# UBI Guide > The blog of Scott Santens - author and unconditional universal basic income specialist. Learn all about UBI from a continually-growing collection of angles. Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts. Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`). ## Pages ### Home URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/home/ Last updated: 2026-07-07T19:25:57.000Z I’m **Scott Santens**, and I've been researching and advocating for the concept of unconditional universal basic income (or **UBI**) since 2013. Acknowledged by former U.S. presidential candidate Andrew Yang as one of those who helped shape his thinking, I've lived with a basic income floor [via Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) since 2015 which has enabled me to focus on popularizing UBI full-time. I am the founder and CEO of the [Income To Support All (ITSA) Foundation](https://www.itsafoundation.org/?ref=scottsantens.com), host of [The Basic Income Show](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXhMtYULkYuFiM0s9Kj2U6QkwjGjxwOw9&ref=scottsantens.com), and I also serve on the board of directors of the [Gerald Huff Fund for Humanity](https://fundforhumanity.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) and have a Substack: [*Foreword to Civilization*](https://scottsantens.substack.com/). My debut book about UBI and how to pay for it is titled ***Let There Be Money***. You can [buy it on Amazon](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) or [listen to it](https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/Let-There-Be-Money-Why-We-Need-Modern-Monetary-Theory-MMT-and-Why-It-Needs-Universal-Basic-Income-UBI-e175t4m?ref=scottsantens.com) for free on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you to all who support my work by sharing it, and if you're new to UBI, my [UBI FAQ](https://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq?ref=scottsantens.com) or my evidence threads on [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/scottsantens.com/post/3lckzcleo7s24?ref=scottsantens.com) or [X](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1040683616488103936?ref=scottsantens.com) are great places to start. ### YouTube Playlist of Media Interviews and Podcast Guest Appearances URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/tv-media-interviews-youtube/ Last updated: 2022-02-10T18:17:44.000Z Click the button in the upper right to scroll through the full list. ### Privacy Policy URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/privacy/ Last updated: 2022-05-17T22:09:20.000Z # Scott Santens operates the scottsantens.com website, which provides the SERVICE. 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These changes are effective immediately, after they are posted on this page. ## Contact Us If you have any questions or suggestions about our Privacy Policy, do not hesitate to contact us. ## Posts ### Turtles All the Way Down: The Biological Case for Universal Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/turtles-all-the-way-down-the-biological-case-for-universal-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2026-09-10T14:48:52.000Z ### If our decisions are shaped by forces we never chose, then punishing people for those decisions and withholding the resources that would improve them is our true moral failure. I got my psychology degree in 2004 with a focus on cognitive neuroscience after first spending two years studying engineering physics. That background has informed almost everything I’ve written about basic income, especially when it comes to the science of stress, [which I’ve written about previously](https://www.scottsantens.com/from-rats-in-cages-to-primates-in-paradise-the-scientific-story-of-stress-in-society/). But it wasn’t until I recently read Robert Sapolsky’s book [*Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will*](https://amzn.to/4fMXo5E?ref=scottsantens.com) that something newly shifted in how I think about UBI at the most fundamental level as a recognition of what we actually are. We are not who we think we are. And the implications of that are enormous. Sapolsky’s book makes the argument that I think for most people is completely unacceptable: **there is no free will**. Not in the way most people use the term. When you make a decision, that decision is the product of neuronal firing patterns shaped by the seconds before, which were shaped by the minutes before, which were shaped by the hormones of the hours before, which were shaped by the neuroplasticity of the months before, which were shaped by the development of the years before, which were shaped by the genetics and epigenetics baked into you before you ever drew your first breath. It’s causes and effects all the way down. Or as Sapolsky frames it, borrowing from a famous cosmological anecdote: [**it’s turtles all the way down**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles%5Fall%5Fthe%5Fway%5Fdown?ref=scottsantens.com). There is no turtle floating in the air. There is no moment where the chain of cause and effect breaks and a “you” steps in to freely choose. That’s the illusion. I know. It’s a lot. Most people won’t accept it. Most people *can’t* accept it, because the feeling of choosing is so strong that it seems absurd to deny it. I feel it too. I feel like I chose to write this essay. But Sapolsky would argue that I was always going to write this after reading his book, given everything that led to this moment. My reading his words, the neurons it activated, the prior decade of my writing about stress and poverty, my psychology degree, my physics background, my childhood, my mom’s womb, my diet, my inherited mix of genes. All of it. Turtles on turtles on turtles. So what does this have to do with universal basic income? **I think it might be the most controversial argument for UBI I've ever tried to make.** ## The Chain of Causation To understand why, you have to understand the chain of causation. Sapolsky walks readers through it one piece at a time, starting at the moment of a behavior and working backward through every layer that produced it. **A neuron fires** and your hand moves. You did something. Why? Because a pattern of neurons in your motor cortex activated. Why did those neurons fire? Because neurons in your prefrontal cortex — the part of your brain involved in decision-making, impulse control, and long-term planning — signaled them to using cascades of neurotransmitters. Why did *those* neurons fire in that pattern? Keep going. **Seconds to minutes before**, your brain was awash in hormones that shaped what those neurons did. Testosterone, for example, doesn’t simply cause aggression the way most people assume. It amplifies whatever behavior is already being rewarded in your social context. In an environment where aggression earns status, testosterone makes you more aggressive. In an environment where generosity earns status, [testosterone makes you ](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1608085113?ref=scottsantens.com)[*more generous*](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1608085113?ref=scottsantens.com). Testosterone is a hormone that basically is about status. Then there’s oxytocin and its close relative vasopressin (our love hormones). Oxytocin enhances mother-infant bonding and pair bonding. It makes people calmer by quieting the amygdala. Boost someone’s oxytocin levels, and they become more charitable and trusting in games of competition. Vasopressin does something similar, strengthening pair bonds and paternal behavior. In rodent species, the difference between a monogamous male who sticks around to raise his kids and a polygamous male who doesn’t, comes down to the density of vasopressin receptors in the reward center of its brain. Increase those receptors artificially, and the polygamous male suddenly becomes a devoted father. But oxytocin doesn’t make you warm and prosocial toward *everyone*. It makes you warm toward people who count as “Us.” Toward people who count as “Them,” it can actually increase hostility, making you more aggressive toward competitors, more biased against outsiders, even more inclined to gloat over a stranger’s misfortune. And the levels of these hormones you carry, these are shaped by your genes, your fetal environment, and whether you woke up this morning next to someone you care about. Cortisol, meanwhile (our primary stress hormone) shifts your brain toward short-term survival thinking and away from the kind of measured, long-term reasoning the prefrontal cortex specializes in. You didn’t choose your hormone levels. They helped choose your behavior. **Hours to days before**, your brain’s wiring was shaped by sleep, by what you ate, by whether you were sick, by what stressors you’d been exposed to recently. That wiring determines what your prefrontal cortex is even capable of doing in the moment of your “decision.” And here’s a finding that gets at the heart of the UBI argument: the prefrontal cortex (the seat of willpower and “good judgment”) is the brain region most vulnerable to depletion. It is the most metabolically expensive part of the brain. It tires. And when it tires, it works less effectively. Sapolsky describes a study that illustrates this really well. People who were dieting were placed in front of a bowl of candy. Some of them had just completed a series of demanding cognitive tasks. Others had not. The ones whose frontal cortices had already been taxed by difficult mental work were significantly more likely to break their diets and eat the candy. Their willpower was literally depleted. The cognitive effort of the tasks consumed the neural resources they needed to resist temptation. Now think about what this means for someone living in poverty. We already know from [scarcity research](https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2015/05/the-science-of-scarcity?ref=scottsantens.com) that the mental burden of not having enough financial security operates like a background program consuming processing power. It’s been measured as equivalent to losing roughly 14 IQ points, which is comparable to the cognitive cost of an entire night’s sleep and the difference between “superior” and “average” intelligence, or between “average” and “borderline deficient.” If you’re spending your finite cognitive resources worrying about how to pay rent, how to keep the lights on, how to feed your kids, **you have less prefrontal capacity left for everything else**. Less capacity for patience. Less capacity for long-term planning. Less capacity to resist that drink, that cigarette, that lottery ticket. Not because you’re weak, but because your brain is already maxed out. **Months to years before**, the neuroplasticity of your brain — its ability to rewire itself in response to experience — shaped the actual architecture of your decision-making. Chronic stress doesn’t just make you feel bad. It physically remodels your brain. It enlarges the amygdala, the region that processes fear and threat, while shrinking the hippocampus, the region involved in memory and contextual judgment. A chronically stressed brain becomes a brain that is biologically tuned to perceive threats everywhere and struggle to think its way out of them. [New research](https://academic.oup.com/innovateage/article/10/8/igag054/8739704?login=false&ref=scottsantens.com) published in *Innovation in Aging* even looks at the impacts of long-term financial insecurity and finds that people who experience persistent money struggles or persistent low income in early and middle adulthood perform less well in cognitive tests by age 53 and show significant brain atrophy by age 71\. Increased exposure to low household income and financial hardships was associated with lower cognitive processing speed and, over time, it reduced the amount of brain, particularly in men. And **decades before** — during childhood, during fetal development, during the moment of conception when your particular genetic combination was assembled together — the foundations of all of this were laid without any of your choosing. ## Older Than Thought One of the things that struck me most in *Determined* is how ancient some of this neural machinery actually is. Sapolsky describes the neuronal circuits responsible for something as simple as blinking and traces them back to the sea slug *Aplysia*. Blinking is one of the oldest circuits in neuroscience, operating on principles that are hundreds of millions of years old. The same basic mechanisms that make a sea slug retract its gill when you poke it are the ones that make your brain associate a sound with a shock, or a smell with a memory, or a face with a feeling. It’s the basis of Pavlovian conditioning. This is the foundation on which all of our “choices” are built. We like to believe that somewhere above this machinery, there’s a rational agent pulling the levers, but Sapolsky argues that there is no level at which the machinery gives way to something else. It’s neurons running on ancient circuitry all the way up. Even the most sophisticated stuff your prefrontal cortex does — weighing competing options, imagining future consequences, overriding an impulse — is itself a product of neurons operating according to the same physical and chemical laws as everything else. Conditioned associations can be exploited to create links between things that have no logical connection. You can condition someone to associate an out-group like immigrants with fear. You can condition someone to associate poverty with moral failure. You can condition an entire society to believe that hard work is the primary determinant of success when the data says otherwise. These aren’t rational conclusions. They are conditioned responses, running on the same circuitry a sea slug uses to decide whether to retract its gill when touched. And once conditioned, they are remarkably resistant to logic. ## You Are Your Environment If this chain of cause and effect shapes individual behavior, it also shapes entire cultures, and this is where Sapolsky’s book kind of blew my mind. Sapolsky describes how something as basic as climate and geography can determine the kind of society you’re born into, which in turn shapes the neural development of every person in it. For example, growing rice requires elaborate irrigation systems and cooperative labor among neighbors. You can’t really grow rice alone. You need to coordinate water usage with the people upstream and downstream. And so, over centuries, rice-based agricultural societies developed cultural orientations toward collectivism, deference, and cooperation. Meanwhile, herding sheep or goats requires rugged self-reliance and a willingness to violently defend your flock from anyone who might take it. And so, over centuries, pastoralist societies therefore developed cultures of honor, independence, and retaliatory aggression. These aren’t just random cultural tendencies. And they get wired into brains. Research in cultural neuroscience has shown that people raised in collectivist cultures and people raised in individualist cultures actually process information differently at the neural level. Their brains are structurally different because their environments were different. Think about that. You didn’t choose to be born into a rice culture or a herding culture. You didn’t choose whether your community would wire your brain for cooperation or for vigilant self-protection. But those things shaped who you are, down to the architecture of your neurons. Now think about what it means to be born into a culture of poverty. A culture of economic insecurity. A culture where chronic stress is as ambient as the air. ## The ACE Score and the Dice You Were Handed Anyone interested in human wellbeing should know about the **Adverse Childhood Experiences** score. The ACE score is a simple count of how many categories of adverse experiences a person was exposed to during childhood like: physical or emotional abuse, neglect, a household with substance abuse, mental illness, domestic violence, incarceration of a family member, or parental separation. The relationship between ACE score and life outcomes is one of the most robust in public health. For each additional adverse experience, the risk of negative outcomes climbs. People with high ACE scores are dramatically more likely to become addicted to substances, to develop heart disease, to experience depression and anxiety, to attempt suicide, to end up incarcerated, and to die young. And remember that new study about long-term economic stress and brain atrophy that showed a larger impact in men? It also showed a larger impact for adults with high ACE scores. Again consider free will. **None of these children chose their ACE score.** A child doesn’t choose to be abused. A child doesn’t choose to have a parent in prison. A child doesn’t choose to grow up in a home where addiction is the norm. And yet those experiences physically alter the developing brain, changing the trajectory of the entire life that follows. The prefrontal cortex develops differently. The stress response system calibrates differently. Gene expression changes epigenetically in ways that can last a lifetime and even be transmitted across generations. When that child grows up and makes what we call a “bad decision” by dropping out of school, becoming addicted to something, or committing a crime, we *blame* them. We say they made a choice. But the neuroscience says their capacity for making what we’d consider the “right” choice was compromised by forces that acted on their brain before they were even old enough to go to school. ## When the Disease Undermines the Cure Sapolsky tells a story in *Determined* that I think captures this blame problem memorably. A woman with epilepsy was told by multiple doctors not to drive because of the risk of having a seizure behind the wheel. She drove anyway. She had a seizure while driving. She caused an accident that killed a child. The instinct is to blame and punish her. She knew she had seizures. She was told not to drive. She chose to drive anyway. But Sapolsky points out something that should give us pause: **the very same brain abnormality that caused her seizures likely also impaired her judgment about whether to drive.** Epilepsy doesn’t just produce seizures. It can affect the frontal regions of the brain involved in risk assessment, impulse control, and decision-making. The disease itself undermines the cognitive capacity needed to properly manage the disease. This is not an unusual situation. It’s actually the *norm* for many conditions. Depression impairs the motivation needed to seek treatment for depression. Addiction hijacks the reward circuitry needed to choose sobriety. Poverty depletes the cognitive bandwidth needed to make the financial decisions that might escape poverty. **The condition and the capacity to address the condition are entangled.** You can’t separate them and pretend that someone is freely choosing to remain in their condition. ## Parasites and Vaccines If you’re still not convinced that our decisions aren’t entirely our own freely chosen, consider *Toxoplasma gondii*. This is a single-celled parasite that needs to get inside a cat’s gut to complete its reproductive cycle. To do that, it infects rodents and actually rewires their brains so that instead of being terrified of the smell of cat urine, they become *attracted* to it. The infected rodent walks toward the cat, the cat eats the rodent, and so the parasite accomplishes its life’s mission. The rodent never “chose” to approach the cat. Its brain was hijacked by a parasite. Somewhere between a third and half of all humans on Earth are infected with *Toxoplasma gondii*. In humans, infection has been associated with subtle personality changes like increased risk-taking, slower reaction times, and in some studies, an elevated rate of car accidents and links to conditions like schizophrenia. We are carrying around a parasite that may be quietly nudging our behavior. And *Toxoplasma* is just one organism. Your gut is home to trillions of bacteria collectively called the microbiome that are, in a strange and literal sense, part of you and not you at the same time. Did you know that **these bacteria produce neurotransmitters**? About [90% of the body’s serotonin](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2015.02.047?ref=scottsantens.com) is manufactured not in the brain but in the gut, by bacteria. Gut microbes also produce dopamine, GABA, and other neurochemicals that directly influence how you feel, what you crave, and how you respond to stress. Research has shown that altering the gut microbiome in mice can change their anxiety levels, their social behavior, and their responses to stress. You are a walking ecosystem. **An entire microbial civilization living inside you is participating in the production of the chemistry that underlies your “decisions.”** You didn’t choose those microbes. You acquired them from your mother during birth, from your environment, from what you eat. And they are shaping what you do next. Sapolsky brings up another example that really struck me. During the first Gulf War, U.S. troops were given a drug (pyridostigmine bromide) to protect against chemical weapon exposure. The drug was tested beforehand and deemed safe. But the testing didn’t account for the conditions soldiers would actually face: extreme heat, sleep deprivation, heavy physical loads, and the psychological stress of combat. Under those conditions, the drug interacted with the soldiers’ already-stressed physiology in ways that contributed to what became known as Gulf War syndrome. They now suffer from a cluster of chronic symptoms including fatigue, pain, and cognitive problems. The drug was safe in the lab but it wasn’t safe in the field because of *stress*. This raises a question that applies to far more than war: **what else do we think we understand about human behavior, health, and decision-making based on observations made under ideal conditions that don’t account for the chronic stress of real life?** Most of what we think we know about willpower, about self-control, about good decision-making — how much of that was studied in people who had their basic needs met, who weren’t worried about rent, who weren’t overflowing with stress hormones? When we judge someone living in poverty for making a decision that a middle-class person in a lab wouldn’t make, we’re comparing results within two very different environments. ## From Witches to Patients All of this leads to the question of where we draw the line between biology and blame. Sapolsky makes the point in *Determined* about how in the 15th century, a person who had epileptic seizures stood a real chance of being burned alive as a witch. A handbook for the Inquisition published in 1486 that was used for over 200 years titled *Malleus Maleficarum* explicitly identified seizures as a sign of demonic possession. Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly women, were killed as a result. Today, no one burns people with epilepsy. We give them medication. We understand that seizures are a neurological condition, not a moral failing. As Sapolsky puts it, we learned to say a new sentence: “**It’s not her; it’s her disease**.” That shift took centuries, but it happened. It happened because our understanding eventually deepened through science. We moved the line of what we consider within a person’s control, and what we consider biology. Sapolsky’s argument is that **the history of medicine is really the history of moving that line, and that it has only ever moved in one direction**. We used to blame people for things we now understand they couldn’t control. We never move the line the other way though. No one has ever discovered a condition we thought was biological and concluded, “Actually, turns out she’s just a witch after all. Burn her!” So the question is: **where does that line stop?** If every new discovery has moved it further from “free choice” and closer to “biological and environmental causation,” why would we assume there’s a line where it finally stops and free will takes over? I no longer believe we should assume that. And I think the implications for how we view poverty and in turn basic income are pretty profound. ## The Just World Fallacy There’s a name for the belief that people basically get what they deserve. It’s known as the [Just World hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world%5Ffallacy?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s a comforting belief that lets us look at someone who’s struggling and tell ourselves they must have done something to deserve it, and look at someone who’s thriving and tell ourselves they must have done something to earn it. But the science says otherwise. An [Italian simulation](https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068?ref=scottsantens.com) I’ve [written about before](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-angine-de-poitrine-argument-for-ubi/) modeled how talent and luck interact and found that pure talent was not the best predictor of success. Luck was. The most successful people in their simulations weren’t the most talented. They were moderately talented people who luckily caught the right breaks at the right moments. And the most effective intervention for ensuring that talent outperforms luck? Giving everyone an equal amount of money. Not rewarding the already successful. Not trying to identify who “deserves” funding. Just giving everyone the same income with the same regularity. Sapolsky arrives at the same conclusion about luck without modeling. If every decision a person makes is the downstream product of genetics, epigenetics, hormones, childhood experiences, culture, parasites, and environmental stressors — none of which anyone chooses — then the concept of “deserving” collapses. He writes: > **“There is no justifiable ‘deserve’. The only possible moral conclusion is that you are no more entitled to have your needs and desires met than is any other human. That there is no human who is less worthy than you to have their well-being considered. You may think otherwise, because you can't conceive of the threads of causality beneath the surface that made you you, because you have the luxury of deciding that effort and self-discipline aren't made of biology, because you have surrounded yourself with people who think the same. But this is where the science has taken us.”** That passage essentially summarizes the book. I have also never read a more concise destruction of the moral framework that sustains opposition to UBI. Every argument against giving people a basic income floor, every “they should just work harder,” every “why should I pay for someone else’s bad choices,” every “some people just don’t want to help themselves;” it all rests on the assumption that there’s a “they” in there who is freely choosing to fail. Sapolsky’s decades of research says there likely just isn’t. ## The Biological Argument for UBI Now let’s bring this all the way back to unconditional basic income. If our decisions are not truly free but are the downstream products of genetics, epigenetics, hormones, parasites, childhood experiences, cultural conditioning, cognitive depletion, and chronic stress — none of which any individual ever chooses — then the most rational response is not to blame individuals for the outcomes those forces produced. **The most rational response is to** **transform the environment**. This is the argument for UBI that I think may be the most important one I’ve ever tried to make, and it’s the one that arguably runs deepest and is likely the hardest to accept. It’s not the economic argument, though the economics work. It’s not the automation argument, though automation makes it urgent. It’s not even the moral argument, though the morality is clear. It’s the *biological* argument. The argument that rests on what we actually are, down to our neurons. If we know that poverty during pregnancy alters fetal brain development through chronic stress and elevated cortisol — and we do — then we should want no one who is pregnant to live in poverty. Not because they “deserve” help. Because the developing brain inside them will be physically changed by the stress, and that child will carry those changes for life. [**UBI improves prenatal conditions**](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecin.12235?ref=scottsantens.com). If we know that growing up in poverty raises ACE scores, alters gene expression, impairs prefrontal development, and tilts the stress response toward chronic activation — and we do — then we should want no child to grow up in poverty. Not because those children made bad choices. Because they haven’t made any choices. Their neurons are still being wired. [**UBI improves ACE scores**](https://www.nber.org/papers/w31733?ref=scottsantens.com). If we know that chronic economic insecurity depletes the same cognitive resources needed to make what we’d call “good decisions” in the same way a difficult cognitive task depletes the willpower of someone trying not to eat candy, then we should want no adult to live in chronic financial insecurity. Not because they need to be saved from themselves. Because their decisions are being shaped by a brain under siege. [**UBI improves cognitive capacity**](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1810901116?ref=scottsantens.com). **UBI is an environmental intervention.** It is the deliberate creation of conditions under which human neurobiology is more likely to produce what we’d call “good outcomes.” Not because people are being forced into good decisions. Because the upstream conditions that shape decisions are being improved. This isn’t a eugenic argument. Don’t make that mistake. It’s an epigenetic one. It’s the environment that matters. And when the environment changes, gene expression changes with it. ## We Will All Do Better When We All Do Better The late Senator Paul Wellstone said it simply: **we all do better when we all do better.** That statement is redundant, but it’s also deeply true. We are social animals. Our neurobiology was shaped by millennia of group living. We are affected by each other’s stress levels, each other’s behavior, each other’s presence or absence. A society full of chronically stressed people produces more crime, more addiction, more displacement aggression, more illness, less trust, less cooperation, less innovation, and less long-term thinking. Not because people chose to be that way, but because their environments shaped them that way. When people say “human nature” is a reason not to do UBI — that people are inherently lazy, or greedy, or short-sighted — they have it all backwards. Understanding human nature at the level of neurotransmitters, at the level of glucocorticoids and cortisol and dopamine and testosterone, at the level of gene-environment interaction and epigenetic modification, at the level of the ancient circuits we share with sea slugs, at the level of the conditioned associations we absorb from our cultures, at the level of the parasites we don’t even know are nudging us — understanding all of this makes the case *for* UBI, not against it. We are not fixed creatures with a fixed nature. We are dynamic biological systems that respond to our environments. Change the environment, change the outputs. Basic income doesn’t solve everything, and I’ve never claimed it does. But it addresses what I believe are the most fundamental upstream causes of the most downstream problems: **the chronic stress and deprivation that shape human neurobiology from the womb onward**. It’s a floor beneath everyone’s feet. It’s the foundational recognition that in a world driven by luck, genetics, epigenetics, hormones, conditioning, and all the environmental forces that no individual ever chose, that the least we can do — the absolute bare minimum of a civilized society — is to ensure that no one’s most basic needs go unmet. The Just World fallacy needs to go. It needs to be retired the same way we retired the idea that seizures are witchcraft. We didn’t stop restraining people who had seizures, we just stopped burning them. We found medication. We treated them with dignity. We moved the line. We need to move the line again. ## The Shame That’s Coming In 1757, a man named Robert-François Damiens stabbed King Louis XV of France. The wound was minor but the punishment was far from it. Over the course of an entire day, in front of tens of thousands of spectators, Damiens had his flesh torn from his body with red-hot pincers. Molten lead and boiling oil were poured into his wounds. His right hand was burned with sulfur, as were his genitals. Then horses were attached to his limbs to pull him apart. The horses couldn’t do it at first. The executioner had never attempted a quartering before, and it turned out to be much harder than expected. After multiple failed attempts, the executioners resorted to hacking through what remained with knives. Eyewitnesses claimed Damiens was still alive when his torso and dismembered limbs were finally tossed into a fire. He had been calling for mercy for hours. Horrific, right? This was done as **a public celebration of justice**. Fast forward to 1936 in Owensboro, Kentucky. A crowd estimated at 20,000 people gathered to watch the public hanging of Rainey Bethea, a young Black man convicted by an all-white jury. The town treated it as a family event. People brought their children. Vendors sold food. Newspapers called it a carnival of sadism. Today, there is no historical marker in Owensboro about [America’s final public execution by hanging](https://www.wkms.org/history/2025-10-15/20-000-people-watched-a-black-man-hang-in-owensboro-90-years-ago-a-new-book-looks-at-why?ref=scottsantens.com). The town has since spent decades trying to distance itself from what happened that day. Residents insist it was outsiders who came for the spectacle, certainly not locals. The shame is so deep that the community would rather erase the memory than reckon with it. I think about these two events described in *Determined* — separated by fewer than 200 years — and I think about what’s coming for us when it comes to basic income. We will look back at the era before basic income with shame. We will look back at a society that understood the neuroscience of poverty, that understood how chronic stress rewires the brain, that understood epigenetics and ACE scores and cognitive depletion and the fraud of the Just World fallacy and chose to do nothing. We will look back at a society that had the resources to ensure no one’s basic needs went unmet that decided that some people deserved poverty. And people will see it for what it was. There will be a reckoning. And when that reckoning comes, **everyone will claim they were always for UBI**. They’ll say it was other people who opposed it. They’ll say they always knew poverty was destructive and unnecessary. Just like Owensboro says it wasn’t the residents of Owensboro who came to watch. But we’ll know. The science was there. The evidence was there. The money was there. What wasn’t there was the will to let go of a comforting lie; the lie that people get what they deserve. **It’s time to move the line on poverty and chronic stress.** Not because the poor have earned our compassion through sufficient suffering. Not because they’ve proven they deserve help by making the right choices. Because the entire framework of “deserving” is built on an illusion — the illusion that somewhere in human civilization’s chain of cause and effect, there’s a turtle floating in the air. If Sapolsky is right, there isn’t. It’s turtles all the way down. **The only question is what kind of world we humans build on top of them.** --- ## Addendum For those readers who made it all the way to the end, I want to emphasize that UBI is a good idea for many reasons, of which the argument made here is only one of them. Some readers have taken this as an argument for UBI only if free will doesn't exist. The argument doesn't depend on settling that debate. UBI matters either way. You do not need to believe that free will does not exist in order to accept this argument. Even if you strongly believe in free will, you must acknowledge that our choices are influenced by a multitude of factors outside our control, most especially chronic stress. I am not making the case that we are all just simple automatons, nor am I making a philosophical case. I want people to know that poverty has all kinds of downstream cause and effect consequences, as does the chronic stress of financial insecurity that people experience who aren’t in poverty but constantly fear it. If without UBI, someone has an 80% chance of making a choice you consider to be bad, and with UBI the odds of that drops to 20%, then we should do UBI, especially if that multiplies massively across all of society and all of our countless decisions. If free will doesn’t exist, UBI is extremely important to improve environments so that better choices are made. If free will does exist, and someone faced with 80% odds or 20% odds can freely make either choice, UBI is still important in order to encourage the better choice. In either case, we should do UBI. --- *If reading this was worth your time, it’s worth sharing with others. Share it, subscribe for free, and if you can, make a monthly pledge or buy a paid subscription to keep this work going.* [![Support my work on Patreon](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bsif!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F84fd433d-9077-4eb6-b1d5-1af775321217_461x66.png "Support my work on Patreon")](https://www.patreon.com/c/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Thank you to my UBI Producer level patrons and paid Substack subscribers*: Gisele Huff*, *Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Oliver Bestwalter, Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Frederick Weber, Tom Cooper, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Jeremy Wertheimer, Andrew Yang, Kimi Avary, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Paradigm shift, Miki Phagan, Draper Kauffman, Webmemo, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Joe Ballou, Felix Ling, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Steve Roth, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, John Sullivan, Stephen Castro-Starkey, CodyS, chris heinz, Zachary Weaver, bradzone, Tim, Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Nicolas Pouillard, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Karla Hagemeister, Mark Pierce, Fred Weber, Linda Hearne, David Allen, Janos Abel, Wendy Voahangy Ravano, Liz, and all my other monthly patrons for their support.* ### The Land Dividend: How a Land Value Tax Can Fund a UBI URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-land-dividend-how-a-land-value-tax-can-fund-a-ubi/ Last updated: 2026-07-28T19:43:04.000Z ### Why taxing the value of land is potentially the best tax for universal basic income by making housing cheaper, taxing AI indirectly, and pushing rents down instead of up Imagine two plots of land in the heart of a big city, side by side, the exact same size. On one stands a gleaming fifty-story tower full of offices and apartments and shops. On the other sits a zero-story parking lot. Now ask yourself: which owner pays more in taxes? The tower owner does. We tax the building, so the more you build, the more you owe. The parking lot owner, who built almost nothing, pays almost nothing, even though the dirt beneath that asphalt is worth a fortune precisely because it sits in the middle of a thriving city that everyone else built up around it. So the parking lot just sits there. Year after year. The owner pays their small tax, and watches the land’s value climb—value they did nothing to create, mind you—waiting to sell for a huge windfall. I think that’s pretty perverse, and a **land value tax** (LVT) is built to fix it. A land value tax is a tax on the *unimproved* value of land: the worth of a location itself, not the buildings or improvements sitting on it. That value isn’t created by whoever holds the deed. It’s created by the whole community around it. A land value tax, paired with a **universal dividend**, can give that value back to everyone in equal shares. It may be the closest thing we have to a perfect tax. It can’t be hidden or dodged. It makes housing cheaper instead of more expensive. And I believe it’s the best way to capture and share the enormous wealth that technology is concentrating into very few hands. It’s also the final layer of a broader multi-layered universal basic income plan I’ve been building. But it stands on its own, so let me start from the ground up. ## What a land value tax actually is First, a land value tax is not a property tax. It’s really important to understand the difference between the two. A property tax taxes everything. It taxes the land *and* whatever is built on top of it. Build a house, add a bedroom, fix the roof, put up an apartment building instead of a house, and your tax bill goes up and up. You get punished for improving things. A land value tax taxes only the **unimproved value of the land itself**. Whatever you do on top of it is yours, tax-free. Build a skyscraper or build nothing, the land bill is the same. Why do it that way? Because, **you do not create the value of the land you own.** Nobody does individually. The value of land comes from everything around it: the roads, the transit, the schools, the hospital, the grocery store, the coffee shops, the neighbors, the jobs, the whole humming civilization that grew up around that spot. Land appreciates because of the work *society* does around it. **Society makes the land valuable**. So when we collect that value and share it, we’re not taking anything any one individual earned. We’re returning something we all made together. This is one of the oldest ideas in economics, and it was once hugely popular. ## The book that diagnosed the problem In 1879, an American named Henry George published a book called [*Progress and Poverty*](https://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/George/grgPP.html?ref=scottsantens.com), and it became one of the best-selling books of the nineteenth century. Working people devoured it, all around the world. The question George asked was the one everyone was and still is: **why, in an age of breathtaking technological and industrial progress, did poverty keep getting *worse***? His answer was basically, “**It’s the land, stupid**.” As a society grows richer, the people who own the land capture the gains. Everyone else pays them rent for the privilege of existing near all that progress. George wrote that the great cause of inequality in the distribution of wealth is inequality in the ownership of *land*. Every gain a society makes—be it a new technology, a growing population, or a better-run city—makes the land more useful, and so makes it more valuable. But that gain doesn’t lift wages. It gets soaked up into the price of the ground and skimmed off as rent. Work harder, invent more, accomplish more, and landlords simply raise the rent. That is why progress and poverty advance together. Look around. This process is still happening. It’s a fundamental economic problem. We generate staggering wealth in places like the SF Bay Area and New York City. And what happens? It becomes more and more expensive to live there. The engineers and nurses and teachers who make those cities run get priced out, while the people who happened to own the dirt get richer for doing nothing. The wealth we create together flows to whoever holds the deed. That’s how the system is designed to work. It’s a system designed by landowners. And George diagnosed it and prescribed the solution about 150 years ago. ## The wealth tax that can’t run away Here’s another thing land does: it sits there out in the open. You cannot hide it. We have spent decades watching the very wealthy stash money in shell companies and offshore accounts. You can’t do that with land. Land cannot be wired to the Cayman Islands. A land value tax is therefore an **unavoidable wealth tax**. It’s one of the only ones we’ve got that the rich can’t evade. When you have more money than you could ever spend, your money goes hunting for assets to buy, and land is the most-loved asset. Extreme wealth inequality is already driving up the cost of housing for this reason. As AI drives a tsunami of even more wealth toward a handful of people, that wealth will pour into real estate too, concentrating land into fewer and fewer hands and further pricing everyone else out. History has a lesson for us. The cotton gin did exactly what AI will likely now do. It made human labor way more productive but the gains did not flow to the people whose labor it saved. The gains flowed into land. The price of cotton-growing land soared. Those who owned it grew richer, and slavery, which some had expected to be hurt by the new technology, instead worsened. A labor-saving machine made the owners of land more powerful, not the workers. **AI is the cotton gin of our century**, and without a land value tax, the gains will pool in the same place they always have. ## AI is already landing — literally We don’t even have to wait to watch it happen. It’s happening. Every AI model runs on data centers, and data centers have become [the most expensive land use in America](https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/dont-reject-data-centers-negotiate). In Loudoun County, Virginia, one plot recently sold for **$6 million an acre.** And Loudoun shows what happens when a community actually taxes that. Data centers now generate about **$1.3 billion a year, roughly 45% of the county’s tax revenue**. It’s so much that the county has cut its residential property tax rate every year for a decade, down 30%, even as its budget grew. The tech industry’s hunger for land actually lowered bills for homeowners. That’s a land dividend in embryonic form: the wealth of the AI age flowing back to the residents whose community hosts it. Most places are doing the opposite. At least 37 states now *subsidize* data centers with tax exemptions; Virginia’s alone was projected to cost $1.5 million a year and now costs $1.6 *billion* **.** **We are paying trillion-dollar companies to occupy our land**. As Greg Miller of the Center for Land Economics argues, communities shouldn’t reject data centers *or* subsidize them; they should [negotiate harder](https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/dont-reject-data-centers-negotiate). Wherever AI touches down, the land beneath it soars in value, and the tax converts that surge into a dividend for everyone who lives there. No lobbying, no shell companies, no races to the bottom. The more valuable AI makes the land, the bigger everyone’s check can be. So a land value tax is, in a very real sense, **a way to tax the automation of work indirectly.** We don’t have to chase every token or tax every robot to capture the gains from automation. We can let the money do what money does—flow into land—and tax it *there*. Then we spread it back out, universally, so that everyone benefits. ## Why homes would get cheaper and why that needs a dividend Now for the part that makes some people nervous and it’s part of the reason we don’t already tax land value. **A land value tax would reduce the sale price of homes**. How? A recurring tax on land gets “capitalized” into a lower purchase price. If owning land carries a higher annual bill, buyers won’t pay as much up front for it. The future tax shrinks what the land is worth as an investment. Cheaper land means cheaper homes. For renters and first-time home buyers, that’s fantastic. But for everyone who already owns a home, their single biggest asset would be worth a bit less. That’s a real issue. Pretending otherwise is dishonest. I think about this the way I think about universal healthcare. I believe moving to a single-payer system would be an enormous good. It would cover everyone and cost less. It would *also* put a lot of people who work in private health-insurance administration out of a job. That doesn’t make universal healthcare a bad idea. It makes it an idea that has to come with a way to make the transition less painful. Same here. Lowering the wealth locked up in homes is good for affordability and bad for anyone counting on their house as their retirement security. **That is exactly why LVT needs a dividend, and exactly why it should be on top of other dividends.** A land value dividend compensates for reduced housing wealth. And more deeply, it changes what security even means. Instead of “buy land when young and pray it appreciates,” your security comes from a lifelong check that arrives every month no matter what. It’s also a better incentive structure for investing. As Stephen Hoskins argues, taxing land [“removes land’s role as the central pathway to retirement-saving”](https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/land-and-the-liberty-to-build-on) and pushes people to invest in productive businesses instead of speculating on dirt. That’s healthier for everyone, but only if there’s a floor underneath people while the old rules change. The dividend is that floor. And to be clear, none of this means anyone gets forced out of their home. As Henry George himself insisted, we don’t need to confiscate land—just the rent: “We may safely leave them the shell,” he wrote, “if we take the kernel.” The worry that always comes up here is the retiree who owns a now-valuable home but lives on a fixed income. The fix is simple: let owner-occupiers defer the tax until they sell the home or pass it on. The bill comes due only when the land changes hands. Nobody need be evicted by a land value tax. ## The incentive that can’t backfire Whatever you tax, you tend to get less of. Tax cigarettes, people smoke less. Tax fuel, people drive less. Tax work, people work less. Tax consumption, people consume less. Tax buildings, people build fewer buildings—which is the disaster of the property tax. Land is the magnificent exception. **You cannot get less land by taxing it.** The supply is fixed. Tax it at any rate you like and there is exactly as much land tomorrow as there was today. So what *does* the tax do? **It discourages land speculation**. Right now it’s comfortable to hold a vacant lot or an empty house and wait for the neighborhood to do the work of making it valuable. A land value tax makes that waiting expensive. Suddenly the parking lot owner is paying the same as the skyscraper owner next door, and the only way to pay that bill is to put the land to use. Convert the parking lot to a 20-story parking structure. Or build a big apartment building. Or build a skyscraper. Or sell to someone who will. The result is a tax that *increases the supply of housing.* More housing means more *affordable* housing. LVT is a tax that encourages making more of the thing we desperately need more of. That’s why Milton Friedman called the tax on the unimproved value of land [“the least bad tax,”](https://www.ubicenter.org/uk-lvt?ref=scottsantens.com) reaching all the way back to invoke “the Henry George argument of many, many years ago.” ## Public investments, private windfalls There’s one more source of land value we haven’t covered yet, and it’s the one we all pay for most directly: public investment. Announce a new light rail line through a neighborhood and the land along it instantly shoots up in value before a single rider ever boards a train. The same goes for every new school, park, sewer line, and levee. Public money goes in, and the value of the surrounding land goes up. The economist Joseph Stiglitz proved this formally in 1977 in what’s now called the [Henry George Theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry%5FGeorge%5Ftheorem?ref=scottsantens.com). Spending on public goods tends to reappear as higher land values, by at least as much as the public spent. New York just wrote this insight into law. Tucked inside the state’s latest budget is a renewed provision ([Section 119-r](https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/new-york-authorizes-a-land-value)) authorizing New York City to capture the land value created by new transit lines, through a special assessment or an outright land value tax, to help pay for the Interborough Express between Brooklyn and Queens. By one Niskanen Center estimate, that single line could generate **$1.5 to $3.5 billion** in capturable land value. Build the train, tax the windfall it creates, and the train helps pay for itself. Now contrast that with how it usually goes. The entire tax base pays for the rail but the gains fall like a lottery prize on whoever happened to already own land nearby. But they didn’t build the rail line. The public did. **A land value tax says: if public investment created the value, the public should share the value**. ## Why a dividend, and not just a tax cut Some people, hearing all this, will say: fine, tax land, but use it to cut other taxes. Lower the property tax or income tax. Lower the sales tax. Just cut taxes. This is the same problem I wrote about in my proposal to [replace the standard deduction with a standard credit](https://www.scottsantens.com/replace-the-standard-deduction-with-a-375-monthly-fully-refundable-tax-credit-for-everyone-ubi/). **Cutting taxes helps the rich more, because they pay the most tax to begin with.** A dividend helps everyone *equally*, because it’s the same dollar amount to every single person. I believe a universal dividend is the most fair way to handle land value, for the reason I’ve come back to again and again: everyone in the community creates the value of the land in that community, even those who don’t pay any property tax. The barista, the bus driver, the nurse, the kid in school; they are all part of why that land is worth what it’s worth. So when we collect the value of the land, everyone should get an equal share back. Not a tax cut weighted toward whoever currently owns the most. A dividend, weighted toward everyone equally. Watch what that does to different people: A **renter** pays nothing into a land value tax. Renters don’t own land. So a renter receives the dividend and pays zero for it. It’s pure gain for them. A family who **owns their own home and lives in it** sees their land tax go up, and their combined dividends cancel it out. It’s roughly a wash. They’re fine. Meanwhile, someone who **owns lots of homes** pays a higher tax on every one of those plots and receives exactly *one* dividend. That’s the whole design. It makes hoarding homes more expensive and makes owning your own home far easier. LVT-UBI gently pries land out of the hands of the few and puts it within reach of the many. I guarantee you that private equity funds that own tens of thousands of homes hate this idea. Oh well, I guess they’ll have to sell some homes to actual people. C’est la vie. ## But won’t rent just go up? The most common fear people have about UBI is that [landlords will just raise rents](http://widerquist.com/will-basic-income-cause-rent-to-increase/?ref=scottsantens.com) to capture it. It’s a fair fear. It’s also the fear a land value dividend is best built to answer, because every pressure it creates on rent points downward. Start with supply. As we already covered, a land value tax makes it expensive to sit on vacant lots and empty homes, and it makes building more the best way to cover the bill. More housing means more choices, and more choices means landlords competing for tenants instead of tenants competing for housing. Then add homeownership. A land value tax lowers the purchase price of homes, and a dividend helps people save up for one, while the tax makes hoarding homes a losing game. Every renter who becomes a homeowner is a customer landlords lose. Fewer renters chasing more homes pushes rents down further. Then add mobility, which I think is the most underrated effect of all. Right now, most people have to live where the jobs are, which means landlords in expensive metro areas face no real competition from landlords elsewhere. But a UBI is income that follows you wherever you go. Suddenly the person paying too much in a costly city can move somewhere cheaper without giving up their income floor. We already ran a version of this experiment. When the pandemic made remote work normal, people spread out, and rents [fell in the densest, most expensive areas while rising in cheaper surrounding ones](https://penniur.upenn.edu/publications/policy-brief-how-remote-work-is-affecting-real-estate-markets?ref=scottsantens.com). UBI would extend that freedom beyond remote workers to everyone, forcing landlords in cities to compete with landlords in cheaper areas. And if rents do still rise somewhere? Then land values rise there too, the tax collects more, and everyone’s dividend grows*.* Instead of a rent increase enriching only the landlord, it funds a bigger check for everyone. A land value dividend is a version of UBI where the thing people fear about it automatically pays for more of it. ## What the numbers look like The [UBI Center looked at a UK land value dividend](https://www.ubicenter.org/uk-lvt?ref=scottsantens.com). They modeled a 1% tax on land value which raised roughly £55 billion a year in 2021\. As an equal dividend to every person, child and adult alike, that’s about $100/mo in 2026 USD. That may sound small but that’s a poverty reduction of **20%.** The bottom tenth of the UK would see its income rise by **16%.** The top tenth would see its income fall about **2%.** Overall, **70% of people would come out ahead.** Now run the same logic for the United States. Estimating that [the privately held land here](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212041620301200?ref=scottsantens.com) is at least **$36 trillion**, a 1% land value tax on that base would raise roughly **$360 billion a year.** Spread it equally across all \~320 million American citizens and green card holders, adults and children alike, and that’s about **$90 a month.** I'd then suggest phasing it up to **5% over five to ten years.** Why 5%? Because that's roughly the rate that collects 100% of rent. Land typically earns its owner about 5% of its price in rent each year, so a tax of 5% of today's land value amounts to [collecting nearly all of the annual rent of land](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty?ref=scottsantens.com) which is exactly what Henry George proposed we do. And yes, taxing away the rent means land prices themselves would fall. That's the point. The revenue comes from the rent that land generates every year, not from its sticker price. At 5%, the same math yields roughly **$1.8 trillion a year—about $470 a month per person**—and it keeps growing as land keeps becoming more valuable to use, which it always does. Stack that onto other UBI layers and we're talking about real money, paid to everyone, for their entire lives, sufficient to end absolute poverty. ## Why this layer is state-by-state, not national There’s a problem though. At the federal level, a land value tax runs straight into the Constitution. The Constitution treats a tax on land as a “direct tax,” and it requires direct taxes to be apportioned among the states by population, with each state owing a share that matches its head count. That’s unworkable for a land tax, because land value isn’t distributed by population. The Sixteenth Amendment carved out *income* taxes from this apportionment rule in 1913, but it never touched taxes on land. So a genuine nationwide land value tax would likely require a constitutional amendment**.** That’s a high bar. But here’s the good news: **any state can tax land value on its own.** A state might need to amend its own constitution to do it, but amending one state’s constitution is a far lighter lift than amending the entire nation’s. So this is the UBI layer I imagine arriving **state by state, county by county, city by city,** or some mix of all three. Land value dividends would sit *on top of* the national UBI layers, the way Alaskans already receive their universal dividend on top of whatever the federal government happens to provide. This also creates a beautiful competition. A state that adopts a land value dividend makes its housing more affordable and puts money in every resident’s pocket, which *attracts* people to move there. States that refuse will watch their residents leave. For once, the race between states would be a race to affordable housing and economic security. ## Pennsylvania already ran the experiment Pennsylvania has already shown the good sense of taxing land value. Until this year, it was the only state with widespread municipal use of split-rate property taxes where land is taxed at a higher rate than the buildings on it. Nearly twenty municipalities have done it. Harrisburg adopted a two-rate tax in 1975 to fight Rust Belt blight. Over the next two decades, its vacant structures fell from more than 4,000 to around 500, and its number of businesses [more than quadrupled](https://www.governing.com/archive/gov-land-tax.html?ref=scottsantens.com). A study of fifteen Pennsylvania municipalities found that shifting the tax toward land grew construction, and a [Lincoln Institute analysis](https://www.lincolninst.edu/app/uploads/legacy-files/pubfiles/banzhaf-wp08sb1.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) found split-rate towns grew their housing stock roughly five percentage points faster than comparable single-rate towns. Pennsylvania isn’t even America’s first run at this. In 1912, [Houston taxed land at 75% of its value while taxing buildings at only 25%](https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/contra-watling-on-the-failure-of). The results: rents fell 20%, construction jumped 66% in six months, vacant lots filled in, and bank deposits surged. The tax commissioner behind it, J. J. Pastoriza, proved so popular that he won re-election and then the mayor’s office. And the experiment didn’t end because it failed. It ended because the Texas Supreme Court struck it down, to the delight of land speculators who were upset precisely because it worked. [Sound familiar](https://www.scottsantens.com/billionaire-fueled-lobbying-group-behind-the-state-bills-to-ban-universal-basic-income-experiments-ubi/)? New York City tells the same story from another angle. In the 1920s, the city exempted new buildings from property taxation by taxing only the land underneath and set off the biggest housing construction boom in its history; one so big it [ended the city’s housing shortage in just three years](https://chpcny.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/How%5FTax%5FExemption%5FBroke%5FDeadlock%5FNYC.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). A city facing a critical shortage, rent-gouging landlords, and inflated land prices built its way out, not with vast public spending, but by changing what it taxed. Taxing buildings less got more buildings. A century later, NYC is circling back to the same insight with its new transit provision. This idea is finally spreading again. By the Center for Land Economics’ count, LVT went from no state legislation three years ago to two states expanding LVT authority in 2026, seven more with active bills, and two more with emerging interest. Something is shifting. [The momentum is unmistakable](https://landeconomics.org/lvt-legislation?ref=scottsantens.com). ## South Korea might beat us all to it And it isn’t only an American story. South Korea may become the **first country on Earth to fund a basic income with a nationwide land value tax.** Its president even campaigned on it. [Lee Jae-myung](https://www.ubiworks.ca/blog/south-koreas-ubi-president?ref=scottsantens.com), now South Korea’s president, has spent more than a decade turning basic income from idea into policy. As governor of the country’s largest province he ran a real basic income program for young adults. And in his 2022 presidential run he proposed a national UBI funded primarily by a **land value tax and a carbon tax;** the argument being that land value belongs to the public and that taxing it can both fund a dividend and curb the real estate speculation eating the country alive. He lost that race by less than one percentage point, in part because opponents stoked fear about real estate taxes. He then won the presidency in 2025 and continues to expand the number of people receiving basic income, [starting in rural areas](https://www.asiae.co.kr/en/article/2026052016120330569?ref=scottsantens.com). And no country on Earth is better equipped to do it. The most common practical objection to a land value tax is that you can't credibly value land separately from the buildings on it. South Korea already does. [Every parcel in the entire country, separately from buildings, every single year](https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/how-to-value-land-korean-style), with the whole national operation completed in five months and the results published publicly down to the individual lot. The valuation machinery the critics say is impossible is already running there. All that's left is to attach the tax and dividend there too. LVT-UBI is *so* close there. ## The full UBI stack Now look at all my proposed UBI layers: - [**Layer 1**](https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/democrats-deduction-problem-standard-tax-credit)**:** replace the standard deduction with a refundable standard tax credit. - [**Layer 2**](https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/how-to-pay-for-ubi-stock-dilution-tax)**:** a stock dilution dividend — a wealth tax the rich can’t dodge. - [**Layer 3**](https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/fund-universal-basic-income-consumption-tax-vat)**:** a consumption dividend — a VAT or a tiny tax on transactions. - [**Layer 4**](https://www.scottsantens.com/this-idea-can-literally-change-the-world-universal-basic-income-through-carbon-pricing/)**:** a carbon dividend — a Pigovian tax on pollution. - **Layer 5:** a land value tax and dividend — implemented state by state. The first layer is a pretty boring but effective tax reform, but the other layers are all meant to distribute dividends based on shared ownership and collective value creation. This final layer is the oldest idea in the whole UBI story. [Thomas Paine argued in 1797 that the earth is the common inheritance of all, and that landowners owe the rest of us a ground-rent for it](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-spaceballs-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi/). Henry George built a movement on it. Alaska has been paying its residents a dividend on shared natural resource wealth since 1982, and no Alaskan calls it welfare. They call it their rightful share. A land value dividend is simply that same logic, applied to the most valuable resource we hold in common and the one nobody can take offshore. Plus it will solve the landlord problem and make both renting and owning housing more affordable. The skyscraper and the parking lot will always sit on equally valuable ground. The only question is whether the value of that ground keeps flowing to whoever got there first and made the rules, or whether, at last, it flows to everyone who creates its value. I think it’s past time we collect the rent we’re owed and pay it to ourselves. --- *If reading this was worth your time, it’s worth sharing with others. Share it, subscribe for free, and if you can, make a monthly pledge or buy a paid subscription to keep this work going.* [![Support my work on Patreon](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bsif!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F84fd433d-9077-4eb6-b1d5-1af775321217_461x66.png "Support my work on Patreon")](www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership) **Thank you to my UBI Producer level patrons and paid Substack subscribers*: Gisele Huff*, *Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Oliver Bestwalter, Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Frederick Weber, Tom Cooper, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Jeremy Wertheimer, Andrew Yang, Kimi Avary, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Paradigm shift, Miki Phagan, Draper Kauffman, Webmemo, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Joe Ballou, Felix Ling, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Steve Roth, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, John Sullivan, Stephen Castro-Starkey, CodyS, chris heinz, Zachary Weaver, bradzone, Tim, Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Nicolas Pouillard, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Karla Hagemeister, Mark Pierce, Fred Weber, Linda Hearne, David Allen, Janos Abel, Wendy Voahangy Ravano, Liz, and all my other monthly patrons for their support.* --- ## Do you support UBI as a tech dividend? If so, have you signed the [AI Pledge for Humanity](https://aipledgeforhumanity.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) yet? ### How to Fund Universal Basic Income by Taxing Consumption: Over $450 a Month From a VAT URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/how-to-fund-ubi-by-taxing-consumption-vat/ Last updated: 2026-07-08T16:54:52.000Z ### Pairing a 10% value-added tax or a tiny 0.1% automated transaction tax with UBI transforms a regressive tax into a progressive dividend for every American A 10% value-added tax (VAT) in the United States could raise about $1.76 trillion a year — enough to fund a universal basic income of more than $450 per month for every American citizen and green card holder, adult and child alike, with no deficit spending. So could a tiny 0.1% tax on every transaction that moves through our banking system. In this article I’m going to walk through both options, because I believe a consumption tax is another natural layer of UBI funding. More than 170 countries have a value-added tax, including [every single member of the OECD except one](https://www.cbo.gov/budget-options/54820?ref=scottsantens.com). Guess which one. The average standard rate across the OECD is [**about 19%**](https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/consumption-tax-trends-2024%5Fdcd4dd36-en.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Hungary’s is 27%. The UK’s is 20%. Even famously tax-averse Australia has one at 10%. The question isn’t whether a VAT can work. The question is why the wealthiest country on Earth refuses to use the [third-largest revenue source](https://taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-vat?ref=scottsantens.com) in the developed world. I think part of the answer is that Americans believe consumption taxes hurt the poor. And they’re right — *if* the revenue disappears into the general fund. But pair a consumption tax with a universal basic income, and something remarkable happens. A regressive tax becomes progressive in outcome. This article is a sequel of sorts. I’ve already written about [replacing the standard deduction with a $375 monthly Standard Tax Credit](https://www.scottsantens.com/replace-the-standard-deduction-with-a-375-monthly-fully-refundable-tax-credit-for-everyone-ubi/), and [a 1.5% stock dilution tax that would fund a $365 monthly universal dividend](https://www.scottsantens.com/how-do-we-pay-for-universal-basic-income-tax-stock-the-way-companies-already-issue-it/). The first layer reforms how we tax income. The second layer taxes wealth in a way no billionaire can escape. This third layer taxes consumption, and I’ll show you two different ways to go about it. ## Option one: the 10% VAT Andrew Yang made the VAT famous in American politics by proposing a 10% rate to help fund [his Freedom Dividend](https://www.scottsantens.com/there-is-no-policy-proposal-more-progressive-than-andrew-yangs-freedom-dividend/). I informally advised him on that, and I still believe it makes good sense. So let’s run the numbers with a maximally broad base, the way New Zealand does it. Tax nearly *everything*, exempt as little as possible, and handle fairness on the spending side instead of carving holes in the tax side. Americans now spend [just about $22 trillion a year](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCE?ref=scottsantens.com) on personal consumption. Even the broadest VAT base ever modeled for the US captures [about 80% of that consumption](https://www.urban.org/research/publication/effects-imposing-value-added-tax-replace-payroll-taxes-or-corporate-taxes?ref=scottsantens.com). The roughly 20% it leaves out isn't groceries or clothing; it's the handful of things that are genuinely hard to tax or that nearly every country exempts: government-financed health care like Medicare and Medicaid, education, the services of churches and charities, and the estimated value of banking services that customers pay for indirectly through lower interest on deposits or higher interest on loans instead of through direct fees. Housing gets handled the way most VATs handle it. Rather than taxing the rent people pay month to month, the base taxes the purchase of new homes, treating a house like the durable good it is. That leaves a base of roughly $17.6 trillion. A 10% rate on it raises **$1.76 trillion a year**. Now for the dividend. Like every layer in my proposed UBI stack, this one goes to **citizens and green card holders**. That’s everyone with permanent legal status, adult and child alike, equally. The Census estimates [about 342.6 million US residents as of June 2026](https://www.census.gov/popclock/?ref=scottsantens.com), and while the Bureau doesn’t tabulate legal status, subtracting temporary and unauthorized residents leaves roughly 320 million citizens and lawful permanent residents. Divide $1.76 trillion by 320 million and you get **$5,500 a year or about** **$458 per month** (or $517/mo per adult and $259/mo per child). Call it a deficit-neutral consumption dividend. I want to be clear about the range here. Estimates with narrower bases come in lower. [Yale’s Budget Lab modeled about $1 trillion](https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/modeling-revenue-and-distributional-implications-value-added-tax?ref=scottsantens.com) from a 10% VAT in 2025, and economist William Gale’s plan for Brookings [raised $842 billion in 2020](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-a-vat-could-tax-the-rich-and-pay-for-universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) on a base covering only 64% of consumption. The lesson here is that **every exemption shrinks the dividend**. Exempt food, exempt clothing, exempt this and that for seemingly compassionate reasons, and you end up mailing smaller checks to the very people the exemptions were supposed to protect. The optimal design in my opinion is the broad one. ## Doesn’t a consumption tax hurt the poor? Yes. Alone, it absolutely does. A VAT is regressive by nature because the less money you have, the larger the share of it you must spend on basics. So let’s take one of the hardest cases imaginable. Picture someone who is homeless and can spend only $1,500 a year on food. A 10% VAT turns that cost into $1,650\. We just made one of the poorest people in America pay another $150 a year to eat. That’s indefensible *if that’s where the story ends*. But it’s not where the story ends. That same person would also receive $458 a month in UBI. Subtract the $150 they paid in VAT and they come out **$5,350 ahead** — money for food, for shoes, for a phone to apply for jobs with, or their share of rent. The tax took $150 with one hand and the dividend gave back $5,500 with the other. Run that arithmetic up the income ladder and you find the crossover point: anyone spending less than $55,000 a year on taxed consumption comes out net positive. Anyone spending more becomes a net payer. The combination functions as a **negative consumption tax** — an alternative to [Milton Friedman's negative income tax](https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-is-not-cheaper-than-universal-basic-income-ubi-nor-is-guaranteed-income-more-progressive-by-excluding-the-rich/), working through consumption instead of income. That’s the beauty of it. A consumption tax is regressive in nature but the *pairing with UBI* is progressive in outcome, and the more someone consumes, the more they fund everyone else’s basic income. The person buying a third yacht pays for a lot of people’s groceries. And here’s the part that should make this especially interesting: **conservatives already agree**. The Republican [FairTax plan](https://taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-fair-tax?ref=scottsantens.com) — a national sales tax beloved by the Freedom Caucus — includes a monthly cash payment of around $300 to every household called the “Family Consumption Allowance,” precisely because its authors understood that taxing consumption without rebating it would tax people *into* poverty. [I’ve written before about how the FairTax “prebate” is a UBI](https://www.scottsantens.com/fair-tax-would-implement-universal-basic-income-ubi-fairtax/). Anyone who supports the FairTax has already conceded the principle: a consumption tax requires a UBI in order to be fair. We’re not debating *whether* anymore. We’re debating *how*. Even the economists who conservatives most respect lean this way. Greg Mankiw, who chaired George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, uses a story of two hypothetical CEOs, [Sam Spendthrift and Frank Frugal](https://mankiw.scholars.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum5931/files/mankiw/files/how%5Fto%5Fincrease%5Ftaxes%5Fon%5Fthe%5Frich%5Famended%5Ffeb2020.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Sam blows his fortune on lavish parties, private jets, and island vacations. Frank invests his, financing the capital and technology that grows the economy. An income tax treats them identically. Mankiw’s point is that the tax code should distinguish between them. A consumption tax does. It taxes the spending, not the producing. Pair it with UBI and you get the version that helps the poor and working class. ## But won’t prices just rise to eat it? This is the other great fear about UBI, right alongside the worry about work: give everyone money and businesses will simply raise prices to capture it, leaving people no better off. [It’s a fair worry but a multivariate one](https://www.scottsantens.com/17-key-variables-that-determine-ubis-inflationary-impact/). And a VAT-funded UBI answers it in a way no other funding source can, because the tax and the dividend are both coupled to prices. The dividend is funded by a percentage of what people spend, so when prices rise, the tax collected on them rises too and so the dividend rises right along with it. If a gallon of milk goes from $4 to $5, the dime the government collects flows into the same faucet that pays everyone’s monthly check. This UBI is thus self-indexing. We already have a cruder version of this in Social Security’s annual cost-of-living adjustment, the COLA. But the COLA is calculated once a year off a backward-looking index, always chasing last year’s inflation. A VAT-UBI indexes *continuously* — no annual vote, no formula to argue over, no lag. It’s a COLA without the committee. ## The tax that reaches everyone Here’s something an income tax can never do that a consumption tax can: reach the money that was never income in the first place. The wealthiest Americans have largely opted out of the income tax, and they’ve done it legally. The playbook is well known. Buy assets, borrow against them, and let the estate settle the rest. A billionaire can live lavishly for decades on loans secured by stock they never sell, and because a loan isn’t income, the income tax never touches it. My other UBI layer proposals go after this from two directions already: [the Standard Tax Credit proposal](https://www.scottsantens.com/replace-the-standard-deduction-with-a-375-monthly-fully-refundable-tax-credit-for-everyone-ubi/) taxes capital gains as ordinary income and adds a wealth tax that reaches fortunes whether or not they’re ever sold, and [the stock dilution tax](https://www.scottsantens.com/how-do-we-pay-for-universal-basic-income-tax-stock-the-way-companies-already-issue-it/) skims a share of corporate equity straight off the top. A consumption tax adds a third vector. The moment that borrowed money is spent on the yacht, the jet, or the third home, it gets taxed, because spending is spending no matter where the money came from. Income when it’s earned, wealth while it’s held, consumption when it’s spent: three different angles on the same fortune, and borrowing only slips past the first. A consumption tax doesn’t replace taxing wealth. It catches what the others miss, because eventually, everyone spends. And it catches more than just the rich. It reaches undocumented immigrants and tourists — everyone physically present, buying things, contributing to the system. I don’t mean that as anti-immigrant or anti-tourist. I mean it as a feature with a good incentive structure. Under a VAT-UBI, every new arrival makes the dividend a little larger for everyone who receives it. The more tourists, the higher your UBI. The more immigrants, the higher your UBI. People who today are told to resent newcomers as a drain would have a direct, personal stake in welcoming them. For undocumented immigrants specifically, the dividend creates something we don’t currently offer: a built-in reason to follow the rules. Pay the consumption tax with no green card and you get nothing back. Get legal status and the same tax now comes paired with a monthly dividend. That’s a powerful, non-punitive nudge toward legal immigration — but only if the system actually works. Right now it doesn’t. We’ve built an immigration process that is, for most people, an endless labyrinth of waiting lists, backlogs, and immigration courts without even close to enough resources to handle the load. You can’t credibly tell people to “just immigrate legally” when the legal door is, in practice, bolted shut. So this argument comes with a caveat: it works only if we fix the broken system first and make legal immigration a real choice instead of a decades-long maze. Build that functioning doorway, and the dividend gives people every reason to walk through it instead of around it. ## The SNAP question: stack it or swap it? A $458 monthly dividend is high enough to create a choice the other layers can’t, and I want to lay out both sides of this, because it’s genuinely an option, not a requirement. **Option A: add the layer on top of SNAP.** Everyone keeps their food assistance and gets the dividend too. Simple. Maximally generous for SNAP recipients. But not everyone in need of food assistance is a SNAP recipient. Only about [three out of five](https://cosm.aei.org/understanding-the-recent-declines-in-snap-participation/?ref=scottsantens.com) people below 130% of the poverty line get SNAP benefits. **Option B: replace SNAP with the dividend, and make it larger.** SNAP cost [about $100 billion in fiscal year 2024](https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R42505?ref=scottsantens.com). Fold that into the dividend pool and the monthly amount rises from $458 to roughly **$485 per person (**or $546/mo per adult and $273/mo per child). And here’s the key fact making replacement possible: the maximum SNAP benefit is [$298 a month for an individual and $994 for a family of four](https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/allotment/cola/fy26?ref=scottsantens.com), which works out to about $249 per person. Both dividend variants — $485 for all or $546 per adult and $273 per child — exceed the *maximum* SNAP benefit for every household size. No one would receive less than they do today, and most would receive far more, because the average SNAP benefit is only about $187 per person. And those two out of five people below 130% of the FPL that SNAP doesn’t reach would be reached by the UBI. I prefer replacement, and I want to explain why, beyond reaching all five of five. **Cash is better than vouchers.** SNAP can buy groceries and nothing else. It can’t buy diapers. It can’t buy tampons. It can’t buy soap, toilet paper, a winter coat or blanket, or the gas to drive to the only grocery store within twenty miles. Cash can buy any food anywhere food is sold, *and* everything else a human being needs to live. Vouchers say “we don’t trust you.” Cash says “you know your life better than we do.” That trust isn’t a side benefit. After a decade of watching cash transfer evidence accumulate from around the world, I’d argue that [trust ](https://www.scottsantens.com/think-like-a-martian-about-money-and-universal-basic-income-ubi/)[*is*](https://www.scottsantens.com/think-like-a-martian-about-money-and-universal-basic-income-ubi/)[ the key](https://www.scottsantens.com/think-like-a-martian-about-money-and-universal-basic-income-ubi/). Dignity does things for people that paternalism and surveillance never will. **And then there’s the marginal tax rate.** SNAP phases out as you earn income. It drops by [30 cents for every additional dollar earned](https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R42505?ref=scottsantens.com). That’s a 30% marginal tax rate stacked on top of payroll taxes, income taxes, and the phaseouts of every other means-tested program. UBI never phases out. Its marginal tax rate is 0%. Replacing SNAP with UBI therefore cuts the marginal tax rate of every SNAP household by **30 percentage points**. For someone deciding whether to take a job, pick up a shift, or accept a raise, that can be the entire difference between work that makes sense and work that punishes you for working. We have spent decades lecturing poor people about work incentives while burying them under tax rates that would make a hedge fund manager riot. Replacement with UBI fixes that. ## Option two: the tax you’d barely notice Now for the more exotic route, and one of my favorites to consider. What if instead of taxing consumption at 10%, we taxed *every transaction* at a rate so small you’d struggle to feel it? This is the **Automated Payment Transaction tax**, [proposed by economist Edgar Feige](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=2486665&ref=scottsantens.com) — a student of Milton Friedman — who suggested replacing the entire US tax system with one flat micro-tax on every payment that clears the banking system. Every purchase, every stock trade, every wire transfer, every bond sale. No deductions, no exemptions, no tax returns. The tax is collected automatically, electronically, by software, at the moment of settlement. Feige wanted the APT to replace everything. I’m proposing something far smaller: an APT sized to fund just this one UBI layer. So what percentage rate raises the same $1.76 trillion as the 10% VAT? The Federal Reserve’s settlement system Fedwire alone processes [over $1 quadrillion in transfers per year](https://www.frbservices.org/resources/financial-services/wires/volume-value-stats/annual-stats.html?ref=scottsantens.com). That’s quadrillion, with a Q. Add CHIPS, the private bank-to-bank clearing system, the ACH network, and every card swipe in America, and the total volume of US payments comfortably exceeds $1.5 quadrillion annually — more than eighty times larger than the consumption base the VAT taxes. Even if we conservatively assume the tax causes transaction volume to fall by half, as Feige himself did, we’re left with a base of about $750 trillion. To raise $1.76 trillion from that base requires a rate of about **0.12% on each side of every transaction** — a bit more than a dime from the buyer and the same from the seller on every $100 that changes hands. Buy a $5 coffee and you pay about half a cent. Buy a $30,000 car and you pay $36\. Execute a $50 million block trade of derivatives and you pay $60,000 — which is exactly the point, because the overwhelming majority of transaction volume isn’t coffee. It’s finance. The wealthy conduct a wildly disproportionate share of all transactions, which is why Feige noted the APT base is *more* skewed toward the rich than income itself. A flat rate on a base like that is progressive before the UBI even arrives. However, if electronic payments carry a tax, some people will try to escape it by living in cash or cryptocurrency, so Feige’s design applies a **higher rate on cash withdrawals and deposits**. And under an APT, crypto's on-ramps and off-ramps through the banking system are themselves taxed transactions, so the toll gets paid either way, and those too could be paid at a higher rate. The tax you’d otherwise have dodged gets collected at the door as your money exits and re-enters the banking system. There’s also a second way to do this. Instead of taxing both sides of every transaction, tax only one: the deposit side. This is the **Automated Deposit Tax** (or [“Tiny Tax”](http://thetinytax.com/?ref=scottsantens.com)) developed by William Hermann, who spent a decade promoting Feige’s APT tax before concluding that taxing *all* transactions was more complex than necessary. His version taxes money only when it lands in an account. Using Bank for International Settlements data, and after aggressively cutting the base in half twice — once to exclude untaxed trading within accounts, once more for behavioral avoidance — Hermann still arrives at a deposit base of about $458 trillion. Funding our UBI layer from that base would take a rate of roughly **0.4%** — about 40 cents per $100 deposited. So which design is better? I think reasonable people can prefer either. The case for taxing both sides is Feige’s: splitting the tax keeps each party’s rate microscopic, which minimizes anyone’s incentive to restructure their behavior around it. And it mirrors the reality that every transaction has two halves, a buyer and a seller, each receiving something of value. The case for taxing only deposits is simplicity: one collection point, one taxed party, one line item, even less to administer. And notice what the deposit-only design does to the cash problem. It mostly solves itself. Paying with cash gains the payer nothing, because the tax never fell on payments in the first place. Feige’s version needs the higher cash rate as a patch. Hermann’s version doesn’t need the patch at all. Either way, here’s what I most want people to understand: **this is not really a new idea. It’s a system already operating at a smaller scale.** Every time you swipe a card, [the card networks and banks skim a swipe fee of roughly 2% to 3%](https://www.britannica.com/money/credit-card-interchange-fees?ref=scottsantens.com) — automatically, invisibly, by software, with no forms and no filings. Merchants have lived with it for decades. The entire payments system is *already* a transaction-tax collection apparatus. It just collects for shareholders instead of for the public. Banks could implement an APT or ADT the same way they implement everything else: a few lines of code at settlement, the tax swept into a Treasury account before anyone could even think about evading it. A fee of 0.12% to 0.4% is a small fraction of what every merchant in America already hands to the card networks without a second thought, except this fee would come back to everyone, every month. ## The tax base of the AI century There’s one more reason I believe a consumption tax layer belongs in UBI’s design stack, and it’s the reason I keep coming back to in much of what I write recently: **artificial intelligence**. Our entire tax system leans on labor. Payroll taxes and income taxes supply the bulk of federal revenue. So what happens as AI and robots perform a growing share of the work? When a machine takes a job, the paycheck disappears, and so does every tax that paycheck carried. A tax system built on labor is a tax system built on a melting glacier. The answer is to shift taxation toward the things automation *can’t* shrink and instead will *grow*: wealth and transactions. The [stock dilution tax handles the wealth side](https://www.scottsantens.com/how-do-we-pay-for-universal-basic-income-tax-stock-the-way-companies-already-issue-it/). A consumption tax handles the transaction side. AI and robots don’t earn wages, but they *are* bought, and they *do* transact. A VAT captures the value the machines add the moment their output is sold. And an APT goes further still, capturing the torrent of machine-to-machine payments that the agentic AI economy is already beginning to generate — software autonomously buying compute, data, and services from other software, billions of times a day, at speeds no payroll tax will ever touch. Human labor may decline as a share of the economy. Transactions won’t. They will grow. We should tax the thing that grows. ## Multiple layers. One floor. No poverty. So let’s stack the layers to measure the full stack. [The Standard Tax Credit](https://www.scottsantens.com/replace-the-standard-deduction-with-a-375-monthly-fully-refundable-tax-credit-for-everyone-ubi/): **$375 a month**. [The Great American Dividend from the stock dilution tax](https://www.scottsantens.com/how-do-we-pay-for-universal-basic-income-tax-stock-the-way-companies-already-issue-it/): **$365 a month**. The consumption tax dividend, with SNAP folded in: **$485 a month**. That’s **$1,225 per month — $14,700 a year — for every American citizen and green card holder, adult and child alike**, funded entirely by reforming income taxes, taxing wealth through dilution, and taxing consumption. A single parent with two kids would have a floor of $44,100 a year before earning a single dollar of wages. A family of four: almost $60,000. And notice something: the VAT and the APT aren’t mutually exclusive. Do *both* and the consumption layer roughly doubles, lifting the total to around **$1,685 per month per person**, or more than $20,000 a year. The federal poverty line for a single adult is about $15,650\. So that’s a UBI that **ends poverty in America** — permanently. None of this requires inventing anything. The VAT runs in 170+ countries. The transaction tax already runs invisibly inside every payment network as processing fees. The dividend already runs in Alaska. The prebate is already in a bill many Republicans love. All the parts are just sitting there, tested and waiting. The only thing America hasn’t done is pick them up and assemble them. We’re the weird country without a VAT. Fine. Then let’s be weird in the other direction too, and become the first country whose consumption taxes end poverty. --- *If reading this was worth your time, it’s worth sharing with others. Share it, subscribe for free, and if you can, make a monthly pledge or buy a paid subscription to keep this work going.* [![Support my work on Patreon](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bsif!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F84fd433d-9077-4eb6-b1d5-1af775321217_461x66.png "Support my work on Patreon")](https://www.patreon.com/c/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Thank you to my UBI Producer level patrons and paid Substack subscribers*: Gisele Huff, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Oliver Bestwalter, Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Frederick Weber, Tom Cooper, Joanna Zarach, Mgmuyy, Albert Wenger, Jeremy Wertheimer, Andrew Yang, Kimi Araya, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Innen, Paradigm shift, Miki Phagan, Draper Kauffman, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Joe Ballou, Arjun Banker, Christine Celli, Felix Ling, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Steve Roth, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, John Sullivan, Stephen Castro-Starkey, CodyS, chris heinz, Zachary Weaver, bradzone, Tim, Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Nicolas Pouillard, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Karla Hagemeister, Mark Pierce, Fred Weber, Linda Hearne, David Allen, Janos Abel, Wendy Voahangy Ravano, Liz, and all my other monthly patrons for their support.* --- ## Do you support UBI as an AI dividend? If so, have you signed the [AI Pledge for Humanity](https://aipledgeforhumanity.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) yet? ### How Do We Pay for Universal Basic Income? Tax Stock the Way Companies Already Issue It. URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/how-do-we-pay-for-universal-basic-income-tax-stock-the-way-companies-already-issue-it/ Last updated: 2026-06-11T17:22:35.000Z ### A 1.5% annual stock dilution tax on corporations with revenue over $100M would raise over $1.4 trillion a year — enough to send every American about $365 a month, automatically. Corporations issue new stock all the time — to raise cash, to pay executives, to swallow up other companies. So here’s a question: what if they had to issue a little new stock to the rest of us, too? I call it a stock dilution tax, and I think it’s the cleanest way to pay for a universal basic income (UBI) with a wealth tax. Make every large corporation mint 1.5% in fresh shares each year, sell them off slowly, and hand the proceeds to every American — roughly $365 a month, with no new bureaucracy and nowhere for the wealthy to hide from it. I’m not the only one thinking about this approach. This week, [Senator Bernie Sanders announced](https://www.commondreams.org/news/bernies-sanders-ai-sovereign-wealth-fund?ref=scottsantens.com) the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which would hit the biggest AI companies with a one-time 50% tax to be paid in stock and to drop those shares into a fund that pays dividends to all of us. Last year, [Trump signed an executive order](https://www.benzinga.com/news/politics/25/09/47438150/trump-wants-americas-own-sovereign-wealth-fund-but-what-is-it-anyway?ref=scottsantens.com) to create a sovereign wealth fund, and his administration has been grabbing equity along the way — [a roughly 10% stake in Intel](https://thediplomat.com/2025/10/intel-nvidia-and-the-asia-factor-in-the-uss-unconventional-sovereign-wealth-fund/?ref=scottsantens.com), a chunk of the rare-earth company MP Materials, a “golden share” in U.S. Steel. And as I write this, senior officials are [reportedly in early talks](https://thenextweb.com/news/us-officials-have-discussed-taking-government-stakes-in-ai-companies?%5Fbhlid=60ee96cd946a8e0845408c3f06eb3cdb2e446aa6&ref=scottsantens.com) with the big AI companies about having them voluntarily hand the government shares, with a dividend paid to American households floated as one thing to do with the proceeds. Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla [floated taking 10% of every public company](https://techcrunch.com/?p=3063088&ref=scottsantens.com) and pooling it for the people. And back in 2021, Sam Altman [proposed almost exactly this](https://moores.samaltman.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) in his essay “Moore’s Law for Everything” where he suggested an American Equity Fund capitalized by taxing big companies 2.5% of their market value every year, payable in shares. So the question is no longer *whether* the public should own a stake in the wealth we all help create. Experts regardless of party affiliation have basically conceded that point. The question now is *how*. And on the *how*, I think everyone is making the same mistake. They all want to build a giant pile of wealth. I don’t. I want to build a faucet. ## The mechanism: a tax companies pay by printing shares Here’s the deal. Require every covered business entity — public or private — with either more than $100 million in annual revenue or more than $100 million in fair-market equity value to issue new shares or equivalent ownership interests equal to 1.5% of its value each year into a public dividend fund. The revenue threshold captures the roughly [35,000](https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2022/econ/susb/2022-susb-annual.html?ref=scottsantens.com) large U.S. firms that can be measured from Census business data, while the valuation threshold prevents high-value private firms from escaping merely because they have low current revenue or stay private. At today’s valuations, that’s around **$1.44 trillion a year**. Divide it across every legal permanent resident, adult and child, and you get roughly **$365 a month, for everyone, permanently**,in a way that grows as the value of America’s corporations grows. Notice what each company actually does to pay this tax. It doesn’t write a check. It doesn’t sell a factory. It simply **issues new shares**, [the same way a government issues new currency](https://www.scottsantens.com/how-money-is-born-out-of-public-spending-and-dies-by-taxes-mmt/). A company that’s worth $100 billion issues $1.5 billion in fresh stock and the public now owns it. It’s the most painless wealth tax ever designed, and it’s also the most inescapable one ever designed. Think about what dilution does. When you mint 1.5% more shares, every existing share is now worth a hair less, because each one represents a slightly smaller slice of the same company. It’s inflation, but for stocks instead of dollars. And here’s the best part: **there is no escaping it.** Billionaires can move to Monaco. They can hire the cleverest tax lawyers on Earth. They can route their fortunes through a dozen shell companies in a dozen countries. None of it matters. Their shares are worth slightly less no matter where they happen to sit, because there are simply more of those shares in the world now. You cannot flee dilution. You cannot deduct it. You cannot offshore it. It finds you wherever you are. And it’s gentle. At 1.5% dilution, the very wealthy don’t *lose* wealth — they just gain it a little more slowly. Instead of their fortunes compounding at, say, 10% a year, maybe they compound at 8.5%. They still get richer. They just share a sliver of the upside with the rest of us on the way up. I think that’s a deal almost anyone can live with, including them. ## My twist: don’t hoard the shares — sell them, steadily, and refill every year This is where I part ways with Bernie and Trump and Altman and Khosla — and with Matt Bruenig, whose [Social Wealth Fund for America](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/social-wealth-fund/?ref=scottsantens.com) is the most carefully worked-out version of the whole idea. Every one of their proposals ends with a giant pile of stock sitting in a government fund, like Norway’s, or Alaska’s, growing over time while it pays out a small percentage of its total value each year. [Alaska’s Permanent Fund](https://source.washu.edu/2018/04/childhood-poverty-cost-u-s-1-03-trillion-in-a-year-study-finds/?ref=scottsantens.com) pays residents a dividend from only a small slice of its holdings, precisely so the fund keeps growing. That’s a fine model if your goal is to hoard wealth. But why would we want to hoard public wealth? The whole problem is the hoarding. The answer can’t be another hoard. I’ve written [a book about how money actually works](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) for a country that issues its own currency, and the short version is this: the United States does not need to stockpile money before it can spend money. It is not a household. It creates dollars when it spends and deletes them when it taxes. So there is no reason — *none* — for a vast hoard of wealth at the federal level when we could be putting it directly into people’s hands. A hoard is what you build when you’re afraid you’ll run out. A currency issuer never runs out. So here’s what I’d do instead. Call it a **temporary holding fund** — a faucet, not a hoard. A company issues its shares into the fund. There are about 250 trading days in a year. Each day, the fund sells 1/250th of those shares. And it doesn’t dump them all at the opening bell — it sells them at a slow, steady drip across each trading day, the way an algorithm quietly works a large order so it doesn’t move the price. The goal is to be the most boring participant in the market: to sell every single share over the course of the year so smoothly that nobody can even tell. Then, the next year, the companies refill the fund, and we do it all again. The proceeds get paid out to every American as **The Great American Dividend**. We could call the law that creates it the “**GAINS Act”** — *Granting Americans Income from National Shares.* We wouldn’t hoard the gains. We’d share them. We wouldn’t invest the gains in the markets. We’d invest them in each other. To make the system simple, payments would be based on the previous year’s realized proceeds. On January 1, covered companies would issue shares or equivalent ownership interests into a public dividend fund. Over the course of that year, the fund would gradually convert those assets into cash. Then, the following year, the realized proceeds would be paid out in equal monthly checks. That means the 2028 dividend would be funded by the equity collected and sold in 2027, while the 2028 equity batch would be collected and sold to fund 2029\. No guesswork. No monthly market swings. Just last year’s shared corporate wealth becoming this year’s monthly public dividend. “But won’t selling stock every single day crater the market?” That’s a fair question to ask, and the answer is no. The reason why is the whole point of the daily drip. Markets get hurt by *surprise* and by *size*: a sudden dump nobody saw coming. A slow, fully predictable, evenly spaced sale of a known quantity is the opposite of that. It’s the most digestible kind of selling there is. And here’s the part that should settle that worry completely: **we already run this exact machine in reverse, every single year**. American corporations currently spend [more than a trillion dollars a year buying back their own stock](https://www.interactivebrokers.com/campus/traders-insight/securities/stocks/2025-buyback-spree-is-top-heavy-as-fewer-firms-repurchase-shares/?ref=scottsantens.com) — about $1.1 trillion in 2025, an all-time record — *removing* shares from the market and funneling the gains to the people who already own them. **My dilution tax is simply buybacks run backward**. Instead of companies pulling shares out to further enrich existing shareholders, we sell shares to enrich everyone. If the market can swallow a trillion dollars of share *buying* a year, it can absorb a comparable amount of share *selling* the same way. There's one honest difference — buybacks nudge prices up, and selling nudges them down — but the daily drip keeps that nudge faint, and much of the time we'd simply be offsetting buybacks already underway. And there's one more advantage I care about. Because the fund sells everything it receives, it never builds up a permanent stake in anybody. The government does not slowly accumulate voting shares and board seats and the power to punish or reward. Bernie and I want a lot of the same things here — broad public ownership of the wealth we all helped build, the rich paying in, everyone collecting a dividend — and his version is sincere about all of it. I just don't want the state holding the controls, and the reason is sitting right in front of us: Trump's administration has been grabbing equity selectively, picking which companies get a federal partner and which don't. That's the danger with state-held shares. The same machinery one administration builds to do good, the next one inherits to reward friends and punish enemies. There's a second danger, too: a government that owns shares in companies it also regulates becomes both shareholder and referee — the very objection [critics are already raising](https://www.notus.org/technology/trump-ai-stake-openai?ref=scottsantens.com). A fund that sells everything is never the lasting shareholder, so it never compromises the referee. So I'd rather the public own the *wealth* without the government owning the *control*. My approach is a wealth fund that hoards nothing and controls nothing. A wealth fund that never becomes a power grab. --- > *Thank you to all my monthly patrons who contribute to making my articles free for all. If you find value in my writing and would like to support it, please join* [*my Patreon*](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) *or become a paid subscriber on* [*my Substack*](https://scottsantens.substack.com/)*.* --- ## Why we’ve earned this You might be thinking: sure, painless and inescapable, but on what grounds do we get to hand ourselves a slice of companies we didn’t build? On every ground there is. Start with the research. Almost none of the technology these companies are built on came from the private sector alone, because the riskiest, earliest, least-profitable science is exactly what the market won’t fund. The public funds it. In [*Jump-Starting America*](https://mitsloan.mit.edu/press/jump-starting-america-new-book-mits-jonathan-gruber-and-simon-johnson-argues-public-investment-science-key-to-revving-u-s-growth-engine?ref=scottsantens.com), economists Simon Johnson and Jonathan Gruber lay out how, beginning in 1940, massive public investment — WWII research and then the Space Race panic after Sputnik — built radar, jet engines, digital computers, and eventually the internet that private companies turned into fortunes. Federal R&D spending peaked at around 2% of GDP in 1964\. Today it’s [about 0.6%](https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf26314?ref=scottsantens.com). People have no idea how much of the stock market’s wealth was seeded by public money. Every pharmaceutical company on Earth is, in some real sense, standing on a mountain of public-funded basic research. The profits got privatized. The bill got socialized. Then there’s the new wrinkle: AI. We all trained it. Every search, every post, every photo, every sentence any of us ever wrote online became fuel for these models — uncompensated labor, performed by billions of us, that now powers trillion-dollar companies. That’s why I launched the [**AI Pledge for Humanity**](https://aipledgeforhumanity.org/?ref=scottsantens.com). The people building AI keep telling us that something like UBI will be necessary. Elon Musk says “universal high income” is the best way to deal with AI-driven unemployment, and Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis has said much the same. Okay. Now let’s hold them to it. We trained the machines. We funded the science. We deserve to be treated as what we already are: **shareholders.** And companies issuing stock to be sold in our name is how you actually make us shareholders, instead of just promising to. ## Turning it up $365 a month as a universal dividend is a real floor, but it’s a starting point, not a ceiling. There are ways to make it bigger. First, raise the dilution rate. Because the faucet pays out everything it collects, the math here is simple: the UBI rises in a straight line with the rate. Every extra half a percentage point adds roughly $122 a month to everyone’s check. At 2% it’s about $487 a month per person. At 2.5% — the rate Sam Altman himself proposed — it’s around $608\. At 3%, about $730\. There’s no hidden cliff, no point where collecting more quietly starts collecting less. You just turn the dial. So why not crank it to 3% on day one? Because the smart move I think is to just get it going. I’d launch at 1.5%, prove the mechanism works, and get checks into people’s hands, because once a UBI exists, raising it becomes one of the most popular votes in all of politics. Then I’d crank it to 2.5% over a few years, and treat 3% as the ambitious ceiling we reach only once the system is mature. And remember, this is an inescapable wealth tax. Elon’s shares are worth slightly less the instant we mint more of them, and he can’t run from it. It’s so much easier than chasing his assets around the globe with auditors. We don’t have to hunt down his wealth. We just have to dilute it. Second, I like the idea of pairing the dilution tax with a value-added tax of 10% or a tiny tax on all financial transactions — something like 0.25%, in the spirit of what economists call a [Tobin tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobin%5Ftax?ref=scottsantens.com). This barely touches an ordinary person who buys and holds, but it bites the high-frequency traders who make their money off astronomical volumes of trades. It would tax the churn at the top and, as a bonus, nudge everyone toward investing for the long term instead of skimming pennies off millions of trades a second. I see it as an optional add-on for a larger UBI. And then there’s what I’ve argued for elsewhere: replacing the standard deduction with a [refundable standard ](https://www.scottsantens.com/)[*credit*](https://www.scottsantens.com/). Stack that on top of the dilution dividend and the consumption dividend, and a $100/ton carbon fee and 1% land value tax and we’d be talking about a poverty-eliminating multi-layered UBI **exceeding $1,500 a month** — over $3,000 a month for a couple and over $6,000 a month for a family of four. ## But won’t this shrink my 401(k)? Here’s the objection that deserves the most honest answer of all, because it’s the one that will worry regular people rather than billionaires. If we dilute every company’s shares, we dilute the shares sitting in *our* retirement accounts. That’s true. So let’s walk through exactly what it does to us — because once you see the math, the worry should evaporate. Start with what your 401(k) is actually made of (if you even have one). Almost nobody holds 100% stocks for a lifetime. A typical retirement plan lands somewhere around a 60/40 mix — roughly 60% stocks, 40% bonds. So the drag on your account isn’t the headline rate. It’s about 60% of it. At a 2.5% dilution, a typical account grows roughly 1.5% a year slower than it otherwise would have. At the 1.5% launch rate, under 1% slower. Real, but a long way from scary. Now the part that matters most, and it’s a matter of simple arithmetic. The dilution cost is *proportional* — it scales with how much stock you own, so a small saver barely feels it while a large one feels it a lot. But the UBI is *flat* — the same dollar amount lands in every account, whether you’ve saved millions or nothing. Proportional cost, flat benefit. That means there is a crossover point: below it, your monthly check exceeds your loss, and above it, the loss exceeds the check. So where does the line fall? Run the numbers and it sits at roughly **half a million dollars per person.** And here’s the best part — *it doesn’t move when you change the rate.* Crank the dilution from 1.5% to 3% and the hit your retirement account takes gets bigger, yes, but so does your dividend, so the crossover stays put right around $500,000\. No matter how high you set the dial, the same group of people are the only ones who end up net contributors. Raising the rate doesn’t really shift who comes out ahead or behind. It only deepens how much the very top shares with everyone else. So how many people end up with less in retirement? And who sits above that line? Hardly anybody. Only [about 9% of households that have any retirement account at all hold $500,000 or more](https://www.nerdwallet.com/retirement/learn/the-average-retirement-savings-by-age-and-why-you-need-more?ref=scottsantens.com), and since [barely half of U.S. households have a retirement account in the first place](https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12928?ref=scottsantens.com), that’s only around 5% of all households. The richest 5 to 10 percent. Everyone else — the overwhelming majority of us — comes out ahead. It’s even better for couples, because the UBI is paid per person while the savings usually aren’t. In most two-earner households, the bulk of the retirement money sits concentrated in one person’s account, yet *both* people collect the dividend. Two checks against one diluted nest egg pushes the household crossover up close to a full million dollars. A retired couple sitting on almost a million dollars still comes out ahead. Two basic incomes, every month, for the rest of both their lives, easily outrun the slightly slower growth on their savings. In summary, a slightly smaller nest egg plus a universal dividend beats a slightly larger nest egg and no universal dividend, for roughly 9 out of 10 of us. The only people who’d be modestly worse off are the households least likely to need the help, the ones already sitting on seven figures. ## What we should actually want Decades ago, the writer Robert Anton Wilson described something he called the [RICH Economy](https://c4ss.org/content/54156?ref=scottsantens.com) — Rising Income through Cybernetic Homeostasis. The idea was that automation shouldn’t be something we dread. It should be something we *cheer for*, because the machines doing more of the work means more abundance for everyone, paid out as a dividend to all. That’s the world I want. I want our companies to win. I want the robots to work for us and the AI to make productivity charts go up, up, up. But right now, none of that helps you unless you happen to own a lot of stock. The stock market and the economic security of ordinary Americans have come completely uncoupled from each other. The market hits record highs in the same week that families can’t cover an emergency. The productivity belongs to the machines. The gains belong to the shareholders. And most of us are neither. The stock dilution tax couples those two things back together. It makes every American a shareholder, automatically, by birthright, in the success of the whole economy — so that when our companies do better, *we all* do better. Not metaphorically. Literally, in dollars, every month. We get to want them to succeed because their success is finally our success too. We helped pay for the science. We trained the AI. We are the customers, the data, the workforce, and the reason any of it has any value at all. [The wealth was built on a foundation all of us laid, going back generations](https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-ubi-is-your-productivity-dividend-its-the-only-way-to-all-share-what-we-all-built/). Our dividend is not charity, and it’s not radical. It’s ours, and it’s overdue. Let’s not build a giant pile of stocks. Let’s build the faucet — and finally turn it on. --- *If reading this was worth your time, it’s worth sharing with others. Share it, subscribe for free, and if you can, *make a monthly pledge* to keep this work going.* [![Support my work on Patreon](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bsif!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F84fd433d-9077-4eb6-b1d5-1af775321217_461x66.png "Support my work on Patreon")](https://www.patreon.com/cw/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) **Thank you to my UBI Producer level patrons and paid Substack subscribers*: Gisele Huff, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Oliver Bestwalter, Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Frederick Weber, Tom Cooper, Joanna Zarach, Mgmuyy, Albert Wenger, Jeremy Wertheimer, Andrew Yang, Kimi Araya, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Innen, Paradigm shift, Miki Phagan, Draper Kauffman, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Joe Ballou, Arjun Banker, Christine Celli, Felix Ling, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Steve Roth, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, John Sullivan, Stephen Castro-Starkey, CodyS, chris heinz, Zachary Weaver, bradzone, Tim, Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Nicolas Pouillard, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Karla Hagemeister, Mark Pierce, Fred Weber, Linda Hearne, David Allen, Janos Abel, Wendy Voahangy Ravano, Liz, and all my other monthly patrons for their support.* --- ## Do you support UBI as an AI dividend? If so, have you signed the [AI Pledge for Humanity](https://aipledgeforhumanity.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) yet? ### The Primordial Credit Argument for Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-primordial-credit-argument-for-unconditional-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2026-06-03T17:46:46.000Z ### What David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years reveals about gratitude, interdependence, and why UBI is the smallest acknowledgment civilization can make to the unpayable debt of being alive Every time I drop a bag of garbage down the chute in my building, I think about debt. Not the kind you pay back in monthly installments. Not the kind that shows up on a credit report. I mean the kind you can never repay no matter how long you live or how hard you work. The debt of being alive at all. Someone built that chute. Someone engineered the pipes that carry water to my faucet and the sewers that carry it away. Someone built the truck that takes the garbage somewhere I will never see, and someone built the road the truck drives on, and someone refined the diesel, and someone before them figured out that crude oil was useful for anything at all. The chain goes back to people whose names I will never know. Every time I drop that bag, I am the beneficiary of thousands of years of accumulated effort. I did almost none of that work. I will never be able to do enough work to repay it. This is the idea David Graeber surfaces in [*Debt: The First 5,000 Years*](https://amzn.to/4nH1Xke?ref=scottsantens.com), drawing on the French anthropologist Philippe Rospabe. Long before money was a medium of exchange or a unit of account, it was something stranger. **It was an acknowledgment that you owed something you could never give back.** Rospabe studied “primitive money” — the cattle, shells, brass rods, and copper bracelets used in marriage payments across societies on every inhabited continent. The conventional reading was that these were *bridewealth*: a man’s family paid the bride’s family to compensate them for the loss of her labor. Rospabe argued the opposite. The payment was not compensation. Nothing of that scale could ever be compensation. A woman who joined a new family and bore children for that family handed over something even a large quantity of goods could never match. The payment was instead, in Graeber’s phrasing, “not to settle a debt, but as a kind of acknowledgment that there exists a debt that cannot be settled.” Money, Graeber wrote, summarizing Rospabe, “begins, as Rospabe himself puts it, ‘as a substitute for life.’” One might call it a life-debt. “Money is first and foremost an acknowledgment that one owes something much more valuable than money.” Read that sentence again. **Money is first and foremost an acknowledgment that one owes something *much* more valuable than money**. This is what unconditional basic income actually is. Not a welfare program. Not a stimulus. Not a transfer. UBI is a society asking for something so uniquely valuable that payment of any sort would be impossible — and offering, in return, the smallest possible gesture of recognition. **UBI is *lifewealth*. Not paid to settle a debt, but paid to acknowledge a debt that cannot be settled**. ## The Time Cone Imagine your life as a point. Behind you stretches an enormous time cone widening into the past. In that cone is every human who ever lived, every tool they made, every language they shaped, every disease they survived, every fire they tended, every plant they grew, every animal they domesticated, every law they argued over. All of it converges on you. You are alive because that cone exists. In front of you stretches another time cone widening into the future. In that cone are your children, if you have them, and their children, and everyone they will know and love and work with. All your work — paid and unpaid — is one of the lines feeding that cone. So is your every action, your kindness to a stranger, the time you took to teach a kid something. So is the art and science and knowledge you help generate, or the art and science and knowledge you help support by participating in a civilization where those things can exist. There is no equivalent for a human life. Not money. Not goods. Not even another human life. The only thing that even comes close to matching a life is another life, but lives are not for trading. When someone is born, and they live, and they have children who have children, and they do work that allows other people to do work, and together they produce art that outlasts them and science that compounds and knowledge that propagates, the total can never be tallied. Even with everything society gives you as your inheritance just for showing up — language, plumbing, antibiotics, the alphabet, basic literacy, the periodic table, music, electricity — it is not enough. The debt remains. UBI is a small payment, made during your life, recognizing the future time cone you are part of. It is also a payment that makes you feel a debt to the past time cone, to everything that came before you. We owe each other in both directions. Forward and back. **Society owes us something it cannot fully give. We owe society something we cannot fully give**. UBI is both sides of that ledger written in the smallest possible numbers, just enough to say: yes, the debt exists. There is a name for the first half of this in anthropological theory: [*primordial debt*](https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Primordial%5FDebt%5FTheory?ref=scottsantens.com). The idea is that money emerges from the recognition of an absolute debt to what gave you life — to your ancestors, to your gods, to the society that made you possible. Graeber engages with primordial debt theory throughout his book, with both interest and skepticism. What he helped me see is the symmetry that primordial debt theory misses on its own. **If there is a primordial debt running from each of us to society, there is also a *primordial credit* running the other way — from society to every individual it brings into existence**. We are each born into both at the same moment. Both are absolute. Both are unpayable. The work we spend our lives doing runs along the debt side of the ledger. UBI runs along the credit side. Neither side ever balances. Neither side is supposed to. ## What Gratitude Research Actually Found Psychologists have spent the past two decades building a small mountain of evidence that the simple practice of noticing what you owe other people makes you measurably happier. The opening salvo was Robert Emmons at UC Davis and Michael McCullough at the University of Miami, who in 2003 ran what is now the [foundational study](https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.2.377?ref=scottsantens.com). Three groups, ten weeks. One wrote weekly about things they were grateful for. One wrote about daily hassles. One wrote about neutral events. The gratitude group reported higher levels of optimism, fewer physical complaints, more time exercising, and a greater sense of connection to others. That paper landed in a young field. I got my psychology degree in 2004 with a focus on cognitive neuroscience, which is to say I was studying the brain right as [positive psychology](https://positivepsychology.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) was just beginning to crystallize as a coherent discipline. Almost everything we now know about positive psychology came after my time in college. Reading Daniel Gilbert’s [*Stumbling on Happiness*](https://amzn.to/4nKXxsD?ref=scottsantens.com) in 2008 was the first time it really hit me how much there was to learn here that nobody had taught me, and how much of what we think we know about happiness is wrong. I love using what science actually figures out about happiness to live a better, happier, more fulfilled life. If I ever have the time — maybe after we all have UBI — I’d happily go back for a PhD in this stuff. In the twenty-plus years since that first paper, the evidence has accumulated. The largest synthesis to date came out in [PNAS in July 2025](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2425193122?ref=scottsantens.com): a meta-analysis by Choi, Cha, McCullough, Coles, and Oishi covering 145 studies, 727 effect sizes, and nearly 25,000 participants across 28 countries. **Gratitude interventions reliably produce small but real increases in well-being across cultures**. Small effects, repeated across a lifetime, compound. So does the alternative. One finding I want to flag, because it matters for the argument I am making. Several studies on what researchers call the [“proximal experience” of gratitude](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0179123&ref=scottsantens.com) — what it actually feels like — have found that gratitude exercises produce a mixed emotional state. People feel uplifted *and* indebted at the same time. The uplift is what positive psychology mostly measures. The indebtedness is what Graeber was writing about. They are not opposites. They are the same feeling, viewed from different angles. When you notice what you have been given, you feel grateful, and you feel a debt, because both are responses to the same fact about the world. I feel grateful about a lot of things. I do not know whether this is because I have lived with my own basic income, funded by patrons, since 2015\. It might just be how I am wired or because of how I grew up and what I’ve read and experienced. But I think about it constantly. Literally every time I walk to the garbage chute. Every time I turn on a faucet. There are people on this planet today walking miles to fetch water. I am not one of them. I did nothing to earn not being one of them. I am alive in a building someone built, drinking water delivered by pipes, on a street someone paved, in a country someone fought to build for me before I existed. Pick up a pen. Could you make that pen from its raw materials? Most of us could not. We could not smelt the metal in the clip. We could not refine the plastic from petroleum we cannot extract. We could not formulate the ink. Maybe you are the rare person who could pull it off given enough time. If so, ask yourself how many hours of your life it would take. A pen costs a dollar. The labor compressed into that dollar runs into the thousands of human-years. A round-trip flight across the country costs around $500\. Many of us complain about that. We have a sense that $500 is not cheap, and a sense that what we are buying is too expensive. But $500 is roughly twenty hours of work at a median wage. Twenty hours of work in exchange for being lifted into the sky and moved three thousand miles in five hours, in a sealed aluminum tube, kept alive in conditions that would otherwise kill you, by a vehicle that took roughly a century of accumulated aeronautical engineering to design, built by a global supply chain of hundreds of thousands of people. Think about just the aluminum for a moment. The skin of that plane is made out of *rocks*. Specifically, bauxite ore that has to be mined out of the ground, crushed, refined into alumina, and then electrolyzed at temperatures approaching a thousand degrees or around 200 megajoules per kilogram — a process so energy-intensive that aluminum was, in the 1880s, [more valuable than gold](https://clintonaluminum.com/aluminum-was-once-worth-more-than-gold-and-silver/?ref=scottsantens.com). We figured out how to make it cheap. Now we fly across continents in tubes of it. Twenty hours of your work, in exchange for that. Do you feel you have paid that debt? Do you feel you deserve that capability? I do not. I do not feel I could ever do enough work to pay the debt of a single flight. Every product from pen to plane is a frozen pool of human effort, almost all of it uncompensated, much of it forgotten, none of it possible without everyone else. ## The Stress That Eats Gratitude There is an obvious problem with telling people to be grateful, and I want to name it before going further. A lot of people are suffering. A lot of people are exhausted and stressed the hell out. A lot of people are working two jobs, sleeping four hours, drowning in medical debt, watching their rent rise faster than their wages, raising children in a country that does not give a damn whether those children make it. Asking someone in that position to keep a gratitude journal can sound, depending on your tone, somewhere between unhelpful and obscene. The K-shaped economy we live in is, among other things, **a machine for grinding gratitude out of people**. Chronic stress narrows attention. It makes the future look like a threat instead of a promise. It makes other people look like competitors instead of collaborators. A brain steeped in cortisol does not notice how amazing a plane actually is. It’s too busy calculating whether the rent will clear. So when I say I think gratitude is one of the most useful practices a human being can take up, I mean that *and* I mean that we have built a civilization that makes the practice nearly impossible for huge numbers of people. The fault is not theirs. The fault is the system. Here is where UBI comes back in. **If you want a society in which more people can feel grateful, you have to give them something to be grateful for**. You have to take the goddamn boot off their necks. You have to make the rent clear without panic. You have to make a sick day not catastrophic. You have to make food not a question. The most efficient way to do this, [more efficient than any program targeted at “deserving” subsets of the population](https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/the-universality-argument-for-basic-income-ubi), is to put a floor under everyone and let them stand on it. UBI does not solve every problem a human can have. It does not cure cancer ([even though it will reduce it](https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-ubi/)). It does not end loneliness ([even though it does reduce it](https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-ubi-increases-social-cohesion-capital-trust/)). What it does is move the ground beneath you up by a few feet, so the next wave that comes does not drown you. And once you are not drowning, you can look around. You can notice the awesome plane. You can notice the chute. **You can notice you are aliv**e. ## Trust Is the Substance There is one more piece of this I want to put in front of you, because I think it is the part most people miss when they argue about UBI. **UBI is not really about money. The money is the medium.** [**The substance is trust**](https://www.scottsantens.com/think-like-a-martian-about-money-and-universal-basic-income-ubi/)**.** Money, [Alan Watts liked to say](https://www.scottsantens.com/yeah-but-who-is-going-to-pay-for-it-basic-income-alan-watts), is a way of measuring what we owe the community and what the community owes us. Bookkeeping. But the bookkeeping only works because the people on each side of the ledger trust each other. The dollar in your pocket is a piece of paper. It does what it does because the person you hand it to trusts that the next person will accept it. Pull the trust out and the paper is paper. Money is trust wearing a costume. UBI takes that same logic and applies it to people directly. **The message of UBI, stripped of the fiscal jargon, is one sentence: “*I trust you* *.”*** I trust that if I give you what you need to live, you will use it to live. I trust that you do not need a caseworker checking up on you. I trust that you do not need to prove you are looking for work. I trust that you do not need to be poor enough or sick enough or pathetic enough to deserve it. You are a human being. **You exist**. That is sufficient. Our current system says the opposite. Our current system says: *what can you do for me first?* Show me a pay stub. Show me a drug test. Show me a job search log. Show me a doctor’s note. Show me you are trying. Show me you are deserving. Then maybe, if I feel like it, I will give you a small fraction of what you need, and I will take it away the minute your circumstances improve. The default is suspicion. The burden of proof is on the person asking to live. UBI rightly reverses that. It says: *Here is what you need to live. Now, if you would like to do something for the rest of us in return, that would be great. You do not have to. But we trust you will, because we already know what kind of species you are.* Trust breeds trust. The places on this planet with the highest social trust are also the places with the lowest poverty and inequality, the highest reported happiness, and the most functional public institutions. The arrow runs both ways. **Trust people and they become more trustworthy. Distrust them, and they become whatever they *have* to become to survive**. Now stack this on top of everything above and watch what happens. A society that distrusts its people produces people too stressed to feel grateful. A society that trusts its people produces people who can finally see what they have been given, and who feel — yes — a *debt*. A debt they will spend the rest of their lives trying to repay in whatever form best suits them. The cycle reverses. Gratitude becomes possible because survival is no longer in question. Contribution becomes voluntary, which is the only way it was ever going to be sustainable. This is the part Graeber would have loved. He died in 2020, and the UBI advocacy [he was best known for](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEb4Bda%5F06c&ref=scottsantens.com) went through his [bullshit jobs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit%5FJobs?ref=scottsantens.com) argument rather than this one — his point being that an enormous fraction of paid work in our economy is work the workers themselves believe is useless, and that this is a moral catastrophe that UBI helps undo. He was right about that. I think the primordial credit argument is the other side of the same coin. Bullshit jobs are what happens when a society demands work for its own sake. A UBI grounded in primordial credit and life-debt is what happens when a society finally remembers what work was actually for. ## What the Pilots Already Show This is not all theory. UBI pilots have been run, with real money, in real countries, with real measurements. The consistent finding across more than a decade of evidence is that giving people unconditional cash makes them happier and healthier, and the mechanisms by which it does so map closely onto the argument I’ve just made. Finland’s experiment found that giving people the same money with no strings produced 33% less poor mental health than giving people the same money with strings. The amount did not matter. The conditions did. Germany’s 3-year pilot found large gains in life satisfaction, sense of purpose, and especially autonomy — the feeling of having control over your own life. Across the more than 150 U.S. guaranteed income pilots, people given unconditional cash consistently spend more time with friends, family, and community, and report higher trust in other people and institutions. I wrote about all of this in detail in [my Finland piece](https://www.scottsantens.com/finland-gave-two-groups-identical-payments-one-experienced-33-better-mental-health/) — if you want the evidence in full, read that one next. What I want to point out here is the *shape* of the findings. The wellbeing gains seem to be coming from a mix of reduced stress (because survival is no longer a daily stressor), more time with loved ones (because there is finally time to spend), and higher trust in other people (because being trusted makes people trust back). These are not separate channels. They are facets of the same underlying shift. Take the boot off necks and people exhale, and after that exhale they become more themselves. I do not know whether any researcher has specifically measured gratitude as a vector in these studies. Most validated wellbeing instruments capture something close to its absence — rumination, hopelessness, despair — without capturing the positive feeling itself. My guess, based on the gratitude literature and on everything I have felt in my own life since 2015, is that gratitude is one of the hidden vectors driving the wellbeing gains. You give people a floor. The stress drops. The mind stops spinning on the next bill. And in the quiet that follows, the noticing becomes possible. Whether or not the surveys ask about it, that feeling is doing work. ## Interdependence Is the Real Word There is a word for this that gets used less than it should: ***interdependence***. We use the word independence constantly. We celebrate it. We sing songs about it. We give people awards for embodying it. We almost never use the word interdependence, which is the actual condition of being a human being. No one is independent. Not really. Not even close. The myth of the self-made person is the most expensive lie our culture tells itself, because it requires erasing every single contribution made by everyone other than the person being celebrated. Even the most extreme case — someone alone on an island, growing their own food, catching their own fish — is depending on what other people taught them about farming and fishing and which plants are poisonous and how to start a fire. Robinson Crusoe does not make it through chapter one without literacy. Our superpower as a species is not intelligence. Plenty of animals are intelligent. Our superpower is that we are social animals. **Our *mega* superpower is that we are so social we figured out how to communicate with each other after we die**. We invented writing. How amazing is that? We pass knowledge across centuries. We build on what came before — not just on the ideas of people we know, but on the ideas of people who lived and died before our great-great-grandparents were born. Specialization, coordination, accumulation across generations: this is what humans do, and it is the only reason anything we have exists. There is an anime called [*Dr. Stone*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr.%5FStone?ref=scottsantens.com) that I love so much I sometimes wish I had kids just so I could watch it with them. It opens with the entire human race turned to stone in an instant. A teen genius wakes up thousands of years later, in a world where civilization has crumbled into nothing, and he sets out to rebuild it from scratch — chemistry, agriculture, electricity, antibiotics, glass, steel, telephones — using only the science he learned before civilization ended. He cannot do it alone. He needs a strong friend to lift heavy things. He needs a craftsman to make precision parts. He needs an explorer to find rare rocks. He needs a singer to lift morale. He needs a mentalist and a fighter and a curious child who rolls around in a melon. The show is, at heart, an argument for interdependence. Our diversity is what makes us strong. The scientist needs the builder needs the artist needs the explorer needs the caregiver needs the fighter. The civilization works because all those people exist, all with different interests, all contributing what only they can contribute. ## Genius, Scenius, Civilizenius I have made the Einstein Argument for UBI before. The short version: if UBI enables even one more Einstein over the next century, the program pays for itself many times over — and Einstein himself became Einstein with a patent clerk’s salary and enough time and space to think about time and space. If that argument lands for you, read [the full piece](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-angine-de-poitrine-argument-for-ubi/) after this one. It goes much further, into Ireland’s permanent basic income for artists and the band Angine de Poitrine that I can’t stop listening to. What I want to build on here is a word [Brian Eno](https://kk.org/thetechnium/scenius-or-comm/?ref=scottsantens.com) coined for the substrate Einstein actually emerged from: *scenius* — the collective form of genius that emerges from a scene. Individual geniuses do not pop out of a vacuum; they arrive out of communities of people working on related problems, reading each other’s papers, building on each other’s ideas. The “genius” is the visible tip of an iceberg. Scenius is the iceberg. [Eno supports UBI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-53tzx69fM&ref=scottsantens.com) for exactly this reason: free up the time, and you get more scenes, more scenius, and more geniuses. I love this word, and what follows would not be possible without it. Eno gave us *scenius*. From it I want to derive something larger. A scene is local. A scene is a few hundred people in a city in a moment. Bell Labs. Vienna in 1900\. Liverpool in 1962\. Saguenay right now. Scenes are real and they matter. But every scene is itself nested inside something larger. The Liverpool scene did not invent the guitar. Bern did not invent paper. None of these scenes invented language, or roads, or the concept of writing things down. Every scene is dependent on a civilization that built the preconditions for the scene to be possible. I want to call that larger thing ***civilizenius***. Civilization plus genius plus scenius. The collective intelligence of an entire civilization across time. Scenius is the iceberg under the visible genius. Civilizenius is the ocean the iceberg is floating in. You need both. A scene without a civilization to grow in is a small group of people inventing fire from scratch every generation. A civilization without scenes is a vast inert library nobody is reading. The two together is what produces Einsteins. UBI feeds both. It funds the scenes by funding the people in them, and it feeds the civilization by trusting it to keep building on itself. A thriving civilizenius — full of ideas, full of cross-pollination, full of weird subcultures rubbing up against each other — is the only kind of civilization that produces real surprises. This is also why looking only at the tip of the iceberg misses the argument. We do not need to find another Einstein. We need to build the civilizenius from which more Einsteins are able to emerge. Everyone you walk past on the street today is, whether they know it or not, contributing to that. The retail worker is contributing. The bus driver is contributing. The nurse is contributing. The mother is contributing. The kid in the library is contributing. None of them get paid what their contribution is worth, because their contribution cannot be priced. It is, in Graeber’s phrase, more valuable than money. ## The Smallest Possible Acknowledgment So here is the argument, distilled. You and I owe society something we cannot ever repay — call it our primordial debt. Society owes you and me something it cannot ever repay — call it our primordial credit. The work you do for a paycheck will not settle either side. Nothing will. The debt and the credit are the kind of thing money was invented to acknowledge precisely because money cannot pay them. UBI is the smallest gesture a civilization can make to recognize that fact. It is not generosity. It is not redistribution. It is not even, strictly speaking, justice, though it is closer to justice than what we currently do. It is the simplest possible acknowledgment that you exist, that your existence has value that exceeds anything that could be priced, and that the civilization you were born into owes you the minimum conditions to live. In return, your life — every hour of it, paid or unpaid, productive in the GDP sense or not — contributes to the future time cone that will give to people not yet born what was given to you. Notice what this does psychologically. Pay people for work and they feel they have earned it. Give people something they did not earn, and they feel a debt. That feeling is key to civilizenius. The gratitude that comes from being given something is what makes people want to give in return — not to a specific person who handed them the money, but to the civilization that made the money possible. A paycheck closes a transaction. UBI opens one. It hands you a debt you will spend the rest of your life trying to repay, in whatever form you find you are best able to repay it. Some people will repay it by raising children. Some by curing diseases. Some by writing songs. Some by exploring the unknown. Some by inventing things no one has thought of yet. None of them will repay it in full. None of them are supposed to. This is not a utopian argument. Or rather, it is utopian in the only sense of the word I find useful. The Star Trek future is not a world where nobody works. It is a world where work is no longer the price of being allowed to live. People still build things. People still write things. People still explore and create and care for each other. They just do those things because they want to, because they were given the room to want to, because society finally figured out that the way to get the most out of human beings is to stop holding their survival hostage. I drop a bag of garbage down the chute. Someone else takes it from there. Someone else built the chute, and the truck, and the road, and the country in which any of this is possible. I did not earn this. None of us earned this. We were given it, and given it, and given it, all the way back to the first human who shared food with another human, and all the way forward to whoever will read these words long after I am gone. The least we can do — the very least, the floor below which there is nothing — is make sure everyone has enough to live. Not because they deserve it. Because the debt exists. Because the debt cannot be paid. Because money was invented precisely for moments like this, to acknowledge what cannot be repaid in any other way. Think about the things that make you feel grateful. List them. Watch a plane fly overhead and ponder the hands that built it. Pick up a pen and try to imagine making it. Drink a glass of water and trace it backward. Then ask yourself what you owe, and to whom, and what the smallest possible gesture of acknowledgment might look like. It looks like an unconditional basic income. It has always looked like an unconditional basic income. We just needed an anthropologist to remind us that this is what money was for in the first place. --- ## Epilogue: A Human Symphony I started taking notes for this article on a plane in 2023, flying to Seoul, reading Graeber’s *Debt* for the first time. I tweeted about what I wanted to write a month later and then sat on it for over two years, because the argument felt too big to write. Every time I sat down to try, I felt like I couldn’t do it justice. After my recent [Angine de Poitrine](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-angine-de-poitrine-argument-for-ubi/) essay was the first time I felt I could get it right. Maybe by writing about scenius I gave myself permission to write about civilizenius. Maybe the audience for this argument is finally ready. I don’t know. Either way, here we are. I want to end with a list, because the article is partly an argument for making lists. If you have read this far, thank you. There are more articles in the world than hours in a lifetime, and you spent some of yours on this one. **I am grateful**. If you share this with someone, thank you for that too. The fact that ideas move through the world by one person showing another person something they cared about is one of the most extraordinary things our species does. We are not just social. We are so social we built distribution systems for thought itself. Every share is a small act of trust. I am grateful for it. I am grateful for everyone who taught me to read and write. My mom who taught me at home in kindergarten. The English teachers who later graded my papers. The editors who pushed back. All the writers I have read who showed me what good prose looks like by example. None of any of my articles exist without them. I am grateful for everyone whose work I cited and everyone whose work I drew on without realizing I was drawing on it. Graeber, who started this whole train of thought when I decided to read his book on a long flight. Rospabe for his work Graeber drew from. The researchers in positive psychology who spent careers measuring something most of us never bothered to measure. Eno for his music (especially [the song](https://open.spotify.com/track/7a33FEffdtLLRQJ5gRW6nQ?si=cc98be7d37f543a9&ref=scottsantens.com) I had on endless loop as I wrote this) and his concept of scenius. Roddenberry for the Star Trek future I keep pushing for. The thousands of writers and thinkers I have absorbed, forgotten, and absorbed again. There is a specific group I owe more directly than the rest. Since 2015 I have lived on a basic income funded by people who decided that what I do is worth keeping me alive to do. They make this work possible in the most literal sense. The people in the UBI Producer level of my Patreon: Gisele Huff, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Oliver Bestwalter, Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Jeremy Wertheimer, Andrew Yang, Kimi Avary, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Janos Abel, Miki Phagan, Draper Kauffman, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Joe Ballou, Arjun Banker, Christine Celli, Felix Ling, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Steve Roth, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, John Sullivan, Stephen Castro-Starkey, CodyS, chris heinz, Zachary Weaver, bradzone, Tim, Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Nicolas Pouillard, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, along with every other monthly patron whose name is not on this list, are all walking demonstrations of the argument I have just made. They acknowledged a debt that did not exist on any ledger by sending me a recurring pledge, and in doing so they created the conditions under which this article could be written. I owe them something I cannot ever fully repay. The closest I can come is to keep writing. I think of all of this as a human symphony. Every reader. Every sharer. Every teacher. Every engineer. Every researcher. Every translator. Everyone who picks up a copy of Graeber’s *Debt* or starts reading a positive psychology book because of this essay. Every person who writes a gratitude list tonight. Every person who quietly decides, the next time it comes up at the dinner table, to argue for UBI a little more seriously than they did last month. Every one of them is a note. The piece is not played by any one of us. It is played by all of us together. It gives me an immense, almost embarrassing amount of joy to know that another human read something I wrote, enjoyed it, and handed it to someone else to enjoy too, and to know my words will live on after I am gone. That is the whole thing. That is what civilization is. A symphony of human creation and human enjoyment of the creation. None of us could have written the score alone. All of us are playing it. I am forever grateful to be one of the people playing. --- **Have you signed and shared the AI Pledge for Humanity in support of UBI yet?** [The AI Pledge for HumanityWe all made AI possible. We all deserve a share of what it makes possible.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/icon/apple-touch-icon-c38cef93-e279-4674-aafc-9e9f81c36812.png)The AI Pledge for Humanity![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/thumbnail/social-card-77215dad-5086-4280-bfc1-ab8f1088d9d0.png)](https://aipledgeforhumanity.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Universality Argument for Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-universality-argument-for-basic-income/ Last updated: 2026-05-24T16:45:51.000Z ### Why including everyone — yes, even billionaires like Elon Musk — works better than means-testing ever possibly can Imagine a room with a thousand people. You know that 999 of them need something to survive, and one of them doesn’t. You have two options. Option one: give the same thing to all 1,000 people, and when they leave through a door where everyone’s income is already being checked, take a bit more from the one person who didn’t need it. Option two: before giving anything to anyone, set up an additional checkpoint inside the room, hire people to run it, create paperwork, establish eligibility rules, and test all 1,000 people — knowing that the test will incorrectly fail dozens if not hundreds of people who actually need help — all to avoid giving something to one person for whom the amount is a rounding error. That is the choice between universal basic income and means-tested anything. When you frame it honestly, the answer is obvious. But we don’t frame it honestly. We frame it as responsible budgeting versus reckless spending. We frame it as helping the deserving versus subsidizing the rich. We frame it in ways that serve the interests of the people who benefit most from the means-tested version. And those people, as I’ll explain, are not the poor. I have been making this argument for over a decade. I am going to make it one more time, and I am going to make it so thoroughly that I never have to make it again. If you believe basic income should exclude those with high incomes, I am asking you to read this entire article before you decide I’m wrong. ## The Inconvenient Math of Targeting The single most important thing to understand about means-testing is that it does not work the way people think it works. People imagine a clean binary: the needy get helped, the non-needy don’t. In reality, the moment you add a test to a benefit, you create two kinds of errors. A false positive is when someone who doesn’t need help gets it anyway. A false negative is when someone who does need help gets excluded. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xql6!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4eb72281-a740-455e-bc0f-4626b06ca918_1536x1024.jpeg) Chart by author Here’s what most people don’t think about: these two errors are not equally dangerous. A false positive — Elon Musk getting $15,000 he doesn’t need — is a waste of $15,000, which is approximately what he earns in the time it takes him to salute. A false negative where a single mother get excluded from the help she desperately needs can mean eviction, hunger, medical crisis, or death. One error is wasteful. The other is fatal. Any serious system designer knows which one to prioritize avoiding. The evidence on how badly targeting fails is damning. [Development Pathways conducted an exhaustive global review](https://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/news/failure-revealed-poverty-targeting-misses-44-97-of-those-it-aims-to-reach/?ref=scottsantens.com) of 38 poverty-targeted social protection programs across 23 countries and found that **these programs miss between 44% and 97% of the people they are designed to reach**. The best-performing targeted programs still exclude nearly half of the people they exist to help. The worst exclude almost everyone. In contrast, **universal programs have the lowest exclusion errors**. Bolivia’s universal social pension excluded only 8% of its intended recipients. Mongolia’s universal child benefit excluded just 2%. This is not a minor difference. This is the difference between a system that works and a system that *mostly* doesn’t. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zV83!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F884c5d1a-ac8c-46bf-9cca-c549a85d21c8_1060x624.png) Chart from [Hit and Miss: An assessment of targeting effectiveness in social protection – Summary version with updated analysis by Development Pathways](https://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/publications/hit-and-miss-an-assessment-of-targeting-effectiveness-in-social-protection-summary-version-with-updated-analysis/?ref=scottsantens.com) ## The Staggering Cost of Testing People One of the great ironies of means-testing is that it’s supposed to save money. But the logic ignores the cost of the testing itself — the bureaucrats, the paperwork, the IT systems, the appeals processes, the consultants, and the inevitable errors that require corrections. Georgia’s Pathways to Coverage program is perhaps the most egregious recent example. The state’s Medicaid work requirement experiment, [according to a GAO report](https://thecurrentga.org/2025/09/24/georgia-pathways-medicaid-work-requirement-gao-report/?ref=scottsantens.com), spent $54.2 million on administrative costs compared to just $26.1 million on actual health care. **The program designed to test whether people deserve health coverage spent more than twice as much on the testing as on the coverage**. Senator Raphael Warnock called it what it was: the real waste, fraud, and abuse. **The administrative apparatus designed to prevent waste *was* the waste**. This is not unique to Georgia. The Earned Income Tax Credit — the closest thing America has to a negative income tax — [costs recipients an average of 11% of their benefit in tax preparation fees](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/project/the-myths-of-the-earned-income-tax-credit/?ref=scottsantens.com), and one in five people who qualify for it don’t receive it at all because they don’t file or file incorrectly. One in four EITC payments is miscalculated. Compare this to Social Security, which is universal among retirees. [Its administrative overhead is 0.5%](https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/admin.html?ref=scottsantens.com). A universal basic income distributed through existing SSA infrastructure would likely be even lower. It’s extremely cheap to direct-deposit identical payments to everyone. It’s extremely expensive to figure out who deserves them first. Every dollar spent on administration is a dollar that could have gone directly to a person who needed it. The question is not whether we can afford to include the rich. The question is whether we can afford to keep paying middle-men to exclude them. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!qVFc!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7a3178b2-adc5-4fb0-814e-78724f998982_1916x692.png) Chart by [Matt Bruenig](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/project/the-myths-of-the-earned-income-tax-credit/?ref=scottsantens.com) ## The “Too Expensive” Illusion The most common objection to universality is that it costs too much. If you give a basic income to 260 million adults instead of 230 million, that’s 30 million extra payments. At $15,000 each, that’s $450 billion more. How could that possibly be affordable? It’s the wrong math. [The error is treating the gross cost as the net cost](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-is-the-net-transfer-amount-not-the-gross-price-tag/). When someone with a high income receives $15,000 in basic income and pays $20,000 in additional taxes to fund it, the net cost of including that person is not $15,000\. It’s negative. That person is a net contributor, not a net recipient. The $15,000 goes out and more than $15,000 comes back. The cost of including them is zero. In fact, they’re subsidizing everyone else. This is true for everyone above the breakeven point — the income level at which the additional taxes paid equal the basic income received. Below that line, you’re a net recipient. Above it, you’re a net payer. A universal basic income and a negative income tax that phases out at the same rate and reaches the same people produce the exact same distribution of net gains and losses. The only difference is that the universal version sends a check and collects a larger tax, while the means-tested version sends a smaller check and collects a smaller tax. The net transfer is identical. One is not cheaper than the other. What the phaseout actually does is concentrate the tax burden on the people being phased out — typically the middle class or upper-middle class — while shielding the very top from higher taxes. A phaseout that starts at the 90th percentile and ends at the 95th percentile is a tax on those five percentiles that lets the top 5% off the hook. A universal program funded by broad progressive taxation spreads that burden all the way to the top. [I’ve covered this math in detail elsewhere.](https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-is-not-cheaper-than-universal-basic-income-ubi-nor-is-guaranteed-income-more-progressive-by-excluding-the-rich/) But the bottom line is this: a means-tested guaranteed income is not cheaper than a universal one. It just hides the taxes inside the phaseout instead of collecting them openly. And in doing so, it taxes the middle while protecting the top. ## Who Really Benefits from Targeting? There’s a question most people never think to ask: **if targeting helps the poor, why do the rich keep supporting it?** [Development Pathways published a devastating analysis](https://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/blog/who-really-benefits-from-poverty-targeting-in-social-protection-the-poor-or-the-rich/?ref=scottsantens.com) of exactly this question. The conclusion is counterintuitive but critical: **the main beneficiaries of poverty-targeting are the rich, while the poor are the main beneficiaries of universal provision**. Targeted programs minimize the tax burden on the wealthy because the programs are small. Universal programs require the wealthy to pay substantially more, and in exchange, everyone — including the poorest — gets more. This is why **poverty-targeted programs dominate in countries where the wealthy hold outsized political influence**. A key aim of poverty-targeting is to minimize taxation, which disproportionately hits the wealthy even when taxation is flat. The World Bank itself has acknowledged that the push for “better targeting” is more often motivated by cutting entitlement bills than by helping the poor. The middle class is continually fooled into supporting all of this. They are told that targeting is more efficient, more progressive, more responsible. But what targeting actually does is impose less of a burden on the rich and provide less of a benefit to the poor and middle class than a universal approach would. How convenient for the people at the top for means-testing to be considered “common sense.” ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!D-Ap!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff16d7803-0224-4cf5-89e3-c95e8fd9a67d_621x416.png) [This is why wealthy people tend to prefer targeted benefits](https://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/blog/who-really-benefits-from-poverty-targeting-in-social-protection-the-poor-or-the-rich/?ref=scottsantens.com) ## Universality Makes Programs Indestructible A program for all is harder to kill than a program for some. **A program that everyone receives becomes a right. A program that only some people receive becomes a target**. Since 1982, every Alaskan has received an annual dividend from the Alaska Permanent Fund regardless of income. No Alaskan views it as welfare. It’s a shared right to natural resources. It would be wrong if only oil companies and their shareholders benefited from Alaska’s oil. The dividend ensures that wealth is rightfully shared. And because everyone gets it, everyone defends it. Now imagine if that dividend had been means-tested. Would it still exist four decades later? Or would the oil companies and their shareholders have found a way to kill it and keep the money for themselves? I think you know the answer. The same principle holds for education and health care. Should rich kids be excluded from public school? If they were, rich parents would slash their property tax bills, because they’d be paying for a system their children couldn’t use. Public school quality would collapse. Should high-income seniors be excluded from Medicare? The political coalition defending it would shrink and the program would weaken. Universality among seniors is what makes Medicare a third rail of American politics. That’s exactly the kind of political durability that wealthy interests want to avoid. ## The Marginal Tax Rate Trap Here is where means-testing does its cruelest work. Every means-tested benefit comes with a clawback where the benefit is reduced as income rises. [That clawback is economically identical to a tax on earned income](https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-is-not-cheaper-than-universal-basic-income-ubi-nor-is-guaranteed-income-more-progressive-by-excluding-the-rich/). SNAP reduces benefits by 30 cents for every dollar earned. That’s a 30% marginal tax rate imposed on some of the poorest people in the country. SSI reduces benefits by 50 cents for every dollar earned past a small exclusion. If you receive both benefits, you’re looking at an 80% marginal tax rate on earned income. Add in the loss of Medicaid, housing assistance, or childcare subsidies, and the rate can exceed 100%. Someone can earn a dollar and lose *more* than a dollar. **Why are we imposing the highest marginal tax rates in the country on the people with the least income, in the name of helping them?** We are punishing them for trying to increase their incomes, taxing them at rates that would cause a revolt if imposed on the wealthy. We could choose to move the phaseout to the middle class, but then *they’d* be the ones hit by those rates. **A universal basic income carries a *zero percent marginal tax rate* from the payment itself**, because the payment doesn’t change with income. The only rate a UBI recipient faces comes from taxes, which can be designed progressively. Instead of a 30% clawback hitting someone, a low surtax could apply across a broader range and generate the same revenue — extending all the way up the income scale to the very top, so instead of only the poorest paying for the phaseout, the wealthiest help pay for it too. Any phaseout is mathematically equivalent to a surtax, but the surtax version spreads the burden instead of concentrating it on those who can least afford it. There's an additional reason to shift that burden upward rather than leave it at the bottom: **those with higher incomes are the least likely to change their actual work behavior in response to higher marginal tax rates**. [Piketty, Saez, and Stantcheva](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.6.1.230&ref=scottsantens.com) analyzed top earner responses to taxation across 18 OECD countries and found that top earners barely reduce their actual work when taxed more. Meanwhile, [research using Danish administrative data](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.16483?ref=scottsantens.com) found that low-income workers are the most sensitive. Higher marginal tax rates depressed their wage growth and reduced their likelihood of seeking promotions or better-paying jobs. In other words, we are currently imposing the highest marginal tax rates on the people most likely to change their behavior because of it, while shielding the people least likely to change theirs. Universality corrects this by moving the burden to where it does the least harm. ## Universality Eliminates Stigma When everyone gets something, no one is ashamed to receive it. When only the poor get something, receiving it becomes an admission of failure. This is not abstract psychology. It is a measurable crisis of program design. [Research published](https://academic.oup.com/healthaffairsscholar/article/2/1/qxad084/7486464?ref=scottsantens.com) using USDA data found that 45% of SNAP-eligible nonparticipants cited stigma as a reason for not participating. A [2025 study](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40920540/?ref=scottsantens.com) confirmed that **over 30% of eligible individuals across major U.S. welfare programs do not access the benefits they qualify for, and identified perceptions of public stigma as a key barrier**. [A comprehensive review](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/152397210200200201?ref=scottsantens.com) found that take-up rates across means-tested programs in various countries range from as low as 25% to 80%, and concluded that stigma is likely the main determinant of low take-up. Think about what this means. **If you design a program specifically to help people in need, and a third of them refuse to accept the help — not because they don’t qualify, but because of what they think accepting it *says* about them — then the program itself is a failure**. It is the insistence on targeting only those in need that creates this situation. A universal program would not create it, because there is nothing to be ashamed of when everyone receives the same thing. **Stigma is a direct product of targeting. Universality eliminates it entirely.** The most vivid proof of this may be school lunches. Under the traditional means-tested model, some kids get free lunch and everyone knows who they are. The [Campaign for Children reports](https://campaignforchildren.org/resource/issue-brief-universal-school-meals/?ref=scottsantens.com) that **children from low-income households face bullying, have already-served lunches discarded in front of them, are marked with stickers, or are forced to complete chores** — all because of a system designed to help them. Schools that adopted universal free meals saw participation rise by an average of 6.8% for lunch and 12.1% for breakfast, and saw a [15% decline in suspensions](https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED671531.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) by the third year, particularly among students who had previously received subsidized meals. [Research in New York City](https://www.chalkbeat.org/2023/8/10/23825754/free-universal-school-meals-lunch-breakfast-research-studies-bullying-groceries-academics-states/?ref=scottsantens.com) found that **universal meals led to reductions in bullying**. Yes, that means the kids of wealthy families eat for free too. Is that a bad outcome? Of course not. **It is the outcome that makes the program work for the kids who actually need it**, by removing the very thing — *visible differentiation* — that was keeping them from participating or subjecting them to harm when they did. ## You Can’t Use What You Don’t Know Exists Stigma is one barrier to take-up. Ignorance is another. Means-tested programs are complicated by design, and millions of people who qualify for them simply don’t know it. They don’t know they’re eligible. They don’t know the program exists. They don’t understand the application process. They file the wrong form, or miss a deadline, or can’t find the right office, or give up after being put on hold for the third time. New Mexico just proved this decisively. In November 2025, the state became the first in the nation to offer [universal free child care](https://www.nmececd.org/universal/?ref=scottsantens.com) with no income limits. Before that, families earning under 400% of the federal poverty level — roughly $128,000 for a family of four — already qualified for free child care. Four in five New Mexico families were already eligible. Yet when the state made child care universal, something remarkable happened. [According to the state's own data](https://www.nmececd.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Universal-Child-Care-Brief%5F41526.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), 54% of *newly* enrolled families had *already* been eligible under the old means-tested rules but had never enrolled. **More than half of the families who signed up after universality didn't need universality to qualify**. **They needed universality to participate**. Whether it was stigma, lack of awareness, confusion about eligibility, or something else — the targeted version failed to reach them. The universal version succeeded. A universal basic income eliminates these kinds of problems entirely. You don’t need to know you qualify, because everyone qualifies. You don’t need to navigate a bureaucracy, because there is no bureaucracy to navigate. You don’t need to file a special application, because no application exists. The money simply arrives, the same way for everyone, whether you have a tax attorney or whether you’ve never filed a return in your life. That is what it means to design a system that actually reaches the people it’s supposed to reach. ## The Engineering Principle I originally studied engineering, and there’s an old engineering joke I love: before studying engineering, if someone asked me what 1 + 1 is, I’d have said 2\. After studying engineering, I’d say I’m pretty sure it’s 2, but we’d better make it 3 just to be safe. That joke contains a profound truth about systems design. Engineers know that things fail. When you’re building life-support systems, you wisely design for failure. You build in [fault tolerance, redundancy, and graceful failure](https://www.scottsantens.com/engineering-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi-fault-tolerance-graceful-failure-redundancy/). A means-tested safety net is a bang-bang system. You qualify or you don’t. If you fall through the cracks, you hit zero. A universal basic income is proportional control. It’s always there. If your income drops, you still have it. If you lose your job, you still have it. If a disaster shuts down your work overnight — you still have it. You never hit zero. The pandemic proved this in real time. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, the government sent stimulus checks based on the most recent tax return on file, which for millions of people, was their 2018 return. Someone who earned $100,000 in 2018 but was earning less than that in March 2020 was excluded based on income they no longer had. The test used data that was two years old to determine who needed help at that moment. Had a universal basic income been in place, none of this would have mattered. The floor would have been there the day the pandemic hit. No applications. No processing delays. No old data. No exclusions. That is what engineers mean by fault tolerance. ## The Trust Problem There’s another cost to exclusion that doesn’t show up on any budget spreadsheet: the erosion of social trust. [Research published in the *American Journal of Political Science*](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajps.12767?ref=scottsantens.com) examined Pakistan’s national unconditional cash transfer program and found that **being excluded from a benefit program — especially when you feel economically deprived — actively erodes trust in government**. [International comparative research](https://ideas.repec.org/p/lis/liswps/870.html?ref=scottsantens.com) by Naoki Akaeda confirmed this at a global scale: low-income targeting crowds *out* social trust, while universalism *grows* social trust. We live in an era of collapsing institutional trust. One of the contributing factors is that **millions of people interact with government systems designed to determine whether they deserve help, and those systems regularly tell them they don’t — even when they do**. Universality eliminates this. Everyone is included. No one has to prove they deserve it. And UBI pilot after UBI pilot has shown that when you give people unconditional cash, trust goes up. This is the predictable consequence of treating people as humans with rights rather than applicants under suspicion. ## Just Tax the Rich Let me address the Elon Musk question directly, because it comes up every time. Yes, under a UBI of $1,250 per month, Elon Musk would receive $15,000 a year. And yes, under any competent tax system, his taxes would increase by far more than $15,000\. He would not be a net recipient. He would be a substantial net contributor. The UBI would function as a tax cut for the poor and middle class and a tax increase on the wealthy, but because everyone receives the same base amount, it could be perceived as a universal right rather than government charity. But let’s say we couldn’t get his taxes right. Let’s say he evaded every additional dollar and got the full $15,000 for free. **So what?** **That amount is meaningless to him**. It is not worth building an entirely separate bureaucratic apparatus to test hundreds of millions of people just to exclude him and the tiny handful of people like him. And don’t tell me we can’t tax a wealthy person at least $15,000 more. Of course we can. That amount is nothing to them. But beyond that, we can invest more resources in the IRS. We can close loopholes. We can raise rates on capital gains. We can implement a wealth tax. We can shift taxes onto bases that are harder to avoid, like consumption taxes, or impossible to avoid, like land value taxes. Saying we can’t tax the rich is lazy and defeatist. We can, we must, and a universal program is what creates the political will to do it, because the middle class has skin in the game by benefiting too. ## The Politics of Inclusion Does it really make sense to tell the people who pay the most in federal taxes that they don’t deserve to participate in the programs their taxes make possible? That’s bad policy and terrible politics. It turns potential allies into opponents. If high-income taxpayers receive a UBI, they have a reason to defend it. If they’re excluded, they have every reason to kill it. **Programs for the poor become poor programs**, because the people with the most political power have no personal stake in keeping them strong. Andrew Jackson said something about this [nearly 200 years ago](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th%5Fcentury/ajack006.asp?ref=scottsantens.com) that I think about often. He described what government should provide as: “*a plain system, void of pomp, protecting all and granting favors to none, dispensing its blessings, like the dews of Heaven, unseen and unfelt save in the freshness and beauty they contribute to produce.*“ That’s universality. Blessings that fall on everyone, like rain, creating conditions for everyone to flourish. ## The Least Important Opinion in the Room I want to address something directly to anyone with high income or wealth who opposes universality because they personally don’t want a basic income. You are centering yourself in a conversation where you should listen to those experiencing means-testing first-hand. Your aesthetic discomfort with receiving money you don’t need is not more important than the material survival of people who have spent their entire lives being failed by the targeting systems you are defending. The people who would benefit most from a UBI — people who have actually experienced means-testing, who have been denied benefits they qualified for, who have been humiliated by caseworkers, who have watched their marginal tax rates exceed anything the richest have paid since the 1970s — those people want it to be universal. They want you to get it too. They want that because they know from lived experience that the moment you add a test, people like them fall through the cracks. If someone living in poverty is willing to let you have $15,000 you don’t need so that they can be sure they will actually receive the help they do need, then your opinion about wanting to be excluded is the least important opinion in the room. The data supports universality. The economics support universality. The political science supports universality. And the people whose lives depend on getting this right support universality. If none of those arguments move you, then at the very least, go apply for welfare and get denied. Just for fun. ## What We Lose by Excluding When you means-test a benefit, you exclude many, if not most, of the people you’re trying to help. You can spend twice as much on testing as on care. You impose high marginal tax rates on the poorest people in the country. You create stigma that discourages people from seeking help. You build a system without fault tolerance that lets people hit zero. You erode the trust that holds communities together. You create weaker programs that are easier for the wealthy to attack. And you save the rich money on taxes while telling yourself you’re being progressive. When you make a benefit universal, you reach everyone. You let the existing tax system handle the redistribution. You eliminate the bureaucratic waste. You preserve work incentives. You remove stigma. You build trust. You create a permanent floor that catches every person no matter what happens to the economy. You build a program so popular it becomes politically untouchable. People’s hearts may be in the right place when they insist on only helping people in need. But doing that requires defining need, and bureaucrats are terrible at that. And the impacts of that targeting create work disincentives, create stigma, create costly bureaucracy, create weaker programs, and require less taxation of the rich than a universal program would. It is simply the wrong answer to insist on excluding the rich. Include them. And tax them. I believe that **the insistence on excluding the rich from public benefits is one of the most successful pieces of propaganda ever sold to the middle class**. It sounds compassionate. It sounds fiscally responsible. It sounds like common sense. But it serves the interests of the people at the very top, because it guarantees that taxes remain lower for them, programs remain weaker, and the political coalition defending economic security remains fractured instead of united. Andrew Jackson wanted the blessings of government to fall like the dews of Heaven — unseen, unfelt, and universal. Instead we built a system of checkpoints and gatekeepers that spends more money deciding who deserves help than it spends on the help itself. **The dew doesn’t ask the grass whether it earned the right to be watered. It just shows up**. That’s how a basic income should work. For everyone. Including the people who don’t need it. Because **including them is what makes the system actually work for everyone who desperately needs it**. --- *If reading this was worth your time, it’s worth sharing. Share it, subscribe for free, and if you can, *make a monthly pledge* to keep this work going.* [![Support my work on Patreon](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bsif!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F84fd433d-9077-4eb6-b1d5-1af775321217_461x66.png "Support my work on Patreon")](https://www.patreon.com/c/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Thank you to my UBI Producer level patrons*: Gisele Huff, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Jeremy Wertheimer, Andrew Yang, Kimi Avary, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Janos Abel, Miki Phagan, Draper Kauffman, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Joe Ballou, Arjun Banker, Christine Celli, Felix Ling, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, John Sullivan, Stephen Castro-Starkey, CodyS, chris heinz, Zachary Weaver, bradzone, Tim, Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Nicolas Pouillard, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Linda Hearne, David Allen, Liz, and all my other monthly patrons for their support.* --- **Have you signed and shared the AI Pledge for Humanity in support of UBI?** [I Just Launched the AI Pledge for Humanity. Here’s Why.AI leaders keep saying UBI is necessary. This pledge asks them to prove it. I’ve been working on universal basic income full-time since 2013\. Thirteen years. In that time, I’ve watched the conversation shift from “that’s a crazy idea” to “that’s inevitable.” Especially among the people![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/icon/favicon-6fd250b145cdcfd1aaafebbb7a4c5b969c8238a391acb1f66508e3ad9de1aa99.ico)UBI GuideScott Santens![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/thumbnail/the-ai-pledge-for-humanity-b87f9d73a4f43995e4ed6d98f7a37f9f3436a3499fc9768f80b57e1b3bd977af.png)](https://www.scottsantens.com/i-just-launched-the-ai-pledge-for-humanity-heres-why/) ### I Just Launched the AI Pledge for Humanity. Here’s Why. URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/i-just-launched-the-ai-pledge-for-humanity-heres-why/ Last updated: 2026-05-01T16:10:24.000Z ### AI leaders keep saying UBI is necessary. This pledge asks them to prove it. I’ve been working on universal basic income full-time since 2013\. Thirteen years. In that time, I’ve watched the conversation shift from “that’s a crazy idea” to “that’s inevitable.” Especially among the people building AI. And I’ve watched that shift accomplish very little. That’s the problem I want to talk about today. It is now routine for AI leaders to say that something like UBI will be necessary. Elon Musk recently posted that “Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI.” He’s been saying versions of this [since 2016](https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/elon-musk-says-universal-high-income-is-coming?ref=scottsantens.com). Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind and a Nobel laureate, [told CNN](https://www.benzinga.com/markets/tech/25/06/45946602/googles-demis-hassabis-echoes-elon-musks-idea-of-a-guaranteed-paycheck-in-the-future-explains-the-need-for-universal-high-income?ref=scottsantens.com) we may need “universal high income” so that AI’s productivity gains are distributed across the economy. Mustafa Suleyman, now CEO of Microsoft AI, [warned in 2023](https://fortune.com/2023/05/10/artificial-intelligence-deepmind-co-founder-mustafa-suleyman-ubi-governments-seriously-need-to-find-solution-for-people-that-lose-their-jobs/?ref=scottsantens.com) that AI would create “a serious number of losers” and called UBI a measure we need to start talking about “in a serious way.” But are they truly being serious about it? Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [recently told Semafor](https://www.semafor.com/article/04/24/2026/progressives-skeptical-of-tech-billionaires-ubi-support?ref=scottsantens.com) she is skeptical of tech billionaires’ stated support for UBI, saying the devil is in the details of their willingness to actually fund it. She’s right to be skeptical. The words are everywhere. The action is almost nowhere. I say almost because there are a few notable exceptions. One of them is Sam Altman who put [$14 million of his own money](https://www.scottsantens.com/did-sam-altman-basic-income-experiment-succeed-or-fail-ubi/) into a three-year basic income pilot — one of the largest in American history. It mattered. It was real money behind a real commitment. Jack Dorsey, through his [#startsmall fund](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-ycOLoA496Qj37IHJvrXO3Vg2ETvMphtRGjyv2FNn8c/edit?gid=0&ref=scottsantens.com#gid=0), also directed tens of millions of dollars to UBI pilots and research between 2020 and 2023 — including major support for Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, the OpenResearch pilot, and Humanity Forward. Together, Altman and Dorsey are the rare exceptions. But they also highlight how alone they are in having done it. Meanwhile, the man on track to become the world’s first trillionaire spent his truly massive amount of resources dismantling government programs through DOGE. The way Elon Musk talks about UBI is personal for me. Years ago, a friend of mine named Gerald Huff worked at Tesla as a principal software engineer who helped develop the Model 3\. [Gerald could see where automation was heading](https://medium.com/basic-income/should-we-be-afraid-very-afraid-4f7013a5137c?ref=scottsantens.com). He started speaking publicly about the need for UBI. Elon eventually called him into his office and told him to stop talking about UBI or he’d be fired. So Gerald stopped accepting speaking invitations — and started directing them to me instead. That’s how I ended up giving many of the talks that helped build my career in this work. Gerald died of pancreatic cancer in 2018 at the age of 54, before he could see UBI gain the traction it has today. His mother Gisele founded the [Gerald Huff Fund for Humanity](https://fundforhumanity.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) in his name to carry on his UBI mission. I’ve served on its board since its inception. What Elon did to Gerald is documented in Gisele’s memoir, [*Force of Nature*](https://www.amazon.com/Force-Nature-Remarkable-Holocaust-Resilience/dp/B0B916X2C6?ref=scottsantens.com). So when I watch Elon Musk post about “universal high income” to an audience of millions — while having personally silenced one of the people inside his own company who tried to advocate for it — I know what the gap between words and actions looks like. If Musk has quietly funded UBI efforts, I’d welcome the correction. I know of others who quietly have, so he wouldn’t be the only one, but color me skeptical. The pattern is always the same: predict mass disruption, then treat preparing for it as someone else’s problem. And here’s what makes it worse: their casual UBI predictions give everyone else permission to not take AI seriously. When the people creating the disruption treat UBI as a prediction, or even just marketing, rather than an urgent priority, the rest of the world reasonably concludes that the disruption must not be that bad. If the architects of AI aren’t panicking, why should anyone else? But it is that bad. [For fifty years, productivity has soared and wages haven’t](https://www.rand.org/pubs/working%5Fpapers/WRA516-2.html?ref=scottsantens.com). AI is about to accelerate that pattern — driving down wages long before it replaces workers entirely. The disruption is not some distant hypothetical. It’s here. It’s happening in paychecks right now, quietly, before the headlines catch up. It’s happening in the lack of hiring entry level workers. It’s happening in the unusually high unemployment and underemployment rates for recent college graduates. It’s happening through early retirements. More will happen. It will get worse. Well, I got tired of waiting for the people who should be leading on this to actually lead. So I built something. ## The AI Pledge for Humanity Today, I launched the [AI Pledge for Humanity](https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/the-ai-pledge-for-humanity?ref=scottsantens.com) — an open letter and public commitment to turn AI’s wealth into a shared dividend for everyone. The pledge has two tiers, and both matter. The first tier is for people with resources to commit. Founding signatories go public with their commitment to invest a percentage of their income or wealth into UBI pilots, unconditional cash programs, and the advocacy work needed to make a shared AI dividend real. Their names, affiliations, and the organizations they support are listed publicly on the pledge page. This isn’t a vague promise. It’s a public, named, specific commitment — and it’s designed to be exactly the kind of thing that the people who keep talking about UBI should be doing but aren’t. The second tier is for everyone else. If you aren’t in a position to commit resources but believe AI’s gains should be shared, you sign the petition in solidarity. Your signature joins the call and pushes those profiting from AI to step up. You become part of the pressure. I think of these two tiers as complementary forces. The founding signatories are the proof that serious people are willing to put their money where their mouth is. The petition signers are the weight behind the demand that others do the same. ## Why This, Why Now I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words about UBI. I’ve spoken at conferences around the world. I’ve advised political campaigns. And I believe that at this particular moment, the single most important thing the UBI movement needs is not another study, not another pilot, and not another article. It’s accountability. It’s action. The conversation about AI and UBI has become too comfortable. People say the right things and do nothing. The AI Pledge for Humanity is designed to make that gap visible. It creates a public record of who is actually backing UBI with resources and who is just talking. And it gives everyone else a tool — a link they can share every time some tech leader mentions UBI without doing anything about it. A way to say: if you believe it, sign it. If you won’t sign it, we know what your belief is worth. I believe this matters because UBI is not just an economic policy. An unconditional income floor does not just distribute money. It distributes freedom. [It’s the power to say no](https://widerquist.com/basic-income-as-power-to-the-people-janus-debates-preview-part-2/?ref=scottsantens.com) — to bad wages, to unsafe conditions, to abusive situations. It’s the power to negotiate the terms of your own labor and the policies that govern your life. No other policy does this. A higher minimum wage doesn’t. A four-day workweek doesn’t. Unemployment insurance doesn’t, nor does it even reach more than about 30% of the unemployed, let alone everyone doing essential work who are underpaid or entirely unpaid. UBI reaches everyone, because everyone is the point. And we can do this. An economy capable of producing unprecedented wealth is capable of sharing that wealth. [The question has never really been whether we can afford it](https://www.georgetown.edu/news/less-than-3-percent-of-gdp-could-end-u-s-poverty-new-research-shows/?ref=scottsantens.com). The question is whether we will choose to do it. One more thing worth saying plainly. The signatories of this pledge are committing private resources, but private resources alone won't fund UBI at sufficient scale. That requires public investment, which requires that those who benefit most from AI contribute the most to making sure its gains are shared. Wealth taxes. Corporate taxes. Whatever mechanism gets us there. The wealthy people who are actually serious about UBI will recognize that personal giving and supportive policy go together — that you can't credibly say you want a shared AI dividend while lobbying against the means to fund one. History tells us what happens to societies when wealth concentrates at the top and stays there. We should not need to relearn that lesson. ## What I’m Asking You to Do Three things, in order of commitment: **Sign the petition.** It takes thirty seconds. Your name adds pressure. It tells every tech CEO, every AI investor, every founder who mentions UBI that the public is watching and expects them to act. [Sign here.](https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/the-ai-pledge-for-humanity?ref=scottsantens.com) **Share it.** Post it. Email it. Text it. And when you see someone powerful talk about UBI without backing it up, reply with this pledge and ask them: will you sign it? **Become a founding signatory.** If you have resources to commit — whether that’s 1% of your wealth or 5% of your income or anything you choose — add your name to the public list of people who are putting their money behind their belief in the need for UBI. You can include a link to the UBI organization or project you support, helping others discover where to direct their own resources. [Fill out the form here.](https://forms.gle/q9CXJdx3RpKzfCi98?ref=scottsantens.com) We already have founding signatories including Andrew Yang, Dustin Moskovitz, and other founders and co-founders, CEOs, engineers, AI managers, researchers, and advocates from multiple countries. The list is growing. I want your name on it too. ## The Line in the Sand I’ve spent 13 years making the case for UBI. I believe the case is made. [The evidence is overwhelming](https://skyview.social/?url=https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x6eidgqhve7ulo4djhbgqv2v/post/3ldy3ssm7bs23&viewtype=unroll&ref=scottsantens.com). The logic is clear. The history is deep — from [Thomas Paine](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-spaceballs-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi/) to [Martin Luther King Jr.](https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/where-do-we-go-here?ref=scottsantens.com) to [Milton Friedman](https://basicincome.org/bien/pdf/NewsFlash3.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), this idea has allies everywhere. What we lack is not evidence. What we lack is action. The AI Pledge for Humanity draws a line. On one side are those willing to do something. On the other side are those content to predict a future they have no intention of building. I know which side I’m on. **We all made AI possible. We all deserve a share of what it makes possible.** If you agree with that statement, [**sign the pledge**](https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/the-ai-pledge-for-humanity?ref=scottsantens.com)**.** And then send it to someone who needs to sign it more than you do. ### The Angine de Poitrine Argument for UBI URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-angine-de-poitrine-argument-for-ubi/ Last updated: 2026-04-29T22:05:59.000Z ## Why Angine de Poitrine's viral microtonal math rock KEXP session, Ireland's permanent basic income for artists, and Albert Einstein are three sides of the same human triangle Two guys in papier-mâché masks from Saguenay, Quebec, have been playing music together for 20 years since they were 13 years old. For most of that time, they existed in relative obscurity. Then, [KEXP](https://www.kexp.org/read/2026/3/25/angine-de-poitrine-kexp-session-feature/?ref=scottsantens.com) posted a video of them playing four songs and the internet lost its mind. As of this week, [that video has over ten million views](https://www.guitarworld.com/artists/bands/angine-de-poitrine-reveal-their-microtonal-approach-started-as-an-inside-joke?ref=scottsantens.com) and their song Fabienk is [No. 1 on Spotify’s Viral 50 – Global chart](https://montrealgazette.com/entertainment-life/music/quebec-buzz-band-angine-de-poitrine-continues-world-domination-with-spotify-google-billboard-nods/?ref=scottsantens.com). Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters fame has said they “absolutely blew his f\*cking mind”. The band is [Angine de Poitrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angine%5Fde%5FPoitrine?ref=scottsantens.com), and if you haven’t watched the full set yet, stop reading this, go watch it, and then come back. I’ll wait. Or just listen to it while you read this essay. Okay. Now let me tell you why I think this band is one of the best arguments for universal basic income I’ve come across in a long time, and why Ireland and Albert Einstein are part of the same story. I first want to make three points, *like a triangle*, because triangles are very on-brand for this article. Stick with me. **The first point is about Einstein**. Albert Einstein did not become Albert Einstein in a university lab. He became Albert Einstein while working as a patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland. The job paid the bills and left him enough hours in the day to think. That was key. That was the magic formula. Genius, plus a floor under him, plus time. With those three ingredients, one man starting in his twenties rewrote physics. Special relativity. The photoelectric effect. Brownian motion. The equivalence of mass and energy. All four in a single year, 1905, while he was a patent clerk. General relativity then came a decade later. We are still living inside the consequences of what that one man thought about with his basic needs met more than a hundred years ago. GPS satellites have to correct for his equations or your phone would send you to the wrong address. The energy released by splitting an atom is accounted for by his equations. Our entire picture of space and time is his. Now try to put a dollar figure on that. Go ahead. I'll wait again. You can't. The value one Einstein delivered to humanity is incalculably large. It dwarfs any UBI program you could ever design. And here is the Einstein Argument for UBI in one sentence: **if universal basic income enables even one more Einstein to become Einstein over the course of the next century, it will have paid for itself a thousand times over**. The thing is, Einstein changed how we think about space and time because he *had* space and time: he had intelligence, education, a floor under him, and time to think. That's not a miracle. That's a policy choice we refuse to make. How many Einsteins never became Einsteins, because they had genius, but lacked space and time? **The second point is about artists.** In 2022, Ireland did something extraordinary. The government [randomly selected 2,000 artists out of more than 8,200 eligible applicants](https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/unemployment-and-redundancy/employment-support-schemes/basic-income-arts-pilot/?ref=scottsantens.com) and gave them €325 a week, unconditionally, for three years. No strings. No testing beyond being an artist. Just money, every week, so they could make art. Another 1,000 artists served as a control group. The final results came in last year, and the Irish government read them and made the program permanent. The independent evaluation by Alma Economics found that [**the pilot cost €72 million and generated €80 million in benefits**](https://www.optimistdaily.com/2025/10/ireland-makes-basic-income-for-artists-permanent-signaling-support-for-creative-economy/?ref=scottsantens.com). Artists in the program earned on average €500 more per month in arts-related income, earned about €280 less from non-arts jobs, and drew roughly €100 less per month from social services. The money let them do more of the stuff they were good at and less of the stuff that was just paying the bills. The evaluators estimated that if scaled up permanently, the program could produce a 22% increase in artistic output. Ireland’s Minister for Culture, Patrick O’Donovan, [called the scheme “the envy of the world.”](https://journalofmusic.com/news/scheme-envy-world-and-tremendous-achievement-ireland-government-commits-permanent-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) He’s not wrong because [other countries](https://uk.news.yahoo.com/snp-promise-basic-minimum-income-105528398.html?ref=scottsantens.com) are already discussing doing the same. I want to say that part again because it’s important: Ireland ran the experiment and calculated an impressive return on investment. [**Every euro invested came back as €1.39 in benefits to Irish society**](https://hyperallergic.com/ireland-makes-basic-income-program-for-artists-permanent/?ref=scottsantens.com). And Ireland isn’t alone. In New York State, [Creatives Rebuild New York gave 2,400 artists $1,000 a month for 18 months](https://www.creativesrebuildny.org/guaranteed-income-for-artists/overview/?ref=scottsantens.com). The impact study [found exactly what you should expect](https://www.stltoday.com/news/community/article%5F46dfeeb4-2679-59d8-b243-9cc5b7a4f5bd.html?ref=scottsantens.com): less debt, better mental health, more time spent on art, no drop in other income, and a bunch of artists who started landing grants, residencies, and paid work in their fields because they finally had the space to pursue them. Stephen Roll, one of the lead researchers, put it well when he asked: “**What art could we produce as a society if our artists could invest more time and money in their craft? Perhaps more importantly, consider how many great artists never get to emerge because an artistic career often carries such high risks of financial hardship and insecurity.**” The pattern from Ireland and New York matches the pattern from every saturation basic income pilot we’ve ever run, going all the way back to [Dauphin, Manitoba in the 1970s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome?ref=scottsantens.com). When you give everyone in a community a floor of income, entrepreneurship skyrockets. New businesses get started. People take risks they wouldn’t have otherwise taken. This isn’t surprising. Starting a business is terrifying when the downside is losing your house. It’s a lot less terrifying when the downside is falling back on a basic income. Ireland did not do this because it was a nice thing to do for artists. Ireland did it because art is an enormous economic and cultural engine, and the current system is incredibly wasteful of the people who run that engine. The Irish government calculated a monetary value for art and discovered what should have been obvious: investing in art pays more than it costs. We can apply that same math to everything a basic income unlocks. **The third point is Angine de Poitrine.** Here is what they are. They’re a two-person [microtonal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtonality?ref=scottsantens.com) [math rock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Math%5Frock?ref=scottsantens.com) band from Quebec. The guitarist calls himself Khn. The drummer calls himself Klek. They wear black and white polka-dotted costumes and papier-mâché masks with long noses and describe themselves as space-time voyagers. They do not speak to audiences in any real language, just in a made-up one. Between songs they form triangles with their hands and the crowd forms triangles back. They are weird in the absolute best way. They are marvelously, unapologetically, beautifully different. Quick aside on what “math rock” actually means; math rock is rock music that uses unusual time signatures, odd rhythms, and the kind of structural complexity that makes your foot tap on the wrong beat. Where a normal pop song is in 4/4 — four beats per bar, over and over, like a heart — math rock might be in 7/8 or 11/8 or switch between them every few bars. And on top of the math, they play microtonal music. A quick primer for anyone who doesn't know what that means either: Western music uses twelve notes per octave. You can find all of them on a piano — seven white keys and five black. The distance between any two adjacent keys is a half step. Microtonal music uses the notes *between* those notes. A quarter tone sits exactly halfway between two adjacent piano keys — a pitch that, on a standard instrument, doesn't exist. Most rock and pop you've ever heard lives on whole steps and half steps. AdP lives on the steps in between. As one YouTube commenter wrote, "The elites don't want you to know this, but you can just make your own notes." To play this music, Khn plays a [custom double-necked hybrid instrument](https://www.guitarworld.com/artists/bands/angine-de-poitrine-microtonal-guitar?ref=scottsantens.com) — half guitar, half bass — with twice the frets to play the microtonal notes. [Klek originally built the first version himself with an actual saw](https://www.cbc.ca/music/angine-de-poitrine-quebec-band-kexp-9.7120120?ref=scottsantens.com). The current one was made by a [professional friend](https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general%5Fmusic%5Fnews/how-angine-de-poitrine-built-their-diy-microtonal-double-neck-and-why-its-a-joke-about-guitar-heroes?ref=scottsantens.com). Khn plays it while looping parts in real time, with both hands, while also working a full pedalboard with his feet. I want to pause on that for a second. I can’t pick a sock up off the floor with my feet. My toes are purely decorative. This guy is using his feet as a third instrument while his hands are playing four times the notes as a normal guitarist, all while peering through his mask’s eye-holes covered by gold dollar signs. I can’t explain why I love this band as much as I do. There’s just something happening in my brain when I listen to them that I don’t have words for. It’s like the music itself is playing me as an instrument. It’s like I never heard music before this. You know those videos of a hearing-impaired kid getting a cochlear implant and hearing their parent’s voice for the first time? That’s what it feels like when I hear AdP. It makes me very, very happy. And I want more of it. I want more art like this. Maybe that’s selfish. I don’t care. I want more artists to be able to push boundaries, to explore new ideas, to get really good at whatever brings them joy. Because here’s the thing. Khn and Klek have been playing together for 20 years since they were 13\. That’s two decades of two teenagers becoming two masters. Two decades of getting incredibly good at something that, until just months ago, almost certainly was not a significant source of income prior to going viral, and likely functioned as a passion-driven project rather than a primary livelihood. Two decades of pursuing what Khn himself has described as a series of inside jokes about rock music in general that turned, somewhere along the way, into one of the most creatively original things happening in music right now. How many people, looking at a teenager in small-town Quebec in 2008 sawing extra frets into a guitar would have said “that kid is a genius”? I’m going to guess: none of them. Angine de Poitrine is what happens when two people get to spend decades getting really good at something weird. They did it without UBI. Maybe they had parents who helped. Maybe they had day jobs. Maybe they had government supports I don’t know about. However they got there, they got there. But here is the point I keep coming back to: **without UBI, people like this are exceedingly rare**. Einsteins are rare. Khns and Kleks are rare. With UBI, they will be less rare. That is not a hope. That is a statistical near-certainty. Which brings me to a finding I think about a lot. --- *A big thanks to my monthly patrons who contribute to making my articles possible and free for all. If you find value in my writing and would like to support it, please join* [*my Patreon*](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) *or become a paid subscriber on* [*my Substack.*](https://scottsantens.substack.com/) --- ## Talent is Everywhere. Opportunity is Not. A few years ago, an Italian research team ran a simulation of how talent and luck interact over a 40-year working life. [Scientific American covered it beautifully.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/beautiful-minds/the-role-of-luck-in-life-success-is-far-greater-than-we-realized/?ref=scottsantens.com) What they found was that **pure talent was not the best predictor of success; luck was**. The most successful people in the simulation were not the most talented — they were moderately talented people who got lucky at the right moments. Which sounds demoralizing, until the researchers did the interesting part. They asked: okay, given that luck is doing so much of the work, what’s the best way to fund people so that talent actually has a chance to break through? They tried a bunch of strategies. Giving extra funding to people who were already successful did almost nothing. It concentrated more resources in people who didn’t necessarily have the most talent, just the most luck. Mixing “reward the successful” with equal distribution did a little better. Pure random distribution did better than that. And **the winner, by a wide margin, was the strategy of giving everyone an equal amount**. In their simulation, distributing a small equal sum to every person every five years led to 60% of the most talented people achieving above-average success. Bumping the equal sum up a little led to 100% of the most talented people having an impact. Let me say that again. **When the researchers gave everyone the same amount of money, 100% of the most talented people in the simulation had an impact.** When they gave the money only to the “deserving,” most talent went nowhere. This is UBI. This is exactly UBI. The paper is essentially a mathematical proof that **a world with universal basic income is more meritocratic than a world without one**, because luck-based distribution — which is what we have now — throws away most of the talent in the room. A UBI world isn’t a world that rewards laziness. It’s a world where the Einsteins and the Khns and the Kleks and the creatives you’ve never heard of yet actually get a shot at mastery that their talent deserves, instead of getting filtered out at age 19 because they couldn’t afford rent. There’s a history lesson hiding in here that I want to pull out before I go any further. A huge amount of the best music ever made in the UK — [The Clash, The Specials, UB40 (literally named after Unemployment Benefit, Form 40), Pulp, Oasis, and many more](https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/art-and-design/role-of-the-dole-how-benefits-benefit-artists-1.530599?ref=scottsantens.com) — was made by people who were, at the time, living on “the dole.” When Britain had a welfare system that gave artists a tiny floor of income and left them mostly alone to do their thing, Britain produced some of the most important popular music of the twentieth century. When that system was [dismantled and means-tested and hoop-jumped and shamed out of existence](https://kottke.org/21/07/new-labour-and-the-end-of-the-welfare-state-for-artists?ref=scottsantens.com), that pipeline dried up. The dole worked as a floor. Not a universal one. Not an unconditional one. It came with strings. It was means-tested or contribution-based, which meant earning money reduced it, sometimes sharply. It came with conditions. Forms. Appointments. Proof that you were looking for work. And if you failed those conditions, there were sanctions. Payments cut or stopped. It also came with stigma. You had to declare yourself “unemployed” and submit to a system designed to monitor and correct you. Despite all that, it still did something important. It gave people just enough stability, in some cases, to create. UBI keeps the only part that mattered—the floor—and removes the rest. No means tests. No earnings penalty. No proving you deserve it. It just shows up, whether you’re earning or not, and leaves you alone to decide what to do with your time. ## This is What “Truly Human” Feels Like Here is the question I want you to sit with. What is it about Angine de Poitrine that has made grown adults in the comments section write things like “30 seconds in: ‘this is fucking stupid’ 18 minutes in: ‘this is the greatest musical performance of the century” and “It’s the first time I’ve felt like a teenager listening to music since I was one”? Why this band? Why now? I think part of it is that this is happening at the exact moment AI-generated art is flooding the internet. Every day there is more “AI slop.” We are surrounded by the remixing of what already existed into something smoother, less surprising, more average. And into that ocean of generated averageness, two genius maniacs from Quebec walk in wearing polka-dot costumes and start playing notes that don’t exist on a piano, using a custom double guitar with twice the frets each, moving their feet like hands, and the comments section lights up with one phrase repeated over and over: ***this is truly human***. Because it is. Whatever “truly human” means, this is it. Exploration. Creativity. Joy. Fun. The willingness to try something that might fail and look ridiculous. The willingness to saw extra frets into a perfectly good guitar because you had an idea and you had to play around. The willingness to spend twenty years on something that may never “pay off” in the financial or fame sense. AI can remix the old into new arrangements. And yes, [humans remix everything](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9RYuvPCQUA&ref=scottsantens.com) too — every artist is influenced by other artists, every idea builds on older ideas. But there is something qualitatively different about what Einstein did, and what AdP is doing, and what every once-in-a-generation artist or scientist does when they show us something we’ve never seen before. It is the opposite of averaging. It is a leap into new territory. It is what humans do when they are free enough to follow the weird thing. No matter how good AI gets, I promise you there will always remain a deep, stubborn love for what humans like Khn and Klek make, because part of what we love about AdP is knowing that a real person spent years of their actual life getting good enough to play that. The joy on the other end of the screen is real because the joy on the stage is real. ## Genius from Scenius [Brian Eno](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian%5FEno?ref=scottsantens.com) — the producer, composer, and philosopher of ambient music, the guy who shaped records by Bowie, Talking Heads, U2, and roughly half of the sounds you associate with the last fifty years — has a word for what I’m circling around, and it’s better than any word I’ve come up with. The word is *scenius*. It’s his coinage. It means the collective form of genius that emerges from a scene. The idea is that individual geniuses don’t pop out of a vacuum. Einstein didn’t happen in a box. Einstein happened inside a culture of physicists arguing with each other in the early twentieth century, reading each other’s papers, correcting each other’s math, building on each other’s ideas. The “genius” is the visible tip of an enormous submerged iceberg of other people doing related work. Scenius is the iceberg. And Eno, for exactly this reason, [supports UBI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-53tzx69fM&ref=scottsantens.com). Eno’s argument is that **the “need to earn a living” is actively hindering us from reaching our collective potential**. If we want more geniuses, we need more scenius, and if we want more scenius, we need more people who are free to participate in the scene without having to focus every hour of their life around survival. He has said, in so many words, that **UBI is the closest thing he has ever seen proposed to the future he actually wants** — a future where the sheer cooperative potential of billions of differently-shaped human minds finally gets to express itself. I think he’s right, and I think AdP is proof. Because Khn and Klek aren’t alone. They grew up inside a scene. They were absorbing Indian, Japanese, Arabic, Indonesian, and Turkish music as teenagers. They were listening to King Crimson and Zappa and Gentle Giant. Saguenay had a music scene. Quebec had a festival circuit. Someone at Trans Musicales in Rennes booked them. Someone at KEXP in Seattle chose to record them. Someone at the Montreal Jazz Festival let them play. And now, there are guitarists on YouTube and bass players on Instagram and composers in tiny apartments in cities you’ve never heard of watching the KEXP session for the 100th time and reaching for plastic zip ties to play quarter tones. AdP has already joined the scenius. They are now part of the raw material other people are going to make their own weird new things out of. The dole era in Britain was scenius too. The Clash did not happen alone. The Specials did not happen alone. UB40 did not happen alone. Those bands were in pubs and rehearsal rooms and record shops, rubbing up against each other, ripping each other off, fighting, collaborating, improving, and the dole was what paid the rent on all of that. Take away the floor and the whole scene collapses. Britain learned that the hard way. It is, as Eno puts it, what happens when you make everyone spend all their time earning a living instead of contributing to the shared well. We are all born different. **Every human is a unique instrument with its own weird little tuning**. **UBI is the thing that lets us actually find out what we sound like together** — lets the microtones between us ring out instead of getting tuned away. Scenius is the sound of a whole society finally in tune with its own diversity. We have never heard that sound. I would very much like to. People ask all the time: what will people do with UBI? Won’t they just get lazy? Will they lose their sense of purpose and meaning? Will they stare at the wall? No. Of course not. They will figure out cool new stuff. They will impress the hell out of the rest of us with how creative they can be when they aren’t forced to spend eight hours a day filling out forms for no real purpose, in what the late anthropologist David Graeber ([who also supported UBI by the way](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEb4Bda%5F06c&ref=scottsantens.com)) rightly called [bullshit jobs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit%5FJobs?ref=scottsantens.com). Humans are the most creative species we know of in the universe, and most of that creativity is being wasted right now on make-work and survival. Free it up, and watch what happens. Some people will make bad art. Some people will make good art. Some people will make a microtonal double-guitar and paint themselves with polka dots. Most people will just live better, which is also fine. ## The Point of Bread is to Eat It In his 1932 essay [“In Praise of Idleness,”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3%5F2B9OTm0E&ref=scottsantens.com) Bertrand Russell pointed out that the whole economy is built on the assumption that production is noble and consumption is frivolous. You make the bread, you are virtuous. You eat the bread, you are wasting time. Russell thought this was absurd, and he was right. **The point of bread is not to fuel you to make more bread. The point of bread is to be eaten and enjoyed**. To take a few minutes of your day to sit down and think, “damn, that’s some good bread.” Maybe alone. Maybe with someone you love. Maybe with enough time to invent a new sandwich and hand it to a stranger who then wonders if bread was always this ambitious. Work is important. Nobody is saying work is not important. But the fruits of work are the whole point of work. If you spend your whole life too busy cooking to ever eat, something has gone very wrong. As I wrote in [the Monsters, Inc. Argument for UBI](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-monsters-inc-argument-for-unconditional-basic-income/), we are currently running an economy on fear, when joy turns out to be ten times more powerful. A world where more people get to do the science and the art they actually want to do — instead of whatever happens to pay the bills — is a radically better world than the one we live in now. **Angine de Poitrine and Einstein are what we get when people are free to do what they truly want**. The current world is what we get when most of them can’t. One more thing before I wrap, because I have not seen anyone else point this out and I can’t stop thinking about it. Look closely at the polka dots on their costumes and their stage backdrops. The dots aren’t arranged horizontally and vertically. They’re rotated 45 degrees. Take that pattern and rotate it back 45 degrees — the dots sit in perfect squares. Rotate another 90 degrees — still squares. The world most of us see. But rotate it that extra quarter turn, the quarter turn they live at, and suddenly the same dots aren’t sitting in squares anymore. They’re sitting in bisected squares — aka triangles. And diamonds. And, if you let your eyes relax a little, cubes. A whole different geometry pops out of the exact same dots. I think Khn and Klek did a quarter turn to the world. Where the rest of us saw nothing but squares, they saw triangles and diamonds and a hidden dimension that was there the whole time. And now, because we get to watch them, we get to see what they see. We get to borrow their quarter turn. It is, quite literally, glorious. So let me tie this triangle together. ## What Humans Become When They’re Free Einstein became Einstein, partly because he had a patent clerk’s salary and the time to think. With UBI, more Einsteins will have a version of that combination, and even one more Einstein — just one — pays for every dollar UBI ever cost, and gifts humanity centuries of progress. Science is essential. But it is only half of the picture. The other half is art. Who are the artist Einsteins? Or maybe I have the question backwards, and the real question is: which artist was Einstein most like? Einstein himself said imagination was more important than knowledge, and he played the violin his whole life, and he thought in pictures. He loved math and he loved music. He said that if he had not been a physicist, he probably would have been a musician. Math and music have always been the same language spoken two different ways. So maybe the better question isn’t which artist Einstein was like. Maybe the better question is: which mathematician is Angine de Poitrine most like? We need both art and science, and we need more people free to get really good at whichever one brings them joy — especially those who, like Einstein and like AdP, refuse to believe the two are really different things. Ireland ran the experiment on artists and got a positive return on investment within three years. New York ran the experiment and got a bunch of artists the time and space to finally breathe and create. Every saturation basic income pilot in history has shown that giving everyone a floor leads to more entrepreneurship, more creativity, more risk-taking, more health, more community. The results are in. The studies are done. The math has been checked. And into this moment of proof walks AdP, fresh off a KEXP session with over 10 million views, looking like a Dada painting, playing the notes between notes, showing us something new under the sun. Two guys from Quebec who spent twenty years perfecting their craft before it ever popped off. This is what human beings do when they have the time and space to do it. **Einstein and Angine de Poitrine are not exceptions to the rule. They are the rule of what humans can be when they are free. The exceptions are how few of them we currently get.** With UBI, we will get more. More Einsteins. More Khns and more Kleks. More bread worth eating. More sandwiches we haven’t invented yet. More art that makes you feel like you’re hearing music for the first time, like a bunch of neurons in your brain just woke up and asked where this has been your whole life. If you already support UBI, keep supporting it. If you don’t yet, I hope this article moved you a quarter-note closer. And whatever you do, please go watch [the full AdP session on KEXP](https://www.youtube.com/results?search%5Fquery=angine+de+poitrine+kexp&ref=scottsantens.com). Make a triangle with your hands and waves with your arms while you watch. You’ll know when. That’s the Angine de Poitrine argument for UBI. I hope it helped connect some dots. --- *If reading this was worth your time, it’s worth sharing. Share it, subscribe for free, and if you can, *make a monthly pledge* to keep this work going.* [![Support my work on Patreon](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bsif!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F84fd433d-9077-4eb6-b1d5-1af775321217_461x66.png "Support my work on Patreon")](https://www.patreon.com/c/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Thank you to my UBI Producer level patrons*: Gisele Huff, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Jeremy Wertheimer, Andrew Yang, Kimi Avary, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Janos Abel, Miki Phagan, Draper Kauffman, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Joe Ballou, Arjun Banker, Christine Celli, Felix Ling, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, John Sullivan, Stephen Castro-Starkey, CodyS, chris heinz, Zachary Weaver, bradzone, Tim, Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Nicolas Pouillard, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Linda Hearne, David Allen, Liz, and all my other monthly patrons for their support.* --- Looking for a UBI-focused nonprofit to support? Donate to the [**Income To Support All (ITSA) Foundation**](https://www.itsafoundation.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) to support UBI projects focused on research, storytelling, and direct implementation to realize economic freedom for all. Universal Basic Income: **It’s a foundation**! --- [I Just Launched the AI Pledge for Humanity. Here’s Why.AI leaders keep saying UBI is necessary. This pledge asks them to prove it.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/icon/https-3A-2F-2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2F676da128-b7a2-4d65-b611-16193cf4d8d6-2Fapple-touch-icon-180x180.png)Foreword to CivilizationScott Santens![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/thumbnail/https-3A-2F-2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2F218abb65-95c4-4129-b75e-fa181ea48ac5_1983x793.png)](https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/i-just-launched-the-ai-pledge-for) ### Replace the Standard Deduction With $375 a Month for Everyone URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/replace-the-standard-deduction-with-a-375-monthly-fully-refundable-tax-credit-for-everyone-ubi/ Last updated: 2026-06-13T03:31:05.000Z ### My proposal for a fully refundable $4,500 tax credit that reaches everyone—and leaves the bottom 90% better off There is a new trend in Democratic politics, and it is one of the most frustrating things I’ve watched in years. Senator Cory Booker wants to more than double the standard deduction to $75,000 for married couples. Senator Chris Van Hollen wants to exempt the first $46,000 in income from federal taxes. Katie Porter, running for governor of California, wants to exempt the first $100,000 from state income taxes. This is what passes for Democratic economic policy in 2026: a bidding war over who can shield the most income from taxation. I get the political instinct. Republicans passed their “One Big Beautiful Bill” full of tax giveaways, and Democrats want to show they can cut taxes too. But this is the same strategic error Kamala Harris made in 2024 when she tried to out-tough Republicans on immigration instead of making the affirmative case for what immigrants contribute to this country. When you play on your opponent’s field, you lose, even when you win. Taxes are not the enemy. [Taxes serve vital functions](https://www.scottsantens.com/how-money-is-born-out-of-public-spending-and-dies-by-taxes-mmt/). The question should never be whether to tax, but *what* to tax and *how* to make sure the prosperity we create together actually reaches the people who create it. On that question, Democrats are reaching for the wrong tool. The right tool is not a bigger deduction. It’s **a fully refundable tax credit**. ### Deductions Help the Rich More Than the Poor. That’s How They Work. A tax deduction reduces your taxable income. That sounds equal if everyone gets the same deduction, but it’s not. The value of a deduction depends entirely on your tax bracket, which means **it’s worth more to those who already have more**. Consider the current standard deduction of $16,100 for a single filer. A worker earning $30,000 is in the 12% bracket. That deduction saves them **$1,932**. A worker earning $200,000 has income reaching into the 24% and 32% brackets. That same deduction saves them over **$4,000**. The identical provision in the tax code delivers twice as much benefit to the person who needs it less. Now consider someone earning $12,000 a year — a part-time worker, a caregiver piecing together hours. The standard deduction zeroes out their small tax bill, but that’s all it can do. It cannot put a single dollar in their pocket. A deduction can only reduce what you owe. It can never give you cash. **This is the fatal flaw in every plan built around expanding the standard deduction**. Booker’s plan to raise it to $75,000 for married couples would deliver about $10,000 in annual tax savings to a couple earning $300,000, according to [the calculator on his own website](https://www.booker.senate.gov/tax-calculator?ref=scottsantens.com). A family earning $20,000? Nothing. The poorest 20% of households would see zero benefit from Van Hollen’s plan because their federal tax liability is already zero. You cannot fight poverty with a tool that is invisible to poor people, and you cannot reduce inequality with a tool that helps the rich more than the working class. --- *A big thanks to my monthly patrons who contribute to making my articles possible and free for all. If you find value in my writing and would like to support it, please join* [*my Patreon*](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) *or become a paid subscriber on* [*my Substack*](https://scottsantens.substack.com/)*.* --- ### A Tax Credit Does What a Deduction Cannot A tax credit reduces your tax bill dollar-for-dollar. If the credit is $4,500 and you owe $5,000 in taxes, you now owe just $500\. Everyone gets the same amount of reduction, regardless of their bracket. Simple. Fair. Equality before the law. But the real power unlocks when the credit is *fully refundable*. A fully refundable credit means that if you owe $1,000 in taxes and the credit is $4,500, you don’t just zero out your tax bill — you receive $3,500 as a cash payment. The credit reaches below the tax line into the population that deductions can’t touch: the people in poverty. We know this works because we already proved it. In 2021, the American Rescue Plan expanded the Child Tax Credit to up to $3,600 per child and made it *fully refundable* — meaning families previously excluded because they earned too little could receive the full amount. According to Census data, the expansion contributed to a more than 40% reduction in child poverty, driving the rate to a historic low. The CTC lifted 3 million children out of poverty. Full refundability was the main driver, bringing 19 million more children into eligibility. When Congress let the expansion expire, **child poverty more than doubled**. [That single year of data is all the proof anyone should need that the mechanism works](https://www.scottsantens.com/one-year-after-the-expiration-of-the-enhanced-child-tax-credit-ctc-what-all-have-we-learned-about-its-effects/). The question is whether Democrats have the vision to apply it more broadly. ### The Standard Tax Credit: What Democrats Should Actually Propose Here is what I believe Democrats should do. **Replace the standard deduction with a fully refundable Standard Tax Credit** — the STC — of $375 per month for every adult and every child, or $4,500 per year per person. Design it the same way the 2021 expanded CTC was designed: anyone can choose to receive the credit as an advance monthly payment, or claim it as a lump sum at tax time. Like the current standard deduction, the STC is an alternative to itemizing. Filers choose one or the other — not both. Households with high mortgage interest, charitable giving, or state and local taxes can still itemize if that produces a better result for them ([although these could also be converted to credits](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1vE%5FLVBx4s&ref=scottsantens.com)). Everyone else takes the STC, which for the vast majority of Americans will be the far better deal. This single reform replaces and consolidates the standard deduction, CTC, EITC, WIC, and TANF — converting multiple cash programs into one. No applications. No caseworkers. No benefit cliffs that punish you for taking a raise. Because the credit goes to every adult and every child, a married couple with two children receives $1,500 per month, or $18,000 per year — more than or equal to the combined value of the programs the STC replaces for virtually all households, with a hold-harmless provision ensuring no family receives less than they do today. Keep the current tax brackets in place for everyone earning under $250k — today’s 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, and 32% rates. Then raise the existing 35% bracket (currently starting at $250,525 for singles and $501,050 for married couples) to 37%, raise the existing 37% bracket (currently starting at $640,600 and $768,700) to 40%, and add one new bracket on top: 50% on income above $1 million ($2 million for couples). Tax capital gains and dividends the same as ordinary income under these brackets — no more preferential rates that let billionaires pay a lower effective rate than their secretaries. The STC replaces the standard deduction as the primary mechanism for reducing taxes on the overwhelming majority of Americans, and the new top brackets raise taxes at the top to help balance it out. The credit is what makes the system progressive at the bottom. Because it's a flat amount, $4,500 represents a much larger share of income for a low earner than a high one — and because it's fully refundable, it reaches the people deductions can’t. The brackets handle fairness at the top. The credit handles it at the bottom and middle. ### Who Pays More. Who Pays Less. **Under this system, the bottom 90% of Americans are taxed less than they are now**. A single filer earning $12,000 goes from owing nothing (and getting nothing) to receiving a net refund of about $3,300\. At $30,000, they save $2,568\. At $50,000, they save $2,416\. At $100,000, they save $958\. At $150,000, they save $636\. At $200,000, they save $420. For married couples with two credits, the savings are even larger. A couple earning $40,000 saves $5,457\. At $100,000, they save $4,831\. At $200,000, they save $1,916\. At $400,000, they still save $840\. Add children — each receiving their own $375 per month — and the savings grow further. The crossover — the income at which the new system taxes someone more than the current one — lands at around $206k for single filers and $412k for married couples, roughly the top 5% to 10% of each group. A single filer at $300k pays about $2,124 more per year. A single filer at $500k pays about $6,124 more. A couple at $700k pays about $6,249 more. These amounts represent modest fractions of incomes that will increasingly be the product of AI-augmented productivity — income flowing disproportionately to those capturing the gains from technologies we all helped train. Then the new top brackets kick in. A single filer at $900,000 pays about $17,000 more once the 37→40 rate change takes effect. At $1.5 million, $85,000 more once the 50% bracket takes over. At $5 million, over $540,000 more. Taxing capital gains as ordinary income ensures that the wealthiest — whose income is disproportionately derived from investments rather than wages — contribute their fair share. Add a wealth tax of 1% above $50 million, 2% above $1 billion, and 3% above $10 billion, and the wealthiest finally begin paying their fair share in taxes. **The bottom 90% see their tax burden go down**. The next 9% see small increases — typically less than 1% of their income. The top 1% sees substantial increases. The top 0.1% sees the largest increases. This is progressive taxation that reduces the economic inequality of this Second Gilded Age. ### How to Pay for It The cost of a $375/month standard credit replacing the standard deduction is approximately $1 trillion a year. Here are the other tax offsets: - **Consolidating existing programs** — CTC ($120 billion), EITC ($75 billion), WIC ($7 billion), and TANF ($17 billion) — recovers \~$220 billion. - **The new top brackets** — raising the existing 35% rate to 37%, the existing 37% rate to 40%, and adding a new 50% bracket above $1 million ($2 million for couples) — approximately $135 billion. - **Taxing capital gains and dividends as ordinary income** raises a conservatively estimated $150 billion to an optimistic $220 billion. - **The wealth tax** adds another $240 billion or more. Total revenue: approximately $745 billion to $815 billion. That leaves a gross annual deficit of roughly $245B to $315B. But that shortfall does not account for what happens when you give money to people who spend it. ### A Credit Grows the Economy. The Deficit Pays for Itself. When low- and middle-income households have cash, they spend it. The USDA estimates that every dollar of SNAP generates $1.50 to $1.80 in GDP. Canada’s Child Benefit generates [$2 per $1](https://www.ubiworks.ca/ccb?ref=scottsantens.com) while recovering over 55 cents per dollar in taxes from the resulting economic boost. A larger standard deduction disproportionately benefits higher earners who save the windfall. A refundable credit puts money in the hands of immediate spenders. That spending is revenue for businesses. That revenue creates jobs. The economy grows from the bottom up. [Calnitsky and Gonalons-Pons](https://repository.upenn.edu/entities/publication/cbf4e519-621d-4057-b7ca-d0455c08f4f9?ref=scottsantens.com) analyzed the Dauphin Mincome experiment and found significant reductions in both total crime and violent crime when residents received guaranteed basic income. Scaled conservatively for the smaller poverty-reduction effect of a $375/month credit relative to Dauphin’s near-elimination of poverty, the total societal benefit of the resulting crime reduction is approximately $300 to $500 billion per year — roughly $75 billion of which translates into direct federal budget savings through reduced criminal justice spending, lower Medicaid costs from violent-crime injuries, and recovered tax revenue from people who were not victimized. [Evelyn Forget’s](https://www.lse.ac.uk/LSEE-Research-on-South-Eastern-Europe/Assets/Documents/Events/Conferences-Symposia-Programmes-and-Agendas/2018/FORGET-MINCOME-and-Ontario-short.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) analysis of the same experiment documented an 8.5% reduction in hospitalization rates from fewer accidents, injuries, and mental health admissions. Applied to the roughly $620 billion Medicaid and Medicare spend on hospital care, that’s another $53 billion saved. GDP multiplier effects generate approximately $200 billion in additional tax revenue. Those three offsets total $328 billion — more than the estimated deficit. The plan therefore runs a net annual surplus of roughly $13 to $83 billion in its first year. And those are just first-year, federally-relevant effects. Research led by [Irwin Garfinkel](https://povertycenter.columbia.edu/publication/2022/child-allowance/benefit-cost-analysis?ref=scottsantens.com) at Columbia University estimates that the children’s portion of the credit alone would generate trillions in present-value annual societal returns through higher future earnings, better health, and reduced long-term government spending — a potential 15-to-1 return on investment per child. This is not a costly proposal. It is a plan that pays for itself, even before counting the massive generational benefits to children and the country they will inherit. ### This Is Universal Basic Income. Call It What It Is. What I’m describing is a small universal basic income delivered through the tax code. A fully refundable tax credit paid to every person, monthly, with no conditions — that is UBI. The political scientist Philippe Van Parijs explained years ago why universality is essential even when it seems counterintuitive to include the rich. Giving money to everyone, even the rich, is not better for the rich but better for the poor. The high earners pay for their own credit and more. Universality makes it much harder for the poor to be excluded or fall through the cracks. Those just below income cutoffs are no longer trapped by the threat of losing means-tested benefits if they find a job. And a universal transfer does not stigmatize the poor the way a targeted one does. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!iloH!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F69f0b73f-3d53-4bed-8691-e72782141e71_1536x1024.jpeg) Van Parijs also offered a critical insight: [**sometimes the best way to achieve a basic income is to present it as a refundable tax credit**](https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/ubi-could-mean-justice-for-everyone-how-do-we-get-there-uk-poverty/?ref=scottsantens.com) — simply reducing taxation for everyone, with a cash transfer to those whose tax liability is less than the credit. That is exactly what this proposal does. It is UBI, implemented through the mechanism Americans already understand and accept. ### “But Won’t People Stop Working?” No. The most common objection to UBI is that it will discourage work. The evidence says otherwise — and at $375 per month, the question barely makes sense. $375 is not enough to live on. It is not enough to pay rent in any major American city. It *is* enough to pay for food, take the edge off, cover a car repair, keep the lights on during a bad month. It is a foundation, not a net full of holes. It’s a floor, not a ceiling. Unconditional income experiments of $500 to $1,000 per month have not shown people leaving the workforce in any worrisome way. [Plenty have shown increases](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/60ae8e339f75051fd95f792e/t/6941c387953c35295909bdb2/1765917575864/MGI%5FEnd+of+Year+Report+2025%5FFinal%5F12%5F16%5F25.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Alaska, which has paid every resident an annual dividend since 1982, saw increased employment. Their similar size UBI — [which could be $3,800 this year](https://alaskapublic.org/news/politics/alaska-legislature/2026-04-06/house-committee-oks-3-800-dividend-that-would-spend-half-of-state-savings?ref=scottsantens.com) — has had no negative impact on full-time work and a 17% increase in part-time work, as cash recipients generated more demand that local businesses had to hire more workers to meet. But the most relevant evidence is what happened here in 2021\. About 40 million American families received monthly Child Tax Credit payments of $250 to $300 per child — approximately the scale of a $375 Standard Tax Credit, through the same delivery mechanism, to the population that would benefit most under this proposal. Parents kept working. **Employment among parents actually went up slightly**. And economists who studied the impact found **no measurable inflationary effect** from the CTC payments — the inflation that did occur was driven [by global supply chains and oil shocks](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/05775132.2023.2278348?ref=scottsantens.com), not by families receiving cash. **The Standard Tax Credit has, in essence, already had a massive trial experiment**. It worked. ### A Foundation, Not a Ceiling For those on the other side — those who think $375 per month is too low — I agree. It is. $375 is a starting point, not an end point. The Standard Tax Credit is the foundational layer of a UBI that can grow as additional tax mechanisms are added on top. Each layer is a separate income stream feeding the same monthly delivery mechanism. Some illustrative possibilities: - A **10% value-added tax** could raise roughly $1.76 trillion per year. Split 2:1 between adults and children — recognizing adults consume more — that adds about $487/mo per adult and $243/mo per child. - A **1%** [**land value tax**](https://www.ubicenter.org/uk-lvt?ref=scottsantens.com) would likely equate to about $200B–$400B annually, with \~$300B as a midpoint estimate based on current rough land value ranges. With the same 2:1 split, that adds about $100/mo per adult and $50/mo per child. I recommend raising this to 5% over the course of 5-10 years, which would raise the amounts to $500/mo per adult and $250/mo per kid and grow as land value grows. - A **1.5%** [**stock dilution tax**](https://www.scottsantens.com/how-do-we-pay-for-universal-basic-income-tax-stock-the-way-companies-already-issue-it/) requiring the roughly 35,000 corporations valued over $100 million to issue 1.5% new stock each year into a national wealth fund — sold gradually over the following year through normal trading — could generate around $1.4 trillion. Distributed as a productivity dividend, that adds about $365/mo per adult and child, or about $400/mo per adult and $200/mo per child that would grow as the stock market grows. - A [**$100-per-ton carbon tax**](https://www.scottsantens.com/this-idea-can-literally-change-the-world-universal-basic-income-through-carbon-pricing/) on the roughly 5 billion tons of US emissions could raise about $500 billion, adding another $125/mo per person. - A [**tax on intellectual property rents**](https://www.scottsantens.com/zombification-of-intellectual-property-reform-universal-basic-income-ubi/) — applying to royalties, licensing income, and excess profits from patents and copyrights — could raise roughly $200 billion per year, adding about $60/mo per adult and $30/mo per child. Stack all of those layers on top of the $375 Standard Tax Credit, and the total reaches around $2,000/mo per adult and over $1,200/mo per child — a full-on basic income floor well above the $1,350/mo 2026 federal poverty line. The child amount would cover [about 90% of the median cost of raising a child to an adult](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cost-to-raise-a-child-300000-us-state-by-state/?ref=scottsantens.com). Each layer stands on its own merits: the VAT taxes consumption instead of income in the AI Age, the LVT taxes land and increases the housing supply, the stock issuance tax shares national productivity gains [that haven’t been shared since the mid-1970s](https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/universal-basic-income-is-your-productivity), the carbon tax reduces pollution and incentivizes clean energy, and the IP tax captures economic rent and expands the public domain. The details of each are for other articles and there can be any number of more layers. The point is that **the Standard Tax Credit is the base layer that reduces the income taxes of the bottom 90% of Americans**. Everything else can build on top of it. ### Closing the Deal “$375 a month for every American” is a clearer, more compelling, more memorable message than “We’ll raise the standard deduction to $75,000.” One is concrete. The other is accounting jargon. One reaches every single person. The other reaches only those with enough income to benefit — and gives more to those who already have more. Democrats don’t need to become the party of not taxing. They need to become the party that leaves more money in 9 out of 10 people’s pockets after taxing. That is not a tax deduction. That is a dividend on being American. Stop bidding up the standard deduction. **Start fighting for the Standard Tax Credit**. --- *If reading this was worth your time, it’s worth sharing. Share it, subscribe for free, and if you can, *make a monthly pledge* to keep this work going.* [![Support my work on Patreon](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bsif!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F84fd433d-9077-4eb6-b1d5-1af775321217_461x66.png "Support my work on Patreon")](www.patreon.com/c/scottsantens/membership) **Thank you to my UBI Producer level patrons*: Gisele Huff, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Jeremy Wertheimer, Andrew Yang, Kimi Avary, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Janos Abel, Miki Phagan, Draper Kauffman, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Joe Ballou, Arjun Banker, Christine Celli, Felix Ling, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, John Sullivan, Stephen Castro-Starkey, CodyS, chris heinz, Zachary Weaver, bradzone, Tim, Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Nicolas Pouillard, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Linda Hearne, David Allen, Liz, and all my other monthly patrons for their support.* ### The Next Moonshot: Universal Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-next-moonshot-universal-basic-income-ubi-artemis/ Last updated: 2026-04-16T16:04:21.000Z ### What Artemis II and the Return to the Moon Should Remind Us About Ending Poverty As I write this, four astronauts are hurtling toward the Moon aboard the Orion spacecraft, named *Integrity* by its crew. On April 1, 2026, NASA’s Artemis II launched from Kennedy Space Center — the first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit in more than fifty years. For the first time since Apollo 17 returned to Earth in December 1972, human beings are returning to the Moon. Watching that launch, I felt something I haven’t felt in years. I grew up on *Star Trek* and *The Right Stuff*. I grew up believing I might one day work on the Moon, or fly a spaceship, or at the very least live in a world that took its cues from the Federation rather than centibillionaires. That feeling where your chest tightens and your eyes sting because you’re watching your species do something extraordinary — that’s what programs like Apollo and Artemis II give me. And it’s that same feeling that drives my work on universal basic income. The connection between these two things is not merely a metaphor. It is historical. In August 1969, three days before announcing his Family Assistance Plan — a guaranteed income floor for American families with children — Richard Nixon asked himself why he was doing it. He had doubts. There was no airtight evidence it would work. There was no overwhelming political mandate. There was only the momentum of a decision-making process that had reached the point where it would actually be proposed. He’d already decided. But why? As Daniel Patrick Moynihan recounted in *The Politics of a Guaranteed Income*, Nixon’s reasoning came down to three propositions. First, the existing welfare system was destroying the poor, especially the Black poor, and this was becoming the most serious social problem of the time. Second, it was time to bring the South back into the mainstream of American life, and what fundamentally kept the South apart was poverty. Third, it was necessary to prove that government could work — that there was an answer to what Nixon called the “crisis of confidence in the capacity of government to do its job.” And then Moynihan recorded the crucial line: “**The moonshot had been one kind of success; a guaranteed income would be another, at least as important, surely more difficult. America needed some successes**.” Nixon understood something we seem to have forgotten. The Moon landing wasn’t just a technical achievement. It was proof that a democratic government could marshal collective resources, set an audacious goal, and deliver. It restored faith in what we could accomplish together. A guaranteed income, Nixon believed, would do the same — but for the ground beneath our feet rather than the sky above our heads. He was right. And over half a century later, we still haven’t done it. --- *A big thanks to my monthly patrons who contribute to making my articles possible and free for all. If you find value in my writing and would like to support it, please join* [*my Patreon*](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com)*.* --- ## We Choose to Do These Things When John F. Kennedy stood at Rice University in September 1962, he did not promise that going to the Moon would be simple. He promised the opposite. “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things,” he said, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.” I look at universal basic income the same way. Ending poverty will not be easy. Restructuring an economy where [the top 1% owns nearly a third of all wealth](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBST01134?ref=scottsantens.com) — a record high, per the Federal Reserve — while the bottom half of Americans shares [just 2.5%](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBSB50215?ref=scottsantens.com) will not be easy. Building the political will to guarantee every person an income floor that prevents them from ever falling into destitution — in a country where we’ve been conditioned to believe that poverty is a moral failing rather than a systemic design choice — will not be easy. But we can do it. We have the technology. We have the resources. We have the knowledge. We have the economic capacity. We have the wealth. The United States is the richest country in the history of the world. What we lack is the political decision to distribute that wealth in a way that reflects our stated values. We could return to the level of inequality we had in the 1970s and the rich would still be rich. But the poor would no longer be in poverty as we presently define it, and the middle class would have the stability it once had. An economy where [10% of the population consumes 50% of all goods and services](https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/03/the-wealth-of-the-top-1percent-reaches-a-record-52-trillion.html?ref=scottsantens.com) is not a strong economy. It is a distorted one. It is an economy oriented around serving the preferences of a small fraction of the population, rather than meeting the needs of all of us. This is destabilizing. It corrodes social trust, weakens democratic participation, and creates the conditions for authoritarianism. It is the economic structure of a society in decline, not one reaching for the stars. There's a joke that floats around the internet where someone sits down with Karl Marx and explains what the world is like today. They ask him for his analysis. Marx's response is not about capitalism or class struggle. It's: "Holy shit, you went to the Moon?" They try to redirect but Marx won't let it go: "The Moon in the sky?" It's funny because it captures something real. If you could explain our world to anyone from the 19th century — the technology, the productive capacity, the sheer wealth — the most baffling part would not be what we've achieved. It would be what we've chosen not to do with what we've achieved. **We went to the Moon**. We mapped the human genome. We carry supercomputers in our pockets. And yet tens of millions of Americans live in poverty. That's not a resource problem. It's a decision problem. ## The Parable of Two Wolves There’s a Cherokee parable I love about an elder teaching a child. Inside every person, the elder explains, two wolves are fighting. One is fear, anger, despair. The other is hope, courage, love. The child asks which wolf wins. The elder answers, “The one you feed.” I think about this constantly. Not just as individuals, but as a civilization — which wolf are we feeding? And why are we doing that? When we launch astronauts to the Moon, we feed the hopeful wolf. When we invest in science and exploration, when we set goals that seem impossible and then achieve them, we feed the hopeful wolf. When we tell stories about futures worth building — futures without poverty, without hunger, without the quiet desperation of wondering whether you can make rent — we feed the hopeful wolf. Universal basic income feeds the hopeful wolf too. It says, “We believe everyone deserves to stand on solid ground.” It says, “We have the resources to end poverty, and we choose to end it.” It says, “The purpose of an economy is to serve those who comprise it, not the other way around.” And I believe these things feed each other. When we envision a future without poverty, [a future where every person has the freedom to pursue work that matters most to them](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-monsters-inc-argument-for-unconditional-basic-income/), it becomes easier to imagine a future where we explore the galaxy. And when we do hard things like put human beings on the Moon and send them on to Mars, it becomes easier to believe we can do the hard domestic work of guaranteeing economic security for every citizen. Gene Roddenberry — the man who created *Star Trek* and, in doing so, gave millions of people like me a vision of what humanity could become — understood this. He built a fictional universe premised on the idea that humanity would outgrow poverty, war, and greed, and that our species would dedicate itself to exploration and betterment. As he put it: “**Star Trek speaks to some basic human needs: that there is a tomorrow** — it’s not all going to be over with a big flash and a bomb; that the human race is improving; that we have things to be proud of as humans.” That vision mattered. It still matters. It matters because the stories we tell about the future shape the future we build. And right now, we are not telling enough stories like *Star Trek*. Too much of our science fiction, and too much of our politics, is dystopian. It feeds the fearful wolf. We get *The Hunger Games*. We get collapse narratives. We get fiction that assumes the worst about human nature and then builds worlds to match. We feed the fearful, angry, despairing wolf. I want the *Star Trek* future, not the *Hunger Games* future. And I believe UBI is one of the key policies that gets us there. ## What Exclusion Costs There is a reason Nixon identified the failure of welfare as one of his three motivations. The traditional welfare system doesn’t just fail to solve poverty — it actively undermines the relationship between citizens and their government, and Nixon knew that because he experienced it himself as a kid. Think about what means-tested welfare actually requires. You must prove you are poor enough. You must fill out forms, attach supporting documents, submit to interviews, and open your life to bureaucratic scrutiny. You must do this repeatedly. And after all of that, you may be told you don’t qualify, even when you are barely surviving. And if you do get it, you can lose it if you work to increase your income, leaving you potentially worse off. The experience is dehumanizing by design. [Research by Katrina Kosec and Cecilia Hyunjung Mo](https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12767?ref=scottsantens.com) confirms what this does to how people view their government. Studying Pakistan’s national cash transfer program, they found that when someone in need barely qualifies for assistance, their trust in government increases modestly. But when someone in need barely doesn’t qualify — when they are denied help despite being just as desperate — their trust in government collapses by a far greater magnitude. **The negative effect of exclusion dwarfs the positive effect of inclusion**. It is enormously more damaging to deny someone help they need than it is beneficial to give someone help they need. This is the trap of targeted welfare. Every time you draw a line and say “you qualify but *you* don’t,” you create a person on the wrong side of that line who now has a rational reason to distrust and resent their government. Multiply that by millions of people across hundreds of programs with different eligibility criteria, different renewal periods, different documentation requirements, and you get what we have now — a population that broadly believes government doesn’t work. Not because government *can’t* work, but because for most people who interact with it at its most critical point of contact, it *doesn’t*. Universality solves this. When everyone gets the same floor — the same unconditional income that both prevents poverty and enables participation — no one is excluded. The same goes for universal healthcare. No one is told they’re not poor enough or not deserving enough. No one is forced to prove their suffering to a bureaucrat. The floor is there for everyone, just as the Moon is there for everyone to look up at and dream. ## The System of Pulleys Thomas Paine, that great pamphleteer of the American founding, saw this clearly over two centuries ago. In *Agrarian Justice*, he argued that [every person is owed a share of the common inheritance](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-spaceballs-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi/) — the natural resources and accumulated knowledge of civilization — and that government’s role is to ensure that share is paid. He envisioned government not as a punitive institution that sorts the worthy from the unworthy, but as what he called a system of pulleys — a mechanism for lifting everyone, in a way that private charity never can and never will. Universal basic income is that system of pulleys. It treats every person as having equal rights. It looks at every citizen as a shareholder in the economy they collectively comprise. We are all equal before the law when we all receive the same floor — a floor that both prevents us from falling into poverty and enables us to stand upright and and build on a strong foundation. This is what our founding documents promise, even if we have never fully delivered. All people are created equal. