by Kate McFarland | Jun 5, 2016 | News
On Tuesday, May 31, My Basic Income (MBI), a basic income advocacy group in San Francisco, held a raffle to give away a $15,000 one-year basic income.
The winnings went to a man named ‘Edwin’ from Sarasota, Florida.
When participants enrolled in the drawing, they were asked to state what they would do if their income was guaranteed for a year. Edwin said that he would “save the money for a rainy day.”
The raffle (along with some general discussion of basic income and its present popularity) was reported upon in Vice, including an interview with MBI co-founder Cameron Ottens.
“There are a lot of assumptions about what happens when you give people free money. But in reality, we really don’t know,” said Cameron Ottens … “We’re trying to figure out what real people would actually do with it and how it would impact real peoples’ lives, to move beyond academic speculation about peoples’ behavior.”
MBI received approximately 3000 responses to its question, with a wide range of ideas about how individuals would use of one-year basic income.
People wrote about using the cash to offset their expenses while getting a degree, quitting a bad job, or starting a business. There were also responses about handling unexpected expenses, like paying off a hospital bill or a car repair—something more than half of Americans said they couldn’t afford, according to a recent survey from Bank Rate.
For those who missed it live, the spinning of wheel of basic fortune is available to view on YouTube.
MBI is currently raising money for a second basic income raffle.
Reference:
Arielle Pardes, “What Would Happen If We Gave Everyone Free Money?” Vice, June 2, 2016.
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by Kate McFarland | May 31, 2016 | News
As previously announced at Basic Income News, the San Francisco-based project My Basic Income (MBI) will be giving away a $15,000 one-year, no-strings-attached basic income to one randomly selected individual. The winner will be drawn from those who signed up for the raffle by answering one simple question (albeit, as we know, a very big question): “What would you do if your income were guaranteed?”
The drawing will take place on Tuesday, May 31st at 7:00 pm Pacific Time, and will be streamed live on YouTube.
Natalie Foster from the Institute for the Future and Milicent Johnson from Tipping Point will also speak at the event.
MBI-founders Gregory Tippett and Cameron Ottens on what they would do with a guaranteed income
Visit MBI’s Facebook event page for further details and updates. (Unfortunately, the free food is only available on-site in San Francisco, CA, not via the live stream.)
Like its forebear Mein Grundeinkommen, which has given away 42 crowdfunded basic incomes (and counting), My Basic Income does not plan to stop with one.
Thus, it is continuing to collect donations for future raffles — in order to continue to increase awareness and support of basic income.
In MBI’s words, its mission it to “aim for impact now, for raising awareness now, and for public support for Basic Income now.”
by Kate McFarland | May 28, 2016 | News
In an article in last month’s Huffington Post, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes argues in favor of a $1000 annual tax credit for all Americans.
While Hughes is not presently advocating a universal basic income, due to worries about its political feasibility, he does express support for the idea and sees his proposed universal tax credit as a potential preliminary step towards a full-fledged UBI.
I’m supportive of the idea of a basic income over the long term and believe that one day something of this size will likely be necessary to cope with the impact of automation and globalized trade on the United States. But the reality today is that kind of intervention would be unaffordable and impractical: a benefit of $12,000 per adult would cost just shy of $3 trillion annually, about 75% of the entire current federal budget. Beginning with a modest, but universal tax credit would help millions of Americans and build a framework for future investment. The effects of these cash transfers could be further studied and provide the basis for a potentially permanent establishment of a basic income.
Chris Hughes, 17 May 2016, “The Case for Cash for All,” Huffpost Politics.
by Kate McFarland | May 27, 2016 | News
Former CIA officer Bryan Dean Wright says that the “smart spies” all recognized that, within the lifetimes, many would be “out of a job, too old to re-train, or struggling in a ‘shared economy'” due to automation.
In an article in Congress Blog, the “forum for lawmakers and policy professionals” at The Hill, Wright describes the problem and proposes a solution: data mining royalties, or “money paid from Big Data companies like Facebook who mine and sell your personal data.”
Wright compares his idea to the Alaska Permanent Fund — which provides a small annual income to all Alaskans, funded from royalties paid by oil companies when they extract natural resources from Alaskan land.
In Wright’s words:
“The ‘Data Permanent Fund’ would work in a similar way: each year, all full-time U.S. citizens earning less than $250,000 would get a tax-free check. How to calculate the check’s amount should be subject of rigorous debate. For instance, it could be based on a percentage of the amount charged by Google (or Facebook, or Apple) to advertisers when they sell your data. But the bottom line is still the same: You get paid when you get mined.”
Bryan Dean Wright (February 10, 2016), “Surviving the robot revolution,” The Hill: Congress Blog.
Image Credit: Arbeck, Wikimedia Commons
by Kate McFarland | May 26, 2016 | News
In a piece published in Equites, business writer Joel Anderson analyzes how a UBI might be feasible — “in three acts.”
Anderson begins (in “act one”) by asking why it is desirable to adopt a basic income. In answering this question, he highlights the potential of a UBI to enhance the bargaining power of workers. When people live in poverty, they might feel compelled to take any job — even a terrible, low-paying job — out of necessity. Furthermore, as long as there’s a pool of such impoverished would-be workers, workers who do want to bargain for more than a paltry wage are risk of replacement by someone willing to work for less. This would change drastically under a UBI.
Further bolstering the case for a UBI, Anderson examines the changing nature of the American economy. Due to advancements in robotics and IT, he says,
[W]e’re now living in a world where a large section of society is searching for a role to play without a clear sense that there will be one.
Instead of continuing to subdivide what work still needs actual humans into a series of low-wage, low-skill jobs that few people actually want to do, why not embrace our changing future and try to empower people to find how they can contribute value that’s unique to them? A UBI would hypothetically give every citizen the flexibility to make choices about how they use their time in a society that increasingly doesn’t need them to spend it working.
In his “second act,” Anderson asks how a basic income could be afforded in the United States. (To illustrate, he considers a UBI of $15,600 per adult per year, with an additional $5,000 per dependent.)
He provides a comprehensive look at savings due to elimination of current welfare programs, anticipated reductions in spending on crime and security, and anticipated increases in tax revenue due to economic growth. After this, he admits that the US would still need to raise taxes considerably to fund a UBI — but to a level that is still modest by global standards.
Finally, in the “third act,” Anderson presents empirical evidence that a UBI would work — including a brief summary of results from past basic income pilots.
Now, these studies were all relatively small, so it’s likely a mistake to simply extrapolate out their results, but they do seem to indicate a basic truth: people mostly want to do something with their lives. Overall, when freed from the need to work simply to fulfill basic necessities, most people in these studies tended to still find ways to be productive. Not everyone, to be sure, but a pretty solid majority. In many cases, they pursue things like a better education or job that will greatly increase productivity over the course of their lifetimes.
Reference
Joel Anderson, 10 May 2016, “Money For Nothing and Your Checks for Free: Why the Basic Income Makes More Sense than You Think,” Equites.
Image Credit: badgreeb Records via flickr
