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'We Could Fund a Universal Basic Income With the Data We Give Away To Facebook and Google' (thenextweb.com)
Tristan Greene reports via The Next Web:
A universal basic income (UBI), wherein government provides a monthly stipend so citizens can afford a home and basic necessities, is something experts believe would directly address the issue of unemployment and poverty, and possibly even eliminate hundreds of other welfare programs. It may also be the only real solution to the impending automation bonanza. According to AI expert Steve Fuller, the problem is, giving people money when they lose jobs won't fix the issue, it's a temporary solution and we need permanent ones. Sounds fair, and he even has some ideas on how to accomplish this end: "We could hold Google and Facebook and all those big multinationals accountable; we could make sure that people, like those who are currently 'voluntarily' contributing their data to pump up companies' profits, are given something that is adequate to support their livelihoods in exchange."
It's an interesting idea, but difficult to imagine it's implementation. If the government isn't assigning a specific stipend value, we'll have to be compensated individually by companies. One way to do this, is by emulating the old coal mining company scrip scams of early last century. Employees working for companies would be paid in currency only redeemable at the company store. This basically created a system where a company could tax its own workers for profit. Google, for example, could use a system like that and say "opt-in for $10 worth of Google Play music for free," if they wanted to. Which doesn't help pay the bills when machines replace you at work, but at least you'll be able to voice search for your favorite songs. Another idea is to charge companies an automation tax, but again there's concerns as to how this would be implemented. A solution that combines government oversight with a tax on AI companies -- a UBI funded by the dividends of our data -- may be the best option. To be blunt: we should make Google, Microsoft, Facebook and other such AI companies pay for it with a simple data tax.
It's an interesting idea, but difficult to imagine it's implementation. If the government isn't assigning a specific stipend value, we'll have to be compensated individually by companies. One way to do this, is by emulating the old coal mining company scrip scams of early last century. Employees working for companies would be paid in currency only redeemable at the company store. This basically created a system where a company could tax its own workers for profit. Google, for example, could use a system like that and say "opt-in for $10 worth of Google Play music for free," if they wanted to. Which doesn't help pay the bills when machines replace you at work, but at least you'll be able to voice search for your favorite songs. Another idea is to charge companies an automation tax, but again there's concerns as to how this would be implemented. A solution that combines government oversight with a tax on AI companies -- a UBI funded by the dividends of our data -- may be the best option. To be blunt: we should make Google, Microsoft, Facebook and other such AI companies pay for it with a simple data tax.
Our economic system is first built on land ownership and natural resources, then on services extracting, processing, and delivering product from those resources. Everything else is just moving little green pieces of paper around when those first two groups are done with them.
You can't take something like 'mining personal data for sales and marketing' and turn it into an economy-driving primary natural resource, and any economic scheme that isn't ultimately rooted in property and natural resources is doomed to fail before it is even implemented.
No we're not.
The US Federal government is given its power by the individual States, not the people. It's State government which gets its power from the people.
The People may collectively delegate their individual authorities to an organization called "government"; the American philosophy is that rights existed before government (they were "endowed by their Creator"), and that government can merely act as a delegate for the attendant authorities of those rights.
However, no individual ever had the right to walk into his neighbor's pub, smash his beer bottles, and declare that his 100-year-old family business may no longer operate.
Yet, that's precisely what the United States Government did during Prohibition.
They promised to protect "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness", but they have done nothing of the sort. Your government is a fraud; your government is a bait and switch.
That is a little bit an exaggeration.
Especially considering countries that still has a relatively high rate of corruption or where you have "politics as job" and on top of that lobbying.
However true is that our governments, especially the EU, constructs laws that protect the consumers and citizens and workers/employees from corporations. In so far we can trust the governments.
In other words: we don't have to sue after we feel abused to get a ruling defining "law" telling the company: you did wrong.
The big difference between the EU/europe and US is:
We (the citizens) have a clear idea what the states responsibility is, and we have governments that more or less are run by citizens that have the same idea
The US have a clear idea what the states responsibility NOT is, and have governments that more or less are run by citizens that have the completely different ideas
From our point of view the US is a state in constant anarchy, consisting of entities trying to sue each other into oblivion and presidents who have nothing better to do than to revert the work of the previous one.
And if nothing interesting is going on inside of the country they quickly launch a war somewhere for no particular reason.
