Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Scots Anton's Ubi Enterprise this time. I want to read something. That's actually the first thing I ever published on medium and this is the article why should we support the idea of an unconditional basic income an answer to a growing question of the 21st century? I publish this on June 2nd 2014. This is actually the article where I introduced the slogan basic income is not Left to right it's forward. It's also really interesting to look at this article from their perspective of Andrew Yang's campaign for the presidency because you can actually see that a lot of what I wrote here made it into his platform. So I'm actually really happy with the way that this article has aged. Now that it's over five years old and really the only thing that didn't age well was actually I mentioned in this about the Happy Birthday song and how it was not something that's in the public. Main, so that's actually something that has changed since I wrote this is that when I wrote this happy birthday was still not in the public domain and now thankfully it is but besides that I'm actually still happy quite happy with the way that this reads. So yeah, I'm happy to share this with you now for all those who've never read it. And of course a never heard it either so yeah, here we go. What would you do? So what exactly would you do if you were guaranteed $1,000 per month for the rest of your life? And yes, that's around what the amount would most likely be here in the United States at least at first so think about that amount for a moment and don't think about what others might do with it. Think about what you would do with it. Perhaps you would do more of what you enjoy. So, what does that didn't they try this in Russia? You've compared this idea to Communism. So let's focus on that first. In doing so let's also talk about what was actually done in the former Soviet Union and not what was intended what they actually did there simply put was transfer the means of production from those who ran the businesses based on Market forces into the hands of a bureaucracy who made decisions based not on Market forces, but on politics and cronyism, this is a terrible idea, but why is this a terrible idea the market works because it is a means of figuring out what people want the degree. Which they want it and the means of getting it to them. Let's take bread as an example in Russia. They thought everyone should have bread that was a decision made by those in power and they then tried to make that happen and whether everyone wanted bread or not. This did not work so well and there were shortages. Plus those were the connections got more than enough While others got none trying to give bread to everyone although Noble and gesture was a failure. The magic of markets. So how do we do it here in America right now the makers of bread make bread and sell it to stores so that people with the money to buy bread can buy bread. If bread isn't getting bought less Bread is made if all the bread is getting bought more Bread is made those who make the bread aren't making a top-down decision on how much bread to make they are listening to Market forces and the decision is bottom up this perfect, right? Just the right amount of bread is getting made and at just the right price. No, it's not why and how can this be improved right now only those with the means to pay for bread have a voice for bread. We love to use the term voting with our dollars. So is the outcome of that daily election accurate does everyone have a voice for bread? No, they don't there are people with no voice because they have no dollars the only way to make sure the It is working as efficiently and effectively as possible to determine what should be getting made how much to make of it and where to distribute it is to make sure everyone has at the very minimum the means to vote for bread if they have that money and don't buy bread. There's no need to make and distribute that bread if the bread is bought that shows people actually want that bread. So how do we accomplish this Improvement of capitalistic markets? With unconditional basic income by guaranteeing. Everyone has at the very least the minimum amount of voice with which to speak in the marketplace for basic goods and services. We can make sure that the basic needs of Life those specific and universally important to all goods and services like food and shelter are being created and distributed more efficiently. It makes no sense to make sure 100 percent of the population gets exactly the same amount of bread some may want With another's and some may want less. It also doesn't make sense to only make bread for 70% of the population thinking that is the true demand for bread when actually 80% of the population wants it but 10% have zero means to voice their demand in the market bread makers would happily sell more bread and bread eaters would happily buy more bread. It's a win-win to more accurately determine just the right amount and that's basic income. It's a win-win for the market and those who comprise the market. And it's a way to improve on capitalism and even democracy by making sure everyone has the minimum amount of voice. Can we really improve capitalism or is this just theory if you want actual evidence of how much better capitalism would work with basic income? Look at the pilot project in Namibia quote The Village School reported higher attendance rates and that the children were better fed and more attentive police statistics showed a 36.5% drop in crime since the introduction of the grants poverty rates decline from 86 percent to 68. Sent 97 percent to 43 percent when controlled for migration unemployment dropped as well from the sixty percent to 45 percent and there was a 29% increase in average earned income excluding the basic income Grant these results indicate that basic income grants can not only alleviate poverty in purely economic terms, but may also jolt the poor out of the poverty cycle helping them find work start their own businesses and attend school and quote. Think about that for a Second crime plummeted and people given a basic income actually created their own jobs and actually ended up with even greater earnings as a result or how about the psychology experiment as evidence for increased productivity quote the participants