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Government of the people, by the people, for the people. These are not just slogans. They are engineering specifications for a society that we have never finished building. ## The Moonshot We Still Haven’t Taken Artemis II is a reminder. It’s a reminder that we can do extraordinary things when we decide to do them. It’s a reminder that the same country that put human beings on the Moon in 1969 — with less computing power than exists in a modern thermostat — can solve the problem of poverty if it chooses to. We went to the Moon not because it was easy but because it was hard. We should end poverty for the same reason. Nixon was right to connect these two ambitions. The moonshot proved that government could do something magnificent. A universal basic income would prove that government could do something essential — that it could work not just in the extraordinary and spectacular sense of spaceflight, but in the ordinary, daily, foundational sense of making sure no one in the richest country on Earth ever goes without food, shelter, or dignity. We are the country that first landed on the Moon. We should also be the country that first abolishes poverty. These are not competing goals. They are the same goal — the goal of a civilization that believes in itself enough to do what is hard and what is right. The astronauts aboard *Integrity* are about to travel farther from Earth than any human being has ever gone, breaking the distance record set by Apollo 13\. Back here on the ground, tens of millions of Americans are struggling to pay rent, buy groceries, or keep the lights on — not because the wealth doesn’t exist, but because we haven’t decided to share it. We need to decide. Roddenberry imagined a future where there would be no hunger, no greed, and all the children would grow up to pursue what they most wanted to pursue. That future doesn’t build itself. It gets built by people who choose to feed the hopeful wolf — who insist, against all the cynicism and all the despair, that **tomorrow can be better than today**. Going back to the Moon is one way to feed our good wolf. A universal basic income for every American is another. And I believe, as Nixon did in 1969, that doing both is how we prove — to ourselves and to the world — that self-governance works. That democracy can deliver. That a government of the people can actually be for the people. The moonshot we took in 1969 changed how humanity saw itself. The moonshot we still haven’t taken — the one that ends poverty — would change how we live. It’s time to take it. --- *If reading this was worth your time, it’s worth sharing. Share it, subscribe for free, and if you can, *make a monthly pledge* to keep this work going.* [![Support my work on Patreon](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bsif!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F84fd433d-9077-4eb6-b1d5-1af775321217_461x66.png "Support my work on Patreon")](https://www.patreon.com/c/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Thank you to my UBI Producer level patrons*: Gisele Huff, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Jeremy Wertheimer, Andrew Yang, Kimi Avary, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Janos Abel, Miki Phagan, Draper Kauffman, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Joe Ballou, Arjun Banker, Christine Celli, Felix Ling, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, John Sullivan, Stephen Castro-Starkey, CodyS, chris heinz, Zachary Weaver, bradzone, Tim, Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Nicolas Pouillard, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Linda Hearne, David Allen, Liz, and all my other monthly patrons for their support.* ### Universal Basic Income Is Your Productivity Dividend. It’s the Only Way to All Share What We All Built. URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-ubi-is-your-productivity-dividend-its-the-only-way-to-all-share-what-we-all-built/ Last updated: 2026-07-22T16:20:34.000Z ### Why Universal Basic Income (UBI) Is the Only Way to Share AI and Productivity Gains With Everyone There was a time in America when productivity growth and wage growth moved together. From the end of World War II until the mid-1970s, as productivity rose, pay rose with it. Workers produced more and earned more. That was not charity. It was the natural result of an economy that shared its gains with those who generated them. That relationship is dead. It has been dead for half a century. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!x6Rm!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F903d0d8a-24e6-4b47-873e-7b56dadedb1d_1216x1296.png) Source: [EPI.org](https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/?ref=scottsantens.com) According to the Economic Policy Institute, since 1979, productivity has annually grown over twice the rate on average as typical worker pay. Before the late 1970s, these lines were practically the same line. Then policy choices — the erosion of the minimum wage, the dismantling of unions, tax cuts for the rich, deregulation — broke the link between what the economy produced and what most people received. The income generated by rising productivity did not vanish. It went into the salaries of top executives, into corporate profits, and into returns to shareholders. A [February 2025 study](https://www.rand.org/pubs/working%5Fpapers/WRA516-2.html?ref=scottsantens.com) by the RAND Corporation put a number on it. Carter Price estimated the gap between what the bottom 90 percent of American workers earned in 2023 and what they would have earned had income growth remained as evenly distributed as it was in 1975\. The annual gap in 2023 alone was $3.9 trillion. The cumulative total since 1975 was $79 trillion. Seventy-nine trillion dollars flowed upward, away from the vast majority of Americans, over five decades, because we allowed it to happen through deliberate policy choices. Some will suggest raising the minimum wage would fix this. It wouldn’t. A higher minimum wage helps the lowest-paid workers but does nothing for the millions above it who have still seen their share of productivity growth erode. Some will point to unions. Restoring union power would help, and we should do it, but even at peak union strength, not every worker was unionized, and unions cannot reach into every home where unpaid care work — raising children, caring for aging parents — produces enormous value invisible to the labor market. No minimum wage increase or collective bargaining agreement will ever put a paycheck in the hand of a parent staying home with a child. Neither would a tax cut. Universal healthcare? We should have it. Decoupling survival from employment is critical. But universal healthcare distributes healthcare, not the gains of productivity. Shorter work weeks? Worth doing as AI makes it possible to produce more in fewer hours. But shorter work weeks distribute hours of employment, not the wealth generated by the economy. A [negative income tax](https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-is-not-cheaper-than-universal-basic-income-ubi-nor-is-guaranteed-income-more-progressive-by-excluding-the-rich/)? The net outcome can look like UBI on a spreadsheet, but an NIT phases out as income rises which is the same as taxing the incomes of only those in the phaseout range. It does not provide the same amount to everyone. It does not say to every person: you are a shareholder. Only universal basic income does that. Only UBI distributes the same amount to every person, unconditionally, as a foundational floor beneath everyone’s feet. > Every article I publish here is free for everyone because of my supporters [on Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/c/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com). If you value this work, subscribe to this blog and join them. ### Everyone Deserves a Share Because Everyone Built This Here is the strongest and most fundamental case for universality, and it goes beyond wages and productivity charts. As the political economist Gar Alperovitz argued in [his essay on technological inheritance](https://medium.com/@GarAlperovitz/technological-inheritance-and-the-case-for-a-basic-income-ded373a69c8e?ref=scottsantens.com#.101bu1tyi) in 2016, the overwhelming source of modern economic output is not the labor any individual performs today. It is the accumulated knowledge and technology inherited from every generation before us. MIT economist Robert Solow demonstrated that nearly 90 percent of productivity growth in the first half of the 20th century was attributable to “technical change” — a catch-all term encompassing technological innovation, accumulated scientific knowledge, improvements in education, better organizational methods, and any other factor that made a given amount of labor and capital produce more output than before. US per capita output grew roughly sevenfold over the 20th century. None of us individually earned that sevenfold increase. We inherited it. This inheritance argument applies with full force to AI. Large language models were trained on text that billions of people wrote. Audio and video models were trained on audio and video that billions of people created. We all generated that training data. But it is impossible to determine who contributed what, whose data is being used most in any given output, or whose data is qualitatively more valuable. The complexity is irreducible. What we can recognize is that everyone contributed, and therefore everyone should benefit. This is not an abstract philosophical claim. When someone puts up capital to fund a corporation, they often receive a dividend when that corporation matures and generates profits. Our collective human output — our language, our knowledge, our creative work — is the capital that built AI. We are the shareholders. UBI is our dividend. ### We Paid for This With Public Dollars Too The case for a universal dividend is further strengthened by the fact that the foundational technologies behind AI were funded by public dollars. Federal investment through DARPA has been the dominant source of AI research funding since the 1960s. The internet emerged from ARPANET. The NSF funded the research behind Google’s PageRank algorithm. DARPA’s Grand Challenges launched the self-driving car industry. Federal agencies have poured billions into the computing infrastructure, neural network research, and reinforcement learning that made modern AI possible. We all funded the research that created AI. The appropriate return on that investment is not being told to go find another job. A return on investment is a dividend. We invested. We deserve our cut. And we all deserve to benefit even if we keep our jobs, because productivity will continue to grow, and the benefits of everything that got us here should not only go to one percent of people. ### Job Guarantees and Targeted Benefits Are Not Alternatives Do not offer us a new job as our dividend. A job guarantee is not an alternative to UBI. If someone loses their job to AI and a job guarantee helps them find another, that is useful for that person. But it does nothing for the person whose wages have been suppressed for decades. It does nothing for the parent at home. It does nothing for the retired person or the person with a disability. It benefits only those who take the guaranteed job. Everyone should directly benefit from productivity growth, not just those whose employment situation happens to qualify them. The same applies to benefits targeted only at those who lose their jobs. Unemployment insurance is a net with holes. It only catches those who fall through a specific kind of floor in a specific kind of way. Meanwhile, everyone watches productivity grow and their share shrink. We don’t tell stockholders that we can’t trust them with cash, so instead of a dividend, they’ll receive food or housing. That would be absurd. Cash allows people to determine for themselves what they most need. [Universal basic services are fine as complements](https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/why-universal-basic-services-is-no-alternative-to-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com), but they are no substitute for cash in people’s hands. ### How Much Should the Dividend Be? The RAND study provides a useful benchmark. If the bottom 90 percent of Americans were shortchanged by $3.9 trillion in 2023 alone, that number has only grown since. Divided among every adult in the United States, we are looking at a dividend that should be about $1,390 per month here in 2026\. Factor in a smaller amount per child — roughly $500 per month — and we are talking about a dividend that would end poverty in the United States. The poverty line for a single adult in the US sits at [$1,330 per month](https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/federal-poverty-level-fpl/?ref=scottsantens.com). Therefore, a UBI of at least $1,400 per month for every adult, with $500 per month for every child, would abolish poverty as we define it. This is not fantasy. This is the money that should have been flowing to all of us for decades and was instead funneled to a relative few at the top. The $79 trillion cumulative gap since 1975 represents what was taken. A wealth tax on a significant percentage of that accumulated concentration is not punitive. It is corrective. Ideas like AI token taxes can help with the narrative for this. So can land value taxes, which connect to the oldest argument for UBI — the one Thomas Paine made at the founding of this country, that [the earth is the common inheritance of all](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-spaceballs-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi/). Alaska has operated on this logic since 1982 with its Permanent Fund Dividend, and no Alaskan considers it welfare. They consider it their rightful share. That logic supports both a national resource dividend and an AI dividend. But we should not get stuck on the tax question first. What matters most is settling on the amount and the principle: every American rightfully receives a universal dividend. Then we assemble the tax mix. If the annual figure is now north of $4 trillion, that is the full dividend target. Perhaps phase it in over five years to avoid a demand shock. But do it. ### This Cannot Wait We cannot start crowning trillionaires while millions of Americans line up at food banks and millions more live stressed out lives of chronic financial insecurity. Those like Elon Musk exist at the end of a long chain of human achievement that every person who ever lived contributed to. It is wrong for one person to accumulate a trillion dollars based on what all of humanity built, while the rest of us are told to go retrain and compete on price with a robot or survive on gig work. Productivity growth used to be widely shared. It has not been for fifty years. The inequality we have now is already worse than the First Gilded Age. We have the productivity and the resources to end poverty and significantly reduce economic insecurity for all. We have the moral and economic case for a universal dividend. What we lack is the political will to treat every citizen as a shareholder in the economy they comprise. UBI is our rightful dividend. It is time to start paying it. --- ### If you agree with what you just read, sign this pledge next: [The AI Pledge for HumanityI just signed the AI Pledge for Humanity and I want to tell you why. For fifty years, productivity has soared and wages haven’t. Now AI is about to accelerate that pattern. The people building it say Universal Basic Income will be necessary — and then do nothing to make it happen. This pledge calls that bluff. Those with resources commit publicly to investing in UBI. The rest of us sign to push everyone profiting from AI to put their money where their words are. We all made AI possible. We all deserve a share of what it makes possible. Sign and share. And if you know someone who keeps saying UBI is a great idea without backing it up, send them this and ask: will you sign it?![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/icon/favicon-963c8a31bc0ace6a2b835eae9df4d91e9ef68ed87befe9a0dc81b02a6dc8f625.png)Action NetworkAction Network![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/thumbnail/the_ai_pledge_for_humanity-614c23980f3958c4d4221d0d9d0f359bc5999e4b12419be6354a15130ea3de31.png)](https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/the-ai-pledge-for-humanity?ref=scottsantens.com) --- *If reading this was worth your time, it's worth sharing. Share it, subscribe for free, and if you can, *make a monthly donation* to keep this work going.* [![Support my work on Patreon](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bsif!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F84fd433d-9077-4eb6-b1d5-1af775321217_461x66.png "Support my work on Patreon")](https://www.patreon.com/c/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Thank you to my UBI Producer level patrons*: Gisele Huff, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Jeremy Wertheimer, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Janos Abel, Miki Phagan, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Joe Ballou, Arjun Banker, Christine Celli, Felix Ling, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, Stephen Castro-Starkey, CodyS, chris heinz, Zachary Weaver, bradzone, Tim , Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Nicolas Pouillard, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Liz, David Allen, Linda Hearne, and all my other monthly patrons for their support.* ### We Gave Homeless People Cash. They Bought Housing Not Drugs. URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/we-gave-homeless-people-cash-they-bought-housing-not-drugs-ubi/ Last updated: 2026-07-10T16:55:15.000Z ### The evidence from Vancouver to Denver is undeniable: When people in crisis receive money, substance use goes down, employment goes up, and homelessness ends. On any given night in the United States, over half a million people have no place to call home. They sleep in shelters, in cars, under bridges, and on sidewalks. We spend billions trying to address this crisis through a labyrinth of programs, vouchers, case managers, and bureaucratic systems — and yet the number of people experiencing homelessness has been climbing. What if we’ve been approaching this problem backwards? In 1967, [Martin Luther King Jr](https://www.scottsantens.com/martin-luther-king-jr-basic-income-mlk/). offered a different vision: > *“We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished. The poor transformed into purchasers will do a great deal on their own to alter housing decay.”* King understood something that policymakers have been slow to grasp: poverty is the root, and homelessness is the branch. We’ve spent decades trying to prune the branches while ignoring the roots. But a growing body of rigorous scientific evidence now points to a deceptively simple solution that works far better than our current approaches. **Provide basic income.** Not vouchers. Not services. Not case management alone. Cash. Unconditional cash directly into the hands of people experiencing or at risk of homelessness. And the results aren’t just good — they’re transformative. ### The Vancouver Experiment In 2018, researchers at the University of British Columbia launched what would become possibly one of the most important studies on homelessness ever conducted. [Published in *PNAS* in 2023](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2222103120?ref=scottsantens.com), the experiment was elegantly simple: take 50 people who had recently become homeless in Vancouver and give each a one-time cash transfer of $7,500 CAD — roughly 60% of their average annual income — with no strings attached. The results defied every stereotype about homeless people and money. Over the following year, cash recipients spent **99 fewer days homeless** than the control group. They spent 55 more days in stable housing. They retained $1,160 more in savings. And here’s the finding that should put to rest the most persistent myth about giving cash to the poor: there was **no increase in spending on alcohol, drugs, or cigarettes**. None. **In fact, it dropped by 39%.** The money instead went exactly where you’d expect it to go if you stopped thinking of homeless people as fundamentally different from yourself — food, housing, transportation, and durable goods. Even more remarkable was the cost-effectiveness. The cash transfers generated $8,277 in societal savings through reduced shelter use alone, resulting in a net savings of $777 per person *after* accounting for the cost of the transfers themselves. We didn’t just help people — we saved money doing it. The New Leaf Project, as it came to be known, was later expanded to 239 participants and disbursed over $1 million in cash transfers. [The expanded results](https://ubiworks.notion.site/New-Leaf-Impact-Report-2025-Dec-PDF-public-link-to-share-2e6a9ac7ed7380698917d13e8700ed8c?ref=scottsantens.com) confirmed and strengthened what the pilot suggested: cash recipients spent 40% more nights in stable housing and retained 85% more in savings after 12 months. They even earned 21% more in wages, meaning they worked more and/or found better jobs. > *“Across all outcome areas, the data told a consistent story. Unconditional cash support led to rapid, measurable gains in housing stability, financial security, food stability, and key aspects of employment, without reducing labor force participation or increasing irresponsible spending.”* When people have resources to meet their basic needs, to feel stability and hope, they *reduce* their substance use and secure housing. They stop self-medicating their misery because they have less misery to medicate and start improving their living situations. ### What Denver Really Shows If you’ve followed the debate around cash transfers and homelessness, you may have heard that the Denver Basic Income Project “failed.” This narrative deserves a closer look, because what actually happened in Denver tells a far more interesting and hopeful story. [The Denver pilot](https://bsky.app/profile/scottsantens.com/post/3lbudhex36k2u?ref=scottsantens.com), launched in 2022, tested three different approaches with people experiencing homelessness. Group A received $1,000 per month for 12 months. Group B received a $6,500 lump sum followed by $500 per month. Group C received just $50 per month. Crucially, all three groups also received something incredibly valuable that often gets overlooked: a free cell phone with a data plan, plus connections to local charities and support services. This matters because in the 21st century, a phone is infrastructure for survival — you can’t apply for jobs, receive callbacks from employers, or stay connected with family who might offer help without one. Here’s what happened: 43% of those who started unhoused and who got $1,000 a month ended up housed, compared to 25% of the lump sum group and 28% of the $50 group. That’s nearly twice as many people housed in the highest cash group compared to the comparison groups. Full-time employment *increased* in Groups A and B — from 18% to 23% in the $1,000 group, and from 24% to 37% in the lump sum group. Meanwhile, employment actually *decreased* in the $50 control group, from 26% to 21%. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!wr5d!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F25896a08-44f1-4f6f-b40a-b63c2bc317d3_1024x559.jpeg) Think about that. The group receiving substantial cash saw employment go *up*. The common fear that giving people money will make them stop working has it exactly backwards. Money doesn’t create dependency — it creates opportunity. It pays for the bus fare to get to a job interview. It covers the work clothes you need for your first day. It keeps your phone on so employers can call you back. It provides the stability needed to hold down a job once you get one. And what about drug use? This is the fear that dominates every conversation about giving cash to homeless people. Surely they’ll just spend it on drugs, right? Wrong. The Denver study found **no statistically significant increase in substance use** across any group. What did change was blood plasma selling — a marker of financial desperation where people literally sell parts of their bodies for cash. Plasma selling dropped by 60% in Groups A and B. But in the $50 control group? It *rose* by 17%. When people have money, they stop doing desperate things for money. Numbers don’t capture everything. The qualitative findings revealed that participants in Groups A and B reported decreased stress, increased hopefulness, and reduced anxiety. They started setting long-term goals — housing, school, transportation. Meanwhile, Group C participants could only focus on immediate survival needs like gas, food, and hygiene. When you’re drowning, you can’t think about swimming lessons. One finding that particularly caught my attention: almost all participants noted feelings of relief when asked about the impact of the program on their daily lives. One participant mentioned how paying for car insurance for the first time made it possible to drive without the constant stress of looking over their shoulder, waiting to get pulled over or get into an accident they couldn’t afford. Another participant noted that cash was fundamentally different from other benefits: “Food stamps, you can only use it on food. Any other benefits, you can only use it on those bills, and oftentimes, you can’t do it, because you’re using cash to pay someone else’s bill because they’re letting you have a place to stay. With DBIP, you can use that cash on anything you want. That makes a huge difference.” Here’s another important nuance: sometimes what someone experiencing homelessness needs isn’t actually thousands of dollars — it’s fifty. The Denver study included a $50/month group as the control. Qualitative interviews showed that sometimes the barrier to accepting help from friends or family wasn’t the absence of people willing to help, but the shame of not being able to contribute anything. Having even a small amount of money can transform the psychological dynamic of asking for help. “Can I stay with you?” becomes “Can I stay with you? I can help with utilities.” The difference between those two questions can mean the difference between housed and unhoused. So why do people claim Denver “failed”? Largely because the differences between the treatment and comparison groups weren’t as dramatic as some hoped. But this misses some crucial points: the comparison group wasn’t a true control. Everyone in the study received phones, data plans, and connections to support services. Group C also received more existing welfare support than Groups A and B, whose higher incomes made them ineligible for programs like SSI. When you give the “control” group substantial help too, of course the gap narrows. The real story is that **just trusting people with cash worked**, and those with more cash improved the most. ### Miracle Money and the “Cash Plus” Lesson Another real-world test of the “give homeless people money” approach comes from [Miracle Money: California](https://dworakpeck.usc.edu/news/guaranteed-income-study-finds-meaningful-results-for-people-experiencing-homelessness-cash?ref=scottsantens.com), a partnership between Miracle Messages and USC researchers. It’s important because it didn’t just test cash—it tested cash plus human connection, pairing monthly payments with a volunteer “phone buddy” (Miracle Friends) designed to rebuild relational support alongside financial stability. The program scaled up what looked promising in a small earlier pilot. In that initial Miracle Money pilot, 14 people received $500 per month for six months, and among those who were unhoused at entry, 67% secured stable housing. Then came the larger test. Launched in 2022, the larger study provided 103 unhoused participants in the Bay Area and Los Angeles County with $750 per month for 12 months, distributing nearly $1 million in cash between 2022 and 2024, and tracking outcomes for 15 months across three groups: cash+social support, social support only, and a waitlist control. Here’s the nuance. Nearly half of the cash group exited homelessness during the study window—48%—but the study did not find a statistically significant difference in homelessness exits compared to the other groups (38% in the social-support-only group and 43% in the waitlist control), meaning researchers couldn’t claim the cash-plus model reduced homelessness in this particular test. That’s not evidence that cash “doesn’t work.” It’s evidence that *amounts matter* in high-rent environments, and that a payment sized below local housing costs may function more as stabilization and triage than as a housing guarantee. What Miracle Money did do—decisively—is crush the moral panic. Recipients spent nearly all of the money on basics, because of course they did. In the reporting on the study, the biggest categories were food (26%), housing costs (24%), and transportation (13%). Spending on “temptation goods” (alcohol, cigarettes, drugs) was under 5%, and there was no increase in it. Employment also didn’t drop—again. And the “plus” mattered. If Denver shows that large enough cash amounts move housing outcomes more, Miracle Money shows something complementary: even when the payment size isn’t enough to buy a clean exit from homelessness in a high rent market, cash still buys breathing room—and breathing room is where better decisions, follow-through, and reconnection become possible. ### The Prevention Revolution Everything I’ve discussed so far has focused on people who are *already* homeless. But what about keeping people from becoming homeless in the first place? This is where the evidence becomes even more compelling. In 2016, researchers from the University of Notre Dame published a groundbreaking [study in *Science*](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aag0833?ijkey=TutmUim3VeIlo&keytype=ref&siteid=sci&ref=scottsantens.com) that examined what happened when people on the brink of homelessness in Chicago received emergency cash assistance of around $1,000\. The results were stunning: recipients were **88% less likely to become homeless within three months** and **76% less likely within six months**. Even over a two-year period, they remained significantly less likely to ever end up on the street. This is the prevention insight that changes everything. We currently spend tens of thousands of dollars per person per year keeping homeless people alive — shelters, emergency rooms, jails, social services. New York City alone spends millions putting homeless people up in publicly-funded hotel rooms. What if we invested a fraction of that upstream, before people lost everything? Oakland’s Keep Oakland Housed initiative has been doing exactly this since 2018, using a points-based system to identify those at highest risk — including foster care youth — and providing $5,400 to $8,150 in assistance. The result? **92% of recipients avoided homelessness six months later**. The model is now being deployed across Alameda County. Consider what universal basic income would mean in this context. It wouldn’t just reduce existing homelessness — **it would prevent much of it from ever happening**. When everyone has a guaranteed income floor, the cascade of events that leads from a job loss to an eviction to a shelter to the street gets interrupted at the very first step. You don’t need emergency assistance if you never face the emergency in the first place. ### Cash Beats Vouchers Perhaps the most policy-relevant evidence comes [from Philadelphia](https://www.housinginitiative.org/phlhousing-housing-outcomes-at-two-years.html?ref=scottsantens.com), where researchers recently conducted a randomized controlled trial directly comparing cash rental assistance to traditional housing vouchers. This is the head-to-head comparison that housing policy has long needed. The results should reshape how we think about housing assistance. Cash assistance achieved a **100% utilization rate** — every single household was able to use their benefit. Housing vouchers? Only 75% utilization. One in four families offered a voucher couldn’t actually use it, despite Philadelphia having a higher-than-average voucher success rate. The reasons are familiar to anyone who has navigated the housing system: landlords who won’t accept vouchers, bureaucratic delays, housing that doesn’t meet inspection requirements, the sheer complexity of the process. Cash recipients experienced a 63-75% reduction in forced moves compared to controls. **Their rate of homelessness was cut by 67% at 18 months** — 2.5 per 100 households versus 7.8 for controls and 6.3 for vouchers. They also reported 22% fewer serious housing quality concerns. Cash worked faster and more completely than vouchers because it gave people the flexibility to solve their own problems in their own ways. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!p9VV!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbb03d1c2-56e4-49a2-aac6-9a51287b7574_1421x752.jpeg) This finding illuminates something fundamental about how we approach poverty. We’ve built elaborate systems designed to help the poor while not trusting them. We create vouchers instead of cash because we worry people will make bad choices. But the evidence consistently shows that people experiencing poverty know what they need. They don’t need us to make decisions for them. They just need resources and the freedom to act with agency and human dignity. ### Youth and the Missing Safety Net One population deserving special attention is homeless youth. [Oregon’s Direct Cash Transfer Program](https://www.streetroots.org/news/2025/11/18/oregon-experiments-direct-cash-payments-assist-homeless-youths?ref=scottsantens.com) provided 117 young people aged 18-24 with $1,000 per month for two years, plus a one-time $3,000 payment. At the program’s end, **91% reported stable housing**. Why does cash seem to work especially well for young people? Research from Merrill Lynch shows that American parents give their adult children approximately $500 billion annually in financial support. This invisible safety net — helping with rent, covering emergencies, co-signing leases, providing a place to crash — isn’t equally distributed. White parents are significantly more likely to provide this support than parents of color, reflecting generations of wealth inequality. Cash transfers for homeless youth function as a substitute for this inequitable safety net. One participant, Gabi Huffman, used her funds for the mundane necessities that separate housed life from unhoused life: car insurance, gas, work clothes, a laptop for community college. She also paid for her father’s cremation. She moved from a church basement shelter to a duplex with her daughter. These aren’t stories of young adults becoming dependent. They’re stories of people getting the resources they need to build lives. ### Addressing the Rent Question At this point, a reasonable objection arises: if we give everyone money, [won’t landlords just raise rents to capture it all?](https://widerquist.com/will-basic-income-cause-rent-to-increase/?ref=scottsantens.com) This concern deserves a full article of its own, but let me offer several responses. First, UBI would enable many current renters to become homeowners, which actually *increases* the supply of rental housing. In [the Gary, Indiana pilot](https://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/October-2014/Want-to-Help-Gary-Indiana-Why-Not-Just-Give-Them-Money/) in the 1970s, home ownership rates increased by over 30% for pilot participants. Second, UBI reveals *true* demand for housing — demand currently distorted by the fact that millions who need homes can’t signal that need in the market. Developers need accurate demand signals to know where to build and how much. Third, UBI creates an entirely new market for landlords. Currently, renting to low-income tenants is very risky because their income is unstable. But a guaranteed basic income makes everyone a reliable renter with predictable income that landlords can trust. Fourth, UBI should be accompanied [by complementary policies](https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/land-and-the-liberty-to-build-on): replacing single-household zoning with multi-household zoning, implementing land value taxes to encourage development and push down rents, and where appropriate, rent controls paired with policies that ensure housing supply keeps growing despite the controls. The solution isn’t to abandon cash transfers — it’s to pair them with policies that ensure housing abundance. ### What Saturation Would Show Here’s something important about every study I’ve described: they were all *targeted* interventions. Cash went specifically to people experiencing homelessness, not to entire communities. We haven’t yet run a saturation pilot in the US ([aside from arguably Chelsea Eats](https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/the-reports-of-ubis-death-are-greatly)) — giving basic income to *everyone* in an area — specifically designed to measure effects on homelessness. But think about what such a pilot would likely show. When everyone in a community has a basic income, local spending increases. One fear is increased rents, but local GDP grows. Local businesses hire more workers. More job opportunities emerge for everyone, including those escaping homelessness. The currently homeless aren’t just receiving cash — they’re participating in a more prosperous local economy with more opportunities to earn additional income. This is critical: **basic income is a floor, not a ceiling**. It provides a foundation from which people can build. It doesn’t replace work income — it supplements it. And when that foundation exists for everyone, the entire community benefits. ### The Truth About People What all this evidence reveals is something that should have been obvious to everyone from the start: homeless people are people. They’re not a separate species with fundamentally different desires or capabilities. They’re not *Homo homeless.* They’re not uniquely prone to irresponsibility or addiction. They’re people who, through some combination of circumstances — job loss, medical emergency, family breakdown, mental health crisis, addiction, domestic violence, or simply bad luck — found themselves without enough money to keep a roof over their heads. Any of us could find ourselves in similar circumstances. Anything can happen to anyone at any time. It’s Murphy’s Law. Poverty isn’t punishment for poor choices. It’s a condition that *causes* poor choices by trapping people in survival mode, unable to think beyond the next meal or the next night’s shelter. [The cognitive burden of scarcity consumes mental bandwidth](https://amzn.to/4rlxFEz?ref=scottsantens.com) that could otherwise go toward planning, problem-solving, and building a better future. Poverty is a trap, not a verdict. It certainly shouldn’t be akin to a guilty verdict. This is why the fear that cash will be wasted on drugs gets it backwards. Drug use among homeless populations isn’t caused by having money — it’s caused by not having enough. It’s a coping mechanism for misery, a way to escape unbearable circumstances, a form of self-medication when real medicine isn’t available. [Study after study shows that when people receive cash, drug use doesn’t increase](https://davidevans.blog/2016/11/29/the-poor-dont-use-cash-transfers-on-alcohol-and-tobacco-really/?ref=scottsantens.com). Often it decreases — significantly, as the 39% drop in the New Leaf expansion demonstrates. People stop self-medicating their misery because they have less misery to medicate. They start building futures because they can finally see futures worth building. Supply people with money and they buy food. They pay for housing. They fix their cars so they can get to work. They buy phones so employers can reach them. They pay for the small things — bus passes, work clothes, car insurance — that make the difference between drowning and swimming. They act, in other words, exactly like you or I would act if we suddenly found ourselves without resources. ### The Path Forward The evidence is now overwhelming and consistent across multiple rigorous studies in multiple cities and countries. Cash transfers reduce homelessness more effectively and more efficiently than our current system of vouchers and services. They prevent homelessness before it starts. They don’t increase drug use — they decrease it. They don’t discourage work — they often increase employment. They save money by reducing the need for emergency services, shelters, and hospitals. Universal basic income would take these findings and apply them at scale, not just to those who have already fallen through the cracks, but to everyone, ensuring that the cracks themselves disappear. An unconditional basic income floor means that hard times happen less often and anyone facing hard times — anyone at all, because it can happen to any of us — has resources to maintain stability while they get back on their feet and rebuild their lives. Dr. King was right. Abolish poverty first, and the problems of housing will become far more tractable. Transform the poor into purchasers, and they will do a great deal on their own. The question is no longer whether cash works. The evidence has answered that decisively. The question is whether we’re ready to trust people — all people — with the resources they need to live with dignity. The evidence says we should. The evidence says it works. **Period. End of story.** --- *Want more content like this? Please like it, share it with others, and click the free subscribe button. Also *consider making a monthly pledge* in support of my UBI advocacy work.* [![Support my work on Patreon](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bsif!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F84fd433d-9077-4eb6-b1d5-1af775321217_461x66.png "Support my work on Patreon")](www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership) **Thank you to my UBI Producer level patrons*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark, Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Steve Roth, Miki Phagan, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Joe Ballou, Arjun Banker, Tommy Caruso, Felix Ling, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Juro Antal, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, Stephen Castro-Starkey, David Allen, Liz, and all my other monthly patrons for their support.* --- Looking for a UBI-focused nonprofit charity to donate to? Consider donating to the [**Income To Support All Foundation**](https://www.itsafoundation.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) to support ambitious UBI projects focused on research, storytelling, and implementation to realize economic freedom for all. ### Top 10 Universal Basic Income Articles of 2025 URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/top-10-universal-basic-income-articles-of-2025/ Last updated: 2026-01-30T22:00:26.000Z # As host of [The Basic Income Show](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXhMtYULkYuFiM0s9Kj2U6QkwjGjxwOw9&ref=scottsantens.com) and moderator for the [Basic Income subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/?ref=scottsantens.com), I read hundreds of article every year about UBI. Below, I’ve compiled a list of the top ten articles I consider my favorites out of everything published in 2025. --- *A big thanks to my monthly patrons who contribute to making articles like this possible and free for everyone. If you find value in my writing and would like to support the creation of more content like this, please check out* [*my Patreon page*](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com)*.* --- 1. [**A Kantian Approach to Everything? On Life Choices and Universal Basic Income**](https://blog.apaonline.org/2025/11/25/a-kantian-approach-to-everything-on-life-choices-and-universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Julieta Elgarte To start this list, I’ve chosen a philosophical piece from the American Philosophical Association’s blog that approaches basic income from a Kantian perspective. Julieta Elgarte, a philosopher at Universidad Nacional de La Plata in Argentina, argues that we should try to make our life choices not merely as means to external ends, but as ends in themselves—and that UBI is the policy that makes this possible for everyone. I’ll admit part of why I loved this article so much is that I read [*How to Be Perfect*](https://amzn.to/3Nb5LMC?ref=scottsantens.com) by Michael Schur last year and it stuck with me. Schur’s accessible tour through moral philosophy left me thinking a lot about Kant’s categorical imperative—the idea that **you should never use someone merely as a means to an end**—as a general rule to live by if you want to try to be a good person. So when I came across Elgarte’s piece applying that same framework to UBI, it immediately resonated. What I appreciate about this article is how it frames the case for UBI through the lens of autonomy in relationships and work. Elgarte explains how economic dependency traps people, especially women, in relationships they might otherwise leave, and forces young people to instrumentalize (treat as a means to an end) their very lives by choosing careers based on expected income rather than passion or calling. Here’s her core argument: > “By freeing young women and men from the economic insecurity that pushes them to instrumentalize their very life—from their most intimate relationships through the abilities they choose to develop to the contribution they make to the world through their everyday work—a UBI would give them the real freedom and the genuine opportunity to choose what they inherently value: to marry for love and to work on their calling.” This is a great article to share with anyone interested in philosophical foundations for UBI, and it’s a refreshing approach that connects Kant’s famous categorical imperative to concrete policy. 1. [**André Gorz: From the End of Work to the Age of Artificial Intelligence**](https://www.ardatunca.net/post/andr%C3%A9-gorz-from-the-end-of-work-to-the-age-of-artificial-intelligence?ref=scottsantens.com) by Arda Tunca Continuing the philosophical thread, this piece introduces readers to André Gorz, a thinker who long ago anticipated our current moment. Gorz, who fused existentialism, Marxism, and ecological thought, argued in his 1980 book [*Farewell to the Working Class*](https://amzn.to/4jsuJ64?ref=scottsantens.com) that automation would make necessary labor progressively obsolete—but that capitalism would cling to employment as a moral obligation anyway. What makes this article valuable is how Arda Tunca connects Gorz’s decades-old insights to the AI economy. Gorz foresaw the “productivity-without-prosperity” dilemma: technological abundance coexisting with economic insecurity, wages stagnating while output soars, workers pushed into precarious service jobs. His observation that “capitalism cannot survive without making labor compulsory, even when it becomes unnecessary” describes our current situation with eerie accuracy. Gorz proposed universal basic income not as a way to preserve consumption, but to guarantee autonomy—freedom from market dependency. A basic income would allow people to divide their lives between paid work, care, art, study, and civic participation. He envisioned what he called a “civilization of time” rather than a “civilization of work.” > “The question is not how to make people fit for the system, but how to make the system fit for people.” For anyone looking for a deeper philosophical grounding for the case that AI demands UBI, Gorz is essential reading, and this article is an excellent introduction to his thought. 1. [**Basic Income in Canada is Closer Than You Think**](https://rabble.ca/columnists/basic-income-in-canada-is-closer-than-you-think/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Nancy Wilson For those following UBI developments in Canada, this article for Rabble is a great update. Nancy Wilson writes about Senate Bill S-206, the National Framework for a Guaranteed Livable Basic Income Act, which passed second reading and is currently before the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance. This isn’t a pilot. It’s real legislation working its way through Parliament to form a real plan for basic income. Wilson does a great job contextualizing the bill’s journey, noting how NDP Member of Parliament Leah Gazan first introduced a similar bill (C-223) in 2021, which died on the vine in 2024, and how Senator Kim Pate has persistently revived the effort. This continuity matters because it shows basic income is no longer tied to a single politician or party—it’s a sustained policy effort with institutional backing. She also reminds readers of Mincome, Canada’s famous basic income experiment from the 1970s in Manitoba, and its findings: modest reductions in work hours (mostly among new mothers and students), a 17.5% drop in crime rates, and improvements in physical and mental health. > “Basic Income isn’t a utopian dream. It is a real policy initiative that is working its way through Parliament right now.” Anyone who thinks UBI is politically impossible should read this article. 1. [**The Cruel Catch-22 of Cash Aid**](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/09/the-cruel-catch-22-of-cash-aid/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Mother Jones This Mother Jones piece is essential reading for understanding one of the biggest obstacles facing guaranteed income programs in the United States: the benefits cliff. It tells the story of Portia, a 27-year-old mother in Flint, Michigan, who is paralyzed below the waist and receives $936 monthly from Supplemental Security Income. When she enrolled in Rx Kids, a guaranteed income program in Flint giving $1,500 to expectant mothers plus another $500/mo for the year after birth, she faced an impossible choice: each $500 payment would trigger a nearly equal reduction in her SSI. > “If I wouldn’t have taken the $500, that would have been another two weeks before I was able to put anything in my refrigerator. These are the decisions that people are forced to make.” The article explains how this problem has existed since at least the 1970s, when researchers running “income maintenance” experiments in Seattle and Denver were puzzled that eligible residents passed on more money than welfare offered—because signing up meant losing other benefits and having subsidized rents raised. What’s particularly frustrating is how close we came to fixing this. Former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley was working on regulations that would have protected SSI recipients who receive guaranteed income payments, but the effort evaporated after the 2024 election. “We were so close,” says Kathleen Romig, who was helping iron out details at the agency. This is the kind of article that helps people understand the issues with the conditions and means-testing of existing programs, and to consider what potential reforms existing programs should face in a post-UBI world. Should anyone ever be worse off if their incomes increase for any reason? UBI makes sure the answer to that is “No.” 1. [**Yes, Cash Transfers Work**](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/08/cash-transfer-economic-growth/684028/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Annie Lowrey Annie Lowrey, author of the book *Give People Money*, returns with this Atlantic piece that serves as a powerful rebuttal ([aside from my own](https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/the-reports-of-ubis-death-are-greatly)) to recent skepticism about cash transfer programs. Some critics have pointed to “lackluster” results from recent pilots—Denver’s program didn’t significantly reduce homelessness compared to the control group, Compton’s didn’t significantly improve psychological well-being, the OpenResearch pilot didn’t significantly bolster health outcomes. But Lowrey argues these critiques overinterpret limited evidence while ignoring decades of research showing cash works. She makes several important points. First, the recent pilots took place during and after the pandemic, when Congress was already flooding families with stimulus checks and enhanced unemployment—making it harder to isolate the effects of any single program. Second, they occurred during an acute cost-of-living crisis brought on by post-pandemic inflation. But her most important point is this: the pilots did reduce poverty. Participants had more money to spend on housing, transportation, and food. Mothers were less likely to be in poverty. > “You give people money; they have money.” She also reminds readers that the strongest benefits of cash transfers often take time to appear. Mothers’ pensions from the 1910s-1930s had muted effects on the women receiving them at the time, but significant effects on the lifetime earnings and educational attainment of their sons, decades later. This is an article to share whenever someone claims some basic income pilots “failed.” 1. [**What Does Global Justice Look Like in the 21st Century?**](https://jacobin.com/2025/10/global-justice-ubi-migration-parijs?ref=scottsantens.com) by Philippe Van Parijs It’s always great to read something new from Philippe Van Parijs, widely regarded as the godfather of UBI. In this *Jacobin* interview, he discusses his intellectual trajectory, the prospects for basic income in the age of AI, and the dilemmas of justice posed by mass migration. Van Parijs offers an important corrective to the typical AI-based case for UBI. He doesn’t expect AI to make the world jobless, but he does believe it will further polarize the distribution of earning power and wealth. UBI, combined with massive expansion of lifelong learning, can counteract this trend. On migration, he’s characteristically thoughtful. He acknowledges the tension between opening borders and protecting the interests of the worst-off among locals, but refuses to conclude that borders should stay closed: > “High rates of immigration do not make life easier for a generous basic income, but they do not make it impossible.” What I especially appreciate is his honesty about his own intellectual positioning. When asked about his relationship to Rawls and Marxism, he says he’s “probably best labeled a left-Rawlsian rather than a Marxist” and explains exactly where he finds Rawls insufficiently egalitarian. This interview is essential reading for anyone interested in the philosophical foundations of UBI and how it connects to broader questions of global justice. 1. [**Basic Income as Power to the People**](https://widerquist.com/basic-income-as-power-to-the-people-janus-debates-preview-part-2/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Karl Widerquist This essay is a preview of Karl Widerquist’s forthcoming book for the Janus Debates series, and it’s one of the most powerful articulations of the freedom case for UBI I’ve read recently. Karl’s central argument is that UBI gives ordinary people something they desperately lack: real power. He starts with a critique of our existing checks on power. Our vote is one among millions, easily outweighed by donor money. In the marketplace, we call ourselves “free labor” because we can say yes or no to any one employer, but we lack the power to say no to all the bad choices. A livable UBI changes that: > “A livable UBI is the ultimate check in government and in economics, because it devolves one important piece of real power to everyone as an individual: the freedom from labor-market dependence; the power to say no to any and all employment.” What I love about this piece is how Karl systematically works through the implications. UBI gives workers the power to demand better wages and conditions. It gives women the power to leave abusive relationships. It gives unions an “inexhaustible strike fund.” It even helps people make better reproductive choices by reducing the financial penalty for having children. He also addresses the common objection that people won’t work: > “Some people, especially privileged people, allege that we won’t work if UBI exists. We should ask them, are your job offers so terrible that no one with the power to refuse would take them?” This is an article to bookmark and share whenever someone asks why UBI matters beyond just reducing poverty. It’s about power to the People. 1. [**Just How Many More Successful UBI Trials Do We Need?**](https://thenoosphere.substack.com/p/just-how-many-more-successful-ubi) by Katie Jagielnicka Katie Jagielnicka’s piece for The Noösphere is built around a simple but devastating question: at what point does the evidence become sufficient? She writes in response to the results of Germany’s three-year basic income study, in which 122 people received €1,200 monthly with no strings attached. The results were overwhelmingly positive. Participants worked 40 hours per week on average—identical to the control group. They reported greater job satisfaction and were more likely to change jobs or pursue education. They saved more money and donated more to charity. Women, in particular, experienced significant increases in autonomy. But Katie’s larger point is that Germany is just one of many successful trials. She walks through GiveDirectly’s 12-year experiment in Kenya, Finland’s state-run study, Canada’s Mincome, and dozens of others. The pattern is consistent: people don’t stop working, health improves, and the feared social collapse never materializes. > “If governments were genuine in saying they will apply ‘evidence-based policy’, we would have a basic income system already.” This article resonated with me because I've been saying the same thing for years—but what really excites me is that it's no longer just UBI advocates making this point. The frustration Katie expresses is becoming mainstream. "Of course that basic income pilot was a success" is turning into its own meme, because what else would you expect from the two hundredth study to reach the same conclusion? We've developed this strange habit of endlessly re-testing policies we already know work while refusing to actually implement them, and UBI is finally being recognized as exhibit A. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!NeGS!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fedfa8a01-14c5-4580-8fe0-3541bb3d2c3c_500x1069.jpeg) Meme found in the wild not created by me 1. [**Labor Supply Responses to a Very Large Income Shock:**](https://drive.google.com/file/d/12iDsOHN1LATFWFCTfYOQvKzGh-nEHEw2/view?ref=scottsantens.com)[**Evidence from Daughters of Brazilian Military Officers**](https://drive.google.com/file/d/12iDsOHN1LATFWFCTfYOQvKzGh-nEHEw2/view?ref=scottsantens.com) by Marcelo Ferreira My article about this one is [here](https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/the-200-year-basic-income-experiment-in-brazil-for-women-ubi) if you’d prefer to read that to an 80-page academic paper, but this research is by Marcelo Ferreira at Princeton is so important that I had to include it despite it being a long paper. Ferreira analyzed what amounts to a long-term natural experiment in Brazil: lifetime pensions for daughters of military personnel that date back to 1795 under the Portuguese Empire. What makes this study remarkable is its scale and duration. This wasn’t a two-year pilot with a few hundred participants. Ferreira analyzed data from over 30,000 people receiving permanent, unconditional income ranging from poverty-level amounts to the equivalent of $15,000 per month. If the laziness myth were true, we’d expect labor force participation to collapse at those higher amounts. It didn’t. The income elasticity of labor supply was extremely low. For every dollar given, labor earnings fell by just 8 cents on average. People who continued working didn’t reduce their hours at all. The reduction came entirely from some women dropping out of the workforce or taking longer between jobs—often to do unpaid care work or be more selective about employment or to just retire a few years earlier. When combined with the 2020 systematic review finding that 93% of trials showed no meaningful work reduction, and the 2025 End of Year Report covering 27 American pilots that found zero showed a decline in employment, the conclusion is inescapable: People are afraid of a bogeyman. Unconditional basic income is the foundation of work, not the enemy of it. This debate is over. 1. [**The Best Books on Universal Basic Income**](https://fivebooks.com/best-books/universal-basic-income-matthew-johnson/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Matthew Johnson My favorite article of 2025 is this Five Books interview with Matthew Johnson, Professor of Public Policy at Northumbria University and chair of the Common Sense Policy Group. What I love about it is how it weaves together the philosophical, economic, and political case for UBI through a discussion of five influential books—and in doing so, creates an incredibly accessible and informative introduction for newcomers while offering fresh insights for veterans. Johnson selects a fascinating range: Marx’s *The German Ideology* for its emphasis on how material conditions shape our worldview; Hayek’s *The Road to Serfdom*, which could surprise people with its arguable endorsement of basic income; Philip Pettit’s *Republicanism* on freedom from domination; and Guy Standing’s *The Precariat* on the changing nature of work. What makes this interview exceptional is Johnson’s willingness to be direct about the political obstacles. When the interviewer asks about cost, he doesn’t hedge: > “Tax rich people. This is supposedly a rich society, in which rewards from working are reducing relative to rewards from wealth.” He’s equally blunt about the current UK government’s inadequacy and the need for large-scale public investment. But he also makes the affirmative case that UBI isn’t charity—it’s recognition of our shared inheritance: > “UBI should be seen not as a handout but as a rightful share of common wealth.” Johnson explains why universality matters (it ensures the poorest actually receive benefits, unlike targeted programs with high exclusion errors), why unconditionality matters (it doesn’t create poverty traps), and why basic income changes everything by working through three pathways: increased resources, increased security, and increased predictability. This is a fantastic recommendation for anyone wanting a comprehensive introduction to UBI. Bookmark it, share it, and consider reading the books he recommends. --- **Bonus:** [**The Marshall Islands Just Quietly Implemented the First National Universal Basic Income**](https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/marshall-islands-just-implemented-ubi) by Scott Santens I’m including this as a bonus because I wrote it, but the news itself is potentially the biggest UBI development in decades, and everyone who supports basic income needs to know about it. In late 2025, the Republic of the Marshall Islands passed and funded a nationwide, legally established, permanent universal basic income called “Enra.” This is not a pilot. Not a time-limited experiment. It’s a permanent system paying every citizen living in the country $200 every three months, with children included. There’s no means test and no work requirement. Relative to their economy, this is equivalent to the United States paying everyone about $750 per month—around 10-11% of GDP per capita. The program is funded by a U.S.-capitalized sovereign wealth fund created under the Compact of Free Association, essentially making it a national dividend similar to Alaska’s Permanent Fund but at a much larger scale relative to their economy. A sovereign nation has now legislated a permanent, nationwide, unconditional, individual, regular cash payment to all citizens. It has committed around 8% of GDP to that UBI and another 6% to additional distributions for higher-need communities. It has funded it from a sovereign wealth fund built from external rents. For larger economies, this isn’t a plug-and-play blueprint, but it is a clean proof of concept. A government can decide that a share of national wealth should be paid out as universal basic income. The Marshall Islands just did exactly that. So, who’s next? --- **Bonus Meme:** **Nothernlion’s Extremely Important PSA** I haven’t done this before, but my meme of the year goes to [Northernlion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northernlion?ref=scottsantens.com). You need healthcare and universal basic income. Don’t get distracted! --- I hope you found this list helpful and if you want to avoid missing any great articles about UBI in 2026, consider a daily visit to the [Basic Income subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/?ref=scottsantens.com), subscribing to [monthly UBI news updates](https://itsanewsletter.beehiiv.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) via my ITSA Newsletter, and following @ScottSantens on Bluesky, YouTube, and [everywhere else I am](https://linktr.ee/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) where you are too. --- *Want more content like this? Please like it, share it, and click the free subscribe button. Also *consider making a monthly pledge* in support of my UBI advocacy work.* [![Support my work on Patreon](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bsif!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F84fd433d-9077-4eb6-b1d5-1af775321217_461x66.png "Support my work on Patreon")](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Thank you to my UBI Producer level patrons*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark, Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Steve Roth, Miki Phagan, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Joe Ballou, Arjun Banker, Tommy Caruso, Felix Ling, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Juro Antal, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, Stephen Castro-Starkey, David Allen, Liz, and all my other monthly patrons for their support.* --- Looking for a UBI-focused nonprofit charity to donate to? Consider donating to the [**Income To Support All Foundation**](https://www.itsafoundation.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) to support ambitious UBI projects focused on research, storytelling, and implementation to realize economic freedom for all. ### The 200-Year Experiment: How a 'Privileged' Basic Income in Brazil Proves We Can Afford to Be Universal URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-200-year-experiment-how-a-privileged-basic-income-in-brazil-proves-we-can-afford-to-be-universal/ Last updated: 2026-01-06T18:00:12.000Z ### From $500 to $15,000 a Month: How Decades of Data Prove That an Unconditional Basic Income Guarantee Fuels Ambition Instead of Laziness What if I told you that the Portuguese Empire accidentally ran one of the most comprehensive basic income experiments in human history? Not a one-year or two-year or even three-year pilot. Not a few hundred or few thousand participants. A policy spanning over two centuries, distributing everything from poverty-level incomes to amounts equivalent to $15,000 per month in modern purchasing power. And **the results absolutely demolish the idea that giving people money makes most of them stop working** for more money. This is the question that haunts every conversation about Universal Basic Income. It doesn’t matter if we’re discussing a UBI of $1,000 a year or $10,000 a month or anything in between—someone always asks: “But won’t people just quit their jobs?” The Brazil data, [analyzed in 2025 by Marcelo Ferreira](https://drive.google.com/file/d/12iDsOHN1LATFWFCTfYOQvKzGh-nEHEw2/view?ref=scottsantens.com) at Princeton, doesn’t just challenge the laziness myth. It drives a stake through its heart. And when we combine this historical evidence with the massive systematic reviews of the past decade and the just-released [2025 End of Year Report](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/60ae8e339f75051fd95f792e/t/6941c387953c35295909bdb2/1765917575864/MGI%5FEnd+of+Year+Report+2025%5FFinal%5F12%5F16%5F25.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) covering 27 American pilots, the picture becomes undeniable. We have been terrified of a bogeyman. Unconditional basic income is the foundation of work, not the enemy of it. ## The Daughters of the Empire To understand why this Brazil data is so remarkable, we need to go back to 1795. The Portuguese Empire wanted to ensure that families of naval officers wouldn’t starve if the male breadwinner died. The solution was elegantly simple: a pension for unmarried daughters that would last for life. The logic was paternalistic but practical—women had limited economic opportunities in the 18th century, so the state would provide a floor for them to stand on. But something striking happened as the centuries rolled on. In Brazil, this policy expanded. According to Ferreira’s research, the scope grew through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries even as women’s labor force participation increased and alternative social protections developed. The central legal framework became [Law 3765](https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil%5F03/Leis/L3765.htm?ref=scottsantens.com), enacted in 1960, which regulated pension payments to widows and daughters of military personnel. This was essentially when the basic income quasi-experiment started. Prior to 1960, the money was conditional. A reform in 2000 restricted new eligibility to service members who joined before December 28, 2000, but for those already covered, the pensions continued with a small fee. These laws created a very large cohort with decades of data to analyze. For the purposes of the Ferreira study, it was like looking at an experiment with over 30,000 people in it who got basic income from 2002 to 2025\. The “start date” of 2002 is because the full names required to link individuals across different datasets were only provided by the Ministry of Labor starting in 2002. This wasn’t a means-tested welfare check that disappeared if they got a job. It wasn’t a conditional stipend requiring bureaucratic hoops. It was, effectively, a lifelong guaranteed income for a specific demographic. I reached out to the study’s author, Marcelo Ferreira, to clarify some details about how it worked. “It is not conditional,” he confirmed, pointing to official Brazilian Navy guidelines. In 2001, military personnel could opt to contribute 1.5% of their pay to keep their daughters covered under the old rules. “I don’t have data on this decision,” Ferreira told me, “but 1.5% seems like a low fee for getting your daughter covered for life so I would expect that most of them took it.” Here’s where it gets fascinating. Because military ranks vary wildly, the pension amounts varied wildly too. Some daughters received amounts equivalent to minimum wage. Others received sums tied to high-ranking officer salaries—upwards of $15,000 every month. This allows us to answer a question that no modern UBI pilot has been able to touch: What happens to people’s motivation to work when a basic income floor is lifelong and enormous? Conventional economic wisdom—the kind that assumes humans are just mice waiting for pellets—suggests that labor force participation should collapse once the income is high enough to live comfortably. If you’re receiving $10,000 a month for breathing, why would you ever clock in, right? The answer from the Brazil data may shock you: **The impact was small and flattened out over time regardless of size**! ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Z603!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F42c300e4-2858-43ff-a3e5-be21f0ab41c6_666x667.png) According to Ferreira’s analysis, the income elasticity of labor supply was extremely low. In plain English, that means even as the guaranteed income got bigger and bigger, the decision to work barely budged. When I asked Ferreira what lessons we could draw, he emphasized that the findings extend beyond UBI specifically: “Any social transfers have an element of income effect on labor supply, and it seems like 5 to 10 cents per dollar is a reasonable estimate for how much ‘free cash’ depresses earnings.” Eight cents per dollar to be exact. That was the "labor cost" of providing total financial security. In a study of permanent, lifetime pensions as high as nearly triple the national median earnings, it was found that for every dollar given, labor earnings fell by just 8 cents. It wasn't the total abandonment of work that critics fear; it was a modest, gradual adjustment—even when the amount of money was life-changing and far higher than any basic income would likely ever be. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!X_iO!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5de52b55-5522-495f-ac84-424fd348f999_662x613.png) But here’s what makes Ferreira’s findings even more revealing: when he decomposed the labor supply response, he found that “this transfer induces a 10% decrease on the extensive margin of labor supply after seven years, with no effect on the intensive margin.” Translation: the reduction came entirely from some women either dropping out of the workforce immediately or taking longer between jobs. People who continued working didn’t really reduce their hours at all. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!HmFR!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8abae018-5dc9-4302-a00a-8e8599cf9606_672x608.png) The adjustment happened gradually, “driven by a large temporary increase in the hazard of separation and a persistent moderate reduction in the job finding rate.” In other words, some women used the financial security to leave jobs they didn’t want, and others took more time searching for employment that suited them. They weren’t lounging on beaches—they were being selective or doing unpaid work. And those who stayed employed? They kept working exactly as much as before. This distinction matters enormously. The reduction wasn’t coming from millions of workers each shaving days off their weeks. It was concentrated among those who chose to exit entirely—often older daughters approaching retirement age, or those who could finally afford to leave jobs that made them miserable. Think about what this all means. We aren’t talking about a small one-time payment. We’re talking about life-changing, “you never have to work again” money. And yet these women participated in the labor force at remarkably high rates. In many cases, their participation rates exceeded the general population because they had the resources to secure education and childcare. Tragically, this golden natural experiment may be nearing its end. In October 2025, a bill was introduced in Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies—[PL 1.160/2025](https://www.camara.leg.br/proposicoesWeb/fichadetramitacao?idProposicao=2488221&ref=scottsantens.com)—that would make these pensions conditional on remaining unmarried. If passed into law, if the daughters marry or form a civil union, they would lose the benefit entirely. It’s the typical policy instinct: means-test everything, add conditions, ensure that no one is getting something they don’t “deserve” or “need.” But for now, those covered under the old rules continue to receive their unconditional income. The Brazilian Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled in favor of the daughters when challenges arise. And the data we’ve gathered from decades of this policy remains some of the most powerful evidence we have about human behavior under conditions of permanent, real, financial security. ## Defining What We’re Actually Talking About Before we go further, let’s be precise about what Universal Basic Income actually means, because the term gets thrown around carelessly. UBI is defined as a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement. It is cash with four additional characteristics: universality, unconditionality, regularity, and individuality. Everyone gets it, regardless of employment status or wealth. No strings attached—you don’t have to prove you’re looking for work or attending job training and you don’t lose it as a result of accepting a job. It comes reliably, typically monthly, not as a one-time windfall. And it goes directly to individuals, not household heads who may or may not distribute it fairly. The Brazil pensions were periodic, unconditional cash payments to individuals. And because they lasted for life, they removed the “duration bias” that critics often cite regarding short-term pilots. These women knew the money was never going away. They had every rational incentive to be lazy. And they chose to be productive instead. [Remind you of any millionaires or billionaires](https://jacobin.com/2017/01/rich-universal-basic-income-piketty-passive-income-capital-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) who can entirely afford to stop working and don’t? ## The Scientific Consensus: It’s Not Just Brazil If the Brazil study were the only data point, you could perhaps argue it was a cultural fluke, an artifact of a specific time and place. But it’s not. It’s just the most dramatic example of a trend that appears in virtually every rigorous study of unconditional cash. In 2018, Gilbert and colleagues published [a massive systematic review](https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/bis-2018-0011/html?ref=scottsantens.com) in the peer-reviewed journal *Basic Income Studies*. The researchers analyzed 16 major basic income trial programs involving over 105,000 people across 12 nations. The results? **93% percent of reported outcomes showed no meaningful reduction in work when the criterion was set at a 5% decrease or more**. When the researchers looked at the numbers, the laziness argument was statistically nonexistent. In the vast majority of cases, the needle simply didn’t move. Even more interesting was what happened in developing economies, where guaranteed income often led to an *increase* in work. Why would free money make people work more? Because **it takes money to make money**. **Basic income acts like venture capital for regular people**. It buys the tools. It pays for the bus fare to the job interview. It provides the stability needed to take a risk on a better opportunity. And a small amount of money does not make earning more money pointless. This was further reinforced by de Paz-Báñez and colleagues in their peer-reviewed [2020 systematic review](https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9459?ref=scottsantens.com) published in *Sustainability*. After screening over 1,200 documents on the UBI/employment relationship, they selected 50 empirical cases and 38 studies with contrasted empirical evidence. Their conclusion was unequivocal: “**Despite a detailed search, we have not found any evidence of a significant reduction in labor supply**.” Instead, **they found “evidence that labor supply increases globally among adults, men and women, young and old**.” The only groups that consistently worked less were children, the elderly, the sick, those with disabilities, women with young children, and young people who continued studying. As the researchers noted, “**These reductions do not reduce the overall supply** since it is largely offset by increased supply from other members of the community.” ## The 2025 Reality Check: Zero Decline If historical data and international reviews aren’t enough, look at what just happened in the United States. The End of Year Report 2025 from Mayors, Counties, and Legislators for a Guaranteed Income represents the largest body of research on this topic ever assembled in America. It covers 27 finalized pilots that have disbursed over $335 million to roughly 30,000 Americans. The report’s findings on employment are unequivocal. Out of 27 scientifically rigorous studies, how many showed a decline in employment? **Zero.** In 27 different locations, with different demographics and local economies, and with the standard amount of guaranteed income being $500 a month, not a single pilot resulted in people significantly quitting the workforce. Recipients were actually more likely to find long-term employment. The specific outcomes are striking. In Ithaca, caregivers increased their rate of full-time employment. In Baltimore, parents missed 9 fewer hours of work per month due to childcare challenges. In Santa Fe, students used the money to finish school. This is the reality of human psychology. People aren’t quitting en masse because they start each month with $500 to $1,000\. They’re keeping their jobs because that check fixes the car that gets them there and they want far more than $1,000 a month. ## The ORUS Elephant: Let’s Actually Look at the Numbers So how do we square all this evidence—the Brazil history, the systematic reviews, the 27 successful pilot studies—with headlines about [the OpenResearch study](https://www.scottsantens.com/did-sam-altman-basic-income-experiment-succeed-or-fail-ubi/) showing a “significant” reduction in work? Let’s actually look at what those numbers mean. According to the ORUS researchers themselves, the reduction in work hours represented an “approximately 4%-5% decline relative to the control group mean.” Remember the Gilbert systematic review that found 93% of trials showed no meaningful reduction? Their criterion for “meaningful” was 5% or more. The ORUS result sits right at or below that threshold—and that’s the average across all participants, including groups we’d expect to work less. When you break it down further, there were no significant decreases in employment or hours worked among childless adults or those over age 30\. The reduction was concentrated entirely among single parents—who shifted to unpaid caregiving—and young adults, many of whom pursued education. For everyone else? Zero percent. The “4%” average is being dragged up by people doing exactly what we’d hope they’d do with financial security: caring for their kids and investing in their futures. A 1.3-hour reduction per week works out to about 15 minutes less work per day in a five-day workweek. Fifteen minutes. That’s an extra bathroom break. That’s a slightly longer lunch. On an annual basis, it’s equivalent to about 8 days less work per year. Now here’s some context that should make anyone worried about that number feel a bit ridiculous: Japan has the *least* amount of paid vacation days of any developed nation in the world, and their legal minimum is 10 days per year. The United States is the only OECD country with zero legally mandated paid vacation days. So even if we take the ORUS findings at face value and assume that $1,000 of basic income universally causes people to work 8 fewer days per year, Americans would *still* have less time off than Japanese workers. The difference between us and France would shrink from 30 days to 22 days. Does 8 days of additional rest per year sound like economic collapse to you? But even that framing is misleading, because the ORUS study couldn’t measure what it couldn’t test. The ORUS study was a micro-experiment. It gave basic income to a thousand people scattered across Texas and Illinois. It measured the labor supply of those individuals, but it couldn’t measure the labor demand that a true UBI would create. In a genuine Universal Basic Income scenario, everyone gets the money (but not everyone gets a boost after taxes). That means most (but not all) people are spending additional money. That spending circulates through the economy, driving up demand for goods and services. When demand increases, businesses need to hire more people. This isn’t theoretical. We see it in Alaska every year. The Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend—where every resident gets an annual payment from oil revenues—had no effect on full-time employment overall. Any reduction was counteracted by spending creating new jobs. There was, however, [a 17% increase in part-time employment](https://harris.uchicago.edu/news-events/news/universal-basic-income-policies-dont-cause-people-leave-workforce-study-finds?ref=scottsantens.com). The ORUS study couldn’t capture this multiplier effect because the recipients were too few and too scattered to shift local economies. It measured supply without measuring the demand that universality would generate. And even setting aside the macro effects entirely, look at who was actually working less in the ORUS data. Again, there were no significant decreases in employment among childless adults or those over age 30\. The reduction was concentrated among single parents—who shifted from paid employment to the unpaid (but essential) labor of caring for their children—and young adults, many of whom reduced hours to pursue education. This isn’t laziness. This is investment. And it’s also freedom. ## What Are We Even Doing Here? There’s one final piece of context that makes the entire “work reduction” panic borderline absurd: artificial intelligence. We are standing on the edge of the greatest transformation of labor in human history. AI is already handling vast amounts of cognitive and creative work. [Entry-level jobs are disappearing](https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/03/job-market-new-grads-unemployment.html?ref=scottsantens.com). College graduates are finding it harder to get their foot in the door. In a world where AI and automation are rapidly displacing jobs, why are we so terrified of humans working slightly less? And what does that say about real freedom? If UBI causes a small reduction in work hours—as people *choose* to spend more time with their families or pursue education—that’s actually a *good* thing in an AI-driven future. It means we’re sharing the remaining necessary labor more equitably. The more work AI does for us, the less sense it makes to hyperventilate about labor supply. We’re solving the problem of production. We have the goods. We have the services. The problem now is distribution. [That problem has existed and worsened](https://truthout.org/articles/sanders-1-percent-has-sapped-79t-in-wealth-from-bottom-90-percent-since-1975/?ref=scottsantens.com) for 50 years now. We must better distribute growing prosperity. In an environment where there may not be enough jobs for everyone who wants one, people choosing to work less would actually open up opportunities for those who want jobs. Imagine a work environment where everyone there truly wants to be there and no one feels forced to be there? [Imagine that level of freedom from coercion](https://www.scottsantens.com/dennis-explains-the-implication-of-saying-no-always-sunny-argument-for-ubi/). ## The Floor, Not the Ceiling The lesson from the Brazilian military daughters spans cannot be ignored. They were given a guarantee: “You will survive. No matter what happens, you will have enough.” They didn’t decay. They didn’t rot. They didn’t retreat from the world. They lived full, active lives. And as the pension grew larger—even up to that $15,000 monthly equivalent—they simply used that security to make better choices. The systematic reviews covering dozens of trials and hundreds of thousands of people confirm it. The 27 American pilots confirm it. Alaska’s 40+ years of UBI confirms it. If we implement a UBI and index it to GDP growth, so that as our automated economy gets richer the payment grows with it, the data suggests we have nothing to fear. [People want to contribute](https://www.scottsantens.com/ai-will-rapidly-transform-the-labor-market-exacerbating-inequality-insecurity-and-poverty/). They want purpose and meaning. Ferreira also ran the numbers using a statistics model and concluded that "the redistributive gains from a UBI in Brazil would outweigh its efficiency costs, resulting in net welfare gains." The 5-to-10-cent reduction in earnings per dollar transferred simply doesn't come close to offsetting the benefits of economic freedom for all. The idea that humans will receive UBI and do nothing but sit on the couch eating potato chips is a cynical myth that has been demolished by centuries of history, multiple comprehensive systematic reviews analyzing over 50 empirical cases, and 27 modern American experimental studies. UBI is not a ceiling that holds us down. It is a floor. And when you give human beings a solid floor to stand on, they don’t lie down. **They reach for the stars.** --- *If you enjoyed this article, please share it and click the subscribe button. Also *consider making a monthly pledge* in support of my work to have your name appear below.* [![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jMpR!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F94c4f669-7d04-4e25-b4bb-c528fdc223ff_461x66.png)](https://www.patreon.com/c/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Special thanks to my monthly patrons*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark, Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Steve Roth, Miki Phagan, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Joe Ballou, Arjun Banker, Tommy Caruso, Felix Ling, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Juro Antal, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, Stephen Castro-Starkey, David Allen, Liz, and all my other monthly patrons for their support.* ### The $1,000 Lie: Why Trump Accounts Are the Wrong Answer to the Right Question URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-1000-lie-why-trump-accounts-are-the-wrong-answer-to-the-right-question/ Last updated: 2026-01-06T17:55:44.000Z ### Billionaires are lining up to seed investment accounts for kids, but we already know how to end child poverty — and waiting until age 18 isn’t it In December 2025, something ostensibly remarkable happened. [Michael and Susan Dell](https://www.npr.org/2025/12/02/nx-s1-5628412/michael-susan-dell-trump-account-children-investment-saving?ref=scottsantens.com) pledged $6.25 billion to fund new “[Trump Accounts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%5Faccount?ref=scottsantens.com)” for American children. [Ray and Barbara Dalio](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/3924300/scott-bessent-ray-dalio-donate-trump-accounts/?ref=scottsantens.com) followed with $75 million for Connecticut kids. [BlackRock and BNY](https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/17/trump-accounts-dalio-blackrock-bny.html?ref=scottsantens.com) announced they would match government contributions for their employees’ children. Headlines celebrated the generosity. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent launched a “[50-state challenge](https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0340?ref=scottsantens.com)” calling on billionaires in every state to follow suit. The idea may sound wonderful: give every baby born between 2025 and 2028 a $1,000 investment account that compounds over 18 years at which point it converts to a traditional IRA account, potentially growing into a nest egg of at least around $700,000 for retirement, or to help with college, buying a home, or some other approved reason to withdraw money without a 10% early withdrawal penalty. Who could oppose giving kids a financial head start as young adults? **I oppose it.** At least as an alternative to what we *should* be doing. Not because giving kids money is bad — it’s not. But because this is the equivalent of offering a starving child a coupon for a meal they can redeem in 18 years. It’s offering a drowning person swimming lessons that begin after they’ve already drowned. It’s a cruel joke dressed up as generosity, and the science is overwhelmingly clear about why. ### **Understanding What Trump Accounts Actually Are** Before we can evaluate Trump Accounts, we need to understand what they actually are — and what they’re not. The details matter, because the headlines are misleading. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed July 4, 2025, the federal government will deposit $1,000 into investment accounts for every U.S. citizen born between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2028\. This is the *only* group eligible for the government’s seed money. Children born before 2025 or after 2028 can have Trump Accounts opened on their behalf, but they receive nothing from the government, as currently proposed. The accounts are invested in low-fee U.S. stock index funds until the child turns 18, at which point they convert to traditional IRAs. Parents, relatives, employers, and nonprofits can contribute up to $5,000 annually. Employers can contribute up to $2,500 per year tax-free through cafeteria plans. The money cannot be withdrawn before age 18, at which point it can only be used for approved reasons without penalty until age 59 and a half. Now here’s what the headlines obscure about the billionaire donations. The Dell family’s $6.25 billion isn’t adding $250 on top of that $1,000 government seed. It’s going to a **completely different population**: 25 million children who are age 10 and under and were born *before* January 1, 2025\. These children don’t qualify for the government’s $1,000 at all. They’re getting $250 — period. The Dalio donation follows the same model: $250 each to approximately 300,000 Connecticut children under 10 who were born before 2025\. So when you see headlines about billionaires “supercharging” or “boosting” Trump Accounts, understand that the billionaire money and the government money are going to different children. A baby born in 2026 gets $1,000 from the government. A 7-year-old born in 2018 might get $250 from Dell or Dalio — but only if they meet additional criteria. ### **The Zip Code Exclusion Problem** Both the Dell and Dalio donations come with a geographic restriction: children must live in zip codes where the *median* household income is below $150,000\. According to CNBC’s analysis of Census data, only about 3% of U.S. zip codes have median incomes above that threshold, and 87% of Connecticut zip codes qualify. This may sound reasonable until you think about what “median” actually means. A zip code with a median income of $160,000 still has families earning $30,000\. It still has service workers, home health aides, restaurant employees, and their children. It still has families experiencing working poverty. They’re just surrounded by wealth rather than concentrated with other poor families. This is the fundamental problem with means-testing by geography rather than ensuring universality. **Poor children exist in wealthy zip codes too.** A child growing up in poverty in Palo Alto or Greenwich faces all the same developmental challenges as a child growing up in poverty in rural Mississippi — perhaps more, given the higher cost of living and the psychological strain of poverty amid abundance. When you start carving out exceptions based on zip codes to exclude those who aren’t in need, you inevitably leave behind some of the children who need help the most. ### **The Trillion-Dollar Problem We’re Ignoring** Child poverty in America isn’t just a moral failure of society itself. It’s an economic catastrophe we pay for every single day. According to research from Washington University in St. Louis, childhood poverty costs the United States [**over $1 trillion annually**](https://academic.oup.com/swr/article-abstract/42/2/73/4956930?redirectedFrom=fulltext&ref=scottsantens.com) — roughly 5.4% of GDP. This comes from lost economic productivity, increased healthcare costs, higher crime rates, and the downstream effects of child homelessness and maltreatment. Let that sink in. Every year, we hemorrhage more than a trillion dollars worth of resources because we choose not to prevent child poverty. But here’s what makes this choice truly inexplicable: a comprehensive benefit-cost analysis by Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy — updated in April 2024 with the latest evidence — found that making the enhanced Child Tax Credit permanent would cost about $97 billion per year but generate **$1.5 trillion in social benefits**. [That’s a return on investment of approximately **15 to 1**](https://povertycenter.columbia.edu/publication/2022/child-allowance/benefit-cost-analysis?ref=scottsantens.com). For every dollar we invest in directly reducing child poverty, we get back fifteen dollars in improved health outcomes, higher educational attainment, increased lifetime earnings, and reduced spending on healthcare, child welfare, and criminal justice. We actually know this works because we’ve done it before. In 2021, the American Rescue Plan expanded the Child Tax Credit, making it fully refundable and delivering monthly payments directly to families. The result? [**Child poverty fell by over 40%**](https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/%5Fcache/files/dd209a98-c23b-4b2e-8478-61a55ec2b647/the-expanded-child-tax-credit-dramatically-reduced-child-poverty-in-2021-final-1-.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) **— the largest single-year decline on record.** The poverty rate dropped to 5.2%, the lowest ever measured. Black child poverty fell by more than half. Hispanic child poverty dropped from 30% to 8%. Each CTC dollar even generated $1.25 in local economic activity. Consumer spending grew the economies of Main Street USA. Then Congress let it expire. Child poverty **immediately more than doubled**, shooting back up to 12.4% in 2022 — the largest one-year *increase* on record, right after the largest decrease. Child hunger spiked 25%. By 2024, nearly 10 million children were living in poverty again. Local businesses across the country took a hit. ### **What We Actually Learned From the Enhanced CTC** The year following the enhanced CTC’s expiration gave economists a treasure trove of data to analyze. What they found demolishes every argument against direct cash support for families. First and most importantly: [**the monthly payments had no negative impact on employment**](https://www.scottsantens.com/one-year-after-the-expiration-of-the-enhanced-child-tax-credit-ctc-what-all-have-we-learned-about-its-effects/). Study after study confirmed that parents kept working just as much as before. If anything, employment *increased* because over 11% of families used the money to pay for childcare, removing a major barrier to work. Even more striking: **approximately 300,000 households became new small business owners** while receiving the monthly CTC. Lower-income parents, defined as making less than $50,000 annually, showed the largest growth in self-employment. The economic security provided by guaranteed monthly payments didn’t make people lazy — it made them entrepreneurs. The payments reduced desperation in ways that should trouble anyone with a conscience. Before the enhanced CTC, research documented parents selling their blood plasma and taking on predatory payday loans just to feed their children. During the six months of monthly payments, that desperation measurably declined. After the payments stopped? A survey by Parents Together Action found that **45% of parents reported skipping meals so their kids could eat**. 64% had to spend down their savings. 84% of parents said the CTC had made them less anxious. Research funded by the National Institutes of Health found that the enhanced CTC **reduced anxiety symptoms by 3.4 percentage points** — a 13.3% reduction at the population level. The effects were even larger for Black and Hispanic parents. Other research found that when women receive income boosts from tax credits, **an additional $1,000 decreases physical and sexual violence against unmarried low-educated women by nearly 10%**. Violence against women and children isn’t just a crime problem. It’s a poverty problem. ### **The Science of Why Timing Matters** The proponents of Trump Accounts will tell you that $1,000 invested at birth could grow to $1 million by age 28 if the maximum $5,000 amount is contributed annually. They’ll point to the magic of compound interest. What they won’t tell you is that **the brain also compounds — but in the opposite direction when exposed to poverty.** The study of [epigenetics](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5122474/?ref=scottsantens.com) has revealed that growing up in poverty can literally rewire developing brains. Chronic stress from poverty is associated with dysfunction in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala — regions critical for learning, memory, emotional regulation, and decision-making. The Great Smoky Mountains Study, led by epidemiologist Dr. Jane Costello at Duke University, provides extremely compelling evidence. Starting in 1992, researchers followed 1,420 children in rural North Carolina, including 349 Cherokee children. Then in 1996, a casino opened on the Cherokee reservation, and every tribal member began receiving semiannual dividend payments — about $4,000 to $6,000 per year. The results were stunning. Within four years, the number of Cherokee families in poverty dropped by half. **Behavioral problems among Cherokee children declined by 40%**, falling to approximately the same rate as children who had never been poor. High school graduation rates improved. Crime rates dropped. A decade later, researchers found that the[ **youngest children when the payments began were a third less likely to develop substance abuse or psychiatric problems**](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35994270/?ref=scottsantens.com) as teenagers. Most remarkably, the children who received cash during childhood showed permanent improvements in two key personality traits: conscientiousness and agreeableness, both of which are associated with higher lifetime earnings. Another study cleverly used birth timing and tax benefits to track long-term impacts. It found that [**an increase of just $1,300 in the first year of a child’s life resulted in that baby growing up to be an adult who earned 1% to 2% more income**](https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/137/4/2539/6571263?redirectedFrom=fulltext&ref=scottsantens.com). Math and reading scores increased. High school graduation rates improved. The researchers concluded that “the longer-term effects on child earnings alone are large enough that the transfer pays for itself through subsequent increases in federal income tax revenue.” ### **The Rx Kids Revolution** If anyone still doubts that cash during childhood — not 18 years later — transforms lives, look at Flint, Michigan. In January 2024, Flint became the first city in America to launch a universal prenatal and infant cash program called Rx Kids. Every pregnant woman receives $1,500 during pregnancy and $500 per month for the baby’s first year of life. No strings attached. No bureaucratic hoops. The results have been nothing short of miraculous. A [population-level study](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=5459276&ref=scottsantens.com) found that Rx Kids **cut preterm births by up to 18% and low birthweight births by up to 27%**. The program prevented approximately 42 preterm births and 68 NICU admissions in its first year, saving an estimated $6.2 million in healthcare costs alone. But it goes further. Evictions among participating mothers were **reduced by 91%**. Postpartum depression and anxiety plummeted. Food insecurity dropped dramatically. Perhaps most powerfully, in a city that had been devastated by the water crisis and years of institutional betrayal, **trust in government and healthcare institutions began to rebuild**. A November 2025 study found that Rx Kids produced a [**32% reduction in child maltreatment allegations**](https://poverty.umich.edu/2025/11/24/new-research-shows-rx-kids-reduced-infant-maltreatment-allegations-in-flint-2/?ref=scottsantens.com) among infants. Before the program, 21.7% of Flint infants experienced a maltreatment investigation within their first six months of life. After Rx Kids launched, that rate dropped to 15.5%. Related research found that [a single $1,000 cash payment to low-income households decreases referrals to child protective services by approximately 10%](https://www.nber.org/papers/w31733?ref=scottsantens.com) and reduced physical abuse by 30%. This is what investing in children *now* looks like. Not an investment account that can’t be withdrawn from at all until age 18 and without penalty until age 60, but money that prevents premature births, reduces child abuse, keeps families housed, and gives babies the healthy start their developing brains desperately need. ### **Who Really Benefits from Trump Accounts?** Let’s be clear-eyed about who benefits most from Trump Accounts. A child born to a wealthy family who maxes out contributions at $5,000 per year could accumulate hundreds of thousands of dollars by age 18\. A child born into poverty, whose parents can contribute nothing beyond the initial $1,000, might have $3,000 or $4,000 after 18 years of compound growth. **This isn’t leveling the playing field. It’s giving a head start to kids who already have one.** Meanwhile, consider who else benefits. All those billions invested in index funds will drive up stock prices. Who owns stocks? Overwhelmingly, the wealthy. According to Federal Reserve data, the top 10% of Americans own **93% of all stocks**. When BlackRock and other financial giants announce their support for Trump Accounts, they’re not just being philanthropic — they’re supporting a program that will channel billions into the very markets they manage. And there’s another troubling dimension. Treasury Secretary Bessent’s “50-state challenge” asking billionaires and corporations to step up has the uncomfortable whiff of a loyalty test. In an era where the federal government has shown willingness to use its power against perceived enemies, what message does it send when billionaires and corporations are publicly called upon to demonstrate their “patriotism” through donations to accounts bearing the president’s name? ### **The Real Question We Should Be Asking** Here is the fundamental absurdity of Trump Accounts: we’re being asked to celebrate giving a child born into poverty in 2025 a savings account they can access in 2043, while we **simultaneously allow that child to grow up hungry, unstably housed, and neurologically damaged by chronic stress**. We know that child poverty costs us over $1 trillion annually. We know that ending it would generate a **15-to-1 return on investment**. We know that the 2021 expanded Child Tax Credit cut child poverty nearly in half for about $100 billion per year while increasing entrepreneurship and having zero negative effects on employment. We know that programs like Rx Kids prevent premature births, reduce child abuse, and save millions in healthcare costs. We know all of this. And yet, instead of making the obvious choice to invest in children now, we’re celebrating a program that kicks the can 18 years down the road — a program that will do precisely nothing to help the 10 million children currently living in poverty — 14.3% of all kids under 18. *What good is a college savings account to a child who couldn’t focus in school because they were hungry? What good is first-time homebuyer money to someone whose brain was permanently altered by the toxic stress of childhood poverty and ended up in prison? What good is business startup capital to an adult whose educational outcomes were damaged before they ever entered kindergarten?* The question isn’t whether we can afford to help children. We’re already paying — over $1 trillion per year in the costs of not helping them. The question is whether we’ll continue choosing an expensive pound of cure while rejecting the affordable ounce of prevention. Billionaires want to donate to Trump Accounts? Here’s a better idea: **demand to be taxed to** **fund an expanded, permanent, universal Child Tax Credit**. Even better, get behind the [End Child Poverty Act](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2025/11/20/rep-tlaibs-economic-dignity-for-all-agenda-would-bring-economic-security-for-millions/?ref=scottsantens.com) that would provide $469 a month to every kid in America. Fund programs state by state like Rx Kids in Michigan that put cash in the hands of families ***now***, when it can actually change children’s lives, instead of locking it away until the damage is already done to further inflate the stock market. The data is clear. The science is settled. The moral imperative is undeniable. Children don’t need investment accounts that mature in 18 years more than they need food on the table tonight. They need stable housing this month. They need parents who aren’t crushed by financial stress today and every day. Trump Accounts aren’t a solution to child poverty. They’re a distraction from it — a shiny object that allows us to feel good about “doing something” while doing nothing that actually matters in the here and now. And every child who spends the next 18 years in poverty while their Trump Account compounds is a monument to our collective failure of imagination and will. **We can do better. We know how to do better. The only question is whether we’ll ever choose to.** And if we really want to make “every American a shareholder” as the Trump administration is saying they want to with these Trump accounts, we’d just do Universal Basic Income for all adults and kids and index that dividend to GDP growth. > *“When every American owns a share of the most powerful economy on earth, every American will benefit from our nation’s growth. Every American will capture a portion of the productivity gains brought about by AI, robotics, and other world-changing technologies. And every American will be invested in the free-market system and its continued success.”* > > *—Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent describing UBI without realizing it* --- *If you enjoyed this article, please share it and click the subscribe button. Also *consider making a monthly pledge* in support of my work to have your name appear below.* [![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jMpR!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F94c4f669-7d04-4e25-b4bb-c528fdc223ff_461x66.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Special thanks to my monthly patrons*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark, Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Steve Roth, Miki Phagan, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Joe Ballou, Arjun Banker, Tommy Caruso, Felix Ling, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Juro Antal, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, Stephen Castro-Starkey, David Allen, Liz, and all my other monthly patrons on Patreon for their support.* [![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8dwv!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fca50e0ce-931f-4a86-9f73-27cde08aabc8_1181x633.png)](https://noblemobile.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Finland Gave Two Groups Identical Payments. One Experienced 33% Better Mental Health. URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/finland-gave-two-groups-identical-payments-one-experienced-33-better-mental-health/ Last updated: 2025-12-23T15:52:17.000Z ### New research from Finland's basic income experiment proves that simply trusting people with money—not just the money itself—significantly improves mental health There’s a revolution happening in mental health treatment, and it’s not coming from pharmaceutical companies or therapy offices. It’s coming from something far simpler and, in retrospect, far more obvious: giving people monthly unconditional income. A [new analysis](https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2025-035.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) of [Finland’s basic income experiment](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/social-sector/our-insights/an-experiment-to-inform-universal-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) has just added another brick to what is becoming [an undeniable wall of evidence](https://skyview.social/?url=https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x6eidgqhve7ulo4djhbgqv2v/post/3ldy3ssm7bs23&viewtype=unroll&ref=scottsantens.com). In the groundbreaking experiment, two groups of unemployed people received an identical amount of money with identical regularity—€560 per month. The only difference was *how* they received it. One group got it unconditionally, with no strings attached. The other group got it conditionally, with requirements to look for work, report to unemployment offices, and satisfy bureaucrats. And the money went away with employment. Same money. Different rules. The results? In the control group receiving conditional benefits at the end of the trial, **24% had poor mental health**. In the treatment group receiving unconditional basic income, only **16% had poor mental health**. That’s an 8 percentage point reduction—a full **33% less poor mental health**—simply from removing the conditions. Let that sink in. It wasn’t the amount of money that made the difference. Both groups got the same €560 a month. It was the unconditionality itself—the simple act of trusting people with resources, without surveillance or judgment, without hoops to jump through or forms to fill out—that created these dramatic improvements in psychological well-being. This new analysis, published in December 2025 by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research and the University of Helsinki, confirms what basic income advocates have long suspected: the conditions we attach to welfare aren’t just bureaucratic inconveniences. They are active harms. They create stress, anxiety, and psychological damage that persists even when the financial support is adequate. Foreword to Civilization is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. ### **What Finland Actually Tested** The Finnish experiment, launched in 2017, was a two-year nation-wide randomized field experiment on basic income. Two thousand randomly selected unemployed people received €560 per month with absolutely no conditions—no requirement to look for work, no reporting to unemployment offices, no penalties if they found employment or earned additional income. A control group of over 173,000 continued receiving traditional conditional unemployment benefits of the same amount. Both groups got essentially the same money. The treatment group’s administrative burden was simply lower—they received their €560 without any conditionality whatsoever. That’s it. That’s really the only difference that was tested. The researchers measured mental health using the MHI-5, a validated five-item mental health screening instrument that identifies people at risk of mood and anxiety disorders. What they found was striking: the treatment group was significantly less likely to screen positive for poor mental health. The adjusted risk difference was 8 percentage points, with a 95% confidence interval between 3 and 12 percentage points. In plain English, they’re confident unconditional basic income reduced poor mental health by somewhere between 12.5% and 50%, with their best guess being 33%. This wasn’t a fluke or statistical noise—**this was a robust, significant finding**. The treatment group was more satisfied with their lives, experienced less mental strain, less depression, less sadness, and less loneliness. They reported better cognitive abilities—improved memory, learning, and concentration. All from receiving the same money with fewer strings attached. This isn’t an isolated finding. It’s part of a pattern so consistent it should be making headlines everywhere. ### **The Trust Connection** Perhaps the most fascinating finding from Finland wasn’t about mental health at all—it was about trust. The basic income recipients trusted other people and institutions in society to a larger extent than the control group. They were more confident in their own future and their ability to influence things. > *“The basic income recipients trusted other people and the institutions in society to a larger extent and were more confident in their own future and their ability to influence things than the control group. This may be due to the basic income being unconditional, which in previous studies has been seen to increase people’s trust in the system.” \[*[*source*](https://stm.fi/en/-/perustulokokeilun-tulokset-tyollisyysvaikutukset-vahaisia-toimeentulo-ja-psyykkinen-terveys-koettiin-paremmaksi?ref=scottsantens.com)*\]* Evidence [from Malawi](https://jhr.uwpress.org/content/48/2/370?ref=scottsantens.com) reinforces this pattern. In a cash transfer experiment with adolescent schoolgirls, those who received unconditional payments were 14 percentage points less likely to suffer from psychological distress compared to the control group. Girls who received the same money but with conditions attached—requiring regular school attendance—showed only a 6 percentage point improvement. So here, **unconditional cash was 2.3 times better for mental health than conditional cash—a 133% improvement**. Researchers attributed the gap to the psychological burden of meeting conditions. Even well-intentioned requirements like education can undermine the mental health benefits that cash provides. Think about what this means. When society trusts you with resources—when it says “here, we believe you can handle this without us watching over your shoulder”—you begin to trust society back. And when you trust the people and institutions around you, you feel better. Your mental health improves. I know in my own life, I’m going to feel better mentally if I trust every member of society more. That trust isn’t just nice to have—it’s foundational to psychological well-being. It’s hard to feel good about the world when you feel surveilled, suspected, and constantly required to prove your worthiness. Unconditionality removes that burden, and the mental health benefits follow. ### **No One Was Harmed—Everyone Benefited** The researchers also investigated whether basic income helped some groups more than others. Using three different analytical methods—conventional subgroup analysis, multilevel modeling, and machine learning (causal forest)—they looked for variations across age, gender, education level, prior employment status, urbanicity, partnership status, and family composition. What they found was remarkable: **the beneficial effects were consistent across *all* groups**. Basic income didn’t help young people more than old people, or women more than men, or the less educated more than the highly educated. It helped everyone roughly equally. As the researchers put it: “Our results suggest that basic income schemes have no harmful effects on mental health across multiple potential axes of labor market disadvantage, and are unlikely to increase mental health inequalities among people in unemployment.” This matters enormously for policy. One concern about universal basic income is that it might help some people while harming others—that perhaps it would reinforce traditional gender roles or disadvantage certain groups. The Finnish data shows this isn’t the case. Basic income is a universally beneficial policy for mental health. ### **Cash Beats Therapy** Finland’s findings align with research from around the world. In Kenya, researchers conducted [a rigorous study](https://www.nber.org/papers/w28106?ref=scottsantens.com) comparing the effects of a $1,076 unconditional cash transfer against a five-week psychotherapy program that cost almost three times as much. One year later, the cash recipients showed higher levels of psychological well-being than the control group. The psychotherapy recipients? No measurable effects on either psychological or economic outcomes. Perhaps most telling: combining both interventions—giving people both cash and therapy—produced results similar to cash alone. The therapy added nothing. The money was doing all the work. This shouldn’t surprise us. When someone is drowning in financial stress and bureaucratic anxiety, cognitive behavioral therapy can only do so much. The therapy isn’t addressing the actual problem. Cash—*unconditional* cash—does. ### **Germany Confirms the Pattern** Fresh results from Germany’s three-year basic income pilot, [published in April 2025](https://www.ifo.de/en/cesifo/publications/2025/working-paper/cash-transfers-mental-health-and-agency-evidence-rct-germany?ref=scottsantens.com), add even more weight to this evidence. Participants received €1,200 monthly for three years with no strings attached. The mental health improvements were, in the researchers’ words, “substantively large and robust.” Mental health improved by 0.347 standard deviations. Sense of purpose in life improved by 0.250 standard deviations. Life satisfaction improved by 0.417 standard deviations. Expensive, intensive programs often produce effects of 0.1-0.2 SD. Getting 0.35-0.42 SD from “just” giving people money is remarkable. And the strongest effect was on autonomy—basic income gave people the feeling that they had more control over their lives, that their lives were “more valuable and meaningful.” The German researchers concluded that basic income “functions as a resilience instrument.” **It gives people the power to say no**—to bad jobs, to exploitative conditions, to situations that harm their mental health. That power changes everything. ### **Thirty-Eight Studies Tell the Same Story** A systematic review published in Social Science & Medicine examined [38 studies of social security policy changes](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953621000496?ref=scottsantens.com) in high-income countries. Twenty-one studies looked at increases in social security generosity; seventeen looked at decreases. The pattern was unmistakable: **policies that improve social security eligibility and generosity are associated with improvements in mental health**. Policies that reduce eligibility and generosity are associated with worse mental health. The evidence isn’t ambiguous. Give people more security, their mental health improves. Take security away, their mental health declines. The researchers also found that cuts to social security tend to increase mental health inequalities, while expansions have the opposite effect. ### **Cash Transfers Save Lives** In Brazil, researchers studying the Bolsa Família program—covering half the Brazilian population over twelve years (over 114 million people)—found that cash transfer recipients had [dramatically lower suicide rates](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=3766234&ref=scottsantens.com): 5.5 per 100,000 compared to 11.1 per 100,000 among non-recipients. **The monthly cash support was associated with approximately a 61% reduction in suicide risk**. The effect was strongest among women (65% reduction) and individuals aged 25 to 59 (60% reduction). We’re not talking about abstract well-being measures here. We’re talking about lives saved. These are thousands of real people who didn’t end their lives thanks to having cash support. ### **Three Decades of Evidence from North Carolina** Some of the most compelling long-term evidence comes from North Carolina. In 1996, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians opened a casino and began distributing profits equally to all tribal members—a universal basic income for the community that continues to this day. A Duke University study that was already tracking children’s mental health in the region suddenly became the longest-running observation of UBI’s effects. The results were remarkable: behavioral problems among children in families lifted out of poverty [declined by 40%](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14559956/?ref=scottsantens.com). Children who were youngest when payments began were [a third less likely to develop substance abuse or psychiatric problems](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20483972/?ref=scottsantens.com) as teenagers. At ages 25 and 30, those who grew up with the basic income had [a third of the anxiety and half the rates of depression](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35994270/?ref=scottsantens.com) compared to those who didn’t. The casino dividends also [improved the community’s social cohesion](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/186498?ref=scottsantens.com) and self-determination. It wasn’t just individual mental health that improved—it was the fabric of the community itself. Economists have since tracked the costs of the annual dividend versus the savings in expenditures on crime and medical care. They find that by age 26, [**the benefits of the UBI exceeded its costs by a factor of three to one**](https://academicminute.org/jane-costello-duke-university-sharing-the-wealth/?ref=scottsantens.com). ### **Building Community, Building Mental Health** One of the most underappreciated findings from basic income research is how it [strengthens community bonds](https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-ubi-increases-social-cohesion-capital-trust/)—and how those stronger bonds contribute to better mental health. In the [150+ guaranteed basic income pilots](https://basicincome.stanford.edu/research/ubi-visualization/?ref=scottsantens.com) conducted across the United States since 2020, researchers consistently find that participants use their time and resources to spend more time with friends, family, and neighbors. In [Namibia’s UBI pilot](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), researchers observed that “a stronger community spirit developed.” Begging had created barriers to normal social interaction—when everyone might ask you for money, you avoid social contact. Once basic income made begging unnecessary, people felt free to visit each other without being seen as wanting something in return. In [India’s UBI pilot](https://amzn.to/45fWUPL?ref=scottsantens.com) villages, traditionally separate castes began working together in ways that surprised even researchers. We know from decades of research that social connection is the trump card for mental health. Basic income doesn’t just give people money—it gives them the time and security to invest in relationships. And those relationships support mental health in ways that compound over time. ### **The Unexpected Connection to Gun Violence** Here’s where the mental health and social cohesion findings lead somewhere potentially unexpected: gun violence. The United States has one of the highest murder rates in the industrialized world—nearly three times more murders per capita than Canada and ten times more than Japan. What explains this (besides the guns)? In 1998, Ichiro Kawachi at the Harvard School of Public Health led [a landmark study](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9683374/?ref=scottsantens.com) investigating the factors driving American homicide rates. Using data from all 50 states measuring social capital (interpersonal trust that promotes cooperation), income inequality, poverty, unemployment, education levels, and alcohol consumption, the researchers identified which factors were most associated with violent crime. The results were striking. Income inequality alone explained 74% of the variance in murder rates. But social capital had an even stronger association—**by itself, it accounted for 82% of homicides**. Other factors like unemployment, poverty, or education were only weakly associated. Social capital wasn’t just important—it was primary. As Kawachi concluded, when the ties that bind a community together are severed, inequality is allowed to run free, with deadly consequences. What about guns themselves? In a follow-up study, Kawachi found that when social capital and community involvement declined, gun ownership increased. People who don’t trust their neighbors are more likely to think guns will provide security. In this way, both the number of guns and the number of homicides stem from the same root: eroded social capital. Address the root cause—rebuild trust and community bonds—and both problems may improve together. This is where basic income enters the picture. Remember Finland’s finding: basic income recipients trusted other people and institutions more than the control group. Remember Namibia: a stronger community spirit developed. Remember India: castes began working together. Basic income doesn’t just improve individual mental health—it rebuilds the social fabric that protects communities from violence. According to [University of Washington sociologists](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11205-011-9785-x?ref=scottsantens.com) (my alma mater), social activism—people working together for their community—is the single most important factor associated with reduced violence at the neighborhood, national, and individual levels. Universal basic income gives everyone the time and security to engage in exactly this kind of civic participation. It’s not just a mental health intervention. It’s a gun violence prevention intervention too. ### **The Conditions Are the Problem** The new Finland study makes something crystal clear that has been obscured for too long: the conditions we attach to welfare programs aren’t neutral features. They are active harms. The surveillance, the requirements, the constant need to prove worthiness—besides adding to administrative costs, these create psychological damage that persists even when the financial support is adequate. We’ve spent decades debating how much money to give people, when we should have been asking whether we need to give it with so many strings attached. Finland gave both groups the same money. The group with fewer strings had 33% better mental health. That’s not a marginal improvement—that’s a transformation. The evidence from Finland, Germany, Kenya, Brazil, North Carolina, Namibia, India, Canada, and dozens of American cities all points in the same direction: unconditional cash improves mental health. The unconditionality matters. The trust matters. **Treating people like adults who can make their own decisions about their own lives**—that matters. The Canadian Mental Health Association has already officially endorsed basic income. So has the Canadian Medical Association. As the evidence continues to pile up, more health organizations will follow. The question is no longer whether basic income improves mental health—that question has been definitively answered. The question now is how long we’ll continue to ignore the answer. Every day we delay implementing universal basic income, people suffer unnecessarily. They experience anxiety and depression that could be prevented. Their trust in society erodes, in turn eroding faith in democracy itself. Children grow up with chronic stress that shapes their brains and personalities in lasting ways. The science is in, and it’s unambiguous: **universal basic income would be one of the most powerful mental health interventions humanity has ever devised**. Conditions are the problem. Trust is the solution. It’s time we started acting like it. --- *Note: This article discusses the mental health benefits of universal basic income based on multiple peer-reviewed studies and pilot programs. Individual experiences may vary, and basic income should be considered as one component of comprehensive mental health policy, not a replacement for necessary medical or psychological care.* --- *If you enjoyed this article, please share it and click the subscribe button. Also *consider making a monthly pledge* in support of my work to have your name appear below.* [![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jMpR!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F94c4f669-7d04-4e25-b4bb-c528fdc223ff_461x66.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Special thanks to my monthly patrons*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark, Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Steve Roth, Miki Phagan, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun Banker, Tommy Caruso, Felix Ling, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Juro Antal, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, Stephen Castro-Starkey, David Allen, Liz, and all my other monthly patrons on Patreon for their support.* [![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8dwv!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fca50e0ce-931f-4a86-9f73-27cde08aabc8_1181x633.png)](https://noblemobile.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Another way to improve your mental health is to use your phone less… ### Eduardo Porter is Still Wrong About UBI and AI: A Response to The Guardian URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/eduardo-porter-is-still-wrong-about-ubi-and-ai-a-response-to-the-guardian/ Last updated: 2025-12-23T15:51:57.000Z ### Universal Basic Income Isn’t a Job Replacement Plan—It’s an AI Dividend and Stable Income Floor That Protects Work, Wages, and Democracy ## Eduardo Porter’s new [Guardian piece](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/dec/15/universal-basic-income-ai-andrew-yang?ref=scottsantens.com) is built around a familiar move: treat universal basic income as a single, maximalist policy meant to replace paychecks, then declare it either unaffordable or socially corrosive, then pivot to means-tested wage subsidies as the “serious” alternative. This time the villain is AI. The structure is the same as last time. He even opens by mocking UBI as a “space zombie,” a sci-fi idea that keeps crawling back no matter how many times critics think they’ve killed it. The reason it keeps coming back is not Silicon Valley fad-cycling. It keeps coming back because the problems it addresses have kept getting worse for half a century: rising productivity with relatively stagnant wages, growing insecurity, a safety net that a significant percentage of people fall through, and an economy that increasingly rewards ownership over labor. AI does not create those problems. AI accelerates them. Porter has changed in one meaningful way since he went after UBI in 2016\. He now takes the tech disruption of the labor market story more seriously. He now acknowledges that AI can hammer job security, reshape bargaining power, and intensify the distributional fight over who captures new productivity. That is growth. He has not changed in the way that matters. He still argues against UBI by arguing against a policy that UBI advocates are not proposing. He loves building straw men. Foreword to Civilization is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber here or on Patreon. ## What Porter Got Closer To, And What He Still Misses Back in 2016, Porter argued [in the New York Times](https://archive.ph/AuEJF?ref=scottsantens.com) that UBI was a poor tool to fight poverty and leaned heavily on two claims: it would be ruinously expensive, and it would reduce work. The expense claim relied on multiplying a big check by a big population [as if gross cost were UBI’s meaningful cost](https://www.scottsantens.com/how-to-calculate-the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-ubi/). The work claim leaned on a moral story about effort rather than the evidence he himself previously cited on pilots. That contradiction is why [I called him out then](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/universal-basic-income-is%5Fb%5F10251176?ref=scottsantens.com). He highlighted evidence showing no meaningful work collapse in the pilots he chose to discuss, then turned around and warned that UBI would make people stop working. I pointed out the hypocrisy plainly: praising a result and then denying it in the very next breath is not analysis, it’s agenda. In 2025, Porter now repeats the same pattern with updated props. He admits AI could destroy or degrade jobs and wages, then treats that as a reason to reject UBI anyway. He argues that if the AI future is bleak, a broad consumption tax is “ridiculous,” and if the AI future is not bleak, UBI is unnecessary. That is not a critique. It’s a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose pseudo-intellectual trap. ## The First Fix: Stop Pretending UBI Means “No One Works” UBI is not meant to replace the income from all jobs. UBI is meant to ensure nobody falls below a non-zero floor, and to distribute a dividend from an economy we all help create. The floor is the point. The dividend is the justice. Put in the simplest terms: UBI is a foundation. All income is earned on top of it. A poverty-line UBI is not “the replacement paycheck for the post-work apocalypse.” It’s the equivalent of the foundation of a house. It’s so the house built on top of it doesn’t crumble and fall. It prevents the worst outcomes, stabilizes consumer demand, and gives people leverage to say no to exploitation. Porter keeps fighting a fictional UBI where everyone gets a middle-class wage from the government and the labor market disappears. He even waves at a fantasy number—“give everyone the median income”—then declares it would cost $14 trillion and therefore the entire concept is unserious. That is like “critiquing” public schools by multiplying the price of private boarding school for every child and calling public education impossible. ## AI Job Loss Is Not 100%. It’s Still Massive. The Right Range Is The Point. There are two childish stories about AI and jobs. One says AI ends all jobs. The other says everything will be fine. [**Both are wrong**](https://www.scottsantens.com/ai-will-rapidly-transform-the-labor-market-exacerbating-inequality-insecurity-and-poverty/). The reality is a wide band of disruption that can be measured in chunks of the labor market large enough to break lives and politics, but not so large that society becomes a sci-fi desert of total idleness. I have been arguing for years that the most realistic path is not instant total unemployment. It is rapid labor market churn, wage pressure, and a race down the job ladder. That “middle path” now has plenty of backing: - A 2025 World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report concluded that [22% of jobs are expected to be disrupted](https://www.weforum.org/press/2025/01/future-of-jobs-report-2025-78-million-new-job-opportunities-by-2030-but-urgent-upskilling-needed-to-prepare-workforces/?ref=scottsantens.com) by 2030. - A 2025 study jointly published by the Gerald Huff Fund for Humanity and the National Science Foundation concluded that [25% of jobs](https://fundforhumanity.org/national-science-foundation-ai-worker-impact-report/?ref=scottsantens.com) could be disrupted by 2028. - A 2023 report by McKinsey estimated that [30% of hours worked](https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/generative-ai-and-the-future-of-work-in-america?ref=scottsantens.com) in the U.S. could be automated by 2030. - A [2023 Goldman Sachs report](https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/generative-ai-could-raise-global-gdp-by-7-percent?ref=scottsantens.com) estimated that two-thirds of jobs are to some degree exposed to automation and that 25% to 50% of work in those exposed jobs could be replaced by 2033. - MIT’s Project Iceberg has an “Iceberg Index” estimating that current AI systems already overlap with about [11.7% of U.S. labor market](https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.25137?ref=scottsantens.com) wage value in technical capability terms. That 10% to 25% zone is the disruption Porter should be able to see clearly. It is not the “end of work.” It is the end of stability for many of those who still have some. Additionally, the spending of UBI will create more jobs for people to take. Without UBI, the net job losses will be larger than without UBI. ## Demand Is The Hidden Variable Porter Barely Touches Porter’s Guardian piece nods at AI and jobs, but it still treats employment as if it’s determined primarily by worker incentives. It is not. Demand creates jobs. People with money create demand. People without money create layoffs. I laid this out [in detail in 2023](https://www.scottsantens.com/ai-will-rapidly-transform-the-labor-market-exacerbating-inequality-insecurity-and-poverty/) with a simple, realistic model: AI makes some workers more productive, firms need fewer workers for the same output, and whether those workers keep jobs depends on whether there is enough consumer demand for the firm to expand rather than cut. UBI’s macro job effect is not a mystery. A floor under everyone’s income is an automatic stabilizer. It keeps spending from collapsing during displacement shocks. It reduces the odds that productivity gains translate into demand shortfalls and cascading layoffs. There will always be some amount of demand for human labor, no matter the cost or quality of AI-created goods and services. Just as some people choose to spend more for organic foods, some will choose to spend more on human goods and services. ## The Second Fix: Stop Using Gross Cost As Propaganda Porter’s favorite move is arithmetic theater: multiply a universal check by the population and call the result “the cost,” as if taxes, benefit offsets, and savings mechanisms do not exist. [UBI cost debates that start and end with gross cost are not serious](https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-is-not-cheaper-than-universal-basic-income-ubi-nor-is-guaranteed-income-more-progressive-by-excluding-the-rich/). Here is the serious part: the net cost of a poverty-line UBI, with realistic offsets and tax phaseout, is not remotely the apocalyptic number critics love to chant. A [new working paper](https://widerquist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/BackOfTheEnvelope-ForPosting-2025Oct22-150.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) by Karl Widerquist and Jack Rossbach updates “back-of-the-envelope” UBI costing with 2024 data and finds that a UBI set at $16,000 per adult and $8,000 per child (with a 50% phaseout accomplished via taxes) has a net cost of around $605.5 to $649.2 billion per year, roughly 2.07% to 2.29% of GDP. The most important point is not even the dollar figure. It’s the trend: as a share of GDP, a poverty-line UBI has gotten cheaper for more than 50 years—down from about 6.22% of GDP in 1970, to around 2% today. So when Porter treats UBI as a futuristic luxury that becomes plausible only after some imagined AI endpoint, he is historically backward. If anything, [the 1970s were the time to begin](http://truthout.org/articles/sanders-1-percent-has-sapped-79t-in-wealth-from-bottom-90-percent-since-1975/?ref=scottsantens.com). That was when wages first decoupled from productivity and growing insecurity and inequality became government policy. UBI is entirely affordable, and a poverty-line floor is more affordable now than it was when the modern wage-productivity split began. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!PKhU!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff8b94372-4aeb-49b4-a35a-792f6df70fee_1216x1236.png) ## The Third Fix: Universality Is Not Waste. It’s The Design. Porter continues to treat universality as a fatal flaw: money “wasted” on people who do not “need” it. That view confuses accounting with political economy. Universality is what makes a floor durable. Universality is what makes it automatic. Universality is what makes it non-punitive. Universality is what makes it trusted. Means-tested programs train people to fear the system and actively discourage people from increasing their incomes. They are booby-trapped with cliffs, paperwork, surveillance, and stigma. They punish volatility in income precisely when volatility becomes the norm. They exclude via bureaucratic testing those who need help the most. That is all the opposite of what you need in an AI-impacted labor market. Porter’s preferred substitute—the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) wage subsidy—does something even worse: it ties survival more tightly to wages. It explicitly excludes the unpaid work that keeps society alive: caregiving, volunteering, community building. If you do not have taxable earnings, you do not count. UBI counts everyone. That is the point. ## The Dividend Argument Porter Still Refuses To Take Seriously Porter concedes that capital owners will capture a disproportionate share of AI’s gains and suggests heavier taxation of capital. Fine. That is part of the answer. But taxation alone still frames the public as petitioners. UBI reframes the public as dividend-earning shareholders. AI is built on a mountain of collective inheritance: publicly funded research, public universities, decades of government grants, and training data produced by billions of people—living and dead—who were never asked, never compensated, and never given a share certificate. [Gar Alperovitz](https://medium.com/%40GarAlperovitz/technological-inheritance-and-the-case-for-a-basic-income-ded373a69c8e?ref=scottsantens.com) puts the moral core cleanly: most modern income exceeds what anyone can claim as the product of their own work in the present; it is “a gift of the past,” a **technological inheritance**. That inheritance is currently routed upward by default. A universal dividend is how you route a portion back downward by right. Porter’s alternative is still paternalistic. He wants targeted help for the poor and wage subsidies for workers. That is how you build a permanently anxious majority watching a permanently secure minority. A universal dividend is how you build a shareholder society that includes everyone. And universal provision [builds pressure to tax the rich more](https://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/blog/who-really-benefits-from-poverty-targeting-in-social-protection-the-poor-or-the-rich/?ref=scottsantens.com) than targeting ever can. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!b9pT!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff5d89d52-47c8-4ab8-a54f-f34a4e0a7592_621x416.png) ## UBI Reduces Inequality In Several Direct Channels Porter waves at inequality and implies UBI is too blunt to matter. That is wrong in at least four ways. 1. **Consumption inequality falls immediately** because the floor raises the bottom mechanically. 2. **Bargaining power rises** because the threat of destitution is removed. When survival is not on the line, saying “no” becomes possible. Wages rise at the bottom because employers lose the ability to weaponize hunger and homelessness. 3. **Unions strengthen** because UBI functions as a universal, unlimited-time strike fund. The ability to withhold labor without starvation is what makes collective bargaining real. 4. **Democratic participation rises** because time and stress are freed up. That means more organizing, more volunteering, more small-donor politics, and fewer people trapped in the learned helplessness that inequality manufactures. UBI is not a cure-all. It is the platform that makes other equalizing reforms easier to win and easier to sustain. ## Financing: Porter’s “VAT and Income Tax Won’t Work” Claim Is Just Slogan Porter dismisses income taxation and mocks VAT-style approaches in a future with less work. This is where the critique collapses into vibes. A modern UBI can be financed by a portfolio, not a single tax: - progressive income taxes and reforms - consumption taxes and transaction taxes - wealth taxes and estate taxes - land value taxation - corporate taxation and excess profit mechanisms - requiring large corporations to issue new stock annually into a [National Wealth Fund](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/social-wealth-fund/?ref=scottsantens.com), diluting shareholder value to fund the universal dividend Even Porter’s own instincts point toward the real destination: broaden ownership. The difference is that UBI advocates are willing to make that destination universal and automatic, instead of conditional and stigmatized. Also, taxation is not the only lever. In a world where AI drives disinflationary pressure by lowering costs and compressing wages, [some portion of a UBI floor can be treated as macro stabilization](https://www.camecon.com/reports/the-macroeconomics-of-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com), similar in spirit to the pandemic-era recognition that governments can and do create and issue money. Porter treats that as unthinkable. Recent history says otherwise. ## The Missing Layer In Porter’s Work Story: Security, Stress, Democracy Porter keeps returning to the fear that if people have income, they will work less, and that this is inherently bad. Even if it were true at the margin, it is not a moral failure. It is a social upgrade. Less forced labor, less desperation employment, more care work, more education, more entrepreneurship, more civic participation. But the deeper point is what insecurity does to a society. A chronically stressed population is sicker, angrier, more violent, and easier to radicalize. Insecurity consumes cognitive bandwidth. It increases receptivity to scapegoating and authoritarian “order” narratives. I have argued explicitly that [reducing insecurity and inequality is a democratic necessity](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-hidden-reasons-authoritarianism-is-growing-and-how-to-reverse-it-ubi/), not a lifestyle perk. Universality matters here again. When government delivers a tangible benefit to everyone, it signals inherent worth, builds trust, and reduces the corrosive politics of “makers vs takers.” A universal dividend is not just redistribution. It is social cohesion. ## The Real Package: UBI As Floor, Plus A Time Dividend, Plus Public Options UBI is the foundation, not any kind of ceiling. A serious “AI economy” agenda stacks policies: - UBI as a poverty-ending floor [that grows with productivity](https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-or-universal-high-income-ubi-uhi-amount/) - universal healthcare so survival is not tied to employment - shorter workweeks and shorter workdays with no loss in pay so productivity gains become time, not just profit - stronger collective bargaining rights and antitrust enforcement - public investment and, if necessary, public employment for socially necessary work that the market underprovides Porter writes as if rejecting UBI preserves work. In reality, rejecting UBI preserves desperation. ## The Bottom Line Porter Keeps Dodging UBI is not a plan for a world with no jobs. It is a plan for a world where jobs are less reliable as the sole delivery mechanism for survival and dignity. AI disruption in the 10% to 25% range is not speculative fantasy anymore. It is visible in exposure measures and credible institutional estimates. A poverty-line UBI is not fiscally absurd, and arguably never has been. The newest costing work suggests it is on the order of about 2% of GDP on net, and it has gotten cheaper as a share of GDP for decades. The cost to directly end poverty with UBI has never been lower than it is now. And the moral logic is not radical. It is inheritance. Most wealth is built on a collective gift of the past. A universal dividend is a modest, sane way to distribute a portion of that gift to everyone alive now, including the caregivers, volunteers, and unpaid workers all of whom Porter’s preferred policies leave behind. Porter has grown enough to see AI as a distributional threat. He has not grown enough to stop fighting a straw man UBI that serious advocates are not proposing. He is still arguing against “universal basic income replacing work,” while the actual case is “universal basic income preventing poverty, lessening insecurity, stabilizing demand, reducing inequality, and distributing an earned inheritance to all so that AI literally WORKS FOR EVERYONE.” --- *If you enjoyed this article, please share it and click the subscribe button. Also *consider making a monthly pledge* in support of my work to have your name appear below.* [![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jMpR!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F94c4f669-7d04-4e25-b4bb-c528fdc223ff_461x66.png)](https://www.patreon.com/c/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) *Special thanks to my monthly patrons: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark, Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Steve Roth, Miki Phagan, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun Banker, Tommy Caruso, Felix Ling, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Juro Antal, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, Stephen Castro-Starkey, David Allen, Liz, and all my other monthly patrons on Patreon for their support.* [![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8dwv!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fca50e0ce-931f-4a86-9f73-27cde08aabc8_1181x633.png)](https://noblemobile.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Universal Basic Income Reduces Crime: Here’s What the Evidence Shows URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/elon-musk-is-wrong-about-universal-basic-income-and-crime/ Last updated: 2026-07-13T17:27:19.000Z ### Evidence from UBI experiments, guaranteed income programs, and natural experiments shows how increasing economic security can reduce property crime, violent crime, domestic violence, and recidivism Recently, an account on X/Twitter posted a claim that the basic income pilot in Finland proved that basic income doesn’t reduce crime. They cited [a new study](https://www.nber.org/papers/w34547?ref=scottsantens.com) analyzing the data which found a “[null result](https://www.scottsantens.com/reports-of-ubis-death-are-greatly-exaggerated-mountain-of-positive-results-vs-pandemic-null-results/)” on crime impacts. Elon Musk—the guy most likely to become the world’s first trillionaire who allegedly supports UBI but says he doesn’t [until people buy enough of his robots and robotaxis](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1848473658081083848?ref=scottsantens.com) to cause mass unemployment—boosted this signal to his massive following, replying “Correct” to the sentiment that if you think basic income fixes crime by reducing poverty, you’re deluded, and that the real problem is low intelligence and low self-control. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!D3R2!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6e39519c-f97c-4d5e-a67d-78a889a11798_680x347.png) ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!806m!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2afeb9bc-897c-44c0-8b19-a7d01cbae773_682x254.png) Now it’s [even being amplified by Noah Smith](https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/at-least-five-interesting-things-93d?ref=scottsantens.com) on his blog. This really pisses me off. It pisses me off because it is a classic case of using a specific, highly nuanced data point to tell a broad, dangerous lie. It allows cynics to dismiss the suffering of millions with a “Well, actually” based on a study they haven’t properly read. The claim that “Universal Basic Income doesn’t reduce crime” isn’t just wrong; it is actively contradicted by decades of evidence from Alaska to Namibia, and from Canada to North Carolina. But to understand why the Finland study showed what it showed, and why *actual* UBI significantly reduces crime, we have to look at the details that the headline-skimmers routinely ignore. ### The Finland Fallacy Let’s start with the “Fact” layer of our Truth Sandwich: **Poverty, insecurity, and inequality are the primary drivers of crime.** When you alleviate those, crime rates go down. So, why did the Finland pilot show a “null result”? If you give people money, shouldn’t crime drop? The answer lies in the experimental design. [**The Finland experiment was not a test of Universal Basic Income (UBI)**](https://www.scottsantens.com/what-is-there-to-learn-from-finlands-basic-income-experiment-did-it-succeed-or-fail/). It was a test of a slightly more efficient unemployment system for 2,000 unemployed people. In the Finnish trial, the treatment group received €560 per month. But here is the critical context: [**This money was instead of the same amount of their normal unemployment benefit**](https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1%5Fwp9875.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)**.** Finland already has a robust social safety net. The people in the experiment were already receiving money from the government; the experiment simply removed the bureaucratic conditions and means-testing attached to that money to see if it would encourage them to take low-paying jobs without fear of losing some of their benefits. If you take a group of people who are already getting €560/month with conditions, and you switch them to getting €560/month *without* conditions, why would you expect less crime? Their material circumstances haven’t shifted. They just have less paperwork. To put this in perspective, imagine we wanted to test if raising the minimum wage reduces crime. But instead of raising the wage, we took 2,000 workers earning $15/hour and simply changed *how* they were paid—maybe via direct deposit instead of a paper check—but kept the amount exactly the same. If crime didn’t go down, would you conclude “Higher wages don’t reduce crime”? Of course not. You’d conclude that you didn’t actually raise their wages. The Finland pilot was a test of bureaucracy reduction, not poverty reduction. ### The “Nothing” Problem There is another massive flaw in using Finland to argue against UBI in the United States: **Finland doesn’t have our level of desperation.** Right now, there are approximately [**13 million Americans living in poverty who receive absolutely nothing**](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/13-million-people-in-poverty-are-disconnected-from-the-social-safety-net-most-of-them-are-white/2019/02/04/807516a0-2598-11e9-81fd-b7b05d5bed90%5Fstory.html?ref=scottsantens.com) from the federal government. They don’t qualify for TANF (which is notoriously difficult to get). They’ve exhausted SNAP and unemployment insurance or never got them. They are completely outside the system. These are the people most likely to engage in “survival crime.” When you have $0, and your child is hungry, you don’t care about the law. You steal food. You sell drugs. You engage in sex work. You do what you have to do to survive. The Finland pilot didn’t study these people because, **in Finland, desperate people largely don’t exist** due to their strong safety net. [Finland’s poverty rate in 2022 was 0.3%](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/fin/finland/poverty-rate?ref=scottsantens.com). A real UBI in the United States would reach the millions who are currently excluded. It would be the difference between $0 and $1,000 a month. When you actually make *that* change—when you move people from “nothing” to “something,” or when you boost the income of the working poor who are barely holding on—the data shows that crime drops like a stone. ### The Evidence of Abundance When we look at experiments that actually *increased* people’s incomes rather than just shuffling their paperwork, the verdict is undeniable. **1\. The Plasma Center Effect** A fascinating recent study looked at what happens when blood plasma donation centers open in a neighborhood. In the US, selling plasma is one of the few ways people with no income can generate cash quickly. It serves as a grim sort of market-based safety net. The researchers found that [when a center opens, there is a **10% to 12% drop in crime** in the surrounding area](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=5259763&ref=scottsantens.com). Property crime and drug offenses plummeted. Why? Because when people have a legal, accessible way to get the cash they need to survive, they don’t need to break the law to get it. It’s not rocket science. It’s basic economics. **2\. Namibia’s Crime Collapse** In the [Otjivero UBI pilot in Namibia](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), the entire village was given a basic income. This was a “saturation” pilot, meaning everyone got it (around 1,000 people), creating a community-wide floor. The results were staggering. - Overall crime fell by **42%**. - The illegal poaching of animals for food/money fell by **95%**. When everyone had enough to eat, nobody needed to steal their neighbor’s livestock. The “survival” incentive for crime evaporated overnight. **3\. The Mincome Miracle** In the famous “Mincome” experiment in Dauphin, Manitoba, an entire town was guaranteed a basic income for about five years. [Researchers found a **15% drop in overall crime** and a large **37% drop in violent crime**](https://repository.upenn.edu/entities/publication/cbf4e519-621d-4057-b7ca-d0455c08f4f9?ref=scottsantens.com). Much of this reduction was driven by a decrease in domestic abuse and alcohol-related offenses. Financial stress is a pressure cooker. When you turn down the heat, the pot stops exploding. **4\. Domestic Violence in Kenya** In a study by GiveDirectly in Kenya, providing [unconditional monthly income to women reduced the instances of physical and sexual violence from their partners by **51%**](https://www.fastcompany.com/90315666/how-a-basic-income-could-help-stop-domestic-violence?ref=scottsantens.com). Money is power. Financial independence gives people the power to say no, the power to leave abusive situations, and the power to de-escalate household stress before it turns into violence. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) shows this too by the way, [with 21% fewer counts of physical or sexual violence as the result of an additional $1,000](https://www.nber.org/papers/w29930?ref=scottsantens.com). **5\. The Oh Look I Have Healthcare Now Effect** If you want to know what happens when you stop punishing poverty and start treating it, look at the data on Medicaid expansion. In [a massive 2022 study](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35020737/?ref=scottsantens.com), researchers analyzed FBI crime data from over 3,000 counties to see what happened after the Affordable Care Act allowed states to expand Medicaid. The results were undeniable. States that expanded the safety net saw a **20% to 32% drop in overall arrest rates** compared to states that didn’t. - **Drug arrests** fell by **25-41%**. - **Violent crime arrests** fell by **19-29%**. This is the “prevention” argument in action. When people can access healthcare—including mental health services and addiction treatment—without financial ruin, they don’t spiral into the criminal justice system. A UBI would be [a universal preventative care system for poverty](https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-ubi/) that stops crime before the police are ever called. It’s also a reason to do universal healthcare too. ### The Kids are Alright (And Less Criminal) One of the most insidious arguments against UBI is that it’s a waste of money. But when you look at [the cost of crime](https://web.archive.org/web/20250109172924/https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2021/02/05/new-research-examines-the-cost-of-crime-in-the-u-s-estimated-to-be-2-6-trillion-in-a-single-year/), UBI is actually a savings plan. **The Smoky Mountains Study** In North Carolina, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians began distributing a portion of casino profits to all tribal members in 1996\. Researchers had already been studying the youth in that area for unrelated reasons, giving them a perfect “natural experiment.” The results? The children whose families received the income boost saw massive behavioral improvements over the next few decades. As they grew up, they committed less crime. By the time the cohort reached age 21, the number of “minor crimes” committed by the youth had dropped considerably. [By age 26, the researchers calculated that the **Return on Investment (ROI) was 3 to 1**](https://academicminute.org/jane-costello-duke-university-sharing-the-wealth/?ref=scottsantens.com). For every dollar given to families, society saved three dollars—mostly by *not* having to pay for police, courts, and jails. It was also the result of better health leading to less need for medical treatment, and better educational outcomes leading to better jobs. **The SSI Cliff** Conversely, we know what happens when you take money away. A study published in the *Quarterly Journal of Economics* looked at children who received Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for their disabilities but were removed from the program when they turned 18. The study compared kids who lost the income to kids who kept it. The result? [The number of criminal charges for the group that lost the income **increased by 20%** over the next two decades](https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/137/4/2263/6581195?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false&ref=scottsantens.com). The researchers noted that the “savings” the government achieved by cutting these kids off were almost entirely wiped out by the increased costs of enforcement and incarceration. We are stepping over dollars to pick up pennies, and ruining lives in the process. ### Recidivism: Breaking the Cycle Critics love to claim that “criminals are just criminals” and that money won’t change their behavior. This is the “bad blood” argument, and it is scientifically bankrupt. In the United States, the recidivism rate is horrifying. About **70%** of formerly incarcerated people are rearrested within three years. Why? Because we release them with $50 in their pocket if anything, a criminal record that makes them unhireable, and no housing. We practically force them back into survival crime. But look at what happens when we change the environment: - [**The Just Income Pilot**](https://www.guaranteedincomeworks.org/data-from-gainesville-fl?ref=scottsantens.com)**:** In Gainesville, Florida, a pilot provided a guaranteed monthly income to formerly incarcerated people. The recidivism rate wasn’t 70%. It dropped by **31%** compared to the control group. - [**CEO’s Returning Citizens Stimulus**](https://www.ceoworks.org/rcs?ref=scottsantens.com)**:** Another program giving cash to returning citizens found consistent reductions in new convictions. Even in Alaska, studies have shown that [property crime drops](https://www.promarket.org/2019/06/13/basic-income-ubi-reduce-crime%e2%80%a8/?ref=scottsantens.com) specifically in the weeks *after* their Permanent Fund Dividend checks arrive. The larger the check, the larger the impact. When liquidity is available, theft becomes less necessary. ### It’s the Stress, Stupid We need to stomp out the eugenicist notion that crime is caused by low IQ or “bad genes.” This kind of thinking is not only racist; it is biologically wrong. Scarcity changes how your brain works. Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir wrote the book [*Scarcity*](https://amzn.to/4q5pLyg?ref=scottsantens.com), detailing how [economic insecurity essentially lowers your functional IQ](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1238041?ref=scottsantens.com). One study showed that Indian farmers performed significantly better on cognitive tests *after* the harvest (when they had money) than before it (when they were broke). Another study in a mall showed that just getting poor people to *think* about a large car repair bill caused a drop in cognitive function equivalent to losing a night of sleep or **13 IQ points**. Economic insecurity is like a glitched app running in the background of your phone, draining the battery and slowing down the processor. **UBI closes that app**. When we reduce poverty, we aren’t just filling bank accounts; we are freeing up bandwidth. We are reducing the chronic stress and cortisol spikes that lead to impulsive decision-making and violence. [We know that inequality is actually more strongly linked to homicide rates than poverty alone](https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/primate-diaries/the-jokers-wild/?ref=scottsantens.com). UBI attacks both. ### The Macro View: A K-Shaped Disaster Finally, we have to look at the bigger picture. We are currently living in a K-shaped economy. [The top 10% are consuming half of everything, while the bottom 50% are fighting for scraps](https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/02/24/higher-income-americans-drive-bigger-share-of-consumer-spending?ref=scottsantens.com). Inequality is spiraling, and history tells us that extreme inequality inevitably leads to social unrest and crime. UBI is not just a crime reduction policy; it is an economic stimulus package for the people who actually spend money. Unlike the Finland pilot, a real UBI would boost the disposable income of the bottom 60% to 90% depending on tax details. That money doesn’t disappear; it cycles through the local economy. It creates demand. Demand creates jobs. In Alaska, [their UBI has been shown to increase overall employment](https://harris.uchicago.edu/news-events/news/universal-basic-income-policies-dont-cause-people-leave-workforce-study-finds?ref=scottsantens.com). Why? because when people have money to spend, local businesses have customers. If Finland had done a real UBI—giving money to everyone in a town and comparing it to a town that got nothing—they likely would have seen the same 15%+ drop in crime seen elsewhere, driven by a booming local economy and higher employment. ### The Double Standard of Crime Let’s be honest about how we talk about crime. When a poor person steals baby formula, we call it a character flaw. When a rich person steals millions in wages from their employees—which, by the way, accounts for more lost money annually than all shoplifting, burglary, and robbery combined—we call it a “smart business practice.” Nobody looks at a billionaire committing tax fraud or crashing the economy via subprime mortgages and says, “It must be his genetics.” We understand that the rich commit crimes because they think they can get away with it, or because they simply *want* more. We need to understand that the poor often commit crimes because they *need* more. ### Conclusion: The Signal in the Noise The Finland study is a valid data point about bureaucracy and employment incentives within a specific welfare state, but it is a terrible data point about the relationship between poverty and crime. If you actually look at the mountain of evidence—from the plains of Namibia to the towns of Canada, from the plasma centers of the US to the tribal lands of the Cherokee—the signal is clear: **Poverty is a policy choice, and crime is one of its side effects.** UBI also isn’t just about money. It’s about reducing the inequality that tears the social fabric apart. It’s about **increasing trust** in our neighbors, our politicians, and our government—[something the Finland pilot *did* successfully prove](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/social-sector/our-insights/an-experiment-to-inform-universal-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com), by the way. We have a choice. We can keep spending trillions on prisons, police, and punishment to manage the symptoms of poverty. We can keep believing the lie that crime is an inherent trait of “those people.” Or we can look at the actual data. We can invest in the cure. We can build an economy that serves the needs of the many rather than the wants of the few. Crime is not a trait. It is not a gene. It is not a skull shape. That is the intellectual on-ramp to eugenics and racism, because it treats social outcomes as biological destiny and uses that story to justify punishment instead of prevention. Crime is a set of behaviors that responds to incentives, stress, opportunity, necessity, and the degree of inequality and social cohesion in a society. Elon might be satisfied with a “Correct” tweet, but we should demand the whole truth. And the truth is that universal basic income builds a safer world for everyone. --- *If you enjoyed this article, please share it and click the subscribe button. Also *consider making a monthly pledge* in support of my work to have your name appear below.* [![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jMpR!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F94c4f669-7d04-4e25-b4bb-c528fdc223ff_461x66.png)](https://www.patreon.com/c/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) *Special thanks to my monthly patrons: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark, Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Steve Roth, Miki Phagan, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun Banker, Tommy Caruso, Felix Ling, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Juro Antal, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, Stephen Castro-Starkey, David Allen, Liz, and all my other monthly patrons on Patreon for their support.* [![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8dwv!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fca50e0ce-931f-4a86-9f73-27cde08aabc8_1181x633.png)](https://noblemobile.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Marshall Islands Just Quietly Implemented the First National Universal Basic Income (UBI) URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-marshall-islands-just-quietly-implemented-the-first-national-universal-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2025-12-23T15:51:19.000Z [**READ ON MY SUBSTACK**](https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/marshall-islands-just-implemented-ubi) The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) just did something most governments still insist is impossible. They passed and funded a nationwide, legally established, permanent [universal basic income](https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq/), and almost no one outside the Pacific and a few crypto news sites is talking about it yet. It is not a pilot. It is not a time-limited experiment. It is a permanent system baked into the country’s fiscal architecture, with money already approved by their national legislature, and the first payments already scheduled to arrive by December 1st. They call their new universal basic income program “**Enra**.” ### What Enra actually does Enra pays every Marshallese citizen living in the country a flat amount of around **$800 per person per year**, delivered in **quarterly payments of about $200**. Children are included. This is per person, not per household. There is no means test and no work requirement in the public rules. Enra is individual, universal within the citizen-resident population, unconditional in terms of income or employment, and regular. That is the core definition of universal basic income. It is small in absolute terms, but structurally it is a real UBI. People can choose to receive it by paper check, direct deposit into a bank account, or via Lomalo, which is a government-backed digital wallet that can hold a USD-linked stablecoin called **USDM1**. The purpose of including a digital wallet and transfer via stablecoin as an option is to lower barriers and costs to maximize inclusion. ### How big this is relative to their economy On paper the Marshall Islands may look like a poor country in per-capita GDP terms. Recent estimates put their GDP per capita at roughly **$7,500** a year. Enra at roughly **$800 per person per year** is thus about **10–11 percent of GDP per capita**. Translate that into U.S. terms. U.S. GDP per capita is on the order of **$86,000**. Ten to eleven percent of that is roughly **$9,000 per person per year**, or about **$750 per month**, for every adult and child. So in relative GDP terms, what the Marshall Islands just did is equivalent to the United States paying everyone a basic income of around **$750 per month**, no strings attached. If you look at it as a share of the whole economy, Enra itself is projected at about **8 percent of GDP**. A companion program for higher-need communities, called the **Extraordinary Needs Distribution (END)**, adds roughly another **6 percent of GDP**. Together they are spending about **14 percent of GDP** on universal basic income plus targeted supports. That is a real investment in the people of the Marshall Islands. ### Extra support for people with greater needs The Marshall Islands did not stop at a uniform UBI. They layered additional help on top of it. The first layer is the Individual Support Distribution (ISD) “Enra Bwe Jen Lale Rara” or Enra for short, paid per person to all citizens residing in the country. The second layer is the Extraordinary Needs Distribution (END) funded from a separate account in the same trust fund. This money is legally earmarked for atolls and islands in “extraordinary circumstances” with exceptional hardship, limited land, poor housing, and very weak local economies. It currently funds food, housing repair, and other support through local governments in high-need communities, especially outer islands affected by nuclear testing and isolation. Policy documents go further and model an **Outer Island Basic Income Support** that would add a substantial per-person top-up for these communities, layered on top of Enra and funded out of END. That would effectively be a higher basic income for people in the most structurally disadvantaged locations. On top of those, the same budget that launches Enra also creates: - A new **Social Support Program** that pays **$100 per month** to eligible retirees and disabled people. - An expanded **early-childhood program** paying regular stipends to mothers of children aged 0–5, aka a universal child allowance. In other words, they are building a three-layer system: a universal floor, targeted extra support for structurally disadvantaged places, and classic categorical programs for old age, disability, and early childhood. ### How they are paying for all of this The cost will be about $27 million a year for Enra. None of it is funded by a new domestic tax. It is also not funded by some crypto scheme. It is funded from a **U.S.-capitalized sovereign wealth fund** created under the **Compact of Free Association** between the Marshall Islands and the United States. The fund is formally called the [**Trust Fund for the People of the Republic of the Marshall Islands**](https://rmicfatf.com/?ref=scottsantens.com). It was created in 2003 when the original 1986 Compact was amended. The logic was simple: U.S. aid under the Compact would end after 2023, so the U.S. would pay money into a trust fund for 20 years, invest it, and then the earnings (and if needed some principal) would provide ongoing revenue after grants stopped, with similar logic to Alaska’s Permanent Fund continuing on after their oil revenue stops. Under the 2003 terms, the U.S. contributed a baseline $7 million per year plus rising “step-up” amounts. The Marshall Islands itself and Taiwan also put money in. Over two decades that built a substantial asset base. In 2023 the Compact was renegotiated again. Under the new deal the U.S. promised a large, front-loaded injection into the same trust fund: - $200 million in 2024 - $200 million in 2025 - $200 million in 2026 - $100 million in 2027 After that there are no further scheduled U.S. contributions. The idea is that, beyond 2027, the fund mostly lives off investment returns. By mid-2025, total trust-fund assets were around **$1.3 billion** across several accounts. The Enra and END programs together are authorized to draw about $50 million per year from those assets, or about 3.6% of the value of the fund, which has grown at an annual rate of 6.9% since 2004, making the UBI permanently sustainable as is. So Enra is effectively a **national dividend UBI** financed out of a **sovereign wealth fund,** [**in a similar setup to Alaska**](https://www.academia.edu/20148953/Applying%5Fthe%5FAlaska%5Fmodel%5Fin%5Fa%5FResource%5FPoor%5FState?auto=download&ref=scottsantens.com)**, but capitalized by another country**. ### Why the United States is paying To understand why this money exists you have to remember what the Marshall Islands is in the U.S. system. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!35m9!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F14213e12-ffcc-4e19-b099-b1e2f301b612_1600x1327.gif) After World War II, the Marshalls became part of the U.S.-administered **Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands**, the only UN trusteeship designated as “strategic.” That gave the U.S. wide latitude to close areas for security reasons. It used that status to turn much of the northern Marshalls into the **Pacific Proving Grounds** for historic nuclear weapons testing, and to build the missile test range at **Kwajalein Atoll**. From 1946 to 1958 the U.S. detonated **67 nuclear devices** in the Marshalls, at yields that in some cases dwarfed Hiroshima. Fallout and displacement affected entire atolls. Later, Kwajalein became a critical site for ballistic-missile tests and space tracking. It still is. In 1979 the Marshall Islands became self-governing. In 1982 it negotiated the first Compact of Free Association with the United States, which entered into force in 1986\. Under the Compact, the RMI is fully sovereign, but the U.S. retains full authority over defense and security and exclusive base rights, in exchange for aid and other benefits. The Compact also wrapped nuclear claims and compensation into a contained legal regime, something Marshallese leaders have repeatedly argued was inadequate. So the trust fund that now pays UBI is the financial descendant of a very simple bargain: the U.S. used these islands for nuclear testing and continues to use them for missile testing, and strategic presence, and in exchange it pays. Some of that payment was structured as a long-term trust fund. The Marshall Islands has now chosen to use a slice of that trust-fund income to pay everyone a permanent universal basic income. That choice is political, not automatic. The trust fund did not dictate UBI. Marshallese lawmakers decided late last year in a resolution introduced by a member of their legislature David Paul (now the Finance Minister) to make UBI the way some of that national wealth regularly reaches and benefits everyone. ### Why Taiwan is in the picture Taiwan also contributes to the trust fund, though on a much smaller scale than the United States. Its total commitment is on the order of **$40 million spread over 20 years**. The reason is not mysterious. The Marshall Islands is one of the few countries that still recognizes Taiwan as sovereign. Beijing has been actively courting Pacific island nations with money and infrastructure deals to switch recognition. Taiwan responds with its own aid packages, budget support, agricultural missions, and, in this case, trust-fund contributions. So the RMI UBI fund is indirectly and partially financed by the geopolitical struggle between Beijing and Taipei over diplomatic recognition, layered on top of the much older strategic relationship between the Marshall Islands and Washington, DC. ### The VAT that does not exist yet Right now the Marshall Islands does not have a value-added tax on consumption. It has a mix of gross-revenue taxes, wage taxes, import duties, and excise taxes. International advisors like the IMF and PFTAC have been pushing for a shift to a **broad-based VAT plus a modern profit tax**, with legislation already moving and implementation potentially in **2026**. None of Enra’s current funding comes from a VAT, because there is no VAT yet. All of the UBI and END money is coming from the Compact Trust Fund and related U.S. transfers. The IMF has explicitly said that, once a VAT is in place though, some of its revenue could be “recycled” back to households as cash transfers to offset regressivity. If the Marshall Islands chooses to do that, VAT money could make the UBI amount larger, index it to inflation, or fund more generous top-ups for high-need communities. A VAT-boosted UBI would also echo [Andrew Yang’s “Freedom Dividend”](https://www.scottsantens.com/there-is-no-policy-proposal-more-progressive-than-andrew-yangs-freedom-dividend/) proposal. At this point that is potential, not policy. Enra today is a fixed nominal amount written in legislation and funded from the trust fund. There is no automatic inflation indexing. Any increase over time will require deliberate political decisions and new budget authorizations. ### The digital piece and the IMF’s opposition The part of this story that caught the eye of crypto media is **USDM1**, the digital instrument that the Lomalo wallet can hold. The government has framed USDM1 as a kind of “digital sovereign bond” backed by U.S. Treasury assets, with yields used to support public spending. It is important here to separate payment rails from funding. Enra is funded by the trust fund drawdowns. USDM1 is not the underlying source of the money. It is a way of delivering money, and just one option among several, to “ensure that no community is left behind,” as described by their finance minister. The IMF has nonetheless raised red flags. From its perspective, a small island state with limited regulatory capacity issuing an innovative digital asset to global investors, and running UBI and other transfers partly through that system, introduces financial-stability and money-laundering risks. It has recommended dialing back the digital ambitions and replacing UBI with a traditional targeted scheme. So you have a small country using a U.S.-capitalized sovereign fund to implement UBI, while the lender of last resort is telling it to target more and innovate less. ### Why almost nobody has heard about this (yet) At the moment, coverage of all this consists of: - Local and regional outlets like the [**Marshall Islands Journal**](https://marshallislandsjournal.com/hilda-enra-rollout-in-december/?ref=scottsantens.com) and [**Marianas Business Journal**](https://www.mbjguam.com/marshalls-biggest-budget-endorsed-quarterly-resident-payments-begin?ref=scottsantens.com), which have followed Enra and END as part of normal domestic politics and budgeting. - A handful of [crypto and markets sites](https://www.tradingview.com/news/cointelegraph%3A2e7d88414094b%3A0-marshall-islands-launches-universal-basic-income-program-using-digital-wallet/?ref=scottsantens.com), which noticed the Lomalo app and the stablecoin and framed it as “Marshall Islands launches UBI on a digital wallet.” - Dry IMF and trust-fund committee documents, which talk about “Individual Support Distributions” and “Extraordinary Needs Distributions” in the language of GDP, fiscal risks, and amortization schedules. Major U.S. newspapers, wire services, and TV news have effectively ignored it so far. Even most UBI enthusiasts have not heard of it yet. ### What this means for the global UBI debate The Marshall Islands is small. Its history is specific. Its funding source is unusual. It is easy for large countries to wave this away as an outlier. What matters is the structure. A sovereign state has now: - Legislated a **permanent, nationwide, unconditional, individual, regular cash payment** to all citizens residing in the country, successfully meeting the [Basic Income Earth Network](https://basicincome.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) definition of a UBI. - Committed **around 8 percent of GDP** to that UBI and **around 6 percent of GDP** to an additional distribution for higher-need communities. - Funded it from a **sovereign wealth fund built out of external rents**, instead of pretending that money does not exist. It has also acknowledged that outer islands facing long-term structural disadvantages need more than a flat, uniform benefit and is building layered cash-transfer architecture on top of the universal floor. For larger economies this is not a plug-and-play blueprint. It is, however, a clean proof of concept. A government can decide that a share of national wealth that currently accumulates in funds, accounts, and defense-linked transfers should be paid out as a universal basic income. It can do this at scale relative to its GDP. It can include children. It can layer extra support where it is needed most. The Marshall Islands just did that. So, who’s next? --- *If you support my UBI work, please share this post and click the subscribe button. Also *consider making a monthly pledge* in support of my work to have your name appear below.* [![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jMpR!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F94c4f669-7d04-4e25-b4bb-c528fdc223ff_461x66.png)](https://www.patreon.com/c/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Special thanks to my patrons*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark, Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Steve Roth, Miki Phagan, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun Banker, Tommy Caruso, Felix Ling, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Juro Antal, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, Stephen Castro-Starkey, and all my other patrons on Patreon for their support.* ### Irish Government Proposes Basic Income For Artists URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/irish-government-proposes-basic-income-for-artists/ Last updated: 2025-10-21T21:47:00.000Z ### Irish government plans to implement permanent basic income program of €325 ($361) a week for 2,000 professionals in the creative sector; an expert backs the initiative *The following is the English translation of* [*an article*](https://www.ubc.org.br/publicacoes/noticias/governo-irlandes-propoe-renda-minima-artistas?ref=scottsantens.com) *I was interviewed for, written by Eduardo Lemos Marti for UBC (União Brasileira de Compositores) - Brazil’s non-profit collective management organization for music rights holders* Artists and creative-industry workers in Ireland may receive up to R$2,000 (€325) per week under a kind of “basic income for culture” announced this month by the local government. The program is scheduled to begin in September 2026 and is expected to benefit up to 2,000 artists from different fields, including music. The goal is to support recipients’ subsistence and well-being, allowing these professionals to focus on their creative work without worrying about commercial viability. After three years of a pilot project launched in 2022, the Irish government found that beneficiary artists experienced reduced financial stress, dedicated more time to creative work, and enjoyed greater well-being. The program becomes permanent in 2026, with a promise that the number of supported artists will increase each year. According to federal administration data, the pilot also identified substantial social and economic benefits, generating a return of approximately €1.39 to the State for every €1. “The economic return from this investment in Ireland’s artists and creative-arts professionals has an immediate positive impact on the sector and on the economy in general,” said Ireland’s Minister for Culture, Patrick O’Donovan, adding that it was important to keep the arts sector “resilient, sustainable, progressive, and accessible.” ### OTHER COUNTRIES The initiative—unprecedented in its terms and amounts—has attracted attention from other countries. According to the minister, authorities in Australia, Wales, South Korea, Canada, Norway, Lithuania, and Estonia sought information about the project. The initiative is also being well received by experts such as Scott Santens, president of the [Income to Support All Foundation](https://www.itsafoundation.org/?ref=scottsantens.com), a U.S. nonprofit that researches and promotes the benefits of universal basic income. “Focusing specifically on musicians for a guaranteed income program is particularly useful, due to the nature of the work that all artists face. It’s rare for a musician to have a 9-to-5 job playing music five days a week. Most musicians are involved in irregular work. This kind of insecurity is extremely stressful,” he notes. For Santens, the spread of artificial intelligence only worsens the picture and makes programs like the Irish government’s even more necessary: “Music-generating AIs were trained on the work of musicians (as well as composers, producers, performers, and other professionals in the music chain). It seems natural, then, that these professionals, as a group, should be the first to benefit from basic income. Basic income is a stable floor. By providing a stable monthly income, musicians can worry less about meeting basic needs and set aside hours of survival work to pay for music work, and focus more on the whole work of being a musician." ### GOOD RECEPTION IN IRELAND The Irish public is also applauding the program announced by the local government. According to a public consultation, 97% of respondents supported the decision to make the program permanent. Of the more than 17,000 respondents, 47% believed that beneficiaries should be selected based on economic need, while 37.5% thought they should be chosen considering artistic background or merit. Another 14% preferred random selection, exactly the criterion Ireland used during the pilot project. Apparently, no one from the current U.S. government has sought further information from Ireland about the program, and Santens believes this will not happen. But one of the most famous basic-income projects for artists took place in the United States. Between 2021 and 2024, 2,400 artists in New York State received one thousand dollars per month for a year and a half. At the end of the project, participants—visual artists, writers, and musicians—reported a 19% increase in time devoted to arts-related work, a 19% reduction in food insecurity, and a 29% reduction in cases of severe anxiety and depression among beneficiaries. The study, a multidisciplinary research effort, also noted improved work-life balance for 75% of artists. The United States is currently debating something that is not exactly the same but is also grounded in the idea of a minimum payment: a bill that institutes basic transfers from streaming to music artists. ### NO BUREAUCRACY For Santens, it is essential that the Irish government and any other country wishing to implement a minimum payment not create excessive bureaucracy for the supported artists, such as requiring specific work outputs like a set number of shows or albums released. “That doesn’t work. Study after study has shown this to be true. So don’t do it. Don’t insist on it. Insisting on work requirements only increases a program’s administrative cost and worsens its outcomes,” the expert explains. He also warns about the taxes these artists must pay on the money received. “A musician with €1,300 per month in basic income should be able to accept a gig that pays €500 without losing €250 or more from their benefit. All earned income should be in addition to the basic income and taxed at a rate that makes sense relative to total income,” he argues. According to Santens, who is also the author of a book on the subject ([“Let There Be Money: Understanding Modern Monetary Theory and Basic Income,” published in 2021](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com)), what musicians need is money, without major barriers to using the benefit. “Let them determine for themselves what they need. The program in Ireland does this, and that’s why the impact was so positive in the pilot—and why I expect it to continue to be highly positive. It simply isn’t true that artists need to suffer to create good art. The arts thrive when artists thrive. Less stress and more freedom to experience life mean a higher caliber of artistic creation. A fully universal basic income would lead to a Second Renaissance,” the author contends. --- [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2025/10/Swatting-Phones--Earning-Dollars.png)](https://www.scottsantens.com/andrew-yang-is-paying-people-to-use-their-phones-less-noble-mobile/) Get paid to use you phone less with Noble Mobile! ### It's Time to Walk the Walk for Universal Basic Income (UBI) URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/its-time-to-walk-the-walk-for-universal-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2025-10-09T15:00:42.000Z This post is not meant to change anyone's mind about the need for Universal Basic Income. If you don't support it, I'm not here today to convince you otherwise. This post is meant for all those who already know they, and everybody else, absolutely need UBI and who talk about it with others. That's great, we need that, and thank you, but this post is about doing more than talking the talk. The day that UBI is passed into law, most people will very likely pay more in taxes in some way, be it higher income tax rates, or higher consumption tax rates, or some other tax of some kind like a wealth tax or land value tax. [It's not theoretically necessary to tax more for UBI](https://www.scottsantens.com/how-money-is-born-out-of-public-spending-and-dies-by-taxes-mmt/), but realistically speaking, it's likely in order to help [manage inflationary potential](https://www.scottsantens.com/17-key-variables-that-determine-ubis-inflationary-impact/) and [inequality](https://www.scottsantens.com/inequality-and-the-basic-income-guarantee-universal-ubi/). On the flip side, the UBI itself will function as a reverse tax, such that most people will actually end up with an overall decrease in total taxes paid. Understanding both sides of this equation is key to understanding [how UBI works](https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-is-not-cheaper-than-universal-basic-income-ubi-nor-is-guaranteed-income-more-progressive-by-excluding-the-rich/) and even [how much it actually costs](https://www.scottsantens.com/how-to-calculate-the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-ubi/), but it’s also an invitation to just start doing it here and now. Here’s what I mean: let’s say you support starting with a $500/mo universal basic income. [A plan exists for that](https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/FleischerHemel%5FBasicIncome%5F87UCLR625.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). It could be done with a 9% universal surtax on income (or 7% with reforms like halving the military budget). If your current income is $75,000, you’d pay $6,750 more to get $6,000 in UBI, in which case you’d pay $750 more in taxes. That’s $62.50 a month. If you start donating that now every month in support of UBI, and stop when your UBI starts, you can experience no tax hike at all. That’s what I’m doing, but for a different UBI plan. We talk about this regularly on [The Basic Income Show](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXhMtYULkYuFiM0s9Kj2U6QkwjGjxwOw9&ref=scottsantens.com), but for those who don’t know, my non-profit, the [Income To Support All Foundation](https://www.itsafoundation.org/?ref=scottsantens.com), is supporting the development of a platform that will create a basic income floor for all members, based on an automated 7% fee on bank deposits. The platform is called [Comingle](https://www.comingle.us/?ref=scottsantens.com) and the target for the basic income floor will be around $50 a week. The success of Comingle will depend entirely on people choosing to become net donors, just as GoFundMe depends entirely on people choosing to be donors. The Comingle mechanism will distribute income based on income. If the average income of the Comingle community is $40,000 then 7% of that is $53.85 a week. Someone with $40,000 income would essentially pay nothing and get nothing because what they pay and get would cancel each other out. Those with slightly higher incomes would donate a tiny amount to the community and those with slightly smaller incomes would receive a tiny amount. Someone without any income would receive the full $53.85 a week, and someone with an income of $150,000 would donate $201.92 - $53.85 = $148 a week. I personally am very excited about Comingle existing as an option for automated giving via UBI. As a supporter of UBI, I am more than happy to donate towards UBI on a monthly basis in the here and now, in support of UBI, just as I would happily pay more taxes as a result of UBI. I am no hypocrite. If I support higher taxes for UBI in the future, I support reducing my disposable income in the future to achieve UBI. **And if I support that in the future, I support it now.** This is why since early 2025 I’ve been donating 4% of my monthly income to ITSA Foundation in support of getting Comingle up and running, and also why I intend to be an active member of Comingle as a net donor to the community when it’s up and running, where 4% of my income will then go towards creating the basic income floor for the entire community universally. I encourage everyone reading this who is a supporter of UBI, who has an income higher than $3,000 a month, to join me as a monthly donor in the here and now. [**Donate monthly to help make UBI a reality, in a way that aligns with what your net tax increase could likely be due to a UBI**](https://givebutter.com/NB7TFF?ref=scottsantens.com). And when Comingle is open to everyone to join, please join me in being a net donor. Help make that UBI work. It won’t work without you. We can build a basic income floor right now, without any need to wait on the government to get around to doing it. It will only require enough people like you deciding to donate a small percentage of your income toward UBI. And then, when UBI exists for real, you can choose to stop doing that, knowing that the government is now doing it for you. Or you can keep doing it, knowing that you’re still helping give people a little extra boost. Either way, help make UBI happen by doing more than talking about it. If you support UBI, then set aside some of your income to help make it happen. The UBI movement needs resources. It’s not going to just happen. It needs enough of you who want it to happen, to actually put money into it. Because believe me when I say, [the billionaires who oppose UBI are most definitely putting money into stopping it ](https://www.scottsantens.com/billionaire-fueled-lobbying-group-behind-the-state-bills-to-ban-universal-basic-income-experiments-ubi/)from happening. Don’t let them win this fight. Our problems today are diverse, large, and growing larger. Extreme inequality is driving a cost of living crisis that tariffs are now only adding to. The impacts of AI are arriving, reducing hiring and eating entry-level jobs. The climate crisis is creating climate disasters that are destroying entire communities. [All of this is only further inflaming authoritarianism](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-hidden-reasons-authoritarianism-is-growing-and-how-to-reverse-it-ubi/), not just here in the US but around the world. An unconditional universal basic income would significantly help with all of this. It just can't wait any longer. We need a universal floor underneath us that we can depend upon. We need to start constructing that floor. **Immediately**. Donating to ITSA Foundation is how to start building that floor and walking the walk for UBI. We are supporting ambitious UBI projects like Comingle, and the *Bootstraps* docuseries, and [UBIdata](https://ubidata.io/?ref=scottsantens.com), and [events all across the country next year](https://givebutter.com/9sEnIs?ref=scottsantens.com). You have other options too, no matter where you live, all over the world, there's an organization near you putting resources into helping to make UBI happen. How you choose to financially support the UBI movement is up to you, but please, **if you support UBI, walk the walk**. [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2025/10/itsa-button-ubi.png)](https://givebutter.com/NB7TFF?ref=scottsantens.com) --- *Another way you can help is by sharing this post with others and clicking the subscribe button.* **Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon*: Gisele Huff, dorothy krahn, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Tricia Garrett, Katie Moussouris, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Steve Roth, Miki Phagan, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun Banker, Tommy Caruso, @Justin\_Dart, Felix Ling, S, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Juro Antal, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, Stephen Castro-Starkey, and all my other patrons for their support.* ### The Reports of UBI’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated: The Mountain of Positive Results vs. Some Pandemic-Era Null Results URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/reports-of-ubis-death-are-greatly-exaggerated-mountain-of-positive-results-vs-pandemic-null-results/ Last updated: 2025-09-18T20:59:49.000Z *Originally published on* [*my Substack*](https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/the-reports-of-ubis-death-are-greatly) *on September 13\. Reposted here to place this Universal Basic Income evidence review in my site’s searchable archive and internal link network—improving discoverability for “UBI evidence,” “cash transfers,” “saturation site pilots,” and "null results.” See also these two studies as two brand new positive results of unconditional cash for* [*moms*](https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2025.308244?ref=scottsantens.com)*' and* [*kids*](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=5459276&ref=scottsantens.com)*' health.* To borrow a quip from Mark Twain, the reports of Universal Basic Income’s death have been greatly exaggerated. This essay serves as my response as a subject-matter expert in this particular field to recent shots fired against cash transfers like this [liberal](https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/giving-people-money-helped-less-than?ref=scottsantens.com) one and this [conservative](https://stkarnick.substack.com/p/poor-poor-pitiful-ubi-performance) one. For over ten years, I’ve been reading and compiling the results of basic income pilots and unconditional cash studies. I can assure you that the authors of such think-pieces, however evidence-informed they may appear to be, are akin to the blind-folded touching an elephant’s trunk and claiming they’ve discovered a new species of snake. They know more than nothing, but they don’t know enough to know how much they don’t know. Here’s 9 things you need to know about recent unconditional cash transfer experiments: 1. **COVID-19 happened**: For pilots that distributed monthly cash between 2020 and 2023, the pandemic, stimulus, and high inflation need to be considered as potential confounds by comparing to pilots that happened outside those years. 2. **The U is universal**: Part of what makes UBI a UBI is universality. A non-universal pilot can help inform the discussion, but not as much as a universal pilot that uses a saturation site design can. 3. **The household size problem**: Part of what makes UBI a UBI is also that every member of a household gets the money. If a household of four gets $500 a month, that will have less of an impact than one person getting the same amount. 4. **Prevention versus treatment:** It’s one thing to provide cash to those in need. It’s another to provide cash to prevent need. 5. **Time is a factor:** Fewer strong conclusions can be drawn from a one-year experiment or even a three-year experiment than from decades of data. 6. **The control group problem**: Control group details vary from experiment to experiment. Consider this carefully. 7. **Evidence for thee but not for me:** Those who may wish to provide benefits-in-kind vs. cash tend to not care about benchmarking those programs against cash. 8. **Missing the forest for the trees:** Concluding that targeted cash is better than UBI is missing the point of how effective UBI is at actually reaching those in need. 9. **There’s more to poverty than brainwaves**: It would be very interesting if it turns out that UBI can impact brain development, but if it doesn’t, so what? ## COVID-19 Happened It feels like Covid, which is still around and infecting people mind you, up and got memory-holed. For those who have forgotten, a new coronavirus kind of went and infected the entire world in 2020 which caused all kinds of problems besides the hospitalizations and deaths it caused. It was an extremely stressful time. My own personal experience was spending ten days in the hospital at the bedside of my wife as she fought it before there were any vaccines to help. Stressful is an understatement. One of the things being claimed recently is that basic income experiments have shown surprisingly little impact on mental health, and this is from pilots like Sam Altman’s [OpenReseach](https://www.openresearchlab.org/studies/unconditional-cash-study/study?ref=scottsantens.com) (ORUS) pilot that provided $1,000/mo starting in 2020 and ending in 2023, and the [Baby’s First Years](https://www.babysfirstyears.com/data-and-documentation?ref=scottsantens.com) (BFY) experiment that started in 2018 and provided money for a child’s first 4 years and 4 months. The researchers themselves have included in their studies that it’s likely that the pandemic served as a confounding variable, but the people writing think-pieces about this stuff seem to be just hand-waving that away. Here’s how I like to think of this: Imagine that we just invented the lifeboat and we decided to put it to the test in the open ocean to see if it would save lives. We go out to sea, put our boat in the water and then—bam!—a super typhoon happens and the lifeboat sinks. Would it be fair to conclude from our test that lifeboats don’t work? This is what seems to have happened with cash instead of lifeboats. It turns out that apparently $333-$1,000 of monthly unconditional cash per household may not be enough to overcome the massive stress and macroeconomic impacts of a global pandemic. Does that mean UBI doesn’t work? Well, maybe, but before we draw that conclusion, maybe we should look at experiments before and after the super typhoon. What I find particularly interesting in this regard is the Stockton pilot that started providing $500/mo in February 2019, a solid year before Covid hit. The results from the first year showed significant improvements in mental health, comparable to medication. Then Covid hit and the second year results showed that over the course of the study, there was no significant improvement. This seems to indicate that the stress of the pandemic just overwhelmed the cash. In fact, Baby’s First Years also followed this pattern. [The year-one analysis](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2115649119?ref=scottsantens.com) used only data prior to the pandemic, and those results showed that infants in the $333/mo group showed more power in high-frequency bands which is consistent with increased cognitive development. Unfortunately, only 435 of the 1,000 kids were able to be tested before the pandemic hit, so the sample was 43.5% of the size it should have been, and thus too underpowered to draw any strong conclusions. However, there’s a pile of other studies to learn from about the mental health impacts of unconditional cash. The biggest one I know of is one from Brazil that used the “100 Million Brazilian Cohort” which is an absolutely massive dataset. Tens of millions of people received cash from the Bolsa Familia program between 2004 and 2015, and it turns out that [suicide risk was reduced by 61%](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=3766234&ref=scottsantens.com). Clearly, that kind of massive cohort and duration makes a strong case for mental health improvements via cash. A [systematic review](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953621000496?ref=scottsantens.com) was published in 2021, the first of its kind, that looked at observational studies of social security policy changes in high-income countries and summarized the mental health effects of those policies. 38 studies were included in their review. 21 looked at increases in social security and 17 looked at decreases in social security. They found that overall, “policies that improve social security benefit eligibility/generosity are associated with improvements in mental health,” and that ”social security policies that reduce eligibility/generosity were related to worse mental health.” More income security = good. Less income security = bad. Those are real-world policy results from high-income countries based on far more than three studies, over a period of time far greater than three years, based on getting cash to far more than a thousand people. That’s what actually happened when people had increases or decreases in their economic security due to government policy reforms outside of a pandemic. Additional confounds beyond the pandemic but directly related to it are the stimulus we did to combat its economic impacts, and also the period of high inflation that followed. Both of those are important to consider. For example, take a household of two parents and two kids in a control group. It’s possible that both parents lost their jobs, and got paid $800 a week each in 2020\. Maybe that was actually an increase in pay for them, so they went as a household from $3,200 a month to $6,400 a month. That family also got three stimulus checks, totaling $11,400\. They also got the enhanced child tax credit in 2021 for an additional $600 a month. That’s a big increase in money. If they were part of a pilot looking for impacts of $333, $500, or even $1,000 a month, maybe those amounts were overwhelmed by the rest of the stimulus. Then inflation happened. From March to September 2022, a family of four was spending about $1,000 more per month in higher prices. Again, it’s possible that an extra $333-$1,000 a month could be overwhelmed by that, with a $500/mo experiment actually looking at the difference between a treatment group with a $500/mo consumption power drop and a control group with a $950/mo consumption power drop. Maybe in such an experiment, both groups are going to see hits to their mental health, and they won’t be significantly different. It’s important to consider that. All of this is to stress what should be obvious, which is that guaranteed income experiments that occurred between 2020 and 2023 should have an asterisk next to them. It’s not to say there’s nothing to learn from them, but it is to say that confounding variables were present such that their results may very likely have been different had the pandemic not happened. ## The U is Universal If you provide $1,000 a month to a thousand people across two states with a combined population of 44 million people as ORUS did, that’s not a universal basic income. UBI would be if all 44 million people got the money. If you give one person $1,000 a month, that will help that person to some degree, but it won’t help anyone else, which in turn limits its potential for the individual, because they’re the only ones spending it. Consider a town with a population of 5,000 people where five people get $1,000 a month in unconditional income. Also consider a second town that is identical, where all 5,000 people get $1,000 a month. Do you think it’s possible or even likely that five people in the second town who are identical to the five people in the first town will have a different experience? We already know the answer to this is yes. Alaska has been providing money universally to everyone every year since 1982\. One of the many studies of it looked at employment impacts and found that [there was an overall increase in employment](https://harris.uchicago.edu/news-events/news/universal-basic-income-policies-dont-cause-people-leave-workforce-study-finds?ref=scottsantens.com). The increase was due to the spending of the money, which created additional jobs for unemployed people to take. If only a thousand people in Alaska got that money every year, the spending of that money would not spur any employers to hire anyone new. So when we look at a pilot like the ORUS pilot that provided $1,000 a month to 1,000 people spread out across Illinois and Texas and find an average decrease of [8 days a year](https://www.scottsantens.com/did-sam-altman-basic-income-experiment-succeed-or-fail-ubi/) (or 15 minutes a workday) in paid work, we also have to consider the possibility that people who wanted a job simply couldn’t find one. And they may have found a job if everyone around them also had additional money to spend that would have created new jobs to find. A properly designed universal basic income experiment involves a “saturation site” where an entire community gets the money. It could be a village or a town, or a part of a city, but the treatment group needs to test the impacts of universality in some way. Experiments like this have been carried out. [The Namibia UBI experiment](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) provided money to an entire village of about 1,000 people. [The India UBI experiment](https://amzn.to/4gwgID1?ref=scottsantens.com) provided money to eight entire villages, which was about 6,000 people. [The Dauphin experiment](https://www.lse.ac.uk/LSEE-Research-on-South-Eastern-Europe/Assets/Documents/Events/Conferences-Symposia-Programmes-and-Agendas/2018/FORGET-MINCOME-and-Ontario-short.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) in Canada in the 1970s used a saturation design, providing income to a third of the population of Dauphin, which had a population of about 10,000 people. All three of these experiments had very significant positive results. Namibia observed a **301% increase in entrepreneurship** and a **42% decrease in all crime**. **Employment increased 25%**, school attendance doubled, and dropout rates fell from 40% to 5%. India observed a tripling in entrepreneurship, more employment overall, and better health. Dauphin observed a **9% decrease in hospitalization rates**, a [**15% fall in crime**](https://academic.oup.com/socpro/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/socpro/spaa001/5809598?redirectedFrom=fulltext&ref=scottsantens.com), and a **37% fall in violent crime** that was mostly due to far less domestic abuse. A more recent saturation pilot at the community level in India even resulted in the community forming [a new labor union](https://theconversation.com/we-cant-believe-you-would-just-trust-us-why-social-assistance-shouldnt-come-with-strings-attached-245080?ref=scottsantens.com). The closest thing to a saturation pilot in recent years among the 150+ guaranteed income pilots in the US took place in Chelsea, MA, during the height of the pandemic, when about 15% of its population via lottery of 40,000 people experienced a guaranteed $200 to $400 a month per household depending on household size. A [randomized controlled study of its impact on health](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2821454?guestAccessKey=552cd0c8-8665-4c5f-abbd-5d608d7517e8&linkId=516833861&ref=scottsantens.com) found a **27% decrease in emergency department visits** compared to the control group. The largest decreases were behavioral health–related emergency department visits, which dropped 62% relative to the control mean, and substance use–related emergency department visits which dropped by 87%. Those health impacts are so large that I wonder if the pandemic may have functioned as a confound in the opposite direction, where outside of a pandemic, perhaps the money would have had less of an impact, but it makes no sense to ignore such results in defense of an opinion that claims a UBI in the US would have no health impacts, while holding up some non-saturation pilot to defend the opinion. From all the studies I’ve read, it appears that the biggest impacts from cash provision appear within saturation pilots where entire communities benefit universally. Remember that the next time you hear that a basic income pilot was somehow disappointing. Was it a saturation pilot? ## The Household Size Problem The federal poverty line scales by household size, because the more people there are in a home, the more money is needed to meet basic needs. Right now, for one person in 2025, it’s $15,650 with each additional person adding $5,500\. A household of five thus needs $3,138 a month to not live in poverty, [using FPL guidelines](https://www.medicaidplanningassistance.org/federal-poverty-guidelines/?ref=scottsantens.com). Most of the pilots going on in the US have involved giving money to one person in a household. This can still tell us useful stuff, but it needs to be kept in mind that UBI scales by household size. If one adult in a household of four gets money, that’s not simulating a universal basic income. If all four do, or at least all adults, then that’s simulating a universal basic income. Besides the already mentioned Chelsea Eats program that provided $200/mo for a household of one, $300/mo for a household of two, and $400/mo for a household of three or more, and Alaska’s annual UBI that provides the same amount to every member of a household, and the [2021 enhanced child tax credit](https://www.scottsantens.com/one-year-after-the-expiration-of-the-enhanced-child-tax-credit-ctc-what-all-have-we-learned-about-its-effects/) that provided money for every child in a household, there’s no data to point to in the US about money that scales by household size. Now consider again the Baby’s First Years pilot that people are uplifting as evidence against UBI. That was $333/mo for a minimum of two people. That same amount went to moms with two kids, and three kids, and four kids, and more. According to interviews as part of that study, the largest household size was ten people. The median household size was five. It’s possible that this could be a factor in the BFY study results so far, especially when combined with other confounding variables like the pandemic, and how stimulus payments and the CTC went to all kids. Perhaps $333/mo for a household of five just isn’t enough to move the needle for cognitive development, and if the study had only looked at single moms, the researchers would be finding significant results. It’s possible. Researchers in Germany considered this possibility in their unconditional basic income study design, so what they did was provide 1,200 euros per month for three years to only single adult households. This enabled them to have a better understanding of what that amount of UBI would do for an individual. What they found was [a third of a standard deviation improvement in mental health](https://www.ifo.de/en/cesifo/publications/2025/working-paper/cash-transfers-mental-health-and-agency-evidence-rct-germany?ref=scottsantens.com). To put that in perspective, medication usually helps a bit less than that, and therapy can help as much or a bit more than that. This finding also agrees with the Stockton pilot prior to the pandemic that also found a medication-equivalent impact on mental health. So when someone is upholding the ORUS results as showing no impact on mental health, besides that pilot being impacted by the pandemic, it also only provided $1,000/mo to households and the mean household size was 3 people. Using FPL guidelines, the poverty line for a household of three is $26,650\. That’s $2,221/mo. It’s possible that $1,000/mo for three people is simply too small based on household sizes just as the $333/mo BFY study may have been. This is what the German experiment points to as likely considering the very significant mental health results they found, and what the Chelsea study that scaled by household size also found. ## Prevention vs. Treatment Another of the arguments people have been making lately is that unconditional cash is most effective in certain situations and not in others, and so cash should be targeted to those specific situations, like for example getting money to women during pregnancy, or right after someone is released from incarceration, or right after a disaster happens, etc. One of the biggest benefits of a universal basic income in practice is that it’s already flowing to people at their time of need. No need to fill out any forms or prove anything. No need to wait and cross your fingers that your request will be approved. The money is already there and more is coming soon according to a set schedule. It’s certainly interesting to test something like the Denver Basic Income Project did, which was to see if basic income could help get homeless people housed faster. The results of that experiment are among those considered “disappointing” by not revealing a large difference between those provided $50/mo and $1,000/mo. For the record, [45% of people who were homeless at the start were no longer homeless ten months later](https://bsky.app/profile/scottsantens.com/post/3lbudhfubqs2u?ref=scottsantens.com) compared to 25% of those given $50/mo. I don’t consider that disappointing. I also don’t consider it disappointing that the selling of blood plasma dropped 60% for those given $1,000/mo and went up by 17% for those provided $50/mo. But let’s assume for a moment that giving homeless people money doesn’t help them at all. Helping people avoid becoming homeless is extremely helpful, and has been shown to save more than it costs. [A large study in Chicago](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aag0833?ijkey=TutmUim3VeIlo&keytype=ref&siteid=sci&ref=scottsantens.com) of around 5,000 people found that getting them **a payment of around $1,000 right when they needed it reduced their chances of becoming homeless by 88%** in the following three months and 76% in the following six months. We have an entire safety net built around treating poverty instead of preventing it, and that approach is needlessly expensive. Child poverty alone costs us [over $1.5 trillion a year](https://povertycenter.columbia.edu/publication/2022/child-allowance/benefit-cost-analysis?ref=scottsantens.com). We could see a 15x return by investing in lifting all kids out of poverty. We also know from the SSI program (that currently provides a max of $967/mo) what the impact is of kicking people off of SSI. A 1996 reform created two equivalent populations that could be studied. One group kept getting SSI at age 18 and the other group didn’t. A 2022 study of those groups found that **the loss of SSI resulted in a** [**60% increased chance of ending up incarcerated**](https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/137/4/2263/6581195?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false&ref=scottsantens.com), eliminating the savings of spending less on SSI. A 2021 study estimated the cost of crime in the US to be over [$2.6 trillion](https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2021/02/05/new-research-examines-the-cost-of-crime-in-the-u-s-estimated-to-be-2-6-trillion-in-a-single-year/?ref=scottsantens.com) a year. We also spend over [$5 trillion](https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-reports/national-health-expenditure-data/historical?ref=scottsantens.com) a year on healthcare treating illness. [One of the best studies of the health impacts of basic income](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=4059228&ref=scottsantens.com) has been going on in North Carolina since 1996 when a quarter of the kids in an ongoing study of poverty started getting biannual dividends as Eastern Band of Cherokee Indian (EBCI) tribe members. After twenty years, researchers found that **those who have received the basic income and continue to receive it use less alcohol and fewer drugs, commit fewer crimes, and are more likely to graduate from high school. Teen pregnancies are also less common among them, and their average IQ is a bit higher. They are also half as likely to experience depression as non-recipients, and a third as likely to experience high anxiety**. Economists have compared the total amount of money to the savings in expenditures on crime and medical care and found that **by age 26, benefits exceeded the amount of cash distributed by a factor of three to one**. Also very interestingly, the strongest benefit of the cash occurred in the children of families who received the transfers for the longest duration and who received a larger transfer due to having two Native American parents (scaling by HH size). This supports the hypothesis that a higher amount of basic income has more health and crime impacts than a lower amount, and that the longer someone has a basic income, the better those impacts will be. This brings us to the next important factor to consider. ## Time is a Factor A study of basic income that lasts one year is interesting. A study that lasts two or three years is more interesting, especially if it isn’t confounded by a pandemic, but a study that spans a decade or two or three or more is far more interesting. I’ve already covered some of what we know from decades of basic income. The Alaska dividend gives us over 40 years of data to examine. The EBCI dividend covers almost 30 years of data and continues to this day. It’s now distributing over $15,000 a year. The 1996 SSI reform also resulted in 30 years of data. From what I can tell having studied hundreds of cash studies, the positive results build over time, and the biggest impacts are from getting basic income to kids before they are born and never removing it. The impacts on these kids as adults are as clear as day and unimpeachable. To hold up a 3-year study done during a pandemic to argue that basic income is disappointing while entirely ignoring decades of data is methodological malpractice. It cherry-picks a short, shock-ridden window and calls it truth. The longitudinal evidence draws a clear picture and if your conclusion needs to erase the long-run record to survive, your conclusion is wrong. As Annie Lowrey included in [her response piece in The Atlantic](https://archive.ph/vegfb?ref=scottsantens.com), “the second- and third-order effects \[of cash transfers\] take time to show up in the data.” She added, “mothers’ pensions, the precedent for today’s welfare program, had muted effects on the women receiving them from the 1910s to the 1930s, but significant effects on the lifetime earnings and educational attainment of their sons, decades later.” She didn’t go into that further but I will, because I found them fascinating too when I first learned about them. The Mothers’ Pension program was our first government welfare program in the US and it provided cash to moms. It averaged about $500/mo to $750/mo in today’s dollars during the decades it ran. A [2014 study](https://www.nber.org/papers/w20103?ref=scottsantens.com) of it found that male children of accepted applicants lived one year longer than those of rejected mothers and received **one-third more years of schooling, were less likely to be underweight, and had 14% higher income in adulthood** than children of rejected mothers. Imagine canceling that program four years into it in the belief that the cash just wasn’t working. It would have negatively changed the life trajectories of tens of thousands of people. We also have four decades of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) which provides cash to tens of millions of families near the poverty line. From all those years of data we know that “an additional [$1,000 in EITC](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=2674603&ref=scottsantens.com) exposure when a child is 13 to 18 years old increases the likelihood of completing high school (1.3%), completing college (4.2%), being employed as a young adult (1 %), and earnings by 2.2%.” [A 2021 study](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33388334/?ref=scottsantens.com) of the EITC found that a 10 percentage point increase of it led to 4% fewer suicide attempts and 1% fewer deaths by suicide. [A 2022 study](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8783139/?ref=scottsantens.com) found that it reduced the alcohol abuse of pregnant mothers. EITC money also [improves birthweights](https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/briefs/earned-income-tax-credit-poverty-and-health?ref=scottsantens.com), which happens to also be an observed result of the Alaska dividend too. Please note that none of this is to say there is nothing to learn from 1-3 year studies of unconditional income. One of the interesting findings from the experiments we did in the 1970s came from the cohort in the [Seattle and Denver negative income tax pilots](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222578698%5FA%5Ffailure%5Fto%5Fcommunicate%5FWhat%5Fif%5Fanything%5Fcan%5Fwe%5Flearn%5Ffrom%5Fthe%5Fnegative%5Fincome%5Ftax%5Fexperiments?ref=scottsantens.com) that were told they would get the money for 20 years but only got it for 9 before the money was canceled. Their results didn’t differ from the 3-year or 5-year findings. So depending on what you’re measuring you may get the same results short-term as long-term, but long-term findings that disagree with short-term findings, I believe carry more weight in terms of being applicable to UBI discussions. ## The Control Group Problem One of the surprising findings from the Denver Basic Income experiment that provided unconditional income to homeless people was how well the control group did that got $50 a month. What isn’t ever pointed out in any of the opinion pieces that use the results in their arguments against universal basic income is the possibility that the $50 provided on a regular monthly basis to those experiencing the greatest amount of desperation actually had a significant impact on its own, but we can’t know for sure because there was no group that received $0 a month. The $50/mo group also didn’t only get cash. They became part of a community that cared about them and connected them to resources. They were all given phones with free service. Many of them also received welfare benefits like SNAP and SSI that were additional for them but lost by those given $1,000 a month. Compare someone getting $1,000 and losing $967 in SSI to someone with $967 in SSI provided an additional $50\. That’s not +$1,000 vs +$50 but +$33 versus +$50\. It’s not really a test of $1,000 compared to nothing. In this example, the person provided $1,000 is actually $17 worse off than the one provided $50. This is an unfortunate problem with many of the guaranteed income pilots that have gone on and continue to go on in the US, and is something that [Mother Jones](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/09/the-cruel-catch-22-of-cash-aid/?ref=scottsantens.com) covered well this year. The federal government and many state governments do not make it easy to study basic income. There’s a lot of state-by-state variance, such that some states don’t count basic income towards programs like SNAP and Medicaid, but SSI is always withdrawn as income increases and if your income is $1,000/mo, you get $0 in SSI thanks to SSI considering basic income as *unearned* income. If it were considered earned income, it would be reduced by 50 cents per dollar instead of a dollar per dollar. The [Finland experiment](https://www.scottsantens.com/what-is-there-to-learn-from-finlands-basic-income-experiment-did-it-succeed-or-fail/) even had a similar kind of problem that the experimenters themselves complained about from the beginning, which was how many of the participants kept getting other welfare benefits that exceeded the amount of the basic income (€560/mo), which they would have lost by becoming employed, so even though Finland still saw [a small employment increase](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/social-sector/our-insights/an-experiment-to-inform-universal-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com), it likely wasn’t as large as it otherwise would have been had none of the participants been in the situation of losing other larger benefits for their family upon accepting a job. From [the qualitative report](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/64f507a995b636019ef8853a/t/6671a1cd22177e7367f7f230/1718723023952/FINAL%5FDBIP+Year+One+Qualitative+Research+Report.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), we know it was also not uncommon for those in the $50/mo group in Denver to express feeling more security due to the money, and also a positive feeling of being trusted, which improved their well-being. And some of them also believed that they would get $1,000/mo when the experiment ended, pointing to the possibility of survey responses that were rosier than they would have otherwise been. This is a somewhat similar problem to the 1970s experiments where the design of the experiments created an incentive for people to say they earned less than they actually did, in order to get a larger amount of money, because the amount scaled by income during those experiments. There’s also always the problem of attrition in control groups. When it comes to an experiment involving homeless people in particular, this can mean half the control group not responding, only leaving those who got housed, which can make the control group look like it did better than if it were able to get data from everyone in the control group. In the Denver pilot, the control attrition rate was 38%, meaning that only 62% of the control group remained in the data. It’s important to keep all of this in mind when there’s a null finding from a cash study that found no significant differences between the control group and treatment group. The question must be asked, was the control group truly a control group in the sense of what we usually think of as a control group, where it was virtually identical to the treatment group except for the cash? ## Evidence for Thee but Not for Me One of the most frustrating things for me personally is how much evidence there needs to be in support of unconditional cash. In just this article alone, I’ve pointed to many more than the three studies that naysayers are currently holding up against UBI, and where the results weren’t even negative, but simply null. A null finding can be interesting and we can learn from it, but it’s still not a negative finding. Where are the piles of studies that were done in advance of other safety net programs? Where are the experiments that tested to make sure a new middle-class tax credit worked, or a new tax cut for the rich worked? Where are the RCTs that benchmark benefits-in-kind against cash that are demanded before a new non-cash benefit? For over a decade now, I’ve been compiling study after study as a thread on Twitter/X and now Bluesky. **Here’s** [**a dynamically-updated page**](https://skyview.social/?url=https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x6eidgqhve7ulo4djhbgqv2v/post/3ldy3ssm7bs23&viewtype=unroll&ref=scottsantens.com) **that makes it easy to go through everything I’ve compiled. Go look at it sometime, because I can’t put it all here**. Spend some real time going through it all. You’ll find far more than the results of three experiments cherry-picked for some anti-UBI op-ed. As a prime example, the results of [a first-of-its-kind study](https://www.housinginitiative.org/phlhousing-housing-outcomes-at-two-years.html?ref=scottsantens.com) were just released that actually put housing vouchers to the test. It was the first ever RCT experiment to test vouchers against cash, and it took place in Philadelphia. Researchers very cleverly took advantage of the long wait lists for housing vouchers to just start giving cash to those waiting. It’s a four-year test that will continue until Summer 2026\. The median amount of money recipients are getting is $881 per month. Try guessing what the results were halfway through. Ready? Two years in, **one out of four housing voucher recipients were not able to use their housing vouchers anywhere**, and those who were able to find someone to accept their voucher took about four months to find that housing (additional note: [only 1 in 4](https://www.vox.com/2014/5/31/5764262/76-percent-of-people-who-qualify-for-housing-aid-dont-get-it?ref=scottsantens.com) who qualify for housing vouchers ever even get them). At the 18-month mark, the vouchers had reduced homelessness by a statistically significant 19% compared to the control group (who only got a small amount of money every six months for each survey and who had no attrition issues). Meanwhile, 100% of the unconditional cash group were able to use their cash for housing, because it was cash, and were able to use it in just 3 weeks instead of 4 months, and saw **a drop in homelessness compared to the control group of a statistically significant 67% at 18 months**. **The unconditional cash was therefore almost four times as effective as the housing vouchers at reducing homelessness at 18 months**. This is a hugely impressive finding. I was one of those listening live as the results were released, and I wasn’t alone in being surprised by the difference in effectiveness. We assume so much about our existing safety net. Virtually none of it has ever been RCT-tested against cash, and yet here we are, testing cash again and again and again. Did you read about these voucher versus cash results in The Argument? No? Did you read about them in a New York Times op-ed by David Brooks? No? Why not? In regards to cash versus non-cash benefits, there’s something economists refer to as the marginal value of public funds (MVPF) that measures the efficiency of government spending. If the government spends $1 on a program, the MVPF asks: how much do people actually value that $1, after accounting for costs and side effects? Cash transfers usually have an MVPF close to or above 1.0, because people can spend the money on whatever they need most. Housing vouchers are 0.7, meaning they have about 70% of the value to people as cash. For SNAP it’s 0.61\. For job training it’s 0.44\. The programs with the highest values of between 2 and 5 are programs for kids’ education and healthcare. (Note: hat tip to [Matt Darling](https://x.com/scottsantens/status/1958607610598629852?ref=scottsantens.com) on responding with these stats) So we actually already know that for many of our programs, people would prefer just being given cash instead, and when we do an RCT comparing a non-cash benefit to cash, we find cash does better, but here we are still arguing over cash? Why? Because the reason we don’t have UBI yet, is not because we lack evidence. It’s because we don’t really care about evidence. ## Missing the Forest for the Trees You may hear the argument that unconditional cash does work just fine actually, but only in certain circumstances, for certain people, at certain times, in certain places, and certainly not for people who don’t need it, where “need” is very vaguely defined but accepted to certainly not include Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates. In a world of god-like bureaucrats, this may actually make sense. With god-like powers, we really could target people with aid right when they need it, and we would have a god-like definition of “need” where we help people who most wouldn’t define as being in need, but who actually are in need. We’d be gods, anything would be possible. It helps to be all-knowing when delivering unconditional cash assistance. But we aren’t all-knowing. We aren’t gods. Constant universality is how to actually reach all those people that gods would, because we would include everyone all the time. And because we can all agree that billionaires aren’t in need of any help, we can just tax billionaires far more than the amount of any UBI they would be provided. We can raise taxes on those in the entire top 10% more than the amount of UBI they receive, so that they get the UBI just like everyone else, but pay it back and more via taxes. In a world without gods, [universal provision is the best way of reaching everyone you want to reach](https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-is-not-cheaper-than-universal-basic-income-ubi-nor-is-guaranteed-income-more-progressive-by-excluding-the-rich/), and taxation is the best way of reverse-targeting those you feel aren’t in need. Because cash is simply what most people prefer in many cases outside of education and healthcare, do cash. No need to spend on vouchers that people wish were just cash, who would sell their vouchers for cash at a loss if they could. No need to pay all the middle-men to do all the testing to determine who needs what, and in so doing, watch people fail those tests, or [corruptly take a cut](https://www.basispointinsight.com/Story/Economy/why-corruption-makes-universal-basic-income-better-than-targeted-welfares-%5Ff9edc438dc1b.html?ref=scottsantens.com), or result in people refusing to even apply or feel the lesser because of what being in need and accepting help says about them. Targeting creates stigma and stigma means helping fewer people than if there were no stigma. If an experiment shows a null result, such that there’s no difference between conditional benefits-in-kind and unconditional cash, then why are we doing conditional benefits-in-kind? Why is the cash seen as a failure? If we can do cash without work requirements and the impact is the same as cash with work requirements, then why are we doing all the bureaucracy to make sure people are working? We know [work requirements don’t increase work](https://www.niskanencenter.org/all-hail-medicaid-1115-waivers-slayer-of-work-requirements/?ref=scottsantens.com), and dropping them doesn’t decrease work, [and can even increase it](https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9459?ref=scottsantens.com), so what are we doing? Why are we wasting money on all the bureaucracy? When it comes to universality, besides making sure to reach everyone in need without fail, another benefit is not discouraging anyone from increasing their income. Targeting means withdrawal rates which mean high marginal tax rates. SNAP has a marginal 30% tax rate such that every dollar earned means losing 30 cents of SNAP. Housing vouchers also have a 30% marginal tax rate. SSI has a 50% rate on earned income (100% on unearned income) such that a dollar gained is 50 cents lost. These combine, so if someone with SNAP, SSI, and a housing voucher increases their income by a dollar, they lose $1.10\. They are ten cents worse off for working. Does that make sense to you? That’s a ceiling built over the heads of those with disabilities, basically locking them into an existence where they aren’t allowed to earn any money. The testing we do to make sure people have low income actively encourages people to keep their income low. UBI doesn’t do that. With UBI, everyone is always better off increasing their incomes. None of the US experiments are testing marginal tax rate differences. [Spain did](https://www.scottsantens.com/did-spains-b-mincome-experiment-prove-that-unconditional-universal-basic-income-doesnt-work-ubi/). Spain’s experiment found that cash with a 100% marginal tax rate decreased work (big surprise). They also found that cash with a marginal tax rate of 25% to 35% increased work. When the pandemic happened, we got people money, but the $600/week bump to unemployment we provided was conditional on remaining unemployed. We literally paid people to not work. That makes sense within the context of a pandemic, but not outside of one. And in normal times, besides imposing a 100% marginal tax rate, unemployment income also only reaches 28% of the unemployed. UBI would reach 100% of the unemployed and apply a marginal tax rate of the bottom tax bracket’s 10%. Also during the pandemic, we provided stimulus payments to most people, which was great, but we did it based on incomes from 2018 and 2019\. There were people with low incomes in 2020 who got no stimulus payment in 2020 because of old data that showed them with high incomes. Again, that is a reason for universality plus taxes as income-testing after the fact. I mention all of this to try and get everyone to look at the big picture that extends far outside of any one unconditional cash experiment. The question of going with universal basic income extends far beyond a null result from a few-years-long experiment focused on a specific group. It’s about the dignity we extend to that group and everyone else, and the realities of actually reaching them and others in need, and the labor market distortions of the targeting we do, and the resources we waste on all the hoops we make people jump through like trained seals. Unconditional beats conditional. Universal beats targeting. Cash often beats non-cash. Per person beats per household. All of these things we already know point right at UBI as the way to go. ## There’s More to Poverty Than Brainwaves The final point I want to make is in response to the notion that unconditional cash doesn’t work because of (insert weirdly specific goalpost here). The Baby’s First Years pilot is such a great example of this because people are actually saying that this study at its 4-year results mark somehow represents a failure of cash in helping kids. Why? Because of a null result on measurements of brain activity using EEG scans. I’ve already covered why this study just had bad timing with the pandemic, and how its pre-COVID year looked promising, and how household size varied greatly, which can help explain the null results at age 4, but more than that, people are being really weird about this study in claiming it shows cash doesn’t help kids. The experiment itself was very interesting. Because of known correlations between parent income and child brain activity, maybe lack of money is actually causing kids’ brains to develop differently. This study was meant to help figure out if lack of income *caused* less brain development. If the findings at 4 years had found significant results in this regard, that would have been intriguing. But not finding it isn’t some kind of F-grade for cash. I’ve already covered just how much evidence we have to show that unconditional income is extremely helpful for kids in all kinds of ways, and how different results can be observed later on in life. We already know this stuff. We just don’t know yet about early brain development and unfortunately because of the pandemic, even this experiment won’t settle that question. But there is no question about the effectiveness of cash in reducing poverty and helping kids grow up to be higher functioning adults who become more educated, earn more, abuse substances less, do less crime, and live healthier, longer lives. In fact, research has already established [a bidirectional causal relationship between poverty and mental illness](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aay0214?ref=scottsantens.com). We know that loss of income can cause mental illness. We also know that cash transfers reduce mental illness. We know that losing income can worsen mental health and lead to even less income which can lead to even worse mental health. These are RCTs telling us this. Universal basic income can break this feedback cycle by always being there for everyone as a floor below which no one can fall, that also functions as a solid foundation to help everyone build upon. Poverty is a state of being that most of us will move through in our lives — more than half of us actually. [50% to 60% of Americans will live in poverty for one year](https://confrontingpoverty.org/research/chasing-the-american-dream-understanding-what-shapes-our-fortunes/?ref=scottsantens.com) before they are age 75\. That’s not because 3 out of 5 people get lazy for a year. It’s because stuff just happens. If you don’t have a college education, your odds are 75%. If you do, your odds are 50%. If you’re Black, your odds are 84%, and if you’re white, your odds are 54%. These are the result of systems, not individuals. We want to believe that poverty won’t happen to us, because we make good decisions, and that poverty happens to those who make bad decisions. But it just doesn’t work that way. During the pandemic, the unemployment rate spiked to 15% within 8 weeks. We don’t know what impacts AI is going to have, but [one recent NSF-funded report](https://fundforhumanity.org/ai-impact-report/?ref=scottsantens.com) suggested 25% job displacement by 2028. We temporarily changed the way we helped each other during the pandemic because it was easier to see hardship wasn’t deserved in that context. We need to come to see all hardship within that context, and maybe hardship caused by AI will help us in that regard as COVID did. Mexico recently reduced their overall poverty rate by [a whopping 26%](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/18/mexico-welfare-policies-amlo?ref=scottsantens.com) in just 6 years. They did that by tripling their minimum wage and providing unconditional cash to everyone over age 65 every two months. That was just a political decision they decided to make to reduce poverty. It didn’t happen because 26% of Mexico started making better decisions. **By teaching us to view poverty as a moral failure of the individual, society keeps us from realizing that poverty is actually an ethical failure of society itself**. We can write all the op-eds for the New York Times we want, and it won’t change the fact that we could choose to help each other more, and trust each other more, and extend more dignity to each other, and we just don’t. We create more than enough food for everyone to eat, but [we waste 40%](https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america/?ref=scottsantens.com) of what we produce. We have more than enough ability and resources to house everyone, and we just don’t. We don’t do these things, not because a scientific experiment showed us what we do right now is what’s best. We do it, because it’s just how it’s been done. Poverty is a legal status based on an income measurement. [Someone experiences poverty because their income is too low](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2025/08/29/the-simple-math-of-poverty/?ref=scottsantens.com), often because they lost their job, or had a kid, or got too old, or became disabled. This then has a range of effects on that person that includes greater stress which can lead to substance abuse and then homelessness. It leads to the survival anxiety of fight or flight that in turn can lead to poor health, crime, and violence against strangers but also loved ones. It’s a downward spiral we can prevent with cash and services. It really just comes down to the choice of seeing others more like we see ourselves—as having inherent worth. ## Conclusion Don’t be fooled by the weakly-informed opinions of people who don’t want things to change or only want things to change in a way that they themselves don’t insist upon a mountain of supporting evidence in order to support while ignoring literally hundreds of studies that disprove their views. UBI’s obituary writers are leaning on a few pandemic-tainted, non-saturation, household-misaligned pilots and calling that a verdict. It isn’t. When cash is tested under conditions that actually map to UBI—per person, community-wide, for long enough, with clean controls and benefit-interaction designs—the pattern is clear: basic income cuts poverty and its collateral damage, improves health and education, reduces crime, and supports work through boosted demand and bargaining power. Cash also clears the basic efficiency test. If an in-kind or conditional program cannot outperform unconditional cash in a fair head-to-head RCT, it does not justify its frictions, cliffs, and cost. Poverty is an income deficit, not a character deficit. Close the income deficit with a universal floor and reverse-target the top through taxes. That reaches the people that targeting misses, removes punitive marginal tax traps, and replaces administrative suspicion with simple rules that compound benefits over time. The nulls pulled from a once-in-a-century shock tell you about that window of time, not about the general case. Alaska’s annual universal dividend, the EBCI’s twice-yearly universal dividend, the CTC and EITC, saturation pilots, large-N transfer research and so much more tells you about the general case. If the problem is too little money and stability (which it is) give people money monthly and stop charging them for proving it. And also stop charging people for increasing their incomes. The big question is not whether cash “works,” but whether anything else works better at comparable scale and cost. Until shown otherwise, choose the mechanism with the highest demonstrated value to recipients alongside education and healthcare. That’s unconditional basic income. **UBI is not a theory in search of proof; it’s a foundation in search of political will.** --- *If you support my UBI work, please share this post and click the subscribe button. Also *consider making a monthly pledge* in support of my work.* [![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jMpR!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F94c4f669-7d04-4e25-b4bb-c528fdc223ff_461x66.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon*: Gisele Huff, Steven Grimm, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Tricia Garrett, David Ruark, Katie Moussouris, Jessica Chew, Larry Cohen, Daryl Smith, A.W.R., John Steinberger, Albert Wenger, Mgmguy, Joanna Zarach, Robert Collins, Tom Cooper, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Laurel gillespie, Frederick Weber, Liya Brook, Philip Rosedale, David Ihnen, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, Andrew Yang, Arjun , Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Albert Daniel Brockman, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Miki Phagan, Steve Roth, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Deanna McHugh, Braden Ferrin , centuryfalcon64, Leslie Kausch, Juro Antal, Mark Broadgate, Chuck Cordes, Jason Clark, Mark Donovan, Jocelyn Hockings, S, Felix Ling, '@Justin\_Dart , Tommy Caruso, and all my other patrons for their support.* ### Andrew Yang Has Begun Paying People to Use Their Phones Less URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/andrew-yang-is-paying-people-to-use-their-phones-less-noble-mobile/ Last updated: 2025-09-16T13:23:24.000Z ### Introducing Noble Mobile and Its Monthly Data Dividend For those who have followed my work for years, you already know that I've considered Andrew Yang a friend since before he ever launched his presidential campaign back in 2017\. He ran in the Democratic primary with universal basic income as his key policy and quickly became known as the guy who wanted to pay us all $1,000 a month in universal basic income. He called his proposal the [Freedom Dividend](https://www.scottsantens.com/there-is-no-policy-proposal-more-progressive-than-andrew-yangs-freedom-dividend/), and alongside it, he proposed ideas like ranked choice voting, the [American Scorecard](https://2020.yang2020.com/policies/measuring-the-economy/?ref=scottsantens.com), [Democracy Dollars](https://2020.yang2020.com/policies/democracydollars/?ref=scottsantens.com), and [over 150 others](https://2020.yang2020.com/policies/?tab=all&ref=scottsantens.com). One of them was [Data as a Property Right](https://2020.yang2020.com/policies/data-property-right/?ref=scottsantens.com) which was meant to "enable individuals to share in the economic value generated as a result of their data." Now, as of today, Andrew has launched [Noble Mobile](https://noblemobile.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com), which is a new mobile service that will **pay users every month to use their phone less**. I've been testing it out early and based on my own usage, it looks like I'll be earning about $19 a month by minimizing the amount of data I use on the 5G network. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2025/09/Dashboard-Noble-Mobile-1-.png) Here's the MATH. All Noble users will pay $50 a month and get unlimited data. Users who barely use any data, or who restrict their usage mostly to Wi-Fi as I do, will get up to $20 per month back as their data dividend. Users can then immediately cash that in so that their monthly phone cost is closer to $30 a month, or they can let that money sit and gain 5.5% in interest. Apparently, based on my usage, I can expect $213 in a year if I don't withdraw any of it. I've actually used a secondary carrier for years, so it's nothing new to me to spend less on my mobile service than most people do. Until Noble, which uses the T-Mobile network, I was using Boost, which uses T-Mobile and AT&T. I was paying $35 a month until I upgraded to $50 a month in order to be able to use my phone as a mobile hotspot (which Noble includes). So for me, it's not a huge change and I'm a bit happier spending a bit less. But I know most of you reading this still use a primary carrier. There's a good chance that right now you're spending somewhere between $67 and $131 a month on your current plan, so let's say it's $85 a month. If I were you, and had just switched from your $85/mo plan to Noble, then I'd expect to save about $54 a month, or $648 a year. That's 43.2 hours working at a $15/hr job. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2025/09/noble-85.png) I think at this point, most of us know we should be using our phones a bit less. Might as well get paid to do it, right? It's a good incentive to put your phone down a bit more if you know it might make you a buck or two to keep it in your pocket or purse. Spend some more time being present in the moment with your friends and family. And if you can do that and still have your phone to use when you need it, and only pay \~$30 a month for it, that's a pretty good deal, right? I think so. Even better, if you make the switch through [my referral](https://noblemobile.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com), you'll get an extra $50. So yeah, consider switching as I did, using your phone less, and enjoying a small monthly data dividend as a reward. You deserve it. We all do. Society needs a break. ### The New York Times Missed the Real Story on UBI and Kids URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-new-york-times-missed-the-real-story-on-ubi-and-kids/ Last updated: 2025-08-13T11:00:52.000Z ## Baby’s First Years, long-run basic income evidence, and why unconditional cash still beats status-quo poverty metrics The latest round of discourse about basic income was triggered by [a New York Times piece](https://archive.ph/9aYp3?ref=scottsantens.com) claiming that [a recent study](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8487960/?ref=scottsantens.com) showed monthly cash to poor families did nothing for child development. The article centers [*Baby’s First Years*](https://www.babysfirstyears.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) (BFY), a randomized trial that gave some new mothers $333 per month and measured brain activity and a handful of early-development proxies. The headline takeaway: no detectable effect on language, behavioral problems, executive function, or EEG patterns by age four, so the case for income guarantees is “weakened.” What follows is how that framing collapses when placed against design details, the full BFY evidence base, and decades of long-run results from multiple cash programs—including the strongest child-focused findings we have. ## What This Study Was and Was Not BFY enrolled low-income mothers *before birth* and paid either $333/month or a token $20/month for 52 months, starting at birth. It is the first US RCT designed to test whether *poverty reduction* in early childhood affects development, including brain function. That matters. But three features of the intervention and its timing make sweeping conclusions irresponsible. 1. **Per family, not per person.** $333/month was *per household*. A family with one infant and three other kids still received only $333 in total. This design dilutes per-child dosage precisely where needs scale with family size. 2. **Pandemic and inflation shock.** BFY’s main study years overlapped with COVID disruptions and an [unusual global inflation surge](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/05775132.2023.2278348?ref=scottsantens.com) resulting from those disruptions. A small transfer, in real terms, was partly swamped by macro shocks outside the study. The study team and even some ideological critics acknowledged this confounding variable. 3. **A narrow lens on early metrics.