The digitization of our economy will bring with it a new generation of radical economic ideologies, of which Bitcoin is arguably the first. For those with assets, technological savvy, and a sense of adventure, the state is the enemy and a cryptographic currency is the solution. But for those more focused on the decline of the middle classes, the collapse of the entry-level jobs market, and the rise of free culture, the state is an ally, and the solution might look something like an unconditional basic income. Before I explain why this concept is going to be creeping into the political debate across the developed world, let me spell out how a system like this would look:
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Every single adult member receives a weekly payment from the state, which is enough to live comfortably on. The only condition is citizenship and/or residency.
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You get the basic income whether or not you’re employed, any wages you earn are additional.
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The welfare bureaucracy is largely dismantled. No means testing, no signing on, no bullying young people into stacking shelves for free, no separate state pension.
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Employment law is liberalised, as workers no longer need to fear dismissal.
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People work for jobs that are available in order to increase their disposable income.
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Large swathes of the economy are replaced by volunteerism, a continuation of the current trend.
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The system would be harder to cheat when there’s only a single category of claimant, with no extraordinary allowances.
This may sound off-the-charts radical, but here’s why you’re going to be hearing a lot more about it:
1 – The Middle Classes Are In Freefall
As Jaron Lanier points out, Kodak once provided 140,000 middle class jobs, and in the smouldering ruins of that company’s bankruptcy we have Instagram, with 13 employees. It’s an extreme example, in most cases the economic misery is largely confined to young people, with entry-level workers trapped in a cycle of internships, ever-lengthening education, and debt. The result is that young people are not being allowed to grow up. In the 1960s the average first-time house buyer was 24 years old, and as late as 2002 it was 28. The average is now 37. The path to economic selfhood is being stretched by market forces, too many people chasing too few jobs, and a continuation of the status quo is likely to push that lifeboat out even further.
In stripping out inefficiencies and pushing digital goods to near-free prices, the Internet kills middle-class jobs. Digitization has already largely de-monetized academia, film, music, journalism, and lots more besides. More industries will feel the pain, including the legal professions, real estate, insurance, accounting, and the civil service, all of which are built on inefficiency, and all of which will be stripped of jobs in the years to come. As it becomes clear to those with established positions that there are no jobs for their children, they’ll push for a more radical solution.
To put this in econometric terms, wages as a share of the economy have been in long term decline and recently hit a new low in the United States. Meanwhile corporate profit margins have hit an all time high. The last few years of economic turmoil has allowed industry to reduce staff numbers and reduce entry-level pay, without reducing capacity. If that trend continues, wealth creation will increasingly be confined to those with capital, and things start to follow a Marxist logic. The middle classes (and their elected representatives) will not let that happen.
2 – Demand For Human Labour Is In Long Term Decline
Imagine a point in the future when robots do more of our physical labour, computers do more of our mental labour, and our mechanized-digitized economy is ten times more efficient. We don’t need to agree on a date, this could be 2050 or it could be 2500, all we need to agree on is that current trends are likely to continue in the same direction. Between now and then two things can happen, either we do 90% less work, or we demand ten times more goods and services, or a bit of both. The first option requires that we drastically revise downwards our expectations of how much work people do, the second requires that we drastically redistribute purchasing power to consumers.
We’ve redefined work in the past, so there’s no reason we can’t do it again. The concept of “a job” as something that happens outside the home and for someone else is a largely Victorian creation. Even after it was formalized into an obligation to the market economy, we always accepted that certain people do not have to work. We do not expect infants, the elderly, or the disabled to work, and these categories are relatively fluid. The expectation that children work inside and outside the home has been in steady decline ever since the industrial revolution, while the default retirement age has crept ever later, pushed by governments avoiding a pension crisis and senior employees hanging on to their established social roles. While men were forced out of the home to do paid work, women were kept in the family home to do unpaid work. During the world wars, everyone was expected to work. During a world cup final, almost nobody is expected to work. We regularly change our expectations of who works and how. Forcing the unemployed onto a jobless market on the basis that “everybody has to work” is at best misguided and at worst cruel.
In 2012 the average working year in South Korea was 2,226 hours, and in the Netherlands it was 1,381 hours, 38% less. You can have a rich, developed economy on relatively little work. If we stop stigmatizing the non-employed, we can stop pushing people into jobs that offer little collective benefit. From telemarketers to chuggers to sign holders to beggars, huge numbers of people are forced to eek out an existence on the fringes of the economy in roles that have almost no marginal economic output.
