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eBay Founder Pledges $500,000 To Test Universal Basic Income Program In Kenya (mashable.com)
"Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar is the latest tech bigwig to get behind the concept [of universal basic income]," reports Mashable. "His philanthropic investment firm, the Omidyar Network, announced Wednesday that it will give nearly half a million dollars to a group testing the policy in Kenya." The money will come from the Omidyar Network and be doled out to people living in Kenya through a program called GiveDirectly. Mashable reports: Universal basic income is the notion that a government should guarantee every citizen a yearly sum of money, no strings attached. The thinking is that such a program would relieve economic stress as automation technology severely reduces the demand for labor. Theories along these lines have existed for centuries, but their proponents have never had much luck convincing governments to give them a shot. Thus, the only data on real-world effects come from a few scattered experiments throughout the years. GiveDirectly is looking to add to that knowledge with one of the biggest trials of a basic income system in history. The group recently launched a 12-year pilot program in which it plans to give 6,000 Kenyans regular stipends for the entire duration. Around 20,000 more will receive at least some form of cash transfer. The Omidyar Network is hoping the study will help advance the debate around basic income from broad theoretical terms to more practical considerations. "While the discussion has generated a lot of heat, it hasn't produced very much light," wrote the Omidyar Network's Mike Kubzansky and Tracy Williams in a blog post announcing the pledge. "There is very little research and empirical evidence on how and when UBI could best be used."
never allow this to happen since they want to make us work.
so they want to force us to have to work instead of just accepting UBI. They will never allow this to happen.
This idiot should be funding birth control in Kenya
cut full time down and have an X2 OT at 60-80 hours a week well salary as well
If we all have money, money loses its value.
And things become more expensive.
Its basic economics....
Now, if you factor in automatization and post-scarcity, then why even use money?
Just go and ask nanny government for your ration of the day...
Reducing full time will help the underemployed at the expense of only the middle class, rather than the expense of the capitalist class who really need to shoulder the burden. That in turn only further widens the gap between rich and poor, makes it harder and harder for someone to escape from dependency on the capitalists.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Is it to allow people to not work at all, or is it to provide an income floor to allow them to bootstrap their way out of poverty into a truly productive, sustainable lifestyle?
Because automation is a real threat to the economy in Africa...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This makes no sense. A universal basic income is probably going to happen at some point in the distant, but foreseeable future. Automation will get to a point where very few people are required to work. This will happen in the most technologically advanced first-world countries first. Not Kenya.
Give them a bunch of money, let them become dependent on you, then when the money runs out they will all starve to death from over breeding.
Then the liberals will call for adopting even more African children.
So sad.
I enjoyed watching Hans Rosling's TED talk and visiting his dollar street web application. It's so hard to get a feel for what it is like to live in another country, so I can't judge how much difference $40 per month per couple would make. But I believe people, goods and services are generally free to move around Kenya, so it will be interesting to see what effect this has on the economy outside of the target villages and how the demographics of each village changes during the experiment.
Nullius in verba
yeah, universal
https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/extraordinary-pierre-omidyar/
"In short, Omidyar Network's philanthropy reveals Omidyar as a free-market zealot with an almost mystical faith in the power of "markets" to transform the world, end poverty, and improve lives—one micro-individual at a time. "
I'm glad for the experiment. However, I cannot see how Universal Basic Income would not simply lower the nominal value of money. Once everyone has X, that X is no longer worth anything. If you get $2,000 per month for nothing, and you rent an apartment from me, guess how much I'm going to charge you for it? More than $2,000.
The government creates no money. None. What happens when they run out? Who will pay the taxes? What happens when the govt needs more money than the amount they have to pay more citizens? What is going to stop more citizens from working, paying taxes, and just taking money?
This is nothing but a step to communism.
This is akin to socialism, which works very well... when everyone is from the same Tribe and are related going back 15 generations.
But it all falls apart when the neighbors are the wrong color, or religion, or accent, or we don't have the same great-great-great-great-great grandfather.
