by Andre Coelho | Mar 20, 2016 | News
Jenna van Draanen. Credit to: The Big Picture.
The Big Picture, the American political news show hosted by Thom Hatmann, has taken an interest in basic income. That interest was spurred by the situation in Canada, where new tests of basic income are being planned, and materialized in inviting Jenna Van Draanen, secretary from the board of directors of Basic Income Canada Network, to the program. The conversation starts with a general description of the Ontario’s recent proposal of a basic income trial, passing through a rough comparison with the Alaska Permanent Fund. Jenna underscores basic income’s potential advantages, such as simplicity, debureaucratization, freedom of choice, empowerment (especially for the poor) and savings in social programs.
More information at:
The Big Picture, “Universal Basic Income has begun” – interview with Jenna Van Draanen
by Josh Martin | Mar 3, 2016 | News
The Goa Foundation, an environmental NGO in India has developed a list of reforms for the mining industry, among which is to implement a citizen’s dividend which will act as a universal basic income for all. Their chief argument rests on the fact that minerals are non-renewable inherited assets owned by the state and that a citizen’s dividend will act as a new non-wasting asset of at least equal value to the minerals that may be sold.
The Goa Foundation looks toward the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend as a model to be followed in setting up the Future Generations Fund.
They want to invest the equivalent amount of money of mineral sales into a Future Generations Fund, from which “all the real income from the fund is distributed equally to all citizens in the form of the citizen’s dividend.”
“We want this implemented across India and globally. It is fair, our right and our duty to our children.” said Rahul Basu, member of Goa Foundation.
To read more, click on the following link:
Rahul Basu, “A Citizen’s Dividend from Mining”, Basic Income India, 11 February 2016.
by Timothy Roscoe Carter | Jan 9, 2016 | Opinion
Before beginning this essay, let me describe the people about whom I am speaking when I use the term “liberal”. In the American 21st century context, I am essentially describing the people you would likely find in the leadership of the Democratic party. Despite the conservative view of mainstream liberals as radical socialists, they are, at most, cautious reformers. Even that probably goes too far. The way they depict themselves, and probably actually see themselves, is as people who believe in the system, but want it to be fairer, more compassionate, and more efficient. When viewed systematically, the most important of those is efficiency. A look at policy reveals that the primary aim of liberals is using the government to make capitalism work better and more efficiently. This also applies to seemingly non-market concerns like welfare benefits, civil rights, and education.
Let us look at equal pay and anti-discrimination labor laws for women. Some economic theorists on the right argue that such laws are unnecessary. According to them, the market would automatically correct any form of discrimination. If sexist employers refused to hire women or paid them significantly less than their equally skilled male counterparts, other employers would exploit the opportunity to hire the women at higher wages. The productivity gains of the fairer employers would lead to emulation and competition for women workers until parity with men is achieved.
Liberals usually respond by appealing to empirical reality. If this argument were true today, it would have also been true in 1910. We know there was sex discrimination then, as there continues to be today. If markets corrected inefficiencies by themselves, there would never have been any gender discrimination. But liberal arguments do not contradict the claim that sex discrimination is inefficient. Laws preventing gender discrimination may be just and compassionate, but they also make markets work more efficiently. Eventually, laws against gender discrimination turned out to benefit employers as much as they benefited women. In the documentary Inequality For All, Robert Reich showed that employers took advantage of the growing numbers of women in the workforce competing with men for the same jobs, and this was one of the factors that eventually lead to the leveling off of real wage growth that began in the United States in the late 1970s and early 1980s .
This analysis applies across the range of policies pushed by liberals. Consumer protection laws and tort laws may protect and compensate consumers, but they also encourage trade by making it easier to trust strangers in the market. Public health care and education saves and enriches people’s lives, but they also produce a skilled and healthy workforce for employers. Laws that support strong unions help the workers themselves, but they also increase workers’ wages so that they can spend more as consumers. Infrastructure projects provide public goods that are used by all, but they notoriously prioritize the needs of businesses over the needs of the disadvantaged communities where they are inevitably built.