The crime rate, the gun possession/obsession, the health care issue, the industrial/medical complex, the military, the amount of people in jail, the education situation, the homeless etc. p.p. Completely unthinkable in a civilized country. But americans consider themselves to live in a civilized country: amazing.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
However, the idea of UBI, or at least, the sane version, is that it would be implemented in an "economy of plenty" where automation was producing goods and services at much lower costs and much higher availability. Those conditions are hand-wavey; we can't quantify them yet, so it's problematic to try and predict the costs of living, etc. But that's why UBI or similar will be required; workers will be out and automation will be in. It's not today's landscape that defines the need.
Uhm, no.
UBI was not conceived, as an idea, as a response to rising automation and the prospect of large masses of unemployed people. This prospect, due to the current automation and AI hype, which I believe to be vastly overblown (as it was in the past - yes, lots of people will lose their current jobs, but most of them will find other ones), is being used currently to additionally argue in favour of some sort of UBI. That, however, is rather beside the point.
UBI was originally conceived as an idea that radically simplifies and cheapens the various types of state aid given to people, while at the same time removing the stigma attached with them. There are many potentially "sane" variants of UBI, with one being the Negative Income Tax (NIT) proposed by Rhys-Williams and Milton Friedman. Another option is the Guaranteed Livable Income (GLI) scheme proposed by the Green Party of Canada, where everyone is given a payment, but those who have jobs essentially pay this back via taxes, so in the end it ends up being a sort of welfare payment that the unemployed (and poorly paid) collect.
The point being, if I just pay out EVERYONE e.g. $1500 a month (or whatever), I don't have to (as a state/government) worry about checking who qualifies for welfare, pension assistance, subsidies for their energy bills, food stamps, or whatever else I was already giving out to those in need. I can eliminate all those programs, all the costs associated with them, all the employees associated with them. I don't have to go around chasing welfare recipients to see if they're attending their retraining course, going to job fairs, applying for work, or not delivering pizza on the side without declaring their income. Furthermore, I've removed the stigma from getting welfare (since EVERYONE gets it, both the millionaire and the homeless bum on the street) which often traps people in a cycle of dependence and poverty. The end result, since the people who have a job will repay this money via taxes, is more or less the same as today: people without a job, poor people, people in need, get monetary assistance from the government. At a lower total cost to the government than today - hypothetically.
Now, there are lots of details to work out - do we still need minimum wage laws? Will companies that use low-cost labour (e.g. fast food joints) "piggy-back" on UBI and skim the profits by just paying their employees a UBI "top-up" rather than the full salary, offloading costs to the government? What exactly should the UBI amount be, per month? How do you to the "claw-back" via taxes to make it fair and still motivate people to work? How do you prevent people moving from low-UBI jurisdictions to high-UBI jurisdictions just to make more money by doing nothing? How does one qualify for UBI in the first place? Etc., etc.
Almost none of these are related to automation and mass joblessness however, and none require a futuristic economy of plenty.
The crime rate isn't that great in the larger cites but the UK, Italy, Germany, France, and Spain aren't in the top 100 lowest crime rates either. ... most certainly not a gun)? It is December 6th now ... definitely not this year. And I can not remember a case last year.
Obviously I talk about violent crime. Not about shoplifting.
When was the last robbery in Germany that involved a weapon (knife or a stick
I'm not really sure what education situation you are talking
Weapon controls at the school entrance.
Low level education.
Long ways to school.
No way for kids to walk to school (because of laws that directly forbid it - or to long distances)
No free universities.
On top of that absurd "tenures" for universities. Or call it colleges.
And then "rules" like this: https://www.washingtonpost.com... Not sure if that is true, it sounds absurd or at least bizarre from an european point of view.
In basically all European countries education to the level where a pupil graduates and can go to an university: is free
Going to an university is free beyond a kind of $100 fee for re-registering every semester.
On top of that you can get a state given credit to pay your expenses (rent, energy etc.) in case your parents can not pay for you (in some countries, like scandinavia you get the credit regardless of your parents situation)
You are automatically in healthcare till age of 25 or 27 (or so), payed by your parents employer and your parents (and if they had no kids, they would pay the same price anyway).
Sure, if you prefer you can pay for private education in private schools and private universities. If you extend the typical study time of about 4 - 5 years it might be a fee of about $500 per semester is due (in public universities).
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.