In summary: people in aggregate, suck.
Is it to allow people to not work at all, or is it to provide an income floor to allow them to bootstrap their way out of poverty into a truly productive, sustainable lifestyle?
A good overview of the concepts is in Manna, a short story by Marshall Brain. It's a quick read and gives an easy description of the economic problems we're in the midst of.
In broad terms, we can imagine an automated factory which is capable of producing all the goods needed by everyone in the country.
Such a factory could get its energy from solar cells, and in addition to making everyone's goods it could make enough solar cells to replenish the ones it has when they go bad, and it could have enough energy to recycle all the waste products from goods that people throw away.
That's a the metaphor of course, but it largely sums up where the labor pool is headed in the next 50 years or so: consumption has an upper bound, automation is making huge sections of the labor force unnecessary, and increases in productivity make the labor we have more effective.
As a data point, note that companies are road testing automated trucks *right now*, companies are testing automated last-mile delivery via drones and rolling robots *right now*, and automated farming is coming on line *right now*.
The trucking thing alone will directly eliminate somewhere between 3 and 5 million jobs, and millions more in support structure: restaurants and hotels on the highway, for instance.
We're at the point *right now* where we have too many capable workers and not enough jobs, and improvements in technology will bring us closer and closer to the "completely automated" factory metaphor used above. The actual factory will be a host of factories distributed around the country, "automated" will still require 100K workers for maintenance and upgrades, and energy will be rooftop solar
The regular rules of economics are about to break down. It's currently a sort of cycle, where money flows to the people (through salary), the people purchase things from companies, and the cycle repeats.
With no one working, no one has money to purchase anything so the cycle stops. People starve and the economy halts.
UBI is an attempt at a new economic model. People are given money to spend to keep the economy going, and as a side-benefit people don't starve or commit crimes to survive. Society benefits by having reduced crime and an active economy, and people have more leisure time to do things such as raising children or getting educated.
UBI is one of about 5 proposed solutions for the economic transition we're facing.
It's had a couple of small trials to great success, so it seems like it might be a viable option.
I think parent means reduce the hours worked but keep take-home the same:
Used to work 40 hrs at $65 per hour
Now work 20 hrs at $130 per hour
See? Now we're all happy.
That would be fine, except that it's much harder (if possible at all) to mandate a one-time but permanent doubling of all wages, than it is to mandate fewer hours punishable by higher pay requirements at longer hours.
E.g. if you drop full time from 40 to 20 hours, and demand that everyone already working be paid twice as much, then the employers are going to replace everyone already working with two new hires getting paid "half as much" (i.e. what the old pay used to be) as quickly as possible.
About the only people you could save from this without the government suddenly dictating exactly what every single worker in the country must be paid are minimum-wage employees (i.e. you could double the minimum wage), which takes us back to the problem of helping the poor only at the expense of the middle class.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
The only way that UBI could ever work is if the Government owned everything. The Government is never a producer, they are a consumer with the power to redistribute wealth. We have seen this happen repeatedly in history, and the result is never good for the populace. Look at Stalin and Lenin's Russia after the Communist Revolution. The Government took control of all food and distribution channels because "for the people". The Proletariat is a fiction, because there always has to be control, storage, and distribution sites. That bureaucratic layer is either Government or Privately controlled. In Russia the takeover led to a massive amount of corrupt government and death to tens of millions of Russians.
People are attempting to stage use cases where it's possible to demonstrate even a tiny victory, but even if they find one it won't work at scale. Be mindful of what comes from those tests and remember the old saying. "Nothing comes for Free", so you either give up all liberty for free stuff or keep liberty and earn what you work for.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
When it comes to that point, what they really want is for all the useless have-nots to just die and stop nagging them for things. "You didn't work hard enough" becomes just the excuse for why their easily-prevented deaths are justified.
I emboldened one of your words to draw attention to it.