3 – Cultural Production Is Detaching From The Market
We already have a society of volunteers and creators, and that’s a good thing. That Wikipedia article you just read, the parkour YouTube video you just watched, that Russian electronica you’re listening to, the code that powers your browser, all were probably given away for free. Everyone expected an information economy, and instead we got an information culture.
When people are locked out of the jobs market, some may sit at home all day on the couch, but many will go out into the world and produce cultural goods that they then give them away for free. I don’t buy into the myth that unemployed people are lazy. I’ve lived in a country that had a period of “full employment” and now has 14% unemployment, and I don’t see how anyone can be so misanthropic to claim that those 14% of people just got lazier. Employment doesn’t just give people an income, it also gives them an identity, status, confidence, a sense of mission, and a network of peers. Anyone given access to those rewards will work for them. As the fantastic talk by Dan Pink puts it, we are motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose, but not money. As machines take over more of our work, we are going to have to find other ways of letting people fulfil these human needs. Forcing them to send 500 CVs out every week is not a good start.
Don’t dismiss this as socialism, it involves a complete rejection of the Stakhanovite work ethic and a full-throttle embrace of consumer culture.
How would we pay for it?
We could start by getting corporations to pay their taxes. As I mentioned above, corporate profit margins have hit an all time high, and that money will circulate far faster if it’s placed in the hands of consumers. For salaried workers a basic income would likely be a repackaging of tax free allowances, although they would likely need a net gain to buy into it. The scheme would also yield savings elsewhere in the public sector, from a reduction in the size of the bureaucracy, to an increasing role for volunteers and charities. The scheme would also stimulate economic activity, as shown by the PPI scandal in Britain which forced the transfer of £10 billion from banks to customers, and led to a GDP growth boost of 0.1% because consumers were so much quicker to spend it.
Frankly, in an era when communities can create their own currencies, capital can sneak across digital borders despite being legally frozen, and economic production is increasingly decentralized, finding ways of fairly collecting revenue for the public good is going to be one of the big questions of the century, regardless of whether or not we have an unconditional basic income. Under the current set of rules, most developed world governments are bankrupt, but as the bank bailouts proved, the rules can be rewritten when needs be. Money is a device we use to help us allocate resources, it is a symbol and an understanding, seemingly solid in the short term, but flexible and evolutionary in the long term. If you burn all the notes in your wallet right now, you haven’t made the world any poorer, you’ve simply reduced your personal claim to available resources. There is always more money.
As has become increasingly clear, austerity is not working, and should never have been expected to work. An unconditional basic income would be the Keynesian response that should have been launched as soon as it became clear the financial sector had a rotten core. In other words, it would be a bailout for consumers.
This piece has been translated into French.
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LOL
Forcing the unemployed onto a jobless market on the basis that >>“everybody has to work” is at best misguided and at worst masochistic.
Its actually sadistic since they are being forced to do it, if they were doing it to themselves that would be masochistic
True that, thanks for pointing it out…I’ll change it to “cruel”
I like these ideas, but in reality, the need for large-scale manual labor will never go away.
Tell that to the laborers who used to manufacture cars.
Or harvest corn.
You are 100% correct, there will always be a need for large-scale manual labor. Soon, robots will fill that position. Robots will make other robots and eventually the world will be filled with robots.
Most companies will want robots for that manual labor you’re talking about because robots don’t bitch and moan like humans do. You can beat a robot when it makes a mistake and not get sued.
After robots do everything, what will humans do?
This is just horrible, I hope to die peaceful capitalistic death before this hell breaks loose.
I hope you do too.
Classy
Money is an energy storage unit. If you burn your money you are converting it into heat energy, which is horrendously inefficient.
no… it’s actually mostly a ‘value’ storage unit
Excellent post! Just FYI, I submitted this to Hacker News, where it made the front page and is currently being discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6025999
Aha thanks for letting me know, I was wondering!
People haven’t gotten lazier; they’ve gotten more ignorant. Go spend some time listening in a college-level classroom. The country doesn’t lack jobs–it lacks knowledgeable entrepreneurs and professionals that create jobs.