given a choice between either two or three puzzles each spent about five minutes working on the puzzle, they selected but those who were also given the option not to participate spent about seven minutes working on their selected puzzle. Explicitly choosing to do something rather than not to do it greatly increase the amount of time spent on the task and quote this suggests that if we create the option for people to be able to choose not to work genuinely choosing to work may result in even greater commitment because it is suddenly a matter of choice and not force choice is a powerful motivator speaking of motivation. What does the science have to say about money as an effective motivator? Are for complex and creative tasks larger rewards lead to poorer performance quote. This is one of the most robust findings in social science. And also one of the most ignored I spent the last couple years looking at the science of human motivation, particularly the Dynamics of extrinsic motivators and intrinsic motivators, and I'm telling you it's not even close if you look at the science, there is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does Does that's actually fine for many kinds of 20th century tasks, but for 21st century tasks that mechanistic reward and Punishment approach often doesn't work and often does harm quote by Dan pink in the 21st century as we continue quickly automating away half of our jobs in the next 20 years jobs list cognitively complex and more physically laborious. We need to enable ourselves to freely pursue. More creative and complex Ventures some of the best work happening right now is the stuff being done in our free time that is unpaid like Wikipedia and are many other open source Community Creations not to mention all the Care work performed for our young and elderly basic income is a means of recognizing those unpaid work as having greater societal value and further enabling it or how about the multiplier effect as evidence of enhanced capitalism. I quote all those dollars low-wage workers spend create an economic ripple effect, every extra dollar going into the pockets of low wage workers standard economic multiplier models tell us ads about one dollar and 21 cents to the National economy every extra dollar going into the pockets of a high-income Americans by contrast only adds about 39 cents to the GDP and quote. This means that by redirecting that money pooling at the top doing Peridot believe very little accumulating in ever-increasing amounts through continual redistribution upwards from the bottom and middle of the income spectrum and recirculating that clotted money back down to the bottom and middle. This would actually expand the entire economy by making it more sustainable and more inclusive. This is how the body works. This is how engines work. This is how systems work a system cannot exist in perpetuity that is designed for one-way flow Thomas Piketty has recently demonstrated in his sweeping capital and the 21st century that our current system is exactly that one way it is up to us to create a true circulatory system for the engine of capitalism without monetary circulation the system as a whole will come to a grinding halt if Piketty is right then holding on to an ideology of income and wealth redistribution as theft may just be like a heart refusing to Blood anywhere but the brain capitalism 2.0 capitalism 2.0 is sounds great and all but can we afford it basic income is entirely affordable given all the current and hugely wasteful means-tested programs full of unnecessary bureaucracy that could be Consolidated into it and the cost also depends greatly on the chosen plan a plan of $12,000 per US citizen over 18 and $4,000 per citizen under 18. Amounts to a revenue need of 2.9 eight trillion which after all the programs that can be eliminated are rolled into it requires an additional need of 1.2 a trillion or so. So, where do we come up with an additional 1.2 a trillion a land value tax has been estimated to be a source of Revenue of about one point seven trillion dollars a flat tax of around 40% would be sufficient due to the way as such a Tax Works in combination with Ubi this would have Actively be reduction in taxes for about 80% of the population a 10% value-added tax has been estimated to be a source of Revenue of about 750 billion dollars that could be increased to reach 1.3 trillion or added to other sources of additional Revenue. These other sources of revenue could be a financial transaction tax 350 billion dollars a carbon tax a hundred and twenty five billion dollars or taxing capital gains like ordinary. The income and creating new upper tax brackets a hundred and sixty billion dollars. Did you know that for 50 years between 1932 and 1982 the top income tax rate averaged 82 percent. Our current highest rate is thirty nine percent. There is a place in the world that already pays a regular dividend to everyone living there universally to child an adult through a wealth fund. It has created through royalty fees paid by companies for the rights to profit from its natural. Sources this place is Alaska and the Alaska model could be applied anywhere as a means of granting a basic income as the social dividend from a sovereign wealth fund of resource-based Revenue. We could even get more creative by thinking about how we go about giving away other forms of shared resources royalty-free to corporations like the use of our public Airwaves and patents copyrights. That should have entered the public domain long ago, but haven't thanks to corporate lobbying from those like Disney. To protect their profits off of Creations like Mickey Mouse. Did you know that the Happy Birthday song isn't even in the public domain company should pay us instead of politicians to keep things out of the public domain and we could use this Revenue as an additional means of growing a resource-based wealth fund suffice to say there exist plenty of funding options any of which are more than sufficient that if combined could potentially allow for larger basic income or a reduction or even Of income taxes entirely. Okay. It's affordable, but wouldn't people stopped working. We studied this question in the 1970s here in the United States back when guaranteed annual income was a goal of President Nixon and the house even successfully passed a bill for it the findings