On February 28, 2017, RT Times reports:
Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates said it’s too early to dish out money to needy people, though the billionaire accepts the idea of universal basic income (UBI).
“Over time countries will be rich enough to do this. However we still have a lot of work that should be done – helping older people, helping kids with special needs, having more adults helping in education,” he said, responding to users’ questions during an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit.
UBI is an idea to provide people with a regular allowance regardless of their income or assets. The system can reportedly close gaps in equality, with an individual’s basic needs covered with free cash, funded by massive taxes at the top.
“Even the US isn’t rich enough to allow people not to work. Some day we will be, but until then things like the Earned Income Tax Credit will help increase the demand for labor,” the billionaire stressed.
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a form of levy charged to lower-income families in the US to boost savings, incentivize work and help people to escape poverty.
The idea of giving people money on a regular basis to increase social welfare has gained momentum in some countries in recent years. Basic income was initially proposed in the 1960s and briefly tried out in the US and Canada.
‘Radical option’: #India considers cash handouts to fight poverty https://on.rt.com/82gl
Finland launched its own two-year long experiment on basic income in January. The country’s authorities randomly chose 2,000 recipients of social assistance and started paying them €560 a month per month. Canada and the Netherlands have also announced similar experiments.
READ MORE: Kiwis consider paying people for doing nothing
Last year, the Japanese government announced plans to issue money ‘vouchers’ for low-income young people to halt a significant decline in consumption within the age bracket. New Zealand is also debating UBI.
#BasicIncome: Japan considers giving away money to boost consumption http://on.rt.com/784y
https://www.rt.com/business/378896-bill-gates-basic-income/#.WLWcfluZlDE.facebook
Of course, the subject of this article and related stories within is about redistribution of current wealth, not the creation of new productive capital wealth while simultaneously creating new capital owners, whose new earnings would come via the full-payout of dividends.
There is no question that people need income but rather than a hand-out for no productive input into the economy and which would be taken from those who do contribute productivity and redistributed, we should be empowering EVERY citizen (children, women and men) to acquire personal ownership in the formation of new wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets using insured, interest-free capital credit, without requiring any savings or pledges of equities to secure the capital credit. The capital credit loans would be repayable strictly out of the earnings of the investments in the capital assets that grow our economy. Ones capital asset portfolio would steadily accumulate, as would ones dividend income.
The end result is that citizens would become empowered as owners to meet their own consumption needs and government would become more dependent on economically independent citizens, thus reversing current global trends where all citizens will eventually become dependent for their economic well-being on the State and whatever elite controls the coercive powers of government.
This future economic democracy can be achieved through monetary reform (http://capitalhomestead.org/page/monetary-justice) and by enacting the Capital Homestead Act (aka Economic Democracy Act) at http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/, http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-a-plan-for-getting-ownership-income-and-power-to-every-citizen/, http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-summary/ and http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/ch-vehicles/.