Since time immemorial adults have complained that young people are ignorant and frivolous, “the youth of today”!
*shakes stick*
Maybe you’re right, maybe “these kids nowadays” and all that, but it still doesn’t change the trend to automation and collapse of the labor market.
What happens when everyone is a knowledgeable entrepreneur that creates jobs? You can’t expect everyone to be the best and base your economic expectations on that
Let me kill that myth. It’s entirely possible to be ignorant yet still be fantastically productive and add enormous value to the economy. Did Rockefeller know everything about oil? Carnegie about steel? Virtually every large firm over 150 years old was built by someone who wasn’t college educated — or had much education at all. Here’s a short story by W. Somerset Maugham that dramatizes this: http://www.sinden.org/verger.html
I found this a fascinating summary of a lot of ideas I’ve been kicking around as one of the intermediary-destroying technical class. I’m also a father. Figuring out how to guide my kids into a productive career has proven daunting given the amount of economic, social and technical change that’s reworking the workforce.
I really liked your characterization of the fluidity of “jobs”, and how that term has changed over time. Hadn’t thought that through before, and it does shine a light on how narrow our expectations have become.
It seems to me that another advantage to a minimum basic income will be dismantling the minimum wage, which has always troubled me from an efficiency of economy standpoint – if everyone has enough to eat and live, all jobs become optional and we don’t need to prop up incomes artificially to ensure entry level work provides that living wage.
Glad you liked it. The knock-on implications of a BI would be manifold, and the minimum wage would be one of the first things to go. For white collar jobs minimum wage is already largely ignored by employers offering internships, work placements, entry-level freelance contracts, and volunteer positions.
A minimum wage doesn’t prop up incomes. It eliminates jobs below that wage, or moves them to the black market. It is, in short, lunacy.
The trends you cite are real, and the remedy (unconditional basic income) plausible. But rather than the “state” as surrogate for ownership, which is riddled with the potential for corruption, why not direct ownership as a surrogate for the “state” ? With universal transparency a state overseer is no longer required.
I’d love to hear more about what you have in mind, I’m not sure I fully catch your drift. Any kind of centralized authority is prone to corruption, but that corruption feeds on the nuanced decisions that need to be made (who gets the contract, what category is this person in, who is eligible for the rebate, what do we define as deductible etc etc). The more black and white the rules, the harder it is to milk the system. In this case the two fraud risks would be double claiming and non-eligible claiming. Once it’s established that someone is eligible and not already claiming, there are no more decisions to be made. I don’t want to play down the logistical challenge that would pose, but I think it would be no more challenging than the farming subsidy system, with far less scope for misspending.
If you create a baseline income, then the Haves will simply raise prices on the Have Nots. Creating income equality does nothing about the problem of ownership inequality.
Let’s say I have ten meals and 20 starving people with equal amounts of money. I’m going to charge exactly twice what each person has so I maximize income and they can work together and split the meals. Or the strong half robs the weak half. Or the strong quarter gang up on the rest and eat well while the others starve.
You aren’t feeding 20 people any better this way. You are just increasing the amount the seller will charge.
Food is only about 10% of the economy so not sure it’s a helpful example. What tends to happen is you have capacity for 100 goods and 20 people willing to buy them. Any scarcity is only the result of the uneven distribution of purchasing power.
You may already be aware of the theory of “artificial scarcity”, which would be the way producers respond to falling prices.
To simplify: there’s so much stuff in the world firms would collapse if it were all released into the market. So they keep it locked up in order to maintain prices.
I don’t know if we’re experiencing it now, but I see some good arguments for it on FTAlphaville (see http://ftalphaville.ft.com/tag/beyond-scarcity/).
Exactly, it’s called inflation. Thanks for introducing reality; something leftists have no response to. As a previous commenter wrote: LOL.
Inflation has nothing to do with overall distribution of goods. Money is given power because the group gives it power, distributing it in a fairer fashion (while not totally equal) is the best way to go.
Money has power because a group you are not a part of gave it power. Without leverage (economic or otherwise) you have no power to change this fact. Did you know the Russian Revolution was funded by western oligarchs? Same story.
…actually, most of it was funded by the German Reich, in the hopes that the Bolsheviks would undermine the Russian war effort (WWI). It worked.
If money is any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given socio-economic context or country,( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money ) then what are persons who receive this money paying? What changes hands? The state gives Chad cash and he gives them what in return? Is a minimum income even money anymore?
