by Karl Widerquist | May 17, 2016 | News
This op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times proposes “a Data Mining Royalties Fund.” According to the author, ” In short, I’m proposing that companies pay a royalty to a permanent federal fund when they mine and sell personal data. From those proceeds would flow a yearly check, similar to Alaska’s permanent fund… Or, said another way, basic guaranteed income.”
Bryan Dean Wright, “Robots are coming for your job,” Los Angeles Times, March 28, 2016
Robot-staffed store in Tokyo
by Kate McFarland | May 14, 2016 | News
Andy Stern spent fifteen years as the president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) — one of the United States’ largest unions, with approximately 1.9 million members from the health care, public services, and property services professions.
As he relates in a recent blog post for the World Bank, Stern resigned as head of the SEIU in 2010 because he had “lost his ability to predict labor’s future” due to rapid changes in the economy. Instead, he says, his focus “turned to larger questions: If there are significantly fewer jobs and less work available in the future, how will people make a living, spend their time, and find purpose in their lives? Also, how can we keep the income gap from growing so wide that it erupts into social discord and upheaval?”
The solution that Stern proposes — in both the blog post and his upcoming book, Raising the Floor, from which it’s drawn — is the universal basic income.
After presenting trials in Manitoba and Namibia as evidence of the UBI’s effectiveness, Stern concludes:
“My support for UBI is born from a belief that we must attack poverty at its core—a lack of income—rather than treating its symptoms. Also, with major technological advances eliminating more middle-class jobs, new systems of universal support are required. Lacking good jobs and satisfying work, the next generation will desire to build a life outside of poverty and low-wage work, and we should endeavor to give them that opportunity.”
Sources:
Andy Stern, 12 April 2016, “Moving towards a universal basic income,” The World Bank.
A summary of Stern’s soon-to-be-released book, Raising the Floor, is available on the website of the publisher, Public Affairs Books.
A short video interview with Stern about Raising the Floor has recently been published on YouTube.
Photo: Andy Stern, 2010
Credit: Ralph Alswang (www.ralphphoto.com)
by Kate McFarland | May 8, 2016 | News
Last Wednesday, May 4, billionaire bond manager Bill Gross (of Janus Capital) made waves when he endorsed universal basic income in his Monthly Investment Outlook – or, perhaps more accurately, declared a UBI to be inevitable.
Mr. Gross, like many other commentators on current economic trends, foresees massive job loss due to automation:
Virtually every industry in existence is likely to become less labor-intensive in future years as new technology is assimilated into existing business models. Transportation is a visible example as computer driven vehicles soon will displace many truckers and bus/taxi drivers. Millions of jobs will be lost over the next 10-15 years. But medicine, manufacturing and even service intensive jobs are at risk. Investment managers too! Not only blue collar but now white collar professionals are being threatened by technological change.
He is critical of the idea, currently en vogue, that the appropriate response is to make higher education more accessible and affordable — submitting that a college degree might “better prepare students to be contestants on Jeopardy” but not necessarily lead to better jobs or more economic growth.
What, then, should be the alternative? Well, here’s what Mr. Gross says:
Instead we should spend money where it’s needed most – our collapsing infrastructure for instance, health care for an aging generation and perhaps on a revolutionary new idea called UBI – Universal Basic Income. If more and more workers are going to be displaced by robots, then they will need money to live on, will they not? And if that strikes you as a form of socialism, I would suggest we get used to it.
Indeed, he later goes so far as to assert, “The question is how high this UBI should be and how to pay for it, not whether it’s coming in the next decade. It is.”
On the question of how to financial a UBI, Mr. Gross recommends that central banks print more money – the idea popularly referred to as “helicopter money” and promoted in Europe as “QE for the People.”
Within hours, Mr. Gross’ proclamations led to a proliferation of news stories on basic income – including reports in Reuters, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and CNN Money, to mention only a few.
Matt Levine (in his Bloomberg View column “Money Stuff“) drew upon some personal anecdotes from Bill Gross to common on the common objection-cum-question “Would people stop working if they had a basic income?”:
Imagine a young Bill Gross, offered a basic income, free of the constraints of needing to earn a living. Would he still have become an obsessive bond manager? Yes of course he would have, come on. Gross has been open about the fact that he’s not in bond investing for the money; he’s in it for the fame. And there is no universal basic income of fame, though I guess Twitter is getting us pretty close.