Curiously, as a group Republicans give more to charity than Democrats. Apparently Republicans are more caring and giving than Democrats in general on that score, so long as the giving is voluntary and not mandated.
Also curiously, the party with "free speech" as one of its core values has no problem smashing the venues of a controversial speaker.
This is my way of saying that there's evil on both sides of the aisle. Saying it's one side or the other is a misnomer, we need to identify the stupid bits on both sides and excise them like a cancer.
Come out against the stupidity instead of against the side. There are good Republicans and there are bad Democrats.
We need to stop turning everything into a tribal conflict.
On that point, instead of telling us what "they" actually want, tell us where we should be going.
People would actually support a good plan, if someone should propose it.
Does Kenya have Radio Shacks?
It is known that if the income is substantial that it actually saves money foe a governmental system. My only reservation is that Kenya may not have an honest enough government to actually put the money in the hands of the intended recipient. In the US, in many areas, it is assumed that a person in deep poverty will work under the worst conditions or starve to death quietly in a dark corner. That is a fantasy. people in poverty will steal, sell drugs, commit armed robberies or even murder to get by. Things are so twisted that if a person is suffering enough poverty a smart move is to build some sort of history of addiction and by doing so get fed and sheltered in a rehab, hospital; or even a jail. Fort Lauderdale has seen the extreme edge of this with alcoholics who live in the jails. They get arrested quite deliberately. After a few weeks or months they are put out on the street. They will walk about, see the sites, smell the air and then walk into a restaurant, order a large meal and then not pay the bill in order to get a ride back to the jail. A variant is to walk into a liquor store twist open a bottle and chugalug as much as they dare and have the store owner call the PD to drive them back to the jail. Sometimes they even go back to the same cell or cell block and swap stories about what they did this time. Four arrests a year can get them food, shelter, and medical care for that year. It costs the city a fortune to play the game which pleases the drunks to no end. These folks belong in long term care in a hospital like facility where therapies known to achieve good results can be tried and the inmate protected from their own suicidal type of alcohol abuse. It would actually be cheaper than keeping them in jails with multiple trials etc.. When released these folks are often way too burned out to work and would only be able to survive with a realistic income from the state.
Reducing full time will help the underemployed
Reducing full time employment does NOT help the underemployed. That is the Lump of Labor Fallacy. There is not a fixed amount of labor to be divvied up. Real economies just don't work that way. When someone is employed, they spend their earnings on goods and services, thus creating demand for more labor.
When France reduced standard working hours to 35 hours per week, proponents of the change were sure it would reduce France's persistently high unemployment. That didn't happen. Economists were not surprised.
But $500K doesn't seem to be a lot of money. This eBay billionaire shouldn't get a Slashdot article out of that paltry sum, which many readers on /. could've matched (admittedly not w/o hardship, but let's say they could in their will).
Omidyar is an F. CHEAPSKATE!
Make full time 32 -35 hours a week also put a cap on OT so you don't jay working 80 hours a week to cover for jack and bill.
> *right now* and automated farming is coming on line *right now* ...
Farming automation was a long time ago, in the US and other developed countries. Farms today employ 94% fewer people per output than they did in 1945. (USDA)
Factories were automated in the 1960s-1980s, with the process being competed around 2006-2007. They haven't gotten significantly more automated in the last ten years. (Brookings)
A huge portion of middle class jobs in bookkeeping, drafting, printing, writing, and all forms of processing information were replaced by computers in the 1970s and 1980s. I don't have the statistics on that handy, but it was somewhere around half of middle class jobs - what a single computer does today used to take a room full of people.
In the 1970s and 1980s there was a lot of fear and debate about the issues you mentioned. You mentioned the book Manna - another book titled Manna was written in 1984, also a dystopian view of the industrial revolution. Because the change happened in the 1960s-1980s, today we get to actually see what the results were, we don't have to predict. What happened is that as people no longer needed to work on farms, food costs fell and they instead worked making Blu-Ray players and Raspberry Pi and quadcopters, and they spend their money on Blu-Ray players and Raspberry Pi and quadcopters. Most likely, you are employed in a job that didn't exist in 1960, or at least didn't exist in the same form. My job didn't exist in 1960. My grandfather was a bookkeeper - his position has been replaced by a computer. That computer needs to be secured, which created a new position for me making three times as much money as my grandfather made (inflation adjusted).