What about same-sex marriage? It is crucial for social justice, but does it help market efficiency to allow people to marry whom they wish? No, it does not, and that is why same-sex marriage provides a useful counter-example. The fact is that same-sex marriage was never really a mainstream liberal goal. Nor was it really a goal of the large mainstream gay rights organizations. The main goal was just for more acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community. If straight people can partake in hookup culture on apps like Tinder then why can’t gay people go on Discreet Gay Dating without being judged for it? If dysfunctional heterosexual couples can have a baby why can’t stable same-sex couples adopt one? Both the politicians and the organizations focused on the acceptances of the community and getting anti-discrimination laws passed, which do serve market efficiency as previously noted. Same-sex marriage as a goal arose from the gay and lesbian grass roots and was pursued more through the courts than through legislation. As late as 2008, all three top contenders for the Democratic nomination for President declared their opposition to same-sex marriage. The speed and enthusiasm with which virtually all of the top Democrats reversed their positions the moment same-sex marriage polled over 50% could certainly cause a person to doubt the sincerity of their previous opposition. But to blame that insincere opposition on political cowardice would be to miss the point. Professional politicians fight uphill battles against initial public opposition a lot. But they also have to pick their battles. And however much powerful liberals may have secretly sympathized with the plight of their gay and lesbian friends who wished to marry, and may have even supported them with donations towards items to help them consumate such a marriage (be it a feeldoe or helping with the ceremony itself), they were simply not going to prioritize a political battle for social justice that would not increase market efficiency, grow the economy, and enrich their campaign donors.
So where does this leave us with basic income? To answer this, we need to examine how liberals approach welfare in general. It is certainly true that they support much more generous benefits than conservatives, they also tend to be even more concerned with separating the deserving poor from the undeserving poor than conservatives, whose main concern is turning whatever welfare spending that does exist into a way to funnel that money into corporate coffers. Liberals usually support robust Earned Income Credits, a kind of negative income tax limited to low wage earners, dropping off quickly above the poverty line. They support benefits for children and the elderly as well as the disabled, although they can be extremely strict about whom they consider disabled. They will give welfare benefits to unemployed single parents sparingly, on a temporary basis, and require education or employment search conditions designed to get the parents back to work as soon as possible. Drug and alcohol abuse are seen as reasons to cut off benefits. For unemployed working age adults, liberals sponsor “Care Not Cash” initiatives, which replace cash benefits with direct services, in the few localities that offer any benefits at all.
The pattern is clear: liberals believe that humans have value primarily as engines of production and consumption. Within this view, welfare is a legitimate tool to push people into the labor market. This ensures that goods and services can be produced. Those who do work and those incapable of working are to be given a sufficient income to take them slightly above the poverty line. This appears compassionate, but the systemic reason is to ensure that they have just enough money that they spend all of it. This way there is sufficient demand for goods and services to be produced, but people can not save enough money to become capitalists or be able to leave the workforce. Indeed, virtually all public assistance programs cut off recipients with any significant savings. While conservatives fight for the direct interests of the capitalist class, liberals fight for the interests of the capitalist system.
I understand that few liberals consciously believe and support the goals and beliefs which I ascribe to them here. They believe they are compassionate people who want to make the system work better for the unfortunate. That is probably true. But it does not matter. Like with institutional racism, the conscious intent of the participants does not matter; it is their actions and the results that matter. And the fact is, if you assume that the primary concern of liberals is market efficiency, you will predict their actions better than if you assume that their primary concern is uplifting the downtrodden or achieving economic and social justice.
Let us look at one more example before we turn to basic income: the minimum wage. One obvious way that the minimum wage fits the pattern I have described is that you have to be employed to benefit from it. A less obvious way is that it looks free, but it is actually a tax that is passed on to consumers, so it is the middle class that pays for it, not the capitalist class.
But the most striking way that the minimum wage fits this pattern is when you look at its amount. Democrats pick a new number every seven to twelve years. They refuse to index it to inflation so they can have at least one winning issue against Republicans every decade. Opponents of raising the minimum wage always mock the arbitrary nature of the new number picked and ask something like, “Why not $100 per hour?” Liberals typically dismiss this mockery with empirical evidence, pointing out that raising the minimum wage has almost never resulted in a loss of jobs, and sometimes results in increased employment due to increased demand.
But as with anti-discrimination laws, just because right-wing critics are empirically wrong does not mean that they do not have a point. What criteria do liberals use to determine how much the minimum wage should be? $100 per hour likely would wreck the economy. But if $10.10 per hour, the current consensus goal of the Democratic Party, would have no ill effects, why not fight for $15, or $20, or $25? Why not commission a study to determine the maximum sustainable minimum wage? Applying the principle that liberals are working to support the capitalist system, we can see where they get their numbers. Liberals pick a minimum wage that puts workers near the edge of the poverty line, where they can be good consumers but never save enough to exit the workforce.
