On April 28, 2017, Rutger Bregman presents a talk on TED:
STANDING OVATION FOR UBI
Dutch historian Rutger Bregman gave a TED talk on universal basic income (UBI) in which he explored this loaded question: Why do the poor make such poor decisions? His answer was simple: people in poverty save less money, eat less healthful foods, and do drugs more often because their basic needs are not met.
UBI is the simplest, fastest way to meet those needs for everyone, without danger of unfairness, Bregman argued. It is his position that the need and the means to establish UBI already exist, and only action and the will to implement it remain unfinished.
“Poverty is not a lack of character. Poverty is a lack of cash,” he told the TED crowd of more than 1,000 people — inspiring the crowd onto its feet.
This standing ovation was a sign of the groundswell of support for UBI in the U.S., a movement which has its roots in the technology sector. As artificial intelligence (AI) and the changes it will inevitably cause in the labor force creep ever nearer, Silicon Valley thought leaders are searching for ways that humans and AI alike will be able to thrive in a 21st century economy. Sam Altman of Y Combinator, Pierre Omidyar of eBay, Chris Hughes of Facebook, and Elon Musk of Tesla all see UBI as an essential part of the solution. Other influencers are taking note, too; Venture capitalist Chris Sacca tweeted that Bregman’s remarks were, “devastatingly provocative and enlightening.”
UBI AND AUTOMATION
Based on the enthusiastic response from the TED crowd, the U.S. may have the will to implement — just not the action quite yet. With this will can inspire action remains to be seen, but a spate of UBI trials around the world is bringing the concept into the mainstream. In Finland, Kenya, and Oakland, California, UBI experiments are already happening. Later this year the Netherlands will begin a trial as well.
On Monday, April 24, Premier Kathleen Wynne of Ontario shared the specifics of the Ontario Basic Income Pilot which will be trialled for three years starting this spring. This UBI program will provide income to a total of 4,000 people from Hamilton, Lindsay, and Thunder Bay, with the goal of making findings that can be generalized to the rest of the province.
These experiments are taking place now largely in anticipation of automation, which experts say is coming soon regardless of anyone’s feelings about it. And while some argue that UBI cuts against a free market system, other experts point out that UBI actually enables a truly free market for laborers in which people have more freedom to seek out meaningful work and pursue it. The ability to make better choices for ourselves may be the greatest benefit we draw from the age of automation — if Bregman is correct, at least.
https://futurism.com/video-reveals-that-americans-have-a-very-powerful-reaction-to-universal-basic-income/
Let me address what is avoided in all articles about a universal basic income – alternatives.
While a Universal Basic Income sounds appealing to those solely dependent on a job or welfare, there is a far better way for EVERY child, woman and man to EARN more income by providing equal opportunity to acquire personal ownership in future wealth-creating, income-producing capital formation using insured (lending protection) capital credit, repayable out of the future earnings of the investments. This would not require anyone to pledge as collateral (past savings/equity as security for repayment).
Using such new owner-creation financial mechanisms would enable EVERY citizen to contribute productivity to the economy, create demand for a higher standard of living, while not taking from those who already are capital owners through taxation to support otherwise non-productive citizens.
We should be looking at how “the rich are getting richer,” not on how we can take and redistribute the earnings of the rich and middle class. Obviously, the distinction between the rich and the non-rich is that the rich OWN wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets, the very essence of technological progress, and the poor only have their labor to sell to the wealthy capital ownership class.
The fact that the core function of technological invention and innovation is to invent “tools” to reduce toil, enable otherwise impossible production, create new highly automated industries, and significantly change the way in which products and services are produced from labor intensive to capital intensive, should surprise no one who is conscious and who has even causally observed the constant shift to non-human productive inputs in the manufacturing, distribution, and sales of products, as well as the delivery of services, that has been occurring during their lifetime.
The urgency is to figure out means for people to earn an income without dependency on jobs. The focus should not be on a pro-job growth future but an alternative to wage dependency as economists across the board predict further losses as AI, robotics, and other technologies continue to be ushered in.
Such future invention and innovation should be financed using mechanisms that create new owners simultaneously with the growth of the economy, while respecting the private property rights who now own, and ensuring that any further concentrated capital ownership acquisition will be abated.
The fundamental challenge to be solved is how do we reinvent and redesign our economic institutions to keep pace with job destroying and devaluing technological innovation and invention so not all of the benefits of owning FUTURE productive capacity accrues to today’s wealthy 1 percent ownership class, and ownership is broadened so that EVERY American earns income through stock ownership dividends so they can afford to purchase the products and services produced by the technology economy.
A National Right To Capital Ownership Bill that restores the American dream should be advocated by the progressive movement, which addresses the reality of Americans facing job opportunity deterioration and devaluation due to tectonic shifts in the technologies of production.
The question that requires an answer is now timely before us. It was first posed by Kelso in the 1950s but has never been thoroughly discussed on the national stage. Nor has there been the proper education of our citizenry that addresses what economic justice is and what capital ownership is. Therefore, by ignoring such issues of economic justice and capital ownership, our leaders are ignoring the concentration of power through monopoly ownership of productive capital, with the result of denying the 99 percenters equal opportunity and access to become capital owners.
The question, as posed by Kelso is: “how are all individuals to be adequately productive when a tiny minority (capital owners) produce a major share and the vast majority (labor workers), a minor share of total goods and services,” and thus, “how do we get from a world in which the most productive factor—physical capital—is owned by a handful of people, to a world where the same factor is owned by a majority—and ultimately 100 percent—of the consumers, while respecting all the constitutional rights of present capital owners?”
There is a solution, which will result in double-digit economic growth and simultaneously broaden private, individual ownership so that EVERY American’s income significantly grows, providing the means to support themselves and their families with an affluent lifestyle. The Just Third Way Master Plan for America’s future is published at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797.
The solution is obvious but our leaders, academia, conventional economist and the media are oblivious to the necessity to broaden ownership in the new capital formation of the future simultaneously with the growth of the economy, which then becomes self-propelled as increasingly more Americans accumulate ownership shares and earn a new source of dividend income derived from their capital ownership in the “machines” that are replacing them or devaluing their labor value.
The solution will require the reform of the Federal Reserve Bank to create new owners of future productive capital investment in businesses simultaneously with the growth of the economy. The solution to broadening private, individual ownership of America’s future capital wealth requires that the Federal Reserve stop monetizing unproductive debt, including bailouts of banks “too big to fail” and Wall Street derivatives speculators, and begin creating an asset-backed currency that could enable every man, woman and child to establish a Capital Homestead Account or “CHA” (a super-IRA or asset tax-shelter for citizens) at their local bank to acquire a growing dividend-bearing stock portfolio to supplement their incomes from work and all other sources of income. Policies need to insert American citizens into the low or no-interest investment money loop to enable non- and undercapitalized Americans, including the working class and poor, to build wealth and become “customers with money.” The proposed Capital Homestead Act would produce this result.
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.
Support Monetary Justice at http://capitalhomestead.org/page/monetary-justice.
Support 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/.
