Equality in Entrepreneurship: UBI’s Role in Fostering Inclusive Startups

Equality in Entrepreneurship: UBI’s Role in Fostering Inclusive Startups

Image Source: Unsplash

by Beau Peters

So you’re an aspiring entrepreneur. You have a concept that you believe will add value to a sector of the market, the passion to set out on your own, and the know-how to make a dream into a small business.

However, as you venture into a field with many competitors, large and small, you’ve likely come up against a core truth in a capital-driven economy. While in theory, anyone can start a successful business and achieve success, some are more likely to succeed than others. The gulf between resources available to a first-time entrepreneur who left their minimum wage job to make something of themselves and a seasoned businessperson with several success stories under their belt is – well, it speaks for itself.

Read the full article here.

New book on income inequality in the UK features basic income

New book on income inequality in the UK features basic income

The Richer, the Poorer charts the rollercoaster history of both rich and poor and the mechanisms that link wealth and impoverishment. This landmark book shows how, for 200 years, Britain’s most powerful elites have enriched themselves at the expense of surging inequality, mass poverty and weakened social resilience. It reveals how Britain’s model of ‘extractive capitalism’ – with a small elite securing an excessive slice of the economic cake – has created a two-century-long ‘high-inequality, high-poverty’ cycle, one broken for only a brief period after the Second World War.

Why, he asks, are rich and poor citizens judged by very different standards? Why has social progress been so narrowly shared? With growing calls for a fairer post-COVID-19 society, what needs to be done to break Britain’s destructive poverty/inequality cycle? The book has two chapters on the way forward and this includes adopting a guaranteed income floor through a modified basic income along with a top-up social dividend paid through a citizen’s wealth fund.

For a review, click here.

Kela Conference on Social Security 2019 – Equality and wellbeing through sustainable social security system

Kela Conference 2019 will occur on the 10th December 2019, between 9.00 and 16.30h, at Kela’s Main office building in Helsinki. It will be a gathering of experts on social protection, and will include four main themes – Investing in the future, Reforming social security, Customer services in the globalizing and diversifying world and Customer experience by digital transformation.

The main idea behind the Conference is to think about a social security system for Finland which can face the challenges of the present and future in a sustainable way. Issues with delivering wellbeing and usage of artificial intelligence to distributing benefits are important aspects to consider in an ever-increasing globalized and diverse social world.

Signing up for the event can be done here, up until the 3rd of December 2019. Keynotes can be watched online (streamed), without registration.

More information at:

Kela Conference 2019 webpage

United States: Andrew Yang briefly addresses racial and inequality inquiries

United States: Andrew Yang briefly addresses racial and inequality inquiries

 

In this video from MSNBC, Democratic candidate for the United States presidency Andrew Yang answers some direct questions about racial issues and economic inequality.

 

According to him, racial issues get diluted if communities are economically better off, of course with the Freedom Dividend which is central to Yang’s candidacy. That would be because poverty is one of the greatest causes for racial exclusion, while also a consequence of it, in a social degrading feedback loop. So, the rationale is that with less poverty, people respect each other more, irrespective of their skin colour.

 

On economic inequality, Yang reminds us that 1000 $/month for someone like Jeff Bezos is irrelevant, while crucially significant for millions of people living on the lower end of the income scale. That means that, according to him, the distribution of a Freedom Dividend immediately reduces inequality. Moreover, financing the Dividend might also further reduce inequality, by imposing a 10% Value Added Tax which naturally will weight more on relatively richer people, due to their higher levels of consumption.