So what can we expect from liberals in the fight for a basic income?
We can start with two broadly optimistic points. First, since liberals are concerned with efficiency, evidence can sway them, and the scientific and empirical evidence is strong that a basic income is cheaper to administer, raises health and education outcomes, and does not cause people to quit working and live an idle life. Masses of healthy and educated people working and spending money churns the economy, and this is good for the capitalist system.
Second, liberals will join the basic income cause with little hesitation when the technological unemployment crisis starts receiving mainstream media attention. While liberals will tolerate significant unemployment because it keeps down labor costs, they will see too large a number of unemployed as wasted potential consumers. This will be especially true if more workers are not actually needed to produce the goods and services that the unemployed could otherwise buy.
Now the caveats.
Let me start off with a particularly American concern. Despite the significant libertarian origins of and current support for a basic income, many people hear the idea of the government giving everyone free money and they think, “socialism”. And in America, this is a problem. Despite the good arguments that could be made that the United States in the 1950s and 1960s had the most socialist economy that has ever existed in human history, America during the Cold War defined itself in opposition to “socialism”. For many, fear of the label has stuck. Conservatives still use “socialism” as an epithet for economic policies they oppose, and many liberals will do or say whatever is necessary to avoid being associated with socialism. If you ask prominent liberals, they will point to surveys showing the unpopularity of socialism in America. This could be a chicken and egg problem: why should most Americans not be afraid of socialism if even liberal leaders oppose it? Fortunately, this also appears to be a generational problem that is going away. Recent surveys of Americans under 30 show support for socialism to be equal to support for capitalism, and the Presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders may be showing that fear of the label “socialism” is overblown.
The next problem with liberals will be to educate them. The facts being on our side will not help if establishment liberals do not know them. The specific problem here is that the misrepresentations of the work participation and family stability effects of the Negative Income Tax experiments that were spread in the mid 1970s are still believed by many establishment liberals. We will have to work hard to correct those misbeliefs.
Another problem will be that if technological unemployment does not reach a crisis point, liberals will simply not prioritize basic income on their own. They will have to be dragged into taking action by political pressure. This will be similar to the example of same-sex marriage, except that instead of claiming opposition up until the public changes its mind, look for liberals to vocalize general support for the concept of a basic income, but not do anything about it. An example of this strategy was how, in the years following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a lot of politicians of all stripes, including President Bush, voiced support for setting up an Alaska style trust fund to pay oil dividends to all Iraqis, but it never happened. This will be because, even if liberals come to agree that a basic income would be a better policy than the current welfare system, the efficiency benefits to the capitalist system are not great enough to put it on their priority list. Just as the suffering of gays and lesbians who wanted to marry was not sufficient cause to make same-sex marriage a priority, neither is the suffering of the poor. It never has been in the past. Again, this will change when technological unemployment becomes a crisis, and there will not be enough consumers to buy goods and services without a basic income.
The final, and biggest challenge with liberals as allies will be their attempts to dilute the idea of a basic income. While they may become far more generous with the cash amounts, it will be difficult for them not to attach strings and conditions. The reason is that it will be difficult to change their belief that they know how to run the lives of the poor better than the poor themselves. But a bigger danger is that they will try to insist on means-testing. They will try to make the middle-class believe that means-testing will make it cheaper for them. The reality is that means-testing will make the financial burden of a minimum income fall on the middle-classes. This, again, is because the goal for liberals is not economic justice, but making the current capitalist system run better.
In order to relieve the immediate suffering of the poor and establish the principle that poverty is not tolerated in our society, it may be necessary to agree to means-testing to pass an initial guaranteed minimum income. Liberals will trumpet that the job is done. Those of us who count justice as one of our goals need to be prepared to continue the fight.
by Tyler Prochazka | Dec 19, 2015 | News
Interest in the Universal Basic Income (UBI) is sweeping across Europe, with British think tank RSA coming out in support of the UBI in a new report launched on December 17 at a public debate. The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts Manufactures and Commerce, also known as RSA, is a prestigious institution founded in 1754 and granted Royal Charter in 1847.
Report authors Anthony Painter and Chris Thoung said the current approach to welfare “is no longer fit-for-purpose” and requires a new approach.