In theory s/he gives economic stimulus in return by “putting” that money back into the economy. The point you are making is only valid if they just constantly save… rather hoard the cash they now get free.
Its horrible idea, known in history. First time something like ‘unconditional basic income’ emerged in Roman Empire. Citizens get from state free grain, later bred, wine. As a result more and more people leave countryside and travel to city of Rome. In the time of Octavian August (30BCE) there was 320000 citizens with the right to ‘roman unconditional income’ (only free man). In many soviet satellite states being unemployed was a crime, in this case ‘unconditional basic income’ was work and salary. In the end – work was worth nothing, and salary equal to that. But, that was history. Lets think what “unconditional basic income” will do in the future. First there is no need to work in the most biological sense. To survive you just must be a resident or citizen. After rest of the world – witch in fact lives in poverty – realise that “they give food for free” they will literary flood country with such ‘perk’. And more, I think that most of us are not lazy. We just calculate what is worth our work – and what not. Most of us will ‘preserve energy’, and if that ‘unconditional basic income’ will be enough to live at quite nice level – we will stay with that. Even now – most of people live from day of salary to another day of salary – they just want to survive till natural death. Nothing more. There is – in my opinion – less than 10% of population that actually want to “do something in life”. Finally – BUI (for short) will accelerate inflation, seed civil unrest as many people will have too much time to do – literary – nothing. They will think, and is clear to me that in the end of that thinking is somethink like “we want more for free! As much as those who do something have, we are no worse than them!” .
In the end of this too long note, I must admit that emerge of BUI idea is really funny from historical point of view. Many historians think that Roman “breed and games” were responsible for the fall of Empire. Other things responsible for that event were decline rate of birth, religion, and climate change. It sounds familiar… And scary me.
Sorry for my poor English, as it`s not a language witch I speak usually
Thanks for that, very interesting. The growing cost of “bread and circuses” and the decline of work ethic were only one part of a much wider malaise that contributed to the decline of Rome. I could argue that Rome also collapsed because it failed to adapt. It relied structurally on the fruits of military expansion, and failed to reform itself as it reached the limits of that expansion.
The key is automation, radical automation. If the Romans had automated farming, then the decline of the rural population would have had no effect. Same goes for every industry/job now.
why do you assume those who previously didnt have money before would just sit and think? By that logic when the rich get “rich” they do nothing too. The whole point is your supposed to continuously use it. If you honestly find yourself with “nothing to do” on a BASIC income then you probably don’t realize the incredible and impossible blessing that intelligent life (us) exists.
This is of course assuming some of your basic assumptions about human nature are true facts, namely that people do not seek autonomy and mastery and are content with “doing nothing” (what in the world does that mean?). It takes a great deal of courage to look at someone and tell them that they add no value to society, and, the way I see it, a basic income is one way we can ameliorate that (managerial) attitude toward human affairs, opening up avenues of communal value creation that remain, currently by necessity, unanticipated.
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I didn’t know if this was a spoof or not at first. I’m pretty sure your trying to be serious, but you’re lack of experience on actually creating value via capital shows. Trying starting a small business and creating a job or two for someone else before you say everyone should get something for nothing.
I think you and most others are massively missing the main point of this article. At some point, automation and robotics will be able to do EVERYTHING. As a small business owner, I’d probably want to rent or buy robots to act as slaves for me than to deal with troublesome humans. What would the world expect the working class to do then? My big fear is that the 1%’s answer to that question is: “die”, not free money to keep consuming the planet.
Anyone who read that Donald Duck comic where a tornado redistributes Scrooge McDuck’s fortune to all the inhabitants of Duckburg know how this would pan out.
I didn’t read the comic, so how does it pan out?
It’s not the same concept anyway. It wouldn’t involve all of a fortune. Did the tornado redistribute the capital equipment, or just Scooge’s cash?
Here’s how: http://www.freecannon.com/McDuckCapitalism.htm
I just imagine, but I’d like to find that comic.
There was also a Duck Tales episode wherein the money supply was multiplied by a contraption that Gizmo Duck created. It lead to a similarly disturbing catastrophe, one similar to Zimbabwe’s recent fate as a result of the same behavior.
