by Cordelia Holst | Feb 22, 2017 | News
In a Fortune Insiders article published last month, Internet entrepreneur Marc Benioff says we “need to look at universal basic income” as a way to stimulate growth.
Marc Benioff is the founder, chairman and CEO of Salesforce, one of America’s highest valued cloud computing companies and the largest employer in San Francisco, California. A celebrated philanthropist, Benioff and Salesforce contribute cash, equity and employee volunteer hours to efforts focused around the issues of education, health, and equal pay for women.
In his article for Fortune Insiders, Benioff turns to the broader income inequality issues facing the US and the world. He frames the call to action to business leaders to ensure that change benefits all of humanity, not just stock owners, employees and customers. In passing, he endorses a closer look at Universal Basic Income as a path to stimulate growth.
Benioff outlines the opportunities and dangers in our rapidly developing technology, calling on business leaders to carefully apply this tech to solving our complex problems while protecting society and the planet. There are many small things that can improve business without affecting the planet using technology, this could be things like a business phone system, which uses the internet to provide a better connection and communication between business associates, clients, and more. Those phone systems are becoming a lot more popular for businesses these days. In order to transition over to VOIP phone systems, businesses could always consider contacting an IT support provider London to ensure it’s all set up and working correctly. That way, businesses can continue to communicate with their clients. Especially for startup companies, communication and marketing can play a pivotal role in their growth. They can analyze their competitors and build a content strategy with the help of dedicated public relations firms. The pr agency for startups that have trained copywriters, IT pros, and former reporters who can carry out the right content strategy. He also identifies four pillars for business leaders to evaluate for their company while they move toward an agenda of lessening inequality: build trust, stimulate growth, spur innovation, drive equality.
In his discussion of the second pillar, stimulating growth, he notes that while governments are promising more jobs, job creation is much more challenging for governments than in previous eras, as tech is changing the face of the job market so quickly. Benioff writes the following:
“Either the inequality gap continues to widen, leaving and the world much less stable, or we invest in the creating the policies and education programs that train young people for the jobs of tomorrow and retrain displaced workers. For those who cannot be retrained, and even those traditionally not compensated for raising a family or volunteering to help others, we need to look at universal basic income, where governments would provide citizens additional income beyond what they already earn at their jobs.”
However this is all Benioff says about Universal Basic Income, leaving it unclear how he is defining or envisioning the program. All that is evident is that he calls for business leaders to support governments looking at Universal Basic Income as a way to get income into consumers’ hands, both the stimulate growth and to protect vulnerable populations.
The Fortune Insiders article also contains a video of a panel discussion from Dreamforce, a conference Benioff’s company hosted in October 2016. On the panel, Benioff discusses the changes in tech and the impact business leaders can make in their own communities, as well as expresses a willingness to work with US policy makers, “sitting down with our President, whoever she may be”; however, he does not bring up universal basic income as a solution, as he does in this article, published post election.
Read the article here:
Marc Benioff, “Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff: How Business Leaders Can Help Narrow Income Inequality,” Fortune.com Fortune Insiders, January 17, 2017.
Photo CC Kenneth Yeung – www.thelettertwo.com
by Kate McFarland | Feb 21, 2017 | News
Sandhya Anantharaman, data scientist and co-director of the Universal Income Project, spoke on basic income at the tenth annual Meeting of the Minds summit.
In a 10-minute talk, Anantharaman argues that the United States needs a “new social contract” in the form of a basic income.
Setting out the problem, she explains that increases in productivity over the past half-century have not been matched by increases in income for the majority of Americans. Income inequality has risen, and a growing number of people are juggling part-time and contract jobs.
According to Anantharaman, the best solution is to guarantee all Americans an income floor sufficient to meet their basic needs. She contends that the economic security provided by a basic income would, for example, allow individuals to develop the skills and training needed to pursue new careers, promote entrepreneurship, and allow scientists to carry out research for its own sake, without worrying about how to commercialize it. It would, moreover, permit people to devote their time to caregiving, parenting, volunteer work, and other endeavors not traditionally compensated with wages.
Following Anantharaman’s presentation, the host of the event issued a prediction that the accompanying video (posted below) was one of the most likely to go viral.
Meeting of the Minds 2016 was held October 25-27, 2016 in Richmond, California. The event brought together 480 participants from the public and private sectors, non-profit organizations, and academia, with 23 countries represented.
The Meeting of the Minds network states that its mission is to “bring together a carefully chosen set of key urban sustainability and technology stakeholders and gather them around a common platform in ways that help build lasting alliances.”
Reviewed by Madhumitha Madhavan.
Cover photo: Still from YouTube video.
by Kate McFarland | Feb 19, 2017 | News
Indian economist Kaushik Basu, former Senior Vice-President and Chief Economist of the World Bank, has written an article for Project Syndicate in which he recommends that the United States consider “some form of basic income” as a partial solution to the economic insecurity of the working classes.
Basu broaches the idea of basic income, in addition to recommending progressive taxation and investments in education, in the context of suggesting alternatives to protectionist trade policies. While he does not expand on the type of basic income he has in mind, he refers to the program being tested in Finland (in which means-tested unemployment benefits have been replaced by an unconditional cash transfer) and the scheme discussed in India’s Economic Survey (a “quasi-universal” basic income which might be rolled out gradually, beginning with more vulnerable groups).