“The major concern is ultimately people: the lives we are able to lead, our ability to have a sense of security so we can pursue our ambition, and our ability to contribute to supporting one another, innovating, and developing the creative potential of society,” the report said.
“That is where Basic Income has the potential to be so much stronger than our current welfare state.”
The RSA endorsement follows another high-profile British think tank, the libertarian Adam Smith Institute. They published a report earlier this year also advocating for a basic income in the form of a negative income tax.
The RSA proposal for a British basic income
The RSA report suggests replacing the current welfare state with a UBI that would cost an additional 1 percent of UK’s GDP. RSA’s proposal is modeled after the Citizen’s Income Trust (CIT), an affiliate of BIEN, and derives most of its figures from this framework – read the CIT proposal here.
Under the RSA, citizens between 25 and 65 would receive an annual income of 3,692 British pounds, or £308 per month. People between 5 and 24 would get an annual payment of £2,925, or £244 per month. Citizens over 65 would receive an annual pension of £7,420, or £618 per month. Parents of children under 4 would receive an additional annual payment of £4,290 for their first child, or £358 per month. They would fetch £3,387 annually, or £282 per month, for additional children under 4.
It suggests potentially gradually rolling out the basic income to different demographics, such as those above age 55 and those below age 25. At the same time, a small basic income could be introduced while gradually reducing other benefits.
Regarding housing, the report notes that housing benefits should not be folded into a basic income because of the high cost of real estate in the UK. It proposes a Basic Rental Income. The idea is to utilize property taxes as a means to ensure universal housing income, but the report does not delve into the specifics. Nonetheless, this novel approach does deserve more discussion in UBI circles.
In offering these policy specifics, the RSA illustrates that a UBI is not simply a utopian ideal, as some of its critics claim. In fact, the report points out that far more radical changes to taxes and benefits have been implemented in the past.
Painter and Thoung note that a UBI would help society confront challenges created by rapidly improving technology and an aging population, a point that most other UBI proponents stress as well.
One of the attractions of the UBI, and why even conservatives and libertarians have been drawn to the policy, is its simplicity compared to the current system. Substituting current welfare policy with a UBI would eliminate its “perverse incentives, intrusion and complexity entirety.”
Since the UBI is universal there would be less fraud, they contend. And it would not undermine relationships and families because a UBI would not punish individuals for cohabitating as the current system does. This “strengthening of the family” aspect will likely win over more conservatives to the UBI cause over time.
More entrepreneurship and more time for family and community
From an economics perspective, the report argues that a UBI is the best system to incentivize work and avoid the welfare trap. In the current system, benefits quickly diminish as incomes rise, discouraging beneficiaries from taking up work. The report also claims that a UBI’s safety net allows individuals to pursue risks and creative endeavors. Instead of taking the first menial job available, a worker can spend more time searching for the work most suited to increasing their productivity.
This argument has been borne out by empirical studies on the UBI, such as the basic income trial in India that substantially increased entrepreneurship.
One of the criticisms of a UBI is that it lets some individuals take more time off from work. The key is whether their free-time activities are more valuable to society than their work hours. “Basic Income is a foundation for contribution. It incentivizes work but supports other forms of contribution too,” the report said. It suggests that the UBI would allow individuals to care for the elderly and other vulnerable individuals, which is especially important as society ages.
The actual work disincentive effect has been found to be small. The report briefly reviews evidence from experiments with a negative income tax carried out in the US and Canada between 1968 and 1980. The loss of labor hours for men was minimal. Women did lower their workload more substantially. They chose to spend more time with their family or newborns, activities of high social value. In Alaska under the Permanent Fund Dividend, a policy similar to a UBI, inequality fell in the 1990s and 2000s, while it increased in every other American state.
Another key issue is who qualifies for basic income and whether it would be extended to migrants. RSA’s proposal states that EU nationals should have first “contributed to the system for a number of years” before receiving the basic income. International migrants would be subject to current rules to access benefits. Individuals serving custodial sentences would have benefits restored once their sentence was concluded.
In recent years, the welfare system has lost public support as people demand more rules and conditions for the poor to receive assistance. However, benefit sanctions are becoming increasingly “inhumane,” the authors said. In order to detect tax credit abuse, the system has become overly intrusive into citizens’ lives and activities.
