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What is ‘universal basic income,’ and why is everyone talking about it?

By Tina Irgang

In 2017, several countries and at least one company are poised to embark on a major social experiment: What if people were simply handed a certain amount of money each year, no strings attached?

Silicon Valley has long advocated for the idea of a universal basic income, but startup accelerator Y Combinator is poised to launch an actual trial run. The company will select 100 families from Oakland, CA, and provide them between $1,000 and $2,000 a month for up to a year, according to The Guardian .“In our pilot [study], the income will be unconditional; we’re […]

Is Universal Basic Income a Viable Solution? Another Country is Giving it a Shot

In Brief

Ontario, Canada is preparing for its own pilot basic income program in 2017, according to Hugh Segal, former senator and special advisor to Ontario.

t He believes that supplemental income should be set at $1,320 a month ($1,820 for people with disabilities) for it to be effective. Pioneering a program The case for universal basic income (UBI) has been made by financial experts, economists, government officials, and tech moguls, alike. So far, except in the case of Finland, all the talk about UBI has mostly been talk. That’s all about to change now, with Ontario, Canada preparing […]

Why advocates from the tech industry are pushing for a universal basic income

Why advocates from the tech industry are pushing for a universal basic income

Merely days after Amazon landed its first-ever drone delivery, advocates for universal basic income in the tech industry feel the need for the innovative form of social security more strongly than ever before.

As companies like Amazon and 7 Eleven race to revolutionize industries with the use of drone deliveries, economies all around the world brace for what seems to be a looming new era of business and technology — where human help is of decreasing need.

The convenience that new technologies such as drone deliveries have come to offer seems to outshine in more ways than one the often overlooked […]

Offshoring, Not Automation, Is Causing America’s Manufacturing Job Loss

Offshoring, Not Automation, Is Causing America’s Manufacturing Job Loss

Don’t Blame Technology Or Robots

People who say that America is losing its manufacturing jobs because of automation (more robots) are either ignorant, or lying—many are both.

Sadly, these people are about as common as they wrong (very, on both counts).Bad “economists” are everywhere, especially in journalism. For example, Wolfgang Lehmacher wrote a column in Fortune on the subject: …what then explains [manufacturing] job losses? It’s simple: factories don’t need as many workers as they used to, because robots increasingly do the work. Let me be clear: that’s not wrong prima facie —factories are getting more efficient. But that’s […]

The White House’s Fix for Robots Stealing Jobs? Education

The White House’s Fix for Robots Stealing Jobs? Education

Chip Somodevilla-Getty Images A new report from the White House warns that millions of jobs could be automated out of existence in coming years. But it cautions against one much discussed solution: giving away free money.

The report , published this week by the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, joins a growing body of work forecasting massive jobs losses due to automation and artificial intelligence. A paper published in 2013 by Oxford University researchers, for example, estimated that as many as 47 percent of all jobs could eventually be automated. The new report, likewise, forecasts millions of job losses in […]

America faces catastrophic employment numbers

America faces catastrophic employment numbers

Americans continue to drop out of the labour market as employment numbers reach catastrophic levels, warned a panel of experts. The economy has lost a staggering percentage of its workforce over the decades. The number of people employed or looking for work as a percentage of the population sits at only 62,7 percent. Experts warned during the panel discussion that the numbers show a quiet catastrophe.

“I’m not trying to be hyperbolic in describing this as a quiet catastrophe or calamity,” American Enterprise Institute Economist Nicholas Eberstadt said.

“From 1965 to the present we’ve seen a really wrenching decline in employment […]

Apple, Ireland, the EU and tax

Apple, Ireland, the EU and tax

Sir, – The Government plays a dangerous and not very patriotic game when it challenges EU findings that Apple was afforded special tax avoidance privilege in Ireland for a many years.

Facilitating 0.005 per cent tax payable on multiple billions of profit cannot be easily denied or explained. Some might consider it nothing short of treachery for a Government to side with those who would concentrate wealth and power into a sort of corporate feudalism, rather than with its own citizenry who fear they are are being betrayed into a serfdom of unemployed dependency, inadequate services and festering despair.

For when […]

The White House’s Fix for Robots Stealing Jobs? Education

The White House’s Fix for Robots Stealing Jobs? Education

Chip Somodevilla-Getty Images A new report from the White House warns that millions of jobs could be automated out of existence in coming years. But it cautions against one much discussed solution: giving away free money.

The report , published this week by the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, joins a growing body of work forecasting massive jobs losses due to automation and artificial intelligence. A paper published in 2013 by Oxford University researchers, for example, estimated that as many as 47 percent of all jobs could eventually be automated. The new report, likewise, forecasts millions of job losses in […]

Why cash handouts from the government could be the answer to robots taking our jobs

Why cash handouts from the government could be the answer to robots taking our jobs

Some fear that robots and AI will steal our jobs.

They probably will (in the near-term, at least half of them).

If that happens, what will we do for a living? How will we earn money? More from Peter Diamandis: Reinventing Food Human Intelligence (HI) Only Amazon Could Make a Checkout-Free Grocery Store a Reality In this blog I’ll be discussing one of the most important proposed solutions to job loss due to automation: The notion of " Universal Basic Income " (sometimes called guaranteed minimum income). Concert From Our Sponsor Free to be stunning Free to be bold […]

Just give them the money (the argument for basic income)

Poor people are still free to reproduce as much as they want, there just won’t be (and shouldn’t be) an endlessly scaling benefit boost to that activity. No one is stopping people from reproducing anyway, but I don’t want to give people more cash beyond a certain point.

Think of it like the mortgage interest deduction for homes. This is a massive wealth transfer from non homeowners to home owners. There was a reform floated, by Romney no less, of capping the deductions so that people buying multi million dollar mansions could not use that tax […]