An effective solution to the problems facing American workers must recognize where those problems’ roots lie. Every time a new technology enables a company to use less labor, there is a shift from the total wage bill to profits. What workers need, however, is more wages. If they aren’t coming from employers, they should come from elsewhere.
Indeed, the time has come to consider some form of basic income and profit-sharing. Finland has experimented with this. In the emerging world, India, in its most recent economic survey, has outlined a full scheme.
In the same vein, the tax system should be made much more progressive; as it stands, there are far too many loopholes for the ultra-wealthy in the US. Investment in new forms of education that enable workers to take on more creative tasks, which cannot be completed by robots, will also be vital.
Shortly before the release of his Project Syndicate article, Basu was reported as saying in a Tweet that “The Universal Basic Income scheme [in India] should give a cut off income & ask ones above it to voluntarily forego it.” Indeed, the Economic Survey’s author, Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian, suggested encouraging voluntary exclusion of the wealthy from receipt of the basic income (see pg. 191).
It is unclear whether the “form of basic income” Basu mentions is also one he implicitly envisions as restricted to those below a certain income level. It is clear, however, that he supports the idea of divorcing wages from employment–at least as an important option to investigate.
Read more:
Kaushik Basu, “America’s Dangerous Neo-Protectionism,” Project Syndicate, February 13, 2017.
Reviewed by Cameron McLeod
Photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 World Bank Photo Collection
by Kate McFarland | Feb 19, 2017 | News
Sebastian Johnson, Senior Associate at Freedman Consulting, presented a case for basic income at the 2016 Mid-Atlantic TEDx conference.
Held October 21-22 in Washington DC, TEDx Mid-Atlantic 2016 featured over 45 speakers and performers who presented content loosely organized around the theme “New Rules”:
How can we be more empathetic when we design for the future? How can we reconnect policy with facts, truth, and logic? What ethics should we pursue as we shape our rapidly changing world? The answers are elusive — but we become stronger when we ask these questions together. What are the New Rules that will help guide us for the next century?
According to Johnson, presumably, the “New Rules” should include the allocation of an unconditional basic income to all Americans. In his 10 minute talk, Johnson argues that a basic income is the best way to alleviate poverty. He stresses that poverty is the cause, rather than the effect, of poor choices: providing economic security allows the poor to make better choices. He explains that empirical studies have suggested that a basic income encourages entrepreneurship and allow individuals to complete more schooling, while at the same time not causing substantial decreases in workforce participation or significant increases in the consumption of alcohol or tobacco. Johnson additionally argues that work no longer provides a guaranteed route to get out of poverty. Many jobs are insufficiently compensated; meanwhile, many existing jobs are threatened by automation.
Before joining Freedman Consulting, Johnson was a policy fellow at the Institution on Taxation and Economic Policy and a policy analyst for Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley (as well as a number of local officials).
Reviewed by Danny Pearlberg
Photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 cool revolution
by Kate McFarland | Feb 17, 2017 | News
Elon Musk — the famed entrepreneur behind Tesla Motors and SpaceX, who now sits on a panel of economic advisors to President Donald Trump — was a featured speaker at the World Government Summit, held February 12 through 14 in Dubai.
In a dialogue with UAE Minister Mohammad Al Gergawi, Musk reaffirmed his belief (first expressed in a CNBC interview) that “some kind of universal basic income is going to be necessary” to cope with unemployment due to automation of labor.
Musk’s attitude was not entirely optimistic, however. He noted that technological unemployment, and the resultant need for UBI, is something he thinks will happen as a matter of fact — not something he wishes will happen — and he expressed concern that many people might lack “meaning” in a world with mass technology-driven unemployment.
As quoted in Fast Company News, Musk said, in full:
There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better. I want to be clear. These are not things I wish will happen; these are things I think probably will happen. And if my assessment is correct and they probably will happen, than we have to think about what are we going to do about it? I think some kind of universal basic income is going to be necessary. The output of goods and services will be extremely high. With automation there will come abundance. Almost everything will get very cheap. I think we’ll end up doing universal basic income. It’s going to be necessary. The much harder challenge is, how are people going to have meaning? A lot of people derive their meaning from their employment. So if there’s no need for your labor, what’s your meaning? Do you feel useless? That’s a much harder problem to deal with.
According to its website, the World Government Summit drew over 4,000 attendees from more than 130 countries. In addition to Musk, featured speakers included Ruler of Dubai H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, International Monetary Fund Director Christine Lagarde, World Bank President Jim Kim, UNESCO Director Irina Bokova, Linked-In co-founder Reid Hoffman, and many others.
Elizabeth Rhodes, director of Y Combinator’s basic income research project (currently conducting a pilot study in Oakland), attended the World Government Summit as part of a panel on the “legacy of the 21st century” — which also examined the societal impact of automation.
See also:
“Elon Musk warns global governments about the future,” World Government Summit, February 14, 2017.
Reviewed by Cameron McLeod
Elon Musk photo CC BY 2.0 Heisenberg Media