The RSA makes a few recommendations for how the UBI will be applied to the youth, including requiring young adults between 18 and 25 year old to declare how they would use the income. They would sign contracts “with their local community” and not the government, and there should be “no state monitoring” of the contracts, the authors noted. Additionally, those over 18 would have to register to vote in order to receive the UBI.
In suggesting tying the basic income to the community, rather than the government, the RSA report shows precisely the unique potential of the UBI to move away from the impersonal welfare state and toward a more relationship-oriented society. These arguments parallel that of free-market economist Charles Murray in defense of his own UBI scheme.
This report is a serious and comprehensive look at how a UBI could realistically be implemented in the UK. It provides a persuasive look into the economic, societal and moral underpinnings of the basic income. As the debate over the UBI continues to simmer across Europe, the UK will be hard-pressed to ignore this pragmatic approach for a radical overhaul of its welfare system.
Anthony Painter & Chris Thoung, “Creative citizen, creative state: the principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income,” RSA, December 16, 2015.
Anthony Painter, “In support of a universal basic income – introducing the RSA basic income model,” RSA, December 16, 2015.
Citizen’s Income Trust, “Citizen’s Income: a brief introduction,” 2013.
Andrew Walker, “Think tank floats ‘basic income’ idea for all citizens,” BBC News, December 16, 2015.
Tyler Prochazka, “Would a universal basic income be the ‘death’ of civil society?” Basic Income News, November 21, 2015.
Maz Ali, “Money. For free. It’s been tested in Canada and India. Now one Dutch city wants to give it a whirl,” Upworthy, September 4, 2015.
by Guest Contributor | Dec 17, 2015 | Opinion
By Jim Pugh
“I like the idea, but it’ll never happen.”
I hear this response a lot when talking to people about establishing a universal basic income in the United States. Once you get past the explanation of what a basic income is and how offering it could eliminate poverty, support entrepreneurship, and prepare us for a future where most jobs have been displaced by automation, people are generally quite supportive”Š-“Šbut they don’t believe that it could ever be implemented here.
And their skepticism is entirely reasonable. In today’s political climate, it’s hard to imagine how a program as radical as basic income could be enacted. When simply passing a budget to keep the federal government operational starts to seem like a big accomplishment, what chance do we have for major reform?
But in spite of the perceived impasse, there is a viable path to implementing universal basic income in the United States. Here’s how it can work.
Step 1: Spread Awareness
If you were to stop a random person on the street and ask them what they think about basic income, you’d most likely get a confused stare. While more people have become interested in the idea in recent years, basic income is still unknown to the population at large. What’s more, when you first tell people that the solution to some of our biggest economic challenges is just giving everyone money, a lot think the idea sounds crazy.
For that reason, the first step on the path to an American basic income is raising awareness and support across the country. For radical reform to become possible, there needs to be a solid majority of Americans behind the idea.
There isn’t any secret formula for accomplishing this”Š-“Šit’s up to those of us who support the idea to make it happen. We can talk to our friends and family and convince them of the importance of basic income. We can produce compelling media that explains the idea and why it will work. We can organize events to capture the attention of the press and general public.
In 1933, a man name Francis Townsend wrote a letter to the editor of his local newspaper, proposing a plan to provide money every month to the elderly across the United States. Within a year, millions of people had organized into grassroots groups around the country, distributing pamphlets to their community and advocating for passage of the Townsend Plan. And just one year after that, Franklin Roosevelt proposed and passed the Social Security Act, providing the first-ever federal assistance to American retirees.
More and more, people are starting to realize the system we have right now is no longer working. If we let them know there’s a better alternative out there, we can build a movement in support of universal basic income in the United States.
Step 2: Test It Out
Providing a full basic income to all Americans would be a huge leap forward. Before we can make that leap, we need to try it out in a more limited capacity.
The second step on the path to an American basic income is to enact smaller-scale prototypes of the program and see how they go. By observing actual implementations of basic income-like programs in the United States, we can gain insight into how a full program would work and allay the concerns of skeptics. And the cost could be considerably lower, making prototypes much more achievable in the short term.
There are a couple of different models for how basic income prototype programs could work:
Dividends from Shared Resources
One type of basic income prototype actually exists in the US already: the Alaska Permanent Fund. Since 1976, the state of Alaska has managed a fund which is financed by oil revenue in the state. The fund pays out dividends each year, split equally amongst all Alaska residents. Over the last 25 years, the dividend payment has varied between $800 and $3,200 per person.