You're predicting the past. Spoiler because I've already seen it - it turns out pretty good.
I'ma tell ya'all a story about a man named jed
a poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed
then one day he heard about a universal basic income program in kenya
and he loaded up the truck and moved to kenya
later folks
- jed
How is this functionally different from unemployment insurance?
Would the stipends continue if the person is employed?
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
There are the Amish. I'm sure there are more than a few dozen of them. For starters.
test is flawed. In a real setting the village would have to collect the money in order to give everyone a part. In this test money from outside Kenya is funding it. Spreading money in a city will increase the economy for sure and go back afterward.
Like every Liberal project the positives will be highlighted and the negative effects will be hidden. Like socialism and world, universal basic income is a pipe dream that is not sustainable.
And it will be a success without even hearing any information about it. Typical. Yet, We'll see that the economy will TANK. No one will have to work. No one produces anything. And starvation will be even worse when they pull out.
So sad, and sick.
Lot of armchair pundits predicting it will fail, well that is the point of an experiment- even if it fails you learn something. Whenever an "automation will eliminate all jobs" article hits slashdot the number one solution tendered is...... Universal basic income. The number two solution tendered is ...... Absolutely nothing.
...according to Universal basic income 'useless', says Finland's biggest union
Since January, some unemployed Finns have been receiving a stipend of e560 (L477) per month; amount isn't means-tested and is paid regardless of whether recipient finds a job
Of course there's back and forth -- you didn't test correctly, you're a union and afraid of losing power, your mother wears Army boots. Glad he's trying another test, more data is useful As Long As you write down and publish all of the variables you think you're testing As Well As exactly how you tested and how you derived your results.
"I'm testing to see if pigs can fly -- maybe I just need a lot more thrust."
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
Trying it in kenya seems strange.
But, the idea of universal income is that you can do away with all the other social security mechanisms and give people enough that they can survive. This means that then you CAN take extra jobs for a little less money.
Basically in Finland now you CAN NOT take a job that pays under a certain amount in the month because then you will be out of other benefits and you can't survive! but if you would have universal income then you COULD do another job for even 5 bucks / hour, making a lot more jobs viable.
the thing in finland is that the government is obliged ALREADY to provide basic social security to everyone through one way or another but the burocracy for that is very heavy. If you would roll up all the benefits into one, including housing benefits, and just give that to everyone it would be cheaper, easier and enable you to work at the same time.
also it would put pressure to provide housing in which you could live with that.
it would be feasible to take jobs like mowing your neighbors lawn for couple of bucks - right now it really isn't if you're unemployed as you would get kicked out of unemployment status(potentially, or get a quarantine).
Basically it enables a lot of smaller jobs to be done vs. just putting everyone in the social security/unemployment benefits which deny the possibility to take low paying jobs for couple of days every now and then.
as such it would enable manufacturing and service jobs that are not feasible right now, but more importantly you could just fire most of the burocrats out of a cannon into the moon.
why isn't this already being done fullscale in Finland? well duh the buros don't want to lose their jobs too(also in some cities the waiting time to get a social security hearing is longer than even legally allowed.. ).
it would be rather simple to implement too. just make the progressive taxing that finland has just a little bit more progressive, so that people earning (pre tax) 2700e / month or so would be sitting at the same income level of money to the hand (universal basic income would be given to _everyone_ - even those who have good jobs and don't need it. thats what makes it UNIVERSAL and makes it unnecessary to have the burocracy around it).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
How can you have dessert if you don't eat your meat?
