Scott Santens
Writer and full-time advocate of unconditional basic income (UBI); Citizen of Earth and New Orleans; Bachelor of Science in Psychology; Editor of Basic Income Today
Stop Teaching Students WHAT to Think. Teach Them HOW to Think.
The future of education and work
For more than a century, we've been creating an industrial workforce of human automatons, built for the purpose of performing routine labor not yet doable by machines. And we've been operating with the mindset that we should teach students the same way we program actual machines. In the 20th century, schooling became a process of . . .
The Expanse's Basic Support vs. Basic Income
How not to meet humanity's basic needs in our automated future
The Expanse is a series of science fiction novels that is also now a TV series with two seasons available to watch so far. In this universe, in the not too distant future, humanity has moved beyond Earth to extend its reach throughout the entire solar system. Mars is an independent military power, asteroids and various moons . . .
Posted in: technological unemployment
If you think basic income is "free money" or socialism, think again
First, saying basic income is socialism is as absurd as saying money is socialism. It's money. It's all it is. What do people do with money? They use it in markets. In other words, basic income is fuel for markets. Markets are a wonderful invention that serve to calculate via a massively distributed computer comprised of . . .
Posted in: capitalismfree market
For Want of a Dollar
The consequences of our lack of basic income
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
For those . . .
The Cost of Universal Basic Income is the Net Transfer Amount, Not the Gross Price Tag
Why every estimate of UBI that simply multiplies the number of recipients by the amount received is simply wrong
Imagine a group of 5 people. They have an income distribution of $10, $20, $30, $50, and $100. Someone gets the BIG idea of everyone putting 40% of their money into a hat, and dividing the result equitably between everyone.
That means $4, $8, $12, $20, and $40 goes into the hat. That's $84 which when divided by 5 is $16.80.
. . .Posted in: cost
Eating food will fail to reduce malnutrition, new report warns
How to recognize when an anti-UBI title is "fake news"
The OECD recently published a report on basic income as a policy option for the future of work. It concluded that universal basic income would require large tax increases to avoid increasing poverty. Others have since picked up on the report with headlines like, "Universal basic income would fail to cut poverty, says OECD" which . . .
Posted in: costpartial basic incomepoverty
How to Reform Welfare and Taxes to Provide Every American Citizen a Basic Income
My proposed funding plan for UBI in the US
The Economic Security Project has just published an article from me on Medium titled "How to Reform Welfare and Taxes to Provide Every American Citizen a Basic Income". It's a more detailed funding plan for a potentially cross-partisan implementation of universal basic income in the United States. For those looking for numbers, . . .
