by Kate McFarland | May 26, 2016 | News
In recent months, Basic Income News has covered multiple articles that explore basic income as a solution to the unemployment expected to result due to further automation of labor. (See, for example, here, here, and here.)
Meanwhile, events of just the past few days prove that worries about automation are not going away any time soon: Foxconn (a supplier for Apple and Samsung) reported that it replaced 60,000 of its 110,000 factory workers with robots, Pizza Hut announced plans to “hire” the robot Pepper (pictured above) as a server in its restaurants in Asia, and a former McDonald’s CEO warned that minimum wage hikes would spur automation in the fast food industry.
In an article published last month in Tech Insider, reporter Chris Weller weighs in on the issue of technological unemployment — drawing upon the ideas of American basic income advocates like Jim Pugh, a former analytics chief for President Obama and host of basic income “create-a-thons” in the Bay Area, and Sam Altman and Matt Krisiloff of Y Combinator (the San Francisco start-up incubator that has recently hired a researcher to oversee a basic income experiment).
Citing Pugh, Krisiloff, and skeptic Ross Baird (executive director of Village Capital), Weller concedes that basic income might not be a necessary response to automation — but it is clear that he does not rule out the possibility that basic income might be “the hero that saves American workers.”
Read the article here:
Chris Weller (April 8, 2016) “Giving people free money could be the only solution when robots finally take our jobs,” Tech Insider.
Image Source: Photo Zou
by Kate McFarland | May 25, 2016 | News
During the US presidential race, it has become abundantly clear that voters from both ends of the political spectrum are angry about free trade.
In a blog post for EconoMonitor, accomplished economist Ed Dolan argues that protectionism is not the answer to Americans’ worries about trade.
Instead, Dolan recommends two solutions to assist displaced workers while also building work incentives and increasing domestic productivity: universal health insurance and a universal basic income.
Dolan admits that it might seem counterintuitive that work incentives would increase if the government gave people “money for nothing.” He goes on to explain, however, that a UBI would eliminate powerful work disincentives inherent in our current welfare system:
The answer to the paradox lies in a distinction that economists make between two effects of any social safety net program. One is the income effect: If you give people more money, other things being equal, they do have less incentive to work. The other is the substitution effect: If, while giving people money, you also decrease the amount of each added dollar of earned income they get to keep, that also reduces incentives to work. …
Empirical research has repeatedly found that the substitution effect is far stronger than the income effect. Eliminate the tangle of overlapping social programs that give rise to 80 percent effective marginal tax rates for the poor and near poor, and you are sure to get greater work incentives. Those incentives would be especially important for workers displaced by trade who need to relocate and retrain for new jobs.
Read the full article here:
Ed Dolan, “Voters are Angry about Free Trade. What is the Right Policy Response?” EconoMonitor, April 4, 2016.
More extended arguments for basic income can be found in Ed Dolan’s previous work for EconoMonitor, including the multi-part series “The Economic Case for a Universal Basic Income” (January 2014).
Image Credit: AFGE via Wikimedia Commons
by Kate McFarland | May 20, 2016 | News
Although a universal basic income is likely to be conceived in the public eye as a utopian dream of the left, its proponents are often keen to note the idea’s historical appeal across the political spectrum, citing its support from the likes of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek.
Nor is basic income off the radar of the contemporary right. Indeed, the idea recently received some discussion on the blog of the noted conservative publication National Review — with Iain Murray, Vice President of Strategy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, tentatively endorsing the idea. (The CEI is a think tank that describes itself as “dedicated to free enterprise and limited government.”)
In a short post, Murray responds to Michael Strain of the conservative American Heritage Foundation, who published a critique of basic income in the same blog as well as the Washington Post — ultimately coming down against the idea despite admitting several of its appealing features, such as reducing bureaucracy and removing the stigma associated with receipt of government aid.
Murray claims, contra Strain, that a basic income would not problematically dis-incentivize work — unlike the current system of welfare in the United States — and that, on the contrary, it would empower many people to contribute more productively to the economy. He also contends that a UBI would encourage charitable giving.
Granted, Murray does emphasize two caveats: a UBI might just become an add-on to an overblown welfare state, and “it still relies on robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
Despite Murray’s reservations, his tentative endorsement merits attention by other proponents of a free market and limited government, those who might otherwise scoff at a policy sometimes flippantly caricatured as “the government giving away money for free.”
Iain Murray, 4 April 2016, “Tentatively for Universal Basic Income,” National Review: The Corner.
Image Source: Annwong1026 (via Wikimedia Commons)
by Kate McFarland | May 19, 2016 | News
For more than 20 years, Karen Patrick has been a full-time caregiver for an adult daughter with multiple disabilities. When she learned about the idea of a basic income guarantee, Karen saw immediately that it would greatly improve the situations of herself and other family caregivers. The importance of caregivers and even a caregiver agency cannot be understated. Without them, many vulnerable people would be lost and alone.
Karen moderates a Facebook group Caregivers for a Basic Income and, at the request of the Basic Income Women Action Group, created a three-and-a-half-minute video “10 Caregiver Reasons for a Basic Income Guarantee” — viewable on YouTube.
by Kate McFarland | May 17, 2016 | News
Left Forum 2016 will be held from May 20-22 at John Jay College in New York City.
As the annual conference describes itself, “Left Forum convenes the largest annual conference of a broad spectrum of left and progressive intellectuals, activists, academics, organizations and the interested public. Conference participants come together to engage a wide range of critical perspectives on the world, to discuss differences, commonalities, and alternatives to current predicaments, and to share ideas for understanding and transforming the world.”
The 2015 forum included over 4000 participants and 1350 speakers.
This year, Left Forum will include a “collaborative chat” on Basic Income as a Method to End Oppression.
Panelists will include social worker Diane Pagen (NYC Department of Education), Baltimore politician Ian Schlakman, NYC social entrepreneur Joel Cabrera, and sociologist and author William DiFazio (St. John’s University). All speakers are previous participants in US Basic Income Guarantee congresses.
The Basic Income session will be held on May 22 at 10am EST.
Left arrow graphic from Mysitemyway.com, via Wikimedia Commons.