** BFY’s “no effect” claim concerns select early-childhood proxies and EEG patterns by age four. It says nothing about the outcomes that historically move most—schooling, health, crime, and earnings — over the long arc into adolescence and adulthood. BFY’s own pipeline includes broader measures at later ages for exactly this reason. If you went looking for a small, per-family transfer to create obvious EEG separations within four years of unprecedented external shocks, you designed the perfect test to miss the real story. ## The Pattern: Cherry-Pick the Null, Ignore the Mountain There’s a familiar media pattern on cash policy. Isolate a null result. Elevate it as *the* result. Ignore the rest of the literature. The Times story quotes anti-redistribution shops like AEI and Heritage (the Project 2025 guys) while giving cursory treatment to the counter-evidence. The result isn’t synthesis—it’s selection, presented as synthesis. The right question isn’t “Did one narrow measure move by age four?” It is “What does the weight of evidence say about unconditional cash and child well-being across time horizons?” On that question, the answer is not ambiguous. ## The Cherokee Natural Experiment: Decades, Not Months The strongest long-run U.S. evidence comes from [a natural experiment](https://academicminute.org/jane-costello-duke-university-sharing-the-wealth/?ref=scottsantens.com) within the Great Smoky Mountains Study. When the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians began distributing unconditional per-capita casino dividends, a subset of children in a multi-county longitudinal cohort suddenly grew up in households with extra cash; others in the same study did not. The cohorts have now been followed for decades. Findings across peer-reviewed papers are consistent and large: - [**Mental health improved**](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9396462/?ref=scottsantens.com) and behavioral disorders fell sharply among children whose families received the income supplement, converging toward non-poor peers. - [**Education rose**](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257%2Fapp.2.1.86&ref=scottsantens.com)**.** Added income increased years of schooling and reduced dropout. - [**Adult outcomes improved**](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9396462/?ref=scottsantens.com)**.** In adulthood, those exposed to the cash as children report fewer anxiety and depressive symptoms, fewer cannabis-related problems, and better physical and financial functioning; benefits scale with cumulative transfer exposure. The impact was greater the longer a kid had it, and also if both parents got the income instead of only one. These are the outcomes that matter for a society. They are exactly the ones a four-year EEG snapshot will miss—and exactly the ones cash has repeatedly improved over time. If you want causal evidence that growing up with a basic income floor changes life trajectories, this is it. ## Meta-Evidence: Children Gain the Most Beyond a single natural experiment, cross-program reviews keep reaching the same conclusion: children are the biggest beneficiaries of cash. [A review of prominent cash transfer and basic income experiments](https://pn3policy.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/PN3PIC%5FCashTransfers%5FEvidenceReview1024.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) found improvements in nutrition, school attendance, and educational attainment, e.g., lower obesity risk, higher normal weight for age, and large gains for girls’ secondary schooling—with an additional year of schooling on average in some settings. The direction is not isolated; it is systematic. Short-term nulls on narrow proxies are not a rebuttal to this literature. They are a reminder that early, small signals are noisy while structural outcomes compound. ## The 2021 Child Tax Credit: The ROI Frame That Matters Benefit-cost analysis is where policy moves from values to tradeoffs. Columbia’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy synthesized the highest-quality causal evidence on cash and near-cash and then modeled the permanent expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) enacted in 2021: $250–$300 per child per month, fully refundable. Result: an annual *fiscal* cost near $97 billion produced *social* benefits estimated around [$929–$982 billion per year](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working%5Fpapers/w29854/w29854.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) in the original model—roughly a **10:1** return. A [2024 methods update](https://povertycenter.columbia.edu/publication/2022/child-allowance/benefit-cost-analysis?ref=scottsantens.com), incorporating newer evidence, raised the annual benefits estimate to about **$1.54 trillion**, strengthening the ROI further to **$15 per $1**. This is the frame the Times piece ignored. Even if every EEG study in existence showed nothing, a permanent CTC that cuts child poverty and yields 15-to-1 social returns is still a public-finance slam dunk. The purpose of policy is to reduce suffering and improve life chances efficiently, not to optimize for a lab readout at age four. ## The $50-Per-Week Study: Small Cash, Real Changes If you want a recent US randomized study of *teens* instead of toddlers, look at the Rooted School Foundation’s [$50-per-week RCT](https://the50dollarstudy.org/?ref=scottsantens.com), the largest US trial of no-strings cash to high-school students. Over two years across multiple schools, students receiving $50/week: - [**Attended more**](https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-happens-when-you-give-students-50-a-week/2025/07?ref=scottsantens.com)**.** Attendance rose by about **1.23 days** in the following semester. - **Built financial capability.** Measured understanding of financial products and long-term planning improved. - **Spent prudently.** Roughly **46%** went to essentials, including food; many saved and ended the study with a cash buffer. Grades did not leap in a single year, but the stability-and-agency story is familiar: reduce scarcity, increase bandwidth, and behavior adjusts in ways that build over time. ## The Learning-By-Doing Reality “Teach financial literacy first” reverses causality. The skill is inseparable from lived practice and the right to make mistakes. Weekly or monthly transfers create repeated cycles for budgeting, error, feedback, and adjustment; 52 chances a year rather than one annual gamble. That’s not a moral claim; it is a design claim about how humans acquire competence. ## Start Where You Can, But Keep It Universal A poverty-line UBI for adults plus a per-child amount is the goal. Starting smaller is not only acceptable—it is strategically correct—*if* two design principles hold: - **Unconditionality.** No work-testing, no behavioral strings. - **Universality.** Don’t build stigma and bureaucracy back in through phase-ins and phase-outs at the benefit level; [handle progressivity on the tax side](https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-is-not-cheaper-than-universal-basic-income-ubi-nor-is-guaranteed-income-more-progressive-by-excluding-the-rich/). Even a modest universal floor (e.g., [$500 per month](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=3346467&ref=scottsantens.com)) is distributionally progressive after netting the rebate against a flat surtax, because the transfer is worth more at the bottom than the top. The debate should not be about whether universality is “too hard.” Universality is the mechanism that makes the system coherent, trusted, and simple enough to scale. ## Policy Windows You Might Not Expect The politics are shifting in surprising ways because voters like cash with no strings. Two examples from the last few weeks: - **Tariff “rebate checks.”** Senator Josh Hawley introduced the *American Worker Rebate Act* to distribute at least [**$600 per adult and per dependent child**](https://www.hawley.senate.gov/hawley-introduces-legislation-to-send-rebate-checks-to-working-americans/?ref=scottsantens.com) as refundable credits funded by tariff revenue, with phase-outs at higher incomes. Whatever you think of tariffs, the design echoes broad stimulus checks because it is simple, fast, and popular. The coalition for unconditional cash is wider than activists assume. - **Disaster-triggered basic income.** In Pennsylvania, [HB 1791 — *Climate Emergency Basic Income Act*](https://www.palegis.us/legislation/bills/2025/hb1791?ref=scottsantens.com) — would provide **$1,000 per adult per month** for up to **six months** after a state-declared disaster, plus **$500 per dependent**, without requiring home-ownership, formal residency, or ID. Administration would run through the state emergency-management and labor agencies, making the response automatic and legible when people need it most. Both items are live because simple cash support works on its own terms and also solves a bureaucratic problem: it is the fastest way to convert public intent into private capacity. ## Put the BFY Finding in Its Proper Box Return to BFY. Even inside the project’s own publications, there are already non-neural improvements recorded in spending patterns, food security, and time use—predictable channels through which later outcomes move. The point isn’t to pre-declare victory; it’s to refuse a premature defeat declared on the basis of an early, narrow slice. Cash’s largest, most durable effects show up after kids reach school and beyond, exactly as the EBCI natural experiment demonstrates. BFY will report those later outcomes in time. Until then, treat a short-run EEG null as what it is: [a limited result, not a verdict](https://www.givedirectly.org/null-negative-usa/?ref=scottsantens.com). ## The Empirical Baseline The case for unconditional income does not hinge on a single study, positive or negative. It rests on convergent evidence across designs and time frames: - **Causal natural experiment:** Children exposed to an unconditional income floor in [the EBCI study](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257%2Fapp.2.1.86&ref=scottsantens.com) show sustained improvements in mental health, behavior, schooling, and adult functioning. - **Meta-level syntheses:** [Reviews of cash and basic-income trials](https://purehost.bath.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/321829347/10.1515%5Fbis-2022-0003.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) repeatedly find that children gain most — nutrition, attendance, attainment — because childhood is where compounding returns live. - **Benefit-cost accounting:** A permanent, fully refundable CTC at 2021 levels yields social returns on the order of **15:1**, even before counting intergenerational spillovers. - **New RCTs at small doses:** Even $50/week moved attendance and financial capability among teens, with spending consistent with basic needs and forward-looking investments. If your threshold for action is “move EEG bands by age four despite a pandemic and inflation,” you’ve confused instrumentation with policy. ## Why This Matters Beyond the Lab Early-life scarcity is an iceberg. The visible tip is stress, food insecurity, and missed bills. Below the surface is cognitive bandwidth taxation, reduced executive function, and chronic instability that compounds across school years. You don’t fix that with parenting classes or lectures on budgeting divorced from resources. You fix it by reducing scarcity itself, reliably, so families can self-organize. That is what unconditional income does better than any program with strings, and why it outperforms on ROI. The politics of this are not left versus right so much as [**systems that trust people**](https://www.scottsantens.com/think-like-a-martian-about-money-and-universal-basic-income-ubi/) versus systems that attempt to micromanage them. Universality cuts bureaucracy and stigma. Unconditionality acknowledges real constraints and treats people like adults. Together they create a policy that is implementable at scale, legible to recipients, and durable enough to survive election cycles. ## What a Serious Reader Should Conclude - A four-year null on narrow proxies is neither surprising nor dispositive. The literature’s big effects are medium-to-long run and show up where we actually care: health, school, crime, and lifetime earnings. - The BFY study design — a small per-family transfer launched into a once-in-a-century shock — was likely underpowered to move infant physiology in ways the instruments could cleanly detect. - When you run the numbers correctly, the ROI case for unconditional income to families with children is overwhelming. The 2021 CTC expansion’s benefit-cost ratio is not a rounding error; it is an order-of-magnitude result. - The newest evidence keeps pointing in the same direction. Even small, unconditional transfers to teens increase attendance and financial agency, inputs that compound later. If the goal is to improve children’s lives efficiently, you do not wait for EEGs to align with your priors. You scale the interventions that reliably reduce poverty, increase stability, and generate large social returns, and then you keep measuring. That is the path consistent with the data we have, the data we keep getting, and the world we actually live in. --- *Note on authorship: This piece was drafted with ChatGPT-5 using the full transcript of* [*the newest episode of The Basic Income Show*](https://youtu.be/qMDyrAvhp8E?ref=scottsantens.com) *as source material. The model was style-conditioned on a corpus of my prior articles to mirror my tone, structure, and evidence standards (via in-context examples of my writing). I reviewed the output for accuracy and clarity; any remaining errors are mine.* --- *If you support my UBI work, please share this post and click the subscribe button. Also *consider making a monthly pledge* in support of my work.* [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/03/button_support-my-work-on-patreon-2.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon*: Gisele Huff, Steven Grimm, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Tricia Garrett, David Ruark, Katie Moussouris, Jessica Chew, Larry Cohen, Daryl Smith, A.W.R., John Steinberger, Albert Wenger, Mgmguy, Joanna Zarach, Robert Collins, Tom Cooper, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Laurel gillespie, Frederick Weber, Liya Brook, Philip Rosedale, David Ihnen, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, Andrew Yang, Arjun , Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Albert Daniel Brockman, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Miki Phagan, Steve Roth, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Deanna McHugh, Braden Ferrin , centuryfalcon64, Leslie Kausch, Juro Antal, Mark Broadgate, Chuck Cordes, Jason Clark, Mark Donovan, Jocelyn Hockings, S, Felix Ling, '@Justin\_Dart , Tommy Caruso, and all my other patrons for their support.* ### What the Media Isn’t Telling You: Why Universal Basic Income Is the Answer to Poverty, Insecurity, and Inequality URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/what-the-media-isnt-telling-you-why-universal-basic-income-ubi-is-the-answer-to-poverty-insecurity-and-inequality/ Last updated: 2025-08-01T13:00:14.000Z *A Newsweek reporter recently asked me — with a sense of urgency mind you — to provide expert answers on UBI for a story. I answered all their questions in detail by deadline. They never replied. Since then, they’ve published multiple UBI pieces without using a single word. I’m publishing the entire exchange here so you can see the insights they left on the cutting room floor.* **Q: What core problems are UBI and GBI programs trying to solve – in the US context? What contemporary issues have given rise to its increasing adoption/popularity?** The core problems UBI directly seeks to solve are the three pathways it directly impacts: poverty, insecurity, and inequality. Poverty is ultimately a lack of money, and as Dr. King said when he advocated for UBI, [“The simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.”](https://www.scottsantens.com/martin-luther-king-jr-basic-income-mlk/) But someone not in poverty can still live a very stressful paycheck-to-paycheck existence. A job can be lost at any time. It may not pay enough, even with multiple jobs. We’re all one disaster away from poverty. UBI recognizes that prevention is as much a part of the answer as treatment. Targeted assistance programs only help after the fact, and the tests they make people go through result in people failing those tests or not taking those tests due to constraints or stigma. Most targeted assistance programs tend to exclude the majority of those they’re intended to help. They also effectively punish those they help for increasing their incomes. If a floor exists below which no one can ever fall, that’s real security. Finally, even without poverty and with real security, [inequality can still exist as its own problem that causes many other problems](https://www.scribd.com/document/7645514/Effects-of-Inequality?ref=scottsantens.com). Excessive inequality undermines population health. It shortens life expectancy and increases infant and maternal mortality. It corrodes social cohesion by eroding interpersonal trust and civic engagement. It amplifies violent crime, especially homicide. It fuels mental illness and inflates domestic violence and child abuse. And perhaps most dangerously of all, it heightens political instability and conflict risk. Because UBI directly reduces inequality, especially when combined with progressive taxes like wealth taxes, all of these other problems can to some degree be relieved. A society with no poverty and far less insecurity and inequality is a higher functioning society able to focus on problems and challenges far beyond the problems of day-to-day survival, like for example, how to maintain and grow a democracy instead of losing it to authoritarianism, and how to steward our planetary ecosystem better. What has given rise to the discussion and testing of UBI this century is a slew of factors, but deep down I think it’s a growing sense that what we’re doing isn’t working and that things need to change. The Great Financial Crisis of 2008 opened wounds that never closed. The 1% were treated far differently than the 99% and inequality has only grown since. For many areas of the US, the Great Recession still exists for them. Then the pandemic happened, and now AI is happening, and climate change has been happening this whole time. The existing safety net is not designed for the world we live in today, and the income distribution system called jobs is not designed for the world we live in today either. Because of all this, and because the [UBI pilots keep showing success after success](https://skyview.social/?url=https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x6eidgqhve7ulo4djhbgqv2v/post/3ldy3ssm7bs23&viewtype=unroll&ref=scottsantens.com), especially in saturation site tests where entire communities get it, it seems likely that popular support for UBI will only continue to increase over time. **Q: What are the primary benefits of UBI/GBI – and how does this compare to existing welfare programs? (would it ideally replace these?)** I covered a lot of this already, but again, the main issues with traditional welfare programs are their conditions and means-testing which UBI explicitly doesn’t do. TANF provides cash to poor families. Coverage varies from state to state but the nationwide average is about 20%, meaning four out of five families the program is intended to reach don’t get it. In some states it can be 98 out of 100 families in poverty not getting it. That level of exclusion is criminal. SSI as another example is a disability program with a 50% clawback rate and a $2,000 asset limit. Most applicants for SSI are denied. Most of those denied who fight that denial have to wait many months and even multiple years to prove they should get it. Then those who finally get it can lose it by ever having more than $2,000 in their bank account. UBI doesn’t do any of that. Everyone gets it. Period. It’s a floor upon which all income can be earned without worrying about the loss of one’s UBI. With UBI, every job leaves you better off financially. With existing welfare, a job can result in your being worse off. That’s a real problem. In regards to if UBI should replace welfare, I think it depends on the program. TANF is a prime example of a program that should be replaced by UBI. SSI is an example of a program that should be reformed and be additional to UBI because those with disabilities will always have an uphill climb compared to the rest of us. Healthcare should never be considered welfare, so Medicaid and Medicare and ACA subsidies should be additional to UBI. Each existing program should be evaluated as making sense to replace or keep in some form as additional to UBI, depending on the amount of UBI and if the UBI has a child component or is paired with a child allowance. **Q: What’s your view on targeted vs. universal income programs (e.g., child allowances or GBI for low-income groups)?** [Targeting is an inferior approach](https://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/blog/confessions-of-a-former-true-believer-in-poverty-targeting/?ref=scottsantens.com) to universal programs outside of those like disability assistance.The enhanced CTC in 2021 was better than the existing CTC, but [a universal child benefit combined with tax reform would have been better](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2021/12/24/the-folly-of-means-testing-a-child-allowance/?ref=scottsantens.com). All phaseouts where a benefit shrinks as income increases are effectively taxing those in the phaseout range. If someone gets $900 a month with a 50% phaseout, a $900 a month paycheck means $450 less benefit. That’s the exact same thing as not phasing it out and instead taxing their paycheck at a 50% rate. No one pays higher marginal tax rates in the US than the poorest who are receiving benefits. Their marginal tax rates can approach and even exceed 100% when combined across multiple programs with multiple phaseouts. It’s also always important to remember that paperwork of any kind reduces coverage. Republicans just expanded work requirements for SNAP and Medicaid. We already know what’s going to happen as a result. [There will be no increase in employment and instead fewer people will benefit from those programs](https://www.niskanencenter.org/all-hail-medicaid-1115-waivers-slayer-of-work-requirements/?ref=scottsantens.com). Universality recognizes this and does the opposite. We should stop insisting on testing to see who deserves what. We should provide universally and use taxes as the admin-light test after-the-fact. When it comes to UBI, and you don’t want those over $100k getting it, then just make sure those earning $100k pay more in new taxes than the amount of UBI. There’s no need to even send any actual money. Those with $100k in income can see UBI as a new tax credit instead of the standard deduction. **Q: What do you make of the argument that such programs would prove inflationary and require raising taxes – i.e. the fiscal feasibility concerns?** The question of UBI and inflation is a complex one that requires nuance in a world that seems to have lost all nuance. [The true answer is it all depends](https://www.scottsantens.com/17-key-variables-that-determine-ubis-inflationary-impact/). What is the amount of UBI? $2000/mo is more inflationary than $500/mo. What is being replaced? A $500/mo UBI that replaces SNAP and the standard deduction is extremely unlikely to lead to inflation compared to being fully additional to them. What taxes are involved? $1 trillion in UBI spending that’s matched with $1 trillion in taxes is going to be less inflationary than the same amount of UBI via deficit spending. The kind of taxes also matters. Are we doing a land value tax that increases housing supply or are we taxing highly inelastic goods (meaning that people will ignore price)? What is the economic capacity of the economy to meet expressed demand with supply? For goods and services where supply constraints are exceeded, prices could go up, at least until supply is increased. How competitive are markets for various goods and services? A company with no competition, or multiple companies that effectively collude on prices, can raise prices, whereas a company that faces real competition will lose market share with a price increase. So stuff like antitrust enforcement is part of this equation. Automation is also part of it. As machines do more and more work, this can be deflationary, so UBI is less inflationary in a rapidly automating environment. There are other factors too like interest rates, amount of private debt, and reduced spending on the downstream effects of poverty and stress. I also think people would be less worried about UBI and inflation if they realized that a $1300/mo UBI doesn’t mean everyone’s after-tax income goes up by that much. Everyone gets the same UBI but everyone does not pay the same amount of taxes for it. If you get $15k a year in UBI and your taxes go up $15k too, your disposable income goes up $0 which also means it cost the government $0\. That person is not going to buy more of anything, thus that person will have no impact on prices just as their UBI will have no cost to the state. Yes, the fact that buying power can increase for the bottom 60% in a way that looks like a negative income tax can result in inflationary pressure, but it’s far less than if all 100% saw an income boost after taxes. **Q: Of the studies/pilot programs you are aware of – what surprising outcomes emerged – and were there any notable drawbacks?** My own personal definition of most surprising has changed over the years as I’ve read more and more studies. At first, back in 2013, I was most surprised to see such significant decreases in emergency hospitalization rates (9% in Dauphin) and in overall crime (43% in Namibia). Increases in employment were also surprising to me at first, but no longer. Not that it always happens or should happen, but that it can happen, especially in saturation site pilots where the money is universal and thus businesses have more customers and more need to hire to meet increased demand. I was also surprised at the huge impact on entrepreneurship (4x in Namibia and 3x in India). More recently, I was surprised by the results out of Finland that showed significant increases in trust. As for drawbacks, I see them as eye-of-the-beholder. What someone else sees as a drawback, I may not, and vice versa. For example, domestic abuse often drops significantly, both partner abuse and child abuse. An abuser may see that as a drawback, but I don’t. Another example is high interest lending. In some experiments, the loudest complainers are moneylenders who can no longer find people willing to take out loans with 500% interest rates. Oh no, I’m so sad for them. **Q: Can results from small pilot programs be scaled up to predict national-level outcomes?** Some can and some probably shouldn’t. It depends on the result and the design of the pilot. We can draw much stronger conclusions I think from saturation site pilots than small pilots that provide money to 100 people spread out over an entire city or state, but even those pilots can tell us something about individual human behavior. There are some results that are very strong. With as close to 100% certainly as someone who cares about the scientific method can muster, I think we can count on [better maternal nutrition leading to babies born with healthier birth weights](https://www.news-medical.net/news/20100803/EITC-programs-directly-linked-to-higher-birth-weights-Study.aspx?ref=scottsantens.com). But other results I wouldn’t put that level of certainty into. I do think we’ll see better health, less crime, less partner and child abuse, less obesity, more entrepreneurship, more sustainable small businesses, less drug abuse, less debt, and more savings, all to some degree. I also think that the concern that so many people will choose to work less to a worrying degree as a result of UBI is simply unwarranted by the mountain of data, especially if the UBI amount is sub-poverty level and taxes serve to phase-out the income with a small marginal tax rate, but others would disagree with me and say we can’t know what any real UBI impacts would be based on anything that wasn’t permanent and nationwide. The enhanced CTC in 2021 was essentially a massive 6-month UBI pilot of about $450/mo per family. It reduced poverty by 40% and had [all kinds of other positive effects](https://www.scottsantens.com/one-year-after-the-expiration-of-the-enhanced-child-tax-credit-ctc-what-all-have-we-learned-about-its-effects/), and it contributed virtually 0% to inflation, but yeah, it was only 6 months despite reaching about 40 million households. Meanwhile, we have other programs like the Alaska dividend that’s been operating for over 40 years, providing money universally on a permanent basis, and it too has had all kinds of positive effects, but sure, it’s small, once a year, and just Alaska. What’s curious to me though is why we’re holding UBI to such a high bar. Did we do lots of local pilots of Social Security first before rolling that out? No. We had a problem with seniors living in poverty and we decided to dramatically reduce that, so we did. Lots of countries provide money without conditions or means-testing to kids and to seniors. But for some reason, it’s really challenging to do the same for working-age adults without disabilities or kids. Why? The simple and frustrating answer is the combination of lack of trust and a fear of having less leverage over them. **Q: What hurdles – legislative as well as cultural and economic – would wider adoption of GBI or UBI programs encounter in the U.S.?** UBI is a change to the status quo. It is a redistribution of power. Once everyone can refuse to work and still eat, [employers will need to pay more for certain jobs](https://www.atlantafed.org/research/publications/wp/2025/07/14/06-effect-of-unemployment-insurance-eligibibility-in-equilibrium?ref=scottsantens.com). Some new people will run for office and more people will get civically engaged in the act of democracy. Unions will be empowered with a permanent strike fund. The automation of certain jobs will make more economic sense than ever, potentially hurting some unions despite the enhanced strike power. People who make their money off of the existence of poverty will have a hard time. [Owners of prisons and prison stocks may be unhappy](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=5259763&ref=scottsantens.com). More people finally gaining access to the court system may make a lot of rich and powerful people unhappy too. There are all sorts of ways UBI alters the status quo. Things will be shaken up and a new equilibrium will be found, but in the meantime, those currently with the power who will see tens of millions of others gain more power relative to them could put a lot of resources into convincing people they were better off without UBI. Oregon attempted a statewide UBI recently and the voters themselves said no. The big corporations there did a great job of buying that result by mass fearmongering what would happen if they were taxed more. That’s the kind of thing I can imagine seeing a lot more of. There are people who support UBI who voted no on UBI there, because it just wasn't what they considered an ideal version. Big money is really good at getting voters to convince themselves to vote against their own best interests. UBI is a fight to be won, and it won’t be won easily. Those with the power have never been known to willingly hold less of it. But I do have faith in people to eventually realize UBI is more than just money, it’s more power to the People, and to then engage in the level of civic mobilization that won women’s suffrage and civil rights. We’re in the Second Gilded Age and we need to start acting like it to get out of it and beyond it. Perhaps our biggest hurdle is what led to it besides continual tax cuts, which is the role of money in politics. --- *If you support my UBI work, please share this post and click the subscribe button. Also *consider making a monthly pledge* in support of my work.* [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/03/button_support-my-work-on-patreon-2.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark,Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, Laurel gillespie, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Robert Collins, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Steve Roth, Miki Phagan, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun ,' @Justin\_Dart , Felix Ling, S, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Braden Ferrin , Juro Antal, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, Stephen Castro-Starkey, and all my other patrons for their support.* ### 17 Key Variables That Determine UBI’s Inflationary Impact URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/17-key-variables-that-determine-ubis-inflationary-impact/ Last updated: 2025-07-26T13:27:31.000Z Will universal basic income cause inflation? Will the prices of everything rise? I get asked that all the time. Here's the deal about UBI and inflation: it all depends. Can UBI be inflationary? Sure, if we do it in a certain way in a certain context, but no, not in other ways and contexts. We're talking about a multivariate equation. So what are the many variables? ### Inflation Variable 1: The Amount of UBI A $100/mo UBI is going to have a different inflationary impact than $10,000/mo. The amount of UBI matters. It matters because of demand exceeding supply, but also the labor impact that can potentially reduce supply. The higher the UBI, the greater the impact on employment. A poverty level UBI of $1,300/mo has low-to-medium inflation risk depending on other variables. A sub-poverty level UBI of $500/mo has very little inflation risk. ### Inflation Variable 2: Economic Capacity Inflation can happen when the demand for goods and services exceeds the ability to meet that demand with supply. If a country is at or over its capacity, UBI can raise prices. If there's lots of capacity, supply can meet demand. No problem. In a macro-level experiment in Kenya, the economy entirely absorbed the increase in demand with no inflation because there was so much slack waiting for demand. ### Inflation Variable 3: Competition Even if there's plenty of spare capacity, it's possible for prices to rise with UBI due to monopolistic actors. Price collusion is a problem. Policies that protect and enhance market competition are thus important for successful UBI implementation. This means anti-trust enforcement is important, as is reducing barriers to entry for new businesses. A big part of the inflation in 2022 was due to supply chain issues causing price increases which businesses then used as cover for additional price increases for excess profits. If only a few companies were providing supply, it was easy to do. According to economist [Isabella Weber's analysis](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0954349X25000591?ref=scottsantens.com) of about 140,000 corporate earnings calls, the pandemic supply shocks "functioned as an implicit coordination mechanism for firms to hike prices." ### Inflation Variable 4: Time It is possible for UBI to spark temporary inflation. Prices can go up, signaling suppliers to grow supply. The result can be much greater supply, followed by even lower prices due to abundance. So inflation can come and go. Markets evolve and adapt. I would argue that this kind of inflation is a good result of UBI. An economy should be able to meet true demand for basic goods and services. If UBI causes the price of food to go up purely because there isn't enough food being made, then clearly more food needs to be made so that everyone can eat. In the India UBI pilot, prices actually went down over time due to a large supply increase in response to increased demand. ### Inflation Variable 5: Banks In a fiat system where a nation like the US issues its own currency, the money supply is ultimately created [by federal spending](https://www.scottsantens.com/how-money-is-born-out-of-public-spending-and-dies-by-taxes-mmt/), but within that system, banks also create new money out of debt. This is how interest rates impact inflation. When the interest rate is high, debt is expensive, so the bank part of the money supply contracts, and when the rate is low, debt is cheap, so the bank part of the money supply expands. A UBI paired with reducing the ability of banks to expand the money supply would mean no net increase in the money supply by banks. This is [a non-tax method of "paying for" UBI](https://files.modernmoney.network/M3F000001.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). If we started issuing $200 billion a month into the money supply as UBI and simultaneously reduced the issuance of $200 billion a month in credit by banks, the net increase in the money supply would be zero. ### Inflation Variable 6: Taxes [Taxes are what delete money from the money supply](https://www.scottsantens.com/let-there-be-money-book-understanding-modern-monetary-theory-universal-basic-income-mmt-ubi-unconditional/). Deficits are the difference between created money and deleted money. A deficit-financed UBI is going to have more inflationary pressure than a deficit-neutral one. Taxing $1 trillion out of the money supply via a land value tax is also going to have a different impact on inflation than a tax reform that removes $1 trillion from the money supply by some other way. Different taxes have different impacts on prices. Because the top 10% of the population in the US now consumes [50% of all goods and services](https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/02/24/higher-income-americans-drive-bigger-share-of-consumer-spending?ref=scottsantens.com), besides taxing land value, I think optimal tax reform would involve a mix of new brackets and higher taxes on the top 10%, along with carbon taxes and other [Pigovian taxes](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pigoviantax.asp?ref=scottsantens.com), a small standard VAT paired with a luxury VAT, a [tiny tax](https://www.academia.edu/5305083/Starting%5FOver%5FThe%5FAutomated%5FPayment%5FTransaction%5FTax%5F?ref=scottsantens.com) on all transactions, and [a wealth tax](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8357169/?ref=scottsantens.com) on multi-millionaires and billionaires. ### Inflation Variable 7: Welfare Reform If someone buys food with cash instead of SNAP, demand hasn't increased. So a UBI that replaces existing programs like SNAP, TANF, and WIC will be less inflationary than one that doesn't replace those programs. Tax subsidies are welfare too. The standard deduction has inflationary pressure. Replacing the standard deduction with a UBI of about $450/mo would impose very little inflationary pressure. Because it would replace a benefit that varies between about $250/mo to $650/mo depending on income quintile. ### Inflation Variable 8: Supply-Side Policies Lots of people worry about [UBI and rent](https://widerquist.com/will-basic-income-cause-rent-to-increase/?ref=scottsantens.com). UBI in an area where people can only build single-family homes is going to be more inflationary than in an area that allows multi-family homes and big apartment buildings. The easier it is to build new housing, the harder it is for landlords to raise rents. Be smart. [Be YIMBY](https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/land-and-the-liberty-to-build-on). ### Inflation Variable 9: Downstream Savings UBI has been observed to reduce crime and improve health. When spending goes down on those, that's counter-inflationary. Crime increases prices. More people needing emergency healthcare increases the cost of health insurance. In the Dauphin saturation pilot, [overall crime decreased by 15%](https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article-abstract/68/3/778/5809598?login=false&ref=scottsantens.com), violent crime dropped by 37%, and emergency hospitalization rates decreased by 9%. The overall cost of crime in the US has been estimated at potentially exceeding [$4 trillion](https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-17-732?ref=scottsantens.com) a year. We spend over [$5 trillion](https://www.statista.com/topics/6701/health-expenditures-in-the-us/?ref=scottsantens.com) a year on healthcare. The greater the impact UBI has on these massive costs, the less inflationary it is. ### Inflation Variable 10: Net vs. Gross Yes, everyone gets UBI, but that doesn't mean everyone sees a boost after taxes. If you get $15k in UBI and your taxes go up $7k, your net receipt is $8k. Any inflationary pressure would then depend on that net boost of $8k, not the gross receipt of $15k. If you're getting $15k in UBI and your taxes go up $20k because your taxable income is $200k, then your disposable income goes down $5k. You'd have $5k less to spend despite the $15k UBI. For the same reason [a UBI is cheaper than most people think](https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-is-not-cheaper-than-universal-basic-income-ubi-nor-is-guaranteed-income-more-progressive-by-excluding-the-rich/), it's also less inflationary than most people think. ### Inflation Variable 11: Inferior Goods When people get more money, that can mean buying one pair of nice boots that last for 30 years instead of one new pair of cheap shoes each year. What economists call [inferior goods](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/inferior-good.asp?ref=scottsantens.com) like this should be taken into consideration. Demand for certain goods will go down *because* people have more money to spend. People buying less stuff is deflationary, not inflationary. ### Inflation Variable 12: Savings and Debt We know from pilot experiments and also the annual [Alaska dividend](https://scholarworks.alaska.edu/bitstream/handle/11122/4170/bien%5Fxiii%5Fak%5Fpfd%5Flessons.pdf?sequence=1&ref=scottsantens.com) that people provided UBI spend a percentage of it paying off their debts and building up their savings. When it's more attractive to save money instead of spend it, that reduces inflation. Not all UBI will be spent. Some percentage of UBI will be saved for the future. What is saved has no inflationary pressure. When people spend their money paying off their debts, not only are they not buying goods and services, but that kind of spending shrinks the money supply. It's deflationary, not inflationary. So if someone gets a $1500 UBI payment and they then save $500 of it and put $500 towards their credit card, and spend the remaining $500 on stuff, then only $500 has any potential inflationary pressure, and that could be entirely balanced by the $500 they eliminate from the money supply with their credit card payment. ### Inflation Variable 13: Money Velocity A dollar at the bottom of the economy tends to be exchanged more than one at the top. This is known as the marginal propensity to consume and it's part of the overall velocity of money. A tax cut for the top 1% is less inflationary than an equivalent tax cut for the bottom 60% because the rich don't stimulate local economies as much with their spending. They may even just hide it offshore. If an economy has a money velocity that is at [record lows](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V?ref=scottsantens.com), a UBI is going to be less inflationary than if the money velocity were at record highs, so that matters. But UBI will also grow economies more, locally and nationally. A single dollar in the hands of the working class will be spent over and over again in local businesses and that will have a larger impact on GDP than spending by the rich. An expanding economy is going to be able to handle more future spending without inflation than an economy that is stagnant and demand-starved. It could be argued that we would have seen [less inflation](https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/RI%5FCausesofandResponsestoTodaysInflation%5FReport%5F202212.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) as a result of the pandemic if decades of relatively stagnant wages hadn't suppressed GDP growth. ### Inflation Variable 14: Inequality High inequality can actually cause a special kind of inflation, in which case reducing inequality can reduce the costs of certain goods and services. An economy oriented around the demands of the rich responds differently than one oriented around the demands of the many. Consider housing as one example. The rich bid up the price of housing, because it's treated like an asset. Less inequality would mean high wealth households owning five houses instead of ten. That increases the available supply of housing, lowering the price. The rich are also less sensitive to price increases. If the price of eggs go up, they're going to buy eggs no matter the cost. It doesn't matter to them. In order for the price of things to go down, people have to buy less of it. Some stuff only costs as much as it does in the US because inequality is so high. Reducing inequality would lower the costs of various goods and services. That would be a counter-inflationary force. ### Inflation Variable 15: Unpaid Work If two parents were to stop paying each other for child care to watch each other's kids, both parents would have less money but be happier doing that work without pay. In this way, unpaid care work is effectively [subsidizing paid care work](https://www.scottsantens.com/unconditional-basic-income-is-a-pigovian-subsidy-for-unpaid-work/). UBI could reduce the cost of child care if fewer people sought paid child care despite being more able to afford paid child care due to UBI. That would be counter-inflationary. The cost of child care would also likely go down if more people chose to become paid care workers to expand the supply. Consider the impacts of more people choosing unpaid work in all kinds of work as a result of UBI. The more people choose to work for free, or choose to work for less, the lower the price. ### Inflation Variable 16: Disasters As we saw with the COVID-19 pandemic, a global disaster can have large impacts on supply chains and lead to inflation. The same goes for climate change. Introducing UBI in an area frequently being impacted by climate disasters is going to have different inflationary pressure than in an environment not being impacted. For this reason, it would be wise to invest in climate resilience and pandemic planning so that supply is more able to respond to UBI demand in areas that experience supply chain impacts. ### **I**nflation Variable 17: Technology Finally, automation is a deflationary force. As AI advances and robots displace workers, the concern will increasingly be about [deflation leading to recession](https://archive.ph/ihDka?ref=scottsantens.com) as people are less able to buy what machines are producing. UBI can be seen as a tool to counter this danger by maintaining consumer buying power. In this regard, the potential inflationary effect of UBI would actually be a good thing. I'm sure I'm missing even more variables, but hopefully you now understand that inflation depends on a lot of variables. It's a multivariate equation. Basically, it's oversimplifying to say that basic income will cause inflation. It all depends. Every country considering it has different choices to make. --- *If you support my UBI work, please share this post and click the subscribe button. Also *consider making a monthly pledge* in support of my work.* [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/03/button_support-my-work-on-patreon-2.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark, Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, Laurel gillespie, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Robert Collins, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Steve Roth, Miki Phagan, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert, Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun, Justin Dart, Felix Ling, S, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Braden Ferrin, Juro Antal, Austin, Deanna McHugh, Stephen Castro-Starkey, and all my other patrons for their support.* [***Become a monthly patron to see your name here too***](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com)***!*** ### AI, Automation, and the Urgent Case for Universal Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/ai-automation-and-the-urgent-case-for-universal-basic-income-ubi-forward-future/ Last updated: 2025-04-30T10:01:20.000Z *The following interview was with Nick Wentz of* [*Forward Future Daily*](https://www.forwardfuture.ai/?ref=scottsantens.com)*, a newsletter launched by* [*Matthew Berman*](https://www.youtube.com/@matthew%5Fberman?ref=scottsantens.com) *focused on bringing the benefits of AI to all of humanity. It was originally published in two parts (*[*part one*](https://www.forwardfuture.ai/p/ai-automation-and-the-urgent-case-for-universal-basic-income-a-conversation-with-scott-santens?ref=scottsantens.com) *and* [*part two*](https://www.forwardfuture.ai/p/ai-automation-and-the-urgent-case-for-universal-basic-income-part-ii-critiques-implementation-and-th?ref=scottsantens.com)*). If you want to keep up with AI news, consider subscribing to Forward Future.* --- by Nick Wentz Scott Santens has long been one of the most compelling voices in the push for Universal Basic Income (UBI). As AI and automation accelerate, his work—once seen as speculative—feels more prescient than ever. We sat down with Scott to explore the economic transformations ahead, the risks of inaction, and why UBI may be the most powerful idea for the 21st century economy. ## From Curiosity to Advocacy: Scott's Path to UBI Scott Santens didn't set out to become a leading policy voice. But in the early 2010s, a convergence of economic research, firsthand observations, and technological breakthroughs pushed him toward a singular idea: we need a new foundation for economic security. "I got into this back in 2013, and the route that I took was through technology and automation," Santens recalls. "At the time, no one was really talking about the impacts of automation." A conversation on Reddit about advancing technology sparked his interest, leading him to read "Manna" by Marshall Brain—a science fiction novella that presents two possible futures: one where we continue our current trajectory, and another where technology benefits everyone. This exploration led Santens to discover the rich history of basic income, from Thomas Paine's writings shortly after America's founding to Nixon's Family Assistance Plan, which passed the House twice in the late 1970s but never cleared the Senate. "I was fascinated to learn about the pilots that had gone on back then, both in the US and Canada, and then the pilots more recently all over the world," he explains. "They all pointed in the same direction—this is a good idea, it works." What began as an interest in technology's potential impacts evolved into a comprehensive understanding that basic income isn't just a future necessity—it's something "we actually should have done decades ago, if not centuries ago." ## **AI’s Economic Disruption & the Case for UBI** ### AI Isn't Just Another Industrial Shift We've seen automation reshape economies before—from mechanized agriculture to digital tools. But according to Santens, AI-driven automation is fundamentally different. "This time, we're not just automating physical labor or repetitive tasks—we're automating cognitive labor, decision-making, and even creativity." That shift, he argues, breaks the traditional cycle where technology destroys some jobs but creates new ones. With models like DeepSeek drastically lowering the cost of AI, Santens sees automation spreading faster and further than before. The release of ChatGPT in November 2022 was a pivotal moment for Santens. "I've been talking about this for a decade now, and it feels like it's arrived. This moment has arrived, and we're going to start seeing AI advance quickly, and we're going to start seeing economic displacement as a result." In response, he founded the [Income to Support All Foundation](https://www.itsafoundation.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) to accelerate projects addressing these technological changes. The rapid advancement of AI models like DeepSeek demonstrates how quickly capabilities are evolving, making it increasingly difficult to slow development. "We're ramping up one after the other after the other, and it makes it that much harder for any voice that's saying to slow things down to actually achieve that," Santens warns. "There will not be any slowing of this down." ### Productivity Without Prosperity In his viral article "[The Real Story of Automation](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-real-story-of-automation-beginning-with-one-simple-chart/)," Santens highlights a critical disconnect: economic productivity has soared, but the rewards haven't reached most people. "In general, I think people have a bad picture of the impacts of automation," he explains. "A key moment in US history was when productivity decoupled from wage growth. Prior to 1973, productivity grew with wages—they were linked together pretty well. Then in 1973, that stopped being true." Productivity continued to rise through computerization, but wages stagnated in comparison. The result has been massive inequality growth. "A study done in 2018 determined that because of inequality growth, $50 trillion that would have flowed to the bottom 90% as wages flowed mostly to the top 1%. They updated that analysis earlier this year, and now [it went from $50 to $79 trillion](https://truthout.org/articles/sanders-1-percent-has-sapped-79t-in-wealth-from-bottom-90-percent-since-1975/?ref=scottsantens.com)," Santens notes. "In 2018, the annual 'loss' was 2.3 trillion, and now per year it's 3.9 trillion." Santens argues that the real, existing impact of automation isn't mass unemployment but rather this staggering inequality. "That's what I want people to understand—don't only be looking for increases in unemployment rates. Look for increases in inequality and continued wage stagnation." ### Why Universal Basic Income? To Santens, UBI isn't just a policy idea—it's a necessary adaptation to our evolving economic reality. He describes UBI through a powerful framework: "It's the power to say no and the freedom to say yes." The "power to say no" provides bargaining power—the ability to refuse exploitative or degrading work because basic survival isn't at stake. This changes the fundamental nature of employment. "Work isn't really fully voluntary if we say, 'If you don't work, you deserve to starve.' It is voluntary if you have enough to survive and exist. Then employers actually pay you money to attract you to do the job," Santens explains. The "freedom to say yes" enables people to pursue meaningful work that might not pay well, volunteer in their communities, or develop creative talents. "Right now, when you look at jobs that are more meaningful or volunteer opportunities, you have to be able to afford to do them," he notes. Santens identifies three primary pathways through which UBI functions: reducing poverty, reducing insecurity, and reducing inequality. For poverty reduction, Santens argues that UBI is more effective than means-tested programs because it reaches everyone. "The best welfare program that we have is SNAP, otherwise known as food stamps, and that goes to about two out of three people in poverty," he says. Other programs reach even fewer eligible recipients—TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) reaches only one in five people in poverty. UBI also eliminates the high marginal tax rates that many welfare programs impose. "Imagine if someone was getting $1,000 per month, and they were offered a $1,000 per month job, and they took the job and they lose their original thousand dollars per month," Santens illustrates. "That's effectively a 100% tax rate. They're not earning any additional income." With UBI, people never lose their basic income when they earn more, which means "it always makes sense to earn that extra additional dollar." For economic insecurity, UBI creates a floor below which no one can fall. "If you got a $15,000 UBI floor and you're earning $25,000 a year, then now you're at $40,000 before taxes, and that's a much better place to be," Santens explains. "You also know that if you do lose your $25,000 job, you will only ever fall to 15,000\. You will not fall to zero." This security reduces chronic stress, improving mental and physical health, and even cognitive capacity. Studies have shown that relieving financial stress can improve cognitive performance by the equivalent of 13 IQ points. For inequality, UBI paired with progressive taxation can reverse the decades-long flow of wealth to the top 1%. "If you lift everyone up, you're providing more to the middle class too. You're not only boosting the bottom, you're boosting the middle, and you're pressing down on the top thanks to higher taxes," Santens says. ## The Critics: Can We Afford It? Will It Cause Inflation? The most common objections to UBI are concerns about cost, inflation, and work incentives. Santens tackles each head-on. Regarding cost, Santens argues that many misunderstand UBI's true financial impact: "A lot of people misunderstand the cost of universal basic income as its gross cost instead of its net cost." The gross cost would be the UBI amount multiplied by the number of recipients. But this doesn't account for the tax side of the equation. For many people in the middle class, increased taxes would offset their UBI payment, resulting in a neutral impact. "You can't count that as part of the cost because there's nothing happening there," Santens explains. The true cost of UBI is the difference between what net beneficiaries receive and what their taxes are. Depending on the details, the net cost is roughly a third of the gross cost. Santens also emphasizes that implementing UBI would allow for reforming or eliminating some existing welfare programs and tax expenditures, reducing the overall cost. One proposal he mentions would provide a $500 monthly UBI to everyone—adults and children—funded by just a 7% income surtax. Most importantly, Santens asks, "What does it cost to not do a basic income?" Poverty, chronic insecurity, and extreme inequality generate enormous costs in healthcare, crime, lost productivity, and human potential. "If we're spending $4 trillion on the downstream costs of poverty as a whole, and the net cost of basic income is $1.5 trillion, then that's a net benefit." On inflation, Santens acknowledges this as the strongest critique of UBI. "Inflation is definitely a concern to have, and you should plan around that in any implementation," he advises. Several factors influence potential inflationary pressure: the UBI amount, how it's funded (through taxes or deficit spending), which existing programs it replaces, and supply-side policies to ensure adequate housing, food, and other necessities. "You want to make sure that we do give people money to afford rent and mortgages, but then we've got to make sure that there's enough housing or else prices will go up," Santens explains. He suggests pairing UBI with policies like zoning reform to increase housing supply and land value taxes to encourage development. ## Steelmanning the Opposition When asked to present the strongest argument against UBI, Santens points to inflation concerns as the most legitimate critique—but one that can be addressed through careful policy design. The argument about work disincentives, however, isn't supported by evidence from UBI pilots. Research consistently shows minimal impact on work, with any reductions coming primarily from secondary earners (like parents of newborns) and young adults pursuing education. "If you look at Sam Altman's pilot, which showed about a 2% reduction in work, that works out to people working 15 minutes less per workday," Santens explains. "You can think of it as an 8-day paid leave per year, which still puts us below every other developed country." Alaska's Permanent Fund Dividend, running since 1982, demonstrates the long-term effects of a UBI-like program. Studies found a neutral impact on full-time employment (decreases balanced by job creation from increased spending) and a 17% increase in part-time work. In the Stockton, California pilot, recipients actually increased their full-time employment compared to non-recipients. "It costs money to work," Santens explains. "Maybe you need to buy a suit or take time off for an interview. With that cushion, you can take that job interview and hopefully get a better job." Beyond employment, UBI pilots have shown surprising benefits: Finland's experiment increased trust in government, institutions, and fellow citizens. In Canada's 1970s experiment, researchers measured an 8.5% reduction in hospitalizations, a 15% decrease in overall crime, and a 37% decrease in domestic violence. ## Can We Get There? The Politics of UBI Despite growing evidence supporting UBI, implementation remains a political challenge. Santens points to the failed effort to extend the expanded Child Tax Credit in 2021 as an illustration of the hurdles. "We had six months of the enhanced child tax credit. The average payment was going to about 90% of kids in the country, around $440 per month. It reduced child poverty by 40%," Santens recalls. "It should have been a no-brainer with child poverty costing as much as it does." Yet the program ended because of opposition from Republicans and Senator Joe Manchin, who expressed concerns about parents using the money for drugs—despite evidence showing parental drug use actually declined during the program. The core political obstacle, according to Santens, is a deeply held belief that assistance should be conditional on work. "Their logic is, if you're not doing anything to help yourself, then you don't deserve any help," he explains. Yet this principle is inconsistently applied. "It's not like they're trying to attach a work requirement to stock dividends or savings earned from giant piles of money," Santens points out. "If you have a bunch of money, you can put that in the bank or into stocks and earn all kinds of passive income, sit on the beach, and just have a great old life not doing any work at all. They don't care about that." ## The Future of Work—and Life—in a UBI World Looking toward implementation, Santens believes the logistics of administering UBI are straightforward. "We saw the IRS roll out the child tax credit immediately and highly successfully," he notes. "Social Security is always the other choice. They're very good at getting monthly checks out, and of course it'd be even easier if everyone's monthly check was the same amount." One innovative funding approach Santens suggests is creating a sovereign wealth fund that receives a small percentage of public company stocks each year. "Each company would put 1% of their stocks into this fund each year," he explains. "This fund would grow, and we as American citizens could actually benefit from stock market growth. We'd have skin in the game." This approach connects to Santens' view that all citizens should be seen as stakeholders in the economy, particularly as AI advances. "Who trained the AI? Our data did. It was all of our data—all the stories and text and every usage of all these platforms, images, books, songs, videos. We all made it," he argues. "That was our capital that we put into making this possible. We should see ourselves as stockholders." As we stand at the threshold of an AI-accelerated economy, Santens urges immediate action rather than waiting for mass displacement. "Are we going to wait till then to actually have a policy in place? I think that's unwise. We should get ahead of this and start doing this now." His final message is clear: "AI could double or triple productivity, but if we don't redesign how gains are distributed, we'll see even more concentration of wealth and power. Universal Basic Income isn't a utopian dream—it's a practical response to the world we're entering." --- *If you support my UBI advocacy, please share this post and click the subscribe button. Also *consider making a monthly pledge* in support of my work.* [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/03/button_support-my-work-on-patreon-2.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark, Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, John Steinberger, Laurel gillespie, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Robert Collins, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Steve Roth, Miki Phagan, Walter Schaerer, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun , S, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Braden Ferrin , Juro Antal, Austin Begin, Deanna McHugh, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Nikolaus Rath, and all my other supporters.* [***Become a monthly patron to see your name here too***](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com)***!*** ### What's the deal with the $5,000 'DOGE Dividend' checks? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/whats-the-deal-with-the-5000-doge-dividend-checks/ Last updated: 2025-02-22T00:02:48.000Z ### Is it like a stimulus check, or a tax credit, or even universal basic income? Read on. On February 18, 2025, a man named James Fishback (an advisor to the 'Department of Government Efficiency') shared his proposal [on X](https://x.com/j%5Ffishback/status/1891933120313663493?ref=scottsantens.com) (formerly Twitter) for what he calls a "[DOGE Dividend](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PTossggcz4%5FxV82LSv1DE9knYuPq-MG6/view?pli=1&ref=scottsantens.com)", to which Elon Musk replied that he'd check with Trump about it, and then Trump the following day said [he loved it](https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2025-02-19/trump-backs-idea-to-send-some-doge-savings-to-american-citizens?ref=scottsantens.com). Now, as I write this, a lot of people think they're about to get $5,000\. If you're one of the people hoping for that check, keep reading and please note that none of this is to endorse the cutting of everything that's being cut. First and foremost, the $5,000 number comes from being 20% of $2 trillion, which is the number that Elon Musk claimed that DOGE would eliminate in federal spending. That number is not a serious number. "It is completely impossible for DOGE to save $2 trillion," Jessica Riedl, an economist and senior fellow at the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute [told CBS](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/musk-trump-doge-dividend-check-refund-taxpayers-economists/?ref=scottsantens.com). "Two-thirds of the \[$6.3 trillion\] federal budget goes to Social Security, Medicare, defense, veterans and interest on the debt — all of which has been taken off the table by President Trump. Saving $2 trillion would require eliminating nearly every remaining federal program.” So right off the bat, if the DOGE dividend does happen, and it sticks to the plan of being 20% payment and 80% deficit reduction, the payment would be far less than $5,000\. As I write this, DOGE has cut around [$7.3 billion](https://www.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-and-doge-promised-up-to-2-trillion-in-government-savings-how-much-have-they-actually-saved-so-far-201718142.html?ref=scottsantens.com). If they manage to keep that rate up, it could mean $80 billion by the end of the year. The DOGE dividend check would be $202 with that amount of cuts, not $5,000. Next, most people appear to be assuming that the DOGE dividend checks are per person. They are not. As proposed, they are per household. So if there's two of you in your house, think of it as $2,500 per person. If five people, think of it as $1,000 per person. They are also not for all households. They are only meant for those households with incomes higher than the standard deduction, which is about $30,000 for a couple. This means that **the bottom 40% of all households would be excluded from the check**. There are about 131 million households in America and only 79 million of them would get a check based on this plan. That is very much by design. As Fishback explains in his proposal, "The conditional nature of the tax refund (available only to payers of federal income tax in CY 2025) incentivizes labor force participation because only net payers of federal income tax in CY 2025 are eligible to receive President Trump’s 'DOGE Dividend.'” By excluding everyone who doesn't earn enough income to owe taxes after subtracting the standard deduction from their gross earnings, the goal is to encourage everyone in the bottom 40% to work harder this year to earn more. If you believe that universal basic income is a good idea as I do, this isn't it. Where UBI lacks any income requirement, this would impose a large one and effectively label every American earning less than $30,000 as lazy and unworthy, no matter how many jobs they have, or how many hours a week they're working. **About 52 million households would get no DOGE Dividend**. It's hard to say how many of them voted for Trump, but it's likely somewhere around one-third of them based on exit polls and income data. Based on that estimate, **over 17 million Trump-voting households would get nothing under this plan**. This is a significant percentage of the 77 million people who voted for Trump considering how many households have more than one Trump voter. At first I thought this proposal was like a non-refundable tax credit where people would only receive $5,000 if they paid over $5,000 in federal taxes, and $1 if they paid $1, but no, it does appear that even if you only paid $1 in federal tax, your household would qualify for whatever the dividend amount ends up being. When would you get it? As proposed, those who do qualify for this payment would not receive it until after their taxes are filed next year. So if anyone is hoping to get a check this year, not only would it very likely not be anywhere near $5,000, you would not get it until after you file your taxes next year. I should also mention that Fishback claims that this idea [came to him in a dream](https://www.newsweek.com/james-fishback-investorwho-created-doge-stimulus-check-plan-2034116?ref=scottsantens.com), so that's interesting. Also interesting, the fact it's based on 20% of spending cuts is similar to my own belief that a UBI should be structured as a GDP dividend where 20% of GDP per capita is what flows to all citizens every month as their share of productivity growth. Whereas Fishback and Elon and Trump wish to create an incentive to cut federal spending, I wish to create an incentive to grow productivity. Whereas they want people to feel like they deserve a share of the government shrinking, I want people to feel like they deserve a share of the economy growing. As AI and robots begin performing more and more labor for us, they should literally work for all of us, especially since they were trained on our data and funded by our federal research dollars. Finally, I want people to consider the nature of a proposal like this. This is a one-time payment for the ending of many federal jobs doing all kinds of things for the foreseeable future. Is it worth a one-time $200 check to end incredibly valuable research that no business is ever going to do because it isn't profitable? Is it worth it to decimate IRS jobs that for every $1 generate $12 in tax revenue from the wealthiest Americans who already pay a lower tax rate than you? Is it worth it to hamper the ability of FEMA to respond to future disasters that impact you? Is it worth it to make your food less safe to eat and predatory businesses more free to deceive and defraud you out of far more than $200? One more thing. I will say that what's most interesting to me about the DOGE Dividend proposal is that it's clearly a popular idea to send people money and people are already excited about it. It's possible that the idea can grow into something else if popular enough. Maybe Trump's base will get angry about so many of them not getting it and as a result the proposal could be modified to be universal. That would set a precedent. Maybe the desire to create a check closer in size to $5,000, and per person instead of per household, would lead Trump to consider rebating tariff revenue or issuing a regular dividend from the sovereign wealth fund he's having created, just as Alaska does every year, and has since 1982. To me, those are silver linings of what I personally consider to be a disaster. --- *Want more content like this? Please share it and* [*click the subscribe button*](https://www.scottsantens.com/#/portal/signup)*. Also *consider making a monthly pledge* in support of my UBI advocacy work.* [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/03/button_support-my-work-on-patreon-2.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, John Steinberger, Bridget I Flynn, Laurel gillespie, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Robert Collins, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Steve Roth, Miki Phagan, Walter Schaerer, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun , Christopher Wroth, S, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Capitalists for Shared Income, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Braden Ferrin , Juro Antal, Austin Begin, Deanna McHugh, Stephen Castro-Starkey, and Nikolaus Rath.* [***Become a monthly patron to see your name here too***](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com)***!*** ### Top 10 Universal Basic Income Articles of 2024 URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/top-10-universal-basic-income-ubi-articles-of-2024/ Last updated: 2025-02-11T22:36:18.000Z As the editor of [Basic Income Today](https://basicincometoday.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) and a moderator for the [Basic Income subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/?ref=scottsantens.com), I read a lot of stuff every year about UBI, somewhere around 100 articles a month. Below, I've compiled a list of the top ten articles I consider my favorites out of everything published in 2024. --- *A big thanks to my monthly patrons who contribute to making this newsletter possible and free for everyone. If you find value in my writing and would like to support the creation of more content like this, please check out* [*my Patreon page*](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com)*.* --- 10) [**Is a Universal Basic Income System Even Possible?**](https://gizmodo.com/is-a-universal-basic-income-system-even-possible-2000469538?ref=scottsantens.com) by Lucas Ropek To start this list, check out this well-researched and well-balanced overview of universal basic income. Full disclosure, I was interviewed by Lucas to help inform this article, as was Karl Widerquist, so I'm willing to admit some bias on this one, but readers will see he also included multiple anti-UBI viewpoints. The discussion of the cost of UBI is spot-on in this one, which I think is one of the most important and correct takeaways for readers of this article. Here's where he gets into it: > The $2-3 trillion projections are just bad math. These simplistic calculations involve multiplying the number of people in America (roughly 330 million) by the average UBI output (approximately $10-12k). While they accurately assess the amount of money that would be involved in such a system, they aren’t accounting for the fact that most of that money will be exchanged via the tax system (many people will pay into it, but they will also get that money back, effectively nullifying the need to generate “new” revenue), meaning that the total amount of new revenue that the government actually needs to generate is only about $539 billion, or roughly 3 percent of GDP. He also gets into how Widerquist prefers (and I agree with this) a design where the bottom 70% see an income boost after taxes, and the top 10% would pay significantly more in taxes despite the UBI functioning as a large tax credit. This is a good article to keep bookmarked and share with people as a UBI intro. 9) [**Billionaire Backlash Shows the Power of Basic Income**](https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/5/27/billionaire-backlash-shows-the-power-of-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) by Neil Howard Again, full disclosure, this article is based on original research I did into the bills in red states looking to ban basic income pilots in those states. Neil made use of my findings to write this article about the billionaire backlash against all the positive findings from basic income pilots. It's really annoying when someone on the left claims that UBI is bad because capitalism. Clearly there are billionaires who really don't want it, and they are the same ones funding conservative think tanks who push for tax cuts for the rich. Neil ends his article with the following quote: > "The growing battle against basic income can be seen as a kind of a case study of hegemony at work, a classic example both of the tools the powerful use to maintain their position and the moments at which they choose to use them. For progressives, this can mean only one thing – that basic income might just be an idea whose time has come." 8) [**Income Support Policies and Firearm Violence Prevention: A Scoping Review**](https://web.archive.org/web/20241215041547/stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/127460) by Rowhani-Rahbar, Ali et al. This one isn't an article or essay but a study. More specifically, it's a scoping review to examine the current state of evidence on the relationship between income support policies and risk of firearm violence. Here's what it found: > "We found 4 studies; of those, 3 were conducted in the United States and 1 in Brazil. All 4 found associations of policy-relevant magnitude between income support policies and reductions in risk of inter-personal firearm violence." I want to make sure and emphasize this one for a couple reasons. First, we don't really know a lot about the science of gun violence because of how difficult the NRA has made it to collect the data surrounding gun violence in America. So it's really interesting to know about these four studies that point directly at universal basic income reducing gun violence. Second, the reason I want to uplift this is because it's one of the many studies that the second Trump administration has removed from the CDC website. The link for this one is thanks to archive.org. If you don't read the actual paper, here's four key quotes from each of the four studies: Study 1: "A one standard deviation (or 10.11%) increase in percentage of the precinct population receiving public assistance was associated with 10.53 fewer homicides per 100,000 for young adults and 2.9 fewer homicides per 100,000 for adults over the study period." Study 2: "Bolsa Familia coverage had the most pronounced effect on firearm homicides and in the anticipated direction. The investigators stated that while it may not help reduce the incidence of all homicides, \[the monthly cash program\] robustly reduces the incidence of firearm homicides specifically." Study 3: "A one standard deviation increase in welfare spending was associated with 14% lower firearm homicide rates." Study 4: "The \[$1,000 a month\] program was associated with reductions in firearm violence; they estimated there were 55% fewer firearm deaths and hospital visits for firearm injury as well as 43% fewer firearm crimes annually due to the program." 7) [**Participant Stories From the ORUS Basic Income Pilot**](https://www.openresearchlab.org/studies/unconditional-cash-study/participant-stories?type=text&ref=scottsantens.com) by OpenResearch Part of the 3-year OpenResearch basic income pilot was the gathering of qualitative data instead of just quantitative data. Participants were selected at random to provide personal stories of their experience with basic income. It's not possible to truly understand the impact of basic income in this pilot without reading these stories, and so I recommend reading all of them to gain a wider understanding of the data side of the pilot. Here's just one of the stories I want to highlight here: > "Four years before the program started, Lila was the victim of a horrific domestic violence attack. 'I got shot three times in my head, stabbed in the neck. I was completely paralyzed on the right side, totally blind. Um, some of it has come back and I've learned to like walk and stuff again, but that has definitely like affected my life so much.' As a result, she has PTSD, partial blindness and multiple complications, impairing her ability to drive, and making it difficult for her to work or live independently. She applied for disability benefits but was repeatedly denied. > When she learns she will be receiving $1,000 a month felt like it was replacing 'the disability that the government keeps refusing me.' Unable to work, she feels if it were not for the program, 'I probably would be homeless without it.' > 'It's allowed me to be able to not work but still be able to pay for everything I need to and focus fully on getting my mental health and school stuff figured out. It's a huge help.' In preparation for the end of the program she’s been building up her savings more and talking with lawyers to try once again to apply for disability benefits." Something you'll find over and over again in these randomly-selected stories is the ability that basic income provides recipients to flee abuse and also actually get some assistance from a system that has no real interest in giving them any. 6) [**Direct Cash Transfers 'Could Halve Child Poverty' in Oregon**](https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/direct-cash-transfers-could-halve-child-poverty-in-oregon-ubi-us-tax-rebate/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Antonio Gisbert This is an interview with the Antonio Gisbert, the lead guy behind the Oregon Rebate that voters in Oregon voted on in November 2024, where they ultimately decided against taxing big corporations more to provide a universal basic income to every Oregon resident. The election result was a disappointment, but this interview is not. Antonio does a great job of explaining why the cash was written to be as universal as possible, and how even if it fails, it's an important step in this conversation that isn't going to stop. It's unfortunate that voters fell for the messaging by big corporations that spent millions of dollars to convince Oregon voters that this would be bad for them, and it was frustrating to see Democratic leaders in the state agree. Most disappointing of all though was to see even fellow UBI advocates be against it for not being perfect in their eyes. Were I living in Oregon, I'd have voted YES. 5) [**Rentier Capitalism, the Precariat and Basic Income for China**](https://basicincome.org/news/2024/05/rentier-capitalism-the-precariat-and-basic-income-for-china/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Guy Standing This one is the text of a talk that Guy Standing gave in China. It's a fantastic class-based overview of where we are in history and why universal basic income is so important. Here's one excerpt: > "We are living in a transformational moment, a time of constant crisis, in which, to recall Karl Polanyi’s assessment of the 1920s, the world could either lurch into a dark night of authoritarianism, philistinism and neo-fascism or it could make a decisive turn into a new age of Enlightenment. At the moment, the first seems more likely. But it can be averted. The key point on which to concentrate is that we are living in an age of chronic uncertainty, in which crises pile into one another, plunging masses of people in almost every country deeper into social and economic insecurity, impoverishment, stress and ill-health." He ends by encouraging Xi Jinping to embrace UBI: > Basic income is not a panacea. But it is an imperative if society is to experience a reduction in all the ills of chronic economic and social uncertainty. In his speeches, President Xi has said dozens of times that income inequality must be reduced in China. In other parts of the world similar sentiments are expressed. Providing a basic income would be a powerful way of reducing the inequalities that could otherwise become explosive over the next decade. Let us promote it. 4) [**Confessions of a \[Former\] True Believer in Poverty Targeting**](https://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/blog/confessions-of-a-former-true-believer-in-poverty-targeting/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Stephen Kidd Stephen begins this fun essay explaining why universal programs are better than income-tested programs for the poor with the following: > "I have a confession to make: I used to be a true believer in poverty targeting. I know, it’s shocking to hear and difficult for me to admit, but we all, at some time, need to come face-to-face with the Truth Commission and confess our sins. One positive that comes from my dalliance with poverty targeting, however, is that I understand why many other true believers in poverty targeting maintain their devotion to the cult. So as not to be too hard on myself – and others in the same sinking boat – let’s admit that the poverty targeting ideology is highly seductive and it’s very easy to fall prey to its Loreleian charms." As someone who is constantly trying to get people to see why it's important for UBI to be universal, I really enjoyed this essay from the perspective of someone who didn't initially believe that, but came around to it. He summarizes what he now believes here: > "I’ve learnt a lot more about the pros and cons of poverty targeting and universality. I now know that the only way to ***reach*** the poorest members of society and leave no-one behind is through universality, [while poverty targeting always has high exclusion errors](https://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/publications/hit-and-miss-an-assessment-of-targeting-effectiveness-in-social-protection/?ref=scottsantens.com). I have learnt that universality promotes dignity and the rights of the individual, while poverty targeting can undermine them. I’ve realized that the main driver of poverty targeting is a desire to keep costs down and thereby reduce taxes, in particular on the rich... So I’m now convinced that if countries wish to effectively reduce poverty, invest in their children, offer dignity to all, build cohesive societies and strong social contracts, grow government revenues and generate sustainable economic growth, it is essential for those countries to establish universal, lifecycle social security systems that protect everyone from the cradle to the grave." Spot-on. It's great to have Stephen on Team Universality. 3) [**UBI Could Mean Justice For Everyone. How Do We Get There?**](https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/ubi-could-mean-justice-for-everyone-how-do-we-get-there-uk-poverty/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Philippe van Parijs It's always great to read something new written by Philippe, who is widely regarded as the Godfather of UBI. In this interview he explains how to explain to others why basic income should be universal and why it should be unconditional. He also goes into how he looks at the pilots going on and what he thought of the results of Sam Altman's basic income pilot and what kind of UBI it makes sense to push for first. Here's his own take on why universality is important and why refundable tax credit framing might be helpful: > "There is a constant job of explaining again and again that giving money to everyone, even the rich, is not better for the rich but it is better for the poor. That is not obvious, but it’s true. Why? Because the UBI needs to be funded, and the high earners will pay for their own UBI and more. Because the automatic nature of universal transfers increases the chance that the poor will actually get what they are entitled to. Universality makes it much harder to be excluded or to fall through the cracks. Because those just below the cut-off line won’t be trapped into poverty by the threat of losing means-tested benefits if they find a job. And because a universal transfer does not stigmatize the poor in the way a targeted transfer does. To get around this impression, however, sometimes we must realize that the best way to reach a basic income is to present it as a refundable tax credit rather than as a paycheck. As simply reducing the taxation of the rich and poor alike, with a cash transfer to those whose tax liability is less than the credit." 2) [**Why Wait Until the Robots Take Our Jobs? We Need a Basic Income Now**](https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/why-wait-until-the-robots-take-our-jobs-we-need-a-basic-income-now/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Karl Widerquist This would be my favorite article of the year simply because I agree with it all so strongly, save for the wonderful creativity in what I decided was my top favorite. In this article, Karl does a marvelous job of explaining the immediate need for UBI from a technological impact on employment angle, as opposed to the typical belief that such an argument only exists in the future. Here's his reasoning that I 100% agree with as being key: > "One of the central reasons we all need UBI is that most of us haven’t shared the benefits that automation and economic growth have created over the last 40 or 50 years. From the 1930s to the mid-1970s, median income tended to rise at about the same pace as national income, as measured by gross domestic product. This indicates that most people were sharing some of the economic benefits of growth. But since then, most of the benefits of economic growth have gone to the top 1% of the population, and living standards of 99% have stagnated." UBI should be seen as a GDP dividend and we should have started receiving it in the 1970s when GDP growth began to only flow to the top. As AI grows GDP even further, it's even more important to start distributing this dividend immediately and no one should see it as charity or in any way undeserved. 1) [**The Promises of Elusive Maharanis, and No-Strings-Attached Money**](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/tasting-economics/the-promises-of-elusive-maharanis-and-no-strings-attached-money/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Abhijit Banerjee My favorite article of the year is this one by Nobel prize-winning economist Abhijit Banerjee for the Times of India. What I love about it so much is how he turns the tables on the all-too-common fear that people will waste UBI on alcohol. He begins his article with a tale from his youth when he was 6 or 7 at a New Year's Eve party. You know, those parties where pretty much everyone drinks alcohol. He was told that some royalty would be at the party, and his guess was a woman who asked for "another gin and tonic." He makes sure to summarize the first results from the ongoing 12-year UBI experiment that he's working on. > "We now have some results from this study, from exactly the point where the two-year intervention ends. And the results do not disappoint. For one, there is no evidence that getting UBI makes people lazy. **They work more overall, not less, though the difference is small**. They do cut back on working for others but instead are working more on their own projects. The number of non-farming businesses (think shops, eating places) associated with these villages is almost a third higher than the villages where no intervention happened, and the number of farming businesses (think poultry, goat-herding) goes up too. As a result, **earnings are about 20% higher than in the control villages**. The fact that the 12-year UBI money is there for the foreseeable future seems to have made the villagers better able or more willing to take on something new. They also eat better, are less depressed and more likely to say that they are happy." What truly uplifts this article to my number one of 2024 is how he ends it: > "As an economist, my first instinct is to resist the question of whether they are wasting the money, say on drinks or cigarettes. After all, I am answerable to no one when I buy myself a bottle of wine. Indeed, it might even be seen as cool, as evidence that I know the good life. So why should poor people be asked that question? But the world wants that answer (and I guess with anything addictive there are real risks as well) so we collected data on various measures of alcohol consumption. The evidence at one level is clear — **the fraction of villagers who say they drink every day goes down and significantly so with the 12-year UBI**. The question is whether they are just saying it to make us happy. To get around that, we also asked if others in the village were drinking too much and creating an issue for them, so that they have the option of staying “pure”. Again, **what we see in the data is good news — problem drinking goes down**. On the other hand, sales at the local liquor stores are up. But that might be because people are buying fancier forms of alcohol rather than getting drunk on home-brew. This being a new year, I will make the more optimistic assumption and head out to buy a few bottles for our party. He concludes with a photo and recipe for a cucumber mint cocktail he enjoys. I love that so much. I think it's brilliant how he began his article with a story about New Year's Eve and potential royalty drinking alcohol, and ends with a cocktail recipe, and uses that to sandwich some data. Yes, drinking and drug use tends to go down with UBI, but also, anyone claiming to care about that is a hypocrite if they also personally enjoy drinking a nice glass of wine or a cocktail. As for me, I enjoy a nice martini made using Barr Hill gin, shaken, and served up with two olives. --- I hope you find this list helpful and if you want to try to avoid missing any great articles about UBI in 2025, consider a daily visit to [BasicIncomeToday.com](https://basicincometoday.com/?ref=scottsantens.com), subscribing to [monthly UBI news updates](https://itsanewsletter.beehiiv.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) from [ITSA Foundation](https://www.itsafoundation.org/?ref=scottsantens.com), and following [@ScottSantens](https://linktr.ee/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) on Bluesky, YouTube, and everywhere else I am where you are too. --- *Want more content like this? Please share it and* [*click the subscribe button*](https://www.scottsantens.com/#/portal/signup)*. Also *consider making a monthly pledge* in support of my UBI advocacy work.* [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/03/button_support-my-work-on-patreon-2.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, John Steinberger, Bridget I Flynn, Laurel gillespie, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Robert Collins, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Steve Roth, Miki Phagan, Walter Schaerer, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun , Christopher Wroth, S, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Capitalists for Shared Income, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Braden Ferrin , Juro Antal, Austin Begin, Deanna McHugh, Stephen Castro-Starkey, and Nikolaus Rath.* [***Become a monthly patron to see your name here too***](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com)***!*** ### The Hidden Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing — And How to Reverse It URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-hidden-reasons-authoritarianism-is-growing-and-how-to-reverse-it-ubi/ Last updated: 2024-12-12T19:20:06.000Z **It takes all kinds.** Humanity would have never made it this far without a multitude of people with a wide diversity of personality types and preferences. It is our individual differences wherein lies our strength as a society, but my belief in the truth of that statement is also in polar opposition to those who disagree with individuality and diversity and prefer oneness and sameness. This core disagreement does not make them bad people. It makes them different than me, and that's not only okay, it's important, however annoying it can be, and how scary it can be when it comes to elections. But we do need to recognize *why* some people are the way they are and why they vote the way they do, and in what *environments* they vote the way they do, because we also need to recognize that Trump is the *effect*, not the cause, and how important universal basic income is, and universalism in general is, to the future of democracies around the world. ### A Village of Steadfasts and Explorers Before we get into the politics of this argument, let's first go back in time, way back before agriculture, and think about a small band of humans that includes you and me. We've set up a small encampment and a perimeter. Outside the perimeter is the unknown. Beyond that boundary lies danger. It's where THEY are, whatever THEY may be. THEY can be a dangerous animal, or another human that could cause US harm. We care about the safety of US. We need to protect OUR people. But if we're going to advance, we also have to explore the unknown. This is where two primary type of humans come into play - steadfasts and explorers. Steadfasts stay inside the perimeter. Explorers venture outside the perimeter. We will always need someone who really cares about the perimeter, who is primed to detect an outsider and sound the alarm. We will always need the person who really cares about the safety and well-being of the community. We will also always need someone to venture outside the perimeter into the great unknown, who loves to explore despite the risk of injury and death that lies in the great unknown. We will always need the person who seeks out newness even if it actually endangers the community, because with that danger also comes the opportunity of progress. It's this kind of push and pull between two types of human worldviews that lies at the heart of our stories as a species for thousands of years. Joseph Campbell described it as the "monomyth" and wrote about it in [*The Hero With a Thousand Faces*](https://amzn.to/3ABkL0c?ref=scottsantens.com) which in turn inspired storytellers like George Lucas when creating Star Wars. Village elders and perimeter watchers are important. They want the village to survive which requires protecting the status quo and keeping out dangers, but it's the hero who ventures into the unknown and brings back some new truth that improves the status quo. This new status quo will then be protected by the elders and perimeter watchers until the next successful hero's journey. **Change isn't always good**. The explorer can rouse a new enemy or bring back a virus that wipes out the village. They can also find a new friend or bring back a cure that saves the village. **Lack of change isn't always good either**. Those who fight against change can in some cases save the village, but in others they can lead to its end in their pursuit of stasis that prevents adaptation. Which is which simply depends, and sometimes isn't known until long after something has changed or remained the same. Fast forward to the present day with that wisdom of the importance of those focused on the maintaining of the safety of the village and those who love exploring the unknown and meeting new people and seeking novelty. Everyone can be considered as existing somewhere along this personality spectrum where on the one end, there's an extremely strong preference for uniformity and an insistence upon group authority, and on the other end where there's an extremely strong preference for difference and an insistence upon individual autonomy. Most of us exist somewhere between these two extremes. All of us are predisposed from birth and our childhoods to be somewhere along this spectrum. As we age and experience things like college and international travel, our location on this spectrum can shift a bit, and environmental factors that impact cognitive capacity can impact our predispositions too, but for the most part, where we exist on this spectrum is an unchanging part of who we are as individual humans, and [about half of it is inherited](https://hopenothate.org.uk/2020/11/01/authoritarianism/?ref=scottsantens.com). If you're curious about where YOU exist on this spectrum, here's a few questions to consider that are used to measure your worldview. Do you enjoy trying new foods or do you enjoy sticking with what you already love? Do you enjoy a variety of foods from all over the world or do you prefer a few standards like meat and potatoes? When it comes to your kids, whether you have any or not, would you prefer they be independent or respect their elders? Would you prefer they be obedient or self-reliant? Would you prefer they be curious or well-mannered? In general, if you enjoy new stuff, and variety, and the thought of your kids being independent and curious and self-reliant, you exist towards the "libertarian" side or "open" end of this spectrum. If you enjoy the stuff you already enjoy, and the consistency of it, and the thought of your kids being obedient and respecting their elders and being well-mannered, you exist towards the "authoritarian" side or "closed" end of this spectrum. It's important to understand that there is no passing or failing these questions. Don't be thrown off by the labels of libertarian or authoritarian. These are just labels to describe a way of existing as a human being. Remember, we need both types. We can't just have a village full of explorers who refuse to stay in the village or a village full of steadfasts who refuse to explore. We need them both existing together and each doing their things in a balanced way. Our predisposition isn't the only thing that matters though. Who we are interacts with our environment and under certain conditions of "safety", authoritarians and libertarians are hard to differentiate from each other without testing them with the previously mentioned questions about personal preferences. Under other certain conditions of "threat", both authoritarians and libertarians become "activated" and begin insisting on exact opposite things which only further activate each other. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/11/authoritarian-dynamic.jpg) Source: The Authoritarian Dynamic ### How To Activate Authoritarians What we think of as the demands and behaviors of authoritarians occur whenever authoritarians deem them necessary, which is when they consider the normative order of overall oneness and sameness to be sufficiently threatened. According to [Dr. Karen Stenner](https://www.karenstenner.com/?ref=scottsantens.com), a political psychologist and behavioral economist who wrote the book on the authoritarian dynamic, "*the conditions most threatening to oneness and sameness are 'questioned or questionable authorities and values': that is, disrespect for leaders or leaders unworthy of respect, and lack of conformity to or consensus in group values, norms, and beliefs*." In other words, a great way to activate authoritarians is everything Trump has been repeating for a decade. When those with authoritarian predispositions feel let down by institutions, leaders and compatriots, or when they feel like “we can't agree on anything anymore”, or that “we’ve lost the things that once made us great,” all of that is highly threatening. It arouses anger. It activates authoritarians and causes them to seek certain measures that the rest of us consider to be extreme. Once authoritarians are activated, this is what tends to happen: political demands for authoritative constraints on behavior. If your heart yearns for conformity and consensus, you must allow the coercion and constraint needed to achieve it. This typically includes legal discrimination against minorities and restrictions on immigration; limits on free speech, assembly, and association; and the regulation of moral behavior, for example, via policies regarding religion, abortion, censorship, and LGBTQ people; and the punitive enforcement of law and order. If that list looks familiar, it should. The MAGA movement basically has the entire list as their platform. **The MAGA movement is an authoritarian movement**. This is not to say it's somehow evil. If authoritarianism as a label feels a bit much, it may be better thought of as “difference-ism”. They want oneness and sameness. It's important to understand that Trump may have helped further activate already activated authoritarians, and may have activated those who weren't yet activated, but for the most part, MAGA is a response to what existed before Trump came along, and will remain after Trump's political career is over and done, for as long as they remain threatened by lack of oneness and sameness. There's something else that's important to understand too. It's that authoritarians exist on both the political right and left, and that status quo conservatives also exist on the right and left. It is not accurate to say there are two kinds of people: Democrats and Republicans. As authoritarians have become activated, they have gone toward the Republican party, and as the Republican party has become more authoritarian, status quo conservatives have gone toward the Democratic Party. There is a political realignment going on, and it's partly driven by the difference between status quo conservatives and authoritarian conservatives. ### The Conservatives Who Will Save Democracy According to Stenner's research, there are three types of conservatives: laissez-faire conservatives, authoritarian conservatives, and status quo conservatives. To be conservative, in general, is to prefer the status quo to not change. But there are different ways of disliking change. One is to dislike change over space, and the other is to dislike change over time. Imagine for example that for a decade, everyone has agreed to wear red hats. Both authoritarians and status quo conservatives would be really happy with that. But authoritarians would also be perfectly happy if tomorrow everyone started wearing blue hats, because everyone would be wearing the same color. They value conformity. Status quo conservatives would be horrified. You can't just decide on a dime to switch hat colors! They would not at all abide the swiftness of that change. It is this difference that makes status quo conservatives defenders of democracy against authoritarianism. This is what is driving those like Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney, and [so many of the conservatives](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republicans-endorsing-kamala-harris-2024/?ref=scottsantens.com) who served in Trump's cabinet or elsewhere in his administration, to have pushed to elect Harris over Trump. Their interest is not oneness and sameness, but to preserve the United States as a representative democracy. Their interest as traditional conservatives is to preserve the traditions of the village. They are not interested in the major changes sought by authoritarian conservatives. This makes them natural allies to those who exist in the middle or on the opposite side of the authoritarian spectrum. Again, none of this is to suggest that those with authoritarian predispositions are the enemy. Remember, they exist in every political party. There are authoritarian leftists too. They are the ones pushing for oneness and sameness and wanting to enforce it. If you've ever encountered someone on the left who polices language and insists everyone on the left must be on the same page, who seem very willing to wield group authority to coerce behavior, they may be an authoritarian and want laws to prevent a diversity of viewpoints. According to Stenner, two-thirds of leftist authoritarians who were activated by perceived normative threats flipped to the GOP in 2016\. That's why so many Bernie supporters became Trump supporters. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/11/authoritarianism-population-1.png) Source: Karen Stenner Authoritarians can embrace big changes quickly. That can be extremely important in times when status quo conservatives are fighting against necessary changes. Because authoritarians seek oneness and sameness, universal policies can be very appealing to them because they treat everyone the same. They can absolutely get behind policies like universal healthcare and universal basic income. Big policy changes can be much more difficult for traditional conservatives to get behind. The problem with authoritarians comes from their activation and their insistence on policies that can hurt a lot of people they consider to be THEM instead of US. So the question becomes, is it possible to deactivate authoritarians? Yes, it is. ### How to Deactivate Authoritarians Remember, it's normative threats that activate authoritarians, and authoritarians care a lot about the group as a whole. In a series of fascinating experiments done by Stenner, authoritarians were deactivated by normative reassurance and by expanding the group to include THEM. It's also possible to slightly tweak the authoritarian predisposition itself. Normative reassurance is the opposite of normative threat. Authoritarians want to believe WE are doing great and that WE are ALL on the SAME page. Trump is activating authoritarians by repeatedly claiming that the country sucks, and that the economy sucks, and that we're being invaded by immigrants, and that where we used to all be Americans, we no longer are. Now it's the true Americans and the "enemy within." Messages that convey how great the US is doing compared to other countries are reassuring. "Our economy is great. We're number one! We're all Americans and that makes us special." Those are appealing messages to authoritarians that help deactivate them. They are smart messages for Kamala Harris to embrace. The feeling that we can't agree on anything anymore is a threat to authoritarians that has arisen from the internet itself and social media. It was reassuring to authoritarians when there were three TV channels. That became cable and then YouTube and now TikTok. I believe the internet itself has been activating authoritarians, which is a tougher problem to handle. If we no longer agree on reality and instead split into those who care about reality and those who believe in conspiracy theory nonsense, that activates authoritarians. This is one of the reasons it's important to moderate social media platforms like X. It is bad to massively amplify misinformation and disinformation. What I think is the most fascinating of Stenner's experiments were her experiments that explored the expansion of the in-group to include the out-group. In one experiment, she tested what would happen if people were led to believe NASA had discovered we were not alone in the universe and that aliens were real and entirely unlike humans. Suddenly seeing all humankind as being US, and THEM being actual aliens elsewhere in the galaxy led to authoritarians expressing less racism. **Their measured racial intolerance dropped by half**. So an effective way of deactivating authoritarians is to encourage people to think of all humankind as having a shared human experience. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/11/aliens-and-authoritarianism.jpg) Source: The Authoritarian Dynamic If all authoritarians were to travel into space and look back at the planet, I think many authoritarians would be permanently deactivated. The [overview effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview%5Feffect?ref=scottsantens.com) is no small thing. The more you think of humans all being in the same village called Earth, the harder it is to treat any human as an invader. Shared experience is also how to deactivate authoritarians. Extreme inequality is a normative threat. Reducing inequality is a form of normative reassurance. A big, strong, middle class is reassuring. A suburb full of nice houses that all look the same is paradise for authoritarians. One of the biggest reasons we're facing rising authoritarianism is because we let inequality grow so large. As the middle class shrank and those with authoritarian predispositions looked around their neighborhoods and saw factories disappear and their neighbors get left behind as others appeared to get richer and richer, authoritarians got activated. Because the authoritarian predisposition is partly inherited and partly about one's cognitive capacity to handle complexity, it's also possible to reduce authoritarian expression by increasing people's ability to handle complexity. There are a few ways of doing this. One is to teach people ways of better handling complexity. This is what stuff like a solid education and college does. Think of this like installing additional RAM in your computer. Another is to remove background applications that are sucking up resources. Insecurity sucks up resources and reduces our ability to handle complexity. This is [another reason why universal basic income is important](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2203149119?ref=scottsantens.com). Part of the reason conspiracy theories have grown in popularity is because they're a cognitive shortcut. No need to worry about all the impacts of the climate crisis when there is no climate crisis and it's just fake. Finally, another way to increase the ability to handle complexity is just to shrink the number of options a bit. Having too many options can be overwhelming to authoritarians. It is very important to the present and future of democracy in America that we all come to better understand the authoritarian dynamic and embrace the ways of reassuring authoritarians instead of activating them. Government needs to actually work. Politicians need to be trustworthy. The American experience needs to be more universal, full of universal policies like UBI and M4A and greater equality in general. Public education needs to better help people handle the complexity of modern life, and include universal college as an option. Messaging needs to be more "e pluribus unum" oriented. Out of many, one. Liberty and justice for all. We are all Americans. Does it suddenly make more sense why QAnon embraced "Where we go one, we go all?" They crave that stuff. As for me, as you can probably tell by my intense interest in all of this and how important I believe it is to deactivate authoritarians, I am on the far opposite side of the spectrum. As authoritarianism rises, I get more and more defensive of individual freedom and diversity, and because universal basic income achieves both individual freedom and diversity as well as greater oneness and sameness, it is yet another reason I consider it to be so incredibly important. ### A Final Warning Rising authoritarianism is not just going to go away with the defeat of Trump. It's a global phenomenon arising from the increasing complexity of 21st century life; the inherent diversity of opinions within multi-racial liberal democracies; rising inequality; immigration due to climate change, war, and bad governance; the internet and social media; the failure of education systems to adapt to the internet and social media; and the failed policies of politicians who simply refuse to care about people's basic Maslow needs or who insist on targeting over universality. Our world is only going to continue growing more complex and diverse, and with the climate crisis and artificial intelligence, we really need to start making a point of minimizing authoritarian activation, lest [fascism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Luu1Beb8ng&ref=scottsantens.com) take hold in such fertile soil. To those who made it to the end of this who truly care about representative democracy and who dislike the many common ways that authoritarianism expresses itself and causes great harms to out-groups, please heed this essay. --- If you found this essay interesting or even fascinating, I recommend reading [*The Authoritarian Dynamic*](https://amzn.to/3UBv7Ea?ref=scottsantens.com) by Stenner. Other books I read as research for this essay include [*Open Versus Closed*](https://amzn.to/3Ao1cbP?ref=scottsantens.com) by Johnston, Lavine, and Federico, [*Prius or Pickup*](https://amzn.to/3ABfOV9?ref=scottsantens.com) by Hetherington and Weiler, and [*The Way Out*](https://amzn.to/3YRibwn?ref=scottsantens.com) by Coleman. I recommend reading any of them and all of them. --- [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/03/button_support-my-work-on-patreon.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, John Steinberger, Bridget I Flynn, Laurel gillespie, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Robert Collins, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Miki Phagan, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun , Christopher Wroth, S, Jocelyn Hockings, Kara Gillies, Faith Stanhope, Mark Donovan, Capitalists for Shared Income, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Thomas Fitzsimmons, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Braden Ferrin , Juro Antal, Austin Begin, Deanna McHugh, Nikolaus Rath, chris heinz, Zachary Weaver, Justin Seifert, Rosa Tran, bradzone, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, Tim , Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Kev Roberts, Nicolas Pouillard, Walter Schaerer, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, and Laura Ashby.* ### Income To Support All Foundation Reaches $1.5 Million Fundraising Goal, Fully Funding Two Groundbreaking UBI Projects URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/itsa-foundation-reaches-fundraising-goal-for-groundbreaking-ubi-projects/ Last updated: 2024-10-28T13:05:34.000Z **FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE** *Washington, DC, October 25, 2024* – The [Income To Support All Foundation](https://www.itsafoundation.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) (ITSA), founded by globally renowned Universal Basic Income (UBI) expert [Scott Santens](https://www.scottsantens.com/), is proud to announce the successful completion of its $1.5 million fundraising goal for 2024\. This milestone was achieved through a generous $500,000 grant and a matching $500,000 donation contingent upon raising an additional $500,000, which was accomplished with smaller grants from mission-aligned nonprofits and the help of individual supporters. Approaching its third year of operation, ITSA Foundation remains committed to its mission “to support ambitious projects that help realize a foundation of unconditional universal basic income (UBI) through research, storytelling, and implementation.” After raising $53,000 in its first year, the Foundation’s success in hitting this year’s ambitious fundraising goal reflects remarkable growth in both reach and fundraising capacity. **Groundbreaking UBI Projects Set to Launch in 2025** Thanks to the successful fundraising efforts, ITSA will fully fund [two key UBI initiatives](https://www.itsafoundation.org/our-projects?ref=scottsantens.com) for release in 2025: \- *Bootstraps*: A docuseries that chronicles the lives of 11 households across the United States receiving a basic income of $1,000 per month per adult and $333 per month per child for 2.5 years between 2018 and mid-2020\. Through ethical journalism and intimate human stories, the visionary series by Emmy award-winning director [Deia Schlosberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deia%5FSchlosberg?ref=scottsantens.com) explores the potentially transformative impact of UBI. \- Comingle: A software platform that will enable community members to create a weekly basic income for themselves and others. Through a small flat percentage fee automatically deducted from members' incomes, the platform aims to foster community-driven mutual support and establish a baseline income floor for all who join. It also aims to be a new tool for charities to utilize in next-generation continuous UBI pilots as well as rapid and enduring disaster response. **Sustained Growth and Future Expansion** In addition to surpassing its 2024 fundraising goal, ITSA has also secured its own foundational basic income of six figures per month in recurring donations. This ongoing support will allow ITSA to scale its impact, spearhead future UBI initiatives, and grow into a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing Universal Basic Income on a multimillion-dollar scale in the United States through hard data, powerful storytelling, and practical implementation in the private sector, independently of the government. Former presidential candidate [Andrew Yang](https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxA%5Fr3EysrSqjRczedHfsp%5FpK9Nqbi1%5FX3?ref=scottsantens.com), a well-known proponent of UBI with his signature $1,000-a-month Freedom Dividend, has expressed strong support for the Foundation. During a recent Q&A, Yang was asked how he would spend $1 billion and named direct cash giving as one of his top three priorities. When describing which charitable organizations he would back, he said: “Internationally, it's GiveDirectly, domestically I'm going to call out Scott Santens' ITSA Foundation because they are very small, scrappy, and pure, and they're genuine.” "We are thrilled with the outpouring of support and belief in our mission," said Scott Santens. "2024 has been a transformative year for us, and with the projects we’re bringing to life, we are one step closer to building a world where economic freedom is secured for one and all." For more information or to get involved, please visit itsafoundation.org. **About The Income To Support All Foundation** Founded in March 2023 by Scott Santens, the Income To Support All Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to supporting innovative Universal Basic Income projects that rely on research, storytelling, or direct implementation. ITSA Foundation's vision is to create a world where economic security and freedom are a reality for everyone. --- *Media Contact:* *Scott Santens* *media@itsafoundation.org* --- ### Introducing "The Basic Income Show" on YouTube URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/introducing-the-basic-income-show-on-youtube/ Last updated: 2024-09-17T21:07:52.000Z After [29 episodes of the ITSA Live!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17-rRsLr%5FX4&list=PLrF7vwddTTzTWpvVvsCwrmwlg5k%5Fv2zpV&ref=scottsantens.com) weekly audio-only chat I've been hosting on Twitter on Wednesdays alongside my co-hosts Conrad Shaw and Josh Worth, we decided to switch to a new video format and a new name. Similar to what we've been doing, we'll focus on discussing recent developments in the basic income world and invite occasional special guests to talk about basic income from different perspectives and contexts. In this first episode we introduce our new AI-generated (but human written) theme song and talk about the new FOX/Hulu animated series "Universal Basic Guys" before moving on to talking about the debate in the UK about their Winter Fuel Payments they just decided to means-test. Next we talk about the arms race that seems to be taking shape around expanding the child tax credit, and finally we discuss the fact that both Trump and Biden support a U.S. sovereign wealth fund. This first episode was not live-streamed, but future episodes will be and will be simulcast on my [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com), [Twitter/X](https://twitter.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com), [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/scottsantens), and [Twitch](https://www.twitch.tv/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) accounts. Live listeners will be able to reply to us in real-time, and we will also be able to have the occasional listener step up and join our discussion. For those who want to watch and listen live, we'll aim to continue doing these on Wednesdays at 12pm ET. Every episode will always end up on my YouTube channel in edited form like this first one, so please be sure to subscribe to the channel, and if you'd like to listen live, please subscribe to whichever account you'd prefer to catch them on. We look forward to having some great guests and discussions in the weeks and months and perhaps even years ahead, and I hope you enjoy the new format! --- *Want more content like this? Please share it and* [*click the subscribe button*](https://www.scottsantens.com/did-sam-altman-basic-income-experiment-succeed-or-fail-ubi/#/portal/signup)*. Also *consider making a monthly pledge* in support of all my work.* [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/03/button_support-my-work-on-patreon.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Special thanks to my monthly supporters*: Gisele Huff*, *Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, John Steinberger, Bridget I Flynn, Laurel gillespie, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Robert Collins, Joanna Zarach, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Miki Phagan, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun , Christopher Wroth, S, Jocelyn Hockings, Kara Gillies, Faith Stanhope, Mark Donovan, Capitalists for Shared Income, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Thomas Fitzsimmons, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Braden Ferrin , Juro Antal, Austin Begin, Deanna McHugh, Nikolaus Rath, chris heinz, Zachary Weaver, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, bradzone, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, Tim, Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Kev Roberts, Nicolas Pouillard, Walter Schaerer, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, and Laura Ashby.* ### Did Sam Altman's Basic Income Experiment Succeed or Fail? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/did-sam-altman-basic-income-experiment-succeed-or-fail-ubi/ Last updated: 2024-08-02T14:28:39.000Z ### An article to better inform the discussion of the results of the OpenResearch unconditional basic income pilot experiment [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/05/button_this-article-is-reader-supported.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) If you enjoy this free article, please consider sharing it with others, subscribing to my blog, and becoming a monthly supporter of my work on Patreon [The results](https://www.openresearchlab.org/findings?ref=scottsantens.com) of one of the biggest basic income experiments ever came out in July 2024, and as usual, the nuances of the findings are lost among the voices of those loudly proclaiming basic income doesn't work. This one is the three-year pilot of Sam Altman's that provided $1,000 a month to 1,000 people in Texas and Illinois and compared that group to a control group of 2,000 people who got $50 a month. Every participant was between the ages of 21 and 40\. In this article, I will explain the nuances and how the results of this pilot provide some new info but mostly replicate the findings of previous experiments going back to the 1970s and only further demonstrate that what's at stake here is real freedom and the perceived danger it poses to those who benefit from the widespread lack of that freedom. Before we get into the results, for those who aren't already familiar with prior findings, here's the conclusion of [a peer-reviewed 2020 study of 38 studies](https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9459?ref=scottsantens.com): > "Despite a detailed search, we have not found any evidence of a significant reduction in labor supply. Instead, we found evidence that labor supply increases globally among adults, men and women, young and old, and the existence of some insignificant and functional reductions to the system such as a decrease in workers from the following categories: Children, the elderly, the sick, those with disabilities, women with young children to look after, or young people who continued studying. These reductions do not reduce the overall supply since it is largely offset by increased supply from other members of the community." It's important to understand that the above conclusion includes what are called "saturation" pilots where entire communities receive basic income instead of only individuals spread across a large area. When basic income is provided to people here and there, local economies aren't stimulated by the spending of the money and new jobs aren't created by employers needing to hire more employees to meet higher demand. It's one thing to provide money to an entrepreneur. It's another to do that and also provide their business lots of customers with money to spend. Here's another important thing to consider: imagine a group of one hundred people where half of them slap you twice and the other half don't slap you at all. The average is one slap per person. Is it fair to treat everyone as if each of them slapped you because the average was one per person? Hold on to that thought. With all that covered in advance, here are the headline findings from this huge and very impressively ran and researched two-state basic income pilot, and what I believe is the proper context to understand these results as [a UBI expert](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqJq9pnZxDc&ref=scottsantens.com). Employment can increase or decrease along two measures: the binary state of working a job or not and the number of hours worked. On average, those who got basic income were two percentage points less likely to be employed and worked about 1.3 fewer hours per week. These two numbers are basically where many UBI opponents and skeptics claim with triumph that this pilot was a failure. But let's go deeper to gain a better understanding of what these numbers tell us. ### The Context First, it's important we recognize the starting point of this pilot. The payments started getting received in late 2020 when unemployment due to the pandemic was right around its peak. The control group started slightly more employed than the treatment group, and both groups greatly increased their employment. By the end of the three years in late 2023, the control group remained slightly above the treatment group. By any measure, it's clear just from looking at the chart that basic income did not reduce the employment of people in any way that should be considered a cautionary tale. The employment of both groups greatly increased. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/07/quarterly_employment_est.webp) A weekly drop of 1.3 hours works out to about 15 minutes a workday. That's an extra break or a slightly longer lunch. On an annual basis, it's equivalent to 8 days a year. That's a week-long paid vacation. Now consider how the United States compares to the rest of the OECD in regards to paid holidays and paid vacation. An increase of 8 days would still leave the US at the bottom of all OECD nations, still behind Japan by two days. The difference between us and France would be 22 days instead of 30\. Does 8 days seem like an economy-destroying bump in leisure time? ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/07/paid-leave-oecd.png) With that context in mind, now again remember the results from previous experiments, particularly how employment effects from basic income tend to be concentrated among parents and young adults. Did we see that here too? Indeed we did. It's also the only places we observed it. The use of an average spread across all participants - just as the earlier thought experiment about one slap per person - hides the reality that **there were no significant decreases in employment status and hours worked among *childless adults* or those *over age 30***. From the report: > "Recipients who were single parents at the time of enrollment were about 3.9 percentage points less likely to be employed and worked an average of 2.8 hours less per week than single parent control participants. **For recipients who were not single parents at enrollment, we do not find statistically significant effects on employment or hours worked**." The fact that those with kids responded differently than those without kids mirrors [previous findings going all the way back to the 1970s](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222578698%5FA%5Ffailure%5Fto%5Fcommunicate%5FWhat%5Fif%5Fanything%5Fcan%5Fwe%5Flearn%5Ffrom%5Fthe%5Fnegative%5Fincome%5Ftax%5Fexperiments?ref=scottsantens.com) American Income Maintenance Experiments in locations like New Jersey, Indiana, Seattle, and Denver, and also the 5-year MINCOME experiment in Canada. The reason that parents respond differently should be obvious. **They aren't *working* less**. They are switching from paid work to unpaid work. They're putting their kids first. If this is a response you personally dislike, then you should support affordable child care in addition to basic income to give parents a different choice than to earn less from employment than they pay in the child care that enables employment. If it costs [$1,200 a month](https://www.care.com/c/how-much-does-child-care-cost/?ref=scottsantens.com#key-findings) to earn anything under or barely above $1,200 a month, a job does not make sense. Next, remember that everyone in this pilot was older than 21 and younger than 40 and that we know from previous basic income experiments that young adults tend to choose more education and less employment. > "**There was no statistically significant effect on employment or hours worked for recipients over 30**. In contrast, recipients under 30 were roughly 4 percentage points less likely to be employed and worked an average of 1.8 fewer hours per week compared to control participants. **We also observe larger effects on formal education among those in this age group**, suggesting younger adults may be more likely to use the money to enroll in post-secondary education and work fewer hours while in school, though this alone would not account for the observed differences in employment." Those between the ages of 30 and 40 did not see a change in employment status or hours worked. The decrease was only among those under age 30 and a lot of it - not all of it - was due to a switch from paid work to the unpaid work of learning. It reminds me of the Dauphin experiment and how so many kids went back to school to finish that graduation rates exceeded 100% due to dropouts coming back. Is this an effect we don't want to see? I certainly don't think so. So to what degree did this pilot show [increases in education and training](https://www.openresearchlab.org/findings/dream-bigger-do-more-consider-more?ref=scottsantens.com)? > "Recipients were significantly more likely (3.3 percentage points) to have pursued education or job training during the final year of the program—**an increase of 14%** relative to the average control participant. The effect was greatest for recipients who had the lowest household income at enrollment: these individuals were, on average, **34% more likely** to have participated in education or job training during the third year of the program compared to control participants." The largest impact on education was seen in those with the lowest incomes. This also wasn't the only impact to vary by income. By dividing the participants into three categories: (A) those under 100% of the federal poverty line, (B) those between 100% and 200%, and (C) those between 200% and 300%, it was observed that the bulk of the labor decrease was in the highest income group. > "\[Group C\] recipients were 4.4 percentage points less likely to be employed and the effect on the hours they and their partners jointly worked was, on average, 3.7 hours less per week. In contrast, the average reduction in joint work hours was -2.1 for the lowest income recipients and -2.8 for the middle income recipients." So the higher someone's income from work, the more likely they were to reduce their time working. **Those with the lowest incomes were the least likely to decrease their time working**. The thing about UBI that many people don't immediately understand is that [the net income boost after taxes decreases with income](https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-is-not-cheaper-than-universal-basic-income-ubi-nor-is-guaranteed-income-more-progressive-by-excluding-the-rich/). Yes, everyone gets the same amount of UBI, but everyone pays a different total amount of increased taxes. This pilot didn't model anything tax related. In reality, those in Group C would have received a smaller income boost after taxes than Groups A and B, and Group B would have received a larger boost than Group C but a smaller boost than Group A. It all depends on the details of a UBI plan, but to help understand this, just subtract 10% off of earned income. In this case, that would mean Group C getting boosted by $687/mo, not $1,000 a month, and thus the labor impact would have been smaller. Group B would also have been boosted less, netting perhaps about $812/mo, not $1,000 a month. Someone who knows their economics could then argue that because no tax impacts were modeled, that we should also expect a larger labor impact due to tax rate increases, which is entirely true. However, **the higher someone's income, the less of an impact marginal tax rate increases have on their income**. Also, this pilot fully maintained all welfare benefits. In reality, someone would likely get UBI instead of various welfare benefits, and thus face a lower marginal tax rate, not a higher one at the low end of the income spectrum. The fact that all welfare programs were additional to the UBI is also something to consider as potentially having an impact on both the treatment group and control group. If you are getting $3,000 a month in housing assistance, it does not make sense to increase your income, nor does it make sense to increase your income when receiving a program like SSI that imposes a 50% marginal tax rate and when if lost can mean years of waiting to get back. [Finland's basic income pilot](https://www.scottsantens.com/what-is-there-to-learn-from-finlands-basic-income-experiment-did-it-succeed-or-fail/) had this issue too, where people got basic income, but they also got welfare, and even though Finland's pilot showed a slight increase in days worked per year, it was traditional welfare that kept them from employment despite their basic income, because their welfare was much larger and losable. ### Entrepreneurship Another important impact on employment of basic income is how much it increases entrepreneurship. Based on previous pilots, we know that this impact is kind of huge in developing economies. In Namibia, UBI led to a 301% boost. The India UBI pilot observed three times the entrepreneurship in treatment villages than control villages. The impact on self-employment is smaller in developed economies where there's greater access to capital, but it varies based on that access. For example, some unpublished polling I was privy to back in 2016 showed that 3% of white respondents said they'd start a new business with UBI compared to 30% of Black respondents who said they would. Clearly there's less access to capital in the Black community and a lot more business ideas that never see the light of day. So did entrepreneurship increase in this pilot? Not for everyone on average, but [entrepreneurship did increase significantly for Black recipients and women](https://www.openresearchlab.org/findings/entrepreneurship?ref=scottsantens.com). > "In the third year of the program, Black recipients were **9 percentage points more likely** to report ever starting or helping to start a business—**a 26% increase** from the average for Black control participants." > "In the third year of the program, female recipients were **5 percentage points more likely** to report ever starting or helping to start a business—**a 15% increase** from the average female control participant. It's also interesting to note how the intention to start a business increased year after year for everyone, and by the end of it, recipients were 5 percentage points more likely on average than the control group to want to start a business. ### Job Searching Another fascinating difference between the treatment group and the control group was how each of them went about looking for jobs. Part of the reason for the treatment group being two percentage points more likely to be unemployed on average was because they spent one more month on average looking for a job. Were they being lazy? No. They were being choosy. How do we know that? Because recipients were 5.5 percentage points more likely to indicate that "interesting or meaningful work" was an "essential condition for any job they would accept," and recipients were also 6 percentage points more likely to be actively searching for a job and 4.5 percentage points more likely to have applied for a job. These numbers paint a clear picture of basic income recipients highly valuing employment and wanting to find the best job they could. They were the ones doing more job hunting and applying. The control group was just choosing whatever they could find. That's not best for overall productivity. ### Job Creation Another thing we absolutely have to cover is the difference between a pilot that provides cash to people here and there spread across a large geographic area and one where everyone in an area gets money. The former doesn't create new jobs unless the recipients create them themselves. The latter does create new jobs and in doing so helps job-seekers find employment. The best example of this is in Alaska where a small annual UBI has existed since 1982 where for over four decades everyone has received on average $1,500 a year. Researchers curious about the impact on employment concluded that [there was a small decrease in full-time employment but that it was counteracted by the spending of the money creating new jobs that resulted in more employment](https://harris.uchicago.edu/news-events/news/universal-basic-income-policies-dont-cause-people-leave-workforce-study-finds?ref=scottsantens.com). The net result was full-time employment didn't go up or down. There was however a 17% increase in part-time employment so that overall employment went up. Now, imagine that a basic income pilot took place in Alaska and provided $1,500 a year for three years to 1,000 Alaskans spread out all over Alaska. What if it found a small decrease in employment? Would it be accurate to assume that if extended to everyone in Alaska that employment would go down? No, because we already know the opposite is true due to the impacts of the spending of the money on job creation. We only know this because Alaska already has actual UBI. The qualitative data reflects this too. [One of Altman's pilot participants](https://www.openresearchlab.org/studies/unconditional-cash-study/participant-stories/grace?ref=scottsantens.com) shared that "between her unreliable transportation, and living in a rural area removed from job opportunities, she struggled to find employment." Had her entire community been part of the pilot, a new job may have been created for her to find and take. This is also why there needs to be more saturation site pilots. There's definitely things we can learn from all the pilots going on, but there's also a lot we can't possibly learn about UBI without providing to entire communities. For example, a recent saturation pilot in India where an entire community received UBI resulted in the community forming a labor union. That would not have happened if only one person in that community got basic income. ### Job Quality One of the findings considered most disappointing about this pilot was how researchers expected to see the treatment group find higher quality jobs and just didn't observe that as measured in a variety of different ways. I admit I expected to see that reflected in the quantitative data too, but it is there in the qualitative data, and it's pointed to in the geographic mobility results. Here's Lisa's story: > "Lisa is a single mother to three living in Texas. At the start of program, she had no income. Lisa has lupus which kept her out of the workforce at the time, and her short-term disability had been cut off. At the time, her goal was to return to the workforce. Because of the $1,000 per month, Lisa is able to take a job making less money than at her previous job, but with a company that offered more opportunity for growth. Two years later, Lisa is in a salaried position, making over $75k, has gotten two promotions, and thinks she can get another within a year. She loves her job... Lisa was also able to leave her abusive boyfriend and move into her own place, which wouldn’t be possible without the unconditional cash transfers. Her three sons are thriving." Lisa used her basic income to get a "worse" job that was actually a better job. ### Geographic Mobility In regards to geographic mobility, another participant named [Nikisha](https://www.openresearchlab.org/studies/unconditional-cash-study/participant-stories/nikisha?ref=scottsantens.com) reported feeling that "if she had a job her life might be different, but she lives in a rural area and the jobs close by do not pay enough to offset the cost of childcare," and that "better paying jobs are an hour and a half commute one way." Nikisha didn't move but [many UBI recipients did](https://www.openresearchlab.org/findings/how-did-the-unconditional-cash-affect-people-moving?ref=scottsantens.com), likely in the hunt for better jobs even if they didn't end up finding them. Recipients were, on average, 16% more likely to actively search for new housing and 23% more likely to actively search for a new neighborhood than the average control participant. They were also 4.4 percentage points more likely tomove to new neighborhoods. Again consider actual UBI where Main Street USA sees a lot more consumer spending and more people are able to move to where the jobs they want are. It seems likely that more people would be happier with their jobs than right now. ### Drinking and Drug Use Another key result in Altman's pilot was usage of drugs and alcohol. It's very common for people to assume that basic income would lead to more abuse of drugs and alcohol, despite [all the existing evidence to the contrary](https://davidevans.blog/2016/11/29/the-poor-dont-use-cash-transfers-on-alcohol-and-tobacco-really/?ref=scottsantens.com), but this pilot showed very significant positive effects for men especially, who also happen to be the ones most negatively impacted by the status quo. [For male recipients of basic income](https://www.openresearchlab.org/findings/how-does-unconditional-cash-affect-health-2?ref=scottsantens.com) there was a 41% decrease of being under the influence in dangerous situations, a 45% decrease in drinking interfering with responsibilities, a 35% decrease in drinking causing arguments with others, and a whopping 81% decrease in days using painkillers not prescribed to them. Considering all the [deaths of despair](https://www.nber.org/papers/w25787?ref=scottsantens.com) going on as a direct result of alcohol and painkillers, it's impossible for me to look at numbers like that as anything but a prescription for basic income for better health. ### Health Effects In regards to other health impacts observed in Altman's pilot, researchers expected more than they found (possibly due to the overwhelming stress of the pandemic followed by significantly higher costs of living) but what they did find was more visits to the dentist and doctors, pointing to more preventative treatment leading to health savings in the future. However, it's important to note again that the age group was 21 to 40. [Another study of another basic income program](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2821454?guestAccessKey=552cd0c8-8665-4c5f-abbd-5d608d7517e8&linkId=516833861&ref=scottsantens.com) was published the same day as the initial studies of Altman's pilot, and it found hugely positive health impacts. Basic income recipients in Chelsea were a third less likely to need to visit the ER. My hypothesis is that this comes down to age. The average age in Chelsea was 45\. It's likely that just as employment effects vary by age that health effects also vary by age. I should also mention that Dauphin's huge 5-year saturation pilot found a 9% decrease in hospitalization rates. ### Spending Behavior How people spend their basic income is probably the least interesting thing to me, because we all need to spend money on our basic needs and all the pilots always reflect that, but two things I do want to highlight about [what Altman's pilot found](https://www.openresearchlab.org/findings/key-findings-spending?ref=scottsantens.com) is how the bank savings of basic income recipients grew by 25% and that spending on others increased by 26%. That's how much more they spent on gifts to friends and family, loans to others, donations to charity, and alimony payments. On average, recipients spent $310 more per month and most of that was on food, rent, and transportation. They also spent more on child care, which we know is something that better enables employment. Perhaps most importantly though, it was the variety of ways in which recipients spent their money that supports the idea of universal basic income. > "Recipients expressed hundreds of different pressing needs, ranging from a father's funeral costs, back surgery, diapers for a newborn, car repairs, fines for speeding tickets, unpaid school tuition, and a computer and internet service for distance learning, to impending foreclosures, phone and electricity shutoffs, and money to renew a professional license in order to be able to get a job. In that moment, cash was the only tool that provided the flexibility to address those diverse needs, and cash was responsive when those needs shifted based on recipients' circumstances and the unique challenges posed by the pandemic and the larger economic context." As I frequently stress, [cash can be anything](https://www.scottsantens.com/unconditional-universal-basic-income-as-liquid-infrastructure-the-bruce-lee-argument-for-ubi-cash-money/). There is no good or service that government can provide that can meet everyone's needs at all times of need. UBI is a skeleton key to unlock any door, and it's always there in advance of needing to unlock the door. No applications necessary. No need to prove you really need to open that door, or that the door is important enough to provide help to open. Basic income is basic freedom. ### Real Freedom I recommend reading all of the qualitative stories to get a better idea of just what basic income really meant to the people in this pilot, but I want to leave you dear reader with this one above all - [Lila's story](https://www.openresearchlab.org/studies/unconditional-cash-study/participant-stories/lila?ref=scottsantens.com): > "Four years before the program started, Lila was the victim of a horrific domestic violence attack. 'I got shot three times in my head, stabbed in the neck. I was completely paralyzed on the right side, totally blind. Um, some of it has come back and I've learned to like walk and stuff again, but that has definitely like affected my life so much.' As a result, she has PTSD, partial blindness and multiple complications, impairing her ability to drive, and making it difficult for her to work or live independently. She applied for disability benefits but was repeatedly denied. When she learns she will be receiving $1,000 a month felt like it was replacing 'the disability that the government keeps refusing me.' Unable to work, she feels if it were not for the program, 'I probably would be homeless without it.'" Consider Lila's story when you think of the people in Altman's pilot who were unemployed and not technically defined by the government as unable to work. Consider Lila's story when you think of just how much it can mean to people to escape their abusers, and how without basic income they remain trapped. If you look at Lila's employment status data and see an unemployed person using their basic income to be lazy, you aren't really looking at Lila. You aren't looking at just how massively our non-universal and conditional safety net is failing people. And you aren't seeing basic income as the tool of mass emancipation that it is. Yeah, when provided basic income, people can work less, because they have the freedom to do so. They gain the power to say no to abuse - at home and at work. They gain the freedom to start a business or be a stay-at-home parent. They gain the agency to choose to go back to school or to learn a new skill. They gain the liberty to seek a better job, be it in town or in another. They gain the autonomy to purchase what they themselves decide they need most when they most need it. Basic income is basic freedom of choice. ### Future Basic Income Studies There will be more reports written about Altman's study. I'm personally curious to see if engagement in crimes among recipients went down, or if recidivism went down, but I also don't expect any experiment designed like this to show as big of impacts along these lines than saturation pilots that include entire communities. What I do expect to continue seeing is study after study showing all kinds of positive results, most especially for those under the poverty line where basic income makes the biggest difference. One of those studies has already been published since the release of Altman's pilot results. [Another one of the biggest experiments in the US](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5fdc101bc3cfda2dcf0a2244/t/66a8cd0fc256a2303a8569fc/1722338580211/CGIR+LA+BIGLEAP+Final+Report.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), where over three times as many people received $1,000 a month than in Altman's pilot, and where the control group was also almost three times larger, found that providing a basic income to impoverished adults with kids in Los Angeles led to across the board improvements. **The basic income recipients were more likely to secure full-time employment than to remain unemployed compared to those in the control group**. > "They had better employment outcomes, felt safer at home, enrolled their kids in more extracurriculars, and were more likely to leave domestically abusive situations... Within the first 6 months of the program, participants left situations of intimate partner violence more frequently than the control group. In the last 6 months, participants were more likely to establish proximate safety and work toward protecting themselves in the future." Clearly, basic income is particularly helpful for those in poverty and helps connect them to jobs they want to take and empowers them to refuse abuse. It is this escape from abuse that is seen over and over again in the qualitative data of Altman's pilot and it is seen again in the Los Angeles pilot and many other pilots too. In Kenya, [physical abuse of domestic partners dropped in half](https://www.fastcompany.com/90315666/how-a-basic-income-could-help-stop-domestic-violence?ref=scottsantens.com). ### **Conclusion** Altman's pilot was an interesting experiment, but as with other pilots, the most interesting stuff to glean requires the nuance of looking closer, looking inside the averages, and considering the total context of all pilots that came before it and are still to come. It is inside the averages that we see no reductions in work among those who didn't have kids or who were over the age of 30\. Employment reductions were only significant for single parents who cared more for their kids or those between age 21 and 30, many of whom went to college or job training. The impact in the above groups works out to about 17 days less per year. And in that context the US is the only OECD nation with zero days of paid vacation whereas every other OECD nation has at least 20 days of paid vacation except for Japan and Canada. And don't only consider this in the context of paid vacation, but also paid parental leave. If a mom of a newborn reduced their employment by a year by using her basic income as paid maternity leave, that would drag up the average unemployment for all parents. The average paid parental leave policy duration in the OECD is 12 months. The US is zero months. Entrepreneurship also significantly increased for women and Black participants. Drug and alchohol abuse decreased, especially for men, and people moved to places they preferred living. Many women escaped abusive relationships. The fear is that basic income would mean dramatic decreases in employment, but none of the data supports that fear, not even Altman's pilot that showed a slight decrease for parents and young adults. Clearly, all of the resources put into making sure that people are working or seeking work is pointless. Clearly, the means-testing that excludes such a huge percentage of people in poverty and causes so much stigma is needlessly harmful. Clearly, all of the administrative overhead going into avoiding just sending people money to spend on anything instead of insisting on anything but cash, is wasteful. So why are we wasting so much money on the paychecks of middlemen bureaucrats instead of just sending that money directly to people to spend in their local economies? The way we go about the existing safety net is harmful, wasteful, and expensive. It leaves out too many people who fail the tests and it effectively punishes people for increasing their incomes when it's pulled away as a consequence. And the fact almost everything we do isn't cash limits the usefulness of it to everyone who simply just needs cash plus the knowledge that cash will always be there next month too. With UBI we can simply prevent any need for more help. A boost of just $1,000 when someone is on the brink of homelessness [can reduce it by 88%](https://www.businessinsider.com/prevent-homelessness-emergency-cash-2017-3?ref=scottsantens.com). We are spending so much more than that treating the results of homelessness. Here's one final thought experiment to consider: If we had done an experiment in a country with UBI, and tested getting rid of it, and the results were that employment didn't change for those without kids and those over 30, but employment did increase by 17 days a year for those with kids and those under age 30, resulting in parents spending less time with their kids and young adults becoming less educated and skilled, and fewer women and Black individuals becoming entrepreneurs, and men increasing their abuse of women, alcohol, and painkillers, would we consider that a success? Would we say it demonstrated that keeping UBI was a bad idea? --- *Want more content like this? Please share it and* [*click the subscribe button*](https://www.scottsantens.com/#/portal/signup)*. Also *consider making a monthly pledge* in support of all my work.* [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/03/button_support-my-work-on-patreon.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, Keith Smith, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, John Steinberger, Bridget I Flynn, Laurel gillespie, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Robert Collins, Joanna Zarach, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Miki Phagan, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun , Christopher Wroth, S, Jocelyn Hockings, Kara Gillies, Faith Stanhope, Mark Donovan, Capitalists for Shared Income, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Thomas Fitzsimmons, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Jessica Chew, Braden Ferrin , Juro Antal, Austin Begin, Deanna McHugh, Nikolaus Rath, chris heinz, Zachary Weaver, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, Ryan Ash-Miller, bradzone, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, Tim , Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Kev Roberts, Nicolas Pouillard, Walter Schaerer, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, and Laura Ashby.* [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Universal Basic Income or Universal High Income? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-or-universal-high-income-ubi-uhi-amount/ Last updated: 2024-05-23T21:00:27.000Z ### An article to better inform the debate about the amount of UBI [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/05/button_this-article-is-reader-supported.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) "The very positive scenario of AI is actually in a lot of ways, the description of heaven, in that really nobody would need to work. I wouldn't even call it universal basic income. I would say it's probably universal high income." - [Elon Musk at AI Safety Roundtable, September 18, 2023](https://x.com/tomchapin/status/1703990255328846086?ref=scottsantens.com) "We won't have universal basic income. We'll have universal high income." - [Elon Musk at AI Safety Summit, November 2, 2023](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoxremcHRtw&ref=scottsantens.com) "There will be universal high income, not basic, in a positive AI future." - [Elon Musk on X, December 25, 2023](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1792081341615599989?ref=scottsantens.com) "There will be universal high income (not basic)." - [Elon Musk on X, May 29, 2024](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1739495563043701011?ref=scottsantens.com) Because Elon Musk has decided to start talking about a concept he refers to as "universal high income" as being different and seemingly better than universal basic income, I feel the need to set the record straight here. Simply put, universal high income is a universal basic income that is high enough to be considered "high." Universal basic income is not a *low* universal income. As defined by the [Basic Income Earth Network](https://basicincome.org/faqs/?ref=scottsantens.com), the international organization founded in 1986 to foster informed discussion around the world about the topic of basic income, the current definition of basic income is **"a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement."** Since first discovering the concept of basic income in 2013, otherwise known as unconditional basic income or universal basic income or just UBI, I've attended my share of BIEN conferences, and I can assure you that the wording of the definition is very carefully crafted, with a lot of thought behind it, and [a lot of debate](https://works.bepress.com/widerquist/149/download/?ref=scottsantens.com) about how to potentially improve it. For example, [uniformity](https://basicincome.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Miller-BIEN-2022.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) has been suggested as a sixth defining characteristic. The fact that the definition of UBI in no way mentions an amount is very purposeful, and it's not something that everyone within the UBI community agrees on, because most of us do want the amount to at least be high enough to lift everyone out of poverty. But the fact remains, a UBI considered to be "too low" like say $100/mo in the US, would still meet the definition of UBI as long as it was cash (instead of vouchers or benefits-in-kind) provided unconditionally, universally, individually, and periodically. So why do I find it so important to inform everyone of this in response to Elon Musk deciding to contrast universal high income and universal basic income? It's because I believe Elon is responding to the misinformation that his loyal fans appear to be simmering in. There is [a fear that UBI is a trap](https://www.scottsantens.com/is-unconditional-basic-income-ubi-a-trap-being-laid-by-wef-global-elites-to-control-and-enslave-us-all/), that it's meant to be low and stay there, permanently ensnaring us all in poverty as our jobs are automated away, condemning most of us to live with only say $1,300 a month and leaving us unable to earn any income because jobs no longer exist. Elon is in the business of automating jobs away. He wants to create millions of Optimus robots to replace human labor. He wants to create cars and trucks that replace human drivers. He doesn't want people to fear all of that automation he intends to sell though. He also has expressed repeatedly that he doesn't see UBI as being something to do *now*, but instead only something to do *after* a lot of jobs have been automated. Given those beliefs, and the fears of his potential customers, it makes sense to talk about UBI as needing to be very high. It *has* to be if there's no more jobs, right? **Believing that UBI needs to be *high* fosters a poor understanding of how UBI works, which is what I want to try and correct here.** UBI is a floor. It's a foundation. All income is earned on top of it. If your income right now is $50,000 a year, then a $15,000 UBI would mean your income before taxes getting bumped up to $65,000 a year. If you're married without kids, and your household income is $50,000, then a $15,000 UBI would mean your income before taxes would get bumped up to $80,000\. If you're married with two kids and the child component of UBI is $5,000, then a $15,000 UBI for a $50,000 household would mean a $40,000 bump from $50,000 to $90,000. A $15,000 UBI for adults with a $5,000 UBI for kids would virtually abolish poverty in the US immediately, as currently defined here in 2024\. No robots needed. We could do that right now. We could do it instead of a bunch of welfare programs. We could do it instead of a bunch of tax subsidies. We could raise taxes on those benefiting the most from the technology that has been eroding wages for decades now, including Elon Musk and other billionaires and their corporations. That's why Elon is talking about universal high income. "UHI" is something we can't do right now. It's something we can do *in the future*. Don't tax him more now. We can figure out all this stuff later only after there's massive unemployment. Then we can talk UBI, and don't worry, because it will be super high. It will be say six figures? That's high, right? Or maybe $250,000 is high? It doesn't matter. We can worry about that stuff later. That's where that logic leads. But we can't worry about this stuff later. This stuff is what we need to be making happen right now because [people are already being impacted by AI and robots](https://www.scottsantens.com/ai-will-rapidly-transform-the-labor-market-exacerbating-inequality-insecurity-and-poverty/). UBI is something we should have gotten going decades ago back in the 1970s before computerization took off and before automation and offshoring blew away a ton of jobs and killed wage growth, and before [$50 trillion](https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/?ref=scottsantens.com) in new economic wealth was diverted mostly into the hands of the top 1% of Americans. UBI should be seen as an [inherited technological dividend](https://medium.com/@GarAlperovitz/technological-inheritance-and-the-case-for-a-basic-income-ded373a69c8e?ref=scottsantens.com) that is due right now, not who knows how many years from now when "enough" jobs have been blown away and displaced enough workers to cause a panic and violence in the streets. What if we had started with a tiny UBI in the 1970s and it had grown slowly with productivity? According to a study done by the RAND Corporation, that UBI dividend would have been [$1,144 a month](https://www.rand.org/pubs/working%5Fpapers/WRA516-1.html?ref=scottsantens.com) in 2020\. That would be additional to everyone's current income, before taxes. That could exist right now instead of the massive and ever-increasing inequality that exists in its place. It's also important to understand that between right now and some unknown future date where technology has increased unemployment in a way considered finally sufficient for UBI to be implemented by those like Elon, [the impact will continue being what it's always been. **Inequality will rise**](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-real-story-of-automation-beginning-with-one-simple-chart/). People like Elon will get much richer. For those who lose their jobs, they'll find new ones. Some will find jobs that pay more, but many - potentially most - will find jobs that pay less. How high does inequality need to get before it's considered too high? If unemployment never rises to a level considered too high because people are continually able to find new jobs that pay less, then when does someone like Elon say it's time for UBI, high or not? **Is there a functioning society for us to exist in where unemployment is at 5% but the majority of the population has jobs that don't sufficiently cover their costs of living or the spending needed to fuel the economy?** What does that society look like? I think that society looks exactly like ours. It's already here. We exist in that time with low unemployment and high inequality, largely generated from decades of technological advancement, industrial offshoring, and tax cuts for the rich. It's a very angry place. It's a powder keg in a forest fire. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/05/wealth-share.png) Source: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1o9Rc](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1o9Rc&ref=scottsantens.com) It's because the need is immediate and overdue, that we need to do UBI RIGHT NOW, not years in the future. We can't do a *high* universal basic income right now, but we can do a universal basic income right now. We can end poverty right now. Besides those with the lowest incomes, we can also help the middle class right now. We can help everyone feel more stable and secure. Because people will spend their basic income, that will create more jobs that will enable more people to find jobs. It's imperative to protect everyone right now through the transition to a more automated economy instead of waiting until the last minute, which could be too late to avoid the worst impacts, like for example the abandoning of democracy. I've also written before about how [any UBI we start right now should grow over time](https://www.scottsantens.com/cutting-the-gordian-knot-of-technological-unemployment-with-unconditional-basic-income-ubi/). It should be seen as a productivity dividend. I've suggested setting it at 25% of GDP per capita to start, as political economist and co-founder of BIEN Philippe Van Parijs first suggested in his 1995 book, [*Real Freedom For All*](https://amzn.to/3Vb9pYp?ref=scottsantens.com). That way, as productivity grows as AI is implemented and improved, everyone's UBI grows too. It would be a true dividend from AI. It need not only remain at 25% either. That too can grow as we see a shift in the overall ratio of human labor to machine labor. A decade from now, perhaps it makes more sense to be 30% of GDP per capita. In another decade, maybe 40%. The point is that over time, the UBI floor can grow to be an amount that most people would consider to be quite high. And if that amount worked out to be $50,000 a year per person, that would still be a universal basic income. If it were $100,000 a year per person, it would still be universal basic income. There is a practical limit to how a UBI can be though, and it depends on the size of the economy. A UBI set at 100% of GDP per capita represents a kind of theoretical limit where all income would be the UBI and there would be zero income from any jobs or capital. Clearly, the practical limit exists below that theoretical limit. I believe there's a sweet spot to find where the amount of UBI is high enough to lift everyone out of poverty and increase overall productivity but not so high as to start reducing productivity and shrinking what's left for other income by too great a degree. The larger the share of the economy going to UBI, the less there is for wages and everything else. I don't think we want an economy where someone without a job gets $50,000 a year and a doctor only earns an additional $30,000\. The ratio matters. UBI can't take up such a large percentage of the economy that there isn't enough income to create the incentive via wages and salaries for all the work we still need and want humans to be doing. Right now in the US, 100% of GDP per capita is about $6,900 a month. The poverty line is defined as $1,255/mo which is 18% of GDP per capita. So I think in the US, the sweet spot is more than 18%, but less than some unknown percentage we can only guess at, but perhaps is somewhere around 25%, but may be as high as around 33%. So I propose we start anywhere we can that is at or around the poverty line or severe poverty line, and just crank it up from there to find where the unknown sweet spot resides. As technologies like AI and robots grow overall productivity, the upper bound of the sweet spot will increase. A highly automated economy should require a smaller percentage of GDP for wages, and thus the upper bound could go from say 33% of GDP per capita for UBI to 50% or beyond, depending on the degree of automation. In such a way, yes, at some point the universal basic income would be a universal high income, but it would still by definition remain a universal basic income. The basic in basic income just refers to its nature as a primary foundational floor. It's the income we all get by right to be spent on whatever we each consider to be most necessary, which then serves as the base for all other income to be earned as additional income for additional and less necessary purchases. --- *Want more content like this? Please share it and* [*click the subscribe button*](https://www.scottsantens.com/#/portal/signup)*. Also *consider making a monthly pledge* in support of all my work.* [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/03/button_support-my-work-on-patreon.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, John Steinberger, Bridget I Flynn, Laurel gillespie, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Robert Collins, Joanna Zarach, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Miki Phagan, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun, Kara Gillies, Lyn Newman, Mark Donovan, Capitalists for Shared Income, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Thomas Fitzsimmons, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Jessica Chew, Braden Ferrin, Juro Antal, Austin Begin, Deanna McHugh, Nikolaus Rath, chris heinz, Pavel S, Zachary Weaver, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, Ryan Ash-Miller, bradzone, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Tim, Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Kev Roberts, Nicolas Pouillard, Walter Schaerer, Loren Sickles, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Kai Wong, and Laura Ashby.* [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### YouTube channel update: my new video explaining UBI in-depth URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/youtube-channel-update-new-video-explaining-ubi-in-depth/ Last updated: 2024-04-04T20:40:50.000Z I posted a new video on my YouTube channel this week that's an hour long and meant to be a kind of class lecture or seminar on the concept of universal basic income using a slide deck I created for a talk I gave as part of a webinar earlier this year. As people increasingly consume their information via video instead of the written word, I feel it's necessary to start releasing more content on YouTube. I'm not a video producer so please bear with me as I work my way up this particular learning curve and hopefully over time begin to create better videos. My intent is to create more of this style video that involves me showing my screen and talking about the results of recent basic income studies. I figure as more and more pilot conclusions are published, it would be a good idea to reach people on YouTube with those results instead of mostly only reaching people on Twitter (X) and my blog posts. So here's my newest video, and please subscribe to my channel and hit the bell if you'd like to make sure and not miss any of my upcoming videos. Also, if you'd like to see your name at the end of these videos, please join my Patreon as a monthly subscriber at the UBI Producer level. Thank you! [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/04/button_help-me-create-more-content-like-this.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) patreon.com/scottsantens ### The Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban Basic Income Experiments URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/billionaire-fueled-lobbying-group-behind-the-state-bills-to-ban-universal-basic-income-experiments-ubi/ Last updated: 2024-05-28T03:52:16.000Z ## The Foundation for Government Accountability - a Florida-based lobbying group backed by the richest 1% - is working to get basic income experiments banned by state legislators across the U.S. *(This article is also available as a* [*YouTube video*](https://youtu.be/gF5L3nudJSU?si=0pHw6QLnbCUxfBr9&ref=scottsantens.com) *and as a* [*podcast episode*](https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scottsantens/episodes/The-Billionaire-Fueled-Lobbying-Group-Behind-the-State-Bills-to-Ban-Basic-Income-Experiments-e2h1sqd?ref=scottsantens.com)*)* As a well-known quote often wrongly attributed to Mahatma Gandhi says, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” As of 2024, the basic income movement in the United States is now firmly in the "**then they fight you**" stage thanks to a slew of bills introduced in state after state that are all attempting to ban the basic income experiments that have spread across the country. [Over 150 guaranteed basic income pilots](https://basicincome.stanford.edu/experiments-map/?ref=scottsantens.com) are now ongoing or recently completed in 24 states as of this writing, and so far, bills in seven states have been introduced to stop them. All of the bills are the result of efforts by the **Foundation for Government Accountability** (FGA) - a lobbying group with a billionaire-fueled junk science record every American should know about. First, to bring every reader up to speed, [basic income](https://basicincome.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) (or UBI) is "**a periodic cash payment, unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement**." Although such payments without conditions already exist upon a mountain of evidence, post-2020, experiments have exploded in cities across the U.S. thanks to the efforts of Mayors for Guaranteed Income (MGI) which was founded in 2020 by former Mayor Michael Tubbs after the success of the pilot in [Stockton, CA](https://sp2.upenn.edu/study-guaranteed-income-improved-peoples-health-during-pandemic/?ref=scottsantens.com) that provided $500 a month to 125 people for 2 years. The biggest findings there were that **full-time employment grew at twice the rate of the control group, and mental health improved significantly**. Yes, despite the common fear that people provided basic income would work less, in Stockton, they worked more, and the mental health impact was comparable to medication. Since the Stockton pilot ended, there have been dozens of other completed pilots with completed reports, all of which report the same general findings over and over again. Employment does not go down to any worrisome degree, and often actually goes up, with people finding better jobs and better pay, and where wage work is reduced, people invest in schooling or pursue unpaid work or self-employment. With each experiment's results, the case for UBI becomes stronger, and it's clear that **some very wealthy people don't like those results**. In March of 2021 and again in late 2022, [Texas](https://www.kxan.com/news/texas-politics/new-texas-bill-aimed-at-austins-guaranteed-income-program/?ref=scottsantens.com) became the first state to attempt to stop more results. [House Bill 4550](https://capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=87R&Bill=HB4550&ref=scottsantens.com) in 2021 and then [House Bill 553](https://legiscan.com/TX/bill/HB553/2023?ref=scottsantens.com) in 2022 both included the following wording: > "PROHIBITION ON PROVIDING UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME. (a) In this section, 'universal basic income' means unconditional cash grants of equal amounts issued on a regular basis to individual residents of a political subdivision. The term includes a basic income, monthly income, or minimum income paid to each individual resident of the political subdivision without regard to the individual ’s circumstances. (b) Notwithstanding any other law, a political subdivision may not adopt or enforce an ordinance, order, or other measure providing for a universal basic income." Both bills died in committee. In January 2024, a different approach was taken, with a request for the Texas attorney general to [declare such pilots as unconstitutional](https://www.kxan.com/news/texas-politics/new-texas-bill-aimed-at-austins-guaranteed-income-program/?ref=scottsantens.com). It should be noted that as of Feb 2024, there have been seven basic income pilots launched in Texas. One of those that took place in Austin has already published [its results](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1750178842487009775?ref=scottsantens.com). It found that **a payment of $1,000 a month to 135 people for one year led to 9% of participants working less and 7% working more**, and of those who worked less, half upskilled for better future jobs, and half chose unpaid care work. Housing security also significantly increased, as did food security. Participants lived in better housing and ate more balanced meals, and they also felt significantly more connected to the people and places in their neighborhoods. A ban would have prevented these findings. In April of 2023, [Wisconsin](https://archive.ph/x5umb?ref=scottsantens.com) became the next state to attempt to stop more results. At the time, there was a pilot in the city of Madison that wasn't quite done yet, where 155 parents of kids under age 18 got $500 a month for one year. The bill would not have stopped that pilot because it was privately-funded, but the bill was written to stop any future pilots from using any state funds to test "regular periodic cash payments that are unearned and that may be used for any purpose." The bill passed the Wisconsin House and Senate and died by veto by Governor Evers. In 2024, the anti-UBI bill floodgates opened, starting with [Iowa](https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2024/01/18/iowa-legislature-bill-would-ban-guaranteed-income-programs/72269962007/?ref=scottsantens.com) in January and followed in quick succession by [West Virginia](https://www.dominionpost.com/2024/02/07/house-panel-halts-home-based-work-bill-advances-one-prohibiting-universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com), [South Dakota](https://www.thecentersquare.com/south%5Fdakota/article%5Fc404efee-d26d-11ee-9fd8-e79c3b36aa40.html?ref=scottsantens.com), [Arizona](https://azmirror.com/blog/arizona-republicans-want-to-ban-guaranteed-basic-income-programs/?ref=scottsantens.com) and [Arkansas](https://www.businessinsider.com/guaranteed-basic-income-program-ban-south-dakota-affordable-housing-groceries-2024-2?ref=scottsantens.com) in February. All of them introduced bills of their own to stop basic income pilots, all with similar language. At this point, it became clear that a lobbying organization of some kind was behind the bills, something like the [American Legislative Exchange Council](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIMgfBZrrZ8&ref=scottsantens.com) that writes bills for legislators to put their names on and pass into law. In my research to discover the group responsible, I found it's the Foundation for Government Accountability, which led down a rabbit hole of dark money and a slew of harmful bills desired by the 1% to reduce their taxes and reduce the power of the 99% to stand in their way. ### Who is the FGA? The Foundation for Government Accountability was founded in Florida in 2011 by Tarren Bragdon after cutting his chops in Maine at the Maine Heritage Policy Center and then as adviser to Maine's governor, LePage. It was in Maine where Bragdon and a cohort of fellow young conservatives gained a reputation for outrageous anti-welfare policies. “I remember them as **a pack of inexperienced, activist right-wingers that went crazy on welfare reform**,” said Cynthia Dill, a former state senator to the [Washington Post in 2018](https://archive.ph/Q6fln?ref=scottsantens.com). “It galled me that **they had no expertise whatsoever in health and human services** but were appointed to places of power by the LePage administration.” Bragdon's regressive work in Maine was only the beginning for him. He went on to export that work to every state he could and even the federal government too, starting in 2017 when the FGA attempted to expand the work requirements for SNAP to even include parents and limit waivers for states regardless of unemployment rates. The FGA reports now having relationships with [450 policymakers](https://thefga.org/about-us/?ref=scottsantens.com) across the country. Bragdon has described FGA's goal as wanting to "return America to a country where entrepreneurship thrives, personal responsibility is rewarded, and paychecks replace welfare checks," and that their approach is "to really tackle one big issue: how to give more Americans **the life-changing power of work**, at both the state and federal level.” At this point, I will remind readers that [**universal basic income is quite different than welfare**](https://www.scottsantens.com/did-spains-b-mincome-experiment-prove-that-unconditional-universal-basic-income-doesnt-work-ubi/) in how it doesn't get pulled away with work, which is why **so many UBI pilots show increased employment** for recipients since all wages from work increase their total income, whereas with conditional welfare they can be left barely better off financially, or even worse off. Means-tested welfare creates cliff effects, and cliff effects disincentivize work. I will also mention that if someone's goal is thriving entrepreneurship, it should be considered very intriguing how often [**UBI pilots show large increases in entrepreneurship**](https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-will-accelerate-innovation-by-reducing-our-fear-of-failure/). That is, it should be interesting to those who truly value empirical evidence. The FGA however is clearly not interested in empirical evidence. One of its first "studies" contributed to Florida Governor Rick Scott's defense of his controversial welfare drug-testing law, requiring benefit recipients to take a drug test as a qualification for benefits. A Bush-appointed federal judge threw out that study as evidence, claiming **it was "not competent expert opinion"** and that "even a cursory review of certain assumptions in the pamphlet undermines its conclusions." Florida's law requiring drug tests for welfare applicants ended up identifying only 2.6% testing positive, significantly lower than the general population's rate of 8.13% in Florida. This directly contradicted justifications for the law, which also proved financially wasteful. Florida spent over $118,000 reimbursing those who tested negative, exceeding any program savings and resulting in a net cost exceeding $45,000\. [**It cost more to apply the condition than it saved**](https://www.aclu.org/news/smart-justice/just-we-suspected-florida-saved-nothing-drug-testing-welfare?ref=scottsantens.com). It should also be noted that studies of [unconditional cash programs tend to show a net reduction in drug use](https://www.scottsantens.com/what-do-we-do-about-drug-users-with-basic-incomes/). In 2016, the FGA touted a study from Kansas of work requirements on SNAP which was panned by both liberal and conservative economists alike for cherry-picking data. “**Work requirements should be based on credible evidence and attention to policy details — the exact opposite of what FGA produces**,” [tweeted](https://twitter.com/PeteTheCitizen/status/985142798700761088?ref=scottsantens.com) Peter Germanis, a conservative economist who served in the Reagan and Bush administrations who went on to [tweet](https://twitter.com/PeteTheCitizen/status/1660024728533311489?ref=scottsantens.com), “Tarren Bragdon bases his arguments to support work requirements on the **junk science** produced by the FGA – **no serious researcher would accept their claims**." > REMINDER: Tarren Bragdon bases his arguments to support work requirements on the junk science produced by the FGA -- no serious researcher would accept their claims.[https://t.co/tBkcZKLVVB](https://t.co/tBkcZKLVVB?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Peter the Citizen (@PeteTheCitizen) [May 20, 2023](https://twitter.com/PeteTheCitizen/status/1660024728533311489?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) Although the FGA itself is a 501(c)(3) that is prohibited from lobbying, it has a 501(c)(4) lobbying arm [FGA Action](https://www.guidestar.org/profile/47-3125722?ref=scottsantens.com) which operates as the [Opportunity Solutions Project](https://solutionsproject.org/about/?ref=scottsantens.com). Tarren Bragdon is the CEO of both the FGA and OSP. With an annual budget that has been steadily rising from $212,000 in 2011, to over $14 million in 2022, the FGA has been busy attracting a pool of wealthy benefactors as it has pursued: expanded work requirements for everyone in all government assistance programs aka [universal work requirements](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/9/4/20835692/conservative-think-tank-foundation-for-government-accountability-food-stamps-snap-poverty-welfare?ref=scottsantens.com), [the rolling back of child labor protections](https://archive.ph/8Yiil?ref=scottsantens.com#selection-349.0-349.168), the expansion of measures to restrict the vote and [ban ranked-choice voting](https://thefga.org/blog/these-states-are-banning-ranked-choice-voting-yours-should-too/?ref=scottsantens.com), and [the derailing of citizen-led ballot initiatives](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/23/foundation-government-accountability-democracy?ref=scottsantens.com) to protect abortion rights, raise the minimum wage, or expand Medicaid, by pushing for all ballot initiatives to require 60% of the vote instead of a simple majority. And their newest battle is against unconditional basic income, **because of its lack of conditions**. It was on February 13, 2024 that the FGA went public about its opposition to UBI with the publication of its paper "[Why States Should Ban Universal Basic Income Schemes](https://thefga.org/research/why-states-should-ban-universal-basic-income-schemes/?ref=scottsantens.com)." Their main premise is that basic income discourages work, which of course isn't what the evidence shows. Amusingly, their paper cites a source for virtually every sentence, except for this one, "These programs disincentivize work and promote increased dependency on government handouts, at the expense of individual responsibility," and this one, "By providing generous benefits designed to replace income, universal basic income discourages individuals from working." A 2020 [peer-reviewed systematic review of 38 studies of basic income](https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9459?ref=scottsantens.com) reached the following conclusion, my emphasis added in bold: > "Despite a detailed search, we have not found any evidence of a significant reduction in labor supply. Instead, we found evidence that **labor supply increases** globally among adults, men and women, young and old, and the existence of some insignificant and functional reductions to the system such as a decrease in workers from the following categories: Children, the elderly, the sick, those with disabilities, women with young children to look after, or young people who continued studying. These reductions do not reduce the overall supply since **it is largely offset by increased supply** from other members of the community." All the reports of the newer basic income pilots that have been published since that review have only further strengthened the review's conclusion. Over and over again, in city after city, work has either increased or not significantly decreased. The FGA anti-UBI paper also compares the boosted unemployment insurance payments during the pandemic to UBI, which anyone who understands UBI knows is quite different. **Paying people on the condition they remain unemployed is not at all the same thing as paying people regardless of their employment status**. One creates a work disincentive and the other doesn't. It is this difference that all the latest generation of pilots are testing. What happens when someone gets to keep a payment in addition to their paycheck, instead of losing it? The basic income pilots are answering that question using the scientific method to compare treatment groups to control groups. A week after FGA published its anti-UBI paper, it planted an op-ed in the [Dallas Morning News](https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2024/02/19/guaranteed-universal-basic-income-programas-trap-people-in-dependency/?ref=scottsantens.com), just as it and similar groups often do as part of their overall strategy. The op-ed made no mention of [the positive results of the pilot in Texas](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1761392672302866456?ref=scottsantens.com) that had just been published a month prior. Instead it made claims based on the pilots from the 1970s, which were quite different in design, and although do have something to tell us about basic income, need to be looked at [in their full context](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222578698%5FA%5Ffailure%5Fto%5Fcommunicate%5FWhat%5Fif%5Fanything%5Fcan%5Fwe%5Flearn%5Ffrom%5Fthe%5Fnegative%5Fincome%5Ftax%5Fexperiments?ref=scottsantens.com), like for example the high marginal tax rates above and beyond 50% that they tested, and the fact that self-reporting working less meant a larger payment. From now going forward, if you make a point of looking, you'll find quotes from the FGA in articles about bills to ban basic income pilots at the state level. What you won't find is any mention of [Alaska's UBI](https://iseralaska.org/static/legacy%5Fpublication%5Flinks/bien%5Fxiii%5Fak%5Fpfd%5Flessons.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) which it has had since 1982\. You won't find any mention of how studies have shown [it has increased employment](https://harris.uchicago.edu/news-events/news/universal-basic-income-policies-dont-cause-people-leave-workforce-study-finds?ref=scottsantens.com) there, or how it has improved the [health of mothers and babies](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecin.12235?ref=scottsantens.com), or how it has reduced [obesity](https://scholarworks.alaska.edu/handle/11122/11998?ref=scottsantens.com) and [child abuse](https://www.nber.org/papers/w31733?ref=scottsantens.com). And most importantly of all, something else you won't find in FGA's anti-UBI hit pieces, is the names of FGA's funders. ### Who is Funding the FGA? According to the Center for Media and Democracy's [SourceWatch](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Foundation%5Ffor%5FGovernment%5FAccountability&ref=scottsantens.com), the largest single donor to FGA has been the **Ed Uihlein Family Foundation**, with a total contribution from 2014-2021 of **$17.85 million**. Both in their 70s, the Uihleins (pronounced YOU-line) are a husband and wife team, Richard and Liz, worth [around $5 billion](https://www.forbes.com/profile/richard-uihlein/?sh=61f890ce161b&ref=scottsantens.com). Together, the couple is the fourth biggest donor to political campaigns in the U.S., having reported giving over $190 million. The New York Times described them in 2018 as t[he most powerful couple you've never heard of](https://archive.ph/phzx7?ref=scottsantens.com). In 2023 as reported by [The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/23/foundation-government-accountability-democracy?ref=scottsantens.com), the Uihleins were "one of the [key funders](https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-the-billionaire-backed-dick-uihlein-hub-for-election-denial-restoration-action?ref=scottsantens.com) of [election denial](https://www.propublica.org/article/uline-uihlein-election-denial?ref=scottsantens.com)," having poured "[tens of millions](https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2022/03/millions-of-dollars-poured-into-a-dark-money-group-tied-to-billionaire-backed-super-pac-and-efforts-to-expose-voter-rolls/?ref=scottsantens.com) into the 'Restoration of America' network that [promotes](https://www.restorationofamerica.com/restoration-news/eric/left-plans-to-go-postal-on-what-remains-of-americas-election-integrity/?ref=scottsantens.com) [ludicrous](https://www.restorationofamerica.com/restoration-news/eric/eric-the-best-data-money-cant-buy-pt-1/?ref=scottsantens.com) [election](https://www.restorationofamerica.com/restoration-news/eric/the-voter-registration-machine-flipping-the-states-blue/?ref=scottsantens.com) [conspiracy](https://www.restorationofamerica.com/restoration-news/eric/the-left-wing-election-swamp-huddles/?ref=scottsantens.com) [theories](https://www.restorationofamerica.com/restoration-news/eric/the-left-mines-for-votes-in-americas-prisons/?ref=scottsantens.com)," and "in the 2022 cycle, [were also top donors](https://www.propublica.org/article/uline-uihlein-election-denial?ref=scottsantens.com) to election-denying candidates." The Uihleins were also [one of the biggest contributors](https://www.chicagotribune.com/2022/07/26/darren-bailey-declines-to-answer-questions-on-trump-jan-6-committee-and-call-to-censure-adam-kinzinger/?ref=scottsantens.com) to the "March To Save America" rally that preceded the violent insurrection on January 6. The second biggest donor to the FGA is **Donors Trust** and its affiliate organization Donors Capital Fund, with a total contribution of **$17.2 million** from 2014 to 2022\. Founded by [a pair of activist libertarians](https://reason.com/2015/08/18/whitney-ball-founder-of-donorstrust-rip/?ref=scottsantens.com), the combo are two of the most influential conservative organizations around. In 2013, Mother Jones dubbed them the “[dark-money ATM of the right](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/donors-trust-donor-capital-fund-dark-money-koch-bradley-devos/?ref=scottsantens.com).” Donors Trust allows wealthy contributors who want to donate millions to do so anonymously, essentially scrubbing the identity of those underwriting organizations like the FGA. If you're a rich person who doesn't like the idea of UBI and how it will likely raise your taxes, you can give to Donors Trust and let them give the FGA your money for you, protecting your identity from those who would like to know you're fighting against boosting their incomes with a basic income floor. The FGA's third biggest donor, with a total of **$5.3 million** from 2015 to 2020 is the Vanguard Charitable Endowment which is a large donor advised fund (DAF) where donors can drop money in to get an immediate tax deduction, then request where they'd like that money to go. It's another way of keeping one's anonymity. DAFs also [help enable a public charity to stay a public charity](https://theintercept.com/2023/06/08/christopher-rufo-nonprofit-dark-money/?ref=scottsantens.com). Besides Vanguard, another of FGA's biggest donors is another big DAF - Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund - with **$1.3 million** passed through them. Vanguard and Fidelity are not political DAFs in any way. They're just very popular DAFs to use to donate to any 501(c)(3) charity. Coming in at number four, five, and six is the [Sarah Scaife Foundation](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Sarah%5FScaife%5FFoundation&ref=scottsantens.com) with a total of **$3.2 million**, the [Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Lynde%5Fand%5FHarry%5FBradley%5FFoundation&ref=scottsantens.com) with **$2.75 million**, and the [Searle Freedom Trust](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Searle%5FFreedom%5FTrust&ref=scottsantens.com) with **$2.15 million**. Together, these three organizations have been described as "[a source of 'baseload' funding](https://www.eenews.net/articles/meet-the-dead-industrialists-funding-climate-denialism/?ref=scottsantens.com) for organizations that have battled the government for the last 40 years." According to Kert Davies, director of the nonprofit Climate Investigations Center, "**They are fundamentalists about hating the government, hating regulation and trying to stop any progress** on things like climate change because they see it as almost a step toward communism, it’s almost that stark." The Bradley Foundation has provided grants to the FGA specifically to support projects “reducing the welfare state and restoring the working class." The seventh biggest FGA funder is the [Dunn Foundation](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Dunn%5FFoundation&ref=scottsantens.com) with **$2.4 million** from 2016 to 2022\. Founded in 1993 by Florida multimillionaire [William A. Dunn](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=William%5FA.%5FDunn&ref=scottsantens.com). According to the trust agreement, the Dunn Foundation aims to "advance the understanding and practice of classical liberalism, market capitalism, free enterprise, individual political and economic liberty and to reduce the impact of the use of threat of force by coercive organizations (both public and private) against the people of America and the world, principally through education and persuasion." It's a shame that the Dunn Foundation apparently doesn't seem to see basic income in the same way [Milton Friedman](https://iai.tv/articles/why-friedmans-free-market-needs-basic-income-joshua-preiss-auid-2452?%5Fauid=2020&ref=scottsantens.com) and [Friedrich Hayek](https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/why-did-hayek-support-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) both did. Here's what libertarian Matt Zwolinski has written about Hayek's support: > "A basic income gives people an option – to exit the labor market, to relocate to a more competitive market, to invest in training, to take an entrepreneurial risk, and so on. And the existence of that option allows them to escape subjection to the will of others. It enables them to say 'no' to proposals that only extreme desperation would ever drive them to accept. It allows them to govern their lives according to their own plans, their own goals, and their own desires. It enables them to be free." Milton Friedman went even further by even becoming an official member of the Basic Income Earth Network before his death. Finally, the eighth biggest funder is the [85 Fund](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=The%5F85%5FFund&ref=scottsantens.com) with a total of **$2 million** in 2020\. The 85 Fund is Leonard Leo's, and a rebrand of the Judicial Education Project and the Honest Election Project. Everyone should know who [Leonard Leo](https://www.propublica.org/article/we-dont-talk-about-leonard-leo-supreme-court-supermajority?ref=scottsantens.com) is by now. He's the guy chiefly responsible for the transformation of the Supreme Court and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. He's one of the most prolific fundraisers in American politics. Under his watch, groups in his orbit have raised more than $600 million, and in 2021, he was given a war chest of [$1.6 billion](https://www.propublica.org/article/dark-money-leonard-leo-barre-seid?ref=scottsantens.com) by billionaire Barre Seid in the largest political advocacy donation in US history. Beginning in 2021, a year after Leo's donation provided 19% of FGA's funding for the year, the FGA began filing [amicus briefs](https://legaldictionary.net/amicus-brief/?ref=scottsantens.com) in Supreme Court cases. In Biden v. Nebraska, the FGA argued against debt forgiveness. In Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) v. Community Financial Services Association of America, the FGA is trying to kill the CFPB for the payday loan industry (which [UBI would likely destroy](https://www.scottsantens.com/payday-loan-lenders-are-unstoppable-except-with-the-help-of-universal-basic-income-ubi/) by the way). And in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the FGA is trying to end the [Chevron Doctrine](https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-to-hear-major-case-on-power-of-federal-agencies/?ref=scottsantens.com), which would greatly reduce the power of federal agencies. The rest of FGA's donors have all contributed less than $1 million total. For those who would like to see them, you can find the rest of them on SourceWatch. ### Who Will Win? The aforementioned names are only a partial list, and include few actual names because of the nature of dark money, where those with great wealth can pass an unlimited amount of money through various vehicles that hide their identities. But the overall picture painted is a pretty clear one, where an entire ecosystem of nonprofits has been built and is being run for one primary purpose - **to protect the vast wealth of the wealthy from higher taxes**. It is this singular reason that I believe a handful of wealthy donors are supporting the efforts of the FGA to fight against UBI. It's not really about conservative or libertarian against liberal or progressive. If it were, at least some of the above organizations would be interested in basic income as Friedman and Hayek were. A UBI would decrease the disincentive to work by reducing marginal tax rates at the low end of the labor market. It would make taking a job actually pay. It would shrink the size of government by replacing government bureaucrats with cash payments directly to citizens to make their own choices. It would greatly boost entrepreneurship and fuel small businesses across the country, restoring Main Street USA in a way nothing else ever could. It could also potentially be an alternative to minimum wage increases by increasing worker bargaining power. All of this should be very appealing to principled conservatives and libertarians seeking market solutions and greater freedom of choice. UBI would even be a tax cut for the bottom 60% to 90% of the country depending on design details. But what UBI will never be is a tax cut for the top 10%, and especially the top 1%. There is no politically realistic UBI that would ever cut taxes on billionaires, and that's what's fueling the Foundation for Government Accountability - the fear of a world where things are a bit less unequal, and the bottom half of the country has a bit more power to refuse the domination of others, particularly those with wealth who have grown used to so many people having [no power to say anything but yes](https://widerquist.com/mandatory-participation-on-trial-part-1/?ref=scottsantens.com). None of this is to say that every billionaire is against UBI. There are indeed billionaires who have expressed support for UBI, such as Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Tim Draper, Bill Gross, Pierre Omidyar, Marc Benioff, and Richard Branson among others. It's [Jack Dorsey](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jack-dorsey-1b-coronavirus-relief-fund-universal-basic-income-163957394.html?ref=scottsantens.com) whose donations have helped fund many of the 150+ basic income pilots, and [Sam Altman](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meet-woman-running-sam-altman-134610953.html?ref=scottsantens.com) has even funded his own large basic income pilot whose results are expected to be published later this year. So some billionaires do recognize the importance of UBI, although they also seem to be the ones more worried about the impact of AI and robots than higher taxes. It's impossible to know if the donor class is thinking this far ahead, but one of the reasons I personally consider UBI so important, is that it also means a greater ability for more working class people to donate. Instead of getting money out of politics, which is never going to happen without a successful constitutional amendment and therefore virtually impossible, **UBI would help even the political donor playing field**. One person donating $10 million dollars could be balanced by a million people donating $10 each. Combined with a national program that [matched small donations](http://nyccfb.info/program/how-it-works/?ref=scottsantens.com) with public funding, a billionaire spending $5 billion to get their way could face 100 million people spending $10 each, which becomes $100 after matching, which becomes $10 billion, finally drowning out the power of the billionaire. The Catch-22 is how difficult UBI will be to win without UBI, but once UBI is won, so many more things will become possible once the politically motivated billionaires are taxed more, and the power of their dollars is greatly eroded by UBI dollars going to causes, campaigns, and candidates that the People truly support. That's the world the FGA and its donors fear. They fear a loss of power, and so they fear the successful results of basic income pilots. They don't want everyone to know how well basic income works. They don't want people to want UBI. **A world full of people empowered by unconditional basic income scares them.** As for me, I'll see you in that world, because I'm never stopping until we're all in it. Always remember, what comes after "then they fight you" is "then you win." --- *If you're looking to support a 501(c)(3) that's pretty much the exact opposite of the FGA, consider the* [*Income To Support All Foundation*](https://www.scottsantens.com/introducing-the-income-to-support-all-foundation-itsa-ubi/) *whose goal is UBI.* --- *Want more content like this? Please share it and* [*click the subscribe button*](https://www.scottsantens.com/#/portal/signup)*. Also *consider making a monthly pledge* in support of all my work.* [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/03/button_support-my-work-on-patreon.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, Fabian Kehrer, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, John Steinberger, Bridget I Flynn, Laurel gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Robert Collins, Joanna Zarach, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Elizabeth Corker, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun , Mark Donovan, Capitalists for Shared Income, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Thomas Fitzsimmons, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Jessica Chew, Braden Ferrin , Juro Antal, Austin Begin, Deanna McHugh, Nikolaus Rath, chris heinz, Pavel S, Zachary Weaver, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, Ryan Ash-Miller, miki, bradzone, Lee Lor, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Tim , Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Loren Sickles, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Kai Wong, and Laura Ashby.* ### Why China Could Surprise the World by Being the First Country to Adopt Universal Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/why-china-could-surprise-the-world-by-being-the-first-country-to-adopt-universal-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2024-03-07T20:51:16.000Z The concept of [universal basic income (or UBI)](https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq/) \- a regularly provided cash payment distributed without conditions to all individuals within a defined community - has [a long history](https://basicincome.org/history/?ref=scottsantens.com) and an as yet unwritten future. As someone considered to be one of the world’s experts on the topic with over ten years of educating people about it under my belt, one question I’m frequently asked is where I think it will happen first. Despite hundreds of years of discussion, and [the state of Alaska](https://iseralaska.org/static/legacy%5Fpublication%5Flinks/bien%5Fxiii%5Fak%5Fpfd%5Flessons.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) being one of the only places to implement a UBI at scale so far, which country will be the one to stop talking about it, and just do it? Well, some countries are certainly closer than others, and the idea certainly is [more popular in some countries than others](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1544690247052759042?ref=scottsantens.com), but one entirely possible answer to this question tends to not even be considered in the running - **China**. First, although I’m [a huge believer in liberal democracy](https://www.scottsantens.com/what-we-need-to-truly-thrive-democracy-and-unconditional-basic-income-ubi/), and am actively worried about the rise of authoritarianism around the world, the fact remains that democracy tends to require the support of the people to be behind the policies enacted. For a country like the United States to enact UBI, there would need to be a sufficient percentage of voters demanding it, combined with a sufficient amount of support within Congress, and a president willing to sign it into law. For a country like China to enact UBI, the decision need only be made at the top of one party, and where once that decision only needed the agreement of a few men, it now only really needs to be made by one man - [Xi Jinping](https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/22/china/china-party-congress-xi-jinping-leadership-lineup-revealed-intl-hnk/index.html?ref=scottsantens.com). In the summer of 2021, Xi Jinping began using the phrase [“common prosperity”](https://www.china-briefing.com/news/china-common-prosperity-what-does-it-mean-for-foreign-investors/?ref=scottsantens.com) to describe his policy goals for China. He's described it as people-centered growth where those with high incomes - both individuals and businesses - are encouraged to return more to society. He seems to believe that China has moved beyond its rapid-growth stage and has entered a new stage that will require **a reduction of inequality and an uplifting of those left behind**. He has also said he wants to make solid progress in achieving common prosperity by 2035\. Key measurements of greater common prosperity, aside from reduced inequality, will include improved health and reduced environmental degradation, but most importantly **a wider consumption base with more consumer buying power**. It’s that last one that is perhaps the strongest reason of all that China would want to consider implementing universal basic income. Long story short, **China’s chief import is demand**. It relies on consumers around the world buying what it produces. What has made possible the rise of China as an economic superpower is the American consumer and consumers in other countries around the world. The challenge for China at this point is to have its own consumption-loving middle class - a wide base of consumers with the disposable income and time to buy and consume what China produces. China’s current [median disposable income](https://www.statista.com/statistics/259451/annual-per-capita-disposable-income-of-rural-and-urban-households-in-china/?ref=scottsantens.com) is about $7,200 in USD in urban areas and about $3,015 in rural areas, compared to [about $45,000](https://www.statista.com/statistics/710209/us-disposable-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) that the median American has to spend after taxes. [China needs to find a way of boosting disposable income](https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/its-demand-stupid-the-cause-and-cure-of-our-economic-travails/?ref=scottsantens.com) across the board in a way that meets its many stated objectives. Weak consumer spending in China post-pandemic has been described as being a case of "[economic long-Covid](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/end-china-economic-miracle-beijing-washington?ref=scottsantens.com)" and is even becoming somewhat [reminiscent of the Great Depression](https://www.forbes.com/sites/miltonezrati/2024/01/22/chinas-economy-has-picked-up-traits-reminiscent-of-the-great-depression/?ref=scottsantens.com). A [July 2023 meeting](http://spanish.people.com.cn/n3/2023/0726/c31621-20049218.html?ref=scottsantens.com) of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, plus [recent statements of China's central bank](https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3235940/china-vows-more-powerful-policy-supports-after-august-industrial-profits-rebound?module=inline&pgtype=article&ref=scottsantens.com), and also the [Institute of Economics](http://ie.cass.cn/academics/economic%5Ftrends/202308/t20230802%5F5676656.html?ref=scottsantens.com) of the Chinese Academy also all agree on the need to direct state capacity towards increasing domestic demand. So it's not only the international community saying this, but China itself saying this. Whereas the American consumer came roaring out of the pandemic with a desire to spend, spend, spend, consumers in China did not. They are preferring to just stash their money in savings accounts. This is not good for economic growth. Chinese consumer confidence has fallen almost 10% from its high and now stands at a lower level than ever, including during the pandemic. China desperately needs to figure out a way to get people to spend on goods and services instead of saving their money. As Paul Krugman wrote in the [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/18/opinion/china-economy-xi.html?ref=scottsantens.com), "what China must do seems straightforward: end financial repression and allow more of the economy’s income to flow through to households, and strengthen the social safety net so that consumers don’t feel the need to hoard cash." UBI accomplishes both aims. There's also another reason that China could consider UBI as the tool that will accomplish its economic objectives, and it’s known as [dibao](https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3114566/how-chinas-dibao-social-safety-net-being-used-silence-dissent?ref=scottsantens.com). The dibao program is China’s already existing minimum income guarantee. It’s a top-up program originally created for urban areas to reduce urban poverty where if someone earns below the minimum level, they're provided the difference between what they earn and what is deemed the minimum they need. The problem with such a design is the strong work disincentive it creates due to [a 100% marginal tax rate on income](https://www.scottsantens.com/did-spains-b-mincome-experiment-prove-that-unconditional-universal-basic-income-doesnt-work-ubi/). As long as someone has an income below the dibao level, any additional earnings don’t leave them better off. This is contrary to a UBI design, where all additional earnings always leave people better off. To illustrate, consider you have a part-time job that pays $500 a month and the dibao is set at $1,200 a month. You’d be boosted to $1,200\. If you then doubled your hours worked to get $1,000 a month, you’d still be boosted to the same $1,200\. All the extra work wouldn’t matter. You'd be no better off despite that additional work. However, with a UBI set at the same $1,200 a month level, doubling your hours worked would move you from earning $500 on top of $1,200, which would total $1,700, to a new total of $2,200 (before taxes). This is not to say that China would necessarily convert their dibao into a UBI, but that the precedent already exists for China to look at poverty as a lack-of-money problem that can be solved directly with a monthly distribution of money. The origins of the dibao were also in the concerns of [“staving off social instability and turmoil”](https://madeinchinajournal.com/2022/09/12/poverty-and-pacification-a-conversation-with-dorothy-j-solinger/?ref=scottsantens.com) in a time of massive labor market transformation, and it's viewed as having achieved those goals. As labor automation advances, UBI could be recognized as a far more powerful tool for maintaining social stability in a way that doesn't create a work disincentive like dibao-like programs do. These are the three primary reasons I believe China could surprise everyone by being the first to introduce a universal basic income: Xi Jinping could at any point just decide to do UBI. China's stated goals of a strong consumer class and the notion of common prosperity would be accomplished by a UBI. And China could recognize UBI as a superior policy to its existing minimum income strategy. There are plenty who disagree with my take on this, including the UNDP who sees UBI as [“not financially feasible”](https://www.undp.org/china/publications/universal-basic-income-china?ref=scottsantens.com) in China, but that’s due to the same error that many discussing UBI commonly make. UBI is not more expensive than a targeted income program designed to achieve an identical post-tax income distribution. Targeting just uses phaseouts that mistakenly aren’t considered to be taxes. It costs the same to give someone $50 after phasing it down from $100 as it does to give someone $100 and then tax away $50\. However, the former can involve high administrative overhead and high marginal tax rates where the latter requires neither. In reality, [targeting is a more expensive way of distributing income with worse results](https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-is-not-cheaper-than-universal-basic-income-ubi-nor-is-guaranteed-income-more-progressive-by-excluding-the-rich/). UBI can achieve the same reduced amount of inequality as a targeted design, but in a more efficient way that generates more labor supply and many other widely desired outcomes. I know of at least one person in China though who appears to agree with me, and that's the chief economist of the Bank of China - Xu Gao. He has proposed something he calls an ["Ownership Sharing Scheme of State-Owned Enterprises for All"](https://www.obela.org/en-analysis/China-in-the-face-of-domestic-demand-momentum?ref=scottsantens.com) that would establish multiple public investment funds financed with capital from all state-owned enterprises, the profits of which would be distributed universally to the entire population as an annual dividend. UBI enthusiasts may recognize this plan as basically [the Alaska model](https://www.academia.edu/20148953/Applying%5Fthe%5FAlaska%5Fmodel%5Fin%5Fa%5FResource%5FPoor%5FState?ref=scottsantens.com), but using corporate profits instead of oil. This also happens to be basically the same thing [Sam Altman has proposed](https://moores.samaltman.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) and [what I proposed](https://www.scottsantens.com/proposal-for-an-emergency-ubi-that-transitions-into-a-permanent-ubi-universal-basic-income-plan/) during the pandemic, except using state-owned enterprises instead of publicly-traded corporations to grow the wealth fund. The general strategy of such a UBI is to go about it in a way that doesn't use personal income or consumption taxes, and gets citizens a share of overall productivity growth. If there's a mechanism in place so that as companies do better, people do better, people will want companies to do better. If companies automate labor and as a result become more profitable, people should see larger UBI as a result. A dividend tied to corporate profits does that. The prospect of a UBI-equipped China may also lead the U.S. into considering UBI, and it's also possible that [the U.S. may soon realize it needs UBI in order to outcompete China](https://thediplomat.com/2021/11/how-universal-basic-income-can-advance-the-united-states-china-strategy/?ref=scottsantens.com) in AI. Fear of AI taking jobs is an obstacle to embrace of AI. UBI removes that obstacle, especially one tied to national productivity growth. The simple fact of the matter is that China needs consumers, and UBI creates consumers. The only real obstacle is that UBI also means trust in individuals. Its lack of conditions means a giving up of some control. The big question is if China will ever trust its people with the freedom that UBI provides. With the rise of AI and its impact on the labor market and thus consumer spending, it may not really have a choice, which also happens to be true for every other country too. But in China's case, it's really only about convincing one man that UBI is the way to go. --- *Want more content like this? Please share it and* [*click the subscribe button*](https://www.scottsantens.com/#/portal/signup)*. Also *consider making a monthly pledge* in support of all my work.* [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/03/button_support-my-work-on-patreon-1.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Lowell Aronoff, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, Fabian Kehrer, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, John Steinberger, Bridget I Flynn, Laurel gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Judith Bliss, Robert Collins, Joanna Zarach, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Elizabeth Corker, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun , Mark Donovan, Capitalists for Shared Income, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Thomas Fitzsimmons, Leslie Kausch, Jessica Chew, Braden Ferrin , Juro Antal, Austin Begin, Deanna McHugh, Nikolaus Rath, chris heinz, Pavel S, Zachary Weaver, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, Ryan Ash-Miller, miki, bradzone, Lee Lor, Akber Khan, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Tim , Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Loren Sickles, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Kai Wong, and Laura Ashby.* [***Become a monthly patron to see your name here too***](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com)***!*** ### Top 10 Universal Basic Income Articles of 2023 URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/top-10-universal-basic-income-articles-of-2023/ Last updated: 2024-03-07T20:51:48.000Z As the editor of [Basic Income Today](https://basicincometoday.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) and a moderator for the [Basic Income subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/?ref=scottsantens.com), I read a lot of stuff every year about UBI, somewhere around 100 articles a month. Below, I've compiled a list of the top ten articles I consider my favorites out of everything published in 2023. --- *A big thanks to my monthly patrons who contribute to making this blog possible and free for everyone. Your monthly pledges allow me to devote my time to writing posts like this one. If you find value in my writing and would like to support the creation of more content like this, please check out* [*my Patreon page*](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com)*.* --- 10) [**Why Friedman's free market needs basic income**](https://iai.tv/articles/why-friedmans-free-market-needs-basic-income-joshua-preiss-auid-2452?ref=scottsantens.com) by Joshua Preiss The first choice on my list is one about Milton Friedman and his support for basic income being rooted in his support for free markets and individual liberty. He saw a government-funded income floor ([in the form of a UBI or NIT](https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-is-not-cheaper-than-universal-basic-income-ubi-nor-is-guaranteed-income-more-progressive-by-excluding-the-rich/)) as a way to reduce poverty more efficiently and consistently with freedom compared to the current welfare state. He argued that this approach would reduce government bureaucracy and respect individual choices, enhancing both economic independence and dignity for the poor by meeting their basic needs without distorting the role that the price mechanism plays in efficiently allocating resources. Unlike vouchers for specific goods and benefits-in-kind, basic income leaves people free to choose how and what to spend the money on. Joshua's article also touches on how a basic income floor aligns with principles of republicanism and provides the freedom to refuse unsatisfactory work, thereby supporting true market freedom. I believe implementation of universal basic income will require growth in support for UBI among conservatives, so articles like this I feel are especially important. Preiss ends his article with the following quote: > Friedman’s argument that economic freedom is necessary for political freedom – the foundation of *Capitalism and Freedom -* depends on the ability of a complex economy to provide citizens with a wide range of valuable alternatives to their present employer. NIT ensures that they always have one. Friedman’s endorsement of NIT is neither aberrative nor regrettable. It is essential to his case for free markets. 9) [**Will Basic Income Cause Rent to Increase?**](https://widerquist.com/will-basic-income-cause-rent-to-increase/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Karl Widerquist For as long as I've been in the basic income world (which I entered in 2013) the question of rent hikes in response to UBI has been a persistent top-three concern that has only increased post-pandemic in the face of how much more expensive housing has become. This piece by Karl addresses that concern. He acknowledges that UBI might lead to increased rents, particularly in low-income areas where more residents would receive net benefits. However, he also points out that UBI could decrease rents in higher-income areas due to the tax increases required to fund the UBI. This could result in a more equitable housing market and reduce income-based segregation. He also emphasizes the need for tax reforms targeting wealthy landowners to prevent them from disproportionately benefiting from UBI and to ensure that UBI effectively aids the middle- and low-income population. He suggests that such reforms, alongside UBI, could make housing more affordable and equitable, and that perhaps the most important thing that we can do to create more affordable housing is to shift taxation from income and real estate to land value. Widerquist ends his article with the following quote: > "Despite the underlying problems in the real estate market, and the likelihood that landlords will capture some the benefits of UBI, they won’t be able to capture all of the benefits. UBI will do a lot of good for middle- and low-income renters and homeowners even if it is not accompanied by another other reform. And, if we introduce real estate market reforms along with UBI, we can ensure that virtually all the benefits of UBI go to people rather than landlords." 8) [**One Way to Help Prevent Child Abuse? Give Parents Cash**](https://undark.org/2023/04/27/one-way-to-help-prevent-child-abuse-give-parents-cash/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Lindsey Rose Bullinger Lindsey looked at patient data from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta to identify cases of children being admitted to emergency departments for reasons attributed to child abuse and neglect and found that during the four days immediately after a child tax credit payment was issued in 2021 when it was enhanced and monthly, the number of child-abuse-related emergency room cases dipped by about 22 percent, from more than seven cases a day to around six. The dip was especially pronounced for boys and non-Hispanic White children. She also found that unconditional payments of $1,000 to Alaskan families during the first year of a child’s life lead to a 10% reduction in child protective services cases, and that the reduction persists through the child’s first four years. Anyone who says they care to "save the children" should care about articles like this, share them widely, and push for universal basic income to reduce child abuse. 7) [**A Basic Income for Everybody: Why the Musicians' Union Backs UBI**](https://musiciansunion.org.uk/news/basic-income-for-everybody-ubi?ref=scottsantens.com) by Neil Churchman I firmly believe support for universal basic income needs to grow among labor unions, so I always appreciate a new union stepping up in support of it. In this case, it's not only a union, but it's a union of musicians, which also helps build the case for UBI being something all artists should support. In short, the Musicians' Union advocates for UBI as a means to provide financial stability for musicians, especially in uncertain times when traditional income sources can be unreliable. They believe basic income would allow musicians to focus on their creative work without the stress of financial insecurity. Neil's article also emphasizes the positive impact UBI could have on the entire music industry. The article ends with the following quote: > "Some form of Universal Basic Income would ensure that musicians are paid for every stage of the artistic process; ‘starving in a garret’ would no longer have to be part of the job. Basic pay would acknowledge and reward the currently under-recognized ‘research and development’ aspect of the music industry – the creativity, the writing and rehearsing that all lead to the finished product." 6) [**Artificial Intelligence Can’t Work Without Our Data**](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/06/29/ai-pay-americans-data-00103648?ref=scottsantens.com) by Barath Raghavan and Bruce Schneier I've been making this case since ChatGPT was launched, so it was great to see others make the same case in Politico with some specific details like a compulsory licensing fee for large language models of $0.001 per word. All our data is what made foundational models possible. We all provided the data capital and we should all benefit from that capital as stockholders do. We should see UBI as our rightful dividend for the data we contributed to AI. Their proposal in a nutshell quote from the article: > "Our proposal is simple, and harkens back to the Alaskan plan. When Big Tech companies produce output from generative AI that was trained on public data, they would pay a tiny licensing fee, by the word or pixel or relevant unit of data. Those fees would go into the AI Dividend fund. Every few months, the Commerce Department would send out the entirety of the fund, split equally, to every resident nationwide. That’s it." 5) [**The Evidence for Basic Income is Now Sufficient**](https://basicincometoday.com/guy-standing-the-evidence-for-basic-income-is-now-sufficient/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Guy Standing In this article, Guy articulates what I too feel. 2023 was the year of the opening of the floodgates of basic income pilot results, and result after results only affirms previous results. Enough is enough. The evidence is sufficient. We know basic income works. We don't need any more pilots. We need the collective will to do UBI for real. I especially like this paragraph after he summarizes some newer findings: > "In short, if governments were genuine in saying they will apply ‘evidence-based policy’, we would have a basic income system already. But the political Canutes are holding back the waves. It is this that demands our campaigning attention now. Most politicians are not real leaders. They follow what they think is the public mood or what they think will improve their re-election chances. They are opportunistic rather than principled. This does not mean they are cowards, corrupt or amoral. But too many have *spaghetti backbones*, that is, weak moral abilities." 4) [**Every U.S. city testing free money programs**](https://mashable.com/article/cities-with-universal-basic-income-guaranteed-income-programs?ref=scottsantens.com) by Chase DiBenedetto First, I think Chase's article is the best list of all the US pilots, so it's a great article to bookmark. However, there are also other articles that I think are also important that I'm listing here because they each cover new results of various pilots. Each one represents the beginning of what I expect to see much more of in 2024. [Denver's basic income pilot results](https://denverite.com/2023/10/03/denver-basic-income-project-six-month-results/?ref=scottsantens.com) reveal how effective UBI would be for reducing homelessness. After six months, not a single person receiving $1,000 a month has reported still being on the streets. [Durham's basic income pilot results](https://www.businessinsider.com/universal-basic-income-works-red-state-blue-state-2023-10?ref=scottsantens.com) reveal how effective UBI would be in reducing recidivism by focusing on those recently released from incarceration. During the pilot's year-long duration providing $600 a month, 0% ended up back in prison, which is practically unheard of. According to the Federal Bureau of Justice, [about 20%](https://counciloncj.org/recidivism%5Freport/?ref=scottsantens.com) of criminals released return before the first year out of prison. [This article about the Wales basic income pilot](https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/i-wouldnt-food-shower-everything-27978882?ref=scottsantens.com) shows how effective it is for foster youth exiting the foster care system by telling the story of Jasmine and how basic income "has changed everything" for her. Finally, [this article taking a fresh look at the canceled Ontario basic income pilot](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/basic-income-research-1.7014989?ref=scottsantens.com) shows just how much of a difference it was making and how life-changing it was. For Kendal David, who worked on the newest report, "reading the volume of stories was impactful in a way that nothing else I have been involved with in basic income land ever has been." I look forward in 2024 to many more articles like these, each sharing clearly successful empirical data and emotionally moving personal success stories. 3) [**It's one of the biggest experiments in fighting global poverty. Now the results are in**](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/12/07/1217478771/its-one-of-the-biggest-experiments-in-fighting-global-poverty-now-the-results-ar?ref=scottsantens.com) by Nurith Aizenman Possibly the biggest news in all of 2023 related to basic income pilot results came from Kenya with the publication of the first results of the ongoing 12-year pilot there by GiveDirectly. Seven years in, these results cover the first two years of the pilot and compare three different cohorts where people either got a UBI for two years, or twelve years, or received a lump sum equal to the 2-year cohort's total. To summarize the findings, here's what I posted on Twitter: > After 7 years, the first results out of Kenya's massive UBI experiment are out and if you missed what they were, here's a tweet I did about it last week. In summary: > > 1\. Entrepreneurship skyrocketed > 2\. No inflation > 3\. No decrease in work > 4\. Higher wages[https://t.co/JQ9u5mNOgF](https://t.co/JQ9u5mNOgF?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [December 11, 2023](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1734179983281594823?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) 2) [**Why Does Everyone Feel So Insecure All the Time?**](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/opinion/inequality-insecurity-economic-wealth.html?ref=scottsantens.com) by Astra Taylor I loved how this article focused on insecurity as opposed to inequality or poverty. I don't think security is discussed enough compared to the other two, so it was great to see such an article as this one in the New York Times. I think Astra did a terrific job of highlighting this issue and how she separated manufactured insecurity from existential insecurity. At no point does this article mention basic income, although she does mention "a baseline of material security", but anyone who sees the potential of UBI should recognize this article as a great argument for UBI. The way we work has been transformed, and is continuing to transform, into increasingly insecure forms of employment. UBI is a tool that can address this issue. Universal basic income can help protect everyone in society from the "fear of falling" by creating a raised floor underneath which no one is allowed to fall. > "In the United States today, all it takes is a devastating enough crisis to reduce the once fortunate to a state of precarity or poverty: Business could suddenly drop; a job could be automated or offshored; the stock in a retirement account could crash; home values could plummet; a family member could be diagnosed with a serious illness (something that, in the United States, can eviscerate the economic security of a middle-class household overnight); a storm could wreak havoc; another, more deadly pandemic could hit. The writer Barbara Ehrenreich, in her 1989 study of the psychology of the middle class, dubbed the condition 'fear of falling.' But today, the middle feels more precarious than ever, and everyone is afraid of what lies below." 1) [**Mandatory Participation on Trial**](https://widerquist.com/mandatory-participation-on-trial-part-1/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Karl Widerquist This essay is basically a short book, split into 18 different parts. All of it is a must-read, but everyone should at the very least read this first part. Bookmark this link. Share it frequently with others online. It destroys the notion that it is anywhere near okay for employment to be essentially mandatory, and that we should not instead have an economy of basic income and voluntary employment. Widerquist's opening words alone should be sufficient for mass demand of UBI: > "Every time you take a breath, you use something you don’t own to meet your needs without asking anyone’s permission and without paying anyone for the privilege. Although you don’t own the atmosphere, you’ve never had to *get a job* to *earn* the money to *buy* the *right* to use the atmosphere to keep yourself alive. You simply breathe it in as if the free use of a common resource was the most natural thing in the world. I bet you’d be pretty angry if somebody made a rule dividing the atmosphere into private property without giving you a share large enough to keep you breathing." I hope you find this list helpful and if you want to try to avoid missing any great articles about UBI in 2024, consider a daily visit to [BasicIncomeToday.com](https://basicincometoday.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) and following [@ScottSantens](https://linktr.ee/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) on Twitter (X), FB, Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon. --- *Want more content like this? Please share it and* [*click the subscribe button*](https://www.scottsantens.com/#/portal/signup)*. Also *consider making a monthly pledge* in support of my UBI advocacy work.* [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/03/button_support-my-work-on-patreon-2.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Lowell Aronoff, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, Fabian Kehrer, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, John Steinberger, Bridget I Flynn, Laurel gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Judith Bliss, Robert Collins, Joanna Zarach, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Elizabeth Corker, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun , Mark Donovan, Capitalists for Shared Income, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Thomas Fitzsimmons, Leslie Kausch, Jessica Chew, Braden Ferrin , Juro Antal, Austin Begin, Deanna McHugh, Nikolaus Rath, chris heinz, Pavel S, Zachary Weaver, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, Ryan Ash-Miller, miki, bradzone, Lee Lor, Akber Khan, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Tim , Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Loren Sickles, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Kai Wong, and Laura Ashby.* [***Become a monthly patron to see your name here too***](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com)***!*** ### Comingle Crowdfund Success and Other Basic Income News URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/comingle-universal-basic-income-ubi-pilots-news/ Last updated: 2023-10-05T01:26:47.000Z For anyone who missed [my previous blog post](https://www.scottsantens.com/time-to-crowdfund-a-ubi-platform-universal-basic-income/), or doesn't follow me anywhere on social media (maybe because you care too much about your mental health), I've been in crowdfunding mode for the past month helping with [the Indiegogo campaign for Comingle](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/comingle/x/9324920?ref=scottsantens.com#/) which is an app being developed with the goal of creating a small basic income floor right now through every member pledging the same percentage of their income into a pool each week that will be divided equally. The goal was to crowdfund an all-or-nothing $75,000 in one month, and I'm proud to say that **the goal was reached with a week left in the campaign**. As I write this, with 32 hours to go, it's at 104% of its goal thanks to over 600 backers, potentially including you, dear reader, and if so, thank you for chipping in! For anyone reading this who hasn't donated, we're still hoping to gain more backers before the timer runs out. Everyone who donates at least $1 can see their name immortalized on [Comingle's Wall of Founding Members](https://comingle.us/founding-members?ref=scottsantens.com) that will live on Comingle.us, so if that appeals to you, there's still time to make that happen. As part of promoting Comingle, I've been hosting Spaces on the app formerly known as Twitter (X) with the co-founders of Comingle and various special guests. If you'd like to listen to any of them, I've embedded them below. The episodes explore the details of Comingle and basic income in general. **Space 1**: We talked about Comingle and universal basic income. **Space 2**: We had Andrew Yang as a guest and talked about Comingle and UBI. Andrew donated $5,000 during the Space! **Space 3**: We had Sabrina Aviles as a guest. We talked about her film Raising the Floor about the guaranteed income program in Chelsea. **Space 4**: We had Mark Donovan as a guest and talked about the Denver Basic Income Project focused on reducing homelessness. **Space 5**: We had Leslie Kausch as a guest to talk about the impacts of unconditional basic income on mental health. I'm going to continue hosting these Spaces each week going forward, where each week I'll go over some recent basic income news and discuss UBI from a different perspective with a guest focused on that perspective. There's also been some preliminary results published recently from two different pilots that I want to make sure and highlight here as well. Denver released the results of its first six months of $1,000 a month and $500 a month (+ $6500 up front). The key finding in my opinion is that no one in the $1,000 a month group reported still sleeping outside after six months. > As if we needed more evidence for [#BasicIncome](https://twitter.com/hashtag/BasicIncome?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com), here's more, this time from the Denver Basic Income Project ([@denverbip](https://twitter.com/denverbip?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com)) providing cash to hundreds of unhoused people for one year. > > Preliminary results using the first 6 months of data: > > • NO ONE receiving $1,000/mo still… [pic.twitter.com/GQh4b359nL](https://t.co/GQh4b359nL?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [October 3, 2023](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1709296657567744436?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) Atlanta also released the results of its first six months of $850 a month. > And the evidence for [#BasicIncome](https://twitter.com/hashtag/BasicIncome?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) just keeps on piling up as the many pilot projects around the country release their reports. This data is from Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward, the neighborhood where Dr. King grew up, where hundreds of Black women are being provided $850 a month for… [pic.twitter.com/tLv9SycqFR](https://t.co/tLv9SycqFR?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [October 4, 2023](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1709627768273596585?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) Although both of the above reports are preliminary results, they both follow the typical pattern of basic income showing positive effects across a wide range of measures, including the one most people seem so concerned about - employment. Stay tuned for even more reports showing similar results over and over again. How much evidence will ever be enough for lawmakers? I don't know, which is why I feel so strongly about seeing Comingle launched and operational as soon as possible. --- *Want more content like this? Please share it and [click the subscribe button](https://www.scottsantens.com/#/portal/signup). Also consider making a monthly pledge in support of my UBI advocacy work. Besides this blog, please also consider subscribing to the [ITSA Newsletter](https://itsanewsletter.beehiiv.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) too.* **Special thanks to my monthly supporters*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Matthew Cheney, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, David Ruark, Larry Cohen, Fabian Kehrer, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, John Steinberger, Laurel gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Judith Bliss, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, Joanna Zarach, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Andrew Yang, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, Michael Finney, Elizabeth Corker, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Chris Rauchle, Arjun, Rochelle Rochelle, Capitalists for Shared Income, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Thomas Fitzsimmons, Mark Borrington, Leslie Kausch, Jessica Chew, Braden Ferrin , Deanna McHugh, chris heinz, Pavel S, Zachary Weaver, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, Ryan Ash-Miller, miki, bradzone, Lee Lor, Akber Khan, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Tim , Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Loren Sickles, anti666, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Kai Wong, and Laura Ashby.* **[Become a monthly patron to see your name here too](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com)!** [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Time To Crowdfund a UBI Platform URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/time-to-crowdfund-a-ubi-platform-universal-basic-income/ Last updated: 2023-09-06T14:01:14.000Z As some of you already know, I'm excited about the potential for [Comingle](https://www.comingle.us/?ref=scottsantens.com). It's an app that once fully developed and launched will provide a small basic income of around $200 a month, paid weekly, to everyone who signs up for it, who commits 7 percent of their weekly income to join the community and make it possible. Today, the future launch of Comingle is that much closer with the launch of a crowdfunding campaign for it [on Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/comingle/x/9324920?ref=scottsantens.com#/). Here's the co-founder of Comingle to tell you all about it. So why am I personally so excited about Comingle and why do I think it's so important to get launched? I believe we're facing a kind of Catch-22 where the lack of UBI makes UBI more difficult to get legislated, and where if only we already had a UBI, it would be easier to win a national UBI. So I think we need to essentially bootstrap the process by going around government to get a small UBI going, to make a full poverty-eradicating UBI via government more possible. There are a few key obstacles to a wide understanding and mass support for UBI that I think Comingle will help with. One of them is the lack of understanding that UBI is always paired with some amount of taxes. This lack of understanding is why so many people immediately think UBI will be [inflationary](https://www.scottsantens.com/would-unconditional-universal-basic-income-cause-inflation-ubi/), because they think everyone gets free money and thus the money supply must get expanded. But taxes are part of UBI which makes it possible for UBI to be deficit-neutral and thus non-expansionary. In the case of Comingle, the mechanism is essentially a flat 7% income tax. No new money is created in the case of Comingle, obviously, and instead money shifts from those above the average income to those below the average, in proportion to the distance below the average. [That's how UBI works](https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-is-not-cheaper-than-universal-basic-income-ubi-nor-is-guaranteed-income-more-progressive-by-excluding-the-rich/). Understanding that also helps understand another obstacle to UBI, which is the concern that rich people get it too. Many of those outside the Comingle community will continue having that concern. No one inside the Comingle community should have that concern, because they will understand that if Bill Gates were to sign up for Comingle, 7% of his income is much greater than the small UBI he will receive. He would be a net payer to the community and would essentially be volunteering to increase his income taxes by 7% in order to help pay everyone in the community $50 a week, which to him is nothing and merely reduces his self-imposed new tax to 6.9999999% thanks to the Comingle UBI functioning as a tiny tax rebate. Also, if Bill Gates were to join Comingle, and Comingle had 100,000 members, that would boost the weekly payment for everyone by about $40 a week to $90 a week which is $360 a month versus $200 a month. Bill Gates' income is quite a bit above the average, so it would lift the average significantly by joining. Another key understanding that I think eludes people that I learned in the process of crowdfunding [my own basic income on Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com), is how even a small UBI of $200 a month made a difference to my sense of security. This is what so many people miss by focusing on the amount and thinking it needs to be big enough to cover one's entire rent to make a difference. To the contrary, knowing that next month, and every month thereafter, the lowest income you can possibly have is $200, helps reduce one's fear of going hungry, which increases one's sense of security. **It's not nothing to not have to worry about going hungry**. The removal of that fear is a big deal. For me, even with a small UBI, feeling that newfound sense of security was something I felt at an emotional level. It was visceral. It was like a weight was lifted that had been there my entire adult life. I could breathe a bit easier knowing I was going to be okay thanks to finally having an income floor that wasn't zero. I think if 100,000 Americans felt a bit more economically secure, even if with a floor of just $200 a month, that the collective mental health of the entire Comingle community would improve. Of course, such a small UBI is not going to be as effective as $500 a month or $1200 a month or more, but it will help. And if it's able to help improve mental health a bit, and people start to feel other people actually care about them and trust them, then social cohesion can increase a bit. And if social cohesion can increase a bit, that's [where things start getting really interesting](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-big-red-button-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi/) in terms of a healthier society. The message sent by every member of the Comingle community to every other member will be, "**We will leave no Comingler behind. We're all in this together**." That's a powerful message that if amplified within a large community can be more easily amplified even further to the entire country. Now, some of you may be thinking, Comingle sounds great and all, but the only people who sign up will be those who want to get back more than they pay in. I agree that this will likely be the biggest challenge, but I also do believe that we will find those who actually want to pay in more than they get back. I think that because I'm one of those people, and because $500 billion is donated to charity in the U.S. every year. If we can get just a small fraction of that, we can manage a small UBI floor for a lot of people. Personally, I want a platform like Comingle to exist, not only as a basic income supporter, but as someone who would like to essentially automate my giving to a lot of people in some small way. It's not right that so many people in need create GoFundMe campaigns and get nothing while others exceed their goals. I want to know that everyone is being treated equally, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, political party, looks, socioeconomic status, etc. And I want to know that those in the most need are netting the most help, without any testing for need. That's the beauty of UBI. By providing to all equally, and taxing to make those with higher incomes into net payers and those with lower incomes into net recipients, the outcome is inequality-reducing and non-exclusionary. No one falls through any holes when there are none to fall through. Trying to target people is what creates holes. Universality creates a floor instead of a hole-filled net. There's also an added stability from Comingle that will be helpful I think to those near the average income who won't really be net payers or net recipients, but will instead see greater income stability. Imagine someone who gets paid twice the average monthly income, but every other month. They'd pay in say $400 on payday and then receive $50 a week back for the next two months. Overall, they wouldn't gain or lose anything, but they would see a bit more stability in income by getting paid a bit every week instead of only every other month. For those with average incomes, why not join Comingle and gain a bit more stability and security? I'm also interested in seeing just how many people of faith who believe in [tithing](https://www.christianity.com/wiki/christian-life/what-is-a-tithe-meaning-and-importance-of-tithing-in-the-bible.html?ref=scottsantens.com) join Comingle. If you already believe that you should provide 10 percent of your income charitably, then sign up for Comingle. Automate your tithing. Join a community where you know your tithing means that no one falls below seven percent of the weekly average income of the entire community. Because the success of Comingle will rest on finding those who wish to be net donors, another key element of Comingle will require the use of waitlists where those with below-average incomes won't be able to join until another person above the average income joins. This will help ensure the average income stays sufficiently high and also encourage those below the average to actively go out and help enlist those above the average. It also means that the earlier someone signs up for Comingle the better, both in terms of net donors and net recipients. With that in mind, you should know that those who contribute any amount to the crowdfund will be invited to be the first members of the Comingle community. So if this is something that sounds as exciting to you as it does to me, please consider heading on over to [the Indiegogo page](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/comingle/x/9324920?ref=scottsantens.com#/) to donate. I believe we can do this. We need to do this. Help us do this. A small UBI is possible right now. We just need to create the community for it. --- *Want more content like this? Please share it and [click the subscribe button](https://www.scottsantens.com/#/portal/signup). Also consider making a monthly pledge in support of my UBI advocacy work. Besides this blog, please also consider subscribing to the [ITSA Newsletter](https://itsanewsletter.beehiiv.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) too.* **Special thanks to my monthly supporters*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Matthew Cheney, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, David Ruark, Larry Cohen, Fabian Kehrer, Liya Brook, John Steinberger, Laurel gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Judith Bliss, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, Joanna Zarach, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Andrew Yang, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, Michael Finney, Elizabeth Corker, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Chris Rauchle, Arjun, Bram Zeigler, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Thomas Fitzsimmons, Mark Borrington, Leslie Kausch, Jessica Chew, Braden Ferrin , Deanna McHugh, chris heinz, Pavel S, Zachary Weaver, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, Ryan Ash-Miller, miki, bradzone, Lee Lor, Akber Khan, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Garry Turner, Tim , Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Loren Sickles, anti666, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Kai Wong, and Laura Ashby.* **[Become a monthly patron to see your name here too](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com)!** [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Sowing Seeds of Security: How Basic Income Is Taking Root in the U.S. through Local Pilots and Programs URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-earth-network-congress-speech-2023/ Last updated: 2024-03-07T22:09:18.000Z [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/03/button_support-my-work-on-patreon-13.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) ### *Note: The following is a speech I gave at the 2023 Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Congress that was held in Seoul, South Korea. You can find more of the presentations there online at* [*this link*](https://biencongress2023.org/papers/?ref=scottsantens.com)*.* Thank you for inviting me from my home in Washington, D.C. to be here in person today. I’m excited to share with you all a summary of what's been happening in the U.S. in the basic income movement recently, and how just providing people cash appears to be taking root in the U.S. as program after program continues building the case. For those who don’t know me or my work, I’m just a guy who happened to get really into the concept of basic income ten years ago. I get asked all the time how that happened, so long story short, I was on Reddit one day, read the many comments in a discussion thread about how quickly technology was advancing and yet no one was talking about it, found out about UBI, started researching it, and there was no going back after that. Two years later, [I was living with a perpetual crowdfunded monthly basic income floor](https://www.scottsantens.com/what-if-you-got-1000-a-month-just-for-being-alive-i-decided-to-find-out-basic-income-ubi/) that has ever since enabled me to focus on UBI full-time. It was actually through gaining my own basic income floor, that I learned first-hand how truly transformative UBI will be society-wide. First, I learned what it meant to feel a real sense of security, and how little security I ever felt before that. It’s like we’re all fish swimming in an ocean of insecurity. It’s hard to understand what security really means by just reading and talking about it, when all we’ve ever known is insecurity. I also learned that people underestimate just how big a deal even a small UBI is. A couple hundred dollars a month may not sound like much, but when you know for certain it’s going to be there, you know for certain that at the very least, you’re not going to go hungry. That feeling of not having to ever worry about coming up with money for food is not at all insignificant. It’s paramount. When describing a significant result from the Stockton, CA pilot, former Mayor Michael Tubbs has said the mental health impact was akin to antidepressants. And even though it was only $500 a month, an amount some people claimed would have no effect, it also doubled the rate of full-time employment among recipients compared to non-recipients. A story that illustrates that impact is how one of the pilot participants took a day off work to secure a better job. His basic income afforded him the time to do that, and empowered him to take that risk. If all we’re doing is trying to come up with next month’s rent, it’s that much harder for us to afford the time and risk it takes to find a job that fits us best, or at least better. These are the kinds of stories being generated across the U.S., in addition to the empirical data. The new wave of American basic income pilots began with one city in 2018, which turned into 11 mayors across 11 cities in June 2020 with the launch of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, which has since expanded to 116 mayors as of June. Across all pilots, MGI and non-MGI affiliated, over 100 pilots have already launched or completed, with around 60 currently active. What was once just a group of mayors for guaranteed income has also become a group of 28 county officials for guaranteed income across 21 counties, and even a documentary titled [“It’s Basic”](https://www.itsbasicdocumentary.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) on a national 16-month tour of 50 cities. That’s also not the only documentary to be created as the result of a U.S. pilot. A program in Chelsea, Massachusetts that provided monthly cash instead of food to over 2,000 households resulted in [a documentary titled “Raising the Floor”](https://www.raisingthefloorfilm.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) that’s currently in the film festival circuit. In addition, a docuseries titled “Bootstraps” that filmed 10 households across the U.S. living with a basic income of $1,000 a month per adult and $333 per month per kid for two and a half years is [currently in post-production](https://www.itsafoundation.org/our-projects?