Unless the money for this UBI test is directly coming from the 'local economy', specifically the government in charge of taxation & redistribution than this is no valid test at all...if someone wants to come give me money for doing nothing I'll gladly accept it but its no demonstration of any value to the economy as a whole in doing so...UBI if implemented by a government like any 'welfare' system is a 'redistribution of wealth by force'. If you believe that the basic premise is a societal good then its just a debate over which method provides the greatest overall good to society. Attempting to test this by use charitable donations not obtained by force or from the local economy won't give any valuable information at all.
It will most definitely help spread the work around. That will help some of the underemployed and punish others. If full time is changed from say 35 to say 30, all the people currently getting 34.5 will get 29.5 and those hrs will go to others working less. Probably wont change the total much, those working less hrs are probably a little less productive (thats why they get less hrs) so a a tiny bit more may be needed. People will pay slightly less taxes, assuming they ear enough to pay any at all, so the extra could go to more spending to create more demand. But it would be a minuscule change.
Cutting overtime on the other hand couldn't do anything but give more hours to underemployed workers, assuming the overtime is work that still needs to be done, (seems quite likely since they are paying so much to do it) and that underemployed workers are capable of doing the work. (seems at least possible)
1. Lowering birth rates doesn't make anyone of those who are already born less poor.
2. Kenya's birthrate is still significantly above average, but steadily decreasing since the nineteen-seventies.
3. Higher civilization standards correlate with lower birth rates. To increase civilization standards is the best way to lower birth rates.
3. Enabling more people to do other things than just struggling to get their food for the day is the best way, in the long run, to help increasing civilization standards, together with education and infrastructure, to which to contribute is one of the things more people will be enabled to through a basic income, too.
"Birth control instead of money" is just racist hogwash. "More money leads to more births, so give them even less money" may seem logical for some, but is a completely unsubstantiated assumption. In the long run, the facts give much reason to assume the exact opposite.
... and voila - free money, housing, clothes, schooling, hospital treatment, food, etc. for life!
All paid for by white people.
Until the system collapses.
So because you were born your entitled to money no matter what? This is the problem with society that never challenges or expects anything out of someone. We have people here in the US who don't bother being any more to society than a person receiving aid. To say that someone automatically owes you a living albeit a minimal state of income is creating a group of people who will never go beyond what the government provides. This is truly sad to think that government wants all these submissive people living within what they give them.
Historical Materialism is right, but Marx was wrong about what came after capitalism. He missed the fact that conservatives themselves often put in the planks of the "Welfare State" themselves to stave off revolutions. The real problem is that money gravitates upwards much faster than downwards in a market economy, so eventually there's a huge money disparity.
While paper money isn't "real wealth" it is a proxy for your share of total production. So while e.g. a baker can still bake just as many loaves of bread if there's more or less financial inequality, the share of that bread that goes to the rich becomes disproportionately larger over time, because money accumulates at the top. It has to come from somewhere, and that is the working and middle classes.
Basically, if you have a system with a finite amount of money and the rich accumulating it constantly, eventually most people are going to run out of money, and sales, prices and wages for the lower classes will all plummet. Basically you'd get runaway deflation in a money-shortage scenario like that, and deflation means anyone who still has money gets proportionally richer. So in that scenario you're in a deflationary spiral in which those with vast money wealth are gaining wealth at an exponential rate - it's basically the reverse of a deflationary spiral. You end up with a third world peasant nation basically, where only a few elites have access to cash. So the Welfare State developed in *every* capitalist nation, because that was actually necessary to stabilize the movement of money.
Universal Basic Income is the next stage of this because it is easier to oversee but solves the same problem with less bureacracy needed.
That's barely a drop in the bucket.
$500,000 over 6000 people over 12 years is almost $7 a year.
Now, assuming the money is allocated to a mutual fund with compounding interest... you can potentially double the payout.
Are they expecting this to fail on purpose?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
The sign at the park reads "Do not feed the wildlife". Ask the park Ranger why. "Because they will grow used to it, and lose the ability to care for themselves". The same government that runs the park is the same government that hands food and shelter to just about anyone with their hand out.
