend a huge amount of money fighting against this and locking people up in prison. The amount of money currently spent to incarcerate a prisoner for a year could easily be used to instead pay them a UI and avoid the financial motivation for crime in the first place.
-Without a UI, how would our […]

Full Post at www.ar15.com

Feeling bummed out about the new study showing growing income inequality in the United States — with half the country going without a raise since 1980?

Buck up.

Here are three big wins this week for those fighting on behalf of the economically underprivileged. Portland, Oregon, will tax companies with overpaid CEOs to support the homeless. On Wednesday, the city council of Portland, Oregon, passed a new measure aimed at stemming income inequality: taxing disproportionately well-compensated CEOs, the Portland Business Journal reported.According to the Guardian , it’s the first measure of its kind, and would basically add a surcharge of 10% […]

Full Post at mic.com

I get into a lot of arguments with JG supporters but it’s not because I hate the idea of JG, it’s because I hate the idea of JG without UBI. If you want to push for a JG in addition to UBI, so that everyone with a UBI has the opportunity, if they so choose, to earn additional income through paid work, fine, and if the population desires that enough to pass it into law in addition to a UBI, so be it.

However, a JG without a UBI is like giving someone the choice between Coke and Pepsi. Yeah, […]

Full Post at www.reddit.com

Facebook Co-Founder Chris Hughes, Harvard Law School and Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society Professor Yochai Benkler, Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza and Alaska State Senator Bill Wielechowski may not agree on everything, but they agree on this: Cash handouts have the potential to help Americans and the American economy.

Given the challenges posed by automation and globalization, which are replacing workers and leading to stagnating wages, direct payments to workers may, in fact, be the only solution.

More than 100 organizers, activists, researchers and technologists, including Y Combinator President Sam Altman and former President of the Sierra Club […]

Full Post at www.cnbc.com

07.12.15

Finland considers basic income to reform welfare system.

The Finnish government is considering a pilot project that would see the state pay people a basic income regardless of whether they work.The details of how much the basic income might be and who would be eligible for it are yet to be announced, but already there is widespread interest in how it might work.Prime Minister Juha Sipila has praised the idea. “For me, a basic income means simplifying the social security system,” he said.The scheme is of particular interest to people without jobs. In Finland, they now number 280,000 – 10% […]

Full Post at lpstaging.net

Dozens of Princeton University students and faculty walked out of a talk set to be delivered by social scientist Charles Murray on Thursday shortly after he was introduced.

The demonstration was organized by Carolyn Rouse, who chairs the Anthropology Department at the Ivy League college. Ms. Rouse passed out fliers prior to the event encouraging people to show up and walk out of the lecture, accusing Mr. Murray of promoting “racism and classism” in his research.

“Join us today in a silent protest against the normalization of racism and classism in academia,” Ms. Rouse, who also directs the Program in African […]

Full Post at www.washingtontimes.com

As more and more reports about automation making human jobs vanish continue, more and more serious players of the silicon valley are saying that the only recourse humanity may have is universal basic income (UBI).

Elon Musk has already addressed the question in an interview and he feels we simply won’t have any choice.”There is a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation…Yeah, I am not sure what else one would do. I think that is what would happen,” Musk said in an interview with CNBC.

However, this Thursday, the […]

Full Post at www.celebenews.com

Automation is coming after manufacturing jobs, and a new project thinks it may have the answer. The Economic Security Project, announced Thursday, wants to explore a universal basic income (UBI), something it believes could help with the coming economic shift as skilled labor is replaced by machines. The project has a number of notable founding signatories, including Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, Y Combinator president Sam Altman, and Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza.

“In a time of immense wealth, no one should live in poverty, nor should the middle class be consigned to a future of permanent stagnation or anxiety,” […]

Full Post at www.inverse.com

It seems like we might have turned a corner today relative to universal basic income . Or at least that’s the sense that I get as I’m sitting here in bed, scrolling through today’s headlines. I mean, it’s something that we’ve been discussing for a while, but it seems like it’s everywhere today, which is odd, given how few non-Trump-related news stories break though these days. For some reason, though, the idea of universal basic income is everywhere today.

I think it must just be one of those “perfect storm” kind of things, with tech entrepreneur Elon Musk responding to […]

Full Post at markmaynard.com

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a form of social security in which every citizen is afforded an unconditional sum of money, typically enough to provide themselves with basic needs. Proponents argue that it would eliminate poverty, increase economic growth, and reduce the bureaucracy of welfare systems. Critics claim UBI would decrease labor participation and cause major inflation.

As labor forces are threatened by mass unemployment as a result of increasing mechanization, many first-world nations have begun to flirt with the implementation of UBI. Tesla Motors CEO and futurism icon Elon Musk told CNBC in a November 2016 interview that there […]

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