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s important to note that none of the U.S. pilots are saturation site pilots where income is received universally, but the huge diversity of pilots and the participants they enroll does paint a picture of universality. An unconditional monthly cash program that only enrolls the unhoused is not UBI, but because UBI will include everyone who is unhoused, a good story from a homelessness-focused pilot can show how effective UBI will be at reducing homelessness. For example, [Miracle Messages](https://www.miraclemessages.org/money?ref=scottsantens.com), a charity in San Francisco that was already focused on helping the unhoused get housed, decided to provide $500 a month to 15 homeless people for 6 months and the result was that [two-thirds of them found housing](https://basicincometoday.com/thanks-to-500-a-month-of-basic-income-for-six-months-homelessness-reduced-by-two-thirds/?ref=scottsantens.com). It was so successful that it has expanded its cash-giving with the intent of providing [$750 a month for one year](https://www.brightvibes.com/100-california-homeless-individuals-to-benefit-from-universal-basic-income-experiment-funded-by-google-led-by-non-profit-miracle-messages/?ref=scottsantens.com) to 100 more unhoused people in a randomized controlled trial. Here is a summary of most of the many different groups of people besides the unhoused participating in [America’s guaranteed basic income pilots](https://mashable.com/article/cities-with-universal-basic-income-guaranteed-income-programs?ref=scottsantens.com): pregnant women, unpaid caregivers, former foster youth, youth at high risk of crime, the formerly incarcerated, young parents, single parents, high school students, LGBTQ, artists, community college students, refugees, pre-retirement-age seniors, people with disabilities, welfare benefit recipients, and entrepreneurs. Missing from this list I feel are groups like: coal miners, veterans, first responders, and scientists. Consider who you think is missing. What would make for new politically impactful UBI stories? Besides the great variety of people in the U.S. pilots, there’s also a diversity of payment amounts, durations, and frequencies. The smallest amount of basic income is $50 a week and the largest is $1,204 a month. The shortest duration has been three months and the longest is five years. The various frequencies are weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, and semi-annually. All of this variety can help us learn more about optimal payment frequency, and if certain amounts of UBI provide greater bang per dollar than smaller or larger amounts. The U.S. also just ran what was essentially [the largest US-based basic income pilot ever](https://www.scottsantens.com/one-year-after-the-expiration-of-the-enhanced-child-tax-credit-ctc-what-all-have-we-learned-about-its-effects/) by providing $250-$300 a month per kid to 9 out of 10 kids in the U.S. in 2021\. On average, that worked out to around $462 a month to 36 million families. The result was the biggest drop in child poverty in American history, cutting it about in half, with no drop in unemployment. The number of parents selling their blood plasma also fell, and fewer parents started abusing drugs. Symptoms of anxiety also dropped by over 13%. And when the payments stopped, parental unemployment increased, likely due to a decreased ability to afford child care. America’s UBI that has existed in Alaska for over 40 years now also continues to teach us more about UBI as new studies of it are done. Two recent studies found that an additional $1,000 in UBI [reduced the likelihood that a child is referred to Child Protective Services](https://www.eur.nl/en/ese/events/effect-universal-and-unconditional-cash-transfers-child-abuse-and-neglect-2023-02-09?ref=scottsantens.com) by 2 percentage points, or about 10%, on average, and also [increased voter turnout](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-science-research-and-methods/article/does-a-universal-basic-income-affect-voter-turnout-evidence-from-alaska/11D46D5315AEB1C6D01D88D4DB1A8647?ref=scottsantens.com) by 7.6 percentage points. Some lessons that have been learned in the process of running our many pilots are the following: 1. Input from participants is helpful. Listen to them. Maybe they’d prefer they get paid mid-month versus the first. Or maybe they’d prefer a debit card instead of direct deposit. 2. Control group retention is a challenge. Consider how to create sufficient incentive to keep collecting data from control groups. 3. Local universities can be great research partners, as can local nonprofits be useful for participant recruitment and funding. 4. Trust can be a barrier and basic income can feel like something too good to be true. A trusted local org can help conquer the obstacles of disbelief and distrust. 5. Benefit cliffs can be really tricky, especially for those with disabilities who aren’t allowed to earn additional income without losing their disability income. Participants need to know they could lose something they’re already getting unless waivers are secured. 6. Also consider what happens to those who apply to be pilot participants who aren’t selected. What happens to them? It’s smart to engage them in some way and keep them engaged. These are the people who may be willing to be civically active in support of UBI. 7. Finally, what about storytelling? Don’t just collect data. Make a plan for telling the stories. Consider collecting those stories via audio or video. Consider also preparing participants on how to be effective at public speaking and how to communicate with the media. Special storytelling cohorts that aren’t part of the experimental group or the control group can be great for training and communicating their stories that the supporting data is only able to tell with cold data. I can’t stress enough how important these stories are. UBI will be won or lost based on stories, regardless of what all the mountains of data from the pilots they originate from have to say. One extremely powerful story can mean the difference between basic income for all actually happening or not, but there is no such thing as one perfect story for all. [What’s needed are stories](https://basicincometoday.com/success-stories/?ref=scottsantens.com) that people can see themselves in. If you’re an artist just barely getting by now thanks to generative AI’s ability to create the images people want to see in seconds, you need to see a story about how having a basic income transformed an artist’s life for the better. You need to experience their story and think, “That could be me if UBI existed.” That’s how an artist becomes a UBI activist. That’s why I’m especially excited about the artist basic income pilots in the U.S. and also [Ireland](https://basicincometoday.com/she-ditched-her-day-job-to-pursue-her-art-with-a-basic-income-grant-from-ireland/?ref=scottsantens.com). With thousands of artists living with basic income for years, that’s thousands of stories about a demographic of people who are humanity’s storytellers. Hopefully these kinds of pilots can lead to a lot more content about the incredible effectiveness of UBI. It’s the power of the stories of UBI in action that is why I recently founded my own non-profit in the U.S. called [the Income to Support All Foundation](https://www.scottsantens.com/introducing-the-income-to-support-all-foundation-itsa-ubi/) or ITSA Foundation for short as a nod to what UBI can succinctly be defined as. It’s a foundation! The goal of ITSA Foundation is to get the projects launched that will get a small UBI going right now, permanently, and tell the powerful stories that result from people living with UBI. We hope to have over 100,000 people living with a small basic income of $50 a week by 2026, and we hope to share the stories with the greatest potential impact to inspire a national movement. I have hope that the U.S. can get some amount of national UBI going by the end of the decade. Polling to gauge national support has been going steadily up. In 2019 it was 43%. A year later it was 55%. Most recent polling earlier this year showed it now at [61%, including 50% of Republicans](https://today.yougov.com/topics/finance/survey-results/daily/2023/02/14/dc315/3?ref=scottsantens.com). I think OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT last November has helped. I think OpenAI will also provide another boost in support next year. Sam Altman has said his 5-year UBI pilot using an RCT design with 1,000 UBI recipients and 2,000 in the control group that has been taking place across two states will finish next year, and with those results, in 2024, [they will begin pushing for national UBI legislation](https://time.com/6282325/sam-altman-openai-eu/?ref=scottsantens.com). The first permanent local guaranteed income program also now already exists in [Cambridge, Massachusetts](https://basicincometoday.com/cambridges-successful-covid-experiment-at-giving-poor-families-500-month-will-continue-and-grow-from-130-to-to-2000-people/?ref=scottsantens.com), where due to the success of their pilot, every resident with a dependent under 21, living at or below 250% of the federal poverty level, now qualifies for $500 a month for 18 months. It’s not UBI, but it’s another step forward. My hope is that we can continue taking these steps in the U.S., and that other countries, including yours, will also continue taking your own steps, and that one step at a time, some country will get to UBI first, and then the rest of the world will follow. The BIG question is, who will be first? --- *Want more content like this? Please share it and click the subscribe button. Also consider making a monthly pledge in support of my UBI advocacy work.* **Special thanks to my monthly supporters*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Matthew Cheney, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, David Ruark, Larry Cohen, Fabian Kehrer, Thomas Fitzsimmons, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, John Steinberger, Laurel gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Judith Bliss, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, Joanna Zarach, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Andrew Yang, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, Elizabeth Corker, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Chris Rauchle, Arjun, Chuck Cordes, Mark Borrington, Leslie Kausch, Jessica Chew, Braden Ferrin, Deanna McHugh, chris heinz, Pavel S, Zachary Weaver, Herb, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, Ryan Ash-Miller, miki, bradzone, Lee Lor, Akber Khan, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Garry Turner, Tim, Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Loren Sickles, anti666, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Kai Wong, and Laura Ashby.* [***Become a monthly patron to see your name here too***](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com)***!*** [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Introducing the Income To Support All Foundation URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/introducing-the-income-to-support-all-foundation-itsa-ubi/ Last updated: 2023-08-11T17:24:01.000Z I'm excited to share that I'm now the Founder and President of the **Income To Support All Foundation**, a new non-profit whose purpose is to accelerate the implementation of unconditional universal basic income by just doing it and by telling the stories of those whose lives have been transformed by it. Please make a point of [signing up to the ITSA Newsletter](https://itsanewsletter.beehiiv.com/subscribe?ref=scottsantens.com) to make sure you don't miss anything we're hoping to accomplish with the help of as many people as possible by 2025. I urge everyone to [visit the website](https://www.itsafoundation.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) to see who all is involved so far and to see what projects the ITSA Foundation is looking to get off the ground first, but to give a quick summary here of what we're looking to do, we're looking to go about philanthropy in a potentially disruptive way. Quite frankly, philanthropy as it exists should not exist. It exists as it does because of the lack of universal basic income, and because of an abundance of distrust against cash giving. Some organizations have been doing great work to change this status quo, most notably [GiveDirectly](https://www.givedirectly.org/ubi-study/?ref=scottsantens.com) which has been a pioneer in the cash-giving space internationally. More recently, local nonprofits like [Miracle Messages](https://www.miraclemessages.org/money?ref=scottsantens.com) have also begun to discover that to best meet their mission statements, unconditional cash provision should be a part of what they do, as have the nonprofits donating to [the many guaranteed basic income pilots across the US](https://cep.org/guaranteed-income-highlights-success-of-public-private-collaboration/?ref=scottsantens.com) to make them possible. Here's what Kevin Adler, the Founder and CEO of Miracle Messages, had to say in [an interview for Fast Company](https://www.fastcompany.com/90662914/heres-what-happened-when-a-san-francisco-nonprofit-gave-unhoused-people-500-a-month?ref=scottsantens.com) after how successful their provision of cash to unhoused people was in getting them successfully housed: > “I think nonprofits in general should have in the back of their mind kind of a plan to work themselves out of a job. If your staff and expenditures and budget would almost be better allocated by giving directly to individuals on the streets... at some point you have to ask, am I making the biggest difference that I could? Or should I essentially just disband and give out all the funds?” Most every nonprofit's ultimate goal should be to not exist. Whatever problem a nonprofit is looking to solve, the ultimate goal should be for that problem to no longer exist. But many nonprofits seem to now exist mainly to employ people within the nonprofit system, where money donated to help solve a problem [occasionally reaches those suffering from the problem](https://medium.com/basic-income/philanthropy-is-broken-f5fc69d26da4?ref=scottsantens.com) that the donor dollars are allegedly meant to alleviate. The charity industry has a problem — namely that it's an industry — one full of inherent paternalism built on an assumption that people can't be trusted with cash, and therefore need charitable dollars to be *transformed* into anything but cash. This is said to be out of a fear that cash can be misspent, but it's really based on the notion that it's a good thing for the ultra-rich to exist, because if that money had just flowed to people as cash, that would lead to "bad outcomes", so it's a good thing the ultra-rich are around to decide how money should be spent. I believe the opposite is true. Great wealth exists because a structure has been built to funnel vast quantities of money into fewer and fewer hands because of a complicity that exists between corporations and government to withhold people's [fair share of productivity growth](https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/?ref=scottsantens.com). For decades, lower taxes have combined with falling union power, automation, and offshoring, to depress wages and concentrate GDP growth into the hands of the top 10% who are then encouraged to donate *some* of it to charity, and where that charity for the most part is actively prevented from taking the form of the cash that should have flowed directly to people in the first place as paychecks. Universal basic income would solve this, but the grassroots demand for UBI is not even close to being strong enough yet, and even if it were, [the US government is currently non-responsive to the real needs of Americans](https://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy?ref=scottsantens.com). So something has to change. I believe we're looking at a chicken and egg problem where if UBI already existed, people would be empowered to make the changes necessary to win UBI. So that's what ITSA Foundation is looking to do — **get a small UBI going as the missing foundation upon which to make a larger UBI possible**. Get it? It's a foundation! To accomplish this goal as fast as possible, we're looking to get a platform called [Comingle](https://www.comingle.us/?ref=scottsantens.com) launched which has been in slow development for years. One of its creators is Conrad Shaw who previously created the [UBI Calculator](https://ubicalculator.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) that enables anyone to plug in their income and find out what their net benefit or tax increase would be from various UBI plan proposals. With Comingle, **the goal is to get every member of the community a dividend of around $50 a week, by every community member committing 7% of their weekly income**. This design is essentially a voluntary UBI funded by an automated deposit tax. Those in any given week earning above the average income will be net donors to those falling below the average, in proportion to the distance from the average. Someone with zero income would get $50 for a net gain of $50 that week. Someone paying in $50 would receive $50 for a net gain of $0 that week. And someone paying in $150 would receive $50 for a net donation of $100 that week. Personally, I really want this option to exist as simply a better way of giving. Some people may prefer to go on GoFundMe and find one person with one story to donate $200 to. I'd prefer to know my $200 is going to a huge number of people in a way where, combined with the donations of others, they may no longer even need to make a GoFundMe page at all. **I'd much prefer** [**preventing someone from ever falling**](https://www.scottsantens.com/engineering-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi-fault-tolerance-graceful-failure-redundancy/) **than trying to only help them** **after** **they've already hit the ground**. I believe there are others like me out there who also want to donate to others on a perpetual basis, but who would prefer it be done as a perpetual UBI. Are you one of them? Some people will reply that UBI is about only the richest people and corporations paying everyone else, but I believe that **UBI is ultimately about solidarity**. It's something we will *together* all make possible. By relying on each other, sometimes we will be the ones above the average, and sometimes we will be the ones below the average, but together we'll all know that there is a level below which we won't allow any of us to fall. That mutual agreement will be unifying. If you're interested in this project, **get ready for a big announcement in September** and be sure to catch it by [signing up on the Comingle website](https://www.comingle.us/count-me-in?ref=scottsantens.com). There's also another big UBI project that's been in the works for years, where twenty-one people all across the United States were provided a UBI and filmed by Emmy-award winning documentary director - [Deia Schlosberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deia%5FSchlosberg?ref=scottsantens.com). For almost three years, adults received $1,000 a month and $333/mo per kid as part of the [Bootstraps](http://palebluedotmedia.com/bootstraps?ref=scottsantens.com) docuseries project. It's currently in post-production and meant to be a ten-part docuseries examining UBI with an unbiased investigative lens, for better or worse, telling the real stories of UBI's real impacts. I believe in the power of stories and the need for this project to be completed, just as I believe in the potential of Comingle. Additionally, I believe in the combination of these two projects working together, where viewers of the Bootstraps docuseries can be encouraged to sign up for Comingle to start immediately living with a basic income, and to start making it possible for others to live with a basic income too. This can be the mechanism for communities that have hosted guaranteed basic income pilots to avoid just watching them end. A community can use its pilot to encourage people to opt into Comingle's perpetual UBI. If ITSA Foundation succeeds in our goal of getting both Comingle and Bootstraps fully funded, within a year both can be launched, and by the end of 2025, hopefully at least 100,000 Americans will be living with a perpetual, monthly, and fully voluntarily-funded basic income of around $250 a month. And a docuseries showing the entire world what it's really like to live with a basic income will have found a home on a streaming service somewhere and also be touring the US going from community to community with powerful stories, growing the number of people living with their own UBI and hopefully the number of people mobilizing for it. With ambitious UBI projects like this in the world, and hopefully more like it, showing everyone what basic income is like so they can truly understand it, I think UBI becomes much more possible. I could not tell you how many UBI-related project ideas people have proposed to me over the years as being what they think is needed. After the launch of ChatGPT, I decided I needed to pick two with the greatest chance of success and put what weight I have behind them. So that's what I'm doing. I've also been told over the years, and have seen others be told, that if we believe in UBI so much, we should just do it. Okay. Challenge accepted. I will be among the very first people to voluntarily pledge 7% of my income to others as UBI. If you want to help make this all happen, [then let's go](https://itsanewsletter.beehiiv.com/subscribe?ref=scottsantens.com)! --- *Want more content like this? Please share it and click the subscribe button. Also consider making a monthly pledge in support of my UBI advocacy work.* **Special thanks to my monthly supporters*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Matthew Cheney, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, David Ruark, Larry Cohen, Fabian Kehrer, Thomas Fitzsimmons, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, John Steinberger, Laurel gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Judith Bliss, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, Joanna Zarach, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Andrew Yang, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, Elizabeth Corker, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Chris Rauchle, Arjun, Chuck Cordes, Mark Borrington, Leslie Kausch, Jessica Chew, Braden Ferrin, Deanna McHugh, chris heinz, Pavel S, Zachary Weaver, Herb, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, Ryan Ash-Miller, miki, bradzone, Lee Lor, Akber Khan, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Garry Turner, Tim, Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Loren Sickles, anti666, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Kai Wong, and Laura Ashby.* **[Become a monthly patron to see your name here too](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com)!** [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### My Closing Keynote Speech at England's Basic Income North 2023 Conference URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/closing-keynote-speech-basic-income-north-england-conference-2023-ubi/ Last updated: 2024-03-07T22:09:48.000Z [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/03/button_support-my-work-on-patreon-14.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) *(The following is the text of my speech which you can also* [*watch*](https://youtu.be/U2XbrVQZLnI?ref=scottsantens.com) *or* [*listen*](https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scottsantens/episodes/Keynote-Speech-for-Basic-Income-North-2023-Conference-e277jss?ref=scottsantens.com) *to)* A few of you already know me, but for those who don’t, I’m just a guy who happened to get really into the concept of [unconditional basic income](https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-for-all-unconditional-why-ubi-is-necessary-now-evidence-experiments/) ten years ago. I get asked all the time how that happened, so long story short, I was on [Reddit](https://www.scottsantens.com/reddit-robots-and-resources-why-i-got-into-the-idea-of-basic-income-and-how-we-can-go-about-implementing-it/), read through the many comments in a discussion thread about how quickly technology was advancing and no one was talking about it, found out about UBI, dove into everything I could find about it, and like in some cartoon, a light bulb appeared above my head and there was no going back after that. What was the light bulb? It was this: [**there is no single policy more important to the future of humankind than UBI**](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-big-red-button-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi/). When asked to describe UBI in one word, I say “civilizational.” It’s that big. People love to say UBI is no silver bullet; that it’s not a panacea. No, it’s not. But in a world where [most of the population is perpetually being choked so they can’t breathe](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-spaceballs-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi/) deeply, a “no more non-consensual choking policy” is a pretty big deal. It’s not that UBI will solve everything, but what it does do is make everything more solvable. In a world full of locked doors, it’s a skeleton key. If we want to move the world, we need a really long lever, a lot of effort, and a fulcrum. UBI is that fulcrum. My academic background is in psychology and engineering physics. What I ultimately care about is what works and what doesn’t, and so I care about the scientific method more than I do about tribal affiliation. Something is true regardless of what anyone says about that something. Or more accurately, something can be determined to be false, and what isn’t false could be true. Here’s what’s false: [The Just-World Hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world%5Fhypothesis?ref=scottsantens.com). People do not live in poverty because they deserve it, and people do not live with great wealth because they deserve it. No. That absolutely isn’t true. Yes, hard work can lead someone from poverty to wealth, but not necessarily. There’s a lot of people doing a lot of hard work who live in poverty. There’s also a lot of people doing very little work or doing just as much work as everyone else who are living in great wealth. None of us chose who our parents would be and where we would be born. There is a great deal of luck responsible for where each of us are in our lives, but many of us discount all of that because it feels really good to feel we deserve our fortune and others deserve their misfortune. It feels good to think that as long as we work hard and avoid mistakes, everything will be fine. But odds are it won’t be fine. Odds are, at some point in our lives, we’re going to need some help based on pure bad luck, or even a poor decision or two, and when that happens, [what should that help look like](https://www.scottsantens.com/engineering-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi-fault-tolerance-graceful-failure-redundancy/)? Should we treat people as we ourselves would like to be treated? Or should it be full of distrust, and strings, and paternalism, and indignity, and paperwork, and time? So much time. And should it disappear when we no longer need it, like a rug that gets pulled out from under us as soon as we get back on our feet after a fall? And should we even wait until we need help instead of helping each other avoid such a need? Here’s what I think. I think we all need a floor under us at all times. To build our lives, we need a foundation. That foundation should always be there. Knowing it will always be there is security. It’s stability. [It’s mutual trust](https://www.scottsantens.com/think-like-a-martian-about-money-and-universal-basic-income-ubi/). It’s society saying, “I believe in you. You deserve to start with something instead of nothing, just as I do, just as we all do. And with that universal foundation, that is only possible together, we will build and we will prosper, because when we all do better, we all do better.” I’m an optimist and a dreamer at heart, but I’m also a realist and a pragmatist. Again, what works and what doesn’t? If something works, do that. If something doesn’t work, don’t do that. Poverty doesn't work for society. Neither does chronic insecurity or extreme inequality. These things are costly wastes of societal resources. UBI works. It just does. We already know that. That’s what convinced me a decade ago, because the evidence was already there. [UBI does not make people lazy](https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9459?ref=scottsantens.com). Most people who receive unconditional income act just like we ourselves would. People who want to work use it to find the work that’s best for them, paid or unpaid, and those who work a bit less focus on everything else in their lives of more importance than overwork. Oh no, someone with UBI started working less than 80 hours a week across three jobs. They’re so lazy. And that person with $500,000 in the bank earning $2,000 a month in interest? They’re smart, industrious people making their money work for them. Ridiculous double-standards. We also already know that UBI improves health, especially mental health. We know babies are born healthier. We know it reduces crime. We know it reduces domestic abuse. We know it improves diets. We know it doesn’t lead to more abuse of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs. We know it leads to less private debt and more savings. We know it leads to significantly more entrepreneurship. And we know it increases trust in each other. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2023/07/27.png) Sources available [here](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1040683616488103936?ref=scottsantens.com) We know all these things, and we’ll never really know everything until UBI is permanently implemented, but pilots are still important, and pilots are definitely happening. One of the things that won me over originally was reading about the UBI pilots in [Namibia](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) and [India](https://socialprotection-humanrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Indias-Basic-Income-Experiment-PP21.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), and just how powerful the results of such saturation pilots are. I was blown away that crime dropped by 42% in Namibia while entrepreneurship quadrupled, and how costs for food actually went down in India while entrepreneurship tripled. This kind of data can really influence those who can be influenced by data, but let’s be real, for the most part, that’s not who we’re dealing with who aren’t yet supportive of UBI. All the evidence in the world can be falsified by an experiment of one, an anecdote, more commonly known as — a story. [That’s what the pilots are truly all about](https://www.scottsantens.com/should-we-support-the-many-universal-basic-income-pilot-experiments-that-arent-actually-testing-ubi/) and why even micro-pilots have value to the movement. One story is all someone ever really needs. My favorite story from the Namibia UBI pilot is a woman named Frieda who with her first UBI payment went out and bought what she needed to start her own bakery business for her village. Soon she was making four times in profit the amount of her UBI every month, on top of her UBI. She even hired employees. [Ten years later](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5Ften%5Fyears%5Flater%5Freport%5F2019.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) her bakery shop is still in business and her three kids were able to attend the University of Namibia. I love that story for a few reasons. 1) She clearly didn’t get lazy. She started her own successful business. How many others are there like her who want to start a successful business but don’t have the resources or fear the poverty consequences of failure? 2) Her UBI enabled her to earn far more than her UBI. It demonstrates clearly how UBI is a raised floor that better enables additional income; that first comes money and then comes work. 3) And this is the biggest one, her business was successful because she had customers. Everyone in her village had the money to buy her baked rolls. The UBI didn’t just create an entrepreneur, it created demand. How many businesses fail, not because of a bad product or service, but [because of a lack of customers with discretionary income](https://www.scottsantens.com/unconditional-basic-income-would-fix-a-major-flaw-in-markets/) to spend? That’s one of my favorite stories and I will put that up against anyone with their favorite anecdote about how they heard of someone on welfare who does nothing all day but drink and drugs. The challenge of a good story is finding the right one for the right person. That’s why I’m especially excited about all the many pilots in the US, because part of qualifying as a good story is being local enough. So many people don’t care about a baker in Namibia because that’s not 'here', that's 'there.' So local pilots help. The other challenge for a good story is finding one that someone can identify strongly with. A good UBI story is one where we see ourselves, as if through the looking glass to a parallel universe where we ourselves have UBI. This is why I disagree with complaints about what’s going on in cities and counties across the US as not UBI. It’s true that nothing so far has been a saturation site testing universality effects, but all together, there’s a story that universality would tell. In the US more than 115 mayors have joined Mayors for Guaranteed Income with the hopes of launching a pilot in their city and [over 50 such pilots have already been launched](https://mashable.com/article/cities-with-universal-basic-income-guaranteed-income-programs?ref=scottsantens.com). Some have already completed. Some are still ongoing. Some are already looking at permanency. Some are privately funded and some are publicly funded. Some are nonprofits realizing how powerful it is to just give people money instead of what they usually do. But what all share are the individual stories they are creating or have created. An unconditional monthly cash program that only enrolls the unhoused is not UBI, but because UBI will include everyone who is unhoused, a good story from a homelessness-focused pilot can show [how effective UBI will be at reducing homelessness](https://basicincometoday.com/thanks-to-500-a-month-of-basic-income-for-six-months-homelessness-reduced-by-two-thirds/?ref=scottsantens.com). Here are the stories that are currently being generated in the US based on the specific focuses of the many pilots. If you’re pregnant, or looking to be, or once were, there’s a story waiting for you. If you’re an unpaid caregiver, or a former foster kid, or a Black parent, there’s a story waiting for you. If you have or had Long Covid, or were once in prison, or identify as LGBTQ, or are a young parent or an artist, or a community college student or a person with a disability, there is a story waiting for you. If you’re not quite old enough for Social Security or are an aspiring entrepreneur, there is a story waiting for you. That’s what we need, and that’s what we’re creating all over the world, we’re creating stories of a better world, where you see yourself in that world, and you’re just - happier. Stories can also be dangerous and that’s something I’m increasingly concerned about. What UBI has on its side are stories that are true. They are real. But some people are becoming increasingly lost to stories that are complete fiction. There are more and more people out there who believe that [UBI is a trap laid by globalist elites](https://www.scottsantens.com/is-unconditional-basic-income-ubi-a-trap-being-laid-by-wef-global-elites-to-control-and-enslave-us-all/) who want to lock people in their homes and make them eat bugs. It’s completely ridiculous, but again, all someone needs is a story. And those stories are out there. So we have to get the real stories out there. There’s also a bit of a chicken and egg problem here that has me increasingly worried. Studies show that [reduced cognitive capacity](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2203149119?ref=scottsantens.com) and [reduced social cohesion](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103121001487?ref=scottsantens.com) contribute to people believing in conspiracy theories. So the longer we go without UBI, the more our social bonds erode and the more cognitive capacity goes toward stressing out about just meeting our basic needs. People without UBI are out there seeking solace in the communities of conspiracy that make them feel less alone and more special, where they know secret information and are part of a club who will someday shout “I told you so!”, without ever realizing that the only reason the world’s wealthiest people would ever want UBI is not to increase their grip on power, but because of coming to the realization that if they don’t finally give up a bit of their power through UBI, the pitchforks and torches will eventually come for them. That’s what’s going to start keeping more and more of them up at night, but what’s keeping me up at night is the fear that maybe, however much I don’t want to believe it, that maybe it’s simply too late. The climate crisis is already upon us. The world is on fire. Democracies around the world are eroding as [authoritarianism is on the rise](https://hopenothate.org.uk/2020/11/01/authoritarianism/?ref=scottsantens.com). As the climate gets worse, more people will be displaced from their homes, and that in turn will only lead to even greater anti-immigrant sentiment and outright fascism, especially with automation adding even more fuel to the fire by displacing people from their jobs too. We are in a very dangerous place, and we’re here because we have refused to tackle climate change for decades. We’ve refused to strengthen our democracies for decades. We’ve let inequality run rampant for decades. We took it all for granted. All of it. And now we're in a globally destabilizing feedback loop. Still, I live with hope. Sometimes I feel like I’m tending a candle within me, and I have to protect it on occasion from being blown out. There’s a lot of stuff out there that can blow out the candles inside all of us. There's so much algorithmically amplified anger and hate. It can all seem like so much, just too much to deal with, and in those moments I remind myself that UBI is still possible, and if we can win it, we can start to finally *turn* this giant ship that really *really* wants to hit that iceberg up ahead. So how do we get there? I wish I had the answer for you. The only truthful answer I know is one step at a time, and as long as each of us are taking those steps, and more people see us and our stories and want to take their own steps and share their own stories, then we can get there. Together. And really, that’s all we can do. A big step I took recently is start my own nonprofit focused on UBI in the US called the [Income to Support All Foundation](https://www.itsafoundation.org/?ref=scottsantens.com), or ITSA Foundation as a nod to what UBI simply is. It’s a foundation! (.org) Our goal is to help get a small UBI going immediately and permanently and to leverage that to build the movement faster for statewide and nationwide implementations by accelerating [two projects](https://www.itsafoundation.org/our-projects?ref=scottsantens.com) in particular that have been in slow development for years. I don’t know if it will work, but with the launch of generative AI and the distinct possibility of political violence in 2024, I decided at the end of last year it pretty much has to. So that’s what I’m up to and why I think UBI is needed immediately, and why I think the focus needs to be on stories. The question then becomes what can you do? What story is it that you want to tell, or whose story can you help tell? What’s your own fulcrum? Find that. Find that fulcrum and push with all your might for UBI, because we need you. And really, when you get down to it, that’s why we need UBI, because we need each other. We always will. We are an interdependent species, and that will never stop being true. Thank you for listening, and good luck to you. We’re all gonna need it. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and share this post with others. Also consider a monthly pledge in support of my UBI advocacy. **Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Matthew Cheney, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, David Ruark, Larry Cohen, Fabian Kehrer, Thomas Fitzsimmons, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, John Steinberger, Laurel gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Judith Bliss, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, Joanna Zarach, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Bruce Allen, Andrew Yang, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, Max Henrion, Elizabeth Corker, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Michael Honey, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Chris Rauchle, Arjun , Mark Borrington, Leslie Kausch, Jessica Chew, Braden Ferrin , Deanna McHugh, chris heinz, Pavel S, Zachary Weaver, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, Ryan Ash-Miller, miki, Adam Parsons, bradzone, Lee Lor, Akber Khan, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Garry Turner, Tim , Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Loren Sickles, anti666, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Kai Wong, and Laura Ashby. *Become a monthly patron to see your name here too!** [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Big Red Button Argument for Unconditional Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-big-red-button-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2024-03-07T20:54:26.000Z Everyone who has followed my writings through the years knows I like to write specific arguments for the idea of [unconditional basic income (UBI)](https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-for-all-unconditional-why-ubi-is-necessary-now-evidence-experiments/). One of my own personal favorites is the [Engineering Argument for UBI](https://www.scottsantens.com/engineering-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi-fault-tolerance-graceful-failure-redundancy/). Another is the [Monsters, Inc Argument for UBI](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-monsters-inc-argument-for-unconditional-basic-income/). Well, here's another that's been on my mind since around 2016 that I've only ever mentioned here and there without ever writing a full essay diving into it. This is my attempt to finally get it out there. Let's talk about the **Big Red Button** that could mean the extinction of humankind, and how implementing UBI will actually help us avoid pressing it. ### The Big Red Button Imagine there's a device with a Big Red Button. If someone pushes that button, it means the extinction of our species. All humans will die if one human presses that button. How do we avoid that button getting pressed? The most obvious response is to never make that device. But we're humans. We're going to make that device. That device is absolutely getting made. So the next most obvious response is to make that button really really hard for anyone to press. There needs to be as few of these devices as possible. There needs to be all kinds of walls and barriers erected to make pressing that button more difficult, both physical and legal. It needs to be a crime to gather the materials for the device, and there needs to be all kinds of flags that are triggered to signal that someone is attempting to press the button. This is the strategy we've taken for nuclear weapons. It's extremely difficult for a country to get its hands on nuclear weapons, and it's virtually impossible for any lone person to make one themselves. Here's the thing though, the nuclear button isn't the Big Red Button we should all be worried about. The Big Red Button we should all be worried about isn't even really the creation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the form of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) that's smarter than us. Yes, [there's great risk inherent in superintelligent AI](https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/05/openai-is-forming-a-new-team-to-bring-superintelligent-ai-under-control/?ref=scottsantens.com), but that risk is not akin to lots of people getting a button to potentially push, but instead a button pushing itself without human input. Extreme climate change is also a danger with existential risk, and we certainly need to reverse it before it's too late, but we pushed that button long ago, and there is the potential we can potentially unpush it with [smart policies](https://www.scottsantens.com/this-idea-can-literally-change-the-world-universal-basic-income-through-carbon-pricing/) and new [technological advancements](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64886116?ref=scottsantens.com) in direct air capture (DAC). There's still hope. The Big Red Button I want to talk about is biotechnology, because once someone pushes that button, there is potentially no going back. To help in understanding why I think that is, let's first talk about lawn mowers. ### Automation Versus Obsoletion I used to mow lawns for money as a kid. I had a very small customer base of people in my community. They were all within walking distance. I remember as a kid drawing up plans for a robotic lawn mower. How cool would that be to just sit back and watch a robot mow a lawn so I didn't have to do it? Especially my own lawn. My sketch involved setting up a border around the lawn so that the robot would know where to go and where not to go. It seemed so obvious a device to make. At the time, I just thought it would be awesome. It wasn't until much later as an adult, I started thinking about the employment implications of automating the job. If there are robots that can mow lawns, that will put lawn mowers out of work. A company that used to employ a team of 50 lawn mowers could downsize and still mow as many lawns, or it could mow a lot more lawns and take business away from other lawn mowers. Either way, in a world with robotic self-driving lawn mowing technology, there's going to be fewer jobs mowing lawns. That's automation. It's powerful. It can do a lot of work for us. That technology also already exists by the way. First there were Roombas vacuuming floors for us. Now there are lists of [the best robot lawn mowers](https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-robot-lawn-mowers?ref=scottsantens.com). They're here. They exist. And they're already reducing demand for human lawn mowers. However, what if we didn't even need robot lawn mowers anymore? One way to do that is to just not have lawns anymore. Another is to have fake lawns. Some people would love either, and both would certainly save a lot of water, but as long as there's a demand for real lawns, there's going to need to be mowers. Except, that's not entirely true. It's theoretically possible to genetically engineer some grass that wouldn't need cutting. Now imagine the implications of that. **It's one thing to automate something. It's another to completely obviate the need to automate**. With human lawn mowers, let's say a town needs to employ 1,000 lawn mowers. With robot lawn mowers, let's say a town needs to employ 100 lawn mowers. With biotech super grass, that town and every other town would need zero lawn mowers. And one biotech company employing a tiny fraction of the number of people once employed mowing lawns could gain a massive amount of revenue and concentrate it into the hands of very few very rich people. That's the power of biotech compared to robotics. Now here's another story that goes far beyond super grass. One of my favorite sci-fi books I've ever read is *The Diamond Age* by Neal Stephenson. I don't want to spoil the book, but it takes place in a future where nanotechnology exists. People's homes have a kind of replicator called a Matter Compiler that's connected to a kind of plumbing system. Instead of just having water on tap, people have virtually everything on tap. It's important to understand there are limits due to the centralized nature of the system. At the push of a button, voila, there's a new shirt, but you can't make a bomb. Sounds like Star Trek, right? Well, the key technology in the book that's the next advance is Seed technology, which is the ability for anyone to grow anything from special nanotech seeds. And I mean anything. No limits. Someone could choose to grow a pandemic virus to wipe out humanity. They could even just program nanobots to self-replicate until there's nothing but nanobots. Sci-fi fans knows this as a [Gray goo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray%5Fgoo?ref=scottsantens.com) scenario. That's a Big Red Button. It really got me thinking when I first read that. **How does humanity survive if we create technology that can create anything at all?** That's what I love about science fiction. It really gets us thinking and imagining and wondering. Part of being a science fiction fan is contemplating problems before they exist, and finding potential solutions to those problems before they are needed. What we really need to understand now is that those science fiction problems are a lot closer than many people think. AI has already arrived, and AI is already on its way to enabling someone somewhere to push the Big Red Button. ### Building the Big Red Button One of the first revolutionary accomplishments by AI has been a massive step toward [solving the protein folding problem](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2330866-deepminds-protein-folding-ai-cracks-biologys-biggest-problem/?ref=scottsantens.com). A decades-long problem in biology has been not knowing what shapes proteins would take and the time and resources required to try and predict them with any accuracy. Then DeepMind's AlphaFold (and more recently AlphaFold2) [changed all of that](https://www.geekwire.com/2023/how-ai-is-changing-the-way-scientists-make-drugs-biosensors-enzymes-and-more/?ref=scottsantens.com) with its ability to better predict the shapes of virtually every protein. This quickly grew the database of known protein structures from a few hundred thousand to hundreds of millions and has already led to new advances including [new antibiotics](https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/scientists-ai-discover-antibiotic-against-050805332.html?ref=scottsantens.com) and [improving the ability to edit genes](https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/994148?ref=scottsantens.com). The world's [first fully AI-generated drug](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/29/ai-generated-drug-begins-clinical-trials-in-human-patients.html?ref=scottsantens.com) is also already in clinical trials. Next, have you heard of ChemCrow? Most of you probably haven't. A few of you trying to follow AI developments have. In April 2023, [a paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.05376?ref=scottsantens.com) was published describing "an LLM chemistry agent designed to accomplish tasks across organic synthesis, drug discovery, and materials design." The AI researchers developed an AI that "autonomously planned the syntheses of an insect repellent, three organocatalysts, as well as other relevant molecules." Basically they created an AI attached to a chemistry lab that synthesized new compounds via a simple chatbot interface. They stated the obvious in their paper that "there is a significant risk of misuse of tools like ChemCrow." On the one hand, chemists using AI could potentially make more incredible discoveries faster, and non-experts could be empowered to help too. Those are astounding implications for scientific advancement. On the other hand, such tools can better enable people to make things none of us want made, on purpose or by accident. That was in April. This next paper was published in June 2023\. The following is directly from the abstract, and I want to emphasize this is real, not sci-fi: > "MIT tasked non-scientist students with investigating whether LLM chatbots could be prompted to assist non-experts in causing a pandemic. In one hour, the chatbots suggested four potential pandemic pathogens, explained how they can be generated from synthetic DNA using reverse genetics, supplied the names of DNA synthesis companies unlikely to screen orders, identified detailed protocols and how to troubleshoot them, and recommended that anyone lacking the skills to perform reverse genetics engage a core facility or contract research organization. Collectively, these results suggest that **LLMs will make pandemic-class agents widely accessible** as soon as they are credibly identified, even to people with little or no laboratory training." That's the Big Red Button. No need for AGI. No need for any kind of Skynet to come online and decide to nuke humanity. All that's needed is the right LLM connected to the right tools, and a lone human willing to send the commands. If you think AI tools like ChatGPT and Bard from the big guys at OpenAI and Google can put limits in place to prevent such uses, you're probably right. But that's not the real danger. **The real danger is open source AI** where a single person has the ability to train their own unrestricted AI, and that's something the big guys already fear too. ### There Is No Moat A [leaked internal Google document](https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-neither?ref=scottsantens.com) in May 2023 stressed the dangers to Google that open source AI poses, and how the open source community was positioned to outcompete both OpenAI and Google. It all started when Meta's foundational model was leaked. Within weeks, there were open source advancements made with it bringing open source options up to the level of Google's Bard and OpenAI's ChatGPT. Advancements were made at a shocking pace, making it possible to run powerful AI models on a phone versus a giant array of servers, and bringing people the ability to train their own AIs in one day for their own custom needs. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2023/07/open-source-ai-1-.png) Whereas Google and Microsoft were putting massive resources and massive training time behind massive models, the open source community was iterating better and better AI models, cheaply and quickly, based on the volunteer work of thousands upon thousands of people around the world, one improvement at a time. It seems clear already that whatever AI technology is invented with protections and guardrails in place, there will be open source AI options of similar capability without the protections in place too. People who know what they are doing will likely be able to use AI for what they want, regardless of what the rest of society wants to prevent AI from doing. > **"**The more tightly we control our models, the more attractive we make open alternatives**.** Google and OpenAI have both gravitated defensively toward release patterns that allow them to retain tight control over how their models are used. But this control is a fiction. **Anyone seeking to use LLMs for unsanctioned purposes can simply take their pick of the freely available models**." So if open source AI is going to be a Big Red Button, how do we reduce the odds of someone pressing it by training their own regardless of any regulations and laws designed to try to prevent that? If anyone can build a new pandemic virus with AI, what do we do? The answer is simple, but achieving it will not be. The answer is **we have to build a society full of people less likely to ever want to push the button**. That may not be a satisfying answer. It certainly isn't considered satisfying when it comes to the problem of mass shootings in America, but it's ultimately the answer to that too. We can try to keep guns out of the hands of people who want to use them to kill a bunch of people, but that becomes harder and harder to do when someone can just print a gun in their house. Ultimately, there's nothing else to do but get at the roots of the real problem. What makes someone want to kill a bunch of people? If it's a mental health issue, then what improves mental health? If it's a social erosion issue or inequality issue, then what improves social cohesion and reduces inequality? What's the root problem so we can solve it? ### How to Create Big Red Button Pushers In 1999, Ichiro Kawachi at the Harvard School of Public Health led a study [investigating the factors in American homicide](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953698004006?ref=scottsantens.com)*.* He measured **social capital** (interpersonal trust that promotes cooperation between citizens for mutual benefit), along with measures of poverty and relative income inequality, unemployment, education, alcohol use, homicide rates, and the incidences of other crimes like rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft. He was then able to identify which variables were most associated with which particular types of crime. What he found was summarized in [The Joker's Wild: On the Ecology of Gun Violence in America](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/primate-diaries/the-jokers-wild/?ref=scottsantens.com), which I also recommend reading. > "When income inequality was higher, so was the rate of homicide. Income inequality alone explained 74% of the variance in murder rates and half of the aggravated assaults. However, **social capital had an even stronger association and, *by itself, accounted for 82% of homicides and 61% of assaults***. Other factors such as unemployment, poverty, or number of high school graduates were only weakly associated and alcohol consumption had no connection to violent crime at all... The clear implication is that social capital followed by income inequality are the primary factors that influence the rate of homicidal aggression." In a follow-up study Kawachi also found that when social capital in a community declined, gun ownership rates increased. This is a correlational finding, but a reasonable interpretation is that people who come to trust other people less are more likely to look to guns to provide a greater feeling of security. So although there may be good reason to reduce the availability of AR-15s to reduce the number of kills per mass shooting, so long as guns are in a highly unequal society with heavily eroded social capital, where people feel they're on their own in life and surrounded by people they don't trust, there will likely continue to be mass shootings. The problem is how much easier it has become to see "them" instead of "us" and the resulting fall of trust in others. Massive inequality tears at the bonds of community. Instead of all being in this together, surrounded by neighbors we consider friends regardless of disagreements, we see the world as being full of people we no longer even see as human. [Living insecure lives full of a feeling of isolation is terrible for our collective mental health](https://www.scottsantens.com/from-rats-in-cages-to-primates-in-paradise-the-scientific-story-of-stress-in-society/) and leads directly to violence. So if social capital is what we need to regrow, and that is defined as interpersonal trust that promotes cooperation, how do we do that? Well, that's where unconditional basic income comes in. Far beyond just being money to reduce poverty, which again is not well-correlated with violent behavior, UBI is literally an act of interpersonal trust. It is a community deciding that everyone in the community should be trusted with money, which is itself a tool of trust. [Basic income is an act of trust, first and foremost](https://www.scottsantens.com/think-like-a-martian-about-money-and-universal-basic-income-ubi/). With that trust comes a real sense of security. If everyone is unconditionally trusted with the same amount of resources as everyone else in the community, insecurity falls, as does inequality. The universality and equality of UBI are also both unifying. Stress is relieved. People breathe more freely, and that breath is full of gratitude for the entire community. ### Creating Fewer Big Red Button Pushers In [the Finland basic income experiment](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/social-sector/our-insights/an-experiment-to-inform-universal-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com), most people tend to focus on how it didn't reduce employment and in fact slightly increased employment, but what I personally found to be the most incredible finding was how trust increased. **Participants in the pilot who received unconditional basic income expressed higher levels of trust in their own future, their fellow citizens, and public institutions**. It also reduced their stress levels and improved their mental health. It reduced loneliness. Finland's pilot demonstrated that UBI is far more than money. It is social capital. Another important observation was made thanks to a permanent UBI that started being provided in North Carolina to members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in 1996\. A study of children growing up in poverty was already ongoing when it started, so it has been a goldmine for researchers ever since. Remarkably, the [UBI increased agreeableness](https://web.archive.org/web/20160315011208/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/08/the-remarkable-ways-a-little-money-can-change-a-childs-personality-for-life/) of the kids in families who received it. They grew up to be more comfortable around other people and better at teamwork. They had fewer behavioral and emotional disorders. As adults at age 25 and 30, [the kids who grew up with UBI had a third of the anxiety and half the rates of depression](https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/10/cash-payments-families-leads-better-child-mental-health/?ref=scottsantens.com) of the kids who grew up without UBI. They have had fewer illegal behaviors. Crime consistently falls in basic income pilots that utilize saturation sites where regular income is received universally, community-wide. In the Dauphin pilot in Canada in the 1970s where an entire town received a guaranteed basic income every month for about five years, [overall crime fell by 15% and violent crime fell by 37%](https://repository.upenn.edu/entities/publication/cbf4e519-621d-4057-b7ca-d0455c08f4f9?ref=scottsantens.com) compared to similar towns that did not receive the income security. Mental health also improved so much that hospitalizations fell by 9%. In the Namibia UBI pilot, overall crime [dropped by 42%](http://www.bignam.org/BIG%5Fpilot.html?ref=scottsantens.com) and in Kenya domestic violence [dropped 51%](https://www.fastcompany.com/90315666/how-a-basic-income-could-help-stop-domestic-violence?ref=scottsantens.com). UBI pilots have also shown [increased social cohesion](https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-ubi-increases-social-cohesion-capital-trust/). In Namibia, researchers observed that "a stronger community spirit developed." In India's UBI pilot, researchers observed that [traditionally separate castes began to work together](https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-ubi-increases-social-cohesion-capital-trust/), which was especially surprising given the long history of India's caste system. As one researcher described it, "The castes don’t normally 'come together', but the women of different castes in the villages did come together." In [a natural UBI experiment in Lebanon](https://www.rescue.org/report/emergency-economies-impact-cash-assistance-lebanon?ref=scottsantens.com), the UBI led to people being 19% more likely to provide help to other members of their community. Members in the UBI community even reported receiving fewer insults from other members of the community. A huge study of the impact of unconditional monthly cash transfers, covering twelve years and 100 million people, found that [income security reduced suicide risk by 61%](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=3766234&ref=scottsantens.com). Considering how many mass shootings are intended as a final act, I think it's important to keep this in mind too when it comes to the Big Red Button. Pushing the button isn't only about wanting to kill other people. It can also be about killing one's self and deciding that if other people die too, that's fine because nothing matters anymore anyway. Unconditional cash has even been tested against therapy, and [it was significantly more effective at improving mental health than the therapy](https://www.nber.org/papers/w28106?ref=scottsantens.com) that cost almost three times as much. Over and over again, this kind of finding has been replicated. A [systematic review](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953621000496?ref=scottsantens.com) of decades of studies has shown that policies that improve social security benefit eligibility/generosity are associated with improvements in mental health while social security policies that reduce eligibility/generosity are related to worse mental health. Unconditional income improves mental health. We know that unequivocally. [The Canadian Mental Health Association has even already officially endorsed UBI](https://cmha.ca/brochure/statement-on-universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) for that reason, as has the [Canadian Medical Association](https://basicincome.org/news/2015/09/canadian-medical-association-general-council/?ref=scottsantens.com). ### Conclusion Is UBI going to solve everything? Will it eliminate all mental health issues, end all crime and violent behavior, stop all suicides, and prevent all mass shootings? No. It's not a cure-all. But it is a help-most-everything. It will improve mental health, reduce crime and violent behavior, reduce suicides, and reduce mass shootings because it increases social capital and economic security, and decreases inequality. UBI will help a lot of things all at once in a significant way, which brings me back to the Big Red Button. Unconditional basic income will not reduce the probability of someone pushing the Big Red Button down to zero percent. **But, we're talking about existential risk**. If we did a randomized control trial experiment where 100 civilizations were provided Big Red Button machines and half of them had UBI and half of them didn't, and the result was that significantly fewer civilizations with UBI pushed the button, then clearly UBI is a smart thing to do and a very dumb thing not to do. The Big Red Button Argument for UBI is that if we're going to make a Big Red Button that can cause humanity's extinction if pressed, and we know UBI will reduce the odds of someone pushing that button, then **for the sake of all human civilization, implement UBI immediately**. Before it's too late. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my ongoing UBI advocacy. **Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Matthew Cheney, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, David Ruark, Larry Cohen, Fabian Kehrer, Thomas Fitzsimmons, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, John Steinberger, Laurel gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Judith Bliss, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, Joanna Zarach, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Bruce Allen, Andrew Yang, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, Max Henrion, Elizabeth Corker, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Michael Honey, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Chris Rauchle, Arjun , Mark Borrington, Leslie Kausch, Jessica Chew, Braden Ferrin , Deanna McHugh, chris heinz, Pavel S, Zachary Weaver, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, Ryan Ash-Miller, miki, Adam Parsons, bradzone, Lee Lor, Akber Khan, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Garry Turner, Tim , Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Loren Sickles, anti666, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Kai Wong, and Laura Ashby. *Become a monthly patron to see your name here too!** [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Negative Income Tax is Not Cheaper Than Universal Basic Income, Nor is Guaranteed Income 'More Progressive' by Excluding the Rich URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-is-not-cheaper-than-universal-basic-income-ubi-nor-is-guaranteed-income-more-progressive-by-excluding-the-rich/ Last updated: 2025-10-07T22:45:02.000Z Many people don't know this, but Milton Friedman was once asked [in the Spring of 2000](https://basicincome.org/bien/pdf/NewsFlash3.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) what he thought about a universal basic income (UBI) in comparison to his proposed negative income tax (NIT) and this was his response: *"A basic or citizen's income is not an alternative to a negative income tax. It is simply another way to introduce a negative income tax if it is accompanied with a positive income tax with no exemption. A basic income of a thousand units with a 20% rate on earned income is equivalent to a negative income tax with an exemption of 5,000 units and a 20% rate below and above 5,000 units."* To translate that into simpler terms, a UBI paired with a 20% flat income tax would be equivalent to a NIT that had a 20% phaseout rate. Both are considered to be basic income guarantees or 'guaranteed income.' A really simple example of this would be to say that if I were to give you $20 and ask for $10 back, that is equivalent to giving you $10 and asking for nothing back. In both instances, I have ten fewer dollars and you have ten more dollars. The cost of each to me is $10, and either way you are guaranteed to end up with ten more dollars after taxes. That alone is important to understand, that the cost and net distributive outcome of a UBI proposal and a NIT proposal can be identical, but we need to dig a bit deeper to see that actually (and this will surprise many people and be outright denied by others) given a UBI plan and a NIT plan that cost the same, **UBI can actually be implemented with less administrative overhead (aka more cheaply) and in a way that boosts productivity more than NIT (aka more economic bang for the buck)**. If you don't believe me, keep reading to the end of this post. ### UBI and NIT Similarities To first be very clear that we're all on the same page, we should first clarify our terminology. A universal basic income, or unconditional basic income, or just basic income or UBI, is a form of guaranteed income (GI) or basic income guarantee (BIG) that provides an amount of money unconditionally, universally, regularly, and individually. Everyone gets the same amount, at the same frequency, regardless of employment status. In the US, since the poverty line is $14,580 in 2023, let's say the UBI is $1200 a month. A negative income tax is also a form of GI/BIG that would provide say $1200 a month to those with zero income and involve some amount of phaseout, such that for every dollar of earned income, some fraction of a dollar is lost from the NIT payment. A $1200/mo NIT with a 50% phaseout rate would mean that someone with zero income offered a job that paid $1200/mo would lose $600 of their monthly NIT payment, leaving them with $600 in NIT and $1200 in wages, for a total of $1800 a month. Compare this outcome to traditional welfare which can mean someone with $1200 a month in welfare who takes a $1200 a month job could end up with $1200 a month total for taking the job, becoming no better off at all, and you see that the big problem with traditional welfare is how it can result in very high [marginal tax rates (MTR)](https://surlysubgroup.com/2016/06/13/universal-bassic-income-and-marginal-rates/?ref=scottsantens.com) that even the richest people never face. Marginal tax rates are economist-speak for what percentage of the next dollar you earn you lose. Most people understand that if someone is earning $80,000 a year and the next dollar they earn will be taxed at an 80% rate, they might not want to earn that dollar, compared to a tax rate of 20%. Most people however don't seem to understand that **when it comes to welfare and the loss of welfare that happens when recipients increase their income,** **the same holds true**. If someone is earning $12,000 a year and the next dollar they earn will essentially be taxed at an 80% rate through loss of benefits, they might not want to earn that dollar, compared to a tax rate of 20% that would maintain the incentive. They are making the same decision based on the same choices as the person earning $80,000\. They are being taxed so heavily it can make sense to not earn more. A 50% MTR disincentivizes work [much less than a 100% MTR](https://www.scottsantens.com/did-spains-b-mincome-experiment-prove-that-unconditional-universal-basic-income-doesnt-work-ubi/). If you have $1200 and lose $1200 for starting a $1200 job, that's a 100% tax rate and a reason to refuse employment. **Gaining $0 net benefit from a job is like being paid $0 per hour for the job**. Starting with $1200 and ending up with $1800 instead of $1200 for starting a job makes much more sense to pretty much everyone. That's also why a NIT appealed so much to [Milton Friedman and a thousand other economists](https://imgur.com/FKLmMH2?ref=scottsantens.com) back in the 1970s when we tested different amounts of NIT with different phaseout rates across the country in places like Seattle, Denver, Gary, and New Jersey. Conservatives like Nixon understood at the time that imposing high MTRs on welfare recipients was a work disincentive that a basic income guarantee could reduce with a lower MTR. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2023/05/mtr-nit-pilots.png) Source: [Widerquist, Karl. (2005). A failure to communicate: What (if anything) can we learn from the negative income tax experiments?. Journal of Socio-Economics. 34\. 49-81\. 10.1016/j.socec.2004.09.050.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222578698%5FA%5Ffailure%5Fto%5Fcommunicate%5FWhat%5Fif%5Fanything%5Fcan%5Fwe%5Flearn%5Ffrom%5Fthe%5Fnegative%5Fincome%5Ftax%5Fexperiments?ref=scottsantens.com) The question the 1970s NIT experiments were designed to mainly explore was what the impact on employment was of a 50% MTR compared to 30% and 70%, or in Gary, the difference between 40% and 60%. Seattle even tested a more complex phaseout involving a nonlinear function that imposed higher MTRs as high as 80% on lower incomes and reduced the MTR as people earned income. The amount of income provided was also tested to see how an amount that was 50% of the poverty line would compare to larger payments of 75%, 100%, 125%, and 148% of the poverty line. In general, a higher amount of income paired with a higher MTR is expected to have stronger employment reduction effects than a lower amount of income paired with a lower MTR, but a higher amount will cost more, as will a lower MTR. So researchers at the time hoped to explore what could be expected from national implementation set at a certain amount and phaseout by running a bunch of pioneering experiments called the American Income Maintenance Experiments. I'm not going to get into what the results were and instead just recommend reading [Karl Widerquist's outstanding summary](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222578698%5FA%5Ffailure%5Fto%5Fcommunicate%5FWhat%5Fif%5Fanything%5Fcan%5Fwe%5Flearn%5Ffrom%5Fthe%5Fnegative%5Fincome%5Ftax%5Fexperiments?ref=scottsantens.com), but I will say that it helps to understand that an experiment designed to examine the impacts of a $500 monthly payment paired with a 0% MTR is going to likely *increase* employment compared to a control group ([as it did in Stockton](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11524-023-00723-0?ref=scottsantens.com) and in [Hudson](https://jainfamilyinstitute.org/hudsonup-basic-income-pilot-releases-year-two-report/?ref=scottsantens.com)), versus a $1800/mo payment with a 70% MTR (Seattle and Denver) that's likely going to decrease employment, *unless* it's part of a saturation site [like all of Alaska](https://harris.uchicago.edu/news-events/news/universal-basic-income-policies-dont-cause-people-leave-workforce-study-finds?ref=scottsantens.com) where an entire community having more money to spend results in the creation of more jobs for people to take due to increased consumer demand in the local economy. The way most people look at UBI vs NIT is from the perspective of cost. A very serious economist will look you straight in the eye and tell you that a NIT is much cheaper than UBI because people get less money as they earn more, and obviously if the state is spending less money than it otherwise would, that's cheaper. But is that what's actually happening? Does a NIT spend less money? Does it cost less? Consider two people. One of them is getting $600 a month in NIT and is faced with a 50% MTR. Another is getting $1200 a month in UBI and is faced with a 50% tax on earned income. Is the NIT cheaper? The answer is no. It just looks cheaper because their NIT payment was taxed at a 50% rate and it wasn't counted as a tax. But that's exactly what it was. It was an income tax applied to the recipient's payment instead of their wages. Both people were taxed $600 to get $1200\. Both people end up with $600 more income because of the combination of payment and taxes. Both people face the same disincentive to work by losing 50 cents for every dollar earned in wages. Ignoring administrative cost, the cost to the government is the same for each person because in both instances, the government is down $600. ### Administrative Differences However, **we can't ignore administrative cost**. That's actually really important. In reality, there is going to be some amount of overhead to run a NIT program vs a UBI program, separate from the payments they provide. A NIT program is based on estimates of income. In order to calculate the amount of money you should get, the government needs to have some idea of what your income is. The most likely way to do this is to use your most recent tax return. Of course incomes can vary quite a bit, so an old tax return may show you have an income higher or lower than your actual income. Incomes can even vary by the month, which would also require the ability to report or track income changes month by month. This would necessitate some way for people to update their incomes each month. Variance in payments would also introduce errors, which would require adjustments where someone either gets more after getting too little, or has to pay back the amount that was greater than they should have gotten. The closest policy to a NIT, and one actually inspired by it, is the earned income tax credit (EITC). Unlike a NIT which has only a phaseout, the EITC has both a phase-in and a phase-out, but also whereas a NIT would arrive monthly, the EITC currently only arrives once a year. Because the EITC is handled by the IRS, everyone who wants it needs to file a tax return. Because so many people need help with their tax returns, this also means people who qualify for the EITC lose 13% to 20% of their benefit in tax prep fees, resulting in [an average overhead cost of 11%](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/project/the-myths-of-the-earned-income-tax-credit/?ref=scottsantens.com). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2023/05/eitc-costs.png) Source: [People's Policy Project](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/project/the-myths-of-the-earned-income-tax-credit/?ref=scottsantens.com) Now consider a UBI strategy. Everyone gets the same amount. No reporting or income tracking needed. No need for any additional overhead at all. The calculation is done at tax time using the same overhead as taxes already require. [The overhead for Social Security is 0.5%](https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/admin.html?ref=scottsantens.com). The overhead for UBI will likely be even lower than that and could be administrated by existing SSA infrastructure. It is extremely efficient to just direct deposit two hundred million payments, especially when the amounts are all identical. Social Security's coverage is also superior to the EITC which on average excludes [one out of every five people who is qualified to receive it](https://www.eitc.irs.gov/eitc-central/participation-rate-by-state/eitc-participation-rate-by-states?ref=scottsantens.com) based on income and [miscalculates one out of four payments](https://www.taxpayeradvocate.irs.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/ARC18%5FVolume1%5FMSP%5F06%5FImproperEarnedIncome.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). It is fair to assume based on this reality that a NIT would also have a high error rate and also exclude a significant percentage of people in dire need that a UBI would not exclude, based purely on the reduced hurdles necessary to receive UBI via SSA versus IRS administration. We should want to maximize the amount of money provided to recipients versus middlemen and minimize the amount of effort required to provide it. Based on the administrative capacity required to make the payments and correct any errors, **a NIT and UBI of identical distributive outcomes are not identical in cost. The UBI approach is cheaper**. ### Marginal Tax Rate Differences The biggest detail to fully understand though is how little sense it makes to apply a needlessly high MTR on recipients with low- and middle-incomes. The costs of NIT and UBI can be identical, but who pays the necessary taxes can be different, which can also mean differences in productivity, and thus economic growth. If a NIT that applies a 40% MTR to someone is compared with a UBI that applies a 10% MTR to that person instead, the net costs could be the same, but the NIT approach would have a worse work disincentive for that individual, making it possible for the NIT to reduce work and UBI to *increase* it. There are also different growth impacts on the economy depending on who is doing the spending. If a NIT means someone in the bottom 20% gets less of a boost than they would with a UBI paired with progressive income taxes, then those economies are going to look different. The NIT economy is going to have more taxation at the bottom and middle. The UBI economy could have more taxation at the top, because a NIT phaseout is always going to impact those at the top less than UBI taxes, because the richest never pay any NIT phaseout taxes. Only those in the phaseout range do. A real-world policy example to help illustrate the above points can be found in [the enhanced child tax credit compared to a universal child allowance](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2021/12/24/the-folly-of-means-testing-a-child-allowance/?ref=scottsantens.com). The CTC utilized a phaseout tax of 5%. For married couples with kids, the tax hit those reporting incomes between $150,000 and $400,000\. Had everyone within that range been taxed to achieve the same tax goal, not just parents, but childless adults too, the rate could have been more like 2%. Had everyone with incomes over $150,000 been taxed to achieve the same goal, such that those earning over $400,000 weren't excluded from being taxed, the MTR could have been under 1%. If we're going to do a universal child allowance where every kid gets $300 a month, does it make more sense to apply a 5% MTR only to parents in the phaseout range (excludes the rich) or a 0.6% MTR to everyone above the desired phaseout starting point (includes the rich)? When you recognize phaseouts as taxes, it's easier to see that the question is really, "***Should we find a way to tax the rich less by taxing the middle class more?***" If your answer to that question is yes, then you should prefer phaseouts, and thus NIT or guaranteed income approaches. If you believe the increased tax burden should fall more on the rich than the middle class, then you should prefer the UBI approach more. That's just the inherent nature of universal programs compared to targeted programs. How convenient is it for the rich that so many people mistakenly believe that targeted approaches are more progressive despite imposing less of a burden on the rich and providing less of a benefit to the middle class than universal approaches? ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2023/05/universalism-targeting-inquality.png) Source: [Development Pathways](https://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/blog/who-really-benefits-from-poverty-targeting-in-social-protection-the-poor-or-the-rich/?ref=scottsantens.com) I really want to make sure no one walks away from reading this still not understanding that universal basic income is actually cheaper and can reduce inequality more than a negative income tax or a phased-out guaranteed income, so here's one more thought experiment to consider. Imagine that five people sit down to play a game of Monopoly. They each start with different amounts of income which are: $0, $50, $100, $200, and $1,000\. Let's say we want to implement a negative income tax as part of the game, such that players receive an income of $50 with a phaseout rate of 10%. Upon passing Go, player 1 would get $50\. P2 would get $45\. P3 would get $40\. P4 would get $30\. P5 would get $0 and pay a new $165 tax which is equal to a 16.5% tax. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2023/05/ubi-vs-nit-tax-rates-1.png) Compare this to a UBI approach where every player gets $50, but progressive taxation is applied such that P1 and P2 pay a 5% tax, P3 and P4 pay a 10% tax, and P5 pays a 21.7% tax. P1 would pay $0 in tax, P2 would pay $2.50, P3 would pay $10, P4 would pay $20, and P5 would pay $217.50\. With this design, P5 has a higher tax burden and P1 and P2 get a lower tax burden because the phaseout taxes have been shifted upwards, leaving the players with the least income with a larger net benefit after taxes. Additionally players 1 and 2 face a smaller marginal tax rate of 5% instead of 10%. P5 faces a 21.7% MTR compared to a 16.5% MTR, and the effective tax rate on p5 is actually 16.75% because of their $50 UBI functioning as a tax credit. Is that enough for them to stop playing despite still having over three times the money of the second richest player? Is that more of a concern than P1 being too broke to even play the game? ### Tax Method Differences Perhaps my personal favorite reason to prefer UBI to NIT is the ability to utilize other taxes than income taxes. A NIT can be combined with any tax of course, but it will always actually be that tax *plus* a phaseout tax on income. **A UBI can be designed to not utilize any income taxes at all**, and instead utilize only taxes like a [land value tax](https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/does-georgism-work-is-land-really), or an [automated payment transaction tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated%5FPayment%5FTransaction%5Ftax?ref=scottsantens.com), or a [progressive consumption tax](https://slate.com/business/2011/12/the-progressive-consumption-tax-a-win-win-solution-for-reducing-american-economic-inequality.html?ref=scottsantens.com), or a [carbon tax](https://www.scottsantens.com/this-idea-can-literally-change-the-world-universal-basic-income-through-carbon-pricing/), or any other [Pigovian tax](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pigoviantax.asp?ref=scottsantens.com), or a value-added tax, or any other tax that isn't income tax. As AI advances and capital replaces labor, it will become increasingly important to tax things other than income. NIT can't escape income taxes. It will always tax income because it phases out based on income. Its fate is in its name - negative income tax. As one example, consider a land value tax (LVT) which is not a tax on what's built on the land, but only the land itself. Milton Friedman considered it "[the least bad tax](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJIUXV4fzGA&ref=scottsantens.com)." The tax rate of LVT imposed on anyone who doesn't own any land is zero. Consider the difference in land ownership between wealthy individuals/corporations and Black communities who have suffered centuries of systemic exclusion from home ownership. All renters would face a marginal tax rate of 0%. All landowners would only see an increase in their taxes if they bought more land, not if they worked more. Because the value of land is created by the community and all the stuff around it, it makes the most sense to share that value equally (UBI). What would make less sense is to vary the amount provided to the community by income and in doing so impose an entirely unnecessary marginal tax rate on income (NIT). Another example is any kind of consumption tax. Everyone could work more and not get taxed more. Instead, taxes would go up with consumption. The more money people would spend, the more tax they would pay. The more people saved or invested, the less tax they would pay. Combined with UBI, those who consumed the least would end up keeping more of their UBI and earned income while those who consumed the most would end up losing more of their UBI and earned income. Consider a 10% VAT and a $15,000 UBI. That could potentially mean everyone spending less than $150,000 would end up with a net benefit from UBI, and everyone spending more would end up paying more in taxes. The combination is essentially a **negative consumption tax**. Utilizing NIT with VAT instead of UBI would impose an entirely unecessary marginal tax rate on income. Consider too [the case of Alaska](https://iseralaska.org/static/legacy%5Fpublication%5Flinks/bien%5Fxiii%5Fak%5Fpfd%5Flessons.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) and their UBI in the form of an annual dividend that has been distributed since 1982\. Imagine if they had tried to distribute oil revenue as a NIT? It may have even been deemed unconstitutional just as their original plan to vary payments by length of residency was deemed to violate equal protection rights before they then decided to distribute payments equally. It just makes more sense to use UBI with tax methods other than income taxes. ### Psychological Differences There's also one more reason to prefer UBI to NIT or GI, and it's a psychological reason. Losing benefits hurts more than paying taxes. **It's not psychologically equivalent to lose $10 from your NIT as it is to keep $20 in UBI and lose $10 from taxes**. In [an experiment conducted at the University of Essex](https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/losing-benefits-hurts-more-than-paying-taxes/?ref=scottsantens.com), subjects were required to do a task in exchange for payments, which were taxed. One group paid the tax out of a cash benefit they received up-front (NIT condition), and another group paid the tax out of their earnings for the task (UBI condition). It should not matter where the tax comes from if the net result is the same, but it did. **Those who were asked to pay the tax from their up-front benefit rather than from their earnings were around three times more likely to quit working early**. One possible explanation for this finding is loss aversion, where people are more averse to losing what they have than gaining something new. Applying this to NIT and UBI means that even with an identical outcome and marginal tax rate, it's possible that people could be less motivated to increase their incomes by seeing their NIT shrink compared to a UBI that never shrinks. More research is needed. ### Political Differences With all of the above said, there is one reason that a NIT could be seen as superior to UBI, and it's the political realities of the national context in which the two policies are being discussed. Most people will never read this post or ever fully understand just how similar these two policies are and for what reasons UBI edges out NIT. It therefore may just be more politically possible to pass a NIT into law based on the lack of understanding of UBI. I don't see that as optimal, but I do see it as far better than lacking either one. On the other hand, a UBI could still be more politically popular by going to everyone and being widely viewed as an earned dividend and inheritance. If the discussion driving basic income discussion is centered around AI, a lack of understanding of UBI and NIT could still result in a preference for universality. If AI is seen as something [we all collectively trained](https://www.axios.com/2023/04/24/ai-chatgpt-blogs-web-writing-training-data?ref=scottsantens.com), and the technology behind it is seen as something [we've all inherited from those who came before us](https://medium.com/@GarAlperovitz/technological-inheritance-and-the-case-for-a-basic-income-ded373a69c8e?ref=scottsantens.com#.101bu1tyi), does NIT make sense as a mechanism of fairly distributing the benefits to everyone? ### Conclusion I hope at this point it's now clear that for any NIT and UBI designed to be identical in distributive impact, the UBI is technically cheaper due to lower administrative costs, and that every NIT and phased-out GI design imposes a tax on those with lower and middle incomes that a UBI could instead shift onto those with higher incomes. The UBI approach also need not tax anyone's income at all and recognizes loss aversion psychology. It can even be communicated as a dividend. Although very similar to a negative income tax (NIT), an unconditional universal basic income (UBI) is simply a better way of going about boosting incomes, decreasing marginal tax rates for those with low- and middle-incomes, and increasing taxes on those earning, consuming, and owning the most - aka the rich. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? **Please click the subscribe button** and also consider making a monthly pledge in support of my ongoing UBI advocacy. **Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Matthew Cheney, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, David Ruark, Larry Cohen, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, John Steinberger, Laurel gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Judith Bliss, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, Joanna Zarach, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Bruce Allen, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, Max Henrion, Elizabeth Corker, Gray Scott, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Michael Honey, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Chris Rauchle, Arjun , Leslie Kausch, Jessica Chew, Braden Ferrin , Deanna McHugh, chris heinz, Pavel S, Zachary Weaver, Herb, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, Ryan Ash-Miller, miki, Adam Parsons, bradzone, Lee Lor, Akber Khan, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Garry Turner, Tim , Warren J Polk, Timothy P O'Connor, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Oliver Bestwalter, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Loren Sickles, anti666, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Kai Wong, and Laura Ashby. *Become a monthly patron to see your name here too!** [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### A.I. Will Not Displace Everyone, Everywhere, All at Once. It Will Rapidly Transform the Labor Market, Exacerbating Inequality, Insecurity, and Poverty. URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/ai-will-rapidly-transform-the-labor-market-exacerbating-inequality-insecurity-and-poverty/ Last updated: 2024-03-07T22:06:36.000Z [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/03/button_support-my-work-on-patreon-7.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) There is no simple way of discussing the economic impact of artificial intelligence. As someone who has been warning about the impacts of automation [for a decade](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1040683616488103936?ref=scottsantens.com) now, and trying to get people to understand that **automation has already been impacting us for decades**, I can tell you that this nuanced conversation basically gets boiled down to "Technology is going to end all jobs" versus "Everything will be fine." Both of those are wrong. The truth as usual, exists somewhere in the middle, and comes with a lot of "it depends" asterisks. In this post, my goal is to help people understand that although AI will get rid of a lot of jobs, that doesn't mean everyone will be jobless and forever unemployable. And that despite a market for human labor continuing to exist with AI shouldering a lot of work, the wave of job disruption is not going to be pleasant, and the path we take depends greatly on the adoption of [an unconditional, universal basic income as a steadily rising AI dividend](https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-for-all-unconditional-why-ubi-is-necessary-now-evidence-experiments/). The future is not out of our hands. It is entirely within our hands, and up to our collective decision-making to benefit or hurt us. First, to get everyone up to speed, [this](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-real-story-of-automation-beginning-with-one-simple-chart/) is what I've previously written to explain the realities of automation. Here's a key paragraph to save you the time of reading the whole thing, although I still do recommend reading the whole thing anyway. > Decade after decade, medium-skill manufacturing/office jobs have been disappearing, and in response, the unemployed have found new employment in new low-skill service jobs. People unemployed by machines still require income, so they end up finding what they can get. At the same time, they are competing against others doing the same thing and thus **people are bidding down their own wages and taking any jobs they can get in a race against the machines**. This also serves to make investments in automation less attractive. As an added bonus, [the jobs that are being automated are more productive jobs than most of the jobs being newly created](https://medium.com/@geraldhuff/a-tale-of-two-economies-27dddb6c5059?ref=scottsantens.com). Cheaper human labor and an increasing number of low productivity jobs together then result in [a “paradoxical” deceleration of productivity growth](https://www.scottsantens.com/economic-paradox-technology-automation-basic-income-ubi-slowing-productivity/). Long story short, the middle of the labor market is disappearing. That’s the reality, and it’s been happening for decades. This general trend is what seems most likely to continue, albeit potentially more focused on the upper-middle instead of the lower-middle based on early analysis of the capabilities of GPT-4 and other generative AI. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2023/04/exposure-to-LLMs.png) Source: Arxiv.org The above table is from a working paper published in collaboration with OpenAI on March 27, 2023\. The paper titled "[GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models](https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.10130?ref=scottsantens.com)" attempts to estimate how GPT-4 will impact jobs. The researchers make three different estimates to create a lower and upper bound (and even have GPT-4 itself make estimates too) and find that the most impacted will be workers with Bachelor's degrees. Those with Master's degrees will be impacted too, but not as much, and those with high school degrees or GEDs will be impacted even less than either more-educated groups. From the abstract of the paper: > Our findings reveal that around 80% of the U.S. workforce could have at least 10% of their work tasks affected by the introduction of \[Large Language Models\], while approximately 19% of workers may see at least 50% of their tasks impacted... our analysis suggests that, with access to an LLM, about 15% of all worker tasks in the US could be completed significantly faster at the same level of quality. **When incorporating software and tooling built on top of LLMs, this share increases to between 47 and 56% of all tasks**. Now, regarding use of the word "impact," it's important to understand that this doesn't mean that the work will be performed by AI entirely on its own, but that those jobs are most likely to use AI to be more productive. For some jobs, that's just going to mean a lot more productivity with more work done in less time, but for other jobs, that can mean fewer of those jobs. Here's an example that I think illustrates this well: technical support jobs. Imagine a technical support call center with 100 employees. Now imagine that AI usage makes everyone more productive to the point that average wait times fall from 30 minutes to 3 minutes. For everyone involved, this is a great outcome. Customers are happy waiting a tenth of the time they usually would, all 100 workers are happy they get to keep their jobs, and the business itself is happy. In fact, the business gains market share from similar less productive call centers that haven't adopted AI yet. This even means the business actually expands and hires more workers. Now consider what happens if the average wait times drop from 10 minutes to 0 minutes. Hitting zero means that a lot of the workers are just sitting around waiting for another call. They're so much more productive that fewer of them are needed. If the business can find more customers, it can make sense to keep all 100 workers, but if they can't, it makes sense to cut enough workers to bring average wait times up to one to five minutes. This could mean letting go of 50 workers, or it could just mean not hiring to fill positions when workers leave. As should be apparent, one of the big asterisks is demand. **If demand is sufficient, certain jobs will continue to exist, whereas if it isn't sufficient, they won't**. This isn't just theoretical. The first study of real-world use of LLMs like ChatGPT has been published where a Fortune 500 company used the technology for a year. On average, [customer support agents provided the AI became 14% more productive](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-24/generative-ai-boosts-worker-productivity-14-new-study-finds?leadSource=uverify%20wall&ref=scottsantens.com), with the biggest impact observed among the least-skilled workers who became 35% more productive. That's with AI less capable than GPT-4 and without the connection to tools, which OpenAI believes will triple productivity boosts observed from just LLMs on their own. ### Jim-1 Now let's zero in on the example of one person in particular. Let's call him Jim, and let's say Jim's company has incorporated AI to become 25% more productive. In Jim's case, there is not sufficient consumer demand for it to make sense to keep Jim, so Jim's employer lets him go to save labor costs and increase their profits. Jim is now unemployed. He applies for unemployment insurance. If he lived in Florida, he would have three months to find a new job, and would get a maximum of $1,100 a month during that time. If he lived in Washington, he would have 6 months to find a new job, and would get a maximum of $3,376 a month during that time. If he was a freelancer, he'd get no time and no money as 60% of the unemployed get from unemployment insurance. Let's say he gets four months and $1,500 a month. That's how much time he has before his income falls to zero. There are mostly two ways Jim's future can go. [He will learn how to use AI and find a job that pays as much or more than he was previously](https://www.scottsantens.com/chatgpt-has-already-decreased-my-income-security/), or he will find whatever he can get which ends up being a job that pays less than he was earning previously. Given existing trends, and just how much more productive AI can make most workers, the result with the most likelihood is less income for Jim. It is also not at all a sure thing that Jim will find a job within four months. There's a good chance so long as a lot of employers are looking to fill positions as there are right now, but given the Fed's desire to increase unemployment, and given the ability of AI to enable ten people to do the work of fifteen, Jim may have a harder and harder time finding the next job, as employers decide they just don't need as many people as they once did without AI. If Jim cannot find a new job within four months, he falls into poverty. If he chooses to then seek government assistance, he needs to apply for what he's eligible for, which is likely to just be SNAP (aka food stamps). That's about $250 a month for a maximum of three months. So that's three more months free of hunger, and most likely Jim will need to rely on his local food bank too. If Jim can find a job within three more months, he'll be okay, but again, he will mostly likely find a job that pays less money than he was before, even though it's also possible he'll find an even higher paying job. But what if he doesn't find any job? He's out of luck and joins the [13 million Americans living in poverty who get nothing](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/13-million-people-in-poverty-are-disconnected-from-the-social-safety-net-most-of-them-are-white/2019/02/04/807516a0-2598-11e9-81fd-b7b05d5bed90%5Fstory.html?ref=scottsantens.com) from the federal government to help them. Jim isn't about to starve though, so he begins to steal in order to survive. He steals food and steals stuff to sell for food. Taking this route, a few more possibilities open up. He either eventually finds a job (which is even harder now than ever for him), or he gets arrested and imprisoned where he receives free room and board at a public cost of about $5,000 a month, or he ends up dead thanks to poverty now being the [fourth largest cause of death in the US](https://truthout.org/articles/poverty-is-the-4th-leading-cause-of-death-in-the-us-research-shows/?ref=scottsantens.com) among those age 15 and older. That's how far Jim can fall. He can fall to his death. It's not the most likely scenario, but it is entirely possible. It's also entirely possible he can end up upskilled with even more income with a job he enjoys more. Random chance will play a large role in Jim's future, whether he or anyone else recognizes it. Now let's redo this entire scenario in another universe where universal basic income exists as a floor underneath Jim. ### Jim-2 Jim-2 works for a company in a parallel universe that has incorporated AI to become 25% more productive, just as in Jim-1's universe. But, because UBI also exists, and the bottom 90% of the country has a disposable income boost, Jim-2's company sees a sufficient amount of consumer demand to not let him go. And that's the story of Jim-2. Just kidding, that's a pretty short story. So let's assume that even with the higher amount of demand that comes from UBI [to create and fuel jobs](https://harris.uchicago.edu/news-events/news/universal-basic-income-policies-dont-cause-people-leave-workforce-study-finds?ref=scottsantens.com) through people spending their UBI, that Jim-2 still gets let go. Jim-2 is now unemployed, but because of UBI, his income falls to the lowest possible limit of $1,200 a month. If he lived in Florida, he'd have three months to find a new job and would get a maximum of $1,100 a month during that time, bringing his total income to $2,300 with UBI. If he lived in Washington, he'd have 6 months to find a new job, and would get a maximum of $3,376 a month during that time, bringing his total income to $4,576 a month with UBI. If he was a freelancer, he'd have only the UBI of $1,200 a month, and an unlimited time to find a new job without ever losing that income floor. Let's say he gets four months and $1,500 a month, the same as Jim-1, for a total of $2,700 a month with UBI. He has four months with $2,700 a month before falling to $1,200 a month. There are still mostly two ways Jim-2's future can go, although a couple other options also become more possible with UBI. He will either learn how to use AI and find a job that pays as much or more than he was previously, or he will find whatever he can get which ends up being a job that pays less than he was earning previously. Given existing trends, and just how much more productive AI can make most workers, the result with the most likelihood is still less income for Jim-2, albeit with his UBI serving to further boost his income. However, two other realistic options include starting his own business or pursuing unpaid work, perhaps as a volunteer in his community planting trees to fight climate change. It's still not at all a sure thing that Jim-2 will find a job within four months, but thanks to UBI, he has more time to upskill, or relocate, or go back to school or do whatever else he needs to find his next job. There's a good chance so long as a lot of employers are looking to fill positions as there are right now, but given the Fed's desire to increase unemployment, and given the ability of AI to enable ten people to do the work of fifteen, Jim-2 may have a harder and harder time finding the next job, as employers decide they don't need as many people as they once did without AI. But also thanks to UBI, there are more job openings than there would otherwise be thanks to higher demand for goods and services than there would be without UBI. Now, if Jim-2 cannot find a new job within four months, he falls to $1,200 a month. That is the absolute minimum. If he chooses to then seek extra government assistance, he needs to apply for what he's eligible for, which is likely to just be SNAP (aka food stamps). That's about $250 a month for a maximum of three months. So that's three months of $1,450 a month instead of $1,200 which Jim-2 decides isn't worth the trouble. He's fine without the extra money for food, and is also fine without the assistance of food banks. He declines both options. If Jim can find a job, he'll be back to having plenty more than $1,200 a month, with his new paychecks being additional to his UBI that's always there. But what if he doesn't find a job? He will never have less than $1,200 a month. Unlike Jim-1, he never experiences poverty as defined by the current federal poverty guidelines. Also unlike Jim-1, Jim-2 never needs to steal in order to survive. He never ends up arrested, or imprisoned, or dead of poverty. Instead, he eventually finds another job, and eventually brings his income back up to $70,000, but he pays $7,400 less in taxes than he would without UBI in place, because despite the additional $7,000 in taxes as a result of a $14,400 UBI, the remaining $7,400 functions as a tax credit. In Jim-2's universe, [the bottom 90% have a lower tax burden](https://ubicalculator.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) than in Jim-1's. Only the top 10% - the owners and primary beneficiaries of AI - see an increased tax burden. Clearly, Jim-2 is far better off than Jim-1\. Poverty is not one of the possibilities for Jim-2\. He is protected from that. [It's not allowed to happen](https://www.scottsantens.com/engineering-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi-fault-tolerance-graceful-failure-redundancy/). Death therefore is also far less likely to happen. Jim-2 is more likely to end up upskilled than Jim-1\. He's more likely to get a new job, especially if his universe makes the active attempt to make it more possible through programs like free skills training, or free education, or investing in the creation of green jobs. Chance will still play a large role in Jim-2's future, but the odds are far more in Jim-2's favor than Jim-1's. Please note that Jim-2's universe is not all sunshine and rainbows. UBI does not automatically make a world where everything is awesome. It just clearly creates a better world where poverty doesn't exist, and people have a cushion under them at all times that makes it easier for them to find the next thing. It's a world with less stress, more security, less crime, better health, more entrepreneurs, and more freedom for people to determine for themselves what work it is they wish to be doing, and at what price they will do it for. Now if it were up to me, another detail of Jim-2's UBI would be that [it grows as productivity grows, or as inflation grows, whichever is higher](https://www.scottsantens.com/cutting-the-gordian-knot-of-technological-unemployment-with-unconditional-basic-income-ubi/). As AI makes us all more productive, that increase in national productivity should flow equally to all of us as a dividend. Over time, and as AI improves and becomes more widely adopted, $1,200 a month in UBI should become $1,500 (in 2023 dollars), and then $2,000, and then $3,000, etc. And [taxes should be utilized as a tool of inflation management](https://www.scottsantens.com/how-money-is-born-out-of-public-spending-and-dies-by-taxes-mmt/) and inequality reduction, so that over time, inequality continues to decrease and prices remain stable year over year. Without UBI, and without more taxes at the top, [inequality will grow](https://philiprosedale.substack.com/p/why-do-the-rich-get-richer) as AI advances. It's not that everyone will end up without a job, but it's entirely possible that perhaps 120 million people are employed instead of 165 million, and that it creates a deflationary environment where less income means less spending which means fewer jobs which means less income, which means less spending, in a vicious cycle. That unemployment outcome also depends on other things besides UBI, like how long the workweek is. Going to 4-day weeks can mean more people working shorter weeks, which can mean 165 million people employed, just as now, but with more leisure time. With UBI, that can mean working part-time jobs with full-time income. These are the kinds of choices we need to make that lie before us. There is no future where there are *zero* jobs. There is no "end of work." As long as people have money to spend, there will be people willing to do something for someone else for money. If money concentrates into fewer and fewer hands, that's how people lose the ability to earn income. To explain why, let's now talk brunch. ### The Jazz Brunch Economy A big fear that exists regardless of the existence of universal basic income is the belief that AI and robots will just be so good at doing work, that there's just nothing to do, let alone anything to do for money that technology can do better. This brings me to what I think of as the Jazz Brunch Economy, because I'm from New Orleans, and it provides a unique example. Let's pretend that AI does indeed eliminate half of all jobs, and instead of lowering the work week to 20 hours from 40 so that everyone can still find a job, we instead have half of workers working 40 hours and the other half unable to find jobs. Not the brightest idea, but let's say it happens. Does this mean there's no way of earning money for half the population? Are they out of luck? In New Orleans, there's something called a "jazz brunch." It's where you can go to eat brunch somewhere, and there's a live band playing. We've all eaten in restaurants that lack any music, or have recorded music playing. Recorded music is a form of automation. So if the technology exists to listen to recorded music at a restaurant, why ever hire a band to play? Because people enjoy it. It's a special experience to go to a jazz brunch. Live music will always be something we enjoy despite the ability to listen to recorded music. When it comes to jazz brunches, it's something people specifically look for, because it's not the norm. They choose which restaurant to eat at based on whether or not a band will be playing there. It's how some restaurants are able to bring in customers that would otherwise choose to eat elsewhere. It's an experience that even draws tourists to New Orleans in the first place. That's what humans will always be able to provide even when intelligent machines can do our work for us - **the unique experience of being human**. Another example from New Orleans is something called "[house floats](https://www.kreweofhousefloats.org/?ref=scottsantens.com)." This was born during the pandemic when we skipped having a Mardi Gras celebration in 2021\. A lot of work goes into building the parade floats every year, which requires a lot of workers. The lack of Mardi Gras that year left a lot of people unemployed. A response to that was the creation of the house float, where people paid artists to decorate their homes like floats. That employed a lot of artists and the demand for it came out of nowhere. One day house floats weren't a thing, and the next day they were. People just decided they wanted to pay someone to creatively decorate the outside of their homes. It was a new job that was born in 2021 - house float artist. If suddenly everyone, everywhere across the country, wanted the outside of their homes decorated by local artists, there would be a lot more people getting paid to do that suddenly much more common job. It's all about customer demand. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2023/04/143598805_1560565304140225_4581462544580469520.jpg) Source: [The Art Newspaper](https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/02/05/with-mardi-gras-parades-cancelled-new-orleans-artists-create-house-floats?ref=scottsantens.com) I think these examples illustrate both the unique value-add that humans have despite technology, and how new jobs can indeed be created, just by some people wanting to pay other people to do something both the payer and the payee enjoy. This all depends of course on people having money to spend. It's possible that a kind of "Made in USA" label will come into existence for human-based goods and services. Something like "Made by Humans" or "Human-Made" will become something that consumers specifically look for despite cheaper automated options existing, just as people shop for stuff made domestically instead of internationally, or shop organic even when it costs more to make those choices. Because that demand seems likely to exist, those jobs seem likely to exist, because consumer demand is what ultimately creates jobs. It is possible, and quite likely even, that many jobs will stop existing to the degree they currently do. They'll go away, or there will be fewer of them, or they will require new skills. Some of the people who had those jobs, if they don't find newly created jobs, if they have basic income, will decide to pursue something very human, like playing live music. Venues that don't currently offer live music will start offering live music, and people who enjoy live music will be willing to pay a bit extra to enjoy the experience of that live music. Those jobs will exist because of consumer demand. Something like house floats will pop up out of nowhere too, where something we never or rarely paid people to do before will be something we start paying people to do, just because we want to pay someone to do it, and because someone wants to be paid to do it. We can't really imagine what those things will be yet, but I'm sure you can think of some of your own examples if you really stop and think about it. They happen all the time. [People really don't enjoy doing nothing](https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9459?ref=scottsantens.com), and people will always enjoy paying others to do something they can't do as well, or don't want to do themselves, and that will remain true to some degree even when technology can do so much more for us. Even right now, there are already new examples, of paying someone else to use AI to accomplish something, because some people are already better at using AI than others, and because time will always be limited. Because time is limited, there will always be a reason to just pay someone to do something for us, even if the tools exist for us to do it ourselves using AI, as long as people have money to spend. That's the one neat trick. **We have to make sure everyone always has money to spend** **if we want to make sure that people can always earn additional money** doing some kind of work, or afford to do some kind of work they enjoy for free. Besides volunteering, it's also a lot easier to start a business to create new jobs if you have an income underneath you to support you, and the people around you also have an income to be your customers. Our collective economic future is up to us. We can choose the path where we all equally share in the massive wealth generation that AI makes possible ([that we all made possible together with our collective data](https://www.axios.com/2023/04/24/ai-chatgpt-blogs-web-writing-training-data?ref=scottsantens.com)) by greatly increasing our collective productivity, and where we all always have the money to spend to pursue new interests, paid or unpaid. Or we can choose the path we're currently still on, where AI makes life harder for a large percentage of the population while massively enriching a relative few, and where jobs really do become harder to come by because spending power has been concentrated in too few hands to provide sufficient overall demand to fuel our economy. Which path do *you* prefer? --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a monthly pledge in support of my perpetual UBI advocacy. **Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Matthew Cheney, Camilo Riviere, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, David Ruark, Larry Cohen, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, John Steinberger, Laurel Gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Michael Tinker, Judith Bliss, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, Joanna Zarach, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, Max Henrion, Elizabeth Corker, Gray Scott, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Michael Honey, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Chris Rauchle, Arjun , chris heinz, Pavel S, Zachary Weaver, Herb, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, Deanna McHugh, Ryan Ash-Miller, miki, Adam Parsons, bradzone, Lee Lor, Akber Khan, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Phuong Truong, Garry Turner, Tim, Warren J Polk, Timothy P O'Connor, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Oliver Bestwalter, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Loren Sickles, anti666, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Kai Wong, and Laura Ashby. *Become a monthly patron to see your name here too*.* [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Fable of the Two-Headed Dragon-Tyrant and the UBI Missile URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-fable-of-the-two-headed-dragon-tyrant/ Last updated: 2023-04-06T12:10:14.000Z *The following short story is an adaptation of [The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant](https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon?ref=scottsantens.com) by Nick Bostrom, written by GPT-4 with my prompting (and light editing) in response to the open letter calling for a pause on the development of GPT-5.* Once upon a time, in a prosperous kingdom, there lived a fearsome two-headed dragon that cast a dark shadow over the land. One head represented Poverty, and the other represented the Toil of Labor. This monstrous creature not only devoured opportunities and kept countless citizens in a perpetual state of suffering and despair, but it also forced them to engage in endless, unnecessary work that drained their spirits and left little time for their passions. The King, having seen the hardships faced by his subjects, decided to consult the kingdom's Wise Council. They proposed various solutions to alleviate the suffering and lighten the burden of labor, but none seemed to have a lasting impact. People continued to struggle, and the dual grip of Poverty and Toil on the kingdom remained strong. One day, a group of brilliant Scientists who specialized in Artificial Intelligence came to the King with a bold proposal. They had been researching and developing an idea that they believed could vanquish the two-headed dragon once and for all. This revolutionary concept was called Universal Basic Income (UBI), and it promised to provide every citizen with a financial floor, ensuring a minimum standard of living for all while liberating them from the shackles of unnecessary work. The Scientists explained that UBI should be thought of as a dividend made possible by AI, and that [as technology continued to advance, the UBI should grow](https://www.scottsantens.com/cutting-the-gordian-knot-of-technological-unemployment-with-unconditional-basic-income-ubi/). They revealed that the kingdom was home to [magical trees that grew money](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com), which could be used to fund the UBI. The key to unlocking this magic was a technology inside the missile called Generative AI, which would greatly increase the supply of goods and services across the land, but also [reduce the ability of people to buy those goods and services by reducing their incomes](https://www.camecon.com/what/our-work/the-macroeconomics-of-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com). By combining UBI and AI, both heads of the dragon could be severed at once, which they hypothesized would be the killing blow. The King, intrigued by the potential of this idea, granted the Scientists the resources they needed to develop their project, which they called "The UBI Missile." As the Scientists toiled away, word of their endeavors spread throughout the kingdom. Many were skeptical, fearing that the UBI Missile could not deliver on its promises. They argued that it would lead to laziness, a lack of motivation, or even the collapse of the kingdom's economy. A group of concerned townspeople, wary of the potential dangers of AI development and testing, banded together to voice their fears. They drafted an open letter, proposing a six-month pause in the development and launch of the AI-armed UBI Missile and posted it in the town square. They hoped that this period would allow for more thorough assessments of the missile's potential risks and offer a chance for safer alternatives to be explored. One particularly vocal townsperson, whose family had suffered greatly under the dragon's oppressive reign, passionately argued against the proposed delay. He pointed out the dire consequences of inaction, saying, "By delaying the launch of the UBI Missile, we would be consigning six months-worth more people to their deaths and unnecessary suffering at the hands of Poverty and the Toil of Labor. We cannot let our fear of the unknown paralyze us when there is a chance to bring relief and hope to those who need it most." The King, aware of the growing tensions, convened his Wise Council to weigh the merits of the townspeople's concerns and the potential consequences of delaying the UBI Missile's launch. After days of deliberation, the Wise Council concluded that while caution was important, the urgency of the situation demanded action. They recognized the potential dangers of AI development and testing but believed that the Scientists had taken necessary precautions to ensure its safety. With the King's unwavering support, the Scientists resumed their work, eventually bringing their groundbreaking project to fruition. The UBI Missile, forged from the powerful Generative AI technology and powered by the kingdom's magical trees, was launched, and its impact was felt throughout the kingdom. With a sudden influx of financial security, [the citizens found themselves better equipped to face the challenges of life](https://www.scottsantens.com/from-rats-in-cages-to-primates-in-paradise-the-scientific-story-of-stress-in-society/). The two-headed Dragon of Poverty and the Toil of Labor, once an insurmountable force, began to wither and weaken. As the Dragon's grip on the kingdom faded away, [people were liberated from unnecessary work and found the freedom to explore, discover, and pursue their passions](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-monsters-inc-argument-for-unconditional-basic-income/). The UBI unleashed a wave of creativity and innovation, benefiting everyone in the kingdom. [New businesses, inventions, and ideas flourished](https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-will-accelerate-innovation-by-reducing-our-fear-of-failure/), enriching the lives of the citizens and making the kingdom even more prosperous. One day, a wise elder from the kingdom approached the King and expressed regret for not having slain the dragon sooner. "For generations, we have allowed the dragon to wreak havoc on our people, accepting its presence as a normal part of life," the elder lamented. "If only we had found the courage to act earlier, countless lives could have been saved from the clutches of Poverty and the Toil of Labor." The King acknowledged the elder's words but reminded him that the kingdom had finally taken the necessary steps to liberate its people. "We have learned from our past, and now we must look towards a brighter future," the King said. "Together, we have vanquished the dragon, and we must ensure that it never returns to torment our people again." As the years passed, the kingdom continued to thrive. The UBI, powered by the Generative AI and the magical trees, brought stability and prosperity to every citizen. People were now free to pursue the work that was most important to them and most valuable to their towns, ensuring that the kingdom remained a beacon of hope and progress. And so, the legacy of the UBI Missile and the defeat of the two-headed dragon of Poverty and the Toil of Labor lived on, serving as a reminder to all that the power of innovation, courage, and unity can overcome even the most daunting challenges. --- *Bonus video suggestions:* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a monthly pledge in support of my ongoing UBI advocacy. **Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon*: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Matthew Cheney, Camilo Riviere, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, David Ruark, Larry Cohen, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, John Steinberger, Laurel Gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Michael Tinker, Judith Bliss, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, Joanna Zarach, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, Max Henrion, Elizabeth Corker, Gray Scott, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Michael Honey, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Chris Rauchle, Arjun , chris heinz, Pavel S, Zachary Weaver, Herb, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, Deanna McHugh, Ryan Ash-Miller, miki, Adam Parsons, bradzone, Lee Lor, Akber Khan, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Phuong Truong, Garry Turner, Tim, Warren J Polk, Timothy P O'Connor, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Oliver Bestwalter, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Loren Sickles, anti666, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Kai Wong, and Laura Ashby. *Become a monthly patron to see your name here too*.* [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Did Spain's B-MINCOME Experiment Prove That Unconditional Basic Income Doesn't Work? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/did-spains-b-mincome-experiment-prove-that-unconditional-universal-basic-income-doesnt-work-ubi/ Last updated: 2024-12-19T13:13:12.000Z [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/03/button_support-my-work-on-patreon-8.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) Between 2017 and 2019, in the city of Barcelona, an experiment in the provision of monthly cash happened. It was called B-MINCOME. The original intent of the experiment was to test unconditional basic income to gather evidence for a nationwide universal basic income, but the pilot was put through the wringer of politics and what came out the other side was not so much an innovative new UBI pilot, [like the one that was supposed to start this year in Catalonia](https://presidencia.gencat.cat/web/.content/ambits%5Factuacio/renda%5Fbasica%5Funiversal/disseny-pla-pilot/Design-report-Universal-Basic-Income-Pilot-Project%5FENG.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), but more a test of whether the outcomes of people on welfare improved by making them do certain things or not. There is still something to be learned from the results of this pilot, but it's not the headline result that some UBI opponents are claiming as evidence against UBI. To the contrary, it's all quite pro-UBI as usual. First, here's the abstract from [a recent paper about it published in March 2023](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=4375359&ref=scottsantens.com): > "While unconditional cash transfers have been studied extensively in developing countries, little is known about their effects in a wealthier context. Through a randomized controlled trial, we study the employment effects of a generous and unconditional transfer targeting low-income families in Spain. Two years into the program, **subjects assigned to treatment are 20 percent less likely to work** than subjects assigned to a control group. Assignment to an activation plan does not attenuate adverse effects; a more lenient transfer withdrawal rate does. It appears that effects are driven by subjects with children, suggesting substitution of labour for care tasks." Based on that abstract, without reading the paper, it would be understandable to believe that basic income reduced work by 20%. That seems like quite a finding, right? Well, here's what is not mentioned in the abstract, or in articles I've seen like [this](https://www.aei.org/poverty-studies/study-finds-unconditional-cash-transfers-had-sizeable-and-adverse-employment-effects/?ref=scottsantens.com) and [this](https://cnsnews.com/commentary/daniel-mitchell/more-evidence-against-universal-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) writing about the experiment: **that result is due to a marginal tax rate of 100%**. In a big surprise to absolutely no one, it turns out that when you offer someone money, and then take away $1 of that money for every $1 they earn from employment, they are more likely to not work a job, and instead just take the money. That's it. That's the true headline result of a 2-year experiment involving about 1,000 households who on average each received about 500 euros per month — equal to about half the minimum wage there, and about $800 per month in the US based on purchasing power parity. But that's not all. Here's where things get really interesting, and again, absolutely not reported anywhere, at least anywhere I've seen. The B-MINCOME experiment didn't only test cash with a 100% phaseout rate. It also tested a phaseout rate of 25% on those earning under 250 euros per month, and 35% on those earning over 250 euros per month. This cohort is what could be considered [a UBI cohort hit with a 25%-35% surtax as a consequence of the UBI](https://www.scottsantens.com/ubi-universal-basic-income-does-not-require-tax-rates-of-40-to-60-percent/), making it more realistic than a 0% phaseout tax, albeit a bit higher than the 10% to 20% rate I'd recommend. The B-MINCOME experiment also tested various activation policies like "community involvement" where in addition to the cash, they were encouraged to participate in the social and community life of their neighborhoods, and "social entrepreneurship" where they trained to become social entrepreneurs. Activation was meant to improve outcomes by encouraging people to do things that politicians considered would help people more than just getting money. Here's the table from the study analyzing the impacts on work of the main treatment (100% tax), the UBI (labeled partial withdrawal), and the activation policies compared to the control group who got no monthly income. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2023/03/b-mincome.png) Here's the translation of the above table into English with my emphasis added in bold: 1. Working: The control mean is 0.473, and the treatment effect is -0.095\. The Activation policy has an effect of -0.043, and the Partial withdrawal has an effect of 0.031\. This suggests that the overall treatment reduces the likelihood of working, while the Activation policy specifically reduces it further. However, **the Partial withdrawal has a positive effect, increasing the likelihood of working**. 2. Employed: The control mean is 0.457, and the treatment effect is -0.101\. The Activation policy has an effect of -0.046, and the Partial withdrawal has an effect of 0.017\. Similar to the working outcome, the treatment reduces the likelihood of being employed, with the Activation policy having a negative effect, and **the Partial withdrawal having a positive effect**. 3. Self-employed: The control mean is 0.016, and the treatment effect is 0.007\. The Activation policy has an effect of 0.003, and the Partial withdrawal has an effect of 0.015\. In this case, the treatment increases the likelihood of being self-employed, with both the Activation policy and **Partial withdrawal having positive effects**. 4. Working full-time: The control mean is 0.229, and the treatment effect is -0.058\. The Activation policy has an effect of 0.015, and the Partial withdrawal has an effect of 0.023\. The treatment reduces the likelihood of working full-time, but the Activation policy has a positive effect, and **the Partial withdrawal also has a positive effect**. 5. Working part-time: The control mean is 0.245, and the treatment effect is -0.039\. The Activation policy has an effect of -0.058, and the Partial withdrawal has an effect of 0.010\. The treatment reduces the likelihood of working part-time, with the Activation policy having a larger negative effect, while **the Partial withdrawal has a positive effect**. 6. Permanent contract: The control mean is 0.186, and the treatment effect is -0.050\. The Activation policy has an effect of -0.011, and the Partial withdrawal has an effect of 0.023\. The treatment reduces the likelihood of having a permanent contract, with the Activation policy having a negative effect and **the Partial withdrawal having a positive effect**. 7. Temporary contract: The control mean is 0.264, and the treatment effect is -0.048\. The Activation policy has an effect of -0.031, and the Partial withdrawal has an effect of 0.003\. The treatment reduces the likelihood of having a temporary contract, with the Activation policy having a negative effect, and **the Partial withdrawal having a negligible positive effect**. In summary, the non-UBI treatments generally seem to have a negative impact on labor supply outcomes, with the activation policy often having a more significant negative effect. However, **the "partial withdrawal" mimicking a UBI plus accompanying taxes often has a positive effect on these outcomes, even *counteracting* the negative work impacts of activation policies**. That's right, UBI resulted in across the board positive impacts on work compared to the control group, and paternalistic activation policies led to mostly worse work outcomes. Whereas the headline result showed a 20% decrease in paid work, **the UBI+tax cohort saw a 6.5% increase in paid work**. Where the welfare with a 100% marginal tax rate saw a 25% decrease in full-time employment, **those provided UBI with a 25%-35% phaseout tax saw a 10% increase in FT work**. In regards to self-employment, **those provided UBI+tax were twice as likely (94%) to become self-employed** as those in the control group. Table 8 of the study examined household impacts. There, the researchers found that whereas the 100% tax reduced the number of workers in a household by 18%, the 25%-35% phaseout tax did not, and whereas the 100% tax made a household 14% more likely to have zero people doing paid work, the 25%-35% phaseout tax only made a household 2% more likely to have zero people doing paid work. Now, someone may look at that, and decide that the UBI condition did have at least one negative impact on paid work, but on further examination, it turns out that this reduction was really only among parents of young kids choosing to care for their kids at home for free instead of paying for child care. > "The results of a heterogeneity analysis suggest that adverse employment effects are driven by households with care responsibilities. While **employment effects are largely absent among households without children**, they are sizeable and negative among households with children living at home. Hence, **a potential mechanism explaining our results may be substituting labor for care tasks**." When looking at those in the experiment without kids, who were provided welfare with a 100% phaseout rate, it reduced the probability of paid work by the main recipient by as little as 0.3 percentage points. But when looking at those in the experiment with kids under age 14, that's where the impact was found. So it's pretty clear that what's happening here is that virtually the entire negative impact on employment is operating through parents with young kids not working less, but working for free at home as care providers. That work by the way subsidizes a lower cost of child care for everyone else. As I've written before, [the impact is Pigovian](https://www.scottsantens.com/unconditional-basic-income-is-a-pigovian-subsidy-for-unpaid-work/), meaning that society benefits by subsidizing that kind of work. I think it's also important to note that this study didn't look at hours worked or impacts on income. It only looked at whether people were working for an employer, self-employed, full-time employed, or part-time employed. Leaving out hours means that someone could have been working two hours per week and decided it wasn't worth it when provided income. That's quite different to overall productivity than someone working 60 hours per week deciding not to work. And if someone working 60 hours decided to work 40 hours instead, that wouldn't show as an impact in this study despite the 20-hour reduction, because they were still working full-time, and this study didn't look at impacts on income. Finally, and this is a big asterisk for everything you've just read, the authors of the study concluded after adjusting the p-values using the Westfall and Young (1993) methodology, that most of the results became insignificant, with only the welfare with a 100% phaseout tax being marginally significant in its impact on the number of members in a household working. In other words, basically take this entire study with a grain of salt, except for the quite obvious takeaway that **it's really stupid to provide people with income and then tax it away at a 100% rate**. And anyone who knows anything about universal basic income, and is being honest and forthright, knows that welfare with a 100% phaseout rate is most certainly not universal basic income. For additional reading about the B-MINCOME experiment, you may also find [this paper by Leire Garcia](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13882627221123347?ref=scottsantens.com) interesting. There are some other lessons to be learned about UBI pilots in general. From the conclusion of her paper: > "The intriguing question is, why pilot projects, despite achieving favourable results and being launched by UBI advocates, fail to generate meaningful policy and political impact? This qualitative case study of the B-Mincome pilot project has identified some of the key factors influencing this process, but, taking a broader look at Spanish and Catalan politics, has shown that unexpected factors may end up activating a debate much more effectively than a pilot project... Overall, political analysis of the B-Mincome project suggests that this experiment, rather than having political consequences, was the consequence of politics." For additional research about the impacts of UBI on work, I also suggest reading [this peer-reviewed systematic review of studies](https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9459?ref=scottsantens.com) published in late 2020. > "Over 1200 documents that discuss the UBI/employment relationship have been reviewed. We found a total of 50 empirical cases, of which 18 were selected, and 38 studies with contrasted empirical evidence on this relationship. The results speak for themselves: Despite a detailed search, **we have not found any evidence of a significant reduction in labour supply**. **Instead, we found evidence that labour supply increases** globally among adults, men and women, young and old, and the existence of some insignificant and functional reductions to the system such as a decrease in workers from the following categories: Children, the elderly, the sick, those with disabilities, **women with young children to look after**, or young people who continued studying. These reductions do not reduce the overall supply since it is largely offset by increased supply from other members of the community." --- *Note: The prompt I used in Midjourney for this article's title image was: "a laboratory with a scientist experimenting with cash. there are stacks of dollar bills around and the scientist is looking at money under a microscope. the lab is full of scientific tools and beakers and devices. there is a window in the room. outside the window is Spain. --v 5 --ar 3:2"* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a monthly pledge in support of my perpetual UBI advocacy. **Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon*: Gisele Huff*, *Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Matthew Cheney, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, David Ruark, Larry Cohen, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, John Steinberger, CanadayVibes , Kerry Bosworth, Laurel gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Michael Tinker, Judith Bliss, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, Joanna Zarach, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, Max Henrion, Elizabeth Corker, Gray Scott, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Michael Honey, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Chris Rauchle, Arjun , chris heinz, Pavel S, Zachary Weaver, Juro Antal, Herb, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, Deanna McHugh, Ryan Ash-Miller, miki, Adam Parsons, bradzone, Lee Lor, Akber Khan, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Phuong Truong, Garry Turner, Tim , Warren J Polk, Timothy P O'Connor, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Oliver Bestwalter, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Loren Sickles, anti666, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Kai Wong, and Laura Ashby. *Become a monthly patron to see your name here too*.* [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### ChatGPT Has Already Decreased My Income Security, and Likely Yours Too URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/chatgpt-has-already-decreased-my-income-security/ Last updated: 2023-02-21T22:27:05.000Z *Note: You can also listen to this post thanks to an AI I trained with my voice* Most of you have by now heard of [ChatGPT](https://chat.openai.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) already, but if you haven't, first I'm happy to hear you're out of your coma, and second, it's what's called a "generative artificial intelligence" that was built by OpenAI to generate [machine-learning](https://www.scottsantens.com/deep-learning-is-going-to-teach-us-all-the-lesson-of-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines/) derived text from human prompts. What you also may not know, because so much is happening so quickly, is how it has scared the bejesus out of Google, and a generative AI race has officially begun. Here's a video to get you up to speed. In short, ChatGPT is the fastest service to ever hit 100 million subscribers, and Google's dominance is legitimately threatened by Microsoft who bet on it. With Google suddenly very concerned for its future, it's investing big in its own generative AI solutions, and the two companies are each quickly upgrading their services to utilize generative AI. Because ChatGPT is so hugely popular and experiencing truly massive demand already, you may not have been able to actually personally use it yet, but suffice to say, it's kind of like magic. And it's still early days. Newer versions trained on orders of magnitude more data are still to come, while the current state-of-the-art is already as capable as humans at passing the Wharton MBA exam ([with a B or B-](https://www.businessinsider.com/list-here-are-the-exams-chatgpt-has-passed-so-far-2023-1?ref=scottsantens.com)), a final exam in microbiology (with an A), law school exams (with a C+), a Google coding interview for a [level 3 engineer](https://www.pcmag.com/news/chatgpt-passes-google-coding-interview-for-level-3-engineer-with-183k-salary?ref=scottsantens.com) with a $183,000 salary, and it can barely pass the [US Medical Licensing Exam](https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-02-chatgpt-medical-exam.html?ref=scottsantens.com) to be a doctor (with a 60% where passing is 60%). More recently, it's even passed "theory of mind" psychological tests with the same capability as [a kid at age 9](https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/ai-chatbot-spontaneously-develops-a-theory-of-mind?ref=scottsantens.com). This is all as of early February 2023\. This level of performance will only improve - and quickly. Here's the thing though. As people begin to shift away from doing Google searches and clicking link after link to find what they're looking for, and instead just let AI answer their questions, fewer links will be clicked. Fewer articles and blog posts will ever actually be read. This means those articles will earn less advertising revenue and those blog posts will result in fewer people becoming patrons on creator-centered platforms like Patreon. That last one is what interests me in particular, because it directly impacts me. And if I'm able to sufficiently explain how it's already impacting me, I think you'll understand why you're likely already being impacted too. In 2014 I started blogging about the concept of [unconditional basic income](https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq/). I was inspired by how quickly technology was advancing and how no one was really talking solutions or even the need for solutions. In order to focus full-time on my writing and UBI advocacy, I started [my Patreon account](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) where people could support my writing and UBI advocacy with monthly donations. By 2016, I was earning over $1,000 a month via my Patreon, which enabled me to never look back and just focus 100% on my writing and UBI advocacy, which continues to this day. Part of being a successful creator on Patreon is getting what you create seen and enjoyed by others. So the more views a piece of content gets, the more likely someone who enjoyed it will become a monthly patron. This is also how ad-revenue works, albeit with a different quality factor. Ad revenue only cares about clicks. Patreon revenue cares about quality, where the more someone likes someone's content, and the more people who enjoy that content, the more likely someone is to support more content from that creator. Both Patreon and ad revenue depend on people clicking on your content though. Enter ChatGPT. ChatGPT is like the world's most voracious consumer of content. It has read more than any human being could ever read. It has already read virtually the entire internet, and as time goes on, it will read more and more. And part of what it has read is my stuff. It therefore has the ability to save people the time of actually reading my stuff. On the one hand, this is great. If my ideas are reaching more people, I'm happy with that. What I truly care about is the idea of UBI that I advocate. So if someone can ask ChatGPT about UBI and get an answer that they're happy with, and I'm happy with, we're both happy. But that also means they aren't actually reading my stuff and instead getting a distilled version. And that means fewer clicks, which means fewer people ever learning about my work, which means fewer people supporting my work. At this point in time, it's possible that perhaps just one person who would have read my blog and become a patron decided instead to just ask ChatGPT about UBI. Let's say that's happened and I'm earning $2 a month less than I otherwise would have because of it. Not a big deal, right? No, at least not yet. But more widespread ChatGPT usage is coming, as are its competitors. And it does not matter if these tools provide links back to me. Wikipedia is full of links. How much traffic do people get from those links? Most people just see that something has a citation. Most don't click the citation, let alone read the cited work. Think of a food blogger that has a bunch of recipes. Right now, someone searching for a recipe can happen upon their blog, giving that page a view and perhaps other pages as well if the person is particularly impressed by the recipe. With ChatGPT, people just ask for a recipe and it gives them one. They can even ask the AI to modify the recipe. No clicks. Just information. This is why Google is so worried and why the AI race has begun. **Searching for information is about to experience a paradigm shift as big as using browsers instead of phone books**. We are headed towards a future where people just ask their AI assistant about stuff, and that AI answers questions using massive amounts of stuff humans like me have written which trained them. And humans like me who depended on people actually reading their stuff lose out on those readers, and thus that income. I now face a choice, which I think others will soon find themselves facing as well. There is a solution to having less of your stuff read; it's making even more stuff. I could use ChatGPT to accomplish this. Thus, one potential road I could take is to try and 10x my output. Instead of say two to four articles a month, I could try for twenty, and ChatGPT could help me do that. So that's one thing all content creators will face as a potential solution. Instead of competing against AI, use it to increase your productivity. That will require people learning how to use AI well. Not everyone is going to be able to do that successfully, nor will everyone want to. Another path creators could take is to lean into building and fostering community. If people really care about what you specifically think about something, they won't care what ChatGPT says. What they want to know is what you as a specific individual have to say. This is the subscriber route of building a faithful following of loyal subscribers who really truly care what you create and want to consume it because you, not anyone else, created it. It's the personal touch and connection that people crave here. So if ChatGPT is making it so that less of your stuff is read, instead of making much more stuff to compensate, you could also focus on building a loyal community of fans. Not everyone is going to be able to make this change successfully either, nor will everyone want to. There is a third choice for creators, but this one I really do not recommend at all, and it's to lean into the algorithms. The stuff that gets shared more is the stuff that makes people angry. It's also the stuff that lies and just tells people what they want to hear. Outrage gets lots of views. Disinformation gets lots of views. You can build a loyal audience as a purveyor of extremes and falsehoods. Creators who take that route will do better, which is why we'll see even more of that which we're already seeing. This is an adaptation I'm not looking forward to. It's a maladaptation. What's most important to understand though is that unless content creators adapt, many of them will become worse off financially as AI users click on less of their content. Some will adapt and become even better off, while others will definitely become worse off. And this isn't only going to hit writers. This will hit many people doing all kinds of work. When people can just get legal advice from ChatGPT, and feel confident about the advice, lawyers are going to get fewer clients. Lawyers will need to adapt by using ChatGPT to be even more productive, or they'll need to lean into the human touch, or they'll see reduced incomes. The same is true with artists and AIs like Midjourney. Fewer people will be wanting to pay artists when they can just prompt Midjourney for it, and artists can choose to use Midjourney to increase or improve their output, or they can lean into building a loyal fan base, or they'll see reduced incomes. Generative AI isn't stopping at text and images either. It's already doing speech. It's already doing music. It's already doing short videos. It's even already doing movies. Over and over again, this will be the basic choice people will need to make in a world of AI. You'll either learn how to use AI to increase your productivity, or you'll need to really focus on the quality of being a unique human being whose work people particularly care about, or you will be left behind economically and need to find something else to earn money, even if you don't want to find something else. That will likely require gaining new skills or just finding whatever paid work you can find, regardless of the amount of pay or security it provides. You may be thinking that *your* particular income isn't impacted at all by any existing forms of generative AI. Here's the thing though, whatever you do for money, you likely depend on other people having money to spend, and if other people are slowly having less money to spend, you yourself may slowly earn less money. Don't only think of first-order effects. Think second and third order. AI will drain consumer spending power from the economy as it further increases inequality. Our economy is 70% consumer-based. Income security is a feeling. Your income can remain unchanged, but if you feel less secure in the stability of your future income, that still has an impact. A [2018 study of automation](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953618300819?ref=scottsantens.com) found that just being exposed to a heightened risk of one's job being automated was associated with negative health outcomes. The study concluded that "a 10% increase in automation risk at county-level is associated with 2.38, 0.8, and 0.6 percentage point lower general, physical, and mental health, respectively." A distinguished economist even just published [a new book](https://www.brusselstimes.com/363380/insecurity-is-the-problem-universal-basic-income-part-of-the-solution?ref=scottsantens.com) about how he believes that rising insecurity, not poverty or inequality is what's chiefly responsible for the democratic backsliding happening around the world. It is at this point I want to remind everyone again, that we are being displaced by something trained on our own work. We all together created the content that trained the AIs. History is full of humankind standing on the shoulders of those who came before us, and now AI is standing on our shoulders. We're the ones that made it possible. So why don't we recognize that we all rightfully deserve to all be better off? None of us earned being born now instead of 200 years ago. [Technological Inheritance and the Case for a Basic IncomeOne or another form of unconditional “basic income” has now been advocated by individuals ranging from conservative economists like the…![](https://cdn-static-1.medium.com/_/fp/icons/Medium-Avatar-500x500.svg)MediumGar Alperovitz![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1200/1*K2tXGlERtV7FQbui1tWYoA.png)](https://medium.com/@GarAlperovitz/technological-inheritance-and-the-case-for-a-basic-income-ded373a69c8e?ref=scottsantens.com) What AI is already capable of should be celebrated. It's amazing. It can save so much time and enable so much more productivity. But **we should all share in that collective productivity increase as it continues to improve**. It shouldn't be the case that some people win big while many, if not most, lose. AI is a collective accomplishment and an inheritance. Humanity got to this point together with each generation building upon the work of previous generations. And now this generation even helped train AI with our own work. From the very beginning of my interest in unconditional basic income back in 2013, I saw what appeared to be a fork in the road up ahead in the mid-2020s, where mass economic displacement would start happening thanks to robotics and AI. This entire time, I've seen this as a question of utopia vs dystopia where the status quo as a choice just doesn't exist. Things can either get a lot worse now, or they can get a lot better. Which path we take is up to us. [It’s Time for Technology to Serve All Humankind with Universal Basic Income (UBI)The text below is a speech I wrote for a keynote in Sweden in late 2017\. ThePowerPoint is downloadable\[https://www.slideshare.net/ScottSantens/cutting-the-gordian-knot-of-technological-unemployment\], as is a video recording \[https://vimeo.com/242456791\] of the speech itself. This article has bee…![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2022/02/favicon.ico)UBI GuideScott Santens![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2022/02/technology-robots-automation-unemployment.jpeg)](https://www.scottsantens.com/time-for-technology-to-serve-all-humankind-with-universal-basic-income-ubi/) A study in 2021 simulated the impacts of automation at a global level and found that automation would grow economies around the world but leave many people in those countries worse off. Without basic income that is. With basic income, automation became "[a win-win for all generations in a region](https://www.nber.org/papers/w29220?ref=scottsantens.com)." A more recent macroeconomic model of automation and UBI in 2022 [by Cambridge Econometrics](https://www.camecon.com/what/our-work/the-macroeconomics-of-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) found that because of the income-reducing impact of automation, taxes wouldn't even be necessary to achieve UBI without excess inflation. I see UBI as the wise path where technological advances work for the benefit of everyone. UBI can be a literal dividend, where a percentage of productivity growth flows to everyone equally as our share of the work that machines are doing. So long as we don't implement UBI, the benefits of robots and AI will be highly unequally distributed, just as they've already been for the past half-century of tech progress, where [$50 trillion in productivity growth flowed to the top 1% instead of the bottom 90%](https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/?ref=scottsantens.com). There will soon be many people worse off, and those people aren't going to just sit there and take it. They'll blame it on immigrants and other people in general. [They'll vote for authoritarians](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2111611118?ref=scottsantens.com) who promise to make everything better through brute force. [They'll believe conspiracies](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2203149119?ref=scottsantens.com) about how a dividend is meant to control them and how vaccines are designed to kill them. They'll throw their metaphorical boots into the machines and [push against investments in AI](https://thediplomat.com/2021/11/how-universal-basic-income-can-advance-the-united-states-china-strategy/?ref=scottsantens.com) in fear of losing their jobs. Everything will get even messier than it already has. I don't want us to continue going down this current path. Do you? If not, then demand your rising productivity dividend. Demand that AI literally works for all of us, including you. And with that dividend in hand as a firm and continually rising financial floor, use that freedom to figure out what you as a human should work on next thanks to AI being your servant instead of your replacement. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2023/02/37.png) Image prompted using Midjourney --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please **click the subscribe button** and also consider making **a monthly pledge** in support of my ongoing UBI advocacy. *Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Matthew Cheney, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, Larry Cohen, Frederick Weber, CanadayVibes , Kerry Bosworth, Laurel gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Michael Tinker, Judith Bliss, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, Joanna Zarach, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, Myles McLane, Max Henrion, Elizabeth Corker, Gray Scott, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Michael Honey, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Chris Rauchle, Arjun , chris heinz, Pavel S, Zachary Weaver, Juro Antal, Herb, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, Deanna McHugh, Ryan Ash-Miller, miki, Adam Parsons, bradzone, Lee Lor, Akber Khan, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, Iggy C, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Phuong Truong, Tim , Warren J Polk, Timothy P O'Connor, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Oliver Bestwalter, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Loren Sickles, anti666, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, and Kai Wong.* [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### How Money is Born out of Public Spending and Dies by Taxes URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/how-money-is-born-out-of-public-spending-and-dies-by-taxes-mmt/ Last updated: 2025-10-08T23:43:08.000Z If there's one thing most people don't seem to understand about how money works that I think would really help governments work better in the 21st century, it's that money does not flow in the way we perceive it does. It's an illusion. What money actually does is pop into and out of existence in a way that looks like flow. In this post I will try to sufficiently explain that singular understanding of money. Okay, so you want to start your own country and create your own currency? Congratulations! What's step one? Is it to tax your people? How are you going to get them to pay taxes in a currency that doesn't exist yet? Step one therefore is to [**create money out of nothing**](https://evonomics.com/isnt-time-stop-calling-national-debt/?ref=scottsantens.com). Choose whatever you want. Want to use shells? Okay. Want to carve notches on rocks or sticks? Okay. Want to use dollar bills? Okay. Want to use ones and zeroes? Okay. Whatever you do, get that stuff to your people. After your people have money, tax some of it back. Don't tax all of it back. That would leave nothing for them to use on goods and services in the private sector. Tax some percentage of it back. Congrats! You just ran a "deficit", began your "national debt", and gave your money value by requiring that people pay their taxes in your currency. Now, what comes next is what really trips people up. Let's say you want a new bridge built. Where does the money come from to pay people to build that bridge? Does it come from the taxes you just collected? No. Not as the currency issuer. As the currency issuer you are not limited to first taxing your people in order to spend. You can just spend. Remember, you have the power to create money. No one else but you in your country has that power. Everyone else needs to acquire money first in order to spend it. People do. Businesses do. Cities do. States do. Countries without their own currencies do. You however do not. You just create and spend money. So create the money and use it for your bridge. Don't believe me? [Listen for yourself](https://youtu.be/QWJC%5F%5Fmz1Pc?t=478&ref=scottsantens.com) to former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke talk about how when the government pays for things, it's “not taxpayer money," and they "simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account.” One caveat to money creation is that the money you create and spend into existence will increase the total supply of money and therefore have some amount of inflationary pressure. So you need to tax money out of existence after spending in order to avoid expanding the money supply too much and creating excessive inflation you don't want. This means if that bridge is going to cost $1 million YouBucks to be built, you may want to tax your nation somewhere around $1 million to avoid inflating your money supply. That's pretty much the main purpose of taxes aside from giving money its value and nudging behavior. You don't have to tax first in order to build your bridge. You can just spend the money that building the bridge needs. What actually matters most to building a bridge is if you have the ability to build the bridge. Do you have the materials for it, and the people with the skills necessary to build it, and the time and technology it will take to build it? Those things are what actually matter, not "funding it with taxes." Consider a circular river with a counterclockwise flow and a structure covering part of the river. You don't know what's inside the structure. It's like a giant mystery box. It's fair to assume though that whatever is going on inside the structure is what's causing the river to flow around and around in a circle. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2023/02/circular-river-mystery-box-MMT.png) Created using Midjourney It's completely rational to think that what must be causing the water to flow around and around is some kind of device that you can't see underneath the black box that's physically moving the water. Maybe a big water wheel is there and it's physically applying a force to create the river current. The amount of water in the river stays the same. It's just something is moving that water around and around. That's how people think money works. We have these things called dollars that we physically hand to each other. The dollars are real. They don't disappear and reappear when they change hands. They continue existing and they just move from one person to another. That's how we experience money, so that's how we think money works. But that's not the way it works at the national or bank level. At the national level, what's really going on is that all the money coming out of the government is brand new money. All of it. And the money that looks like it's going back to the government to be spent again is just being deleted. When you pay your taxes, the government just erases money from your bank account. Poof. Gone. Water exits one side. Water enters one side. As long as the river doesn't overflow, the illusion is maintained of water going around and around. But it's just an illusion. The water is being created and destroyed. This is all especially true with digital money like most of us now use. When we use a debit card and on our end a one flips to a zero, and on the other end a zero flips to a one, no tangible thing went anywhere. Money disappeared in one place and appeared in another as if by magic. But it's not magic, it's just a ledger, and the numbers can be anything. The numbers are just numbers. It's what we can buy with the numbers that really matters. Banks also have the ability to create money through what's called fractional reserve lending, but the money that banks create is out of private debt. That money is then destroyed when the debt is paid back. This is also why when the Fed wants to reduce inflation, it makes it more expensive to get loans via higher interest rates. People don't want to pay higher interest rates so they take out fewer loans which reduces the amount of money out there in the economy to spend on stuff that banks would have otherwise created through lending. Whenever you use a credit card, you're spending brand new money that inflates the money supply. When you pay your credit card bill, you're destroying money and shrinking the money supply. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2023/02/circular-river-mystery-box-MMT-with-text.png) Another fun way to look at it is like teleportation in science fiction. Are you being converted to energy and sent somewhere at lightspeed to be reconverted back into yourself? Or [do you die when you step into a transporter](https://starships.com/teleporters-kill-you-the-science/?ref=scottsantens.com), and an exact copy of you is recreated at the destination point? It's kind of a [Ship of Theseus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship%5Fof%5FTheseus?ref=scottsantens.com) question. Spock's opinion on this was to say, "a difference that makes no difference, makes no difference." I think it does make a difference though when it comes to money. It's easy to see why all this is confusing, because of how similar it looks, and how silly it can sound to point out. If a country is spending and taxing $1 trillion a year, it can look like it's taxing $1 trillion and then spending $1 trillion instead of spending $1 trillion and then taxing $1 trillion. And that's exactly what's happening when a government doesn't have its own currency. But when a government has its own currency, it's actually creating $1 trillion and then erasing $1 trillion. It may sound really silly to point such a distinction out. Who cares, right? What's the difference between taxing and then spending versus spending and then taxing, especially when the amounts are identical? Even if one is more true than the other, why does it matter? It matters because **a country with its own currency that thinks it has to come up with taxes first in order to spend is far more likely to think in terms of money limits instead of economic capacity and resource limits**. That leads to all kinds of nonsense like "budget ceilings" and fretting over any amount of taxes that is less than spending, which then leads to destructive policy choices like austerity and increased poverty which costs us trillions of dollars worth of wasted resources on the downstream impacts like worse health and more crime. We hear things like: "Oh no! We spent more on Social Security than we taxed. I guess we need to cut Social Security now." Who cares if that means seniors will experience more hunger despite there being plenty of food. We have to do that because we just don't have enough tax money, right? It's nonsense. It's all nonsense. If your country has enough food for everyone, and you create your own money, then nothing is preventing you from distributing enough money for everyone to buy the food that there's plenty of. There's no physical constraint on that food. There's no physical constraint on the money. The only constraint is the choice to not issue the money for food. It's a political choice. Do you see now why it's so important to stop thinking in terms of money and instead begin thinking in terms of actual economic capacity constraints? If your country has plenty of food for everyone, then you can get money to everyone to buy the food without food inflation. If your country does not have enough housing in places where people want to live, then you need more housing built where people want to live if you want to avoid higher rents from distributing money for housing. If your country wants to have an abundance of clean sustainable energy, then invest in more clean sustainable energy. In the long run, it's going to be a heck of a lot cheaper to use an unlimited resource like the sun or wind than a limited resource like fossil fuels. Not enough electric cars for everyone who wants one to have one? There could be higher prices on electric cars, temporarily, if you distributed money, that is until electric car manufacturers are able to ramp up production to meet the higher demand. Always consider supply constraints when going about money creation as a currency issuer. **Supply of stuff is the real constraint on spending, not the money to buy stuff.** Another reason it's important to understand your economy's real limitations is to avoid thinking you're not going to surpass them because you think you taxed the money first to pay for something. Here's what I mean by that. Let's say that from a spending perspective you need to spend $1 million on something. From a tax-first perspective, you first need to come up with $1 million, and because money is money and money is your perceived constraint, you decide to tax one person $1 million. No one else pays the tax. You're all set, right? No, you're not. If all you do is reduce the spending power of one person, then you could surpass your capacity constraints. A rich person tends to not buy millions of pillows, so if you're worried about surpassing pillow capacity constraints, taxing one person isn't going to help. However, if you taxed 10,000 people $100, or 100,000 people $10, or 1 million people $1, that may make it so you don't surpass your resource constraints. This is why wealth taxes don't make all that much sense from an economic capacity view compared to something like a small consumption tax. **A tiny tax that hits many versus a large tax that hits a tiny few isn't going to have the same impact on inflation even if they're measured as being the same amount of dollars**. This isn't to say that wealth taxes are a bad idea, just that they aren't going to reduce inflation as much as taxes that a lot more people pay. There's other valid reasons to do wealth taxes like reducing inequality. Here's something else that leads directly from a better understanding of how fiat money and taxes work. If you see taxes as necessary to pay for things, then you'll only ever pay for things with taxes, which will limit your actual potential capacity. If you understand that taxes are only one way of avoiding exceeding your inflation constraints, then you'll also see that there are things you can do to avoid exceeding your inflation constraints that aren't taxes, and that therefore can reduce existing taxes or allow for increased spending with the same taxes and no inflation. Let's say in your country you founded, there are two companies working in cahoots with each other to set the price of what they sell instead of competing against each other. Because of this, they each have agreed with each other that the price of beef is $20 a pound. But what if you enforced competition and said they either need to compete or be hit with huge fines or even ultimately lose their ability to sell beef to your people? If the price of beef then went down to $5 a pound, you just reduced inflation without doing any taxing at all. Because your real constraint is economic capacity, if you gave your people money to afford beef in a price-fixing situation, it's possible you would have exceeded your capacity constraints as people spent more money on other things than beef. One way to avoid this is through taxes to reduce the amount of money spent on other stuff. But because another way to avoid inflation is competition, now that money you provided that would have otherwise led to some inflation did not, and you didn't need to raise any taxes. So therefore, **you can "pay for" stuff without taxes by just spending the money and making smart policy choices** that expand your economy's capacity to meet demand with supply. I hope money and public spending and taxes makes a bit more sense now. When you can see money as just a thing we create out of nothing, and delete with taxes, it's easier to see that what really matters is all the real stuff we can't create out of nothing. It's easier to see that taxpayers aren't funding government. They're contributing to inflation reduction and currency value maintenance. It's easier to see that some taxes are better than others despite resulting in equal amounts of dollars taxed, and it's easier to see that we can deploy tools other than taxes in order to reduce inflation. I hope it's also easier to see how truly ridiculous it is to believe as an issuer of currency that you can't afford to pay for what you already promised to pay for, especially when it's spending to increase capacity (like infrastructure) or to free up capacity (like reducing the massive resource burdens of poverty, [especially child poverty](https://source.wustl.edu/2018/04/childhood-poverty-cost-u-s-1-03-trillion-in-a-year-study-finds/?ref=scottsantens.com)). Looking at you, debt ceiling supporters. So the next time someone asks, "But how are we going to pay for it?" about anything at all, perhaps you'll find this post useful in formulating a reply. Of course another option is reading my book, *Let There Be Money* which covers much more. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a monthly pledge in support of my ongoing UBI advocacy. *Special thanks to: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Matthew Cheney, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, Larry Cohen, Frederick Weber, CanadayVibes, Kerry Bosworth, Laurel Gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Michael Tinker, Judith Bliss, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, Joanna Zarach, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, Myles McLane, Max Henrion, Elizabeth Corker, Gray Scott, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Michael Honey, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Chris Rauchle, Arjun, chris heinz, Pavel S, Zachary Weaver, Juro Antal, Herb, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, Deanna McHugh, Ryan Ash-Miller, miki, Adam Parsons, bradzone, Lee Lor, Akber Khan, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, Iggy C, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Phuong Truong, Tim , Warren J Polk, Timothy P O'Connor, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Oliver Bestwalter, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Loren Sickles, anti666, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, and Kai Wong.* [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The FairTax Would Implement a Universal Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/fair-tax-would-implement-universal-basic-income-ubi-fairtax/ Last updated: 2023-02-03T18:39:50.000Z ### Anyone who supports the FairTax and its monthly 'prebate' also supports UBI even if they swear otherwise Basic income. **$279 every month**. Tax free money from the government. No work requirements. No income-testing. For every legal resident of the United States, every month, with additional income for kids depending on number of kids. That's the fully universal basic income that the Republican [FairTax Act](https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/25?ref=scottsantens.com) proposes that the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus of the House wants to pass into law as a truly massive reform of our tax system. The UBI is called the **Family Consumption Allowance**, and referred to in general as a "prebate," but call it whatever you want, [it's a UBI](https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-for-all-unconditional-why-ubi-is-necessary-now-evidence-experiments/). And the only reason it's even being talked about is because some far-right members of Congress demanded that the FairTax get a vote as part of the deal Kevin McCarthy agreed to in order to become House Speaker. In this post, I'm not going to get too deep into the details of the tax side of the Fair Tax, and the implications of replacing our entire income tax system with a consumption tax. There's plenty of other content out there about that. What there isn't a lot of content about is the UBI it proposes, so that's what I want to focus on. First, why is there a universal unconditional basic income as part of the FairTax? It's a side-effect of replacing income taxes with a consumption tax. Right now, we have an income tax system that's paired with a standard deduction of $12,950 in 2023\. This means that someone who earns $12,951 would only be seen as having $1 of taxable income. The intent of the deduction is to not tax people in poverty. So what happens when a national sales tax makes everything cost more? Well, those people not paying income taxes, because they're in poverty, would suddenly be in even greater poverty thanks to being able to buy less stuff with the same amount of money. Poverty would increase in America in a very dramatic fashion with a national sales tax alone. That's where the Family Consumption Allowance comes in. The thinking is that if we add a sales tax to everything, we need to rebate that tax to those in poverty. That's how the amount of the prebate is calculated. The federal poverty line in 2023 is defined as $14,580\. The FairTax proposes to tax 23% of the total price (tax inclusive) of all retail prices, so in order to not hit people below the poverty line with the tax, everyone would need to get an amount of money that is equal to 23% of the federal poverty line. That's $3,353\. Because everyone needs money to buy what they need on a monthly basis, then that's $279 each and every month. Because the federal poverty line varies according to household size, the larger the household, the more money to afford higher prices. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2023/01/Fm7Wn-sXgAAuIZU.jpg) I should note here though that the prebate amount should actually be $365 per month because the FairTax seeks to impose a new 30% tax, which means that the total tax imposition at the federal poverty line would be $4,374\. That's the amount that is 23% of $14,580 + $4,374\. I have no idea what their reasoning is here to not do that. It could be a mistake based on the confusion of saying the tax is 23% of the price plus the tax instead of 30% of the price alone, or it could be a matter of leveraging that confusion to lowball the amount of the prebate. So that's where the amount of $279 a month comes from. But why give the money to everyone instead of only those with lower incomes? Because the plan is to get rid of the IRS. Without the IRS, the government will no longer track people's incomes. The government will not know how much money anyone is making, so there's no way to do any income testing. Instead, the Social Security Administration would send the money based on what they know about who has a Social Security number, and people would only be required to register each year with the "sales tax administering authority" in the state in which they reside. Also this is already how things currently work with the standard deduction. Everyone gets the standard deduction. You can be a billionaire earning hundreds of millions of dollars a year and you can claim the standard deduction. Although most billionaires don't because they can also choose to get an even larger tax deduction by itemizing deductions, but the fact remains, no one pays any income taxes on earnings below the amount of the standard deduction. It's universal. Because the Fair Tax would replace all income taxes, that includes ending the standard deduction, and because there's no way of knowing people's incomes without an IRS, there needs to be an amount of money that goes to everyone as an income floor to afford the tax hike on spending up to the poverty line. And thus the result is a small unconditional basic income. The logic may be to rebate the sales tax on the amount of stuff people below the poverty line buy, but the result is to provide people an income without any means-tests or work requirements. If someone can figure out how to live on $279 a month, then someone can do that. No employment required. It's a basic income. For a married couple, it's a combined income of $558 a month. The excuse to provide that income is a sales tax rebate, but the fact remains that it's enough to pay for food without working for food. So anyone who supports the Fair Tax and its prebate is not opposed to the idea of an unconditional basic income. However small the floor would be, they support a fully unconditional and universal income floor that starts at $279 a month vs today's $0 a month. If you've read this far, as a progressive, maybe you're thinking this actually sounds kind of interesting, and as a conservative, maybe you're thinking this actually sounds less interesting than you thought, but here's where I'll mention a couple other things I think people should know about the FairTax plan besides the UBI. What FairTax advocates don't really advertise is the fact that besides the standard deduction which the FairTax UBI would essentially replace, there are also programs like the child tax credit (CTC) and earned income tax credit (EITC) that would also be ended, and go unreplaced. So right now, some people are not only paying zero taxes, but are also getting income from the government each year from the IRS. Whereas the FairTax proposes to not tax people in poverty just like income taxes don't tax people in poverty, the income tax system also helps reduce poverty through refundable tax credits. This means that some people currently in poverty or near poverty currently receiving CTC and/or EITC payments would absolutely be worse off with the FairTax even with the monthly prebate. The average amount of EITC received in 2021 was $2,411, and the CTC reduces taxes by up to $2,000 per kid. The FairTax doesn't try to replace any tax expenditures except for the standard deduction. This is true not only for the poor, but also the middle class. Middle class households who itemize their deductions currently enjoy the home mortgage interest deduction among other deductions. All those deductions would disappear too. So on the one hand, people pay more for stuff with a FairTax, and on the other, people get a small UBI and get to potentially keep more of their paycheck when payroll taxes are eliminated, but there are definitely winners and losers depending on the tax subsidies people are currently enjoying but not recognizing as government assistance because it's in the tax code as credits and deductions. There's also the issue of ending a progressively-tiered tax system with a consumption tax. Right now, low-income earners pay less than the FairTax would tax them, even with the prebate, and high-income earners pay more than the FairTax would tax them, so it's likely that the FairTax would be an overall regressive reform that would further increase inequality. Eliminating the estate tax would be a hugely regressive reform. [There is no estate tax at all on estates worth less than $13 million](https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/estate-tax?ref=scottsantens.com). No one is paying that tax except the richest 1%. This is also why [George W. Bush considered and rejected the idea when he was president](https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/trouble-fairtax?ref=scottsantens.com). His administration's analysis found that even with the small UBI, the entire bottom 80% of Americans would end up carrying a higher percentage of the total national tax burden. Only the richest 20% would see a decreased overall tax burden. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2023/01/fair-tax-rates.jpg) The small print of the FairTax plan also includes the fact that the 23% sales tax is only for one year (and is actually a 30% rate because it would add a $30 tax to a $100 product, but they say 23% because $30 is 23% of $130). After that it would be decided on a year-to-year basis based on what it's determined that Social Security and Medicare will require on top of a general revenue rate of 14.9%. This makes it extremely likely that the national sales tax would be cranked up after the first year, potentially [as high as 60%](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-national-retail-sales-tax-what-would-the-rate-have-to-be/?ref=scottsantens.com) to achieve the goal of revenue neutrality. Now, I don't want to be accused of leaving out potentially positive impacts of replacing our current tax system with the FairTax, besides the small UBI, so I also should mention that it's certainly theoretically possible that ending corporate taxes could mean lower prices should corporations choose to use their tax cut to lower prices instead of make larger profits. Seriously though, who are we kidding about the realism of that considering [the spectacular amount of record profits being taken recently](https://www.epi.org/blog/corporate-profits-have-contributed-disproportionately-to-inflation-how-should-policymakers-respond/?ref=scottsantens.com) in an inflationary environment where corporations could raise prices more than the impact higher inflation was having on them under the cover that higher inflation provided them. Another thing I want to mention is just how similar a national sales tax and prebate would be to [a carbon tax and prebate](https://www.scottsantens.com/this-idea-can-literally-change-the-world-universal-basic-income-through-carbon-pricing/), in terms of making stuff cost more but rebating that extra cost back to consumers. However, where the FairTax looks to replace all existing federal taxes, a carbon tax would be a new tax that's only meant to fund the rebate, which would also be a UBI if fully universal. Under a deficit-neutral carbon fee and dividend policy, about two-thirds of low- and middle-income Americans would see a net increase of disposable income, while most of the richest would see a net decrease of disposable income. So where the FairTax and prebate would be a regressive change that increases inequality, a carbon tax and prebate would be a progressive change that reduces inequality. Analysis of a carbon tax and prebate also shows that returning the money universally would be the better way of going about it than reducing payroll taxes or income taxes. By refunding 100% of the carbon tax to all Americans equally, the result would be an overall tax cut for the bottom 70% of households, whereas using the carbon tax revenue to lower income taxes would hurt the bottom 60%, and using it to lower payroll taxes would hurt the bottom 30%. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2023/01/carbon-tax-and-prebate.png) Source: [The Week](https://theweek.com/articles/696282/how-make-carbon-tax-insanely-popular?ref=scottsantens.com) The details definitely matter when it comes to pairing consumption taxes with universal basic income. Personally, I think if we're going to purposely make stuff more expensive, the stuff we make more expensive should be stuff we want less of, and if we're going to implement UBI, it would be best to view the UBI as an income tax rebate that lowers most people's overall income tax burdens, and design it in a way that reduces both poverty and inequality. And if we're going to make everything more expensive, we should be realistic about tax avoidance and look to implement an [automated payments tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated%5FPayment%5FTransaction%5Ftax?ref=scottsantens.com) on all electronic transactions or a [value-added tax as Andrew Yang proposed](https://www.scottsantens.com/there-is-no-policy-proposal-more-progressive-than-andrew-yangs-freedom-dividend/) instead of a national sales tax. It's so much easier to avoid a tax that only hits at point-of-sale at the very end of the value-add chain, instead of throughout the entire consumption chain on every sale. In conclusion, I love how the FairTax includes a UBI. It absolutely needs it in order to have any chance at all of not increasing poverty and inequality, but the FairTax as proposed is not going to happen, and even if it had a real chance, it would likely reduce the consumption power of everyone except the top 20%. It's also pretty weird how [the FairTax has its origins inside the Church of Scientology](https://newrepublic.com/article/62243/dianetics-the-tax-plan?ref=scottsantens.com) who lost interest in it after they gained their tax-free status, but that origin doesn't change what it would or wouldn't do if enacted. What I really want people to walk away with after reading this is that anyone who supports the FairTax Act also supports UBI, which reinforces what I've been saying for a decade now - that UBI is indeed not left or right. [It's simply money to spend in free markets](https://www.scottsantens.com/if-you-think-basic-income-is-free-money-or-socialism-think-again/). It's just a monthly consumption allowance to afford basics like food, just like the FairTax proposes. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a monthly pledge in support of my ongoing UBI advocacy work. *Special thanks to my monthly patrons: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Matthew Cheney, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, Larry Cohen, Frederick Weber, CanadayVibes, Kerry Bosworth, Judith Bliss, Laurel Gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Michael Tinker, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Andrew Yang, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, Myles McLane, Elizabeth Corker, Gray Scott, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Michael Honey, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Chris Rauchle, Arjun, Chris Heinz, Pavel S, Zachary Weaver, Juro Antal, Herb, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, Deanna McHugh, Ryan Ash-Miller, miki, Adam Parsons, bradzone, Lee Lor, Akber Khan, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, Iggy C, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Phuong Truong, Tim , Warren J Polk, Timothy P O'Connor, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Oliver Bestwalter, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Loren Sickles, anti666, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, and Kai Wong.* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### One Year After the Expiration of the Enhanced Child Tax Credit, What All Have We Learned About Its Effects? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/one-year-after-the-expiration-of-the-enhanced-child-tax-credit-ctc-what-all-have-we-learned-about-its-effects/ Last updated: 2024-03-07T22:07:48.000Z [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/03/button_support-my-work-on-patreon-9.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) **Summary:* The monthly Child Tax Credit payments did not reduce employment, but what they did do was reduce hunger and increase entrepreneurship, and if made permanent would likely generate far greater benefits than its cost, and reduce domestic abuse of women and children.* 2022 has come to a close, and it’s been over one full year since the enhanced child tax credit (CTC) that got monthly payments to most parents in America expired. The policy’s lapse immediately increased child poverty by 40% and caused a [25% spike](https://consumer.healthday.com/b-e-10-24-u-s-child-hunger-spiked-in-weeks-after-child-tax-credits-repealed-2658480169.html?ref=scottsantens.com) in child hunger. For six months in 2021, 36 million families were receiving $250 per month per kid for those age 6 to 17, and $300 a month per kid for those under age 6, for an average of $462 a month to help families afford food, rent, and everything else families with kids need to buy, with [less need to sell their blood plasma or take on high interest debt](https://humanityforward.com/2022/04/how-the-monthly-child-tax-credit-reduced-desperation-in-america/?ref=scottsantens.com) to buy it. In the time since those payments stopped, economists have been busy crunching the data to determine all the various effects of the payments. There has also been other research done to better discern what the expected impacts would be of long-term implementation. Sure, six months of payments did this or that, but what could we expect decades from now? In this article, I’ll summarize everything new that we learned in 2022 about what the monthly child tax credit payments actually did, what happened when they stopped, and what we can expect if we brought them back and made them permanent. I want to remind readers of what I’ve already written about the immediate impacts of the monthly CTC and the immediate impacts of its expiration, especially what we already know about [just how much desperation it reduced](https://humanityforward.com/2022/04/how-the-monthly-child-tax-credit-reduced-desperation-in-america/?ref=scottsantens.com). It reduced the number of parents selling their blood plasma, taking on predatory payday loans, and starting to use illegal drugs, are all things that need to be shouted from the rooftops in my opinion. Out in front were researchers from the [Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis and Appalachian State](https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/sites.wustl.edu/dist/a/2003/files/2021/10/CTC-and-Employment-10212021.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) who found that **the monthly CTC payments had no negative impact on employment status**. Parents kept working just as much as they already did, albeit with more parents pursuing entrepreneurship. Lower income parents defined as making less than $50K each year showed the largest growth in self-employment, with 2.9% of households, or approximately 300,000 additional households becoming new small business owners. Over 11% of families also reported using the money to pay for child care, whose high price tends to prevent many parents from affording employment. In March, [a paper by Irwin Garfinkel, Laurel Sariscsany, Elizabeth Ananat, Sophie M. Collyer, Robert Paul Hartley, Buyi Wang, and Christopher Wimer](https://www.nber.org/papers/w29854?ref=scottsantens.com) based on “a systematic literature review of the highest quality available causal evidence on the short- and long-term effects of cash and near-cash transfers” found that **making the enhanced child tax credit permanent would cost $97 billion per year and “generate social benefits with net present value of $982 billion per year**.” In other words, bringing the monthly CTC back for good would likely result in a 10x return on investment based on a review of all the best evidence we have to evaluate potential ROI. Also in March, [a paper by Elizabeth Ananat, Benjamin Glasner, Christal Hamilton, and Zachary Parolin](https://www.nber.org/papers/w29823?ref=scottsantens.com) looked at CPS and Census Pulse surveys done through December of 2021 and determined that **the monthly CTC payments had “very small, inconsistently signed, and statistically insignificant impacts” on the employment of parents**. In plain speak, they too found that the enhanced CTC reduced poverty without reducing employment. Next, [a paper published in the Lancet by William E. Copeland, Guangyu Tong, Lauren Gaydosh, Sherika Hill, Jennifer Godwin, Lilly Shanahan, and Elizabeth Costello](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=4059228&ref=scottsantens.com) looked at the long-term impact of kids growing up in households provided unconditional cash payments (of slightly larger amounts than the enhanced CTC) compared to equivalent households who didn’t and found that **the kids who are now adults in their late 20s and early 30s have fewer anxiety and depressive symptoms, better physical health and financial well-being, and engage in fewer illegal behaviors**. They also found that the younger the kids were when their parents began receiving the cash payments, and the more money they got, the more positive the impact twenty years later. In their conclusion they wrote, “the findings support the long-term effects of programs like the child tax credit or universal basic income that provide cash directly to families with children.” In April, [a paper by Resul Cesur, Núria Rodriguez-Planas, Jennifer Roff, and David Simon](https://www.nber.org/papers/w29930?ref=scottsantens.com) that used a decade of National Crime Victimization Survey data found that when women receive an income boost from a tax credit, “**an additional $1,000 of after-tax income decreases the incidence of physical and sexual violence of unmarried low-educated women by 9.73% and the intensity of physical and sexual violence by 21%**.” This research indicates that if the enhanced CTC were permanent, it would at least have as large an impact, and likely even higher, in reducing violence against women. In May, a[ survey by Parents Together Action](https://parentstogetheraction.org/2022/05/10/survey-reveals-families-in-serious-financial-crisis-with-rising-prices-and-no-monthly-child-tax-credit-payments-in-sight/?ref=scottsantens.com) found that after the expiration of the monthly CTC payments, 9 out of 10 parents were finding it harder to make ends meet, and **45% of the parents surveyed reported that they’d skipped meals so that their kids could eat**. 64% of parents said they’d resorted to spending down their savings to get by. When asked what policy would help them the most, 76% of them said restoring the monthly CTC would, because the payments had made a “huge difference” for their families. 84% of them said the CTC had made them less anxious. Four out of five parents had used the money for food for their families. After the payments stopped, three out of ten parents were no longer able to afford their families’ basic needs. In August, [a paper by Lisa A. Gennetian, Greg Duncan, Nathan A. Fox, Katherine Magnuson, Sarah Halpern-Meekin, Kimberly G. Noble, and Hirokazu Yoshikawa](https://www.nber.org/papers/w30379?ref=scottsantens.com) evaluated early results from an ongoing multi-site randomized controlled study of an unconditional monthly cash payment of $333 to parents of newborns for their first few years of life called the Baby’s First Years study. They found that moms spent more time doing learning activities with their kids, and that so far there has been no impact on employment. Moms aren’t quitting their jobs. Kids are just having better childhoods. This study will continue until the middle of next year, after which we will know even more about the impacts of just providing parents monthly income without conditions. Another paper in August looked at the long-term impact of higher income on the first year of life. It cleverly did so by taking advantage of birth timing on tax benefits. This [research by Andrew C. Barr, Jonathan Eggleston, and Alexander A. Smith](https://www.nber.org/papers/w30373?ref=scottsantens.com) found that **an increase of $1,300 in the first year of a child’s life resulted in that baby growing up to be an adult that earned 1% to 2% more income**. Math and reading scores increase and that child is more likely to graduate high school. They concluded that “the longer-term effects on child earnings alone are large enough that the transfer pays for itself through subsequent increases in federal income tax revenue.” There was also some interesting political message surveying done about the enhanced child tax credit throughout 2022\. [First Focus](https://firstfocus.org/news/press-release/by-6-to-1-margin-voters-say-federal-government-should-spend-more-on-children?ref=scottsantens.com) found that 9 out of 10 Democrats, 8 out of 10 independents, and 6 out of 10 Republicans favored making the enhanced CTC permanent. By a 6-to-1 margin, Americans believe we’re not spending enough on America’s children. Surveying by [Democracy Corps](https://democracycorps.com/battleground-surveys/the-key-role-the-child-tax-credit-can-play/?ref=scottsantens.com) found that voters felt so strongly about the monthly CTC in key demographics in battleground states, especially among under age 50 white working class women, that Democratic control of the House could have potentially been preserved if Democrats had spotlighted the monthly CTC more. In October, another study of the results of the enhanced CTC was published. This one [by Natasha Pilkauskas, Katherine Michelmore, Nicole Kovski, H. Luke Shaefer](https://www.nber.org/papers/w30533?ref=scottsantens.com) found that it reduced hardships among families, especially in regards to food insufficiency, and that it even may have reduced the amount of medical hardship. Additionally, as with every other study before it, **it too found no effects on any labor supply measures**. Families just didn’t start working less because of the monthly income independent of work. In a related but separate study, [Allison Bovell-Ammon, Nicole C. McCann, Martha Mulugeta, Stephanie Ettinger de Cuba; Julia Raifman, and Paul Shafer](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2797549?ref=scottsantens.com) looked at the expiration of the enhanced CTC and found that **the disappearance of the money was associated with a 25% increase in food insufficiency** by July 2022\. To put that percentage in better perspective, the expiration of the monthly CTC meant that over 1 million American families began reporting that sometimes or often they did not have enough to eat, when before they lost the monthly CTC payments, they did. In November, another study extremely relevant to the enhanced CTC was published. This one was [by Katherine Rittenhouse](https://krittenh.github.io/katherine-rittenhouse.com/RittenhouseJMP%5Fcurrent.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Her intent was to discern the effects of income on child protection system (CPS) referrals, investigations, and foster care placement. Like one of the studies already mentioned above, it too used differences in tax benefits based on birthdate, but it combined that data with 20 years of data from California and found that **a single $1,000 cash payment to low-income households decreases the number of referrals to CPS in the first 3 years of a child’s life by approximately 3% and days spent in foster care by 8%**. Importantly, this decrease appeared to be a direct result of “true reductions in maltreatment” of kids. Because their families had more money, kids suffered less abuse and were therefore less likely to be taken from their parents and become wards of the state. There’s also already a new study here in 2023 [by Akansha Batra, Kaitlyn Jackson, and Rita Hamad](https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2022.00733?ref=scottsantens.com) that was funded by the National Institutes of Health. This one was designed as a quasi-experimental study to determine the mental health impacts of the CTC expansion. They found that **depressive symptoms decreased by 1.7 percentage points, and anxiety symptoms decreased by 3.4 percentage points, which was a 13.3 percentage reduction**. The effects were even larger for Black and Hispanic parents. The researchers also noted that “although this may be a modest change in risk at the individual level, it represents a meaningful change in the distribution at the population level.” All of the above is new knowledge that should be known and used to inform the debate about the provision of cash payments to parents and caregivers of kids. The enhanced child tax credit was clearly one of the most successful, effective, and popular policies America has ever tried, and the long-term impacts of it can be teased out by looking at other examples of parents getting more money or not, and the long-term impacts of getting or not getting that money, especially in the earliest years of a child. Arguments about the enhanced child tax credit and other ways of getting more money to more families with kids will continue, but the proof in the pudding is in the eating. When it comes to child poverty, that is a truly failed policy. It does not work. It’s a massive waste of resources that hurts all of us. Intelligent people can come up with all kinds of moral and economic reasons to not get money to parents to reduce child poverty, but what that reasoning ultimately comes down to is the moral question of should a child answer for the sins of their parent, and the economic question of should we spend more money to not invest in America’s kids than it would cost to invest in them? For me, as someone who continually sees more and more evidence in favor of unconditional cash, the answers to both of those questions are exceedingly clear. Kids do not get to choose their parents, and investing in kids is one of the smartest investments a country can ever make. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please become a subscriber and also consider making a monthly pledge on Patreon or purchasing a copy of my book about UBI. *Thank you to my monthly patrons: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Matthew Cheney, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, Larry Cohen, Frederick Weber, CanadayVibes , Kerry Bosworth, Laurel gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Michael Tinker, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Andrew Yang, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, Myles McLane, Elizabeth Corker, Gray Scott, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Michael Honey, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Chris Rauchle, Arjun , chris heinz, Pavel S, Zachary Weaver, Juro Antal, Herb, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, Deanna McHugh, Ryan Ash-Miller, miki, Adam Parsons, bradzone, Lee Lor, Akber Khan, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, Iggy C, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Phuong Truong, Tim , Warren J Polk, Timothy P O'Connor, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Oliver Bestwalter, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Loren Sickles, anti666, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, and Kai Wong.* [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Spaceballs Argument for Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-spaceballs-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2025-10-02T19:27:04.000Z There is an argument frequently made against the concept of unconditional basic income (UBI) that essentially goes like this: "Life requires work. You can't just expect to live without work, and it's wrong for someone to live off the work of others. So UBI has no moral justification." This argument usually comes from conservatives and libertarians, and what often comes to my mind in response is *Spaceballs*. Therefore, I think of the following as the Spaceballs Argument for UBI. In the movie *Spaceballs*, a giant spaceship transforms into a giant robot maid complete with giant vacuum cleaner, which is then used to suck up all the air from planet Druidia. Why do I think of this scene as an argument for UBI? Imagine it were actually possible for one person to own a machine that sucked up all the oxygen in our atmosphere, and that the air we need to breathe to live was then sold to us in cans of Perri-Air like in *Spaceballs*. We could then work jobs in order to get paid money to then buy the air we need to live. Sound fair? This is the kind of deal that only a planet full of assholes could support as morally justified. ![](https://media.tenor.com/_2DMDxCLHP0AAAAC/im-surrounded-by-assholes-dark-helmet.gif) The thing is though, this isn't that far from what we actually did here on Earth centuries ago. Land used to exist without a monetary cost to access it. That was the natural way of things prior to the private property system and monetary system. **We created poverty as we know it**. This is what Founding Father Thomas Paine built his argument on back in 1797 when he published [*Agrarian Justice*](https://thomaspaine.org/works/major-works/agrarian-justice.html?ref=scottsantens.com). > *"The first principle of civilization ought to have been, and ought still to be, that the condition of every person born into the world, after a state of civilization commences, ought not to be worse than if he had been born before that period."* Around this first principle, Paine constructed his argument for the universal provision of money to everyone upon reaching age 21\. He wished to "remedy the evils and preserve the benefits" of a civilization that was creating a level of poverty that didn't exist pre-civilization when people could forage and hunt for food. We all would have inherited land, or at least free access to it, but **in the process of creating civilization as we know it, we became dispossessed of our natural inheritance**. That's a root problem that causes a lot of other problems despite all of the benefits it also brings. > *"It is a position not to be controverted, that the earth, in its natural uncultivated state, was, and ever would have continued to be, the COMMON PROPERTY OF THE HUMAN RACE. In that state every man would have been born to property."* Just like in *Spaceballs*, the air belonged to everyone on planet Druidia. It was theirs. No one really thought of it that way though. It was just free and the common property of all Druidians. That is until the people of planet Spaceballs decided to privatize it as theirs, everyone who needed it to breathe be damned. ![](https://media.tenor.com/LGNERzqe_xMAAAAC/megamaid-spaceballs.gif) Paine's solution to the problem that civilization already exists but has dispossessed people of what otherwise would have been common property was to propose that when we mix our labor with natural resources to create something, we own the improvement only, and not the actual stuff that comprises it. And since we can't separate the improvement from the stuff, **people who use the earth to make stuff should pay a percentage to everyone who lost access to the earth the stuff was made out of**. > *"It is the value of the improvement, only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor therefore of cultivated lands, owes to the community ground-rent; for I know of no better term to express the idea by, for the land which he holds: and it is from this ground-rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to issue."* Something like this actually exists in one place on Earth where the residents of Alaska have decided that the oil underneath their feet belongs to all Alaskans, so oil companies should pay the people of Alaska for the privilege of sucking it out of the ground. This revenue goes into a state-owned fund which has paid [a dividend to all Alaskan residents every year](https://iseralaska.org/static/legacy%5Fpublication%5Flinks/bien%5Fxiii%5Fak%5Fpfd%5Flessons.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) since 1982\. In this way there is a recognition that oil companies owe a "ground-rent" to the people of Alaska and don't just get the oil they want for free. This is very different than in *Spaceballs*. In the case of what happened in *Spaceballs*, it was obviously wrong for the people of planet Spaceballs to steal all the air from the people of Druidia, but what if they'd actually already done it centuries before the events of the film, and instead of taking all of it, they sold it back to the people of Druidia? **What if it had just become a normal way of living that people should work to pay for air to breathe?** What if it were normal to tell people who were not getting enough air to breathe that they should just go get a job? What if a common belief became that because everyone worked to breathe, that if some people just got air without working for it, that they were essentially stealing air from those working for theirs? That would suck, right? ![](https://media.tenor.com/fqCWSHKuKTYAAAAC/suck-space-balls.gif) It shouldn't be that hard to imagine because that's pretty much the world we live in right now. There's enough food for everyone, especially in the United States where we waste [40% of all the food we produce](https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america/?ref=scottsantens.com), and stocked grocery stores exist alongside food banks, but it's a common occurrence to tell people going hungry that they should just get a job to buy food. It's also common to believe that a government program like food stamps is essentially stealing from those who work for food by taxing the income from their work. And this is all based on it having been deemed okay to privatize land and resources and prevent people from using it without permission slips called "money" that can be obtained by doing what property owners want done. What's normal is not okay though. **It's not okay to legislate starvation and then use the threat of starvation in order to coerce people into doing stuff**. There's nothing libertarian about that. There's nothing pro-freedom about that. [It's just something a planet full of assholes would do](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-monsters-inc-argument-for-unconditional-basic-income/). If we don't want to be a planet full of assholes, I suggest we do what Thomas Paine proposed centuries ago. Let's just recognize that Earth actually does belong to all of us, everyone in the present and future, and that those who own pieces of it, and who create things out of it, **owe compensation to the rest of us for removing our access** to what would otherwise have been common property. Universal unconditional basic income should be seen as fully justified compensation for the loss of the commons. If food is going to cost money to grant permission to eat it, then just provide people enough money to buy the food they need to live. That's not to say that *all* food should be free regardless of quantity and quality, just that a basic amount of money sufficient to buy a basic amount of it should not remain withheld for *any* reason. People who want a lot more food, or a lot nicer food would still be free to work for more money to earn access to eat beyond the basics of existence, as well as everything else they want beyond basics. **No one should ever think it's okay to suck up all the air and then sell it to us on the condition we work for it.** The air belongs to all of us, and if we want private property to keep existing because of all the benefits of a private property system, then the cost of that system is unconditional basic income. No one should view UBI or taxes as immoral when what's immoral is the system so long as it exists without UBI. **If it's wrong to choke or starve someone unless they do what you want, then it's wrong to withhold air or food from someone unless they do what you want**. It is a violent and immoral act to do those things, and thus it's also violent and immoral to continue withholding basic income. Just because we live in a Spaceballs world where it's normal to privatize the air and charge people to breathe doesn't mean we can't do as Thomas Paine proposed and "preserve the benefits of what is called civilized life, and to remedy, at the same time, the evil which it has produced" by compensating us all with a monthly basic income as an indemnification for the loss of our natural inheritance. Basic income is basic compensation. It is a human right in recognition of what was once, and would have remained, the common property of the human race. ![](https://media.tenor.com/VvUxEkIVw4kAAAAC/jipoune-spaceballs.gif) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my UBI advocacy work. *Special thanks to my monthly patrons: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Matthew Cheney, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, Larry Cohen, Frederick Weber, CanadayVibes, Kerry Bosworth, Laurel gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Michael Tinker, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Andrew Yang, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, Myles McLane, Elizabeth Corker, Gray Scott, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Michael Honey, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Chris Rauchle, Arjun, chris heinz, Pavel S, Zachary Weaver, Juro Antal, Herb, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, Deanna McHugh, Ryan Ash-Miller, miki, Adam Parsons, bradzone, Lee Lor, Akber Khan, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, Iggy C, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Phuong Truong, Tim , Warren J Polk, Timothy P O'Connor, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Oliver Bestwalter, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Loren Sickles, anti666, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, and Kai Wong.* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) \- ### No, Universal Basic Income Does Not Require Tax Rates of 40 to 60 Percent URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/ubi-universal-basic-income-does-not-require-tax-rates-of-40-to-60-percent/ Last updated: 2022-12-21T21:00:06.000Z Lots of news articles are being written about [a new study in Ireland of UBI](https://esri.ie/publications/a-universal-basic-income-for-ireland-lessons-from-the-international-literature?ref=scottsantens.com), and as usual, the discussion is misinforming, as is the study itself. I responded with a long thread on Twitter. Here's that thread in blog form and slightly expanded upon. > Today we published our study on Universal Basic Income, with [@ESRIDublin](https://twitter.com/ESRIDublin?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) colleagues [@seamusmcguinnes](https://twitter.com/seamusmcguinnes?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) and Klavs Ciprikis > Available here: [https://t.co/sGdvYNI89k](https://t.co/sGdvYNI89k?ref=scottsantens.com) > UBI is a popular idea, but despite the mainstream interest in it, little is known about it... (1/8) > > — Paul Redmond (@PaulRedmond9) [December 20, 2022](https://twitter.com/PaulRedmond9/status/1605098158458957824?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) First, let's start with the headlines. I'm seeing many choose to focus on the proposed tax rates of 40% to 60%. I haven't seen a single article talk about effective tax rates, the difference, or UBI as a tax rebate. This is basically lying by omission. When people hear that UBI will require 60% tax rates, a fair assumption to make is that their after-tax income will be reduced by 60%. Bad assumption. Let's say your income is $50,000\. If you paid a 100% tax and got a $50,000 UBI, what would your effective tax rate be? 100% or 0%? The answer is zero in terms of effective tax rate despite having a 100% marginal tax rate. After taxes you'd have exactly the same amount of money as before taxes. That seems kind of important to understand, right? Also important is the amount of UBI. A small UBI can require a small increase in taxes to maintain fiscal neutrality, especially if spending is reduced elsewhere either with purposeful replacement by UBI, or indirectly due to UBI reducing the demand for that spending, like for example reduced hospitalization rates. Now take the 40% headline number. I've looked at this rate before in [my own estimates](https://www.scottsantens.com/does-guaranteeing-a-basic-income-reduce-income-inequality-/). Here's what the effective tax rate looks like by decile. Notice how much lower the effective tax rate is for most people. The bottom half would have a NEGATIVE tax rate. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2022/12/UBI-FIT-adjustedE.png) A 40% tax rate paired with a flat rebate doesn't actually equate to a 40% tax. It only nears that rate at the very top of the income spectrum. If 40% means $20k in tax and the UBI rebate is $15k, then tax owed after the tax rebate is actually $5k, not $20k, and thus 5%, not 40%. So where are the headlines about a 5% tax rate? Why is no one talking about how it's possible for most people's increase in taxes to be far less than the UBI they get, leaving them with more money from one perspective, or less taxes from another perspective? It's not that it's false to say that income tax rates could go from 20% to 40%. They could. But that provides people a false impression of the net impact on their incomes if it's not explained within the context of the UBI as a negative tax and resultant effective tax rates vs marginal tax rates. There's also other ways of taxing than income taxes, like for example consumption taxes, carbon taxes, transaction taxes, corporate taxes, wealth taxes, and land value taxes. Using any of these alternatives or combination of them would reduce the need to raise income taxes. The fact is that UBI will always be a policy that is a combination of money and taxes and it makes no sense to focus on only one or the other outside of proposals that involve zero taxation, which virtually no one is suggesting. This also impacts cost. [How to Calculate the Cost of Universal Basic Income (Hint: It’s Not As Easy As You Might Think)I’ve written about this before, about how the cost of universal basic income isits net cost, not its gross cost\[https://www.scottsantens.com/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-is-the-net-transfer-amount-not-the-gross-price-tag/\], but because this question of the cost of UBI is so frequently raise…![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2022/02/favicon.ico)UBI GuideScott Santens![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2022/04/How-to-Calculate-the-Cost-of-UBI.png)](https://www.scottsantens.com/how-to-calculate-the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-ubi/) The cost of UBI is never what most headlines and articles suggest it is, because most only look at the gross cost and ignore [the net cost](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-is-the-net-transfer-amount-not-the-gross-price-tag/). If the government sends you $100 and taxes you $50, that's the same cost as just sending you $50 and taxing you nothing. Either way you end up with $50 more from the government. Another way of looking at this too is also considering a phased-out version meant to exclude the rich, which most people would consider to be cheaper. But that's wrong. It's not cheaper. It's just using [a budget gimmick](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2022/01/31/the-only-accounting-gimmick-manchin-likes/?ref=scottsantens.com) to make it look cheaper by not counting phaseouts as taxes. But all phaseouts *are* taxes. In the aforementioned example it would be the same as providing $50 after a $50 phaseout tax, making it again cost $50, just like giving $100 and taxing $50\. However, and this is really important, they are not administratively identical. One does cost less. Means-testing isn't free. It costs money. Phaseouts also apply higher than necessary marginal tax rates on those in the phaseout range. [Matt Bruenig](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/tag/welfare/?ref=scottsantens.com) has been hammering this point recently more than anyone, and he's absolutely right. Most everyone else is wrong. For any policy design comparing an income-tested approach to a universal approach with the same net outcome, [the universal approach is cheaper](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2022/11/11/universal-benefits-cost-less-than-means-tested-benefits/?ref=scottsantens.com). Using a surtax instead of a phaseout means less administration. It can just use the existing tax process to accomplish the same intended phaseout outcome. A universal plus surtax approach also creates the ability to spread the tax out, lowering the marginal tax rate and thus the impact on labor supply, meaning that a universal approach is also cheaper because fewer people are discouraged from employment. For example, consider a $3k universal basic income for kids. Bruenig zooms in on a potential phaseout of 5% starting at incomes of $200k for single adults and $400k for married couples. This same phaseout could be achieved at a lower admin cost with a 5% surtax on families with kids who have incomes in the phaseout range. Or it could be achieved by a 2.2% surtax on *all* families with incomes in the phaseout range. Or it could be achieved by a 0.6% surtax on everyone with incomes above the original phaseout point instead of only in the phaseout range. A 0.6% marginal tax rate hike on high earners should be recognized as obviously superior to a 5% marginal tax rate hike on specific households with kids in a specific income range that excludes the richest and the childless from a tiny tax hike that would negate the need for a huge clunky bureaucracy of means-testing. [The Folly of Means-Testing a Child AllowanceMeans-testing is a revenue-raising tax done very stupidly and inefficiently.![](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/cropped-favicon-270x270.png)People's Policy ProjectMatt Bruenig![](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/mi-pham-FtZL0r4DZYk-unsplash-1024x683.jpg)](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2021/12/24/the-folly-of-means-testing-a-child-allowance/?ref=scottsantens.com) The above link uses a universal child allowance to explain the point. Because it would only go to parents, a tax on both parents and non-parents can be recognized as cheaper than just taxing parents. However when it comes to UBI, other taxes can also be cheaper than phaseouts. Because UBI goes to everyone and also taxes everyone, it's also possible to shape the phaseout through additional taxes far more progressively than via phaseouts. Can you imagine how complicated a progressive phaseout versus a flat phaseout is to administer? It would look like [what New York wants to do](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2022/12/12/the-new-york-working-families-tax-credit-proposal-is-a-means-testing-disaster/?ref=scottsantens.com) with their disastrously designed "Working Families Tax Credit." UBI however can use any combo, type, and amounts of taxes it wants to achieve the desired outcome, and the results would be far better too because the calculations are all made *after* taxes are reported instead of estimated beforehand. This means no need for adjustments after taxes. That saves time and resources. Because UBI doesn't apply tests, it also means that [more people with the lowest incomes actually successfully receive cash](https://www.scottsantens.com/engineering-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi-fault-tolerance-graceful-failure-redundancy/) who wouldn't have received cash with a test in place, despite being the intended recipients of the program. This is also why headlines that claim that the poor could be worse off can be wrong too. It ignores how many people fall right through the safety net. If an existing program doesn't reach 75% of its intended low-income recipients, and the other 25% end up with slightly less income as a result of a UBI design, is it being honest to ignore the 75% who start getting UBI instead of nothing? That seems important to recognize too. I think what I've covered here is one of the main bottlenecks to achieving UBI, if not the main one. As long as policymakers look at phaseouts as less money spent instead of a different and worse tax, universality will continue being seen as prohibitively expensive, and we'll see headlines about scary tax rates. Not seeing phaseouts as taxes is what makes UBI seem more expensive than it is. It makes it that much harder to understand the true cost, and that much easier to write uninformed articles and misinforming headlines about high tax rates needed for UBI. Focus on the outcome of a UBI as tax rebate/prebate paired with taxes. That's what matters. What is the net result? How much more or less money do people have? Who does it boost and no longer miss compared to the status quo? What are the labor responses and tax responses? How does behavior change? What's the after-tax change on income and wealth distribution? These are the questions to ask. We are not going to achieve UBI as quickly as we need to (which was decades ago but immediately is now second best) so long as the UBI conversation is so misinformed. Hardly anyone reading the garbage out there will also read posts like this. It's an uphill battle for sure. If you want to help UBI happen, please help in amplifying content like this that I and others create to better inform this extremely important conversation. I just wish social media cared more about nuance and less about "OMG, 60% tax rates!" Thank you to all who subscribe to and share posts like this. I appreciate you. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a monthly pledge on Patreon in support of my UBI advocacy. --- *Special thanks to my monthly patrons: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, Larry Cohen, Matthew Cheney, Frederick Weber, CanadayVibes, Kerry Bosworth, Laurel Gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Michael Tinker, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, Joanna Zarach, Justin Walsh, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, Myles McLane, Max Henrion, Elizabeth Corker, Gray Scott, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Michael Honey, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Chris Rauchle, Arjun, Chris Heinz, Juro Antal, Herb, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Sharon Woodhouse, Rosa Tran, Deanna McHugh, miki, Adam Parsons, bradzone, Lee Lor, Akber Khan, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Elliot Lee, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, Iggy C, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, AYFAQ.com, Phuong Truong, Tim, Warren J Polk, Timothy P O'Connor, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Oliver Bestwalter, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Loren Sickles, anti666, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Kai Wong, Laura Ashby, and all my other monthly patrons for their support.* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) \- ### The Gift-Giving Argument for Universal Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-gift-giving-argument-for-universal-basic-income-ubi-christmas-birthday-giving/ Last updated: 2022-12-06T19:05:37.000Z As I write this, Christmas is right around the corner again, and I think it's time I finally write this article that has been in my head for years now as an argument for the universal part of universal basic income. In short, the entire point of the gift-giving aspect of Christmas and birthdays and other occasions involving gifts would be entirely defeated using the logic people use against UBI. People often ask, "Why should we provide basic income only to tax it back from people?" The answer which I will explain here, is that there is importance in both the giving and receiving, even if not considered as efficient from an economist's perspective. There's ultimately something about the human tradition of gift-giving itself that I think says something about why universal basic income should be truly universal. First, as I've written about previously, [cash is like water in that it can take any shape](https://www.scottsantens.com/unconditional-universal-basic-income-as-liquid-infrastructure-the-bruce-lee-argument-for-ubi-cash-money/). Because it can be anything, when it comes to gifts, it's very tough to beat, unless the intended gift recipient told you exactly what they want, or you know them well enough to give them something they may not even know they even wanted. Economists like to speak about this in terms of "utility" which is really just perceived usefulness. An economist by the name of Joel Waldfogel formalized this decades ago in his paper "[The Deadweight Loss of Christma](https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/104699/original/christmas.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)s", concluding that Christmas presents had a deadweight loss of somewhere between 10% and 33%, meaning that so many people receive stuff they don't want, that up to a third of all Christmas gift-giving is essentially pointless. Basically, if you get a $100 sweater you never wear, whoever gave it to you basically just burned $100\. Meanwhile someone else may have worn the hell out of that sweater, but they can't because it's sitting in your closet. In the big picture sense, a lot of stuff being created that has zero utility can have negative macroeconomic implications. Imagine thousands of tons of cotton being used to make sweaters no one wants. That cotton could have been used for something else. The cotton farms could have produced a different crop. Economically speaking, creating stuff no one actually wants is a waste of time and resources. Thus, from an economist's perspective, gift-giving can reduce the potential capacity of the economy, and thus [even increase inflation](https://vocal.media/theSwamp/why-we-need-modern-monetary-theory-mmt-and-why-it-needs-universal-basic-income-ubi?ref=scottsantens.com). If cotton is being grown and used needlessly, stuff that could have been made instead can cost more than it otherwise would have if the supply of the other stuff were greater. If Americans spend $1 trillion on Christmas, [which we did in 2019](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/12/christmas-holiday-season-shopping-retail-gifts/?ref=scottsantens.com) pre-pandemic, then a conservative estimate of deadweight loss is $100 billion. That also happens to be the cost of 2021's[ enhanced child tax credit](https://www.scottsantens.com/how-the-monthly-child-tax-credit-ctc-reduced-the-level-of-desperation-in-america/), which reduced child poverty by 40%. Child poverty costs our economy over $1 trillion a year, and allocating resources to reduce it by just getting money to parents to spend on what their families need has a massive return on investment of $10 per $1\. So looking at it this way, if the money spent on stuff gift recipients don't want were instead just given to parents as cash to spend as they choose, this would be a much better allocation of resources that would otherwise have been a deadweight loss. Now of course, there's more to gift giving than economic utility. That sweater you get that you'll never wear means something more than the money spent on it. It's a signal that the gift-giver was thinking about you. They spent time that is precious to them thinking about you, and trying to find or even make something that you would hopefully like or benefit from having. It's an act of love, friendship, or respect. The meaning of the thing can be far greater than the thing itself. When asked if "giving specific presents as holiday gifts is inefficient, because recipients could satisfy their preferences much better with cash," economist [Austan Goolsbee](http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-results?SurveyID=SV%5F1z4X7kmHnVYo28d&ref=scottsantens.com) replied *"Instead of proposing to your wife w/diamond ring, you offer a gift card of equal value. Efficient — if you don’t count your hospital bills."* As the well-known saying goes, it's the thought that counts. Gift-giving has also been with us for a very long time, well before even the existence of money. As described so well by David Graeber in his book, [Debt: The First 5,000 Years](https://amzn.to/3P19KIq?ref=scottsantens.com), gifting was what came first, not bartering. People didn't trade coats for carrots. They just gave people coats, and then that person felt a debt to the giver which at some point may have resulted in carrots being provided in return when it was carrot season. That's how humans originally interacted with each other - with gifts. If a person in the village was hungry, they were given food. They weren't told they needed to create some food or make something useful to exchange for food. That's just kind of the truly natural way of humankind - giving to others without expectation, but in doing so creating a feeling of gratitude and indebtedness which was then met with a gift going the other direction, further strengthening that social bond. And in a society where people are giving to each other, there is social cohesion. It was a somewhat unnatural step taken to base exchanges on money and even bartering, where two people must exchange one thing for another. So the fact economists even exist to point out the negative utility of gift-giving is itself arguably unnatural, as is the existence of money. However, we did create a monetary system, and we did create traditions like Christmas where many people are expected to give presents to each other, and it is true that a lot of presents are given that the recipients don't actually want and wouldn't have purchased themselves, and so the giving of cash enters the picture. Giving cash gives the recipient the freedom to choose for themselves what they most want. Some may consider this to be lazy, or even offensive, while others may truly appreciate the money as being a great gift, and far more welcome than a sweater. Giving cash also opens the possibility of two people giving each other cash. This happens in my family quite regularly, where for example I send money to my sister and she sends money to me, but neither of us knows until Christmas. An economist might look at such a thing as wasteful. If I send $100 to my sister and she sends $100 to me, why did either of us even bother? And if I send $100 to my sister and she sends $50 to me, why not just send her $50 and have her not send me anything? Economically speaking, that makes far more sense, right? Here's the thing: that logic is also the logic of a negative income tax, or a means-tested guaranteed income. A negative income tax is where someone with $0 receives the full amount of a cash grant, and then for each dollar their income increases, the amount of the cash grant decreases, until they get nothing. A guaranteed income is almost identical to a NIT, but with a phase-out that doesn't happen at the first dollar earned, and instead the phaseout starts later. Either way, both involve a calculation based on earnings. The logic of both says that I should ask my sister how much she's planning on giving me for Christmas, so that we can compare notes and save one or both of us the effort of sending money inefficiently. Obviously, neither of us are ever going to do that. If we send each other money, so be it, and if it cancels each other out, so be it. It's the giving and the receiving that counts. When I send her money, it's because I love her and want her to pick out what she most wants, be it an object or an experience, and when she sends me money, it's for the same reason. And when I get money from her, I recognize that she wants me to have what I most want, be it an object or an experience, and she feels the same. The fact that we may give and receive the same thing doesn't make it pointless. What would be pointless is not giving anything at all. That we each may give each other the same amount of money is because we love each other and both want us to have what we most want or need. That's also how unconditional basic income works. If I get $1,000 a month in UBI, but my taxes go up $12,000 a year, an economist may look at that as pointless because it balances out to $0, but that's because they're missing the point as economists frequently do. It may be economically equivalent for me to get $12,000 and be taxed $12,000 as it is for me to get $0 and be taxed $0, but [it is not at all the same](https://www.scottsantens.com/engineering-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi-fault-tolerance-graceful-failure-redundancy/), even though [it definitely costs the same](https://www.scottsantens.com/how-to-calculate-the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-ubi/). UBI means a society of far greater social cohesion. Everyone is giving to the community and everyone is receiving from the community. The direction goes both ways. A negative income tax, or a guaranteed income, or typical welfare benefits, they all go one-way. Some people receive something and give nothing in return, and some give something and receive nothing in return. It's a sense of unfairness and lack of reciprocity that is behind so many people hating the existing targeted welfare system, and also why government benefits are so stigmatizing to the point people don't even want it who desperately need it. UBI is different. UBI doesn't care about the perceived economic wastefulness of not balancing things out in advance. It doesn't care how much you earn or what work you do. **It just cares about *you***. UBI is society saying that we all care about each other, and we all want each other to have what we most need, especially basic survival needs like food and housing. It's a return to where we started, and where we once naturally existed, where we gave each other what we needed to survive without expectation. It's a return to being more human. UBI also recognizes the deadweight loss of giving people stuff instead of money. Benefits-in-kind operate on the presumption that government bureaucrats know who is in need, what they need, and what's best for them. It's a system that gives hungry people sweaters instead of trusting them with the freedom to determine for themselves what they truly do need. It's a system of distrust that erodes cohesion. It's also a system that in its targeting those in need, misses most of those in need. The tradition of gift-giving at Christmastime is a beautiful tradition, and I think something that helps foster a more cohesive society. Every time it rolls around, many of us start thinking about what other people might want or need instead of what we ourselves might want or need. **It's empathy-building**, which is why [Charles Dickens' *A Christmas Carol*](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-science-behind-a-christmas-carol/) is so beloved. Christmas strengthens social bonds as people are reminded of how much others care about them. I think it resonates with something deep inside us that really does value thinking more of others than ourselves. [Positive psychology](https://www.healthcentral.com/article/the-link-between-giving-and-happiness?ref=scottsantens.com) shows us that giving to others may just be the most effective road to finding happiness. > "There is scientific proof showing a link in the brain between giving and happiness. One [study](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0963721413512503?ref=scottsantens.com#ref-15) sought to find out if the prospect of giving could make participants happier. Half the group was told they were receiving money that they needed to spend on someone else. The other half was told they were required to spend the money on themselves. Both groups were told to imagine how they were going to spend the money when they received it. After conducting MRI tests and multiple other tests to rule out any other contributing factors, [the researchers determined that generosity improved the level of happiness](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15964.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) in participants, regardless of the recipient or the amount of money." Studies of universal basic income have also shown [increased social cohesion](https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-ubi-increases-social-cohesion-capital-trust/) as one of [its many impacts](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1040683616488103936?ref=scottsantens.com). Not only do people [*not* start working less](https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9459?ref=scottsantens.com) when they get UBI as so many people fear, and even often work *more*, they also feel more connected to each other and [trust each other more](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/an-experiment-to-inform-universal-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com). They get healthier and less depressed. A healthy happy society is one where everyone is giving to each other. If every individual receives something from society with no expectation of return from the rest of society, that is a society where everyone knows they are valued, and also one where everyone wants to give back, perhaps not immediately in a transactional sense, but at some point in the future when they have discovered the best way for them personally to give back to the society that uplifted and protected them. I'm also reminded of a quote by [Benjamin Franklin](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1599838163702542336?ref=scottsantens.com) who definitely agreed with this sentiment of a desire to give back when one has something to give back when he said, *"As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously."* Freely and generously, not coercively and selfishly; he didn't demand [the protection of intellectual property from the public domain](https://www.scottsantens.com/zombification-of-intellectual-property-reform-universal-basic-income-ubi/). He felt gratitude towards everything that others had created that he enjoyed, and wanted to create something new in return. That's a very human feeling, to want to give when one has already received without expectation. It is against our natural way of being to be forced to give because we had received, or to receive only on the condition that we first give. **To give is human. To transact is artificial.** So that's my gift-giving argument for UBI. Just as we give to each other because of the happiness it provides the giver and the receiver, and just as we would never give each other nothing if the monetary value of what we intended to give each other canceled out, we should provide an unconditional survival income to everyone regardless of how much they earn or how much in taxes they pay, because sometimes utility-loving economists don't know what the hell they're talking about. Sometimes something is just the right thing to do, and the reason behind doing it goes far beyond what's being given, and extends to why it's being given, and how it feels to receive without expectation to know you're valued - that you actually mean something to someone, or in the case of UBI - something to everyone. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a monthly pledge on Patreon in support of my UBI advocacy. --- *Special thanks to my monthly patrons: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, Larry Cohen, Matthew Cheney, Frederick Weber, CanadayVibes, Kerry Bosworth, Laurel Gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Michael Tinker, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, Joanna Zarach, Justin Walsh, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, Myles McLane, Max Henrion, Elizabeth Corker, Gray Scott, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Michael Honey, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Chris Rauchle, Arjun, chris heinz, Juro Antal, Herb, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Sharon Woodhouse, Rosa Tran, Deanna McHugh, miki, Adam Parsons, bradzone, Lee Lor, Akber Khan, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Elliot Lee, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, Iggy C, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, AYFAQ.com , Phuong Truong, Tim , Warren J Polk, Timothy P O'Connor, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Oliver Bestwalter, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Loren Sickles, anti666, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Kai Wong, Laura Ashby, and all my other monthly patrons for their support.* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Is Unconditional Basic Income a Trap Being Laid by Global Elites to Control and Enslave Us All? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/is-unconditional-basic-income-ubi-a-trap-being-laid-by-wef-global-elites-to-control-and-enslave-us-all/ Last updated: 2022-11-15T21:39:34.000Z 2023 will mark [ten years](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1040683616488103936?ref=scottsantens.com) of my advocating hard for unconditional basic income. At this point, one of the things that annoys me most is the new claim from conspiracy-fueled people that the rich and powerful fully support UBI and want to use it to make a subservient population. First of all, most obviously, UBI is unconditional. It's in the damn definition. If cash comes with strings attached, it's not UBI. So you can't make the argument that UBI will be conditional. That's like vegans deciding to argue against eating carrots, because carrots are made out of meat. Can you make a carrot out of meat? Well, I guess you could form some meat into a carrot shape, and color it orange, but that doesn't make it a carrot. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2022/11/UBI-definition.png) **BASIC INCOME IS UNCONDITIONAL**. Might some people want to add strings to basic income to make it conditional? Yes, they will, but then it's no longer basic income and is just the way existing welfare programs work whose entire point is to get people to do some things and prevent them from doing other things. It's welfare that's a trap. That's exactly why universality is also such a key strength of UBI. When a program is targeted, it becomes for "them." People don't tend to think that they themselves will ever become "them," because [the world is just](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world%5Fhypothesis?ref=scottsantens.com) and they, unlike them, don't make poor decisions, so they support paternalistic conditions that control other people and limit others' freedom of choice. Universal programs are different. When everyone is getting something, they protect that something because they don't want it to have paternalistic conditions that are meant to control them and limit their own freedom of choice. [Alaska has been a great example since 1982](https://harris.uchicago.edu/news-events/news/universal-basic-income-policies-dont-cause-people-leave-workforce-study-finds?ref=scottsantens.com) of what happens in reality when cash is universally provided. Do politicians try to fuck around with it? Most don't, but some do. What happens to those that do? [They get fired](https://alaskalandmine.com/landmines/guest-post-why-a-conservative-alaskan-governor-promotes-a-universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com). > "By restricting the dividend payout, Governor Walker essentially ended his political career. The unrestricted payout of the dividend was the sacred cow in Alaska politics, and while Governor Walker did not kill it, he just milked it a little, but that was enough to cause a backlash." This is the importance of democracy on display, and how the universality of UBI combines with its civic empowerment. We observe the same with how Social Security works. Are there threats to it? Sure. But people fight for the program because they too expect it when they're old enough to start receiving it. People, especially Americans, will not accept a program that they themselves expect to get, to have behavior-controlling conditions attached. Conspiracy theorists especially like to talk lately about vaccine mandates and how UBI will be used to force people to get vaccines or face losing their basic income, but one of the actions we witnessed during the pandemic is how [Republican-controlled states passed laws that said unemployment income could not be withheld from vaccine refusers](https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/republicans-are-fans-unemployment-insurance-if-it-undermines-vaccine-mandates-n1286659?ref=scottsantens.com). This again supports the universality argument. Because people expected unemployment income themselves, they demanded their representatives oppose conditions they didn't like. As long as everyone is getting basic income, and as long as people have the power to fire politicians and hire new ones, even if a government attempts to pervert UBI into something that isn't UBI, the people will respond at the ballot box. That's also why [democracy and UBI go hand in hand](https://www.scottsantens.com/what-we-need-to-truly-thrive-democracy-and-unconditional-basic-income-ubi/). They strengthen each other. But here's the thing that really gets me most about this argument that UBI is meant to enable the rich and powerful to control you: **IF THAT WERE TRUE IT WOULDN'T BE TAKING ME OVER TEN YEARS TO HELP MAKE HAPPEN. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A GODDAMN CAKE WALK TO PASS INTO LAW**. Like, holy shit, people... If UBI actually further empowered the rich and powerful, and further disempowered everyone else, do you honestly think it wouldn't happen immediately? Do you honestly think it wouldn't have happened decades ago? Does that make any sense at all?? One of the main reasons Nixon's guaranteed income plan for families didn't pass was because the Chair of the Senate Finance Committee stopped it from reaching the Senate floor, because he was concerned about [who would press his shirts](https://basicincometoday.com/fifty-years-later-reflecting-on-the-defeat-of-nixons-family-assistance-plan/?ref=scottsantens.com) if they didn't need to out of desperation. Does that sound like the real reason UBI doesn't exist already? YES. BECAUSE THAT'S THE FUCKING REASON. The rich already have you enslaved. The system is already designed so that you have to do what they want in order to "earn a living." It's in the goddamn phrase. YOU NEED TO EARN YOUR LIFE? Think harder about the way we use our language. Why is it normal to "earn a living" on the planet you were born on, in a man-made private property system that says the Earth belongs to other people and you have to pay to live here by working for them? You think needing to work for natural resource owners in order to live is freedom? **[You think being able to live for free is slavery](https://www.scottsantens.com/if-you-think-basic-income-is-free-money-or-socialism-think-again/)?** Being a UBI advocate is exhausting. This is not easy. I don't know how much longer it will take until the first countries start implementing it, but believe me when I tell you this: When it happens, it'll be a hard-fought victory that many advocates never even lived to see. Basic income is not some conspiracy of the rich to further empower THEM. It is a decades-long slowly growing movement to change the status quo by empowering ALL THE REST OF US. As democracy gave power to the people versus kings, UBI will give power to the people versus billionaires. That's why it's so goddamn hard and why it's taking so long and why I have no idea when it will finally be won. BUT IT WILL BE WON. **IT WILL NOT BE GIFTED**. The conspiratorial "*they who pull all the strings*" do not want you to have income as a human right. That would disempower them. Your boss does not want you to have FUCK YOU MONEY. Corporations do not want you to have UNLIMITED STRIKE FUND MONEY. Governments do not want you to have GENERAL STRIKE MONEY. It's not in the interests of those in power - who are in power because of the current system - to do any of these things. THIS IS NOT EASY. Stop the nonsense that says it's so easy that it's actually a trap. The only reason we're even talking about UBI now as serious policy is because of everyone with a desire for change who slowly over the years has done what they could to push this forward. We will get there someday. We will pass UBI into law. And when we do, it will be a massive victory for humanity. It will be a civilizational moment, like the invention of fire, or agriculture, or the printing press. Such moments don't happen often. THIS IS A FIGHT. [JOIN US](https://www.incomemovement.org/?ref=scottsantens.com). And if you really want to help, and you're still afraid UBI is a trap, then fight for the U in UBI being clearly spelled out within an amendment to the constitution. Demand that UBI actually be UBI. Accept nothing less than the real thing. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my ongoing UBI advocacy. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The BIG Picture of Money, Economics, and Humanity URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-big-picture-of-money-economics-and-humanity-ubi-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-10-21T18:04:01.000Z *The following is the speech I gave at the 2022 BIG Conference on the day Roe vs Wade was overturned. If you prefer, you can also [listen to the recorded audio](https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/The-BIG-Picture-of-Money--Economics--and-Humanity-e1nk8uv?ref=scottsantens.com).