I first heard this concept in 1962, and it’s made more and more sense as time went on. We were mostly concerned about maintaining aggregate demand in the 60s, but now its main attraction would be to decentralize the welfare state.
One conceptual difference is that our version would have given the basic stipend on condition the recipient stayed off the labor market. That system would keep wages high, especially for low paid workers.
You’re a genius you invented socialism!
I love that you’re idealistic but idealism requires that you understand the core structure of the system you’re dealing with.
In this case… Humans and economics
Unfortunately you understand both very poorly, despite this sites claim to focus on anthropology
Burn a few calories reading about Austrian Economics and why this is a terrible idea that is economically unviable as well as illogical based on human nature.
having people like this who support this idea is why an unenlightened electorate is such a dangerous thing
The people can demand anything they want, even if it’s not good for them.
This is why educating and teaching critical thinking skills is vital to democracy
I’m sad to think that there’s more people who think like you…
ugh
No need for the ad hominem response. UBI is a far cry from socialism, it would essentially be a simplification of the welfare state, which I appreciate is anathema in your economic ideology of choice.
Lui-
I wish we could have debates on purely intellectual grounds, but it’s important to sometimes inject emotion into those debates.
I feel that when writing an “opinion piece” you open yourself up to personal rebuttals.
This article is obviously not well thought out in terms of unintended consequences.
I do in fact respect the author’s goals, very much so
As many others have pointed out though, this is based on some very DANGEROUS logical fallacies.
regarding your point:
Since there are obvious semantic differences that come up related to the term “Socialsim” the definition I’m referring to is that of webster’s…
“any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods”
the semantic difference between “Welfare State” (in the sense of modern nordic countries for instance) is a fine line that I feel this proposed concept certainly crosses
The trend of our global society moving towards a life where they no longer need take personal responsibility and somehow it is up to others to provide a solution to their problems will doom us forever.
Unfortunately these ideas you espouse are leading to the destruction of places like Greece right before our eyes
You can’t run a business where you are always losing money
you can’t run a government that way either
Guess what world…
The credit card is nearly “maxed out”
I’ve followed the arguments about basic income for several years, and watched how people change their minds. First stage denial, then anger and so on. You’re getting pushback because people have been raised to believe that work for its own sake is a Good Thing.
Never mind that you correctly raised volunteerism, which is a different type of work and also adds the value that the more traditionally-minded demand.
The pushback is not about how I was raised
The pushback is from first hand experience running companies. Reading history. Understanding human psychology. Being a free man in my soul (not religious by the way)
Volunteerism is beautiful
Why do we all think that this should be state run?
We NEED to stop looking to government for answers all the time
Help a non-profit raise money and distribute it to those who need it
Where has our individualism and strength gone?
Why should we continue to give more and more power to the State.
This is what has lead to the surveillance state that exists in the US and in Europe
I want to live in a world where I’m free to succeed and fail and I have a loving family and local community to support me
NOT a Top Down approach to solutions
I want solutions to come from agile individuals and collections of humans who are free to think and create on their own
anddddd there it is!! You believe you know how things work simply because you were able to succeed once or twice. Guess what Bryan, Its not that fucking hard for smart people. Whether you like it or not, and you know this, there are people who are simply screwed in this world because of where they are born, their parents, experiences and millions of other factors. The reason that you, bryan, don’t want a system like this is because (you have just proven this in your obnoxious comment) you want to be able to be better than others, and a government (a powerful body that was created to manage its people with a set of rules to follow (in a sense incentives for reason to live in your country)) that wants an equal people threatens your vision or perhaps even worse, threatens your ego you don’t deserve because you think you did life right. The truth is we live in a country where you are free to succeed and fail with a loving family in community but we live in a world where people like you only want that for yourself and your friends so you can look down upon others, at least this is what you imply with your previous comment. A government serves ALL its people, not just the agile individuals.
You’re pushing back against things that aren’t part and parcel of a basic income. The volunteerism doesn’t have to be state run. Under a BI you can do things for free if you want, and not do them if you don’t want.
BI isn’t some massive extension of state power. Indeed, in some countries it would just be a rationalisation of existing welfare, and arguably removing it from state discretion.
There’s an argument to be made that if you don’t create value that the market validates, then you don’t deserve free money. I sympathise with this argument, but then I look at the steadily decreasing number of working hours, and the increase in automation, and conclude that we’re looking at inevitable changes.
