by Karl Widerquist | Jun 9, 2014 | News
[Karl Widerquist]
Bernie Sanders, the only socialist in the United States Senate, evaded a question about BIG. The question came up during an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on the popular website, Reddit. During an AMA, a prominent person agrees to be available online for a given period time to and to answer whatever questions Reddit members ask. Although Sanders is known as one of the strongest defenders of the poor in high-level U.S. politics, he would not give a direct answer to the following question asked by Reddit member using the name, LoveAllHarmNone, “What do you think of a Basic Income Guarantee if/when unemployment rises due to automation?”
Bernie Sanders -Wikipedia
Sanders replied, “I think that as a nation we should be deeply troubled by the fact that we have more people living in poverty today than ever before and that millions of seniors are finding it difficult to survive on about $1,200 a month from Social Security. I think we need to take a very hard look at why real income has gone down for millions of Americans despite a huge increase in productivity. In my view, every American is entitled to at least a minimum standard of living. There are different ways to get to that goal, but that’s the goal that we should strive to reach.”
Although some of the comments in the thread expressed frustration at the lack of clarity in the answer, there was no follow up by Sanders.
The entire AMA is online at: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/24zdnn/i_am_senator_bernie_sanders_ivt_ama/
by Aynur Bashirova | May 21, 2014 | Research
This article argues we’ve lost the correlation between contribution and compensation, and considers basic income as a solution.
Mickey Peled, “Why The World of Work Has Changed Forever”, Worldcrunch, 6th May 2014.
Could guaranteed basic income be a solution? Russel Higgs
by Craig Axford | May 19, 2014 | Research
Cumulative percent change in wages and productivity since 1948
[Craig Axford]
SUMMARY: In spite of significant productivity gains in recent decades, wages have have remained largely stagnant. These gains have also translated into fewer workers to produce as much or more than they used to. Among the solutions the author asks us to consider as part of a more collaborative “sharing economy” is a universal basic income.
Arthur de Grave, “The Sharing Economy: Capitalism’s Last Stand?”, OUIShare, March 21, 2014
by Karl Widerquist | May 6, 2014 | Research
-Los Angeles Review of Books
According to this article, “The only reason standards of living are not improving is that productivity gains go almost exclusively to the top one percent. The only reason the economy is stagnant is because the average American doesn’t have enough money in his or her pocket. A Basic Income Guarantee solves both problems.”
Tom Streithorst, “The Road to Recovery: On the state of the economy and how to fix it.” Los Angeles Review of Books. March 20th, 2014
by Scott Santens | Apr 14, 2014 | Opinion
The purchase of Oculus by Facebook for $2 billion is the new best example of the growing inequality inherent in 21st century capitalism – what Paul Mason describes as the The Fourth Wave. A few people just got really rich, while the thousands of people who helped build the company from nothing, through $2.5 million of crowdsourced capital and a thriving open-source developer community didn’t. Every single funder and every single developer should be given their share of cash and Facebook stock. But of course that won’t happen, and even if it could happen, how would this share be calculated, especially as far as the developers are concerned?
Jaron Lanier also describes this phenomenon in his book “Who Owns The Future” where the increasing inequality we see in the information economy is being driven by what he refers to as “siren servers”, where those with the most computing capacity in control of the networks earn all the money, while those responsible for creating the actual networks don’t. He suggests this could be rectified by somehow adding a price value to information exchanges and processing, making it more expensive for central server farms to operate in a way that transfers money to those comprising the actual networks. He doesn’t know exactly how this could be achieved, but feels a solution to this problem is very important to our future.
I submit that one solution to this problem is to instead of the attempt to create a price value for information exchanges, we recognize the overall value of these exchanges, and thus the need to transfer part of the surplus unjustly gained by those running the largest fastest servers to those comprising the actual networks.
A monthly netizen’s dividend in the form of an unconditional basic income would represent an acknowledgement of the share naturally belonging to those who actually comprise all of the networks, of these surpluses not presently being shared with them. In a world of ever-rising productivity and perpetually stagnant wages, this recognition would help resolve our growing problem of the few with the machines getting extremely rich on the backs of the many, while the many get nothing but broken promises.
Palmer Luckey helped build something great, but he did not do it alone. Without the Oculus community he would be just another VR dreamer with a phone tied to his face. He and his executive and creative teams did not create billions of dollars in value on their own. The billions transferred to the Oculus team from Facebook, who themselves only exist because of those who comprise the Facebook network, is entirely disconnected from the thousands of funders who made it possible, and the thousands of people in the open-source community who worked together to help improve the product and reveal what was possible with it. That none of these people will receive anything for being completely integral to creating the value seen by Facebook as worth the billions to purchase it, plainly shows the need for remuneration, and therefore the justification for basic income as representing our society as a whole sharing in the value created in our own networking.