from the accompanying large-scale experiments done in cities like Seattle and Denver found that surprisingly hardly anyone actually stopped working and instead reduced their hours slightly with men reach seeing their hours the least by a maximum of eight percent this slight reduction in hours was then replicated to even less of a degree in Canada's Min come experiment with men choosing to work as little as one percent fewer hours. Meanwhile, we find ourselves today working too much having drifted away from the 40-hour workweek We Now find one out of every three of us working more than 50 hours with many even working more than 60 hours. And what are the effects of this quote new studies show that working more very seldom produces better results employees work many more hours now than they have in the past but it's coming at the expense of health happiness and even productivity. Well, it looks good to be the first to arrive and the last to leave work each day. It turns out that putting in 60 hours of work each week. May do more harm than good in achieving end results through the data one thing. NG becomes extremely clear to boost productivity and Foster excellent employees. The best thing businesses can do is to bring back the 40-hour workweek and quote. We want to start working less. It would be good for overall productivity to be working less. In fact in certain circumstances. We shouldn't even be working at all. It's called presenteeism and happens when people refuse to call in sick quote according to various studies the Cost of presenteeism to you as employers Falls anywhere between a hundred and fifty billion to 250 billion dollars each year. Those costs are on the rise as presenteeism becomes more frequent and tight Economic Times and quote right now people are going to work when they actually should not be going to work and this is having a negative effect on the entire economy. And even our overall health. We need people who are feeling sick to stay home when they should be staying home. And not feeling forced to work because they absolutely have to earn that money or out of fear of losing their jobs. If they actually take a sick day. It's kind of curious, isn't it? Here? We are worrying people will work less if we guarantee a basic income and the reality of the situation is that people are presently working too much and it is costing all of us combine this with the fact there's three people seeking everyone available job and the obvious solution is that we actually want people to be able to choose to work last to free up more. It's for those seeking jobs who are currently being excluded the labor market, but still what about those few who would stop working through the elimination of the welfare trap? Thanks to basic income. This would mean that anyone choosing not to work instead opting to just live off. Their basic incomes would be earning less than everyone choosing to work for additional income. This could not only decrease unemployment and increase productivity, but simultaneously fixed the situation we have Right now where it's possible for the unemployed to actually earn more in equivalent benefits. Then the cash incomes of those who are employed plus the variability of people to not need a job makes it that much harder for employers to exploit employees with insufficient wages and poor working conditions. The ability to actually say no means the empowerment of labor on an individual level. No unions required simply put basically Come makes work actually pay why would insert a you dislike ever agree to this the idea of basic income cuts across all party lines from the extreme right to the extreme left. We are hearing calls for basic income those on the right love its potential to shrink the size of government and do away with minimum wage laws while those on the left love with potential to reduce inequality and once and for all but an end to Poverty basic income, Come is not left or right. It's forward. So why should you support unconditional basic income? Why should you have supported the abolition of slavery back in the late 19th century? Why should you have supported the right for people other than rich white men to vote? Why should you have supported our landing on the moon? Why should you have supported the ending the Vietnam War or the beginning of LBJ is war on poverty. Because you want to make our world a better place. That's why. Thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode of the Scots Anton's Ubi Enterprise and thank you to all my executive producer to your supporters on patreon. And anchor whose names include the Gerald have fun for Humanity. Harun mocked. Asada. Steven Grim Floyd. Marinesko, Andrew Stern Zach Sergeant Carolyn Larry Cohen aren T Schultz, Ace Bailey Albert vanger, Athena, Washington the reward Drawn out as a rock Justin Walsh Michael Tinker Robert Collins surgery better all Navarro Stephen boys firt. Tom Cooper Trisha Garrett, Ubi visuals Victor Lao Zhu di Shapiro Gary Turner Mark Clark how Michael Finney Michael Kwok Peter tonight build tang and Sanford redlich if you two would like to be thanked by Name the end of each episode head on over to my patreon page and select the executive producer tear or pushed the support this podcast button on anchor and select the ten dollar level.
In 2014, I self-published my first article on Medium that to this day I think remains a solid introduction to UBI. Up until this article, I'd been reading a lot about UBI and engaging in a lot of discussion on Reddit about UBI, but this was my first attempt at "giving back" to the discussion with my own thoughts. It did quite well, getting over 100,000 views and because of its success, I was inspired to keep writing new articles, following it up next with my article about UBI and inflation which was even more widely read and shared. In this first article though you can see a lot of Andrew Yang's UBI: $1,000 per month basic income, 10% VAT, financial transaction taxes, carbon taxes, but most historically, it was this article where I first coined that basic income is not left or right, it's forward. It's because of that I think this particular article may just make it into the history books, seeing that it has gone on to become a central message of Andrew Yang's presidential campaign that is strongly resonating with a growing number of people. 