So in my view we have to face up to the problem.
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Re: NGO variation of this future: I’ll just leave this here: http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna5.htm
I can’t tell if you are joking or if you are just ignorant.
This is a really interesting and thought-provoking essay. I would just add one thing – we don’t really know that the internet and the so-called information economy are really going to annihilate so many jobs and “demonetize” so many industries. The past 15 years have been extraordinarily disruptive and it’s tempting to conclude that everything is getting wrecked, but we won’t have a full picture for a long time.
This really makes no sense. This would just cause mass inflation where those on the Free Money plan would simply not work vs. working full-time jobs to have a little spending money. Then to fill these jobs employers would have to offer a huge amount of extra salary which would only widen the gap between rich and poor. You would then have the poor who do nothing, the slightly better than poor who basically service the needs of the poor, then the wealthy business owners who reap all the profits from the first two groups, and the politicians that run the state.
Straight up Communism would work better than this where everything is owned by the state and everyone gets a stipend they can use to buy basic goods from state-ran providers.
Your utopian dream sounds awesome, people work on something they’re passionate about so they’re happier & probably more productive without the fear of economic uncertainty forcing them into the career decisions which make them miserable. Free basic services as well I might add, like healthcare and such.
However, I don’t think corporate taxes are the way to pay for this. As has been pointed out corporate taxes are still taxing people, pick one: consumers, employees, or shareholders.
If it’s consumers, that’s going to lead to inflation.
I suppose employees could take a cut, since we all have our basic security covered. I suppose we can handle a drop in pay for discretionary spending, but are people really going to do the less desirable and dirty jobs for *less* pay? And even though robots will be handling the bulk of it, those jobs never really 100% go away.
I suspect what you’re really talking about is taking it from the shareholder. If so, why would they invest their hard earned money in the first place? They take on increased risk & usually work their asses off to add value to the world. Sure there are some who just wake up and have it sitting in their laps, but if they don’t add value, they quickly lose it. Don’t believe me? How much Rockerfeller or Vanderbuilt wealth do you think is still controlled by their family?
As far as autonomy goes, again that sounds awesome, but how much automony do you really have when you’re dependent upon the government for your living essentials?
Again, great idea, I just can’t see it working.
Quite a bit of wealth is still controlled by the Rockerfellers and Vanderbilts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_family#Family_wealth and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanderbilt_family “Despite the family’s downfall and major loss of fortune, the Vanderbilts remain the seventh wealthiest family in history.”
It sounds like you can wake up and find wealth sitting in your laps, and not lose it all that quickly. This is probably because, in a capitalist system, wealth (invested in anything productive) entitles the owner to more wealth (the production).
I think the way we do work would be changed completely in such a way that your fears would go on unrealized. For instance, yeah, I think people would do work for less pay, because I think that un-automated jobs could be crowdsourced to a number of concurrent temporary workers. There wouldn’t be, in other words, a desire or need for a strict 40 hour work week or other types of restrictions. Compensation for work or services rendered would be made on a private, contractual basis supplementing the UBI. There wouldn’t really be any shortage of people looking to participate in that way, in my view. The exciting thing is its not mandated (like it implicitly is right now). People like me, who aren’t inclined toward mindless industry could focus instead on manifesting value for people that isn’t appreciated in the market of today’s insistence on tangible profit.
The other trend that is doing the human race no favours is the rate of our population growth. In a world of finite resources and dwindling low/no skilled jobs, increasing our number is making us poorer.
“You would then have the poor who do nothing, the slightly better than poor who basically service the needs of the poor, then the wealthy business owners who reap all the profits from the first two groups, and the politicians that run the state.” – you’ve just described what we have now. Except the poor go hungry and die early now.
While history has already proven socialist systems don’t work out so well in practice, doing something like having a minimum wage that is actually a living wage will work in a capitalist system. In America we also have another defacto unconditional basic income system, it’s called disability. http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/
” In America we also have another defacto unconditional basic income system, it’s called disability.”
Disability is definitely NOT unconditional. The article you cite only reinforces the need FOR an unconditional basic income as a replacement for ALL conditional/means tested compensation systems.
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Post is right on.
John Galt was here.
Who?
weren’t there communist societies that behave this way? (providing citizen ship with portion cut benefit regardless of income, status) and they didn’t last.
