They probably will (in the near-term, at least half of them).
If that happens, what will we do for a living? How will we earn money?
In this blog I’ll be discussing one of the most important proposed solutions to job loss due to automation -- the notion of “Universal Basic Income” (sometimes called guaranteed minimum income).
In specific, I want to discuss:
  1. Predictions on job loss
  2. What is Universal Basic Income? Who is experimenting with it?
  3. Does UBI work? What are the implications?
Let’s dive in.

Predictions on Job Loss

In 2013, Dr Carl Benedikt Frey of the Oxford Martin School estimated that 47 percent of jobs in the US are “at risk” of being automated in the next 20 years.
The figure was recently verified recently by McKinsey & Company who suggests that 45 percent of jobs today will be automated by using exponential technologies such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics and 3D printing.
The concept is called technological unemployment, and most careers, from factory workers and farmers to doctors and lawyers, are likely to be impacted.
The impact will likely be even more severe in the developing world.
The expected implications of technological unemployment vary widely.
Individuals like Ray Kurzweil and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen believe that while today’s jobs will perish, new jobs will be created by technology to replace them.
Other experts project that technological unemployment will be massively disruptive to society.
Still others believe that society will adapt, first by constantly demonetizing our cost of living and next by the the widespread deployment of “universal basic income.”
(NOTE: In case you missed it, in a previous blog I covered, in detail, how we are in the process of massively demonetizing the cost of living.)

What is Universal Basic Income? Who is Experimenting?

Universal basic income (UBI) is a policy in which all citizens of a country regularly receive an unconditional sum of money, either from a government or some other public institution, in addition to any income received from other means.
UBI’s core motivation — to address social ills by giving people “free” money — is certainly not a new idea.
For some perspective, Thomas Paine outlined a plan in his 1797 essay “Agrarian Justice” to create a national fund making payments of 15 pounds sterling to each adult over 21 years old….
Today, experiments with UBI are spreading across the world, from Finland and the Netherlands to Canada and France.
In France, several members of Parliament have supported running an experiment, and the finance minister is open to it.
In the last decade, over eight countries have formally experimented with UBI. Here are the top three active experiments worth noting:
  1. Finland: Early next year, the Finnish government will launch an experiment in which a randomly selected group of ~3,000 citizens already on unemployment benefits will begin to receive a monthly basic income of 560 euros (approx. $600). That basic income will replace their existing benefits. The amount is the same as the current guaranteed minimum level of Finnish social security support. The pilot study, running for two years in 2017-2018, aims to assess whether basic income can help reduce poverty, social exclusion and bureaucracy, while increasing the employment rate.
  2. Netherlands: The local government in the Dutch city of Utrecht is planning to conduct an experiment that would give a guaranteed monthly income to 250 Dutch citizens currently receiving government benefits. A two-year test period is tentatively set to begin in January of next year, and some citizens of Utrecht and some nearby cities will receive a flat sum of €960 per month (about $1,100). The Utrecht proposal — called “Weten Wat Werkt,” or “Know What Works” — includes six test groups, and the members in each will receive slightly different stipends under slightly different conditions. In addition to the group that will receive €960 per month without any work obligations, there is a group that will be given that, plus an additional €150 at the end of the month if they provide volunteer services, such as doing maintenance work on schoolyards.
  3. India: Over 350 million people (about 30% of the population) remain below the poverty line after two decades of high economic growth. In that context, in 2011 India launched two pilots to test the impact of basic income grants, funded by UNICEF, with SEWA as coordinator. In eight villages in Madhya Pradesh, every man, woman, and child was provided with a monthly payment of, initially, 200 rupees for each adult and 100 rupees for each child paid to the mother or guardian; these were later raised to 300 and 150, respectively. They also operated a similar scheme in a tribal village, where for 12 months every adult was paid 300 rupees a month and every child got 150. Another tribal village was used as a comparison. The money was paid individually, initially as cash and after three months into bank or cooperative accounts.
In January, Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator, announced that the San Francisco-based startup fund was organizing a basic income study in the U.S.

Does UBI work?

While the implementation of UBI at scale is still in its early days, the results are promising.
Early results in the India experiment show nutrition was improved as measured by the average weight-for-age of young children (World Health Organization z-score), and more so among girls.
In the same study, the UBI grants led to more labor and work, not less, as expected by skeptics.
There was a shift from casual wage labor to more self-employed farming and business activity, with less distress-driven migration out of the region.
Women gained more than men.
That being said, the most compelling study demonstrating how universal basic income could work comes from a small town in Canada.
From 1974 to 1979, the Canadian government partnered with the province of Manitoba to run an experiment on the idea of providing a minimum income to residents called MINCOME.
MINCOME was a guaranteed annual income offered to every eligible family in Dauphin, a prairie town of about 10,000, and smaller numbers of residents in Winnipeg and some rural communities throughout the province.
So what happened to families receiving MINCOME?
  • They had fewer hospitalizations
  • They had fewer accidents and injuries
  • Mental health hospitalizations fell dramatically
  • High school graduation rates increased
  • Younger adolescent girls were less likely to give birth before age 25, and when they did, they had fewer kids
The program brought most recipients above Canada’s poverty line.
And the employment effects in Dauphin were modest. For primary earners — those with full-time jobs — there was virtually no decline in work.
Essentially, nobody was quitting their jobs.
Cash from the government eased families’ economic anxiety, allowing them to invest in their health and plan over a longer horizon.
MINCOME is now serving as inspiration for basic income’s comeback in Canada.
In its 2016 budget, the provincial government of Ontario announced plans to conduct a basic income pilot this year.

Implications

I’m fairly confident that in the near future, as technology continues to eliminate traditional jobs and massive new wealth gets created, we’re going to see some version of universal basic income deployed at scale.
While I think the implications of UBI are mostly positive, there are certainly many complexities associated with its rollout.
There are still many questions that remain unanswered – where is the additional money coming from? Taxes?
Will UBI cause problems that we can’t anticipate or create more conflict than it resolves?
Can governments react quickly enough, given the pace of innovation and automation in tech? Is it actually a solution to technological unemployment? Or will we still have to go through a turbulent, violent period as we redistribute our labor in a world of robots and AI?
At minimum, I believe that with decreased costs of living, UBI will be one of many tools empowering self-actualization at scale – more people will be able to follow their passions, be more creative, and spend more time on higher-order, personally fulfilling tasks.
When this happens, we’ll be one step closer to a world of abundance.

