Y Combinator Announces Funding For UBI-Supporting Political Candidates (latimes.com)

Most people "feel like they have great potential that is being wasted," argues Y Combinator president Sam Altman -- a Stanford dropout whose company's investments are now worth $65 billion, including Airbnb, Reddit, and Dropbox. Now an anonymous reader quote the Los Angeles Times: A wealthy young Silicon Valley venture capitalist hopes to recruit statewide and congressional candidates and launch an affordable-housing ballot measure in 2018 because he says California's leaders are failing to address flaws in the state's governance that are killing opportunities for future generations. Sam Altman, 32, will roll out an effort to enlist candidates around a shared set of policy priorities -- including tackling how automation is going to affect the economy and the cost of housing in California -- and is willing to put his own money behind the effort. "I think we have a fundamental breakdown of the American social contract and it's desperately important that we fix it," he said. "Even if we had a very well-functioning government, it would be a challenge, and our current government functions so badly it is an extra challenge..."

Altman lays out 10 principles including lowering the cost of housing, creating single-payer healthcare, increasing clean energy use, improving education, reforming taxes and rebuilding infrastructure. He has few specific policy edicts, and floats proposals that will generate controversy, such as creating a universal basic income for all Americans in an effort to equalize opportunity, public funding for the media and increasing taxes on property that is owned by foreigners, is unoccupied or has been "flipped" by investors seeking a quick return on an investment.
Altman argues that he wants to "ensure that everyone benefits from the coming changes," and specifically highlights the idea of a Universal Basic Income. Altman writes that "If it turns out to be a good policy, I could imagine passing a law that puts it into effect when the GDP per capita doubles. This could help cushion the transition to a post-automation world."

Comments

'equalize opportunity'

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like Harrison Bergeron?

Or maybe instead

[skam240]

Or maybe you dont have a strong grasp on what UBI is for or how it would work.

What it is for: a future where automation is cutting large numbers of people out of work. While there have always been people who have lost their jobs to automation the worry now is that robotics may be replacing manual labor almost entirely in the future. What are the manual laborers in this country going to do if that happens? Furthermore, advances in "ai" threaten many traditionally well paying jobs which makes the problems even worse.

How UBI works: UBI isnt as expensive as you make out. With UBI there's no unemployment payouts, food stamps, or any other number of social programs along with the large bureaucracies needed to make them work. While that money saved wont cover all the costs there's enough static wealth at the top even right now (let alone in a world so heavily automated) to make up the difference.

And really, I havent heard any viable solutions to what looks like a looming labor crises that isnt "let them all starve" or UBI