* I apologize in advance for kind of running in the red today. Like in Pulp Fiction, I'm a race car in the red. And I say that as a white dude. I can't even imagine what other people, especially women, are feeling at this moment today. And I also like to preface what I'm about to say with the admission that I am not an economist. I would also like to say that I am not an astrologist. I just haven't studied astrology enough to tell all of you which one of twelve personality types you all are, and exactly what's going to happen to you today based on where the planets and stars were when you were born. If I have offended some people who believe in astrology out there, I'm sorry, but what you believe in is a pseudoscience that doesn't reflect reality. And if I've offended some economists out there just now by suggesting that economics is like a pseudoscience built on mythologies, then I also apologize to you if I've offended you. Here's something that offends me - building a science on top of myths. Here's a myth that economics is built on top of - the myth that every human is selfish. That is a myth. Humanity is where we are today *because* we are collaborative species. It's amazing where we are today, because of our inherent social nature, and desire to work together. So to assume that we're all selfish is just bullshit. Here's another thing - another thing that isn't real. [Money isn't real](https://www.scottsantens.com/yeah-but-who-is-going-to-pay-for-it-basic-income-alan-watts/). We invented money as a species, just like we invented inches and points. There is no limit to the amount of money that we have to do stuff with. [What matters is human life, human rights, and resources](https://vocal.media/theSwamp/why-we-need-modern-monetary-theory-mmt-and-why-it-needs-universal-basic-income-ubi?ref=scottsantens.com). What matters is what we can do with the resources we have, the technology we have, the knowledge that we've collectively created, to actually utilize resources to the best effect. So that's what I want people to walk away with today, that money just isn't real. There's a South Park episode that I really love that kind of makes fun of this, that I think reveals a good truth too. It's the [Pinewood Derby episode of South Park](https://www.scottsantens.com/do-we-have-enough-space-bucks-for-basic-income/). For those who are aren't familiar with this episode, an alien is escaping the space cops and lands in South Park. And he's got a bunch of space bucks in his UFO, and the town ends up using the space bucks. It's funny, like Earth basically suddenly gets richer because we've got all these space bucks and the joke is Mexico suddenly feels richer. So they build a bunch of water slide parks and hospitals. They just suddenly created all these things because they got space bucks. And so that's really kind of how I look at the economy, too, in general, at money in general. Whenever someone says something like, “Do we have enough money to pay for basic income? Do we have enough money to end poverty?” That kind of question is really “Do we have enough space bucks?” Space bucks don't really exist. It's a bad question. The real question is, “**Do we have enough resources for everyone to have enough to meet their basic needs?**" Do we have enough food? Do we have enough housing? Do we have enough clothing? Enough electricity? These are the kinds of questions that we need to be asking. And of course, the answer is “Yes, of course. Of course we have.” What we don't have enough of is the collective willpower to do it. And so that's what I think of macroeconomics. I also just kind of want to zoom out - really look at the big picture. I look at it from this perspective of [thinking like a martian](https://www.scottsantens.com/think-like-a-martian-about-money-and-universal-basic-income-ubi/) and how humans are running around deciding that other humans don't deserve enough food. Why? And this belief that you can only earn income if you prove yourself having done enough work to earn what you need to live. It’s funny in a dark and confusing to aliens way. Like, **we're the only species on earth that has to pay to live**. Why? Because we invented money and decided that only some people deserve money and other people don't. Unless. Unless…I think that unless is a question. We should question that "unless." It's a matter of human rights that people have enough to live, if we're going to lock up all the resources and require keys called money in order to access it all. With that said, I want to just talk for just a bit about what we just did during the pandemic. It was amazing to watch. Things went south very quickly, and the government, as if by magic, came up with trillions of dollars and just gave it to us. What did we use it for? We used it for our basic needs. We had miles-long lines for food banks and all the grocery stores were full. So we got money to buy stuff from the stores. We got money to actually pay the rent. We got money to be more in control of our own lives. And we didn't tax first, in order to do it. We didn't borrow first to do it. We just did it. It was amazing to watch the stimulus check bills be signed. And we just did it. That's really what we're facing. Now people will argue, “Oh, it caused so much inflation” like, oh my gosh, we can't do this because inflation. Well first of all, the economists out there are debating how much inflation it was responsible for. But again, I want to focus back on resources. Because that's really what inflation is about. It's about the imbalance between supply and demand, that if supply falls below demand, then you're going to have shortages. Prices are going to rise. That's how the price signaling system works. So then people will argue, “Oh, now people have too much money. We need to figure out a way to reduce the amount of spending people are doing.” The problem? The supposed problem is that people have money to spend. So we need to figure that out. But if you think about it in terms of resources, then it just becomes more clear what the problem is. We're inside of a pandemic. Over a million Americans are dead. And the live ones who survived are complaining about inflation. Oil prices are way up. Putin invaded Ukraine. And so, of course, an impact of that is the rest of the world reacted to that. We said, “Well Russia, we're not going to buy your oil anymore.” And Ukraine was going to sell oil. They were also making much of the world’s grain. Again, we are a global economy. We're a collaborative global species. There's inflation all over the world because of the impacts of a pandemic and a war (and also the resultant profiteering) on our resource allocation ability to meet demand with supply. So keeping it real as far as what we can actually do, I think it is vitally important in keeping it in terms of money not being real. Of course we can just do money. The question is how do we organize society so that we all have enough food and basic needs met? What about dignity, security, and stability? How do we organize society so that we recognize each other's right to exist? That’s what we should build our economy around. How crazy is it that we have an economy built on the assumption that unpaid work doesn't count as work? That care labor doesn't count unless two care workers pay each other to watch each other's kids or their family members? Then that counts to the economy? That increases GDP? So of course, we need to recognize unpaid work - all volunteer work. We need to recognize everything that we can accomplish and want to accomplish as work. We need to stop prohibiting people from doing what they want to do. We need to create a system that actually doesn’t involve poverty wages and doesn’t create a situation where people will actually work for pennies because pennies are better than nothing. So yeah, the big question is, “**Do we have the willpower to actually recognize our inherent dignity and rights as members of the same species?**” We're all in this together. We have division of labor where everything that we have is created because of each other. And all of it is possible because of all of our ancestors whose shoulders we exist on top of, whose body of knowledge we utilize today. And yeah, where do we go from here? How do we turn things around? I just firmly believe that basic income is just absolutely vital to turning our species around and actually achieving everything that we have the potential to achieve that we are actively preventing ourselves from achieving, so long as we withhold access to basic resources from each other. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) \- Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a monthly pledge in support of my ongoing UBI advocacy work. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Incoming! How UBI could change work (and the world) URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/how-ubi-could-change-work-and-the-world/ Last updated: 2022-10-05T20:38:01.000Z *The following is an excerpt from [the 2022 report by Indeed](https://uk.indeed.com/lead/future-of-compensation-2022-report?ref=scottsantens.com) titled "Future of compensation: Pay, benefits and equity in the UK workplace." This excerpt is based on an interview I did in August as part of the report's preparation.* The idea, of a universally provided amount of money, has been around for [a long time](https://basicincome.stanford.edu/about/what-is-ubi?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s just not always been known as basic income. Centuries ago, it existed as a concept. Then came a resurgence in the ’60s, with Martin Luther King and Milton Friedman. Even Nixon was talking about a basic income. His plan wasn’t a universal basic income, but it was partially disconnected from work, and would have greatly reduced the poverty of families—especially children. Since then, basic income has been building upwards in knowledge and in support, albeit at a slow pace, with jumps. A big jump was when [Switzerland](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/magazine/switzerlands-proposal-to-pay-people-for-being-alive.html?ref=scottsantens.com) first got the signatures to put it to a vote. Suddenly, a lot of people around the world heard about basic income for the first time. Interest went down a bit, and then [Andrew Yang](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/opinion/yang-universal-basic-income.html?ref=scottsantens.com) ran for president on basic income. That created another new surge, especially in the US, for the idea. When COVID-19 hit, basic income was top of mind. All of a sudden, jobs were being shed, people had to get on unemployment, they had to go to food banks, and they realized the system isn’t really there for them. Then, at the same time, they started getting stimulus checks, and seeing how things could work entirely differently. On the other hand I’m worried that, because inflation was a result of the pandemic, and Putin provided another huge supply shock, there’s now a confluence of events where blame happens. Regardless of inflation being global, and not tied to the amount of assistance in countries all around the world, that story is out there. I worry that might harm the case for basic income—or at least the potential for it happening soon. Automation is such an interesting part of the story. There’s this fear that, I think, is a bipartisan fear. Yet people sometimes think that, if they’re not working next to a robot, or not losing their job, then maybe it’s not going to happen. The frustration is that we have been impacted by automation for decades—but it’s not so much that people are working next to robots, it’s that their wages are going down, relatively speaking. We really have been coring out the middle class, where highly-productive manufacturing jobs are being automated, globalized and off-shored first. What roles are left? For many people, the answer is lower-paying jobs, which means people have a harder time getting by. The reality of automation is a harder story to tell—because it’s not in your face or full of robots. Since the ’70s, productivity has grown, but [all the growth of the economy has gone to the top](https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/?ref=scottsantens.com). Wages have been stagnant, and inequality has increased. It’s not that machines are generating mass employment; it’s that [they're generating more inequality](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/technology/income-inequality-technology.html?ref=scottsantens.com). I want automation to happen. If a job can be done by a machine—especially if it can be done better, with higher quality or fewer resources utilized—I argue it should. With a basic income, humans can still do something that’s meaningful to them, whereas machines will be doing everything we can utilize them for. I like to describe basic income as the power to say no and the freedom to say yes. When you provide people with this bargaining power, the onus is on the employer to incentivize that job. So it needs to pay enough, have good hours, good coworkers and a good environment to work in. It also helps if the work itself is valuable to the community, and not socially or environmentally disruptive. The freedom to say yes might mean working for less money, or even working for free. You can choose to be a volunteer. You can choose to do unpaid care work. You can choose to be involved politically. You can choose to start a business, without the need for startup capital to provide a runway for you. Basic income provides flexibility in bargaining power for higher wages, the ability to work for less, and for jobs to actually reflect real meaning and purpose. I think one of the biggest potentials is, actually, what David Graeber referred to as ‘[bullshit jobs](https://www.vox.com/2018/5/8/17308744/bullshit-jobs-book-david-graeber-occupy-wall-street-karl-marx?ref=scottsantens.com)’. We’ve got all these jobs that don’t need to exist at all—they’re not adding to productivity, and are just excuses to provide a paycheck for some reason or another, be it bureaucratic, administrative or hierarchical. If people have a basic income that’s fully unconditional, they can actually say, ‘No, I’m not going to do that.' If the economy drains out unnecessary jobs, this will increase our capacity, and better utilize humans—so we can do the things we actually need to get done. Ultimately, we’ll get more done with less resources, which provides a counter-inflationary argument, as well as an environmental one. People always ask, ‘Can we afford it?’, but what is it about what we’re doing now that’s free? Is poverty costless? Is insecurity and instability costless? Child poverty in the US costs [over $1 trillion a year](https://source.wustl.edu/2018/04/childhood-poverty-cost-u-s-1-03-trillion-in-a-year-study-finds/?ref=scottsantens.com), so I think that that needs to be part of this. What is the actual cost of not doing basic income? If we do basic income, and see savings in healthcare, because people are healthier; we see savings in the criminal justice system, because people are doing less crimes; if we see higher productivity, because people are better matched to the jobs they’re doing—these are all savings, and a return on investment. From my perspective, given all the arguments for and against, I feel the basic income is a right. You can’t do a right in a targeted way. You can’t say the rich don’t have the right to, say, public healthcare, or the right to public education. Why would they not have a right to a public income? Obviously, if rich people are getting a thousand dollars per month, you can just raise their taxes more than $12,000 per year. You can nullify what you’re providing them, but also make sure that ground is still underneath them, no matter what. Back in 2013, I got into the idea of basic income through Reddit. It was a discussion that hit the front page, with thousands of people talking about how fast technology was advancing, and how no one was really talking about the implications. I then read *[Manna](https://marshallbrain.com/manna1?ref=scottsantens.com)*, by Marshall Brain—a short novella that’s about the future, what changes we’ll want to make, and what could happen if we don’t make those changes. It really opened my eyes to the fact we’re facing this fork in the road, where things will get a lot worse, or a lot better. Things aren’t really going to stay the same. His solution was this idea of basic income, so I started looking into it. The whole thing fascinated me. As I learned more about the idea—and also details of the existing status quo—I realized that this isn’t just an idea that needs to maybe happen in the future, because of automation, it really needed to have happened decades, if not centuries, ago. My belief became that I should put all my efforts into basic income, because it just seems like something that’s really important. And so I did. I became a moderator of the r/BasicIncome subreddit, then started writing about it, blogging about it and speaking about it. Along the way, I also crowdfunded my own basic income,via [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com). I started that process in late 2014, it took all of 2015 and, by the start of 2016, I had what I considered to be a full basic income underneath me, crowdfunded at a perpetual level. It meant I could focus on this full time, and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. The first thing that really hit me—which isn’t something you can absorb from books or studies—was when I was still in the process of the crowdfunding, and I knew I could count on having, say, $300 per month. It’s a very small amount, and so it shouldn’t really do anything. It doesn’t cover rent, and it’s not like you cannot work because you have $300\. Yet I actually felt a great deal of security, in a whole new way. I felt that, if the worst things happen, I’m not going to starve—no matter what, I’ve got enough money for food. Suddenly, I felt this level of security that I’d never really felt before, even when earning a lot more from a job, or self-employment. Just that knowledge that it’s going to be there made me feel something that I hadn’t felt before. It’s hard to describe, because so many people don’t know what that security feels like. That was the single biggest thing I learned—the security and unconditionality component. Whereas the actual amount didn’t matter nearly as much as people would expect. *You can read Indeed's entire report in full [here](https://uk.indeed.com/lead/future-of-compensation-2022-report?ref=scottsantens.com).* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) \- Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a monthly pledge to continue fueling my UBI advocacy work. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Toothpaste Argument for Universal Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-toothpaste-argument-for-universal-basic-income-ubi-gotz-werner/ Last updated: 2024-03-07T22:08:34.000Z [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/03/button_support-my-work-on-patreon-11.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) The following argument is based on the words of [the late Götz Werner](https://basicincometoday.com/gotz-werner-the-first-inspirer-of-ubi-in-germany-has-died-at-age-78/?ref=scottsantens.com), who was a long-time supporter of the concept of unconditional basic income in Germany, who gained a unique understanding of UBI as a successful businessman and billionaire co-founder of the drugstore chain “dm,” and who passed away in 2022. In an interview given in 2012, Götz Werner said the following to help the audience understand the concept of unconditional basic income: > “If you go shopping, and take a tube of toothpaste from a shelf then you all think, when you go to the checkout, that you are paying for this toothpaste. That is an error. Because the tube of toothpaste that you are taking from the shelf is already paid for, is already paid, else it couldn't be on the shelf. What you are paying at the checkout, is that you are enabling the creation of **another tube of toothpaste**. That's how you have to see it. **Payment is never backwards-oriented. Payment is always forward-oriented**. Payment doesn't balance out, but when you are buying something, you are ordering its continued production and sale.” Hearing Werner’s take on production coming before consumption, which seems entirely obvious, but for some reason isn’t, was a lightbulb for me years ago when I first heard it. Once one properly understands that order of events, it’s easier to recognize the importance of UBI as enabling work instead of rewarding work. In the same interview, Werner makes this connection explicit: > “What is a fact, is that when we are in this world and we need to live. That is obvious. Self evident, right? And if one wants to live in this world, one needs an income. Or else you can't live… Human beings want to develop. For developing, I need work. For existing I need income. And then I realized, after doing hundreds of job interviews, inevitably, that **income isn't the payment for the work, but the prerequisite. That is our mistake in thinking**. Our error in reasoning is, that we think, through the work, the income is generated. The reverse is true. **Because we have the income, we can work**. That has changed the whole view on our company, when we realized, the people that work in our company need an income to be able to afford working with us. There has always been someone who has invested in me. There has always been someone who has given me the prerequisites. There has always been someone, who has put trust in me, and said "Mr. Werner, show us what you can do". And exactly the same is what the basic income is saying. The basic income is saying: "we grant to you, that you can live humbly but with dignity, and now you can show what you can do". That is actually the request to you.” The above logic hit me like a lightning bolt when I first heard it. It’s one of those things that just seems so obvious after you hear it, but you never thought of that way before. Essentially, **income is not the fruit born from the seed of work, but instead work is the fruit born of the seed of income**. To further support this point, think of what happens when someone accepts a new job, and how common it is for that person to work for two weeks before they get their first paycheck. Because that’s the order of events, we think of the paycheck as paying for the prior two weeks of work, but obviously money was needed to make the work possible. If that person is you, you needed to eat three meals a day for two weeks to make that work possible. You needed to have a roof over your head when you slept, and you needed transportation to get to work. You needed clothes and electricity. You needed your phone. You needed lots of things that income made possible. It was the income that came first. When you get that first paycheck, it’s not paying for what you already did, because you already did it. It’s paying for you to continue doing what you’re now doing. It’s fueling your work. It’s providing you the freedom to continue that work. It’s an unleashing of potential. Not understanding this is one of the primary reasons people assume that once provided basic income, people will choose to work less, because they see income as a reward for prior work. But when you recognize that income is the fuel that makes work possible, it’s easier to see that basic income will enable far more work for multiple reasons. For one, having basic income means that [people can choose unpaid or paid work](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-monsters-inc-argument-for-unconditional-basic-income/). It also means that [people are more able to choose self-employment](https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-will-accelerate-innovation-by-reducing-our-fear-of-failure/). Second, basic income also means that there are a greater number of people with a greater amount of money that they are able to spend at the businesses in their local communities. That money is essentially a form of voting on what work the community wants local businesses to continue doing. Werner’s realization was that people with basic income could choose to shop at his stores and vote on which products they wanted his chain of stores to keep buying and selling to customers, and that basic income meant his employees were the ones who actually wanted to be there and do that work, and that their paychecks were enabling them the freedom in their lives to really focus on that work and on their own lives. Realizing that income is forward-oriented instead of backward-oriented also enabled Werner to realize that of course we can afford basic income, because **all of the basic needs it would secure already exist**. They are already produced. There isn’t a shortage of food. There’s just a shortage of ability to buy food. So just create the money people need to buy food, and provide it to them so they can tell businesses to keep making the food they prefer to eat. Here again are his own words: > “Now how do you finance it? This is a problem of our understanding of money. The biggest problem, that we think money would have a value as such. Because it is only an illusionary value. The value are the produced and delivered goods and services that we live on. So when if we want to finance something, we don't have to ask, where is the money, but where are the goods, and when you look at our society, and ask, where are the goods, then you will see that we have never been as rich as today. We have never been as rich as today. **We have enough goods and services for each person in our society to live a humble but dignified life**… We have enough goods and services. I haven't found anyone to tell me, “No, no, no Mr. Werner, listen, there is a shortage.” So, when we have these goods and services, we have to ask ourselves, then why are we affording ourselves poverty? How come we are affording ourselves child poverty? Which is stupid, right? How come we are affording ourselves old age poverty? Which is ungrateful, right? How come we are affording ourselves fear of survival? Why are we putting people under pressure, resulting in hindering them to develop their "better nature", in the sense of Schiller. That is our... that is a purely conceptual problem, really. It isn't a problem of financing. Once you have immersed yourself into this matter, I recommend it to everybody, but to convince, you can only do that to yourself… You will see the **money doesn't matter. Money you can print. We have experienced that in this financial crisis. You can arbitrarily increase it. The question is, whether the corresponding goods are present**. The poverty in our society isn't a precariat problem. It is an elite problem.” So as you can see, all of this flows naturally from the understanding that [what comes first is the resources required to make goods and services possible](https://vocal.media/theSwamp/why-we-need-modern-monetary-theory-mmt-and-why-it-needs-universal-basic-income-ubi?ref=scottsantens.com). That tube of toothpaste already exists when you buy it. Your purchase of it does not in any way impact the fact it was created. If it's the first tube of toothpaste the manufacturer is selling, it's because they first acquired enough money from loans or investors to create it. All your purchase does is function to signal that you want more of that toothpaste made. All that money does is provide you the permission to take that toothpaste home with you and vote for more. If basic income exists, does that mean there won’t be enough toothpaste for everyone, and that the price of toothpaste will need to go up? Well, likely, most people are already buying the toothpaste they need, and the people who aren’t, who will newly buy toothpaste, are just going to signal to toothpaste producers to make more of it. Scarcity of toothpaste is not a thing, especially in the United States. There’s plenty of toothpaste for everyone and the capacity to produce it. There's plenty of food and electricity and internet too. So let’s just make sure that people can buy it all, and that people can signal to producers to keep making it all, and how much of it to make, and where to distribute it. The ability to signal what we want producers to keep producing is also why a market with a basic income floor is a market that has better price signals than a market without a basic income floor. [The market can’t tell the difference between lack of income and lack of demand](https://www.scottsantens.com/unconditional-basic-income-would-fix-a-major-flaw-in-markets/). Without basic income, it’s entirely possible for a store to go out of business, not because their customers didn’t like their product or preferred a competitor or competing product, but because their customers lost the ability to afford their product. Markets work better when everyone can vote on what the market should be supplying, not when only rich people can vote. There’s only so much stuff one rich person can buy. Markets produce more and function better for everyone when everyone can vote in them. Let customers signal to businesses what they want from those businesses, and let workers have the fuel and the freedom to choose which businesses they want to work at or start up, and the price of their labor and their time. Stop worrying about people working less if they can afford not to work, and start worrying about people being unable to afford to keep working if they lack the fuel they need to work. > **"Payment is never backwards-oriented. Payment is always forward-oriented**." If you still doubt that income comes before work, consider all forms of unpaid work too. How's unpaid work possible if income comes after work? Unpaid work is only possible if one already has sufficient access to resources to make it possible. **Volunteers can *afford* to be volunteers**. Income independent of volunteer work is what makes volunteering possible. Basic income would therefore lead to a lot more of that too. Finally, if you'd like some evidence to back all this up too, [one study I find particularly interesting](https://www.nber.org/papers/w28338?ref=scottsantens.com) is one that looked at the impacts of financial constraint on worker productivity by varying payment timing and found that workers who had just received cash became more productive afterward, increasing their output and also making fewer unintentional mistakes. > "The cash infusion leads workers to reduce their financial concerns by immediately paying off debts and buying household essentials. Subsequently, they become more productive at work: their output increases by 7.1% (0.12 SDs), and they make fewer costly, unintentional mistakes. Workers with more cash-on-hand thus not only work faster but also more attentively, suggesting improved cognition. These effects are concentrated among more financially constrained workers." In other words, making sure people have cash *first* leads to more and better work. So that's what I call the Toothpaste Argument for Basic Income, and I highly recommend watching the entire interview with Götz Werner that inspired it. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy this article? Please subscribe to my blog (*it's free!*) and also consider making a small monthly pledge in support of my ongoing UBI advocacy. You can also buy my book to learn more about the affordability of universal basic income. --- *Special thanks to: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, David Ruark, Larry Cohen, Matthew Cheney, Frederick Weber, Patrick Brown, CanadayVibes , Kerry Bosworth, Laurel gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Michael Tinker, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, Joanna Zarach, Justin Walsh, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, John Steinberger, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, LT, Myles McLane, Max Henrion, Elizabeth Corker, Reid Rusonik, Gray Scott, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Michael Honey, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Chris Rauchle, Arjun , chris heinz, Juro Antal, Herb, Justin Seifert, Jodi Sarda, Sharon Woodhouse, Rosa Tran, Deanna McHugh, Ryan Ash-Miller, miki, Ken Warner, Adam Parsons, bradzone, Lee Lor, Senang Diri, Akber Khan, John Sullivan, Kurt Bunker, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Elliot Lee, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, Iggy C, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, AYFAQ.com , Phuong Truong, Tim, Warren J Polk, Timothy P O'Connor, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Oliver Bestwalter, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Brian Peiris, Loren Sickles, anti666, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Kai Wong, Laura Ashby, and all my other monthly patrons for their support.* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) \- ### Today’s Child Tax Credit Versus the Family Security Act 2.0 URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/todays-child-tax-credit-versus-the-family-security-act-2-0/ Last updated: 2023-02-07T21:22:34.000Z *Summary: An analysis by the Niskanen Center of the changes FSA2 proposes concluded that poverty would drop by 13%. It would lift more than 1.1 million kids out of poverty and that’s without raising any new taxes and instead just spending what we already spend, but differently.* The enhanced child tax credit whose monthly cash payments of $250 to $300 per kid cut child poverty by a third, [did not reduce employment](https://web.archive.org/web/20221210044814/https://humanityforward.com/2022/04/study-finds-employment-declined-for-parents-after-ending-ctc-payments/), [did not contribute to inflation](https://web.archive.org/web/20221210044814/https://stayathomemacro.substack.com/p/sending-money-to-kids-didnt-cause), but did [increase entrepreneurship](https://web.archive.org/web/20221210044814/https://humanityforward.com/2022/02/the-monthly-child-tax-credit-gave-birth-to-new-entrepreneurs/), and did [decrease drug use](https://web.archive.org/web/20221210044814/https://humanityforward.com/2022/04/how-the-monthly-child-tax-credit-reduced-desperation-in-america/), and did decrease the number of parents selling their plasma to feed their kids, expired in January 2022 and unfortunately seems unlikely to be restored. So what now? What options are there for something better than what we have now, that could actually pass through Congress to be signed into law anytime soon? One newer option is Mitt Romney’s [Family Security Act 2.0](https://web.archive.org/web/20221210044814/https://www.romney.senate.gov/romney-burr-daines-announce-family-security-act-2-0/) (FSA2). This post will explain some of the key differences that set it apart from the existing child tax credit set to expire in 2025. First, as apparent from the name, this is the second version of Romney’s original proposal that has been modified in the hopes of gaining more support among Republicans. As of this writing, version 2.0 has two other Republican senators besides Romney in support of the bill: Richard Burr of North Carolina and Steve Daines of Montana, whereas version 1.0 had no cosponsors. FSA2 proposes providing up to $350 a month to kids under age 6, up to $250 a month to kids age 6 to 17, and up to $700 a month for pregnant women for the final four months of their pregnancy. The existing CTC provides up to $2,000 once (which even if it were monthly would be $167 a month) and provides nothing to pregnant women. Another difference between the existing CTC and FSA2 is that the existing CTC provides nothing to anyone with an income under $2,500 a year, and does not provide the full amount until parents earn at least $24,000\. FSA2 would start helping parents who earn as little as $1 a year and would provide the full amount of payments to parents earning at least $10,000\. Together these two income tests mean that parents would start getting some help sooner, and more help faster than the existing CTC provides. It’s actually really kind of nonsensical how the existing CTC doesn’t fully kick in until well after a parent is no longer in poverty. At the current federal minimum wage, it’s been estimated that a single parent would have to work [over 63 hours a week, 52 weeks a year](https://web.archive.org/web/20221210044814/https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/04/working-parents-children-federal-support/), to claim the full benefit, and at that point, they’d be about $5,300 over the federal poverty line, then boosted further above the poverty line. Doesn’t it make more sense to boost families that are under the poverty line over the poverty line instead? That’s what FSA2 would do. The second biggest difference between the CTC and FSA2 is that the current CTC is handled entirely by the IRS, while the FSA2 payments would be distributed by the Social Security Administration. This change would reduce the overall administrative burden, and remove the distributive burden from the IRS so that the IRS could focus more of its resources on tax enforcement and collection instead of monthly payments. There’s also one big non-difference between the CTC and FSA2, which is that FSA2 would not require additional taxes or deficit spending to fund the larger payments to more families. The proposal would instead function as a replacement for the child component of the EITC, as well as functioning as a replacement for the SALT deduction, and also replacing the head of household filing status, and the child portion of the CDCC. To quickly explain each of those, the Earned Income Tax Credit provides a tax cut to both adults and kids. The proposal here is to keep the adult portion and subsume the kid portion. The SALT deduction is a deduction for state and local taxes for high-income earners. Head of household is a tax filing status meant to help unmarried parents. It regressively provides more to those who earn more, especially the wealthiest, and the same amount to those with more than one kid as just one kid. Finally, the [Child and Dependent Care Credit](https://web.archive.org/web/20221210044814/https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/childanddependentcarecredit.asp) is meant to help cover the costs of childcare by refunding about a third of childcare expenses up to $1,050 for one kid or $2,100 for two kids per year, only after the money has been spent, versus making the care possible in the first place. The existing system also contains marriage penalties where it doesn’t make financial sense for two people living together to get married because the household is financially better off unmarried than married. By ending HoH filing and reforming the EITC, unmarried couples with kids and married couples with kids will be treated equally, likely leading to higher marriage rates. ## Make the CTC Permanent Finally, it’s important to reiterate that the Family Security Act 2.0 is meant to be a permanent program, whereas the existing CTC is actually scheduled to expire in 2025, where it would fall from $2,000 a year back to $1,000 a year. This gives us under three years to pass something in Congress before child poverty increases significantly yet again. An analysis by the Niskanen Center of the changes FSA2 proposes concluded that [poverty would drop by 13%](https://web.archive.org/web/20221210044814/https://www.niskanencenter.org/analysis-of-the-family-security-act-2-0/). It would lift more than 1.1 million kids out of poverty and that’s without raising any new taxes and instead just spending what we already spend, but differently. Now that’s the good news. However, there are always going to be winners and losers where there are already winners and losers when changes are made to existing programs which are deciding the winners and losers, so it’s important to note that despite an overall reduction of child poverty, and despite alleviating more severe child poverty overall, FSA2 would leave certain parents in certain circumstances with less money. According to an[ analysis](https://web.archive.org/web/20221210044814/https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/romney-child-tax-credit-proposal-is-step-forward-but-falls-short-targets-low) by the CBPP, single parents with two children ages 6-17 with incomes between around $15,000 and $45,000 would lose income compared to now, with parents in the middle of this range losing about $2,000 a year. Again though, the winners would be those with incomes under $10,000, and especially those with incomes under $2,500\. Also, kids who are American citizens who don’t have a parent with a Social Security number will not get help under FSA2 as written. We know child poverty is a policy choice. The end of the enhanced CTC immediately increased child poverty by 41% and also reduced parental employment by making it harder for parents to afford child care. Half a year out from the expiration, half of all parents in America are [struggling to buy food](https://web.archive.org/web/20221210044814/https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/personal-finance/articles/stimulus-update-almost-half-of-families-are-struggling-to-buy-food-without-child-tax-credit-payments/) thanks to record-high inflation. Over [130 economists have signed a letter](https://web.archive.org/web/20221210044814/https://www.economicsecurityproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Economist-letter-CTC-Inflation-April-2022-1-1.pdf) declaring that restoring the CTC would not increase inflation, and yet nothing has been done to drop child poverty again. This is all despite the fact that according to a [Morning Consult poll](https://web.archive.org/web/20221210044814/https://morningconsult.com/2022/04/06/child-tax-credit-midterm-elections-polling/), support for Democrats among CTC recipients fell from 49% to 43% after it expired. That’s a result of helping families for six months and then pulling the rug out from under them. Getting monthly cash to families is politically popular, especially during a time of high inflation when low- and middle-income families need help the most. Politicians looking to be seen as pro-family would be wise to seek those in agreement across the aisle and to pass something together to meet families’ real needs. The big question is what is politically possible in a time of record-high partisanship? Is it possible for Congress to get together along bipartisan lines to help America’s children, who by no fault of their own are being hit with the effects of child poverty, and whose effects we will all pay for anyway down the line to the much more expensive tune of [over $1 trillion a year](https://web.archive.org/web/20221210044814/https://source.wustl.edu/2018/04/childhood-poverty-cost-u-s-1-03-trillion-in-a-year-study-finds/)? If we can help our kids and reduce that cost, isn’t that worth reaching across the aisle to do, even if there’s still more to do after that? Are our kids worth supporting and protecting, or do they just exist for political gamesmanship? The answers to such questions will determine if bills like FSA2 that directly reduce child poverty – even if they aren’t everything all sides want – make it through the rubicon of Congress. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a monthly pledge on Patreon or buying a copy of my book. *Special thanks to my monthly patrons: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Floyd Marinescu, Katie Moussouris, Zack Sargent, Jeff , David Ruark, Larry Cohen, Matthew Cheney, Frederick Weber, Patrick Brown, CanadayVibes , Kerry Bosworth, Laurel gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Michael Tinker, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, Joanna Zarach, Justin Walsh, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, John Steinberger, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, LT, Myles McLane, Max Henrion, Elizabeth Corker, Reid Rusonik, Gray Scott, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Michael Honey, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Chris Rauchle, Arjun , chris heinz, Patricia Pedrosa, Herb, Jodi Sarda, Austin Begin, Sharon Woodhouse, Rosa Tran, Deanna McHugh, Ryan Ash-Miller, miki, Ken Warner, Adam Parsons, bradzone, Lee Lor, Senang Diri, Akber Khan, John Sullivan, Kurt Bunker, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Elliot Lee, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, Iggy C, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, AYFAQ.com , Phuong Truong, Tim , Warren J Polk, Timothy P O'Connor, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Oliver Bestwalter, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Brian Peiris, Loren Sickles, anti666, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, Kai Wong, and Laura Ashby.* [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### How the Baby Formula Crisis Helps Show the Difference Between Cash and Benefits-in-Kind URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/how-the-baby-formula-crisis-helps-show-the-difference-between-cash-and-benefits-in-kind/ Last updated: 2023-02-07T21:41:28.000Z *Summary: I think some kind of compromise between Democrats and Republicans along such lines is something that deserves serious consideration as a response to the baby formula shortage. If we can reduce child poverty while also helping to prevent another baby formula shortage, plus give moms more individual freedom to choose the baby formula best for their kids while making it more affordable for all parents, I think all of that is something worth working together across the aisle to achieve for American families.* Depending on where you live, and when you read this, you may have noticed that baby formula is the latest thing for your local grocery store to be entirely out of. You may have also noticed a lot of blame being thrown around in the usual partisan ways from immigrants to capitalism, and although it’s important to recognize exactly why parents are having a hard time finding food for their babies, and how to immediately solve that problem in the short-term, it’s also an opportunity to look under the proverbial hood of a system that failed, in order to best prevent this problem from happening again in the long-term. And to do this, we’re going to need to look at the ways we treat baby formula and the parents who need to buy it. To do that, we’re going to need to talk about monopolies and a government assistance program called WIC. WIC (short for Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) was [established back in 1972](https://web.archive.org/web/20221006174320/http://www.welfareacademy.org/pubs/foodassist/wic.shtml). It’s kind of like SNAP (aka food stamps) for new moms and moms-to-be. The aim of WIC is to improve the diets of low-income pregnant women so that babies are born healthier, and also to improve the diets of infants up to age five. To achieve this goal, it provides moms with the ability to obtain very specific foods for free, along with classes that teach nutrition and encourage breastfeeding, and referrals for preventive health care and other various services like family planning. States are allowed a lot of leeway in how they go about WIC, but the incomes of recipients must be at least [under the poverty line and at most under 185% of the poverty line](https://web.archive.org/web/20221006174320/https://www.fns.usda.gov/wic/wic-eligibility-requirements). It is a welfare program. The way WIC works at the state level is that each state gets companies to bid for contracts to supply certain foods. This is also part of the reason why one state will allow moms to buy [soy milk](https://web.archive.org/web/20221006174320/https://www.womeninfantschildrenoffice.com/images/foodlist/state33/north%5Fdakota%5Ffood%5Flist02.jpg) or [sliced cheese](https://web.archive.org/web/20221006174320/https://www.womeninfantschildrenoffice.com/images/foodlist/state42/texas%5Ffood%5Flist01.jpg), while another state won’t allow those options. The companies that bid the lowest and win get a four-year exclusive contract with the government to buy their products. WIC recipients are then only allowed to obtain specific foods from that specific company. This arrangement can make a lot of sense for budgetary reasons. The ability to negotiate prices down means the government can spend less than they otherwise would, which is seen as saving taxpayer money. However, in reality, it’s more complex than that. Companies don’t just sell their product to the government at a reduced rate and call it a day. They raise the price of the product others pay so customers who aren’t the government pay more. On average, prices non-WIC recipients pay go up between [26-35%](https://web.archive.org/web/20221006174320/https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formula-nightmare?s=r). In other words, taxpayers still end up paying more, but in a different way, and with another consequence being all the problems that come along with a lack of market competition via monopoly perpetuation. This is where Abbott needs to be introduced into this story. Because of the above arrangement of state-by-state WIC contracts, Abbott is the monopoly provider of baby formula in two-thirds of all states. As a result, this one company provides 43% of all baby formula in the US, and around 20% of all baby formula was produced in just one of its factories until that one factory shut down. The reason it was shut down is that the [hospitalizations and deaths of multiple babies](https://web.archive.org/web/20221006174320/https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2022/02/officials-investigating-another-death-in-outbreak-linked-to-infant-formula/) were linked to that one factory. Shutting down this one factory is the single biggest immediate cause of the baby formula shortage, because of how many states relied on that one factory for baby formula. Getting the plant back up and running should end the shortage in due time, but it won’t solve the real issue, which is a systemic lack of choice leading to supply fragility. The biggest buyer of baby formula in the United States is WIC. One of the first things states did in response to the sudden drop in the supply of Abbott-produced formulas was to allow WIC moms to temporarily choose other brands of baby formula. Some states allowed one other choice, some two, some three, and one state allowed no other choices at all. That state was [Illinois](https://web.archive.org/web/20221006174320/https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/theres-just-nothing-baby-formula-shortage-still-leaves-families-desperate-especially-those-restricted-by-federal-wic-program-rules/). Congress then stepped in and passed a new bipartisan law (that only [9 members](https://web.archive.org/web/20221006174320/https://www.newsweek.com/nine-republicans-vote-baby-formula-1708062) of the House voted against) that says in emergencies that WIC moms are allowed to temporarily have more choices. ![Scott Santens](https://web.archive.org/web/20221006174320im_/https://humanityforward.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Untitled-design-1024x535.png) It’s important to know that there are at least some choices available. There are six FDA-approved manufacturers, although only four together dominate 90% of the market. Some states are hurting more than others right now in terms of alternate choices, but only six states have out-of-stock rates higher than 50%. Shelves in states that didn’t have WIC deals with Abbott are doing a lot better (the average in-stock rate nationwide is 79%), and according to the FDA, the total supply of baby formula is greater than it was before the shutdown as other plants ramped up production to compensate. So if there’s physically enough baby formula, why are shelves empty? Well, once again, part of the story is the supply chain. It doesn’t matter to a hungry baby if the baby formula he or she needs is on the other side of the country. And it doesn’t help if parents are so afraid their babies will go hungry, that they end up buying a lot more baby formula than they usually would. So like how shelves were empty of toilet paper during the pandemic, part of the story is also about hoarding. Yet another part of the story is about tariffs and regulations and how difficult we make it for imported baby formulas to be a new choice. The US produces 98% of its own baby formula, which on the one hand is great in terms of self-sufficiency and protection from the kinds of global supply chain disruptions we’ve seen as a result of Covid. But on the other hand, it does make it much more difficult to ramp up total supply when a plant shutdown happens, and more expensive when those options are actually made available. The US imposes tariffs of up to [17.5%](https://web.archive.org/web/20221006174320/https://www.npr.org/2022/05/19/1099748064/baby-infant-formula-shortages) on imported baby formula, so that can end up meaning buying a can for $21 instead of $18\. That price increase can quickly add up, especially in an already inflationary environment where everything already costs more. That’s pretty much the story of where we are, how we got here, what we’re doing, and what we still need to do to solve this latest crisis, but now let’s imagine a counterfactual. Let’s imagine that WIC was a cash program. What if moms got cash, and they could spend it on any baby formula they wanted? In a scenario of parental choice, there would be more choices available in each state. Instead of one company being responsible for virtually all the baby formula in a state, the shelves in each state would be full of baby formula produced by all six domestic manufacturers, and more, especially if imports were also available and more domestic competitors started up. The loss of one manufacturer would have less of an impact thanks to more competition. It’s also likely that baby formula, in general, would be less expensive, especially with companies no longer hiking prices for non-WIC recipients. What would a cash program like this look like? It would look pretty much like the enhanced monthly child tax credit that Congress let expire. All the CTC would need to do would be to include pregnant women. If we’re comparing the enhanced CTC to WIC, we also need to mention that where WIC reaches [60% of all eligible recipients](https://web.archive.org/web/20221006174320/https://www.nber.org/papers/w25131), the CTC reached [84% of them](https://web.archive.org/web/20221006174320/https://en.as.com/en/2022/01/26/latest%5Fnews/1643204328%5F031119.html). Why is that? Well, the primary reason is that WIC comes with stigmas attached. Cash doesn’t. Here’s a story that reflects that stigma. Four years ago, a Reddit user posted in the [/r/legaladvice](https://web.archive.org/web/20221006174320/https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/7ob5rx/ny%5Fboss%5Fthreatening%5Fto%5Ffire%5Fme%5Funless%5Fi%5Fstop/) subreddit about how her boss saw her in the grocery store using WIC to pay for a can of baby formula and other groceries: *“He texted me afterward*, to say ‘It reflects badly on me if my employee is using WIC. It makes it look like I don’t pay you enough. I hope you can understand that if I find out you are continuing to use government assistance, I will have to fire you.’ I responded back apologizing and requested that we talk about it in person (at work) the next day. During that conversation, I explained that the only government assistance I get is WIC which is a benefit of about $75 a month, *and that if he was willing to raise my pay by $75 a month I would stop using the checks. He refused.”* Now obviously, there are indeed legal implications to firing someone for using government assistance programs, and we should all keep in mind that when it comes to assistance programs for the rich, it’s considered bad business to not take advantage of them, but it’s important to recognize that any non-cash program because it’s not cash, can be stigmatizing. It can lead to someone not wanting to be “that person” or draw negative attention from those who feel that recipients are leeching off of taxpayers when they see an EBT card being used. But when it comes to cash, there’s no way of knowing from where it originated. It could be someone’s salary, or it could be a birthday gift, or it could be an inheritance, or it could be interest accrued from savings, or it could be a tax refund, or it could be a government benefit. Because cash can be anything and can originate from anywhere for any reason, people treat it differently, and that includes the recipient. One of the problems with non-cash programs like WIC is that many people who qualify for them simply don’t want to actually accept them. Making it easier to qualify for a program, making it cash, and including a larger population than just those with low incomes, results in fewer people deciding to not use something being offered. This is also why so few people decide to opt out of the home mortgage interest rate deduction, which is basically just an annual check for having a mortgage. It’s easy and it’s money and claiming it says you’re rich, not poor. Having the parental autonomy to make your own decisions as a parent as to what’s best for your family also means more parents actually being able to choose to breastfeed. Right now, the lack of parental leave means that many parents who would prefer to stay home and take care of their babies until they’re ready to return to their jobs are instead forced back into employment soon after giving birth. [More than half](https://web.archive.org/web/20221006174320/https://www.cnet.com/health/parenting/baby-formula-shortage-explained-why-its-happening-and-when-it-could-end/) of newborns aren’t exclusively breastfed. This leads to many moms buying formula who would rather not buy formula, which is an entirely valid choice for a parent to make, that every parent should be free to make. No mom should have no choice but to seek paid work versus the unpaid work of being a new mom and raising the next generation. None of this is to say that WIC is a bad program that shouldn’t exist. Thanks to WIC, besides better nutrition for moms and kids, and less food insecurity, kids raised with the assistance of WIC even have [lower rates of ADHD and other mental health conditions](https://web.archive.org/web/20221006174320/https://www.nber.org/papers/w24691). They also aren’t forced to repeat grades in school as often. It’s just to question if the way we go about helping families right now is the best way, especially if we already know there are better ways we’ve just tried, and that the current way leads to unintended negative consequences. We currently have a food system that is less resilient due to the fragilities introduced by a shared monopoly that a program called WIC in its current form helped create. This is a bipartisan issue. Senator Romney has suggested [a monthly child allowance payment](https://web.archive.org/web/20221006174320/https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/everyone-should-support-mitt-romneys-child-poverty-plan/) that would be higher than the enhanced CTC and yet be revenue neutral, partially by replacing WIC. I think some kind of compromise between Democrats and Republicans along such lines is something that deserves serious consideration as a response to the baby formula shortage. If we can reduce child poverty while also helping to prevent another baby formula shortage, plus give moms more individual freedom to choose the baby formula best for their kids while making it more affordable for all parents, I think all of that is something worth working together across the aisle to achieve for American families. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you support independent content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a monthly pledge or buying a copy of my book. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### How to Calculate the Cost of Universal Basic Income (Hint: It's Not As Easy As You Might Think) URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/how-to-calculate-the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2025-10-02T19:56:12.000Z I've written about this before, about how [the cost of universal basic income is its net cost, not its gross cost](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-is-the-net-transfer-amount-not-the-gross-price-tag/), but because this question of the cost of UBI is so frequently raised, and so frequently misunderstood, I'm going to attempt to explain this in an alternative way in the hopes people might come to understand it at a deeper level, and therefore be less likely to fall for misinformation. ### Claim The cost of universal basic income (C) is the dollar amount of the UBI (D) multiplied by the number of people receiving it (N). ### Equation C = D x N ### Rating: FALSE ![](https://media.tenor.com/images/e0b2c58181aa41ec616b7a532d3c38ed/tenor.gif) ### Explanation First of all, it's important to understand that **simple multiplication doesn't calculate the cost of UBI**. The reason is because UBI is not the usual kind of program where some people receive a cash benefit while higher taxes are imposed on a different group of people, or where people receive a non-cash benefit in exchange for higher taxes. With UBI, everyone receives cash, and everyone (or at least most everyone) pays some amount of cash too. It's possible to implement UBI completely disconnected from taxes or any kind of tax reform, but it's also highly unrealistic to consider that special case, and only that special case, when costing a UBI plan. **Any UBI plan is most likely to include new taxes and not just cash**, unless [increased inflationary pressure](https://vocal.media/theSwamp/why-we-need-modern-monetary-theory-mmt-and-why-it-needs-universal-basic-income-ubi?ref=scottsantens.com) is the goal of a nation adopting it. Consider the example of a tax credit paired with a tax increase. If the government were to create a new $1,000 tax credit, that would increase someone's disposable income after taxes by $1,000\. That is unless it also increased their income tax rate a few percentage points such that they owed $1,000 more in taxes. In that case, they wouldn't gain or lose anything. The net result would be $0 more in disposable income and $0 more in taxes, despite the new tax credit and new tax increase. Would it make any sense to say the cost of that new $1,000 tax credit for that one person was $1,000? From the perspective of that person, and the perspective of their government, there was no change in disposable income and no change in government tax revenue. It was just a (+1000) and (-1000) added to a ledger, which of course is equivalent to just adding a zero. It would be like if I gave you $10, then asked for it back, got it back, and then said the amount of my money had been reduced by $10 because I gave you $10\. Obviously, that would be incorrect. You might even think I had memory problems. ![](https://media.tenor.com/images/113e26883976408d5fa7379b7dbea676/tenor.gif) What do you mean you gave me $10? It's right there in your hand. When someone claims that the cost of UBI is simply the amount of UBI times the number of people, the mistake they're making is to ignore the existence of any accompanying tax reform, which ***must*** be taken into account in order to figure out what people are actually getting, and the amount the government is newly taxing. So in order to calculate the total cost of UBI (C), **one must first start with the cost of UBI for one person**. That cost can be expressed by the amount of UBI (D) minus the amount of new taxes imposed (T). C = D - T To visualize this, again imagine I handed you $10, but then asked for $5 back instead of $10\. In this case, my income would decrease by $5 and yours would increase by $5, which is equivalent of course to my just handing you $5 and asking for nothing back. In either case, the cost is $5, not $10. *Note: to denote this is one person we are talking about, it helps to add a subscript to the variables in the equation before we continue.* C1 \= D1 \- T1 Now let's calculate the cost of UBI for two people. To do that, we'll need to figure out the cost for each person, and then add those two differences together. C1 \= D1 \- T1 C2 \= D2 \- T2 C = C1 \+ C2 At this point, I hope it's now apparent that **the cost of UBI is a summation of the individual differences between the amount of UBI received and the amount of new taxes paid** **across all recipients of UBI**. C = C1 \+ C2 \+ C3 \+ C4 \+ C5 ... + Cn This equation can now be simplified via sigma notation. i=1Σn \= Dn \- Tn Thus in math speak, UBI's cost is really the summation of a finite arithmetic series. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2022/04/Summation-Notation.jpg) ![](https://media.tenor.com/images/7a089b366b24cf6cc07d0fcd156eb566/tenor.gif) Stay with me, we're almost there... However, there's still one more important detail to consider, which is the difference between the positive and negative results. The summation of all net recipients where D > T will be a positive number, and the summation of all net tax payers where D < T will be a negative number. **It is these two separate sums that together convey the most useful information about the cost of UBI**. The summation of **all *positive* values of C** is the net total amount of UBI distributed across all net recipients. That number can be understood as **the cost of UBI to the government**. The summation of **all *negative* values of C** is the total amount of new taxes paid by net payers. That number can be understood as **the cost of UBI to taxpayers**. These two numbers are identical for every revenue-neutral UBI design, where the sum total amount of UBI issued is equal to the sum total amount of new taxes imposed. But for UBI designs where deficit spending is utilized to decrease the tax burden imposed or where the amount of taxes exceeds the UBI distributed in order to reduce the money supply, these two numbers will not be identical. Where the total amount of net UBI is equal to zero, that will result in every individual being taxed exactly what they received in UBI, and **that is the only case where the total cost of UBI is nothing at all**, which is an entirely pointless UBI because no one's after-tax income is increased. Where the total amount of new taxes imposed is equal to zero, that will result in everyone being a net recipient, and **that is the *only* case where the total cost of UBI can be simplified to the amount of UBI multiplied by the number of recipients.** Thus, to understand the actual cost of UBI, one must understand that it actually exists along an axis located between the two extremes of zero and what's commonly believed to be the cost of UBI that's actually the rare special case of newly created money with no new taxes at all to accompany it. The true cost of UBI will exist somewhere between those two extremes, where it's greater than zero, but less than the cost most people calculate. Realistically speaking, **the most likely cost of UBI is somewhere between one-tenth and two-thirds the gross cost** that most people think is the actual cost. Of course, this calculation is challenging to make in practice, because it requires knowing every individual's income and the tax increase on every individual, so an approximation is needed. This can be done by breaking the population into percentiles, or deciles, or even quintiles. To do an approximation by quintile, we'd need to know the tax impact per 20% of the population, and do a summation series of those five groups. That's a lot easier to do. I performed a calculation like this for [a UBI model I did years ago](https://www.scottsantens.com/does-guaranteeing-a-basic-income-reduce-income-inequality-/) involving a $12,000 UBI paired with a 40% flat income tax, and where the gross cost was $3 trillion, the real cost was around $900 billion, or \~30% of the incorrect calculation most people would make under the belief they need only multiply two numbers. It's also important to understand that the sigma calculation still isn't a reflection of the true cost of UBI, because spending on UBI will reduce other costs. People with UBI will be healthier, and thus require less medical care. People with UBI will also do less crime, and thus require less incarceration. UBI itself will also negate the need for existing welfare programs and existing tax subsidies to the degree they currently exist. In short, we can spend more to spend less. The way I like to think about spending more to save money is with a car analogy. Imagine you're the CEO of a car company, and your engine team tells you it's possible to reduce the cost of the transmission by $1,000 per car if you were to spend $100 more per engine. You would be a terrible CEO if you decided to avoid spending $100 more per engine in the belief it would decrease your profit margin. Basically, the cost of UBI can never be truthfully calculated by assuming that the cost of no UBI is zero. **Poverty isn't free**. Chronic economic insecurity isn't free. This is why it's been estimated that if we restored the monthly enhanced child tax credit, and made it permanent, [the return on investment would be 1000%](https://www.businessinsider.com/making-child-tax-credit-permanent-1000-return-on-investment-report-2022-3?ref=scottsantens.com). By investing $100 billion more in our kids, we'd see an ROI of $1 trillion a year. Is the cost of reducing child poverty $100 billion even if the sigma cost of the enhanced CTC is $100 billion, if our overall net savings is $900 billion? Or is the true cost actually a $900 billion gain thanks to a smart investment in our kids? ### Conclusion It is commonly misunderstood that to calculate the cost of UBI requires the simple multiplication of two numbers on par with what a student learns when they first learn multiplication. To *accurately* calculate the cost of UBI requires a bit more effort on par with what a student learns in pre-calculus. **It is the summation of two finite arithmetic series,** where one is the summation of all positive values, and the second is the summation of all negative values. It is these two summations that together answer the question, "How much does universal basic income cost?" ![](https://media.tenor.com/images/230dcf082912683ed57504916c106a95/tenor.gif) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) patreon.com/scottsantens Do you support independent content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) or buying a copy of my book. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### How the Monthly Child Tax Credit Reduced the Level of Desperation in America URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/how-the-monthly-child-tax-credit-ctc-reduced-the-level-of-desperation-in-america/ Last updated: 2023-02-07T21:38:12.000Z ### With the enhanced CTC, fewer parents resorted to selling their blood plasma and paying 391% interest rates in order to feed and house their families ### Money is protection. When we have enough of it, it can be an all-purpose shield, able to protect us from all kinds of things. Protection from the most extreme things also need not require extreme amounts of money. In fact, a surprisingly small amount of money can mean the difference between experiences born of desperation, and being protected from desperation-born experiences. With that in mind, thanks to the publication of [a](https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-impacts-of-the-2021-expanded-child-tax-credit-on-family-employment-nutrition-and-financial-well-being/?ref=scottsantens.com)[ new study ](https://humanityforward.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Child-Tax-Credit-Report-Final%5FUpdated.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)of the full six months of 2021’s monthly child tax credit, the following is a look at how parents were using the direct payments – not so much what they were doing with the money – but the things they no longer needed to do thanks to having money and being able to depend on that money each month. ![Usage of the child tax credit](https://humanityforward.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-1.43.24-PM-1024x820.png) Figure 2a. Usage of the child tax credit BROOKINGS GLOBAL WORKING PAPER #173 APRIL 2022 In reading the report of the thousands of Americans surveyed both before the first payment and after the last payment, and the differences between those who received the payments and those who didn’t, what stands out as perhaps the most visceral finding, is that the monthly cash payments meant the recipients were half as likely to sell their blood plasma. ### Reduction of Illegal Drug Usage CTC recipients were also almost half as likely to start using illegal drugs. This is a finding quite contrary to popular belief, but also just a further replication of the available evidence. A [2014 meta-analysis](https://blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluations/do-poor-waste-transfers-booze-and-cigarettes-no?ref=scottsantens.com) of 19 studies of the impacts of cash programs on drug use found that none of them resulted in a statistically significant increase in drug usage, while 82% of them found a *decrease* in usage. Since 2014, this finding has only been repeated over and over again, and this CTC finding is just the latest repeat. Drug use is a form of self-medication. It’s all backward to think that cash will increase it. On the contrary, greater economic security thanks to monthly cash mean less stress, which for most people means less desire to self-medicate. ### Predatory Loans Another finding that really stands out as a reduction of desperation is how CTC recipients were almost twice as likely to stop taking out payday loans or pawnshop loans. These predatory types of loans can involve annual interest rates above and beyond 100%. Some states are making such absurdly high-interest rates illegal by capping them at 36% or lower, but not states like [Texas where the typical APR is 664%](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/16/map-shows-typical-payday-loan-rate-in-each-state.html?ref=scottsantens.com). In states like these, however, thanks to the monthly CTC, parents were able to entirely avoid seeking out these loans at all. They no longer so desperately needed money, that they were willing to pay five times what they needed in order to get what they needed for their families immediately. These findings also showed even larger impacts when looking at racial and income differences. Black families thanks to the monthly CTC were almost three times more likely to stop taking out auto title loans, and families with incomes lower than $25,000 were over three times more likely to stop taking out short-term payday loans. Clearly, there was a large reduction in economic desperation, especially for those families who tend to be confronted with the greatest challenges in securing basic needs. ![Monthly Tax Credit](https://humanityforward.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-1.47.37-PM-1024x636.png) ### Security Food and Rent When it comes to what parents need most, rent money is of course right at the top of the list for many, along with food. So it should be of no surprise that another result of the monthly CTC was that recipients were 1.7 times more likely to avoid eviction. This finding also backs up the claims I made in a blog post last year about why [the eviction moratorium was never the best answer](https://humanityforward.com/2021/08/the-eviction-moratorium-was-never-the-answer-cash-is/?ref=scottsantens.com) during the height of the pandemic; monthly cash was. Most people only don’t pay their rent when they simply lack the money to do so. Again, it tends to be a matter of desperate choices, where it’s either food or water or medicine or rent. Making sure parents have more money means no longer having to make the choice of skipping rent to pay for something else deemed even more immediately necessary like food or medicine. Inflation is also something that can create the need to make such impossible choices. Inflation is, for the most part, unavoidable. Families can try to consume less, and try to make cheaper choices, but some of those choices can then involve the choice between which basic needs to decline meeting in favor of others. If a family is barely able to cover their basic needs, and then prices go up, that can mean becoming one of those families needing to decide between food or rent. Here too, the monthly CTC was helping. Around 70% of CTC recipients who were negatively affected by inflation said that the monthly payments helped them manage higher prices. The CTC payments provided a buffer that was protecting parents against being forced to make choices like skipping meals. ### A Tax Credit to Protect Families From Desperate Extremes In my research into [cash transfer programs around the world](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1040683616488103936?ref=scottsantens.com), I’ve come across other examples of this protection from desperate extremes that monthly income independent of work can have. One such example I found particularly surprising in the level of its impact was in [Namibia](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) where an entire village was provided unconditional monthly income, both adults and kids, and as a result, the illegal hunting of endangered animals was reduced by 95%. A drop of such a magnitude to me shows how certain activities people do to survive are activities they really don’t want to do out of a belief it’s wrong. These actions happen because they feel they have no choice. Meanwhile, self-employment in the village receiving cash transfers quadrupled, so it’s clear that there’s work people really want to do, but need income to do it. This exemplifies why [the CTC increased entrepreneurship](https://humanityforward.com/2022/02/the-monthly-child-tax-credit-gave-birth-to-new-entrepreneurs/?ref=scottsantens.com) too. Another finding I’m reminded of is how a cash transfer program in [Indonesia](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz1298?ref=scottsantens.com) that paid households quarterly payments independent of work resulted in a 30% reduction in forest loss. It’s clear here too that cutting down so many trees around them was not something the people there actually wanted to do, but something they felt they had to do in order to survive. Once that need was reduced, that behavior was reduced, and the entire world benefited from that to some degree, because of the impact that trees have on removing CO2 from the atmosphere, and our collective interest as a species in keeping them in the ground. Lest readers think that these kinds of protections of cash transfers against desperate extremes are something observed only in less developed countries and not the United States, a new National Bureau of Economic Research paper [by Manasi Deshpande and Michael Mueller-Smith](https://www.nber.org/papers/w29800?ref=scottsantens.com) published in February 2022 looked at the long-term impacts of young adults losing their Supplemental Security Income payments at age 18 and found that it increased the number of criminal charges over the next twenty years by 20%. As a result, the annual likelihood of ending up in prison increased by 60%. Estimating the economic impact of this finding, the researchers concluded, “The costs to taxpayers of enforcement and incarceration from SSI removal are so high that they nearly eliminate the savings to taxpayers from reduced SSI benefits.” ### Monthly Tax Credit is a Wise Investment It may seem on its face that American taxpayers are saving money now that the monthly enhanced child tax credit has expired. Superficially, yes. But, in the long-term, not spending that money can be a more expensive endeavor. It’s the difference between seeing expenditures as an investment or a cost. Yes, the monthly CTC if extended for a longer duration would have a gross cost of about [$1.6 trillion over 10 years](https://taxfoundation.org/expanded-child-tax-credit-permanent/?ref=scottsantens.com), but the return on investment is about [8 to 1](https://news.columbia.edu/news/child-tax-credit-expansion?ref=scottsantens.com) because of all the costs it prevents and gains it enables. We just did a 6-month experiment of monthly direct cash payments to parents. The results are in. It turns out that the monthly CTC payments protected parents from making costly and extremely difficult choices that they would only have otherwise made from a point of extreme desperation. Fewer parents were forced to sell their plasma. Fewer parents were forced to take on high-interest debt. Fewer parents began abusing drugs. Fewer families were evicted from their homes. Fewer families were suffering the impacts of higher inflation. The monthly child tax credit experiment was a success. There is no good reason to not restore it, not even out of fear of reduced employment, because the data shows that didn’t happen either. As another recent [NBER study](https://www.nber.org/papers/w29823?ref=scottsantens.com) of the full six months of CTC shows, “the expanded CTC did not have negative short-term employment effects that offset its documented reductions in poverty and hardship.” And this is the same thing that [Canada’s version of the monthly CTC](https://www.nber.org/papers/w28556?ref=scottsantens.com) already shows. There is simply no evidence of a negative labor supply response to directly reducing child poverty with monthly cash payments to parents independent of work. Policy should be evidence-based. When it comes to the monthly CTC, the evidence is in. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you support independent content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) or buying a copy of my book. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### No, Ukraine did not just introduce Universal Basic Income. Here is what it did do. URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/ukraine-did-not-just-introduce-universal-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-06-02T22:35:14.000Z On [December 19, 2021](https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/news/sogodni-oficijnij-start-proektu-yepidtrimka-yak-podati-zayavku-na-otrimannya-1000-grn-u-zastosunku-diya?ref=scottsantens.com), Ukraine launched “[ePidtrymka](https://e-aid.diia.gov.ua/?ref=scottsantens.com#card)” which translates to eSupport. It was launched on [Diia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diia?ref=scottsantens.com) which is a smartphone app and web portal that itself was launched in February 2020 to function as a means of storing and sharing digital versions of documents, and also making government services available digitally instead of requiring in-person interactions only. Because Diia made it possible for Ukrainians to prove their vaccination status as one of the over 50 services that is now available on Diia, and because ePidtrymka is a service that rewarded people for getting vaccinated, there are people claiming that the “Great Reset” has just begun in Ukraine with the trifecta of universal basic income, vaccination, and social credits. In this post I will explain what’s actually going on, because what I’m seeing shared on social media is getting way out of hand. First of all, it’s important that everyone knows what UBI is and what it isn’t. To be considered UBI, a program must meet certain criteria. It must be an amount of money that is provided to everyone individually, without work requirements, on a regular recurring basis. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2022/03/UBI-definition.png) The best example of UBI is [in Alaska](https://harris.uchicago.edu/news-events/news/universal-basic-income-policies-dont-cause-people-leave-workforce-study-finds?ref=scottsantens.com) where every year since 1982, everyone gets a cash dividend that they can spend on anything. A program cannot be called UBI if it’s a one-time payment like a stimulus check. Something also cannot be called UBI if it only goes to some people, or if it’s a voucher of some kind like food stamps that can only be used on approved foods. The entire point of UBI is to provide people the freedom of cash to make their own decisions on what they feel is most important to them, and to trust everyone by not making them do anything first in order to receive the income. What Ukraine has done is really interesting, and it’s been a huge help to a lot of people, but it is not UBI, at least not yet. As with most conspiracy theories, there is a grain of truth to them, and in this case, it’s true that people in Ukraine did get rewarded for getting vaccinated. That’s also not unique to them. Here in Louisiana, there was a “Shot for 100” program that for a limited time provided people with $100 Visa gift cards for getting vaccinated. That kind of program happened all over the US and was basically what Ukraine did, by providing people with 1,000 UAH which is about $34\. However, vaccinated Ukrainians couldn’t spend it on anything, because it was also meant as a stimulus program designed to help businesses most hurt by the pandemic. Because places like restaurants and gyms suffered the most financial loss during the height of the pandemic, ePidtrymka cards could only be used at those kinds of businesses. Other possible purchases were books, concerts, theaters, museums, and transport. The point was to help these businesses out of the hole Covid put them in while also encouraging vaccination, which actually makes a lot of sense considering those same businesses were hurt the most because they’re the places where Covid gets transmitted the most. It would be bad for these businesses to suddenly get a lot of unvaccinated customers and lead to another Covid spike. Additionally, cashback debit and credit cards function in a very similar way, where different kinds of purchases result in different reward levels. It’s also somewhat similar to EBT cards (aka food stamps) that can be used to only buy certain foods, but not all foods. There was also a time limit added to the vaccination reward, where it needed to be spent within four months or forfeited. This again was meant as a stimulus, encouraging people to spend instead of save in order to more quickly grow the Covid-impacted economy. Additionally, Ukraine was planning on making the ePidtrymka program available offline in 2022 instead of only available online and via the app. It was never intended to *only* be available online. On [January 24, 2022](https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/news/vidsogodni-za-programoyu-yepidtrimka-ukrayinci-zmozhut-pridbati-liki?ref=scottsantens.com), there was the first expansion to the ePidtrymka program, which enabled those over 60 to spend their rewards on medicines too. This was soon followed on [February 7](https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/news/rozshirennya-programi-yepidtrimka-vzhe-40-tisyach-pidlitkiv-vidkrili-rahunki-dlya-zarahuvannya-1000-grn?ref=scottsantens.com) by extending the rewards to everyone over age 14 and also expanding available spending to “educational services, children's extracurricular activities, staying in a summer or sports children's camp, sporting goods, stationery, and school supplies.” This was then followed on [February 14](https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/news/vidsogodni-za-programoyu-yepidtrimka-ukrayinci-zmozhut-oplatiti-komunalni-poslugi?ref=scottsantens.com) by expanding purchases to housing and communal services for those over age 60. The next expansion of the program was scheduled to happen on [March 14](https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/news/denis-shmigal-z-14-bereznya-za-programoyu-yepidtrimka-mozhna-bude-otrimati-500-grn-za-busternu-dozu?ref=scottsantens.com) with the introduction of an additional 500 UAH (about $17) to reward people for getting a booster shot, and also the ability of those with disabilities to spend their rewards on medicine, housing, and communal services too, but then Putin sent Russian troops over the border to take over Ukraine. Thus the next expansion of the program ended up being the ability of everyone in Ukraine with ePidtrymka rewards they hadn’t yet spent to donate their funds to the [Ukrainian military](https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/news/povernis-zhivim-groshi-z-yepidtrimki-mozhna-vitratiti-na-dopomogu-ukrayinskij-armiyi?ref=scottsantens.com). This was soon followed by [the lifting of *all* restrictions](https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/news/fedorov-mihajlo-groshi-z-yepidtrimki-teper-mozhna-vitrachati-na-bud-yaki-produkti-chi-tovari?ref=scottsantens.com) on spending. Since March 2, as a result of the war, all Ukranians with ePidtrymka rewards have been able to spend their rewards exactly as cash, on anything they feel is best or they most need. And on [March 8](https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/news/mihajlo-fedorov-6500-grn-mozhut-otrimati-ukrayinci-v-mezhah-yepidtrimki-uzhe-vidsogodni?ref=scottsantens.com), an additional 6,500 UAH ($220) was added through the ePidtrymka system to every employee in the most war-impacted areas for whom USC is paid (their version of Social Security), including every entrepreneur, without any vaccination requirements applied, and without any limitations on spending - including time restrictions. All of the above are the facts. They reflect actual reality. Now, do these facts paint a picture of Ukraine looking to take advantage of the Russian invasion of their country to implement an unconditional, universal, monthly-recurring cash payment attached to vaccination requirements and a social credit score system? The truth is that Ukraine innovated a way of more productively administering government programs. One of those programs was a small one-time reward for getting vaccinated against Covid that was meant to support those sectors of Ukraine’s economy that suffered the most from quarantine restrictions. That program then served as a means of helping the people of Ukraine in a time of national emergency in a way that wouldn’t have otherwise been as quickly implementable. Thanks to the plumbing already existing, Ukraine was able to use those pipes to instantly get money to the people of Ukraine that they could spend on anything they need, vaccinated or not, during an invasion by Russia. Now that you know what Ukraine really did, ask yourself in whose interest it is that you instead believe in some conspiracy theory that feeds on your fears? In whose interest is it to create a bogeyman of Ukraine? Who might find it useful to put resources into amplifying such fears, and make it so that tweets about it on Twitter and posts about it on Facebook end up being seen by a lot more people than they otherwise would? The answer of course is Vladimir Putin. This also isn’t only about Ukraine. This kind of disinformation campaign is about reducing trust in the institution of government itself, and it goes beyond Ukraine. The same things about ePidtrymka are being said in Canada about Bill S-233, that it’s somehow a bill designed to strip Canadians of their freedoms, and force them to get vaccinated and do what they're told in order to receive their pensions. Senator Paula Simons actually just set the record straight there by reading into the record [some of the insane things](https://sencanada.ca/en/senators/simons-paula/interventions/573282/24?ref=scottsantens.com#hID) being said about the bill that simply aren’t true, and she nailed the real goal behind resources being put into amplifying such disinformation on social media. It’s all about increasing fear and eroding trust. I highly recommend watching the entire thing, but around the 11m30s mark, she shares a story about how one of her constituents fell for this disinformation and said it’s scary to live in fear every day. Here is what Simons then said: > “That, of course, is the point of this whole disinformation campaign: to create fear and distrust; to keep people scared and vulnerable; to erode our social contract, the social fabric and our confidence in our fellow Canadians, replacing it with suspicion bordering on paranoia. The purpose of this strategy isn’t to defeat Bill S-233, which has only the smallest chance of becoming a law anyway; no, it’s to whip up a hysterical frenzy to convince ordinary Canadians — decent, caring Canadians like Missy — that their political leaders and their political institutions are not to be trusted and then to trick and con ordinary, caring people just like Missy into sharing this fake information with their families, faith communities or their friends on Facebook.” This is why Putin has invested Russia’s resources over the years into [social media influence campaigns](https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research%5Freports/RR2700/RR2740/RAND%5FRR2740.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). It is meant to destabilize democracies. It is meant to create so much distrust among citizens in their representatives and their governments that democracy itself fails. If self-government requires an informed public, a disinformed public cannot function. A house divided against itself cannot stand, and if it cannot stand, then it certainly can’t stand against Putin and his ambitions. Besides, even if there were some grand conspiracy to implement universal basic income, but do it in a way that isn't actually UBI and is instead full of conditions like vaccination and control mechanisms like only being able to spend it on certain things, then the proper response isn't to fight against UBI, but to instead [fight for UBI implemented as an inviolable constitutional right of citizenship](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1502337123151753220.html?ref=scottsantens.com). It would have been a terrible idea to not pass Social Security into law in the belief that seniors would do anything the government tells them to do. [That obviously isn't true](https://www.scottsantens.com/wont-basic-income-give-too-much-power-to-whomever-distributes-it/) at all. Putin thinks you’re too stupid to tell the difference between disinformation and reality. Please share this article instead, and prove him wrong. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you support independent content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) or buying a copy of my book. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Monthly Child Tax Credit Gave Birth to New Entrepreneurs URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-monthly-child-tax-credit-gave-birth-to-new-entrepreneurs/ Last updated: 2023-02-07T21:36:29.000Z ## It’s no coincidence that during the pandemic, entrepreneurship increased in the United States by 23%, which was more than any other advanced economy. #### Capital Requirements Bottleneck Small Business Formation They say necessity is the mother of invention, but what they don’t say in the same breath is that you can need something all you want, but to actually fulfill that need requires a minimum amount of resources. And not only that but there needs to be a low enough fear of not being able to meet one’s most basic needs in the future so that investing resources in the present isn’t seen as being too risky in light of the unknown future. That’s not as catchy though is it? But it’s true. We just witnessed a very large demonstration of that self-evident truth in the form of the monthly child tax credit as tens of millions of parents experienced six months of increased access to resources along with a decreased sense of economic insecurity. > “The CTC has helped expand our country’s small business ecosystem and is allowing more Americans to realize their entrepreneurial goals.”Representatives for Small Business Majority, Main Street Alliance, and the American Sustainable Business Network in a letter to Congress After three months of the guaranteed monthly payments, [the number of parents with incomes under $50,000 describing themselves as self-employed increased by 22%](https://humanityforward.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/CTC-and-Employment-012620221.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). After just the first month, the payments had [lifted in-store retail sales by 15.5%](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210805005340/en/Mastercard-SpendingPulse-Child-Tax-Credit-Helps-Lift-U.S.-Retail-Sales-Growth-to-10.9%2A-in-July?ref=scottsantens.com), exceeding even pre-pandemic levels. Observations like these prompted Small Business Majority, Main Street Alliance, and American Sustainable Business Network to send [a letter](https://smallbusinessmajority.org/policy/business-organizations-support-child-tax-credit?ref=scottsantens.com) to Congressional leaders underscoring their support of the monthly CTC as being beneficial to America’s entrepreneurs. The letter concluded by stating, “The CTC has helped expand our country’s small business ecosystem and is allowing more Americans to realize their entrepreneurial goals.” #### The Data is In A [national survey](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f03fd142e430f23993da413/t/6166fc0581c27751aabc40ac/1634139152158/CTC+Survey+Report.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) of 1,259 small business owners also found strong support for the monthly CTC. 61% of those surveyed were in favor of the payments. 59% of themsaid the payments were enabling parents to spend more money to the benefit of Main Street small businesses. 62% of them believed that the payments were enabling more people to afford child care which was benefitting small businesses. And 23% of them were themselves receiving CTC checks which personally helped them as entrepreneurs to have a bit more stability in their lives. Entrepreneurs know that when other people have money to spend, it’s good for them too, because it’s good for their businesses. Entrepreneurs also know that starting and running a business involves a leap of faith and a bit of capital. It’s not that entrepreneurs are a special kind of people. It’s that not everyone has the access to capital to start a business, and too many people feel that the risks of failure are too great for their own personal safety and the safety of their families. When poverty can kill, failure can kill, and [when failure can kill, good ideas go untried](https://evonomics.com/universal-basic-income-accelerates-innovation-reducing-fear-failure/?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s no coincidence that during the pandemic, [entrepreneurship increased in the United States by 23%](https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economic-issues-watch/startups-boom-united-states-during-covid-19?ref=scottsantens.com#:~:text=Despite%20a%20health%20catastrophe%20and,2020%2C%20a%2024%20percent%20increase.), which was more than any other advanced economy. We’re the country that sent out stimulus checks to almost everyone in our economy. When millions of Americans lost their jobs and started receiving boosted unemployment checks, they didn’t sit around doing anything. They got creative and used the capital and increased financial security provided to them in the form of government checks to launch new endeavors and adapt to the coronavirus-impacted landscape. This stuff isn’t anything new either. It’s simply reinforcing what we’ve already long known. Our food assistance program is known to increase entrepreneurship simply by existing. Even when someone isn’t actively using it, the fact that would-be entrepreneurs believe it will be there for them should they fail results in more people becoming entrepreneurs. Specifically, it was found that [the expansion of SNAP in some states and not others increased the chance within those states that newly eligible households would own an incorporated business by 16%](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/26/wonkbook-how-welfare-encourages-people-to-start-businesses/?ref=scottsantens.com) compared to the states that didn’t expand SNAP. There’s also something much closer to the monthly CTC than SNAP to look at, and that’s Canada’s virtually identical version of our enhanced CTC that they call the Canada Child Benefit or CCB. Their CCB has existed in its current form since 2016 and as a direct result of it, there’s been over $256 billion in new revenue for Canadian businesses, and all that money flowing to parents in Canada has caused more than $27 billion in private capital investments. With a GDP of $1.7 trillion, that’s a healthy economic boost the CCB is providing to entrepreneurs and their customers. It’s been estimated that [without the CCB payments flowing to Canadian parents, Canada’s economy would be at least $46 billion smaller every year](https://www.ubiworks.ca/ccb?ref=scottsantens.com), which would be about a 3% annual hit to their GDP. #### Job Creation Starts With Financial Security For Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurial parents in America are already personally feeling such a hit with the expiration of their monthly CTC. In an interview with the Daily Caller, a couple by the name of [Brian and Megan Curtis](https://dailycaller.com/2022/02/01/american-families-adjust-life-without-expanded-child-tax-credit/?ref=scottsantens.com) described how the loss of the CTC payments, which had felt like “[a rebirth of the American Dream](https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2022/02/03/megan-curtis-congress/?ref=scottsantens.com),” forced them to pull back on the telehealth business they’d recently launched together. The CTC had allowed them to devote more resources towards growing their business without having to worry as much, and when those payments stopped, it meant fewer resources and more worry, and that combo is poison for entrepreneurship. Brian and Megan of course aren’t alone either. #### Small Businesses Need Community Support to Survive As reported in the New York Times, a couple by the name of [Blayne and Kayla Midthun](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/21/well/family/child-tax-credit-families.html?ref=scottsantens.com) whose ice cream parlor business was greatly impacted by the pandemic were able to use the CTC to put money straight back into their business. How good is it for their business, and their family that their business supports, to stop receiving that extra stabilizing $750 a month? And how good is it for many of their customers to take a monthly hit to their own incomes as fellow parents newly less able to afford the luxury of a special treat like an ice cream sundae for their own kids? Goldman Sachs considered questions like that and decided to downgrade their estimate of 2022 US GDP as a result of the answers. With American families hit by higher taxes and thus less disposable income as a result of the lapse of the enhanced child tax credit, [expected GDP growth in Q1 was cut by a third](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/12/20/goldman-65-million-americans-stand-to-lose-300-child-tax-credit-payments-next-month/?sh=30a14e147736&ref=scottsantens.com). Fewer customers are bad for a consumer-based economy. #### Negative Impacts of the Loss of Month CTC The negative impacts of the loss of the monthly CTC payments on America’s small businesses also aren’t equally distributed. [Families in rural America, and thus Main Street USA local economies, were the ones being disproportionately boosted by the enhanced CTC](https://dailyyonder.com/changes-in-child-tax-credit-make-a-bigger-difference-for-rural-families/2021/09/29/?ref=scottsantens.com). 49% of rural children were newly getting a boost from the checks compared to 39% of metro children. The Niskanen Center similarly estimated [a 1.35% boost](https://www.niskanencenter.org/report-measuring-the-child-tax-credits-economic-and-community-impact/?ref=scottsantens.com) to rural area GDP. In Idaho, the enhanced CTC was estimated as already responsible for 1.8% of its GDP, and thus with its loss, a 1.8% decline is fair to expect. A 1.8% loss is also expected in Mississippi and a 1.6% loss in Arkansas and Montana. These are entirely unnecessary losses of economic activity. Small businesses are the heart and soul of the US economy. [They create two-thirds of net new jobs and account for 44% of our GDP](https://advocacy.sba.gov/2018/12/19/advocacy-releases-small-business-gdp-1998-2014/?ref=scottsantens.com). However, this has actually been shrinking. In 1998, they accounted for 48% of GDP. Consider what has happened since wages decoupled from productivity, and for a great many Americans, their discretionary purchasing power fell. As the American consumer has needed to focus on spending less instead of spending locally, consumers moved from Main Streets to Walmart and Amazon. #### Helping American Small Businesses Thrive and Survive When what matters most is the lowest price, buying locally simply isn’t as important. I think we just witnessed a temporary alleviation of that thanks to the CTC payments, where parents became a bit freer to focus a bit less on price and a bit more on other factors like local impacts and sustainability. The American small business economy can’t thrive so long as the American consumer is just trying to survive month-to-month. Small businesses need customers with money to spend after they pay the bills. Consumers aren’t the only ones that need to be free of thinking only about their basic survival needs. Entrepreneurs need to feel free to take risks without fearing for the lives of their families should they fail. Entrepreneurs need to be more than just surviving every month. They need more than that to invest in their businesses. They need someone to believe in them. In what is considered to be perhaps “[the most effective development program in history](https://chrisblattman.com/2015/09/24/is-this-the-most-effective-development-program-in-history/?ref=scottsantens.com),” Nigeria handed out cash grants to would-be entrepreneurs. 1,200 of them got $50,000 each. After three years, 93% of recipients had a company up and running versus 54% of would-be entrepreneurs who didn’t receive the cash grant. Three times as many of the companies were also bigger than those of the control group. #### The Impact on Monthly Income on Entrepreneurship Think about just how many small businesses don’t exist simply because their would-be founders lack the capital to start them. The enhanced CTC wasn’t $50,000, but it was an investment in entrepreneurial parents, many of whom were already beginning to create new small businesses at a faster rate thanks to that cash investment. When I think about the impact of monthly no-strings income on entrepreneurship, I always think about a woman named [Frieda Nembwaya](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5Ften%5Fyears%5Flater%5Freport%5F2019.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) who was living in a village in Namibia when everyone in her village started receiving a monthly unconditional cash grant. With her very first payment, she went out and bought baking ingredients, built a makeshift stove, and started baking small loaves of bread for the residents of her village. Her new business took off and she ended up earning far more from her bakery business than the cash payments she continued to receive that made it all possible. #### The Financial Health of Consumers is Key Think for a moment about what was responsible for her success. Was it Frieda alone who had a good idea and the work ethic to build a successful business? Well, here’s a thought experiment. Imagine it wasn’t monthly cash that she was receiving but a loan. She would have still been able to start her business using that money, but would her business have been successful in a village where no one had any money to buy her bread? What made Frieda’s business success wasn’t Frieda alone. It was the fact her village suddenly became full of people with money to spend, and it was Frieda who offered them a great product that they were actually able to buy, which allowed her to continue making more. #### The True Potential of a Monthly Tax Credit It’s this dynamic that we just witnessed here in the US with the CTC payments. Because parents had a bit more money to spend, parents with businesses had a bit more customers. That enabled more businesses to succeed, prevented some businesses from failing, and enabled some new businesses to be created. That’s the true potential of a monthly child tax credit. Small businesses are job creators, but they don’t do it alone out of thin air. The true job creators are the customers whose spending enables businesses to succeed. We seem to have forgotten that over the past few decades of stagnant wages, but the monthly child tax credit is a reminder of how we can turn things around for small businesses by recentering the importance of people having money to spend, and also the importance of would-be entrepreneurs feeling less afraid of the consequences of failure. We should restore the monthly child tax credit, and we should do it not only to see a lot more kids free of poverty but to recognize that we’ll see a lot more entrepreneurs too. The money isn’t just money. It’s a message to entrepreneurial parents that says, “America believes in you.” We need to start sending that message every month again. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### An Introduction to Unconditional Basic Income For All URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-for-all-unconditional-why-ubi-is-necessary-now-evidence-experiments/ Last updated: 2024-03-07T20:58:23.000Z [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/03/button_support-my-work-on-patreon-6.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) Let’s talk about humanity... Human civilization was not ready for COVID-19, nor is it ready for the continuing impacts of climate change, nor the impacts we will increasingly feel as we automate more and more employment. As a species, we were not ready. We’re still not ready. And we will continue not being ready, until we make some fundamental changes to the human social contract, because from the very beginning, we’ve never been ready. The change I personally believe is of primary importance above all other needed changes, and the one I’m about to make the case for, is the concept of unconditional basic income, also known as universal basic income, basic income, or just UBI. First, what is basic income? Basic income is society investing in itself with a form of social security that’s unconditional, universal, periodic, cash for each and every individual member of society. What makes UBI so different than other forms of social security is that it’s built on a foundation of trust. In fact it *is* a foundation of trust. UBI doesn’t care if you’re employed or not. UBI doesn’t care if you’re poor or not. UBI only cares that you are human, and you are alive. Because you are alive, you need sufficient access to resources to stay alive, no questions asked. Humans are the only species on Earth who have to pay to live here. UBI is the recognition that if we’re going to make everyone pay to live, we should provide everyone the money to live. ![Silvrback blog image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/c92c7cf2-36ba-4b50-ae9a-79829bb5dd38/2.png) Why would we do that? That’s crazy you may say. People would stop working, you may say. We couldn’t possibly afford it, you may say. Well, two decades ago, I may have agreed with you for saying those things, but not anymore. Now I know that it’s the lack of basic income that’s crazy. And the better questions to ask are, “How much work isn’t getting done because people lack basic income?” and “How much does it cost for society not to invest in itself with basic income?” Doing nothing is never free. Not being able to afford to be productive is not good for productivity. We have these things all backwards. It’s like human civilization is a city built on sand. In such a world, it’s normal for buildings to be full of cracks. It’s normal for buildings to fall and for people to sink, but just because it’s normal doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it sane or rational. What’s normal right now should not be normal. Poverty should not be normal. Chronic insecurity and extreme inequality should not be normal. Diseases and violence born from lack of food and shelter and the unceasing fear of not having enough to survive should not be normal. We built human civilization to be like this. We constructed this. We can build a new normal upon a solid foundation. That foundation is UBI. ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_left](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/3388169b-683d-46fb-a882-d61d8404cd95/3_medium.png) The basic concept of basic income can be traced back as far as Thomas More in the 16th century, when he wrote, “No penalty on earth will stop people from stealing, if it is their only way of getting food. It would be far more to the point to provide everyone with some means of livelihood.” The point of course is to get us all to think about how much sense it makes to throw people in prison for the crime of essentially not having enough money. What if we instead just provided people enough money? ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_right](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/bb40c4c3-3261-4ead-a203-c0c8e002c340/4_medium.png) It was Thomas Paine though who made perhaps the strongest case for basic income over two hundred years ago, with his essay “Agrarian Justice.” In it he makes the point that the creation of what we call civilization made most people better off, but it also made some people worse off, and that’s the core problem that needs to be resolved. The original sin of civilization is the disinheritance of what would have been everyone’s natural inheritance in the form of common property. Because everyone would have otherwise been born with free access to land and natural resources, compensation is due, and so he envisioned a universal provision of money for everyone upon reaching the age of 21, in order to begin their lives with inherited capital, not as any kind of charity or welfare, but as a human right. Centuries later, in 1982, the state of Alaska in the United States became the first government to bring Thomas Paine’s vision to life in the form of the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend, where every resident of Alaska, poor or rich, young or old, employed or unemployed, receives a check every year as their rightful share of Alaska’s natural resource wealth. The check has averaged between $1000 and $2000 every year, and no Alaskan sees it as unearned income, but as a rightful earned dividend based on a shared belief in common ownership of natural resources. ![Silvrback blog image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/94324df0-6c32-4b45-a6fc-f08b84a406d1/5.png) Yes, Alaska has had a yearly UBI for almost half a century. It’s the only place in the world to have implemented a permanent UBI so far. What has happened as a result you may ask? Well, the answer is quite a few notable things. First and foremost, it has reduced poverty by lifting tens of thousands of Alaskans out of poverty every year. A [2016 study](https://iseralaska.org/static/legacy%5Fpublication%5Flinks/2016%5F12-PFDandPoverty.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) by the University of Alaska estimated that if the UBI were eliminated, child poverty in Alaska would be increased by one third. The UBI has also increased employment. [Research done in 2018](https://harris.uchicago.edu/news-events/news/universal-basic-income-policies-dont-cause-people-leave-workforce-study-finds?ref=scottsantens.com) at the University of Chicago concluded that Alaska’s UBI had increased part-time employment by 17% and had a net neutral impact on full-time employment, with some people choosing less employment while others who would otherwise have remained unemployed were able to get jobs thanks to the new jobs created by people spending the money. Other observations from Alaska include babies born with healthier birth weights due to better maternal nutrition, reduced rates of obesity and crime that both scale according to the size of the payments, more savings, less debt, and a slower rate of inflation growth as measured by the consumer price index compared to the rest of the US that began when the dividend payments started going out. Although Alaska’s annual dividend is effectively the longest running UBI program on Earth, there are other programs around the world that we can learn more about UBI from, through their provision of unconditional cash. There have also been full UBI experiments carried out in countries like Namibia, India, Uganda, and now Kenya where entire villages have received unconditional cash universally. Finland has done a basic income pilot for the unemployed and Stockton was the first city in the US to run a pilot, which has now been followed by over 60 more cities and still counting, including my own city of New Orleans. I consider all of these and more, pieces of the UBI puzzle that together create a clear picture of its effects. ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/1ce970f3-09d7-4d8d-a37a-b3b1729869a9/6.png) The following is just a sample of the observations made so far across programs and pilot experiments centered around cash provided unconditionally: First and foremost, there is no significant reduction in labor supply. To the contrary, **labor supply has been found to increase globally among adults, men and women, young and old, with decreases usually only observed in children, the elderly, the sick, those with disabilities, women with young children to look after, or young people who opt instead to pursue education.** Additionally, [large increases in entrepreneurship are frequently observed](https://evonomics.com/universal-basic-income-accelerates-innovation-reducing-fear-failure/?ref=scottsantens.com) for three primary reasons: UBI functions as startup capital, consumer buying power, and it reduces fear of failure. Next, people spend their UBI just like all of us would. It tends to be spent on food and housing. What it’s rarely spent on is drugs and alcohol. In fact, overall, [UBI tends to reduce drug and alcohol use](https://www.scottsantens.com/what-do-we-do-about-drug-users-with-basic-incomes). This of course makes sense. Drug abuse tends to be self-medication in response to chronic stress. Because UBI reduces stress by supporting a sense of real security, mental health improves. In fact, health improves overall quite dramatically. In the Manitoba pilot, hospitalization rates fell by 8.5%. Imagine a vaccine that increased everyone’s health so significantly that one out of every ten people no longer got sick enough to seek hospital care. Babies tend to also be born healthier, as a result of better maternal nutrition, which has lifelong health impacts. Childhood obesity also decreases. The health impacts of UBI are profound due to three primary pathways: more basic needs met, less inequality, and less insecurity. Crime reduction is also another repeated observation of basic income. In the [Namibia pilot](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), overall crime went down by 42%, and in [Canada’s Manitoba pilot](https://academic.oup.com/socpro/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/socpro/spaa001/5809598?redirectedFrom=fulltext&ref=scottsantens.com) it went down by 15%. The degree to which crime is reduced also varies by the crime, which says a lot about the desperation that lies underneath certain crimes in particular. In the Namibia pilot, illegal hunting plummeted by 95%. Consider for a moment just how much money could be saved by dramatically reducing crime. Basic income also impacts how we treat each other. In [Kenya](https://www.fastcompany.com/90315666/how-a-basic-income-could-help-stop-domestic-violence?ref=scottsantens.com), there were half as many incidences of women being kicked, dragged, or beaten. In Canada, domestic violence dropped by 30%. In [Finland's experiment](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/an-experiment-to-inform-universal-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com), recipients of basic income began to trust politicians, the legal system, and their fellow citizens more. [Social cohesion increases](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-will-likely-increase-social-cohesion-aceb337262e0?ref=scottsantens.com). Children raised in households with basic income show increases in agreeableness and conscientiousness, meaning they’re more responsible and respectful. They also tend to do better in school and earn more as adults. ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/4b7f23bf-446f-4edd-ad8c-6f4698a6baf3/7.png) These are just some of the observed effects of basic income security. [There’s more we already know](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1040683616488103936?ref=scottsantens.com), and there’s more we’re still learning, but just think for a bit about the available evidence and apply it all to the question of how much UBI costs. How much does not having UBI cost? A society without UBI spends a huge amount of resources on treating the lack of UBI. In the US, the cost of child poverty alone has been estimated as costing us [over $1 trillion a year or 5% of our GDP](https://source.wustl.edu/2018/04/childhood-poverty-cost-u-s-1-03-trillion-in-a-year-study-finds/?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s also been estimated that [every dollar spent reducing child poverty results in eight dollars of economic benefit](https://www.povertycenter.columbia.edu/news-internal/2021/child-allowance/cost-benefit-analysis?ref=scottsantens.com). And that’s just child poverty. What are the full costs of poverty across the entire population? What are the full costs of crime? What are the full costs of people not reaching their full potentials? What are the full costs of physically and mentally unhealthy people that would otherwise be perfectly healthy if they just had enough money and stability? When we look at the big picture, it’s a lack of UBI that’s hugely expensive. UBI is an investment with a high ROI. There’s no better investment to be made than investing in every single member of society with enough money for them to be a truly integrated participant in society. It’s also important to understand what’s already being spent to alleviate these problems in less efficient ways than basic income, and with less trust and dignity, but much more bureaucracy. Consider all the government assistance programs that could be accomplished with cash, and how many tax deductions and subsidies could just be cash instead of tax cuts. Governments do so much because of a lack of UBI, and do so much that could be UBI instead. Basic income is really just a matter of doing a lot of things already being done, but unconditionally, universally, and with cash instead, and as a result, no longer needing to do so many other more costly, less effective things. Now that we’ve covered the basics of UBI and its many positive effects, and understand it for what it really is - an investment in [a social vaccine that inoculates against poverty, extreme inequality, and chronic insecurity](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com) \- let’s talk about the pandemic and the lessons human civilization as a whole should take away from this experience to apply to future disasters. Here’s the deal: There will always be another disaster. It’s Murphy’s Law. Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. Knowing that, failure therefore has to be a part of design. We don't want things to fail, but we know they will, because they always do, so what should be done? The answer reminds me of an engineering joke about what 1 + 1 equals. 3 just to be sure. The answer is fault tolerance and this is what I call [the engineering argument for UBI](https://www.scottsantens.com/engineering-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi-fault-tolerance-graceful-failure-redundancy/). In the event of component failure, a system should be designed to continue functioning either as normal, or at a reduced capacity. And when some system does fail entirely, it should be designed to return to 100% operating capacity quickly. Catastrophic failure should always be avoided, especially for mission critical systems, and even more especially when lives are at stake. Consider planes. If a single component fails, it shouldn't bring the entire plane down. There are ways of avoiding that by incorporating redundancy so that multiple backup systems have to fail in order for the entire plane to fail. **Because we know things will very likely fail, we should design them in a way such that when they fail, lives are protected first and foremost, wherever lives are at risk**. In elevators, it would be bad design for them to plummet with the loss of power. Instead, they utilize fail safe design, where power keeps the brakes off and loss of power activates them. They fail into a safe state, ergo "fail safe." So what does this have to do with basic income? We know that our primary income distribution system fails. It fails all the time. It's called losing your job. We have a safety net designed to catch people when it fails, but that system also fails all the time too, at which point, people can and do die as a result. We have engineered a life support system without fault tolerance, and we did it because engineers didn't design the system. Realism demands that we recognize human beings need money to live. It is mission critical for people to have money to spend on what they need to live. So just make sure they have it, by supplying it to everyone unconditionally. Here's how UBI would introduce fault tolerance into our life support system we call the economy: First, everyone starts with the money they need to live. We wouldn't create a life support system on a space station where in order to receive oxygen, one would need to work to obtain it. Life support is life support. Dead people can't work. So make sure people get oxygen so they can stay alive. Living people will do much more work than dead people. Next, everyone who works for additional money would be utilizing redundancy. They would have two streams of income. If they did multiple jobs or began earning passive income of some kind, it would be three streams of income or more. Instead of a one-engine plane, they could have two or three or more engines keeping them in the air. If one engine failed, they'd have others, and because of the UBI, they'd never have none. ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/17da52e5-f457-47f5-9423-68f002024c48/9.png) Because UBI would mean incomes never fall to zero, anyone who ever loses their job would fall to the level of the UBI instead of the severe poverty of having $0\. We can think of this as what engineers call "graceful failure." Graceful failure means that a failure does not result in catastrophic failure (e.g. sickness or death), and instead fails in a way that protects people or property from injury or damage. With UBI, people who lose their jobs would fall to a state preferably above the poverty line, meaning that failure would never result in poverty. This builds resilience into the system. People who still have something instead of nothing are more able to get back up again, and find new employment. They are also more likely to take innovative risks, secure in the knowledge that failure won't result in death. This is the engineering argument for UBI: We are all living, breathing, human beings, and we all need money to obtain the food and housing and everything else we need to stay alive. The best way to make sure we all stay alive then, is to make sure we always have a basic amount of money, and the best way to make sure we always have a basic amount of money is to provide it to everyone at all times, so it's always there, no matter what. Any argument to the contrary is not sound from an engineering perspective. Failure is inevitable. There will always be mistakes made. There will always be job loss and bad luck. There will always be safety net failures. There will always be disasters. There will always be pandemics. Therefore, we should always have basic income, so that when these things happen, we are less likely to die, and more likely to scrape ourselves off, and get right back up again. Unconditional basic income is how to engineer resilience into our social and economic systems. Everything would be different if every country had already had UBI in place before Covid hit. There are so many ways UBI would have changed the way the pandemic went and how it impacted people, and what the US did and didn’t do illustrates this point surprisingly well. When Covid hit the US, people got sick, and as is often the case, people didn’t stay home because they couldn’t afford to. They went to their jobs, because they felt no other choice in order to pay the bills, and they got others sick as a result. **What if everyone had instead felt the security of knowing that if they stayed home, they’d still be able to pay their bills? How many more people would have quarantined?** When the lockdowns were imposed and people were ordered to stay home, tens of millions of people lost their jobs and businesses began to shutter. Because workers are also customers, the incomes of many people who kept their jobs went down, which caused more businesses to shutter. What if no one’s income had dropped to zero, and more people had been able to continue being customers? How many more businesses and jobs would have survived? How many incomes would not have fallen at all, or as much? When unemployment skyrocketed and before the first stimulus checks had been issued, there were miles long lines of cars at food banks across America. Millions of Americans who’d never visited a food bank before suddenly needed them for the first time in their lives, while at the same time grocery stores were full of food for sale as normal. It’s not that there wasn’t enough food in stores for people to buy. In fact at the same time farmers were plowing crops under, after having lost their restaurant buyers. It’s that people didn’t have enough money to buy food. **What if everyone had never stopped having enough money to buy food? Would we even need food banks?** ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/714795d0-6308-4529-8a65-183998c3df42/10.png) When mass unemployment meant millions of Americans could no longer pay their rent, our answer was to prevent evictions. Some people still got evicted in the middle of a pandemic despite the eviction bans, and small landlords that rely on their rentals for their own income, meant that many landlords also lost their own incomes as a result, and some even became homeless despite literally owning homes. **What if everyone had never stopped having enough money to pay their rent? How many fewer people would have been evicted from their homes, or would ever need to be evicted? How many fewer people would ever experience homelessness at all?** When the world became divided into essential workers and non-essential workers, essential workers turned out to be among the lowest paid, while non-essential workers were the ones with higher incomes and also more able to work from home. In the US, we decided to boost the incomes of the unemployed with a $600 a week boost across the board to all unemployment checks. On the one hand, this was a smart thing to do in order to make sure that tens of millions of unemployed Americans didn’t fall behind on their bills. And because so many people had been earning so little, the unemployment boost served to actually increase the incomes of two out of three unemployed people above what they’d been earning. On the other hand, the workers considered essential who were also earning low incomes, did not receive a boost, which resulted in a lot of bitterness and justified cries of unfairness that so many of the non-essential unemployed were lifted above the essential employed. **What if instead of boosting only the unemployed, there had been a floor of income already beneath both groups?** ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/bbeeb260-fedc-41be-9b7d-c0695aea728d/11.png) Additionally, when mass unemployment occurred, we immediately admitted that there was an entire group of unemployed people that would have otherwise gotten nothing, for having jobs that didn’t qualify them for standard unemployment insurance. So we created the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program to provide the same $600 a week to the self-employed freelancers and gig workers that have long been excluded from the safety net. **What if an income floor wasn’t tied to employment at all, so that it could help everyone regardless of the type of employment they have whenever they lose it, and for however long it takes to find new employment, be it full-time or gig economy work?** Then there is the issue of recognizing all work, not just paid work. As schools across the US closed, kids began to spend a lot more time at home, which meant parents needed to spend a lot more time at home too, even if they were employed, to the point that many parents needed to leave the workforce, and those who left to care for their kids were disproportionately women. Parents weren’t quitting to sit at home doing nothing. They were quitting so that they could work at home and not get paid for it, because the work that involves caring for our kids and our elders and even members of our community tends to go unrecognized as work because it’s unpaid. But of course it’s work, and those who quit to perform it got nothing for being newly unemployed, unlike the newly unemployed who qualified for $600 a week in unemployment insurance or pandemic unemployment assistance. **What if an income floor always existed underneath all forms of work, so that it enabled and supported all kinds of work, regardless of how valuable the rest of society considered it to be? What if unpaid caring and community volunteering were options that more people could afford to perform, because their basic needs were covered and working for free was finally possible for everyone to choose?** ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/4ae3114f-9f02-4b48-8630-c67dc79d6361/12.png) The unemployment check boost has since expired in the US, but not before it had some other lessons to teach us. A very large experiment was effectively launched when half of all states canceled the boost early, while the other half kept the boost in place for another few months. The belief was that the boost was resulting in jobs going unfilled, and that they essentially needed to be forced back into the labor market by reducing people’s incomes or even dropping them to zero. The result was no significant increase in employment after dropping people’s incomes. Instead it just caused more misery and less consumer spending. Apparently there were other reasons that jobs were going unfilled, like low pay, bad hours, poor conditions, closed schools, lack of childcare, and the fact a pandemic was still filling hospitals and killing people. **What if there were a permanent income floor under everyone, so that people’s incomes could never drop to zero during a pandemic, or any disaster, or ever for that matter?** It is in fact because of all the factors hindering employment that has resulted in the strongest labor market the US has seen in decades as employers compete for employees. Wages are going up. Work arrangements are getting more flexible and some are even switching to 4-day weeks. Unions are negotiating better contracts. For the first time in a very long time, the incomes of the bottom 40% are rising faster than inflation, even in an environment of temporarily higher inflation, because workers actually have real bargaining power. **What if workers always had real bargaining power? What if workers could always walk away from the negotiating table and choose to withhold their labor until their demands were met? Strike pay enables that for union members. What if everyone always had strike pay, regardless of union membership?** Americans got a taste of what that might be like, when most of us received three different stimulus checks, two in 2020, and one in early 2021\. The majority of Americans got to personally feel what it was like to check their bank account, and see a payment just appear there, almost by magic. For some, these payments were life-changing. Because they went to people regardless of employment status, these checks reached people who didn’t get any unemployment income, but who had lost income despite maintaining employment. This was no small number of people either. One third of all Americans lost income but didn’t get any unemployment because they remained employed or quit. The stimulus checks found them, most of them at least, not all of them. How the stimulus checks succeeded in reaching so many who lost income but failed in reaching everyone who lost income, is vital to understand. The key detail is that the stimulus checks were means-tested for those with high incomes. Those deemed as having too high of income were excluded from the payments. This line was drawn for individuals at $75,000 such that those earning more than that, got less than the full amount, until they earned so much they got nothing. This may sound like common sense. Why provide payments to those with high incomes? Well, the answer is because we only know people’s past incomes, not their present or future incomes. Because the stimulus checks used earnings data from previous years, there were people who had high incomes, but lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic just like everyone else, and got no stimulus to help them. This is the inherent folly of means-testing - false negatives - where people who should get help and need help don’t pass the test to get help. **There is a big difference between someone getting help they don’t need, and someone needing help they don’t get. The former can be considered wasteful, but the latter can prove fatal. It’s always better to get and not need, than need and not get.** ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/9c28c58e-08d1-4c5a-b969-949756362340/14.png) UBI is a policy that understands this hard truth. Because it is unconditional and universal, the help is always there in advance of even needing it. It’s like falling off a boat with inflatable clothing instead of falling off a boat and screaming for help that may or may not come. It can mean the difference between life and death. The most important reason for basic income to be fully universal is to acknowledge that **any means-testing will always exclude some percentage of those who need it most.** Before the pandemic even hit, [13 million Americans were living in poverty entirely disconnected from all federal assistance programs](https://www.urban.org/research/publication/five-things-you-may-not-know-about-us-social-safety-net?ref=scottsantens.com). The best functioning program is our food assistance program which reaches 2 out of 3 people in poverty, and lasts for 3 months every 3 years. Our worst is our temporary assistance for needy families program which varies by state, and in my home state of Louisiana reaches only 4 out of every 100 families living in poverty. Our disability assistance reaches 1 out of every 5 Americans with disabilities, and the average waiting time to qualify is two years. Our housing assistance reaches 1 out of every 4 Americans who qualify. Our unemployment insurance reached about 1 out of every 4 unemployed people in 2019. Over and over again, with targeted program after targeted program, our safety net tends to let three out of every four people fall right through it. Because of UBI's universality, zero out of every four people would be excluded from assistance, because they'd already have it, and many wouldn't even need any additional assistance beyond their UBI, because it would provide more than many existing supports even offer. Many programs would simply become unnecessary or at least less necessary with UBI operating as a foundational income floor underneath everyone. And for those who need more than the UBI, like for example those with disabilities, at least they would have that floor while they go through the process of qualifying for extra assistance, instead of having nothing until they qualify. ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/5d10120f-af00-40ee-b275-22a177c560a0/15.png) There’s one more program besides the unemployment boost and stimulus checks that the US did and it’s the closest thing to UBI we’ve done yet, and that’s the fully refundable child tax credit payment or CTC which went to most families with kids starting in July of 2021 and ended at the end of 2021\. It lacked any work requirements. All low- and middle-income parents qualified for it regardless of how little income they earned. This new monthly cash payment per child, a kind of basic income for kids, resulted in a substantial drop in child poverty with an estimated 4 million fewer kids living in poverty while the checks were going out. Here’s how parents spent the monthly CTC. The payments helped parents buy things like food and school supplies for their kids, and proved especially helpful during a time of higher inflation that most of the world is still feeling as a result of the pandemic and its impact on global supply chains. Multiple surveys have also shown that the CTC actually led to many parents being able to work more hours of employment by helping them afford childcare. The payments also reduced stress, lowered debt, built savings, and improved mental health. ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/e4d4b190-3dd3-4c92-9e89-e31c219b4e09/16.png) I’m looking forward to all the studies that will be published about the economic impacts of the CTC. My guess is that the impacts will look a lot like [Canada’s Child Benefit](https://www.ubiworks.ca/ccb?ref=scottsantens.com) which is quite similar in size and design, and which has been measured as adding $2 in GDP for every $1 distributed to parents, and is responsible for 2.5% of Canada’s labor force through the jobs created and supported by parents spending it every month there. Now that I’ve covered the three major economic responses to Covid in the US that have the most to contribute to the UBI discussion, there’s something else I would like us all to consider besides Covid, and that’s climate change and its impacts on our everyday lives right now and in the future. I say this as someone living in New Orleans, who recently had to evacuate my home and stay evacuated for ten days because of a hurricane that knocked out the power to my entire city: [basic income is about resilience and adaptation.](https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/escaping-together) When it comes to evacuating for hurricanes, the biggest reason people don’t evacuate is because they can’t afford to. Gas costs money, that is if people even have a car. Hotels cost money. Eating out while away from home costs money. People need money to be able to respond to climate emergencies like hurricanes, flooding, and wildfires. People need to be able to afford to reach higher ground, both physically and metaphorically. Also consider how [cash can be anything](https://www.scottsantens.com/unconditional-universal-basic-income-as-liquid-infrastructure-the-bruce-lee-argument-for-ubi-cash-money), and how useful that is in emergency situations. When I returned from my evacuation, my wife and I stopped at a store along the way to buy some groceries to restock our fridge that had lost power for a week. The store we stopped at was only able to accept cash. The machines that accepted government food assistance were down. Had we not had cash and instead relied on that assistance, we would have left that grocery store without food. That’s the reality for many people receiving government benefits that aren’t cash. Sometimes even when you have it, you can’t even use it. As the saying goes, cash is king. We, as in all of humanity, need to do a better job of making sure that we better protect each other from disasters. We need to better help each other escape dangers and become more resilient to the disasters that can befall any one of us, at any time, poverty included. And the best way to help is always in advance, not after something happens, but before it happens. UBI is how to achieve that. It’s an ounce of prevention instead of a pound of cure. This thinking should also be applied to the automation of labor. We shouldn’t wait until robots end enough jobs for it to be seen as a problem. In fact, automation should never be seen as a problem at all. It should be seen as a benefit to all of society. UBI is how to make automation literally work for all of us, and it should be seen as a dividend accrued through [centuries of technological growth that we inherited](https://medium.com/economicsecproj/technological-inheritance-and-the-case-for-a-basic-income-ded373a69c8e?ref=scottsantens.com#.101bu1tyi) from all the generations before us. It’s not a problem that robots take human jobs. The problem is humans requiring humans to have jobs, especially when many of those jobs can be entirely unnecessary or even harmful, socially or ecologically, and when the entire point of automation is to enable humanity to do more with less. So now that you have a better understanding of UBI and some of its effects and potential, especially in the face of global crises like pandemics and climate breakdown, you may be wondering how to really make it happen. You understand it as an investment now, that can yield more in savings and benefits than it costs, but how can it actually be done? ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/31e6a270-cbf4-443d-bd87-6ca1e8472227/19.png) First and foremost, most countries are already doing a great many things that could fairly easily become UBI if not for all the conditions, means-testing, benefits-in-kind, and tax subsidies they currently insist upon doing instead. For example, many countries choose to use tax allowances where people aren’t taxed until they earn a minimum amount of money. [An alternative to that would be a UBI floor instead](https://neweconomics.org/uploads/files/WeeklyNationalAllowance%5FNEF.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), where a percentage of every dollar earned on top of the UBI is taxed, either directly or indirectly. Second, don’t think of money going to those with higher incomes as wasteful. What’s wasteful is not realizing that it’s a waste of time and money to try to target based on need. Targeting should be accomplished through taxes, because that process already exists. If you don’t want billionaires to receive a disposable income boost with UBI, then just increase their taxes more than the amount of UBI they receive. Understand that because UBI is paired with taxes, there will always be those who receive more in UBI than they pay in taxes, while others pay more in taxes than they receive in UBI. That point where someone pays the same in taxes as they receive in UBI is the threshold to focus on in designing a UBI. Third, the cost of basic income is never the gross cost. It’s never as simple as just multiplying the amount of UBI by the number of recipients. [The cost is the net cost](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-is-the-net-transfer-amount-not-the-gross-price-tag-acb8aa5eab73?ref=scottsantens.com) which is the difference between what people receive in UBI and what they pay in taxes. The simplest way to understand this is to imagine providing everyone a million dollars and then applying a tax of a million dollars so that no one gained or lost any money than they originally had. The cost of that is zero, not $1 million times the number of recipients. What matters is the new allocation of income compared to the old allocation of income after UBI and taxes are both applied. Fourth, [there is nothing more costly than spending time and resources entirely unnecessarily](https://vocal.media/theSwamp/why-we-need-modern-monetary-theory-mmt-and-why-it-needs-universal-basic-income-ubi?ref=scottsantens.com). As long as poverty exists, that is extremely expensive and is actively requiring all kinds of time and resources to very wastefully treat the avoidable results of it. The cost of UBI is never just about UBI, but about all the time and resources that no longer need to go to the impacts of maintaining a society without UBI. Any economist who says UBI is too expensive and yet has never attempted to estimate the full costs of poverty, extreme inequality, and chronic insecurity, is as worth listening to as a doctor who says vaccinating everyone is too expensive despite being surrounded by crowded hospitals full of the unvaccinated. Always consider the overall, big picture, total cost. Consider too, the big picture costs that go far beyond economics. Authoritarianism is on the rise around the world, including in the US. Why? There appears to be a loss of confidence and trust in institutions, and that trust is necessary to hold society together. People need to know that governments can really work for them to meet their very real needs, and trust them to make their own choices in order for people to trust their governments in return. As long as trust continues to erode instead of grow, the social contract itself is at risk of collapse. This isn’t just about money. This is about the success or failure of the institution of government itself. Fifth and also finally, I want to leave you with one more thing. [Money isn’t real](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s a tool we created. Tools are meant to serve us, not limit us. There is no limit to the amount of money humans can create. There are however limits to what we can accomplish based on time, resources, people, technology, knowledge, and will. And it’s that last one that seems to be the most scarce of all. No country has adopted UBI yet because of any other real reason but a lack of will. It’s a choice to keep a minimum amount of money from people’s hands. It’s a choice based on all kinds of long-term societal hangups like distrust of others, fear, racism, and the desire for power and control over others. At its heart, UBI is about freedom, power, and trust. As long as people lack what they need to live, and must do what others tell them to in order to survive, that is a lack of power and freedom. And as long as we are afraid of granting each other the power to truly set our own destinies by way of our own free choices, we have a civilization built on distrust. I don’t think that kind of civilization is going to make it. We are all interdependent. We all need each other, and we should start treating each other that way, by trusting each other, without conditions, with what we all need to live. **We are all equally worthy of existing. That’s unconditional basic income.** ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/6d5c0304-b8f6-4404-8037-ec4cb09253bf/20.png) --- ###### Think people with UBI will stop working or that it will lead to inflation? [Here's a list of answers to those questions and more.](https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq) ![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png) Did you enjoy this article? **Please subscribe to my blog** (*it's free!*) and also consider making a small [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my ongoing UBI advocacy work. You can also [**buy my book**](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) to learn more about just how affordable and necessary UBI is. --- ***Special thanks to: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Floyd Marinescu, Adam Parsons, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, Jeff, David Ruark, Larry Cohen, Jeff Lu, Karla Yatckoske, Whistler, Christine Spencer, Patrick Brown, Kerry Bosworth, Jay & Christina, Xiaohu Xie, Laurel Gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Michael Tinker, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, Joanna Zarach, Justin Walsh, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, John Steinberger, Devon Kim, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, LT, Myles McLane, Toby Green, Jess Allen, Jack Canty, rachel perkins, Max Henrion, Elizabeth Corker, Reid Rusonik, Gray Scott, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Michael Honey, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Chris Rauchle, Arjun , chris heinz, Herb, Jodi Sarda, Sharon Woodhouse, Rosa Tran, Deanna McHugh, miki, Ken Warner, bradzone, Lee Lor, Senang Diri, Akber Khan, Kurt Bunker, Paige Havener, Yang Deng, Elliot Lee, Yan Xie, Ben Stephens, Iggy C, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, AYFAQ.com , Phuong Truong, Tim , Warren J Polk, Timothy P O'Connor, Stephen Starkey, Oliver Bestwalter, Kev Roberts, Walter Schaerer, Brian Peiris, Loren Sickles, anti666, Eric Skiff, Elizabeth Balcar, Thomas Welsh, Kai Wong, Kirk Israel, Bill Teng, Laura Ashby, and all my other funders for their support.*** ### Would you like to [see your name listed here](https://www.patreon.com/join/scottsantens/checkout?rid=120769&ref=scottsantens.com) too? ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner).jpg) ###### ### The Rise of Omicron is Grounds for Extending the Monthly Child Tax Credit URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-rise-of-omicron-is-grounds-for-extending-the-monthly-child-tax-credit-ctc/ Last updated: 2023-02-07T21:32:08.000Z ## The end of CTC payments will also mean the end of employment for some parents, right when times are most difficult due to an Omicron wave. #### Omicron is Likely the Fastest-Spreading Virus Known to Humankind Omicron is spreading like wildfire across the country, with a doubling rate of about two days, but there’s also a giant question mark attached to this new variant that is now already even more dominant than the Delta variant. Omicron does appear to be a milder strain, but could hospitals still become overwhelmed based on sheer numbers of people being infected effectively all at once? What will local responses look like across the country? For parents, how will Omicron impact their kids and their schooling? We simply have more questions than answers right now. That state of unknowing is itself a big problem that requires big solutions. The enhanced child tax credit is a big part of that big solution because of its infinite flexibility as cash, and the monthly security it has been providing. In short, the CTC is just too important to stop during a pandemic, especially during another wave right when it’s needed most. With what could be its final payment having already been sent to parents on December 15, the CTC has been providing dependable cash on a monthly basis for six months now. The bulk of this cash has been spent on basic needs like food and housing, but it’s not just about what it buys. It’s about what it enables by way of what it buys. For many, what it has enabled is employment by affording childcare. For others, it has enabled saving money currently being spent on child care by empowering parents to stay home for their kids. It’s this flexibility that makes it more important than ever right now, on the precipice of its expiration, as Omicron creates a state of unknowing that requires maximum flexibility. With Omicron being as contagious as it is, many people are going to test positive and need to quarantine, especially where mandates require it. For parents, that can mean a loss of income as they are forced to miss days at their job if they can’t work from home. Entire businesses may even need to temporarily close, which would negatively impact those not testing positive too. The CTC payments help afford that loss of income from adults needing to quarantine. Not all schools are going to stop providing in-person learning and switch to at-home learning as a result of an Omicron wave, but some will. Some already are. The parents of those kids need to be able to be there at home for their kids, which for some will necessitate a loss of income. The CTC payments help afford that loss of income due to children needing to quarantine. As young kids are forced to go back to remote learning at home, that can require parents to need to buy things they wouldn’t have otherwise needed to buy, like a new tablet or a replacement laptop when one breaks, or lunches that would otherwise have been free at school. One of the biggest uses of the monthly CTC has already been school supplies. The CTC payments help afford these additional costs. #### Schools Are Again Going Virtual The US is also already seeing a [30% increase](https://web.archive.org/web/20221224230834/https://news.yahoo.com/child-covid-hospitalizations-30-omicron-142740225.html) in child Covid hospitalizations from one week ago. If the number of kids hospitalized due to Covid continues to increase due to low vaccination rates among kids, especially those under age 5 who aren’t yet able to be vaccinated, parents without health insurance will be hit with unexpected medical bills too. The CTC payments help soften the blow of uninsured/underinsured medical bills. As family incomes take a hit from the rippling effects of an Omicron surge, some teens will feel it necessary to drop out of school to find employment to help their families. This has already been happening. Nikki Wall is a mom in Arizona who has experienced this herself and wrote about it in a recent [op-ed](https://web.archive.org/web/20221224230834/https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2021/12/01/child-tax-credit-lifeline-us-minimum-wage-workers/8738358002/): > *“My 16-year-old daughter couldn’t cope with the change to remote learning and fell too far behind. She dropped out and started working as a line cook making minimum wage. Although I didn’t ask her to, she’s helping me cover the rent while making some money of her own. But I’m hoping she goes back to school and gets her diploma: Kids shouldn’t be helping their parents pay the bills.”* > > Nikki Wall, Mother from Arizona The CTC payments help keep kids in school by better enabling parents to afford the needs of their families without their kids needing to contribute themselves to family income #### The CTC is an Employment-Enabling Investment Kids also aren’t the only students. [26% of all undergrads in the US are parents](https://web.archive.org/web/20221224230834/https://www.niskanencenter.org/five-reasons-the-child-tax-credit-shouldnt-have-a-work-requirement/). So what happens when the schools that functioned as child care to enable these parents to go to college switch to remote learning? For some parents, it will mean needing to drop out to focus on their kids unless they can afford help. The CTC payments help parents afford to stay in college. Child care options also tend to be daycare, not night care. Parents with evening-hour jobs instead of day jobs find it that much more difficult to afford the care for their kids that makes their employment possible. The CTC payments help parents afford to stay employed in the evenings. As businesses close due to the sheer volume of people testing positive for Omicron, not only will that reduce incomes, but it can also produce more upward pressure on inflation as the supply of goods and services is further reduced. The CTC payments help shield families from the higher costs of higher inflation. No one knows what prices will be impacted the most if Omicron further disrupts the supply chain. One month it could be a spike in the price of lumber, the next it can be a spike in meat prices. Targeted programs like SNAP can help, but they exclude parents “too rich” to receive them, and because cash can be spent on anything, where vouchers may not help at all, cash can save the day. The CTC payments help parents adapt in a flexible way month by month. Parents have also made long-term decisions based on believing the monthly child tax credit payments wouldn’t end. When those purchases are what enable their employment, like for example after getting a loan for a vehicle, the end of the CTC payments will also mean the end of employment for some of these parents, right when times are most difficult due to an Omicron wave. The CTC payments help parents to continue to afford their employment-enabling investments. #### The Child Tax Credit Helps Expand Families The decision to have another child is also another long-term decision some parents have already made thanks to the monthly CTC making a new child more affordable. At a time when [more adults than ever in America’s history are not having kids](https://web.archive.org/web/20221224230834/https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/national-international/i-just-dont-want-to-more-americans-report-not-wanting-to-have-children-ever/2740266/), making kids more affordable is literally an investment in the future of an America that has already lost over 800,000 Americans. The CTC is expected to return $8 for every $1 invested in American families. That’s an incredible return on investment thanks to reducing the $1 trillion a year cost of child poverty that the $110 billion CTC enhancement has dramatically dropped, and thanks to parents spending their monthly checks as customers of their local small businesses. [Goldman Sachs](https://web.archive.org/web/20221224230834/https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/19/economy/goldman-sachs-joe-manchin-build-back-better/index.html) has already downgraded what it expected GDP to look like in 2022 based on the potential for the CTC to not be renewed as is. The enhanced CTC is a keystone element to have in place throughout all of 2022\. By putting money into the hands of parents with the trust that they will spend it better than anyone else ever could, it will grow the economy and will help insulate American families from the potential economic impacts of yet another Covid wave. #### Parents Need the Freedom and Flexibility that the CTC Provides By trusting parents to do what’s best for their families with the ultimate flexibility of cash, the monthly CTC will continue helping some parents remain employed where they otherwise would have to quit while helping other parents afford to stay home, reduce their household expenses, and focus on their kids. It will continue helping kids do their best while learning in schools and at home. It will continue helping student-parents remain invested in their futures. It will continue helping families afford [the higher costs of inflation](https://web.archive.org/web/20221224230834/https://humanityforward.com/2021/11/understanding-pandemic-inflation-how-to-best-reduce-and-alleviate-it/) until the pandemic is finally over and global supply chains are no longer pandemic-constrained. It will continue helping families afford emergency expenses in an ongoing time of emergencies large and small. The monthly CTC will continue doing all of these incredibly important things for American families, but only if we as a country make sure it does continue. Now is **not** the time to let the monthly CTC expire. Bills are every month. Emergencies can happen at any time. The costs of employment never stop. The prices of basic needs like food and fuel are still inflated. Now is the time to extend the monthly CTC. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Podcast Episode: Vision and Foundations for a Better Society URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/podcast-episode-vision-and-foundations-for-a-better-society/ Last updated: 2022-02-19T19:50:51.000Z From 2019 to 2021, I took part in a convening on automation, opportunity, and belonging to visualize the future and how to get to a better one among the infinitely possible versions of it. Together we crafted over multiple iterations a vision document of the kind of society we could be in 2040, and the foundations we would need to build together as a society to achieve it and the updated social contract it will require. At the end of our convening, we all signed on to the vision document we had together created. What I read in this episode of my podcast is the text of that document. You can also read it yourself at [socialcontract.fundforhumanity.org](http://socialcontract.fundforhumanity.org/?ref=scottsantens.com). My thanks to all of my fellow participants whose names and bios you can find on the website along with the text of our document, and special thanks to long-time patron Gisele Huff for organizing and funding this convening through the Gerald Huff Fund for Humanity. Although the final report was published back in September, I'm hoping that an audio version of it will help it find some new people to share it onward. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Are you glad you found this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### My New (And First) Book: Let There Be Money URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/let-there-be-money-book-understanding-modern-monetary-theory-universal-basic-income-mmt-ubi-unconditional/ Last updated: 2022-02-19T07:00:28.000Z ## Now available in paperback and Kindle For those who have read [my long essay about UBI and MMT](https://vocal.media/theSwamp/why-we-need-modern-monetary-theory-mmt-and-why-it-needs-universal-basic-income-ubi?ref=scottsantens.com) (or [listened to me narrate it](https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/Why-We-Need-Modern-Monetary-Theory-MMT-and-Why-It-Needs-Universal-Basic-Income-UBI-e175t4m?ref=scottsantens.com)) in its entirety, you know it was long. At near 14,000 words, it takes at least an hour for most readers from start to finish, and as a result, fewer than 2,000 people have read it all the way through according to its stats on Vocal. It seems to just be too long to be read as an essay online. Because it appears to potentially exist in the wrong medium, I’ve taken the time to self-publish it as a book, which is a first for me. As a book, I’ve titled it **Let There Be Money**, and it’s now available for purchase [on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle e-book](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) where I hope it will find more readers. If you’re one of the ones who’s already read it online, it would be really helpful if you rated it and gave it a short review. The testimonials on Twitter have been amazing, and I’d love to see them as reviews on Amazon too. In fact, here are some of my favorites, and thank you so much to everyone who wrote them. ### What Readers Are Saying: > “Like Edgar Mitchell, I want to grab a politician by the scruff, drag them to this article, and say ‘Read this, you son of a bitch.’ An absolute must read.” -@danielford77 > “This is probably my favorite Scott Santens piece to date. In addition to emphasizing the shift from money-based to resource-based thinking, I found the reference to evidence-based policy-making as a condition for MMT to be very refreshing.” -@Kenji\_Hayakawa > “I love the way Scott Santens always connects all the dots, sees the bigger picture, and communicates it in a way anyone can understand. A clear argument for how to move towards an economics that stops harming us and starts healing us.” -@fritterskitter > “Bravo Scott Santens! This is a masterpiece. Tremendously effective analogy. A wonderfully convincing introduction to MMT. MMT+UBI FTW!“ -@msimoens > “This completely changed my mindset, Scott. Thank you so much for researching and writing this. Shifting to a human-centered economy will definitely take time but I am inspired and motivated to work towards achieving it. I will definitely share this with my friends.” -@evan41223 > “This is great. One of the clearest explanations of Modern Monetary Theory. And makes a good case for Universal Basic Income. Let’s do it!” -@Kenmarc\_levy > “I think this remarkable piece of work is a strong response on the issue of inflation (caveat: it’s necessarily but bloody long. I need to finish reading it myself and then re-read a few times to make sure I actually understand all of it!).” -@aranjones > “An extremely well written and well articulated piece for the econ nerds who are wrapped up in the debate and misconceptions about MMT Pro-UBI and Anti-UBI arguments.” -@JohnHuynhNOLA > “Glad I saved this rather long read for when I had the time to digest (and probably not even entirely at that). A comprehensive examination of MMT & UBI, and how these could be optimised for maximum societal benefit by Scott Santens.” -@Mathew\_Farmakis ### Getting the Word Out Please feel free to share whichever version seems to make the most sense in your conversations with others online and offline. In many cases, it will make more sense to talk about the book or share/gift a physical copy of the book. In other cases, it may make more sense to share a link to the article or the podcast version. I don’t really have a personal preference. I just want as many people as possible to download it into their minds to accelerate the adoption of UBI that’s implemented in the best way possible with optimal taxation. Also, here’s a banner you can share and add to your profiles for anyone who would like to help get the word out about the book. And if you want to make your own images to share with your favorite quotes, please do, and thank you for your help! [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner).jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Enjoy my work? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. ### Understanding Pandemic Inflation: How to Best Reduce and Alleviate It URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/understanding-pandemic-inflation-how-to-best-reduce-and-alleviate-it/ Last updated: 2023-02-07T21:30:04.000Z ## It would be a mistake to misdiagnose our inflation as mostly a demand problem instead of mostly a supply problem. ### Inflation has become the scariest monster of 2021. That’s pretty amazing considering how a novel coronavirus has killed upwards of [20 million human beings](https://web.archive.org/web/20220625021514/https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates) since a pandemic started, including over 760,000 Americans. We need to step back and gain some perspective, and we need to honestly diagnose our problems if we are going to actually address them. First we need to better understand what is actually causing the higher prices we are seeing. Second, we need to use the right tools to reduce them in the short, medium, and long term. And third, we need policies like the child tax credit to protect low- and middle-income families against higher prices in the here and now. First off, we need to start with inflation itself. What is it? Inflation is a phenomenon that occurs when total spending in the economy outstrips the real capacity of the economy to meet demand with supply, resulting in rising prices. ### Determining Causes of 2021 Inflation There are two primary pathways for this to happen: either *supply falls*, so that demand exceeds supply, or *demand rises*, so that demand exceeds supply. It is generally believed by most economists that some amount of inflation is good, but too much is bad. The sweet spot is widely considered to be a 2 percent annual rate. When it comes to the inflation we’re seeing right now, we are inside a historically novel event in the history of the world, where a pandemic has occurred within the context of a heavily globalized supply chain, and the virus is taking years to relegate to something more like the seasonal flu. We were not ready for such a shock to the system. We did not have resilience built into the system. We were essentially sitting ducks, and we are now witnessing the results unfold as a massive supply shock echoes through global supply chains, causing inflation around the world as the ability to meet supply with demand all over the world has been temporarily reduced. One of the biggest drivers of the supply shock has been a practically overnight shift from a demand for [services to goods](https://web.archive.org/web/20220625021514/https://news.yahoo.com/month-inflation-does-not-crisis-105510925.html). As shutdowns rolled across the world, people stuck indoors were prevented from services and so logically turned to goods. People no longer working in offices needed computers for their homes. Kids needed laptops and tablets for distance learning. Families needed to do more cooking at home instead of eating out. People needed more cars as they moved away from cities and used less public transport. The pandemic caused a huge shift in what people felt made the most sense for them to spend their money on. This huge shift in demand also took place within a context of something called [“just in time” manufacturing](https://web.archive.org/web/20220625021514/https://www.marketplace.org/2020/02/27/justintime-manufacturing-model-challenged-coronavirus/), where companies that used to have buffer stock on hand to handle fluctuations in demand decided it was more efficient to stop doing that. So when the global economy was stopped and restarted, it was that much more difficult for manufacturers to meet pent up demand. ![Auto manufacturers struggle to meet demand](https://web.archive.org/web/20220625021514im_/https://humanityforward.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/shutterstock_533865172-1024x678.jpg) Auto manufacturers continue to struggle meeting demand after the pandemic led many to put a pause on orders of computer chips. One of the biggest mistakes by any business sector in the pandemic occurred when automotive manufacturers decided to cancel their orders for microchips. Instead of banking on people still wanting cars, they bet that people would want fewer cars. The reverse happened. People wanted more cars, but it was too late. The [chip manufacturers had retooled](https://web.archive.org/web/20220625021514/https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chip-shortage-car-prices-sky-high-through-2023/) to make chips for other goods, and cars were relegated to the back of the line. That’s why cars cost so much more right now. It wasn’t because of stimulus money causing people to want second and third vehicles. It was because of a very bad decision by an entire manufacturing sector that meant there just weren’t enough cars for everyone who newly needed one and won’t be for awhile. Gasoline prices are contributing a lot to the inflation being observed right now too, and that’s not because people with more money are wanting to drive around more. It’s because gasoline production was curtailed in 2020 and it’s not just something that can be switched back on like a light switch, [nor do stockholders in US oil companies want to make new investments](https://web.archive.org/web/20220625021514/https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/us-oil-companies-are-in-no-rush-to-solve-biden-s-gas-price-problem/ar-AAQxzMg) over dividends and stock buybacks. Additionally, Saudi Arabia has decided to turn OPEC’s oil spigot back up very slowly instead of just returning to the amount it was producing pre-pandemic in the belief that [early next year there will be a surplus of oil](https://web.archive.org/web/20220625021514/https://www.worldoil.com/news/2021/11/15/saudis-uae-suggest-opec-will-resist-biden-s-pleas-for-more-oil). The combined result is higher prices at the pump, for now. Rents are up right now too, which is again not the result of everyone having more money to spend on rent, but instead the result of Covid. First of all, the construction of new housing was dramatically curtailed by the pandemic, meaning there’s just less new housing available than there otherwise would be. Many people also up and moved, and whenever that happens, landlords are free to raise the rent for those who end up replacing their previous tenants. Additionally, [the eviction moratorium and its end](https://web.archive.org/web/20220625021514/https://humanityforward.com/2021/08/the-eviction-moratorium-was-never-the-answer-cash-is/) meant that many landlords were both free to raise their rents, and also in the position of wanting to catch up on lost rent. The combination of everything spells higher rents, to which the solution should be building a lot more affordable housing and enacting the policies to help achieve that like [zoning reform](https://web.archive.org/web/20220625021514/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Flsg%5FmzG-M). ### Global Supply Crisis Still Unresolved Meanwhile, [the global shipping of goods is a complete mess](https://web.archive.org/web/20220625021514/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7jSsyQKIfE). Empty shipping containers are piled up at US ports. Ships full of containers are piled up outside of ports waiting for a space to open up to unload. Empty ships are leaving without being loaded with empty containers. Full containers are piled up at storage facilities waiting to be picked up by truck. Trucks are waiting for loads and also for trailers to carry the loads, which are stuck underneath empty containers. It is bottlenecks on top of bottlenecks on top of bottlenecks. Increasing interest rates will do nothing to actually fix any of this. Neither will not passing the Build Back Better framework. Supply chain problems require a mix of time and targeted policies designed to address each problem, both immediately and in the long-term to avoid these things from happening again. The worldwide inflation we are seeing right now is not the result of “too much money.” Therefore the solution is not to increase interest rates, or increase taxes, or reduce government spending. All of those would reduce employment and reduce people’s disposable incomes. That would reduce the amount of demand and thus *maybe* reduce some of the inflation, but not back to 2%, and the cost would be people losing their jobs and businesses closing. We are on the road to a fast recovery and a focus on reducing demand would be an off-ramp to a slower recovery. It is vital to not look at 2021’s inflation as requiring a demand reduction when it requires a supply increase, and time. With all of the above said, it must be emphasized repeatedly that so long as the pandemic is still going on, higher inflation will stick around too. They cannot be separated. And as long as higher inflation is sticking around, we need policies to protect people from it. That’s where the child tax credit comes in as one of our most important policies of all. The child tax credit was never meant as inflation protection, but that’s exactly what it’s doing right now. American families are facing higher prices, just like everyone else in the world, and without the CTC, they would be hurting much more than they are. But because the CTC is getting money to most parents every month, it is enabling families to afford higher prices. It’s enabling parents to afford the higher costs of food to feed their kids. It’s paying for the higher costs of gas [to get parents to and from work.](https://web.archive.org/web/20220625021514/https://humanityforward.com/2021/11/the-child-tax-credit-bipartisan-policy-that-works-to-build-both-families-and-the-economy/) It’s helping families afford the higher costs of rent. ### **The Child Tax Credit is functioning as a protective shield against inflation**. Granted, the Child Tax Credit is only helping households with kids, but it’s also showing how important it is to be able to count on at least some amount of economic security. It’s showing how a bare minimum amount of income every month is good for the economy as a whole. The CTC is enabling parents to afford the costs of child care so that they can become employed if unemployed, and remain employed if already employed. The Child Tax Credit is also enabling some parents to be stay-at-home parents ([mostly the parents of infants or toddlers](https://web.archive.org/web/20220625021514/https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/23/the-child-tax-credit-encourages-parents-to-work-study-finds.html)), which helps lower the costs of paid child care by reducing the total demand for it while also helping childless adults to find newly available jobs. Because the CTC also enables more parents to be customers, it’s also keeping small businesses going. It’s feeding local economies and becoming the paychecks of workers with and without kids. The more people employed doing productive work, the less inflationary pressure there will be. Because lack of affordable child care is preventing so much employment, besides the Child Tax Credit which helps with this, policies like child care and universal pre-K can also help reduce inflationary pressures for the same reasons. Above all though, the singular most important thing that must be accomplished to lower inflation is the end of the pandemic. The vaccines are the most effective way of accomplishing this feat, both within and outside the US. Because of our global supply chains, we will still be impacted by higher prices if the goods we need are being produced in and shipped by countries still suffering from Covid. ![Port of Los Angeles - tens of thousands of containers sitting idle](https://web.archive.org/web/20220625021514im_/https://humanityforward.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/shutterstock_2071267880-1024x667.jpg) The Port of Los Angeles is the largest in the United States, managing 20 percent of all cargo entering the United States. Port officials have said that while frustrated cargo has been reduced by 29 percent in recent days, there are still tens of thousands of containers sitting idle. Vaccines also can’t do it alone. Mask wearing helps too. New Covid pills will help. We can win this fight, but we have to keep our eye on the ball, and that ball is a coronavirus. Policies like the Child Tax Credit that are helping families in America get through this extremely difficult time should be supported by all sides as more important than ever during a time of higher inflation and an ongoing pandemic. [America did the right thing](https://web.archive.org/web/20220625021514/https://www.vox.com/22348364/united-states-stimulus-covid-coronavirus) by getting stimulus checks out and supporting American families. We need to stay the course. As the saying goes, “This too shall pass.” We will see the other side of this, but we need to stay strong and keep going forward. It would be a mistake to turn back now when we are so close to coming out the other side. It would be a mistake to misdiagnose our inflation as mostly a demand problem instead of mostly a supply problem. There are things we can do right now to help ease the bottlenecks in our supply chains, and there are also things we need to invest in to avoid these things from happening again. We need federal investment in fully automated ports and automated domestic manufacturing. We need to help truck drivers and also protect small business owners from price gouging. We need to get automatic stabilizers in place and start planning for the next recession. In short, this is not cause for panic. The enemy remains Covid, and we will beat it. Our supply chains will normalize eventually too. In the meantime, let’s make sure we protect each other, and sufficiently invest in our future, especially the future of our kids, by continuing to shield American families with monthly income. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### How Work Requirements are Actually Anti-Work and Why the Fully-Refundable Child Tax Credit is Pro-Work URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/how-work-requirements-are-actually-anti-work-and-why-the-fully-refundable-child-tax-credit-is-pro-work/ Last updated: 2023-02-07T21:26:04.000Z ## The fully-refundable CTC is a better way. It needs to stay. ### Won’t people stop working if they receive income independent of work? That’s always one of the first questions asked in regards to any government benefit that doesn’t require employment or job-seeking in order to receive it. The assumption that the answer to that question would be yes for most people is what led to the welfare reforms under President Bill Clinton that were centered around work requirements. Such assumptions have since been shown to be false, and even counterproductive. To the contrary, the lack of a work requirement actually better enables and rewards work. We can see evidence of this when President Clinton did his [welfare reform in 1996](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/clinton-touts-welfare-reform-heres-how-it-failed/?ref=scottsantens.com), ending Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and creating Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). As a result, the number of people on the welfare rolls went down, and the number of people in poverty went down too. This appeared on its face to be a big win, but the reduction in poverty was mostly due to the booming economy, and the fact that fewer people received welfare ended up being due to people no longer successfully qualifying for welfare, not less need of assistance. After the economic bubble burst in 2000, and burst again in 2008, welfare was no longer able to help people like it did prior to 1996\. A safety net built on employment requires employment, and so during the Great Recession, when the number of unemployed people doubled, the number of TANF recipients only went up by a mere 13%, and that was a national average. In some states, right when more people needed help, the number of people on welfare actually decreased. When jobs dry up, and with it people’s incomes, it becomes that much more difficult to create new jobs, because people lack the money to be customers. Spending power needs to be maintained to fuel jobs. Additionally, because employment-conditional benefits like TANF and unemployment insurance both disappear with employment, that’s a disincentive that essentially mandates that people either accept extremely low wages or extremely high taxes. ### From the Perspective of Working Americans If someone is receiving $7,000 a year in benefits, and they accept part-time employment that pays the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour such that they then earn $10,000 a year, the loss of the $7,000 would mean a real gain of only $3,000\. If they work 20 hours a week, then they aren’t actually working for $7.25 an hour, but effectively instead $3 an hour. Another way of looking at the loss of $7,000 in exchange for earning $10,000 is a $7,000 tax, which is a 70% tax rate. The current highest tax rate is 37%. So it’s not true to say that the rich pay the highest tax rates. It is in fact those receiving government assistance who accept employment to increase their incomes who end up paying the highest tax rates of all. Put yourself in the position of being offered a job that pays $3 an hour, or paying a tax rate of 70% if you accept the job. Are you lazy if you decline to accept that job? No. Why would anyone accept either of those choices unless they felt they had no other choice? That’s why work requirements really exist, not because people are lazy, but because people are rational. The beauty of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) is how it has transformed the above choices. Because the Child Tax Credit isn’t lost when parents accept any amount of employment that pays less than $75,000 a year as a single parent, then job offers become more rational to accept. With the CTC, the real wage is the actual wage, and the real tax rate is the normal tax rate. This reduces the entirely rational reasons to decline employment, and this behavior is already being observed. ![Child Tax Credit Data](https://humanityforward.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Capture.jpg) *Data: Humanity Forward, Washington University in St. Louis, Appalachian State University, UNC-Greensboro, Urban Institute. September 2021.* Humanity Forward recently partnered with a team of researchers from Washington University in St. Louis, Appalachian State University, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and the Urban Institute to survey a nationally representative group of 1,514 American parents to look at [the impact of the child tax credit on employment](https://humanityforward.com/hf-study?ref=scottsantens.com), and what was found is that the Child Tax Credit is indeed pro-work. 94% of parents said they intended to do just as much paid work or more, and the 6% who said they intended to do less work were mostly parents of newborns and those seeking to educate themselves, both of which are forms of unpaid work, and both of which are investments in the future. Additionally, 21% of parents said they either owned a small business or intended to launch one soon, so the CTC doesn’t only not reduce the amount of work being done, but also assists in helping people create and support their own jobs. And that’s true on two fronts. Besides supporting entrepreneurs directly, it also boosts the spending power of parents, creating more customers, which indirectly further boosts small businesses and everyone they employ. A [report](https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Measuring-the-Child-Tax-Credits-Economic-and-Community-Impact.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) from the Niskanen Center estimates that the additional spending from the Child Tax Credit will support the creation of over half a million full-time equivalent jobs, and disproportionately boost small town rural economies across the country. This is what happens when you directly boost the income of the poorest 20% of families by an average of 37.4% as the CTC is doing. Consumers with money to spend are the true job creators. It’s also vital to understand that there are costs associated with employment, especially for parents. If one parent in a two-parent household is offered a job, and that job pays less than the costs of the child care that would be required as a result, it does not make financial sense to take that job, because the household would see reduced overall income after expenses. On the flip side, someone whose kids are in child care while they’re at their place of employment could decide to increase their household income and the happiness of their kids by doing that work at home themselves, which would also open up a position for someone unemployed without kids. There are also additional costs like transportation, clothing, prepared meals, and many more that go along with working outside the home. Working is not free. Bootstraps require boots. The beauty of the Child Tax Credit is that it recognizes all of this and helps make employment make more sense while also simultaneously making care work at home make more sense too. By being agnostic to work, the CTC doesn’t punish people for choosing paid or unpaid work, and instead supports all forms of work. It provides parents the freedom of choice to self-determine what’s most important for their families. Be it spending on basic needs like food and housing, or saving for emergencies, or growing a college fund, or investing in stocks or crypto for their kids’ futures, or covering school and after-school expenses, or paying for child care, or buying presents, or affording anything else otherwise unaffordable without it, the child tax credit is an investment in the future of America through the expansion of financial freedom. ### Common Objections to the Child Tax Credit To anyone who claims the Child Tax Credit is anti-work or too expensive, I urge you to acknowledge how truly anti-work it is to tie benefits to low-wage employment, and how expensive it is to turn down an investment with an [800% return](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5743308460b5e922a25a6dc7/t/61081baa32c9d257a80438b2/1627921323005/Child-Allowance-CBA-Brief-CPSP-August-2021.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Would you refuse to pay $100 to buy $800? I also urge everyone to look at the accumulated evidence from all over the world. A 2020 peer-reviewed [meta-analysis of 38 studies of cash transfers](https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9459?ref=scottsantens.com) that lacked a work requirement did not find any evidence of a significant reduction in employment. Instead, they found evidence that “labor supply *increases* globally among adults, men and women, young and old.” The only decreases in employment they found were “children, the elderly, the sick, those with disabilities, women with young children to look after, or young people who continued studying.” The results of Humanity Forward’s survey of Child Tax Credit recipients therefore reflects what we actually already know about unconditional cash programs. We have to start thinking more about our future, and when our concern is work, we have to also consider the work our kids will do years from now. The CTC does not only assist parents right now. It also assists kids with the work they will eventually do as adults. In [a letter to Congress](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ecd75a3c406d1318b20454d/t/6148f183c62fb147d0d25138/1632170373799/Economist+CTC+Letter+9-14-21+430pm.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) signed recently by over 460 economists in support of permanent Child Tax Credit expansion, they wrote: > *“Expanding the CTC would yield a long-term fiscal payoff. Because reducing child poverty has a positive effect on earnings in adulthood, expanding the CTC would bring in more tax revenue down the road. By improving low-income families’ health, it would reduce government medical expenditures for this group. Once the full effects of the CTC expansion are accounted for, the net cost to taxpayers of the expansion has been estimated to be as little as approximately 16 cents for every $1 of new benefits.”* The CTC is a great deal. We have to start thinking more in terms of long term investments in a wider definition of work, the real costs of employment, and how counterproductive it actually is to tie benefits to employment and penalize low-paid and unpaid work by doing so. The fully-refundable Child Tax Credit is a better way. It needs to stay. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Proof of Humanity and the Universal Basic Income Coin URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/proof-of-humanity-and-the-universal-basic-income-ubi-coin-crypto/ Last updated: 2022-02-10T05:44:32.000Z On March 10, 2021, [Proof of Humanity’s UBI coin](https://blog.kleros.io/introducing-ubi-universal-basic-income-for-humans/?ref=scottsantens.com) went live on the Ethereum Mainnet. For anyone who doesn’t know what that sentence means, it means that a cryptocurrency project was launched using the most popular smart contract blockchain in the world, with the goal of eventually providing a [basic income](https://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq?ref=scottsantens.com) to every living human being. In this post, I’ll explain what it is, how it works, how to start receiving it, why it’s Vitalik Buterin approved, and how to help the project grow and succeed in its goal of eventually providing a global unconditional basic income floor. ### How $UBI Works Here’s how it works: Humans who have been verified as being real, begin to receive basic income at a rate of **1 UBI coin per hour**. It’s actually streamed at a constant rate, so every few seconds, all recipients get a tiny bit more. Every day, that’s 24 UBI coins. Every week, that’s 168 UBI coins. Every 30 days, that’s 720 UBI coins. Every year, that’s 8,760 UBI coins. The price of each coin depends on what it’s trading at, but if the price happens to be $0.12 which it is as I write this [according to CoinMarketCap](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com), that translates to $2.88/day, $20.16/week, $86.40/month, and $1,051/year in USD. If you live in a place like the EU or US, that amount can be helpful, but if you live in a place like Kenya or Uganda, that amount can be nothing short of life-changing. The UBI coins ($UBI) that are streamed to recipients are all newly minted money out of nothing using the Ethereum blockchain. (For anyone concerned about energy consumption, Ethereum is expected to soon use [33,000 times less energy per transaction than Bitcoin](https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/05/18/country-power-no-more/?ref=scottsantens.com) with its transition from [proof-of-work to proof-of-stake](https://www.exodus.com/blog/proof-of-work-vs-proof-of-stake/?ref=scottsantens.com)). The value of the currency is determined by exchanges like Uniswap, where people are able to trade other currencies for UBI. Uniswap is a decentralized exchange that UBI was launched on that utilizes something called liquidity pools (LP), which are currency pairs that people have contributed to. By adding a pair of cryptocurrencies to an LP, those who fill the pools are able to earn a percentage of the revenue from exchanges, and those who want to exchange one currency for another are able to peer-to-peer. In the crypto world, this is part of the decentralized finance (or DeFi) revolution that is empowering everyday people over traditional financial service providers. There are two primary pools for $UBI on Uniswap, an ETH-UBI pair ([v2](https://app.uniswap.org/?ref=scottsantens.com#/add/v2/0xdd1ad9a21ce722c151a836373babe42c868ce9a4/ETH)/[v3](https://app.uniswap.org/?ref=scottsantens.com#/add/ETH/0xdd1ad9a21ce722c151a836373babe42c868ce9a4/10000)) and a DAI-UBI pair ([v2](https://app.uniswap.org/?ref=scottsantens.com#/add/v2/0xdd1ad9a21ce722c151a836373babe42c868ce9a4/0x6B175474E89094C44Da98b954EedeAC495271d0F)/v3). Let’s say you want to add liquidity to the ETH-UBI pool. You could add say $1,000 worth of Ether and $1,000 worth of $UBI. If someone than traded some ETH for $UBI, the price of $UBI would go up in relation to ETH, and you would get a percentage of the fee applied to the trade by Uniswap. Besides the incentive provided by getting a share of the trading fees, there’s an additional incentive provided by Proof of Humanity via what’s called liquidity pool mining, where you have the option of staking the [ETH-UBI](https://pools.proofofhumanity.id/?ref=scottsantens.com#/0xDd1Ad9A21Ce722C151A836373baBe42c868cE9a4/0x6B175474E89094C44Da98b954EedeAC495271d0F) or [DAI-UBI](https://pools.proofofhumanity.id/?ref=scottsantens.com#/0xDd1Ad9A21Ce722C151A836373baBe42c868cE9a4/0x6B175474E89094C44Da98b954EedeAC495271d0F) tokens you get from adding liquidity to either pool, to obtain $UBI as interest. As I write this, the APR for LP mining $UBI is 66% for the ETH pool and 73% for the DAI pool (DAI is a stablecoin pegged to USD where 1 DAI is 1 USD). There is of course risk involved in adding liquidity and/or LP mining. When you add a liquidity pair, you won’t get the exact same ratio back when you withdraw your liquidity. If one half of the pair decreases in value quite a bit compared to the other, you’ll get more of that back and less of the other. Over time, what’s referred to as “impermanent loss” can mean getting back less than you put in. It’s also possible that the USD value of what you deposited goes down, and the value of $UBI itself goes down, so it’s possible to expect a 70% interest rate that actually ends up being a negative 1000% interest rate from devaluation. Of course, the opposite can also be true, where if both parts of the pair go up in value, it can mean a lot larger return than 70%. It could be a 1000% return or more. As the saying goes, buyer beware. Cryptocurrency is highly volatile. Despite the volatility of cryptocurrencies like $UBI though, it does have actual value, and does provide recipients with the ability of converting it into a more widely used cryptocurrency that can then be converted into whatever someone's local currency may be. There are a couple extra steps involved compared to UBI provided in fiat itself though, but by using something like [Coinbase](https://www.coinbase.com/join/2noame?ref=scottsantens.com) for example, it’s possible for someone in the US to trade their $UBI for USDC (a stablecoin pegged to USD) on Uniswap, then send their USDC to their account on Coinbase, and then either sell their USDC for USD to then withdraw to their bank account, or if they have a Coinbase debit card, use their USDC just like they would money from a standard bank account. Because of this ability to exchange $UBI for most any fiat currency, it still qualifies as basic income for the same reason receiving UBI in Canadian currency while living in America would still be considered basic income despite the need to convert it first to use it. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) --- ### How to Get $UBI So now that you have a basic understanding of how $UBI has actual market value, how do you get it? You need to go through the Proof of Humanity verification process to prove proof-of-uniqueness. First, you’re going to need an Ethereum wallet like Metamask, and you’re going to need at least 0.14 ETH in it (about $588 with ETH currently at $4,200). There also is an option to [crowdfund your deposit](https://t.me/joinchat/OQH0QZHmEr5hZTJh?ref=scottsantens.com) if you don't have the necessary ETH. Next, you’re going to need to connect your wallet to [the Proof of Humanity app](https://app.proofofhumanity.id/?ref=scottsantens.com), and fill out the application with your name, short bio, a photo of your face, and a short video of you holding up your ETH address while saying that you are a unique human not already registered in the registry. Submitting the application requires a refundable deposit of 0.128 ETH and an additional fee to execute the smart contract itself which varies depending on gas prices, but will likely be at least an additional 0.01 ETH. The point of the deposit is two-fold. First, the potential of losing it is meant to deter people from trying to cheat the system by setting up multiple accounts. Second, the deposit is used as an incentive for people to challenge applications. If someone challenges your application and they win in the [Kleros court](https://court.kleros.io/?ref=scottsantens.com), you will lose your deposit, and they will get it (plus the jurors who voted against you will get some of it too). *Side note: I’m actually learning more about this process personally as I write this, because my renewal application has been challenged by someone seeking my deposit. If you’re curious about how the court system works, [here’s an intro](https://blog.kleros.io/the-kleros-juror-starter-kit/?ref=scottsantens.com), and if you want to avoid it, follow the application instructions to the letter.* Once your application has been submitted, you will need to be vouched for as real by someone who has already been verified. Vouchers are only supposed to vouch for people they know for certain are real, so you’ll need to ask someone you know, or join a Zoom meetup intended to get people verified. Once you have been vouched for, and your application has not been challenged by anyone, then after a few days, your deposit will be returned to you, and you will be verified and begin receiving a constant stream of $UBI. This stream will continue for one year, at which point you will need to go through the entire process again (except for needing a voucher). At least, that’s true as of right now. It seems likely the renewal process will see further improvements as PoH scales. Since launch, it’s already been changed from expiring every six months to expiring every year. ### How to Help $UBI Grow Now that you know what $UBI is and how you can start receiving it, you may be wondering what you can do to get involved in the community and how to help improve the way everything works and the value of $UBI. Here are some resources for you: You can participate in the [Proof of Humanity forum](https://gov.proofofhumanity.id/?ref=scottsantens.com) to interact with the community. Discuss ways to improve Proof of Humanity and $UBI. Learn about and even propose things to vote on to participate in the management of [the DAOs](https://ubi-alliance.medium.com/ubi-becomes-a-dao-7a1d6b090880?ref=scottsantens.com). The Tokenomics of $UBI is where a lot of ideas are needed. A big challenge that needs to be overcome is how to maintain and even grow the value of an inflationary currency. So far, a few options have been implemented, and more are being considered and developed all the time. Among the biggest recent projects implemented have been the [Yearn vaults](https://medium.com/yearn-state-of-the-vaults/the-vaults-at-yearn-9237905ffed3?ref=scottsantens.com). There are two Yearn vaults so far: a [UBI-DAI vault](https://democracy.earth/?ref=scottsantens.com#/vault/ubi-dai) and a [UBI-WETH vault](https://democracy.earth/?ref=scottsantens.com#/vault/ubi-weth). The vaults allow people to deposit their DAI or their Ether (wrapped) to earn interest over time. When someone withdraws their deposit from the vault, half of their accumulated interest goes to them, and the other half goes to buy and burn $UBI to reduce the supply to raise the price. The Ether vault actually just reached its capacity of 400 ETH, so as of right now, only DAI can be deposited, and BTC will be the next vault to be opened. For an ongoing list of other projects as they are developed, keep an eye on [Humanity Tools](https://humanity.tools/?ref=scottsantens.com) (one tool I find particularly useful personally is the [UBI farming calculator](https://vfat.tools/proofofhumanity/?ref=scottsantens.com)), and Proof of Humanity’s [Twitter feed](https://twitter.com/proofofhumanity?ref=scottsantens.com) and [Telegram channel](https://t.me/proofhumanity?ref=scottsantens.com). ### Vitalik Buterin's Support of $UBI If you’ve come this far in both finding this post and reading all the way to here, there’s a good possibility you know who Vitalik Buterin is, but if you don’t, he’s the founder of Ethereum, and he knows that one of the big long-term challenges is proof of uniqueness. A project that can solve that problem in the crypto world is extremely useful. He’s also very interested in [the ability of crypto to combat global poverty](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLsb7clrXMQ&ref=scottsantens.com), so Proof of Humanity and $UBI got onto his radar. In July 2021, he went through the verification process to become [a verified human](https://app.proofofhumanity.id/profile/0x1db3439a222c519ab44bb1144fc28167b4fa6ee6?ref=scottsantens.com), and in October 2021, he bought 50 ETH worth of $UBI (about $200,000) [and immediately burned it](https://cyburcoin.com/2021/10/vitalik-buterin-has-been-dumping-dog-coins-again/?ref=scottsantens.com) to reduce the overall supply by almost 10%. The result of Vitalik’s buy and burn in combination with his official stamp of approval of the project resulted in the price of $UBI skyrocketing from $0.04 to over $2\. Since then the price seems to have settled at a new equilibrium of around $0.12, but with the coin suddenly now on a lot more radars, the future of the project seems a lot brighter, especially in comparison to [shiny metal orbs](https://worldcoin.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) looking to scan the eyeballs of developing nation populations as a centralized Silicon Valley solution to the proof of uniqueness problem. If you’d like to learn more about PoH's $UBI, below is a talk given by its founder, [Santiago Siri](https://twitter.com/santisiri?ref=scottsantens.com) in July 2021\. And, if you do sign up to start receiving $UBI, besides hodling it, one of the things you can do with it to help support UBI in general would be to trade it for something like ETH or DAI and then [donate it to Humanity Forward](https://thegivingblock.com/donate/Humanity-Forward/?ref=scottsantens.com) to help get a permanent national UBI passed in the US. --- ###### Think people with UBI will stop working or that it will lead to inflation? [Here's a list of answers to those and other frequently asked questions.](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq) --- ![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png) Like my work? [**Please subscribe to my News Flash**](http://scottsantens.news/?ref=scottsantens.com) and also consider making a small [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily work in advocacy of UBI. You can also [**book some time to chat with me**](https://jemi.app/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) on Zoom if you have questions about UBI you'd like to ask me directly. --- ###### Interested in reading a book about basic income? Here's a [BIG list](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-big-library-books-about-basic-income-b9763071b987?ref=scottsantens.com). --- ###### Follow me: [Twitter](https://twitter.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) | [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/scottsantens) | [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-scott-santens-ubi-enterprise/id1443672122?ref=scottsantens.com) | [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/2aSkRUOjQFZzXfkZgkK0bM?ref=scottsantens.com) | [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/ScottSantens?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Forward Book and the Forward Party URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-forward-book-and-the-forward-party-andrew-yang-rcv-ubi-democracy-reform/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T22:51:15.000Z ### Forward is now in bookstores and the Forward Party has just launched! I read Andrew Yang’s new book[ *Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy*](https://amzn.to/3rBx97E?utm%5Fcampaign=Foreword%20to%20Civilization&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter) months ago, and have been anxiously awaiting its release to start talking about the big solutions he now intends to build a movement around, just as he did with universal basic income through his presidential campaign. First, I do suggest you just read the book, but if you don’t want to do that, I suggest at least listening to at least one of his[ recent](https://www.youtube.com/watch?utm%5Fcampaign=Foreword%20to%20Civilization&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter&v=VauKDN6vGD0)[ interviews](https://www.youtube.com/watch?utm%5Fcampaign=Foreword%20to%20Civilization&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter&v=KkfwNv-54v8) he’s done talking about the goal of his book. And no, it’s not a grift for that sweet sweet book sales money. It’s about convincing people of just how screwed up our system has become, and inspiring them to take action to change it, regardless of party affiliation, in ways that will actually work to reform our entire system so that it actually starts responding to our needs instead of tearing us apart. That’s the kind of thing that takes a book to lead up to. Here’s the deal: we are facing long-term structural problems full of misaligned incentives. It’s possible to predict with great accuracy which party is going to win most seats in Congress. We know this because of just how many seats are gerrymandered to win. We know that most incumbents are going to be re-elected despite voters pretty much loathing Congress, and we know that closed primaries lead to people in gerrymandered districts only fearing losing their primaries to people even more extreme than they are. We know that[ first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?utm%5Fcampaign=Foreword%20to%20Civilization&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter&v=s7tWHJfhiyo) leads to winners that lack majority support, and that third parties in the United States lack any real influence because people are afraid to vote for them out of fear of electing the candidates they most dislike as a consequence. We know those are some of our biggest problems. There are more that also include issues with our media ecosystem, but when we talk root problems, the roots are a system of representative democracy where representatives don’t actually respond to all their voters, and instead only respond to their campaign funders, lobbyists, the rich, and the most extreme people in their base who make sure to vote in primaries instead of just general elections. We also know there are solutions to these problems, and that these solutions already exist out there in the real world, demonstrating that they work. The two main changes to make as pitched by Yang in his book are open primaries and ranked-choice voting. [**Open primaries**](https://www.openprimaries.org/?utm%5Fcampaign=Foreword%20to%20Civilization&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter) make it so that all registered voters can vote in primary elections. Right now, in closed primary states, to vote in the Democratic primary, one must be registered as a Democrat. To vote in a Republican primary, one must be registered as a Republican. If someone doesn’t feel either party represents them, they are not allowed to vote, despite their taxes paying for the costs of the elections to be held. In open primary states, an independent voter can vote for a Democrat or a Republican. The difference between closed and open is the difference between a hyperpartisan extreme faction of a party choosing who everyone else gets to vote for in general elections, and a larger more representative less extreme percentage of the population choosing who the rest of the population gets to vote for. [**Ranked-choice voting**](https://www.fairvote.org/?utm%5Fcampaign=Foreword%20to%20Civilization&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter) enables people to vote for who they feel would best represent them, regardless of party. People can vote for third parties without any fear that it will help the candidate they most dislike get elected. If their favorite doesn’t get enough votes, their vote goes to their next favorite, and then their next favorite, until someone wins a majority of the vote. The difference between a winner winning with a majority of the vote instead of a plurality of the vote is huge, even if the candidate is the same person. If you’ve never watched it, I highly recommend watching Hasan Minhaj explain. One difference is that to increase one’s chances of winning, it makes sense to run a positive campaign on what you’re for instead of a negative campaign against your opponents, because of not wanting to piss off the voters who prefer your opponents, but might also rank you if they like you too. RCV also leads to[ greater diversity of representation](https://www.fairvote.org/report%5Frcv%5Fbenefits%5Fcandidates%5Fand%5Fvoters%5Fof%5Fcolor?utm%5Fcampaign=Foreword%20to%20Civilization&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter). | ![We're Doing Elections Wrong \| Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj | Netflix](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/LK23vCZciPJKE-c9usF73zm5SfoxFA09pYFX1BGhEny3CIL1nRONXIwKraiLUXOnUriWXgZwhEo7e2_SLJz02Ca2fcnrwBh9T643eRDI-0kD6KwQ2RhAJxK8hrDwTKAmduRUzQK2 "We're Doing Elections Wrong | Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj | Netflix")We're Doing Elections Wrong | Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj | Netflix | | -------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------- | ------------------------------------ | ----------------------------- | ------- | An example of a state with both open primaries *and* ranked-choice voting is Alaska. Alaskans regardless of party affiliation vote in the primary election. The top four candidates then go on to the general election where voters then rank their favorites to determine who ends up winning a majority. It is likely this election reform that made it possible for Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski in Alaska to feel she could vote to impeach Trump without losing her next election. Because she knew she was representing all of Alaska instead of just the loudest most extreme part of the population, she faced a different kind of choice than her many colleagues in closed-primary plurality-election states. These two changes are not the only changes we need to make, but they would go very far to greatly improve our democracy and to pull us back from our extremes. Gerrymandering is definitely another massive problem, although when ranked-choice voting is combined with multi-winner districts as proposed in[ the Fair Representation Act](https://www.fairvote.org/the%5Ffair%5Frepresentation%5Fact%5Fhh7w4yf4ag7qk9%5Ffvjtdfq?utm%5Fcampaign=Foreword%20to%20Civilization&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter), that can be solved with RCV too. The trillion dollar question is what’s the best way of winning these reforms? Andrew Yang’s solution is his founding of the[ Forward Party](https://www.forwardparty.com/?utm%5Fcampaign=Foreword%20to%20Civilization&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter). This new third party will be focused on winning these key reforms across the country at the state and local levels. By going the third party route, he hopes to reduce the possibility of these reforms being seen as partisan. A third party that manages to mobilize independents would also serve to apply more pressure for the main two parties to implement RCV so as to prevent the spoiler effect from potentially making them lose elections they otherwise would have won if RCV were in place. Haven’t third parties been tried over and over again? Yes, but a key difference here is being fully inclusive of all parties. People don’t need to register as a member of the Forward Party. They can be a Forward Democrat, or Forward Republican, or Forward Green, or Forward Libertarian, or Forward independent, etc. What matters most is support for the six core values of the party: **ranked-choice voting plus open primaries, universal basic income, human-centered capitalism, fact-based governance, effective and modern government, and grace and tolerance**. Candidates who adopt these values can be in any party, and voters who embrace these values will be encouraged to vote for those candidates, and to win the reforms necessary to enable those candidates to win and exist within a functioning government with better aligned incentives. I’m already seeing people freaking out about the possibility of a third party leading to Republicans winning even more races, and this raises two questions. Why aren’t any Democrats thinking that a strong independent party could actually benefit them by taking votes from centrist Republicans who may feel no longer at home in today’s Republican party? Also, if the spoiler effect is truly going to destroy the country, why isn’t the solution to immediately pass ranked-choice voting? Why is the standard solution to instead shit on all third parties and blame them for everything? Seems to me that **the blame for every election spoiled by a third party lies square at the feet of the two main parties who simply have chosen to maintain the spoiler effect**. Enough is enough. It’s time to end the spoiler effect so that third party candidates can actually win and also no longer lead to the worst candidates winning. And it’s time to open up all primaries so that we all have the opportunity to decide who are the best candidates to choose among in general elections. It’s also time to end gerrymandering, and time to automatically register everyone to vote, and time to reduce the influence of large donors, and time to limit the amount of time members of Congress can remain there. It’s time for so many things, because it’s past time to save our representative democracy. Everything depends on our ability to make government actually work for all of us instead of only some of us. Everything depends on our choosing that of all directions to go, the one that truly matters most to the future of our entire civilization, is FORWARD. --- *If this all sounds like something you can get behind, then check out the*[ *Forward Party website*](https://www.forwardparty.com/?utm%5Fcampaign=Foreword%20to%20Civilization&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)*, look over the entire platform as it exists so far, sign up for the mailing list, and even consider*[ *volunteering*](https://opossum-guava-2jfl.squarespace.com/volunteer?utm%5Fcampaign=Foreword%20to%20Civilization&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)*. Let’s save our democracy!* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Republican History of the Child Tax Credit and Why the GOP Should Proudly Embrace It URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-republican-history-of-the-child-tax-credit-ctc-and-why-the-gop-should-proudly-embrace-it/ Last updated: 2024-08-03T13:07:54.000Z ### From Reagan, to Bush, to the Contract with America, to George W. Bush, to Trump, the child tax credit is a Republican creation that the GOP should embrace and make permanent On July 15, the first monthly child tax credit (CTC) payments went out, and they’re already being considered as “[life-changing](https://basicincometoday.com/how-the-new-monthly-child-tax-credit-checks-are-already-changing-lives/?ref=scottsantens.com)” by the parents of the 88% of kids in America now receiving them every month through the end of the year. As [a previous blog of mine](https://humanityforward.com/blog/child-tax-credit-payment-will-likely-grow-the-economy?ref=scottsantens.com) explained, these payments won’t only help American families, but will also help many childless adults too by growing the economy and creating new employment opportunities. Small businesses in America will certainly appreciate the additional $4 billion a month injected into the hands of their customers. The conservative-leaning Niskanen Center estimates this additional consumer spending will create [500,000 jobs](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/expanded-child-tax-credit-provides-225557198.html?ref=scottsantens.com) and disproportionately benefit rural America. However, because all Republicans voted against the bill that contained the CTC expansion, Democrats are already shouting that fact from the rooftops and also already planning to leverage the success and popularity of the checks to help them win future elections. Republicans are now faced with a big decision: be against something that will likely be among the most popular policies ever by the end of the year, or embrace it as their own idea. I suggest the latter and the following is why. The story of how the CTC came to be goes all the way back to 1988 when George H. W. Bush was running to succeed Ronald Reagan. It was during that campaign that Bush proposed a tax credit of $1,000 ($2,350 in 2021 dollars) per child to help low income families afford child care in their own home or in licensed child care centers. **“Vice President Bush has proposed an innovative plan,” said Reagan of the CTC proposal, “one that would strengthen the family.”** Reagan liked how parents could use the money to enable and support unpaid child care, lauding how it would “permit thousands of mothers to choose to stay home with their children.” It was a truly pro-family plan, and one that Republicans began to consider as reflecting their support of family values. Unfortunately, it was ahead of its time. *Side note before continuing: Bush’s support went back even earlier. He had run for Senator* [*back in 1970*](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1235966383739019265?ref=scottsantens.com) *in support of* [*Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan*](https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/how-republican-president-richard) *which also would have provided cash per kid to American families. Bush’s CTC proposal may very well have even been an attempt at a backdoor approach to a guaranteed income for families.* In 1989, Democrats considered taking the new CTC idea and running with it as their own, but their arguing over whether the better approach was cash for parents to make their own decisions, or a services approach of funding child care providers, resulted in choosing neither. As described in the book “[Tyranny of Kindness](https://amzn.to/3kVoWKh?ref=scottsantens.com)” by Theresa Funiciello, “**many daycare groups opposed \[the CTC\] - they wanted all of whatever money was going to be passed around for child care to go to themselves**.” No compromise was possible and the bitter conflict among Democrats resulted in parents being left with neither a cash nor services approach to help them. In 1991, the [National Commission on Children](https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED336201&ref=scottsantens.com) then restarted the CTC debate after it recommended that a universal cash program for children of $1,000 per kid was key to reducing child poverty in America. In 1992, Bush again proposed getting cash to Americans, this time during his campaign for president against Bill Clinton, in the form of [a one-time stimulus check](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1235971150787772416?ref=scottsantens.com). Clinton on the other hand proposed an economic stimulus plan by way of federal spending on government contracts. It was a trickle-up versus top-down approach to economic stimulus where **the Republican position was getting cash directly into the hands of the American people, while the Democrat position was getting cash directly into the hands of government contractors**. Again, Bush was still ahead of his time, and stimulus checks would not be passed until the baton was passed to his son, who did finally do it - *twice* \- once in [2001](https://www.cnn.com/2001/US/07/20/tax.rebate/?ref=scottsantens.com) and again in [2008](https://www.vox.com/2014/5/28/5757764/george-w-bush-and-nancy-pelosi-teamed-up-to-stimulate-the-economy-and?ref=scottsantens.com). In 1994, support for a CTC had grown among Republicans to the point it was included as part of Newt Gingrich’s proposed Contract with America. **“We believe that parents ought to have the first claim on money to take care of their children rather than bureaucrats,” Gingrich would say as Speaker of the House in 1995.** In 1997, the CTC’s time had finally come. As part of the Republican Contract with America, it was passed into law within the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997\. Starting at $400 per kid in 1998, it grew to $500 per kid in 1999, and was then doubled by President George W. Bush to $1,000 per kid as a one-time stimulus, and also even allowed parents who didn’t owe any income taxes to receive the checks. The popularity of the $1,000 amount, although only meant to be one-time, led to an extension, and then permanence. Starting in 2004, it was officially and permanently a $1,000 CTC, and there it stayed with some minor adjustments, until Trump. In 2017, as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, largely due to Marco Rubio, the CTC was doubled again by a Republican president, this time by Donald Trump. Besides making the new amount $2,000, the refundable portion was lifted to $1,400, and many more American families were included by expanding the CTC beyond single parents earning $75,000 and couples earning $100,000 to single parents earning $200,000 and couples earning $400,000\. By making it more refundable, and making it more universal, Trump greatly improved the CTC. In 2021, the CTC has now been expanded again, this time by a Democrat in the White House, but only for six months. The new full amount of $3,000 for kids ages 6-17 and $3,600 for kids under 6 is now 100% refundable and available monthly for the first time. It's estimated that child poverty will drop by up to 40% as parents who were already getting the CTC get more of it, and parents who didn’t previously get the CTC finally qualify. It’s also already very popular with **82% of recipients wanting it to last beyond 2021,** [**including 76% of Republican**](https://www.magnifymoney.com/blog/news/child-tax-credit-survey/?ref=scottsantens.com)[s](https://www.magnifymoney.com/blog/news/child-tax-credit-survey/?ref=scottsantens.com). Democrats have put themselves in a very good position and are already [making strategic moves](https://www.thedailybeast.com/democrats-set-political-tripwire-for-2024-payments-to-parents?ref=scottsantens.com). Putting their money on CTC being even more popular than it already is after six months of receipt, they’re now pushing to extend the CTC until [at least 2024](https://news.yahoo.com/senate-democrats-weigh-extending-bidens-000219479.html?ref=scottsantens.com), where its election year expiration can be used as motivation to re-elect Democrats. Anti-CTC expansion Republicans seem likely to then face a huge backlash that could cost them greatly. **Being anti-CTC is a losing strategy, and also a reversal of the entire history of the CTC being created and advanced by Republicans**. The GOP should embrace it, remind voters of its GOP roots extending all the way back to Reagan, and propose to make it permanent immediately instead of letting it play a role in the 2024 election. As part of embracing a permanent monthly CTC, [as already proposed by Mitt Romney](https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/steve-chapman/ct-column-romney-child-allowance-poverty-chapman-20210205-iaodhphlqjcivafdxjcfjqatly-story.html?ref=scottsantens.com) in a revenue-neutral way, Republicans should rediscover Reagan’s support for the CTC as an enabler of child care in the home instead of a big government approach of government-funded child care outside the home. What better way of strengthening the nuclear family is there than enabling the freedom of stay-at-home parenting? Pro-life conservatives should focus on how extending the CTC to start during pregnancy as Romney already proposes, would do more to reduce abortions in America than any other policy. [**Over 70% of women seeking abortions blame financial reasons**](https://www.guttmacher.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/pubs/psrh/full/3711005.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)**, and about a quarter say they’re the *primary* reason for getting an abortion**. When Italy began its baby bonus, [abortions fell more than births rose](https://www.aei.org/articles/child-allowances-reduce-abortion/?ref=scottsantens.com). The Christian right should be all over the CTC. In fact religious groups like[ CatholicVote](https://catholicvote.org/romney-proposes-new-pro-family-relief-plan/?ref=scottsantens.com) already do support Romney’s proposal, as do taxpayer advocate organizations like the[ National Taxpayers Union](https://www.ntu.org/publications/detail/romney-child-tax-credit-plan-a-thoughtful-addition-to-covid-relief-talks?ref=scottsantens.com). Finally, Republicans should tout the pro-work incentives of the monthly CTC. Although it’s true that Biden’s CTC dropped the work requirement, [work requirements don’t actually work](https://www.ideas42.org/blog/work-requirements-dont-work/?ref=scottsantens.com), and **by flowing to parents regardless of employment status, parents are always better off employed with the CTC than unemployed**. And again, work in the home is work too. That work should be enabled and supported versus forcing parents to leave their kids in child care centers for the government to pay others to watch. Additionally, the evidence from basic income experiments is revealing that income that isn’t conditional on work actually helps connect more people to the labor market. In the Stockton pilot, **monthly cash recipients were** [**twice as likely to find full-time employment**](https://basicincometoday.com/stockton-california-gave-some-residents-500-a-month-for-two-years-after-a-year-the-group-wound-up-with-more-full-time-jobs-and-less-depression/?ref=scottsantens.com) **than non-recipients**. Whereas some conservatives currently claim it would be better to punish children for living in households with unemployed parents, that thinking just doesn’t seem to be in the actual interests of the actual kids forced to live in poverty regardless of whether their parents “deserve” poverty. It also doesn’t make any economic sense due to the [over $1 trillion per year cost of child poverty](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com). Spending $100 billion a year to annually spend $400 billion less on poverty is a pretty sweet deal. The truly conservative take on a monthly tax credit is that [it should be made even larger than Biden has proposed, and immediately permanent, in a revenue-neutral way](https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/The-Conservative-Case-for-a-Child-Allowance.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). **The CTC trusts parents as free individuals to make their own decisions with their own money**. It avoids a big government services-based approach. It supports and enables the important work of care in the home and even homeschooling. It conserves economic resources by reducing crime, improving health, and increasing the lifelong incomes of kids as adults. It grows the economy by supporting small businesses, and it rewards employment by boosting all employed parents instead of facing parents with the usual choice of benefits or employment as most welfare programs do. **A permanent expansion of the CTC is a permanent expansion of personal freedom** that further gets the government out of deciding which services are available to people and instead better enables individuals to decide for themselves how to best meet their own needs and the needs of their families. The Republican party has the opportunity to embrace the CTC, honestly claim it as a historically Republican policy, and make it permanent before the sixth check even goes out in December. Or they can fight against what will most likely become one of the most popular policies in American history and see how that goes. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### New on Vocal: Why We Need Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and Why It Needs Universal Basic Income (UBI) URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/new-on-vocal-why-we-need-modern-monetary-theory-mmt-and-why-it-needs-universal-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-21T19:18:01.000Z ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/59f672c0-7aa2-4c2a-86c3-3f16831deae5/our-20actual-20limits-20720.png) It's published!!! At just shy of 14,000 words, my latest article is the closest thing to writing a book that I've done so far. Despite its length, it's still meant to be readable like an enjoyable book, and not a heavy academic slog that no one will read. I hope readers will agree. I've long avoided explaining money itself as part of convincing people UBI is a good idea, because that's so much heavier a lift. UBI doesn't require that people understand money and macroeconomics. So I've just explained UBI within the context of what people already think about money and how the economy works. It's a lighter lift to just convince people UBI is a good idea using what they currently think about money. My thinking changed last year as I watched 2020 unfold. People's lack of understanding of how money works helped prevent emergency UBI from happening. Instead we just got a few stimulus checks, and concerns about the deficit almost prevented two of them from ever happening, and all of them were means-tested. Now we just canceled the UI boost out of a fear of deficits and inflation and people choosing not to work despite [the states that already canceled it not showing any worthwhile increase in employment](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2021/09/13/setting-the-record-straight-on-the-ui-cuts/?%5Fse=c3NzMTk3N0BnbWFpbC5jb20%3D&ref=scottsantens.com), and despite it being a terrible way to handle temporarily higher inflation, to reduce the incomes of millions of people. We just can't escape the reality that a poor understanding of money and taxes and the economy as a whole is literally killing us and causing so much entirely unnecessary suffering. Fair warning: this will likely take you over an hour to read, but there is also the option of listening to it too, which will take one hour and twenty minutes. Thank you for investing your time in reading or listening to this, and thank you as well for recommending it to others too, should you find it to have been a valuable use of your time. The article is titled: [Why We Need Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and Why It Needs Universal Basic Income (UBI)](https://vocal.media/theSwamp/why-we-need-modern-monetary-theory-mmt-and-why-it-needs-universal-basic-income-ubi?ref=scottsantens.com). You can listen to the article wherever you listen to podcasts [via Anchor](https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/Why-We-Need-Modern-Monetary-Theory-MMT-and-Why-It-Needs-Universal-Basic-Income-UBI-e175t4m?ref=scottsantens.com). Two other options are [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-we-need-modern-monetary-theory-mmt-and-why-it/id1443672122?%5Fse=c3NzMTk3N0BnbWFpbC5jb20%3D&i=1000534947963&ref=scottsantens.com) and [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2aZ6UIy3G3NISwWSnu4VeO?%5Fse=c3NzMTk3N0BnbWFpbC5jb20%3D&ref=scottsantens.com). --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my ceaseless UBI advocacy. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Escaping Together URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/escaping-together-surviving-disasters-with-universal-basic-income-ubi-resilience/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T22:38:42.000Z ### Thoughts about basic income, surviving disasters, and the future we must escape from At some point in all of our lives, we all try to escape from something. There are few things more universal to the human experience than the act of escape, of running from some predator or some danger. To even be where I am today as a human being alive in the 21st century, I know I’m here because of all the things that didn’t manage to kill my ancestors before they were able to pass their genes and knowledge down the ancestral line. **To escape is human**. I write these words as an evacuee having just escaped Ida, the fifth strongest hurricane to ever hit the continental U.S. in recorded history. I write these words as a pandemic kills human after human around the world, their lives snuffed out of existence by the ravages of a microscopic replicator whose sole purpose is to reproduce. I write these words as a human pondering the human experience, living in the unknown space between having a home and wondering when I can return to living in it. It may feel like we live in a unique time of crises, one after the other, be it climate-related, or health-related, or democracy-related, in a seemingly endless chain of tragedies large and small, but really, it’s always been this way. This isn’t the first time we’ve fought a virus, or a hurricane, or a flood, or a wildfire, or an earthquake, or the rise of authoritarianism. These crises have always been with us, and so far, as a species at least, we have managed to overcome them. Along the way, we have lost members of the human family. We have left people behind. Not everyone has been able to survive everything the challenges of human existence has placed before us, but the collective *we* do survive, and we do it together. That concept is key - *together*. Our torch as a species would likely have burned out long ago, were it not for this kind of superpower of togetherness. We are social beings. We work best when we work together, when we collaborate, when we maximize the concept of “us” and minimize the concept of “them.” We are interdependence machines. By dividing the work of survival, we’re able to minimize the amount of time spent on surviving, and grow the amount of our limited lifetimes spent on everything else. By working together, we’re able to escape more, and be trapped less. Having just escaped a hurricane, and having recently escaped a pandemic through a vaccine I could have never created on my own, I sit here in wonder at what humanity has accomplished together, while at the same time I sit in trepidation of our collective future as I watch the refusal of vaccines and the return of authoritarian leaders around the world successfully dimming the light of democracy. We have accomplished so much, and yet we are so short of our full potential, things might just turn around and start going the other direction. We can’t let that happen. **We must escape that future and together discover a better one.** As I write these words in a hotel I didn’t build, in a city that is not my home, in a country I was born into that was built upon the collective effort of millions of humans long past, my own experience is slightly different than most of my fellow evacuees. What’s different about me and my experience is that unlike most people, I feel a degree of economic security that is unknown to most except recipients of dividend income, or savings interest, or Social Security checks. I have a [crowdfunded monthly income](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com), and because of that, my income is not directly connected to some specific amount or type of work. My income is disconnected from work. My income is independent of work. It is its foundation. By starting each month with a known-in-advance and dependable amount of money, that money enables whatever type and amount of work I choose to do. That money is the seed out of which my work grows. This is counter to the popular misconception that income is the fruit that the seed of work bears. In a world where everything requires money, money is required in order to do anything, and the knowledge of future money creates the security where thought can focus on more than mere survival. In my case right now, I am experiencing a level of financial security that I feel so fortunate to have, I hate that so few others have it. Unlike many of my fellow Louisianians, I was able to afford the gas money to evacuate my home in New Orleans. I have a car because I had enough money to buy one years ago. I have enough savings and credit to afford to live in a hotel temporarily. And because I know I’ll continue starting every month with income, I don’t fear any potential loss of ability to afford the basics of life in this time when so much temporarily remains unknown. Because my basics are secured, my level of stress right now is undoubtedly lower than many others whose lives have currently been turned upside-down by yet another catastrophic weather event made more severe by climate change. I want everyone to be able to escape and to live a more secure, less stress-filled life. If you are in an abusive relationship, I want you to be able to afford to escape it. If you are in an abusive work environment, or one is being offered to you, I want you to be able to afford to escape it. If a hurricane is bearing down on you, or a wildfire, or a flood, I want you to be able to afford to escape all of it. I want you to feel every day of your life, that no matter what happens, you will have enough money to survive, that no matter what danger faces you, you’ll always be fully free to escape it. We tell ourselves that there are already mechanisms in place to help each other, but although some do exist, they do not mean they will always help us, and rarely do they attempt to try to prevent us from needing any help in the first place. By default, they are built on the fulfillment of conditions, and if we do not meet those conditions, for any reason, there is no help. This is why [13 million Americans](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/13-million-people-in-poverty-are-disconnected-from-the-social-safety-net-most-of-them-are-white/2019/02/04/807516a0-2598-11e9-81fd-b7b05d5bed90%5Fstory.html?ref=scottsantens.com) living in poverty in 2019 were living in poverty without a single dollar in federal assistance. This is why I’ve been denied my renter’s insurance claim on the technicality that my evacuation was only urged, not mandatory. By requiring specific conditions be met in order to help people, be it a specific form, or an action, or a deadline, or anything else bureaucrats come up with, many people in serious need of help end up getting none as a result when those very specific conditions aren’t met. We can do better. We can embrace *universality* and *unconditionality* so that no one is excluded and everyone always has enough to survive and also always has something in case of emergency, because something is always there, regardless of any emergency. Instead of only trying to rescue people who have fallen off a cliff, we can do more to prevent people from ever falling in the first place. We can catch people *before* they fall. We can feed people before they go hungry. We can achieve lifelong unconditional economic security for all. I’m not the first person to suggest we guarantee income unconditionally and universally. Nor will I be the last. This idea now widely known as [basic income](https://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq?ref=scottsantens.com) has existed for centuries, independently born in the minds through the ages of those who looked at social ills like hunger, and the crimes born of hunger, and thought, “*Why not just provide people with enough money to live?*” Why not? The production of food now collectively takes up about 1% of society’s total collective time, so why is work still considered a requirement for the obtainment of bread? And if the lack of bread creates so much crime, to the point [the cost of the provision of bread is less than the cost of the provision of punishment for crime](https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2021/02/05/new-research-examines-the-cost-of-crime-in-the-u-s-estimated-to-be-2-6-trillion-in-a-single-year/?ref=scottsantens.com), why are we still punishing instead of feeding? Why the conditions to escape hunger? Why do we look at hunger itself as a motivator for the poor despite the rich not having had hunger as a motivator for thousands of years? **I want humanity to escape poverty.** We have the resources. We have more than enough food for everyone and more than enough housing for everyone. As we enter the age of automation, we even already have enough machines for everyone. We have enough artificial intelligence for everyone that has even been trained by the data produced by everyone. We have enough. We have had enough for decades, if not centuries. The only thing we lack is the collective will as a civilization to lift each other up, to universally recognize that all humans are equally worthy of existing, and that no one human can stand between another and what they need to live. That understanding is the heart of UBI. It is the recognition of a right to existence, made possible by a society deciding that it is right and just to guarantee existence in a way we could never do as individuals, in the same way that *We the People* recognized long ago that justice, tranquility, common defense, and general welfare required the teamwork of representative democracy. The achievement of our higher ideals is a collective project, not an individual one. **To escape the worst, we must escape together**. We can decide right now to make it possible for everyone to escape poverty, and to escape the many other disasters that befall us throughout our lives, and where not possible to escape them entirely, to at least minimize the effects of the disasters, and the time we spend suffering their effects. We can acknowledge the fact that [anything that can go wrong will go wrong](https://scottsantens.com/engineering-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi-fault-tolerance-graceful-failure-redundancy?ref=scottsantens.com), and respond in kind with the kindness of building a floor under all our feet so that when we fall, there is always a limit to how far we fall. We can do this together, and only together. And if we don’t do this, I worry about what we can escape. Can we escape the ravages of climate change so long as we can’t escape [the ravages of the chronic stress](https://medium.com/basic-income/human-park-a-mammals-guide-to-stress-free-living-17f6cab007b3?ref=scottsantens.com) of month-to-month survival? Can we escape the limits of short-term survival thinking so long as we all aren’t free to focus on long-term creative thinking and the dreaming that’s a prerequisite for building a better world? Can we escape [the rise of authoritarianism](https://medium.com/basic-income/what-we-need-to-truly-thrive-democracy-and-unconditional-basic-income-ccdbe72cefa5?ref=scottsantens.com) so long as fear and anger burn like a wildfire through all of society to the point nothing of democracy is left but the cinders of hate? We can build a better world. I know we can. We can escape this dystopian present for a utopian future. It’s possible. But to build a better future, we must finally build the foundation that our civilization has been missing all along, and that foundation is basic income for all. We built a world that requires money to live, but we never provided money to live. It’s time to change that. It’s time we entrust each other with enough access to resources to lift each other, empower each other, and free each other to pursue more than just survival. We can escape together, and we can thrive together. But first, we have to decide together. Can we? --- *I wrote the above thoughts as part of my hurricane Ida evacuation experience when I had no idea how long I’d be unable to return home to New Orleans. I have since returned home to an apartment that was fortunately undamaged, and has also regained electricity and internet.* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Letter to the Editor from a New Orleans evacuee URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/letter-to-the-editor-from-a-new-orleans-evacuee/ Last updated: 2022-02-21T18:46:57.000Z ## As published by [L'Observateur](https://www.lobservateur.com/2021/09/03/letter-to-the-editor-from-a-new-orleans-evacuee/?ref=scottsantens.com) Dear Editor: Between evacuating our homes and fighting over gas for our cars and generators, I know we’ve all got our hands full right now, but that’s exactly why it’s so hard to fix our underlying problems. When we’re all looking down at our feet, just trying not to step in any crap, it’s hard to notice the asteroid headed our way. That asteroid is climate change, and we’re all living through its impacts in a very real way right now. Ida was the fifth strongest hurricane to ever hit the U.S. mainland, not because of dumb luck, but because of excessively warm Gulf waters that feed hurricanes like rocket fuel. Decades of greenhouse gas emissions have slowly warmed our planet to where it is today, and as difficult as it is, we have to start doing something about our changing climate in a very serious way, even as we feel the need to focus only on each day as it comes. Fortunately, there’s a window of opportunity right now to do something big as Congress puts together its reconciliation bill. We have until September 15 to make sure the bill includes an annually rising price on carbon that rebates the revenue back to all of us. This is a two-birds one-stone approach. By making fossil fuels more expensive, we’ll use less of it, and by rebating the money back to all of us, we’ll come out ahead after paying for higher prices. Even better we’ll also have a bit more money to afford the costs of escaping and recovering from disasters. Let’s recover from Ida together as we have every previous storm to hit us, but let’s please also not forget to make some calls about that asteroid headed our way. Scott Santens New Orleans resident --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Want more like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Eviction Moratorium was Never the Answer. Cash Is. URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-eviction-moratorium-was-never-the-answer-cash-is/ Last updated: 2023-02-07T21:26:41.000Z ## Trust the American people with the financial freedom to make their own decisions with money. One of those decisions will most certainly be paying the rent or mortgage. ### The pandemic has been one massive disaster, containing within it a series of more disasters One of those disasters was an epidemic of evictions in the United States as tens of millions of Americans either lost their jobs, or maintained at least one of their jobs but lost income as a result of pay reductions, fewer hours worked, or fewer customers. This nationwide loss of income was alleviated by boosted unemployment insurance checks, stimulus checks, and now child tax credit checks, but it wasn’t enough. As a result, one of the first additional responses to the COVID crisis was to enact a moratorium on evictions. This response from the beginning was a “kick the can down the road” policy, and we have now arrived at the end of that road where the rent is finally due. What happened, what’s next, and what could we have done differently? The short answer is more of what worked. The first kicking of the eviction can was on [March 27, 2020](https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN11516?ref=scottsantens.com). That’s when the CARES Act began the first eviction moratorium. That first one expired on July 24, 2020 and disallowed landlords from kicking out tenants until August 23, 2020\. Because we were still smack dab in the middle of a pandemic at that time, and Congress wasn’t about to pass an extension, the CDC stepped in about two weeks after the first expiration with a new eviction moratorium. This new one was set to expire at the end of December but was extended to the end of January, and then extended again to the end of March, and then extended again to the end of June. On July 31, 2021, landlords were finally free again to evict tenants, but three days later a new more targeted moratorium was put in place by the CDC which was immediately met with legal challenges. This was no surprise and part of the strategy. The Biden Administration knew the Supreme Court was unlikely to allow another extension, but they also understood that the court process itself would buy them time to distribute more of the $46.5 billion in rental assistance meant to get those behind on their rent caught up so they could stay in their homes. In the three weeks the new moratorium was in place, the amount of that rental assistance distributed to renters grew from merely 7% to just 11%. With the Supreme Court having just struck down the latest moratorium, [89% of rental assistance funds remain undistributed](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/us/politics/eviction-rental-assistance.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Considering that [15% of all renters owe back rent](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/28/opinion/covid-eviction-moratorium.html?ref=scottsantens.com), and what’s owed is on average [three months of rent](https://www.gobankingrates.com/money/economy/average-amount-of-rent-owed-in-every-state/?ref=scottsantens.com), that’s approximately 11 million Americans now facing eviction unless all of that rental assistance is suddenly immediately distributed, and even then, it wouldn’t save everyone. ### Direct Cash as a Direct Solution Free From Bureaucracy Thankfully, there’s something else out there that will save at least some of these households from eviction – the new monthly child tax credit. Because of the lack of bureaucracy, it is a direct cash payment directly to every American family with children. Because it goes to all families except those with the highest incomes, it should reach all child-rearing households who are behind on their rent. Data also already exists to show just [how much it is helping](https://humanityforward.com/2021/12/a-ticking-clock-and-the-faces-of-the-american-child-tax-credit/?ref=scottsantens.com) with the rent. We know [how the first CTC check was used](https://www.magnifymoney.com/blog/news/child-tax-credit-survey/?ref=scottsantens.com). 47% of recipients spent it on food. 36% of recipients used it to help with household bills. Among households earning under $35,000 a year, 56% of the CTC was spent on household bills. For [29% of recipients](https://parentstogetheraction.org/2021/08/10/new-survey-90-of-parents-receiving-the-child-tax-credit-said-funds-were-helpful-or-made-a-huge-difference-in-their-families-lives/?ref=scottsantens.com), a majority of the Child Tax Credit went to pay rent. 17% of those with at least one child under age 5 spent their check on child care. Spending on child care further helps pay rent by better enabling employment. As a result of their increased ability to afford to pay their bills, difficulty paying household expenses has already [decreased by 8% among households with kids](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/08/economic-hardship-declined-in-households-with-children-as-child-tax-credit-payments-arrived.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Meanwhile, it has increased by 5% in households without kids, meaning that this is happening within an environment where they would otherwise be less likely to pay their bills. Parents are extremely thankful for the boost they’re getting, with [90% of them agreeing that it’s helpful or making a huge difference](https://parentstogetheraction.org/2021/08/10/new-survey-90-of-parents-receiving-the-child-tax-credit-said-funds-were-helpful-or-made-a-huge-difference-in-their-families-lives/?ref=scottsantens.com) in their lives. 70% of them believe it to be extremely important to keep the checks coming beyond December when the Child Tax Credit will expire unless extended. Asked how a permanent Child Tax Credit would help them, 57% of recipients said they could better afford their mortgage or rent, or move homes if desired. Obviously, it’s working very well to get cash directly to the people who need it most, and in a far better way than policies like emergency rental assistance that seem to be finding it virtually impossible to actually help the people who need it most because of all the bureaucracy and conditions involved. The problem is that households with kids aren’t the only households that are behind on their rent as a direct result of the income loss that has resulted from the pandemic. Boosted unemployment insurance and the stimulus checks were the two programs that did the most to prevent even more families from falling behind on their rent. The problem is that there were only three stimulus checks since the pandemic started destroying livelihoods, and then half the country canceled the unemployment boost early. This by the way has had virtually no impact on employment, but [a very large impact on spending](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/20/business/economy/unemployment-benefits-economy-states.html?ref=scottsantens.com). ### Economic Crisis Response Here’s what we should have done instead: From the very beginning, one of the first things Congress should have passed into law was [automatic stabilizers](https://www.change.org/p/president-biden-join-sen-wyden-sanders-booker-calling-for-recurring-stimulus-checks?ref=scottsantens.com). This would have put checks on autopilot. Based on economic triggers, monthly checks would have started in combination with a weekly UI boost. These measures would have remained in place each and every month until automatically triggered off by an economy that had reached the point of being sufficiently recovered as determined by econometrics, not politics. This response, because of being monthly, and because of being direct cash payments, would have enabled most every American to keep up on their bills as the pandemic ravaged the economy. This monthly income is what landlords should have been pushing for this entire time. Money to afford rent is good for the renter and good for the landlord. It’s also good for everyone else who benefits, like those whose job it is to maintain what’s being rented, and local governments who benefit from property taxes being paid. An eviction moratorium was always going to end this way. All we did was postpone the inevitable reckoning. And it didn’t even prevent all evictions. People still got evicted regardless of the moratorium. It didn’t stop all of them. What does stop almost all evictions is renters paying their rent. What’s so frustrating about all of this too is the amount of housing assistance that goes to even more people than federal housing assistance does, in the form of the home mortgage deduction which costs [$200 billion a year](https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/do-existing-tax-incentives-increase-homeownership?ref=scottsantens.com). Asked how the Child Tax Credit is helping her, [one recipient even made this direct connection](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/07/how-the-new-child-tax-credit-is-already-changing-lives.html?ref=scottsantens.com). > “A lot of people are like, Well, I don’t have kids. Whereas for me, it’s like, I have kids; I don’t have a mortgage. So your mortgage tax credit doesn’t have anything in it for me. But that’s okay, because I know it does a lot for you. This does a lot for me.” ### Lessons Learned From the Eviction Moratorium Millions of Americans are now facing down the barrel of eviction from their homes while a pandemic still rages on around them. This is a disaster inside of a disaster, but it is man-made and thus entirely avoidable. Incomes were reduced because of a pandemic and because of the responses by lawmakers to counter the spread of the coronavirus. We know what’s helping the most right now to keep families in their homes is the monthly CTC because rent is due every month. We know that what helped the greatest number of people over the entire course of this pandemic has been the stimulus checks, especially all those who lost incomes despite maintaining their jobs and thus not qualifying for any UI, which was about [a third of the country](https://www.jainfamilyinstitute.org/news/robust-evidence-for-1400-relief-and-recovery-checks/?ref=scottsantens.com). We are the wealthiest country in the world with the largest economy. We have a responsibility to make this right by making people whole again. To our credit, we have accomplished [perhaps the best economic response of all countries](https://www.vox.com/22348364/united-states-stimulus-covid-coronavirus?ref=scottsantens.com), but with millions of Americans now being evicted from their homes for the crime of losing income during a pandemic, it clearly still wasn’t enough. We should look at the Child Tax Credit as a model that should be extended to all adults, at least until this pandemic is truly over. A return to the debate of automatic stabilizer checks as [Wyden and 20 other senators](https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/033021%20Automatic%20Stabilizers%20Letter%20Final.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) have called for in addition to [over 150 economists](https://economicsecproj.org/economists-letter?ref=scottsantens.com) would be a great place to start. This crisis is not over yet. It’s not even the only crisis. We live in a time of crises. As I write this, a hurricane is barreling towards me. A pandemic is just one disaster. Climate change is another. There are many others. There always will be. It’s time we reconfigure our safety net to better respond to disasters and build more resilience into all our lives. Direct cash payments are the answer, and they should be on auto-pilot. Trust the American people with the financial freedom to make their own decisions with money. One of those decisions will most certainly be paying the rent or mortgage. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### My wife is immunocompromised. That's why I feel so strongly about people getting vaccinated. URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/my-wife-is-immunocompromised-thats-why-i-feel-so-strongly-about-people-getting-vaccinated-covid/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T22:35:53.000Z ### Your freedom to do what you want ends at the freedoms of others to not be killed There’s something personal I haven’t shared that I feel I can no longer be silent about, because perhaps it might be helpful as public knowledge, and because I want people to know better where I’m coming from on the topic of vaccines and Covid in general. There’s a big reason why I believe so strongly that people should get vaccinated, and wear masks until Covid has finally been defeated. That reason is my wife who has given me her blessing to write this particularly personal blog post. This part is already public knowledge, but for those who don’t know, last year, before the vaccines were available, my wife and I both caught Covid. We experienced it in late November and early December. Fortunately for both of us, it was quite mild for us. After the quarantine period, we thought we were free and clear, but then Katie started experiencing strange fevers that would come and go, and over the course of about two months, those fevers became higher and more frequent, until finally she felt it was time to go to the hospital. There, her condition worsened. Her fevers were non-stop and required a constant regimen of Tylenol and ibuprofen to try and manage. She soon needed to be put on oxygen as pneumonia spread through both her lungs. It was really confusing for the doctors there because of all the time that had passed after when she tested positive for Covid. Covid didn’t make sense, and she tested negative for it in the hospital, so she wasn’t treated as a Covid patient and instead provided a lot of antibiotics in case it was bacterial, which it wasn’t, and anti-fungal in case it was fungal, which it wasn’t, and eventually the thing that finally did the trick, was **[dexamethasone](https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/coronavirus-disease-covid-19-dexamethasone?ref=scottsantens.com)**, a steroid which has been shown to work well with Covid pneumonia. For Katie, it worked like magic. Her fevers stopped. Her lungs began to clear up. On the 10th day of being in the hospital, she was finally released. We brought home a couple oxygen tanks, which she still needed from time to time at first, but eventually her lungs continued to improve and after another few months, she felt comfortable with returning the oxygen tanks. The final diagnosis was that it had been Covid pneumonia, but it had operated in such a strange way because of its interaction with a medication that she takes, and this is the part that is not public knowledge, that I’m now going to share. **Katie is immunocompromised**. She has a lifelong but manageable medical condition that impacts her nervous system. Because of this condition, she has to stay on medication that tamps down her immune system to help prevent it from attacking her nervous system. We still don’t really know what happened, but it seems like her immune system took an unusually long time ridding her body of Covid because of her medication and eventually non-replicating fragments of Covid in her body began to poke at her immune system, leading to an overreaction. The steroids then functioned to tone things down again. However, this still wasn’t the end of this experience. The steroids did work, but steroids are temporary, because of just how well they shut things down, and when she switched to a more targeted steroid just for her lungs, it still helped, but the fevers would still happen, and we began to worry that things might possibly worsen again. Then the vaccines became available. It was a tough choice for Katie to take the vaccine, because we just didn’t know what would happen. She was still experiencing fevers. Would it make things worse? Would it not even do anything because her body wouldn’t mobilize a normal response to a vaccine? Well, here’s what happened. After her second shot of the Pfizer vaccine, her fevers finally ended. They were just gone. This was a possibility that we had hoped for, and it happened. It was like the vaccine pushed the reset button on her immune system, and she was finally 100% again. Others like her have reported similar results. With the vaccines now available, and both of us fully vaccinated, and so many others finally getting vaccinated, we thought all of this was over. We got to get out more. We got to spend time with vaccinated friends. We still played it safe by masking, not spending anytime inside restaurants, but life did feel like it was getting back to normal. Unfortunately, because the rest of the world is still full of unvaccinated people for Covid to mutate within, and because **we live in Louisiana** where such a small percentage of the population got vaccinated, that return to normalcy was short-lived. The Delta variant arrived, and is currently actively sweeping through all of Louisiana. As I write this, the numbers are still continuing to grow. Hospitals are bursting at the seams with Covid patients. Surgeries for non-Covid related things are being rescheduled. Almost 4,000 people across Louisiana are hospitalized right now, and to give you some idea of hospital capacity, there are a total of 18,000 hospital beds in all of Louisiana. And that’s all beds, not ICU beds, and not the number of staff required to handle all of the patients in those beds. So here’s what Katie and I are now facing together. Even though she has already had Covid, and has already been fully vaccinated, because of the fact she is immunocompromised, we have absolutely no idea what will happen if she gets Delta or Lambda or any future variants. She has been tested for antibodies, and the results were negative, so it’s possible that her immune system just didn’t respond in the way it needed to for strong immunity, because of her medication. She’s actually on a new medication now that’s supposed to work better with the vaccines than her old medication, but all signs point to needing a booster shot now in order to activate her immune system in a way her new medication will allow that her old one wouldn’t. This is now a very stressful waiting game. If enough people got vaccinated, this would be over. If enough people wore masks, this would be over. If Katie were able to get a third shot, preferably one targeting Delta, our lives would be a lot less stressful. But right now, there’s nothing she can really do besides avoid as many human interactions as she can, stay home as much as possible, and wear a mask everywhere she goes. Fortunately she’s able to work for home. Many immunocompromised aren’t so fortunate. I want everyone reading this to please consider this perspective. **Please consider the lives of [every immunocompromised person](https://www.popsci.com/health/immunocompromised-covid-19-vaccine/?ref=scottsantens.com)**. That means people with cancer and being treated for cancer. That means organ donor recipients. That means people with autoimmune disease. That means people with HIV. It also means entirely healthy people on some kind of medication like prednisone. Altogether, there are about ten million Americans in the US who are immunocompromised. Think also of all the kids who aren’t allowed yet to get vaccinated, who rely on the rest of us to get vaccinated to protect them. Here in Lousiana, the number of kids testing positive for Covid has skyrocketed to 20% of all positives and [half the kids in the hospital with it are under the age of two](https://wgno.com/news/health/coronavirus/ldh-reports-alarming-number-of-covid-cases-among-children/?ref=scottsantens.com). What about all the kids under age 12 and all of the immunocompromised? What are they supposed to do as a result of other people making the choice to not get vaccinated or mask up? I’m a huge believer in freedom. It is extremely important to me. I think everyone should be free to do whatever the hell they want to, so long as it only impacts them. And that’s the problem when it comes to a pandemic. It may feel like not getting vaccinated is a personal choice that only impacts you, but it isn’t. If you get Covid, and pass it on to someone else, and they pass it on to someone else, and at some point someone dies, you helped make that happen. You are partially responsible for that person’s death. That’s on you. And if I lose Katie because of a chain reaction of human selfishness, I will never forgive a single one of you who chose to not get vaccinated. Not ever. So yes, this is very personal to me. **Please, just get vaccinated**. If you are just waiting to see, please don’t wait any longer. If it’s difficult for you to find the time, please make the time. If you absolutely refuse to get vaccinated, then please be incredibly responsible about mask wearing, social distancing, and your interactions with others who themselves refuse to get vaccinated, wear masks, or socially distance. Please consider how your actions affect others. Personally, I think it’s an absolute miracle of modern science and technology that we were able to create such incredibly effective vaccines so quickly. I would never have guessed last March that come 2021, we’d have a vaccine available that saved [99.999% of people from death](https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/31/health/fully-vaccinated-people-breakthrough-hospitalization-death/index.html?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s incredible. And even with all the variants, it’s still keeping almost all of the fully vaccinated out of hospitals. In Louisiana, [90% of those hospitalized for Covid are unvaccinated](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/09/covid-vaccinations-surge-us-south?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s a goddamn miracle how effective the vaccines are. It’s the miracle that unvaccinated people dying in hospitals right now are wishing for after it’s already too late for them to get vaccinated. Meanwhile, this isn’t only about death. **Long Covid** is a real thing, and it’s a real unknown that appears to be impacting [25% of those who get Covid](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/covid-19-exposed-our-inequities-long-covid-may-exacerbate-them?ref=scottsantens.com). We have no idea how long people can experience long-haul symptoms. The effects of catching Covid can be mild, and yet possibly result in symptoms that stick around for years to come. People say the same things about the vaccine, and yet those claims are massively over-exaggerated. It’s more dangerous to your health to ride in a car. There is no evidence of long-term downsides to getting vaccinated. There are however very real and known downsides to death and hospitalization, and long-haul Covid, that could permanently impact people’s lives for the worse, [especially those with most of their lives still ahead of them](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/08/health/long-covid-kids.html?ref=scottsantens.com). One more thing. When you get vaccinated, and I really hope you do if you haven’t already, take pride in it. When you get vaccinated, you're saying you care so much about your family, community, and country, that you will do what needs to be done to protect them. This is the closest thing many of us alive today who aren’t veterans have had to a World War. Previous generations stepped up. Now we can too. This is our opportunity to unite and defend each other from a hostile global invader. Let’s all do our part, and end this pandemic together. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2022/02/https-_bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com_public_images_7b3cdb20-cd0a-4f9c-b345-06f7550a45a2_999x562.jpg) My wife Katie (and our dog Titus) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### How Republican President Richard Nixon Laid the Foundation for Monthly Cash for Kids URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/how-republican-president-richard-nixon-laid-the-foundation-for-monthly-cash-for-kids-child-tax-credit-ctc/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T22:31:55.000Z ### Making Our New Guaranteed Income for Kids Permanent is a Real Path to Universal Basic Income (UBI) **“** **I propose that the Federal government pay a basic income to those American families who cannot care for themselves in whichever State they live.”** That sentence was one of the more surprising things I read when I first started learning about the concept of basic income. Those words were spoken by Richard Nixon [on August 11, 1969](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/special-message-the-congress-reform-the-nations-welfare-system?ref=scottsantens.com). Many basic income advocates don’t even know that he did in fact use the phrase, “basic income” half a century ago to describe what he wanted to do as part of his [Family Assistance Plan](http://www.usbig.net/papers/066-Neuberg-FAP2.doc?ref=scottsantens.com). His plan though was not what we now refer to as universal/unconditional basic income or UBI. It was a guaranteed income for families, not childless adults, and the more someone earned after their first $60 a month in earned income ($446 in 2021 dollars), the less they got, until they got nothing. And it had a work requirement attached so that parental income was reduced if they refused to work (unless the parent in question was a mom with a child too young for school), but it was truly historic in what it was proposing. A Republican President of the United States was proposing that poverty should be reduced directly, that the problem was a lack of income, and so more income was the answer. He wanted to guarantee that a family with two parents and two kids would have an income that was not allowed to be lower than $1,600 a year (plus $400 in food vouchers). Today that $1,600 would be equivalent to an annual income of $11,900, which for a family of four is 45% of the federal poverty line based on our current definition of poverty being an income under $26,500 for a household of four. His plan passed the House in 1970, and passed again in 1971 as that session’s H.R.1, but it never got through the Senate for him to sign. There are multiple reasons why it failed. Among those reasons were that those on the left hated the work requirement and thought the amount was too low, and those on the right didn’t like the idea of so many Amercians getting “free money,” and also more Americans disliked the idea than liked the idea, and [racism was certainly part of it](https://basicincometoday.com/fifty-years-later-reflecting-on-the-defeat-of-nixons-family-assistance-plan/?ref=scottsantens.com) for both Democrats and Republicans in the South, but here’s what I want everyone to think harder about right now in 2021: **Nixon’s bill was basically just recently signed into law by Joe Biden**. Biden’s new monthly child benefit that just began in July is closer to Nixon’s plan than most people seem to understand. Nixon’s plan intended to provide income to every member of a family with kids. Biden’s plan only provides income to kids, by way of their parent(s). However, because of Nixon’s work requirement, which dropped the parental benefit from $400 to $100 as punishment for not being employed or seeking work, the only ones whose incomes were truly fully guaranteed were kids, and the amount of that guaranteed income per kid in today’s dollars is $250 a month, the same amount that kids ages 6 to 17 just began receiving. In other words, half a century ago, kids came very close to being guaranteed a minimum monthly income in today’s dollars of $250, and five decades later, kids have finally started getting that money. Regardless of whether their parents work or not, no child in America will now go with less than $250 a month. That is an absolutely historic victory. With that said, this particular battle has not been won quite yet. As of right now, American kids will only get that income every month until 2022\. Biden is now urging Congress to extend that [to 2024](https://news.yahoo.com/democrats-set-political-tripwire-2024-085123207.html?guccounter=1&guce%5Freferrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8&guce%5Freferrer%5Fsig=AQAAABPv3j27adRqXsQhT8-X37q-FSI8RVGRvQBoigvOF0PxOIdvpPrNNcFz-EuU%5FpvSsR86YaxyVUr0tZXRBYW3D6C0HNa3T--aDAhM-XfFdfvMOXQY758M5wOjLZy7t5xnM7jbEtQvkdcUM2Gs3QLmnG7W1k6sH4R2vyGqzniA%5FUWu&ref=scottsantens.com). Four years of monthly checks is certainly better than six months of monthly checks, but those checks need to be made as permanent as Social Security itself. I know some of you reading this may not be happy about basic income for kids if you don’t have any kids, but I urge you to consider these checks from the context of Nixon’s plan. Here’s my two cents on America’s failure to pass Nixon’s guaranteed income plan: **it was one of the worst failures in the history of the United States Senate**. No, it wasn’t a poverty ending amount. Yes, it had a work requirement. No, it wasn’t universal. Yes, it reduced the amount 50 cents for every dollar earned (above $60 a month). But, and this is a huge BUT, it would have set the precedent for an approach to poverty that was centered around **getting money to people**. I believe that if we had set that precedent, and taken that approach to poverty over fifty years ago, that there would be no poverty in America today as defined by people living below the federal poverty line. I believe that we would have expanded that cash program into a full UBI by now, and that everyone who complained that it just wasn’t enough was absolutely wrong, and that those who were against “free money” were absolutely wrong, and that these things would already be absolutely obvious to everyone here in 2021 had we passed Nixon’s plan in 1971. So if you happen to think that a check going out to almost every parent every month for their kids is somehow a bad idea, or a good idea but just not good enough, I urge you to consider an America where Nixon’s plan had passed, and how that would have changed everything. We have a second chance to win that battle, and yes it’s only a battle, but it’s a big one. We’re talking about reducing child poverty by half, and we’re talking about 69 million kids in America (about 93% of all kids) getting money simply for being alive. This is the setting of that precedent, half a century after it was originally proposed, to recognize that poverty is a lack of income which should be addressed directly by income. If someone is living under the poverty line, then create an income floor under them and raise it to lift them higher. Fifty years is a long time to wait to guarantee an absolute minimum of income. Let’s not wait any longer. Let’s [make the monthly child benefit permanent](https://actionnetwork.org/forms/sign-the-petition-to-congress-make-the-child-tax-credit-permanent?ref=scottsantens.com). Then let’s extend that benefit to all adults of all ages, and in doing so, **let’s abolish poverty once and for all**. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Monthly Child Tax Credit Payment Will Likely Grow the Economy URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/monthly-child-tax-credit-payment-will-likely-grow-the-economy/ Last updated: 2023-02-07T21:27:21.000Z ## America’s 6-month experiment with what is essentially a universal basic income for kids will grow the economy, reduce unemployment, and help make the case to make it permanent, increase the amount provided, and implement a full UBI. ### Economic Benefits of Direct Cash I was asked recently if I thought there could potentially be some positive impacts on the economy of Biden’s Advance Child Tax Credit (CTC) payments that start flowing every month to parents starting on July 15, so in this blog post, I just want to answer that question in a bit more detail. The short answer is absolutely, without a doubt in my mind, yes. How can I be so sure, and to what degree of a positive impact can we expect to see? Well, I’m so certain because Canada started a similar program about five years ago, and [the economic impact of their program has already been measured by the Canadian Center For Economic Analysis as successful](https://www.ubiworks.ca/ccb?ref=scottsantens.com). In 2016, Canada reformed and expanded its child tax benefits program, and called the new benefit the [Canada Child Benefit](https://www.savvynewcanadians.com/canada-child-benefit-dates/?ref=scottsantens.com) or CCB. Since then, qualifying families have received on average about $550 ($440 USD) a month in tax-free income, with higher earning households earning a lower amount until their earned incomes are high enough to disqualify them entirely. Over half of CCB recipients have incomes between $50,000 and $150,000 with only 4% of recipients having incomes over $150,000, so the benefit does reach most Canadian families. In July, when kids under age 6 in the United States start receiving up to $300/mo and kids age 6 to 17 start receiving up to $250/mo, kids under age 6 in Canada will be receiving up to $569/mo ($460 USD) and those age 6 to 17 will be receiving up to $480/mo ($388 USD). As you can see, the design is pretty close, with two different tiers based on age range, and amounts that reduce based on household income. Although because the CCB starts decreasing for single parents earning over $32,000 while our CTC starts decreasing for single parents earning over $112,500 as heads-of-household, America’s CTC is actually more universal than Canada’s CCB. In 2017, Canada disbursed $24 billion to 3.7 million families with a total of 6.4 million kids. By the end of 2021, the US intends to have provided 39 million families with a total of 69 million kids with about $110 billion more than they would have received with the existing CTC. All told, it’s estimated that 93% of kids in the US will directly benefit from this poverty-reducing income boost. So now that we’ve compared Canada’s Child Benefit to America’s new (but so far still temporary) Advance Child Tax Credit, and recognize they’re quite comparable to each other, what economic impacts have resulted in Canada that we may expect to also see here? For every dollar of CCB distributed, Canada’s GDP has grown by $2, and 55 cents in taxes is recouped from the additional economic activity that each dollar generates. All of the economic stimulus generated from boosting the incomes of parents, and thus the spending power of consumers with kids, also contributes the equivalent of 453,000 full-time jobs. Without the CCB, it’s estimated that Canada’s labor force would be 2.5% smaller. Looking now at the US and what we can expect, I expect a similar multiplier of around $2 per every $1\. That’s about $220 billion in additional GDP which would grow our GDP of $21 trillion by one additional percentage point than would happen absent the cash payments. With a GDP growth forecast of [6.6% for 2021](https://conference-board.org/research/us-forecast?ref=scottsantens.com), forecasters could be surprised by a growth rate exceeding well over 7% if they didn’t take the economic impact of the Child Tax Credit payments into account. In addition to the positive GDP impact, I expect the unemployment rate to also decrease as a result of the monthly Child Tax Credit, thanks to all the additional spending driving businesses to create and fill new positions, and also thanks to the additional income helping parents afford the child care they need to accept employment that they’d otherwise need to decline in order to continue providing their own unpaid child care as a parent. ### An “Awareness Gap” Could Reduce Potential of the Policy Among Low-Income Families However, there’s an asterisk next to all this, and that’s the fact that so many parents in America have no idea they qualify for the monthly CTC payments, and whereas that doesn’t really matter for those who have already filed their taxes, it does matter for those who earn so little they aren’t required to file taxes, and therefore need to get their info to the IRS. Fortunately the IRS has launched [an online portal](https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/advance-child-tax-credit-payments-in-2021?ref=scottsantens.com) to make it easier for such parents, but it’s still expected that [over two million kids](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22543868/biden-child-tax-credit-july-15-monthly-payment?ref=scottsantens.com) might not receive the payments, despite their parents qualifying for them. So to maximize the economic impact of the Child Tax Credit payments, the amount of parents who qualify but don’t receive the payments will take a lot of reach-out efforts to reduce as much as possible. Regardless of how many parents may end up not receiving them though, hopefully, come 2022, [the results of the monthly CTC payments will be clear.](https://humanityforward.com/2021/12/a-ticking-clock-and-the-faces-of-the-american-child-tax-credit/?ref=scottsantens.com) They will show that just as such payments have grown Canada’s economy, the payments will have grown our economy as well. Hundreds of thousands of new jobs will have been created as a result. Child poverty will have been reduced by almost half. And [all the other many impacts of basic income](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1040683616488103936?ref=scottsantens.com) itself will have been observed too, in the form of things like improved physical and mental health, reduced crime rates, higher productivity and more, because we should never forget that when we’re talking about the economic impacts of reducing child poverty, we should always include the economic costs of letting child poverty continue, and that’s an annual cost of [over $1 trillion where every dollar spent reducing it would save us $7](https://academic.oup.com/swr/article-abstract/42/2/73/4956930?redirectedFrom=fulltext&ref=scottsantens.com). If we spend $110 billion and as a result avoid spending $770 billion and also grow the economy by $220 billion, besides being a huge society-wide improvement that clearly pays for itself, it should also be considered as something worth making permanent, and also something worth expanding to all adults without kids too. If it makes good economic sense to cut child poverty in half, it also makes good economic sense to end child poverty, and it also makes good economic sense to just end poverty. Period. **TL;DR: America’s 6-month experiment with what is essentially a universal basic income for kids will grow the economy, reduce unemployment, and help make the case to make it permanent, increase the amount provided, and implement a full UBI.** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Is $300 a week in UI making people lazy and does it prove UBI doesn’t work? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/is-300-a-week-in-ui-making-people-lazy-and-does-it-prove-ubi-doesnt-work/ Last updated: 2023-02-07T21:27:45.000Z ## Claiming “lazy workers” may be nonsense, but it’s also instructive in better understanding the benefits of Universal Basic Income. ### The Climate of the Labor Market is Not to Blame. **Thanks to social media**, I think we’ve all seen by now the images of signs on storefronts posted by employers unable to find employees. As a result, a story of “lazy workers” has been propagated, with the blame pinned on lack of motivation to work thanks to the $300 a week unemployment insurance (UI) boost combined with three different stimulus checks that have altogether apparently fattened bank accounts to the point people just don’t want to work anymore, and thus the idea of universal basic income has been proven to be a non-starter. All of the above is nonsense of course, but it’s nonsense that’s actually really instructive in better understanding how UBI works, and why it’s such an improvement to the existing way we do things. So in this blog post, I want to dive into this particular discussion and hopefully readers will come out the other side of this with a deeper understanding of UBI’s importance. First and foremost, this is anecdotal data we’re talking about. A photo of a sign is not macroeconomic data, and the data just doesn’t support the story being pushed. If the UI boost were responsible for people not accepting employment, we would expect those most likely to turn down employment to be the ones with the lowest wages, but that’s not what we’re seeing. Low-wage sectors saw a much bigger labor force participation increase than higher-wage sectors paying [$18 to $32 an hour](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1392670447993593856?ref=scottsantens.com). Additionally, the increases are among [men, not women](https://twitter.com/hshierholz/status/1392273795151384577?ref=scottsantens.com). Together this points away from the UI boost and toward closed schools and lack of childcare affordability as being the real reasons certain employers aren’t able to find employees. The employees they want are doing unpaid work at home that they can’t or don’t want to stop doing. People aren’t lazy. They’re working outside the labor market. ![Industries that paid less than $X average wage in 2019](https://humanityforward.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/e1oe2wvxeaaws9m.png) Source: [link](https://twitter.com/IrvingSwisher/status/1392602790242000902?ref=scottsantens.com) Second, employers are finding that by raising their wages, they are in fact able to find willing employees. It’s like this [one neat trick](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1395124728269053955?ref=scottsantens.com) that just seems to work. Making a job attractive enough to accept leads to people wanting those jobs. So whenever someone says they can’t find someone to work for them, remember to finish their sentence with “at the wage I want to pay.” **There will always exist a price to change someone’s “no” into a “yes.”** That’s Econ 101 stuff. It’s just supply and demand at work. The way this works should also be very appealing to those who don’t like the idea of minimum wage laws. If people choose to withhold their labor until the wage is enough for them to accept it, then that’s a free labor market without price distortions imposed by government intervention. So the Republican governors canceling the UI boost in their states in order to force people to “get back to work,” are also making the case for minimum wage laws instead of a case for free markets. A UBI would raise wages by raising the [reservation wage](https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/09/18/the-real-value-of-a-universal-basic-income-is-that-it-raises-the-reservation-wage/?utm%5Fmedium=twitter&utm%5Fsource=twitterfeed&sh=2d82d5e47ca1) which is economic speak for enough to say yes. Furthermore, what’s so interesting is that some Republican governors even fully recognize this. Montana is going to provide [a $1200 “return to work bonus”](https://news.mt.gov/montana-to-launch-return-to-work-bonuses-return-to-pre-pandemic-unemployment-program-to-address-workforce-shortage?ref=scottsantens.com) for unemployed people who accept employment. This is identical to letting the unemployed keep the $300 a week UI boost for one month after accepting employment. In other words, it’s like a one-month UBI trial. In fact, if some state were to decide to incentivize employment by letting UI recipients keep their UI for three months after becoming employed instead of punishing them by taking away their UI boost, this would actually be a 3-month UBI experiment virtually identical in design to [Finland’s successful 2-year UBI experiment](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/an-experiment-to-inform-universal-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) that involved 2,000 unemployed Finns who were allowed to keep their UI regardless of employment status. There’s actually a golden opportunity here for a state to test UBI and replicate Finland’s finding of more hours worked due to income unconditionality. Fourth, the UI boost and [the stimulus checks have successfully increased spending](https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/without-stimulus-checks-personal-income-dropped-13-25-from-march-to-april/ar-AAKu8wo?ref=scottsantens.com). They have literally created jobs while also preventing jobs from being lost that otherwise would have been lost. Every governor choosing to end the UI boost in their state is choosing to reduce the total amount of money being spent in their state. That will result in fewer job openings and more businesses failing. It is absolutely counterproductive to reduce people’s incomes in order to increase employment. Our economy is 70% consumer-based. It requires that people spend money on goods and services. Customers are the ultimate job creators, not business owners. So if we really wanted to increase employment, we’d make sure that there were more customers with more disposable income to spend on stuff. ### In summary: Most low wage workers aren’t actually turning down employment, most of those who are turning down employment are those placing a higher priority on unpaid work, anyone turning down employment is also causing wages to rise which is a good thing, UI’s biggest disincentive to work lies in the fact it goes away with paid work, and if we really wanted more people employed, we’d provide everyone with more income, not less. A fully universal unconditional basic income would provide everyone the power to withhold their labor until their conditions were met. This is **true bargaining power**. UBI would enable everyone to choose unpaid work over paid work, it would pay for childcare for those wishing to choose paid work over unpaid work, and unlike UI it would never punish anyone for choosing paid work. This is **true freedom**. UBI would also create more customers – the true job creators – which would mean more jobs, which would mean higher incomes, which would mean even more spending, which is the virtuous cycle we want, versus the reduced incomes leading to reduced spending leading to fewer jobs which is the vicious cycle we don’t want. UBI is the power to say no and the freedom to say yes. It’s how to create [a free market for labor](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-we-should-all-have-a-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com). **TL;DR: If we really wanted to reduce unemployment, we’d stop punishing people for accepting employment, and we’d start paying people regardless of employment status. UBI does that. UI doesn’t.** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### What about combining a higher federal minimum wage with monthly recurring direct payments? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/what-about-combining-a-higher-federal-minimum-wage-with-monthly-recurring-direct-stimulus-payments/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T22:29:51.000Z ### We can increase incomes, reduce taxes, accelerate automation, and grow the economy Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 is at the forefront of policy debate right now after being pushed by Biden to be part of the reconciliation package where only a simple majority is needed to pass it, but it seems unlikely to make it into the signed bill after the Senate parliamentarian said it’s against the rules of reconciliation, where the only stuff allowed is stuff that increases or decreases federal spending or taxation. A $15 minimum wage is very popular. Most recently this was demonstrated in Florida where Trump won the state, but so did an increase to $15 by 2026 with more than 60% of the vote. National polling shows support exceeds 60% as well, especially among voters who earn under $40,000 a year, in which case [support exceeds 70%, including 56% of Republicans](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/30/two-thirds-of-americans-favor-raising-federal-minimum-wage-to-15-an-hour/?ref=scottsantens.com). Republican members of Congress have even been pushing increases too, but lower, or with fine print attached. For example, Mitt Romney has suggested $10 within four years; Josh Hawley has suggested $15 but only paid by large corporations not small businesses, and also wage subsidies for those earning under $16.50/hr. In response to the Senate parliamentarian’s decision, Democrats are already talking about indirect ways of raising wages to $15 like increasing taxes on companies that don’t pay $15, lowering taxes for those who do pay more than $15, and AOC said that if progressives had known the $15 minimum wage were going to be axed, they’d have pushed harder for the full $2,000 and more. All of this is to say there’s a lot of support for raising the minimum wage above $7.25 because at this point, it hasn’t been raised in so long, it’s equivalent to $5.85 back in 2009 when the last increase happened. It’s just not enough. As an unconditional basic income supporter, here’s my suggestion: **combine a higher minimum wage with monthly direct payments**, aka stimulus/relief/survival/recovery checks. If Republicans are saying $10 is something they can agree to as standalone legislation outside of reconciliation, then accept that offer, but only as long as monthly direct payments make it into reconciliation or its own standalone bill. Monthly direct payments are as popular as a $15 minimum wage. 65% of Americans support $2,000 checks every month for the duration of this crisis, including a majority of Republicans. These proposals can be combined. A $1,000 monthly stimulus check is equivalent to getting a $6/hr raise at a 40-hour per week job or a $12/hr raise at a 20-hour per week job. A $1,200 monthly stimulus check is equivalent to a $7.70/hr raise at 40 hours and $15.40 at 20 hours. Based on the existing $7.25/hr minimum wage, $1,200 checks would bump incomes to a $15/hr equivalent for full-timers, and would do far more for part-timers. Or as another option, $833 monthly checks would boost a new $10/hr minimum wage to $15\. Obviously, different combinations are possible. The question is what combination could enough voters demand and members of Congress get behind? The combination of a higher minimum wage and monthly direct payments would do far more than just a higher minimum wage alone, because raising wages to $15 doesn’t help anyone who is unemployed (*and don’t forget that [only about 28% of the unemployed get unemployment insurance](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/opinion/unemployment-insurance-biden.html?ref=scottsantens.com)*). Higher minimum wages also don’t help the non-employed, like for example all unpaid care workers. Higher minimum wages also don’t directly help those earning more than the new wage floor (*although there will be new pressure for employers to increase wages*). Higher wages can also result in fewer jobs (*although this effect tends to be mitigated to varying degrees by greater spending which creates new jobs*). A higher minimum wage can also result in no net income increase due to reduced hours, and also more automation, and it’s these last two I really want to highlight. Fewer hours and more automation tend to be argued as reasons against raising the minimum wage, but I think they are exactly why we should. We work too much, and we have a situation, especially right now, where there are lots of people working too much while at the same time, there are people entirely unable to find a job. So let’s share employment better. If we cut 10 million full-time 40-hour jobs in half, we’d immediately create 10 million new jobs where 20 million people could now be working 20-hour weeks instead of 10 million people working 40-hour weeks with 10 million people unemployed. Reducing hours would increase well-being and productivity. The problem is that it would also reduce income unless wages were increased. That’s where the higher minimum wage and monthly direct payments come into play. If raising minimum wages results in fewer work hours, such that people see no loss or gain in income, then great, they’re still happier thanks to having more time, and direct payments would provide the desired income increase. For those who want to earn even more, they could use their increased free time to choose paid work over more leisure. If raising wages results in more automation, such that fewer people are able to find employment, then great, they’re still happier thanks to having more time, so long as they have a monthly income they can count on as always being there, and if workweeks are say 4-day instead of 5-day, it’s going to make it a lot easier for people to find a new job to earn additional income on top of their monthly direct payments. Human labor is too cheap. The minimum wage is so low that even though technology exists to replace workers, businesses don’t invest in the technology, because it doesn’t make sense to invest in a $14/hr equivalent robotic worker when people are willing to work for $8/hr. But if we make it illegal to pay humans less than $15/hr, suddenly investing in a lot of automation makes a lot more sense. And that’s great for everyone, as long as robot paychecks flow to everyone instead of only their owners. I see so much concern that people will stop working as soon as they don’t have to work thanks to having a monthly income that’s disconnected from work, but what I don’t see is the realization that forcing people to work for cheap is not only wrong, but it means that machines aren’t doing for us what they could already be doing for us. What if as part of the reconciliation process, some member of Congress suggested that the United States should subsidize automation? What if instead of talking about punishing businesses for not paying enough and rewarding businesses that did, they instead started talking about punishing businesses for not automating enough and rewarding businesses who did? We’d see a lot more unemployment, that’s for sure. But we’d also see a lot more productivity. We’d see lots of machines making stuff for people who couldn’t buy anything, unless we made sure everyone could still buy what the machines are making. [Unemployment is not the problem](https://www.scottsantens.com/a-day-in-my-life-in-2040-with-UBI). So what if automation creates more unemployment, or that a $15 min wage could create more unemployment? If we see these things as creating more self-owned time, they’re great. The problem is that we withhold income from the unemployed, and thus withhold spending from customers. All we have to do is stop doing that, and instead make sure that everyone starts each month with some amount of money to buy the stuff our economy is making. Additionally, if everyone started each month with an income floor instead of a wage floor, they’d have more power to withhold their labor until their demands are met. Those demands could mean wages even higher than whatever the minimum wage is, or those demands could mean finding a job that pays less than similar jobs, but offers a great deal more meaning and purpose, for example choosing a non-profit $50,000 job instead of a $70,000 oil industry job. Republicans have long said that tax cuts pay for themselves by increasing disposable incomes. That’s how they were able to pass their Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017 through reconciliation. Well, every stimulus check is an advance tax rebate, which is a tax cut, so the argument should be that a monthly tax cut would grow the economy every month in the same way the $600 stimulus check just increased retail sales by over 5% in January, blasting past expectations of 1%. Don’t worry about increasing the deficit, especially when [monthly checks would also grow GDP](https://www.ubiworks.ca/groweconomy?ref=scottsantens.com). Republicans should recognize stimulus checks for what they are, GDP-growing tax rebates, and should make their argument for a higher minimum wage using them as their way to get Democrats to agree to a less than $15 counteroffer. Raising the minimum wage and introducing monthly direct payments is something Democrats and Republicans should both be able to get behind, as long as Republicans truly do want to lower taxes for the bottom 80% instead of just the top 1%, and if Democrats truly do want to increase incomes, instead of just increasing tax revenue. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### A Pandemic is a Great Time to Stop Ignoring Unpaid Care Work URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/a-pandemic-is-a-great-time-to-stop-ignoring-unpaid-care-work-universal-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T22:27:41.000Z ### Care work is work. We need to recognize it and support it with monthly income. **Unpaid care work is work**. I want to make that clear first and foremost. However, it’s also more than that. It’s a kind of work that can’t really be measured like wage work. It’s not like informal care workers clock in, work, take a break, work, clock out for lunch, clock in again, work some more, take a break, and clock out until the next day. Care work can be omnipresent. Care work can be done even when nothing is actively being done. It’s kind of like being on call. Sometimes other work can be done while on call, while other times it can’t. You just have to be available at any moment, and because of that, often other work just can’t be done at all. Sometimes the care is of such high priority that no other work can even be thought about, let alone attempted. Sometimes after the work is actually over, at least temporarily, there can simply be no energy left in the batteries, despite one’s time being technically available for other work. A few hours of care work can be absolutely draining in a way other work isn’t. Care work can be absolutely exhausting work, physically and emotionally. As an unconditional basic income advocate I’ve long appreciated the importance of care work and the argument for [UBI as the only policy that can truly recognize and support all forms of care work](https://www.scottsantens.com/unconditional-basic-income-is-a-pigovian-subsidy-for-unpaid-work), but only recently have I experienced care work to the degree I just have in my own life. My fiancee recently required a 10-day stay in the hospital. Every day I spent the day in her room beside her. My presence was part of her care, and if she needed little things like more water or a light flipped on or off, or something tossed in the garbage, or just a hug, I was there. I didn’t even bother bringing my laptop along, because why would I do that? For one, how am I supposed to write anything while the love of my life is in pain next to me? And two, it’s really difficult to write when I’m frequently being asked to do this or that, so the work I’d usually do wasn’t possible anyway, even if I’d wanted to do it in such an environment. I feel incredibly fortunate that I was able to drop everything and just focus on my partner’s health. I was able to do that because [I have a crowdfunded basic income](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com). I didn’t need to use any paid leave days. I didn’t need to talk to Human Resources or prepare the receipts to file for some pandemic-related tax credit. I didn’t need to worry about losing my job if I was gone for too long. **I just switched the work I was doing to something I felt was more important**. I’m not alone in that switch. That kind of switch has always happened. People have always stopped doing paid work in order to start doing unpaid work, sometimes temporarily and sometimes permanently, but that switch just happened in a very big way in 2020\. [Over 2 million women](https://abc7chicago.com/shecession-women-workforce-labor-market-work-force/10255761/?ref=scottsantens.com) in the US have exited the labor force since the pandemic hit, many to focus on unpaid care work at home. They aren’t unemployed and seeking employment. They are not seeking employment. They are instead working at home, **in an extremely undervalued economically kind of way**. Men are switching to unpaid care work too, but unpaid work has always been disproportionately done by women, and that has only increased as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. According to [a UW study done in 2015](https://www.washington.edu/news/2015/06/16/study-reveals-surprising-truths-about-caregivers/?ref=scottsantens.com), **one-third of the U.S. population were informal caregivers performing** **1.2 billion hours of unpaid work every week**. If that work were split among full-time paid caregivers, it would require 30.5 million of them. If that work were counted as part of GDP, it would make up about 4.3% of it. That was years ago. I don’t know what the numbers are now due to Covid with so many more people needing care and so many schools closed. Whatever the numbers now are, indisputably, they have grown, and yet **where is the recognition?** Now President Biden, to his credit, is seeking to establish a monthly child allowance which would provide $250 a month per kid, with an extra $50/mo for kids age five and under. [Mitt Romney has also proposed a similar plan](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22264520/mitt-romney-checks-parents-4200?ref=scottsantens.com), but with an extra $100/mo for kids under six that also includes $1,400 prior to birth. Both are certainly welcome, and are great starts to really starting to recognize the unpaid care work of raising kids, but child care on average in the U.S. costs $1,230 a month, and not all care work involves kids. A great deal of care work involves caring for dependent adults, especially seniors. Where is the monthly cash allowance for that? And even if we were to start paying all unpaid care workers $1,230 a month to support that work, does that make economic sense as a proper reflection of that work’s true value? A full-page ad recently appeared in the New York Times as an open letter to President Biden encouraging him to launch a “[Marshall Plan for Moms](https://www.fastcompany.com/90597145/amy-schumer-eva-longoria-tarana-burke-and-others-say-biden-stimulus-checks-should-go-monthly-to-moms?ref=scottsantens.com)” that includes $2,400 a month for at-home mothers. This letter was organized by Girls Who Code founder and CEO Reshma Saujani and signed by celebrities like Amy Schumer and Eva Longoria. $2,400 a month is a number that seems more appropriate in recognition of the work being done at home, and the work that needed to be left behind in order to pursue it. Consider for a moment that work being left behind. Consider a mom that was being paid $3,000 a month as a toll booth operator, instead choosing to be a stay-at-home mom and teacher when schools closed down. Should that job she left even exist at all? Is it right for her to receive $3,000 less per month to do something fundamentally more important? Is that loss of income good for the economy as a whole? Which kind of work is better for society? Toll booth operating that can be better performed by unfeeling machines? Or parenting that is better done by loving parents? Doesn’t it make more sense to end the jobs that can be done by machines, but make sure people still have incomes to do the work that is best done by humans? Is it somehow a loss for feminism if a woman is performing care work at home instead of performing work that could be easily automated while someone else is paid to do the caring? Shouldn’t the focus be on making sure that women and men alike can freely choose whether to pursue unpaid work at home or paid work in the labor market by at least making sure unpaid work at home is [an actual option for everyone](https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/feminist-politics-and-case-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com), and that everyone can also afford things like childcare that enable employment as a real option? If we are ever to truly properly value unpaid work, recognize the importance of it as a society, and support it in a way that everyone can choose to do it full-time, part-time, or in times of sudden temporary need for it, we need to build a floor for caring that’s always there, underneath all of our feet, at all times. What that amount needs to be is up for debate, but **right now it’s zero dollars, and that amount is simply unacceptable**. [$2,000 a month](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-stimulus-check-2000-recurring-democratic-lawmakers-2021-01-30/?ref=scottsantens.com) has become the rallying cry for the amount of relief/stimulus that we should be getting every month for the duration of the pandemic. This number has [65% support, which includes even a majority of Republicans](https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2021/1/04/65-percent-support-monthly-2000-checks?ref=scottsantens.com). I think this in addition to a monthly child allowance is what needs to be pushed for, and I think if it’s actually won, we would finally start supporting all unpaid work in a way we’ve never done before. If we choose to start supporting and enabling all unpaid care work, I think it will change the way we as a society define work, and how we value each other. The labor market is not the only way of contributing to society, and it’s about time we stop saying that, and start thanking and supporting all the contributing going on that makes so much of all the other contributing even possible. We’re in a pandemic for heaven’s sake. **Out of all times, it’s right now when we most need to make sure that all of us can care for each other and not be actively punished financially for doing so**. If you agree, [please contact your reps and tell them](https://www.bailoutthepeople.com/?ref=scottsantens.com). **$2,000 a month**. It’s long overdue. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### 2020 Revealed That Unconditional Basic Income Cannot Wait Any Longer URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/2020-revealed-that-universal-unconditional-basic-income-cannot-wait-any-longer-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-21T23:29:01.000Z Everything seemed to change in 2020, and yet in very important ways, what really needed to didn’t, which is what must change. It’s time to finally live up to our founding ideals as a nation with a monthly investment in the lifelong economic security of all Americans. Millions of Americans visited food banks for the first time in their lives in 2020, while local grocery stores went without customers and food was plowed back into the fields that grew it. Millions of Americans faced eviction and still do, while 31 vacant homes existed for every homeless person before the U.S. even declared a national emergency. Millions of Americans filed for unemployment assistance for the first time in their lives, while before the pandemic even started, 13 million Americans living in poverty were receiving nothing in assistance from the federal government. With food going unbought, and housing going unutilized, [we clearly have enough resources to meet everyone’s basic needs](https://www.thecrimson.com/column/a-time-for-new-ideas/article/2020/4/16/gilbert-making-basic-income-a-reality/?ref=scottsantens.com) in good times or bad, and yet those resources are not reaching every American. The coronavirus has thus revealed something extremely important that millions of Americans now realize: We don’t really have a safety net in America. We never did. There are programs meant to help in times of need, but those programs - because they are targeted - [always exclude many of those in need](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1328422793294344192?ref=scottsantens.com). SNAP is our most effective program, but even it only reaches two out of three people living in poverty. TANF is our least effective program, reaching as few as 4% of impoverished households in some states. Our disability programs only reach one out of five Americans living with a disability, where the average wait time for those who do qualify is two years. Unemployment insurance prevented tens of millions of Americans from a total loss of income in 2020, but on average took four months for a third of those who qualified to get their first check after their last paycheck, and only reached one out of four unemployed white Americans and one in eight unemployed Black Americans. The coronavirus crisis has made abundantly clear that a net by definition is full of holes, and that when it comes to our safety net, the holes are large enough for millions of Americans to fall through. What is needed is a fully universal and unconditional floor free of holes. We declare that every American should start every month with the same unconditional cash stipend as every other American as our equal share of our economy we together comprise. It is our inheritance. It is our dividend. It is our tax rebate. It is our right as citizens to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, in recognition that lack of unconditional access to survival income infringes upon all the rights that we considered inalienable enough to have fought a revolution to secure. Do we have a right to life if what we need to live can be withheld from us? Do we have liberty if we lack the power to say no to exploitation and abuse? Can we pursue happiness if all we're pursuing is survival? We understand that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are all just words without unconditional access to the basic needs of existence. We are all human beings whose lives have intrinsic worth. **We are all equally worthy of existing**. That is what we now recognize and must fully realize as a nation. UBI is not a new idea nor a call for charity. This is a centuries-in-the-making living up to our founding ideals. As Thomas Paine wrote at our nation’s founding in support of his own plan for universal inheritance, “[it is a right, and not a charity, that I am pleading for](https://thomaspaine.org/major-works/agrarian-justice.html?ref=scottsantens.com).” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Milton Friedman may have disagreed on many things, but they both agreed on the direct elimination of poverty through the guaranteeing of income. **UBI is not left or right. It’s forward.** This is not about capitalism or socialism, or conservatism or liberalism. It’s about humanism. It’s about living dignified lives with the agency to make our own choices, secure in the knowledge that whatever happens, we are protected from starvation and homelessness, and are free to forge our own paths. You may ask, “how can we afford to end poverty?” and we ask in return, “\*\*how can we afford not to end poverty?\*\*” The costs of child poverty alone have been estimated to exceed $1 trillion a year. We spend trillions of dollars annually on healthcare and crime treating the downstream effects of poverty and chronic insecurity. We also suffer from the decreased productivity of people just working whatever job they can find in order to just survive, and our economy suffers from a perpetual GDP gap as a result of there simply not being enough consumers with enough money to purchase all that our economy is capable of producing. You may ask, “won’t people stop working?” and we ask in return, “\*\*how much work is prevented by a lack of money?\*\*” How much work is going undone because people can’t afford to create their own job, or relocate or retrain for a job? How many jobs don’t exist due to small businesses failing due to lack of customers? And how much work is being done in homes across America going unpaid and unrecognized, despite being hugely valuable to all of society? Additionally, as technology is able to do more of our work for us, at an increasingly affordable price, should we even be fretting the loss of those jobs? Or should we be welcoming automation in the same way its owners already do? Is the problem the automation of labor? Or is the problem that we require labor in order to obtain survival income? If the wages that robots aren’t earning are shared universally as a technological dividend, and the value of the data we are generating is shared as a data dividend, then automation literally starts working for all of us. We could welcome automation for the productivity increases it brings if we simply shared the resulting prosperity instead of concentrating it in the hands of the few. It is this decades-long concentration of productivity increases that needs to be reversed. A report by RAND has estimated that had our national income distribution remained the same now as it was in 1974, [the bottom 90% of Americans would be earning $2.5 trillion more every year](https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/?ref=scottsantens.com). That itself makes the argument for UBI simply as a matter of returning the money that would otherwise be distributed each year as wages and salaries, had they not stagnated decades ago. **Yes, we will continue working if poverty is ended in America, just as billionaires continue working without the fear of poverty.** **Yes, we can and should choose to issue a dividend to all stockholders as a right of citizenship in recognition of the value we all inherently have, and all interdependently create.** **Yes, this is rightfully our money to demand.** Our economy needs money to continually exchange hands in order to thrive. We will all benefit from small businesses having more customers with more money to spend. We will all benefit from every American being invested in on a monthly basis. We will all see [returns on that investment](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1040683616488103936?ref=scottsantens.com) in the form of improved health, less crime, better educational outcomes, greater wellbeing, higher trust, increased entrepreneurship, and more resilience to the disasters that can befall any of us at any time. Consider that last point closely. What if we had already implemented UBI before the pandemic hit? What if every American had already been receiving $1,200 not just as a one-time stimulus payment, but as monthly survival income as their right as an American? How many more people would have been able to afford to stay home instead of spread Covid? How many fewer Americans would have had to stand in record-breaking lines at food banks? How many fewer Americans would have fallen behind on their rent? How much less relief would we have needed if the least income any American had was $1,200 each and every month? If we can create, test, and distribute a vaccine to a novel coronavirus all within one year, [we can inoculate ourselves against poverty](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com) when we already have the vaccine available — **money** — and already know how to best distribute it — **unconditionally.** We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish [**this petition**](https://fundforhumanity.org/actnow/?ref=scottsantens.com) for Universal Unconditional Basic Income. After over 240 years, it’s time to live up to our founding ideals. Are you with us? --- **Think people with UBI will stop working or that it will lead to inflation? [Here's a list of answers to those and other frequently asked questions.](https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq)** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my ceaseless UBI advocacy. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Escaping the Cult Commander in Chief URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/escaping-the-cult-commander-in-chief-donald-trump/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T22:25:04.000Z ### Biden is in and Trump is out, but it's nowhere near the end of our problems as a democracy in dire need of systemic reforms and more widely shared prosperity As I write this, I worry about how the coming days will unfold leading up to January 20, and what will happen in the months and years after. Will we see more of what we saw on January 6? I don’t know. But what I do know is that there is a division in this society that is continuing to grow as entire alternate realities develop like bubble universes around us, the contents of which depend entirely on the content we have chosen to digitally feed ourselves. I watched the events unfold on January 6 and in real-time witnessed an alternate reality rapidly be constructed in the form of passing blame to antifa from the mob who marched on the Capitol after direct incitement to do so from Trump. Trump himself has now apparently taken up this fictional explanation of the events that unfolded. A sitting member of Congress actually cited an article on the House floor that was so absolutely false that it was soon deleted, but only after becoming the 11th most viewed article in the country. No, [there were not known antifa recognized by facial recognition technology](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/antifa-facial-recognition-capitol/?ref=scottsantens.com), and the company cited as the source actually reached out via their lawyer to say the truth was that they’d identified two neo-Nazis and a QAnon supporter. And yet because the lie was told, and because the lie was shared, people actually believe it, because they want to believe it. People don’t want to believe that the President they support attempted a self-coup with their support. They don’t want to believe that they are in any way to blame for the deaths in D.C. that day. All of this because they don’t want to believe that Trump fairly lost the election, when he did, and has since lost over 50 times in court. I remember asking myself repeatedly on January 6, “How the hell are we going to fix this?” I’m still asking myself that. I’ve been told a Big Lie before. I was lied to in such a big way, for so many years, that I swore to myself I’d never let it happen again for the rest of my life. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I know how hard it is to come to terms with a Big Lie. It can feel like entire years of your life have been completely wasted. Those years will never come back. But they weren’t wasted. It is possible to get out of a cult. It’s really difficult, but it’s possible. It is possible to see a cult leader for what they are. It helps to learn more about [narcissistic personality disorder (NPD](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/conditions/narcissistic-personality-disorder?ref=scottsantens.com)). I find myself thinking about concepts like [Narcissistic supply](https://thenarcissisticlife.com/narcissistic-supply/?ref=scottsantens.com) lately, and just how much of a textbook narcissist Trump really is. *“The narcissist’s achievements can be imaginary or outward fraud but he will bask in them as long as others believe them to be true. Truth does not matter to the narcissist, only the perception matters. Appearance is more important than substance; in fact, it is the only thing that counts to a narcissist.”* The United States of America has been under the spell of a narcissist cult leader for four years now. His teachings have been propagated as gospel and people feel special in a way that they haven’t felt for a long time, or possibly ever, like they alone know something of divine truth, because they are smart enough, special enough, and worthy enough to have discovered it. Whatever happens between now and Biden’s inauguration and beyond, this mess isn’t over just because we have a new president and a new Democratic Congress. People don’t just lose their religions. People kill over religions. They die over them. The loss of religious beliefs is a profoundly difficult personal decision. They aren’t just taken away like toys. Losing a religion involves voluntarily giving it up. Please just try and keep that in mind as the future unfolds. The tens of millions of Americans who love Trump aren’t your enemy. They aren’t evil. They’re in a cult. They are living on a steady diet of “truth” as fed to them by those restricted to the same diet. Yes, some of them may be racist, and some who are racist may also be neo-Nazis, but the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump are not all neo-Nazis, nor all they all racists. They believe what they believe because of the information diet that they’ve consumed for years or even decades, that has only grown more polarized, especially since the creation and rise of social media. Unifying this country, if it’s even possible now, will require the same effort required to get loved ones out of a cult. It will require time and deprogramming. It will require being a good friend. It will require recognizing that people tend to enter cults because of vulnerabilities born of instability in their lives, feelings of personal failure, purposelessness, and problems at home. It will require [radical empathy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUEGHdQO7WA&ref=scottsantens.com). This isn’t to suggest that we should ignore systemic injustices born out of racism, or let criminal acts of terrorism slide as water under the bridge. We need to confront the racism twisted into the roots of this country, and there needs to be justice in response to acts of domestic terrorism. I’m just trying to appeal to our collective national membership in this tribe we call the United States, because as Lincoln said, “a house divided against itself, cannot stand.” If we just give up on each other as a result of diametrically-opposed belief systems as a result of self-inflicted bifurcated reality, that way lies civil war. We need to find things we actually do agree on, and build off that. $2,000 is something four out of five of us agree on. Let’s start there. Let’s also focus on democracy reforms that improve representative democracy itself, like [political donation vouchers](https://thefulcrum.us/campaign-finance/seattle-public-financing?ref=scottsantens.com) that reduce the political influence of wealthy funders, [ranked-choice voting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MykMQfmLIro&ref=scottsantens.com) which encourages aisle crossing, and [multi-winner congressional districts](https://www.fairvote.org/the%5Ffair%5Frepresentation%5Fact%5Fhh7w4yf4ag7qk9%5Ffvjtdfq?ref=scottsantens.com) that end gerrymandering. Above all though, we need to make life less shitty for so many people, so that we don’t lose them into the abyss of false truth that cult leaders will never stop offering. And that’s why the most important policy of all is [unconditional basic income](https://medium.com/basic-income/what-we-need-to-truly-thrive-democracy-and-unconditional-basic-income-ccdbe72cefa5?ref=scottsantens.com). Until we improve the living environments that all of us exist within, so that we can all thrive instead of just survive, there will always be another mirage to become lost within, in our search for a better truth than the real one. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Basic Income as Liquid Infrastructure: The Bruce Lee Argument for UBI URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/unconditional-universal-basic-income-as-liquid-infrastructure-the-bruce-lee-argument-for-ubi-cash-money/ Last updated: 2025-10-19T16:18:58.000Z *"Be formless, shapeless, like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put water into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” - Bruce Lee* When most people hear Bruce Lee's words about the way water takes the shape of whatever volume it's contained within, they likely think of applying them to martial arts or as some kind of self-help philosophy rule-of-thumb about being flexible in life. **I think about cash.** Cash is anything we want it to be. When we get cash as a gift, it's because the giver doesn't know what we want most, but they also know that *we* do know. And if we don't know, we'll figure it out. This also happens to be why cash isn't the default government benefit. Because we can spend cash on anything, people worry (while swirling a glass of wine or smoking a cigar) that we'll spend it "irresponsibly," i.e. on things like drugs and alcohol. But [these assumptions have been proven wrong](https://davidevans.blog/2016/11/29/the-poor-dont-use-cash-transfers-on-alcohol-and-tobacco-really/?ref=scottsantens.com). Most people when provided cash, actually reduce their spending on drugs and alcohol, usually due to decreases in stress, and instead use it on food, housing, clothing, school, medicine, transportation, household goods, paying debt, or building savings. They also tend to use it on capital, and that's where things really get interesting. People are incredibly creative. One of my favorite examples of how someone used cash was the subject of one of GiveDirectly's blogs titled "[There's no charity for power saws](https://www.givedirectly.org/theres-no-charity-for-power-saws/?ref=scottsantens.com)." You see, [GiveDirectly](https://www.givedirectly.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) is a non-profit focused on unconditional cash, and after doing a survey of what cash recipients in Kenya did with the money that most surprised fellow recipients, some fascinating results rolled in. Among them was someone who used the money to buy a power saw. Cleverly, they used the saw to start their own business where they would cut down trees for people, and then also make stuff out of the wood to sell, like furniture or charcoal. Multiple survey respondents were impressed with that use of the money. As GiveDirectly noted in its blog: > There’s no power saw charity. As far as we know, there’s no tin roof charity either, or a motorcycle charity for aspiring motorcycle taxi drivers, a fish pond charity for future fish farmers, or a dowry charity for people who just want to marry. There’s also definitely no combined power saw/motorcycle/fish pond/dowry charity. Cash is a compelling weapon against poverty precisely because people can use it how they see fit, responding to their own specific needs and dreams. When GiveDirectly entered the charity space in 2008, no one else was focused on unconditional cash. That's why they got into the space. Since then, cash has increasingly become the benchmark to measure all aid against. If an organization is going to spend $1,000 to provide someone something, would the outcome be better or worse than just giving that person $1,000 and calling it a day? The evidence has been building, and it's becoming increasingly clear that in most cases, [cash wins](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/10/17/opinion/just-give-poor-people-money/?ref=scottsantens.com). It's not only that cash can be used on anything, it's that cash can be used in any combination on anything. The way people use cash is like a fingerprint,albeit always changing based on shifting needs and wants. Everyone is unique in the mix of ways we use cash. One person will use 50% on food, 30% on debt, and 20% on medicine. Another will use 40% on housing, 20% on clothing, 30% on school costs, and 10% on savings. The chart below shows how 20 cash recipients in Kenya used unconditional cash provided to them by GiveDirectly. Notice how Recipient 1 used the bulk of their money on education, while Recipient 6 used the bulk of theirs on housing, and Recipient 15 used the bulk of theirs on food. No one but Recipient 5 used their cash on only one thing. ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/3c0f3370-9889-4d1a-82fc-9efba418ee4e/EcregSiX0AAiZK-_large.jpg) A similar pattern can be observed as a result of the $1500 in cash that GiveDirectly provided to victims of climate disasters in Texas and Puerto Rico. In fact, [according to their analysis](https://www.givedirectly.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Why-Not-Cash-Lessons-from-US-Disaster-Projects-GiveDirectly.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), recipients purchased 95 distinct bundles of goods in Texas, and 226 distinct bundles in Puerto Rico, and if GiveDirectly had provided the most commonly-observed bundle in each location instead of cash, they would have matched the preferences of only 20% of recipients in Texas and 6% in Puerto Rico. Overall, **95% of cash recipients in Texas and 80% of cash recipients in Puerto Rico reported that they were happier with the cash they got than other forms of aid.** ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/652a9dec-4f00-4304-8bfc-ae8a2a69a0f8/Why-Not-Cash-Lessons-from-US-Disaster-Projects-GiveDirectly-pdf.png) As one cash recipient in Texas described his experience, "*You know they didn't come say ‘We gonna give you some shoes that don't fit or some food that you don't like, some cold water that you don't need,’ they say ‘Here, take this and do’... and they trusted us with it...I know what I need. Don't kinda second-guess me*.” Or as another recipient in Puerto Rico said, “*Well, the cash is better. As they say: that's the key that opens all the doors, the cash. Because with that, one can buy everything. Imagine that they gave me two boxes of beans, three packages of rice. Well, what was I going to do with that? With the cash I can buy the rice, the meat and whatever else. If I need material to build something, I can buy it. It is not the same as choosing something for me that maybe I did not need*.” Money can be anything. Money is like water. This is the Bruce Lee Argument for Unconditional Basic Income: You put money into food, it becomes food. You put money into housing, it becomes housing. You put money into campaign donations for grassroots candidates, it becomes campaign donations for grassroots candidates. Money can flow, or it can be invested. Give money, my friend. Because unconditional basic income can become anything it is spent on, it can be thought of as infrastructure that is like water. It is **liquid infrastructure.** It's a new roof. It's a solar panel. It's a sculpture. It's even a power saw. It is whatever each and every person with it wants it to be. Typically when we think of infrastructure, I think roads probably come to mind, and roads are extremely important forms of infrastructure, especially in rural areas, but what good are roads if you can't afford a car to drive on them? What good are bridges if you can't afford to cross them? The infrastructure we invest in is only as useful as our ability to use it, and [money increases our ability to use it](https://www.scottsantens.com/one-observed-effect-of-unconditional-basic-income-better-more-reliable-transportation). Money is a kind of last-mile problem solver that functions to connect us to investments that otherwise might not benefit us by filling in any gaps with its shapelessness. I would also argue there are forms of infrastructure that aren't tangible, one example of which is *trust*. As revealed in [Finland's basic income experiment](https://medium.com/basic-income/what-is-there-to-learn-from-finlands-basic-income-experiment-did-it-succeed-or-fail-54b8e5051f60?ref=scottsantens.com), unconditional income increased trust in politicians, the legal system, and society at large. It's not that money bought that. It's that an increase of trust in citizens by government increased trust in government by citizens. So not only can UBI become the roads and bridges that connect us, it can also become the *glue* that holds us together, otherwise known as [social capital](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-will-likely-increase-social-cohesion-aceb337262e0?ref=scottsantens.com). Government is at its best when it's investing in everyone, and in the construction and provision of public infrastructure that everyone can use, but not all of it is usable everywhere all the time, and politicians can't possibly ever know what we as hundreds of millions of individuals each most need at any one time. Therefore, **some percentage of government spending should always be allocated as unconditional cash**. It's not the only thing governments should provide, because some things are more efficiently and effectively provided in the form of services, but because everyone needs money, and because money can become anything, some amount of basic income should be provided as a universal foundation that can be the most things for the most people, that everything else then operates on top of. I don't know what you need, and you don't know what I need, but we both know that money will help us secure what we each need, because ***money is like water.*** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my ceaseless UBI advocacy. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### An Engineering Argument for Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/engineering-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi-fault-tolerance-graceful-failure-redundancy/ Last updated: 2022-02-21T23:32:20.000Z *This post is also available in [Spanish](https://www.rentabasicauniversal.es/2020/11/02/el-argumento-desde-la-ingenieria-para-una-renta-basica-incondicional/?ref=scottsantens.com) and [Czech](https://tribun.red/2021/02/01/inzenyrske-argumenty-pro-zakladni-prijem/?ref=scottsantens.com) due to the volunteer work of translators. Thank you to everyone who [submits](mailto:scott@scottsantens.com) a translation for me to add here.* *(Optional Audio: click [here](https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/An-Engineering-Argument-for-Universal-Basic-Income-UBI-eq82k4?ref=scottsantens.com) to listen to my narration of this article if you prefer listening to reading*) > Before studying engineering, if someone asked me what 1+1 is, I would have said "2." Now, I'd say "I'm pretty sure it's 2, but we'd better make it 3 just to be safe." I originally went to college at the Colorado School of Mines to become an engineer. I switched majors to psychology after two years, but I will always think of things from the perspective of engineering for the same reason I originally pursued it: **what matters is reality and what works and doesn't work**. I love math and I love science, but I really love how engineering takes math and science and applies them to make and improve real things. Being an engineer is about being a realist. It's about pragmatism over theory. It recognizes that **the map is not the territory.** So here's one rule all engineers know, and it's Murphy's Law: **Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong**. Knowing that, failure therefore has to be a part of design. We don't want things to fail, but we know they will, because they always do, so what should be done? **The answer is fault tolerance.** In the event of component failure, a system should be designed to continue functioning either as normal, or at a reduced capacity. And when some system does fail entirely, it should be designed to return to 100% operating capacity quickly. Catastrophic failure should always be avoided, especially for mission critical systems, and even more especially when lives are at stake. Think planes. If a single component fails, it shouldn't bring the entire plane down. There are ways of avoiding that by incorporating things like redundancy so that multiple backup systems have to fail in order for the entire system to fail, and edge cases so that we consider in advance the full range of possibilities, however rare their occurrence may be. Because we know things will fail, **we should design them in a way such that when they fail, lives are protected first and foremost, wherever lives are at risk**. In elevators, it would be bad design for them to plummet with the loss of power. Instead, they utilize fail safe design, where power keeps the brakes off and loss of power activates them. They fail into a safe state, ergo "*fail safe*." Okay, so what does this have to do with basic income you may be asking? It's simple. We know that our primary income distribution system fails. It fails all the time. It's called losing your job. We have a "safety net" designed to catch people when it fails, but [that system is really poorly designed](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-progressive-case-for-replacing-the-welfare-state-with-basic-income-e8bd02c5875e?ref=scottsantens.com), and [it also fails all the time](https://medium.com/basic-income/there-is-no-policy-proposal-more-progressive-than-andrew-yangs-freedom-dividend-72d3850a6245?ref=scottsantens.com), at which point, people can and do die as a result. We have engineered a life support system without fault tolerance, and we did it because engineers didn't design the system. Politicians did. Special interests did. And it's built on antiquated job-centric moralism instead of contemporary life-centric realism. Realism demands that we recognize [human beings need money to live within a system of private property that withholds legal access to basic resources on the condition of having money](https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/we-need-ubi-because-we-all-need-money) or qualifying for government assistance. **It is mission critical for people to have money to spend on what they need to live**. So just make sure they have it, by supplying it to everyone unconditionally. Here's how UBI would introduce fault tolerance into our life support system we call the economy: First, everyone starts with the money they need to live. We wouldn't create a life support system on a space station where in order to receive oxygen, one would need to work to obtain it. Life support is life support. Dead people can't work. So make sure people get oxygen so they can stay alive. Living people will do much more work than dead people. Next, everyone who works for additional money would be utilizing redundancy. They would have two streams of income. If they did multiple jobs or began earning passive income of some kind, it would be multiple streams of income. Instead of a one-engine plane, they could have two or three or more engines keeping them in the air. If one engine was lost, they'd have others, and because of the UBI, they'd never have zero. ![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/d23c299c-df60-41ce-a10d-bc0a9ca7ba6d/Em9M5e2XIAEkZBj_large.jpg) Because UBI would mean incomes never fall to zero, anyone who ever loses their job would fall to the level of the UBI instead of the severe poverty of having $0\. We can think of this as what engineers call "*graceful failure*." Graceful failure means that a failure does not result in catastrophic failure (e.g. sickness or death), and instead fails in a way that protects people or property from injury or damage. With UBI, people who lose their jobs would fall to a state above the poverty line, meaning that failure would never result in poverty. This builds resilience into the system. People who still have something instead of nothing are more able to get back up again, and find new employment. They're also [more likely to take risks](https://evonomics.com/universal-basic-income-accelerates-innovation-reducing-fear-failure/?ref=scottsantens.com), secure in the knowledge that failure won't result in death. There is a belief we have a safety net that protects all those who lose their jobs. This belief is a myth. It helps some people, but before the pandemic even hit, [13 million people](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/13-million-people-in-poverty-are-disconnected-from-the-social-safety-net-most-of-them-are-white/2019/02/04/807516a0-2598-11e9-81fd-b7b05d5bed90%5Fstory.html?ref=scottsantens.com) in America were already living in poverty entirely disconnected from all federal assistance programs. The best functioning program is SNAP, which reaches 3 out of 4 people in poverty, and lasts for 3 months every 3 years. The worst is TANF which varies by state, and in [Louisiana reaches 4 out of 100 families in poverty](https://features.marketplace.org/yourstateonwelfare/louisiana.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Disability assistance reaches [1 out of every 5](https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/infographic-disability-impacts-all.html?ref=scottsantens.com) Americans with disabilities, and the average waiting time to qualify is [two years](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/2017/11/20/10000-people-died-waiting-for-a-disability-decision-in-the-past-year-will-he-be-next/?ref=scottsantens.com). Housing assistance reaches [1 out of every 4](https://talkpoverty.org/2014/06/20/sard/?ref=scottsantens.com) Americans who qualify. Unemployment insurance reaches about [1 out of every 4](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/21/860457210/how-a-decades-old-unemployment-insurance-system-is-measuring-up-in-the-pandemic?ref=scottsantens.com) unemployed people. See the pattern? Most of our safety net programs tend to exclude 3 out of every 4 people who need them. Because of UBI's universality, 0 out of every 4 people would be excluded from assistance, because they'd already have it, and many wouldn't even need any additional assistance beyond their UBI, because it would provide more than many existing supports even offer. This leads me to another engineering element of system design: [bang-bang vs. proportional control](https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/subsection1%5F2%5F3%5F0%5F5.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Bang-bang design is like the way thermostats typically work. You set the temperature at what you want, and when the environment gets too far above or below that setting, *bang*, the air conditioning or heat kicks on to bring the room back to the desired temperature, and then, *bang*, it turns off again. Proportional control means that the further a system strays from the desired setting, more force is applied to bring it back. It doesn't wait to do anything until a point is reached. It adjusts at all points. Right now, our safety net uses bang-bang design. If you lose your job, *bang*, the safety net turns on, that is if you satisfy the necessary conditions, and you may or may not still fall to your death because of the holes in the net. If you do get help, it's temporary and then, *bang*, no more help, or if you don't satisfy the conditions, *bang*, no more help. However, UBI would be proportional control design. [Everyone receives UBI, but everyone also pays for it in varying amounts depending on income and/or consumption](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-is-the-net-transfer-amount-not-the-gross-price-tag-acb8aa5eab73?ref=scottsantens.com). So if your income goes down for any reason, or to any degree, you pay less for your UBI, meaning your disposable income boost is increased. In economic terms, this is called countercyclical fiscal policy. During good times, when most people are employed, you might be paying $1,000/mo in taxes to receive $1,000/mo in UBI, meaning a $0/mo income boost due to earning over six figures. If your hours are cut, you might then pay $500/mo in taxes to receive $1000/mo in UBI, meaning a $500/mo income boost. And if you lost your income entirely, you'd pay $0 in taxes to receive $1,000/mo in UBI, meaning a $1,000/mo income boost. Thus, UBI would respond proportionally to income loss, creating much more stability in incomes than any bang-bang design could provide. Most biological systems utilize such proportional control, because evolution discovered that it tends to just work best when it comes to life support. This is the engineering argument for UBI: We are all living, breathing, human beings, and we all need money to obtain the food and housing and everything else we need to stay alive. The best way to make sure we all stay alive then, is to make sure we always have a basic amount of money, and the best way to make sure we always have a basic amount of money is to provide it to everyone at all times, so it's always there, no matter what. Any argument to the contrary is not sound from an engineering perspective. Failure is inevitable. There will always be mistakes made. There will always be job loss. There will always be safety net failures. There will always be disasters. There will always be pandemics. Therefore, **we should always have basic income**, so that when these things happen, we're less likely to die, and more likely to scrape ourselves off, and get right back up again. Unconditional basic income is how to engineer *resilience* into our social and economic systems. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Should we support the many basic income experiments that aren't actually testing UBI? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/should-we-support-the-many-universal-basic-income-pilot-experiments-that-arent-actually-testing-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T22:22:26.000Z ### Questioning the strategy of non-universal cash grant pilot experiments This debate is nothing new, but I’m seeing more of it as more and more mayors get on board with launching guaranteed income pilots in their cities. The count right now is [25 U.S. mayors](https://www.mayorsforagi.org/who?ref=scottsantens.com) by the way. None of the mayors so far are focusing on universality within an entire community. Because of its unconditionality, basic income is for everyone, but because everyone gets it, we can look at its effects on certain demographics. What would UBI do for single mothers, for foster youth, for Black & LGBTQ communities, for artists, for veterans, for ex-felons, etc? The pilots popping up all over the place to look at the effects of UBI on specific groups aren't saying that UBI is only for those groups. It's about getting people from different communities to think about the effects of UBI on their own communities. In [Santa Clara County](https://basicincometoday.com/santa-clara-county-foster-youth-begin-receiving-1000-a-month-in-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com), youth aging out of the foster system are now receiving $1,000 a month. Single Black moms in [Jackson](http://springboardto.org/index.php/page/the-magnolia-mothers-trust?ref=scottsantens.com) are receiving $1,000 a month. Pregnant Black and Pacific Islander women will be receiving $1,000 a month while pregnant and during their first six months as a mom in [San Francisco](https://basicincometoday.com/san-francisco-to-provide-1000-month-to-pregnant-black-pacific-islander-women-to-test-basic-income-and-improve-health-outcomes/?ref=scottsantens.com). Seniors in high school in one school in [New Orleans](https://basicincometoday.com/high-school-in-new-orleans-begins-paying-200-a-month-in-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) are receiving $200 a month. This is about storytelling. If you can see yourself in the success story of someone provided unconditional basic income, then you are more likely to see the good sense of it. By creating a tapestry of stories people see themselves in, that's how we build a successful coalition. A + B + C + D + E + F + G… = UBI Any experiment we do will never actually be UBI, because the only way to do UBI is to do actual UBI. But in the same way [UBI is a social vaccine](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com), vaccines are trialed, but not on everyone, and the trials will never show herd immunity, but the effects on individuals show efficacy. As a specific example, consider a basic income experiment focused on people just out of prison. The point is to show the effect UBI will have on recidivism, violence, etc. It's not saying that UBI should only be for criminals. It's demonstrating the effect UBI will have on crime. [The Finland experiment](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/an-experiment-to-inform-universal-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) wasn’t UBI either, but by focusing only on unemployed people who would otherwise have received ordinary unemployment benefits, they were able to show that UBI successfully removes the disincentive effects of only receiving a benefit on the condition of remaining unemployed. But basic income pilots are not only about showing it works, or getting people to see themselves in the success stories, it's also about getting influential organizations on board. A pilot focused on a demographic can win the support of an org focused on that same demographic. When organizations that wield a lot of influence recognize that UBI will help accomplish their mission statements, then they can leverage their influence to get sitting politicians on board. That's when the wheels really start turning. In [South Korea](https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Universal-basic-income-gains-support-in-South-Korea-after-COVID?ref=scottsantens.com), a province began providing basic income in a local currency only to 24-year-olds for one year. That proved so popular, it was extended to everyone in the province in response to the coronavirus pandemic, and that was so popular, that the province’s governor, Lee Jae-myung, may become the next president of South Korea with the intention of permanent national adoption of UBI. To win UBI requires strategy, not purity. We need to be doing everything we can to make UBI happen, and part of that is welcoming all those who wish to zoom in on what UBI will mean for the communities they most want UBI for. In short, small pilots will never be UBI, but they can inspire people, and build a winning UBI coalition. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### With UBI, won't people just watch TV and play video games? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-quentin-tarantino-argument-for-universal-basic-income-ubi-people-watch-movies-and-play-video-games/ Last updated: 2022-02-21T23:37:51.000Z --- [(**Click here to listen to this argument as a 13-minute podcast episode**)](https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/The-Quentin-Tarantino-Argument-for-Universal-Basic-Income-UBI-ens0u4?ref=scottsantens.com) --- "*If we give everyone basic income, people will do nothing but watch TV and play video games.*" I've heard and read this more times than I can count over the years, and despite [the evidence](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329102801%5FWould%5Fa%5FBasic%5FIncome%5FGuarantee%5FReduce%5Fthe%5FMotivation%5Fto%5FWork%5FAn%5FAnalysis%5Fof%5FLabor%5FResponses%5Fin%5F16%5FTrial%5FPrograms?ref=scottsantens.com) not supporting that concern at all, and even [pointing in the opposite direction](https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202008.0638/v1?ref=scottsantens.com), and despite the fact that concern is essentially [an acknowledgement of wage slavery and a justification for its continued existence](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com), there's something else about that concern that needs to be called out. **What's wrong with watching TV and playing video games?** I think it's interesting how when people think of completely useless activities to engage in, they immediately talk about either watching TV or playing video games. Why are they so universally considered to be complete wastes of time? First of all, they are both billion-dollar industries. The video games industry alone is on its way to being worth [$300 billion by 2025](https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/video-games-300-billion-industry-2025-report-1203202672/?ref=scottsantens.com). A lot of work goes into making TV shows, movies, and video games. They can take years to make, cost millions of dollars, employ thousands of people, and companies like Netflix and Nintendo would not exist without people paying to watch TV and play video games. As Bertrand Russell explained in his 1932 essay ["In Praise of Idleness,"](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html?ref=scottsantens.com) valuing the production of movies but not the enjoyment of them makes no sense. > The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake. Serious-minded persons, for example, are continually condemning the habit of going to the cinema, and telling us that it leads the young into crime. But all the work that goes to producing a cinema is respectable, because it is work, and because it brings a money profit. The notion that the desirable activities are those that bring a profit has made everything topsy-turvy. The butcher who provides you with meat and the baker who provides you with bread are praiseworthy, because they are making money; but when you enjoy the food they have provided, you are merely frivolous, unless you eat only to get strength for your work. Broadly speaking, it is held that getting money is good and spending money is bad. Seeing that they are two sides of one transaction, this is absurd; one might as well maintain that keys are good, but keyholes are bad. **Whatever merit there may be in the production of goods must be entirely derivative from the advantage to be obtained by consuming them.** The individual, in our society, works for profit; but the social purpose of his work lies in the consumption of what he produces. It is this divorce between the individual and the social purpose of production that makes it so difficult for men to think clearly in a world in which profit-making is the incentive to industry. We think too much of production, and too little of consumption. One result is that we attach too little importance to enjoyment and simple happiness, and that we do not judge production by the pleasure that it gives to the consumer." Simply put, there is no value in producing anything if there is no value in consuming it. Thus, the act of watching movies and playing video games is actually the performance of a service as important as their creation, just as the eating of bread gives value to the making of it. The only reason I am writing this blog post right now is in the hopes others will read it. Thank you, dear reader for reading these words, for your consumption of these words has given meaning to my writing them. With the understanding that the watching of TV and the playing of video games both perform a socially valuable role by completing the purposes of their productions, there is something else I think is even more important in response to the concern that people will do things considered as not contributing to society if free to do them thanks to UBI. **You are not a god.** None of us are gods. None of us can ever possibly know what will end up being considered as valuable uses of time. Who are you to decide for someone else what they should and shouldn't be doing with the limited amount of time they have on this Earth? Pretend for a moment (if it's not already true) that you are a young lover of movies. You live for movies. You watch movie after movie after movie. You talk about movies with everyone you meet. More than a few times, people walk away thinking you watch way too many movies. What are you doing with your life, they say? What a waste, they think. What they fail to realize is that a fire has been lit within you. You don't just love movies, you have a passion for them. You aren't just watching them, even if you think that's all you're doing. You're absorbing them. You're studying them. Eventually, you get your first video camera. You start to film your own movies. You start to apply what you've learned. You start to build on the work others have done. You create movie after movie after movie, until one day, you are considered one of the masters of filmmaking. That is essentially the story of Quentin Tarantino - *film lover turned filmmaker.* > If you truly love cinema with all your heart and with enough passion you can't help but make a good movie. You don't have to go to school. You don't have to know a lens -- you know, a 40 and a 50 and a -- fuck all that shit -- crossing the line -- none of that shit's important. If you just truly love cinema with enough passion -- and you really love it, then you can't help but make a good movie." ― [Quentin Tarantino](https://nofilmschool.com/2013/07/tarantino-on-his-influences?ref=scottsantens.com) Young Tarantino loathed school and eventually dropped out. [He chose to spend his time watching movies or reading comics](https://manofmany.com/entertainment/movies-tv/how-quentin-tarantino-steals-from-other-movies?ref=scottsantens.com) rather than studying. The only subject that appealed to him was history, because it was the only subject that was kind of like movies. How many people in young Tarantino's life thought he was wasting it? How many people thought of his job at a video store as a dead-end job? How many people now think that same thing? Tarantino's movies are a direct result of all the movies he's watched and continues to watch. As a post-modernist, he uses what already exists. In a 1994 interview, he said, ["I steal from every single movie ever made."](https://manofmany.com/entertainment/movies-tv/how-quentin-tarantino-steals-from-other-movies?ref=scottsantens.com) With a giant database of movies in his brain, he creates something new with them, and although [people may take issue with Quentin as a person](https://digg.com/2018/quentin-tarantino-thurman-polanski-me-too?ref=scottsantens.com), and his movies aren't for everyone, his movies certainly are greatly loved by many. This is the Tarantino Argument for UBI: There is no possible way of knowing for certain that something someone is doing with their time has no value, and never will. **What appears to be a waste of time at first glance may end up having been an investment of time in the mastery of something valuable.** Look too at the playing of video games, which has developed into eSports. The highest paid player in the eSports world as of April 2020 is [Johan Sundstein, aka N0tail](https://sportytell.com/esports/worlds-highest-paid-esports-players/?ref=scottsantens.com), with $6.5 million in earnings playing Dota 2\. Outside of professional competition, [Tyler Blevins, aka Ninja](https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/01/29/top-earning-video-gamers-the-ten-highest-paid-players-pocketed-more-than-120-million-in-2019/?ref=scottsantens.com), earned $17 million in 2019 playing video games. When you stop and think about it, rewind the clock back to the early days of professional baseball, and think of all the kids who spent their time playing stickball in the streets. Think of a young Babe Ruth. Was he wasting his time playing? Did anyone at the time think so? No one can know who is going to be the next Quentin Tarantino, or the next Ninja, just as no one could have known about the first Babe Ruth. All we can do is stop judging each other based on how we choose to spend the hours of our own lives, and instead support each other in pursuing whatever is most important to each of us throughout the course of our lives. Unconditional basic income recognizes our inherent value as individuals with an infinite variety of interests, and helps us develop our unique talents by providing us all with the time and the space to explore our passions. It is through this exploration that future masters of their chosen craft will emerge in even greater numbers than now. And that will benefit not only them, but all of us. If there's one thing humans as a society seem to agree on, it's that we all seem to enjoy the work of a master. When someone is really good at something, after having focused on it day after day, year after year, it brings us pleasure to witness it. So let's stop telling each other how to spend our time, by defining in advance what counts or doesn't count as contributing to society, and instead create the conditions where more people can become the masters of their own destinies. Let's also enable people to contribute without asking for anything in return. That kind of gifting is only possible when basic needs are universally covered. No one should have no choice but to sell what they create in order to live, and instead should be free to create and give freely in return to a society which makes that possible, if that's what they prefer. > The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both. ” ― **James A. Michener** One more thing to consider as well for anyone concerned about what happens when more people choose to play video games, watch movies, and in general do things considered to be leisure instead of work: That will increase the wages and salaries commanded by those in traditional employment by decreasing the pool of labor willing to sell their labor as employees. Yes, [more people choosing leisure over employment will increase the value of employment](https://basicincome.org/news/2017/05/response-citizens-income-rights-wrongs/?ref=scottsantens.com). It will also provide increased incentive for companies to invest in automation, making even more leisure possible for everyone. A society full of people in the ongoing pursuit of their own purpose, paid or unpaid, leisure or work, is a society full of greater meaning, and that greater meaning will not only benefit people as individuals. It will benefit everyone, because when everyone is happier, everyone is happier. If mass mastery is a goal, if a purpose-filled society is what we want, UBI is how to achieve it. --- > Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn't stop you from doing anything at all." ― **Richard Feynman** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Why I'm voting for Biden/Harris 2020 URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/why-im-voting-for-biden-harris-2020/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T22:18:51.000Z ### Because Trump needs to go, because we need campaign finance reform, and because of the potential for fully refundable tax credits and monthly stimulus checks in 2021 In 1996, at age 19, I made my first decision as a citizen of the United States as to who the next president should be. My vote went to Bob Dole, the Republican candidate, despite really wanting to vote for Ross Perot, the independent, who had dropped out before jumping back in. I have voted in every general election since. (It took a few more elections for me to learn the importance of primary voting and mid-term voting.) I have always been fiercely independent in my vote and refused to register as a Democrat or a Republican, until I moved to Louisiana where closed primaries exist, which require me to be in the party of the candidate I wish to vote for. To vote for Andrew Yang, I registered as a Democrat, but I still don’t consider myself one. It’s just something I needed to do, that I never had to do in Washington’s open primary system. I should also further preface this by saying that I live in a deep red state, one of the reddest in the country, where because of the Electoral College, my vote does not matter. Regardless of who I vote for, my state’s electors will be pledged to the Republican presidential candidate. There is a 93% probability that Louisiana will vote for Trump. I am not in a swing state. That’s why in 2016, [I voted for the Green Party](https://www.scottsantens.com/i-voted-for-nader-twice-why-its-important-to-vote-for-third-parties-green-party), because at least then my vote would count for something, due to third party public funding relying on the popular vote. With all that now said, I would like to now explain why this time around, I’m voting for Joe Biden, and why I recommend others join me. The main reason I am voting for Biden, is because **Trump must lose**. He must lose not only because of what he’s been doing as president, but because of his anti-science mentality which is directly responsible for his fatal mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, and because of his [anti-democratic authoritarianism](https://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism?ref=scottsantens.com). As a firm believer in science and democracy, I believe it to be of utmost importance for Trump to not be a two-term president. Our institutions and our planet just can’t afford it. For anyone wondering why I’d vote for Biden in a deep red state where I just admitted my vote doesn’t count, it’s because despite the popular vote not deciding who is president (even though I think it should so that my vote actually does matter), I believe it’s important for the popular vote result to be maximized this year. If Trump wins the Electoral College again with a minority of the votes, and Biden loses with a huge majority, that could be enough to finally get enough states to join the [National Popular Vote Interstate Compact](https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation?ref=scottsantens.com) to pledge their electors to the popular vote winner in 2024. However, there are also some key reasons why I think a Biden win would not just be better than Trump, but actually quite important on its own in positive ways. First, Biden has been a long-time advocate of campaign finance reform and the public funding of elections. For those who aren’t familiar with this long-term fight of his as a senator, I recommend reading [this CNN opinion piece](https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/31/opinions/biden-campaign-finance-reform-mcconnell-priority-wertheimer/index.html?ref=scottsantens.com) written by Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a nonpartisan, non-profit organization that works to strengthen U.S. democracy and empower citizens in the political process. In short, it is very likely that a new version of [H.R.1.](https://act.represent.us/sign/What-is-HR1/?ref=scottsantens.com) would be introduced again by Democrats in the next Congress, and that it would pass under a Biden presidency. This reform would help drain the swamp by among other things, introducing a system of **[6:1 public matching of donations under $200](https://www.vox.com/polyarchy/2019/1/14/18182579/democrats-hr1-donor-campaign-finance-proposal-taxpayers?ref=scottsantens.com)**. Under such a system, grassroots campaigns would have a much better likelihood of winning. As one example, the $16 million in 2020 raised by Andrew Yang from small donors in 2020 would have been boosted an additional $96 million to $113 million. It’s not Democracy Dollars where everyone gets $100 to donate to campaigns, but it’s a huge multiplier of what does get donated, and thus would make a huge difference. Other important changes besides small donation matching that are part of H.R.1\. are ending gerrymandering, automatic voter registration, political organization donor disclosure, and other anti-corruption reforms intended to improve our democracy. I consider these reforms to be vital reforms, and so does Joe Biden. The second big reason I am voting for Biden is because of the addition of [a fully refundable child tax credit](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/08/heres-what-joe-bidens-tax-proposals-mean-for-american-households.html?ref=scottsantens.com) to his platform. This would expand the existing CTC of $2,000 a kid to **$3,000 for kids under 17 and $3,600 for kids under 6, and make it fully refundable plus paid monthly**, so that for those earning too little to get a benefit from the tax credit would start receiving a monthly check. For these parents, it would be a small basic income, similar to the [Canada Child Benefit](https://www.ubiworks.ca/ccb?ref=scottsantens.com) which has helped build the case for a basic income in Canada. Not only that, but Biden would also like to boost the child and dependent care credit (CDCC) to $4,000 for one kid and $8,000 for two, and make that refundable as well. Making these credits bigger and refundable is a big step toward basic income, [especially a basic income for kids](https://www.scottsantens.com/why-should-adults-with-kids-get-more-basic-income-child-allowances), and would also help people understand UBI as a fully universal fully refundable tax credit. The third and final big reason I am voting for Biden is because of Kamala Harris. She has been a strong proponent of getting cash directly to people as being what people need. I took issue with her LIFT Act as [not being refundable](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/10/19/do-we-really-need-a-second-earned-income-tax-credit/?ref=scottsantens.com), but with the onset of the pandemic, it was Kamala who together with Bernie Sanders introduced S.3784, the Monthly Economic Crisis Support Act, which proposed **$2,000 a month to everyone earning under $100,000, including $2,000/mo for up to three dependents**. As a VP, I think Kamala Harris would be an ally in the ongoing fight for monthly stimulus payments, and I think if we can with that fight and get some kind of monthly stimulus checks going out to the majority of the country in 2021, then that victory will help lead us to winning **[a full universal basic income](https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq)** after demonstrating the positive effects on the economy and the health and well-being of Americans across the country who would have otherwise suffered greatly without that monthly financial security. It is for the above reasons that I am early-voting for Biden. Our democracy needs to expel Trump in order to survive. It needs to be as big a win as possible in order to prevent [the worst possible post-election-day scenarios](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if-trump-refuses-concede/616424/?ref=scottsantens.com) and to be the final nail in the Electoral College if Trump wins despite losing even more massively than before in the popular vote. Biden would sign important campaign finance reforms into law, he would introduce steps toward basic income like a refundable CTC + CDCC in response to the pandemic recession, potentially even monthly stimulus checks too, and last but not least, [Biden has a spot waiting for Andrew Yang on his advisory council](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-23/biden-launches-small-business-push-with-yang-ice-cream-moguls?ref=scottsantens.com). Every election, both locally and nationally, we need to determine for ourselves what we think is most important, and to vote accordingly as a citizen. Everyone has their own beliefs as to what’s most important at any time. At this time, in October of 2020, these are what are most important to me as my own reasons. They are not my only reasons, but they are my primary reasons, and they are why this year, my vote as a citizen of the US, is going to Joe Biden. As one final note, I would just like to emphasize that none of us should ever feel we have no choice except for someone we hate or someone we don’t like. We have to prevent that feeling by making sure everyone can actually vote their consciences, which is why I think **[ranked-choice voting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MykMQfmLIro&ref=scottsantens.com)** is such an important reform to achieve in state after state. If you’re angry about your lack of choice, fight to expand your choices so that next time around in 2024, you can vote for any candidate you like most, without any fear you will help elect the candidate you most hate. A functioning democracy demands better than a duopoly, and a voter demands better than being shamed for their vote while half the country doesn’t even bother to vote. Please don’t fight each other. Fight to change the rules that encourage you to fight each other instead of the status quo. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### We need UBI because we all need money, power, and trust URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/we-need-universal-basic-income-ubi-because-we-all-need-money-power-and-trust/ Last updated: 2022-03-21T20:02:34.000Z ### Inhumanity reigns so long as we don’t trust each other with the power to choose the directions of our own lives, free of economic coercion I've written before about how besides just being a good idea with a lot of evidence-based reasons to support it, unconditional basic income is a human right, because it is. If you believe it’s immoral to starve someone to death, then you also must believe it’s immoral to withhold food from someone in order to get them to do what you want at the price you want. UBI is a fundamental human right we have yet to recognize as required restitution for taking the Earth - our natural inheritance - and turning it into private property. But right now, I just want to focus on three things: the obvious immediate need for UBI, and two not so obvious immediate needs for UBI: power and trust. The obvious need for UBI was made obvious in 2020, when our entire world was changed due to the novel coronavirus. Tens of millions of Americans immediately lost their jobs or saw their incomes reduced, and we got to watch as Congress debated over whether or not to send most of us three stimulus checks. Month after month, millions of people weren't able to pay their rent or mortgage, and some were evicted for it despite of eviction bans. We saw photos of thousands of cars in miles-long lines for food banks. We saw mental health plummet and insecurity skyrocket as even those who kept their jobs worried that theirs could be next. We all need money. That is a very simple fact of life. We need money to pay our bills. We need money to buy food, water, electricity, clothing, and internet access. We all have the same basic physical survival needs, and yet we tied survival to employment, and so there we were in a time of mass unemployment, and survival was a giant question mark hanging over many of our heads. There should be no debates over survival. We should have already had UBI decades ago. When the pandemic hit, we should have all thought, “Well this is a disaster, but at least I know I’m not going to go hungry or lose my home.” All debate in Congress should have been over how much and how long to temporarily boost our already existing UBI. Survival is not a topic of debate. Our survival is not something to turn into a partisan argument between Team Blue and Team Red. Our lives have inherent value. Humanity has greater value than the almighty Dow. No human being is worthless and everyone has a right to exist, with no work requirements attached. We do not live to work. We live, and life is work. There is however a second, huge, not so obvious reason we need UBI right this very moment, and that reason is **power**. We all need power. Power is the freedom to say no. Power is control over our own bodies and our own time. Oh, you want me to work more hours now with no extra pay? No. Oh, you want to abuse me because you’re stressed out at work? No. Oh, you want me to risk my life for $8 an hour to make sure someone gets a cheeseburger? No way. What worries me is how little power everyone has. We're surrounded by "Yes Men." There’s a lot less rocking the boat. There’s a lot more, “Put your head down and stay silent.” There’s a lot more acceptance of wage theft and exploitation and abuse. This is why UBI is so important. It's not just money. **Unconditionality is power**. Unconditional access to the resources we need to live is the power to look people in the eyes, and make demands or refuse theirs. We all need that power, and we have to recognize that’s what UBI is and that’s why we don’t already have it. Finally, the next not so obvious reason we need UBI immediately is **trust**. We are living through [a crisis of mistrust](https://www.edelman.com/trust/2022-trust-barometer/breaking-vicious-cycle-distrust?ref=scottsantens.com). We feel our institutions are failing us. We feel we are being constantly lied to. We don’t know what to believe, and so we clutch for whatever we can find to give us some sense of control. We fall for misinformation and disinformation. We fall for conspiracies. We stop voting. We lose faith in the project of self-government, and we lose faith in each other. Without trust, society unravels. Democracy fails. We can’t do anything big if we don’t trust that doing big things together is actually possible. But our entire society is built on distrust. Everything is built upon proving ourselves to each other first. “What will you do for me?” we ask each other. We can’t keep doing that. We have to build a foundation of unconditional trust. We have to start off by all trusting each other with access to what we need to live. If we first trust, trust will be returned. If we trust that we all want to contribute to society, then with that trust, we will be more willing to contribute. We’ll be more willing to help each other and work together. The [Finland basic income experiment](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/an-experiment-to-inform-universal-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) increased trust, because of course it did. If you are trusted then you are more willing to trust. And if you’re more willing to trust, then there’s less reason to be afraid. There’s less reason to live in fear, and there’s more reason to vote, and to not just vote, but to really engage in the never-ending unpaid process that is democracy. **We need UBI because we all need money, we all need power, and we all need trust**. Without these things, I worry about the future of human civilization. With these things, we march toward a better future. For there is no future of humankind without kind humans, and there is inhumanity so long as we don’t trust each other with the power to choose the directions of our own lives, free of economic coercion. As the only species on Earth who has to pay to live here, it’s time we cover that inhumane cost. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### My Speech at the People's Convention URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/peoples-convention-speech-universal-basic-income-ubi-m4a-rcv/ Last updated: 2022-02-12T20:05:21.000Z *On August 30, 2020, the [Movement for a People's Party](https://peoplesparty.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) held their first [People's Convention](https://peoplesconvention.org/?ref=scottsantens.com). I was asked to give a speech alongside other invited speakers like Nina Turner, Cornel West, Marianne Williamson, and many others. The purpose of the People’s Convention was to discuss plans to build a new largest party in America by 2024.* A category 4 hurricane just swept through my state of Louisiana during a once-in-a-century pandemic. Extraordinary weather events are normal. 180,000 dead Americans and 1,000 more dying every day from a coronavirus is normal. One million Americans newly applying for unemployment benefits every week is normal. Being killed by police as a Black man is normal. Congressional gridlock is normal. The President eroding faith in our institutions is normal. What’s become normal is not okay. None of this is okay. What we’re doing in America isn’t working. America is not working. It’s time to draw a line. This far and no further. This line, we shall not pass. The only way to really change direction is with truly systemic structural reforms. We have to look with new eyes at ancient festering problems. We can’t just vote for different leaders. We have to change how we vote, and voting has to exist upon a foundation of fundamental human rights. We all have a right to life. That is a fundamental human right, but we’ve never truly recognized it. No one really has the right to life so long as someone else can withhold what’s needed to live. Within a monetary system of private property, money is oxygen so we all have an unconditional right to enough money to live. That is why I believe the most important structural change of all, is an unconditional basic income floor, where every American would start every month above the poverty line, and never fall below it. UBI is not solely an income boost equivalent to a simple raise however. It's a structural change that removes barriers to other structural changes. It's a foundational floor for everything else we need to do. It's the power to say no. It’s the security to breathe freely. It's fuel for essential activism. UBI is still about money too, but too many people don't think through what that means. What does money buy? It buys time. It buys freedom from abuse. It buys access to the courts. It pays for disaster evacuations. It pays for grassroots campaigns. It affords volunteering. It supports entire communities. We need more than UBI. An unconditional right to life is not the ultimate goal of a just society. It is the prerequisite to a just society. UBI is the construction of a firm anti-racist foundation of equity to support our humanity, and free our imaginations and our potentials to achieve all that otherwise remains unachievable. Upon that foundation, we also need healthcare as a right. No one should ever be dependent on their jobs for life-sustaining income or lifesaving medical care. The right to breathe is not an employee benefit. It is inalienable. We need Medicare for All, and we need Basic Income for All. No conditions. No means-testing. No but-whatabouts. Survival. Guaranteed. For life. So that life can be about everything beyond survival instead of an endless pursuit of survival. But to accomplish and preserve these pillars of a just society, we also need a functioning government. We need to save, restore, and expand our democracy. We never should have allowed a two-party system. Duopoly is not democracy. To change this structure requires mass local activism. Every state is in charge of how they vote. Maine was the first to break free by adopting ranked-choice voting. Alaska and Massachusetts may be next. Every state must follow in order to end the spoiler effect and move from plurality to majority voting. Gerrymandering must end too. Politicians must be prohibited from choosing their voters. At the very least, we need third-party fair redistricting, but even better - multi-member districts utilizing proportional representation. We also need publicly-financed elections where every American is allotted an amount of funding to donate to political campaigns, so that lobbyists are overpowered by the power of the People. We need so much more, but I consider these the most important that will make everything else possible, no matter how impossible it all feels right now. 2020 has been a year none of us will ever forget, but it also just changed the world, and a changed world means an opportunity to remake it into something new, something that actually works for all of us. Something that puts our humanity first. A better world is possible, but it’s up to us to make it happen. It’s up to us to build it. It’s up to us to draw that line, together, and choose to recognize our mutual human rights through the further democratization of power, and the decoupling of both survival income and healthcare from employment. To hell with the two-party system. To hell with poverty and the daily fear of it. And to hell with non-universal healthcare. 2020 and no further. Normal is no longer acceptable. ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/983442b1-c7fe-40a5-bf74-e0addf150536/Copy-20of-20Travel-20Youtube-20Thumbnail_large.png) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### My Response to Steve Forbes' Opposition to Universal Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/steve-forbes-universal-basic-income-ubi-video/ Last updated: 2022-02-12T20:07:13.000Z *Steve Forbes recently came out against the idea of universal basic income with [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAq1FXoy34Q&ref=scottsantens.com) followed by [this article](https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2020/08/25/a-paycheck-for-everyone-whether-you-work-or-not/?ref=scottsantens.com). The following is the transcript of my response which I made into my own video.* Steve Forbes just released a video of him talking about how adopting a universal basic income in the US will destroy us all, so I thought I would film my response to his warning of a world of UBI where apparently no one would work but him. As someone who has been researching and writing about UBI since 2013, I can tell you that Steve expresses a ton of assumptions here that are either a complete misunderstanding of how UBI works or factually incorrect based on the evidence we already have. His first claim is that UBI is corrosive to the work ethic, but that's wrong because UBI pays people to do anything, not nothing. The existing system pays people on the condition they don't work. Does Steve really believe that fewer people will work if they can work and keep their benefits, instead of losing their benefits with employment as happens right now? This is actually what Finland just tested in their experiment focused on 2,000 unemployed people, and it turned out that hours worked increased in the basic income group compared to the traditional welfare group. A lot of other positive things happened too, like increased well-being, trust, and mental health among others, all of which carry their own costs in their own ways when lower. Another common finding in UBI experiments is increased entrepreneurship. In Namibia, self-employment quadrupled, and in India, it tripled. Lots of people have lots of great ideas, but lack the capital and time to make them real. Or they create something and then it fails due to lack of customers, not because their idea was bad, but because people lacked the money to pay for it. UBI solves both the lack of capital problem, and the lack of consumer demand problem. Also, Alaska has had a UBI since 1982, and the dividend has had no impact on full-time employment, but has increased part-time employment by 17%. Finally, let's talk about what we mean by work, because UBI experiments have also shown that students reduce their employment hours to focus on education, as do mothers of newborn children who use it as maternity leave, but do either count as working less? Of course not. School is work and an investment in future earnings. Child care is work and an investment in future adults. By the way, the unpaid work of child care if calculated into GDP, is worth over $1 trillion a year. There is A LOT of unpaid work going on, and people are doing it because it's important to them, not because they're getting paid to do it. In fact, on average, unpaid workers pay $7,000 a year to perform unpaid work. Work doesn't just happen. Work requires calories. Work requires that people have full stomachs. As Steve well knows, it takes money to make money, and that's what UBI is, just like it is in the game of Monopoly where everyone starts with money and gets more money for passing Go. Steve also claims UBI would break the link between effort and reward, but most of Steve's income is generated passively through ownership, not work. He doesn't need to work to live, but he does anyway. I don't know how much dividend income Steve gets from the stocks he owns, or the interest he earns, or the rent he earns from property ownership, but I can guarantee you that it exceeds $1,000 a month. So has Steve's passive income disconnected from work resulted in working less? Of course not. He always wants more, and he's not special either. Most people want more money to spend more money. People don't just stop wanting to earn money because they have enough to eat and have a home. They want to go out to restaurants and ballgames. They want to buy PS5s and concert tickets. They want to go on vacations and buy new shoes and everything else there is to buy. The fact people want to buy stuff leads to another problem that Steve didn't mention, which is what happens as automation increases, and people are less able to buy stuff? What happens during an unemployment crisis when people are less able to buy stuff? Our economy is 70%-consumer based. It requires spending. Wages have been stagnant for decades while productivity has more than doubled. All the gains have gone to Steve and others at the top. That's good for him, at least in the short-term, but Steve can't buy everything the economy produces. If we're producing stuff and people aren't buying it, production goes down, which means fewer jobs, which means less money to spend, which causes production to go down more. That's a deflationary spiral, and that's what we're in the middle of right now, and that's what automation causes, because robots don't buy anything. We have to decouple income from work. That should already be obvious in a time when people are in massive lines for food banks while farmers are plowing stuff under and pouring milk down drains. Our problem is not a lack of supply. Thanks to automation our economy is creating more than enough. We have plenty of food and even half of it is thrown away. We have 31 vacant houses per homeless person. Our productive capacity is operating at about 70% and economists believe that lack of spending power is actually holding back GDP growth. If we simply got more money to people to get closer to 100% capacity, GDP would increase 10%. That's more wealth for everyone, including Steve. As long as we don't have UBI, demand will continue to fall as wages fall, which will hurt the economy. Poverty is also extremely expensive, costing trillions of dollars a year in avoidable health costs, costs of crime, and lower productivity. WE ARE PAYING MORE TO NOT HAVE UBI THAN TO HAVE IT. UBI isn't expensive. It's a great deal. The net cost of a poverty level UBI in the US would cost well under $1 trillion a year, and could be done by just adding a 10% sales tax to everything, and replacing current programs like TANF and tax expenditures like EITC and the home mortgage interest deduction. Steve uses an example of a car and gets the math wrong. A $30,000 car would cost $33,000 with a 10% VAT, and that means you've still got $9,000 more dollars in disposable income, which can also be seen as a $9,000 reduction in taxes. The UBI is a giant national tax rebate, where the only people who would see decreased disposable incomes would be those spending more than $120,000 a year, and that's if the VAT is fully instead of partially passed on to consumers. There is simply no good economic argument against UBI, because it improves incentives, increases entrepreneurship, increases spending, increases productivity, decreases poverty, decreases insecurity and instability, improves health, reduces crime, and despite what Steve claims, there is indeed a moral argument for UBI. As Thomas Paine said, no one created the Earth. If we had never invented private property, everyone would have inherited their share of the Earth. But we did invent private property, and in so doing, we created a world of the dispossessed, where people no longer have free access to the land to work it themselves for their own survival, and instead must work for those who have claimed the Earth as theirs, one of whom is Steve Forbes. What Steve is doing is immoral. What Steve is doing is withholding what people need to live, and then agreeing to let them live if they do what he wants. That's not freedom. That's enslavement. UBI creates a free market for labor, where because everyone's basic needs are met as a human right to life, everyone sells their labor to each other voluntarily according to conditions both agree upon. What Steve is saying here is that he wants everyone to continue to not have free access to what they need to live, so that they will agree to be willing employees at a cheap price. He's arguing for the control he has that he wants to keep. UBI is the power to say no to Steve, and I guess he doesn't want that. He doesn't believe in consent when it comes to work. He believes that people should be forced to work for their own good, for cheap, for his benefit. Don't fall for this crap. Steve doesn't know what's best for you. Only YOU know what's best for you, and you know damn well that $1,000 a month is not going to eliminate purpose from your life just as Steve's billions don't eliminate purpose from his. ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/a3c86519-fe96-4992-82db-df7b5646d57d/Travel%20Youtube%20Thumbnail%20(2)_large.png) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### My Proposal for an Emergency UBI That Transitions Into a Permanent UBI URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/proposal-for-an-emergency-ubi-that-transitions-into-a-permanent-ubi-universal-basic-income-plan/ Last updated: 2022-02-12T20:08:05.000Z *In February of 2020 I joined [Mike Broihier's team for his U.S. Senate run in Kentucky](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/andrew-yang-endorses-mike-broihier-vs-amy-mcgrath-in-kentucky-primary-1004399/?ref=scottsantens.com) as his senior policy advisor and was tasked with the design of his UBI plan. With the economic shutdown that soon followed as a result of the novel coronavirus pandemic, this plan also incorporated an emergency UBI into it as something different than what otherwise would have just been a plan for a permanent UBI. The following is the completed proposal that officially became part of Broihier's platform in April 2020.* ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/a97b009a-51cc-419c-9bda-62cf6da13a35/Modern-20Art-20Minimal-20YouTube-20Thumbnail.png) In response to the COVID-19 crisis and its economic fallout, this plan proposes an emergency universal basic income of $2,000 for every U.S. resident over 18, plus $1,000 for those under 18, immediately be provided monthly until one month after the U.S. is officially out of recession, at which point the amounts would be lowered to $1,200 for adults and $400 per child as a permanent UBI floor that’s indexed to GDP per capita. In addition to a permanent UBI, this plan also proposes the implementation of Federal Reserve-distributed universal stimulus payments, carbon dividends, patent dividends, and a national dividend-paying wealth fund that would all exist as income additional to UBI. This plan will protect Americans from the economic repercussions of the novel coronavirus, reboot the economy out of the resulting recession, increase America’s resilience to future disasters, and abolish poverty in America once and for all. The novel coronavirus pandemic has done the impossible and brought the economy of the United States to its knees. To prevent the deaths of millions of Americans, social distancing has been implemented and stay-at-home orders have been given in most states and will more than likely soon be all states. This has shut down most consumer-facing businesses which has in turn resulted in over ten million Americans being thrown out of employment in just two weeks, a number that is expected to potentially exceed over 50 million by the end of the June as estimated by the St. Louis Fed. These numbers exceed the percentage of Americans unemployed even at the height of the Great Depression. To be anywhere near sufficient, an economic response to a crisis of this magnitude must be swift and massive, and focus on the most important thing of all - the American people. Because nothing is more important than the safety and well-being of every single American, everyone should immediately and directly be provided with a sufficient amount of income to enable every American to weather this storm, employed or unemployed. It is also impossible to know what will happen in the months ahead, so means-testing must be avoided. Someone could be expecting to earn $100,000 and have that drop to $0\. For this reason [a floor needs to be built underneath everyone](https://vocal.media/theSwamp/should-we-provide-emergency-universal-basic-income-to-everyone-or-just-those-who-need-it?ref=scottsantens.com), so that regardless of whatever happens, they will not have less than that minimum amount, and that amount will be sufficient to cover the rent or mortgage, food, utilities, and other basic expenses apart from healthcare. To achieve the payments of monthly bills in order to keep the economy going at a minimal level, and to lift the burden of wages and salaries off of employers to better enable them to cover their own monthly bills without laying off their employees and instead allowing everyone unlimited unpaid leave, $2,000 per adult and $1,000 per kid of Emergency Universal Basic Income (E-UBI) is to be provided each and every month until this crisis has ended and the economy has been revved back up out of recession. For a family of two parents and two kids, this would amount to $6,000 per month. The E-UBI is to be financed directly by the United States Treasury through the coining of $1 trillion [platinum coins](https://web.archive.org/web/20191008021449/https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2013/01/09/platinomics), bearing President Trump's face on one side, which the Fed will be required to purchase at face value. This method of funding has also been proposed by Rashida Tlaib in her [ABC Act](https://tlaib.house.gov/media/press-releases/tlaib-jayapal-introduce-groundbreaking-bill-deliver-universal-recurring?ref=scottsantens.com) and is made possible under under 31 U.S.C. § 5112(k). This method is preferred over deficit expansion because by not raising the deficit, it is more likely to not result in austerity measures down the road by concerns over a massively-increased [national debt](https://evonomics.com/isnt-time-stop-calling-national-debt/?ref=scottsantens.com) that is entirely unnecessary to accomplish the task of monetary expansion to maintain liquidity. Distribution of E-UBI would be handled by the IRS or SSA, whichever is faster, and people would be provided with the ability to choose direct deposits. Simultaneously, debit cards would be created for everyone, which would be distributed in a second phase as part of the introduction of personal Fed accounts and USPS banking further discussed below. Unlike any other plan out there, after this crisis is over, instead of ending the E-UBI payments, this plan would lower the emergency amount to a permanent amount, switch from monetary financing to fiscal financing, and would then exist in perpetuity as the largest expansion of Social Security in American history, by creating a permanent floor of economic security under everyone of all ages, eliminating poverty in America by existing as a floor just above the Federal poverty line. Being that the Federal poverty line is currently defined as $12,760 for a household of one with an additional $4,480 with every additional household member, and being that this universal basic income will be funded by a new 10% flat value-added tax on all goods and services, this plan would raise the Federal poverty line by 10% to account for 100% of the VAT being passed onto consumers, even though only around [55%](https://voxeu.org/article/assessing-incidence-value-added-taxes?ref=scottsantens.com) of it is expected to be passed on. Therefore, the permanent UBI will be set at $1,200 per month so all single adults will start every month above the poverty line, with [an additional $400 per child](http://www.scottsantens.com/why-should-adults-with-kids-get-more-basic-income-child-allowances) so that households of all sizes also start every month above the poverty line. The fiscal financing for this permanent UBI floor set above the poverty line, aside from the aforementioned 10% VAT would be primarily the elimination of tax expenditures otherwise known as tax credits, deductions, subsidies, and loopholes. These tax expenditures exceed [$1.5 trillion every year](https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-tax-expenditure-budget?ref=scottsantens.com), 17% of which flows only to the top 1%. This would include the elimination of the standard deduction, the earned income tax credit, and the home mortgage interest rate deduction among others. Additional financing would come from treating the UBI as qualifying income for means-tested programs, which would reduce the total number of people qualifying for those programs, just as if they had won a $1,200 a month lottery or inheritance. All safety net programs would continue to exist with fewer people requiring them, save for [TANF](http://www.scottsantens.com/tanf-is-terrible) which would be eliminated as redundant. Instead of issuing $16 billion in block grants to states to provide to only 22% of those they consider “deserving” on average, that money would flow directly to everyone which includes 5 out of 5 of those living in poverty, instead of only 1.1 of 5. Most importantly, this plan recognizes that all Americans are currently paying a poverty tax that exceeds [$1 trillion a year for child poverty alone](https://source.wustl.edu/2018/04/childhood-poverty-cost-u-s-1-03-trillion-in-a-year-study-finds/?ref=scottsantens.com). Considering the full costs of poverty, and the chronic stress and insecurity that results from the fear of poverty, the United States is presently choosing to spend more to sustain poverty than it would to eliminate it. If seen as a tax on everyone on a daily basis, on just about everything, the elimination of poverty through this UBI plan would actually reduce taxes, not increase them. It would even reduce the taxes necessary to achieve universal healthcare, by creating a healthier population that requires fewer health interventions. [80-90% of all health outcomes are due to the social determinants of health](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3863696/?ref=scottsantens.com), not medical care, so this plan would function as a vaccine approach to healthcare by immunizing the population from social determinants like poverty, extreme inequality, and insecurity. A permanent UBI that eliminates poverty will also mean being better prepared for the next disaster. Imagine if we already had this UBI before this pandemic started. More people would have been able to self-quarantine. More people would have more money to be consumers in their local economies, helping to keep local businesses afloat. Fewer people would be unemployed. Fewer people would be unable to pay their bills. Food banks would be less swamped. Less stressed people would also mean stronger immune systems, further flattening the curve. In any disaster scenario, having an economic floor underneath everyone would lead to better outcomes for everyone and for local economies. In preparation for the next national disaster, this plan also establishes a new ability of the Fed to directly inject liquidity into the economy through people instead of just banks through the establishment of [basic personal accounts at the Fed](https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/forget-checks-how-about-giving-everyone-a-federal-reserve-account/?ref=scottsantens.com). These accounts would exist as a means of providing a basic bank account to all American citizens and legal residents with a Social Security Number, that they could access online, through their debit card at all ATMs, and in person at post offices through the adoption of [USPS Postal Banking](http://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/11/postal-banking-payday-lenders-usps?ref=scottsantens.com). Aside from functioning as a means of direct deposit for UBI, these Fed accounts would also operate as a new means of liquidity injection. If these accounts already existed, the Fed could have provided a $1200 stimulus payment to everyone immediately, weeks before Congress ever even considered $1200 stimulus checks. Fed accounts will supply an important new tool to the Fed to better manage our economy, especially during recessions, or to even avoid them. Being that one of the most important disasters of all to avoid is climate breakdown, this plan also proposes the implementation of [a carbon tax that would rise at a steady rate annually and where the revenue would be distributed on top of the UBI as an additional dividend](https://medium.com/basic-income/this-idea-can-literally-change-our-world-107cbc94057a?ref=scottsantens.com). No plan in the history of economics has more support from economists than a carbon tax and dividend strategy to combat climate change. Over 3,300 economists have signed a statement in support of this strategy. This plan proposes an immediate carbon tax of $40 per ton followed by annual increases of $15 per ton, and with border carbon adjustments to encourage other nations to do the same. In three years this would mean an additional $100 per month and CO2 levels reduced to half of 2005’s levels by 2026, exceeding the Paris Climate Accord target of a 26%-28% reduction by then. Using the carbon tax and dividend model, this plan also proposes a [patent fee and dividend](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-zombification-of-intellectual-property-and-the-tool-that-could-finally-reform-it-2ec037309837?ref=scottsantens.com) where the maintenance of patents requires an annually doubling renewal fee. Just as pollution is an externality of fossil fuel use, a smaller public domain and patent trolling are externalities of intellectual property protections. The granting of temporary monopoly protections is recognized as a driver of innovation, but it is also recognized as an inhibitor of competition. These protections are granted by the People, and so the People should benefit from the investment in such protections, just as a stockholder sees a return on their investments. It is by recognizing the People of the United States as stockholders in the United States that this plan also proposes the creation of a [national sovereign wealth fund](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/social-wealth-fund/?ref=scottsantens.com) similar to Alaska’s Permanent Fund. This fund would be created by a one-time market capitalization tax of 3% applied to all public companies to be paid in issuance of new stock. Every year, all public companies would be required to issue another 0.5% of new stock for the fund. All IPOs would be required to issue 3% to be granted an IPO, and all mergers and acquisitions would only be approved by the same 3% of stock for the fund. In times of crises where bailouts are required, public companies will be required to issue 5% of stock into the fund as a condition to receive a bailout. All inheritance taxes would also be shifted to the fund in recognition that as Thomas Paine said, “man is always related to society,” thus some part of all inheritance should fall to every individual in society. This would help make the fund a trust fund for all, instead of only the fortunate few. Just as in Alaska, this fund would pay a dividend, but this dividend would be issued monthly instead of annually as an amount on top of the UBI. Considering that Social Security was created as a means of providing a form of basic income to seniors, and considering that all seniors receiving UBI have paid into the system to receive it, Social Security will remain untouched and all of Social Security (including SSDI and SSI) will exist on top of the UBI and all dividend payments. However, because there is less need for Social Security going forward, this plan proposes that Social Security taxes be reduced from 6.2% on employees and 6.2% on employers to 4% on employees and 4% on employers. Taxes on the self-employed would be reduced from 12.4% to 8%. This reduction in taxes would also offset any decrease in buying power resulting from the VAT’s impact on prices. It is also proposed that the Social Security cap be lifted so that everyone pays the same into the system, instead of excluding high earners. This plan also encourages all states and municipalities to follow Alaska’s lead and introduce their own [state-wide and city-wide dividends](https://www.academia.edu/20148953/Applying%5Fthe%5FAlaska%5Fmodel%5Fin%5Fa%5FResource-Poor%5FState?ref=scottsantens.com) on top of the national UBI utilizing their natural resources as Alaska does, and also ideas like [land-value taxation](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/extreme-wealth-inequality-alaska-model/?ref=scottsantens.com) in order to make sure everyone creating the value of land sees their share of that value creation instead of it only going as windfalls to the landowners themselves. This would also serve to decrease land speculation and improve land usage through increased development, which would in turn make housing more affordable. At a time of great crisis, this is an opportunity to not only do what must be done for the protection of every American by preventing [unnecessary deaths and mass suffering of historic proportions](https://vocal.media/theSwamp/the-future-of-the-united-states-depends-on-the-immediate-adoption-of-ubi?ref=scottsantens.com), but it’s also an opportunity to help prevent/allay future crises, and to prevent/allay the needless suffering and personal crises that have existed in the lives of every American for centuries. It’s time we abolish poverty and enable mass prosperity. America was founded on the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now is the time to recognize those ideals, and to live up to them. This nation is a great nation, but it has not been great for all. Now, and going forward, this nation shall finally open up the American Dream to everyone, and truly exist as a land of equal opportunity and [economic justice for all](https://basicincometoday.com/editorial-ubi-is-the-recognition-that-racial-justice-and-economic-justice-are-inextricably-intertwined/?ref=scottsantens.com). --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Dennis Explains 'The Implication' of Saying No URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/dennis-explains-the-implication-of-saying-no-always-sunny-argument-for-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-21T23:39:38.000Z In the third episode of the sixth season of *It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia* in 2010, the gang buys a boat. In this episode there's a scene between Mac and Dennis that provides a clear example of what is and isn't consent, and how full consent does not truly exist as long as someone is afraid that saying no to someone who wants something from them could result in serious injury or death. The scene is about sex, but I think it can easily also be understood as being a metaphor for any action where someone lacks the power to say no to that action, out of fear of grievous harm befalling them as a direct result of refusal. If you've never watched it, you can watch it or read the transcript below. --- Dennis: We’ve gotta pop by the department store, pick up the mattress. I’m gonna get a nice one too. Mac: The what? The mattress? What do we need a mattress for? Dennis: What do you mean what do we need a mattress for? Why in the hell do you think we just spent all that money on a boat? The whole point of buying a boat in the first place is to get the ladies nice and tipsy topside, so we can take em to a nice comfortable place below deck, and you know… they can’t refuse. **Because of the implication.** Mac: Oh, uh… okay. You had me going there for the first part. The second half kind of threw me. Dennis: Dude, dude, think about it. She’s out in the middle of nowhere with some dude she barely knows. She looks around and what does she see? Nothing but open ocean. “Ahhh, there’s nowhere for me to run. What am I going to do? Say no?” Mac: Okay… that seems really dark. Dennis: Nah, it’s not dark. You’re misunderstanding me bro. Mac: I think I am. Dennis: Yeah, you are. Because if the girl said no, then the answer is obviously no. Mac: No. Right. Dennis: But the thing is she’s not going to say no. She would never say no. **Because of the implication.** Mac: Now… you’ve said that word, “implication” a couple of times. What implication? Dennis: The implication that things might go wrong for her if she refuses to sleep with me. Not that things are going to go wrong for her, but she’s thinking that they will. Mac: But it sounds like she doesn’t want to have sex. Dennis: Why aren’t you understanding this? Mac: I don’t… Dennis: She doesn’t know whether she wants to have sex with me. That’s not the issue. Mac: Are you going to hurt women? Dennis: I’m not going to hurt these women! Mac: Oh okay. Dennis: Why would I ever hurt these women? Mac: I don’t know. Dennis: I feel like you’re not getting this at all. Mac: I’m not getting it. Dennis: God damn... *(looks over at woman shopping nearby)* well don’t you look at me like that. You certainly wouldn’t be in any danger. Mac: So they are in danger! Dennis: No one’s in any danger! How could I make that any more clear to you? Okay. It’s an implication of danger. Mac: *(Stares silently at Dennis in response)* --- This scene has stuck with me for years, because I feel like Mac in this scene, while the majority of the rest of the world just accepts it as totally fine how people accept poverty wages, no benefits, and terrible working conditions because of the normalized implications inherent in not accepting them. Here's the thing: as long as poverty exists, poverty exists as a threat to get people to do things without their full consent. In some cases, like in the case of sex work, that can be actual sex, in which case, [it cannot be faithfully said that all sex is fully consensual as long as it's agreed to out of survival fears](https://medium.com/basic-income/true-freedom-comes-with-basic-income-7ff1368e170?ref=scottsantens.com). In other cases, like for example minimum wage labor, people are accepting minimum wages out of fear of having nothing, and so they accept anything. This complete lack of bargaining power is behind low wages, dangerous conditions, terrible hours, poor treatment, etc. To help clarify this point that the lack of power to say no to employment means a lack of true consent to employment, I've made some minor edits to the dialog. Here's the new exchange between Mac and Dennis as they discuss the market for labor in an economy where poverty exists. It's basically how I interpret the scene every time I watch it. Dennis: We've got to pop by Monster.com and put up a job opening for a shit job that I'm legally not allowed to pay anything less for someone to take. Mac: The what? A shit job? Why would you offer someone a shit job? Dennis: What do you mean why would I offer someone a shit job? Why in the hell do you think we've never eliminated poverty? [The whole point of poverty in the first place is to get the workers afraid and stressed](https://www.scottsantens.com/may-the-force-be-with-ubi-unconditional-universal-basic-income-poverty-death-star), so we can offer them a nice low wage without benefits or dignity, and you know… they can’t refuse. **Because of the implication.** Mac: Oh, uh… okay? Dennis: Dude, dude, think about it. They're out in the middle of the job market with some employer offering minimum wage. They look around and what do they see? Nothing but unemployed people. “Ahhh, there’s tens of millions of people in need of a job. What am I going to do? Say no?” Mac: Okay… that seems really dark. Dennis: Nah, it’s not dark. You’re misunderstanding me bro. Mac: I think I am. Dennis: Yeah, you are. Because if the worker said no, then the answer is obviously no. Mac: No. Right. Dennis: But the thing is they're not going to say no. They would never say no. **Because of the implication.** Mac: Now… you’ve said that word, “implication” a couple of times. What implication? Dennis: The implication that things might go wrong for them if they refuse to work for me. Not that things are going to go wrong for them, but they're thinking that they will. Mac: But it sounds like they don’t want to work for you. Dennis: Why aren’t you understanding this? Mac: I don’t… Dennis: They don’t know whether they want to work for me. That’s not the issue. Mac: Are you going to hurt workers? Dennis: I’m not going to hurt workers! Mac: Oh okay. Dennis: Why would I ever hurt workers? Mac: I don’t know. Dennis: I feel like you’re not getting this at all. Mac: I’m not getting it. Dennis: God damn... *(looks over at rich person nearby)* well don’t you look at me like that. You certainly wouldn’t be in any danger. Mac: So they are in danger! Dennis: No one’s in any danger! How could I make that any more clear to you? Okay. It’s an implication of danger. Mac: *(Stares silently at Dennis in response)* --- As long as poverty exists, there is an implication of danger that things might go wrong for us if we refuse the jobs that are offered to us, or refuse to do things our employers ask us to do, or if we say things employers might not like. Not that things are definitely going to go wrong for us if we say no to these things. It's possible we'll find a different and better job, or we won't lose our jobs for saying no or disagreeing with our employers. It's possible we'll get some form of assistance from the government ([even though 13 million people in poverty aren't](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/13-million-people-in-poverty-are-disconnected-from-the-social-safety-net-most-of-them-are-white/2019/02/04/807516a0-2598-11e9-81fd-b7b05d5bed90%5Fstory.html?utm%5Fterm=.f23f25812619&ref=scottsantens.com)). It's possible we'll get some help from our friends or families or charities that prevent the worst from happening. But as long as the possibility exists that the worst *could* happen, that we *could* fall into poverty and **die** as a result, then we're only saying yes because we can't really say no, and **that is not how consent works**. Don't be a Dennis. Support unconditional basic income, [so everyone has the power to say no](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-monsters-inc-argument-for-unconditional-basic-income-3b22b63eed3e?ref=scottsantens.com). --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### A Day in My Life in 2040 URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/a-day-in-my-life-in-2040-with-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-12T20:10:20.000Z Recently I was asked to visualize a day in my life twenty years from now in 2040, with the assumption that we made the right decisions as a society and life is much better because of it, not just for me, but for everyone. What is a day like? I'd like to share with you my future day, but first I want to preface it with a quick rethinking of "work" and "leisure,"because I think imagining a better future requires rethinking those two concepts. First, what do we mean by work and the point of it? For that, I'd like to refer you to Mark Twain who said in [an interview with the New York Times](https://www.salon.com/2019/09/14/why-everyone-deserves-a-right-to-recreation/?ref=scottsantens.com) in 1905: > "What I have done I have done, because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it. Who was it who said, 'Blessed is the man who has found his work'? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says his work - not somebody else's work. The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man's work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or physical, can never be great." Next, what do we mean by leisure and the point of it? For that, I'd like to refer you to Bertrand Russell who wrote in his essay ["In Praise of Idleness"](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html?ref=scottsantens.com) in 1932: > "I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work... Leisure is essential to civilization, and in former times leisure for the few was only rendered possible by the labors of the many. But their labors were valuable, not because work is good, but because leisure is good. And with modern technique it would be possible to distribute leisure justly without injury to civilization... Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish forever." With those two quotes in mind, here's a quick look at my life in the year 2040: I wake up and my day is mine. It’s not that I have nothing to do. It’s that everything I plan to do today, I choose to do today, because I have the choice to not do it. I plan to get some writing done today. I’m writing another book and my AI assistant handles everything an editing team decades ago would have handled. I don’t have to worry about formatting. The AI handles it. I don’t have to think as much about style, because the AI has learned my style and makes recommendations I can either accept, adapt, or ignore. Writing a new book can be done now in months instead of years. A full day’s work is considered 2-3 hours, or just one period of flow. I am also more than my work. I am my leisure. My value to my community is not only what I create, but what I enjoy. No one creates in a vacuum. Just as I am writing in the hopes of my words being enjoyed by thousands or even millions, the immense amount of creation being done by others needs time to be enjoyed by others. Because income was decoupled from work decades ago with a [productivity-indexed unconditional basic income](https://medium.com/basic-income/cutting-the-gordian-knot-of-technological-unemployment-with-unconditional-basic-income-e8df7f8eaa16?ref=scottsantens.com), consumption has also been decoupled from income. Yes, people can still do work for money and use that money to purchase the work of others, but [a gift culture has also arisen](http://www.scottsantens.com/future-of-work-consumption-and-basic-income), where because people’s basic needs are more than met, and because full-time is considered to be around 12 hours a week, people have the resources and the time to freely create and share without anything expected in return, and people have the resources and time to enjoy what is created, and to feel a duty born of trust, to want to give back to a society that has given, and is giving, so much to me, simply because I am alive. My community is the world. I feel like I am more than just an American citizen, but also a citizen of Earth, and even the entire solar system, now that we are on Mars and beyond. My community is local, but also expansive. With augmented presence technology, I can virtually sit face to face with someone who is actually anywhere else on the planet. Distance is not the barrier it once was, nor is lack of plentiful access to resources. The barriers to community have been greatly lowered. The question is no longer, how am I going to pay rent this month, but how am I going to grow the most this month as a person? How am I going to improve? How am I going to give back? What experiences am I going to share with my friends and family? What new frontiers am I going to explore, either in my mind, or in person, and who with? What questions am I going to ask? What am I going to learn and create? What am I going to try? These are the questions I care about. These are the questions that matter. **I am a human being. My life has value. My time is mine.** --- *If you think this kind of future sounds good, please now ask yourself, "How do we get there?"* --- ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/b6647ef2-0091-4b4e-a58e-1b2692f77981/Mark_Twain_full_quote_Twitter_Post.png) ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/03c7936b-15b7-480b-aebf-c42e17852e9a/Bertrand-20Russell-20leisure.png) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Why universal basic income instead of just lower taxes? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/ubi-why-universal-basic-income-instead-of-just-lower-taxes/ Last updated: 2022-02-21T23:40:31.000Z A [frequently asked question](https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq) in response to universal basic income that comes mostly in response from conservatives is some variation of, *"Why don't we just tax people less if we want them to have more money?"* It's an entirely fair question to ask, especially if you're paying more than $12,000 per year in taxes, and we're talking about a UBI set at $1,000 per month. $12,000 is indeed equivalent to $12,000, but they're still very different, and lead to much different outcomes. I'll explain why using an analogy. Imagine you have $200,000 in a trust fund and you are given the option to start receiving $1,000 per month in interest. Is earning $1,000 per month in interest equivalent to withdrawing $1,000 per month from the fund itself? Both result in $1,000 appearing in your checking account each month via direct deposit regardless of any amount of work you do or other income you earn. But does that mean they are the same thing? No. They're quite different. **The difference between UBI and tax cuts is that the former is a return on investment and the latter is a decrease of what's invested.** To go further into this analogy, imagine two towns that each have the same annual tax revenue and they also each know the best way to solve the problem of people not having enough money is to increase the amount of money they have. Town A provides a small UBI and Town B cuts taxes. There are some notable differences in results despite being identical total amounts of money. ###### The Great Tax Rebate **Town A** increases disposable incomes using a flat amount of UBI (disposable income is income after taxes). Because everyone gets the same amount of UBI, the poorest 20% of the town sees their disposable incomes double, because the amount provided is equivalent to their prior income. For the extreme poorest, those without any incomes at all, the UBI raises their disposable incomes from $0 to the UBI amount. For the first time, they can actually afford to no longer experience homelessness. Some of them even get jobs thanks to people having more money to spend at local businesses, which creates jobs, which they are able to get now that they are housed and can buy new clothes. For the town's middle 20%, the UBI is a welcome **12% boost** in disposable income equivalent to a generous raise from their employers. For the town's top 20%, the UBI is an insignificant amount. The mayor also decides to just replace their [existing tax subsidies](https://www.cbpp.org/blog/turning-tax-expenditures-right-side-up?ref=scottsantens.com) with the UBI, so the disposable incomes of the town's richest actually go slightly down despite their UBI. In the end, Town A successfully reduces both poverty and inequality, and greatly increases their local GDP, number of jobs, and their tax base as the homeless move from costing the town money to supporting the town through their productive work, consumption, and tax revenue. ###### The Great Tax Cut **Town B** increases disposable incomes using a flat payroll tax cut. Because everyone gets the same percentage reduction in taxes, the poorest 20% of the town sees their disposable incomes increase by a tiny amount because a small percentage of a small amount of money is a tiny amount of money. For the extreme poorest, those without any incomes at all, the tax cut does absolutely nothing for them, because they aren't paying any taxes to cut. They remain unable to get jobs, because they can't afford housing or new clothes. For the town's middle 20%, the tax cut is the same welcome **12% boost** in disposable income as Town A's UBI, equivalent to a generous raise from their employers. For Town B's top 20%, the resulting disposable income boost is equal to twice the amount of money the poorest 20% of Town A received. Town B's rich are very happy. In the end, Town B barely reduces poverty, actually increases inequality, and barely increases their local GDP, number of jobs, and their tax base, because as it turns out, economies are driven by spending and they only succeeded in increasing the spending of those in the middle who were already buying stuff. The rich in Town B just sent their money to their offshore bank accounts. **Two very different outcomes:** Town A's tax *rebate* invested in their people. More people are able to work. More people are able to be consumers. More people are paying taxes. And less money is flowing to offshore accounts so more money stays in town. This change is sustainable. It creates a more virtuous cycle of one person's spending becoming another person's paycheck which they then spend which becomes another person's paycheck to spend. Town B's tax *cut* reduced their investment in people and instead basically just sent money to offshore bank accounts using rich middlemen. This change is not sustainable. As the years pass, Town B will have to cut services, let infrastructure crumble, and dump more tax money into costs they consider untouchable like their budgets for policing and hospitals. In summary, it is true that cutting taxes benefits mostly only taxpayers, and the rich more than the poor, while UBI benefits everyone, and the poor more than the rich. It is also true that cutting taxes starves an economy of mass consumer spending power by concentrating money into fewer hands. But perhaps the primary difference is that **lowering tax rates merely benefits existing taxpayers while UBI benefits existing taxpayers *and* future taxpayers**. In a country where we tell each other to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps, a tax cut is promising people without boots that we won't take their boots if they stand, while UBI is making sure everyone actually has boots upon which to stand. We must recognize that the dividends that stockholders receive do not make them lazy. Dividends are a return on investment, and the investment part is key. Sure we can make money by cashing out our investments, but the smarter thing to do is to take those returns and reinvest them in the smartest investment of all - **each other**. In real world terms, a payroll tax cut will reduce what we invest in each other. It will reduce Social Security and Medicare. It will do very little to boost the economy, which could very well lead directly to another depression by way of allowing a [deflationary spiral](https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/29/federal-reserve-global-economy-coronavirus-pandemic-inflation-terminal-deflation-is-coming/?ref=scottsantens.com) as a result of the bottom half of America being unable to spend on anything but their most basic needs. A UBI is the act of investing in each other. It will do a great deal to [boost the economy](https://medium.com/basic-income/trickle-down-economics-must-die-long-live-grow-up-economics-5b8334a0db76?ref=scottsantens.com), which will successfully stimulate us out of recession by way of greatly increasing the consumer spending power of the entire bottom half of America by covering the costs of basic needs so that all additional income is discretionary income. There is no better way of stimulating the economy than by returning a monthly cash dividend to the stockholders of America. There is no worse way of surviving a disaster, than by reducing our investment in mass resilience. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Universal basic income is the recognition that racial justice and economic justice are inextricably intertwined URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-is-the-recognition-that-racial-justice-and-economic-justice-are-inextricably-intertwined-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-19T05:52:19.000Z Hearing protestors chant in unison, “I can’t breathe,” is something that hits viscerally. It’s a call for the importance of our individual lives. We have the right to life, and we want to stay alive. George Floyd was dispossessed of the air he needed to exist. He was killed. Withholding air is also not the only way of dispossessing someone of their rightful access to what they need to live. We all need air, but we also all need food. We can’t breathe if we can’t eat, and understanding that is understanding that poverty itself is injustice. It kills. Poverty is misunderstood as a lack of resources, but poverty as it exists today is a legal status. It’s a violent act of dispossession that creates poverty. Hundreds of years ago, there was no such thing as having nothing, because we all had the planet as a shared natural resource. Free access to the Earth is a form of natural wealth. We destroyed that access, and we did it on purpose. Or I should say some people did it on purpose, because they recognized it as wealth, and saw that if they had it and others didn’t, they could force others to do what they wanted. This is why racial justice and economic justice are so inextricably intertwined. By dispossessing people of their natural inheritance that is rightfully theirs, and thus their access to what they need to live, they can be subjugated. We will do what we must to eat and breathe. We will never live up to the founding principles of this nation so long as we withhold access to the basic needs of life, on the conditions of those determined by those with control of the resources. The laws are written to recognize that we are all equal. We must make that real. Achieving racial justice within a monetary system requires economic justice. We must make sure that as we are all equal under the law, we are also all equal with a minimum access to resources. We have to eliminate the poverty we created. We must stop withholding access to basics. Unconditional basic income ends the poverty we created. It returns universal access to what we need to live. Instead of access to the Earth, it provides that access via money. That access not only ends poverty. It also ends the theft of power that resulted from dispossession. If no one can legally prevent our access to food anymore, existence is secured to a degree that only the rich have ever experienced and inherited. If race is no longer a line between those with more access to food and those with less, that is racially a redistribution of POWER. Black Americans have never had that kind of power. UBI is about so much more than money. It means the power to refuse being subordinate, to refuse to work for racists or buy from racists. It’s the ability to donate to black candidates seeking local and national office. UBI is the time to run for office or to volunteer to help others run for office. It’s the ability to pay for legal defense and lawsuits and to avoid being jailed for lack of money. It’s the power to strike, the capital to start and support black-owned businesses, and to build wealth. Economic justice requires UBI because nothing else is UNCONDITIONAL UNIVERSAL access to resources that treats everyone equally. A floor underneath us all is the act of repossession and the return of natural inheritance, and thus the return of power. UBI is the breaking of chains. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### My #TestifyForUBI Testimony for Congress URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/my-ubi-testimony-for-congress-universal-unconditional-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-12T20:12:26.000Z *The following is the testimony I wrote and recorded on video for Congress on May 18 as part of the #TestifyForUBI campaign. If you would like to take part too, please visit [TestifyForUBI.com](http://testifyforubi.com/index.php/testify/?ref=scottsantens.com) and fill out the application form. Please also follow [@TestifyForUBI on Twitter](https://twitter.com/testifyforubi?ref=scottsantens.com) for updates.* ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/92fa605b-fa81-4c8c-9d8c-5dc10f511c59/EZOYa7WU0AEVZ-j.jpg) My name is Scott Santens and I’m the senior policy advisor to [Mike Broihier in Kentucky](https://mikeforky.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) for his U.S. Senate run. If you’ve read anything about the idea of universal basic income, there’s a good chance you’ve read something I’ve written. Since 2013, I’ve devoted myself full-time to this concept of our investing in all of society with an amount of money that is unconditional, universal, individual, and regularly provided, and I can faithfully promise you, I know more about this particular topic than most anyone in the country. I can talk for hours about why UBI is so important, and has never been more important than right now, but I’m told I only have three minutes, so here’s how I want to spend that three minutes, which I thank you for providing. There is no policy more important right now than getting a monthly amount of money to as many people as possible. The economy is an engine that runs on money as its fuel. Without people spending money as consumers, our engine stops. Getting money into the hands of consumers is not a Democratic or a Republican idea. It’s simply what our economy needs to function. You’ve all heard of Monopoly. Notice how that game provides all players a starting amount of money, and replenishes that money with more money with every go around the board. That money is not given with any other condition than essentially reaching the first of the month. Without that money, the game is unplayable. If no one has money, it’s game over. Right now we are looking at a game over scenario. When we’re seeing the Fed worry about estimates like [42% of the tens of million of jobs that were just lost may be gone for good](https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/BFI%5FWP%5F202059.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), and how there are actually just as many unemployed people who haven’t filed for unemployment as those who have, and when we’re also seeing accelerated investments in automation, it’s time for BIG ideas. Some of you may believe that UBI pays people to do nothing, but UBI pays people to do *anything*. Unemployment insurance pays people to remain unemployed. It can also lift them above the employed. Right now, that means many unemployed non-essential workers are earning more than many employed essential workers. A universal cash benefit reaches both. As a raised floor, it prevents the unemployed from falling below the amount provided, and the amount provided functions as an income boost to the still employed, which right now would function as Mitt Romney’s Patriot Pay. Before this crisis even hit, there were [13 million Americans living in poverty receiving nothing from the government](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/13-million-people-in-poverty-are-disconnected-from-the-social-safety-net-most-of-them-are-white/2019/02/04/807516a0-2598-11e9-81fd-b7b05d5bed90%5Fstory.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Poverty kills, but so does stress. So does insecurity. [38% of those ages 18-44 are experiencing severe mental distress](https://time.com/5833619/mental-health-coronavirus/?ref=scottsantens.com) right now. That’s a result of worrying about survival. It’s the fear of the unknown. That fear carries over into our economy. Why spend money if you have it, when tomorrow you might not? The most important thing we can do is assure everyone that at least for the remainder of the year, they will have at least $2,000 each month. That money will not be hoarded. It will be spent. That spending will encourage businesses to hire back more employees. That spending will get this economy out of recession and get our economy growing again. This is also about more than money. If every American knows they will be okay, that means security, and economic security means a lot of things, but among them are: [increased physical and mental health, reduced crime, improved educational outcomes, increased entrepreneurship, and less self-medicating](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1040683616488103936?ref=scottsantens.com), which means [fewer deaths of despair](https://vocal.media/theSwamp/the-future-of-the-united-states-depends-on-the-immediate-adoption-of-ubi?ref=scottsantens.com). There is food in stores but people without money lined up by the thousands for food banks. The Fed is doing everything in its power to prevent the Second Great Depression, but you aren’t yet, and we need you to. This economy will not just turn back on, just because the "open" signs light up. This economy will be starved of customers for years to come, unless you do something about it, and the best thing you can do is to get money to people [without conditions, universally](https://vocal.media/theSwamp/should-we-provide-emergency-universal-basic-income-to-everyone-or-just-those-who-need-it?ref=scottsantens.com). Get money into the hands of spenders, and watch the economic engine that is the U.S. roar back to life in a way none of us have ever seen. Get UBI into place, even temporarily, and you will see that [it’s the bipartisan way forward](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-you-think-basic-income-is-free-money-or-socialism-think-again-4a17e8d15b1?ref=scottsantens.com). --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### My Raconteur Interview About UBI URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/raconteur-interview-universal-unconditional-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-12T20:13:30.000Z *I was interviewed last month for [an article published on May 10 for Raconteur, titled "Virus fallout could usher in the UBI era](https://www.raconteur.net/finance/universal-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com)." The author, Oliver Pickup, asked me a series of questions, and from my answers, a few quotes were selected for the article. Below are all my answers in their entirety.* ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/959c230a-a2f5-446c-bb6f-597a9b47b2c2/500x300-image-for-the-website.jpg) > Briefly, is now the time for universal basic income in America? (And, secondly, elsewhere?) The best time to introduce UBI was 50 years ago when we first started experimenting with an income guarantee approach. The second best time is right now, and every day that goes by without UBI means more preventable deaths and more unnecessary suffering. UBI is important everywhere, but it is especially important in the US, where before this pandemic even began to overwhelm what we call our safety net, 13 million people living under the poverty line were already getting no assistance whatsoever from the federal government, and where [600,000 Americans have already died in an epidemic of deaths of despair](https://www.npr.org/2020/03/18/817687042/deaths-of-despair-examines-the-steady-erosion-of-u-s-working-class-life?ref=scottsantens.com). > Do you think in the near (and distant) future people will come to look upon the COVID-19 pandemic as a watershed moment in terms of UBI? As the saying goes, when crises hit, we look around at the option available. In this case, for the first time in history, UBI is being seen as an available option, and in all likelihood, the first nation to adopt UBI even temporarily, will happen in the weeks ahead. That day will go down in the history books as the day UBI was first introduced in an entire nation. Japan is the closest so far as [the first country to introduce a fully universal stimulus payment of around $1,000 to all citizens](https://basicincometoday.com/declaring-a-national-emergency-japan-responds-with-a-fully-universal-100000-yen-930-stimulus-check-to-all-citizens/?ref=scottsantens.com). If they next decide to make that monthly, it will be the world's first "Emergency UBI." > What does the fallout from coronavirus say, do you think, about the current financial systems in place? This pandemic is showing that when a crisis hits, the first people to get help are the rich and powerful. Those who thought we may have learned our lesson from the last crisis in 2009, just learned that it doesn't matter if we already know it doesn't work to bail out the top and hope it trickles down. They will do it anyway, over and over again, even if a bailout of the bottom would flow up to the top and bail everyone out in the process as it worked it's way up from the bottom. [Trickle-down economics must die](https://medium.com/basic-income/trickle-down-economics-must-die-long-live-grow-up-economics-5b8334a0db76?ref=scottsantens.com), and companies that have spent years buying back their own stock instead of saving for a rainy day need to go bankrupt. That's what bankruptcy protection is for. Use it, and maybe next time, you'll give a second thought to propping up your stock value artificially in order to fatten already fat bank accounts to pay for a second helicopter pad on someone's megayacht upgrade. > Was there a sense – even before the introduction of COVID-19 – that there needs to be greater, fairer support for those most in need, so that people don't get left behind? COVID-19 is revealing the weakness of our systems, and the bad sense in their design. Does it make sense for people to lose their health insurance during a pandemic because it's tied to employment instead of citizenship? Of course not. Does it make sense for tens of millions of people to suddenly lose their entire incomes and be forced to spend week after week trying to qualify for an income assistance program that pays more to the unemployed unessential than to the employed essential? Of course not. Does it make sense for ten thousand cars to line up at a drive-thru food bank, while stores have plenty of food but fewer people who can buy it, and while farmers have so much food that they're having to throw it away? Of course not. That 70% of COVID-19 fatalities can be African American in a city like my own city of New Orleans means that the inequality in our society has reached fatal extremes, and that in order to ever achieve any semblance of racial justice, we must first achieve economic justice where no one ever lives in poverty or the fear of it, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, disability, or any other reason. > How does it feel to be so involved in the Andrew Yang campaign, and that his ideas around UBI appear to be – somewhat – vindicated? I've always wanted to get UBI implemented in order to save lives, prevent suffering, and vastly improve everyone's well-being through a vastly improved system oriented around prosperity and human thriving. Right now, all of those things have gone up an order of magnitude in importance. I'm happy to see more people finally taking UBI as seriously as it always should have been, but at the same time, it's hard to celebrate anything, when [the stakes are now higher than they've ever been](https://vocal.media/theSwamp/the-future-of-the-united-states-depends-on-the-immediate-adoption-of-ubi?ref=scottsantens.com). > How can UBI be achieved on a large scale? UBI has long been easily achievable on a large scale. The challenge has always been a matter of will, not of economics, regardless of what any very serious person with a very serious degree says. The full costs of poverty cost more than UBI. If inequality were the same now in the US as it was in the 1970s, everyone would be earning $12,000 more right now a year. Between our welfare programs and our tax expenditures, we already provide enough revenue to be considered UBI, except we insist on all sorts of conditions and bureaucracy in order for people to receive it. We already produce so much food we waste half of it, and we already have so many homes, the empty ones outnumber the homeless, and we already have so much productive capacity that there's not enough demand to even utilize it all. Nothing about UBI is really all that difficult. What's most difficult is our lack of trust in each other, a really weird belief in money as anything but a tool of measurement, and an insistence that people must not be allowed the power to say no, in fear they may say no to those who don't accept no as an answer. > Do you think blockchain-powered UBI is possible? If not now, in the near future? Blockchain-powered UBI is certainly theoretically possible, especially at a community level, but the big challenge to wide adoption is simply getting enough people to use the currency. It needs to be extremely user-friendly, and it needs to be accepted as widely as Visa and Mastercard. > Leading the way in this space is GoodDollar – what do you think about what that team is doing? (GoodDollar ([www.gooddollar.org](http://www.gooddollar.org/?ref=scottsantens.com)) is a not-for-profit social innovation initiative – supported by leading global investment platform eToro, among other sponsors – determined to present an experimental framework for delivering global, sustainable, and scalable UBI through new digital asset technologies.) I like GoodDollar and know the people behind it. I also know of [other crypto UBI projects](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BNvvqwY-JQVjk2pfATWnMcuslI5McoPsXTQx1JpaBmM/?ref=scottsantens.com) and the people behind them as well. I think there's a lot of innovation possible there and look forward to seeing all the projects develop. I also think that at some point in the future, there's a going to be a lot of UBI-like income all stacking on top of each other, where say in the US, someone could have a national UBI, a state UBI, a local currency city UBI, a cryptocurrency UBI created from multiple streams from multiple platforms, and a global dividend of some kind, perhaps from a global carbon tax or a global share of natural resource ownership. > Is there anything else you would like to add? It's hard to stress [how important it is that we adopt UBI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cglOwQhAtE&ref=scottsantens.com), especially in the US where we've already surpassed 10% of our labor force becoming unemployed, and where automation is so capable and so affordable and so immune to COVID-19 that we can expect that millions of jobs are never to return. This belief that we're just going to flip a switch and turn back on the economy is absolutely mistaken. The world just changed and we need to change our systems to reflect these changes, and fast, or else many people are going to die who otherwise would not. We absolutely have to evolve as a civilization, right now, by guaranteeing everyone equal access to the basic resources necessary for life. We need to trust each other and no longer withhold food in order to force each other to do the bidding of those doing the withholding. Life needs to be seen as an unconditional human right, and that means an unconditional amount of money, sufficient for our most basic needs, as a foundation upon which to build a better future. That's UBI, and the time to start building that better future is right now. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### May the Force Be With UBI URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/may-the-force-be-with-ubi-unconditional-universal-basic-income-poverty-death-star/ Last updated: 2022-02-21T23:42:35.000Z There is no film I've watched more than Star Wars: A New Hope except for maybe The Empire Strikes Back. If I were to venture a guess as to how many times I've seen each of them, and also Return of the Jedi, all I can say is it's in the triple digits for each one. I've read dozens of Star Wars Expanded Universe novels, I attended the first ever Star Wars Celebration where I cosplayed as a Dark Jedi complete with a lightsaber I constructed myself out of an old Graflex camera flash tube, and when The Phantom Menace came out, I was one of those fans who stood in line for over a week to be among the first to watch it in a theater full of fans as excited as I was. Now that you know what a huge Star Wars geek I am, I want to connect the plot of Star Wars to the need for unconditional basic income. For anyone who has never watched the very first film, it involves a Death Star, which is a moon-sized superweapon capable of destroying entire planets. This weapon was created to rule the galaxy with an iron fist. Where a Galactic Republic used to exist, where each planet had representatives in the Galactic Senate, with the creation of the Death Star, the Senate is dissolved entirely, and regional governors must answer to the Empire upon the threat of destruction. Asked how the Emperor will maintain control without the Imperial Senate, Grand Moff Tarkin replies, "Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station." Within those two sentences, the reason poverty still exists is explained. It's not about the money. It's all about control. Poverty is a superweapon, and the fear of poverty is what keeps people in line. **Poverty is a Death Star.** Poverty as we know it does not naturally exist. It is human-made. It was constructed. Until relatively recently in human history, access to our planet's natural resources was free. We hunted and gathered for ourselves and our families and our extended families. Survival could be secured with a few hours of work a week. All of this changed when we invented private property. Those with the power to do so enclosed the commons, called it theirs, and commanded those excluded from the land to work the land for its new owners. Thomas Paine recognized the evil of this over two hundreds years ago when he wrote [Agrarian Justice](https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/Agrarian-Justice-by-Thomas-Paine-e4f2lg?ref=scottsantens.com). > The thing, therefore, now to be done is to remedy the evils and preserve the benefits that have arisen to society by passing from the natural to that which is called the civilized state. In taking the matter upon this ground, the first principle of civilization ought to have been, and ought still to be, that the condition of every person born into the world, after a state of civilization commences, ought not to be worse than if he had been born before that period... It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, cultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with the rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal... Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community a ground-rent (for I know of no better term to express the idea) for the land which he holds; and it is from this ground-rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to issue... In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity, that I am pleading for. We are the only species on Earth that has to pay to exist. It hasn't always been that way. We made it that way. We constructed poverty as we know it. We have so much food that half of it goes to waste. We have so many homes that there are five times more vacant homes than people experiencing homelessness. We have so much productive capability that we only produce about 70% as much as we have the existing capacity to produce. [The existence of hunger and homelessness in the United States is entirely unnecessary](https://www.thecrimson.com/column/a-time-for-new-ideas/article/2020/4/16/gilbert-making-basic-income-a-reality/?ref=scottsantens.com). Poverty is a legal status imposed on those excluded from legal access to the needs of life. It is economic injustice. It is a weapon. The Death Star was created to destroy planets, but its true power was not in that destruction, but in all other planets fearing their own destruction. It is for that reason, that Tarkin chooses to destroy Leia's home planet of Alderaan. It's not because Alderaan did anything wrong. Alderaan didn't deserve to be destroyed. It was destroyed as an example to everyone else. That's exactly how poverty works. Yes, poverty kills people, and the people it kills don't deserve it. They are simply sacrifices to demonstrate why people need to do what they're told. The true power of poverty is in everyone's fear of it. If you are afraid of poverty, you will accept that shitty job for that shitty wage. You will do that work you feel is wrong, that hurts other people or the environment, because it's better than hunger and homelessness. You will keep your mouth shut when you would otherwise speak up. You will not rock the boat, if that means possibly losing your job, and being next on the Death Star's list. You will serve the Empire. In Star Wars, a small band of rebels discovers that the Death Star has a weakness, and they risk their lives to exploit that weakness and destroy the Death Star in order to free the galaxy from the oppressive control of the Empire. [Martin Luther King, Jr. discovered that weakness half a century ago](https://www.scottsantens.com/martin-luther-king-jr-basic-income-mlk). > The programs of the past all have a common failing — they are indirect. Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving something else. I’m now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income... We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of proceeding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished. The Death Star could not be destroyed by just shooting at it with all kinds of various weapons. There was only one way it could be done, which was firing a proton torpedo down its exhaust port. In the same way, there is only one way to destroy poverty, and that is to abolish it directly, by firing a basic income torpedo down its exhaust port. Poverty is a lack of money, and so to end poverty, we must create an income floor that lifts everyone above the poverty line. That's unconditional basic income. With UBI, poverty is gone, and with it, the fear of poverty is gone, and with that, control is gone. A society free of the fear of poverty is a free society, free to do what it wants, and say what it wants. It's a society of mutual consent where everyone has the power to walk away from an abusive personal or working relationship, instead of having no choice but to agree out of fear. The UBI movement is the Rebel Alliance. It's up to us to destroy the Death Star of poverty. It is not an easy fight. It never has been. The way things are serve the powerful just fine. They want to be in control. They want people to be afraid. They want people to accept things as they are. What they don't want is for us to realize we can destroy their superweapon. What the Empire didn't realize in Star Wars, was that the Force was with the Rebels. It wasn't just any X-wing that destroyed the Death Star. It was the X-wing of a Jedi who turned off his targeting computer. It wasn't really the torpedo itself which destroyed the Death Star. It was the Force-wielder behind it. It was a belief that it could be done. As Yoda explains in The Empire Strikes Back, the Force is created by life. "Life makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us." The destruction of the Death Star utilized technology, but it was a matter of life choosing life. The existence of poverty is a matter of choosing fear. We have the technology to end poverty. We have the natural resources and the knowledge. But do we have the will? Because that in the end is what it will take. Enough of us must collectively decide to destroy poverty with UBI. We have to believe we can do it. Only when we believe that power is within us, will we finally destroy the Poverty Death Star. --- **If you liked this post and want to go deeper, watch this next:** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Future of the United States Depends on the Immediate Adoption of UBI URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-future-of-the-united-states-depends-on-the-immediate-adoption-of-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-19T01:27:14.000Z ## Without basic income, people will die. With basic income, people will thrive. *This article has been translated into* [*Italian*](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yvBkVyH-XY0wT92FI7JTZY01wIcESu7tBrsCOKSEjp8/edit?ref=scottsantens.com) *and* [*Spanish*](https://eperezubi.blogspot.com/2020/04/el-futuro-de-los-estados-unidos-depende.html?ref=scottsantens.com)*.* ## *Flatten the curve...* We’ve heard that phrase repeatedly as a result of the novel coronavirus in regards to the healthcare system. There are only so many healthcare workers, only so many hospitals with a limited number of rooms and beds, only so many ventilators and PPE. Because of these limits, we have to avoid surpassing them by stretching out the number of coronavirus infections over a longer amount of time. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5e8d0a8176a536001cda324f.png) Flattening that particular curve is something the public and governments both understand. A curve understood by far too few however is our safety net’s. There are only so many welfare workers, only so much website capacity, only so many phone lines and people to answer them. Because of these limits, we should avoid surpassing them too, by avoiding millions of people applying simultaneously for welfare programs as a result of their incomes evaporating, as spending on goods and services grinds to a crawl. All over the world, safety nets are proving absolutely unable to keep up with the numbers of people filing for benefits. In Canada, an Employment Insurance worker wrote their representative to tell them that they were “[completely fucking overwhelmed](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1241380243178471426?ref=scottsantens.com).” In [Australia](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1241906369378336769?ref=scottsantens.com), people are lining up in the thousands in lines that go on for blocks, in the middle of a pandemic, to get income assistance. In the UK, people are waiting in online queues with [over 70,000 people](https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252480546/Huge-queues-for-Universal-Credit-online-applications-due-to-coronavirus-surge?ref=scottsantens.com) in front of them also waiting. In system after system, [websites are crashing](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-25/fired-americans-send-state-unemployment-websites-crashing-down?ref=scottsantens.com) under loads they were never designed to handle, and people are trying over and over again for days at a time to try to qualify for assistance during a time when pretty much everyone everywhere needs assistance. Some countries are responding in smarter ways than others. Denmark and the Netherlands for example are both trying to keep as many people employed as possible by picking up 90 percent of their employers’ payroll costs. This strategy is based on [Germany’s Kurzarbeit policy](https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/04/kurzarbeit-coronavirus-pandemic-america-unemployment-apocalypse-europe-not/?ref=scottsantens.com), which they also deployed in the 2008 financial crisis where it paid two-thirds of the wages of the workers who had their hours cut. This time around, workers are getting their hours cut to zero, but the goal remains to make sure that workers remain employed instead of becoming unemployed. This strategy is meant to try to better pause the economy, and then restart it more quickly. This may sound like an effective strategy, however results are already casting doubt on this approach for countries it's new to. In the attempt to keep people employed in the UK, 80% of people’s paychecks are to be picked up by the government by paying employers, and yet in just two weeks, [one million people have filed instead for universal credit](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/01/950000-apply-for-universal-credit-in-two-weeks-of-uk-lockdown?ref=scottsantens.com). This is up from the usual average of 100,000 every two weeks. People literally can’t afford to wait. They need the money immediately. Whether the United States could have done a better job of utilizing the Kurzarbeit strategy is purely academic however, because the U.S believes in an entirely different strategy, if it can even be called a strategy at all, instead of an utter lack thereof. The U.S. has decided to just [dump people en masse](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/opinion/covid-economy-unemployment-europe.html?ref=scottsantens.com) onto the unemployment rolls, and pay them an extra $2,400 per month on top of the unemployment checks their states usually provide them. Below are some of the ramifications of such a decision. ## *Unemployment and Robots* First, a large burden is dumped immediately right onto everyone’s laps as individuals. Everyone must go apply for unemployment income. Instead of just continuing to get paid by their employers, everyone must go jump through hoops to prove they are deserving of unemployment income. This means website crashes and long waits, but it also means tens of millions of lost hours that could have been spent more productively doing something else. It means utter frustration at having to fill in form after form, and waiting for hours, or even days or weeks. It means people being rejected because they don’t qualify, or because they fill in the blanks incorrectly. With that in mind, consider just how many people are being pushed through this bureaucratic meat grinder right now, and who stand to be pushed through it in the weeks ahead. The most recent week in the U.S revealed a record-shattering number as 6.6 million people filed unemployment claims, which itself shattered the previous week’s record of 3.3 million. Before that, the highest number in one week was 665,000 back in 2009\. This is only the tip of the iceberg too. It’s expected that by the peak of all of this, over [47 million people](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/30/coronavirus-job-losses-could-total-47-million-unemployment-rate-of-32percent-fed-says.html?ref=scottsantens.com) may have filed for unemployment, with unemployment rates possibly reaching 32 percent. It’s hard to grasp how unprecedented that is. None of this has ever happened before. These are far beyond [Great Depression numbers](http://thegreatdepressioncauses.com/unemployment/?ref=scottsantens.com). At its peak, the unemployment rate back then hit 25 percent, which was 11 million people looking for employment. This means, in both absolute and relative terms, more people are going to be unemployed soon than even at the height of the Great Depression. This time though, the government actually *wants* that. It is *choosing* unemployment instead of trying to keep people employed. Not only is the U.S. choosing for more people to become unemployed than even in the Great Depression, it's actively creating the *incentive*. It is expanding unemployment income to be claimable by more kinds of workers like the self-employed, and it is paying an absolute minimum of $600 per week to everyone who can prove they qualify. As an employer faced with the decision of reducing your workers’ pay to try and keep them on your rolls, or letting them go so they can get full pay (or even a federally funded raise), why even attempt to keep your workers? You will be hurting them by keeping them. **Fire them**. That’s the message the U.S. government is sending to employers. **Fire your workers**. What then does this mean? First it means the loss of healthcare benefits in the middle of a pandemic. It also means permanent labor force participation loss in an entirely unprecedented way, because this time, technology exists at a low enough cost to replace a lot of the labor force that will be shed. We saw this happen in the years after 2009, and that was with fewer people unemployed, and with technology incapable of doing as much work as it can now, or if capable then, at a much lower cost now. In 2017, I published [an article](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-real-story-of-automation-beginning-with-one-simple-chart-8b95f9bad71b?ref=scottsantens.com) about the realities of automation in America, and how we are already seeing the impacts on our labor force in the form of skills polarization, downward wage pressure, increasing suicide rates, the rise of alternative work arrangements, increasing periods of unemployment, and more. In that article I issued the following warning about what the next recession would bring: > “Technology is only getting cheaper, so each successive drop squeezes out more human labor, and is able to automate more lower-skill labor that is newly more expensive than machines. Expect the next recession to put over ten million of people out of work, and for the economy to realize they didn’t really need those people as workers after all to produce what was being produced... The economy simply doesn’t need the number of people it currently employs with the technology we already have available.” What’s about to unfold is worse than I imagined. My projections were based on a standard recession. I never considered what would happen if a pandemic created the recession, and I never considered that the U.S. would be foolish enough to incentivize unemployment in response. Here’s what happens when a pandemic is the cause of a 21st century recession: [**immediate investment in automation**](https://ktla.com/news/grocery-stores-nationwide-deploying-robots-to-reduce-pressure-on-workers-during-covid-19-pandemic/?ref=scottsantens.com). Automation already made sense for many reasons, most especially the savings from reducing the costs of labor, and increasing productivity. But a pandemic that pushes the pause button on our entire globalized supply chain uplifts one thing about robots above all others: *robots never get sick*. The natural immunity of robots and code to pandemics may have just become the biggest reason of all to quickly automate as much human labor as possible. A global survey just asked about this and the result should shake people awake. [**41 percent of employers in 45 countries are investing in accelerating their use of automation**](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/bosses-speed-up-automation-as-virus-keeps-workers-home?ref=scottsantens.com). And we haven’t even seen the peak of the economic impact of this yet. What’s now 41 percent will likely increase even further in the weeks and months ahead as businesses come to realize that human labor, if avoidable, *should* be avoided. In [a Vox interview](https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/31/21200010/coronavirus-recession-automation-brookings-mark-muro?ref=scottsantens.com), Mark Muro of the Brookings Institution summarized what’s coming quite succinctly when he said, “*You have to think that what can be automated, likely will be now*.” Why wouldn’t it be? The time is now to automate everything we can, which according to [a report by McKinsey](https://hbr.org/2015/12/how-many-of-your-daily-tasks-could-be-automated?ref=scottsantens.com) was 30 percent of all tasks for 60 percent of all jobs, and that was with technology from five years ago. That means either 28-hour weeks instead of forty for the same number of workers, or millions fewer workers. If you’ve been paying attention to news stories about automation, you’ll have noticed that everyone who starts using some new form of automation inevitably says they plan to use it to increase their productivity. Think tablet ordering at your table at restaurants. The response is that they won’t be firing any servers. That response though, whether honest or not, is equivalent to crossing their fingers behind their backs. Here’s what really happens: when the workers who aren't fired, quit, those positions aren’t *refilled*. Another common response is to reduce hours so workers *earn less* per week. Yet another response is greater output, but *no hiring* of additional workers to accomplish it as they would have otherwise. Combine those existing behaviors with the unemployment of 50 million people. Combine that with the knowledge that automation will enable businesses to keep going when humans go home, and to have less overhead to better stay in business when they do. Combine that with the profound lack of consumer buying power we are about to see when businesses are able to open their doors again. All those people who stay unemployed are also consumers, and that’s the one job category that can’t be automated. Machines may be great workers, but they’re terrible customers. In a 70% consumer-based economy, that’s the crux of the automation problem. As long as the distribution of resources relies on people buying things, as automation increases, consumption decreases. *The economy eats itself*. ## *A Sick Society About to Grow Sicker* It took five years to create as many jobs as has been eliminated in two weeks. Many of those people will return, but many will not. When this economy reboots, it will not return to where it was, that is without sufficient stimulation. Left on its own, using our existing tool set, and our existing reliance on employment for consumption, it will take far longer than five years to recreate as many jobs. It’s also quite possible that we never will. It’s also really important to understand that this decade-long recovery after the 2009 recession only occurred in towns with [populations larger than 50,000](https://www.brookings.edu/research/countering-the-geography-of-discontent-strategies-for-left-behind-places/?ref=scottsantens.com). ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5e8d53d776a536001cda3280.jpg) Source: [Brookings](https://www.brookings.edu/research/countering-the-geography-of-discontent-strategies-for-left-behind-places/?ref=scottsantens.com) For people in small towns and rural areas, they're still economically worse off than they were in 2008 before that crisis changed their lives. This is why before COVID-19 hit, there was already an epidemic of “[deaths of despair](https://www.npr.org/2020/03/18/817687042/deaths-of-despair-examines-the-steady-erosion-of-u-s-working-class-life?ref=scottsantens.com)” among the white population without four-year college degrees leading to a falling life expectancy the likes of which we hadn’t seen since the previous pandemic in 1918\. An estimated 600,000 people have killed themselves on purpose or accidentally through self-medication to numb their economic pains. This too will play out in the years ahead to a now even greater degree. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5e8d6e609671a2001cc57f4b.png) Source: [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/06/opinion/working-class-death-rate.html?ref=scottsantens.com) The suicide rate is about to increase even further. We know this because it happened last time. A [2014 Oxford study](http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-06-12-recession-link-over-10000-suicides-west?ref=scottsantens.com) found that between 2007 and 2010, suicide rates increased by 4.8 percent in the U.S. Thousands of people ended their lives as a result of unemployment, debt, and the loss of their homes. We are about to see that play out again. Thousands of people are going to die, again purely for economic reasons, not COVID-19. Abuse is about to increase too, because when it comes to despair, self-harm isn’t the only result. So too is abusive behavior. Again, we know this because it happened last time and is even already being observed. Studying various regions of the country during the last recession, rates of abusive head trauma in children rose [by 65 percent](https://www.latimes.com/health/la-xpm-2011-sep-19-la-heb-child-abuse-recession-20110919-story.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Three quarters of them were under a year old. 16 percent of them died. A hospital in Fort Worth, Texas has already seen a spike occur there with [seven cases of severe child abuse in one day](https://missoulian.com/news/local/expert-warns-stay-at-home-order-could-increase-child-abuse/article%5F06b61f6b-2912-5ec0-a146-469b2d851b69.html?ref=scottsantens.com) with two deaths in one week, where typically they would see that many cases in a month, and six deaths in a year. Besides children, women also experience the brunt of abuse, and calls for help are already being heard as women feel even less able to flee abusive living arrangements where their “choice” is continued abuse or increased chance of COVID-19\. [The National Domestic Violence Hotline](https://time.com/5803887/coronavirus-domestic-violence-victims/?ref=scottsantens.com) reports that a growing number of callers say their abusers are using COVID-19 as a means of further isolating them from their friends and family and as a mechanism of control by threatening to throw them out on the street to contract it. During China’s recent lockdown, [domestic violence cases tripled](https://www.axios.com/china-domestic-violence-coronavirus-quarantine-7b00c3ba-35bc-4d16-afdd-b76ecfb28882.html?ref=scottsantens.com). This is not a unique response to the pandemic either. This is a typical response. A [decade-long study](https://wws.princeton.edu/news-and-events/news/item/rise-intimate-partner-violence-during-great-recession?ref=scottsantens.com) that was ongoing during both the Dot-Com Bubble and the Great Recession found that “as men feel increasingly anxious and out of control over their jobs and financial security, they become more likely to increase control over their romantic partners, sometimes to the point of abuse.” It doesn’t even take unemployment or falling incomes. All it takes is the *fear* of those outcomes to turn to intimate partner violence. The trigger is the *stress* of living insecure lives in a fragile economy. This economy is not just fragile. It is shattering before our eyes. In New York, reports of [burglaries are already up over 75%](https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-city-sees-more-burglaries-of-businesses-under-coronavirus-emergency-measures-11586008801?ref=scottsantens.com) and in Italy the singing has stopped and [food delivery trucks are already being hijacked](https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/04/europe/southern-italy-coronavirus-black-economy-intl/index.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Our world just changed in a huge way, and it’s not going back. All the billionaires’ robots and all the billionaires’ men will not be putting it back together again. The moment the novel coronavirus hit our shores, everything changed. However, there is still a way forward as long as we do it in time, and that way forward is [a fully universal basic income](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1247191083848806402?ref=scottsantens.com) implemented immediately. ## *Unconditional Civilizational Immunization* Why UBI? Because UBI is the one policy that positively impacts all aforementioned issues. It’s a curve flattener. It’s [a social vaccine](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com) that improves health and reduces crime. It's money that [reaches everyone and excludes no one](https://vocal.media/theSwamp/should-we-provide-emergency-universal-basic-income-to-everyone-or-just-those-who-need-it?ref=scottsantens.com). It's the ability to buy food in grocery stores and farmers markets instead of relying on whatever [overwhelmed food banks](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/02/us-food-banks-coronavirus-demand-unemployment?ref=scottsantens.com) have to offer. It's [security in insecure times](https://www.scottsantens.com/unconditional-pandemic-security-emergency-ubi), and it's [buying power for a consumer-based economy](https://medium.com/basic-income/trickle-down-economics-must-die-long-live-grow-up-economics-5b8334a0db76?ref=scottsantens.com). It's bargaining power for workers and an unlimited strike fund for unions. It’s how to make automation [grow the economy instead of eating it](https://medium.com/basic-income/its-time-for-technology-to-serve-all-humankind-with-unconditional-basic-income-e46329764d28?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s the future, and the future has arrived. UBI in normal times is a floor that paychecks add to. These are not normal times, and so where a UBI floor would be around $1,000 per month, an emergency UBI would need to operate as both floor and paycheck. Here’s how different the future looks like if we decide to adopt a temporary emergency UBI of $2,000 per adult and $1,000 per kid: [nine out of ten](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1242097881592586241?ref=scottsantens.com) households immediately gain the ability to cover all of their basic monthly bills without any further assistance. This keeps the economy for basic goods and services alive. With incomes being directly provided by the government, businesses could cut their labor costs in order to survive. This would reduce the need to layoff employees, and also prevent many businesses from going out of business, while also better maintaining consumer spending. Effectively, this strategy would be a UBI-Kurzarbeit hybrid. With [universal basic economic security](https://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/11/14/13513066/universal-basic-income-crowdfund?ref=scottsantens.com) installed into the economy, a whole slew of other effects would ensue. Besides all essential workers having higher incomes than the unemployed, instead of the same or even lower incomes (thanks to the employed and unemployed both receiving UBI), more people could afford to self-quarantine. Combined with stronger immune systems, fewer people would catch and transmit the coronavirus. Fewer people would feel the stress and despair that would lead to their suicides or substance abuse, or the abuse of their partners or children. Fewer partners would take the abuse too. In Kenya, a basic income experiment resulted in the number of women being kicked, dragged, or beaten by their husbands [falling by 51 percent](https://www.fastcompany.com/90315666/how-a-basic-income-could-help-stop-domestic-violence?ref=scottsantens.com). The likelihood of violent civic unrest would drop. Freed from insecurity, more people would be able to focus on more constructive uses of their time than worrying about surviving, like for example volunteering to help get meals to people, or crafting homemade masks, or working on a new startup to launch post-crisis, or just spending more quality time with their families. In [experiment](https://medium.com/basic-income/what-is-there-to-learn-from-finlands-basic-income-experiment-did-it-succeed-or-fail-54b8e5051f60?ref=scottsantens.com) after [experiment](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1235292174775963656.html?ref=scottsantens.com), UBI has been shown to improve wellbeing and also rates of [entrepreneurship](https://evonomics.com/universal-basic-income-accelerates-innovation-reducing-fear-failure/?ref=scottsantens.com). UBI means an economy that actually restarts. People would actually have money to spend in restaurants that reopen, and that money would become paychecks earned on top of UBI that is then spent elsewhere to enable more businesses to restart, and more paychecks to be distributed. UBI also means that the machines who "take our jobs" pay us all to buy what they're producing. It makes automation literally work for all of us, especially if the amount that a permanent UBI is set at is indexed to productivity. Our choice of future has long been Star Trek or Mad Max, but over the course of the next decade. That choice is now right here. It’s right now. Either we implement UBI to get us all through this and beyond it in a way that saves lives and improves our well-being, or we don’t, and people die amid historic mass suffering. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5e8d6cd63ef96a001e96f2f5.jpg) Utopia or Dystopia I thought we had until [2025 at the latest](https://medium.com/basic-income/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us-like-a-human-driven-truck-b8507d9c5961?ref=scottsantens.com) to adopt UBI. I was wrong. We have a matter of weeks at the latest to adopt UBI to avoid the barely still avoidable. If we don’t, complete social breakdown may just occur in a worst-case scenario where an obviously broken government loses all faith in it by the public at large. In a best-case scenario, the pandemic ends, the economy restarts, and millions of people remain unemployed in a weak economy of even greater inequality, more insecurity, more poverty, more suicides, more abuse, more crime, worse health, and an annihilated American dream. I don’t know how we’re going to get from where we are right now to where we need to go, but we need to get creative, we need to organize, and we need to do it right now. Now is the time to start demanding that our representatives in Congress include UBI in the next bill. Now is the time to start organizing a general strike and an [Internet blackout](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqriFtr2k-k&ref=scottsantens.com) and whatever else we can think of, to make them do what they must do. Our time has almost run out. It’s not yet too late, but it’s about to be. We’ve arrived at a historic fork in the road. This is the moment in history where we choose our path. Dystopia or utopia? There is no other way forward. What we decide in this moment, decides the fate of tens of millions of living breathing human beings, who we may not know and we may never meet, but who are our brothers and sisters in the family that is our civilization. Flattening the curve is not enough. We must finally recognize what Martin Luther King, Jr. described as “*our inescapable network of mutuality*.” It’s time to [build a new social contract](https://basicincometoday.com/financial-times-editorial-board-calls-for-basic-income-to-reverse-the-policy-direction-of-the-last-four-decades/?ref=scottsantens.com) that uplifts everyone and leaves no one behind. The old social contract, or what’s left of it, died of COVID-19. The new social contract is ours to write, ours to sign, and ours to start living by in the future that we build from this day forward. One final thing to consider: disasters like this lower our aspirations. A [study of Pakistan's devastating 2010 floods](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X17301092?ref=scottsantens.com) and their response to it found that the floods dramatically reduced aspirations for the future, except among those who received flood relief in the form of unconditional cash equivalent to about 10% of annual household expenditures for the following three years. Lowered aspirations are the difference between striving to achieve the improbable, and the learned helplessness of lost hope. A post-pandemic U.S. without UBI replaces coronavirus with a plague of hopelessness. A post-pandemic U.S. with UBI is vaccinated against that plague, and moves beyond simply trying to survive, to finally endeavoring to thrive. Hope is what keeps us going, and my hope is that a disaster as large as this teaches us a lesson we never forget about events that suddenly befall us through no fault of our own that forever change the course of our lives... these events we call disasters. **Poverty has** **always** **been a disaster**. --- *The Gerald Huff Fund for Humanity, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Floyd Marinescu, Andrew Stern, Zack Sargent, David Ruark, Larry Cohen, Jeff Lu, Ace Bailey, Albert Wenger, Athena Washington, Daragh Ward, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Joanna Zarach, Justin Walsh, Mark Hechim, Michael Tinker, Myles McLane, Robert Collins, Soo Kobberstad, Tom Cooper, UBIVisuals, Victor Lau, Xiaohu Xie, Brandon Neff, Craig Freeburg, Garry Turner, Heidi, Jeff Tidball, Marie Janicke, Michael Finney, Nelly Yiptong, Peter T Knight, Thomas SV, Aiwu Zhang, Che Wagner, Chris Rauchle, Daniel Brockman, Danielle and Michael Texeira, Elizabeth Corker, Gerald Huff, Gray Scott, Jack Canty, Jan Smole, Jess Allen, Joe Ballou, Max Henrion, Michael Honey, Michael Hrenka, Myi Baril, Natalie Foster, Paul Godsmark, Rachel Perkins, Reid Rusonik, Toby Green, Will Ware, Chris Heinz, AYFAQ.com, Ben Stephens, Brian Schwartz, Casey L Young, Chris Boraski, Daniel Helsten, Elizabeth Balcar, Elliot Lee, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Iggy C, Ivan Vazquez, Janos Abel, Jeremie Rodriguez, Jessica Wales, Justin M, Kai Wong, Kathryn Schelonka, Kev Roberts, Kirk Israel, MARK4UBI, Meshack Vee, Nicolas Pouillard, Oliver Bestwalter, Philip Jackson, Phuong Truong, Reid Knight, Richard Kilshaw, Stephen Starkey, Terry Wei, Thomas Welsh, Tim, Timothy P O'Connor, VilliHaukka, Walter Schaerer, Yan Xie, Yang Deng, Ziggy Williamson, Bill Teng, Sanford Redlich, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.* [**Would you like to see your name here too?**](https://www.patreon.com/join/scottsantens/checkout?rid=120769&ref=scottsantens.com) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### You Have Been Drafted Into the Great Coronavirus War URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/drafted-into-the-great-coronavirus-war-conscription-pay-emergency-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-21T23:44:09.000Z GREETING: You are hereby ordered to report for induction into the ARMED FORCES of the UNITED STATES. War has arrived, and [over 200,000 of us could die](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/29/823517467/fauci-estimates-that-100-000-to-200-000-americans-could-die-from-the-coronavirus?ref=scottsantens.com). This war, unlike all previous wars, is a war against a virus: SARS-CoV-2\. The coronavirus is our enemy this time, and the theater of this battlefront extends from our hospitals into our very living rooms. We have all been drafted into this war. [Until April 30](https://abcnews.go.com/US/coronavirus-live-updates-global-pandemic-killed-30000/story?id=69859267&ref=scottsantens.com), we are to stay home unless our sources of employment are deemed as absolutely essential. Even then, we are called to employ the tactic of social distancing at all times, employed or not, on duty or off. We are to wash our hands for 20 seconds, frequently. We are to self-quarantine. We are to cook for ourselves or if possible order takeout from local businesses to help keep them afloat. We are to provide education and child care to our own kids. We are to put our own needs aside, and worry about the lives of our fellow Americans. Even if we are young and healthy, we could transmit this virus to someone else and get them killed. We must fight for the immune systems of those whose immune systems can't fight alone. Because you have been drafted by this involuntary call to service for this nation, **you are to immediately begin receiving conscription pay** just as you would if drafted for a more typical war. This income will be in addition to any other income you are receiving from other sources. According to [current rates](https://www.thebalancecareers.com/understanding-military-pay-3356713?ref=scottsantens.com), as lowest ranking enlisted soldiers, base pay shall be $1,681 per month. As all active duty military also receive a tax-free monthly allowance for food, called Basic Allowance for Subsistence, you as newly enlisted shall also receive a monthly food allowance of $369 per month. As draftees living off base, you are also entitled to a tax-free [basic monthly housing allowance (BAH)](https://www.thebalancecareers.com/basic-housing-allowance-bah-rates-3356707?ref=scottsantens.com). This allowance usually varies by location, but because this is an emergency, an additional $950 per month will be added to your basic pay, with an additional $1,000 per month per kid in all households in recognition of the larger homes that families reside in, and also in recognition of all the extra care work going on in households with kids thanks to schools and day cares being closed. On April 1, you are therefore entitled to receive a check for $4,500, as is every adult in your household, with an additional $1,500 per child in your home. This amount includes two weeks of back-pay for your service in March in addition to your pay for the month of April. If the President chooses to extend your length of service into May or the months beyond, you will receive additional checks for $3,000 per adult and $1,000 per kid on the first of each month. Thank you for your service. You are a valued citizen of this country, and without your service, millions could die, and this great nation could fall into ruin. Your nation recognizes the sacrifices you are making for the greater good. Although you had no choice in the matter, your service is recognized for what it is - **essential to the future of the United States of America.** See you on the other side, soldier. [Leave no one behind](https://vocal.media/theSwamp/should-we-provide-emergency-universal-basic-income-to-everyone-or-just-those-who-need-it?ref=scottsantens.com). --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Unconditional Pandemic Security URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/unconditional-pandemic-security-emergency-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-21T23:44:52.000Z What I'm about to tell you I only understand because [I have a basic income already](https://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/11/14/13513066/universal-basic-income-crowdfund?ref=scottsantens.com) and it's hugely important for everyone to understand right now in this moment of health and economic crisis. **$1 ≠ $1** That may seem like bad math, but let me try and explain... Many of us were already feeling financial insecurity prior to this pandemic. Every month was a matter of survival. Would you earn enough? Would you keep your job? What would happen if you lost your job? Would you find another? Would you go on welfare? Would you become homeless? All of those fears and anxieties are now actually happening. It's real. People are actually losing their sources of income. People have no idea how long they'll be without income and what's going to happen to them. People are scared shitless and rightly so, because there's no security for so many people. All of the ordinary policy responses are rooted within *insecurity*. Unemployed? Maybe you'll get unemployment insurance. Maybe you won't. Maybe you'll get welfare. Maybe you won't. Maybe you'll get a tax cut. Does that even affect you if your income vanished? Maybe you'll get a stimulus check? Maybe you won't qualify for it. And so insecurity reigns. What we must do is **rein in** insecurity. There is only one policy response that provides real security because security is a feeling built on knowing in advance. It's not about the money. It's about the *unconditionality* of the money. **We need to know our worst fears won't happen.** If everyone knows that the worst possible scenario for them and their family is an absolute minimum of $1,000 per month instead of $0, and an additional amount for their kids, they feel something different. **Starvation is off the table**. That may sound small, but it's not. It means that fear no longer occupies your mind. You are lighter. What the government desperately needs to do to avoid mass desperation is to step in and say: > We've got you. You are all American. We are all in this together. [This nation was founded to secure and protect each other](https://www.scottsantens.com/someday-we-will-look-back-and-interpret-the-constitution-as-having-called-for-unconditional-basic-income-all-along-grant-cordone), and that's exactly what we'll do. No worst fears. No conditions. You are a citizen of the United States of America, and your unconditional right to life is a right we secure. An Emergency Universal Basic Income (EUBI) is least of all about the amount of money. Most of all, it's about introducing a solid floor underneath everyone so no one fears falling into the great depths of the unknown. It's not the same for someone to keep an extra $1,000 as it is to know $1,000 is guaranteed to be there. A fully universal unconditional payment provided each and every month for at least the next six to twelve months (and possibly longer) that excludes no one (including kids) means that every single one of us will feel that minimal sense of security through this crisis. That *feeling* isn't nothing. **It's everything.** Yes, there are health reasons for UBI right now. Yes, there are economic reasons for UBI right now. But, I just want to emphasize that what's going on right now requires a response that understands what we are all *feeling* and addresses it. We don't know what's going to happen. We don't know and we can't know, but what we can do is pull together and swear to each other that no one will be left behind. [**No one.**](https://vocal.media/theSwamp/should-we-provide-emergency-universal-basic-income-to-everyone-or-just-those-who-need-it?ref=scottsantens.com) That's the entire reason we founded this nation in the first place, because we knew we were stronger together than as individuals all on our own. Now is the time to reaffirm our founding principles. None of us are on our own. We are all Americans and we refuse to let one person fall because that one person could be us. We will protect each other and recognize that a storm is here and the only way to weather it is together. There has never been a moment in time in any of our lives where it is more important than right now in this very moment to construct a floor that no one falls beneath and that we can all use to stand upon and rebuild after this pandemic has passed and our lives are unpaused. There are [so many reasons](https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq) to demand a UBI by calling and writing your legislators to support it, but as someone who I think is a lot less afraid than a lot of other people right now because I feel I'm going to be okay, EVERYONE needs to feel too that they will be okay. We will get through this, but I implore you to try and understand how important a feeling of security is to everyone as things get worse before they get better. What we need to do, we need to do *right now*, and that's guaranteeing for the duration of this crisis and beyond, a bare minimum amount of guaranteed economic security. Look beyond the amount. Look beyond means-testing. **Look instead at creating an island of known within a sea of unknown.** Unconditionality. Universality. Basic needs. These are what define UBI, and making sure we provide UBI right now is what will define *us*, and also define our nation. History will judge all of us for the actions, and lack thereof, that we take in this moment. Are we going to be the ones who step up and change the course of history for the better, who get through this together and make sure that the next time this happens, we have the mechanisms in place to take immediate action? Or are we going to be the ones who refused to come together and who watched as our leaders failed us, and by extension watched as we failed ourselves? I hope and urge that we do the right thing. Our coinage has reminded us of what that right thing is for centuries. *E pluribus unum*. Out of many, one. We are stronger together. Let us unite in this time of political division and physical isolation around the idea that no one should ever be left behind, and all of us are better off when all of us are better off. There has never been a more important time to guarantee each other's most basic needs as a right of citizenship. We can do this. We must do this. And we must do it **NOW.** --- *[Please find who your representatives are and contact them immediately to urge they support UBI](http://myreps.datamade.us/?ref=scottsantens.com).* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Should We Provide Emergency Universal Basic Income to Everyone or Just Those Who Need It? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/should-we-provide-emergency-universal-basic-income-to-everyone-or-just-those-who-need-it/ Last updated: 2022-02-19T01:22:14.000Z ## The question of means-testing versus full universality in a time of crisis What’s happened in just the past few days with mind-boggling speed is the near certainty now that in the very near future, the United States is going to start cutting checks for some as yet undefined value and sending them to an as yet undefined population. As an advocate for a universal basic income [since 2013](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1040683616488103936?ref=scottsantens.com), I applaud this growing "cash bailout of the people" consensus, however I would like to emphasize that what matters most right now as with UBI in general, is the [unconditionality/universality](https://www.sitra.fi/en/articles/basic-income-new-universalism/?ref=scottsantens.com) of the payment. In other words, the checks really need to go to everyone, excluding no one, and where that may seem wasteful or unnecessary, let me explain why it should be part of any bill that gets enacted into law for emergency UBI or permanent UBI. There are three main reasons why money should go to everyone: immediacy, error reduction, and social cohesion. People need the checks as fast as possible. Everyone who needs the checks should get the checks. And the distribution of the checks should leave citizens with the feeling that government can actually work. With those three criteria met, Americans may finally come to understand why this nation should have adopted UBI decades ago, if not centuries ago. First, the most important justification for full universality in this moment is all about time. The clock is ticking. We are in the midst of a global pandemic. People are being asked to stay inside to flatten the curve so as to prevent our healthcare system from being overwhelmed. This is the right thing to do to save lives, but the results are financially devastating as consumers in a 70% consumer economy dramatically reduce their consumption. People are already losing their jobs left and right. Businesses are closing. The self-employed are seeing their incomes vanish. The first of the month is less than two weeks away. Our primary goal should be getting money into the hands of people who desperately need it as fast as we possibly can, especially so everyone who is sick can self-quarantine. That means selecting a flat amount of money and sending it to everyone. The common response to this is, “Everyone? But rich people don’t need it.” That sounds entirely logical, but in practice, here’s what happens. First, we need to argue over what “rich” means. What’s that number? Is it $100,000? Is it $1 million? Is it somewhere in between? Let’s say we arbitrarily decide it’s $100,000 so that’s where we draw the line. Now that the line has been drawn, we now have to test *every single person* in the country to determine which side of the line they’re on. Besides needing to now argue over how best to do that, we then need to spend the time and the resources actually doing it. We also then need to punish people for lying in order to qualify for the check. That means more time and resources expended downstream too. The fastest possible way to get money to people is to decide on a number and just send them to everyone without any means-test. This strategy would save weeks and billions of dollars. Most importantly, it would literally save lives. The second most important reason for full universality is the need to eliminate errors of exclusion. Basically whenever we draw a line to divide people into the “deserving” and “undeserving,” we introduce two types of errors. The first type of error is a false positive. It’s when someone passes the test when they shouldn’t have. The second type of error is a false negative. It’s when someone fails the test who should have passed. In regards to the line we draw, here’s what those errors mean in human terms. One person will get a check who didn’t really need it. Another person will not get a check who desperately needed it. The former could be seen as unnecessary while the latter could be fatal. People could die. These mistakes happen all the time all over the world. A study of targeted programs in 30 countries actually found a shockingly high average error rate. If your goal was to get food to the malnourished, do you think that targeting assistance to those in the bottom 40% would mean you’d reach most of the malnourished? You might think so, but according to the study, you’d be missing a whopping [50% of them](https://examplewordpresscom61323.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/poor-individuals-in-poor-households-w24047.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Another study of 38 programs in 23 countries found that poverty targeting excludes [44% to 97%](https://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/news/failure-revealed-poverty-targeting-misses-44-97-of-those-it-aims-to-reach/?ref=scottsantens.com) of the people the programs are intended to reach. That’s how easy it is to draw a line and leave out most of the people you want to help. Think of it this way. Right now, we’re all trapped in a room we can’t escape and [the water is rising](http://www.scottsantens.com/the-water-room-analogy-why-giving-basic-income-to-even-the-richest-makes-sense). We have no idea who will drown and can only guess. It therefore only makes sense to make sure everyone gets a life vest. Who cares if a good swimmer gets one they don’t need as a result of making sure no one drowns? If it’s possible to save people from drowning who otherwise would, that should be our top priority. Additionally, once the danger has passed, there’s nothing preventing us from asking a good swimmer for their life vest back. We already have a system in place to do that. Next year come tax time, just tax them more. That’s a means-test on the back end that takes no additional time or resources because everyone already pays taxes every year anyway. Have you heard the phrase, “Kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out?” Well this is kind of the opposite approach with the goal of saving both lives and time. “Pay ‘em all and let taxes sort ‘em out.” Finally, the reason full universality is so important even goes beyond expediency and including everyone in need. It's also about our constitutional goal of “[a more perfect Union](http://www.scottsantens.com/someday-we-will-look-back-and-interpret-the-constitution-as-having-called-for-unconditional-basic-income-all-along-grant-cordone).” What policymakers don't realize is that the lines they insist on drawing erodes trust in the institution of government itself. This is not a small effect either. It's quite large actually. A cleverly designed [experiment out of Pakistan](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1137101468635414528?ref=scottsantens.com) found that feeling poor, no matter your actual income, can lead to a very large decrease in government support among those who don't get help. The effect is so large that when we draw a line between the "deserving" and "undeserving," those who get help gain a 0.6 percentage point increase in government satisfaction while among those who don't get help, their approval with government plummets by **10.5 percentage points**. That means that in a situation like this, where a pandemic is ravaging our lives and our economy, when our goal is to help people in need, and we choose to draw a line to exclude people, we actually serve to massively erode people's faith in government because the negative impact of not getting help can be **17.5 times stronger** than the positive impact. Full universality means we avoid any large decreases in government satisfaction and instead see positive increases across the board. Instead of some people being happy and some people being extremely unhappy, everyone is happy. That satisfaction can then make other things more possible. For example, maybe the reason we don’t already have universal healthcare is because our long-term insistence on means-testing over universality has resulted in some people being extremely pissed off with government to the point they think government can’t do anything right. The lesson here should be simple. Don’t exclude anyone, especially not in an emergency where time is of the essence and when errors of exclusion can be fatal. Our 7th President, Andrew Jackson, once said, “There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing.” Every member of Congress needs to understand that any insistence that emergency UBI must be targeted is going to greatly delay life-saving money, exclude people who do in fact need it, and damage the way citizens view the institution of government among those excluded. Our entire economy is on fire. What we need is not weeks of finding the right number of fire trucks and which neighborhoods to send them to. What we need is to **make it rain**. --- *Special thanks to: The Gerald Huff Fund for Humanity, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Floyd Marinescu, Andrew Stern, Zack Sargent, Chris Ray, Larry Cohen, Jeff Lu, Ace Bailey, Albert Wenger, Athena Washington, Daragh Ward, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Joanna Zarach, John Hamilton, Justin Walsh, Laurel Gillespie, Mark Hechim, Michael Tinker, Myles McLane, Peter, Robert Collins, Soo Kobberstad, Tom Cooper, UBIVisuals, Victor Lau, Xiaohu Xie, Brandon Neff, Garry Turner, Heidi, Jeff Tidball, Marc Klockow, Marie Janicke, Michael Finney, Michael Kwak, Nelly Yiptong, Peter T. Knight, Thomas SV, Aiwu Zhang, Che Wagner, Chris Rauchle, Daniel Brockman, Danielle and Michael Texeira, David Ihnen, Elizabeth Corker, Gerald Huff, Gray Scott, Jack Canty, Jan Smole, Jess Allen, Joe Ballou, Max Henrion, Michael Honey, Michael Hrenka, Myi Baril, Natalie Foster, Paul Godsmark, Rachel Perkins, Reid Rusonik, Toby Green, Will Ware, Chris Heinz, AYFAQ.com, Ben Stephens, Brian Schwartz, Casey L. Young, Chris Boraski, Daniel Helsten, Elizabeth Balcar, Elliot Lee, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Iggy C, Ivan Vazquez, Janos Abel, Jeremie Rodriguez, Jessica Wales, Joshua Haston, Justin M, Kai Wong, Kathryn Schelonka, Kev Roberts, Kirk Israel, MARK4UBI, Meshack Vee, Nicolas Pouillard, Oliver Bestwalter, Philip Jackson, Phuong Truong, Reid Knight, Richard Kilshaw, Stephen Starkey, Terry Wei, Thomas Welsh, Tim, Timothy P. O'Connor, VilliHaukka, Walter Schaerer, Yan Xie, Yang Deng, Ziggy Williamson, Bill Teng, Sanford Redlich, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.* [**Would you like to see your name here too?**](https://www.patreon.com/join/scottsantens/checkout?rid=120769&ref=scottsantens.com) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Introducing Andrew Yang URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/introducing-andrew-yang-freedom-dividend-universal-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T20:22:17.000Z ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/ca4d975d-38bf-41ba-a736-b5f6cc5675a0/EPkO-ZaXsAAenQw.jpg) *I wrote this short speech on January 30 to introduce Andrew Yang at his town hall in Dubuque, Iowa. Photo by [Marc Klockow](http://klocko.co/?ref=scottsantens.com) of my delivering it.* --- If you're Yang Gang, there's a good chance you know who I am, and if you're Yang Curious, you're probably wondering, who the heck is this guy? Well, I'm a guy who's been pushing for universal basic income for seven straight years now, and I'm here to tell you, the Freedom Dividend is the most important policy of the 21st century, and Andrew Yang is the only candidate who knows that. Andrew knows this is about Amazon, data, and robots, but he also knows this is about poverty, security, and humanity. We need to ask the question, "What is America for?" We founded this country on the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and over two centuries later, we have yet to live up to these ideals. Do we truly recognize the right to life so long as we don't all have the money we need to live? Do we have liberty if through a lack of money, we lack the power to say no to those who don't lack money? Do we have the ability to even *think* about pursuing happiness so long as mere survival is all we can think about? It cannot be overstated how important this election is. On Monday, you have the power to help return power to the people to a truly historic degree. If this were the 18th century, Andrew would be the guy talking about this idea called democracy while everyone else was debating who would be the better king or queen. I'm not exaggerating. An Andrew Yang presidency will be as transformative as when we chose self-governing over the divine right of kings. We need to remember there are no kings here. This country is ours. All of ours. It belongs to We the People. Democracy was a reallocation of power in a time of kings. The Freedom Dividend is a reallocation of power in a time of billionaires. The Freedom Dividend is not free money. [It's freedom](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-you-think-basic-income-is-free-money-or-socialism-think-again-4a17e8d15b1?ref=scottsantens.com). It's freedom from poverty, freedom from abusive relationships, and the freedom to start dreaming again. I want that freedom for everyone and so there is no human being on this planet who I'd rather see in the White House than Andrew, so please now welcome my friend, and the 46th President of these United States, Andrew Yang! --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Top Ten Andrew Yang Videos of 2019 URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-top-ten-andrew-yang-videos-of-2019/ Last updated: 2022-02-19T01:19:33.000Z ## As determined by over 350 of the Yang Gang via ranked-choice voting In the final week of 2019, I asked the supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang (otherwise known as the Yang Gang) to let me know their favorite videos of the year with or about him, and to vote on them using likes on Twitter. The result was [a list of over 30 favorite videos](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VDh20sV56YlptUPMnvYZm6GVWf9b0MM-ak6Dp7PgoM0/edit?ref=scottsantens.com#gid=0). I then took the top 15 from that list and asked the Yang Gang to [rank them](https://rankit.vote/vote/Vz8GePkDChaLbEPZl8JG?ref=scottsantens.com) using ranked-choice voting ([one of Yang's policy proposals](https://www.yang2020.com/policies/rankedchoice/?ref=scottsantens.com)) to best determine the top ten videos. Over 350 people voted and this ranked list is the result. ## **#10: The DNC Summer Meeting speech** In August, Andrew Yang gave a speech at the DNC Summer Meeting to make his case why he is the best candidate to beat Donald Trump. The reason this speech is in the top ten, aside from its content and delivery, is two-fold. First, it's because it ends with a standing ovation, and second, it's because of the reaction by Tom Perez, the chair of the Democratic National Committee. *Duration: 9 minutes 21 seconds* ## **#9: "Hallelujah" at the Santa Monica Pier** On October 5, the Yang Gang organized a day of action across the country to express public support for Andrew Yang. In Santa Monica, a musician with a guitar ([and a YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/user/larrydallaspoling?ref=scottsantens.com)) told the group there that he hoped they would leave soon. What happened then was something those who were there will likely always remember, as will anyone who watches the video. *Duration: 2 minutes 56 seconds* ## **#8: H3 Podcast Episode 132** In August, Andrew Yang sat down with well-known YouTubers Ethan and Hila Klein to have a long discussion that has since been watched almost two million times. It has also since resulted in [a second appearance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HXVws8ZQRc&ref=scottsantens.com) that has in two weeks been watched almost one million times. *Duration: 1 hour 28 minutes* ## **#7: Andrew Yang interviews himself at SXSW 2019** In March, Andrew Yang sat down to be interviewed by Kevin Roose at South by Southwest. Kevin was unable to make it due to unforeseen travel issues, so Yang ended up interviewing himself. The result is an hour of pure Yang. *Duration: 54 minutes 54 seconds* ## **#6: The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special** In April, Andrew Yang sat down with Ben Shapiro and the result is something that's since been watched over 3 million times. It's a favorite for so many because of how rare it is to see a Democrat and a Republican have a rational conversation for an hour over topics they disagree about, and in the process also find things they do agree about. Also, reading through this video's comments section on YouTube is like witnessing a live unicorn. *Duration: 1 hour 5 minutes* ## **#5: Equal Citizens Town Hall with Lawrence Lessig** On April 7, Lawrence Lessig hosted a town hall discussion with Andrew Yang about restoring democracy in America. The entire discussion is important, but the primary reason this video breaks into the top five is because of the moment towards the end when Andrew tells the audience that the reason he is running for president isn't because he ever fantasized about becoming president. It's because he's an American and a parent, and he's unwilling to accept the future we as Americans are leaving to our kids. *Duration: 1 hour 22 minutes* ## **#4: Iowa Democratic Party Liberty and Justice Celebration speech** On November 1, in Des Moines, Iowa, the candidates gathered to address a stadium full of excited supporters at the Liberty and Justice Celebration. The speech Andrew gave is such a Yang Gang favorite because of the punch it packs into 13 minutes, and the standing ovation it receives when it's over. *Duration: 12 minutes 50 seconds* ## **#3: The Axe Files with David Axelrod** On December 5, Andrew Yang sat down with David Axelrod, the former Senior Advisor to President Obama, for an episode of his podcast, The Axe Files. This video actually only exists because of [The Zach and Matt Show](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQFT4LWtQY67xyhDAChiqcw?ref=scottsantens.com) who were there in the audience to record it, and so the audio is not optimal. For the best audio, you can listen to [the actual podcast](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/turner-podcast-network/the-axe-files-presented-by-the-university-of-chicago-institute/e/65817590?ref=scottsantens.com). This conversation is considered to be among the best so far because of the level and breadth of questions asked and answered. *Duration: 1 hour 17 minutes* ## **#2: "Andrew Yang Rising" by KillGreyFilms** This video is the only entry to make it into the top ten that's a fan-made compilation video, and for good reason. In under five minutes, KillGreyFilms energizes the viewer in a way few filmmakers do as well. It's a motivational juggernaut of a video that is so beloved by the Yang Gang, it's even been recently updated in "[Andrew Yang Rising Redux](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHOIGbFhp1M&ref=scottsantens.com)." *Duration: 4 minutes 53 seconds* ## **#1: The Joe Rogan Experience Episode 1245** This is the video that transformed Andrew Yang's presidential campaign. There's pre-Rogan and there's post-Rogan. Everything changed on February 12, 2019\. With over 4.8 million views, this two-hour long discussion is considered by many to be the single most convincing argument for why Andrew Yang must become the 46th President of the United States. Few who take the time to watch the entire two hours walk away with the same views as when they clicked the play button, especially their views on automation and the idea of [universal basic income](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq). (Note: Some details have evolved since this took place, like for example how the Freedom Dividend is now for every citizen over 18 instead of 18-65.) *Duration: 1 hour 52 minutes* ## **Special Mention: Iowa Press interviews Andrew Yang** On January 3, 2020, Andrew Yang sat down for a conversation with the Iowa Press. Because this just happened in 2020, this video is ineligible for a 2019 list, but it does appear to be a new favorite of many, and a potential contender for the top ten Andrew Yang videos of 2020. *Duration: 26 minutes 52 seconds* My thanks to everyone who helped make this list by submitting links and voting on what was submitted. I'm sorry if your personal favorite didn't make it. Some of mine didn't make it either. I encourage readers to look over [all 40 of the videos](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VDh20sV56YlptUPMnvYZm6GVWf9b0MM-ak6Dp7PgoM0/edit?ref=scottsantens.com#gid=0) that this top ten list was winnowed down from, and to also simply search on YouTube for Andrew Yang and just go from there. --- *Special thanks to the Gerald Huff Fund for Humanity, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Floyd Marinescu, Zack Sargent, Carolyn, Larry Cohen, Jeff Lu, Aaron T Schultz, Ace Bailey, Albert Wenger, Athena Washington, Daragh Ward, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Joanna Zarach, Justin Walsh, Michael Tinker, Nidia D., Peter, Robert Collins, Soo Kobberstad, Tom Cooper, UBIVisuals, Victor Lau, 12550 The Zine, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Garry Turner, Heidi, Marc Klockow, Michael Finney, Michael Kwak, Nelly Yiptong, Peter T Knight, Thomas SV, Trevor Russell, Che Wagner, Chris Rauchle, Daniel Brockman, Danielle and Michael Texeira, David Ihnen, Elizabeth Corker, Gerald Huff, Gray Scott, Jack Canty, Jan Smole, Jess Allen, Joe Ballou, lamvee, Max Henrion, Michael Honey, Michael Hrenka, Myi Baril, Natalie Foster, Paul Godsmark, Rachel Perkins, Reid Rusonik, Toby Green, Will Ware, Bill Teng, Erin O'Neill, Sanford Redlich, Chris Heinz, AYFAQ.com, Ben Stephens, Brian Schwartz, Casey L Young, Chris Boraski, Elizabeth Balcar, Iggy C, Ivan Vazquez, Janos Abel, Jessica Wales, Justin M, Kai Wong, Kathryn Schelonka, Kev Roberts, Kirk Israel, MARK4UBI, Melissa C, Meshack Vee, Nicolas Pouillard, Oliver Bestwalter, Philip Jackson, Phuong Truong, Reid Knight, Richard Kilshaw, Roy Bahat, Stephen Starkey, Terry Wei, Thomas Welsh, Tim, Timothy P O'Connor, Valentina Petricciuolo, VilliHaukka, Walter Schaerer, Yan Xie, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.* [***Would you like to see your name here too?***](https://www.patreon.com/join/scottsantens/checkout?rid=120769&ref=scottsantens.com) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### 11 Nobel Prize Winners Who Have Endorsed Universal Basic Income (UBI) URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/11-nobel-prize-winners-who-have-endorsed-universal-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-19T01:16:58.000Z ## Nine winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and two Nobel Peace Prize winners The idea of an [unconditional basic income (UBI)](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq) floor where everyone starts with the same minimum amount of money as everyone else each month as an economic right of citizenship is not a new idea. UBI is an idea with [a long history](https://web.archive.org/web/20170422054601/http://basicincome-europe.org:80/brief-history-basic-income-ideas/) and thus a long history of support. Among that support exists a number of Nobel prize winners. The following is a compilation of some of those names and what they've said about UBI in recent years. This list is focused on living Nobel laureates and not economists throughout history like [Milton Friedman](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-is-the-net-transfer-amount-not-the-gross-price-tag-acb8aa5eab73?ref=scottsantens.com), [Friedrich Hayek](https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/why-did-hayek-support-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com), James Tobin, James Meade, George Stigler, Paul Samuelson, [Herbert Simon](http://basisindkomst.dk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/GBI-Nobel%5FHerbert%5FSimon.