While the amount awarded isn’t sufficient to be considered a true basic income, the Alaska Permanent Fund is an example of an unconditional, universal income. In his book With Liberty and Dividends for All, Peter Barnes argues that this program could pave the way for adoption of similar plans by other states and could be expanded to provide increased universal income down the road.
Credit: 3D Printing Industry.
In fact, an analogous program is currently being considered in Oregon. Under the Carbon Fee and Dividend plan, polluters in the state would need to pay for the carbon they emitted, and this money would then be distributed equally to all Oregon residents. While the Alaska Permanent Fund model only makes sense for states with large oil industries, Carbon Fee and Dividend could be expanded to every state in the country.
Randomized Trials
Another potential prototype model is to provide a full basic income, but only to a small number of people. Randomized trials could be set up and run, where certain families in a given region would receive a basic income, and the program impact could be assessed by comparing to non-participating families.
In fact, an experiment similar to this was previously run in the US in the 60s and 70s”Š-“Šin various locations across the country (New Jersey cities; rural Iowa and North Carolina; Gary, Indiana; and Seattle and Denver), randomly-selected families were provided with a “negative income tax,” which gave substantial direct monetary support to those with low incomes.
The study showed some initial promising results, with increased school attendance rates and only a modest reduction in labor rates. Randomized trials are now being set up abroad in Finland to evaluate the effect of a universal basic income there. If more experiments were conducted in the United States, it could provide a much clearer picture of the full impact of enacting basic income here.
Although labeled as the second step on the path, implementing prototypes could actually happen in parallel to raising awareness amongst the public. These efforts could even be complementary”Š-“Šthe success of prototype programs would increase visibility and support for basic income. And in turn, greater support would make additional prototypes easier to enact. We need some very concrete examples of how basic income can work, though, before we’ll be ready for final step.
Step 3: Wait for Lightning to Strike
Let’s say we’ve reached a point where most people know about and support basic income, and there are prototype programs showing it working. Even then, given the current level of dysfunction in Washington, DC, it would still be extremely difficult to enact a federal version. That’s why the third step to implement an American basic income is to wait for the right moment.
In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein describes how in times of crisis, people may be willing to accept big changes that normally would seem far too radical. While Klein’s focus is on the enactment of exploitative corporate policies, the same principle can apply to positive changes.
If automation continues to displace jobs as predicted in the coming years, there will be moments of extreme disruption to our economy. Grocery stores will lay off big parts of their workforce as cheap, automated stocking and checkout services become available. More automated restaurants like Eatsa will appear, which employ fewer service staff. Millions of jobs will be lost in the transportation industry to self-driving vehicles.
There are no doubts about it, the transportation industry, in particular, has already undergone some significant changes over the past few years. For example, thanks to developments in technology such as Titanwinds trucking dispatch software, it is now possible for fleet managers to plan routes in real-time to ship goods and control their fleets in the most efficient way. With this in mind, it is certainly intriguing to consider what else might be in store for the future of the trucking sector for instance.
As the magnitude of these disruptions becomes apparent, people will be knocked out of their normal routine and be willing to embrace a big change. At that moment, if we have public awareness and support, and if we’ve demonstrated the program’s effectiveness, people across the country can rally behind a clarion call to push past the gridlock in Washington”Š-“Šand we will have a real chance to enact an American basic income.
What’s Next?
The steps laid out above are not theoretical”Š-“Šmany of us are already working to achieve them.
Discussion groups and panels are being convened around the country in places like New York, Palo Alto, Washington, DC, and San Francisco. A new nonprofit organization, Basic Income Action, is pushing presidential candidates to engage on the issue.
People are crowdfunding their own basic income and using the money to support themselves as they write about the idea. An Oregon nonprofit is working to push for the enactment of Carbon Fee and Dividend there.
And on the weekend of November 13, the first-ever Basic Income Create-A-Thon was held in San 
Francisco, where writers, artists, videographers, developers, musicians, and others came together to create content and media around the theme of basic income. More Create-A-Thons are now being planned across the country.
An American basic income is possible”Š-“Šand it’s up to us to make it happen.
Jim Pugh is the CEO of ShareProgress, a politically-progressive tech company offering tools for social sharing. He is the former CTO for Rebuild the Dream, and Director of Analytics for @BarackObama. He holds a PhD in Robotics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.