Just handing money to people is the best form of charity. Debatable - at best. However most people who have studied this issue say direct handouts are not the best form of charity.
But it's really not much of a test of UBI is it?
The tricky part about all of these free money schemes isn't giving out the money, it's getting the money. Giving away money is dead simple, no one is doubting that the government can give money away, that's the easy part. The tricky part is making the scheme work in a closed system where the taxes supply all the free money you are giving away. All this is doing is taking outside money and pumping it into a small local economy. So of course it's going to work, its like winning a "cash for life" lottery.
I'll never understand why people keep pushing these useless UBI and mincome "studies". We have a huge source of data from the former communist block. The whole point of communism is "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". All this is doing is removing the first part and giving us "to each according to his needs", but from where does that money come? Who cares, free money! It's just playing the game of "if I won the lottery" at the whole society level.
the important part is that redistribution increases the size of the pie.
False, innovation and invention increases the size of the pie.
So, basically, a tendency towards income equality means greater equality of opportunity. And greater equality of opportunity means that a huge amount of people who are just surviving can actually contribute meaningfully, adding extra value at the threshold. So, no, redistribution is not just increased economic activity. Its empowering those without opportunity to also become designers and engineers and raise living standards for all.
Equal opportunity does not mean equal outcomes. UBI is an attempt to force equal outcomes which causes innovation and invention dry up. This has been proven over and over again. Venezuela, Russia, China, Cuba, and on, and on, and on.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
>If you have an UBI of 800 bucks and you now earn 1000, having a wage of 200 bucks would mean that you get equal pay.
>low paying jobs would get a LOT cheaper for employers. Paying 200 instead of 1000 is cutting the price tag of that employee to a fifth
You're ignoring one important factor for low paying jobs - maintaining equal pay isn't why people work, they work because it's the most cost-effective use of their time (in terms of return on hours spent).
If you were making 200 from your job, and 800 from UBI, then you're basically spending almost half your waking life in exchange for a 25% increase in income. It's a good bet that you could instead quit your job and spend that other half of your waking life finding ways to spend the 800 more effectively, and live a considerably richer and more pleasant life.
Basically, a UBI reduces the incremental benefit of having a low-paying job. A low-paying job that you hate is still attractive if the alternative is living on the street. But if you can survive comfortably enough without a job then the job (pay, satisfaction, etc) has to be a more valuable use of your time than the alternatives.
And of course, there's the fact that you can leave your job tomorrow, and still be making 800. That reduces the employer's leverage considerably, and will leave abusive employers in a world of hurt.
Taken alone, this half of the equation would tend to drive the wages of low-paying jobs *up*, because they're no longer a necessity, and are thus in direct competition not only with alternative low-paying jobs, but also all the more rewarding ways to spend your time.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
They'll never learn it. It's been proven over and over again. On the search of the perfect socially just world... more government interference - more mess up...
In that case
- short term it first increases dependency on government give outs and along with that the decline in self responsibility
- long term it devalues the exact same amount of money everyone gets as a handout because its free and therefore has no value
Trump should really look into what being taught at schools these days.
This has never been tried anywhere, I am sure good things will result.
Anyone who believes that so-called 'UBI' will work in a country of 300,000,000 people is ignoring the math or is just plain bad at math to start with, and that's all I have to say on the subject.
The article is about a first world entity giving handouts to some 3rd world town which proves exactly nothing.
The biggest beef against UBI is that people who have opportunities to succeed are passing (laziness), meaning UBI is a waste for those individuals. In Kenya, the vast number of people over there likely have far less opportunities to succeed. The needy-to-wasteful quotient is WAY higher there. You need a first-world country for a reasonable test.
Want to see what UBI looks like, take the examples of the UAE and US Indian reservations. In one case, it builds dependency on oil wealth, in the other just dependency of the government. In neither case is it something humans were built for - we evolved as wild predators, not as crops.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... will oppose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism