VIDEO: “Why everybody’s suddenly talking about Universal Basic Income”
Andrew Murphy Davis is a young producer of documentaries and network news, who has started The Millennial Project. This project has been developing since 2015 and aims at “activating a unique millennial voice in American politics”.
Andrew, as the main driver behind The Millennial Project, has recently taken an interest on basic income, and released a video about it. This video was accompanied by an article, which defends that the main reason universal basic income (UBI) is nowadays widely discussed and has spurred interest from several public figures, politicians and the wider public all around the world, is related to artificial intelligence. Although this view has been contested, for instance by prominent researchers and basic income activists like Guy Standing, it is a fact that basic income is now ever more present in today’s globalized social debate.
In this short four-minute video, basic income is presented in general terms and contextualized within a reality of growing automation and advances in technologies that “are threatening to put millions of Americans out of work”. This reality has brought fears to many policy makers, predicting skyrocketing unemployment figures, igniting interest for this “once defunct idea of guaranteeing everyone a modest cash income as a basic right”.
