A new video has been released by Geoff Crocker, on a “radical concept of funding basic income by perpetual deficit”. This video is a result of a presentation done at the Asia Pacific UBI Conference, which was held of the latest 17th and 18th of March 2018.
In this short video, Geoff Crocker generally reviews the most typical arguments for and against basic income, focusing on the financing issues. Particularly, he conceives a thought experiment where all economic goods and services are produced by machines. The question then arises: how to distribute these among the population? Crocker’s conclusions, from this onset, are that basic income becomes “essential to maintain consumer demand”, and that “financial deficit is inevitable”. This, apparently, derives directly from the fact that modern economies operate at a permanent deficit and that “unearned income [is] necessary in high tech economies”.
Geoff Crocker’s ideas had already been mentioned on Basic Income News, in a paper he called “The economic necessity of basic income”.
This makes perfect sense and sadly the UK govt is not looking at Basic Income as a viable alternative to work.
A basic income will free up people to do things that they would like to do but are unable because they are ‘economic slaves.’
The reality is that with robotics and automation set to take over 1 in 3 jobs in the next 12 years across the planet, sticking your head in the sand isn’t an option.
It has been my view for some years and it seems Geoff Crocker’s too, that ‘machines’ will do the work and earn the money,
I have theorised as a futurist that we may own machines that we ‘lease’ to companies to make things. SO, the economy goes on and on in effect.
The argument that people would sit around doing nothing is not going to be largely true. They will be freed to do what they want, in fact they can volunteer to do things, care for people etc which will save the government a fortune.
In my view, having worked in the Benefits system that BI is the only way forward. Having been out of work in 2016 I saw the recent side of the benefits system, it is a shambles. It needs automating and a basic income payment of which you move across 5 tiers from age 16-18, 18 to retirement, retirement to demise and /or ill health payment is the way forward.
The only stipulation is that you are a registered British citizen and ‘on the system.’ This will weed out the corruption and discourage illegal immigration as an added benefit.
We are going through an industrial revolution no different from the 1800’s where many manual workers were displaced by machines, that situation did not lead to long unemployment queues, machines generated wealth and more jobs.