by Joe Timothy | Dec 7, 2015 | News
It can be easy to get carried away in emotional ideological debates about the validity of Universal Basic Income as a new welfare model. However, Scott Santens argues that there is no need for it at all. He maintains that there is enough scientific evidence out there to demonstrate the benefits of UBI beyond a reasonable doubt. Using evidence from studies carried out in Namibia, India, Lebanon and Alaska, Santens argues that we should use this data to inform our future economic policies based on science instead of just using our emotions.
Scott Santens, “Universal Basic Income Will Likely Increase Social Cohesion” , Huffington Post, October 22nd 2015
by Denis Flinn | Sep 25, 2015 | News
Daniel Araya sits down with Scott Santens, writer and advocate of universal basic income (UBI) for all, what it is and how it could work for the United States. The conversation centres around public perception as an obstacle for UBI and the opposing and ongoing pressure on the job market caused by increased automation. Read the full article here.
by Josh Martin | Sep 4, 2015 | News
Santens article eloquently discusses a recent report by David Autor of MIT on the history and future of work, highlighting realities that may not be common knowledge. For instance, low-income jobs have consistently grown throughout the past forty years, but there has been an erosion of middle-class, manufacturing jobs and a slowing of high-skilled, high-paying jobs. When academics claim technology creates jobs as much as it eliminates them, they often ignore the fact that these jobs often are low-quality work that leaves people worse off. Further, Santens cites the Oxford study that found that 47% of jobs are at high risk of automation in the next two decades. Those low-income jobs may shrivel up as well. Considering all of this information, Santens implores policy-makers to consider a basic income as a means to combat the future of technological unemployment.
Scott Santens, “Everything You Think You Know About The History and Future of Jobs Is Likely Wrong” 19 August 2015.
by Will Wachtmeister | Aug 26, 2015 | News
From: https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ty=h
Basic income advocate Scott Santens has published a piece in the Huffington Post arguing that a UBI is a vastly superior alternative to minimum wages policies, which he says treat only the symptoms rather than the causes of low pay.
The intervention in the American minimum wage debate describes how a UBI would put employees in a stronger individual bargaining position with employers as “possibly the best reason to go with basic income instead of a hodgepodge of minimum wage laws, earned income tax credits, welfare programs, food stamps, housing assistance, tax deductions, and all the rest.”
Santens also illustrates how welfare cliffs and bureaucratic holes in the current system create serious problems of their own, whereas a basic income would eliminate the need for minimum wages laws and other needless things “up to and including the existence of poverty itself.”
Scott Santens, “Minimum Wages vs. Universal Basic Income”, Huffington Post, 11 August 2015
by Will Wachtmeister | Aug 21, 2015 | News
From: www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ty=h
Scott Santens argues that there are sound economic reasons for introducing a basic income at exactly the same rate throughout the United States rather than taking into account America’s large cost-of-living differences.
Santens, a well-established basic income advocate, puts forward a case against the setting of different basic incomes according to location because, among other things, living in large cities brings with it an opportunity premium over “Small Town USA”. Basic income would grant all residents the free choice to enjoy this opportunity premium or move to a lower-cost area of the country, argues Santens.
He concludes by calling for a universal income set at “the same amount for all citizens, regardless of location, not only for all the economic reasons above, but because in the eyes of government, all citizens should be treated equally.”
Scott Santens, “Should the Amount of Basic Income Vary With Cost of Living Differences? The question of an unequal UBI.” Scottsantens.com, 7 August 2015