The article makes a massive point that is very, very different from every other attempt like that in the past. ROBOTICS. Read the article again from the POV that we have intelligent robotics that can do EVERYTHING a working human can do. Imagine if big companies decided no more hiring humans because robots are much better to manage. What would happen to “the people” at that point?
This is the economic equivalent of “the patient is dying, more leeches!” How about we get rid of the leeches- taxes, regulation– that are the cause of the problems in the first place?
I’d love to get paid whether I worked or not…. but there’s an old saying: There aint no such thing as a free lunch.
Figure out how this isn’t a free lunch and you’ll see the problem with the plan.
I’m surprised no one has brought up Modern Monetary Theory here. It develops the economic framework for why your UBI idea might work, and should quiet those who are worried about inflation. In fact, some MMT economists have a similar idea called a Job Guarantee, which replaces guaranteed government money with guaranteed government provided jobs. I actually think that by incorporating the digital economy and the importance of personal autonomy in your thinking, you provide a more accurate portrait of the psychological factors that would lead to useful productivity in this imagined future economy.
MMT Primer: http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/03/what-is-modern-monetary-theory-or-mmt.html
Long ago Thomas Payne said that “Government at its best is but a necessary evil”
So you assume that the devil himself is your ally. Good luck with that.
Long ago the Bible said the earth was flat…
Thomas PAINE said this in Agrarian Justice:
“Civilization, therefore, or that which is so-called, has operated two ways: to make one part of society more affluent, and the other more wretched, than would have been the lot of either in a natural state.”
“It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, cultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal.”
“Having thus in a few words, opened the merits of the case, I shall now proceed to the plan I have to propose, which is,
To create 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, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property:
And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.”
So many fallacies in this article.
You mean, like, begging the question?
Great post. I’ve written a reply here: http://zachaysan.tumblr.com/post/55196452425/geolibertarianism-a-political-system-that-will-create
Where I basically talk about how a land tax is the only way to go. It’s pretty libertarian-geared, but I think you might enjoy it.
I’d like to know what planet the author of this article is from and whether he is human at all or maybe he’s something else. I laughed my ass off while reading the entire article, not because it’s not possible – clearly, people thought communism was possible as well, but mostly because the author is so far removed from being related to human beings in general, it’s scary…and laughable. There is a reason capitalism has survived in its current shape and form for this long – it is by far the best economic system ever designed to deal with the entire range of human behavior – from the mentally retarded, or just plain lazy and incompetent people…up to the kinds like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, etc – people who spend their lives thinking and solving actual problems with actualy, 3D-bound solutions……
Is all of what the author said invalid? No -and some of it has been tried elsewhere, and might work to an extent…but having state supplied income whether one works or not…. hell will probably freeze over before that happens.
capitalism (in this guise) really hasn’t been around for nearly so long as, say, monarchy, or feudalism even… correct me if i’m wrong
You said this has been tried in the past, so I’m really curious where a society of robots did all the work for people in the past. The article is not about trying to give everyone a free wage in the world we live in today. The article is about trying to give everyone a free wage when jobs as we know them today are done by robots.
So, as far as I can tell, there has NEVER been a society like the one we are about to enter into. Humans as works days are numbered.
For example, I believe this is the last generation of humans to drive big rig trucks. Robotic controlled cars are here NOW. They can drive from LA to DC on their own on regular roads. So, today, truck drivers need to start learning how to be graphic designers and programmers or they can get welfare and sell drugs. However, what about when EVERY SINGLE JOB like that is done by robotics?
I wish people would actually read the article.
I think people are playing in their own thoughts far too much. No specific number was even mentioned. Everyone against this idea seems to assume everyone will now have enough money to not go out and do things and everyone for it assumes now you do! The point of the word basic is to imply essentials. If you choose to spend all your UBI on an ipad instead of food that is a choice the economy will respond to. For people who can already afford an ipad can now use their UBI for basics and feel far less afraid to spend their money on things like ipads, once again bringing more money into the economy. You simply CANNOT assume people will no longer want to work nor assume everybody can afford everything simply because of that.
For this to work, it would have to be implemented across the planet at once, and for that to happen, a world government would be required. If it is implemented in one country/region and not in others, then you will most likely see huge waves of immigrants, and you’ll get the inevitable backlash against immigrants, and things will get ugly.