Meanwhile, other authors and commentators took a skeptical stance. Fortune columnist Chris Matthews, for example, questioned the political feasibility of UBI in present day America, and Myles Udland, writing for Business Insider, claimed that a UBI would not be welcomed because “in the US we have attached a stigma to receiving certain types of government assistance, and the sociopolitical hurdles to a basic income program are very high.”
To be fair, Udland probably penned this criticism before he had chance to the read David Calnitsky’s article in the Canadian Journal of Sociology, “‘More Normal than Welfare”: The Mincome Experiment, Stigma, and Community Experience,” reported upon in Basic Income News last week. Calnitsky’s article provides empirical support to what many have already expected: since it is given to everyone — “obscuring the distinctions between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor,” as Calnitsky writes — a basic income should substantially diminish the stigma associated with the receipt of government monies.
Is basic income nonetheless too radical to be accepted in the States? At the very least, given the quickly burgeoning interest in the idea — and more and more prominent endorsements like that of Bill Gross — it seems premature to rule out its eventual widespread acceptance, which perhaps might happen sooner than we think.
Image Credit: Sequence Media Group
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by Kate McFarland | May 5, 2016 | News
Erik Olin Wright is a Professor in the prestigious Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison — and a staunch advocate of a universal basic income.
Wright was interviewed on the April 5th edition of the Berkeley-based radio show Against the Grain. In a broadcast of approximately 50 minutes, the distinguished sociologist explains why a basic income would not be a “disincentive” to work (unlike means-tested anti-poverty programs), argues that basic income does not “subsidize low wages” in a morally problematic way, discusses the potential impact of basic income on unions and progressive politics, and differentiates his preferred version of a basic income from that of Charles Murray and others on the right — and more.
Overall, Wright presents a persuasive and compelling case that the radical left must take basic income seriously, while allaying worries that the policy could hurt workers and rebutting objections to its unconditionality.
Against the Grain describes itself as providing “in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social, and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism.”
The broadcast can be heard in its entirety here.
A partial transcript is available here.
Photo: Erik Olin Wright presenting in Luxemburg (May 2011), Rosa Luxemburg-Stiftung
by Kate McFarland | May 2, 2016 | News
Earlier this year, Basic Income News reported on the activities of the San Francisco-based My Basic Income team, which successfully crowdfunded a $15,000 no-strings-attached basic income to be awarded to one lucky individual in a raffle.
My Basic Income has now announced that the drawing will take place on May 31 (the following is a press release from the group):
SAN FRANCISCO GROUP IS GIVING AWAY $15,000 TO PROMOTE BASIC INCOME
America’s first crowdfunded Basic Income sweepstakes has launched in San Francisco. On May 31st, the “My Basic Income” team will hold a random drawing to decide who will receive $1,250/month for one year, with no qualifying conditions or strings attached. The goal of the project is to promote and discuss the idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI), and find out how the payment affects people’s lives.
The drawing at www.mybasicincome.org is still open and free for anyone to sign up. Entrants are asked to answer the question “What would you do with your life if your income was guaranteed?” Initial funds for the project were raised on the Indiegogo platform, and the group is now building ongoing support through Patreon. The group will host an event at 111 Minna in San Francisco, though attendance is not required to win.
The SF team was founded at the first Basic Income Create-A-Thon, an event in November 2015 attended by over 80 people. There they were coached by Michael Bohmeyer, a German entrepreneur who created a similar project and has successfully crowdfunded 39 basic incomes so far. The Basic Income concept has grown exponentially in the last year, beginning with a strong internet presence, and several European countries are now conducting pilot experiments. It has recently begun to appear in mainstream news.
Founder Cameron Ottens says “With the automation revolution in full swing, it’s time that we rethink our safety net. Basic Income can give all people the security and resources to innovate and take on more meaningful work.” Historically, variations on the idea of guaranteed income have been promoted both by Martin Luther King Jr. and Milton Friedman for the goals of eliminating poverty and reducing inefficient and dehumanizing government means-testing among many, many others. This cross-partisan support has led Scott Santens, UBI blogger and activist, to coin the phrase “Basic Income isn’t left or right – it’s forward!”
Press Release from My Basic Income
Thanks to my supporters on Patreon. (Click the link to see how you too can support my work for Basic Income News.)