Supporting universal basic income as step in world progress
People will benefit from social help, plus accelerating tech + science abundance.
May 28, 2017

date: May 27, 2017
topic: Adopting a universal basic income for all people can help society think creatively with new ideas, develop new industries — and free-up people to work on important future projects.
This practical social support program can grow as science & technology rapidly evolve, becoming part of world abundance.
story by: Ray Kurzweil

Dear readers,
As you might have seen in the news, entrepreneur and renowned Facebook founder & CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a commencement speech at Harvard University. He said in his talk:
“To keep our society moving forward, we have a generational challenge — to create new jobs, a renewed sense of purpose, and to take on big meaningful projects.
Our generation will have to deal with tens of millions of jobs replaced by automation like self-driving cars & trucks. But we have the potential to do so much more together.
More than 300,000 people worked to put a man on the moon — including that janitor. Millions of volunteers immunized children around the world against polio. Millions of people built the Hoover dam and other great projects.
We should have a society that measures progress not just by economic metrics, but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income — to give everyone a cushion to try new things.
We’re going to change jobs many times, so we need affordable child care — to get to work and health care that aren’t tied to one company. We’re all going to make mistakes, so we need a society that focuses less on locking us up or stigmatizing us. And as tech keeps changing, we need to focus more on continuous education throughout our lives.
Giving everyone the freedom to pursue purpose isn’t free. People like me should pay for it. Many of you will do well and you should too. That’s why my wife Priscilla Chan and I started the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and committed our wealth to promoting equal opportunity. These are the values of our generation.“
— Mark Zuckerberg |  source
A universal basic income is a form of security for a society’s citizens in which all residents of a country regularly unconditionally receive a sum of money, either from a government or public institution, in addition to any income received from elsewhere.
I support something along these lines. We want to do it in a way that doesn’t destroy incentives to contribute to society. So the question is how we get there. We already have a muddle approximating UBI * in the form of food stamps, social security, Medicaid, Medicare, emergency rooms and other programs.
You can get most of your needs for basic sustenance from these programs today — with the important exception of housing. There are shelters but these are grim and dangerous.
We are clearly headed toward a situation where everyone can live very well, with the support that society will provide. The fantastic price-performance gains we’ve seen in information technology is coming to physical products, food, energy, and other material items as they all become information technologies — like 3D printing, vertical agriculture, and solar energy.
I plan to talk about these issues, and how they will affect — and ultimately improve our civilization — in my next book. I remain positive that people like Mark Zuckerberg are thinking creatively about the future. We will be able to enter an age of abundance, as technology & science progress makes a better world for all of us.
— Ray Kurzweil
notes | 11 reasons to support basic income
source: Basic Income
1.  Basic Income will help us rethink how & why we work.
A basic income can help you do other work and reconsider old choices. It will enable you to re-train, safe in the knowledge that you’ll have enough money to maintain a decent standard of living while you do. So it will help each of us decide what it is we truly want to do.
2.  Basic Income will contribute to better working conditions.
With the insurance of having unconditional basic income as a safety net, workers can challenge their employers if they find their conditions of work unfair or degrading.
3.  Basic Income will down-size bureaucracy.
Because a basic income scheme is one of the most simple tax / benefits models, it will reduce all the bureaucracy surrounding the welfare state thus making it less complex and costly, while being fairer and more emancipatory.
4.  Basic income will make benefit fraud obsolete.
Benefit fraud will vanish as a possibility because no one needs to commit fraud to get a basic income: it is granted automatically. Moreover, an unconditional basic income will fix threshold and poverty trap effects.
5.  Basic income will help reducing inequalities.
A basic income is a means for sharing the wealth produced by a society to all people, reducing growing inequalities across the world.
6.  It will provide a more secure and substantial safety net for all people.
Most existing tested anti-poverty programs exclude people because of their complexity, or because people don’t know how to apply or if they qualify. With a basic income, people currently excluded will automatically have their rights guaranteed.
7.   Basic Income will contribute to less working hours, better distribution of jobs.
With a basic income, people will have the option to reduce their working hours without sacrificing their income. So they’ll be able to spend more time doing other things they find meaningful. At the macro-economic level, this will induce a better distribution of jobs — because people reducing their hours will increase job opportunities for those currently excluded from the labor market.
8.  Basic Income will reward unpaid contributions.
A huge number of unpaid activities are currently not recognized as economic contributions. Yet our economy increasingly relies on these free contributions — think about Wikipedia, or the work parents do. A basic income would recognize and reward theses activities.
9.  Basic Income will strengthen our democracy.
With a minimum level of security guaranteed to all citizens — and less time in work or worrying about work — innovation in political, social, economic & technological terms would become a lively part of everyday life and its concerns.
10.  Basic Income is a fair redistribution of technological advancement.
Thanks to massive advancements in our technological and productive capacities, the world of work is changing. But most of our wealth and technology comes from standing on the shoulders of giants. We’re wealthier because of our ancestors. Basic income is a way to civilize and re-distribute the advantages of that ongoing advancement.
11.  Basic Income will end extreme financial poverty.
Because we live in a world where we have the means and the will to end the kinds of suffering we see as a supposedly constant feature of our surroundings. Basic income is a way to join together the means and the will.
Wikipedia | universal basic income
Wikipedia | Mark Zuckerberg
Futurism | universal basic income: the answer to automation? • infographic
Vice | What would happen if we gave everyone free money: new experiments in universal basic income
Basic Income | main
Basic Income | What is basic income?
Basic Income | 10 reasons to support basic income
book | on topic

 book title: Basic Income: a radical proposal for a free society & a sane economy
authors: by Philippe Van Parijs + Yannick Vanderborght
What is Universal Basic Income? A brief history.
Published on May 25, 2017