I don’t see this idea being possible in today’s world.
It could very well be in 2070 that the ultra rich build fortified edifices to house their favored employees and entourages while the rest starve in ultra-dense tenements. Oh wait, this is already the reality in India today.
Regarding this quote: “I’ve lived in a country that had a period of ‘full employment’ and now has 14% unemployment, and I don’t see how anyone can be so misanthropic to claim that those 14% of people just got lazier.”
I hesitate to take someone’s radical economic ideas too seriously if they either can’t do math or does not know the econ 101 definition of “full employment”.
I must say for anyone who is in love with capitalism this is a terrifying REALITY that is not far in the horizon. I lean slightly conservative but I see this trend developing as a software engineer who’s job it has been to create the software that powers the machines who are replacing people. What will happen when no one has a job because even service jobs are being replaced NOW. if there is no one to buy the goods why would they be created?
There are two out comes, Guaranteed income like suggested in this article, or the dark ages 2.0 and another period of technological and societal regression.
I am hoping for the first personally.
0. Greatly expanding individuals dependency on government is unlikely to be worth it because malevolent individuals like GWB and Obama occasionally attain power. Many framers of the US constitution understood this point quite well from the other end of Colonial rule. Undoing hard-learned protections with the knowledge of the nature of people is incredibly naive. (The US executive branch has accreted far too much power.)
1. Getting companies or the ultra rich to pay more taxes would encounter resistance, to put it nicely. It should be clear by now that both retain accoutants, lawyers and lobbyists that are quite adept at gaming the laws. They’d sooner pull a Gerpardue or a Woz instead.
2. Given Greece, et. al., with debt and declining population, using future generations’ money is unlikely to be end game for any maturing economy. Funding this for say the US at a poverty level would be 250m * 15k USD/yr = 3.75 trillion USD/yr. This much currency being spent (authors’ assumption of high MPC) would directly cause prices to rise, just as surely as the tens of thousands of newly minted dotcom millionaires caused the localized prices of homes in Silicon Valley to inflate in the late 90′s.
Either raise pitchforks and fires at “rich people” for being stingy, or for yourself unable to become so and set a better example of leadership.
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Good luck getting the leadership into power to implement that… alas, politicians require political campaigns funded… and they’re funded by large corporations who want to avoid paying taxes at all costs. So they’re only going to fund campaigns that suit their own agenda… which isn’t an agenda volunteering to pay more taxes.
I agree with you, Anon. To quote the post:
“If that trend continues, wealth creation will increasingly be confined to those with capital, and things start to follow a Marxist logic. The middle classes (and their elected representatives) will not let that happen.”
Unfortunately the author is laboring under the impression that elected representatives are working for the middle classes. That has not been the case in the USA for at least the past 30 years.
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These are great points. We first need to myth-bust: 1) people who are successful worked hard and deserve their lot, people who are not successful are lazy and suck. 2) when we are frightened of losing everything we do are best work.
We need to become a compassionate society.
Raise tariffs and enforce borders. Ease of globalization in short…. Jobs would magically reappear.
There has to be a global consensus about something like this.
I dont know much about economy, but woudn’t give “free” money to everyone cause high inflation?
We will never see this happen. The global population continues to rise, and as a result, so does competition for finite resources. This competition steadily inflates prices as people in free market economies compete for these finite resources. Money is simply a generic medium of productivity that vastly improves upon the barter system.
No… what is already happening is a silent nod of content toward silently culling those too weak, dumb, and slow to be productive in the county they were born. We see this as a result of law enforcement becoming more strict; loss of privacy for the benefit of security (the availability of global resources is a matter of national security); big brother using big data to sniff out current or potential criminals – in the aggregate, for now.
Sanctions on birth rates will become more strict with each passing decade – unless and until we have another global war to reset the game board; or, we somehow find a way to mine resources off-planet.
Those who are productive, or born into productive families, will benefit from society – more so than what this article lays out as a base-line. All others will be on their own to either stand up and be productive or be the forgotten, shrugged-off undesirable member of their society.
Should read this
http://www.digitalcosmology.com/Blog/2012/12/11/the-new-digital-world/
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Fabulous post, thanks. I see this particular topic getting fleshed out and its subtleties being articulated beyond refutation very soon.
“Ad hominem is the refuge of the scoundrel, without any decent arguments.”