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Mark Zuckerberg Doubles Down On Universal Basic Income, Calls It a 'Bipartisan Issue' (cnbc.com)
Mark Zuckerberg praised the Alaska Permanent Fund and used it as another platform to lobby for universal basic income, as he did during his commencement address to Harvard in May. The Alaska Permanent Fund was established in 1976 as the Alaska pipeline construction neared completion. According to CNBC, the "goal was to share the oil riches with future generations." From the report: Zuckerberg says the state's cash handout program "provides some good lessons for the rest of the country." The dividend averages $1000 (or more) per person. "That can be especially meaningful if your family has five or six people," says Zuckerberg in a post he wrote about the payment. "This is a novel approach to basic income in a few ways. First, it's funded by natural resources rather than raising taxes. Second, it comes from conservative principles of smaller government, rather than progressive principles of a larger safety net," says Zuckerberg. "This shows basic income is a bipartisan idea." Fundamentally, Zuckerberg says people think and work differently when they have their basic needs met. "Seeing how Alaska put this dividend in place reminded me of a lesson I learned early at Facebook: organizations think profoundly differently when they're profitable than when they're in debt. When you're losing money, your mentality is largely about survival," says Zuckerberg. "But when you're profitable, you're confident about your future and you look for opportunities to invest and grow further. Alaska's economy has historically created this winning mentality, which has led to this basic income. That may be a lesson for the rest of the country as well."
As we automate more and more people out of work, as ownership of those automated facilities concentrates more and more, we MUST switch to UBI or admit we're making almost the entire population redundant. This isn't weavers destroying Jacquard looms - computers and robots are on the threshold of obliterating general labor as a way to make even a subsistence living.
And if we decide the general population is redundant, how long until someone who is in the 'have' group decides the 'have nots' need to starve to death or be killed off before they storm the gates looking for their share?
The problem is that while much of the rest of the world is at least slightly socialist already, the USA is still paranoid about communism and resists social programs even if they're dying as a result - the Republican support for repealing socialized healthcare being a textbook example.
So UBI may not fly in the USA until past the time when its needed, and then we will get to see if the masses die off before they revolt.
The Koch Brothers aren't going to be an issue in ten years. The base of their power, fossil fuels, is in a price decline that probably will never end, until oil and natural gas simply follow coal into oblivion. For the Koch Brothers, as with all the fossil fuel companies, the next 15-20 years is about maintaining economic conditions just long enough for them to eek out the last bit of profit fossil fuels can generate. In the long term, the Koch Brothers and their ilk will be irrelevant. Not that their accumulated wealth won't keep their families going for a while, but they'll be like the great robber barons of previous ages, each generation afterwards being less relevant.
The real power base going ahead is technology centers like Silicon Valley. Already companies like Apple are among the wealthiest entities to have ever existed in the history of humanity, and in the end they will be the center of economic gravity. The Kochs are dinosaurs. The Tim Cooks and Elon Musks of the world are the future, and these people are very much in the Progressive camp. Indeed, I'd say demographics in the US are decided blue, and all the gerrymandering in the world can't hold back that tide forever.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
A basic income should allow a worker to tell his or her employer where to get off if they mistreat their workers, and take their labour elsewhere. Surely the libertarian dream?
A basic income means that employers need only pay small wages in order to attract workers, in fact, no minimum wage would be necessary.
Small businesses could start up and workers take a risk by joining the business for stock instead of pay and still afford to live.
Many more people could try that business they always thought about but couldn't risk their family's future on.
Of course the massive wealth inequality we have today would have to go, because the money necessary for a basic income is in the hands of the billionaires and the hands of the big corps.
We know there is enough money in total, because we are always being told that if everyone works hard enough they can all have nice houses, pensions etc. implying that there is sufficient money for said.
Unfortunately a basic income is also a big boon to rapacious capitalist types:) because now they can ramp up the prices of things since poor people who previously didn't have money, now do, and also the cost of housing will shoot up. Inflation then reduces the basic income to less than what is needed to live. Price control is necessary for basic needs and utilities. Not so libertarian! :)
Experiments in basic income prove little unless they are on the scale of an actual nation state and there is tight control of immigration, for example no EU state could try this while the unemployed of every other EU state can just pop over and claim it! The EU as a whole could though if it managed to get a grip on all that tax avoidance.
I'm a lefty, I love the idea of a basic income, I believe that if it worked it would markedly increase the freedom of all those current 'wage slaves' who know they are never going to be a CEO because, well, how many CEOs can there be? But the necessary changes in the behaviour of people and businesses, and the alterations to tax codes and housing policy might very well be too big a change to institute at once; and like an unstable equilibrium, I fear that a basic income would fail rapidly if there aren't some strict controls in place, and those with the 'active consent' of the vast majority of the population.
snake
There is no greater fallacy today than the belief the government must tax what it spends. All money is created by a ruling sovereignty. There is a reason the Secret Service is one of the oldest institutions around - counterfeiting is a direct attack on sovereignty.
Taxes are about inducing demand for state currency, and in modern economies, controlling for the inflation that comes from a government regulated banking system. You'll know the income tax was legalized within months of passing the Federal Reserve Act. Now you know why.
What a load of hogwash.
Except for recent actions like "quantitative easing" and other pump/dump strategies, way less than half of the "money" is created by sovereignty. It is created by the banks (and other financial institutions). Part of it is regulated by fraction reserve lending, the other part is the wild west (e.g., credit default swaps). The government tries to monopolize this by creating some demand by "taxation", but that only affects a portion of the "money" that gets exchanged (because many transactions are shielded from taxation).
For example, just the other day, Apple created $7B out of thin air by issuing bonds backed by money in Ireland out of the reach or purview of the Fed. The global Credit Default Swap market is estimated at around $500 trillion. Compared to the federal reserve about about $1.6 trillion actual deposits times the reserve ratio of 10% would only be a fraction of only the CDS market, not even including the corporate bond market and other financial derivative markets.
The cart is now driving the horse for better or worse...
In modern times, if the govt were to simply try print money to increase its budget, it probably couldn't print it fast enough to outpace inflation (as many countries that have tried have found out the hard way).
No, you are dependent for your own safety in every situation you mention except foreign terrorist states (unless you willingly go to one).
Why are 'foreign terrorist states' deemed out of my control but companies doing things I can't see, using processes I can't find out about; not out of my control?
I control companies and other potential bad actors, by living in a country that regulates business, monitors the environment, punishes harmful behaviour and does all this with a government. Because I am not equal in power to a big company but a government bloody should be!
snake
The point of universal income is to still be able to have a consumer class when robots/AI have taken 99% of our jobs. This is NOT altruism, this is very forward-thinking greed.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016