David Croen

Risk Management and Strategy Executive

What is Universal Basic Income, what is a brief history of the concept, why people are talking about it (now), what are the pros and cons, and what are some of the potential costs and benefits?
What is it?
Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a form of social security, in which each citizen of a country periodically receives an unconditional payment of money, either from a government or another public institution, in addition to any income the citizen may obtain from elsewhere. The main idea is to ensure that every person receives a minimum amount of income so that no one has to live in poverty.
There are several types of UBI, including physical payments such as universal grants or wage supplements, as well as credits such as negative income tax or earned income tax credits.  
A Brief (and Incomplete) History
UBI is not a new concept. Some forerunners can probably be traced back as far as the free grain offered to Roman citizens. Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense and one of the inspirations for the American Revolution, called for a “national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling.”
In the Twentieth Century, economists and civic leaders called for the institution of UBI, in order to build a “floor” or minimum income for each citizen. During the Great Depression, Louisiana Senator Huey Long gained some traction with his “Share Our Wealth” plan that sought to guarantee that each household had at least one-third of the average family wealth.’’ During the same period, several economists, including Paul Samuelson, John Kenneth Galbraith, and James Tobin called on Congress to adopt “a national system of income guarantees and supplements.” Martin Luther King Jr. also endorsed the idea, writing that “the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective— the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.”
In 1969, President Nixon established the Commission on Income Maintenance Programs, which recommended “the development of a universal income supplement program to be administered by the Federal government.” The Family Assistance Plan (FAP), would have provided ~$1,600 in 1969 dollars for a family of four with no earned income (~$10,320 in 2014 dollars), plus an additional $800 in 1969 dollars ($5,160 in 2014 dollars) in food stamps. The FAP included a work requirement, and benefits would have been phased out as earned income increased. Nixon’s proposal actually passed the House. However, FAP was opposed in the Senate by liberals, who thought benefits were too low, and by conservatives, who objected to the program’s cost. Eventually, the plan was killed on a 10–6 vote in the Senate Finance Committee.
Nixon included his plan in his 1972 re-election campaign platform, while his opponent George McGovern also called for a guaranteed income program (guaranteeing a family of four at least $6,500), meaning that both Republicans and Democrats supported (at the same time!) some form of guaranteed national income. Yet after Nixon’s re-election, the idea faded rapidly from the public policy discourse. Interestingly, we could see similar kinds of resistance today… 
Why are people talking about it now?
Substantial evolution of economies, advancement of automation reshaping labor markets, and changing demographics, in the context of significant governmental budget and debt containment challenges, and a desire to manage social programs more efficiently, are stimulating the conversations. Also, the current US welfare system and safety nets do not appear to be working as intended, prompting further discussion of alternatives.
The rapid and pervasive advance of automation has put pressure on employment not only in manufacturing, but in other areas as well. Here are some examples:
In the U.S., President Trump's first full-year budget would substantially reduce the government's role in society, impacting a number of the rural supporters who helped to vote him into office, as well as urban voters who generally did not support him. The proposed budget would curtail the safety net that has protected many poor, disabled or elderly citizens. In fact, the President’s budget proposes cuts of $1.7tn over 10 years in mandatory programs, including cuts to Medicaid of $800bn (-17%), cuts in the Children's Health Insurance Program of $13.4bn (-19%, only funded for 2018), reductions in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) of $193bn (-29%), and shrinks the Social Security Disability Insurance program by $72bn.
The House and Senate are likely to push back on the magnitude of these reductions, and consequently, there could be an increased focus on developing alternative funding mechanisms that could distribute resources more efficiently, including the potential application of UBI.
What are the pros and cons and what are some of the potential costs and benefits?
Some have argued that these alternative distribution programs, even if they are means-tested, are likely to be inefficient or ineffective, and may even be “un-American”. Considering the historical resistance to earned benefit programs such as Social Security (1935) and Medicare / Medicaid (1965) faced prior to their introduction, it is not surprising that other changes to the “safety net” provided by Earned Income Tax Credits, Unemployment Insurance and food stamps would cause some level of resistance.
Current Examples – Momentum may be building
There are several programs that exist or are currently undergoing testing. Here are some examples:
Surely, this is the beginning of the conversation on Universal Basic Income, and is not conclusive. But it is increasingly clear that governments need to re-examine welfare and payment systems and re-evaluate how these could be more effectively implemented within the increasing claims on limited budgets. Expect to hear more about these programs going forward.
Listen to LinkedIn’s #WorkInProgress podcast starting this Thursday, May 25, for a conversation on Universal Basic Income, and including some of the key considerations and hurdles to its development. 

05-04-21

This coalition of mayors is experimenting with giving no-questions-asked cash to their citizens

Michael Tubbs, the former mayor of Stockton, California, is leading Mayors For a Guaranteed Income, a coalition of city leaders—a winner of Fast Company’s 2021 World Changing Ideas Awards—in finding the best way to implement guaranteed income programs.

BY TALIB VISRAM

Guaranteed income is having a moment. It’s not for the first time: Thomas Paine proposed it as far back as 1797. Martin Luther King, Jr. viewed it as a “balm” for many of society’s ills. “It’s an idea as old as the country itself,” says Michael Tubbs, the former mayor of Stockton, California, who may be responsible for bringing it back into fashion, more enduringly, to help achieve economic, and racial, justice. Over two years as mayor, Tubbs spearheaded a program that sent a supplemental income of $500 a month—no questions asked, no strings attached—to 125 Stockton residents living below the city’s median wage of $46,000.

The data from Stockton’s program—The Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, or SEED—has been persuasive. For people who received the funds, income volatility declined, and full-time employment rose from 28% to 40%, double the rate among those in a control group. More people reported being more productive, fewer reported feelings of anxiety and depression, and it generally created “new opportunities for self-determination, choice, goal-setting, and risk-taking.” It may also to help shatter the typical “false tropes” against GI: beneficiaries spent less than 1% on alcohol and tobacco; the rest on food, utilities, gas, and easing debts.

As financial instability rose during the pandemic, Tubbs (who lost a re-election campaign in 2020) founded Mayors For a Guaranteed Income, the winner of the politics and policy category of Fast Company’s 2021 World Changing Ideas Awards. The group now counts 43 fellow mayors aligned with the concept as members, and provides them with guidelines on pilot design and best practices, and also supplies research support in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania School of Policy and Practice, which helped conduct the original SEED study. Most crucially, it advises cities on how to secure funding—and issued $500,000 per city to its original members, divvied up from the $18 million donated to the group last year by Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey.

The other mayors (all Democrats. “I am working feverishly on getting a couple Republican mayors,” Tubbs says.) are starting to launch their own pilots, with their own unique designs. Compton’s includes undocumented immigrants among recipients; Columbia, South Carolina’s will send checks exclusively to Black fathers, and Gainesville, Florida’s to people who were formerly incarcerated . Tubbs emphasizes that the extra income is additive to any social security benefits people may receive, not a replacement. “If we are going to look for cuts to government programs,” he says, “those cuts come from programs that benefit the wealthy, and not those who don’t have other resources.”

No matter how successful the various pilots prove, mayors still have to balance their budgets. Absent any outside assistance, mayors can’t afford to expand these programs citywide. Pilots will remain pilots. So, the mayors are thinking big: GI on a federal level. Tubbs thinks they have the momentum. Andrew Yang spread the basic income gospel to the national stage, and COVID-19 stimulus checks have kept the idea in the public eye. The mayors simply want those cash transfers in the mail to continue after the pandemic ends. That doesn’t seem far-fetched to Tubbs, given the progress from four years ago—”when, literally, it was just me.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/90617227

When a California city gave people a guaranteed income, they worked more — not less

Stockton’s experiment shows what $500 per month in “free money” can do for employment, mental health, and more.

By Sigal Samuel  Mar 6, 2021, 9:00am EST

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22313272/stockton-basic-income-guaranteed-free-money

Preliminary Analysis: SEED's First Year 1 Poverty is the biggest issue.

Everything we deal with stems from that. There’s so many people working incredibly hard, and if life happens, there’s no bottom. —Michael D. Tubbs

 Executive Summary

The Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, or SEED, was the nation’s first mayor-led guaranteed income initiative. Launched in February 2019 by former Mayor Michael D. Tubbs, SEED gave 125 Stocktonians $500 per month for 24 months. The cash was unconditional, with no strings attached and no work requirements. This Randomized Control Trial (RCT) pilot is being evaluated by a team of independent researchers, Dr. Stacia West of the University of Tennessee and Dr. Amy Castro Baker of the University of Pennsylvania, and funded by the Evidence for Action Program at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Our primary research questions are the following: How does guaranteed income impact income volatility? How do changes in income volatility impact psychological health and physical well-being? How does guaranteed income generate agency over one’s future? In March 2021, SEED released its preliminary findings from the first year of the experiment. These findings encompass the pre-COVID time period from February 2019 through February 2020. Key Findings Include: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6039d612b17d055cac14070f/t/603ef1194c474b329f33c329/1614737690661/SEED_Preliminary+Analysis-SEEDs+First+Year_Final+Report_Individual+Pages+-2.pdf

 

Everywhere basic income has been tried, in one map

Which countries have experimented with basic income — and what were the results?

By Sigal Samuel  Updated Oct 20, 2020, 9:50am EDT

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/19/21112570/universal-basic-income-ubi-map

Finland gave people free money. It didn’t help them get jobs — but does that matter?

Receiving a basic income had other great effects on the unemployed.

By Sigal Samuel  Feb 9, 2019,

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/2/9/18217566/finland-basic-income

A Canadian study gave $7,500 to homeless people. Here’s how they spent it.

The results show the power of cash transfers to reduce homelessness.

By Sigal Samuel  Oct 27, 2020, https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21528569/homeless-poverty-cash-transfer-canada-new-leaf-project

These mayors want to fight Covid-19 and the recession with one big idea: A guaranteed income

Mayors of Atlanta, Los Angeles, Stockton, and other cities want a federal cash program to support their residents in need.

By Dylan Matthewsdylan@vox.com  Jul 21, 2020, https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/7/21/21327413/basic-income-guaranteed-income-ubi-michael-tubbs-keisha-lance-bottoms-eric-garcetti


Should every U.S. citizen get a share of GDP? Y Combinator chief says yes

Nov 28, 2017
Sam Altman this week floated a variation on the universal income experiment that he and his Mountain View accelerator have been working on for more than a year.
American Equity
I think that every adult US citizen should get an annual share of the US GDP.
I believe that owning something like a share in America would align all of us in making the country as successful as possible—the better the country does, the better everyone does—and give more people a fair shot at achieving the life they want.  And we all work together to create the system that generates so much prosperity.
I believe that a new social contract like what I’m suggesting here—where we agree to a floor and no ceiling—would lead to a huge increase in US prosperity and keep us in the global lead.  Countries that concentrate wealth in a small number of families do worse over the long term—if we don’t take a radical step toward a fair, inclusive system, we will not be the leading country in the world for much longer.  This would harm all Americans more than most realize.
There are historical examples of countries giving out land to citizens (such as the Homestead Acts in the US) as a way to distribute the resources people needed to succeed.  Today, the fundamental input to wealth generation isn’t farmland, but money and ideas—you really do need money to make money.
American Equity would also cushion the transition from the jobs of today to the jobs of tomorrow.  Automation holds the promise of creating more abundance than we ever dreamed possible, but it’s going to significantly change how we think about work.  If everyone benefits more directly from economic growth, then it will be easier to move faster toward this better world.
The default case for automation is to concentrate wealth (and therefore power) in a tiny number of hands.  America has repeatedly found ways to challenge this sort of concentration, and we need to do so again.
The joint-stock company was one of the most important inventions in human history.  It allowed us to align a lot of people in pursuit of a common goal and accomplish things no individual could.  Obviously, the US is not a company, but I think a similar model can work for the US as well as it does for companies.
A proposal like this obviously requires a lot of new funding [1] to do at large scale, but I think we could start very small—a few hundred dollars per citizen per year—and ramp it up to a long-term target of 10-20% of GDP per year when the GDP per capita doubles.
I have no delusions about the challenges of such a program.  There would be difficult consequences for things like immigration policy that will need a lot of discussion.  We’d also need to figure out rules about transferability and borrowing against this equity.  And we’d need to set it up in a way that does not exacerbate short-term thinking or favor unsustainable growth.
However, as the economy grows, we could imagine a world in which every American would have their basic needs guaranteed.  Absolute poverty would be eliminated, and we would no longer motivate people through the fear of not being able to eat.  In addition to being the obviously right thing to do, eliminating poverty will increase productivity.
American Equity would create a society that I believe would work much better than what we have today.  It would free Americans to work on what they really care about, improve social cohesion, and incentivize everyone to think about ways to grow the whole pie.
 [1] It’s time to update our tax system for the way wealth works in the modern world—for example, taxing capital and labor at the same rates.  And we should consider eventually replacing some of our current aid programs, which distort incentives and are needlessly complicated and inefficient, with something like this.

Of course this won’t solve all our problems—we still need serious reform in areas such as housing, education, and healthcare.  Without policies that address the cost of living crisis, any sort of redistribution will be far less effective than it otherwise could be.: http://blog.samaltman.com/

What’s wrong with UBI?

Writer and speaker on Artificial Intelligence
One out of three ain’t good
Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a fashionable policy idea comprising three elements: it is universal, it is basic, and it is an income. Unfortunately, two of these elements are unhelpful, and to paraphrase Meatloaf, one out of three ain’t good.
The giant sucking sound
The noted economist John Kay dealt the edifice of UBI a serious blow in May 2016 in an article (here) for the FT. He returned to his target a year later (here) and pretty much demolished it. His argument is slightly technical, and it focuses on UBI as a policy for implementation today, so I won’t dwell on it. But if you are one of the many who think UBI is a great idea, it is well worth reading one or both articles to see how Kay demonstrates that “either the basic income is impossibly low, or the expenditure on it is impossibly high.”
To put it more bluntly than Kay does, if UBI was introduced at an adequate level in any one country (or group of countries) today, there would be a giant sucking sound, as many of the richer people in the jurisdiction would leave to avoid the punitive taxes that would pay for it.
UBI and technological unemployment
But what happens a few decades from now if a large minority – or a majority – of people are unemployable because smart machines have taken all the jobs that they could do? We don’t know for sure that this will happen, of course, but it is at least very plausible, so we would be crazy not to prepare for the eventuality. Kay explicitly ignores this question, but tech-savvy and thoughtful people like Elon Musk and Sam Altman think that UBI may be the answer.
Imagine a society where 40% of the population can no longer find paid employment because machines can do everything they could do for money cheaper, faster and better. Would the 60% who remained in work, including those in government, simply let them starve? I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t, even if only because 40% of a population being angry and desperate presents a serious security threat to the others.
Many people argue that UBI is the solution, and will be affordable because the machines will be so efficient that enormous wealth will be created in the economy which can support the burden of so many people who are not contributing. I describe elsewhere a “Generous Google” scenario in which a handful of tech firms are generating most of the world’s GDP, and in order to avoid social collapse they agree to share their vast wealth by funding a global UBI.
I suspect there are serious problems with the economics of this. Exceptional profits are usually competed away, and companies which manage to avoid that by establishing de facto monopolies sooner or later find themselves the subject of regulatory investigations. But putting that concern to one side, in the event of profound technological unemployment, should we ask the rich companies and individuals of the future to sponsor a UBI for the rest of us?
This is where Meatloaf comes in. (Yay, Meatloaf!)
Universality
The first of UBI’s three characteristics is its universality. It is paid to all citizens regardless of their economic circumstances. There are several reasons why its proponents want this. Experience shows that many benefits are only taken up by those they are intended for if everyone receives them. Means-tested benefits can have low uptake among their target recipients because they are too complicated to claim, or the beneficiaries feel uncomfortable about claiming them, or simply never find out about them. Child benefits in the UK are one well-known example. There is also the concern that UBI should not be stigmatised as a sign of failure in any sense.
But in the case of UBI, these considerations are surely outweighed by the massive inefficiency of universality. In our scenario of 40% unemployability, paying UBI to Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates, and the millions of others who are still earning healthy incomes would be a terrible waste of resources.
Basic
The second characteristic of UBI is that it is Basic, and this is an even worse problem. “Basic” cannot mean anything other than extremely modest, and if we are to have a society in which a very large minority or a majority of people will be unemployable for the remainder of their lives, they are not going to be happy living on extremely modest incomes. Nor would that be a recipe for a stable, happy society.
Many proponents of UBI think that the payment will prevent everyone from starving, and we will supplement our universal basic incomes with activities which we enjoy rather than the wage slave drudgery faced by many people today. But the scenario envisaged here is one in which many or most humans simply cannot get paid for their work, because machines can do it cheaper, better and faster. The humans will still work: they will be painters, athletes, explorers, builders, virtual reality games consultants, and they will derive enormous satisfaction from it. But they won’t get paid for it.
If we are heading for a post-jobs society for many or most people, we will need a form of economy which provides everyone with a comfortable standard of living, and the opportunity to enjoy the many good things in life which do not come free – at least currently.
Income
UBI isn’t all bad. After all, it is in part an attempt to save the unemployable from starving. And the debate about it helps draw attention to the problem that many people hope it will solve – namely, technological unemployment. So UBI isn’t the right answer, but it is at least an attempt to ask the right question.
Perhaps we can salvage the good part of UBI and improve the bad parts. Perhaps what we need instead of UBI is a PCI - a Progressive Comfortable Income. This would be paid to those who need it, rather than wasting resources on those who have no need. It would provide sufficient income to allow a rich and satisfying life.
Now all we have to do is figure out how to pay for it.

WORLD CHANGING IDEAS

Sign up for this app and you’ll get weekly basic income (or help give one)

New app Comingle is creating a community-funded basic income for its members.

11-02-20 BY KRISTIN TOUSSAINT

If you want to benefit from direct cash transfers or a universal basic income right now, you have to live in one of the areas where various governments or nonprofits are running pilot programs to test the idea. Not that many people have won that geographic lottery. But now there’s a chance for anyone to volunteer for a guaranteed income program, one that you both can benefit from—and help support.

A new app called Comingle plans to offer this online community approach to guaranteed income. Members will contribute 7% of their weekly earnings to a general fund, which is then divided among all the members via a weekly payout. Those on the lower-earning end will receive more money than they pay in. For those with higher incomes, they might put more into the fund than they get back, but Comingle founders Conrad Shaw and Josh Worth hope the benefit of helping others is enough of a draw to participate. Plus, that person might receive a net-positive payout in the future, if bigger earners join the platform or if they fall on financial troubles themselves.

“It doesn’t require any legislation to happen, it doesn’t require any nonprofit funding. It’s not built on a charity model,” says Shaw, a filmmaker currently working on a documentary about his own UBI pilot program in which he crowdfunded money to pay 20 people a weekly basic income over two years, and creator of the UBI calculator. “It’s built on a community and solidarity and inclusivity model—that we’re all in this together. Our unofficial motto is ‘strength in numbers.'”

You don’t need to have an income to join or benefit, either. There is a $2 minimum contribution, but for those without an income, Comingle will deduct that $2 out of their dividend, and they’ll still come out ahead. “For people that are working, the freedom that comes with knowing you’ve got a guarantee of a certain amount of money gives you that little extra cushion to be able to start pursuing things for reasons beyond just being able to pay your bills,” says Worth. Regular cash payments could also add stability to freelancers—like Worth, a freelance graphic designer—who often experience ups and downs with their income. When a freelancer gets paid, they’ll pay more into the Comingle fund that week, and those weeks when they aren’t earning money, they’ll still receive a Comingle payout.

It’s not yet clear how much each Comingle member will receive weekly, because that payout depends on how many people join and how much is contributed to the fund (Comingle will max out payments at $15,000 a year). The company is hoping some funding from investors will help kick-start its payouts, and Comingle will make money by keeping a small portion of the fund—1% or 2%—for its operations. Every Comingle employee will also be a member, paying 7% of their earnings into the Comingle fund.

Shaw hopes this model is appealing to wealthy people who want to give back. “If you’re someone who’s consistently in the top 5% [of earners on the app], you’ll probably be consistently giving in,” he says. “But if you’re the sort of person that likes to give back and give to charities and know [your giving] is being effective . . . I can’t imagine anything is going to compete with 99% of every dollar going exactly to someone who needs it, and immediately, without paying any middleman salaries or missing the people who didn’t apply directly.”

Comingle isn’t up and running yet, but people interested in joining can sign up to be notified when the app launches. Shaw and Worth are planning a beta version to begin within a month, and an official launch a few weeks after that. At its start, Comingle will only be available to people in the U.S., as long as you have a bank account that has been active for at least three months. As the app grows, the founders hope to bring it to other countries, to those without bank accounts, and to allow for targeted giving, like if people want to directly help a community after a disaster, when residents aren’t able to earn money and federal aid may not be immediate.

Shaw and Worth also hope Comingle can introduce more people to the idea of a guaranteed income in an accessible way. On the Comingle site, the FAQ section tackles some of the criticisms or “controversial” aspects of a guaranteed income. “Isn’t guaranteed income just called ‘a job’?” one question asks. The answer notes a job is condition, and jobs come and go. “Isn’t this a lot of wishful thinking?” Answer: “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” And: “Is this socialism, communism, or some other word that I’m supposed to be scared of?”

“Nope,” the FAQ reads. “It’s people just like you trying something new, looking out for each other and dreaming of a better world.” Worth and Shaw say they included these questions to address them head-on, not shy away from them. It’s not about starting a capitalism vs. socialism debate, they add, but to acknowledge that the system we have now isn’t working for a lot of people, so why not try something new? Worth references a recent blog by consultant Matt Webb, who wrote about the idea of “me money” and “we money.” “We need to have both of those,” Worth says.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90569594/sign-up-for-this-app-and-youll-get-weekly-basic-income-


  • 07-20-20

Is the pandemic finally the moment for a universal basic income?


As unemployment remains high and the threat of automation looms over any recovery, UBI is getting another look as a potential key to ongoing economic stimulus.

When Andrew Yang dropped out of the Democratic presidential primary in February, he had no way of knowing that within weeks one of the central pillars of his failed campaign would move from the fringes of American political conversation to the very center of global policy debates. Citing looming labor market disruptions brought on by accelerating workplace automation, Yang ran on the idea of instituting a universal basic income (UBI), an idea that’s lived at the outskirts of American political thought—though never quite in the mainstream—for 250 years. Specifically, Yang proposed the U.S. government pay each of its adult citizens $1,000 per month (in lieu of some of the benefits the government currently offers) to alleviate poverty and gird all Americans for the day the robots come for their jobs, a notion dismissed by its many, many detractors as fantasy.

Five months on, with much of the global economy struggling to reopen and the Federal Reserve forecasting millions of jobs lost that will never return, Yang’s notion of a guaranteed income for all doesn’t feel nearly as fantastical. Since February, governments around the globe—including in the U.S.—have intervened in their citizens’ individual financial lives, distributing direct cash payments to backstop workers sidelined by the COVID-19 pandemic. Some are considering keeping such direct assistance in place indefinitely, or at least until the economic shocks subside. In some countries, that could keep some kind of regularly distributed guaranteed income in place for years, even if governments choose to call it by another name.

In the U.S., lawmakers continue to debate a range of economic stimulus measures beyond the onetime $1,200 stimulus checks sent out to most Americans starting in March and the additional $600 in federal funds tacked onto weekly state unemployment insurance payouts. Some of the measures under consideration include additional direct cash payments to citizens aimed at supporting workers until the pandemic eases and the economic crisis passes. But behind the scenes, another debate is emerging: What if the crisis doesn’t pass?

Even under more normal circumstances, recessions tend to accelerate adoption of the very technologies that Yang and many others in Silicon Valley believe will someday necessitate some sort of universal guaranteed income. In the decade since the last recession, a steady growth in automation was largely masked by surging demand, says Mark Muro, senior fellow and policy director for the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. The vast wealth generated by economies and financial markets bouncing back from the 2008 crisis kept employment ticking upward even as companies steadily replaced lower-skilled labor with a mix of technology and fewer higher-skilled workers, a proven formula for boosting productivity.

The current pandemic-driven recession only makes automation more attractive. Not only do robots never get sick, but they address a public health priority by minimizing human interactions. And while it might seem like the ongoing spike in joblessness would make human labor attractively less expensive for companies, the opposite is true when consumer demand is simultaneously cratering. “When revenues are collapsing, people become more expendable,” Muro says. With fewer dollars to spend on wages and salaries, each worker becomes relatively more expensive.

Muro and his research associates have flagged some 36 million U.S. jobs rated as highly susceptible to automation, in sectors ranging from hospitality and food service to manufacturing, retail, agriculture, transportation, and logistics. Many if not most of the jobs supplanted by increasingly capable machines during the COVID-19 crisis won’t be coming back, making a jobs-led recovery increasingly unlikely.

Take the nation’s largest private employer, for example. By year’s end, Walmart plans to have autonomous floor-scrubbing robots deployed in 1,860 of its more than 4,700 stores, a robot rollout that began long before COVID-19 was a headline. The company is also deploying shelf-scanning and stock-sorting robots at more than 1,000 stores, a rollout that has continued during the pandemic, a Walmart spokesperson recently confirmed to CNN. And more autonomous robots are coming, says Phil Duffy, vice president of product for San Diego-based Brain Corp, the company behind the software that drives Walmart’s autonomous cleaning bots. “The world of fully autonomous robots at scale—these are robots that have all the sensors on them, have the processing on board, and are able to make decisions themselves—is probably less than five years away.”

These robots aren’t necessarily designed to replace humans, Duffy says, but to augment them, boosting their productivity (one less human mopping the floor frees up one more human to do work robots currently can’t, like cleaning high-touch surfaces that may more readily transmit COVID-19). But that’s not necessarily comforting news for workers as technology continues to allow machines to perform more and more tasks. A survey of corporate executives released by accounting firm PwC indicates that nearly half of CFOs anticipate cuts to workforce efforts in response to COVID-19. Meanwhile, only 17 percent expect cuts to initiatives like “digital transformation” and 44 percent plan to accelerate “automation and new ways of working”—all terms that either explicitly or implicitly nod toward replacing human workers with technology.

“A lot of the technologies that were relatively crude during the last recession are now ready for prime time,” Muro says. “So I don’t think this is a hot take. I think this is going to be a much more substantial feature of this downturn, both because the technology is so advanced and because of the particular nature of the infection danger. It’s almost perfectly programmed to ratchet up the use case for this stuff.”

Whenever major labor disruptions loom, UBI surfaces as a potential remedy. Its historical champions include representatives from across the philosophical and political spectra, from founding father Thomas Paine to conservative economist Milton Friedman to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and even President Richard Nixon. But in recent years the loudest voices pushing UBI into mainstream conversation come from Silicon Valley, names like Andrew Yang, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk. In late May, Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey donated $3 million to Yang’s Humanity Forward nonprofit, cash that will be distributed in 20,000 micro grants of $250 each as the organization continues to make a case for UBI in the United States.

In Stockton, California, that case is already being made. The city of just over 300,000 people has teamed with the nonprofit Economic Security Project to conduct a UBI pilot program providing 125 residents with monthly no-strings-attached payments of $500 over the past 18 months—beginning in February of 2019—as a means of measuring their social and economic  impacts. “I think at the bare minimum we’ve found that if you give money to people the world doesn’t implode, people don’t stop working, we don’t stop being America,” says Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs, addressing some of the more persistent and hyperbolic critiques of UBI.

The initial data bears out the efficacy of Stockton’s program. Early results show that more than 40% of the funds are spent on food, 20% on consumer goods, and 10% on utilities. Additionally, participants are reporting that they are able to spend more money on their children, and to spend more time preparing for and applying to higher-paying jobs. But with the emergence of coronavirus, the experiment has become something of a measuring stick for how a guaranteed income can impact communities during a serious economic crisis (the project was recently extended for an additional six months in direct response to the COVID-19 crisis).

In response to both long-standing economic insecurity in their communities and the current coronavirus pandemic, 11 mayors (including Mayor Tubbs) came together in June to form Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. Within a few weeks their ranks grew to represent 15 cities, including Los Angeles, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, and Jackson, Miss. The organization’s goal: “Mayors will come together in this network to advocate for a guaranteed income—direct, recurring cash payments—that lifts all of our communities, building a resilient, just America,” a signal that UBI is gaining some political traction in the U.S., at least at the local level.

Meanwhile, the federal government’s primary pandemic relief initiative—the one-time $1,200 stimulus payment initially supplied by the federal government—is a distant memory for most recipients, their checks quickly absorbed by rent, bills, and the day-to-day costs of living, says Economic Security Project co-founder Natalie Foster. “Enhanced unemployment” continues to supply those eligible with an extra $600 per week, but that additional payout will cease at the end of July, 2020. For some in Stockton, the $500 monthly UBI payments are staving off financial catastrophe, but only for 125 families, and only for now. “The bills come due every month,” Foster says. “And so should the checks.”

As a growing number of lawmakers come around to the same way of thinking, Yang’s proposal to place a monthly income floor beneath all Americans has in a matter of months evolved from a politically untenable fringe notion to a palatable economic policy, at least on a limited basis. “There’s more interest in guaranteeing an income than we’ve ever seen in Washington, D.C.,” Foster says. “And for very good reason.” Representatives Tim Ryan (D-OH) and Rho Khanna (D-CA) have proposed a $2,000 monthly payment to adults (plus $500 per child up to three children) for a minimum of six months, continuing until the economic crisis is contained. A similar bill put forth by Senators. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Ed Markey (D-MA) in the Senate would provide the same monthly payments until three months after the public health emergency ends.

Five of the six proposals circulating on Capitol Hill would means-test recipients, reducing or restricting payments based on a household’s income, but one of the bills—introduced by Representatives Rashida Tlaib (D-MN) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA)—is truly universal, offering $2,000 monthly until the pandemic ends and then $1,000 until one year after the associated recession ends. But with more than 17 million Americans still filing for continuous unemployment benefits and more than 1 million filing new claims each week, it’s unclear what the end of the recession will look like for workers, particularly as increasing automation ensures many jobs won’t come back.

Looking toward 2021 it’s no longer difficult to envision a world wherein large swathes of the global population remain unemployed or underemployed as labor markets recover unevenly and accelerating automation continues to hamstring a jobs-led economic recovery. In that type of environment, “UBI becomes thinkable,” Brookings’ Muro says. In Spain, that thinking has led to the institution of a “national minimum income,” a means-tested program that will ensure its poorest people receive at least $500 a month (those earning less than $500 monthly would receive the difference). The initiative has re-ignited a long-dormant discussion of an EU-wide minimum income between some government leaders and members of the EU parliament. And in the U.S., the debate over the next phase of economic and fiscal stimulus continues.

After years spent on the political fringes, the notion of UBI (or “minimum income,” or “guaranteed income”) may be coming into its time not through the front door of political or ideological revolution but via a backdoor opened wide by an epidemiological crisis compounded by technological disruption. Those suffering through economic uncertainty unprecedented in our lifetimes likely won’t care how it gets here or how it’s marketed to voters if and when it arrives. “Whether we call it a guaranteed income, an income floor, whatever you want to call it,” says Stockton’s Mayor Tubbs. “I’m agnostic as long as people get what they need as part of a new social contract so they have some foundation to stand on.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/90529479/is-the-pandemic-finally-ubis-moment

The Case for 'Universal Property'

An idea pioneered by Alaska could inoculate society against extreme inequality

When voters went to the polls in November, one outcome was certain: America would emerge as a nation deeply divided. President-elect Biden’s pledge to “unite and heal” will do little to remedy this reality unless good intentions are matched by bold policies that truly bring Americans together. Universal property—an innovative idea that goes beyond income to the economic bedrock of wealth—offers a way to move in that direction, one that could win support on both sides of the political aisle.

Americans cherish both equality and liberty. The problem is that when these appear to be in conflict, the nation is torn between those willing to sacrifice some liberty for greater equality and those willing to do the opposite. This underlying fault line was in evidence between those who voted for Biden and those who voted for Trump. It is also a source of ambivalence among the many Americans on both sides who value both.

The notion that equality is the enemy of liberty, and vice versa, is founded on the view that government is the ultimate guarantor of equality, and private property the ultimate guarantor of liberty. The balance between equality and liberty thus morphs into the balance between the state and the market. A quintessential exposition of this line of thinking can be found in the writings of antebellum South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun. In his Disquisition on Government, published in 1851, Calhoun juxtaposed “two great classes”: one comprised of taxpayers (including slaveholders like himself) who fund the government, the other of “tax-consumers” who live on government handouts. The 20th-century free-market avatar Ayn Rand gave Calhoun’s classes more vivid labels: “The creator produces,” she wrote in her 1943 novel The Fountainhead, “the parasite loots.”

Around the same time that Calhoun was penning his Disquisition, across the Atlantic two German émigrés offered a very different notion of class struggle. In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels portrayed the working class as the true creators of wealth, and the owners of capital as parasites. A key plank in their program for building a more egalitarian society was state ownership of “the means of production.” The shortcomings of this recipe became all too clear with the advent of Communist regimes in the 20th century. The belief that state property would in a meaningful sense belong to all was belied by the rise of new elites, whose power like that of capitalists rested on control of property—property nominally belonging to the governments they ran. In Russia, three decades after elite “reformers” in the U.S.S.R. leveraged their political status to reinvent themselves as post-communist oligarchs, wealth is distributed even more unequally than in the United States. And in China inequality has reemerged with a vengeance.

The lesson: Neither private property nor state-owned property is sufficient to guarantee equality and liberty for all. The first can allow economic elites to monopolize wealth and power, the second can allow political elites to do the same. But there is an alternative type of property that can never be concentrated in the hands of an elite. It was pioneered in, of all places, Alaska.

In 1976, as oil production commenced on Alaska’s North Slope, the state amended its constitution to create a new entity called the Alaska Permanent Fund. The idea was the brainchild of Republican governor Jay Hammond, who believed that Alaska’s oil wealth belonged to all its residents, and that all should receive equal annual dividends from its extraction. The fund is “permanent” because some of the money is invested so that future generations will receive dividends too once oil production ends. “That money and the resources it comes from belong to all Alaskans,” Hammond wrote, “not to government or to a few ‘J.R. Ewings’ who in states like Texas own almost all the oil.” Not surprisingly, the fund has proven enormously popular across the state’s political spectrum. The record payout, more than $3,000 per person including a one-time rebate, came under Governor Sarah Palin in 2008.

The Permanent Fund is neither private property nor public property in the conventional senses. Unlike public property, the right to the revenue belongs to the people, not the government. Unlike private property, this right cannot be bought or sold, owned by corporations, or concentrated in a few hands. It is universal property: individual, inalienable and perfectly egalitarian.

In 2001 Peter Barnes, a solar energy entrepreneur and co-founder of the Working Assets Long Distance telephone company, wrote a book called Who Owns the Sky?, in which he proposed to treat the atmosphere’s limited capacity to safely absorb carbon emissions like Alaska treats its oil: as a joint inheritance that belongs in equal measure to each and every person. To protect this precious inheritance for future generations, Barnes argued that we ought to strictly limit the use of fossil fuels, charge prices for the carbon emissions we do permit, and recycle the revenue to the public as dividends. Hammond, for one, found the idea intriguing. “Pie in the sky?” he mused. “Perhaps, but provocative.”

In his forthcoming book Ours: How Universal Property Can Transform the World, Barnes extends the possibilities for this alternative type of property beyond natural assets to include assets we have created as a society, such as the legal and institutional architecture of the financial system that underpins individual prosperity. The gifts of society and the gifts of nature would be treated as a joint inheritance belonging to all: universal property. Those who benefit from using them would pay according to their use, and the money received from their use would be paid out equally to all.

If implemented on a significant scale, universal property would inoculate the society against extreme inequality. It would provide an asset-based source for a universal basic income, not dependent on redistributive taxation. Charging for use of the sky’s carbon-absorption capacity would help stabilize the Earth’s climate by curbing emissions; similarly, financial transaction taxes would help stabilize the economy by curbing hair-trigger speculation.

Universal property is a bold idea that does not fit neatly into old labels. It is neither Democratic nor Republican, neither liberal nor conservative, neither socialist nor libertarian. Or rather, it is both. It would advance equality and liberty together. And by bringing everyone into the same boat as co-owners, it could help bridge the divides that keep us apart.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-case-for-universal-property/ 

How these mayors are bringing guaranteed income to their cities

On the ‘World Changing Ideas’ podcast, we spoke to two mayors who launched guaranteed income pilot programs in their cities—and to a recipient of those supplemental checks.

BY TALIB VISRAM

Tomas Vargas Jr. used to work part time as a youth facilitator for convicted juveniles in Stockton, California. He also repaired cars and did other odd jobs. “I was sitting there, just trying to make the checks work,” he says. That was before he was randomly selected to be part of a guaranteed income pilot program: to receive a sum of $500 per month for two years, no questions asked.

That pilot laid the groundwork for more mayors around the country to follow suit, many of whom are part of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, a coalition of 55 mayors, and counting, aiming to ease people’s financial burdens with supplemental income. The founder of the coalition, and that Stockton pilot, former Mayor Michael Tubbs, joined us on the World Changing Ideas podcast to discuss MGI, which won a 2021 World Changing Ideas Award in the Politics and Policy category.

Conti]Fundamentally, guaranteed income is an anti-poverty measure. “It comes from a Kingian tradition in terms of how do we eliminate poverty in our country,” Tubbs says, referring to Martin Luther King Jr., who decades ago proposed guaranteed income as a way to alleviate poverty. Tubbs also notes how it’s an idea that historically has been embraced by unlikely allies like economist Milton Friedman and former President Richard Nixon. (Today, though, Tubbs is still trying to get the first Republican mayor on board.)

Unlike universal basic income, which qualifies everyone, guaranteed income prioritizes those who’ve been stuck in “economic purgatory” for generations: those who struggle to survive on their income, yet are often are making “too much” to qualify for welfare. In this model, instead of meager government benefits, poorer residents receive cash, no strings attached—to be spent in the way they see fit for their families. “The idea is to turn notions of deservingness on [their] head,” Tubbs says. “They don’t necessarily need us to tell them exactly how to spend every single cent.”

city of Cambridge]Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui of Cambridge, Massachusetts, who also joined on the podcast, agrees: “You’re putting faith in your families,” she says. “We know they have the agency to do what they want with cash.” Siddiqui’s city, which suffers from extreme wealth disparity, is launching its own pilot, starting with a lottery this summer to draw successful candidates. Like many of the pilot programs, it’s targeted to a specific population, based on need. While some have sent their cash solely to Black fathers, or people recently released from prison, hers is for single caretakers.

According to Tubbs, data collected from Stockton’s pilot has shown that people are spending the cash on essentials like transport, childcare, and clearing debts—as Vargas did. Vargas says it helped “tremendously,” not only financially but also mentally. “I was able to make better choices,” he says.

Tubbs’s research supports this idea of an alleviation of stress and depression due to economic anxiety. “No matter how you slice and dice it,” he says, “the data will come back that economic security is good for them.”

The intention is for that data, and more to come, to be presented as evidence to make guaranteed income a federal program. After all, pilots have limitations: They’re short-lived, and participation amounts to the luck of the draw for residents. Furthermore, budget-constrained cities are relying heavily on unsustainable private funding—such as the $18 million donated to MGI by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. The mayors are encouraged by glimmers of federal GI, such as the COVID-19 recovery checks, and President Joe Biden’s childcare tax credits of up to $300 per child.

But the coalition is pushing for something more robust and long-lasting. “I come at this unapologetically from the lens of: I don’t like poverty,” Tubbs says. “I don’t think we should have poverty. And a guaranteed income accomplishes that goal.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/90655023