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), and [James Mirrlees](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/comments/3rruew/during%5Fthe%5Fnobel%5Fprize%5Fseries%5Fevent%5Fin%5Fsingapore/?ref=scottsantens.com) among others who all supported UBI during their lifetimes. *The following names appear in chronological order based on when they became a Nobel laureate.* ## 1\. Desmond Tutu: 1984 Nobel Peace Prize In 2006, the [11th Basic Income Earth Network Congress](http://www.widerquist.com/karl/Artciles--Pop-other/Report--11th-BIEN.html?ref=scottsantens.com) took place in South Africa. It was on that occasion that Desmond Tutu recorded a strong endorsement for the entire basic income movement. His whole speech is available in its entirety below, but here is a short transcript excerpt: > "Friends, I do not need to remind you of the importance and benefits of campaigns such as the basic income movement that are designed to enhance the dignity, well-being, and inclusion of all people, and to move us closer to our vision of social equity... We have a unique opportunity to wipe out hunger and abject poverty, to make sure that no one falls into absolute destitution. For perhaps the first time in history we have the resources, the know-how, and the technology to make starvation and dependency relics of the past. But do we have the will?" ## 2\. Robert Solow: 1987 Nobel Prize in Economics During an interview in 2015 alongside fellow Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, when asked about UBI and why he prefers universality over means-testing, this is how Robert Solow explained his reasoning: > "I think means-testing sounds so plausible. Why waste this on people who don't need it? But we know two things about means-tested benefits. One is that they're never fully taken up. If you offer a means-tested benefit, there will be many many eligible people who simply for one reason or another, maybe because they think it stigmatizes them in some way, maybe ignorance, maybe some other reason, they don't do it. Even a kind of normal benefit as the earned income tax credit. It's part of the tax return. It sounds so natural. There are many many eligibile people who don't take it up. So means-testing eliminates part of the benefit, part of the good that a benefit can do. > > The second problem is it's very difficult, maybe impossible, to design an effective means-tested benefit that doesn't end up with an excessively high marginal tax rate on the beneficiaries as they earn their way out of the benefit. As their means increase, phasing out seems always to involve a very high marginal tax rate, so it provides a bad incentive, so it's no good from that point of view. The idea of a non-means-tested benefit, especially a child benefit, which also bears on the equality of opportunity issue, and making it taxable as normal income, that sounds far more sensible to me." ## 3\. Amartya Sen: 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics In 2017, [Amartya Sen said during a discussion about UBI](https://basicincome.org/news/2017/03/nobel-laureate-economist-amartya-sen-india-not-ready-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) on New Delhi Television in India that when India reaches "*the level of prosperity that Europe has*," that "*basic income would be a good thing to have*." ## 4\. Vernon Smith: 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics In a [2017 article published in *The Wall Street Journal*](https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-best-deal-ever-privatize-the-interstates-1498605231?ref=scottsantens.com), Vernon Smith wrote the following about UBI: > "How could you use the money from highway and land sales to benefit all Americans—and improve your own popularity? By creating a new Permanent Citizens Fund, invested in stocks, bonds and real estate world-wide. Every citizen would hold an equal share, with annual dividends paid in cash. > > Better highways, more land for productive development plus a permanent fund sending checks to every citizen. A guaranteed basic income financed from public assets waiting to be monetized and put to work. You might even get the progressives’ vote. Have you ever made such a great deal? > > If you think it’s pie in the sky, ask an Alaskan. The Alaska Permanent Fund, initiated in 1976 to distribute oil revenue, has a market value I estimate at $72,000 for each Alaskan citizen. Annual dividends began in 1982, when the public corporation that administers the fund cut the first checks for $1,000\. Little wonder that Alaska is second among all the states in income equality. > > After highways, bridges and federal acreage, your next project would be to start auctioning all US mineral, oil and gas resource rights for deposit to the fund. These assets also belong to the people, not the government." ## 5\. Daniel McFadden: 2000 Nobel Prize in Economics In 2017, multiple Nobel prize-winning economists participated in the 6th Lindau meeting on economic sciences in Germany. During [a panel discussion](https://www.forbes.com/sites/francescoppola/2017/08/31/top-economists-endorse-universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com), Daniel McFadden explained how introducing casinos in native American communities along the Rio Grande enabled them to deliver a basic income to the poor and how surprisingly well it worked. > “A lot of economists would think that was not a good thing to do, but what happened was that child abuse dropped drastically, spousal abuse dropped drastically, crime dropped. Simply handing money to poor people was salutary. It really helped them. Being trapped in poverty, with the stress and insecurities associated with that, is progressively debilitating. Sometimes even the simplest kind of transfers can break the cycle.” ## 6\. Muhammad Yunus: 2006 Nobel Peace Prize In [a 2018 interview with the Hindu BusinessLine](https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/variety/ai-is-the-most-dangerous-tech-stringent-user-norms-needed/article24314232.ece?ref=scottsantens.com), Muhammad Yunus, economist and founder of the Grameen Bank, said that because of artificial intelligence, it is now time to introduce UBI. > “To me AI is the most dangerous technology. While we are excited about all that AI can accomplish to make our lives more beautiful, at the same time thousands of people will lose their jobs with machines taking over. AI is now at a stage where it can wreak havoc, starting with autonomous cars that will render thousands of drivers jobless... > > Human beings by nature are entrepreneurs, go-getters, problem-solvers, farmers, hunters, gatherers, that’s what our history tells us. But, somehow economic theory persuaded us that the only thing that we can do to survive is to find a job. > > The Education system is job oriented where Universities take pride in saying they produce ‘job ready’ people which is a shame. They should create ‘life ready’ young people who know what is the meaning and purpose of this life. Why let a few people who have money hire you and make money? We are mercenaries of the whole system. Why should we be mercenaries?” ## 7\. Peter Diamond: 2010 Nobel Prize in Economics In [a 2017 interview with Steve Schifferes](https://theconversation.com/how-inequality-became-the-big-issue-troubling-the-worlds-top-economists-83171?ref=scottsantens.com), Peter Diamond said that he now favors UBI because growing inequality is an issue that has to be faced. > "Diamond believes that the debate on inequality can help focus discussion on policy failures: from the lack of investment in education, research and infrastructure, to the failure to compensate those who bore the cost of globalization through job losses in heavy industry. He also argues that direct transfers, including introducing child benefit to everyone who has children and a UBI, would help tackle poverty." ## 8\. Christopher Pissarides: 2010 Nobel Prize in Economics During [a panel at the 2016 World Economics Forum in Davos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmumRUGXQhQ&ref=scottsantens.com), Christopher Pissarides stated the following in support of UBI: > "The pie is growing bigger, there is no guarantee that everyone will benefit if we leave the market alone. In fact, if anything, we think that not everyone will benefit if we leave the market alone. So we need to develop a new system of redistributions, new policies that will redistribute inevitably from those that the market would have rewarded in favor of those that the market would have left behind. Now, having a universal minimum income is one of those ways, in fact, it is one I am very much in favor of..." ## 9\. Angus Deaton: 2015 Nobel Prize in Economics At [a forum at the Taipei International Convention Center in 2016](http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2016/05/19/2003646566?ref=scottsantens.com), Angus Deaton said that "*the government should take care of people with low income and should be pushing basic income grants*," and that "*basic income grants give everyone a stake in their nation*." ## 10\. Abhijit Banerjee: 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics After he signed up to help with [GiveDirectly's 12-year UBI experiment in Kenya](https://www.vox.com/2016/4/14/11410904/givedirectly-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) and also after Switzerland voted against implementing universal basic income in 2016, Abhijit Banerjee wrote the following in an article in the [Indian Express](https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/swiss-voted-against-the-idea-of-a-universal-basic-income-but-the-debate-continues-2859528/?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of UBI: > "This is an old idea, going back at least to the 1970s, when, interestingly, it drew support both from right-wing libertarians like Milton Friedman and center-left Keynesians like John Kenneth Galbraith. For people on the right, its attraction is two-fold: First, being unconditional, it does not create any direct disincentives for those who want to work more and live better. Second, by just letting people have the money and decide what they want to do with it, it gets away from the 'nanny state' that so many libertarians despise. On the left, the support comes from the sense that it makes a certain minimum standard of living a right rather than a reflection of the munificence of the state. This is something that I personally find very appealing: If you think of the mother (or the father) who stays home to take care of the children, it is not clear why we would think of her as doing nothing, rather than sacrificing herself to do one of the most important jobs that we do in society... > > But even before we get there (if we do), there is the question of whether the current, multifariously fractured system of welfare, where multiple authorities give out different subsidies (money, food, housing, travel, education, healthcare), guided by their own priorities and targets (the young or the old, the mother or the child, the poor or the indigent), makes any sense. Why not have one universal basic subsidy that covers everything (perhaps except health and education) and let people decide how they will spend it, rather than trying to target subsidies based on our imperfect knowledge of what people need and deserve." ## 11\. Esther Duflo: 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics In [an interview with *Business Today*](https://www.businesstoday.in/current/economy-politics/corporate-tax-cut-no-answer-india-economic-ills-nobel-laureate-esther-duflo/story/387236.html?ref=scottsantens.com) shortly after becoming the second ever female Nobel prize-winning economist, Esther Duflo said the following in support of UBI: > "It's not just about public expenditure, it's also increasing its effectiveness. Universal Basic Income is interesting as a concept, and could be tried out. If you're poor, you're always close to some disaster. So you are extremely reluctant to undertake any risky activity. And because you are not attending any risky activity, you are less productive. So what the basic income does is give people the assurance. That kind of security, I think, will give people the confidence to do new things to improve their lives. I think we should give it a try and experiment, it might work." With the above support now known, an endorsement of a Nobel-winning economist does not in itself make any idea a good idea, but it does make it very difficult to claim that because someone supports the idea of UBI, that they know nothing about economics. There are a lot of economists who support the idea of UBI. In fact, in 1968, more than 1,000 economists from over 125 universities signed [a statement in support of guaranteed annual income](https://books.google.com/books?id=yk5NI69ZO9sC&lpg=PA268&ots=mTd0pZtjt6&dq=1968%20economists%20annual%20income&pg=PA269&ref=scottsantens.com#v=onepage&q&f=false) as being "feasible and compatible with our economic system." > A STATEMENT BY ECONOMISTS ON INCOME GUARANTEES AND SUPPLEMENTS > > May 27, 1968 > > The statement below was circulated in May of 1968 to 275 universities and research organizations. More than 1,000 economists from 125 universities signed the statement. > > The undersigned economists urge the Congress to adopt this year a national system of income guarantees and supplements. > > The Poor People's Campaign in Washington is demanding a guaranteed minimum income for all Americans. The Kerner Commission on Civil Disorders called for a national system of income supplements. A group of business leaders recently advocated a "negative income tax." These proposals are all similar in design and purpose. > > Like all civilized nations in the twentieth century, this country has long recognized a public responsibility for the living standards of its citizens. Yet our present programs of public assistance and social insurance exclude the millions who are in need and meet inadequately the needs of millions more. All too often these programs unnecessarily penalize work and thrift and discourage the building of stable families. > > The country will not have met its responsibility until everyone in the nation is assured an income no less than the officially recognized definition of poverty. A workable and equitable plan of income guarantees and supplements must have the following features. (1) Need, as objectively measured by income and family size, should be the sole basis of determining payment to which an individual and/or family is entitled. (2) To provide incentive to work, save and train for better jobs, payments to families who earn income should be reduced by only a fraction of their earnings. > > Practical and detailed proposals meeting these requirements have been suggested by individual sponsors of this statement and by others. The costs of such plans are substantial but well within the nation's economic and fiscal capacity. > > As economists we offer the professional opinion that income guarantees and supplements are feasible and compatible with our economic system. As citizens we feel strongly that the time for action is now." --- *Special thanks to: The Gerald Huff Fund for Humanity, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Floyd Marinescu, Andrew Stern, Zack Sargent, Carolyn, Larry Cohen, Aaron T Schultz, Ace Bailey, Albert Wenger, Athena Washington, Daragh Ward, Joanna Zarach, Justin Walsh, Michael Tinker, Nid E D, Robert Collins, Sergi Beltrol Navarro, Stephane Boisvert, Tom Cooper, Tricia Garrett, UBIVisuals, Victor Lau, 12550 The Zine, Bob Bakh, engageSimply - Judy Shapiro, Garry Turner, Heidi, Marc Klockow, Michael Finney, Michael Kwak, Peter T Knight, Bill Teng, Erin O'Neill, Sanford Redlich, Che Wagner, Chris Rauchle, Daniel Brockman, Danielle and Michael Texeira, David Ihnen, Elizabeth Corker, Gerald Huff, Gray Scott, Heather Scarabosio, Jack Canty, Jan Smole, Jess Allen, Joe Ballou, Max Henrion, Michael Honey, Michael Hrenka, Myi Baril, Natalie Foster, Paul Godsmark, Rachel Perkins, Reid Rusonik, Will Ware, Chris Heinz, AYFAQ.com, Ben Stephens, Brian Schwartz, Casey L Young, Chris Boraski, Elizabeth Balcar, Iggy C, Ivan Vazquez, Janos Abel, Jessica Wales, Justin M, Kai Wong, Kathryn Schelonka, Kev Roberts, Kirk Israel, MARK4UBI, Melissa C, Meshack Vee, Nicolas Pouillard, Oliver Bestwalter, Phuong Truong, Reid Knight, Richard Kilshaw, Roy Bahat, Stephen Starkey, Thomas Welsh, Tim, Timothy P O'Connor, Valentina Petricciuolo, VilliHaukka, Walter Schaerer, Yan Xie, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.* [**Would you like to see your name here too?**](https://www.patreon.com/join/scottsantens/checkout?rid=120769&ref=scottsantens.com) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### A Visual History of the #YangMediaBlackout URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/a-visual-history-of-the-andrew-yang-media-blackout/ Last updated: 2022-02-19T01:45:30.000Z ## A historical record of mainstream media exclusions of Andrew Yang (Last Updated: 2/12/2020) Back in June of 2019, I tweeted about the latest egregious example of MSNBC excluding Democratic Presidential candidate [Andrew Yang](https://www.yang2020.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) from their ongoing coverage of the 2020 Presidential candidates. There had been previous examples, but that was the worst up to that point because they had photos of all 20 candidates who were going to be in the first debates, and instead of including Yang as one of them, they included someone who wasn't even going to be there. I then started to add each new example as a new reply, and that ongoing thread has now been covered over and over again with each new example as a source of entertaining absurdity. It's been covered by traditional media outlets like [The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/07/andrew-yang-yang-gang-2020-freedom-dividends?ref=scottsantens.com), [Vox](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/8/30/20840598/andrew-yang-media-blackout-cnn-msnbc-poll?ref=scottsantens.com), and [The Hill](https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/460224-why-the-media-dislike-andrew-tulsi-bernie-and-marianne?ref=scottsantens.com). It's also been covered by new media like [Ethan and Hila Klein of the H3 Podcast](https://youtu.be/rYY8X9Un0CM?t=4160&ref=scottsantens.com) for their two million subscribers. I have gotten many requests to put the entire thread in one place outside of Twitter, so this article has been created to meet that request. Each time a new example occurs, I will update the thread on Twitter, and update this page on Vocal too. I have also made a point here of expanding on the thread in a way I can't on Twitter, by expanding the timeline with earlier examples that had occurred before I started my thread. So instead of starting in June, this timeline starts back in March... ## **March 9, 2019:** On MSNBC's "Up", a long list of names was displayed while the host discussed the many possibilities of who could end up winning the Democratic nomination. The list contained both the names of those who had already announced, were expected to announce, and who might possibly announce. Missing from the list was Andrew Yang, who filed with the FEC back in November of 2017\. Note too the blank space for another name. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5e1cc9c578f064001ebc4a95.jpg) Source: [MSNBC on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk5ggf35f-g&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **March 15, 2019:** Beto O'Rourke joins the race and NBC lists eleven other candidates already in the race, without listing Bernie Sanders or Andrew Yang. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5de82eebca6539001c52adbc.jpg) Source: [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/b1dh8a/anyone%5Felse%5Fnotice%5Fthe%5Fomission%5Fof%5Fthe%5Fcandidate/?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **March 18, 2019:** Andrew Yang excluded from list of all announced Democratic candidates. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5daf4a0855ae71001e384b98.jpg) **Source:** [**/r/YangForPresidentHQ**](https://www.reddit.com/r/YangForPresidentHQ/comments/b2nv4p/it%5Fhappened%5Fagain%5Fits%5Fnot%5Fan%5Faccident/?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **March 19, 2019:** Andrew Yang excluded again from list of all Democratic candidates. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5daf4a0855ae71001e384b99.jpg) **Source:** [**/r/YangForPresidentHQ**](https://www.reddit.com/r/YangForPresidentHQ/comments/b2sl7r/andrew%5Fyang%5Fnot%5Flisted%5Fon%5Fmsnbc/?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **April 17, 2019:** Andrew Yang excluded again from list of all Democratic candidates. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5daf4a0855ae71001e384b9a.png) **Source: Morning Joe** ## **April 25, 2019:** Andrew Yang excluded again from list that has grown to include Joe Biden. > A look at the top 2020 Democratic presidential contenders, as Joe Biden joins the race. [pic.twitter.com/rt0kkQUUO1](https://t.co/rt0kkQUUO1?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — MSNBC (@MSNBC) [April 25, 2019](https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1121395193259921408?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **April 28, 2019:** During an interview with Andrew Yang, to his face, he's shown this list of all candidates, which again excludes him, even though they're talking to him. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5daf4a0855ae71001e384b9b.png) **Source:** [**Weekends with Alex Witt**](https://www.msnbc.com/weekends-with-alex-witt/watch/where-andrew-yang-stands-on-2020-issues-1511459907882?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **May 17, 2019:** With the list of candidates now exceeding twenty, Andrew Yang is excluded yet again, despite outpolling seven of the candidates listed. > Dear [@MSNBC](https://twitter.com/MSNBC?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com): 10 of the 20 people you've represented to all your viewers as the "2020 Contenders" are polling at or below [@AndrewYang](https://twitter.com/AndrewYang?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com). 7 of them are polling lower than Andrew yet you seem determined to exclude him and ignore the [#YangGang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangGang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com). [#WheresAndrew](https://twitter.com/hashtag/WheresAndrew?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com)? [pic.twitter.com/wtZco3PZ8I](https://t.co/wtZco3PZ8I?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Tom from Nerds for Humanity 🇺🇸 📊 (@nerdsforyang) [May 17, 2019](https://twitter.com/nerdsforyang/status/1129509313846874112?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **May 30, 2019:** During coverage of impeachment proceedings, MSNBC displayed a graphic designed to show where all of the Democratic candidates stood on the potential impeachment of Donald Trump. Missing was Andrew Yang. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5e1cc9c578f064001ebc4a96.jpg) Source: [MSNBC.com](https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/some-2020-candidates-turn-up-the-volume-on-their-cries-for-impeachment-60591685837?ref=scottsantens.com) **June 9, 2019:** Andrew Yang excluded again from list of candidates running, despite outpolling half of them. > New Iowa Poll: Joe Biden leads the pack. [https://t.co/11DC3290LQ](https://t.co/11DC3290LQ?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — MSNBC (@MSNBC) [June 10, 2019](https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1137940215216185345?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **June 22, 2019:** Listing all twenty candidates who will be in the first debate over two nights, Andrew Yang is excluded to make room for a candidate who didn't even qualify for the debate. This marks the beginning of my thread on Twitter. > Holy shit. They did it. The crazy bastards did it. [@MSNBC](https://twitter.com/MSNBC?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) created a graphic with photos of the 20 candidates to appear in the first debates, and they actually went so far as to remove [@AndrewYang](https://twitter.com/AndrewYang?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) and include someone who didn't even qualify. This is shameless in how brazen it is. [pic.twitter.com/IOD2dxwFcY](https://t.co/IOD2dxwFcY?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [June 22, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1142442971922653184?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **June 25, 2019:** On Morning Joe, every candidate's name in the top eight is read aloud, except for Andrew Yang's. Be sure to [watch the video](https://v.redd.it/eh9d4aphwh631?ref=scottsantens.com). > Good Lord. [@MSNBC](https://twitter.com/MSNBC?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) just can't help themselves. In the latest example, they include his photo in a list of top 8, and manage to read every name but [@AndrewYang](https://twitter.com/AndrewYang?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com)'s??[https://t.co/2l8SJkUu4R](https://t.co/2l8SJkUu4R?ref=scottsantens.com)[#YangGang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangGang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#Yang2020](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Yang2020?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#HumanityFirst](https://twitter.com/hashtag/HumanityFirst?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#FreedomDividend](https://twitter.com/hashtag/FreedomDividend?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [June 25, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1143581884796067840?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **June 26, 2019:** In their coverage of a MoveOn poll, MSNBC excludes Andrew Yang, despite their obviously being room for him, and it looking odd to do so. > Isn't it kind of odd how [@MSNBC](https://twitter.com/MSNBC?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) went with 7 bars here instead of 8? Doesn't it look asymmetrically unappealing? Does it look to you like something is missing? That number 8 spot belongs to [@AndrewYang](https://twitter.com/AndrewYang?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) with 1.1%.[#YangGang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangGang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#Yang2020](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Yang2020?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [pic.twitter.com/HnOtnmBqDT](https://t.co/HnOtnmBqDT?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [June 26, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1143858555319140353?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **June 27, 2019:** Despite outpolling half the stage, Andrew Yang is asked the fewest questions at the first debate hosted by NBC. > I'm going to go ahead and leave this here in this thread, as it obviously belongs here. You can force the brass at NBC to put someone on the stage according to their rules, but you can't force them to ask him anything beyond the absolute minimum of questions. [#DemDebate](https://twitter.com/hashtag/DemDebate?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#YangGang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangGang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [pic.twitter.com/SVTVPb82x6](https://t.co/SVTVPb82x6?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [June 28, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1144452293724475392?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **June 28, 2019:** In one of the more amusing examples, MSNBC's graphic is turned off right when Andrew Yang's name is mentioned. > Okay, this one is actually really funny. Hat's off on this one, MSNBC. > > "Who else is on that stage with the former Vice President, with Bernie Sanders, you know Andrew Yang... whoops... my screen just went out!"[#LetYangSpeak](https://twitter.com/hashtag/LetYangSpeak?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#YangGang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangGang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#Yang2020](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Yang2020?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [pic.twitter.com/qvOnhrPbnl](https://t.co/qvOnhrPbnl?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [June 28, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1144725258118795270?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **June 29, 2019:** In another odd-looking example, Andrew Yang is excluded despite it looking weird to do so with four names on the left and three on the right. > 9/ MSNBC: "Sorry. There's just no room in the graphic to show [@AndrewYang](https://twitter.com/AndrewYang?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) in 8th with 1.3%."[#LetYangSpeak](https://twitter.com/hashtag/LetYangSpeak?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#YangGang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangGang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [pic.twitter.com/QqUvRr0RNU](https://t.co/QqUvRr0RNU?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [June 29, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1144997111303483404?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **June 30, 2019:** Yet again, Andrew Yang is excluded in a way that makes the graphic look like something is weirdly missing. > 10/ In this latest NBC graphic, [@AndrewYang](https://twitter.com/AndrewYang?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com)'s positive Twitter mention percentage is literally off the charts, likely because [#LetYangSpeak](https://twitter.com/hashtag/LetYangSpeak?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) was a top trending keyword nationwide all day on Friday and anything over 40% couldn't be displayed… Also, no room for a 9th anyway, right? [pic.twitter.com/qMHGNmKd3t](https://t.co/qMHGNmKd3t?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [June 30, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1145388302540967937?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **July 4, 2019:** In this example, Andrew Yang is either missing entirely or is located in the lower left-hand corner behind the chyron. > 11/ At this point the graphics department at [@MSNBC](https://twitter.com/MSNBC?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) should be classified as a PAC... > > Spotted by: [@rosemary\_yb](https://twitter.com/rosemary%5Fyb?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com)[#LetYangSpeak](https://twitter.com/hashtag/LetYangSpeak?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#YangGang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangGang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#Yang2020](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Yang2020?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#HumanityFirst](https://twitter.com/hashtag/HumanityFirst?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [pic.twitter.com/x2rdDl2ZhN](https://t.co/x2rdDl2ZhN?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [July 4, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1146818908147593217?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **July 11, 2019:** Given the opportunity to describe Andrew Yang's platform, MSNBC chooses to exclude all three of his main policies: The Freedom Dividend, Medicare for All, and Human-Centered Capitalism, and instead lists six of his lesser-known policies. > 12/ MSNBC: > > "We've got Yang on the air! Quick! Tweet 6 policies and make sure to exclude $1k/mo Universal Basic Income, Medicare for All, Democracy Dollars, data as a property right, carbon fees, Ranked Choice Voting, and don't mention he has >100 more!"[https://t.co/J3XrQ4puJe](https://t.co/J3XrQ4puJe?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [July 12, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1149516935605809153?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **August 4, 2019:** Having invited Andrew Yang to speak about the mass shootings in Ohio and Texas, MSNBC cuts away while speaking to Yang to cover Bernie Sanders. > MSNBC: "Thanks for accepting our invite to speak to our audience today... lol/jk... here's live footage of Bernie."[#YangGang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangGang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#Yang2020](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Yang2020?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com)[pic.twitter.com/hZ2sdi1fPt](https://t.co/hZ2sdi1fPt?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [August 4, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1158124928773828608?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **August 9, 2019:** In their coverage of the poll that qualified Andrew Yang for the fall debates, MSNBC excludes Yang. > MSNBC: "A new qualifying poll came out from Monmouth where 2% is needed to get into the fall debates. Let's exclude [@AndrewYang](https://twitter.com/AndrewYang?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) again, despite his getting 2% for the 4th time and becoming the 9th candidate to officially qualify for the fall debates."[#Yang2020](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Yang2020?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#YangGang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangGang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [pic.twitter.com/CpMeTB7MGE](https://t.co/CpMeTB7MGE?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [August 9, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1159861568491986949?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **August 14, 2019:** In this example, MSNBC includes Andrew Yang, but makes sure to put him in the very back and block him from the shot. > MSNBC: "Okay let's make a graphic that displays all 9 of the candidates that have already qualified for the fall debates. Oh and let's use perspective to make our favorites bigger and let's put Yang on the far end. One more thing, make sure to block him. There we go…" [#YangGang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangGang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [pic.twitter.com/nW7bT2IyMl](https://t.co/nW7bT2IyMl?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [August 14, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1161700163313905670?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **August 15, 2019:** Given a poll where three candidates polled at 2%, two of them are included while Andrew Yang is not. > MSNBC: "Hey check out the latest Economist/YouGov poll with [@AndrewYang](https://twitter.com/AndrewYang?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) at 2%. Let's make sure and just show Booker and Gabbard at 2%. No one needs to know about this Yang guy and his damn MATH."[#YangGang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangGang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#Yang2020](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Yang2020?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [pic.twitter.com/GcRBvBYgfz](https://t.co/GcRBvBYgfz?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [August 15, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1162064421553889280?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **August 27, 2019:** Given a poll where Andrew Yang polled 7th highest, CNN chooses to exclude him and leave four spaces empty. > CNN: "Yo MSNBC, hold my beer!" > > ([@AndrewYang](https://twitter.com/AndrewYang?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) got 3% in this poll which apparently they simply had no room for… Also each of the other missing candidates got 2% or less.) > > Spotted by: @kai101497[#YangGang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangGang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#Yang2020](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Yang2020?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#WhoIsAndrewYang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/WhoIsAndrewYang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [pic.twitter.com/fW6v4fn6oo](https://t.co/fW6v4fn6oo?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [August 27, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1166366450099085314?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **August 28, 2019:** In their coverage of a Quinnipiac poll where Andrew Yang ranked 6th highest, CNN decides to exclude Yang and instead include Beto O'Rourke who didn't even make the top six. In a correction, they later remove Beto, but continue to exclude Yang. > CNN: "Okay okay okay, everyone. Sheesh. Enough with the outrage machine. We've heard you, and so here's the top 6 candidates based on recent rolling polling average, minus [@AndrewYang](https://twitter.com/AndrewYang?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) because we couldn't fit him into the graphic obviously."[#YangGang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangGang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#Yang2020](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Yang2020?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#WhoIsAndrewYang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/WhoIsAndrewYang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com)? [pic.twitter.com/31mDtDJhRF](https://t.co/31mDtDJhRF?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [August 28, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1166785582476996609?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **September 2, 2019:** In a graphic that is obviously ordered from highest to lowest ranking in the polls, Andrew Yang is moved from 6th to 9th, while Klobuchar is moved from 10th to what should have been Yang's position. > This CNN graphic decided to order all the candidates by RCP rolling average. Guess who is out of position? [#YangGang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangGang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#Yang2020](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Yang2020?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) > > 1\. Biden > 2\. Warren > 3\. Sanders > 4\. Harris > 5\. Pete > 6\. Yang\* > 7\. Booker > 8\. Beto > 9\. Castro > 10\. Klobuchar\* > > At 0.9% Klobuchar is heavily subsidized by the MSM. [pic.twitter.com/KVsaZcekIF](https://t.co/KVsaZcekIF?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [September 2, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1168505570615332864?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **September 5, 2019:** Listing the 10 candidates who will appear in the September debate, MSNBC lists only nine candidates. Andrew Yang is missing. > MSNBC: "Hey CNN! Take your beer back. We are the kings of excluding [@AndrewYang](https://twitter.com/AndrewYang?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) from our graphics and we will not be surpassed. Behold our masterpiece!!" > > (It's hard to believe this one is real, but it absolutely is) > > Proof: [https://t.co/yiBOo2jsD3](https://t.co/yiBOo2jsD3?ref=scottsantens.com) [#YangGang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangGang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#YangMediaBlackout](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangMediaBlackout?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [pic.twitter.com/JEuEJahEz8](https://t.co/JEuEJahEz8?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [September 6, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1169829220534517760?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **September 6, 2019:** On NBC's website full of candidates, for some reason Andrew Yang had no listed profile. This omission was later corrected. > NBC doesn't even list [@AndrewYang](https://twitter.com/AndrewYang?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) on their 2020 Democratic Presidential Election Candidates page. He's MIA. As I write this, Yang is outpolling all but 5 of the candidates on this page of 16 faces.[https://t.co/8YU9PkC979](https://t.co/8YU9PkC979?ref=scottsantens.com)[#YangGang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangGang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#Yang2020](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Yang2020?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#YangMediaBlackout](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangMediaBlackout?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#GoogleAndrewYang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/GoogleAndrewYang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [pic.twitter.com/SEc0VqWiHi](https://t.co/SEc0VqWiHi?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [September 6, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1169846265691066368?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **September 9, 2019:** In one of the more infamous examples, Andrew Yang was listed as John Yang while crowdsurfing, causing #WhoIsJohnYang to trend on Twitter. > MSNBC: "Seriously though, John Yang is living his best life. I wish we could crowdsurf. But alas, we're stuck here in this studio reporting the news, with the utmost of accuracy and attention to detail..."[#YangGang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangGang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#YangSurfing](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangSurfing?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [#WhoIsJohnYang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/WhoIsJohnYang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com)[pic.twitter.com/0Bo3bxXyBo](https://t.co/0Bo3bxXyBo?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [September 10, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1171212720663871489?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **September 12, 2019:** Analysis of ABC coverage reveals Andrew Yang had been provided with two seconds of coverage despite outpolling others given orders of magnitude more time. > Analysis by [@The\_MRC](https://twitter.com/The%5FMRC?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) of ABC’s [@ABCWorldNews](https://twitter.com/ABCWorldNews?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) coverage of candidates from Jan 1 through Aug 31: > > Biden: 68 min > Harris: 15 min > Warren: 12 min > Beto: 8 min > Bernie: 7 min > Pete: 7 min > Booker: 4 min > Klobuchar: 3 min > Castro: 2 min > Yang: 2 \*SECONDS\*[https://t.co/Xthw0DjMPI](https://t.co/Xthw0DjMPI?ref=scottsantens.com) [#YangGang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangGang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) [pic.twitter.com/ygqpR00Qlz](https://t.co/ygqpR00Qlz?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [September 12, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1172179682613170176?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **September 21, 2019:** Reporting on the Iowa Steak Fry, MSNBC created a graphic that excluded not only Andrew Yang, but also Bernie Sanders and five other candidates who attended the event. [Snopes reached out to MSNBC to comment](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/msnbc-graphic-bernie-sanders/?ref=scottsantens.com) on this one. They did not respond. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325c76464c001c6e2a04.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1191838368281366528?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **October 3, 2019:** After hauling in $10 million in the third quarter, CNN chose to exclude Andrew Yang and instead include Cory Booker who raised $4 million less. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325d76464c001c6e2a05.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1179900910862045184?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **October 5, 2019:** In a graphic with one error, its Andrew Yang where the mistake was made. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325d76464c001c6e2a06.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1180596359642009600?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **October 13, 2019:** Reporting on the results of a Fox News poll, CNN chose to include Cory Booker, but not Andrew Yang, despite both getting 2% in the poll. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325d76464c001c6e2a07.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1183391573809258498?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **October 19, 2019:** In their reporting of the candidates with the most cash in hand, MSNBC chose to exclude Andrew Yang, and instead include Cory Booker who had less cash on hand. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325d76464c001c6e2a08.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1185614404655734791?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **October 22, 2019:** Deciding to do a special on climate change where the top seven Democratic candidates are asked about their climate change policies, the Weather Channel chose to exclude Andrew Yang, despite being ranked 6th. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325d76464c001c6e2a09.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1186636569094086656?ref=scottsantens.com) ## October 24, 2019: Reporting on a new poll where six candidates polled at 1%, CNN decided to include only Beto, while excluding Andrew Yang and four other candidates. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325d76464c001c6e2a0a.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1187390856229216258?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **October 31, 2019:** When Andrew Yang achieved his first qualifying poll for the December debate, MSNBC chose to exclude him from the poll results, despite showing Tulsi Gabbard. They both got 5% in New Hampshire. > MSNBC: "A debate qualifying poll just came out of New Hampshire. We know we should report on every candidate polling higher than 4%, but that Yang guy is in there again. Tulsi, Klobuchar, and Yang all got 5%. Let's only show Tulsi."[#YangMediaBlackout](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangMediaBlackout?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com)[pic.twitter.com/oyB5Hlk4dx](https://t.co/oyB5Hlk4dx?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [October 31, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1189899118065225728?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **October 31, 2019:** When 300 schools in Iowa held a mock election, Andrew Yang got the 4th highest number of votes. Local ABC affiliates chose to display Pete Buttigieg in 4th. They later corrected their story and said all the votes hadn't come in yet at the time of reporting, but nowhere in the original story did they say the results weren't final, and despite Biden, Yang, and Pete all being virtually tied at 7%, they chose to show only Biden and Pete. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325d76464c001c6e2a0b.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1189960215019474944?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **November 10, 2019:** In a report on how cable news is disproportionately covering the Presidential candidates, MSNBC chose to exclude Andrew Yang from a graphic which listed 10 candidates, including Beto O'Rourke who had already dropped out of the race. For the record, only five candidates were outpolling Yang during the week listed, and [he got 0.5% of the coverage](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-media-frenzy-around-biden-is-fading/?ref=scottsantens.com). ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325d76464c001c6e2a0c.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1193580478957309957?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **November 17, 2019:** In one of the most egregious examples so far, MSNBC reported on the results of a Des Moines Register poll by including every candidate who polled over 0%, except Andrew Yang who polled at 3%. Notable in this exclusion is their inclusion of Michael Bloomberg who has yet to officially announce that he's even running, and the fact there's an empty spot. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325d76464c001c6e2a0d.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1196079424548098050?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **November 20, 2019:** Reporting on a new poll and how little support Pete Buttigieg is showing among black voters in South Carolina, CNN created a graphic that excluded Steyer at 4%, and Yang, Williamson, and Patrick at 1% each. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325d76464c001c6e2a0e.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1197225561153851392?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **November 20, 2019:** With ten minutes to go before the fifth Democratic debate began on their own network, MSNBC caught up viewers on the latest polling averages by excluding Andrew Yang in rapid succession from their graphics for national polling average, Iowa polling average, and New Hampshire polling average. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325d76464c001c6e2a0f.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1197345244888674305?ref=scottsantens.com) ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325d76464c001c6e2a10.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1197348094171586563?ref=scottsantens.com) ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325d76464c001c6e2a11.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1197520998389682178?ref=scottsantens.com) Upon the end of the fifth debate, Andrew Yang was once again provided the least amount of speaking time for the second time in an MSNBC-hosted debate and fourth time overall. Yang even got no time at all for the entire first 32 minutes. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5de82eebca6539001c52adbd.png) Source: [CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/20/politics/dem-debate-speaking-time-november/index.html?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **November 26, 2019:** Despite having been [called out by Andrew Yang himself](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/andrew-yangs-war-msnbc-is-heating-up-1257962?ref=scottsantens.com) for their treatment of him, where [he even cited this very article as evidence](https://twitter.com/AndrewYang/status/1198386165524652036?ref=scottsantens.com), MSNBC excludes him yet again, this time from a graphic displaying firm support in New Hampshire, where he should be listed as having the third strongest support, below only Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard (who is also missing). ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325d76464c001c6e2a12.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1199457748775264262?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **December 17, 2019:** Using their news ticker at the bottom of the screen, CNN displayed the name of every candidate to be on the stage in the December debate except for Andrew Yang. > CNN: "The sixth Democratic debate is coming up on Thursday. Let's use our news ticker at the bottom of the screen to list every candidate who will be on the stage, except for [@AndrewYang](https://twitter.com/AndrewYang?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com), the only person of color to make the debate.[#YangMediaBlackout](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangMediaBlackout?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com)[pic.twitter.com/oyiNUQtehs](https://t.co/oyiNUQtehs?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [December 18, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1207137925906997248?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **December 17, 2019:** As the host for the December debate, PBS created a promo for it. Missing from the promo was Andrew Yang. PBS swiftly apologized for the error. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325d76464c001c6e2a13.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/PBS/status/1207322705478983687?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **December 24, 2019:** Reporting on the race in New Hampshire, MSNBC created a montage of eight candidates. Andrew Yang was missing despite being ranked sixth in NH at the time. ## **January 6, 2020:** Quickly considered by many to be among the most ridiculous examples yet, CNBC while reporting on fourth quarter fundraising totals, used a photo of Geoff Yang instead of Andrew Yang, and a photo of Kirsten Gillibrand instead of Tulsi Gabbard. As Geoff responded [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/geoff%5Fyang/status/1214244103174512644?ref=scottsantens.com), he is not running for President. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325d76464c001c6e2a14.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1214197661231910915?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **January 12, 2020:** Instead of excluding Andrew Yang, this time MSNBC included him, but misreported to their viewers that he is a billionaire. [Only Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Buttigieg have lower net worths than Andrew Yang](https://www.businessinsider.com/estimated-net-worth-wealth-2020-democratic-presidential-candidates-2019-4?ref=scottsantens.com#democratic-activist-tom-steyer-made-a-fortune-managing-a-hedge-fund-farallon-capital-for-over-two-decades-as-of-2019-forbes-estimates-his-net-worth-at-16-billion-10). All of the rest of the candidates are wealthier than him. The only billionaires in the Democratic presidential race are Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325d76464c001c6e2a15.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1216515236372545537?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **February 1, 2020:** In the final days before the Iowa caucus, NBC covered the candidates making their final pitches. Not mentioned was Andrew Yang who had been doing multiple campaign stops a day for weeks. NBC did however take the time to talk about someone who wasn't even running - Hillary Clinton. > With just 2 days left until the Iowa caucus, NBC just managed to add another example to the [#YangMediaBlackout](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangMediaBlackout?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) by not mentioning [@AndrewYang](https://twitter.com/AndrewYang?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) in their coverage of the final days in Iowa despite even finding the time to talk about Hillary Clinton. [#YangGang](https://twitter.com/hashtag/YangGang?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com)[pic.twitter.com/a1ihFWV7E1](https://t.co/a1ihFWV7E1?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) [February 1, 2020](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1223633091480248326?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) ## **February 5, 2020:** Two days before the eighth Democratic debate, which would mark the return of Andrew Yang to the debate stage, the Washington Post created this illustration. Apparently what qualified as "what to know" about the next debate, was not that Yang would be there. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5e446fd295f2a0001c05b0d1.jpg) Source: [Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/11/everything-you-need-know-about-next-democratic-debate/?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **February 7, 2020:** On the night of the eighth debate, despite then being the lone person of color on stage, and also someone who had triumphantly returned to the stage after missing the previous one, Andrew Yang was once again provided the least amount of speaking time. It wasn't even close. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5e446fd295f2a0001c05b0d2.png) Source: [The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/07/us/elections/debate-speaking-time.html?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **February 8, 2020:** On the day following the eighth debate, [article](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/elections-2020/winners-and-losers-from-the-new-hampshire-democratic-debate/ar-BBZMeHm?ref=scottsantens.com) after [article](https://www.npr.org/2020/02/08/804023695/5-takeaways-from-the-last-democratic-debate-before-the-new-hampshire-primary?ref=scottsantens.com) after [article](https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-02-08/new-hampshire-democratic-debate-analysis?ref=scottsantens.com) made no mention at all of Andrew Yang, including the NYT who printed this large photo of every candidate who had been there, except for Yang. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5e446fd295f2a0001c05b0d3.jpg) ## **February 10, 2020:** On the final day before the New Hampshire primary, CNN let viewers know where each candidate was making campaign stops. Not mentioned was Andrew Yang, who was making six campaign stops that day, more than anyone else. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325d76464c001c6e2a16.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1226963651510362114?ref=scottsantens.com) ## **February 11, 2020:** In this final example, nothing could be more fitting. On the morning of the New Hampshire primary, MSNBC lamented that if only the Democrats would nominate a normal person, they could beat Trump. Not mentioned once during [this discussion](https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/-nominate-a-normal-person-editor-s-advice-to-dems-78553157913?cid=sm%5Fnpd%5Fms%5Ftw%5Fma&ref=scottsantens.com) was Andrew Yang, author of "The War on Normal People." Later that day, Andrew Yang, a normal person, withdrew from the race. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325d76464c001c6e2a17.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1227488017167732743?ref=scottsantens.com) That concludes my historical record of the #YangMediaBlackout. With Andrew Yang having officially exited the race after over two years of running, everyone is finally talking about him and there will be no further new entries to report, at least that is, until he runs again...? ## November 22, 2020 Confirmation: After an appearance on Andrew Yang's podcast, "Yang Speaks," a former producer for MSNBC, Ariana Pekary, was referred to this article, at which point she checked her private journal and discovered that on the same day Joe Biden entered the presidential race, she was told never to pursue Yang for an interview on MSNBC's The Last Word. It remains unknown if others from other shows on MSNBC or other other networks were given similar directives, but this revelation is certainly confirmation that for at least one show on MSNBC, the #YangMediaBlackout was indeed not simply a series of increasingly odd coincidences. It was real. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325d76464c001c6e2a18.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/arianapekary/status/1330571415549046787?ref=scottsantens.com) ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,q_auto,w_720/5fdd325d76464c001c6e2a19.png) [Source tweet](https://twitter.com/arianapekary/status/1330571415549046787?ref=scottsantens.com) --- *Special thanks to: The Gerald Huff Fund for Humanity, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Floyd Marinescu, Andrew Stern, Zack Sargent, Carolyn, Larry Cohen, Aaron T. 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Young, Chris Boraski, Chris Smothers, Elizabeth Balcar, Iggy C, Ivan Vazquez, Janos Abel, Jessica Wales, Jill Weiss, Justin M, Kai Wong, Kathryn Schelonka, Kev Roberts, Kirk Israel, MARK4UBI, Meshack Vee, Nicolas Pouillard, Oliver Bestwalter, Phuong Truong, Reid Knight, Richard Kilshaw, Roy Bahat, Stephen Starkey, Thomas Welsh, Tim, Timothy P. O'Connor, Valentina Petricciuolo, VilliHaukka, Walter Schaerer, Yan Xie, Bill Teng, Erin Oneill, Sanford Redlich, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.* [**Would you like to see your name here too?**](https://www.patreon.com/join/scottsantens/checkout?rid=120769&ref=scottsantens.com) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### New bill introduced in New York State Senate to fund a 2-year conditional cash transfer pilot labeled as a UBI pilot URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/new-york-state-senate-bill-2-year-ubi-pilot-s6696-kevin-parker/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T20:24:25.000Z ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/2a779e8d-c30e-4f44-a20b-8406f6a4e241/4021_Bill_S6696.jpg) This week a bill was introduced in the [New York State Senate](https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/s6696?ref=scottsantens.com) by Senator Kevin S. Parker to fund a “universal basic income pilot program.” [Bill S6696](https://legislation.nysenate.gov/pdf/bills/2019/s6696?ref=scottsantens.com) proposes to begin a pilot no later than January 21, 2021 which would last for a duration of two years and provide an income of $600 per month to 10,000 participants between the ages of 21 and 65 years old. Participants would also need to be verifiably employed on at least a part-time basis and earning less than $35,600 per year, thus making this UBI pilot not a UBI pilot, but a conditional cash transfer (CCT) pilot. The monthly CCT would not take the place of SNAP or TANF, and would instead function as an additional cash supplement to anyone receiving these programs. Because [TANF in New York](https://www.cbpp.org/research/family-income-support/tanf-benefits-remain-low-despite-recent-increases-in-some-states?ref=scottsantens.com) reaches only 42.2% of households living in poverty with benefits that are 45.6% of the federal poverty line, this would mean that among the 57.8% with no assistance living in poverty who are randomly selected for this conditional cash transfer program, they would receive less overall assistance than those with equivalent below-FPL incomes on assistance also in the pilot. The pilot bill also stipulates that a research study be conducted no later than one year after the end of the pilot with a focus on physical and mental health effects, how the cash is used, and whether the effects show that less money would be spent elsewhere if the pilot was scaled up to a true UBI policy implemented statewide. One particularly concerning detail in the language of the bill is to observe just how many people who are unemployed become employed to qualify for the pilot. This appears to suggest that one of the goals of the pilot is to function as a carrot to encourage the unemployed to choose to stop being unemployed. If so, this operates under the assumption that UBI would be improved by not providing it to the unemployed, and thus again, undermines itself as a UBI pilot capable of providing useful evidence toward a statewide UBI implementation. It is not made clear within the text of the bill what would happen to those who qualify to begin receiving the income when they are employed and who then become unemployed during the course of the pilot. If they stop receiving the income, despite doing unpaid work, it is a pure CCT pilot. If they continue receiving the income, then those participants are the ones who could provide the most useful data applicable to UBI. At a proposed cost of $288 million, this pilot is far from being optimally designed as is, and those responsible for drafting it would do well to reach out to basic income experts on ways to improve it, among which would include removing the job requirement, removing the earnings ceiling, and increasing the taxes of those who receive it in order to also model the higher tax rates required to successfully fund a $600 per month basic income in the state of New York. That CCT programs are now being pitched as UBI programs says a lot about how far the idea of UBI has come in recent years from being considered a fringe idea to becoming something other ideas are dressed up and sold to the public as in order to gain support from those unfamiliar with what makes UBI actually UBI. --- *You can also find this article on [Basic Income Today: The UBI News Hub](https://basicincometoday.com/new-bill-introduced-in-new-york-state-senate-to-fund-a-2-year-conditional-cash-transfer-pilot-labeled-as-a-ubi-pilot/5410?ref=scottsantens.com)* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Goodbye, Medium URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/goodbye-medium/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T20:25:27.000Z [My last article](https://medium.com/basic-income/there-is-no-policy-proposal-more-progressive-than-andrew-yangs-freedom-dividend-72d3850a6245?ref=scottsantens.com) wasn’t considered good enough to be curated into any [topic category](https://medium.com/topics?ref=scottsantens.com), despite being viewed over 20,000 times and having over 5,000 applause. It even included cover art that was an incredible illustration inspired by and created just for the article by a very talented illustrator. Would you like to know why it wasn’t curated? I did. The answer is **Medium wants to prevent writers from earning money in any way but through a paywall.** > As you know, we have our publicly available Curation Guidelines, so always make sure you are writing with those in mind. Your story was not chosen for additional distribution because it violates one or more of the guidelines: Patreon/crowdfund links and affiliate links. > Even posts that meet the minimum criteria may not be selected for additional distribution. Curators are looking for the absolute best quality posts, which is inherently subjective. We understand it can be a mysterious process. We are working on improving our feedback channels, but at this time we are unable to provide editing or advice on why a story was not chosen. Patreon provides a stable monthly income to writers like me by enabling fans of my writing to directly support and enable my writing. Medium wishes to force writers to use their paywall, which provides an irregular, undependable source of income that can vary greatly month to month. Medium is therefore promoting economic insecurity for their own benefit. ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/1a879b15-9d6f-4315-a5f0-6ad634c52371/Patreon-X-2.png) I have been publishing here since [my first article in 2014](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com). Every single article I’ve ever written has included a link to my Patreon, including all five of my articles that have been curated. I have been welcomed and interviewed inside of Medium HQ before. The [Basic Income topic](https://medium.com/topic/basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) exists here in large part because of all of my articles with hundreds of thousands of views which have popularized Medium as a place for articles about basic income. I am incredibly disappointed to see that in 2019 Medium has grown into a company that wants to limit the ways in which self-published writers earn money by limiting full readership potential to those who only earn money through their paywall, and not through Patreon or a combination of other sources. Writers need dependable income and paywall income is not dependable. It also encourages low quality click-bait content. Ad-driven income for a single article fades away. Subscription-based income is far more stable. Medium knows that, which is why they switched to a subscription model themselves. Medium wants what’s good for them and bad for writers, and because of that, this is the last thing I will ever publish to Medium. I will never publish here again and I welcome other writers to leave too, especially my fellow Patreon creators, who may not even know why their content they are working so hard to create is not being curated. I am voluntarily giving up an audience here of over 26,000 readers, but because I have a monthly basic income, I have the freedom and economic security to walk away from this relationship. I will start over from scratch and build up a new readership base elsewhere. If you'd like to know whenever and wherever I post new stuff, [**please subscribe to my newly launched news flash**](http://scottsantens.news/?ref=scottsantens.com) to get email alerts. Thank you. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Story of George McGovern's Failure to Guarantee Every American $1,000 URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/george-mcgovern-failure-guarantee-every-american-1000-demogrant-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T20:28:18.000Z It’s presidential debate season time here in 2019, and in doing my research for [an editorial I wrote for Basic Income Today about Andrew Yang’s first debate appearance](https://basicincometoday.com/editorial-andrew-yang-makes-u-s-history-by-introducing-the-idea-of-universal-basic-income-onto-the-national-debate-stage/5315?ref=scottsantens.com), I gained some fascinating new insights about what happened back in 1972, which until now was the last time a basic income guarantee was seriously debated in this country. What happened to the idea? Why did it die? Well the answer is actually connected to the transformation of the Democratic party itself after the loss of George McGovern, and it is the story around McGovern’s campaign that I share with you now. Simply put, basic income was mortally wounded when McGovern debated Hubert Humphrey on a Democratic primary debate stage on [May 28, 1972](https://www.ourcampaigns.com/EventDetail.html?EventID=58&ref=scottsantens.com). ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/1eb03a7f-4ff4-407a-959f-94bbe2623855/May-2028-201972.jpg) To fully appreciate what happened that fateful night, we need to go back a bit further. The idea of an income guarantee for all Americans was on the rise in the 1960s. Although the idea of a basic income has a rich history in the US, going as far back as [Thomas Paine and his “groundrent” to pay for every citizen’s “natural inheritance”](https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/Agrarian-Justice-by-Thomas-Paine-e4f2lg?ref=scottsantens.com), it was Milton Friedman whose inclusion of a negative income tax (NIT) in his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom that really helped bring it to the halls of Washington, D.C. By 1968, discussion around a guaranteed annual income had grown so large that MLK was planning the Poor People’s March upon it, and more than 1,000 economists from 125 universities signed [a statement](https://books.google.com/books?id=yk5NI69ZO9sC&lpg=PA268&ots=mTd0pZtjt6&dq=1968+economists+annual+income&pg=PA269&hl=en&ref=scottsantens.com#v=onepage&q&f=false) in support of it. Not too long after, a plan was pitched to President Lyndon Johnson to propose, which he declined in favor of skills training and education, and the plan went on to be pitched instead by the new President [Richard Nixon in 1969](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vHYFzYvCak&ref=scottsantens.com). Nixon’s plan came to be known as the Family Assistance Plan (FAP). It was essentially a negative income tax for families that would have provided nothing to adults without children. As it worked its way through Congress, a work requirement was attached to it that would have removed some of the total as punishment, but it passed the House of Representatives in both 1970 and 1971\. It never made its way through the Senate to be signed by Nixon into law, but if it had, a family of four with two kids could have been guaranteed $1,600 per year in cash, which in today’s dollars is about $11,000, and for every dollar earned, they’d have lost 50 cents of it. Why the FAP couldn’t make it past the Senate is [its own story](https://thecorrespondent.com/4503/the-bizarre-tale-of-president-nixon-and-his-basic-income-bill/173117835-c34d6145?ref=scottsantens.com) and even [its own mystery](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1117884531451633665?ref=scottsantens.com), but simply put, Democratic Senators wanted a much higher amount and Republican Senators were concerned about family breakup rates, erosion of self-reliance, and the potential for workers to be unwilling to do unpleasant work without wage increases. ![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/a9b4672a-574d-497f-95d2-2045ef385885/PO-one-thousand-percent-mcgovern-button_busy_beaver_button_museum_medium.png) Despite the death of FAP in the Senate, [large negative income tax experiments would go on for the rest of the decade](https://basicincome.org/news/2017/12/basic-income-guarantee-experiments-1970s-quick-summary-results/?ref=scottsantens.com) in cities across America including Seattle and Denver, but it was in 1972 that an idea much closer to universal basic income was proposed. In January of that year, Goerge McGovern proposed a “demogrant” of $1,000 annually to every American as a guaranteed annual income. Unlike Nixon’s FAP, the $1,000 guarantee was for every man, woman, and child. Where Nixon proposed $1,600 for a family of four with a 50% clawback, McGovern proposed $4,000, which in today’s dollars would be $25,000, with a 33% clawback. The McGovern plan was a retooling of a previously failed plan he had proposed in 1970 that he called [the Human Security Plan (HSP)](https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1978&dat=19700119&id=jDgiAAAAIBAJ&sjid=9KsFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4553,1787385&ref=scottsantens.com). The HSP was a child allowance that would have provided $50 per month for every child ($338/mo in 2019), a guaranteed job for every adult, a Social Security boost that would provide a minimum of $100/mo to ever senior ($678/mo in 2019), and a Special Public Assistance plan for those with disabilities. McGovern’s HSP went absolutely nowhere in Congress, so in 1972 not too long after he began his Presidential campaign, he proposed his demogrant instead. Unfortunately for him, and perhaps even the rest of the world historically speaking, he lacked the computing power to model it. On the night of their debate, McGovern took the stage against Humphrey with no real understanding of what the net distributive impact of his demogrant looked like, and so when Humphrey attacked it upon claims it would increase the taxes of middle class families earning $12,000 by $400 ($75,000 by $2,500 in 2019), McGovern couldn’t defend it. He thought Humphrey knew more than he himself did, so he didn’t push back. When one of the moderators responded in complete surprise, "But you're asking us to accept a program that you can't tell us how much it's going to cost," McGovern answered, "That's exactly right." What McGovern and Humphrey both didn’t know, and what Nixon did know thanks to the resources available to him as President, is that the bottom 70-80% of families would pay less under McGovern’s demogrant than under existing law or Nixon’s FAP. Households wouldn’t start paying higher taxes under McGovern’s plan until they earned more than $20,000 ($125,000 in 2019). Humphrey had been wrong, but it didn’t matter. The damage was done. Humphrey had successfully painted McGovern’s demogrant as an unaffordable tax on the middle class. Humphrey also framed it as a pure UBI where everyone would get it, rich and poor alike, when the actual plan had [a clawback of 33 cents on every dollar](https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/NegativeIncomeTax.html?ref=scottsantens.com), such that a $12,000 household of four would get $0 of the demogrant. McGovern did not push back against this point either. Viewers watching the debate walked away with the belief the demogrant would not benefit them despite being told everyone would get it, because they thought their taxes would go up too much to pay for it. McGovern ended up winning the nomination, but in the usual twist of irony that history so loves to display, it was [Nixon himself who attacked McGovern](http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1972/mcgovern-welfare?ref=scottsantens.com) as wanting to put 47% of the country on welfare, and that if you weren’t in that 47%, you’d be paying for it. Again, he knew that wasn’t true. He simply used Humphrey’s attack that everyone already believed. That’s right... Nixon, the guy that history remembers as almost getting an income guarantee passed in America, went after McGovern’s superior income guarantee as being welfare. McGovern dropped the idea completely, went back to the drawing board, and came back with a standard negative income tax focused on the poor, the disabled, and seniors. Months later, Nixon’s FAP died in the Senate, and in November, Nixon won in a landslide with McGovern winning only Massachusetts and D.C. The loss was so huge that it gave birth to neoliberalism. The lesson many Democrats decided to take away was not that McGovern should have been better prepared to defend ideas like his demogrant, or that a massive loss in 1972 could not have been avoided by any Democratic candidate, but that McGovern had simply gone too far left. That belief has stuck with the Democratic establishment until this day. In [Joshua Mound’s “What Democrats Still Don’t Get About George McGovern” published in The New Republic in 2016](https://newrepublic.com/article/130737/democrats-still-dont-get-george-mcgovern?ref=scottsantens.com), he makes the case that what Democrats should have learned from McGovern’s loss was the same thing Republicans learned in Barry Goldwater’s loss. Republicans didn’t see Goldwater as wrong. They saw him as the one true standard bearer. Goldwater inspired countless Republicans, including Reagan, who went on to win his own landslide election. Seen from this perspective, McGovern was as right about his demogrant as he was about tax-funded single-payer health care and the closing of tax loopholes for the rich. He wasn’t too far left. The country just wasn’t ready yet. Here in 2019, I think we’re ready now. I think Andrew Yang is bringing back universal basic income at the perfect time, and framing it as it should be framed, a Freedom Dividend for the stakeholders of America, the citizens, that should be paid for by all the massive corporations like Amazon who are paying $0 per year in federal income taxes. [Technological advancements should benefit everyone, not just the few](https://medium.com/basic-income/its-time-for-technology-to-serve-all-humankind-with-unconditional-basic-income-e46329764d28?ref=scottsantens.com). We’ll see if Andrew Yang can successfully make that case where George McGovern could not, but regardless of what happens, and whether history repeats or we finally move forward, I think the idea of UBI is here to stay this time until it’s finally enacted. As automation forces our hand, the demand for UBI will grow, and at some point, any politician who doesn’t support UBI will suffer political losses that would shock even McGovern. --- *This post was inspired by [an article published in 1973 for The Crimson, "Are You Kidding, George? $1000 Per Person?"](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1973/6/14/are-you-kidding-george-1000-a/?page=single&ref=scottsantens.com) which I highly recommend everyone read next who enjoyed reading this.* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Deradicalizing the Radicalized: How Andrew Yang's Campaign for Humanity First is Revealing How to Heal the Nation URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/deradicalizing-the-radicalized-how-andrew-yang-campaign-for-humanity-first-is-revealing-how-to-heal-the-nation/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T20:29:02.000Z You need to read [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/YangForPresidentHQ/comments/chx1s4/andrew%5Fyang%5Fand%5Fhis%5Fcampaign%5Fis%5Fwhat%5Fended%5Fup?ref=scottsantens.com) about how [Andrew Yang's UBI-centered campaign](https://www.yang2020.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) deradicalized someone that so many others just want to either write off or further radicalize. **Not left, not right, forward**, means bringing people back out of the depths of destructive hate. > I'm in my early 20s, but I don't want to disclose my specific age. I was raised in a rather kosher conservative household and might have described myself a right-of-center moderate until I entered high school. I was really active online, and what started as rather innocent laughs at the expense of very vocal and radical feminists and otherkin and fringe gender identities manifested itself into increasingly hateful positions on women's rights, LGBTQ persons, race relations, and more. At first, I was proud not to be the people I was laughing at, but I grew increasingly proud of myself through the very same lenses I criticized them for - race, sex, sexuality. I really became aware of my status as a white man of European descent. I wore it on my sleeve with pride and chauvinism, and in time, I really began to think these qualities alone made me inherently superior to my peers. . > With the onset of the European migrant crisis in 2014, the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, what I saw as a hysterical reaction to the Trump campaign and later victory, and further "research" on websites like 4chan and various communities on Reddit that included racial disparities in crime rate, IQ, and broad civilizational achievements, I had all but abandoned any pretense of simply being a conservative, or a fierce one at that. I proudly labeled myself as a racialist, and I read everything I could get my hands on, from Hitler's Mein Kampf to Codreanu's For my Legionaries. I considered myself "woke" on the Jewish question, and saw them as over-represented in law, academia, banking, politics, the courts, media, and more. I saw them as responsible for Communism's domination of it's sphere of influence in the cold war, and saw Jewish academics as responsible for "cultural marxism" in the United States as a form of deliberate subversion. It really developed into a visceral hatred. I began to doubt the validity of the Holocaust after watching The Greatest Story Never Told off of a dropbox again on 4chan. Really, I was deep, deep into this rabbit hole. . > I was present at the Charlottesville rally. I felt no remorse when I heard a woman had been killed. Today, I know her name was Heather Heyer. Up until four months ago, all of the above would have applied to me. I started following Andrew Yang's campaign through twitter, initially just as a joke. Myself, and many on the far-right had been disillusioned by Trump's dismal failure to take any meaningful action to slow America's transformation into a minority-majority country - one where white men such as myself were now a marked minority from 90% to 49% in less than a hundred years. There was a perception that Trump is firmly in Israel's pocket, and will never act in America's interest when it comes to foreign policy, instead continuing to cozy up to Saudi Arabia and launch vapid tirades against the Iranian boogeyman. The idea was, if even our best chance was going to be a failure, we may as well get a thousand bucks a month while we watch the country descend into chaos. . > But, I started watching more of Andrew's interviews. I started following more of his social media. I went to one of his rallies to see him in person. I started absorbing more and more articles published online. I read through each and every one of his proposed policies. To me, he was just a very charming individual. I didn't care that he wasn't white. I thought he was funny, charismatic, and when he spoke I really felt as if he cared about what he had to say and he cared about the issues he spoke about. His perception that AI is currently the largest 'unseen' threat to the average American worker - me, couldn't have rung more strongly with me. His solutions just made sense to me in a way that I can't articulate. I tried to poke holes in the argument for a basic income, but could only come up short. . > For me, a thousand a month would let me spend more time with my sick mother, without working increasingly later shifts at work. It would give me the flexibility to care for my loved ones without sapping my own strength. I don't know why, but seeing the benefit to myself in such a dramatic manner just triggered some otherworldly type of empathy within me. Out of 300,000,000 Americans, tens of millions probably live through more stressful situations every single day. What's meaningful to me would be monumental to them. > I have gotten involved in small-scale volunteer operations, and it is just eye opening to work alongside people of all ages, races, and backgrounds. I would go home from my shifts feeling ill at what I would have thought about these people without giving them a second chance. I'm still de-programming myself from the hate that I absorbed over the last five years. But I can confidently say I am not a racist any longer. I am not a sexist any longer. I am not an anti-semite any longer. I believe Andrew Yang has the winning formula for neutralizing the movement that today is a radicalized, racially-conscious group of disaffected young white men who feel that they have less and less of a future to live for. Thank you. I am proud to say Andrew has secured my vote in the primaries and I will do my utmost to get this man elected. **He has won me my life back.** I see a debate between Democrats who appear to believe white voters no longer matter and the focus should be on people of color, and the GOP who appear to believe only white people will ever matter. Meanwhile Yang is saying this goes deeper than color. There are Americans being driven into extremism by scarcity. Instead of writing off those who voted for Trump as racist hate-mongering deplorable bigots, let's put a floor under them. Let's put resources into their hands. Let's end their daily survival stress so they can breathe freely, because existential anxiety is the enemy, not color. Have you ever seen the documentary "Accidental Courtesy" about Daryl Davis, an African-American man who has made it his mission in life to change the hateful ideology of members of the KKK by engaging them in conversation? It shows what works to actually pull them out of hate. That's what's probably bothered me most about the shit Yang has gotten for having some alt-right supporters. They like him not because he's like them. They like him because he is talking to them about their real problems instead of demonizing them, and that's how to deradicalize. Deradicalization requires engagement. **You can't hate people out of hating.** It doesn't work that way. You have to find common ground and then you can start to bring them back. What doesn't work is drawing a line and saying, "Your life doesn't matter to me. You're a racist monster." ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/d23f2d01-e8b6-4e2c-99aa-4e826d0b21b5/EAaFOqGWkAIPMt3.jpg) Ten days before his assassination, MLK said, “I think it is absolutely necessary now to deal massively and militantly with **the economic problem**." In his final speech he spoke about going beyond civil rights to human rights. Humanity First is a message of economic justice for all. The way forward isn't further division where you're either a racist asshole or calling out racist assholes for being racist assholes. The way forward is to change the environment by ending poverty and **the fear of it**. That's how to make fewer racists. End the fear that makes them. Yang's campaign is already bringing people hope that things can actually be better. That hope alone is enough to shift some people from a mindset of scarcity to one of abundance. I've seen it myself over the years just talking about UBI. Its very potential to exist can change how people think. As [I've written about before](https://medium.com/basic-income/what-we-need-to-truly-thrive-democracy-and-unconditional-basic-income-ccdbe72cefa5?ref=scottsantens.com) and as a line from Dune states so well, "fear is the mind killer." Our entire society is suffering the consequences of an increasingly rare sense of any security in life. But we can change that with [**an unconditional universal floor for life.**](https://medium.com/basic-income/human-park-a-mammals-guide-to-stress-free-living-17f6cab007b3?ref=scottsantens.com) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### There is No Policy Proposal by Any 2020 Presidential Candidate More Progressive than Andrew Yang’s Freedom Dividend URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/there-is-no-policy-proposal-more-progressive-than-andrew-yangs-freedom-dividend/ Last updated: 2022-02-19T00:48:29.000Z Primary season has begun and as Trump marches toward a possible second term, a list of Democrats over 20-candidates-long is vying for the honor of being the one who prevents that from happening. One of those candidates, [Andrew Yang](https://www.yang2020.com/?ref=scottsantens.com), has proposed a [universal basic income](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq) of $1,000 per month that he calls a “Freedom Dividend.” As a [longtime advocate of UBI](http://www.scottsantens.com/), I have something to say about this, and the details of his plan as proposed. This article is meant to be a detailed response to anyone claiming Yang “doesn’t care about the poor,” or that “a VAT makes the UBI regressive,” or that Yang’s plan “increases inequality” and is a “neoliberal Trojan horse meant to destroy the safety net.” None of those claims reflect reality. The reality is that while [Yang’s proposal can certainly be improved](http://www.scottsantens.com/why-should-adults-with-kids-get-more-basic-income-child-allowances), if signed into law as proposed, **the Freedom Dividend would be the single most progressive policy advance ever signed into law in American history**. To understand why this is true, we need to dive into the details, so here we go… ## **What is the Freedom Dividend?** [The Freedom Dividend](https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-freedom-dividend-faq/?ref=scottsantens.com) as proposed is an unconditional cash transfer of $1,000 per month that would go to every American citizen age 18 and up. The dividend is unconditional in that it carries no requirements, including any of the typical work requirements imposed on standard benefits. Unemployed? You get it. Do you have to prove you’re looking for a job? No. Do you have to attend any classes? No. Employed? You get it in addition to your paycheck. Can you spend it on anything? Yes. It’s cash. You are free to use it in any way you want, to buy anything you want. Sounds simple, right? Well, there are some asterisks involved that people tend to miss, or misunderstand, and these can spread either accidentally with no ill intent, or maliciously with the full intent of eroding support through the spreading of disinformation. The most common inaccuracies being spread tend to revolve around the funding and the opt-out structure being proposed which offers people the choice of keeping their welfare benefits or receiving $1,000 per month in basic income, whichever is preferred. **Here’s a partial list of programs that people would voluntarily opt out of in order to receive the Freedom Dividend**: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Nutrition Assitance (SNAP), Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Supplemental Security Income (SSI). These programs provide less than $1,000 per month on average, even when combined. **Here’s a partial list of programs that would exist on top of the Freedom Dividend that no one would have to opt out of**: Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) — aka Social Security and SSDI — unemployment insurance (UI), housing assistance, VA disability. These programs provide more than $1,000 per month on average. For those concerned about health care, that’s a separate issue. People on Medicaid would only lose it if and when replaced by [Medicare for All](https://www.yang2020.com/policies/medicare-for-all/?ref=scottsantens.com) which is one of Yang’s two other core policy proposals alongside the Freedom Dividend and [Human-Centered Capitalism](https://www.yang2020.com/policies/human-capitalism/?ref=scottsantens.com). As a rule of thumb, programs that are considered entitlements because they are contribution-based, will be earned as additional income to the Freedom Dividend. Programs that are considered welfare because they are based on low income, will mostly be offered as an alternative to the Freedom Dividend. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1356/1*xS6YUNQvgf_lXydfvysxfQ.png) [Source: CBPP](https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/a-quick-guide-to-snap-eligibility-and-benefits?ref=scottsantens.com) As one example, Anna is a single mother receiving $336 in TANF (median for household of two) and $247 in SNAP (average for household of two) for a total of $583 per month. Opting for $1,000 per month instead, she would effectively get an additional $417 per month, a 72% raise in income, unconditionally, and the conditions for her original $583 would be removed. **Question: So why provide people a choice between existing programs and the Freedom Dividend? Why not let them keep everything?** **Answer: To maximize unconditionality.** Consider another recipient of existing benefits. Let’s call him Tom, and he receives $750/mo in TANF and SNAP combined. Tom is offered a job that pays $2,000/mo. Accepting this job will mean losing his $750/mo. His net income increase would thus be **$1,250**. That’s an increase of **167%**. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1160/1*ZcS7oRtfPS5qKEoQEBP4xA.png) [Source: CBPP](https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/a-quick-guide-to-snap-eligibility-and-benefits?ref=scottsantens.com) Now, let’s say Tom opts for the Freedom Dividend instead of TANF and SNAP, and gets the same job offer. Instead of $750/mo, he has $1,000/mo as a starting point that doesn’t disappear with any amount of earned income. Going from $1,000/mo to $3,000/mo is an increase of **$2,000**, or **200%**. Finally, let’s say Tom gets to keep his TANF and SNAP on top of his Freedom Dividend and is offered the same job. In this case, in accepting the job, he would go from $1,750 to $3,000, which is an increase of **$1,250**, or **71%**. Between these three scenarios, there are three key takeaways. First, the scenario where the Freedom Dividend is *instead* of TANF and SNAP results in the **greatest incentive to work**. Employment makes Tom in that scenario three times better off, financially speaking. Second, the scenario with the worst incentive to work is the scenario where Tom keeps TANF and SNAP in *addition* to the Freedom Dividend. Tom actually has a better incentive to work in the scenario that exists today, than he would with everything stacking, because his relative increase with everything stacking would be smallest. Third, in the everything stacking scenario, in absolute terms, Tom is no better off than in the pure Freedom Dividend scenario and is objectively worse off. He still ends up with $3,000/mo, but he has to do a lot of paperwork and dehumanizing bureaucratic hoop-jumping along the way to maintain conditions compliance. To emphasize this point, because it needs emphasizing, **those who believe the entire existing welfare state should exist on top of the Freedom Dividend are demanding that we make everyone’s incentive to work even worse than the existing system already does**. Because people would be lifted higher with the dividend, but then dropped the same distance upon losing their benefits as they are now, there’s even less reason to accept any form of employment. **Instead of eliminating the welfare trap, it would be made into an even bigger trap**. Fewer people would earn additional income, which would only serve to reduce instead of increase economic mobility. I would argue that increased economic mobility is a progressive goal to achieve, and thus as proposed by Yang, the Freedom Dividend meets this goal better than stacking welfare on top of the Freedom Dividend. Besides enhanced mobility, another reason for welfare benefits not to stack is because of all the restrictions imposed, and the damaging effects of those restrictions. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1160/1*FhKeq1sq_9FElY8IttEAmQ.png) [Source: CBPP](https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/a-quick-guide-to-snap-eligibility-and-benefits?ref=scottsantens.com) TANF is a prime example of a welfare program that is **functionally regressive**. Designed as a federal block grant provided to states to use essentially as they please, states have been using less and less of it on cash assistance to low-income people. It now [pays non-profits to teach pregnant women to get married](http://www.scottsantens.com/tanf-is-terrible), helps fund the [college educations of middle and upper-middle income kids](https://www.marketplace.org/2016/06/10/how-welfare-money-funds-college-scholarships/?ref=scottsantens.com), and is actively responsible for [**15% of the black-white child-poverty gap in America**](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/through-welfare-states-are-widening-racial-divide/591559/?ref=scottsantens.com). How is it that conditional welfare programs like TANF are actively increasing the racial divide? In the book [*Disciplining the Poor*](https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo12120768.html?ref=scottsantens.com), it’s described as “**neoliberal paternalism**.” Because a dollar in welfare has about three to five times as many strings for someone who is black than someone who is white, the severity of the conditions themselves, and the punishments applied for not meeting those conditions, can actually function to leave people (*disproportionately people of color*) worse off than if they’d never applied for assistance in the first place. Not only that, but people exposed to the worst conditions and punishments learn lessons that hurt democracy. They retreat from participating in politics. They become less likely to make their voices heard, and less likely to participate in elections and community organizations. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1394/1*HsU9soGqHMJV7LLU-wUmng.png) [Source: CBPP](https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/a-quick-guide-to-snap-eligibility-and-benefits?ref=scottsantens.com) Too many assumptions are made about conditional welfare, and these assumptions tend to be made by those who have never experienced the process of getting, using, and keeping them, and these assumptions tend to be based on whether one is liberal or conservative. If liberal, these programs are godsends that save the lives of everyone in need. If conservative, these programs are demonspawn that rob hardworking Peter to pay lazy pill-popping Paul. Nuance, lived experience, and data are missing from these assumptions. Here’s the reality beyond the racial elements already covered. [**Thirteen million Americans living in poverty are entirely disconnected from the federal safety net**](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/13-million-people-in-poverty-are-disconnected-from-the-social-safety-net-most-of-them-are-white/2019/02/04/807516a0-2598-11e9-81fd-b7b05d5bed90%5Fstory.html?ref=scottsantens.com). They receive no assistance at all. A third of those in severe poverty defined as half the poverty line, get nothing. By any conceivable measure of need, these are the neediest Americans, and conditional benefits don’t reach them. Why they don’t is a combination of not knowing the help is possible, not wanting the help because of the stigma, not properly applying, not qualifying despite living in poverty, and being kicked off. When it comes to TANF cases, [20% are closed due to non-compliance, 15% are ended because of sanctions, and 13% of people just quit](https://brandongaille.com/39-stunning-welfare-recipients-demographics/?ref=scottsantens.com). Only 16% get off TANF because of employment, and only 1.3% reach the time limit. About two out of five people who qualify for SNAP never even apply, and to qualify for SNAP or SSI one must have less than $2,000 in assets and keep it that way. Did you know that in some states, you must prove you’re homeless by providing [a document](https://www.nmceh.org/pages/forms/2016/Homeless%20Verification%20Form-%20CoC%20Clinic.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) you can only get from an approved homeless shelter verifying you’re homeless? Did you know that [over 10,000 people die every year](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/2017/11/20/10000-people-died-waiting-for-a-disability-decision-in-the-past-year-will-he-be-next/?ref=scottsantens.com) while waiting with over one million other Americans to prove they’re sufficiently disabled enough to receive disability benefits? The **average wait time is now two years**, and there is [a minimum wait time of five months](https://www.disabilitybenefitscenter.org/glossary/social-security-disability-waiting-period?ref=scottsantens.com). Did you know that [people receiving $5 per day in SNAP benefits can be forced to spend eight hours a day in a “work-search office”](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/15/liviing-on-food-stamps-welfare-queen?ref=scottsantens.com) where if they are five minutes late they can lose their benefits? That works out to **63 cents per hour**, even less if one considers the cost of getting to and from the office. Did you know [WIC can only allow mothers to purchase cow’s milk that is fat-free or low-fat, cheese that is domestic only, and eggs that are white and smaller than large](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1139599552170856451?ref=scottsantens.com)? That’s the level of control these programs have over everyday decisions that non-recipients take for granted. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*Nw6gPtcXX4I9TvaFr0CtKw.png) [Source](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1139599552170856451?ref=scottsantens.com) According to [Kate Miechkowski](http://roguesocialworker.com/?ref=scottsantens.com), a social worker who has begun asking her clients if they’d prefer to keep their conditional welfare assistance or receive an unconditional $1,000 per month instead, [out of 38 asked so far, only 2 have said they’d prefer to keep their conditional benefits](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JfcMKN7Z7AcDqhjAOerYqbHK4eSOWpedDd1WB2R1jHU/edit?ref=scottsantens.com#gid=0). One even replied that the Department of Social Services (DSS) makes them “**want to blow their head off**,” because of how they’re made to feel like a “shitty person.” Another said they’d work three jobs if they could, to not have to deal with it. Why do some progressives want to continue subjecting people to such [dehumanizing and humiliating treatment](https://gawker.com/true-stories-of-life-on-the-dole-poverty-from-state-to-1698532894?ref=scottsantens.com)? Because unless people get an extra 15% per month in SNAP that prevents them from having more than $2,000 in assets, and that requires doing pretend-work eight hours a day for the luxury of the extra $5 a day they can’t even spend on hot food or diapers or hygiene products, that they’ll be worse off? Progressives need to accept that **conditional programs aren’t progressive**. **They are** **paternalistically neoliberal**. The most progressive thing to do is to lift everyone up without conditions, and to remove the conditions of the cash and cash-like welfare benefits already being received. If what they’re currently receiving is more than $1,000 per month, then let them keep those benefits if they choose, but **let them also opt to *escape* them if they choose**. Conditions exist as they do for a reason. Although popular belief is that the conditions exist to make sure to target the deserving and exclude the undeserving, **the real purpose of these conditions is punishment**. The more punitive the programs, the fewer people will be on them. The goal is to *discipline* people into escaping poverty, to teach them that becoming poor was a mistake, especially if they are people of color. And as long as they are given any help, they need to be manipulated and restricted into making the right decisions, because if they could make the right decisions on their own, they wouldn’t be poor in the first place, right? No. That entire line of thinking is *regressive*. **Okay. Not stacking conditionality onto UBI is progressive, but what about how Yang plans to fund his UBI with a 10% value-added tax (VAT)? Isn’t that a regressive tax that would make UBI’s tax burden fall disproportionately on the poor?** ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*-drex3eRSMUjHW8DdlwsPA.png) [Source: OECD](http://www.oecd.org/tax/consumption-tax-trends-19990979.htm?ref=scottsantens.com) ## The 10% VAT It is indeed true that a [VAT is a regressive tax](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/valueaddedtax.asp?ref=scottsantens.com). Because it is a tax on consumption, and those with low incomes spend a larger percentage of their incomes on consumption goods than those with high incomes, those with low incomes are disproportionately impacted. However, in the case of a UBI-VAT, the revenue is fully rebated, and in such a way that those with low incomes receive far more than they pay, and the rich pay far more than they receive. Think of it this way. Let’s say you wanted to provide $90 to a homeless person, free and clear. One way of doing that is to hand over $90\. Another way is to hand over $100, and ask for $10 back. Both result in them having $90 more. It’s nonsense to claim that the second example is regressive because the homeless person loses $10\. The net outcome is a $90 gain. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*n9ob4yHC9wn65nrUo5tNnQ.png) [Source: The UBI Center](https://www.nmceh.org/pages/forms/2016/Homeless%20Verification%20Form-%20CoC%20Clinic.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) Furthermore, the $90 is coming from corporations like Amazon, reducing their profits, and also the spending of the rich, reducing their total disposable incomes. Amazon is able to avoid federal income taxes ([they paid $0 on $11.2 billion in profits in 2018](https://fortune.com/2019/02/14/amazon-doesnt-pay-federal-taxes-2019/?ref=scottsantens.com)), but they can’t avoid a VAT because it is applied to every step of production, which is why it’s a tax used [in more than 140 countries worldwide](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/business/value-added-tax-enforcement.html?ref=scottsantens.com), including progressive champions: [Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark](https://taxfoundation.org/vat-rates-europe-2019/?ref=scottsantens.com). Businesses like Amazon primarily have two choices with VAT. They can avoid price increases by reducing their profits, or they can pass on price increases to consumers. If they reduce their profits, that effectively increases the buying power of consumers. If they pass on the VAT to consumers, because of the $1,000 per month UBI, and assuming all 10% is passed on, consumers would need to be spending $10,000 per month to not see a net increase to their incomes. A net decrease is physically impossible for anyone earning less than $120,000 per year. One caveat is that for those who choose to keep their existing benefits, their spending power could be reduced by the VAT by up to 10%, and in response to this, [Yang has suggested boosting their benefits](https://youtu.be/%5FONkNw1jbVg?t=858&ref=scottsantens.com) to compensate for this loss of buying power. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*B4P0jeQwkVXAnGPKdU6gTQ.png) Source: [The UBI Center](https://medium.com/ubicenter/distributional-analysis-of-andrew-yangs-freedom-dividend-d8dab818bf1b?ref=scottsantens.com) [A distributional analysis done by the UBI Center](https://medium.com/ubicenter/distributional-analysis-of-andrew-yangs-freedom-dividend-d8dab818bf1b?ref=scottsantens.com) concluded that given the details of Yang’s plan, **86% would come out ahead**. Looking at only those earning under $25,000 per year, 90% would come out ahead *(those that don’t come out ahead are mostly non-citizens*). **The bottom 10% would see their disposable incomes increased by almost 120%** while the top 10% would see their disposable incomes reduced by 4%. **This is a highly progressive outcome** that also provides *stability* for all*.* Furthermore, when it comes to reducing poverty, 74% fewer households would have disposable incomes that fall under the federal poverty line. That’s a huge reduction in poverty. The only program that comes close to that level of poverty reduction is Social Security, which reduces poverty among seniors by 75%, except instead of only impacting seniors, the Freedom Dividend would impact *everyone*. It would virtually eliminate poverty among seniors and also further reduce poverty among those with disabilities because of stacking with OASDI (Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance). In fact, because everyone receiving Social Security and SSDI would receive an additional $1,000 per month, it could be seen as [the largest expansion of Social Security since its creation](https://youtu.be/HBBvTRgk8gc?ref=scottsantens.com), and because everyone would get it, it would essentially be **Social Security for All**. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1280/1*70RvBpvlg-Hyulv3riWg_w.jpeg) [Source: PGPF](https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2018/09/what-effect-does-social-security-have-on-poverty?ref=scottsantens.com) When it comes to reducing inequality, America’s Gini index score would fall by 15%. **We would be 15% more equal than we are now**. No other policy being offered by any other candidate achieves that level of inequality reversal. ## The Rub of Conditions One of the main reasons inequality is reduced so much by UBI is because of how many people in poverty are excluded from the existing safety net. Right now, [76% of people](https://www.vox.com/2014/5/31/5764262/76-percent-of-people-who-qualify-for-housing-aid-dont-get-it?ref=scottsantens.com) who qualify for housing assistance don’t get it. There are [65 million adults](https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/infographic-disability-impacts-all.html?ref=scottsantens.com) in the US living with some form of disability, and only 14 million of them receive [SSI](https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat%5Fsnapshot/?ref=scottsantens.com) or [SSDI](https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/dibStat.html?ref=scottsantens.com). That’s 23%. **The remaining 77% are left to compete with the fully abled** in the labor market where they experience poverty at [over twice the national average](https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/how-poverty-status-related-disability?ref=scottsantens.com). When it comes to cash welfare, in Texas, only 4 out of 100 families living in poverty receive TANF. [18 states out of 50 provide cash to the poor that’s less than $200 per month, and 16 states entirely exclude more than 90% of those living under the poverty line from cash assistance](https://www.cbpp.org/research/family-income-support/tanf-benefits-remain-low-despite-recent-increases-in-some-states?ref=scottsantens.com). The Freedom Dividend would change those numbers to 50 out of 50 states providing $1,000 per month, and 50 states excluding 0% of citizens living in poverty. That’s why inequality would be reduced so much by UBI, because [**conditionality ends up excluding far too many people**](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-progressive-case-for-replacing-the-welfare-state-with-basic-income-e8bd02c5875e?ref=scottsantens.com). Additionally, do you think it would be fair if conditional benefits were stacked on top of the Freedom Dividend, so that for every 100 impoverished families, 23 were lifted above the other 77 equally impoverished families? Is it progressive to provide more to some than others, despite them both being equally poor? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*gk9ziLGE2HaZeoJa2f8vIQ.png) [Source: Marketplace](https://features.marketplace.org/yourstateonwelfare/?ref=scottsantens.com) The conditions that exclude so many people in need from assistance are also the same conditions that kick people off assistance. As the system exists today, if everyone won a lottery that paid out $1,000 per month for life, virtually everyone would immediately lose their welfare benefits, because most everyone would be earning enough money to no longer qualify. The entire point of these programs is to only benefit the “deserving poor,” so why is it so important to stack TANF, SNAP, WIC, and SSI on top of UBI, if by existing definition, someone earning $1,000 per month is not considered deserving? The same result would occur if everyone got a job earning $1,000 per month. Does that mean employment is a Trojan horse designed to destroy the safety net, because if everyone had a $1,000 per month job, there would be far fewer people on benefits? Does that mean a job guarantee is in fact the ultimate Trojan horse, because it intends to disqualify as many people as possible by paying everyone $30,000 per year to do the guaranteed jobs? [Hyman Minsky](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/05/15/hyman-minsky-really-did-oppose-the-dole-on-principle/?ref=scottsantens.com) certainly saw it that way when he said, “*The guarantee of an income through a job is the first step toward the elimination of the welfare mess.”* All of these welfare programs are also temporary. TANF lasts for a maximum of five years. Assuming someone is fortunate enough to receive $1,000 per month in TANF, and they receive the payment for the full five years, and they live for another fifty years, the Freedom Dividend is ten times larger because of its unlimited lifespan. **Is it progressive to prevent someone in poverty from gaining $660,000 in order to prevent them from losing $60,000**? Lifelong income from age 18 to death is far more progressive than any temporary program, especially when [1 out of 5 welfare recipients stops receiving their benefits within 7 months, and **the average total benefit is less than $833 per month**](https://brandongaille.com/39-stunning-welfare-recipients-demographics/?ref=scottsantens.com). Making sure someone in poverty receives $5,831 in exchange for 7 months of 20 hours a week of job searching will never be as progressive as making sure someone in poverty is lifted out of poverty, without conditions, for as long as they live. A permanent unconditional income also means never being made worse off by a raise, or a gift, or some inheritance. Because the Freedom Dividend is never lost, there’s no possible situation where additional income would leave someone worse off. If conditional benefits were stacked on top of the Freedom Dividend though, that would no longer be true. Earning $15 per hour instead of $13 per hour could mean a loss in benefits larger than the raise. Unconditional basic income is also the only way of finally remunerating the [**1.2 billion hours of unpaid work going on every week**](https://www.ozy.com/acumen/americas-unpaid-billion-hours-a-week-workforce/61897?ref=scottsantens.com), and [enabling even more of it](http://www.scottsantens.com/unconditional-basic-income-is-a-pigovian-subsidy-for-unpaid-work). For anyone who supports a living wage in the belief that no one working full time should live in poverty, this belief should be extended to include *all* forms of work. Paid work is not the only way of contributing to society. With UBI, we can for the first time **liberate our most meaningful work from employment**. And by creating the option to choose unpaid work and even [more leisure](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html?ref=scottsantens.com) over paid work, we also grant [the power to demand that paid work actually pay](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-future-of-the-labor-movement-rests-on-the-achievement-of-unconditional-basic-income-217f26500d83?ref=scottsantens.com). ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*ju0rsFizHow_DNaCs1hoHw.png) llustration by [Lousine Boyakhandjyan](https://lousine.com/?source=post%5Fpage---------------------------) ## Conclusion I believe that nothing is less progressive than the perpetuation of an inhumane and undignified system built on a foundation of distrust, control, and humiliation. It is a conservative ideology to wish to maintain the status quo, to avoid change, to protect what exists for the sake of stability in fear that change could lead to worse results. Progressives on the other hand, are concerned about making changes that make things better, but “better” is inherently subjective. This is why progressives have a hard time agreeing on what steps to take despite fully agreeing that steps need to be taken. Some progressives are scared that one step forward could lead to two steps back, and thus support no steps forward. Other progressives believe that unless five steps forward are taken, no steps forward should be taken. Some progressives have less interest in measurable progress than they do an ideal where a romantic notion of revolution is of greater seduction, however violent and full of suffering, than peaceful evolution. These progressives are willing to burn it all down in the hope something better will emerge. I however believe that progressivism is about pragmatic progression. A step forward is a step forward, and we should always be stepping forward. After every advance, there’s always another advance to make, and we should not refuse to make those advances or misrepresent them because “they aren’t big enough.” We should care about measurable improvements, and we should do so with unceasing empathy. If a program makes people miserable, is that a program to defend? Or is it a program to move beyond? If unconditional cash has been shown to lead to [improved physical and mental health](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com), [reduced crime](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-doesnt-work-says-new-prime-example-of-fake-news-60ea1983b6c4?ref=scottsantens.com) and [intimate partner violence](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1105111034480730112?ref=scottsantens.com), [improved educational outcomes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0k905yXsVs&ref=scottsantens.com), [more entrepreneurship](http://evonomics.com/universal-basic-income-accelerates-innovation-reducing-fear-failure/?ref=scottsantens.com), [increased social cohesion](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-will-likely-increase-social-cohesion-aceb337262e0?ref=scottsantens.com), [increased trust](https://medium.com/basic-income/what-is-there-to-learn-from-finlands-basic-income-experiment-did-it-succeed-or-fail-54b8e5051f60?ref=scottsantens.com), [greater life satisfaction](https://assets.nationbuilder.com/bicn/pages/42/attachments/original/1551664357/BICN%5F-%5FSignposts%5Fto%5FSuccess.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), [enhanced resiliency to disasters](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1061655181996236800?ref=scottsantens.com), [fewer deaths of despair](https://www.nber.org/papers/w25787?ref=scottsantens.com), and [numerous other positive effects with no negative impact on work](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1040683616488103936?ref=scottsantens.com), **why would we not evolve our system** to what obviously works better? Is the goal of the progressive movement revolution or evolution? Your answer to that question as a progressive may very well decide whether you support Andrew Yang or not. The Freedom Dividend is the evolution of our safety net into a solid foundation, [one that should rise with the rise of automation, so that technology always benefits everyone](https://medium.com/basic-income/its-time-for-technology-to-serve-all-humankind-with-unconditional-basic-income-e46329764d28?ref=scottsantens.com) as MLK himself suggested when he wrote, “[*the guaranteed income must be dynamic; it must automatically increase as the total social income grows*](http://www.scottsantens.com/martin-luther-king-jr-basic-income-mlk).” If you believe what Yang is proposing we start at isn’t enough, then fight for what you believe would be better, and demand that all candidates fight for your ideal UBI. And if those candidates refuse to consider your UBI, you need to ask yourself a question… **Is it progressive to not support the greatest reduction of poverty and inequality — and greatest increase in freedom and dignity — ever proposed in American history, because you insist upon *preserving* paternalistically neoliberal conditionality?** --- ***Special thanks to: The Gerald Huff Fund for Humanity, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Andrew Stern, Roy Bahat, Floyd Marinescu, Zack Sargent, Larry Cohen, Aaron T. Schultz, Tom Cooper, Robert Collins, Stephane Boisvert, Justin Walsh, Daragh Ward, Joanna Zarach, Ace Bailey, Albert Wenger, Victor Lau, Athena Washington, UBIVisuals , Garry Turner, Peter T. Knight, Danielle and Michael Texeira, Jack Canty, Paul Godsmark, Rachel Perkins, Chris Rauchle, David Ihnen, Michael Hrenka, Natalie Foster, Reid Rusonik, Daniel Brockman, Carrie Mclachlan, Michael Honey, George Scialabba, Che Wagner, Jess Allen, Gerald Huff, Will Ware, Jan Smole, Joe Ballou, Gray Scott, Myi Baril, Elizabeth Corker, Max Henrion, Arjun Banker, Chris Heinz, Chris Smothers, Janos Abel, Kai Wong, Phuong Truong, Jill Weiss, MARK4UBI , Elizabeth Balcar, Georg Baumann, Jessica Wales, Kirk Israel, Valentina Petricciuolo, Meshack Vee, Timothy P O’Connor, Kev Roberts, Chris Boraski,*** [***AYFAQ.com***](http://ayfaq.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) ***, Stephen Starkey, VilliHaukka , Michael Finney, Casey L Young, Brian Schwartz, Tim , Oliver Bestwalter, Thomas Welsh, Walter Schaerer, Michael Finney, Sanford Redlich, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** ## [Would you like to see your name here too?](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&source=post%5Fpage---------------------------#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Andrew Yang makes U.S. history by introducing the idea of universal basic income onto the national debate stage URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/andrew-yang-makes-us-history-by-introducing-the-idea-of-universal-basic-income-onto-the-national-debate-stage/ Last updated: 2022-02-19T05:47:23.000Z On June 27, history was made when during the second night of the first U.S. Presidential debate for the 2020 Democratic Primary, Andrew Yang explained on the national debate stage the importance of a universal basic income floor for all citizens of $1,000 per month, rich or poor, employed or not that he’s dubbed the Freedom Dividend. Prior to Thursday night, the idea of a basic income guarantee had not been debated [since 1972](https://www.ourcampaigns.com/EventDetail.html?EventID=208&ref=scottsantens.com) when George McGovern was running on a $1,000 per person per year proposal ($6,231 in 2019 dollars) that he dubbed a demogrant.\* Asked how he would provide UBI, Mr. Yang responded by describing how a [value-added tax](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/valueaddedtax.asp?ref=scottsantens.com) (a consumption tax applied to each stage of the supply chain of a product, from production to its point of sale) at half the European level (10%) would put the American people in a position to actually benefit from technological innovations by getting an $800 billion slice of that revenue, that when combined with the economic growth of a trickle-up economy where people spend their basic incomes on local goods and services, and the economic savings of reduced costs of crime, poverty, and poor health, the Freedom Dividend is entirely possible. He also made sure to mention that the reason he believes Trump is President, is [because of the millions of jobs that were automated away in the swing states](https://basicincometoday.com/job-losses-and-flat-wages-caused-by-automation-in-manufacturing-states-influenced-the-outcome-of-the-2016-presidential-election/5237?ref=scottsantens.com), and that automation is only going to accelerate so it needs to be addressed. Aside from two lightning-round-style questions asked of all candidates to answer with “one or two words only”, his question about UBI was one of only three direct speaking opportunities that were given to Mr. Yang by NBC moderators – two direct questions and his closing remarks – for a total speaking time of 2 minutes and 50 seconds, the lowest of all ten candidates that night. No other candidate was asked fewer questions, and this despite Mr. Yang having higher polling numbers than half the candidates on stage. ![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/engagesimply/redactor_images/BasicincomeExploreGoogleTrendsJuly.png?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJMHNMWHUTSJKAFSQ&Expires=1877540507&Signature=uxXWnFt5uqO8Ek0LvyCIERSbrio%3D) Average polling indicates that for the most part, NBC moderators appeared to have assigned questions according to polling rank, except in the case of Mr. Yang, who was treated like he had the lowest polling numbers. This was the kindling that was lit by the revelation after the debate had ended, that Mr. Yang’s microphone appeared to have been muted when he tried to respond to what was being said by other candidates. This accusation, despite being denied by NBC, was shared later by fellow candidate [Marianne Williamson](https://twitter.com/marwilliamson/status/1144831650783793152?ref=scottsantens.com) who also claimed issues with her own microphone. As a result, the hashtag [#LetYangSpeak](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23letyangspeak&src=typd&ref=scottsantens.com) was born which quickly became a top trend on Twitter nationwide the following day. Due to the top trending hashtag on Friday, and likely also combined with the near 150,000 retweets of [the tweet](https://twitter.com/AndrewYang/status/1143373231430283264?ref=scottsantens.com) he announced pre-debate where a share and a follow could win someone $1,000 a month for a year, Mr. Yang reported an all-time high in his site traffic and also [surpassed the 130,000 individual donor limit for the next round of debates](https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/451243-yang-meets-donor-requirement-for-third-and-fourth-debates?ref=scottsantens.com) in September and October. Mr. Yang was also the only candidate of all twenty to gain [more than 100,000 new followers](https://twitter.com/connortryan/status/1145355382577086466?ref=scottsantens.com) on Twitter following the two nights of debate – an increase of 32%. Additionally, NBC posted clips of each candidate and their answers [on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/user/NBCNews/videos?ref=scottsantens.com) following the debates, and it was Andrew Yang’s clips which have earned more views than any other candidate, surpassing even Bernie Sanders. All told, despite having received less than three minutes to talk to America about basic income, automation, and [his list of over 100 policies](https://www.yang2020.com/policies/?ref=scottsantens.com), Andrew Yang appears to have been boosted by the first debate, and Google search traffic for basic income spiked by around 300%. Many people just learned about the idea of UBI for the first time thanks to Mr. Yang’s first debate appearance, and with the second debate later this month, and fourth and fifth debates in the Fall ([it seems likely he’ll also qualify for](https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/451243-yang-meets-donor-requirement-for-third-and-fourth-debates?ref=scottsantens.com)) the outlook appears good for both basic income and the realities of automation to increasingly become a part of the national conversation. It’s even possible that even if Andrew Yang doesn’t go any further than the fourth debate, the discussion will continue. At a fundraising dinner over the weekend, Mr. Yang reportedly shared how [Joe Biden had approached him after the debate](https://www.reddit.com/r/YangForPresidentHQ/comments/c77yqx/i%5Fjust%5Fgot%5Fback%5Ffrom%5Fa%5Ffundraising%5Fdinner%5Fin%5Fny/?ref=scottsantens.com) and expressed wanting to talk to Mr. Yang in the future about the Fourth Industrial Revolution and what can be done about it, out of fear that the middle class could cease to exist. It’s impossible to tell how far Andrew Yang will carry the UBI torch towards the White House, but keeping in mind that Donald Trump at this time in 2015 was polling at 1%, and with the knowledge that concerns about automation and the need for UBI are already spreading to other candidates, it seems that the candidacy of Andrew Yang may likely be looked back on by history as a key milestone in the implementation of a fully universal and unconditional basic income, whether he becomes the 46th President of the United States or not. *\*Historical note: Not to be confused with UBI, [McGovern’s demogrant was actually a negative income tax](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1973/6/14/are-you-kidding-george-1000-a/?page=single&ref=scottsantens.com) that proposed $1,000 to those earning $0 where $1 would be clawed back for every $3 earned. A household of four with an income of $12,000 ($74,771 in 2019 dollars) would have received nothing under his proposal.* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### ‘Universal Basic Income Doesn’t Work’ Says New Prime Example of Fake News URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-doesnt-work-says-new-prime-example-of-fake-news/ Last updated: 2022-02-19T00:41:52.000Z ## Or How to Spot Disinformation in a World of Propaganda In April 2019, a report titled “[Universal Basic Income: A Union Perspective](http://www.world-psi.org/sites/default/files/documents/research/en%5Fubi%5Ffull%5Freport%5F2019.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)” was paid for and published by Public Services International (PSI), a global trade union representing 20 million workers employed around the world providing public services. This report was authored by Anna Coote and Edanur Yazici of the New Economics Foundation (NEF), a British left-leaning think-tank. They concluded that providing services to all is better than providing income to all. In the paragraphs to follow, I intend to explain how this report, and how it was rolled out, is a prime example of a disinformation campaign designed to manipulate public opinion against the idea of universal basic income, and in doing so, I hope to increase the critical-thinking skills of readers to better spot this kind of shameless propaganda in the future about anything, not just UBI. ## How to Propagandize Step 1: Titles It’s an unfortunate reality, but in this age of social media we’re in, most people stop at titles. It’s all about the title. Titles don’t even need to faithfully represent what’s in the actual article. It just needs to be something that engages readers enough to click that “like” button, or that “share” button. It’s also smart to leverage search engine optimization (SEO) strategies so that people more easily find what they’re looking for, and in the case of disinformation, the goal is for people to easily confirm their existing biases. For example, if you’re looking for evidence that vaccines cause autism, you’ll do a search for something like “vaccines cause autism.” Through the magic of the internet, you’ll immediately find disinformation to confirm your beliefs that you can then spread like measles to others. The trick is putting the disinformation right in the title. This is exactly what Anna Coote did when she wrote her opinion piece for the Guardian about the report titled, “[Universal basic income doesn’t work. Let’s boost the public realm instead](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/06/universal-basic-income-public-realm-poverty-inequality?ref=scottsantens.com).” By putting the disinformation right in the title, it’s easy to find for anyone seeking [confirmation bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation%5Fbias?ref=scottsantens.com) for the belief “universal basic income doesn’t work.” > **“Confirmation bias** is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.” You may notice I’ve done the exact same thing in devising the title for this article you’re reading right now. This is because I too want people looking to confirm their beliefs that basic income doesn’t work, but with the intention of people discovering this article instead of a flaming garbage fire. ## How to Propagandize Step 2: Deception Many of us don’t take note of details like authors and their bios. We just read the article. When I first read Anna Coote’s article, I already knew who she was, and I already knew she’s been an active opponent of basic income for years, but even I missed something extremely important in my first read of her Guardian article, and I missed it because of the way she chose to write it. The article appears to be written in the voice of a journalist describing a report they just read. The very first sentence reads, “A study published this week sheds doubt on ambitious claims made for universal basic income (UBI).” A very small percentage of readers will notice that Anna is herself none other than the author of the study she’s writing about. **She wrote an opinion piece about** ***her own report*** **in a way that deceives the reader into thinking of her as being an objective messenger**. Not only that, but her opinion piece is also an extremely slanted representation of her own report. She actually further spun what was already spun. Here’s one example: The report cites multiple sources across multiple countries that the net cost of implementing UBI would be 0% of GDP in a revenue-neutral design, 0.28% of GDP in the UK (for a small UBI), 3% of GDP in the UK and US, 5% of GDP in India, and between 20%-30% of GDP according to an ILO estimate that used gross instead of net costing. Yet in the Guardian, she neglected to mention any of the low estimates. She instead stated, “The cost of a sufficient UBI scheme would be extremely high,” citing only the ILO gross estimate. Why is it so important we differentiate between gross and net cost when it comes to UBI? Because the gross cost of a program that provides money to everyone that everyone pays money into tells us nothing about the cost. Think about it. If everyone paid half of their incomes to receive an income that is equivalent to half of their incomes, what’s the cost of that in terms of GDP? Is it 50%? No. It’s zero. There is no cost to GDP because everyone got rebated what they were taxed. [**The only meaningful estimate of the cost of UBI is thus the *net* cost**](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-is-the-net-transfer-amount-not-the-gross-price-tag-acb8aa5eab73?ref=scottsantens.com), and the net cost of UBI in terms of GDP is right around 3% in most countries for a poverty floor amount, not 30%, and in revenue-neutral designs where a small UBI is introduced purely through welfare and tax reform, it’s as low as 0% of GDP because no new taxes at all are required. What’s so frustratingly dishonest is that I know Anna knows this stuff. How? Because not only is it included in her actual report, but it’s been proposed by none other than her own think tank, in a report they published only one month prior titled, “[Nothing Personal — Replacing the Personal Tax Allowance with a Weekly National Allowance](https://neweconomics.org/uploads/files/WeeklyNationalAllowance%5FNEF.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com).” In this report, the NEF concluded that a UBI of £48 per week (about $266 per month) could be implemented without raising any new taxes at all, by simply cashing out the cash allowance portion of the tax code, and taxing people on their first dollar instead of waiting until after they reach £12,500 of earned income. This is the most mind-boggling part for me. **The NEF proposed a revenue-neutral plan for universal basic income**, claimed it’s not UBI even though it is (except for the fact they exclude the top 1%), and then published Anna’s report concluding that UBI plans are too expensive. Both can’t be true. ## How to Propagandize Step 3: Claims to Authority Think tanks and those with the deep pockets who fund them have been utilizing this strategy for decades and it’s a proven strategy. It’s how neoliberalism managed to unseat Keynesianism, so it’s no surprise to see left-leaning think tanks engaging in the same tactics to push whatever policies their funders are paying them to push. In the case of Anna’s UBI report, it’s pushing Universal Basic Services (UBS) for a union that would be representing the workers performing those services. It’s no different than the Koch brothers funding a report pushing for more drilling as an alternative to sustainable energy. If a think tank report benefits who paid for the report, it doesn’t automatically mean the report is false, but it does mean we should question its veracity. This is where knowledge of the scientific method comes in. The beautiful thing about science is that it’s a way of evaluating the world around us. It’s the most powerful critical thinking tool ever devised. I can’t describe it any better than Carl Sagan, so I’ll just defer to him here: > “Science is more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking; a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then, we are up for grabs for the next charlatan (political or religious) who comes rambling along.” — Carl Sagan Key to the scientific method is right in the name — the method — so every scientific paper requires showing one’s methodology so that others can repeat it and see if they can duplicate the findings. That’s another key to science, being open about the how, not just the what. Who cares what you conclude if how you concluded it is the scientific equivalent of pulling it out of your ass? The NEF report lacks any methodology. It begins with its conclusions, goes on to discuss what UBI is, the arguments for and against it, how much it would cost, and before discussing proposed alternatives like universal basic services and job guarantees and concluding the alternatives are the way to go, it includes five pages in chapter seven summarizing twelve “examples of UBI in practice.” These five pages are the “evidence,” upon which this 48-page report is based, and it’s really nothing but another op-ed. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*wIIPWUdK4oA7Ipv1YGeM_Q.jpeg) Original illustration by [Sinnerman](https://twitter.com/SinnermansSkull?ref=scottsantens.com) ## The NEF Report First, the report starts by asserting that because universal basic income doesn’t exist anywhere yet, it’s hard to draw any conclusions about it based on any of the evidence, because the evidence is from trials. This is like saying there’s nothing to learn from experiments at all, ever, about anything, because they’re only experiments. That’s an unscientific and nonsensical assertion. If the manipulation of a variable in experimental conditions results in a statistically significant effect compared to a control group, that’s something to learn from, not ignore as pointless because we didn’t observe it for 50 years among a population of 300 million people. Next, it claims that save for Alaska and a few others, all of the experiments are actually conditional. The logic here is that negative income experiments target the poor, which is a poor understanding of NIT and UBI. NIT experiments that provide a full amount to those earning $0 and then claw back 50 cents for each dollar earned are effectively modeling a fully universal basic income paired with a 50% flat tax to pay for it. The net amount received is unconditional in that there’s no work requirement and no control of how the money is spent. One could argue that NIT experiments actually do a better job of modeling UBI in practice because any national UBI would have net receivers and net payers because of the taxes imposed to pay for it. Furthermore, it claims that [the UBI experimentation in India](http://sewabharat.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Report-on-Unconditional-Cash-Transfer-Pilot-Project-in-Madhya-Pradesh.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) wasn’t unconditional because it required that people open a bank account to receive the funds. Ignoring the fact that the tribal experiment didn’t do that and only the general experiment did (there were two experiments in India), this is a laughable definition of conditionality, especially when the result was that 95.6% of recipients were banked before the experiment began, and the remaining 4% were banked within the next three months, and getting banked was something everyone was helped with to make the experiment possible. In India, 100% of the experimental group comprising entire villages received basic income and yet the NEF report claims it tells us “*nothing about the impact of making cash payments to all regardless of income or status*.” Does that sound true to you? Not only is it not true, but again, it’s unscientific to make such a claim that there’s nothing to be learned even when conditions are applied. For example, the report mentions Malawi which provided cash, both conditionally and unconditionally to girls on the condition they stay in school. What I found so interesting about the Malawi study when I first read about it years ago is not mentioned anywhere in this report, which is what happened to those who didn’t meet the conditions compared to those without conditions. It turned out that the unintended consequence of withdrawing income from girls were **higher rates of teen pregnancy and HIV**. Does that result tell us nothing about the impact of unconditional income that when compared to conditional income it reduces the rates of HIV in teens? Another claim the report makes is that in developing countries with few existing safety nets, providing cash is helpful but “*it calls for a shift in power relations so that the same individuals can control what happens to them, to their families and neighbors and to their environment over the medium and longer-term. They need structures for shared decision-making as well as access to essential resources.*” This quote in particular really jumped out at me because **the basic income experiments have these results**. In experiment after experiment, basic income shifts power relations to those who have the least power. Individuals have more control over what happens to them because they have more agency as individuals with unconditional incomes, and shared decision-making is exactly what we see more of in basic income experiments. [As I’ve written about before](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-will-likely-increase-social-cohesion-aceb337262e0?ref=scottsantens.com), an extremely common result is people pooling their basic incomes to make collective decisions. The report also claims that because the effects of basic income seem to fade once the experiments end, that it’s potentially unsustainable, before going on to conclude that in developing countries, there’s a choice between services or cash, that both can’t be done at the same time, and thus services are better. This argument is nonsense on two accounts. First, basic income is the logic of insulin. Is insulin a bad idea because it needs to be a permanent part of people’s lives? Of course not. Insulin saves lives. The same is true of universal health care. Is universal health care a bad idea because if it ends, the effects of health care fade? Of course not, so their logic contradicts itself. Second, there is no real choice between cash or services. Both can and *should* be provided. The authors simply want to put the two choices against each other as a tactic. In the section on UBI in richer countries, this part is especially noteworthy: > There is not yet any clear evidence about the possible impact of UBI on individuals struggling to cope with penny pinching, stigmatising welfare regimes, or with fast-changing, increasingly automated labour markets. It would be unwise to read across from trial results in poor countries where the context is entirely different. The Mincome and New Jersey trials took place in another, pre-internet era. The Alaska Fund offers an annual dividend from shared wealth: a model with real potential, but one that currently makes payments that are far too small to address either problem. Elsewhere, the idea of UBI has failed to win sufficient political support to test its potential. This is most often because it is considered unaffordable without huge tax hikes that would not win votes. There is in fact clear evidence for anyone with any understanding of the scientific method. It is indeed wise to read across from trial results in poor countries to rich countries, because human beings do actually react in identical ways to identical stimuli. As the behavioral economist Dan Ariely replied when asked if what is being learned in GiveDirectly’s 12-year UBI experiment in Kenya could be applied to the US, “[*If you think about the fundamental aspect that you’re testing, people are people*](https://www.businessinsider.com/dan-ariely-explains-how-basic-income-can-work-in-the-us-2017-1?ref=scottsantens.com)*.*” Anna Coote appears to believe that people in India and Kenya are fundamentally different than people in the US and UK, and also that people alive today are fundamentally different than people in the income guarantee experiments of the 1970s. She’s wrong. Over and over again, in experiment after experiment, when income is provided unconditionally, and people are relieved of the fear of starting at zero each month, stress is reduced. This reduction of stress was seen in [Dauphin in the 1970s](http://www.livableincome.org/rMM-EForget08.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) where it led to 8.5% fewer hospitalizations. It improved both physical and mental health. The same effect has been observed in poor countries, and the same effect has been seen in the present day. [Finland’s experiment just showed this](https://medium.com/basic-income/what-is-there-to-learn-from-finlands-basic-income-experiment-did-it-succeed-or-fail-54b8e5051f60?ref=scottsantens.com), as did [Ontario’s experiment](https://assets.nationbuilder.com/bicn/pages/42/attachments/original/1551664357/BICN%5F-%5FSignposts%5Fto%5FSuccess.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). **It is an observable fact that unconditional basic income reduces stress**. This fact is indisputable. It should also be nothing less than absolute common sense. Of course stress is reduced when people no longer fear not being able to meet their basic survival needs. It’s [human biology](https://medium.com/basic-income/human-park-a-mammals-guide-to-stress-free-living-17f6cab007b3?ref=scottsantens.com). As for waving off Alaska’s dividend as being too small, it too has had notable positive impacts despite its size. A [2018 study](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=3118343&ref=scottsantens.com) concluded that the Alaska dividend has created thousands of new jobs, increasing part-time employment by 17%. In [a separate study](https://www.alaskapublic.org/2019/02/12/ask-an-economist-what-does-the-pfd-for-jobs-crime-and-health-in-alaska/?ref=scottsantens.com), Alaskan researchers found that provided a $1,000 dividend, women in Alaska work one hour less and male employment increases by about 2% because of 2,000 new jobs in the three months following the dividend. Can we apply this to the concern of technological unemployment? Absolutely, because consumers create jobs as a result of having money in their hands to spend. In this way, the size of Alaska’s dividend actually underestimates the amount of new jobs UBI creates. Alaska’s dividend has also been shown to improve birth weights due to improved maternal nutrition and during the 1990s and 2000s the dividend helped Alaska become [the only US state in which *equality rose* rather than fell](https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/alaska-model-citizens-income-in-practice/?ref=scottsantens.com). Alaskans also love their dividend so much [they’d prefer to pay more in taxes than lose it](https://qz.com/1018413/new-survey-by-the-economic-security-project-finds-alaska-residents-strongly-support-preserving-a-universal-basic-income-ubi-from-the-alaska-permanent-fund-dividend-rather-than-cut-taxes/?ref=scottsantens.com). Alaska is [a treasure trove](https://iseralaska.org/static/legacy%5Fpublication%5Flinks/bien%5Fxiii%5Fak%5Fpfd%5Flessons.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) of stuff to learn about UBI. The report even claims Switzerland as evidence against UBI, because they voted against implementing it, and presumes cost was the reasoning. Two things here: first, can you imagine claiming as evidence against recognizing women’s right to vote, a country’s vote against it? Switzerland wasn’t ready to recognize female suffrage in 1959 either, but they did in 1971\. [UBI will likely follow a similar path in Switzerland](https://www.politico.eu/article/unconditional-basic-income-news-why-switzerlands-basic-income-idea-is-not-crazy-vote-referendum/?ref=scottsantens.com). Second, although 40% of those who voted no in Switzerland were concerned about cost, that concern was based on a high UBI, and without an understanding of net cost, as discussed previously. Either way, including Switzerland in the evidence section of a summary of UBI evidence is about as unscientific as one can get. Now let’s talk about what was left out of the report. ## How to Propagandize Step 4: Lying by Omission A truly tried and true way of lying is to simply not mention key facts. One of the most fascinating things to me about Anna Coote’s NEF report is the evidence it simply omitted. The only way to catch propaganda like this is to be able to spot what’s missing, and that’s much more difficult to do because it requires a time-consuming knowledge base of sufficient size. Most people don’t have that and so rely on “experts,” and experts know that. Among the most glaring pieces of evidence in this case is Namibia’s UBI pilot, all the experiments in the US in the 1970s other than the New Jersey experiment, and the Great Smoky Mountains Study of Youth. There’s more excluded than these, but to leave these out is mind-blowing. ## Namibia The Namibia UBI report is one of the most fascinating of all pieces of basic income evidence to read. I recommend reading [all 103 pages](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) of the report. You won’t be disappointed. As a quick background, in January 2008, the Basic Income Grant (BIG) pilot project commenced in the Otjivero-Omitara area of Namibia, where for two years, 930 people received N$100 per person per month, without any conditions being attached. It was the first experiment in the world where a flat amount of cash was provided universally, monthly, and for long enough to study its effects. The results were profound. The percentage of people living below the food poverty line dropped from 76% to 37%. The percentage of people engaged in income-generating activities rose from 44% to 55%. Self-employment dramatically grew by 301%. Child malnutrition fell from 42% to 10%. School dropout rates fell from 40% to 5%. Average debt fell from N$1,215 to N$772\. Overall crime rates plummeted by 42%. There was less need for women to engage in transactional sex, and aside from the very first payout, alcohol use did not increase. It was also determined that the cost to implement UBI in Namibia would be under 3% of GDP and because Namibia could handle taxing over 30% of GDP and were only taxing 25%, that UBI would be entirely affordable in Namibia by just bumping their VAT rate and introducing a levy on natural resources. It should be clear now how absurd it is to have excluded Namibia from the NEF report, but also understandable why they chose to dishonestly omit it. ## The American Income Maintenance Experiments Another odd exclusion is everything learned in the US in the 1960s and 1970s experiments. There were actually four different experiments: the [New Jersey Graduated Work Incentive Experiment](https://www.mathematica-mpr.com/our-publications-and-findings/publications/the-new-jersey-graduated-work-incentive-experiment?ref=scottsantens.com) from 1968–1972 in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the [Gary Income Maintenance Experiment (GIME)](https://www.mathematica-mpr.com/our-publications-and-findings/publications/the-gary-experiment-in-welfare-reform?ref=scottsantens.com) in Gary, Indiana from 1971–1974, the [Rural Income Maintenance Experiment (RIME)](https://irp.wisc.edu/publications/sr/pdfs/sr10.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) in North Carolina and Iowa from 1970–1972, and [the Seattle/Denver Income Maintenance Experiments (SIME/DIME)](http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/conf/conf30/conf30a.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) in Seattle, Washington and Denver, Colorado from 1969–1982. Each of these experiments tested different amounts of income and different clawback rates in different population groups. The largest of all the experiments took place in Seattle and Denver where 4,800 people compared to New Jersey’s 1,200 received guaranteed income, some for as long as eight years compared to New Jersey’s three years, and thus excluding it from the NEF report is another alarm bell. Why exclude the largest longest experiment about guaranteed income that the US has ever done? I don’t have an answer to that question, but I can tell you the general findings which is that men barely reduced their hours and when they did, it was a per year reduction where they spent more time looking for jobs between jobs. New mothers decided to use the money like paid maternity leave, and young students decided to focus on going to school instead of augmenting family incomes with wage work. The former effect is great for wages and productivity, and the latter effects are great for society. Those were the effects on work. There were also other effects observed, but they were not the focus of the experiments. Here is how [Karl Widerquist has summarized the non-labor-market effects](https://basicincome.org/news/2017/12/basic-income-guarantee-experiments-1970s-quick-summary-results/?ref=scottsantens.com): > The experimental results for various quality-of-life indicators were substantial and encouraging. Some studies found significant positive influences in elementary school attendance rates, teacher ratings, and test scores. Some studies found that children in the experimental group stayed in school significantly longer than children in the control group. Some found an increase in adults going on to continuing education. Some of the experiments found desirable effects on many important quality-of-life indicators, including reduced incidents of low-birth-weight babies, increased food consumption, and increased nutritional content of the diet. Some even found reduced domestic abuse and reduced psychiatric emergencies. The NEF report mentions none of this and instead only refers to the entirety of the American experiments with a single sentence in the main body of the report in the evidence section: “The Mincome and New Jersey trials took place in another, pre-internet era.” That’s it. That’s all there is outside of the appendix in regards to lessons learned from [14 years of experiments involving 8,624 Americans](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222578698%5FA%5Ffailure%5Fto%5Fcommunicate%5FWhat%5Fif%5Fanything%5Fcan%5Fwe%5Flearn%5Ffrom%5Fthe%5Fnegative%5Fincome%5Ftax%5Fexperiments?ref=scottsantens.com). ## The Great Smoky Mountains Study Perhaps the strongest piece of UBI evidence of all outside of Alaska’s annual dividend is what began in North Carolina in 1996 and exists to this day where members of the Cherokee Nation receive around $12,000 per year in dividend income. This is valuable on its own for research purposes, but what puts this into the category of scientific experiment is that a long-term study of impoverished kids was already ongoing when a percentage of the parents suddenly started receiving the no-strings income. Those kids whose parents did not receive any dividend income became the control group, and to this day, more and more is being learned about the results of kids being raised by parents receiving basic income. According to [a 2010 peer-reviewed study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2891175/?ref=scottsantens.com), behavioral problems for the children lifted out of poverty by the dividend income fell 40%. By 16, they were 22% less likely to have a criminal record. By 21 they gained on average one additional year of education. Personality tests showed improvements in conscientiousness by 43% and agreeableness by 31%. For context, people who lack conscientiousness tend to lie, break rules, and have trouble paying attention, and those who are more agreeable tend to be more comfortable around people and have more aptness for teamwork. Both traits are strongly correlated with more life success and happiness. All these positive results on the kids were found to have happened mostly by alleviating the stress of their parents. Less stressed parents were able to create better home environments where they spent more quality time with their kids, and those are the kinds of changes in a child’s life that can make all the difference in the world. Another fascinating finding from this natural experiment was by Randall Akee, an economist whose analysis revealed that [the dividend income net reduced expenditures](https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/18/what-happens-when-the-poor-receive-a-stipend/?ref=scottsantens.com), meaning the amount of poverty eliminated was actually worth more than the total amount of dividends disbursed, by way of reduced criminality, reduced need for psychiatric care, and the savings gained by kids not repeating grades. In other words, the basic income saved more money than it cost. [It even increased voter turnout rates](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2018/10/25/a-story-from-this-american-indian-reservation-has-important-lessons-for-americas-voter-turnout-problem/?ref=scottsantens.com). So why was what we’ve been learning in North Carolina for over 20 years also excluded from the NEF report? I hope it’s clear by now just how irresponsibly dishonest and poorly done the NEF report is, but to make it absolutely crystal clear, it’s also important to see what an honest and well-researched report actually looks like. ## How to Propagandize Step 5: Misdirection Propagandists rely on misdirection. By showing people falsehoods, using sleight of hand, what’s true goes unseen. It takes time and energy to figure out what to trust and what not to trust. If you’re reading this, you may or may not already trust me, and if you aren’t already familiar with my work, that’s wise of you. Make up your own mind, and to help you do that, I’d like to point you to two reports that like the NEF report both analyze a large collection of experimental data, and you can decide for yourself if they seem more trustworthy: one looks at 16 income guarantee trials, and the other looks at 165 studies of 56 cash transfer programs across 30 countries. ## The Gilbert Review of Evidence In 2018, Richard Gilbert of Loyola Marymount University along with four other co-authors published a comprehensive review in the peer-reviewed journal *Basic Income Studies* titled “[Would a Basic Income Guarantee Reduce the Motivation to Work? An Analysis of Labor Responses in 16 Trial Programs](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329102801%5FWould%5Fa%5FBasic%5FIncome%5FGuarantee%5FReduce%5Fthe%5FMotivation%5Fto%5FWork%5FAn%5FAnalysis%5Fof%5FLabor%5FResponses%5Fin%5F16%5FTrial%5FPrograms?ref=scottsantens.com)” Among the 16 programs looked at were the basic income trials that NEF included as well as the Namibia experiment and the three American Income Maintenance experiments that NEF omitted. If you take the time to look at the methodology they used, you’ll find they focused solely on work effects and filtered an initial set of 1,400 papers down to a data set focused on the impact of cash guarantees on adult work rates, which they then coded so as to isolate variables for analysis. Income guarantee sizes were made comparable to each other across countries by benchmarking against average national income figures in order to examine whether there’s an association between the proportional size of an income guarantee and subsequent labor impacts. Statistical tests on the resulting coded data showed that 71% of the data on labor force participation rates supported the hypothesis of a small or no *increase* in labor force participation, and 100% of the working hours data found reductions of less than 1 to 4 hours of work per week assuming a standard 40-hour work week. When the LPR data and hours worked data were combined: > “The results indicate that 27 out of 29 results, or 93%, support the prediction that a basic income program would have a limited impact on work activity when the criterion is set at between a 2.1% and 5% decline in labor force participation or less than a 1 to 2 hour reduction in a standard 40-hour work week.” The results of this meta-analysis cannot be overstated. A data set representing a sample size of 105,000 recipients of guaranteed income across 12 nations in the developed and developing world found no evidence to support the widespread assumption that basic income would cause humans to do anything more than slightly reduce their time spent working. In fact, *increases* in work were found in Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Namibia, and Uganda. One caveat for these results is that the average annual income across all 16 trials was 6.8% of the national average annual income, and thus may underestimate work reductions where small work reductions were seen. For example, 6.8% would represent a basic income in the US of $285 per month. A basic income of $1,000 could have the same negligible impact of 38–39 hours worked per week on average, or it could look more like 34–37 hours worked per week. Or the impact of increased consumer spending could lead to an average increase in work. All that we can really say with certainty is that basic income is extremely unlikely to lead to significant work reductions with a poverty level amount. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*X9M6S1kS5nYvV0zbBtNdAQ.png) ## The ODI Review of Evidence The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) is an independent, global think tank focused on research and analysis. In 2016 they published a massive review of the evidence from 56 cash transfer programs all over the world that happened between 2000 and 2015, titled “[Cash transfers: what does the evidence say?](https://www.odi.org/publications/10505-cash-transfers-what-does-evidence-say-rigorous-review-impacts-and-role-design-and-implementation?ref=scottsantens.com)” The exhaustive 300-page review looked at the impact of cash on monetary poverty, education, health and nutrition, savings, investment and production, employment, and empowerment. The key findings were reported as follows: - **Monetary poverty**: Cash transfers reduce monetary poverty. - **Education**: Cash transfers raise school attendance, but do not always lead to improved learning. - **Health and nutrition**: Cash transfers stimulate health service use and improve dietary diversity, but there is less evidence that they affect the height and weight of children. - **Savings and investment**: Cash transfers can help foster beneficiaries’ economic autonomy. - **Employment**: Cash transfers are associated with a reduction in child labor. Most show either no effect or a positive effect on adults working. - **Empowerment**: Cash transfers increase women’s decision-making power and choices, but do not always reduce emotional abuse. It’s harder to apply such a large look at cash transfer programs in general to the prospect of a fully universal and unconditional basic income, but certain clearly universal results stand out. When people are provided income, they don’t waste it. It tends to buy things that you too would buy, like food. It supports education systems and health care systems. It increases savings and functions as capital. It empowers women, reducing physical abuse and increasing their choices. And again, it has little impact on work and can even increase work. > The evidence does not suggest that cash transfers generate work disincentives. For more than half of the indicators measured in this outcome area, employment outcomes were not affected by receipt of the transfer (e.g. 9/14 studies for adults’ work participation find statistically non-significant results). Most of the studies reporting a significant effect on adults of working age found an increase in work participation (3/4 studies) and intensity (4/6). Where a reduction in work participation or work intensity was reported, this tended to involve the elderly and those caring for dependents, or reflected reductions in casual work. Both of the aforementioned evidence reviews are clearly in a different league than the NEF evidence review and point to nothing but support for basic income. Cash clearly has positive effects when provided to human beings to spend as desired. It also clearly does not lead to people becoming couch potatoes, and it also clearly functions to improve investments in services like education and health care. Meanwhile, the critique that basic income is too expensive ignores that the only meaningful cost is the net cost, ignores the savings gained from effects like improved health and reduced crime, ignores all the tax expenditures that can be converted into cash, ignores the impacts of increased economic activity and productivity, and ignores that the only thing preventing the abolition of poverty amid vast wealth is a lack of collective will for economic justice. People like Anna Coote and think tanks like NEF would have you believe that [basic income and basic services are enemies](https://www.centreforwelfarereform.org/library/by-az/basic-income-or-basic-services.html?ref=scottsantens.com), but basic income should instead be seen as a foundation for better functioning services. If 60% of health outcomes are related to income, it makes no sense to only treat health outcomes with expensive treatments downstream [when treatments could be entirely avoided by investments in incomes upstream](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com). If people suffering poverty and insecurity can’t focus on school, it makes no sense to only fund schools instead of boosting incomes so as to improve the ability to learn. Lack of sufficient income and lack of economic security are the causes of far too many problems to not address them, and [all the evidence](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/wiki/index?ref=scottsantens.com#wiki%5Fthat.27s%5Fall%5Fvery%5Fwell.2C%5Fbut%5Fwhere.27s%5Fthe%5Fevidence.3F) points to addressing them directly through cash as the most efficient and effective solution. With all of the above said, I’d like to make one last point, and that point is the entire reason for my writing this lengthy response in the first place. I actually hate writing response pieces like this, but one thing I find unforgivable in our world is the abuse of trust. ## **Conclusion: The Erosion of Institutional Trust** Before I began researching the idea of basic income back in 2013, I enjoyed learning about a very diverse range of topics. I just love learning. It’s fun. It’s always been fun for me. I liked to learn a little about a lot of things, but never a lot about one thing. It was only when I finally found one thing I wanted to explore in massive depth that I discovered how absolutely full of shit many trusted experts are. It angered me. It viscerally angered me to discover how many people pretended to know things about stuff they obviously didn’t. It’s not just the lying that angers me so much. That’s upsetting, but what bothers me the most is the impact on society as a whole. Trust in institutions is eroding all around us. Trust in experts is dying. Trust is fading to the point that increasing numbers of people no longer even trust their own doctors about vaccines, or climate scientists about climate change. The story of this loss of trust is a story about the loss of social cohesion and also the effects of the profit-motive. Too many people do things for money, and too many people know that. Every time another expert misuses the authority they have to make a buck, or gain fame, or make people believe what they want them to believe, regardless of whether it’s true or accurate, social trust is eroded, and what’s actually true is harder for people to believe. When Anna Coote wrote her report for a check signed by Public Services International, and when she then wrote her op-ed in the Guardian that she disguised as an objective editorial, she violated what I consider to be a sacred trust. I care about what’s true and what’s real. I care about the scientific method and critical thinking. I care about a society that values reality. What I will not stand for is someone misrepresenting scientific experiments, portraying ideologically-driven opinions as evidence, and trying to manipulate society into believing what they self-servingly want society to believe. I hope this article helps readers in some way better differentiate between what can be trusted and what should be questioned. I also know that time will still always be a factor. We only have so much time to apply to figuring out what we can and can’t trust, and so our lack of free time will continue proving to be a major obstacle. This of course is another argument for unconditional basic income, but [that’s something I’ve already written about](https://medium.com/basic-income/what-we-need-to-truly-thrive-democracy-and-unconditional-basic-income-ccdbe72cefa5?ref=scottsantens.com). If there’s one final thing I’d like you to take away from this article, it’s to take a microscope to anything claiming there’s evidence basic income doesn’t work. The evidence for basic income is [a large and growing pile](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1040683616488103936?ref=scottsantens.com), and if you want to know what that pile is telling us, I suggest reading some of the actual studies yourself, instead of just taking anyone’s word — including mine — for what’s in them. I also recommend reading Carl Sagan’s [The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark](https://amzn.to/2EHzJ4A?ref=scottsantens.com) to help build and strengthen your charlatan detector so that articles like the one you’ve just finished never have to be written in the first place. > “Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication, and courage. But if we don’t practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us — and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.” — Carl Sagan ## Explore the Basic Income Evidence Yourself - [Dauphin, Manitoba Mincome Experiment (1974–1979)](http://www.livableincome.org/rMM-EForget08.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) - [Seattle and Denver Income Maintenance Experiments (1969–1982)](http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/conf/conf30/conf30a.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) - [The Rural Income Maintenance Experiments in North Carolina and Iowa (1970–1972)](https://irp.wisc.edu/publications/sr/pdfs/sr10.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) - [The Gary, Indiana Income Maintenance Experiment (1971–1974)](https://www.mathematica-mpr.com/our-publications-and-findings/publications/the-gary-experiment-in-welfare-reform?ref=scottsantens.com) - [The New Jersey Graduated Work Incentive Experiment (1968–1972)](https://www.mathematica-mpr.com/our-publications-and-findings/publications/the-new-jersey-graduated-work-incentive-experiment?ref=scottsantens.com) - [The Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend UBI (1982-NOW)](https://iseralaska.org/static/legacy%5Fpublication%5Flinks/bien%5Fxiii%5Fak%5Fpfd%5Flessons.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) - [The North Carolina Cherokee Dividend Natural Experiment (1996-NOW)](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20160133&ref=scottsantens.com) - [The Social Security Notch Natural Experiment (1972–1977)](http://www.nber.org/programs/ag/rrc/rrc2015/papers/3.3%20-%20Ayyagari,%20Frisvold.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) - [The Mothers’ Pension Program (1911–1935)](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257%2Faer.20140529&ref=scottsantens.com) - [Belgian Win for Life Lottery Natural Basic Income Experiment](http://www.basicincome.org/bien/pdf/2004MarxPeeters.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) - [Dolly Parton’s My People Fund in Tennessee (2016–2017)](https://assetbank.ath.utk.edu/asset-bank/images/assetbox/73c96af5-7111-4dfd-891a-e55c7189abd1/asset152296.html?ref=scottsantens.com) - [Liberia Social Cash Transfer Pilot Program (2009–2014)](https://www.unicef.org/evaldatabase/files/Final%5FEvaluation%5Fof%5FSCT%5FPilot%5FProgram%5FLiberia.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) - [Lebanon Winter Cash Assistance Program (2013–2014)](https://www.rescue.org/sites/default/files/document/631/emergencyeconomiesevaluationreport-lebanon2014.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) - [Iran’s De Facto UBI (2011-NOW)](http://erf.org.eg/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1090.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) - [Namibia UBI Pilot Project (2008–2010)](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) - [India UBI Pilot Experiment (2011–2013)](http://sewabharat.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Report-on-Unconditional-Cash-Transfer-Pilot-Project-in-Madhya-Pradesh.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) - [Finland Basic Income Experiment (2017–2019)](http://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/161361/Report%5FThe%20Basic%20Income%20Experiment%2020172018%20in%20Finland.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) - [Ontario Basic Income Pilot Experiment (2017–2019)](https://assets.nationbuilder.com/bicn/pages/42/attachments/original/1551664357/BICN%5F-%5FSignposts%5Fto%5FSuccess.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) - [Continued…](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/wiki/index?ref=scottsantens.com#wiki%5Fthat.27s%5Fall%5Fvery%5Fwell.2C%5Fbut%5Fwhere.27s%5Fthe%5Fevidence.3F) --- ***Special thanks to: The Gerald Huff Fund for Humanity, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Andrew Stern, Roy Bahat, Floyd Marinescu, Larry Cohen, Aaron T Schultz, Robert Collins, Stephane Boisvert, Justin Walsh, Daragh Ward, Joanna Zarach, Ace Bailey, Albert Wenger, Victor Lau, Athena Washington, UBIVisuals , Peter T Knight, Danielle and Michael Texeira, Jack Canty, Paul Godsmark, Rachel Perkins, Chris Rauchle, David Ihnen, Michael Hrenka, Natalie Foster, Reid Rusonik, Daniel Brockman, Carrie Mclachlan, Michael Honey, George Scialabba, Che Wagner, Jess Allen, Gerald Huff, Will Ware, Jan Smole, Joe Ballou, Gray Scott, Myi Baril, Elizabeth Corker, Max Henrion, Arjun Banker, Chris Heinz, Chris Smothers, Janos Abel, Kai Wong, Jill Weiss, MARK4UBI, Elizabeth Balcar, Georg Baumann, Bryan Herdliska, Jessica Wales, Kirk Israel, Valentina Petricciuolo, Meshack Vee, Timothy P O’Connor, Kev Roberts, Chris Boraski, VilliHaukka, Michael Finney, Casey L Young, Tim, Oliver Bestwalter, Thomas Welsh, Walter Schaerer, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** ## [Would you like to see your name here too?](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### I am the Editor-in-Chief of a newly launched UBI news site - Basic Income Today URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/i-am-the-editor-in-chief-of-a-newly-launched-ubi-news-site-basic-income-today/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T20:31:44.000Z ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/d1fd3dae-72ca-41f8-a9b4-04e107b84616/Basic-20Income-20Today.png) [Basic Income Today](https://basicincometoday.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) is a new UBI website that's been created to provide updated news and information about Unconditional Basic Income with the goal of furthering the discussion about how UBI impacts purpose, identity, and dignity. Content will be curated from general news and will also include some original content. **I am the Editor-in-Chief of this new UBI news site.** Editorially, under my direction, Basic Income Today will focus on seven broad themes: **Workforce Automation:** How technology and AI built to accelerate economies can displace human workers and how individuals and economies cope and evolve. **Social Justice:** Centered around the relationship between UBI and those affected by the results of conditional safety nets and workforce automation mitigating a new vision for society to re-imagine the social contract for the 21st century. **Income Inequality:** Today, many people must work several jobs they do not enjoy, just to keep a roof over their heads. The ramifications of wealth distributed so unevenly will be covered, and its effect on those not sure that they will be able to meet their families' basic needs. **The Basics of UBI:** BIT’s content is designed to demystify the noise and false information surrounding the idea of UBI, bringing readers a clearer picture. **Success Stories:** Evaluating the results where UBI is instituted and how people, paid and unpaid work, business, and the economy benefits. **The Social Debate:** There is certainly no lack of opinions on this subject. A balanced view of the arguments will be presented, pro and con. **Pilots & Experiments:** Who’s adopting UBI, where it’s happening and how it’s progressing. These are the focuses of BIT. The ultimate goal is to properly inform the UBI discussion, reduce misinformation, and get what people most need to read/watch/hear to their eyes/ears. Please [subscribe on the website](https://basicincometoday.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) for regular news updates, and also follow the Basic Income Today [Twitter](https://twitter.com/TheUBINewsHub?ref=scottsantens.com) and [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/TheUBINewHub/) accounts. --- **If you're on Reddit, please subscribe to my new subreddit, [/r/ScottSantens](https://www.reddit.com/r/ScottSantens?ref=scottsantens.com)!** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### My Forbes Interview About Universal Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/forbes-interview-scott-santens-about-universal-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T20:32:29.000Z *This interview of mine with Kavi Guppta took place in 2016 and was [originally published on September 22, 2016 on Forbes with the title "Basic Income Might Be The Answer To Society's Productivity Crisis"](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kaviguppta/2016/09/22/basic-income-might-be-the-answer-to-societys-productivity-crisis/?ref=scottsantens.com). I have recently recorded this interview as [a podcast episode](https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/My-QA-Interview-with-Forbes-About-Universal-Basic-Income-e3prfr?ref=scottsantens.com) so am making the text available here for the first time.* ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/5065a71d-66c8-43a3-b9bf-0b09a946c892/Forbes-20Interview.png) With the decline of manufacturing jobs, and the onset of automation to take over almost all kinds of work, society is on the hunt for a long-term, scalable solution to our future productivity. What will happen to displaced workers? How will mass unemployment hurt our increasingly globalized economy? One concept, a universal basic income, has been debated by thinkers as far back as the 16th century. The theory suggests that a flat income, given to every citizen regardless of employment or societal status, will allow society to pursue the work it really believes in. Can a monthly universal stipend help citizens take care of basic needs while pursuing new opportunities? I spoke with Scott Santens, a New Orleans based writer who is studying and championing the adoption of basic income policies and processes. Santens’ ideas and opinions have been published in the Huffington Post, TechCrunch, and the Boston Globe. He also claims to earn a basic income for his work via the [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) creative crowdsourcing platform. In the conversation below, I ask Santens to simplify the arguments for and against basic income, and why the concept could be a viable option for society’s future of work. **Kavi Guppta: What is the concept of basic income trying to solve?** Scott Santens: Basic income is commonly misunderstood as some kind of magical silver bullet. Making sure everyone has a minimum amount of income sufficient to cover basic needs is not a 100% solution for any one thing, but instead an improvement for innumerable things. What it is, is the creation of an economic foundation that is currently missing from every economy in the world. And because it's a foundation we're talking about it has the potential to affect a great deal of the world around us. Basic income has been shown to reduce poverty and inequality. It's been shown to lead to improved health and reduced crime. It's been shown to reduce debt and increase savings. It's been shown to increase entrepreneurship and social cohesion. Unlike welfare, it reaches everyone in need and enables people to escape lives of destitution and insecurity. Unlike unemployment, everyone receives basic income and so it creates the situation where everyone is always financially better off employed than unemployed, but everyone also has the real ability to pursue the work that's most important to them, even if unpaid. So much of our current environment exists as it is because so many people don't have sufficient access to money, which is the tool we use to obtain access to resources using markets. By making sure everyone has sufficient access to money, and therefore sufficient access to markets, we create the foundations for a stronger economy; and with it, a better society. **KG: Why haven't we seen an embrace of the basic income concept globally?** SS: I believe we are actively seeing the embrace of basic income globally. It's just not something that happens overnight. Think back to before women could vote and when we still thought it was a good idea to own people as property. When the first people came up with the idea that maybe slavery shouldn't exist, and that maybe women should be able to vote, were these ideas immediately implemented? Of course not. For women, it took centuries. For slavery, it took a war. Basic income is another idea that is taking centuries for people to similarly see the good sense of. But it is happening. Switzerland recently voted on the idea. They voted against it, but they did the same thing the first time they got the chance to vote on a woman's right to vote, too. Finland is looking to test the idea for two years starting in 2017 (*[read the preliminary results](https://medium.com/basic-income/what-is-there-to-learn-from-finlands-basic-income-experiment-did-it-succeed-or-fail-54b8e5051f60?ref=scottsantens.com)*). The Netherlands is also testing it in multiple cities. Canada is looking to test the idea as well (*[read the unofficial results](https://assets.nationbuilder.com/bicn/pages/42/attachments/original/1551664357/BICN%5F-%5FSignposts%5Fto%5FSuccess.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)*). Things are also looking very good for [the UK](https://www.inverse.com/article/54505-universal-basic-income-brexit-voting-sheffield-may-be-england-s-first-test?ref=scottsantens.com) to test the idea, and an independent [Scotland](https://basicincome.scot/?ref=scottsantens.com) would most likely incorporate the idea. There's a great deal of support in Iceland for basic income as well, and countries across Europe like Spain, France, and Italy are also increasingly discussing it, as are others. Make no mistake. This is a worldwide conversation and the race is on for the first country to adopt a universal basic income. Will it be a country like Finland who seems out ahead on this? Or will it be a country like China that isn't even talking about it, but is investing heavily in automation while simultaneously wanting a consumer economy? I don't know, but interesting times are ahead. **KG: Why is basic income the "only" solution to dealing with employment?** SS: Basic income isn't the only solution, but it's arguably the best solution because it's the solution that actually does the most. Look at education for example. It's been shown that [increasing the incomes of parents does more for educational outcomes than something like pre-K](https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/this-policy-would-help-poor-kids-more-than-universal-pre-k-does/?ref=scottsantens.com). So why spend money on pre-K instead of parental incomes? If the reason kids aren't doing as well in school as they would if their parents just earned more money to improve household environments, why give money to schools instead of parents? It's the difference between treating the symptoms and treating the causes. Treating symptoms is wasteful and never ends. Treat the causes. Better yet, vaccinate against diseases so people don't get sick in the first place. When it comes to work, we as a society have a serious problem with how we look at it. We don't look at all the work going on that's unpaid as work, even though it's arguably the most important kind of work. Think of care work and volunteering in our communities and the open-source movement, and even art. All of this work is valuable but unpaid. Meanwhile there are countless jobs full of work that we arguably shouldn't be doing. Maybe because it's harmful to people or the environment, or because it's work better done by machines, or perhaps because it's work that actually takes 4 hours instead of 8 but we pretend to be busy when we're not. Meanwhile, jobs that people don't like doing for the most part pay very little, while more enjoyable jobs pay more, which is all backwards. But it's the way it is because people must accept jobs if they can't say no to them. Those facing destitution say yes to working poverty because at least it's better than absolute poverty. Basic income changes all of this by granting people the power to say no. With the ability to say no to jobs no one wants to do, those employers must pay more for people to do them, or reduce the hours, or invest in automation. With the power to say no also comes the ability to say yes. People can choose to do the unpaid work that is arguably more valuable. They can choose to use their basic incomes as basic venture capital to startup new businesses, and people with basic incomes can even afford to work at these startups for free in exchange for something like stock options that will reward them far more down the road if the idea is successful than a wage would have, because they have the real ability to work for free. Basic income also changes the entire way we look at the growing gig economy. Right now Uber drivers might only be driving for Uber because they are barely getting by and need more money to meet their needs. With basic income operating as an income floor, Uber drivers have their basic needs covered and they are driving because they simply choose to drive for additional money (until a self-driving Uber provides far cheaper rides). On-demand labor with a basic income means that everyone has both greater ability to earn additional income and a feeling of economic security. On-demand labor without basic income means growing insecurity as more and more people try to just scrape by and monthly incomes vary so much that people are constantly falling behind and ceaselessly living on the edge. And finally basic income changes the automation discussion from will robots take our jobs to let's give our jobs to robots. I think it's extremely odd that we've developed our technology to the point it can not only do our muscle work for us, but also a great deal of our mind work, and we're all worried it will do our work for us. That makes no sense to me. The fact anyone is even worried at all that machines might actually do our jobs for us is a big bright signal that we're doing something wrong, and what we're doing wrong is that we require employment in order to live. If we break that connection and allow people to live without employment, then we dissolve our fear of technological unemployment. **KG: What holes do you see in the argument to support a basic income? What needs to be addressed?** SS: The real holes in the basic income discussion are in the arguments of those afraid of the idea. [Basic income is not unaffordable](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-is-the-net-transfer-amount-not-the-gross-price-tag-acb8aa5eab73?ref=scottsantens.com). It will save us far more than its net cost. Basic income will not lead to people doing nothing. It will enable people to do far more work that they are currently prevented from doing, and far more valuable work at that. [Basic income will not lead to rampant inflation](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7?ref=scottsantens.com). It will stimulate economic growth and investment in automation and create a far stronger consumer base. Basic income will not lead to rampant illegal immigration. It will incentivize immigrants to pursue legal immigration since basic income will only be received by citizens or legal residents. When it comes to discussing basic income, we need to get beyond these reflexive objections and get to the details. What would be the best way or mix of ways to fund it? Should it use a flat income tax, or a consumption tax, or a carbon tax, or a land value tax, or a transaction tax, or some mix thereof? Should it not even use tax and use something like publicly-created money instead, or perhaps some kind of [revenue earned from patents and copyrights like making Disney pay rent to keep a monopoly on Mickey Mouse](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-zombification-of-intellectual-property-and-the-tool-that-could-finally-reform-it-2ec037309837?ref=scottsantens.com)? [Which programs should we eliminate or partially eliminate](https://medium.com/economicsecproj/how-to-reform-welfare-and-taxes-to-provide-every-american-citizen-with-a-basic-income-bc67d3f4c2b8?ref=scottsantens.com) as no longer necessary and which programs should we keep? [Which tax credits, deductions, and subsidies should we eliminate](https://medium.com/economicsecproj/how-to-reform-welfare-and-taxes-to-provide-every-american-citizen-with-a-basic-income-bc67d3f4c2b8?ref=scottsantens.com) as no longer necessary and which ones should we keep? [Should kids get basic income too](http://www.scottsantens.com/why-should-adults-with-kids-get-more-basic-income-child-allowances)? If so what percentage of an adult's basic income should it be? Who should it go to? What should happen to the basic incomes of those serving prison sentences? What's the best way to get basic income to everyone? Mailing checks? Using plastic cards? Wiring to bank accounts? Should the basic income be monthly, fortnightly, or weekly? There are so many discussions we need to have around the details. We need to talk about the best ways to go about basic income, not whether to do it or not. **KG: Why do you believe the population will be compelled to do more because they are supported by a basic income?** SS: [Maslow described a hierarchy of needs as a pyramid](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-the-maslow-argument-d1346fa9a9f2?ref=scottsantens.com) where the base is our most basic needs--stuff like food and shelter, and where higher levels are things like relationships and self-improvement. Those higher needs can't be met until the lower needs are. If all you're worrying about is finding something to eat and a place to sleep, you're not working on human relationships or thinking about how to create cold fusion. Your thinking is limited. It's like wearing blinders. When the basics are covered people don't stop striving for more because everyone has more needs and wants than just food and shelter. People with basic incomes are still going to want to go out to dinners with friends. They're still going to want to go to movies, plays, sports events, and concerts. They're still going to want to buy nicer houses and nicer cars and nicer home entertainment systems. And they're definitely still going to want to do whatever they most want to do. If they love their job, it'll still be their job, unless a machine can do it. If they would rather become self-employed and create something other people will enjoy, it'll be that. Basic income is about freedom of choice in how we work. If we are really worried about people not working when they have a basic income, we should acknowledge the truth behind that fear: [we force people to work with the stick of poverty](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com) out of fear nothing will get done. In other words, that fear is a full-on endorsement of wage slavery for the good of humankind. And if you look back at history, you'll see the same argument used by plantation owners in support of slavery. But freed slaves didn't choose to do nothing as a result of their freedom did they? If we truly do want a free society, we should care about making a free market for labor, and we should recognize that the work people choose to do voluntarily is the work people do best and with the greatest motivation of all. **KG: How is this concept different from welfare programs?** SS: Welfare pays people to do nothing. Basic income pays people to do anything. What I mean by that is that welfare is a targeted program. It involves a decision of who qualifies, and then the removal of that assistance once they no longer qualify. If someone is getting welfare and then they lose that welfare once they get a job, they can end up no better off in spite of it. It's like we're taxing the poorest of the poor with the highest tax rates of all. They get a job and for every $1 they earn, they keep 15 cents or less. We are effectively punishing people given welfare for becoming employed. Basic income is never withdrawn with any amount of employment. Instead all employment adds additional income on top of the basic income. This is what I mean by a foundation. Everyone earns the basic income, and everyone who earns additional income earns additional income. It's an income floor people can build incomes on where instead of punishing people for employment, they are rewarded. Additionally, [because welfare is targeted, it introduces type II errors or false negatives](https://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/news/failure-revealed-poverty-targeting-misses-44-97-of-those-it-aims-to-reach/?ref=scottsantens.com). This means that people who we all say should get assistance, don't. They fall through the holes of our safety net like the net didn't even exist. Basic income's lack of conditions entirely eliminates all type II errors. Instead the worst thing that happens is that people who we don't see as needing assistance get assistance, otherwise known as a type I error or false positive. The former case is like not throwing a life preserver to someone who is drowning, and the latter case is like throwing a life preserver to someone who already has one. One can result in death and the other can just be seen as unnecessary. I think all of us would rather get an extra life preserver than drown. Additionally, simply adjusting the tax code is how we can reduce type I errors, by effectively clawing back income at the top for a change instead of the bottom like we do now. --- --- **ANNOUNCEMENT: If you're on Reddit, please subscribe to my new subreddit, [/r/ScottSantens](https://www.reddit.com/r/ScottSantens?ref=scottsantens.com)!** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### My time at UBI Nordic 2019 in Oslo, Norway URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/my-time-at-ubi-nordic-2019-in-oslo-norway/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T20:33:11.000Z Hi, everyone! I'm back from my trip to Norway for [UBI Nordic 2019](https://ubi-nordic.org/?ref=scottsantens.com)! I was a part of one panel there and also chaired a panel as well. Both of those were recorded on video. Panel 1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs-HTLSNIaE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs-HTLSNIaE&ref=scottsantens.com) Panel 2: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2LPRGGxRPc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2LPRGGxRPc&ref=scottsantens.com) There's also a video clip that's been made of my talk there as part of the first panel. Talk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlLzCKvg62c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlLzCKvg62c&ref=scottsantens.com) I've also just uploaded the audio of the Future of Work panel as a podcast. Podcast: [https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/UBI-Nordic-2019-Panel-on-the-Future-of-Work-e3nmqi](https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/UBI-Nordic-2019-Panel-on-the-Future-of-Work-e3nmqi?ref=scottsantens.com) I live tweeted both days as well. Day 1: [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1114441232858656768.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1114441232858656768.html?ref=scottsantens.com) Day 2: [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1114803212144365568.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1114803212144365568.html?ref=scottsantens.com) --- **ANNOUNCEMENT: If you're on Reddit, please subscribe to my new subreddit, [/r/ScottSantens](https://www.reddit.com/r/ScottSantens?ref=scottsantens.com)!** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Think Like a Martian About Money and Universal Basic Income (UBI) URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/think-like-a-martian-about-money-and-universal-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2023-04-12T22:22:48.000Z ## My Keynote Speech at Imagine Belfast Festival of Ideas & Politics *Also available in* [*Italian*](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1buVgMEvXCLek4KJqUkpVtd9VMZc%5FhYQ9MrYtvT44Ejw/edit?usp=sharing&ref=scottsantens.com)*,* [*Spanish*](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iOONoNAtNxTmA248Wf8k067eAReX1wBP/view?ref=scottsantens.com)*, and* [*Korean*](https://medium.com/@no%5Fo%5F0/%ED%99%94%EC%84%B1%EC%9D%B8%EC%B2%98%EB%9F%BC-%EC%83%9D%EA%B0%81%ED%95%98%EC%9E%90-663dc7991ff1?ref=scottsantens.com) Think like a Martian… That’s a lesson I learned years ago from a theoretical physicist named Richard Feynman. I never met him, but he was one of my teachers as a fellow human being, and that’s one of the lessons that has stuck with me the most since I learned it, so I want to, in turn, share it with you all now. There’s a way of looking at the world with new eyes, as if we know nothing about the way we do things here on this planet. One of Feynman’s examples was sleep. Imagine you’re a Martian and you arrive here on Earth for the first time, and you notice that for some reason, humans need to kind of shut down for around eight hours every rotation of the planet. Why? What’s it like? How do humans experience daily unconsciousness? Does it hurt? Do our thoughts just suddenly stop? Or do we kind of just slow down and drift away? It’s interesting isn’t it to think of things we take for granted as part of our normal daily experience? With that said, let’s talk about something else humans do, and have done for a very long time. Imagine you’re a Martian and you notice that humans give pieces of paper to each other, or slide little plastic cards, and in exchange one person gets some form of resources in return, be it biological fuel, or colorful soft outer skins to adorn themselves with, or transport from one place to another in some vehicle. As if that isn’t odd enough, some humans seem to have virtually unlimited pieces of paper, or plastic cards that can get absolutely anything in return, while others have no paper, and no plastic card, and many humans simply refuse to interact with them because of it. Perhaps oddest of all, humans appear to prevent each other from access to Earth itself. Humans are *born* here, but without those pieces of paper, they seem to not be allowed to *live* here. Think about that fact for a moment through Martian eyes. **Humans are the only species on planet Earth who have to pay to live here.** What does that even mean? How did that happen? And what the hell is money? As Alan Watts, another teacher of mine I never met, once taught me, [money isn’t real](https://www.scottsantens.com/yeah-but-who-is-going-to-pay-for-it-basic-income-alan-watts). It’s a tool of measurement like inches. It’s just a construct we use to help distribute access to scarce resources. The stuff money is meant to measure is real, but money itself is not real. To help illustrate this, Watts told a fictional story about all the banks of the world deciding one day to store all of the gold in the world on one island deep underground, so that instead of shipping gold all over the world, they could just move stacks a few feet here and there. This went on successfully for years you see. Everything was much easier. All that was required was some bookkeeping. No more hauling gold all over the world. Then some bankers decided to visit to see the gold only to discover that unbeknownst to everyone, a few years before, there had been a catastrophic subterranean earthquake and all the vaults had been swallowed up and all the gold had disappeared. But so far as the bookkeeping was concerned everything was in perfect order. What this plainly reveals is that money is nothing but bookkeeping. As Watts said, “It’s figures. It’s a way of measuring what we owe the community and what the community owes us.” But it’s also more than that. It’s trust. When we spend money, we get what we want in exchange for it because the person receiving it trusts that they will be able to do the same thing. All of us trust these little pieces of paper, because we have faith in one another to believe in its usefulness. The moment we lose faith in each other to do things for each other because of the paper we hold, money as a tool breaks. We’ve even seen it break before. Back during the Great Depression, if we as Martians looked at humans both prior to and in the middle of the Great Depression, nothing was different. The same number of humans existed. The same amount of resources existed. The same technology existed. As Watts described, it was like showing up one day at a construction site only to be told by the foreman to go ahead and go home, because that day, they were simply all out of inches. All out! No inches today, everyone! So my Martian friends, just how much intelligent life is there here on Earth after all? As of just recently, there are now two human beings currently worth over $100 billion dollars each. It’s hard to comprehend what that means, so let me suggest imagining you are a billionaire and I’m broke. The wealth gap between you and them is $99 billion dollars. The wealth gap between me and you is only $1 billion dollars. So basically, compared to them, as billionaires, you are 99 times more broke than I am, relatively speaking. It’s extremely difficult to comprehend just how much money $100 billion dollars is. Saying the words is just words. Word labels give it the illusion of comprehension, but it’s just that, an illusion. If we were to count to 1,000 right now, at a rate of one every second, it would take 17 minutes. Counting to a million would take 12 days. Counting to 100 billion would take 3,200 years. 3,200 years ago, was 1181 BC, and the Trojan War had just ended. Another way to think of this amount of money is that Jeff Bezos is accumulating money at a rate of about $150,000 per minute, or around $2,500 per second. If he walked by a pile of $25,000, it would literally not be worth his time if it took more than 10 seconds to stuff it all into his pockets. What’s it even mean to say Jeff Bezos is worth $150 billion dollars? Most of that value is in Amazon stock. What’s that mean? Those are special units of measurement that people want because they tend to grow in value over time unlike ordinary units of measurement that tend to decrease in value over time. But what it amounts to is that Jeff Bezos has hundreds of billions of times more access to the collective productive output of the entire human race, than a significant portion of the entire world population combined. I just want us to think for a moment about what that means. Why is it that one human can have virtually unlimited access to the natural and collective resources of the Earth, while billions are actively prevented from any access at all, without exchanging increments of the limited amount of time they have alive, for access to the life-sustaining resources being withheld from them. It’s withheld. That’s one of the most alien things of all. [Long long ago, nothing was withheld](https://www.scottsantens.com/wouldn-t-a-basic-income-just-be-stealing-from-those-who-earned-their-money). Life required work, but it had no price. The Earth was a free-for-all of land, animals, and vegetation. We didn’t even trade with each other. It was mostly a gift economy built on trust where we gave stuff to each other and did stuff for each other, and then felt the social obligation to do the same for others as members of a community. Then one day, some humans drew lines on the ground and shouted “Mine!”, then went about accumulating more and passing it to their kids who passed it onto their kids, and now here we are, where everyone not born into wealth has to sell their lives in order to live what’s left of their lives. This has been going on for so long, that humans have grown used to it as normal. People actually fight now over the right to sell their lives to others in order to live. Those who can’t find a paid occupation are left to potentially starve, and those who don’t wish to starve are willing to work for any pittance in competition for the available jobs. It’s normal that people go without food and shelter. It’s normal that people are constantly worried about losing their jobs. It’s normal that people live stress-filled lives, month to month, never certain if they’ll obtain enough pieces of paper that month to prove their worth as human beings. It’s like the fable about the fox and the grapes, where humanity decided that because it couldn’t reach the grapes, they must be sour anyway. [The freedom to live without masters is sour](http://autonomy.work/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/The-Desire-For-Work-As-An-Adaptive-Preference-V2-.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)? Once I started seeing things in this way, I couldn’t unsee it. It’s all wrong. It’s immoral. As a Martian, I just won’t stand for it. The productive capacity of the human species is immense. Earth is a spaceship rocketing through the cosmos full of passengers who don’t even know they’re all billionaires. We have the resources, we have the knowledge, we have the people power, we have the technology, to create a world of abundance for everyone. All that’s stopping us really, is a thing we call trust. That’s the one thing we don’t yet have an abundance of, but we can change that. Thinking as a Martian, if humans were to decide to trust everyone a minimum amount, such that no human had no trust, but every human had some trust, and that amount of trust was sufficient for everyone to obtain a minimum amount of access to the resources necessary for life, then [everything would change](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hgus7oM25s&ref=scottsantens.com). That’s what all of this comes down to. Can we as a species, trust each other enough to say: Yes, our ancestors put locks on everything long ago, but here are the keys. I trust you to unlock your own food, because I know you need it. I trust you to unlock your own housing and your own clothing, because I know you need it. I trust that you want to do useful things that are inherently valuable, for yourself and for your community, not because you’re forced to, but because you want to. **I trust you.** That’s the message of Unconditional Basic Income. People tend to get caught up in the amount of money, but UBI goes deeper than money. Money, and the amount of money, is the least important aspect of UBI. It’s just the vehicle for what’s being expressed, which is trust. I trust you this much unconditionally. I will continue trusting you at least this much every month for the rest of your life. I don’t own this planet, or the long history of human accomplishment. [It’s not mine to withhold from you](https://fermatslibrary.com/s/agrarian-justice?ref=scottsantens.com). Here. I trust you will put it to your own best use, in ways I never would have considered, because I’m not you. Here. You don’t need to do something for me first. That’s not how trust is built. Trust is given. And if you want more access to resources than this, you can [choose to find voluntary paid employment](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com), or you can employ yourself, or you can refuse employment and refuse to attach a price tag to what you choose to do instead. You are just as valuable to me and the rest of our community as a volunteer, and as someone who cares for others. I trust that the life you will pursue with your basic needs unconditionally secured will be one of meaningful purpose because all of us want that. I trust we are alike in that way, that we both seek to be part of something bigger than ourselves, and that [the best work is done not because you have no choice, but because it ](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-monsters-inc-argument-for-unconditional-basic-income-3b22b63eed3e?ref=scottsantens.com)[*is*](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-monsters-inc-argument-for-unconditional-basic-income-3b22b63eed3e?ref=scottsantens.com)[ your choice](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-monsters-inc-argument-for-unconditional-basic-income-3b22b63eed3e?ref=scottsantens.com). [I trust you to explore the outer limits of human knowledge](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-future-of-education-and-work-basic-income), to learn, because learning is one of life’s lifelong pleasures. [I trust you to form meaningful relationships with those around you](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-will-likely-increase-social-cohesion-aceb337262e0?ref=scottsantens.com), as part of communities large and small, because social bonds are important to us. [I trust you to engage in the practice of self-government](https://medium.com/basic-income/what-we-need-to-truly-thrive-democracy-and-unconditional-basic-income-ccdbe72cefa5?ref=scottsantens.com), to be informed and to help inform others, and even to run for office for the privilege of being my own representative in government. **I trust you as a human being, to live your life on** ***your own*** **terms, not mine.** This is how a Martian sees UBI. The question then becomes how do we get from here to there? How do we start trusting each other? This is where pilots and legislation come in. We already know that poverty hurts all of us. We already know that highly unequal societies, and societies full of chronic instability and stress is actively harmful. We don’t need more data to learn that people need food to eat and roofs to sleep under, and that when provided money, they buy those things, because they need them. We don’t need more evidence that when the shackles are removed from people’s necks and the whips are taken away from their backs, that people choose to keep working. We have [piles of evidence](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1040683616488103936?ref=scottsantens.com) that a world *without* UBI is hugely expensive in so many ways. Not only does it lead to worse health and more crime, but it leads to lower productivity thanks to rampant lack of engagement in all the work we aren’t truly choosing. It leads to reduced entrepreneurship, less innovation, and more self-medication of human misery. It leads to less education, learning, and knowledge, as people seek out money instead of self-improvement. **We already have the evidence. What we lack is will.** So as we go forward designing new experiments to gather new data, let’s see them as what they are. They are human trust experiments, to test over and over again, if we should treat each other as human beings *deserve* to be treated. Each new pilot is important, not so much for the data, but because it’s doing on a small scale something that needs to be done everywhere and as often and for as long as it can be done — **treating people with goddamn *human* *dignity***. It’s hard for us to take big steps forward, and so lots of little steps can eventually accomplish that big step. Pilots are those little steps. But I’d rather see little UBIs. If we’re going to dip our toes in the water, instead of treating thousands of people with thousands of dollars worth of human dignity, let’s try also to just start treating millions of people with hundreds of dollars worth of human dignity. As Ontario most recently has made tragically clear, [pilots end](https://medium.com/basic-income/doug-ford-cancelled-ontarios-basic-income-pilot-experiment-because-it-was-working-75dd504d5fe6?ref=scottsantens.com). Actual policies however, especially when fully universal, are far more permanent. I think we need to be more open to actual policy steps, however small in amounts. Yes, [let’s eliminate personal tax allowances](https://inews.co.uk/opinion/comment/why-everyone-earning-less-than-125000-should-be-given-48-per-week-by-abolishing/?ref=scottsantens.com) and other tax subsidies and instead provide those tax expenditures universally as a small UBI. Yes, let’s create [wealth funds like in Alaska](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/social-wealth-fund/?ref=scottsantens.com) and distribute small dividends universally. Yes, let’s look at what we’re already doing, and just cut the strings. I think the biggest steps we can take in a world where distrust is the default setting of societies everywhere, is to create policies of universal trust. Where universal trust is not yet politically possible, trust experiments can move us forward, but let us always remember that all of this is about our civilization learning to trust. Keep in mind that word too — civilization. Unconditional Basic Income is not just a big idea. It’s a *civilizing* idea. **It’s evolutionary, not revolutionary**. Without UBI, humanity cannot yet call itself civilized or even all that evolved, really. And here’s the thing too about civilization: It’s the ultimate example of something for nothing. I’ve shared what I’ve learned from Richard Feynman and Alan Watts because they’re both no longer alive. There’s nothing I did or could have done to deserve their teachings. I never knew them. They never knew me. The wisdom they shared with me was a gift. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*ZPDOjUAkhknGi4IbFqqzkA.png) **All of civilization is a gift from the past**. Every single one of us alive today inherited this world from those who walked on it before us. Do any of the children born tomorrow deserve that they are being born into a world with cheap solar power, self-driving cars, AI-powered robotics, running water, sewage treatment facilities, every book ever written, calculus, and even the language I’m using right now to frame and communicate my thoughts? Did the children born centuries ago deserve to be born into a world plagued with smallpox, people owning other people as property, and the burning of women who dared to be born left-handed? No. When and where we are born is not deserved. It’s not earned. It’s given to us by those who themselves received the gift of civilization, built upon it, and passed on new knowledge that wouldn’t have ever been achieved if every generation was always starting over from scratch. We don’t deserve our smartphones just because we paid for them. We have the privilege to be walking around with a small supercomputer in our pockets, and all we can ever do to come even close to deserving it, is to use them and the rest of technology to build higher the sum total of human knowledge and achievement, to then pass on to those after us who we will never meet. As the saying goes, society grows great when the old plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in. [UBI is an inheritance being withheld](https://medium.com/economicsecproj/technological-inheritance-and-the-case-for-a-basic-income-ded373a69c8e?ref=scottsantens.com) by those who believe the shade is only for them. Civilization is about paying it forward. It’s about working to create a world that’s even better than this one, where even more people have the opportunity to live lives of even greater flourishing, meaning, and discovery. In Star Trek, another dead teacher of mine, Gene Roddenberry depicted the future as it could be. I want us to reach that future, and I think we can through UBI, but there’s something else I want us to consider about the Star Trek universe he created. It’s widely known to fans, but as the story goes, humanity was discovered by our fellow neighbors in the galaxy, not by Martians, but by Vulcans upon our technological achievement of warp drive, and thus the ability to travel faster than light. Our crowning achievement was a technological one. But what if it’s not really about technology? **What if humanity’s crowning achievement is not technological but sociological?** **What if the test of what counts as an advanced civilization is not the tools we create, but** ***how we treat each other*** **?** Think about it. As a Martian, as a Vulcan, as anyone not from this world, are you ever going to trust a species that has never learned to trust itself? I think that’s a test we have yet to pass. --- ***Special thanks to: Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Floyd Marinescu, Roy Bahat, Andrew Stern, Aaron T Schultz, Larry Cohen, Ace Bailey, Albert Wenger, Daragh Ward, Gisele Huff, Joanna Zarach, Justin Walsh, Robert Collins, Stephane Boisvert, Victor Lau, Peter T Knight, Arjun Carl Watts, Carrie McLachlan, Che Wagner, Chris Rauchle, Daniel Brockman, Danielle and Michael Texeira, David Ihnen, George Scialabba, Gerald Huff, Gray Scott, Jack Canty, Jan Smole, Jess Allen, Joe Ballou, Matt DeKok, Max Henrion, Michael Honey, Michael Hrenka, Myi Baril, Natalie Foster, Paul Godsmark, Rachel Perkins, Reid Rusonik, Vladimir Baranov, Will Ware, Alvin Miranda, Bryan Herdliska, Casey L Young, Chris Boraski, Chris Smothers, Dylan Taylor, E. Davies, Elizabeth Balcar, Elizabeth Corker, Georg Baumann, Janos Abel, Jill Weiss, Kai Wong, Kev Roberts, Kirk Israel, Lee Mark, MARK4UBI, Meshack Vee, Oliver Bestwalter, Thomas Welsh, Tim Timothy, P O’Connor, Valentina Petricciuolo, Villi Haukka, Walter Schaerer, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** ## [Would you like to see your name here too?](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*HywQLw3EsmfGE7QNLc7_yQ.png) **Anyone is welcome to translate and post this article anywhere in other languages, and I will share a link to your translation here:** [**Italian**](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1buVgMEvXCLek4KJqUkpVtd9VMZc%5FhYQ9MrYtvT44Ejw/edit?usp=sharing&ref=scottsantens.com)**,** [**Spanish**](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iOONoNAtNxTmA248Wf8k067eAReX1wBP/view?ref=scottsantens.com)**,** [**Korean**](https://medium.com/@no%5Fo%5F0/%ED%99%94%EC%84%B1%EC%9D%B8%EC%B2%98%EB%9F%BC-%EC%83%9D%EA%B0%81%ED%95%98%EC%9E%90-663dc7991ff1?ref=scottsantens.com)**.-** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### My Unconditional Basic Income Testimony for Maryland's House Ways and Means Committee URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/my-unconditional-basic-income-ubi-testimony-for-maryland/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T20:35:05.000Z ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/79ed7723-0223-4b77-8fd0-cc1706d2ce3f/Maryland-20UBI-20YT.png) **[Click here to optionally listen instead of read this post](https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/My-Unconditional-Basic-Income-Testimony-for-Marylands-House-Ways-and-Means-Committee-e3c9ff?ref=scottsantens.com).** *In mid-February I was contacted by the legislative aide for [Delegate Gabriel Acevero of Maryland](https://twitter.com/gacevero?ref=scottsantens.com) who has introduced [a bill](http://mgaleg.maryland.gov/2019RS/bills/hb/hb1089F.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) to create [a social wealth fund](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/social-wealth-fund/?ref=scottsantens.com) intended to eventually pay out [a cash dividend to every resident of Maryland](https://jacobinmag.com/2019/02/maryland-socialist-policy-vaughn-stewart-gabriel-acevero?ref=scottsantens.com). As a prominent advocate for UBI, I was asked to provide a couple pages of written testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee about why such a bill is so important. The following is my prepared testimony as submitted for the hearing that took place on March 1, 2019.* Dear Chair Kaiser, Vice Chair Walker, and all the members of the House Ways and Means Committee: My name is Scott Santens and as someone who has been self-employed since 1997, I’ve been living the future of work since I was 20 years old. As someone who studied both engineering physics and cognitive psychology in college, I have a mind for what works versus what I might want to work, and how people think versus how I might assume they think. Somewhere along the way, I began to be considered among the world’s leading experts on the idea of an Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) and today I’m writing you in support of HB 1089 2019. The world is changing. That has always been true, but the world is now changing faster than ever. Technology is a tool we invented long ago to enable us to do more with less, and it’s a tool whose abilities, unlike ours, expand exponentially. At the dawn of the 20th century, everyone wanted a better horse. A decade later, hardly anyone wanted a horse, because the car had arrived. Pretty much all the horse jobs were essentially automated away, and the role of the horse in our lives changed forever. We as humans are the next to experience this sudden automation of almost everything we do in exchange for money. Automation has always created new and better jobs in the past, but [this time it really is different](https://medium.com/basic-income/deep-learning-is-going-to-teach-us-all-the-lesson-of-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines-7c6442e37a49?ref=scottsantens.com). This time, thanks to the invention of limited forms of artificial intelligence that are able to learn, in combination with increasingly capable machines with decreasing price points, many forms of work will soon no longer make economic sense for a person to perform. You see, all work can be divided into four types: routine and nonroutine, cognitive and manual. Routine work is the same stuff day in and day out, while nonroutine work varies. Within these two varieties is the work that requires mostly our brains (cognitive) and the work that requires mostly our bodies (manual). Where once all four types saw growth, the stuff that is routine hasn’t grown since 1990\. This happened because routine labor is easiest for technology to shoulder. Distressingly, it’s exactly routine work that once formed the basis of the American middle class. It’s routine manual work that Henry Ford transformed by paying people middle class wages to perform, and it’s routine cognitive work that once filled office spaces. Such jobs are now increasingly unavailable, leaving only two kinds of jobs that have maintained promising outlooks: jobs that require so little knowledge that we pay people little to do them, and jobs that require so much knowledge that we pay people quite well to do them. We have arrived at a new point in human history however when all four forms of work can now be increasingly performed more capably and more cheaply by servants made of silicon. It’s important to understand both: capability and cost. Over time, capability will do nothing but improve, and over time, cost will go nowhere but down. This is not a matter of a future that may happen, either. [It’s already in the process of happening](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-real-story-of-automation-beginning-with-one-simple-chart-8b95f9bad71b?ref=scottsantens.com). Most Americans know that we’ve been eliminating our manufacturing jobs, but only about [one in four know that we’re also manufacturing more now than ever](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/25/most-americans-unaware-that-as-u-s-manufacturing-jobs-have-disappeared-output-has-grown/?ref=scottsantens.com). We’re simply able to produce far more with fewer workers. A small percentage of the technologically unemployed are finding new and better jobs, but the overwhelming majority are having to find new ways of working with far less pay and far more financial insecurity. [All of the net employment growth since 2005 has been in alternative work arrangements](http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/lkatz/files/katz%5Fkrueger%5Fcws%5Fv3.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) – defined as temp workers, on-call workers, contract workers, and freelancers. They are jobs our existing safety nets aren’t really designed for. They lack protections and benefits. They lack stability and security. Incomes are insufficient and vary greatly month to month. This is all a recipe for disaster, and we’re already seeing it happen. Life expectancy is falling and has been since 2014\. [Deaths of despair](https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/6%5Fcasedeaton.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) are an official category on the rise where people are increasingly taking their own lives, or medicating themselves to death using alcohol, opioids, or other drugs. These have been particularly destroying the lives of rural white men and women without college degrees since 2000, with mortality rates going nowhere but up. All of this is what got me looking into the idea back in 2013 of just providing everyone a flat monthly stipend without conditions, a source of income that everyone could depend on to always be there, a kind of Social Security for All. What would the effects be? What evidence was out there to apply to this question? It was then that I discovered the experiments with guaranteeing incomes back [under Nixon in the 1970s](http://www.widerquist.com/karl/Articles--scholarly/Failure2communicate.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), and the experiment in Canada in the town of [Dauphin](http://www.livableincome.org/rMM-EForget08.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) that for five years effectively eliminated poverty. I discovered the experiments that were done in [Namibia](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) and [India](http://sewabharat.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Report-on-Unconditional-Cash-Transfer-Pilot-Project-in-Madhya-Pradesh.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) this century with fully universal basic income, where everyone in a defined area got the same amount. I dove into the studies of [unconditional cash transfer programs](https://www.odi.org/publications/10505-cash-transfers-what-does-evidence-say-rigorous-review-impacts-and-role-design-and-implementation?ref=scottsantens.com) all over the world. And I looked right in our own backyard at [Cherokee dividends](https://thecorrespondent.com/4664/why-do-the-poor-make-such-poor-decisions/179307480-39a74caf?ref=scottsantens.com) and the annual dividend in [Alaska](https://iseralaska.org/static/legacy%5Fpublication%5Flinks/bien%5Fxiii%5Fak%5Fpfd%5Flessons.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) that goes to every resident of Alaska as a right of residency. Like a puzzle that came together over time, it eventually became clear I was looking at a picture that has so far eluded us. Here’s what I saw: [trusting people with money to decide for themselves how to use it is profoundly transformative](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1040683616488103936?ref=scottsantens.com). Our existing systems built around conditions and non-universality are inefficient and counterproductive. They are a disincentive to work through their removal with work. For those they are intended to reach, they tend to exclude more people than they include. They prevent choices. They are full of stigma. They can be devastating for those with disabilities, especially the ones they don’t consider to be disabled, they ignore unpaid work, and they simply aren’t designed for alternative work arrangements. That is, they are not designed to exist in this century. They are antiquated. They are the past. If there’s one thing you need to take away from reading this testimony, it’s that the way we currently do things is far too expensive. Poverty is expensive. Extreme inequality is expensive. Financial insecurity is expensive. Chronic stress is expensive. According to a 2018 study from the Brown School at Washington University, [childhood poverty alone costs us $1.03 trillion per year](https://source.wustl.edu/2018/04/childhood-poverty-cost-u-s-1-03-trillion-in-a-year-study-finds/?ref=scottsantens.com). That’s more than the net cost of a national poverty-level basic income guarantee. What we are doing is wrongheaded. We mean well with our systems designed to target assistance in the forms we think are best to those who we think need it most, but it’s wrong. It’s all wrong. How do I know it’s so wrong? Because that’s what [the evidence](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/wiki/index?ref=scottsantens.com#wiki%5Fthat.27s%5Fall%5Fvery%5Fwell.2C%5Fbut%5Fwhere.27s%5Fthe%5Fevidence.3F) shows. When people are provided cash without conditions we see all of the following improvements to varying degrees: hospitalization rates go down, crime goes down, stress goes down, birth weights improve, nutrition improves, entrepreneurship increases, educational outcomes improve, social cohesion grows, savings go up, debts go down, home ownership rates increase, behavioral disorders decrease, cognitive functioning improves, and usage of substances like alcohol actually slightly decreases. This is only a partial list. How can there be so many improvements? It mainly comes down to three things: people need enough money to pay for what they need, people need enough stability in their incomes to plan ahead and worry less, and people need to exist in environments where inequality isn’t so extreme so as to erode social bonds. All of these factors are improved by a flat amount of income, provided universally on a regular basis, that functions as a foundation upon which to build one’s life as an individual and as part of a community of individuals operating on the same equal foundation. This is why UBI is so important. It improves society across a wide range of factors and it functions as a 21st century safety net built as a floor that’s always there to support everyone instead of a net for people to fall through or get trapped in. If this floor is designed to rise as productivity rises, it functions as a way of making technology work for everyone as an automation dividend where everyone is better off with automation instead of most people being worse off. It is the policy of the future, and it’s a policy that goes back all the way to our country’s own founding, through the writings of [Thomas Paine](https://fermatslibrary.com/s/agrarian-justice?ref=scottsantens.com). It is thus also a profoundly American idea beloved by both [Milton Friedman](https://medium.com/basic-income/why-milton-friedman-supported-a-guaranteed-income-5-reasons-da6e628f6070?ref=scottsantens.com) and [Martin Luther King, Jr](http://www.scottsantens.com/martin-luther-king-jr-basic-income-mlk). alike. It’s an idea that is not left or right, but forward. You have the opportunity in Maryland to help lead the way by leapfrogging over Alaska, and showing that it’s possible to create a fund whose stakeholders are all of Maryland, and who could then receive a monthly dividend paid universally as a right. That’s really the key too, that the cash people receive on a monthly basis be seen as rightfully theirs. No one in Alaska argues about how their dividend is provided to the “undeserving.” There is no undeserving in Alaska. The natural resources of Alaska belong to Alaskans. The same is true in Maryland, but can be true to an even greater degree, as there is more natural wealth than just oil, and there is more collective wealth than just natural wealth. In a study by Gary Flomenhoft titled, [“Applying the Alaska model in a Resource-Poor State: The Example of Vermont](https://www.academia.edu/20148953/Applying%5Fthe%5FAlaska%5Fmodel%5Fin%5Fa%5FResource-Poor%5FState?ref=scottsantens.com),” he concluded it was possible to create a universal monthly dividend there at least equivalent to Alaska’s dividend, and possibly even as high as $10,000 per year. The wealth is out there. It’s just a matter of no longer giving it away and seeing it instead as Alaska sees their oil - something partially owned by everyone. You have the opportunity to be a pioneering state, to show the way forward this century, by doing two things that together are nothing short of evolutionary. The first is to recognize citizens as co-owners of natural and collective wealth, and the second is to trust them enough to treat them as stockholders instead of the inherently lazy in need of poverty to drive them, and bureaucrats to make their decisions for them. Maryland can be the first state to truly emancipate its citizens with real freedom and economic justice for all. As one future horse to another future horse, I pray you consider these words well. Regards, Scott Santens --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### One Observed Effect of Unconditional Basic Income: Better More Reliable Transportation URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/one-observed-effect-of-unconditional-basic-income-better-more-reliable-transportation/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T20:36:11.000Z ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/761ca091-15fd-47d1-b83d-735d3e8a0436/UBI-20and-20travel.png) Unconditional basic income means many things to many people, being that cash offers total freedom of choice on what good or service to exchange it for, but one particularly common thing it allows people to newly obtain, who feel they need the most help in obtaining it, is transportation. In the US, 17% of household expenditures are spent on getting from one place to another, which is even more than food at 13% of household expenditures. Transportation is what allows us to get to our jobs. Without reliable transportation, stable work can be virtually impossible. Transportation can thus be considered one of our costs of working. It’s a cost not accrued to the same degree by those who are non-employed, but it is a financial burden added to the backs of those who are employed or self-employed. The cost of transportation is thus a barrier to work by those who can’t afford the cost. In the Ontario basic income pilot, [baseline survey data](https://hamiltonpoverty.ca/preview/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/OBIP-Baseline-Survey-Preliminary-Analysis-1.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) revealed that the number one need participants felt they needed help with was transportation. [Survey responses](http://lindsayadvocate.ca/more-than-a-third-of-basic-income-recipients-went-back-to-school-survey/?ref=scottsantens.com) of 10% of the OBIP participants showed that 20% of them could afford transportation in response to the question, "How did basic income change your work life?"but because the pilot was cancelled before any official data could be collected, we’ll never know just how much of an impact the basic income had on transportation there, but we do know how much of an impact an existing UBI has had on transportation elsewhere. Among Sovereign Native American Nations in the US, tribe members have been receiving dividends for decades, and in qualitative research of the effects of those payments, [Thomas Klemm in an interview with the Basic Income Podcast](https://basicincomepodcast.com/podcast/native-american-experience-cash-dividends-feat-thomas-klemm/?ref=scottsantens.com) shared one seemingly universal positive impact - better more reliable transportation. > So the biggest thing that everyone said that I talked to is they have better more reliable transportation. It's hard to overstate how important reliable transportation is in rural areas. It's the difference between having a job, getting to doctor's appointments. It's everything. There's no public transportation out where I'm from so that was the biggest one that everyone mentioned up front when I asked them what has been the positive effect. Almost, everyone, the first thing they said was ‘I had better transportation.’ Consider this observed effect on an observed obstacle to employment and then consider just how realistic it is to tell people to “get a job” if they can’t afford to reach them. Then consider that with UBI, reaching a job becomes far more likely, as does reaching one’s purpose, which is a destination too few people ever reach in a world without basic income. --- *This short blog post is available as a two-minute video on YouTube which you can also [download via Dropbox](https://www.dropbox.com/s/tt069zjyzbiqbrd/UBI%20and%20Transport%20%28Made%20by%20Headliner%29.mp4?dl=0&ref=scottsantens.com) for your own embedding on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### What is Unconditional Basic Income in One Word? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/what-is-unconditional-basic-income-in-one-word/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T20:38:11.000Z I've been in a couple rooms of around 50 people or so where we were asked to describe in one word, why we believe unconditional basic income is important, and each time I was impressed with the great variety of responses, but also how certain responses were expressed again and again. Inspired by those responses, I posed the same question on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1088171204807151617?ref=scottsantens.com), [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/scottsantens/photos/a.1632628506972203/2311880769046970/?type=3&theater), and [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/comments/ajeyr2/in%5Fone%5Fword%5Fwhy%5Fdo%5Fyou%5Fsupport%5Fthe%5Fidea%5Fof/?ref=scottsantens.com) recently to see just how many responses to that question I could get, to get a much wider look at what people see in UBI, and which ways of looking at UBI are most universally important to people. > Limiting yourself to just one word, which word would you use to best describe why you support the idea of unconditional basic income? Which word in your opinion best justifies its importance? > > Examples: potential, freedom, dignity, trust, justice, rights, solidarity, efficiency…[January 23, 2019](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1088171204807151617?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) I created a [spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NdTEP5d0XOns2fwpk2Gl40oF92sd-D25zvDHwnmm%5FhY/edit?usp=sharing&ref=scottsantens.com) for all the responses and counted "likes" as votes, so for example if one word was expressed three times, it would have a weight of three, and if another word was expressed once, but was liked twice, that too would have a weight of three. The result was almost 1,000 responses from over 500 people. The top 20 responses and their frequency of response are as follows: 1. Freedom - 107 2. Dignity - 53 3. Security - 44 4. Equality - 36 5. Human - 35 6. Fairness - 31 7. Sustainability - 27 8. Stability - 26 9. Opportunity - 25 | Justice -25 10. Evolution - 23 11. Empowerment - 22 12. Safety - 21 13. Happiness - 18 | Equity - 18 14. Civility - 17 15. Automation - 15 16. Progress - 14 | Compassion - 14 17. Survival - 13 18. Efficiency - 12 | Solidarity - 12 19. Hope - 10 | Decency - 10 | Society - 10 | Startrek - 10 | Balance - 10 20. Peace - 8 | Hunger - 8 | Necessity - 8 | Capitalism - 8 | Harmony I then imported all the responses into [Word Art](https://wordart.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) to create a word cloud to better visualize the data. Here is the result: ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/a5eec0b6-5282-48d7-ac93-15e69cacf2ad/UBI%20word%20cloud%20(936)%20HQ%204k%20plus%20text_large.png) Here's [a link to download an ultra-high resolution (7406 x 4320) version](https://www.dropbox.com/s/31lxe89gtrok7bw/word%20cloud%20spectrum%20%28936%29%20v8%20HQ.png?dl=0&ref=scottsantens.com) for whatever purposes you like. For those interested, I've also made it available on some shirts and mugs on my [Spreadshirt shop](https://shop.spreadshirt.com/supportbasicincome/?ref=scottsantens.com). ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/e69ee0d9-5d9c-401c-8605-7636b1aa1b0a/Show-20Your-20Support-20for-20Basic-20Income-20shirts.png) Everyone is welcome to use [this data](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NdTEP5d0XOns2fwpk2Gl40oF92sd-D25zvDHwnmm%5FhY/edit?usp=sharing&ref=scottsantens.com) for your own research, or to create your own visualizations, or to build off it to create an even larger database. If it's one word that describes unconditional basic income to the largest percentage of people, it's **freedom.** May that and all the rest of the ways of describing UBI inspire you as much as it inspires me. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### What is There to Learn From Finland’s Basic Income Experiment? Did It Succeed or Fail? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/what-is-there-to-learn-from-finlands-basic-income-experiment-did-it-succeed-or-fail/ Last updated: 2022-02-19T00:19:12.000Z ## Evaluating the Preliminary Results of a Partial UBI and Slightly Less Bureaucracy **Update:* Since I published this article, the official final report was released in early 2020\. You can read a summary of the findings [here](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/an-experiment-to-inform-universal-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com).* After two years of experimentation within a two-year experimental design, Finland released on February 8, 2019, preliminary results of their basic income experiment. For anyone who reads [the full report](http://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/161361/Report%5FThe%20Basic%20Income%20Experiment%2020172018%20in%20Finland.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), it can be considered nothing short of both promising and fascinating, but what it can’t be called is complete, because the results are still preliminary and based on only the first half of the experiment. With that said, [as is also true of the experiments in the U.S. and Canada in the 1970s](https://www.academia.edu/1159217/A%5Ffailure%5Fto%5Fcommunicate%5FWhat%5Fif%5Fanything%5Fcan%5Fwe%5Flearn%5Ffrom%5Fthe%5Fnegative%5Fincome%5Ftax%5Fexperiments?ref=scottsantens.com), there are certainly some conclusions that can and can’t be drawn within the proper context of the experiment’s design. But to reach these conclusions, we’ll first need to go over some of the nitty-gritty details of how the experiment was designed, and what it didn’t even try to measure. ## The Context Finland’s experiment rocked the headlines of the world when it was announced back in 2015\. What went under the headlines was that [this experiment was to be part of a new Finland where the scientific method would be applied to public policy](https://www.demoshelsinki.fi/en/2015/12/08/this-is-why-finland-is-able-to-implement-the-basic-income-experiment/?ref=scottsantens.com). It would be a landmark in the history of policy making where instead of endlessly speculating and arguing, potential new policies would be considered, tested, and compared to existing policies and other alternative policies, before implementing what was found to be the best one. Finland’s goal was to become the first truly experimental nation in the world, where policies are based on science, not ideologies or myths. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*5I-52uyEvUkvfW9QtrQyBQ.jpeg) [*(Design for Government: Human-centric governance through experiments Demos Helsinki 2015)*](https://www.demoshelsinki.fi/en/projektit/design-for-government/?ref=scottsantens.com) It is within this context that experimenting with basic income began its way through a process where what was once hoped to be a grand first in finally putting the idea of unconditional basic income to the test at a national level became a not-so-grand test of slightly less conditional unemployment benefits. The question transformed from “What would a random person do if provided an unconditional basic income instead of most existing conditional benefits, and what would the effect then be on both the individual and society?” to “What would an unemployed person do if provided a partial basic income in addition to many existing conditional benefits, and what would the effect be on only the individual?” That may seem like a fairly small difference, but it’s actually quite large. You see, unconditional basic income is meant to be about entire communities, not just the individuals within those communities. [**It’s about universalism**](https://medium.com/basic-income/basic-income-and-the-new-universalism-a934d1a81714?ref=scottsantens.com). That’s where the bulk of its effects emerge, from universal application. It’s also mostly about the employed, because most members of society *are* employed. To only test the unemployed is to therefore miss out on how most of the population would be impacted by UBI. To be fair to the researchers, they knew this. They are scientists trained in science. Politicians however are not, and politicians are the ones who ultimately made the decisions. As a result, the experiment as implemented was extremely limited in design, and given the opportunity to expand the experiment from only looking at the unemployed to looking at the employed as well, Finland’s politicians, the same ones who claim to want an evidence-based Finland, chose to keep the experiment limited in scope. [**It was that decision which was misreported around the world as Finland’s decision to cancel their basic income experiment.**](https://www.kela.fi/web/en/-/contrary-to-reports-the-basic-income-experiment-in-finland-will-continue-until-the-end-of-2018?ref=scottsantens.com) Finland of course never canceled their experiment, despite all the headlines written to the contrary. It was a two-year experiment that took place over 2017 and 2018\. Because of the way data is available for research in Finland, there is a year gap, so the employment data from 2017 is available in 2019, and the data from 2018 will not be available until 2020\. Thus the evaluation phase of the experiment will not be fully completed until next year. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*bpSyPda9gV9Cz9lU_sv04g.jpeg) It is within this context, that we need to understand Finland’s experiment, and how it really wasn’t a test of UBI. It was a test of slightly reducing the marginal tax rates experienced by the unemployed, and also slightly reducing the amount of bureaucracy they experience. Both of course are elements of UBI, and so there is still information to learn from such an experiment, but we must be careful with what conclusions can and should not be drawn, and it requires some knowledge of scientific methodology to fully appreciate why. ## The Experiment As a quick introduction to scientific experimentation, by creating two groups that are mostly identical to each other (preferably through random selection) by changing one variable in one group (the treatment group) and leaving the other group unchanged (the control group), we can determine what are the effects of manipulating that variable on other variables we’re interested in. What we change is called the independent variable, and what is changed as a result are the dependent variables. In Finland’s experiment, the control group was 173,222 unemployed Finns. The treatment group was a randomly selected group of 2,000 also unemployed Finns. You may think how the experiment was run, was to give them basic income instead of unemployment benefits, but you would be mostly wrong, and only partially right. The single greatest problem with the design of the basic income experiment, aside from the exclusion of employed Finns, and the lack of using a saturation site to test everyone in an entire town or city, is that **the treatment group continued receiving 83.3% of the conditional benefits as the control group.** > The single greatest problem with the design of Finland’s basic income experiment is that **the treatment group continued receiving 83.3% of the conditional benefits as the control group.** That fact is extremely important to understand, and it should be considered nothing short of shocking. If the primary goal of the experiment was to see what would happen if people stopped losing benefits in exchange for employment, then the treatment group should have received as close to zero conditional benefits as possible. If you don’t understand why, put yourself in their shoes. Imagine you are receiving 560 euros per month in basic income (or about $630). Although true that if you accept employment you will get to keep that money where usually you would lose it under typical unemployment benefits, in this experiment, accepting employment would still mean losing the benefits you are receiving for your family, losing your other benefits, and possibly even losing your housing assistance. That’s still a lot of disincentive to work isn’t it? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1318/1*4pqXcjwmVfQk8SdCFMujkA.png) **Finland’s basic income experiment didn’t test the removal of the work disincentive which conditional benefits create. It only** ***slightly*** ***reduced them***. Again, the experimenters themselves appreciated this. It’s the politicians making the decisions who didn’t. The experimenters hands were tied. How? According the the report itself, it mostly came down to kids… > It is more surprising to note that **the amount of the unemployment benefits paid to the treatment group is in fact only about one-fifth smaller than the amount of the benefits paid to the control group**. This is a direct consequence of the Act on the basic income experiment, according to which **unemployed persons must apply for unemployment benefits just as before if they are entitled to unemployment benefits that are higher than the basic income**. In this way, especially **families with children who received a basic income were forced to apply for unemployment benefits in order to receive child increases**. According to the research group that planned the experiment, the child increases should have been included in the basic income, whereby the basic income would have also been a truly unconditional benefit for families with children. It did not turn out this way, however. This feature of the experiment means that **a majority of individuals in the treatment group did not benefit from the lower bureaucracy and the fact that active labor market measures were non-compulsory** due to choosing to apply for the standard unemployment benefit. In other words, it was a political decision in an experiment about replacing unemployment benefits with basic income to require people receiving basic income to continue applying for unemployment benefits, because the size of unemployment benefits varies, especially according to household size. If politicians had any understanding of the scientific method, they’d have agreed to the scientific recommendation to provide a basic income for kids too, paid to the parent, so that unemployment benefits could be replaced regardless of household size. Anyone looking to experiment with basic income should also appreciate this lesson. [**Kids should be included**](http://www.scottsantens.com/why-should-adults-with-kids-get-more-basic-income-child-allowances). If they aren’t, too many conditions still remain, because existing benefits are designed mostly around families, and we all should appreciate that parents make decisions with their kids in mind. Few parents out there are going to take a job that has the potential of leaving their kids worse off. Another interesting thing to note, is that the number of conditions remaining in the treatment group would have been even greater, if not for the higher total income that basic income afforded by boosting employment incomes which then disqualified *some* basic income recipients from *some* benefits. This by the way is also how [UBI could effectively replace many existing benefit programs](https://medium.com/economicsecproj/how-to-reform-welfare-and-taxes-to-provide-every-american-citizen-with-a-basic-income-bc67d3f4c2b8?ref=scottsantens.com), by simply lifting people out of qualifying for them anymore, just as if they’d started receiving a paycheck of the same size. Now that we understand just how little basic income was actually tested in this basic income experiment, we can better appreciate the collected data. ## The Preliminary Results First and foremost, there was no discernible impact on employment, save for a small 2% boost in the self-employed, where the proportion of people with earnings from self-employment went from 42.85% to 43.70%. Knowing what we know about just how many conditions the basic income group still faced, that makes a lot of sense doesn’t it? There was no observed difference between the treatment group and control group in regards to employment, largely because there’s very little difference between the treatment group and the control group, *period*. Why would we expect a significant bump in employment, especially within a competitive environment where [the unemployment rate is varying between 7%–11%](https://tradingeconomics.com/finland/unemployment-rate?ref=scottsantens.com), if people are still largely [*punished for employment*](https://medium.com/basic-income/what-people-get-most-wrong-about-unconditional-basic-income-ubi-b571af99c50c?ref=scottsantens.com) through loss of benefits? Aside from the typical work disincentives that thus still remained for the basic income group, because this experiment was only provided to 2,000 people, and those people were spread out across Finland instead of being in a town of 2,000 people, there was no boost to demand that would generate new jobs in a true basic income environment. If all 2,000 people lived in the same town, [someone spending their basic income would be someone else’s income](https://medium.com/basic-income/unearned-income-and-the-velocity-of-money-ddf9b19fcb8a?ref=scottsantens.com), which they in turn would spend, trading hands over and over again, heating up the local economy, and enabling people to find new jobs, offering wages to further increase incomes apart from the basic income, which itself would be spent locally, and would itself circulate, etc. Not only do we already see this through Social Security, the Roosevelt Institute has estimated that through this effect, [a UBI would grow GDP in the U.S. by 12.56% in just eight years](http://rooseveltinstitute.org/modeling-macroeconomic-effects-ubi/?ref=scottsantens.com). ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*DIsNm-rvRW1mnVU1e-PyBw.png) [Every $1 of Social Security generates about $2 of total output for the U.S. economy — nearly $1.4 trillion in 2012](https://blog.aarp.org/2013/10/01/social-securitys-one-two-punch/?ref=scottsantens.com) Entrepreneurship too would be further enhanced, because just providing one person cash may function as venture capital and risk reduction for them, but it doesn’t create their customer base. Providing money to everyone is what creates customers, which fuels new businesses. This is why [increased entrepreneurship is such a common finding in actual experiments of basic income](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-will-accelerate-innovation-by-reducing-our-fear-of-failure-b81ee65a254?ref=scottsantens.com) that impact entire communities. For example, in [Namibia’s UBI experiment](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), **entrepreneurship jumped 301%**. In [India’s UBI experiment](http://sewabharat.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Report-on-Unconditional-Cash-Transfer-Pilot-Project-in-Madhya-Pradesh.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), entrepreneurship in treatment villages was observed at **three times** the rate as control villages. These are the results of both increased capital and increased consumer buying power combined. Economic stimulation and creation of new jobs would without a doubt exist in any full implementation of actual UBI. So concluding that because more employment wasn’t seen in Finland in one year, that we’ve learned something about a nationally implemented UBI’s effect on employment, is just a bad conclusion. We do however already know something about UBI’s effects on part-time and full-time employment from a statewide implementation of a small UBI elsewhere — **Alaska**. [Since 1982, Alaska has been distributing around one-fifth of what Finland tested](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/12/alaska-oil-permanent-fund-dividend-universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com), to all residents of Alaska, regardless of employment. A study evaluating its effects on employment determined a neutral effect on full-time employment, just as in Finland, but with a [**17% boost in part-time employment**](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=3118343&ref=scottsantens.com). The boost is a result of a stimulated economy which created more part-time jobs, and that’s with a fraction of the amount Finland tested, which is itself a fraction of a full basic income. If Alaska had first tested its dividend on 2,000 people, I don’t expect they’d have observed a boost in part-time employment either. Perhaps we should also be asking ourselves if boosting employment is even the point of unconditional basic income, and if not, what is the point? Now that’s a question that the Finland experiment has shined some new additional light on, because employment wasn’t the only thing researchers measured. > In surveying the participants about aspects of their lives other than employment, their answers suggest that basic income reduced their stress levels, increased their senses of physical and mental health and well-being, increased their financial stability, grew their confidence, and even increased their levels of trust in other people and government, including politicians. Remember that the basic income group really only saw around a 20% reduction in their conditional benefits, so these results should be considered surprising even if the basic income group saw a 100% reduction in the conditions imposed upon them. That these results were seen with a relatively small decrease in bureaucratic conditions, should be considered as nothing short of jaw-dropping. What it seems to suggest is that [even just a little bit more freedom, dignity, and security goes a very long way](http://www.scottsantens.com/what-is-unconditional-basic-income-in-one-word). Across measure after measure, basic income improved what was measured: - **Life Satisfaction**: Those provided with standard benefits in Finland rated their satisfaction with life as a 6.76 on a scale of 0 to 10\. Those provided a partial basic income rated their life satisfaction as a 7.32\. That’s an **8.28%** **improvement**. - **Trust:** Among the unemployed in Finland, trust in others is lower than the population as a whole (possibly because they’re unemployed), but being provided a partial basic income instead of standard benefits increased their trust in other people by **6%**, the legal system by **5%**, and politicians by **13%**. *(Note: this supports* [*previous findings*](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-will-likely-increase-social-cohesion-aceb337262e0?ref=scottsantens.com)*)* - **Confidence**: 58% of those provided partial basic income were strongly or quite strongly confident in their futures, compared to 46% provided standard benefits — a **26%** **improvement**. 42% were strongly or quite strongly confident in their financial situation, compared to 30% — a **40%** **improvement**. 29% were strongly or quite strongly confident in their ability to influence society, compared to 22% — a **32%** **improvement**. - **Physical and Mental Health**: 55% of those provided partial basic income considered their physical and mental health to be good or very good, compared to 46% provided standard benefits — a **20%** **improvement**. *(Note: this supports* [*previous findings*](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com)*)* - **Concentration**: 67% of the partial basic income group felt they could concentrate well or very well, compared to 56% on standard benefits — a **20%** **improvement**. *(Note: this supports* [*previous findings*](https://thecorrespondent.com/4664/why-do-the-poor-make-such-poor-decisions/179307480-39a74caf?ref=scottsantens.com)*)* - **Depression**: A loss of interest in things once considered enjoyable is a key sign of the onset of depression. Among those provided partial basic income, only 25% felt that way during the previous year, compared to 34% of those provided standard benefits — a **36%** **improvement**. - **Financial Security**: 39% of those receiving partial basic income felt they were barely getting by or finding it difficult to make ends meet, compared to 49% of those provided standard benefits — a **26%** **improvement**. - **Stress:** 55% of the partial basic income group felt little to no stress at all, compared to only 46% of those provided standard benefits — a **20%** **improvement**. *(Note: this supports* [*previous findings*](https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/18/what-happens-when-the-poor-receive-a-stipend/?ref=scottsantens.com)*)* - **Attitudes Toward UBI**: 68% of those receiving partial basic income strongly agreed that a nationwide UBI would make it easier to accept job offers, compared to 42% of those provided standard benefits — a **62% increase**. 51% felt a nationwide UBI would make it easier to start a business in Finland, compared to 39% of those provided standard benefits — a **31% increase**. 65% felt Finland should now adopt UBI, compared to 49% provided only standard benefits — a **33% increase**. It’s important to note that all the above results are from 586 people who were successfully interviewed, which is of course a fraction of the 2,000 people. It’s possible that those willing to be interviewed were only those who were happier with the results of being provided partial basic income. It’s also important to note that all of the above is still preliminary data absent the second year of register data. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1126/1*tahRGzDpIztuimKhnXziYA.png) [Illustration by Amanda Wray whose art you can support on Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/amandawray?ref=scottsantens.com) With that said, there does appear to be across-the-board improvements on a wide range of measures, and all despite the fact that those provided partial basic income still had to deal with bureaucracy and conditions, just a bit less of it. An entirely fair conclusion to draw from the preliminary results is one that involves flipping around the point of the experiment… Imagine everyone in Finland already had UBI, and this experiment was looking at if creating new conditions and hiring a team of bureaucrats to apply those conditions would be a good idea. Obviously it isn’t. The results show that those conditions would not increase employment, and would instead have across-the-board *negative* effects. No one would look at such an experiment as evidence for switching from unconditional basic income to conditional unemployment benefits. Finally, there is one more important thing to learn from Finland’s experiment with basic income, and that’s what they didn’t even bother to measure, because it’s about *us* as a society. ## The Unmeasured Data In all of the headlines about the negligible effects on employment observed in Finland’s basic income experiment, one thing goes entirely assumed, that employment is the only way of measuring one’s contribution to society. No where in the report is the word “volunteering” or “unpaid work” even mentioned. For all we know, hours spent volunteering were increased by 50% and hours spent caring for others increased by 35%. Those are outcomes of more work, not more employment, but is the goal of work to be paid for it? Or is the goal of work to accomplish the work, paid or not? The experiment showed a small bump in self-employment, where the self-employed actually earned a bit less. That seems to me like a very positive result, to see that people are willing to earn less, to take a risk. [Think about the possibilities](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-will-accelerate-innovation-by-reducing-our-fear-of-failure-b81ee65a254?ref=scottsantens.com). What if five years from now, something just one person among Finland’s 2,000 basic income recipients did in 2017 grew into a new billion dollar industry? What if that industry improved the lives of billions of people all over the world? Innovation takes time, often many years, and it only takes one huge success to make many investments well worth it, regardless of how many other investments yielded no fruit. Paul Graham of Y-Combinator refers to this as [black swan farming](http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html?ref=scottsantens.com). All it takes is one, *just one*. Another popular assumption about employment is that all employment is better than no employment. Finland’s experiment did not break employment down to the granularity of the nature of the work itself. If they had done so, and the results showed that 50 basic income recipients quit their jobs as telemarketers to pursue their doctoral degrees in biotechnology and quantum computing, would that loss of employment reveal a failure of basic income, or its success? Existing research also shows that [going from unemployment into a bad job is worse for your mental health than staying unemployed](https://www.researchgate.net/blog/post/having-a-bad-job-may-be-worse-for-your-health-than-having-no-job-at-all?ref=scottsantens.com). We need to start asking some important questions about employment. How much employment actively hurts society? How many people have jobs that are the opposite of contributing to society, and instead drag society down? [How many people have entirely unnecessary jobs that don’t need to exist at all](https://www.thedailybeast.com/nearly-half-of-you-reading-this-have-bullshit-jobs?ref=scottsantens.com)? How many people have jobs that could already be done more cheaply and with higher quality and dependability by existing technologies? How many hours are we clocking that could be reduced without accomplishing less? None of the above questions were investigated in this experiment, because for the most part, these questions aren’t being asked by society in general because of a mass delusion that all employment is good. That assumption is not only wrong, but [*dangerously wrong*](https://medium.com/basic-income/what-we-need-to-truly-thrive-democracy-and-unconditional-basic-income-ccdbe72cefa5?ref=scottsantens.com) with exponential technological advancement. ## The BIG Question So again, we need to ask the question, what is the goal of unconditional basic income? The answer is not job creation. Yes, UBI *will* likely create jobs due to the economic impact of increasing demand requiring increasing supply, but that’s not it’s purpose. It’s just one of many effects. To answer the purpose of UBI requires asking another question, and that question is “What is *our* purpose?” What is our purpose as individuals? What is our purpose as a society? I can only speak for myself, but I believe our purpose is to **make life** ***better*** **for everyone**. Better is of course subjective, but I think Finland’s experiment did show that compared to the existing system built on distrust, partial basic income made life better for its recipients, by simply trusting them with the agency of making their own decisions. It was a test of freedom, dignity, security, and more, and it adds to [the growing pile of evidence](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1040683616488103936?ref=scottsantens.com) that human beings simply thrive more in systems based upon such core principles. Personally, what’s surprising to me, is how that’s surprising to *anyone*. --- ***Special thanks to: Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Andrew Stern, Stephen Starkey, Roy Bahat, Floyd Marinescu, Aaron T Schultz, Larry Cohen, Gisele Huff, Robert Collins, Stephane Boisvert, Justin Walsh, Daragh Ward, Joanna Zarach, Ace Bailey, Albert Wenger, Victor Lau, Peter T Knight, Danielle and Michael Texeira, Jack Canty, Paul Godsmark, Vladimir Baranov, Rachel Perkins, Chris Rauchle, David Ihnen, Michael Hrenka, Natalie Foster, Reid Rusonik, Matt DeKok, Carl Watts, Daniel Brockman, Carrie Mclachlan, Michael Honey, George Scialabba, Che Wagner, Jess Allen, Gerald Huff, Will Ware, Jan Smole, Joe Ballou, Gray Scott, Myi Baril, Max Henrion, Arjun Banker, Chris Smothers, Alvin Miranda, Kai Wong, Jill Weiss, MARK4UBI , Elizabeth Balcar, Georg Baumann, E. Davies, Dylan Taylor, Bryan Herdliska, Mark , Kirk Israel, Valentina Petricciuolo, Elizabeth Corker, Meshack Vee, Kev Roberts, Chris Boraski, Lee, VilliHaukka , Casey L Young, Oliver Bestwalter, Thomas Welsh, Walter Schaerer, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** ## [Would you like to see your name here too?](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Basic Income is now a dominant discussion in India's 2019 general election URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-is-now-a-dominant-discussion-in-india-2019-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T20:39:07.000Z ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/8e485d0b-2121-4a22-b5fb-a790c801b4e2/UBI-20India.png) --- [**NOTE: Want to listen to this post instead, or as you read it? Click here.**](https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/Basic-Income-is-now-a-dominant-discussion-in-Indias-2019-general-election-e3324r?ref=scottsantens.com) --- With [the historic announcement by India's opposition party](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/30/indias-opposition-wants-universal-basic-income-does-idea-stand-chance/?ref=scottsantens.com) of an intention to implement basic income for the poor (not UBI), just two years after [India's 2016-2017 Economic Survey](https://carnegieindia.org/2018/02/14/unpacking-economic-survey-s-ubi-proposal-pub-75504?ref=scottsantens.com) called UBI "the shortest path to eliminating poverty," and seven years after the successful [2011-2012 UBI experiment in Madhya Pradesh](http://sewabharat.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Report-on-Unconditional-Cash-Transfer-Pilot-Project-in-Madhya-Pradesh.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), for perhaps the first time in history a country's two leading parties appear to now agree on the idea of just giving cash to people without strings and are instead fighting over who thought of it first, and what the details should be. > We cannot build a new India while millions of our brothers & sisters suffer the scourge of poverty. > > If voted to power in 2019, the Congress is committed to a Minimum Income Guarantee for every poor person, to help eradicate poverty & hunger. > > This is our vision & our promise.[January 28, 2019](https://twitter.com/RahulGandhi/status/1089854868175638528?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) > Indian agrarian crisis as opportunity for quasi-universal basic rural income (QUBRI):cash transfer of Rs.18,000/year to 75% of all rural households. Our new proposal [@bsindia](https://twitter.com/bsindia?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com): [https://t.co/E2HgSiko1S](https://t.co/E2HgSiko1S?ref=scottsantens.com). Ungated: [https://t.co/0z8XkYECQh](https://t.co/0z8XkYECQh?ref=scottsantens.com). Longer version: [https://t.co/MAHmboQYUb](https://t.co/MAHmboQYUb?ref=scottsantens.com) 1/n[January 28, 2019](https://twitter.com/arvindsubraman/status/1089689154760380417?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) What's so interesting about this development in India is that it's *kind of* like if a Democratic president had been toying around about implementing UBI if re-elected, and then the Republican party promised they would implement a UBI if elected. The debate then moves immediately to details versus concept alone. In India, neither of the parties involved are talking full UBI ,[*(except in the state of Sikkim)*](https://indianexpress.com/article/india/sikkim-says-it-will-become-first-state-to-roll-out-universal-basic-income-5531093/?ref=scottsantens.com), but one is talking about a significant step towards it that's centered around farmers and rural areas, and now the other is talking about everyone under an income level. Unfortunately, neither of them fully understands the full value of full universality, because each is focused mostly on the poor. Here's the thing: If your concern is that those who "don't need UBI" don't get it, then regardless of your reasoning, you should simply support clawback via methods of taxation, not on the income itself. If you don't want someone to have $1,000 more, then just increase their taxes or decrease their existing tax subsidies by at least $1,000 to nullify the boost. ![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/e842e699-786c-4e58-8cc6-feb1a7001b13/Upside_Down_to_Right-20Side_Up_2014_benefits.png) For example, in the U.S. tax code, [taxpayers help the rich afford larger mansions by allowing them to deduct their mortgage interest](https://www.dallasareahabitat.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Upside-Down-to-Right-Side-Up-2014.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). In a way, renters are pooling their money together to write $30,000 checks to the rich to buy bigger homes. So if you don't want the rich to get $12,000 in UBI in a way that leaves them $12,000 richer, then just give it to them anyway and get rid of the $30,000 tax subsidy. They'll end up with $18,000 less total annual income, without even touching their tax rates, and they'll be more likely to support the program, because they get money they can hold in their hand just like everyone else. Basically, if your goal is to only help the poor, then an alternative to only giving something to the poor, is to give to everyone and then take it back from the rich. These may sound the same, but they're quite different. It's all about marginal tax rates and errors of exclusion. The "basic income" for the poor announced by Rahul Ghandi in India appears to be a guaranteed minimum income. A typical GMI sets a threshold and says anyone below this line, we will raise to this line. It's tightly targeted. The result is a marginal tax rate of 100%. What's that mean exactly you may ask? A 100% marginal tax rate means that given a line drawn at $1,000, someone earning $400 will be given $600\. If that same person works twice as many hours to earn $800 instead, they will only get $200 because their need is seen as being half what it was. Their additional $400 earned results in a $400 loss, which is equivalent to a 100% tax on earned income. The benefit for working twice as hard is *non-existent*. Put yourself in that position. If no matter how many hours you work, you get a TOTAL monthly income of $1,000, what's the point of earning income through employment? Yes, people will have enough to eat, which is good, and much better than lots of people starving, but what you've just created is a ceiling, not a floor. Also consider being right on the other side of that qualification line. Say you are earning $1,001\. What do you get? **Nothing.** You get nothing. And all those people doing nothing? They all end up with $1 less than you, the sucker working full-time for basically $1 per month. Would that upset you? Would you really care that no one is going hungry? Now, there is another way to go about this that still avoids giving to those who "don't need more money." It involves moving the qualification line into the middle class, and adding a slope so that the marginal tax rate is lowered from 100% to something much more reasonable, like 30%-50%. Now take the same earlier example of someone earning $400 and the clawback rate is **50%** *(purely for the sake of simplicity of mental calculations)*. Someone earning $0 would get $1,000, but someone earning $400 would get an $800 boost, for a new total of $1,200\. If they worked to double their earned income to $800, they would get a $600 boost for a total of $1,400. Notice that now, working to earn more **always** results in more total income. Again consider the case of earning $1,001\. Do you get nothing? No. Your new total income is $1,500.50\. You get $500.50, which you can view as a 50% raise. Are you still mad that those earning $0 get $1,000? This was Milton Friedman's great insight and [what was tested in the 1970s in both the United States and Canada](http://www.widerquist.com/karl/Articles--scholarly/Failure2communicate.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). It's called a [Negative Income Tax (NIT)](http://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-nit-and-unconditional-basic-income-ubi-what-makes-them-the-same-and-what-makes-them-different). It's still targeted, but in a way that's a floor instead of a ceiling. At the very least, India should be talking about this kind of targeting. ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/ab89ad9a-8855-4776-84f0-aed36725b5bf/NIT-model.png) Now what about UBI? The amount of total income can be absolutely identical to the numbers above. For the person earning $400, they could still end up with a total of $1,200 per month, but instead of getting an extra $800, they'd get $1,000 in UBI and pay $200 of their earned income for it. ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/6e116344-1c2b-495e-a40c-4df7eff33599/UBI-model.png) If they worked twice as much to earn $800, they would get $1,000 in UBI and pay $400 for it, ending up again with a total of $1,400\. The person earning $1,001 would still end up with $1,500.50, but they'd get $1,000 in UBI and pay $500.50 for it. [The results are all the same. This understanding is frequently missed](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-is-the-net-transfer-amount-not-the-gross-price-tag-acb8aa5eab73?ref=scottsantens.com). UBI, unlike NIT, requires no monthly calculation. [This is important as earned income varies more and more, month by month, for more people](https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/rsa-blogs/2016/04/basicincomeinsecurity?ref=scottsantens.com). The basic income would be the same every month for everyone, maximizing its dependability for purposes of long-term planning, and the clawback from the rich would be done via the tax code once a year, or through other tax methods than income taxes, like for example consumption taxes , transaction taxes, land value taxes, or [Pigovian taxes](http://www.scottsantens.com/unconditional-basic-income-is-a-pigovian-subsidy-for-unpaid-work) like [carbon taxes](https://medium.com/basic-income/this-idea-can-literally-change-our-world-107cbc94057a?ref=scottsantens.com). That's where the focus needs to be. If you're so damn concerned about only the poor getting something, then focus on the tax system, not what you want to give to the poor. It does not cost $1,000 to give someone $1,000 if you increase their taxes by $1,000\. It is no different than giving that someone a $1,000 tax credit as a means of reducing their tax burdens as an alternative to lowering their tax rate. Worry much more about false exclusion than false inclusion. The rich getting money to buy food can be seen as a waste, but those with insufficient incomes not getting money to buy food can be **FATAL**. The line of determination therefore needs to exist towards the top, not the bottom, and full universality eliminates all false exclusion errors. [*Example: Targeting effectiveness of Georgia’s universal pension and India’s poverty-targeted pension*](https://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/blog/the-meaning-of-pro-poor-as-understood-by-the-world-bank/?ref=scottsantens.com) ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/10fa0d73-f44d-4444-87c5-22a5f1ae0acf/India-20pension.png) Doing it this way also means [creating an incentive to work instead of a disincentive to work](https://medium.com/basic-income/what-people-get-most-wrong-about-unconditional-basic-income-ubi-b571af99c50c?ref=scottsantens.com). As things are, the highest marginal tax rates are on those who receive something *because* they are poor. The highest marginal tax rates should be on the rich *because* they are rich. ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/78941263-28c8-4db0-8342-f3ee23fd1198/MarginaltaxratesonwelfareECON.png) Someone who ***spends* $10,000 per month** on average to support their lifestyle is not going to stop working to earn $1,000 per month, and as a result have their spending limited to only $1,000 per month. They can already do that and they don't! High marginal tax rates have a much smaller impact on work at the top than the bottom of the income ladder. With all that said, I'm still excited about how seriously India is considering providing income to the poor, because [it's a dramatic improvement to subsidies](https://www.livemint.com/Politics/TOnQO3E1fNCO5lkHXgr19N/Subsidies-must-give-way-to-a-universal-basic-income-Pranab.html?ref=scottsantens.com) and benefits-in-kind with work requirements, and because a lot of discussion about fully universal and unconditional basic income is now happening there. That India is accepting that the solution to poverty is cash is **HUGE**. It's also huge for the basic income discussion to move from small corners to an entire nation, **especially one with 18% of the world's population**, and for the discussion to move to policy details instead of just the idea itself. In conclusion, all of India is not implementing UBI just yet, *but* I think they're *closer* than all other nations on Earth right now. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### "The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct, and immediate abolition of poverty." — Martin Luther King Jr. URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/martin-luther-king-jr-basic-income-mlk/ Last updated: 2026-05-23T15:05:11.000Z It is not as widely known as it should be, but Martin Luther King Jr. wrote and spoke about the need for an unconditional basic income before he was killed. Here is a video of him speaking about UBI at Stanford in 1967. > One of the answers it seems to me, is a guaranteed annual income, a guaranteed minimum income for all people, and for all families of our country. It seems to me that the Civil Rights movement must now begin to organize for the guaranteed annual income. Begin to organize people all over our country, and mobilize forces so that we can bring to the attention of our nation this need..." Those are powerful words just as true now as they were then. The Civil Rights movement is not over. There is still more to be done, and one of those goals yet to be accomplished, is the guaranteed annual income (today better known as basic income or unconditional basic income or universal basic income or just UBI for short) so as to provide a minimum amount of equal opportunity to all citizens. MLK got into far more detail about his vision of basic income in his final book, [*Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?*](https://amzn.to/2FP8iqX?ref=scottsantens.com) In it, he wisely wrote that poverty was mostly not a lack of anything but money, so the best way to eliminate poverty is to simply provide people with money, not bureaucracy-filled welfare programs. In other words, as historian Rutger Bregman has himself explained [poverty is not a lack of character. It's a lack of cash.](https://www.ted.com/talks/rutger%5Fbregman%5Fpoverty%5Fisn%5Ft%5Fa%5Flack%5Fof%5Fcharacter%5Fit%5Fs%5Fa%5Flack%5Fof%5Fcash?ref=scottsantens.com) > In addition to the absence of coordination and sufficiency, the programs of the past all have another common failing — they are indirect. Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving something else. **I’m now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income**." MLK knew that we've already beaten scarcity through technological abundance, and that our problem is not a lack of stuff, but a lack of money to buy that stuff. Or as sci-fi author William Gibson has alternatively put it, "The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed." > We have come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations in the market operation of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people to idleness and bind them into constant or frequent unemployment against their will. The poor are less often dismissed from our conscience today by being branded as inferior and incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands it does not eliminate all poverty. > **We have come to the point where we must make the non-producer a consumer or else we will find ourselves drowning in a sea of consumer goods. We have so energetically mastered production that we now must give attention to distribution**. Though there have been increases in purchasing power they have lagged behind increases in production. Those at the lowest economic level, the poor white and Negro, the aged and chronically ill, are traditionally unorganized and therefore have little ability to force the necessary growth in their income. They stagnate or become even poor poorer in relation to the larger society." MLK also understood that many of our problems are due to a lack of basic income, and that with basic income, we'd find far fewer homeless people, far more healthier people, and far more educated people, because people don't choose to be homeless, unhealthy, and uneducated. [It's most often simply a lack of money that creates these issues,](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com) and that provided money, people can be trusted to spend it on what they themselves best know they need most. > We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished. **The poor transformed into purchasers will do a great deal on their own to alter housing decay**. Negroes, who have a double disability, will have a greater effect on discrimination when they have the additional weapon of cash to use in their struggle. > Beyond these advantages, a host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. **The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the assurance that his income is stable and certain, and when he knows that he has the means to seek self-improvement**. Personal conflicts between husband, wife and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on a scale of dollars is eliminated." MLK also believed that a UBI should be high enough to provide dignity for all, and that it should grow as the national economy grows. I too believe this. [A UBI should be indexed to GDP per capita, so that as automation increases our productivity, our UBI increases](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/extreme-wealth-inequality-alaska-model/?ref=scottsantens.com). Such a setup would fully incentivize automation. Unemployment would no longer be a fear but a goal if the more robots we employed, the higher our monthly basic income checks grew. > Two conditions are indispensable if we are to ensure that the guaranteed income operates as a consistently progressive measure. First, it must be pegged to the median income of society, not at the lowest levels of income. To guarantee an income at the floor would simply perpetuate welfare standards and freeze into the society poverty conditions. Second, **the guaranteed income must be dynamic; it must automatically increase as the total social income grows**. Were it permitted to remain static under growth conditions, the recipients would suffer a relative decline. If periodic reviews disclose that the whole national income has arisen, then the guaranteed income would have to be adjusted upward by the same percentage. Without these safeguards a creeping retrogression would occur, nullifying the gains of security and stability." MLK knew that achieving UBI would require all those with insufficient incomes working together, regardless of color or political affiliation. [Left and right must act in coalition](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-you-think-basic-income-is-free-money-or-socialism-think-again-4a17e8d15b1?ref=scottsantens.com). The fact that [Milton Friedman also supported UBI](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-is-the-net-transfer-amount-not-the-gross-price-tag-acb8aa5eab73?ref=scottsantens.com) in MLK's time shows this is entirely possible. > The proposal is not a “civil rights” program, in the sense that the term is currently used. The program would benefit all the poor, including the two-thirds of them who are white. I hope that both Negro and white will act in coalition to affect this change, because their combined strength will be necessary to overcome the fierce opposition we must realistically anticipate." MLK knew that the rich already have a UBI, something [Matt Bruenig wrote about in 2016](https://medium.com/@MattBruenig/the-ubi-already-exists-for-the-1-d3a49fad0580?ref=scottsantens.com). > Our nation’s adjustment to a new mode of thinking will be facilitated if we realize that for nearly 40 years two groups in our society have already been enjoying a guaranteed income. Indeed, it is a symptom of our confused social values that these two groups turn out to be the richest and poorest. **The wealthy who own securities have always had an assured income**; and their polar opposite, the relief client, has been guaranteed an income, however miniscule, through welfare benefits." MLK knew that basic income was pro-work, that it would enable people to voluntarily pursue the work most valuable to them, and thus most valuable to society. He did this by quoting Henry George from his own book [*Progress and Poverty,*](https://amzn.to/2AXSz5F?ref=scottsantens.com) a book which I also wholeheartedly recommend. > The fact is that the work which improves the condition of mankind, the work which extends knowledge and increases power and enriches literature, and elevates thought, is not done to secure a living. It is not the work of slaves, driven to their task either by the lash of a master or by animal necessities. It is the work of men who perform it for their own sake, and not that they may get more to eat or drink, or wear, or display. In a state of society where want is abolished, work of this sort could be enormously increased.” MLK knew that the lack of basic income in this day and age is nothing but archaic thinking. He knew this back in 1968. > The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity. If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent. **We are wasting and degrading human life by clinging to archaic thinking**." It is time for us to civilize ourselves. No civilization is truly civilized so long as it withholds access to what people need to live. Poverty is a present-day form of cannibalism. Unconditional access to basic needs must be provided, and UBI accomplishes that goal - a goal which will only grow increasingly important to achieve [as automation continues to reduce the employability of humans](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-real-story-of-automation-beginning-with-one-simple-chart-8b95f9bad71b?ref=scottsantens.com). > The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them." In the 21st century, the time truly has come for us to finally civilize ourselves by the total, direct, and immediate abolition of poverty, just as MLK himself advocated. --- **I also recommend watching this video by** [**Orf**](https://www.patreon.com/Orf?ref=scottsantens.com)**:** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Top 10 Basic Income Articles of 2018 URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/top-10-basic-income-articles-of-2018/ Last updated: 2024-01-10T20:41:14.000Z As a moderator of the /[r/BasicIncome subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/?ref=scottsantens.com), I read a lot of links every year about UBI, probably around 100 per month. Once again, as I did last year, I've compiled a list of the ten articles/papers/reports I consider the most important to read out of everything published this year. Please bookmark, read,and share away! --- 10) [**"The Role of Luck in Life Success Is Far Greater Than We Realized"**](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-role-of-luck-in-life-success-is-far-greater-than-we-realized/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Scott Barry Kaufman for Scientific American My first selection for this list is one that never even mentioned the words "basic income" but as you'll discover in the following excerpt from it, there's no other conclusion to reach than that a basic income would lead to far more meritocratic outcomes, which in my opinion is an extremely powerful argument for basic income. > **The best funding strategy of them all was one where an equal number of funding was distributed to everyone**. Distributing funds at a rate of 1 unit every five years resulted in 60% of the most talented individuals having a greater than average level of success, and distributing funds at a rate of 5 units every five years resulted in 100% of the most talented individuals having an impact! This suggests that if a funding agency or government has more money available to distribute, they'd be wise to use that extra money to distribute money to everyone, rather than to only a select few. As the researchers conclude,"**if the goal is to reward the most talented person (thus increasing their final level of success), it is much more convenient to distribute periodically (even small) equal amounts of capital to all individuals** rather than to give a greater capital only to a small percentage of them, selected through their level of success - already reached - at the moment of the distribution." Essentially, without basic income, "mediocre-but-lucky" people tend to be much more successful than "more-talented-but-unlucky" people, and the most successful people of all tend to be those who are only slightly above average in talent but have a lot of luck in their lives. With basic income, because people with skill and talent have the resources to not suffer disastrous bad luck, they are able to rise above those with less skill and talent whose luck would prevent them from disaster. It turns out that unconditional basic income functions as universal good luck! 9) [**"The New York Times Gets the Finland Basic Income Story Wrong"**](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/04/25/the-nyt-gets-the-finland-basic-income-story-wrong/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Matt Bruenig for People's Policy Project If it's one thing that had the potential to drive me crazy in 2018, it's all the misinformation spewed onto the internet from all over the place about Finland's basic income experiment, including from the paper of record itself, the NYT. Matt Bruenig does an exemplary job in this article of not only correcting the record by fact-checking the NYT, but going underneath it with survey info, to show that even the idea that the people of Finland have somehow turned their back on UBI is wrong. No, Finland did not cancel their experiment. It was a two-year experiment from inception that took place over 2017 and 2018\. The data is now being evaluated and we'll know this year what happened in 2017, and we'll know the final results of the entire experiment in 2020\. [This information is directly from the experimenters themselves.](https://www.kela.fi/web/en/-/contrary-to-reports-the-basic-income-experiment-in-finland-will-continue-until-the-end-of-2018?ref=scottsantens.com) ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/aeeb8685-a832-45f4-b885-6c0080633566/Finland-20timeline.jpg) 8) [**"The Great Equalizer: What Dolly Parton and a Tennessee Wildfire Can Teach About Universal Basic Income"**](https://inthemesh.com/archive/dolly-parton-universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Daniela Perdomo for In The Mesh In late 2016, a forest fire in Tennessee burned down about 1,000 homes, and in response Dolly Parton came to the rescue of the newly homeless victims with $1,000 per month for five months followed by an additional (and entirely unexpected) $5,000 check in the sixth month for a grand total of $10,000\. The results of this basic income were then analyzed by Stacia West. You can [read her full report here](http://www.csw.utk.edu/research/economicjustice-housing/west/My%20People%20Fund%20Evaluation-Final%20Report.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), but this article is a summary of that report. A 10-minute video documentary was also made, which you can [watch here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kInUGW4H3Jc&ref=scottsantens.com). Basically, basic income increased resiliency to disaster by helping everyone get back on their feet faster by providing people with what they needed most - cash to self-determine their own priorities. The following excerpt really says it all: > “It was very rare, I can almost get a tear. I just — to talk about it is one thing, but when it happens to you…,” Don Daily trails off for a moment. “I can get a little emotional about it, because it’s just not the way it’s supposed to work, and it did. It did. Saved people’s lives. If nothing else, up in their head where they could keep going on. Just take those next steps.” Daily says the checks were important because we live in “a money world,” but that just as valuable was the freedom and dignity he experienced. And he finds the Gatlinburg community has changed: “People are helping people who weren’t helping before. You can’t buy that.” 7) [**"Nearly Half of You Reading This Have Bullshit Jobs"**](https://www.thedailybeast.com/nearly-half-of-you-reading-this-have-bullshit-jobs?ref=scottsantens.com) by Nick Romeo for the Daily Beast There was a lot of coverage in 2018 of [David Graeber's book *Bullshit Jobs: A Theory*](https://amzn.to/2TNHX0n?ref=scottsantens.com), which I absolutely recommend reading in full, but I liked this article about it best because it was a nice in-depth interview with David himself that functions as a solid summary of the book for those without the necessary time to read the book itself. Learn about flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box checkers, and taskmasters, and consider not only the depth of the problem of a system that's creating entirely unnecessary work, but also how important unconditional basic income is to finally escaping said system. 6) [**"Universal Resource Inheritance"**](https://medium.com/@bytemaster/universal-resource-inheritance-505e7ca4d048?ref=scottsantens.com) by Dan Larimer It's been interesting watching Dan Larimer, creator of BitShares, Steemit, and EOS deepen his understanding of basic income over time, from his posts on Steemit about UBI, to this essay on Medium where he essentially makes Thomas Paine's argument on a worldwide level. As a libertarian you can see his dislike of taxation and welfare, but you can also see his immense dislike of natural resource-based domination. To square these, he suggests a UBI funded by a 5% annual tax on wealth, not based on need, but based on everyone's rightful inheritance of natural resource wealth redistributed every year over an assumed 100-year lifespan. His main premise is natural inheritance and the challenge of making sure each generation, including those not yet born for thousands of years to come rightfully inherit their share of the Earth. This is a great essay to share with those most hardcore of conservatives and libertarians who shout that taxation is theft while entirely ignoring the theft of the Earth by those who claimed it as theirs long ago. It also should be read by everyone in the blockchain/cryptocurrency world. 5) [**"Basic Income or Basic Services"**](https://www.centreforwelfarereform.org/library/by-az/basic-income-or-basic-services.html?ref=scottsantens.com) by Simon Duffy for the Centre for Welfare Reform AND ["Universal Basic Services and how it compares to Universal Basic Income"](https://ideasfortoday.org.uk/universal-basic-services-basic-income-promises/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Jack Perry for Ideas For Today I'm listing two here because I recommend reading them both, and I like sharing them both. It's hard for me to say which I like better because they're both great looks at UBI vs UBS, but they each compare them in different ways. Simon's is more of a big picture vs. big picture breakdown of the two, and Jack's is more of a detailed breakdown of each service compared to cash. Read them both, bookmark them both, and share either one when someone suggests a bunch of free goods and services would be a better option than providing people with any cash to pay for goods and services. As Simon concludes his piece with, "UBI is not a silver bullet in the fight for social justice - but it is at least a real and definable bullet. UBS - at least presented as an ‘alternative’ to UBI - looks like a blank." 4) [**"The Labor Market Impacts of Universal and Permanent Cash Transfers: Evidence from the Alaska Permanent Fund"**](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=3118343&ref=scottsantens.com) by Damon Jones and Ioana Elena Marinescu This was my favorite paper of the year involving new research in support of basic income. Through the clever creation of a "synthetic Alaska" (a kind of alternate universe Alaska that never introduced it's annual cash dividend) Damon and Ioana cleverly tease out an estimate of the impact of Alaska's Permanent Fund Dividend since its start in 1982\. The results? Basically, a bit less-full time employment neutralized by an increase in full-time employment through a stimulated economy, in addition to a 17% increase in part-time employment. If you think providing everyone with a financial floor will lead to economic devastation brought on by less stuff getting done, Alaska's long-term provision of cash to everyone proves you wrong. 3) [**"Smart money: Why the world should embrace universal basic income"**](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-smart-money-why-the-world-should-embrace-universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Annie Lowrey for The Globe and Mail I feel that every year this list requires the best new UBI summary, something to use to introduce people to the idea. That book this year is [Annie Lowrey's "*Give People Money*"](https://amzn.to/2T1RDUM?ref=scottsantens.com), but that article in my opinion is what Annie wrote here through a Canadian context for the Globe and Mail. It's got historical background. It's got evidence with newly created charts. It's even got a few quotes from me. Annie got a lot of media coverage in 2018 for basic income through her book's publication, and until you read it, at least read this. 2) [**"The Desire For Work As An Adaptive Preference"**](http://autonomy.work/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/The-Desire-For-Work-As-An-Adaptive-Preference-V2-.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) by Michael Cholbi for Autonomy I read so many things about basic income that are just mostly the same thing remixed in all kinds of ways, so it's really refreshing to read something that really makes me think and reflect on basic income in a new way. This is one of those few that manages to be something novel and thought-provoking. In it, Cholbi makes the case that our desire for work is a behavioral adaptation born of unjust conditions where we have no choice but to work. This understanding is an important consideration as we look at policies designed around automation. People will want to keep working even as there is less need to work, so besides basic income, we need policies that help shift society away from a maladaptive desire to work work work, by pursuing policies like shorter working weeks and lower retirement ages that reduce work.We must consciously "un-adapt" from a work-centered society, and that means also avoiding solutions like JG which perpetuate work-centricity. We are foxes and leisure time is our grapes. With the rise of automation, it's time we stop looking at leisure as sour, simply because for centuries, we were forbidden from enjoying it. 1) [**"Basic Income, Not Basic Jobs: Against Hijacking Utopia"**](https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/16/basic-income-not-basic-jobs-against-hijacking-utopia/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex I don't think there was any link I shared more in 2018 than this link, and it remains one of my absolute favorite breakdowns of the job guarantee versus basic income debate. In this 13,000 word tome of logic and rational thought, Scott obliterates the notion of a jobs guarantee being better than a basic income guarantee. Those who read every word of this and conclude UBI sucks and that unlimited government job creation is a superior response to the automation of labor are simply living somewhere other than reality, or are hiding their true reasoning, possibly even from themselves. If there's one thing about basic income published in 2018 that you can't not read, it's this one. --- *Bonus Link:* If there's one article of my own among those I've written this year that I'd select for such a list, it's probably [The Monster's, Inc. Argument for Unconditional Basic Income](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-monsters-inc-argument-for-unconditional-basic-income-3b22b63eed3e?ref=scottsantens.com), which also got turned into [an 11-minute video essay](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTZ2A%5FGknZM&ref=scottsantens.com) if you'd prefer to watch it instead of read it. Cheers, and here's to 2019 being an ever bigger year for the basic income movement than 2018! --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Standing on Shoulders URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/standing-on-shoulders-in-memory-of-gerald-huff-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T20:48:42.000Z On November 17, 2018, a true human being named [Gerald Huff died of pancreatic cancer](https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sfgate/obituary.aspx?pid=190826268&ref=scottsantens.com). He was a fellow basic income advocate and a friend. Like me, he was passionate about UBI, so much so that he had been working for five years on his first novel, a work of science fiction about the future we are headed towards, where UBI plays a central part of the story. He asked me to read a draft of it earlier this year, to provide feedback and any ideas to help improve it. He also asked me to write a blurb for it for the back cover. This is what I wrote: > *This story takes place in a future United States that has not made the decisions it needed to make in the here and now. What transpires is an important warning by Gerald Huff of the kind of future we can realistically expect where due to political gridlock and corporate greed, technology continues to not be used for the benefit of all until the inevitable breaking point is reached... Is this the future we want, and what can we do to avoid it? Read it and find out.* With the help of his sister and daughter, he managed to finish the book the day before he died, and it's [now available on Amazon](https://amzn.to/2rNO5tB?ref=scottsantens.com) posthumously: ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/087a36ac-e221-4b36-aeee-6ffe9b8996ff/3D-Crisis-2038-624x392.png) Please consider getting yourself a copy, reading it, and sharing it with others. It was so important to him to finish it, and I hope it helps people understand through a fictional lens how badly we need UBI before things get violent, and how much better the world could be with it. On December 3, 2018 I then joined Gerald's daughter Jane on the Basic Income Podcast with Jim Pugh to have a conversation together about Gerald and his book. You can listen to that episode [on a variety of platforms](https://basicincomepodcast.com/podcast/remembering-gerald-huff-feat-jane-huff-scott-santens/?ref=scottsantens.com), including [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/19fdIkDrbDCugczMSfUIC7?ref=scottsantens.com). You can click the play button below to listen to it here. On December 16, 2018 I attended the celebration of Gerald's life in Oakland and was asked to speak for five minutes about how our paths intertwined through basic income and what it is. Below is what I wrote for the occasion, and I'd like to share it with you, to share a bit more about Gerald, and *why* UBI was so important to him. --- Out of everyone here, I'm probably among those who knew Gerald the least, but I did consider him a brother in mind. I first began communicating with Gerald online back in 2014, and we met for the first time in 2015 at the first [World Summit on Technological Unemployment](https://www.wtn.net/technological-unemployment-summit?ref=scottsantens.com) which he helped organize. The only reason I took the stage that day was because he insisted I be among the speakers there. As a public speaker, prior to that day, I had only ever spoken as a valedictorian at my high school graduation. And yet, because of Gerald, [there I was suddenly speaking on a world stage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE04%5Fs9Bd5Q&ref=scottsantens.com), where I was directly followed by Robert Reich and Joseph Stiglitz. I felt like I was the opening act for the economic Rolling Stones. **We don't deserve what happens to us in life. We don't deserve each other. We're lucky. We're lucky to have each other.** No one is an island, entire of itself. As John Donne said, everyone is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. No one is self-made. Every day, we help make each other. Gerald helped make my thinking. I helped make his. Our ideas danced together, and we were the stronger for it. I helped him with [a slide deck](https://www.slideshare.net/guesta538d6/universal-basic-income-55942987?ref=scottsantens.com) one time for a presentation about basic income he gave in Florida. He then recommended to the organizer that I speak at [the same event the following year](https://basicincome.org/news/2017/04/us-basic-income-advocate-scott-santens-speak-1750-per-ticket-conference/?ref=scottsantens.com). I helped him create, and he helped me create. The most read article I've ever written was [an article about deep learning artificial intelligence and basic income for The Boston Globe](https://medium.com/basic-income/deep-learning-is-going-to-teach-us-all-the-lesson-of-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines-7c6442e37a49?ref=scottsantens.com). He read my first draft of the article and suggested an introduction to help better hook people. Few people know that he was a part of that article. He was an invisible part of it. Having read his book, I see now I'm an invisible part of that too. So much of what we do is invisible to each other to the point we forget. But that's what humanity is, **a group of individuals lifting each other up in so many ways we come to think we're all standing on *feet* instead of on *shoulders*.** Gerald wanted to help lift humanity. That's why he supported the idea of basic income. It's literally **an investment in humanity** itself, where everyone starts with **something instead of nothing**, *unconditionally*, and is trusted to use it in their own best *and infinitely creative* ways. At first glance, the idea of everyone receiving a monthly cash dividend seems only about money, but that's only the vehicle of the meaning. It's a recognition that **everything that humanity has ever discovered, the fruits of the sum total of all our knowledge, to some degree belong to everyone, not just those at the end of a long chain that extends for millennia back to the very first tool.** [Technology is a tool](https://medium.com/basic-income/cutting-the-gordian-knot-of-technological-unemployment-with-unconditional-basic-income-e8df7f8eaa16?ref=scottsantens.com) our species created, [as is money](http://www.scottsantens.com/do-we-have-enough-space-bucks-for-basic-income). These tools can be wielded for our benefit or our downfall. Gerald knew that it's up to us to decide which. It's up to us to wield our tools for the good of humanity. It's up to us to recognize that tools can cut on both sides, and that protections need to be engineered for optimal outcomes. [It's up to us to make technology work for everyone](https://medium.com/basic-income/its-time-for-technology-to-serve-all-humankind-with-unconditional-basic-income-e46329764d28?ref=scottsantens.com), to reduce the fears of it and to expand its benefits to all, as [our rightful human inheritance](https://medium.com/economicsecproj/technological-inheritance-and-the-case-for-a-basic-income-ded373a69c8e?ref=scottsantens.com). Gerald knew that as long as tech doesn't lift everyone up, we'll pull against it, we'll slow its progress, and we'll be worse off instead of far better off. There's a part in his book where someone defends technology because it detected pancreatic cancer early and saved someone's life where just ten years earlier that technology didn't exist. Gerald knew that were technology just a bit more advanced, he wouldn't have to leave us. He knew the power of technology to do miraculous good. In that same breath, he wrote that the same technology that saved a life got someone fired for detecting they were sleeping on the job. He knew that tech wasn't an inviolate good. It's all about the decisions we make. Over and over again, Gerald stressed in his book the call to action: "What will you do?" His book is his own answer to that question. That's what he did. That was his gift to humanity. Now for him, I ask you that same question. What will *you* do as he did? **In a world of return on investment, what will be your own return to humanity?** I think that's the question he wanted to leave us with. Scott Santens, December 16th, 2018 --- *Gerald wrote a few articles about UBI too. Please [head on over to Medium](https://medium.com/@geraldhuff?ref=scottsantens.com) to read them, especially [this one](https://medium.com/basic-income/should-we-be-afraid-very-afraid-4f7013a5137c?ref=scottsantens.com) which is his rebuttal of the most common arguments against a future of technological unemployment.* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### What People Get Most Wrong About Unconditional Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/what-people-get-most-wrong-about-unconditional-basic-income/ Last updated: 2025-05-12T15:51:02.000Z *Prospect Magazine approached me to write an article for them about* [*what people get most wrong about unconditional basic income*](https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/other/what-people-get-most-wrong-about-unconditional-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com)*. It was published on December 3, 2018\. As it exists behind a soft paywall, the full article can be found below. You can also choose to* [*listen to it in audio form*](https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/What-People-Get-Most-Wrong-About-Unconditional-Basic-Income-e2nn8m?ref=scottsantens.com)*.* The idea of an unconditional basic income as a foundational social investment policy is an evolution of traditional safety nets in recognition of the evolution of work. In five years it’s gone from an idea few people had ever even heard of to one many now think they know all about, despite being misinformed [by those who are themselves misinformed](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/04/25/the-nyt-gets-the-finland-basic-income-story-wrong/?ref=scottsantens.com). As someone who’s focused solely on this idea since 2013, I see people getting a lot wrong about UBI, but there are primarily three things people get wrong most: UBI’s impact on work, the cost of implementing it, and the nature of the idea itself. Traditional safety nets are targeted, meaning that only some people qualify, and only if they meet the requirements. What’s commonly not understood is that **the targeting itself, not the money, creates a disincentive to work**. Because benefits are withdrawn as income is earned, [recipients can effectively see tax rates exceeding 100%](https://surlysubgroup.com/2016/06/13/universal-bassic-income-and-marginal-rates/?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s like asking people whether they’d like money, or more or less the same money plus misery. Which would you prefer? Contrary to conditional benefits, unconditional basic income has no disincentive to work. Because UBI is never withdrawn, everyone is always financially better off employed than not employed. UBI is a floor, not a ceiling. Without a disincentive to work, the incentive to work then rests on the shoulders of those offering the work. Traditionally this tends to take the form of higher wages, but it can also be more meaningful work or more flexible hours. What we mean by working and not working is also important. Many seem to only think of paid work as work, but unpaid work is valuable work too, and not working can actually be finding better work. For example, [income guarantee experiments have shown people work fewer hours in a year](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222578698%5FA%5Ffailure%5Fto%5Fcommunicate%5FWhat%5Fif%5Fanything%5Fcan%5Fwe%5Flearn%5Ffrom%5Fthe%5Fnegative%5Fincome%5Ftax%5Fexperiments?ref=scottsantens.com). You’d think that’s all you need to know, right? But what if you then learned people were spending two more weeks finding a higher-paying more meaningful job that better utilizes their skills? What if they were teenage dropouts, and what they were doing was going back to school? What if they were mothers of newborns and what they were doing was maternity leave parenting? The details matter don’t they? Another common misconception about UBI is that it massively increases taxes. [This simply isn’t true](https://works.bepress.com/widerquist/75/?ref=scottsantens.com). UBI is a unique policy of everyone paying to receive income security. If your taxes go up $6,000, that can sound like a big tax hike, but if it’s for the receipt of a fully refundable $12,000 tax credit, then it’s actually a $6,000 tax cut. The opposite is true for a billionaire paying $1 million for $12,000 instead of [the existing $30,000 tax deduction for owning a mansion](https://www.dallasareahabitat.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Upside-Down-to-Right-Side-Up-2014.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Focusing on only one side of a two-sided transaction is misleading at best and purposely deceitful at worst. The net cost is what matters. Aside from reducing most people’s tax burdens, UBI is a consolidation of hundreds of programs and tax expenditures combined with the freedom-enhancing elimination of their bureaucratic conditions. Instead of food stamps, a low-income person would receive UBI. Instead of the standard deduction, a middle-income person would receive UBI. Instead of a home mortgage interest deduction, a high-income person would receive UBI. **The bulk of UBI already exists, just hugely inefficiently.** Net costing UBI also requires costing the lack of UBI. How much does economic insecurity cost by deteriorating health and increasing crime? What’s the productivity cost of disengaged workers underbidding machines in the pursuit of basic survival? The status quo isn’t free. If not having UBI costs over $1 trillion annually, [which it does](https://source.wustl.edu/2018/04/childhood-poverty-cost-u-s-1-03-trillion-in-a-year-study-finds/?ref=scottsantens.com), and the net cost of UBI is less than $500 billion annually, [which it is](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-we-should-all-have-a-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com), then UBI saves more than it costs. Is it expensive to save money? Lastly, political polarization has been growing for decades to the point ideas can be dismissed or embraced immediately depending on the source. Conservatives who read a progressive piece can therefore think UBI is leftist, and vice versa for leftists reading conservative pieces, but UBI isn’t left or right, it’s forward. It’s been embraced across the entire political spectrum, from Milton Friedman to Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s supported by billionaires like Elon Musk and it’s supported by the Poor People’s Campaign. Its support is unbounded. UBI is also an idea that requires study to appreciate the breadth of the arguments. One article isn’t enough. One video isn’t enough. Entire books have been written about it that don’t cover everything. That’s really the big challenge, that **UBI feels like a simple idea that can be judged in an instant, when it’s actually a complex idea to be discussed across conventional ideological lines.** From improved physical and mental health, to reduced crime, to increased productivity, to smaller government, to increased bargaining power, to reduced effective tax rates, to increased entrepreneurship, to better educational outcomes, to economic multiplier effects, there’s a [growing body of evidence](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/wiki/index?ref=scottsantens.com#wiki%5Fthat.27s%5Fall%5Fvery%5Fwell.2C%5Fbut%5Fwhere.27s%5Fthe%5Fevidence.3F) in support of a foundational floor of unconditional financial security. Together these reasons form a picture of indispensability. This is especially true as automation continues transforming how we work, making inflexible non-universal safety net conditionality increasingly unable to cope with a rapidly evolving twenty-first century labor market. Basically, to be against UBI is understandable as long as one misunderstands UBI. But to be against UBI once one fully understands it and [the realities of ongoing technological disruption](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-real-story-of-automation-beginning-with-one-simple-chart-8b95f9bad71b?ref=scottsantens.com), that’s what’s truly difficult to understand. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Zombification of Intellectual Property and the Tool That Could Finally Reform It URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/zombification-of-intellectual-property-reform-universal-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-19T00:10:51.000Z ## How IP-Funded Basic Income Could Enrich the Public Domain You know what a zombie is, right? Do you know why you know? You know because of a mistake that threw *Night of the Living Dead* freely into the public domain, bypassing all standard copyright protections. Purely by accident, George Romero’s groundbreaking film instantly became a horror classic that could be licensed at no cost. The result was a movie that every theater could show, every TV station could broadcast, every artist could adapt and build off of… it was essentially a *gift* to the entire world. I think the success of zombies as a worldwide phenomenon provides an excellent case for looking at the entire idea of **intellectual property (IP)** differently. What is the purpose of IP? What is its history? What should its future be? And how can we best get to that future? To answer these questions, let’s go back to where it all started — censorship and money. ## The Dawn of the Undying IP Originally it was pretty easy for both Church and State to limit thought by controlling the pen, but then technology advanced as it always does, and the printing press greatly replaced the pen. Worried that this new technology would enable all kinds of new ideas to be published, Queen Mary in 1557 granted [The Worshipful Company of Stationers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worshipful%5FCompany%5Fof%5FStationers%5Fand%5FNewspaper%5FMakers?ref=scottsantens.com) a royal charter giving them the exclusive right to publish. Upon the expiration of this charter, England’s Parliament signed into law the [Statute of Anne in 1710](http://www.copyrighthistory.com/anne.html?ref=scottsantens.com), which was the first copyright law, where authors themselves were granted by the State a monopoly on their words for 14 or 21 years, **and** **no longer**. Control was shifted to authors, but control it remained, and part of the reasoning was to avoid “the ruin of them and their families.” In other words, authors needed money to live and copyrights could help provide that. Meanwhile, patents were seen as a way of raising government revenue *without taxation*, which would then also allow for the granting of favors to secure loyalties. By paying a fee, those who paid and were approved could become protected from competition. It was also meant to encourage inventors to disclose the details of their inventions, in other words to help society more than to help inventors. As written into the U.S. Constitution in 1787, Congress has the authority to grant patents “**to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing *for limited times* to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries**.” Besides just raising government revenue, patents were thus originally seen in the United States as a way of encouraging innovation through temporary restriction. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*0TAtjA6ms6tJKYtDPesi8A.png) Who needs brains when you have intellectual property? Fast forward hundreds of years to today. [Corporations worth billions of dollars now gobble up intellectual property ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c%5FM-8e9kys4&ref=scottsantens.com)[like a pack of zombies at a brain buffet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c%5FM-8e9kys4&ref=scottsantens.com) and have successfully and repeatedly fought to expand the duration of IP protections. Why? For innovation? No, the reason is because corporations love IP as a barrier to entry to restrict competition and to extract unproductive [economic rent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic%5Frent?ref=scottsantens.com) from the economy. [**They are rent seekers**](http://evonomics.com/they-dont-just-hide-their-money-economist-says-billionaire-wealth/?ref=scottsantens.com). Intellectual property costs money. Corporations have money. Corporations use that money to buy IP, not only to protect ideas they’ve invented or purchased, but to function as a shield against lawsuits and to use as leverage for protectionist dealmaking. So for example, two companies can sue each other or threaten to, and as a result decide to cross-license to each other, protecting themselves from competition. Companies without the money for patent arsenals can’t compete in such ways, and are open to patent lawsuits thanks to larger IP-armed companies having little fear of being countersued. Rentier Capitalism as explained by Guy Standing (37 minutes) This isn’t the capitalism of competitive free markets. This is [**rentier capitalism**](https://www.opendemocracy.net/guy-standing/we-must-combat-rentier-capitalism?ref=scottsantens.com) where the size of corporations and the power of governments are utilized to extract profits without innovating. [We see this kind of behavior in drug companies all the time](https://venturebeat.com/2008/02/28/unnaturally-extended-patents-they-cost-the-healthcare-system-billions-but-just-wont-die/?ref=scottsantens.com). If someone invents something new and innovative, and they sell the idea to a big pharmaceutical company, that company may lock away the patent and use it to prevent anyone else from using the new idea. It can then continue business as-is without productive investments to improve itself. The result is a lack of innovation — the exact opposite intent of patents. The idea of intellectual property has been twisted and malformed. What was always clearly mandated as being *temporary* as a means of giving innovators a head start, has become measured in terms of lifetimes instead of decades. Current copyright law extends copyright for **70 years after the author’s death**, and corporate works-for-hire are copyrighted for 95 years after original publication. **Copyright law started in the U.S. at 14 years** with the right to renew for another 14 years. Current patent law provides protection for 20 years from filing. It started at 14 years from issuance. On its face, this isn’t an extreme change for patents, but what has become extreme is the way they’re collected en masse by corporations with the deepest of pockets who are consolidating into a handful of oligopolistic megacorporations. The story of how we went from temporary protection to a century or more of monopolistic control can really be simplified down to just one word — **Disney**. ## The Mouse That Won’t Die ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/782/1*AbLm8Rzn9Zh4mE4QN-Ti3g.jpeg) [Image](http://zombieportraits.com/zombie-art-mickey-mouse-disney-and-living-dead/?ref=scottsantens.com) by [Rob Sacchetto](https://www.patreon.com/zombieportraits?ref=scottsantens.com) of [Zombie Portraits](http://www.zombieportraits.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) Walt Disney is a name we know because of the stories he told. Where did he get those stories? **He got them from the public domain** as told by the Brothers Grimm. Where did they get their stories? **They got them from the public domain** too as folk tales passed down from generation to generation. **The Disney name was built on the public domain** as its very foundation. Walt Disney then excluded his stories from the public domain via intellectual property law. But IP law as it existed in Disney’s time wasn’t good enough for Disney’s company after his death, because it would mean everyone eventually being able to create stories about Mickey Mouse and his friends, so The Disney Company started dumping money into perhaps the most lucrative corporate investment of all — lobbying. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*xHrPfGizXiqB2rnGVrDQrA.jpeg) Had Disney (and others) not lobbied for extending the duration of copyrights, Mickey Mouse would have entered the public domain in 1984, but thanks to the power of corporate lobbying, in 1979 with five years left to go, that date became 2003\. Thanks to even more corporate lobbying, in 1998 with five years left to go again, 2023 became the new date. With five years left to go as I write this, we may see another extension any time. These extensions have also had retroactive consequences on countless other non-Disney-owned works. When Congress changed the law in 1976, it gave all existing copyright protected works published between 1923 and 1977 a term of 95 years. Because of this, works from 1923 will only begin to finally enter the public domain in 2019\. Meanwhile, works from 1961, whose arrival into the public domain would have originally been expected in 2018, now won’t enter the public domain until 2057\. And duration wasn’t the only change. Another change made to copyright law is it became *automatic* upon creation. That it was once not automatic is how zombies as we know them came to be. The Horrors of Copyright (7 minutes) Before reading further, I recommend watching the above video essay created by [kaptainkristian](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuPgdqQKpq4T4zeqmTelnFg?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s a fantastic video. In it, he explains how prior to 1976, copyrighting a film required the copyright mark be affixed to the title card at the beginning of the film at the time of its first public viewing. Due to a last minute renaming of the film from *Night of the Flesh Eaters* to *Night of the Living Dead* as to avoid confusion with an existing film named *The Flesh Eaters*, the title card that had the copyright mark was swapped with one that didn’t. The result was a brilliant film being released **directly into the public domain**. Any movie theater could screen it. Any TV station could air it. As a result, it appeared everywhere, including within other movies and shows. Artists were free to adapt it, to use George Romero’s vision of zombies within their own new works. Zombie movie after zombie movie was born, each using zombies that looked and acted like Romero’s zombies, that followed the same zombie rules of being slow-moving reanimated corpses that required destruction of the brain to kill. This would never have been possible if zombies as depicted in *Night of the Living Dead* were protected property. Yes, it was a good film, but its ubiquity is a huge part of how it came to spawn an entire multibillion-dollar industry. *The Walking Dead* would not exist if *Night of the Living Dead*’s title card had included a copyright declaration, neither would *Game of Thrones* exist as we know it. Name your favorite zombie movie, show, book, or comic. None of them would exist as we know them, if at all, had George Romero been given a monopoly on his zombies. There are other examples of this too. What’s your favorite Christmas movie? Is it *It’s a Wonderful Life*? If so, that’s largely because it entered the public domain in 1975, after not properly being renewed for an additional 28 years after its first 28 years of protection expired. As described by [The Center for the Study of the Public Domain](https://law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/?ref=scottsantens.com): > “Because its copyright was not properly renewed after the first 28-year term. The film had been a flop on release, but thanks to its public domain status, it became a holiday classic. Why? Because TV networks were free to show it over and over again during the holidays, making the film immensely popular. But then copyright law reentered the picture…. In 1993, the film’s original copyright holder, capitalizing on a recent Supreme Court case, reasserted copyright based on its ownership of the film’s musical score and the short story on which the film was based (the film itself is still in the public domain). Ironically, a film that only became a success because of its public domain status was pulled back into copyright.” Every year, the CSPD releases [a list of movies and books and music](https://law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2018/pre-1976/?ref=scottsantens.com) that would have entered the public domain that year, had copyright law not been changed and works of art were allowed to enter the public domain as according to the 1909 copyright act. This year, those books included *Catch-22, Stranger in a Strange Land,* and *The Phantom Tollbooth*. This year’s movies would have included *Breakfast at Tiffany’s*, *West Side Story*, and *The Parent Trap*. This year’s music would have included Patsy Cline’s *Crazy*, the song *Stand By Me*, and *Surfin’* by the Beach Boys. Adapting any of this material, or using it within your own would have been absolutely free. But that changed, and now it won’t be freely available for all of us to use until 2057. Even science is being impacted. There were scientific papers published in 1961 that would have entered the public domain this year as well. Instead they’re locked behind paywalls where one can be required to pay $30 for one day of access. Do you think humanity benefits when [60-year-old science is behind paywalls](https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008%5Fdjvu.txt)? Who does this all benefit? Not us, because it’s been estimated that [the total economic loss due to patents alone is about $1 trillion per decade](https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/The-Circle-Bastiat/2011/0921/Patent-system-cost-the-economy-0.5-trillion-since-1990?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s not benefiting the creators, because many of them are already dead, and yet the argument goes that if copyright didn’t extend 70 years past death, creators would create less. Another way of saying this is creators are only motivated to create if they’re protected from competition for their entire lives, the lives of their children, and the lives of their grandchildren and great grandchildren. **That’s an absolute lie**. **The truth is that** **companies like Disney want to be protected from competition for as long as they can,** **because money, and because companies never die**. Yet another great video by CGP Grey (6 minutes) Every new copyright extension does far more to reward those who own the rights to *existing* works than it does to encourage the creation of *new* works. This is antithetical to the entire point of copyright’s ability to encourage new stuff. So if copyright should not be life plus 70 years, what should it be? Is there a kind of Goldilocks zone where government-granted protection is long enough to encourage new stuff to a greater degree than a lack of protection would, but not so much as to have no effect on incentives and even actively harm creation by withholding resources for artists to use, adapt, and remix? **The answer may be 15 years.** In the 2009 paper [*Forever Minus a Day? Calculating Optimal Copyright Term*](https://rufuspollock.com/papers/optimal%5Fcopyright%5Fterm.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), its author Rufus Pollock of the University of Cambridge built a first-of-its-kind theoretically-and-empirically-grounded model, and concluded **the optimal copyright term would be approximately 15 years with a 99% confidence interval extending up to 38 years** **at the most**. Existing copyright law protects new works for far, *far* too long. All such lengthy protections do is better enable corporations to extract rent. Why create something truly new when you can just milk something dry for two centuries due to enforced lack of competition? The sole purpose of copyright as a tool is to benefit the public at large through encouraging a larger pool of ideas. Enriching creators has only ever been the *means* of accomplishing that purpose, not the purpose itself. A rich public domain enriches us all. A small public domain costs us all. It is creatively impoverishing. [Copyrights being as long as they are serve to actively restrict our total knowledge base](https://questioncopyright.org/what%5Fwe%5Flose%5Fwhen%5Fwe%5Fembrace%5Fcopyright?ref=scottsantens.com). We believe long copyrights help the little guy, but copyright extensions are not for the little guy. They were not the results of grassroots organizing by millions of poor artists. They were about those with money wanting more of it. The little guy just tends to go along with it, because of the promise of the potential of more economic security for themselves and for their families. If you’re earning royalties from a book you wrote, as long as you need money to live, you’re likely going to be for continuing that passive income until your death, and you’ll even support terms that exceed your death out of the same concern for your family and the generations who succeed you. Therein lies the problem, but therein also lies **the solution**… One of the best introductions to the idea of basic income courtesy of [Rutger Bregman](https://amzn.to/2PReRif?ref=scottsantens.com) (15 minutes) As it stands, copyright reform poses a hell of a challenge, and the challenge is global. However, [**unconditional basic income**](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq) is a potential game changer. The unconditional provision of an income sufficient for the meeting of basic needs as a monthly starting point, would weaken the popular support for long copyrights. Why support copyrights that last 70 years beyond your death, if you know you’re going to be okay, your family will be okay, your kids will be okay, your grandkids will be okay, and your great grandkids will be okay? If everyone starts each day with enough money to live, then obtaining money to live is no longer the all-encompassing overriding concern that it is now, right? There’s also an opportunity here to use how we fund UBI to accelerate the expansion of the public domain. Because we want a large public domain upon which we can all use to build new ideas, and the granting of intellectual property rights is something we grant collectively, **I propose we charge an annually increasing fee to those wanting IP protection**, where the revenue goes immediately to every individual as their share of what’s being withheld from the public domain. Call it an IP fee and dividend (or IP fee and rebate). ## The IP Dividend [**Intellectual property dividends**](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/extreme-wealth-inequality-alaska-model/?ref=scottsantens.com) could work like a [**carbon fee and dividend**](https://medium.com/basic-income/this-idea-can-literally-change-our-world-107cbc94057a?ref=scottsantens.com), and for the same reasoning. By introducing an annually increasing price for IP protection, it would eventually become too expensive for companies like Disney to continue excluding IP from the public domain. But at the same time, the longer something is kept from the public domain, the public itself would be increasingly enriched, so either way, the public wins. To illustrate, let’s take Mickey Mouse as an example. Imagine if Walt Disney had been granted 15 years of protection on Mickey Mouse for an initial fee of $10\. At the end of 15 years, to renew protection for another year, it could cost say $20\. The next year it would be $40, the next year $80\. These are numbers that most people can afford, especially Disney. But the increase is *exponential*. At such a rate, in 1966, on the 38th year of copyright protection (which remember has been calculated as the uppermost boundary of an ideal length of protection for maximum public benefit) in the year of his death, Walt Disney would have needed to pay $167 million to maintain exclusive rights to Mickey Mouse. Had The Walt Disney Company wished to then continue maintaining exclusive rights after Walt’s death, they could have done so, but it would have been increasingly expensive. In 1970, the fee would have surpassed $2 billion. In 1980, it would have surpassed *$2 trillion*. In 1980, with a population of the US being 226 million people, each person’s share of the fee Disney paid that year to prevent everyone from freely using Mickey Mouse would have been around $12,000\. That’s a basic income, and it would have been paid for entirely by Disney, and not by any taxes whatsoever. Realistically of course, Disney could never pay $2 trillion, but that’s exactly the point. Every year beyond 38 years of protection should be prohibitively expensive to the point everyone looking to maintain exclusive rights would need to eventually conclude it’s no longer worth it to maintain exclusive rights, at which point the IP would become available to all. But for every year they do consider it’s still worth it, the public being prevented from a larger public domain would still benefit in the form of a cash dividend. Win-win! And let’s not forget, [**the public is the original funder behind all the patented ideas anyway**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvgdtF3y0Ss&ref=scottsantens.com). The public as *investors* are already owed a dividend. ## Conclusion [Intellectual property is a zombie that needs to be shot in the head so it can stop living forever](https://fee.org/articles/how-intellectual-property-hampers-the-free-market/?ref=scottsantens.com). The weapon capable of this great task is unconditional basic income, because so long as people require money to live, they’ll defend IP laws that aren’t actually in their best interests. To get back to the true purpose of IP laws — the common good — our goal should be whatever works best to “promote the progress of science and useful arts,” not what imposes artificial scarcity on an infinitely reproducible non-physical resource. Ideas are infinite and they all originate from a global commons. Ideas don’t just appear from the nothingness like particles and anti-particles in the quantum foam of the universe. **Everything is a remix**. If you’ve never watched this 37-minute documentary by Kirby Ferguson, WATCH IT. All ideas build off other ideas, and so we need a rich pool of common ideas from which we can all draw. Zombies got added to the pool accidentally, and we all benefited, and not at the expense of George Romero, because he benefited too. He’s been immortalized. Nothing could be more fitting than the fact that through his zombies, he will live forever. It’s time we reduce the perceived need for intellectual property by guaranteeing everyone an unconditional basic income, and funding it as an IP dividend using royalty fees from patents and copyrights. And aside from expanding the public domain, if we do that, [a patent for a machine that can do everything we can do](http://robertreich.org/post/113801138315?ref=scottsantens.com) is a lot less scary if we’re all earning its paycheck. But then again, maybe you’re more scared of robot apocalypse movies than you are zombie apocalypse movies, in which case all I can say is, “[**There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves…**](https://medium.com/basic-income/deep-learning-is-going-to-teach-us-all-the-lesson-of-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines-7c6442e37a49?ref=scottsantens.com)” *Please note that in the spirit of this article I am self-publishing it directly into the public domain via the* [*Creative Commons “No Rights Reserved” CC0 license*](https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/?ref=scottsantens.com)*. This work belongs to everyone now. Use it however you like.* > “In the long run, making programs free is a step toward the postscarcity world, where nobody will have to work very hard just to make a living. People will be free to devote themselves to activities that are fun, such as programming, after spending the necessary ten hours a week on required tasks such as legislation, family counseling, robot repair and asteroid prospecting. There will be no need to be able to make a living from programming. We have already greatly reduced the amount of work that the whole society must do for its actual productivity, but only a little of this has translated itself into leisure for workers because much nonproductive activity is required to accompany productive activity. The main causes of this are bureaucracy and isometric struggles against competition. Free software will greatly reduce these drains in the area of software production. We must do this, in order for technical gains in productivity to translate into less work for us.” — [Richard Stallman, The GNU Manifesto, 1985](https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.en.html?ref=scottsantens.com) --- ***Special thanks to: Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Andy Stern, Stephen Starkey, Larry Cohen, Roy Bahat, Floyd Marinescu, Aaron T. Schultz, Topher Hunt, Gisele Huff, Sasha Barrese, Robert Collins, Kian Alavi, Stephane Boisvert, Justin Walsh, Daragh Ward, Jordan Lejuwaan, Joanna Zara, Chace Bailey, Daryl Smith, Albert, Peter T. Knight, Danielle and Michael Texeira, Jack Canty, Paul Godsmark, Vladimir Baranov, Rachel Perkins, Chris Rauchle, David Ihnen, Sylvain Barone, Michael Hrenka, Natalie Foster, Reid Rusonik, Matt DeKok, Daniel Brockman, Carrie Mclachlan, Michael Honey, George Scialabba, Che Wagner, Gerald Huff, Will Ware, Joe Ballou, Jack Wagner, Gray Scott, Catherine MacDonald, Max Henrion, Arjun, Chris Smothers, Alvin Miranda, Kai Wong, Jill Weiss, Nicolas Pouillard, MARK4UBI, Elizabeth Balcar, Robin Ketelaars, Georg Baumann, Lisa Hallman, E. Davies, Dylan Taylor, Bryan Herdliska, Mark, Kirk Israel, Valentina Petricciuolo, Elizabeth Corker, Meshack Vee, Kev Roberts, Chris Boraski, Lee, Villi Haukka, Casey L. Young, Oliver Bestwalter, Thomas Welsh, Walter Schaerer, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** ## [Would you like to see your name here too?](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Doug Ford Cancelled Ontario’s Basic Income Pilot Experiment Because It Was Working URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/doug-ford-cancelled-ontarios-basic-income-pilot-experiment-because-it-was-working/ Last updated: 2022-02-19T00:04:22.000Z ## Ontario should demand the completion of the OBIP experiment in the name of empirical evidence and human research ethics *Update: Since my publication of this article, [two](https://labourstudies.mcmaster.ca/documents/southern-ontarios-basic-income-experience.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) [surveys](https://assets.nationbuilder.com/bicn/pages/42/attachments/original/1551664357/BICN%5F-%5FSignposts%5Fto%5FSuccess.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) were completed to get at least some data about the effectiveness of the OBIP experiment.* A **crime** took place in Ontario at the end of July, 2018\. The perpetrator was Doug Ford, the new Progressive Conservative Premier of Ontario, and the victim was the [Ontario Basic Income Pilot (OBIP)](https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontario-basic-income-pilot?ref=scottsantens.com) experiment that had begun under the previous government, where 4,000 people in Ontario in four different cities (Hamilton, Brantford, Thunder Bay, and Lindsay) had recently just begun receiving — instead of the existing conditional welfare benefits for the unemployed and disabled — an unconditional income boost, based simply on the amount of income they were earning, with an additional boost for those with disabilities. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/960/1*lxQ_rbW-7a4NXpxhZb2DKw.jpeg) Guns don’t kill experiments. Ideologically-driven people do. The goal of the **three-year $150 million scientific experiment** was to determine the effects of directly increasing people’s incomes without conditions in comparison to a control group of 2,000 people. What would be discovered after three years of data gathering? Would people in the experimental condition do more work or less? What kind of work would be accepted or avoided? Would incomes from employment increase or decrease? Would productivity improve? Would there be an economic stimulus? Would business startup rates increase? Would education rates increase? Would grades improve? Would health care expenses fall? Would mental health improve? Would crime rates decrease? Would the existing burden on the criminal justice system be lightened? Would household partner violence fall? There are so many questions to ask about the effects of basic income, and so the government under the previous Premier of Ontario, Kathleen Wynne, turned to the scientific method to help answer these questions. No amount of arguing and debate will ever reveal the truth of whether it’s raining or not as well as opening a window and sticking your hand outside will. Science is a tool for determining objective reality. This is also why some people are anti-science. Some people reject reality. Some people have no interest in determining what is and what isn’t. Some people believe reality tends to be inconvenient and contrary to their emotional and economic interests. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/2400/1*9XStjvcsnJ4ZjFWk5hyWIw.jpeg) ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/2400/1*Z8fCFsixGOYpnFQqSsj7aw.jpeg) ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/2400/1*W9uTQGAcyc6zWlxgZntxqw.jpeg) [Humans of Basic Income](https://www.jessiegolem.com/humans-of-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) Doug Ford — as well as his Community and Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod — are apparently among those for whom objective reality is somewhat of a nuisance. We can safely assume this because they had the opportunity to build an evidence-based case against basic income, and they chose not to gather that evidence. Their reasoning is clearly ideological, because first, [the only official data gathered so far was baseline data to compare future d](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/basic-income-pilot-project-ford-cancel-1.4771343?ref=scottsantens.com)[ata against](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/basic-income-pilot-project-ford-cancel-1.4771343?ref=scottsantens.com), second, they’ve changed their story repeatedly, and third, if there was evidence already pointing towards it being a failure, the best possible thing to do would be to sit back and watch it fail. Come 2020, with three years of data at their disposal in support of basic income having negative consequences, they could have then built a solid case against basic income, putting it to rest as an option. But they didn’t do that. Thus we can only really conclude one thing: **The basic income experiment was working, and therefore it could not be allowed to continue**. Were the experiment allowed to finish, there would then be [an even larger mountain of evidence than there already is](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1040683616488103936?ref=scottsantens.com) in favor of basic income as a better policy. That could not be allowed. The experiment had to be ended before enough data was created to inform an evidence-based policy decision. There’s a way to test this hypothesis too. Become one of the voices demanding that Ford continue the experiment **as he himself promised he would prior to** ***and*** **after his election**. If he believes that basic income is a bad idea, and he does care about evidence, then he will continue the experiment in order to produce irrefutable evidence against basic income. If he refuses to continue the experiment beyond the [March 31, 2019](https://globalnews.ca/news/4422214/ontario-basic-income-pilot-end/?ref=scottsantens.com) date he’s now set as its official cancellation date, then he does not care about evidence, and he’s forming his opinion of basic income in the absence of evidence, and even *in spite of it*. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/2400/1*W96c2yGzLAvDD3ZCggNPfg.jpeg) ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1250/1*uGTfwQqFpcjjEJbCwlogIw.jpeg) ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/2400/1*YbHgLQ6xAcAQ5JZ2IXyniA.jpeg) [Humans of Basic Income](https://www.jessiegolem.com/humans-of-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) I absolutely welcome Ford reversing course and deciding that scientific evidence should inform government decisions. In fact, aside from [the evidence already learned in Canada decades ago from the 1974–1979 Mincome experiment](https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/12/23/mincome-in-dauphin-manitoba%5Fn%5F6335682.html?ref=scottsantens.com), and [the evidence gained from other basic income experiments and unconditional cash transfer programs all over the world](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1040683616488103936?ref=scottsantens.com), let me help by sharing some of the anecdotal evidence actively being gathered now from the new firsthand accounts shared both before and since Ford announced the Ontario Basic Income Pilot’s cancellation. ## The Living Proof Let’s start with [Angel](https://www.thespec.com/news-story/8795958-basic-income-life-before-after-and-once-again-without/?ref=scottsantens.com). Prior to receiving basic income, Angel had been engaged in sex work for survival. With basic income, she was enabled to transition out of sex work and to begin pursuing a degree in medical administration. If the basic income experiment is not saved, that will end, and her sex work for survival will most likely resume. **Is that what Ford supports? Would Ford prefer his constituents be coerced into selling their bodies instead of opting to better their minds?** Prior to receiving basic income, [Dave Cherkewski](https://motherboard.vice.com/en%5Fus/article/paxzv8/hamilton-canada-basic-income-pilot-future-work-v25n1?ref=scottsantens.com) had on multiple occasion considered ending his life of long-term poverty. With basic income, he was immediately affordably housed, and finally freed to begin making long-term plans, among which included the creation of a work co-op *for* people with disabilities *by* people with disabilities. If the basic income experiment is not saved, survival itself will again become his full-time job. **Is that what Ford supports? Would Ford prefer his constituents spend all their time just trying to survive and even considering death as an option, instead of creatively engaging in their communities as happier citizens?** ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/2400/1*7v0hzHg_fTBDRzU4fky9aQ.jpeg) ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/2400/1*ZmvqdIgNFhBwEU78RyEvUQ.jpeg) ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/2400/1*rWU-TsYYbF4kqELE5TTmUw.jpeg) [Humans of Basic Income](https://www.jessiegolem.com/humans-of-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) Prior to receiving basic income, [Lindsay Boyd](https://www.thespec.com/news-story/8795958-basic-income-life-before-after-and-once-again-without/?ref=scottsantens.com) needed to go to food banks every month and was thus limited to processed foods. Bankrupted twice by high interest payday loans, Lindsay was finally able to begin building savings instead of debt. She was also finally able to include fresh fruits and vegetables into her diet. If the basic income experiment is not saved, there go her savings and her healthier eating. **Is that what Ford supports? Would Ford prefer his constituents build debt instead of savings, and eat poorly instead of healthy?** Prior to receiving basic income, [Eric Chiodi](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/basic-income-legal-action-1.4770245?ref=scottsantens.com) had been disabled thanks to a car crash and lived a life of constant pain. With basic income, he was able to afford therapy to live in a little less pain. He was also able to begin paying off his back taxes that were threatening the loss of his house. If the basic income experiment is not saved, his pain will be back, and his house may be lost. **Is that what Ford supports? Would Ford prefer his constituents live in pain and be unable to pay their share of taxes?** Prior to receiving basic income, [Sue Paskoski](https://tvo.org/article/current-affairs/the-human-cost-what-the-cancellation-of-the-basic-income-pilot-means-for-three-thunder-bay-residents?ref=scottsantens.com) was discouraged from earning too much working because it would mean the loss of her disability benefits. She also couldn’t afford a car. With basic income, she was able to buy a car and begin working as a cleaner to earn additional income. If the basic income experiment is not saved, she will not be able to work without losing her benefits, and will then also not be able to afford her car payments. **Is that what Ford supports? Would Ford prefer his constituents stay home and not work, and not be able to buy economy-stimulating goods like cars?** ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/2400/1*PVlVg44aq6X1xLj54U_bZA.jpeg) ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/2400/1*BmqeyXtR8tRE75DAWBOjsg.jpeg) ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/2400/1*HxzOsAqva0e81n91t9I_HQ.jpeg) [Humans of Basic Income](https://www.jessiegolem.com/humans-of-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) Prior to receiving basic income, [Steve Pelland](https://www.thespec.com/news-story/8795958-basic-income-life-before-after-and-once-again-without/?ref=scottsantens.com) was homeless and found it extremely difficult to find a job because most of the available jobs are late shift, but the homeless shelter doesn’t allow day sleeping. With basic income, he was not only able to afford housing, but he was also able to begin learning a trade to eventually get a middle class job. If the basic income experiment is not saved, he will certainly not be able to continue learning a trade, and will most likely end up homeless again. **Is that what Ford supports? Would Ford prefer his constituents stay homeless and unemployed instead of housed and paying taxes on middle class incomes?** Prior to receiving basic income, [Roland Singleton](https://tvo.org/article/current-affairs/the-human-cost-what-the-cancellation-of-the-basic-income-pilot-means-for-three-thunder-bay-residents?ref=scottsantens.com) had been homeless amidst dried up construction work. With basic income, Roland was able to afford housing and also enrollment into a two-year college electrician program. If the basic income experiment is not saved, he’s one of the lucky few who will likely be okay because his basic income made such a big difference so quickly. **How can Ford not support this outcome? Would Ford prefer that his constituents be unable to become skillfully employed and instead live on the streets looking for work where they can find it?** ## Video: Ontario's Basic Income Was 'A Blessing' To These Small Business Owners ### Luis and Leanna Segura of Lindsay, Ont. were struggling to pay the bills at home, while keeping their new restaurant up… www.huffingtonpost.ca Prior to receiving basic income, [Luis and Leanna Segura](https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/07/27/ontarios-basic-income-program-is-helping-this-family-business-thrive%5Fa%5F23490950/?ref=scottsantens.com) were small business owners with four kids. Creating a new business while balancing a family together was a real challenge. With basic income, the stress of covering bills at home was lifted, enabling them to grow their business with less worry. They also noticed an uptick in customers and what customers were spending due to their customers also being part of the basic income experiment and having more money to spend. If the basic income experiment is not saved, their business is more likely to fail instead of expanding to new locations. **Is that what Ford supports? Would Ford prefer the small businesses of his constituents fail? Does Ford prefer an Ontario with fewer customers with less money to spend into their local economies?** ## Dashed hopes: Hamilton photographer puts faces to basic-income victims ### Jessie Golem has created a photo essay of people like her who were negatively affected when the Ford government cancelled the basic income pilot program. www.thespec.com Prior to receiving basic income, [Jessie Golem](https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/jessie-golem/doug-ford-axed-basic-income-and-ontarios-chance-to-change-the-world%5Fa%5F23494005/?ref=scottsantens.com) had four different jobs and even squeezed in freelance work between them in the never-ending battle to afford rent. With basic income, Jessie was finally able to take a deep breath, and with tears of joy streaming down her face, feel security for the first time. She gained the freedom to begin focusing on developing her role at a non-profit that’s helping grow grassroots organizations all over the world. If the basic income experiment is not saved, the exhaustion of daily survival will be placed back on her shoulders, and her newfound sense of security destroyed. **Is that what Ford supports? Would Ford prefer his constituents work four jobs just to get by, and live day after day with the weight of survival on their shoulders, unable to focus on the potential to positively impact our entire world?** It’s not too late for Ford to reverse his course reversal. He now has until the end of March 2019\. He obviously made his decision to cancel the basic income experiment without looking at any of the available evidence, because the only data gathered was data to create the baseline. Nor did he sit down with any of the basic income recipients with the intention of gaining at least some understanding of how the experiment was working or even not working for them. But since his decision, an increasing number of personal stories have been shared of just how well the experiment was indeed working for the participants. There’s no excuse now for going ahead with this decision in light of all the positive stories available to listen to and learn from. In fact, Jessie Golem — one of the above-mentioned basic income recipients — is now using her basic income to collect and share these many stories as part of an ongoing photography project she has begun. The project is called [**Humans of Basic Income**](https://www.jessiegolem.com/humans-of-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) ([@HumansBasic](https://twitter.com/HumansBasic?ref=scottsantens.com) on Twitter) and you’ve actually been looking at the photos while reading this. Jessie has also begun touring each of the basic income pilot areas to meet more of her fellow basic income recipients who want to visually share their stories. Stories like this one of a mother who was able to keep her baby daughter because of basic income… ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*dDGuqmZ5nKFVDXQh_KoIEw.jpeg) [Humans of Basic Income](https://www.jessiegolem.com/humans-of-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) > Basic income allowed me a chance to recover my future. UBI gave me hope to provide a secure and better future for my baby girl. It gave me the confidence to “keep” my baby, rather than being forced to give her up for adoption. My family felt relieved to know my daughter and I would have a fighting chance, as a single mother. UBI significantly reduced my depression, anxiety, and OCD, which allowed a secure attachment to flourish between me and my baby girl. I was able to be a better, more attentive mom; I focused on my baby’s needs rather than ruminate about my own unmet needs. As a result, my baby is a well adjusted, healthy, happy girl. UBI is FOR CHILDREN!! UBI gave me the confidence and **INCENTIVE** to apply for a good job, knowing I had a safety net to catch me if I didn’t get the job. UBI cut out my need to use the food bank — I could afford to eat “real food.” UBI allowed me to save up for a down payment on a home. Basic income gave a basic income recipient the confidence to keep her baby. Stop for a moment and think about that. **A mother was able to afford to keep her child because of the basic income pilot**. The effects of it are *that* big, as are the effects of *not* having basic income. Jessie’s project is also not the only way of learning what was happening in the basic income pilot from those taking part in it. A blog has been setup for basic income recipients to share their stories of how their lives have changed as a result of it. The blog is called [**Basic Income Voices**](http://bivoices.hamiltonpoverty.ca/?ref=scottsantens.com) and I encourage everyone reading this to read those stories too, to learn for yourself directly from recipients what Doug Ford and Lisa MacLeod refuse to acknowledge, that basic income demonstrably works, and in thousands of ways no bureaucratic system of gatekeepers and string-pullers ever could. The Ford administration would instead like everyone to believe that the basic income experiment is too expensive.This all too common notion is wrong-headed. It doesn’t look at the effects of basic income, effects which the experiment was built to measure. From the firsthand accounts of basic income recipients, we know many were for the first time enabled to find housing, to find employment, to find better jobs, to pursue their educations, to improve their skills, to eat better, to live with less stress, to build their businesses, and to spend their money into their local economies. It is abundantly clear from all of this that tax revenue would have likely increased and spending on the costs of poverty like health care and crime would have likely decreased. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1500/1*_YP2O9S6HZyLEr-neyuWag.jpeg) ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/2000/1*mihaDE4abVDP--YvBqf0WQ.jpeg) ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/2000/1*t6XUAbReZGW4P82-gVbYvQ.jpeg) [Humans of Basic Income](https://www.jessiegolem.com/humans-of-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) The full cost of poverty is crucial to understanding the cost of basic income. If the total cost of the basic income experiment was to be $150 million at the end of three years, that may sound expensive, but what if spending elsewhere had been discovered to fall by $100 million, and what if tax revenue from a larger tax base and a larger GDP had increased by $100 million? In that case, Ontario would not be out $150 million. It would be up $50 million more than it would have had it not done the experiment. It would have gotten *richer*. Coming out ahead with basic income is an entirely realistic possibility. The cost of poverty in Ontario is estimated as being [**$32-$38 billion per year**](https://ccednet-rcdec.ca/en/toolbox/cost-poverty-analysis-economic-cost-poverty-ontario?ref=scottsantens.com). What if implementing basic income Ontario-wide reduced that cost to $0, and [grew Ontario’s GDP](http://rooseveltinstitute.org/modeling-macroeconomic-effects-ubi/?ref=scottsantens.com) from [$652 billion](https://www.statista.com/statistics/577539/gdp-of-ontario-canada/?ref=scottsantens.com) to $752 billion? Isn’t that outcome something worth investing [$43 billion](https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/04/19/basic-income-cost-canada%5Fa%5F23415260/?ref=scottsantens.com) on basic income to achieve? An Ontario with a higher GDP per capita would mean more tax revenue without raising anyone’s tax rates. An Ontario without basic income is not without cost. [Poverty is not free. Poverty costs everyone, everywhere, all the time](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com). The ability to make this calculation is why **all of Ontario, and even all of Canada, needs to demand that Ford continue the experiment**. Yes, basic income involves spending more money, but it also involves making more money and saving more money. The question is how much of each? What’s the answer? **That’s what scientific experimentation is for!** The people of Ontario can’t know the answers and never will, unless Ford keeps his promise and sees the experiment through to completion. If Ontario is tired of spending money it doesn’t need to spend, and wants its people and its businesses to earn more money, it will do what needs to be done to keep the promise, complete the experiment, and save the basic income recipients. Anything less is not only anti-science, it’s criminal. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/2000/1*gEuGnu_hQ64NK5hSCpk-nw.jpeg) ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/2000/1*Xxz1MXNYihDDjxfPV_fDpg.jpeg) ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/2000/1*tOCyDQE0qtWRChiCJJDQEQ.jpeg) [Humans of Basic Income](https://www.jessiegolem.com/humans-of-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) This is also why [an open letter to Ford and MacLeod](http://evidencenetwork.ca/an-open-letter-to-premier-ford-and-minister-macleod-on-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) has been written and signed by a collection of principal investigators, research teams, and stakeholder groups behind [basic income experiments around the world](http://ubi.earth/map/?ref=scottsantens.com). The evidence being gathered was going to benefit not just Ontario, but the planet. We must also never forget that basic income research involves experimenting with human beings, and such experimentation must meet the highest of ethical standards. As stated in the open letter, “*standards for the ethical conduct of social experiments involving humans have evolved significantly in recent years.* ***Not only is the cancellation inconsistent with international best practices, but it violates Canada’s own policy for the ethical conduct of experiments involving humans***.” It cannot be ignored that the cancellation of a three-year experiment involving real live human beings is an ethical violation of the most serious kind, [the kind that can lead to **death**, especially by increased risk of heart attacks and **suicide**](https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/08/01/basic-income-recipients-feel-shock-betrayal-at-ford-governments-surprise-move-to-cancel-pilot-program.html?ref=scottsantens.com). In the name of science and ethics, and because it appeared to be working, the cancellation of the basic income pilot experiment should be reversed. But if the people of Ontario refuse to sufficiently pressure Ford into doing the right thing, as [multiple mayors in Ontario](https://globalnews.ca/news/4433662/ontario-mayors-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) and [multiple Chambers of Commerce](https://www.hamiltonchamber.ca/joint-letter-to-minister-duclos-on-basic-income-pilot-september-10th-2018/?ref=scottsantens.com) are already beginning to plead for, and if [the class action lawsuit](https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/08/27/class-action-lawsuit-launched-against-ontario-government-over-cancellation-of-basic-income-pilot.html?ref=scottsantens.com) already being brought against the Ford administration for breach of contract also fails to force his hand, then [the federal government will need to step in](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-trudeau-government-urged-to-save-ontarios-basic-income-pilot-project/?ref=scottsantens.com) and make sure that basic income in Ontario does not end on March 31, 2019, but will instead complete as originally designed at the end of three years *as promised*. Promises were made. Promises were broken. Those promises must be kept. Wherever you live, anywhere in the world, please do what you can to help make this right. In addition to the links already included, please also make use of the ones below. Sign the petitions, contribute to the fund raisers, like and favorite, share and retweet, whatever you can do to help, please do that. Save the basic income pilot recipients. Complete the experiment. ***Keep the promise.*** --- ***Special thanks to: Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Andy Stern, Stephen Starkey, Larry Cohen, Floyd Marinescu, Aaron T. Schultz, Topher Hunt, Gisele Huff, Robert Collins, Kian Alavi, Stephane Boisvert, Justin Walsh, Daragh Ward, Jordan Lejuwaan, Joanna Zarach, Ace Bailey, Daryl Smith, Albert, Peter T. Knight, Danielle and Michael Texeira, Jack Canty, Paul Godsmark, Vladimir Baranov, Rachel Perkins, Chris Rauchle, David Ihnen, Sylvain Barone, Michael Hrenka, Natalie Foster, Reid Rusonik, Matt DeKok, Daniel Brockman, Carrie Mclachlan, Michael Honey, George Scialabba, Che Wagner, Gerald Huff, Will Ware, Joe Ballou, Richard Just, Jack Wagner, Gray Scott, Catherine MacDonald, Max Henrion, Arjun Banker, Dan O'Sullivan, Chris Smothers, Alvin Miranda, Kai Wong, Jill Weiss, Nicolas Pouillard, Christopher Anderson, MARK4UBI, Elizabeth Balcar, Robin Ketelaars, Georg Baumann, Lisa Hallman, E. Davies, Dylan Taylor, Bryan Herdliska, Mark, Kirk Israel, Valentina Petricciuolo, Elizabeth Corker, Kev Roberts, Chris Boraski, Lee VilliHaukka, Casey L. Young, Robert F. Greene, Oliver Bestwalter, Thomas Welsh, Walter Schaerer, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** ## [Would you like to see your name here too?](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### What We Need to Truly Thrive: Democracy and Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/what-we-need-to-truly-thrive-democracy-and-unconditional-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T23:53:12.000Z *The text below is a speech I wrote for a keynote in Ireland for DemCon 2018\. The PowerPoint I created for it is also available* [*here*](https://www.slideshare.net/ScottSantens/unconditional-basic-income-and-democracy?ref=scottsantens.com)*.* > “Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.” — Frank Herbert, Dune F**ear**… About a century ago, the world witnessed what happens when fear takes hold of the minds of the citizenry of nations. Fear of poverty, fear of the other, fear of change… these fears led to the rise of leaders who promised total control because fear often emerges from the lack of control. From that seed fascism was born, and from fascism came a level of devastation that was unprecedented in human history. War engulfed the planet. When FDR declared there’s nothing to fear but fear itself, he was expressing another response to fear, which is to not be afraid. **Fascism feeds on fear. It requires it**. It makes a false promise to solve it by exerting control over everything, but control does not end fear. Control uses fear parasitically. Totalitarian control is a Faustian Bargain, where the Devil makes the unknown less scary by collapsing an infinity of options down to one — the one you’re *told*. The year is now 2018, and I am afraid. As an American who has studied history, I am afraid that fascism is on the rise again, and this time, it’s even in my own country, which happens to be the most powerful country on Earth, fully capable of single-handedly destroying it. How did we get here once again, and what can we do about it to stop it and to also prevent it from ever happening again? I believe the answer lies in two ideas which need each other and reinforce each other: **democracy, and** [**unconditional basic income**](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq). Democracy is one of humanity’s greatest achievements. I firmly believe that. I consider myself among the luckiest of humans to have ever existed, to have been born after the divine right of kings had perished from this earth. That my forefathers had something to do with a nation born in independence from royalty, and who believed in the right and the ability of self-rule by the people, fills me with great pride. But democracy is not something that is created, and just continues existing forever. Democracy is not a physical object. It has no inertia. **Every day we must wake up and together create democracy**. I can’t help but feel that in the US, we’ve been letting it fade, partly because of the simple fact that like vaccination against disease, it works. When something’s working, it’s easier to take it for granted. We also haven’t sufficiently scaled our representative democracy to account for a vastly larger population than we had in the 18th century, nor have we sufficiently protected our democracy from the overpowering influence of money. But most of all I think democracy has been fading because of our original sin as a nation. **That original sin was slavery.** Contrary to popular belief, we never truly ended slavery. We didn’t fully abolish it as an institution. We simply went from one form of slavery (chattel slavery), to another form of slavery (wage slavery). Instead of forcing people to work for nothing, we instead let people work for money to live, without which they risk death for not obtaining. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*bTTq5WoXSgmAk-52gUlePQ.png) [Read about Garrison Frazier](http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/savmtg.htm?ref=scottsantens.com) In the words of a former slave in 1865 when asked how he would define slavery, “**Slavery is receiving by irresistible power the work of another human being, and not by their consent**.” How can one consent — to anything at all — if saying “No” is not a real option? A lack of chains is not enough to end slavery. What is needed to truly end slavery is to make domination resistible through sufficient access to resources to live by one’s own hand. **Liberty requires non-domination**. *No action* is truly voluntary without the power to refuse that action. [Full consent requires the power to say “No” without fatal consequences for saying it](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-monsters-inc-argument-for-unconditional-basic-income-3b22b63eed3e?ref=scottsantens.com). What does this have to do with democracy? **A democracy full of slaves is not a democracy**. Be they chattel slaves or wage slaves, a nation of slaves is a nation of the controlled, the dominated, the manipulatable. Ancient Greece knew this. It was unfortunate their solution to this problem was a nation of free men served by owned men, but they did realize what the most important job of all was — *citizen*. You see, in ancient Greece, work was regarded as a curse. It was disdained as the enslavement of the human mind by the body’s need for survival. Work was not seen as something that free people should be forced to perform. Slaves were forced to do the menial work of survival so that the citizens of Greece could be free to perform the activities more worthy of a citizen, like art, philosophy, and politics. **Politics was viewed as the work of true citizens, not survival work.** **To** ***not*** **be a citizen, was to be a slave**. This is a profound insight, however immorally implemented. Back then we had an agricultural society. The work required to feed everyone was great, and so the burden forced upon unfree people was also great. That’s no longer true. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*kt_xCmwKrzL90A2xu5W5Qw.png) In the US, 1% of our total work efforts are involved in the production of food, and the technological progress that makes that possible stands to reduce that soon to virtually 0%. **Instead of enslaving flesh, we have enslaved metal machines. We have enslaved *silicon***. Our problem is not a lack of these new silicon slaves capable of performing our work for us. [We have the technology right now to automate half of all the work we do](https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/digital-disruption/harnessing-automation-for-a-future-that-works?ref=scottsantens.com), and as David Graeber has discovered, [about 40% of all the work that hasn’t yet been automated doesn’t seem to even need to be done at all](https://www.thedailybeast.com/nearly-half-of-you-reading-this-have-bullshit-jobs?ref=scottsantens.com). **We are enslavers of silicon, who only force the silicon to work for our masters.** In his essay “[In Praise of Idleness](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html?ref=scottsantens.com),” Bertrand Russell wrote “Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish forever.” What if we stopped being foolish? What if we put machines to work for all of us, to free us as citizens to perform the work of citizens? What if in the case of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, everyone started higher up the pyramid, and no one ever had to start at the bottom of it? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*oK7a04-5kQIMzJfGds_f2w.png) Well, for one, with basic needs covered, an entire world of unpaid work opens up to everyone. That means more volunteers. It means more people working in phone banks and knocking on doors for those fellow citizens they’d like to represent them. It means more care work done by those who care most about those cared for. It means people doing work they actually want and choose to do, whatever that work may be. It means people having the time to be informed citizens, to think critically, and to engage as informed citizens. **Basically, it means an entire nation of people with the same abilities and freedoms as the idle rich**. We know [there’s a connection between money and citizen engagement](http://theconversation.com/failing-union-of-capitalism-and-democracy-fuels-rise-in-inequality-27217?ref=scottsantens.com). In the US, if you earn over six figures, there’s an 80% chance you’ll vote, but if you earn less than the poverty level, that chance drops to 30%. Why is this? We can think of many factors that apply to low wage earners, such as a concern of showing up late to work on election days, or of having less time in general to vote or feel informed enough to vote. But perhaps most impactful of all is a self-fulfilling prophecy where the poor feel ignored by their representatives, who because they don’t vote, ignore them. What can we do to break such a cycle? Recent research has discovered a piece of the puzzle: *cash without conditions*. It turns out that [providing cash unconditionally to poorer families increases their children’s likelihood of voting as adults](https://www.nber.org/papers/w24770?ref=scottsantens.com). Why would this be? I think the answer lies in another finding. In 1992, the Great Smoky Mountains Study of Youth began studying the youth in North Carolina to determine the possible risk factors of developing emotional and behavioral disorders. Because Native Americans tend to be underrepresented in mental health research, researchers made the point of including 349 child members of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation. About halfway into the ten-year study their parents began receiving a share of casino profits. By 2001 those dividends had grown to $6,000 per year. By 2006, they were $9,000\. Today they are $12,000\. [The results have been nothing short of incredible](https://thecorrespondent.com/4664/why-do-the-poor-make-such-poor-decisions/179307480-39a74caf?ref=scottsantens.com). Poverty declined by 50%. Behavioral problems declined by 40%. Crime rates decreased. High school graduation rates increased. Grades improved. Home environments were transformed. Drug and alcohol use declined. Additionally, the lower the age the children were freed of poverty, the greater the effects as they grew up, to the point the youngest ended up being a third less likely to develop substance abuse or psychiatric problems as teens. It has even even calculated that the savings generated through all the societal improvements actually exceeded the amounts of the dividends themselves. However, [the most powerful finding of all was in personality effects](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/08/the-remarkable-ways-a-little-money-can-change-a-childs-personality-for-life/?ref=scottsantens.com). These changes were observed as a result of better home environments that involved less stress and better parental relationships. Incredibly, the children saw long-term enhancements in two key personality traits: **conscientiousness and agreeableness**. That is, they grew up to be more honest, more observant, more comfortable around other people, and more willing to work together with others. And because personalities tend to permanently set as adults, these are most likely lifelong changes. I think these behavioral changes explain the observed increase in voting. It’s about seeing each other as being in the same boat. It’s about trust and teamwork. It’s about growing up in an environment where you feel the world *gives a damn about you*. You see, **democracy requires trust in each other**. If we don’t trust each other, democracy is lost. **And yet we built our entire system around distrust**. Unconditionality is not the norm. Cash to spend on anything is not the norm. It’s all about conditions and benefits-in-kind, and these are full of unintended consequences. Conditional benefits divide the citizenry into the deserving and undeserving poor. This stigmatizes the assistance and those who receive it. It creates anger and shame. **It disincentivizes the earning of income through withdrawal of benefits that leaves recipients with little reason to accept employment**. It is paternalistic in telling people what they need instead of letting people decide for themselves. And by creating and enforcing tests that people must pass, people in need don’t take the tests at all, or even fail them. So conditions exclude those we wish to include, and those included can actually be lifted higher than those not considered to be in need, which is justifiably seen as entirely unfair. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*4twL5wWEIQ0kk9qbpzGmbg.jpeg) This is not a recipe for a strong democracy. **It’s a recipe for division**. To heal this division we must do as government was always intended to do, treat all citizens as equals. To do this, what government provides to citizens must be decoupled from work, and coupled instead to citizenship itself. That’s the heart of the idea of UBI. It’s an investment in the citizenry of a nation. It’s We the People deciding that **being a citizen has inherent value**, and that to be a good citizen requires a level of opportunity provided to all citizens equally, and a level of freedom from poverty that *no citizen is denied*. **UBI is the foundation of a nation, and yet all nations are missing it.** Some look at UBI instead as being the end of democracy, where the fear finally comes true that all a democracy needs to do to self-destruct is for the citizens to realize they can vote to take all the wealth away from the rich, killing the proverbial golden goose in the process. [This fear was seen as having two safeguards to protect against it](https://medium.com/basic-income/its-time-we-take-a-closer-look-at-americas-three-favorite-words-f512f8a1ad6f?ref=scottsantens.com). Aristotle believed that the way to make sure the *have-nots* didn’t use their greater numbers to vote away the very existence of the *have-a-lots*, was to create in the middle a group of *have-enoughs*, sufficiently content in their own wealth and circumstances so as to not look upon the rich with want and disdain. In other words, **he saw democracy as requiring a *high* *enough* level of *political equality* and a *low* *enough* level of *economic inequality* to sustain long-term stability**. James Madison saw the same problem as Aristotle, but instead believed the answer was a lower amount of democracy with more power invested in those with the most wealth. It was Madison who in his fear of full democracy designed a system of aristocratic representation. American political power would reside in the hands of the wealthy — those who by their wealth were seen as more capable and willing to protect the rights of property owners — to act as representatives for the common man but also protectors of the aristocracy. I look around right now and see both these solutions as having failed. I think Aristotle was right to believe in a strong middle class, but it’s only a partial solution. Politics and economics are connected so there must be an economic component in place to maintain the political component. And I think Madison was wrong in not trusting all citizens equally, but he was right in coming up with an idea that scaled better than direct democracy as population grew. At this point in our history however, aside from a system of UBI that starts all citizens above the poverty line and keeps inequality from growing too extreme, I think there needs to be a lot more democracy in a great multitude of ways. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*lgCPAh3VZ8K7aB0rM7WSzw.png) Liquid Democracy Among the many ideas I’d like to see widely implemented are: [national popular votes](https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/?ref=scottsantens.com), [ranked-choice voting](http://www.fairvote.org/rcv?ref=scottsantens.com) to eliminate the spoiler effect, [fair representation](http://www.fairvote.org/fair%5Frepresentation?ref=scottsantens.com) where people are represented by multiple reps from different parties, [mail-in voting](http://www.governing.com/columns/dispatch/Why-Hasnt-Voting-by-Mail-Spread.html?ref=scottsantens.com), voting holidays, automatic voter registration, [open primaries](https://www.openprimaries.org/?ref=scottsantens.com), tax-funded elections, laws that make clear [corporations aren’t people](https://movetoamend.org/?ref=scottsantens.com), and as we go forward into the future, the utilization of technology to implement [liquid democracies](https://medium.com/organizer-sandbox/liquid-democracy-true-democracy-for-the-21st-century-7c66f5e53b6f?ref=scottsantens.com) where people can choose to vote on issues directly, choose to delegate their votes to others based on topic, and choose standard representatives, all in a more dynamic fashion. Basically, anything that empowers citizens to vote and to better make sure their vote counts is something I support. I’d also like to see democracy spread outside of politics and more into our daily lives. Democracy should be a perpetual experience. [It should be in our workplaces](https://www.democracyatwork.info/democratizing%5Fthe%5Fworkplace?ref=scottsantens.com). It should be in [our monetary system](http://www.bien2012.de/sites/default/files/paper%5F170%5Fen.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Why do we let banks create our money out of debt instead of creating it debt-free in the hands of all citizens equally? But again, these solutions on their own, however much they improve the structure of democracy and shift it from representative democracy toward direct democracy, they do not create a better *citizenry*. The key to creating a better citizenry is to create an environment where citizens are less stressed. [**Chronic stress is the physiological weak point of humanity as a species**](https://medium.com/basic-income/human-park-a-mammals-guide-to-stress-free-living-17f6cab007b3?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s a byproduct of our evolution. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*9lQyp-Vgv3uHAshN6BvB5A.png) You see, back in the day, we evolved a bit of a super power now known as the fight or flight response. Those who had it when faced with danger were able to immediately shift into a state where long-term higher-order creative thinking shut down, and the body was enabled to think faster, react quicker, be stronger, move faster, run longer, and think only about survival. This clever evolutionary adaptation however is now maladaptive. We don’t live in that same world anymore where we can turn a corner and be eaten by a giant cat. We need our long-term higher-order creative thinking. We need it pretty much all the time. Prolonging fight-or-flight into a chronic condition means that neurons in the brain related to things like learning, memory, and judgment all suffer the consequences, thanks to the wide-ranging effects of double-edged sword stress hormones called glucocorticoids. Recent research has even shown a constantly stressed out brain appears to lead to a kind of hardening of neural pathways. Essentially, feeling chronic stress makes it harder to not perceive stress, creating a vicious cycle of unending stress. Aside from the many health issues like diabetes and cardiac disease that chronic stress leads to, it also causes behavioral changes as people reach for levers of control to reduce stress. These levers include among others, [self-medication](https://steemit.com/basicincome/@scottsantens/the-question-of-universal-basic-income-and-drug-abuse?ref=scottsantens.com) and displacement aggression. Self-medication is self-explanatory, it’s pretty much any addictive substance or behavior you can think of, but displacement aggression is a special something among mammals. It turns out that we can reduce our stress by picking on those below us in our social hierarchies. In other words, this is where anti-social behaviors like bullying, racism, and anti-immigrant xenophobia are born. You know, those same things that fuel fascism. So to solve these problems, we need to go to the root, which is what’s causing the stress in the first place. What’s the most common cause of stress? It’s money. Whether it be the lack of sufficient money, or money that is too irregular or infrequent, or money that feels like the flow of it could stop at any moment. There are a lot of reasons to stress about money, and it all comes down to the fact that **we built a system that requires money for our continued survival**. Unconditional basic income cuts to the root by ending our existential money-based fears. **With UBI, no matter what happens, our ability to secure our basic needs is guaranteed, from birth to death**. That feeling of emancipatory security is transformative in the most profound of ways. **It creates *trust*.** [This trust effect has been observed in multiple UBI pilots and unconditional cash transfer programs](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-will-likely-increase-social-cohesion-aceb337262e0?ref=scottsantens.com). In India, people from different castes actually began to gather together. In Lebanon, recipients were less offended by others. In Namibia, recipients became friendlier with one another because it was less likely that someone they would talk to would ask them for money. **When you get right down to it, UBI is really a redistribution of trust, because that’s what money essentially represents.** Consider what happens when we digitally send money to everyone in a village in East Africa. Nothing physical is sent. The only thing that changes is the order of various 1s and 0s. The village gains no additional resources. Nothing is different. And yet suddenly, someone there can walk up to a shop, and walk out of that shop with food. That food was already there, but it was not being given to that person prior to having money. Why? **Because** **the shop owner couldn’t trust that they themselves would benefit otherwise**. They did trust that they could use money elsewhere to obtain something they themselves wanted. **We trust money, and in trusting money, we trust each other.** Consider also the reverse of this. What happened in the Great Depression? The amount of resources and energy were unchanged. The manufacturing capacity was unchanged. The amount of human labor willing to work to produce what was needed was unchanged. And yet the system essentially ground to a halt. Why? Because there was insufficient money in most people’s hands and thus a lack of trust. Nothing was stopping anyone from exchanging goods and services. As [Alan Watts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-JMHiaYIiU&ref=scottsantens.com) has described the situation, it was like everyone showed up on Monday to build a house, and they were told there would be no work that day, not because of a lack of wood or hammers or nails or cement, but because they were all out of *inches*. [Money doesn’t really exist like we think it does. It’s just a tool of measurement built on trust](http://www.scottsantens.com/do-we-have-enough-space-bucks-for-basic-income). So what are we doing hoarding so much of an imaginary construct in some places, and preventing any of it from reaching other places? Why have we invented something out of thin air, and then pretended it is a finite resource? The answer is because we didn’t create enough democracy. We didn’t make citizens equal enough. We didn’t free citizens enough to engage in and grow democracy. And we weren’t able to do that because we didn’t implement unconditional basic income to free people from the imposition of survival work. It’s a catch-22\. It’s two sides of a coin. **We need UBI for democracy, and we need democracy for UBI**. It’s a feedback loop for prosperity. The beginning of this loop begins with the understanding that **UBI is more than money. It’s a yet to be recognized right of citizenship**. To see this, we need to recognize a few things. First, [**Thomas Paine was right**](http://fermatslibrary.com/s/agrarian-justice?ref=scottsantens.com). His argument was that the creation of private property was a great invention that increased overall prosperity, but that it also made some people worse off than prior to its invention. Cutting people off from access to land effectively robbed people of their natural inheritance, and so those who owned land owed a rent on that land that was to be returned to everyone as their rightful inheritance. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*FFv99WmwwIj4W9ingfTKnw.png) Second, **without an unconditional basic income, our other rights are infringed**. Think about something as fundamental as the right to free speech. Does that right fully exist if we fear that saying something has the potential to get us fired or keep us from employment, in a world where employment is how we survive? Third, [**if we have the right to life, if we truly do see ourselves as having the unalienable right to life, then access to the resources required to live cannot be justly withheld on the condition of work**](http://www.scottsantens.com/someday-we-will-look-back-and-interpret-the-constitution-as-having-called-for-unconditional-basic-income-all-along-grant-cordone). It just can’t. If I sucked all the air out of this room, and sold you bags of it back in exchange for work I commanded you to do, you’d call me a super villain. But we do that every day and don’t call it anything, because it’s been entirely normalized. Those are three justifications for the right to an unconditional basic income, but there are also justifications for a UBI that grows beyond covering survival needs, something more like an [**unconditional prosperity dividend**](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/extreme-wealth-inequality-alaska-model/?ref=scottsantens.com). ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*cZeRniZgFIKVBBuvm2zKoQ.png) Read [“The Entrepreneurial State” by Mariana Mazzucato](https://amzn.to/2ALSch8?ref=scottsantens.com) First, **citizens are effectively unemploying themselves with their own tax money**. Those machines we built that are eliminating more and more jobs… [all the research began with public funding](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/magazine/uber-would-like-to-buy-your-robotics-department.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Because citizens paid for that technology to exist, because they put up the capital, all citizens should be treated as shareholders with dividends that grow as productivity grows. Second, **citizens are effectively training their own replacements**. Citizens not only paid for the technology itself, but they are creating the data to train the algorithms how to unemploy them. Most of the discussion around big data is around data like the type we create via social media. What goes undiscussed is [*ambient intellectual property*](https://basicincome.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Julio%5FAndrade%5FImplementing%5Fa%5FUBI%5Fby%5Freconceptualising%5Fdata.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), which is the kind of omnipresent data we create through our everyday existence. It’s not just sending a tweet. It’s being born and going about our daily lives. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*2D5tcCxrJDpbZCqMCG-ibw.png) Third, **human civilization is a generation by generation accumulation of knowledge**. It’s like a staircase. Every generation begins on the top of all previous generations. Not a single billionaire alive today single-handedly accomplished anything. Consider Elon Musk. Yes, he and his SpaceX team have advanced rocketry in amazing ways, but they didn’t start from scratch. They built off what we already learned during the 1960s when we invested heavily in our goal of men walking on the moon. And that technology had origins in WWII. And down and down into history it goes. [There is a technological inheritance not being inherited](https://medium.com/economicsecproj/technological-inheritance-and-the-case-for-a-basic-income-ded373a69c8e?ref=scottsantens.com) and instead being concentrated in the hands of whomever is lucky enough to be at the top of a knowledge chain that made the latest innovation possible. Mark Zuckerberg is worth billions, partially because of Facebook and all its unpaid users freely creating all the data, but also because of the internet, which was a publicly-funded creation. We need to come to realize that we’re all in this together. There is no such thing as the “self-made” billionaire. In fact, **the term “self-made” needs to die.** **No one is self-made.** **Everything we do is on the shoulders of others**. Because of the division of labor, we are all *interdependent*. We all need each other, and we all benefit from each other. Democracy is built on this. Governments are instituted among men (and women) to secure our unalienable rights, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. We have agreed that we have certain rights as human beings, and that if we band together, we can together ensure those rights equally for all. **We are human beings, not human doings. Our great purpose is to be, not to do**. Our most important job is to *be* a citizen, to *be* involved in our lives, the lives of our loved ones, the lives of our communities, the lives of our fellow citizens, and the lives of all humankind. It’s about life itself. Our great task is to find meaning, and to share it with each other. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*ufsE1tl4BZPiVRjrpII2KQ.png) This notion that for one to win, another must fail, is false. **Human civilization is not zero-sum**. If we lift each other up as we progress forward, everybody can win. But **as long as we are only trying to survive, we will never thrive**. We have to guarantee everyone’s survival as their unalienable right to live. Only then can we attain non-zero-sum thinking, where scarcity thinking gives way to *abundance of thought*. Democracy is one of our greatest achievements as a species, but we implemented it without UBI, and that was a mistake. **Democracy is incomplete as long as a citizen can’t choose to be a full-time citizen**. And human civilization itself is at risk as long as humans grow more and more concerned about meeting their most basic needs. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*X-CQ2StGh_draIZoou_L6w.png) We are living in an incredibly dangerous time. We are facing long-term threats that risk our very extinction. Climate change is here. Artificial Intelligence is being born. Fascism is on the horizon. Nuclear weapons are still everywhere. We have to create a world where the human mind is freed from immediate survival concerns and is instead free to tackle these threats instead of each other. Imagine a box with a button that can extinguish humanity in the blink of an eye. **Who is more likely to push that button?** Someone living in a democracy with an unconditional basic income? Or someone living under a totalitarian dictatorship, who lives each day awash in fear? Consider the ability to create bioweapons in garages. Consider a future of weaponized nanotech. Do you see that technological advancement will force our hand? **We have to become better, kinder, more thoughtful, and more loving. We must have** ***social innovation*** **alongside tech innovation**. We have to give up the desire to control other people. That is not the answer to fear. **The answer to fear is** ***trust*** **. It’s the relinquishment of control. We need to free people, and we need to trust in one another**. We need democracy built on unconditional basic income. **Without this foundation, I believe our civilization will fall. With it, I believe humanity will turn the page, and begin writing our next chapter as a truly** ***civilized*** **species**. --- ***Special thanks to: Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Andrew Stern, Stephen Starkey, Larry Cohen, Floyd Marinescu, Aaron T Schultz, Topher Hunt, Gisele Huff, Sasha Barrese, Robert Collins, Kian Alavi, Stephane Boisvert, Justin Walsh, Daragh Ward, Jordan Lejuwaan, Joanna Zarach, Ace Bailey, Daryl Smith, Albert Wenger, Peter T Knight, Danielle and Michael Texeira, Jack Canty, Paul Godsmark, Vladimir Baranov, Rachel Perkins, Chris Rauchle, David Ihnen, Sylvain Barone, Michael Hrenka, Natalie Foster, Reid Rusonik, Matt DeKok, Daniel Brockman, Carrie Mclachlan, Michael Honey, George Scialabba, Che Wagner, Gerald Huff, Will Ware, Joe Ballou, Richard Just, Jack Wagner, Gray Scott, Catherine MacDonald, Max Henrion, Arjun Banker, Dan O’Sullivan, Chris Smothers, Alvin Miranda, Kai Wong, Jill Weiss, Nicolas Pouillard, Christopher Anderson, MARK4UBI, Brooke Colwell, Elizabeth Balcar, Robin Ketelaars, Georg Baumann, Lisa Hallman, E. Davies, Dylan Taylor, Mark, Kirk Israel, Valentina Petricciuolo, Chris Boraski, Lee VilliHaukka, Casey L Young, Robert F. Greene, Oliver Bestwalter, Thomas Welsh, Walter Schaerer, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** ## [Would you like to see your name here too?](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Basic Income Guarantee Would Provide Economic Security URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-guarantee-would-provide-economic-security/ Last updated: 2023-06-05T17:53:36.000Z Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said it best during a November 1967 lecture, “We are demanding an emergency program to provide employment for everyone in need of a job, or if a work program is impractical, a guaranteed annual income at levels that sustain life in decent circumstances. It is now incontestable that the wealth and resources of the United States make the elimination of poverty absolutely practical.” These words are truer than ever. Too often, many of our neighbors live precarious lives, devoid of economic security, while still living in what is one of the world’s largest economies — more than $19 trillion. Many struggle silently to afford food, rent or child care, lacking any sense of economic security. Universal basic income (UBI) is that missing sense of security. It’s the centuries-old policy idea of unconditionally lifting up every man, woman and child with a foundational income floor upon which to earn additional income. Beyond addressing existing economic injustice and creating a foundation, UBI is also proposed to address our more automated future. For example, fully-autonomous vehicles will put millions of transportation workers out of work. Ask your elected politician or candidate for office how we will deal with this ongoing problem of the accelerated automation of human labor. Proposals for solutions should be made today and not after disaster occurs. UBI is evolutionary, not revolutionary. It requires a paradigm shift in how we think about notions of work, inequality, scarcity and human freedom. Admittedly, there are other sound and complementary proposals outside of UBI, which can further improve the quality of life of the everyday person. Unfortunately, none speak to the eradication of systemic poverty. UBI takes a very large step toward this goal. While the elimination of poverty is often perceived as utopian, it must be understood that eliminating poverty is undeniably possible, but its achievement is hindered by a crippling lack of political will. We will achieve a basic income, once we convince our legislators that not supporting it will lose elections. In the last 80 years, the United States has experimented and bills have even been drafted, but they have never gone so far as to institute basic income policy. Nevertheless, we are convinced, given the benefits of an income guarantee and the future of automation, a federally instituted UBI will be required and achieved in the next decade. The list of prominent UBI supporters is long, but one notable opponent is former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden argues that the value of hard work in providing a sense of identity provides sufficient reason to reject a UBI. There is no denying the function of work in providing an individual with a sense of identity. But we should be very wary of accepting arguments that use the social function of work to oppose providing a basic social safety net. Ending the constant worry of going homeless or hungry, increasing the bargaining power of workers, enabling individuals to pursue wage-boosting job training and enabling entrepreneurs to take risks, a basic income will provide for one's basic needs. In other words, UBI is a foundation on which to pursue the work we deem most valuable and meaningful to us, paid or unpaid. Those like Biden don’t recognize this aspect, despite the fact he himself starts each month not with $1,000 as an income floor, but $20,000\. That’s the size of his Senate pension. Does his pension erode his work ethic? Maybe that’s a question to ask him during his national tour. As UBI continues to rise in the national arena, with 2020 U.S. presidential candidate Andrew Yang running on a pro-UBI platform and the recent UBI endorsement by former President Barack Obama, it will be crucial for us to take the time to understand the policy proposal, and implications, outside of a typical conservative versus liberal frame of thought. While work contributes greatly to the formation of one’s social identity, we’re not convinced that paid employment in jobs we can’t really refuse is the best way of achieving a sense of meaning through work. Nor are we convinced that poverty wages and financial insecurity that together dominate the lives of the majority is a status quo to support as ideal. Do you? *This article was originally written for and published by The Gainesville Sun* [Income guarantee would provide economic securityDr. Martin Luther King Jr. said it best during a November 1967 lecture, “We are demanding an emergency program to provide employment for everyone in need of a job, or if a work program is impractical…![](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/sites/gainesville/images/favicon.png)Gainesville SunCharounson Saintilusand Scott SantensSpecial to The Sun, Gainesville Sun![](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/authoring/2018/08/03/NTGS/ghows-LK-72601a63-949a-5632-e053-0100007fc011-255d3434.jpeg?auto=webp&crop=2996,1693,x0,y159&format=pjpg&width=1200)](https://www.gainesville.com/story/opinion/columns/more-voices/2018/08/03/charounson-saintilus-and-scott-santens-income-guarantee-would-provide-economic-security/11076811007/?ref=scottsantens.com) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my ongoing UBI advocacy. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### One Thing to Build a More Open World: Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/one-thing-to-build-a-more-open-world-unconditional-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T20:54:07.000Z *The video below was created for [The Economist's Open Future contest](https://www.economist.com/openfuture/video-contest?ref=scottsantens.com) where everyone has one minute to change the world. This is my minute.* The one thing I would change is no power to say NO... **No**. I will not work for a poverty wage. **No**. I will not be abused. **No**. I will not be dominated, or controlled, or coerced into anything, ever. **No**. The power to say no is fundamental. There’s no consent without the power to refuse. This does not then mean that [no work will get done](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com) if all work is voluntary. Work will always be done if it needs to be done, and people will always accept work for the right price, but we can no longer require work for money to live, [especially in light of automation](https://medium.com/basic-income/its-time-for-technology-to-serve-all-humankind-with-unconditional-basic-income-e46329764d28?ref=scottsantens.com). If we have the *unalienable right* to life, then access to what we need to live cannot be justly withheld on the condition of work. The basics for life must be our new universal starting point. That’s our missing foundation. Humanity needs freedom and security to thrive. Humanity needs the means to live and to love. [Humanity needs more humanity](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-monsters-inc-argument-for-unconditional-basic-income-3b22b63eed3e?ref=scottsantens.com). If we are to be an open world, we must be free, and to be [truly free](https://medium.com/basic-income/true-freedom-comes-with-basic-income-7ff1368e170?ref=scottsantens.com), we must all have an **unconditional basic income** upon which to build that free and open world. My one thing is three letters: [**U. B. I.**](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq) ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/4cabf590-e573-4b9a-ae81-6c9598c7f298/DjXnhk1W0AAT3qS.jpg) --- ###### If after reading the above post you're curious about the potential erosion of UBI due to rising prices/inflation, [please read this](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7?ref=scottsantens.com) next. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Unconditional Basic Income Would Fix a Major Flaw in Markets URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/unconditional-basic-income-would-fix-a-major-flaw-in-markets/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T21:02:58.000Z Do you like markets? Well, whether you like them or not, they're pretty effective in most cases. The ability for two people to make an exchange where both feel they leave the exchange better off than prior to the exchange is a powerful thing. It's a form of democracy. By exchanging money for goods and services, people in markets are essentially voting with their dollars. What sells, producers make more of. What doesn't sell, producers make less of. What sells, producers try to make better or and/or cheaper than their competitors. Those who make the best/cheapest product do well. Those who can't compete in the marketplace, fail. So far so good, right? How prices are determined is actually kind of amazing too in that it's a decentralized process. No one person is figuring out how much everything should cost everywhere. It's more like an iterative process of trial and error. Prices go up. Prices go down. High demand for something can increase its price, which results in greater supply to meet the demand, which can result in a lower price. This process is happening continually and is called the [price mechanism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%5Fmechanism?ref=scottsantens.com). What if I told you that something extremely important was missing from all of this? What if I told you that the price calculation mechanism within all markets, however free and competitive they are, has a serious and yet entirely correctable flaw? Here's the great flaw: **markets can't tell the difference between zero and null.** The invisible hand of the market, no matter how strongly you believe in it, is simply incapable of determining the difference between the two. In fact, you may not even know the difference either, so let me explain. **Zero is a quantity less than one.** It's a number that is known. If you have one apple and eat the apple, you now have zero apples. **Null is a lack of value.** It's like a blank cell in a spreadsheet. There's just nothing there. So why is this distinction so important in order for markets to function properly? Imagine for a moment that you've just started a business selling ice cream. It's a secret family recipe. You think it's the best ice cream ever and everyone you've ever made it for has said the same thing. So you put together some capital and open yourself up a shop. Congratulations! Unfortunately, your favorite treat just doesn't sell. Day after day, you just don't sell enough ice cream. You are failing. Now, according to what we know about markets, customers are essentially not voting for your ice cream. Why aren't they voting for your ice cream? Is it because your ice cream sucks? It's entirely possible. However, there's another possibility. It's also possible that your customers lack the money to *pay* for your ice cream. This is a very important distinction to make, so I want to make this part very clear. If your customers have enough money and are choosing not to buy your ice cream, then that's a vote. They are voting "No." It's a zero value. But if your customers don't have enough money, then they aren't really choosing not to buy your ice cream. They aren't voting "No." They simply can't vote on your ice cream, and that's a null vote. They aren't voting yes or no. They simply aren't voting at all. This is what markets can't determine on their own. If something doesn't sell, markets just see a lack of demand. **Markets have no way of discerning whether customers don't demand a good/service or if they lack the means of expressing demand for that good/service**. That's a serious shortcoming. How many businesses have gone out of business, not because of goods or services that their customers didn't want, but because there weren't enough customers? How many great ideas have failed, not because they weren't great ideas, but because people just couldn't vote on them? In fact, this problem exists for "Yes" votes too. When someone buys something, they are voting yes, but would they have voted yes if they had more money to vote on something else? The market can't determine the answer to that either. In economic terms, these kinds of votes are on "[inferior goods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferior%5Fgood?ref=scottsantens.com)" which are things people wouldn't buy if they had more money. So what's the solution here? It's a really simple fix actually. **Just make sure everyone starts each month with a minimum amount of money**. As soon as everyone starts off with at least SOME money, then we know that a business without enough demand for their good or service is getting *downvoted* by their customers. That business can then use that knowledge to change its business model or fail. On the flip-side, businesses that otherwise would have failed, are more likely to succeed thanks to their customers being able to *upvote* their product or service. Both of these outcomes are systemic improvements. By the way, this is pretty much how the board game Monopoly works. Everyone starts the game with some money, and then every time someone passes Go, they get more money. Try playing Monopoly without these rules, where no one gets any money to start with and no one gets money for passing Go. See how well that game works and how long you want to keep playing it. **That $200 in Monopoly everyone gets for passing Go? That's [unconditional basic income](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq).** If everyone received $1,000 for passing the first of the month each and every month, the price mechanism would function better. Because everyone would be able to express demand, markets would function better, and what people actually want and need would be more accurately and efficiently allocated. Think about it. [How much of our food goes to waste on store shelves](http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/datastore/234-2425.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)? Is that because people don't want it, or because people can't buy it? Well, [there are an increasing number of people seeking free food in food banks](https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/01/12/25708084/even-as-the-economy-booms-food-bank-demand-is-up?ref=scottsantens.com), so obviously there's a demand for food. By providing everyone the ability to purchase food in markets, waste would be reduced. That's good for people. It's also good for the planet. It would even obviate the need for food stamps. [Markets can also lead to distorted outcomes through the concentration of money in the hands of too few market participants](https://ordinary-times.com/2016/04/22/the-unconditional-basic-income-and-the-hayekian-price-system/?ref=scottsantens.com). Consider again the ice cream shop you opened. What if you were able to stay in business by adding gold flakes to your ice cream and increasing your price to $100 per scoop? Suddenly, those with lots of money are buying your gold-flaked ice cream. Does that mean your ice cream is better with gold flakes? Does that mean that no one really wants ice cream except rich people? Does it even mean that you've found the best business model despite the fact that you could be making ten times more money if you were able to sell to tens of thousands of people instead of hundreds? Concentration of money is just as big of problem for markets as lack of money. So not only does everyone need a minimum amount of votes, but there should not be too large of concentration of votes in too few hands, lest our economy be oriented mostly around meeting the demands of a small percentage of people instead of everyone. In a real democracy, all citizens have the right to vote, so why don't we have democracy in our economy? Why isn't everyone already starting off each month with a minimum amount of money to participate in markets if markets function better when all market participants have enough money to vote in them? Good question. Let's keep asking it. --- ###### If after reading the above post you're curious about the potential erosion of UBI due to rising prices/inflation, [please read this one](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7?ref=scottsantens.com) next. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Monsters, Inc. Argument for Unconditional Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-monsters-inc-argument-for-unconditional-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T21:06:05.000Z Every year [since 2002](http://usbig.net/congresses.php?ref=scottsantens.com#past), there is a [North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress](https://medium.com/basic-income/notes-of-discussions-in-the-north-american-basic-income-guarantee-congress-of-2015-56607ceb9362?ref=scottsantens.com) held in either the US or Canada. On the eve of [this year’s NABIG in Hamilton, Ontario](https://www.basicincomecanada.org/nabig%5Fcongress%5F2018%5Fregistration%5Fnow%5Fopen?ref=scottsantens.com), I’d like to share with you my favorite presentation from 2017\. It was a talk given by Ken Burak and it centered around the Pixar film “Monsters, Inc” as an argument for basic income. It may be a kids movie, but it has a lesson to teach that's far deeper than you may think. In this post, I’ll summarize it for you. Monsters, Inc. takes place in a universe that literally runs on fear. Monsters enter the human world at night through bedroom closets to scare children for the purpose of energy production. You see, whereas the world we know mostly runs on fossil fuels, hydropower, nuclear, and increasingly solar and wind, the world of monsters runs on the emotion of fear. When kids scream, their screams are harvested as energy. That energy powers a world of monsters. And so every night, monsters enter the world of humans, to make children scream, to mine their fear. However, all of that changes when through the course of the film, it’s accidentally discovered that **the laughter of children is ten times more powerful than their screams**. This discovery leads at the end of the film to a complete transformation of the company Monsters, Inc. as it pivots from fear-based energy production to joy-based energy production. Think about that for a second. An entire world was oriented around the harvesting of screams. Every single day, monsters went to work with the purpose of scaring children as their goal. The entire global monster economy was built around this as its foundation. This was normal. This was life. As the viewer, we can only imagine that at some point in the past, some monster—who must have gone down in monster history—scared a child and upon doing so discovered that the resulting screams could function as a power source. It worked, and yet laughter, which worked ten times better, was never even considered. It was never even tested. No one thought to try laughter, because **screams worked**, and so screams were what the economy was built upon. Believe it or not, we live in that same kind of world. We discovered something monstrous that works, and we use it to drive our economy. We’ve done it for so long, we don’t even question it, and we never even tested a far more powerful alternative. What works we discovered is an economy based on the fear of death by poverty, where fear of death is used to compel people into working, and what we never tested (until recently that is) is an economy where there is no fear of death by poverty, where all work is thus fully voluntary. **Monsters, Inc. can therefore be seen as a metaphor for wage slavery.** Yes, forcing someone to work results in work getting done. We learned that a long time ago. We learned that whipping someone could get them to pick cotton. We learned that paying zero dollars in wages meant a hefty profit thanks to low overhead. If we force someone to work, and pay them nothing, then we get to keep everything. What a great idea, right? Well, no, it’s a terrible idea, and it’s morally wrong, even if it works. Now some people are under the impression we got past this idea, but we didn’t. We didn’t abolish slavery as an institution. We simply went from one form of slavery ([chattel slavery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery?ref=scottsantens.com)), to another form of slavery ([wage slavery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage%5Fslavery?ref=scottsantens.com)). Instead of forcing people to work for nothing, we instead let people work for money needed to live, without which they risk death for not obtaining. Force is involved in both, albeit in different forms. This is also an understanding even freed slaves had directly following the Civil War. When asked about slavery, and how to preserve freedom from it, [Garrison Frazier](https://medium.com/basic-income/its-time-we-take-a-closer-look-at-americas-three-favorite-words-f512f8a1ad6f?ref=scottsantens.com), a newly free man chosen by fellow former slaves to speak for them, responded: “**Slavery is, receiving by irresistible power the work of another man, and not by his consent**. The freedom, as I understand it, promised by the proclamation, is taking us from under the yoke of bondage, and placing us where we could reap the fruit of our own labor, take care of ourselves and assist the Government in maintaining our freedom." Garrison went on to say that "the way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor.” Garrison understood that a lack of chains wasn't enough. What was needed to truly end slavery was the ability to resist the irresistible power of another man, by making it resistible through sufficient access to resources to live by one's own hand. Liberty requires non-domination. No action is truly voluntary without the power to refuse that action. Full consent requires the power to say "No" without fatal consequences. Think of it this way. One method of forcing someone to do something is to physically choke them. If they do what you want, you stop choking them. If they don’t do what you want, you keep choking them until they do. The other method involves gaining control over all the air, and then telling people that if they do what you want, you’ll give them pieces of paper that they can use to pay for air. If they don’t do what you want, you don’t give them any access to air until they do. Both involve the restricting of air supplies. Both are based on the fear of death by asphyxiation. Both involve choices where the choice is life or death, which isn’t really a choice at all. Both are forms of domination, but one is direct, and the other is indirect. **Our entire world is based on this indirect choice of life or death, save for those fortunate enough to be born into a family with *sufficient wealth* to be the ones providing that choice to others.** Some may disagree with this argument by saying work has always been required to avoid death, and yes, that's true, but for most of human history everything was free, and we could stay alive by just doing some gathering on the land owned by no one. It was only somewhat recently in human history when we privatized everything as property, thus removing the option of free gathering, and replaced it with the option of selling your time to those who up and claimed the land as theirs. The old choice was open your mouth and toss in a free nut or die. The new choice is work for someone else your entire life or die. It is this choice that underlies everything we do. It is what our entire economy is based on. It is the fear that drives us all. In offices all over the world, and in restaurants and warehouses and factories and governments, everywhere there's people working for money to live, in the minds of those doing the work *only for the money*, you will find the harvesting of billions of silent screams. We are monsters using fear as a motivator to build our phones and make our cheeseburgers. ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/3cf5182e-6908-4689-ad5e-a4f3b8b08b4d/monters_inc_wallpaper1920x1080.jpg) And yet, we know **people forced to work do not do the best work**. We know that people choosing to do work, not for the money alone, or even for money at all, but because the work itself provides meaning in the doing, *that* work is our best work. Imagine walking into a restaurant where there are two cooks you can choose between to prepare your meal. One of them is there because to them cooking is an art form. Each dish is a new challenge to best their previous dish. Their life is dedicated to the pursuit of creating the perfect meal. They enjoy this pursuit of perfection so much, that they don’t even accept payment. They wish only to witness the expressions of those experiencing true bliss as they eat their newest creation. If they could bring you to orgasm with their food, they too would experience just as true a state of bliss. ![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/1b4fa563-1a0c-4b3e-8c8e-5a41edf91f93/sense8-111-turn-the-wheel-capheus-gun-to-head-2015_medium.png) The other cook has a loaded gun being held to their head by an executioner. They have no interest whatsoever in cooking, but they really don’t want to die, and so they will certainly cook for you. Moral questions aside of putting a gun to someone’s head to force them to cook for you with the threat of death, who do you think will make the better meal? Whose meal would you be happier eating? Let us make no illusions here. **The cook who takes joy in cooking is going to cook a meal ten times better than the cook who cooks out of fear**. This is the difference between screams and laughter. This is the difference between a world based on fear and one based on joy. So how do we create a world based on joy instead of fear? The answer is through [unconditional basic income](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq). By unconditionally providing everyone a sufficient amount of money to live regardless of any work done, working then becomes entirely optional. [That does not then mean everyone stops working](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com). It means that the work people do switches from being involuntary to being voluntary. It means that [the motivation for work shifts from being extrinsic to intrinsic in nature](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y&ref=scottsantens.com). [This is essentially Maslow’s theory applied to the labor market](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-the-maslow-argument-d1346fa9a9f2?ref=scottsantens.com). With your most basic needs met, you then move on to your higher needs. Everyone is always trying to meet all of their needs, not just their basic needs, so the meeting of basic needs as a starting point simply starts everyone higher up Maslow’s pyramid. ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/bf2a3f79-b825-4beb-b3cb-7ccd025b1c75/0041-flat-maslows-hierarchy-needs-powerpoint-template-16-9-1.jpg) Without basic income, workers in restaurants all over are making your sandwiches with a gun to their head. [With basic income, the people making your sandwiches will be only those people who want to make your sandwiches](https://medium.com/basic-income/true-freedom-comes-with-basic-income-7ff1368e170?ref=scottsantens.com). The work people do would go from being the work people feel they have no choice to do, to the work people are choosing to do more than anything else, because they have the very real freedom to not do anything at all. [Try to think about how profoundly transformative that would be](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-we-should-all-have-a-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com). Right now, only 15% of workers are engaged by the work they do. What if 100% of workers were engaged by their work, because everyone was fully choosing to do it instead of being compelled to do it? What if employers had to offer [more than a minimum wage](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/minimum-wages-vs-universal-basic-income%5Fb%5F7957850.html?ref=scottsantens.com) or [reduced hours](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-future-of-the-labor-movement-rests-on-the-achievement-of-unconditional-basic-income-217f26500d83?ref=scottsantens.com) in order to attract fully voluntary workers? What if startups didn't have to pay any wage and were instead able to attract passionate volunteers to work for [a percentage of future profits](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-will-accelerate-innovation-by-reducing-our-fear-of-failure-b81ee65a254?ref=scottsantens.com)? We can create a world that runs on joy instead of fear. We can choose to do that. We can choose to remove the guns pointed at everyone’s heads, and in so doing liberate everyone with the freedom to voluntarily pursue whatever pursuits they find most meaningful. All that’s required is to abolish the fear of death by poverty. Unconditional basic income does that. And if we don't do that, if we don't transition from fear to joy, we’re nothing short of monstrous. ###### If after reading the above post your next question is about the potential erosion of UBI due to rising prices/inflation, [please read this one](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7?ref=scottsantens.com) next. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Future of the Labor Movement Rests on the Achievement of Universal Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-future-of-the-labor-movement-rests-on-the-achievement-of-universal-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2023-05-18T21:18:46.000Z Today is May Day and International Workers Day and Labour Day, and beyond recognizing the past victories of the labor movement in achieving milestones like the 8-hour day and the 40-hour week, we really need to talk about the future of the labor movement in a world increasingly automated by machines. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/854/0*OI2w6d9zdwwX_UwX.jpg) As automation continues, potentially eliminating half of all existing jobs or more by 2030, eroding economic security and buying power through the growth of part-time jobs, low-paid work, temp labor, gig labor, zero-hours contracts, and freelancing, unconditional basic income represents the ability to empower *all* workers. The ability for everyone to say “**No**” to any and all employers would have an undeniable effect on bargaining power. It’d mean greater profit sharing, higher wages, shorter days and/or weeks, improved working conditions, more flexibility, etc. UBI can even function as a universal strike fund. Achieving UBI would be the achievement of new voluntary contracts on more equal footing between employer and employee, including the empowerment of the employee to become their own employer through UBI’s functioning as venture capital for entrepreneurs, and effective demand for customers. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1324/0*oUDkq_HShWQmU74D.jpg) [UBI would mean a solid floor to stand on instead of a net full of holes to fall through or be trapped in](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-progressive-case-for-replacing-the-welfare-state-with-basic-income-e8bd02c5875e?ref=scottsantens.com). It’d mean a new age of greater equality, productivity, and innovation, where all are finally free to pursue the goals they wish to pursue, and ALL work would be recognized. As it stands now, only paid work is recognized as having value. Why? Shouldn’t the labor movement also care about reproductive work, care work, volunteer work, and civic activism? Isn’t it time we started recognizing all the important labor going unpaid, of which there is so much? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*wd1W6URUzMGUM20Y.jpg) Andrew Stern, SEIU’s former president and author of “[Raising the Floor](http://amzn.to/1s8FEaj?ref=scottsantens.com)” believes UBI is the future of the labor movement and the policy we must all together now strive for in the 21st century. He’s also not alone. Unite the Union, UNISON, GMB, TUC, and more, these are unions with millions of members who are now fighting for UBI. This century, [the labor movement will require winning basic income as a new key victory](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/automation-frase-robots/?ref=scottsantens.com), so as to not only win the gains of technology away from only continuing to fall into the hands of owners of capital, but to actually return to achieving a previous goal — more leisure time. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1280/0*eHICMplyaLCL6xKm.jpg) [Who Stole the 4-Hour Workday?](https://www.vice.com/en%5Fus/article/yvqqxw/who-stole-the-four-hour-workday-0000406-v21n8?ref=scottsantens.com) The labor movement was never about more work. It was about **making work work for workers**. That goal has been lost. What happened to the 3-day week or the 4-hour day? Why are we talking about creating more jobs for people instead of more work for robots? Why is it that more than a century after achieving the 8-hour day, we’re now back to working around fifty hours on average in a country that is around three times more productive as it was in 1950? Everyone should be working less not more when we can do more with less. So what’s going on? What’s going on is that we’re all being robbed. We’re being robbed of our share of the growing economic pie. We’re being robbed of our time. We are sitting and watching as more and more of the productivity growth goes to the top, forcing everyone to work more to not fall behind. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*WkDMsH4tQrNxn21i.jpg) Does it make sense that as tech improves, humanity should be forced to work harder? Of course it doesn’t. Does it make sense that as work is automated, organized labor should fight for jobs? Of course it doesn’t. What makes sense is a fight for economic freedom. What makes sense is a fight for a redistribution of power. **Everyone should have the power to refuse to work for another as a condition for their existence**. The right to exist is unconditional, and so no one has the right to command your wage labor with the threat of destitution. What unconditional basic income achieves is nothing less than profoundly historic. UBI is the declaration that all wage labor should be fully voluntary, all work, both paid and unpaid should be recognized, and that the goal of technology is to increase our control over our time. As we celebrate Labour Day we should thus also be looking years down the road at what kind of new day we could celebrate decades from now. Perhaps someday, once we have freed ourselves of the fear of unemployment, every May 2nd at midnight, we could celebrate the End of Labour Day? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*1SfkidT7lURS51p6.jpg) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Don't Make People in Need Jump Through Hoops for Food URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/don-t-make-people-in-need-jump-through-hoops-for-food/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T21:15:34.000Z ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/e77cf72f-dedf-48fe-ad46-093f796166f1/10250389986_8dda997b40_b.jpg) The Trump administration has recently proposed adding what I consider to be [some pretty counterproductive new requirements for SNAP](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/04/12/gop-proposes-stricter-work-requirements-for-food-stamp-recipients-a-step-toward-a-major-overhaul-of-the-social-safety-net/?ref=scottsantens.com) (aka food stamp) recipients. In response to this, I immediately signed [a public statement in defense of SNAP as an advocate of unconditional basic income](http://snap.universalincome.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) because we should be going in the direction of removing *all* requirements for food assistance and providing it as cash, not the opposite direction of adding additional requirements, most especially work requirements. Jim Pugh over at Universal Income Project who organized the public statement in defense of SNAP also created [an online tool that enables basic income supporters to easily write and submit a letter-to-the-editor to their local papers](https://actionnetwork.org/forms/submit-a-letter-to-the-editor-no-work-requirements-for-snap?ref=scottsantens.com). Using this tool, I wrote and submitted [the following letter, which was published by The Times-Picayune on April 27, 2018](http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2018/04/food%5Fstamps.html?ref=scottsantens.com). --- I may have missed Hurricane Katrina, having moved here to New Orleans in 2009, but I've been here long enough to see signs go up in response to other hurricanes and other disasters like our floods, where suddenly, recipients of food stamps (SNAP) are allowed for a limited time to purchase hot food. Hot food. This is a testament to the absurdity of the conditions already applied to nutrition assistance, where only in case of emergencies, are the poor allowed to eat warm meals. We treat those in greatest need as being so incapable of their own decisions, that not only do we not simply provide cash (as we do for the rich ad nauseam) but we attach condition after condition to the assistance we do provide -- and now are considering even more. The result is an ever-expanding bureaucracy of government officials who we pay to discipline us into no longer not having enough money. This city knows what it's like to need each other and to rely on each other. We know that sometimes the worst happens, and that making sure we can at least all eat, is a fundamental part of a community that cares for its own. No one reading this would ever accept being told to just go get a job after their city was destroyed. No one reading this would accept being told to just go starve because you've taken more than three months to find employment, where a full stomach tends to be an important element of job-seeking. We should be ashamed of ourselves for the way we already treat those in greatest need. The last thing we should be considering is treating them even worse. Should the assistance we provide each other have work requirements? No. The assistance we provide each other should be given in the same way we ourselves would like to be treated given similar circumstances. Call it the Golden Rule of the Social Contract. We're already breaking that rule, and it really needs to stop. --- *I urge you to take the same actions I have here. Please [sign the statement in defense of SNAP against increased requirements](http://snap.universalincome.org/?ref=scottsantens.com), and also [write your own letter to your own local paper](https://actionnetwork.org/forms/submit-a-letter-to-the-editor-no-work-requirements-for-snap?ref=scottsantens.com). Thank you!* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### It's Time for Technology to Serve All Humankind with Universal Basic Income (UBI) URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/time-for-technology-to-serve-all-humankind-with-universal-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T23:42:17.000Z *The text below is a speech I wrote for a keynote in Sweden in late 2017\. The PowerPoint is* [*downloadable*](https://www.slideshare.net/ScottSantens/cutting-the-gordian-knot-of-technological-unemployment?ref=scottsantens.com)*, as is a* [*video recording*](https://vimeo.com/242456791?ref=scottsantens.com) *of the speech itself.* *This article has been translated into:* [*French,*](https://www.revenudebasevilleray.com/santens?ref=scottsantens.com)[*Portuguese*](https://medium.com/rendimento-b%C3%A1sico/%C3%A9-tempo-da-tecnologia-servir-toda-a-humanidade-com-rendimento-b%C3%A1sico-universal-f10531a04073?ref=scottsantens.com)*,* [*Spanish*](http://www.mediafire.com/file/1x77cybi99x2ra7/its%20time.docx?ref=scottsantens.com)*, and German. You are free to translate this article into any language. If you do, please notify me of the link so I can add it here.* Imagine a year where what we’ve long taken for granted, that technology destroys jobs but also creates new and better jobs, is discovered to no longer be true. Instead, machines permanently displace human labor, and what new jobs are created, are mostly worse jobs. An ever decreasing percentage of the population is employed, and for a majority of those left in the labor market, incomes decrease, hours worked increase, monthly income variance grows more extreme, time between jobs grows, jobs themselves become more akin to tasks, employer-provided benefits become more rare, and the bonds that hold society together begin to fray as inequality grows ever more extreme. What year do you predict such a future comes to pass? 2030? 2040? 2050 and beyond if even then? The answer will vary nation by nation, but in the US, the answer is [**right around 1990**](https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2016/january/jobs-involving-routine-tasks-arent-growing?ref=scottsantens.com). Yes, it already happened. It’s not in the future. It’s in the *past*. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*2gFMNBI2dp0w1S8EedvmLA.png) 1990 was the year routine job growth flat-lined. It’s also when hours worked per year stopped declining and started increasing again for the first time since the Great Depression. Since 2000, the percentage of the population employed has trended downward. Peak human labor in the US appears to have occurred 17 years ago. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*ch-e9nahEgKfiMiC962cyw.png) This is the story of technological unemployment brought on by automation, and I’m here to tell you, it’s not some future what-if scenario. It’s *real* and it’s a clear and present danger to all of human civilization, *unless* appropriate actions are taken, and soon, to transform it from devastation to emancipation — actions everyone in this room need to seriously consider. I’m also here to tell you what single action we most need to take, along with a plethora of reasons why I believe there’s no other action of greater importance to the future of the human race. That single most important action is the decoupling of income from work, through a policy known as [unconditional basic income](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq)[ or UBI](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq) for short. However, before I dive into that, I’d like to journey back a bit further into the past, to the moment humankind discovered tool use… In this scene from Kubrick’s *2001: A Space Odyssey*, we’re shown a historic moment in time where primitive man used the first tool. It’s a bone, and used like a club, it allows a physically weaker group to overpower a physically stronger group. The story is of course fictional, but at some point in time we as humans did use our first tool, and ever since that day we’ve been able to accomplish increasingly more with increasingly less. Buckminster Fuller referred to this ongoing process as “ephemeralization.” Its theoretical endpoint exists as an asymptote that we can only approach but never reach, where we gain the ability to accomplish everything with nothing. This should sound great. It is. But there’s a catch. There’s always a catch. The catch is of our own making. The catch, and it’s a big one, is two-fold. First, we require the exchange of money for the basic necessities of life like food and shelter. And second, we require the exchange of work in order to obtain money. The result of this pairing is that we require the exchange of work to exist. So as long as everyone can exchange their labor for income, everyone can theoretically survive in a system where private property is established and enforced. However, tool use throws an unavoidable wrench into this system. [**That wrench is technological unemployment**](https://medium.com/basic-income/cutting-the-gordian-knot-of-technological-unemployment-with-unconditional-basic-income-e8df7f8eaa16?ref=scottsantens.com)**.** If we require money to live, and money can only be obtained by selling one’s labor, how do we obtain money to live when machines can do almost everything we can do, more cheaply, more consistently, more safely, more quickly, and overall more efficiently than we ourselves can? It’s one thing for tools like bones to perform physical labor. What happens when 21st century bones are performing mental labor, and learning at a rate we can’t match? There can only be **three solutions,** or mix thereof, to this self-created conundrum based on our two-fold catch. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*ZWxekesz2TZFrJoyuyxJRQ.png) We can either stop requiring the exchange of money for basic needs, essentially making certain things like food, water, and shelter entirely free. Or we can guarantee that everyone can always find paid work for enough income to exchange for the fulfillment of basic needs. Or we can stop *requiring* the exchange of work for money by paying everyone an income whether they work or not, and the amount would just need to be sufficient to cover basic needs. The first option would eliminate the price system for basic goods and services. This would in turn cripple the ability to calculate just what to produce, how much of it to produce, who gets what, when they get it, where it’s needed, how often, and so on. This option is a planned economy for basic goods and services where the answers to such questions are centralized. Free food may sound good, but then there’s no limit. We already waste half our food supply. Making it free would lead to even more waste just like making gas cheaper leads to even more driving. Whatever is free also hurts business owners who sell it for a price. Not many people know this history anymore, but in the US, food stamps were a response to handing out free food from the backs of trucks, literal “handouts”. People who received these handouts weren’t going to stores, and that meant other stuff also wasn’t getting bought. Food stamps were seen as a more efficient way of getting food to people, in a way that got customers into markets, stimulating the economy. Also consider housing. Why should someone in New York City and someone in the rural countryside both get the exact same price of $0 for housing? Is that fair? And if living in NY was free, wouldn’t even *more* people move there? The market is a distributed calculator. Supply and demand using money as a signaling device works to distribute resources without centralized decision making. Removing price signals for things like food and housing may sound good on its face, but it would have unintended consequences from the return of breadlines where the unlucky have too little, to increased wastefulness where the lucky have far more than they need. The second of our three options, guaranteeing work, would guarantee that in a world of machines able to do an increasing amount of work better than us, the work we could guarantee ourselves would be increasingly pointless — the equivalent of digging holes and filling them, or making inspectors to inspect inspectors. This is the job guarantee ([or JG for short](http://evonomics.com/two-big-questions-job-guarantee-god-devil-details/?ref=scottsantens.com)) and in a world where work is already no longer working, it makes little sense. As Milton Friedman said, if the goal is jobs, why not use spoons instead of shovels? It also involves asking the same kind of questions as a planned economy. What are the jobs? Where are they located? Is all work paid the same or is some work paid more? If the same, how’s that fair for those doing harder work? If different, who gets the easier work? Is it possible the answer is not **people of color**? What about those with disabilities who are told they’re not disabled *enough*? What about people already doing work of immense value that isn’t even considered work? Would 100% of all unpaid work be compensated, especially care work? Would all open source coding be compensated? Can someone be fired from a guaranteed job? If not, why bother doing anything if they hate the job and would rather be doing something else? If they can be fired, doesn’t someone else *have* to hire them, creating an infinite loop of fully disengaged labor? What about people who already have jobs and are barely getting by? How do they benefit? What about those who love their jobs but simply need a raise? What about the costs required above and beyond the JG wages in middle management and administration? Government-created jobs tend to cost far more than the money they provide as income, commonly more than 6 figures. Finally, worldwide, only 13% of workers are engaged by their jobs. How would creating even more jobs help to change this? These are questions JG advocates have no real answers for, aside from, **jobs are good, let’s make more of them**, never considering the possibility that perhaps jobs have become the *problem*, not the solution, which brings me to our third option. Option three would fully preserve the price system and entirely avoid the pitfalls of unnecessary work. In fact, [it would not only preserve the price system, but enhance it](https://ordinary-times.com/2016/04/22/the-unconditional-basic-income-and-the-hayekian-price-system/?ref=scottsantens.com), and not only avoid the creation of unnecessary work, but reduce it. This third option is the unconditional basic income. If technological unemployment is the Gordian Knot of the 21st century, UBI is the sword that slices through it. By simply severing the connection between income and work through the unconditional provision of an income for life that’s always sufficient for basic needs, the fear of technological unemployment is eliminated. It doesn’t stop there though, because the provision of basic income has a multitude of repercussions beyond the elimination of fear, and these repercussions are themselves systemically transformative. Now, here I am presenting both a problem and a solution, but many of you may still believe the problem isn’t real, and that the solution is hogwash. Fair enough. That’s what I’m here for. So now I’m going to dive deep into technological unemployment, and then even deeper into basic income. Are you ready? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*vILNcAz8iUb1jQDZhvb14Q.png) Let’s start here. This one chart encapsulates the automation of human labor, like none other I’ve ever seen so far. What should be immediately apparent is that as the number of oil rigs declined in the US due to falling oil prices, so did the number of workers the oil industry employed. But **when the number of oil rigs began to rebound, the number of workers employed didn’t**. That’s an important observation, but it’s not the only one. Another is, have you even heard of [Iron Roughnecks](https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Robots-Over-Roughnecks-Next-Drilling-Boom-Might-Not-Add-Many-Jobs.html?ref=scottsantens.com)? They’re basically robotic drill hands, and they’re part of the reason for oil drilling jobs not rebounding. Thanks to investments in such automation, what once took a crew of 20 is expected to soon only need 5\. This is part of the reason that after the oil industry’s global downturn shed 440,000 of its jobs, it’s now expected that half of those will never return. The other reason those jobs aren’t coming back, is that many of those jobs simply stopped being necessary years ago. When you’re making hand over fist like the oil industry was at $100 per barrel, being lean and mean is not your concern. However, when belts need tightening, efficiency gains in importance, and unnecessary human labor is inefficient. If a job can be done with 10 people, why hire 20 back? So that’s what happened here, and the process was just over two years. **TWO YEARS**. That’s how quickly an industry began more heavily investing in automation and ridding itself of extraneous human labor. It also just happened last year, and few people know anything about it. This is [the real story of automation](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-real-story-of-automation-beginning-with-one-simple-chart-8b95f9bad71b?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s a story of heads buried in the sand. Human labor is simply unnecessary overhead that can be squeezed out to increase profits. People deny that fact, and they deny it with wishful thinking. The main wish is that although jobs are lost due to new technologies, new ones are always created. The unasked question is the *nature* of those jobs. What *kind* of jobs are we creating? What kind of skills do they require? How much do they pay? What are their hours and durations? How much meaning do they provide? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*UgeKVEyDmInTA0hTMzH_Vg.png) In the US, for four decades, [low-skill jobs have grown to fill the vacuum created by the loss of middle-skill jobs](https://medium.com/basic-income/everything-you-think-you-know-about-the-history-and-future-of-jobs-is-likely-wrong-4f84e3a8945e?ref=scottsantens.com). Yes, new high-skill jobs were created too, but the net growth is in low-skill employment. And that also makes complete sense. The jobs to automate first are those that pay humans the most money, but not so much money due to such a high skill requirement that technology isn’t up to the task. Then as technology gets cheaper, it makes sense to automate lower and lower-skill jobs, and as technology gets more capable, it makes sense to automate increasingly high-skill jobs. The loss of middle-skill jobs first is exactly what we should expect as a result of automation, and it’s exactly what we see. Not only in the US, but in nation after nation, the middle is being hollowed out everywhere. As jobs are automated from the middle out, because people need money to live, and jobs provide money, people find whatever jobs they can get. As a result, people compete against each other, and the nature of jobs worsens. Except for those moving on to new high-skill jobs, wages go down. Full-time goes to part-time. Employee goes to contractor. Paychecks go from every two weeks like clockwork to, “I really hope I get paid before rent is due.” ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*sHqtR-ZmHoS0tS6w64PMOw.png) All of this is also true on a global scale. Worldwide, the middle is being eroded as the middle classes of more developed nations compete against machines, and also the cheaper labor of less developed nations, directly thanks to the technology that makes a globalized labor market possible. Additionally, and this confuses people, [automation can actually slow productivity](https://medium.com/basic-income/our-paradoxical-economy-courtesy-of-technology-and-the-lack-of-basic-income-361f40051de0?ref=scottsantens.com). How? Because we’re automating more productive jobs and forcing people back to work in less productive jobs. Low wages also mean less work is automated that otherwise would be automated if humans didn’t insist on being such cheap labor. Low wages are hindering investments in automation. All of this is what we’d expect to see as a result of automation where people freed from jobs have no real choice but to find another. And it’s exactly what we’re seeing. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*2lVNTPeiFecsYoOXMEjdTg.png) [A first of its kind 2017 study](https://economics.mit.edu/files/12763?ref=scottsantens.com) even looked at the impact of *just* industrial robots on jobs from 1993 to 2007 in the US and found that every new robot replaced around 5.6 workers, and every additional robot per 1,000 workers reduced the percentage of the total population employed by 0.34%, reduced wages by 0.5%, and increased GDP by 0.13%. During that 14-year period of time, the number of industrial robots quadrupled, and between 360,000 and 670,000 jobs were erased. And as the authors noted, “Interestingly, and perhaps surprisingly, we do not find positive and offsetting employment gains in any occupation or education groups.” In other words, the jobs were ***not*** replaced with new jobs. Remember, this finding was from looking at industrial robots only, not all robots, not software, and especially not artificial intelligence. Consider all of it, and how quickly advancements in AI are being made such that cars and trucks are already driving themselves, and machine learning algorithms are already learning how to write their own code, and we’re looking at something entirely new in human history. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*zdyGY4WRKXxuEZgGSUvv0Q.png) But to see this, we have to open our eyes. In the US we’ve lost manufacturing jobs over the past three decades, and whereas 8 out of 10 Americans know that, [only 26% of Americans know manufacturing output has ](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/25/most-americans-unaware-that-as-u-s-manufacturing-jobs-have-disappeared-output-has-grown/?ref=scottsantens.com)[*increased*](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/25/most-americans-unaware-that-as-u-s-manufacturing-jobs-have-disappeared-output-has-grown/?ref=scottsantens.com) over that same time. In other words, most Americans have no idea America is manufacturing more now than ever, despite the loss of manufacturing jobs. Americans also think the jobs being lost are due to immigrants and offshoring, but [a 2015 Ball State University study](https://projects.cberdata.org/reports/MfgReality.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) that looked closely at this found only 13% of job loss was NOT due to efficiency gains. According to the study, in 2010 it was possible to accomplish with 12.1 million workers what once would have required 20.9 million workers just **10 years** prior. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*w0b_cxjCF22rwdmnDE3ABQ.png) Now let’s consider again the oil market downturn. It effectively simulated a recession. Recessions always squeeze out unnecessary labor. In the US, the result is that we hit peak labor back in 2000\. So what happens to workers all over the world during the next global downturn? How many workers will never be rehired because they already aren’t needed? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*whpx9AFue8Vy0LVqyXXnDA.png) It will also likely take longer for those newly unemployed to find new jobs, as more and more people compete in our ongoing game of musical chairs to find a seat not newly filled by hardware or software. In the US, this has been the trend for 70 years. And what will these new jobs people find look like? Because again, according to long-term trends, not only will they take longer to find and pay less, they’ll also not be traditional jobs, and will result in more monthly variance of incomes. In the US this century, [all 9 million net new jobs we’ve created are forms of alternative work](https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/lkatz/files/katz%5Fkrueger%5Fcws%5Fv3.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), and if we look at the bottom 20% in the US, 74% of workers now see [their incomes vary by 30% month to month](https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/rsa-blogs/2016/04/basicincomeinsecurity/?ref=scottsantens.com). ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*4oKiS3nCC2Ya3r7Ndd6qvg.png) What this boils down to is that government-provided safety nets all over the world are designed around a notion of 20th century jobs where jobs once fell from job trees and provided regular, dependable income, with benefits, for decades at a time. Automation has since transformed the way we work. It’s also transformed businesses themselves. As technology enables businesses to do more with fewer workers, that means to obtain “full employment”, we also need more businesses, or we all need to work less. So what do we observe? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*Hj5AREXsEP2ib0LaVUjISg.png) Well, in the US, startup creation has been declining for decades, and in fact, in 2008, the death rate of businesses surpassed the birth rate for the first time ever recorded. However, the number of billion-dollar startups is trending upwards. Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft are together worth $2.7 trillion and employ merely a fraction of the top companies like GM, Ford, Exxon, GE, and IBM did decades ago. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1920/1*O5u2KAvqkOkaE3C_13RBWw.png) ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1920/1*1zjtR-AdwUnNZqB_Kb3p4Q.png) Perhaps most importantly, discretionary incomes are falling. Despite rising productivity, people have a decreasing percentage left of what they earn to spend on what’s being made more and more by machines, after covering basic needs. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*GBtxX-CgFRWv4uxpsJangg.png) This is not a sustainable trend. People have to be able to afford what machines are producing, or else what’s the point of machines producing any of it in the first place? And [what are the social ](https://medium.com/basic-income/human-park-a-mammals-guide-to-stress-free-living-17f6cab007b3?ref=scottsantens.com)[consequences of societies increasingly starved of income](https://medium.com/basic-income/human-park-a-mammals-guide-to-stress-free-living-17f6cab007b3?ref=scottsantens.com), and where inequality only continues to grow more extreme? I believe we’re already seeing the consequences in the form of reactions like rising nationalism, xenophobia, and drug addiction. Trump and Brexit are warning signs that we can’t stop ignoring the social effects of technology. We have to take our heads out of the sand. We can’t look at a low unemployment rate and think everything is okay. We can’t tell a person who just went from a 40-hour per week career with benefits and a sense of security, to three different jobs/gigs without any benefits, working longer hours to earn less total income in a far more insecure life of just mere survival. We can’t look at a world where **5 men now own more wealth than half the planet** and brush it aside as unimportant. Inequalities affect societies across a wide range of measures. As inequality grows, social cohesion decreases, crime increases, gun violence and drug abuse rises, overall physical and mental health worsens, life expectancy falls, emotional well-being declines, and even economic growth suffers. Perhaps worst of all, are the effects of extreme inequality on our youngest. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*LDs8JZlPfZYI_j4IejpNFA.png) The lower a socioeconomic status a child is born into, the worse they will perform on cognitive tests measuring language skills, short-term memory, long-term memory of facts and events, and spatial relationships. Why? [Because the less income parents have, the less cortical surface area the brains of their kids will end up having](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/sa-visual/this-is-your-brain-on-poverty/?ref=scottsantens.com). Decades from now, we will look back at this as nothing less than barbarism. How could we ever have thought it okay to inflict brain damage on untold millions of humans as punishment for not choosing wealthier parents? Furthermore, how much are we holding civilization back by allowing impoverishment to continue? How much more could we accomplish as a species, if we made the choice, that’s right, THE CHOICE, to abolish poverty and extreme inequality forever, by simply investing in humanity — **in each other**? What if we chose to lay a foundation underneath all of our feet that from birth to death prevented everyone ever again, from not having enough to survive? **What would you do in life, if you started each month with enough money to live?** ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*RtioSZCnhVnL5HhDq6Fcgg.png) This is the idea of unconditional basic income. It’s not a new idea, but it’s one that was new to me back in 2013 when I first started searching for solutions to technological unemployment. [It’s also not an idea confined to the political left or right. It crosses all lines](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-you-think-basic-income-is-free-money-or-socialism-think-again-4a17e8d15b1?ref=scottsantens.com), with both supporters and detractors across the entire political spectrum, from civil rights leading Martin Luther King, Jr. to free market-loving Friedrich Hayek. UBI is the provision of a regular and non-withdrawable cash stipend to individuals, without conditions, of sufficient size to create an earnings floor above the poverty line. This may sound simple, but there are many misconceptions. One of the first questions asked is where the money comes from. Well, it comes from all of us. [Everyone gets the same amount, but we all contribute varying amounts to make it possible](https://medium.com/economicsecproj/how-to-reform-welfare-and-taxes-to-provide-every-american-citizen-with-a-basic-income-bc67d3f4c2b8?ref=scottsantens.com). ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*jzKGvSHN0SoB-P5mGavDTw.png) It’s really important to understand this, because it also answers another frequently asked question and common misconception, which is the cost. [Because everyone pays into UBI and everyone receives UBI, the cost is the net cost, not the gross cost](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-is-the-net-transfer-amount-not-the-gross-price-tag-acb8aa5eab73?ref=scottsantens.com). Think of it this way. Imagine that UBI is implemented tomorrow and your taxes go up $12,000 in order to pay for it, and in return you receive $12,000 in UBI. How much did it cost the government to provide you UBI? Aside from administration costs of less than 1%, it cost nothing. All net payers cost nothing to provide UBI to, and the cost to net receivers is the total amount of UBI, minus the amount in additional taxes imposed. In other words, the UBI can cost the same as its cousin the negative income tax, birthed by Milton Friedman. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*0u4DdG63Nn2WFmXOxmvubw.png) Although universal, a UBI functions to circulate income from top to bottom, where it then circulates right back up again. In other words, [**UBI closes the loop of an economic system currently reliant on infinite growth**](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/01/alive-in-the-sunshine/?ref=scottsantens.com). Basic income creates a sustainable ecosystem. In doing so it also answers the question of where the money comes from in a novel way. It comes from where it’s going, like water itself. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*GmN2XolMBvMmdW1g2tx17Q.png) Understand this, and [understand another fear as just a fear, that is the fear of rampant inflation](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7?ref=scottsantens.com). Few models of UBI involve monetary expansion. UBI is instead a circulation of existing money from those effectively hoarding it to those who will immediately spend it. This increased circulation also leads directly to a stronger economy through multiplier effects. Someone on Wall Street getting another dollar adds 39 cents to the economy, whereas a low-income earner getting another dollar adds $1.21 to the economy. That’s **three times** better for the economy. So [making sure everyone in the bottom 60% has money to spend into the economy makes a hell of a lot more sense than the top 20% being shoveled even more money](https://medium.com/basic-income/trickle-down-economics-must-die-long-live-grow-up-economics-5b8334a0db76?ref=scottsantens.com). As a concept, this may sound all well and good now, or still completely bonkers. I don’t know about you, but how something sounds only goes so far with me. The big question is does it work? Well, countries around the world are increasingly asking that same question. Trials have begun in Finland, the Netherlands, Canada, Kenya, Uganda, Brazil, Spain, Italy, and even the US, with more trials in the works for Scotland and likely even India and more. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*wmfYi8-9O4Bxo4Z8k5GZyg.jpeg) [Click for updated map if available](http://ubi.earth/map/?ref=scottsantens.com) But we actually don’t have to wait for these. When I first started looking into UBI, I was shocked to discover [just how much evidence there already was](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/wiki/index?ref=scottsantens.com#wiki%5Fthat.27s%5Fall%5Fvery%5Fwell.2C%5Fbut%5Fwhere.27s%5Fthe%5Fevidence.3F) for those seeking it. There’s already so much we know. Here are just some of the many observations that have struck me the most, collected from a variety of pilots and studies from the United States, Canada, India, Namibia, and Lebanon. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*5K-_2HM1G8o2_Rl7BKfySw.png) Crime went down 42%. Illegal hunting aka poaching went down 95%. Hospitalization rates decreased 8.5%. Birth weights improved due to better maternal nutrition. Consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables went up. Consumption of alcohol and other temptation goods went down. Personalities improved such that kids were more honest and worked better together. School attendance increased and grades improved. Teen pregnancy rates went down. [Frequency of people being personally offended by each other went down. Trust increased.](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-will-likely-increase-social-cohesion-aceb337262e0?ref=scottsantens.com) Savings went up and debt went down. Entrepreneurship quadrupled in one place and was three times higher than control groups in another. Recipients worked more hours, and earned more additional income. And disproportionately positive effects overall were seen among women, the elderly, and the disabled… in other words, the traditionally marginalized. Some of these results have been observed once, some multiple times. [Increased entrepreneurship for example seems to be a common effect of giving people UBI](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-will-accelerate-innovation-by-reducing-our-fear-of-failure-b81ee65a254?ref=scottsantens.com), for I think three main reasons: more capital, more customers, and more risk-taking. Fear of risk leading to catastrophic failure prevents far too much innovation. When a New York Times reporter asked him how he felt about failing 700 times, Thomas Edison responded, “I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed *once*. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that *will* work.” UBI transforms failure from an existential risk to an opportunity to learn **what** **doesn’t work**. Failure is not a bad thing. Failure is how we learn. Failure is how we innovate. What’s bad is when we arrange things so that failure is life-*threatening* instead of life-*instructing*. Now, another common result of providing basic income is healthier babies, and this is a particularly profound finding. For those familiar with [epigenetics](http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/why-poverty-is-like-a-disease?ref=scottsantens.com), where environments can turn off and on genes in the womb, the implications of babies born healthier should knock you back to consider the generational effects. For example, a high risk for obesity can be the product of starvation in the womb, as babies are consequently programmed to store more calories. So consider the implication of generations of kids growing up finding it much harder to become obese. Also consider just how much societies with basic income will save in the form of reduced expenditures on crime, poor health, and lost productivity whose costs along with many others, actually *exceed* the cost of implementing UBI. [Functioning as a social vaccine, UBI is an ounce of prevention instead of a pound of cure](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com). Then there’s also what I call the “Einstein Cost”, which is the cost to all of society if even one new Einstein is out there right now, ***not***being the next Einstein, thanks to being too busy simply surviving day by day working multiple pointless jobs a machine could do. [If we step back and look at the big picture, it’s ](https://medium.com/basic-income/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a?ref=scottsantens.com)[*not*](https://medium.com/basic-income/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a?ref=scottsantens.com)[ adopting UBI that costs too much!](https://medium.com/basic-income/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a?ref=scottsantens.com) ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*DsVA1ry0ow24eKo9Ux8bDQ.png) What we’re really seeing here when it comes to observed effects of basic income is essentially [Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-the-maslow-argument-d1346fa9a9f2?ref=scottsantens.com) in action. Everyone has basic needs, and when those needs are covered, people then pursue higher order needs. I believe our higher needs are even more important to us than our basic needs. Suicide is an action not often taken by someone who is starving. It’s an action taken by those who feel there may just be nothing else to life than just not starving. Basic income, by starting everyone higher up Maslow’s hierarchy, makes it far more possible for everyone to climb to the top instead of getting stuck at the bottom. Life is not meant to be a treadmill to nowhere. Life is meant to be a constant journey. Those who think basic income in any way inhibits work are therefore missing three key understandings. The first is that [**intrinsic motivation is far more powerful than extrinsic motivation**](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com). That is, what we do because we simply want to, for internal reasons like autonomy, mastery, and purpose, we do with much more engagement than what we do for external rewards. In fact, external rewards have been shown to even inhibit work that requires creativity, and studies have also shown that just being given the option to refuse a task, increases engagement with that task. Fully voluntary work is far more motivating than forced work. The second key understanding is just how much [**non-universal, conditional welfare systems disincentivize work**](https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e?ref=scottsantens.com). No one sees higher marginal tax rates than people on welfare — ***no one***. As someone on welfare earns income, they lose their benefits. The result is the reality of people being barely better off accepting employment, or even becoming far worse off. The most extreme examples are those with disabilities who must prove they are “unfit to work” (which ends up excluding around 80% of people with some form of disability) and who then face losing 100% of their disability income for earning additional income. Basically, welfare is a system where governments pay bureaucrats to make sure people don’t work, and to punish them if they do by removing their benefits. It’s also all about making decisions for people, instead of letting them make their own decisions. **Welfare agencies destroy agency.** The third key understanding of how UBI enables more work is the recognition of [**unpaid work as perhaps the most valuable work of all**](http://www.scottsantens.com/unconditional-basic-income-is-a-pigovian-subsidy-for-unpaid-work). In the US, the amount of unpaid care work alone is estimated at [$700 billion per year](http://www.washington.edu/news/2015/06/16/study-reveals-surprising-truths-about-caregivers/?ref=scottsantens.com), or 4.3% of GDP, and it’s done by almost one-third of the population, mostly women, about 1.2 billion hours every week, the equivalent of about 30.5 million full-time care aides. What would happen to the economy if all unpaid care workers went on strike? What about other kinds of unpaid work? If someone with a basic income quits their minimum wage job to instead develop software for the open source community or dedicate themselves to scientific research, is society worse off? If someone quits their job as a telemarketer to raise their kids instead of outsourcing that care work to others, is society worse off? Why is it only considered work if you care for someone else’s kid and not your own? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*eWllLoolnKr_j0Ny-ZsAEA.png) We must come to understand that work and jobs are different. Not all work is a job. Not all work is meaningful. Not all jobs are meaningful. Not all jobs are work. And [the pursuit of jobs, work, and meaning are ](https://steemit.com/basicincome/@scottsantens/a-world-with-fewer-hours-of-jobbing-is-not-a-world-without-work-or-meaning?ref=scottsantens.com)[*all*](https://steemit.com/basicincome/@scottsantens/a-world-with-fewer-hours-of-jobbing-is-not-a-world-without-work-or-meaning?ref=scottsantens.com)[ better enabled when one’s basic needs are met](https://steemit.com/basicincome/@scottsantens/a-world-with-fewer-hours-of-jobbing-is-not-a-world-without-work-or-meaning?ref=scottsantens.com). In fact, I myself have a basic income. [Ever since January of 2016, I start each month with $1,000 as my income floor](https://medium.com/basic-income/what-if-you-got-1-000-a-month-just-for-being-alive-i-decided-to-find-out-9e8591976c37?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s crowdfunded via [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com), and I would not be here right now without it. It enables me to pursue the work I consider most meaningful, which is researching, writing, and speaking about basic income. The biggest understanding I’ve gained from my basic income is a sense of security. Until I had security, I had no idea how little of it I had prior. It was just a word with a definition. Now I FEEL it. Knowing every month I’ll be able to cover my basic needs is a sense of freedom I can’t properly convey to those who don’t already have that freedom. Basic income has also increased my resilience to disaster. I crossed paths with a tornado last year, and I was able to cover that unexpected expense to my car. Imagine how much of a difference UBI would make to *all* victims of events like floods, fires, and hurricanes? Is UBI perhaps even justified by climate change alone? I’ve also begun to think differently about things like intellectual property, and even money itself. What I write, I write for people to read. The more people who read what I write the better. So why would I choose to publish behind a paywall? This makes me wonder, is it possible that with UBI, the open source movement will massively expand? If you’re no longer forced to sell your work to live, will more of you freely provide your work? Is it possible that GitHub pull requests would multiply overnight, or that wikis of all kinds would see even more pages expanded and created? Basically, basic income allows everyone to say “YES” to what we otherwise might have to say no to in order to survive. On the flip side however, it also allows everyone to say “NO” to what we might otherwise have no other choice but to say “yes” to. This in turn means [UBI could also negate the need for minimum wages](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/minimum-wages-vs-universal-basic-income%5Fb%5F7957850.html?ref=scottsantens.com). If everyone has the ability to refuse to work for what’s considered too low a wage, wages must *increase* to attract people to do those jobs. It’s also about more than jobs. Think about how many women, and men too, are in abusive relationships simply because they can’t afford to leave them, or even how much speech is left unexpressed, in fear of losing one’s present job, or being denied a future job. Is it even possible, that rights like freedom of expression don’t truly exist without economic rights? Does a lack of basic income even infringe on citizenship itself by making people prioritize jobs over voting, where that second or even third shift at work has greater priority than being an informed and engaged citizen? At this point, perhaps you’re thinking that no matter how good of an idea UBI is, and how affordable it is, and how much new and valuable work people will do, perhaps even for free, that people simply don’t deserve it. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*Msr7sqQzdgIL7wowseacZw.png) Well, here’s the thing. First, no one created our natural resources. No one created the land. People only ever called dibs on it many centuries ago. The Earth belongs to all of us equally. [This was essentially the argument of Thomas Paine](http://fermatslibrary.com/s/agrarian-justice?ref=scottsantens.com) who said “It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race… Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community a ground-rent for the land which he holds; and it is from this ground-rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to issue.” This is even the logic behind the annual Alaska dividend and also provides strong support for ideas like [land value tax dividends](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/extreme-wealth-inequality-alaska-model/?ref=scottsantens.com), and [carbon tax dividends](https://medium.com/basic-income/this-idea-can-literally-change-our-world-107cbc94057a?ref=scottsantens.com). Next, [all of this technology around us has roots in taxpayer dollars](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/opinion/americas-underappreciated-entrepreneur-the-federal-government.html?ref=scottsantens.com) because Level 1 R&D, aka basic research, is simply too risky for the private sector to invest in. All of the data around us is also generated **by us** to the tune of an estimated $2,000 per year on average and growing. And finally everything we create and discover is simply the next link in a kind of generational blockchain that goes all the way back to the very first use of tools at the Dawn of Man. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*wyBiZrj8NNKvDypo7USK_A.png) As Sir Isaac Newton said, he stood on the shoulders of giants. He didn’t do what he did on his own. What Newton did was only possible because of everything done before him *by* those before him. He *inherited* the knowledge that he built upon. One can say all of civilization is simply something for nothing. All of it’s inherited. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*QMp3y99fJdCnNIFSDUyBrg.png) Economic output per person in the US grew roughly seven-fold over the course of the 20th century from roughly 7,000 to 52,000 in 2017 dollars. If the economic gains of the 20th century continue at the same pace in the 21st century, then [by 2100 it’ll be roughly $365,000 per person](https://medium.com/economicsecproj/technological-inheritance-and-the-case-for-a-basic-income-ded373a69c8e?ref=scottsantens.com). A person born at the end of this century will have done absolutely nothing to enable this enormous gain. All of it will exist as a gift from the past, from the accumulation of technological and scientific knowledge received, simply by being born. Now imagine a UBI is indexed to grow with productivity, and therefore with automation. The more automation, the higher the output, the higher the UBI… Instead of fearing automation, people would want as much automated as possible, to maximize their UBI. Wait? People in the future should be paid six figures simply for being alive? Yes! Because it’s their inheritance! **UBI is our natural inheritance.** **UBI is our technological inheritance.** **UBI is our return on investment as taxpayers.** **UBI is our big data dividend.** In fact, I think understanding UBI as a data dividend will be of increasing importance. Companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter are worth billions not because of their infrastructure but because of their users, and these users live all over the world. They’re more than citizens. They’re netizens. And they perform uncompensated work with every status update, with every search, and with every tweet. This work is owed what I refer to as a **netizen dividend**, because it’s owed to those who comprise networks. We need to recognize what we do online as a form of atomized work — work so small we don’t even see it as work. And we need to see it all around us. Our data generation is omnipresent. Everything we do, and even everything we don’t do, generates data. But only stockholders are financially benefiting from it all. This needs to change, and everyone here can help make it happen. The answer to *how* exists to a great degree I think in blockchain development and cryptocurrencies. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*84G_XYqAumHqusAUrFiAKA.png) [Netizen dividends can be built into any cryptocurrency, and some already do](https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@scottsantens/hi-steemit-scott-santens-here-if-you-ve-ever-googled-basic-income-you-may-have-read-something-i-ve-written?ref=scottsantens.com). But also take for example the platform [Steemit](https://steemit.com/@scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s a kind of hybrid between a blogging platform and Reddit built on a blockchain. People create posts, which are voted up. How many votes they get determine how much Steem the posts earn, which gets divided between the person who created the post, and those who upvoted it. This currency is then exchangeable for other currencies like bitcoin and ethereum, which can in turn be exchanged for traditional currencies. In this way Steemit’s users are treated as both freelancers and stockholders. There’s no longer any need to follow the old model. Every platform that does anything can follow this same new model built on blockchain technology. And I think the only kind of company that can make Facebook the next MySpace will follow this model and incorporate a netizen dividend into it. Imagine earning multiple streams of income across a dozen different platforms you use, simply for using them. As a young superhero once learned the hard way, with great power comes great responsibility. Software developers are I think a new kind of hero. The automation of human labor is an incredible boon to all of humankind, but not on its own. Systemic changes must accompany it so that the benefits of automation accrue to everyone. I cannot stress enough how important it is for the long-term survival of our species, to shift from the idea of conditionally providing charity, to unconditionally distributing prosperity. We are a young species, but in order to become an old species, we’ve got some incredible challenges ahead of us that require long-term thinking. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*8MPr-RpKhS37Hja5XVQVSg.png) Climate change is one of our biggest challenges and it very well could be the end of us. To tackle it, we have got to stop only thinking about survival. As long as we’re just worried about the day to day stuff, our minds aren’t free to tackle the big picture. As long as income remains coupled to work, an unemployed coal miner is going to want to keep digging coal. Billions of decisions every day will continue being made for the sake of making it to the next day instead of the next millennium. We’re all evolved primates. We’ve come a long way, my hairless ape friends, but we’ve got something in our DNA that switched from brilliantly adapting us to our environment, to being an anchor tied to our ankles. It’s called the stress response, or more popularly, the fight-or-flight response. Back in the day, many thousands of years ago, it was a clever emergency gear where long-term higher-order creative thinking shut down, and we were temporarily enabled to think faster, react quicker, be stronger, move faster, run longer, and think only about survival… those were the humans who survived. It was basically a superpower. The problem is we don’t live in that same world anymore. We aren’t being chased down by lions or being eaten by wolves while sitting in front of our computers in our air-conditioned offices, and yet our fight-or-flight responses are still being activated. In fact, for far too many, daily existence is no longer anything but fight-or-flight. The stress response was only ever meant to be used in case of emergency, not be a persistent state. [Never ending stress leads not only to all kinds of health issues, but to social issues like displacement aggression and learned helplessness](https://medium.com/basic-income/human-park-a-mammals-guide-to-stress-free-living-17f6cab007b3?ref=scottsantens.com). It rewires our brains to stay stressed, and as a result, our gaze as a species is looking down at our feet, instead of up to the horizon. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*gFX0ddm_SxS6_PQAgtwdbw.png) Chronic stress is a mind killer. By design, it limits us to short-term thinking. It creates a scarcity of mental resources. It is a tax on the brain, that when lifted, has even been measured as being equivalent to a gain of 14 IQ points. This is because concern about not having **enough** operates as a kind of software program running in the back of our minds that limits available resources available to be applied elsewhere. Reaching a state of having enough to no longer worry, results in freeing those resources. With every year that passes, technology is capable of doing more, and at an exponential rate. So let me ask you this. Let’s pretend that tomorrow everyone gets a button-triggered device that would end the world when pressed. How long do you think our world would survive? Is the answer then to not invent such god-like **to us** technologies? I don’t think so. Such a technology would really be just another bone of sorts. Our challenge is that as technology advances, ***we*** need to advance along with it. We need to become humans who would *not* press that button. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*6Yg2iTc7pYYFx3A1c76fqQ.png) So how do we do that? Well consider two societies. One society starts everyone at the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid and says, “Good luck, asshole. Every man for himself.” Another society starts everyone at the middle of the pyramid, and says “We care about you, and we *trust* you. We’re all in this together.” Which society is less likely to press that button? I want us to be *that* society. This is why I feel so strongly about UBI. If we’re going to beat climate change, if we’re going to survive future advances in bio-technology, nanotechnology, and general AI… if we’re going to use [Elon Musk’s Neuralink](https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html?ref=scottsantens.com) to interface with AI and in so doing become a civilization where that button *really* does exist, we have no choice but to become better. We *have* to. And we have to do it now, because we needed to do it yesterday. You all have a responsibility which cannot be ignored. You can’t just automate human labor out of existence without recognizing what else must be done. Technology does not exist in a vacuum and those who understand technology have a responsibility to help steer the ship instead of just praying for a lack of icebergs. [The consequences of doing nothing will only get more disastrous](http://thehill.com/opinion/finance/382084-automation-risks-costing-people-their-health-as-well-as-their-jobs?ref=scottsantens.com), whereas the alternative is a future that has never shined with brighter potential. For the problem is not that jobs are being automated, it’s that we require jobs for income, and for some reason think 40 hours is “full-time.” We must learn to share the wealth, and also share the hours. Right now is a pivotal moment in human civilization. Which course will you help us take? The one with more fear and anger and insecurity and stress? Or the one with more hope and love and possibility, and above all, more **time**? We have the opportunity to forever free humanity from drudgery and toil, but as long as people require money to live, and jobs are the primary way of obtaining money, people will fear automation. Let’s **remove** that roadblock to human progress. Let’s erase the existential fear of meeting basic needs. No more just surviving. It’s time to start *thriving*. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*XH2kAofVIEnFR49pSBr3rQ.png) There’s also one last thing I’d like you to consider. If it’s true that we all have the right to life, and life cannot be taken from us, does anyone truly have the right to life if what is needed to live is withheld on the condition of being servile? [I](https://www.princeton.edu/~ppettit/papers/2008/A%20Republican%20Right%20to%20Basic%20Income.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)[f living has a price, shouldn’t enough money be unconditionally provided to cover that price, as a fundamental human right](https://www.princeton.edu/~ppettit/papers/2008/A%20Republican%20Right%20to%20Basic%20Income.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)? Think hard about that, because it’s a question I think people mere decades from now are going to look back on and wonder why it was ever even a question at all. Unconditional basic income is not “free money”. It’s freedom. And freedom belongs to all of us. It’s time for technology to serve all humankind. [*Jobs*](https://medium.com/basic-income/deep-learning-is-going-to-teach-us-all-the-lesson-of-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines-7c6442e37a49?ref=scottsantens.com)[ are for machines](https://medium.com/basic-income/deep-learning-is-going-to-teach-us-all-the-lesson-of-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines-7c6442e37a49?ref=scottsantens.com). *Life* is for people. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*VyMqSGIP57Xm1u90CgQmkg.png) --- ***Special thanks to: Steven Grimm, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Larry Cohen, Andrew Stern, Floyd Marinescu, Topher Hunt, Gisele Huff, Kian Alavi, Stephane Boisvert, Justin Walsh, Daragh Ward, Dominic Wyler, Joanna Zarach, Ace Bailey, Daryl Smith, Aaron Schultz, Albert Wenger, Chris Smothers, Danielle and Michael Texeira, Jack Canty, Paul Godsmark, Vladimir Baranov, Rachel Perkins, Chris Rauchle, Michael Hrenka, Stephen Warley, David Ihnen, Natalie Foster, Carrie Mclachlan, Daniel Brockman, Che Wagner, Jordan Lejuwaan, Michael Honey, Gerald Huff, Will Ware, BoNster, Richard Just, Gray Scott, Joe Ballou, Jack Wagner, Max Henrion, Catherine MacDonald, Dan O’Sullivan, Saura Naderi, Kai Wong, Jill Weiss, Nicolas Pouillard, Christopher Anderson, Stuart Mark, Elizabeth Balcar, Erhan Altay, Georg Baumann, Lisa Hallman, Laurie Ruettimann, Dylan Taylor, Bryan Herdliska, Ron Lisle, Kirk Israel, Kev Roberts, Chris Boraski, Lawrence W Lee, Lee Irving, Andreas, Casey Young, Court Jester Ashe, Brian Schwartz, Robert F. Greene, Robert Solovay, Oliver Bestwalter, Thomas Welsh, Walter Schaerer, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** ## [Would you like to see your name here too?](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Here's what I said about automated vehicles and basic income at the House of Commons of Canada URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/canada-house-of-commons-automated-vehicles-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T21:17:18.000Z *Below is the audio and text of the short speech I delivered to the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities at the Canadian House of Commons on March 28, 2018 as an expert called to answer questions as part of a big study they are doing on [Automated and Connected Vehicles in Canada](http://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/TRAN/meeting-97/notice?ref=scottsantens.com).* In 2014, I went on a road trip with my fiance, and on that road trip from Louisiana to Florida, we had a conversation about the potential effects of driverless trucks. Months later, I self-published [an article born from that conversation](https://medium.com/basic-income/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us-like-a-human-driven-truck-b8507d9c5961?ref=scottsantens.com) that went viral globally, and in these past four years, despite my own warnings about it, even I have been shocked by the speed of development of this technology. I have no PhD. I am not a programmer or a truck driver. I am simply a citizen who spends a lot of time researching topics of interest to me and writing about them, and the area that tends to interest me most is the effect of technological advancement on human civilization. With that in mind, I wish to spend my time attempting to convey the monumental impacts automated vehicle technology will have on society as we know it, and the utmost need to understand what’s coming down the road, so to speak. To begin, I want to share a quote that I feel summarizes why this technology will happen. It’s from the CFO of Suncor in regards to a fully automated fleet of driverless trucks operating in their mining operations. “It’s not fantasy. That will take 800 people off our site. At an average of $200,000 per person, you can see the savings we’re going to get from an operations perspective.” That’s the cold calculus of self-driving technology. Humans are expensive. Their labor is expensive. Their benefits can be expensive. They’re costly to train. They get injured. They get tired. They make mistakes. They drink and use medications. They get distracted. They look at their phones. They go on strikes. They get involved in lawsuits. They get angry and depressed. They have physical and biological limits. They quit. Machines do none of these things. Machines are the perfect worker as long as the cost is right, and the output is good. When it comes to driverless trucks, the cost of fuel also enters this equation. Trucks that drive themselves offer incredible efficiencies in fuel costs. Driverless trucks can travel longer distances in shorter times thanks to not needing to sleep. They can travel in convoys to increase aerodynamic efficiencies. Fewer accidents can save a lot in human and capital costs. There are many reasons driving the adoption of this technology, and billions of dollars both invested and at stake for those who get there first. I’m here speaking only a week after the first death of a pedestrian by a self-driving car, but that accident itself says a lot about the status of this technology. It’s already as good as a human, such that people already expect superhuman abilities from it. Why didn’t its radar and laser-based systems see the woman before tragically colliding with her in the dark. Why didn’t the car immediately detect her and immediately slam the brakes? And yet we’re talking about a matter of seconds where below average human drivers would have caused the same death, just as they do over 3,000 deaths a day, causing 1.3 million deaths every year all over the world. The first human being has died, but this technology will save lives. This technology will save money. This technology will save time. And this technology will impact our economies in ways governments needed to start preparing for years ago. Don’t be fooled into thinking this is just about eliminating driving jobs. The automation of vehicular transport will ripple through the economy. Think of cars and trucks as blood cells in a circulatory system, carrying oxygen throughout the body in the form of income and spending. There are businesses that depend on drivers spending their money. There are businesses that depend on car ownership. There are businesses that depend on vehicles getting into accidents, parking, and requiring insurance. These businesses are themselves then depended upon by other businesses, and so on like falling dominoes. The challenge that lies ahead for lawmakers is in helping guide this process in a way that doesn’t discourage its advancement, but enables it to flourish and leaves as many people better off as possible. This means not just assisting people in learning new skills for new jobs, but also creating a safety net that acknowledges the transformation of work in this 21st century of great uncertainty. Requiring former drivers to jump through an arduous system of forms and bureaucrats to receive income as they retrain and search for their next opportunity for employment is not the best way to go about a world of work where people are increasingly between increasingly insecure jobs of shorter duration and greater monthly income variance. This is why I also believe any conversation about automation and the future of work requires a conversation about a basic income guarantee. You’re ahead of the curve in that you’re already testing it, but I do wish to urge you of its importance. Self-driving tech will absolutely create winners and losers, and all those who lose cannot be ignored or expected to just easily find a new job with equal pay, hours, benefits, skill requirements, security, meaning, and distance from home. It is imperative that you as lawmakers work to make sure that technology like driverless vehicles and the AI that makes it possible, [effectively works for everyone, not just its owners](https://medium.com/basic-income/cutting-the-gordian-knot-of-technological-unemployment-with-unconditional-basic-income-e8df7f8eaa16?ref=scottsantens.com). Without that focus, danger lies ahead. It’s up to you to negotiate our way around these dangers, as best as you can, so we can all arrive at a place our ancestors perhaps never even imagined possible. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Universal Basic Income Cryptocurrencies Like Manna are Pioneering the Way Towards Decentralized Targeting URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/manna-universal-basic-income-blockchain-cryptocurrency-decentralized-targeting/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T21:18:31.000Z *I've provided [an introduction to the cryptocurrency "Manna" in a previous blog entry](http://www.scottsantens.com/manna-universal-basic-income-cryptocurrency-whitepaper-news), so if you've never heard of it, please start by reading that first, before coming back here to dive deeper.* ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/11a319f3-e6ab-489f-8df3-d735343da9c4/Mannabase-20-20Blockchain-20Platform-20for-20Universal-20Basic-20Income.png) There's something about Manna (and any UBI cryptocurrency really) that may just blow your mind to realize, as it did my own, that makes them all *not* just another cryptocurrency built on blockchain technology. **Because cryptocurrency can be thought of simultaneously as both an asset and a currency, and because UBI goes to everyone, rich or poor, UBI cryptocurrencies represent an entirely new way of determining need itself in an entirely decentralized way.** To fully explain what I mean, I need to start off with a quick explanation of how we currently determine need. Right now, "need" is a label we tend to apply to people who meet certain conditions. That condition could be that they have an income below some arbitrarily drawn line so they are deemed as "poor enough." It could be that they have a disability that exists on one side of an arbitrarily drawn line so they are deemed as "disabled enough." It could be that their age exists on one side of an arbitrarily drawn line so they are deemed "old enough" or "young enough." It could be that their roof is made of straw instead of metal, or that their food is kept in a fridge, or it could be the lack of a cow or other livestock. All of these are ways of determining need, and all of them exclude people in actual need for not ending up on the proper side of those arbitrarily drawn lines. The above tests are referred to as [proxy means tests](https://www.unicef.org/socialpolicy/files/targeting-poorest.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), and just one example of how terrible such tests are in determining need is a recent World Bank study that found [75% of the malnourished are not among the poorest 20% of households, and around half aren't found in the bottom 40%](https://examplewordpresscom61323.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/poor-individuals-in-poor-households-w24047.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). So if your goal was to end malnutrition and you targeted the bottom half under the assumption that only the poorest are malnourished, 40% of the population would still be malnourished because of your uninformed assumption. **The only truly accurate way of determining need is everyone making their own self-determination. It requires a bottom-up process, not a top-down one. It requires a distributed calculation and not a centralized calculation**. Enabling such a calculation therefore begins with something fully universal. Think of it this way: [imagine we need to determine who can swim in a way that eliminates type II errors of false exclusion](http://www.scottsantens.com/the-water-room-analogy-why-giving-basic-income-to-even-the-richest-makes-sense), meaning we want to make sure nobody drowns. If we decide to only hand out life preservers to those who can't swim well enough, a type II error will be made, and someone who can't swim won't get a life preserver and they will drown. Perhaps even worse, if someone learns how to swim, their life preserver will get taken away, which can then lead to their drowning. To avoid these errors in judgement, everyone needs to be given a life preserver no matter what, thus the error then made is a type I error of false inclusion, where someone gets a life preserver who doesn't actually need one. That's an error that's wasteful instead of fatal. It's costly, but in terms of resources, not human life, and there may come a day where they do need it after all. Providing everyone with a life preserver in the form of money, or better yet **their own individual foundation on which to *improve* life instead of just prevent harm**, will require more revenue than we currently raise, [although not as much as most people tend to think](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-is-the-net-transfer-amount-not-the-gross-price-tag-acb8aa5eab73?ref=scottsantens.com). However, providing everyone with cryptocurrency, especially one that doesn't require massive amounts of energy to produce, is essentially free. It is then up to recipients to determine their need by selling it, holding it, or giving it away. This is where a cryptocurrency like Manna truly shines. Every week, a new distribution of Manna occurs, and although the ability to send and receive hasn't yet been activated as of this writing, it will be soon, and at that point, people can begin selling their Manna for their currency of choice. If someone [sells their Manna on an exchange](https://www.southxchange.com/Market/Book/MANNA/BTC?ref=scottsantens.com), they just signaled their immediate need, and anyone who buys that Manna is meeting that need with traditional currency. Those who don't sell their Manna are signaling their lack of immediate need. By holding on to Manna, recipients are waiting until they are in need of it. Those who choose to give it away are conveying they don't even see a need for their Manna in the future and would prefer to give it to others now. That is a distributed calculation for determining need using a universally distributed cryptocurrency as the mechanism. This mechanism introduces a truly novel new means of philanthropy. Imagine you've got $10,000 you're looking to give away to help people in the best, most efficient way possible. [GiveDirectly](https://www.givedirectly.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) is perhaps the best existing example of how you could give away this money. Hardly any of it would be lost to administration, and it would be provided as cash to those in East Africa, and even [a 12-year UBI experiment](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/magazine/universal-income-global-inequality.html?ref=scottsantens.com). It would improve lives, and it would do so in a virtually unlimited number of ways. With Manna, you could either donate that $10,000 to the [People's Currency Foundation](http://peoplescurrency.org/?ref=scottsantens.com), the 501c(3) non-profit that backs the value of Manna, or you could buy $10,000 worth of Manna, which would come from those who are selling it all over the world, who are in need of traditional money, otherwise they wouldn't be selling their Manna. You could then treat your new Manna as an investment that may increase in value over time, or you could use the Mannabase interface to find people to give your Manna to, which could even be everyone universally, once again eliminating any errors of exclusion. The above is true for Manna, but it could also be true of any cryptocurrency built on the foundation of UBI, where everyone receives it simply for being alive. Full universality allows the distributed calculation for need to take place. It could even be true of a sovereign national currency created as credit, not debt. *(See: [Positive Money](http://positivemoney.org/?ref=scottsantens.com), [helicopter money](http://justmeans.com/blogs/ben-bernanke-and-milton-friedman-were-right-helicopter-money-or-qualitative-easing?ref=scottsantens.com), and [seigniorage reform](http://www.basicincome.org/bien/pdf/2000Huber.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com))* Consider for a moment if the Fed opened up an account at the Fed for everyone with a Social Security number, made it physically accessible to everyone through [postal banking](http://www.campaignforpostalbanking.org/?ref=scottsantens.com), and that instead of allowing private banks to expand the money supply through debt, the Fed instead created an equal amount of debt-free money (or even a [national cryptocurrency](https://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r%5Fqt1709f.htm?ref=scottsantens.com)) inside everyone's account each month. Those who immediately use their money are signaling their need for the money. Those who don't immediately use it obviously don't immediately need it, and at the end of the year, it could subtract from their tax bill just like a standard tax credit would. Or other options could be given just like Mannabase intends to provide and [just as Alaska already provides each year when its dividend goes out](http://www.iser.uaa.alaska.edu/Publications/bien%5Fxiii%5Fak%5Fpfd%5Flessons.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), where people are provided options on where to give it if they don't want it. Imagine too that the option again exists to send your money to everyone's account universally. All of this may also sound quite [inflationary](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7?ref=scottsantens.com), but what if a tiny transaction fee were added to every transaction, where instead of that fee functioning as incentive for mining, it instead functioned as a means of returning the currency to everyone's accounts/wallets with each and every transaction? That way the money appearing each distribution isn't new currency but recycled currency. It would be like transforming the monetary system into something that looks more like the water cycle, where the universal distribution of currency is precipitation, and the universal transaction fee is evaporation. ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/ee9c32fa-85eb-4ee9-8f5a-0a43fe13372d/THE-20WATER-20CYCLE-20Precipitation-20Condensation-20Water-20Vapor-20Evaporation.jpg-20-20JPEG-20Image-20-20960-C2-A0-C3-97-C2-A0720-20pixels-20.png) In agricultural terms, **universal basic income is a means of watering the entire field, so that no crop goes without, and all can reach for the sky.** Determining the needs of others is a fool's errand. A centralized decision making process involving costly administration and legions of bureaucrats making arbitrary decisions based on flawed ideas of who needs what is all something we need to get away from. It also punishes those who go from meeting the requirements to no longer meeting them. The best way to determine need is to make sure everyone has a minimum amount of currency as a starting point, and simply let people decide for themselves their degree of need and what it is they need using that currency in markets. Universal basic income cryptocurrencies like [Manna](https://www.mannabase.com/?ref=gws5597g76), [Swift](https://www.swiftdemand.com/?referred%5Fby=scottsantens&ref=scottsantens.com), and [Circles](https://joincircles.net/?ref=scottsantens.com) point the way forward as tools for more effectively and immediately determining need in a fully decentralized way and even lifting people above the point where they need at all. By giving everyone a base of currency as a starting point, [there will be less need for health care](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com), less need for prisons, and [far less chronic stress and insecurity](https://medium.com/basic-income/human-park-a-mammals-guide-to-stress-free-living-17f6cab007b3?ref=scottsantens.com). With a foundation underneath everyone and above the poverty line, all people can build their lives on firm financial ground. That's what UBI is about, and I firmly believe UBI cryptocurrencies and ideas like [sovereign money](http://positivemoney.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) can help bring that world closer, faster. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### This Idea Can Literally Change the World: Universal Basic Income Through Carbon Pricing URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/this-idea-can-literally-change-the-world-universal-basic-income-through-carbon-pricing/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T23:34:12.000Z ## A Bipartisan Free Market Solution to Climate Change Through Atmospheric Justice ***September 2, 2021 update:*** *It’s been almost four years now since I originally wrote this article. Currently* [*a huge reconciliation bill is working its way through Congress*](https://citizensclimatelobby.org/climate-policy-in-budget-reconciliation/?ref=scottsantens.com) *with a portion of the bill meant to address climate change. There is a chance that carbon pricing could make it into this bill, especially because it’s a revenue-neutral option. If you want to help make this happen, please be sure to contact your representatives in the* [***House***](https://citizensclimatelobby.org/house/?ref=scottsantens.com) *and* [***Senate***](https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/?ref=scottsantens.com) *and tell them that you want carbon pricing with a cash back rebate to be part of the reconciliation bill.* ***February 20, 2019 update:*** *It has been just one year since I originally wrote this article, and in that time over 3,300 economists have now signed onto* [*a statement in support of carbon dividends,*](https://www.econstatement.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) *recommending that the most cost-effective way to reduce carbon emissions at the scale and speed necessary* *to act sufficiently on climate change is to implement an annually rising carbon tax where the revenue is returned directly to U.S. citizens through equal lump-sum rebates. This policy recommendation is thus officially now the largest public declaration in the history of economics. The* [*Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividends Act*](https://energyinnovationact.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) *also now exists in both the U.S. House and Senate, and Canada has in 2019 become the first country in the world to implement* [*carbon dividends nationwide*](https://citizensclimatelobby.org/canada-adopts-carbon-fee-and-dividend-to-rein-in-climate-change/?ref=scottsantens.com)*.* There’s an idea out there with a large and growing consensus of support. Experts long focused on climate change like [James Hansen](http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2015/04/20/james-hansen-rochester/26080843/?ref=scottsantens.com) and [Bill McKibben](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719?ref=scottsantens.com) see it as an absolute no-brainer of a policy at this point, which is why [about 90 countries included some version of it in their plans as part of the Paris Climate Agreement](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/us/politics/carbon-pricingbecomes-a-cause-for-the-world-bank-and-imf.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Despite its absence so far in the Republican platform and its only [just recently being added to the Democratic platform](https://medium.com/@camilathorndike/democrats-a-price-on-carbon-is-half-of-the-solution-3aae1a16c988?ref=scottsantens.com#.k1ipp13m8), a survey done by Stanford in 2015 found that [**67% of adults in the US approved of the idea**](http://www.carbontax.org/blog/2015/04/15/carbon-tax-polling-milestone-23-support-if-revenue-neutral?ref=scottsantens.com) **as long as it was revenue-neutral**. This means the revenue raised by it would not be spent by government. Instead, all revenue would be refunded to everyone equally, which it can and arguably should be, so as to transform it from regressive to progressive, and to gain necessary support from both ends of the political spectrum. *So what’s the idea?* ## Revenue-Neutral Carbon Taxation ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1248/1*R3IbgInu9CWX2IaMDY7JNA.png) At its most simple, **the idea is to make it cost more for everyone to use the atmosphere as a toilet**. In its most ideal form, the idea is to add a new and annually increasing fee per ton of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas emissions, and to simply rebate that revenue back to everyone in the form of monthly dividends for all. **The idea is called a** [**revenue-neutral carbon tax**](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323611604578396401965799658?ref=scottsantens.com)**, or** [**carbon tax and rebate**](http://www.rff.org/research/publications/designing-rebates-protect-low-income-households-under-carbon-tax?ref=scottsantens.com)**, or** [**carbon fee and dividend,**](http://citizensclimatelobby.org/carbon-fee-and-dividend/?ref=scottsantens.com) **or** [**carbon fee and rebate**](http://www.carbonpricedc.org/?ref=scottsantens.com)**.** **Pick your favorite.** ## Changing Behaviors Some hear this and think, what’s the point of taking more money from people and then giving it straight back to them? Well, the point is to nudge behavior. If gas costs $4 per gallon instead of $2 per gallon, we’re going to drive less. If airline tickets cost more, we’re going to fly less. If it costs more to pollute, we’re going to pollute less. Whatever we tax, we tend to reduce it. That’s also one of the reasons more than a few economists don’t like income taxes, while others love the idea of a [land value tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land%5Fvalue%5Ftax%5Fin%5Fthe%5FUnited%5FStates?ref=scottsantens.com). ## Creating Choices The creation of monthly cash dividends with carbon tax revenue then additionally enables new market choices. For example, let’s say gas costs $2 without a carbon fee and rebate, but $3 with a carbon fee and $1 rebate. Do we wish to drive around just as much with $3 gas thanks to being able to afford that choice with the extra $1, just as much as we did with $2 gas and no dividend, or do we wish to drive less and use the $1 dividend elsewhere? Perhaps we’d instead prefer to use that money on a new electric car or solar panels? Perhaps we’d prefer to use it on education or training, or more nights out with friends and family, or to pay down debts or build savings? Or to start a new business? The rebate creates new options for consumers that weren’t there before the fee was applied. ## Green Competitors Creating new options is the real power of carbon fee and rebate. It flips the script on the carbon economy and makes the green economy far more competitive. If energy from coal and oil is cheaper than energy from solar and wind, but then we tax coal and oil to make it just as expensive or even more expensive then their green competitors, more people will choose to opt instead for solar and wind. New green businesses will form, creating new green jobs to meet greater green demand from more customers with more money making greener choices. Carbon dividends offer a market solution for climate change. ## Price Externalities In fact, it’s not only about making fossil fuels and greenhouse gases cost more. It’s about recognizing that their relative cheapness is because their true cost is not being paid for because of ***cost externalization***. Estimates have put this cost at [**$41-$124 per ton**](https://www.sei-international.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate-mitigation-adaptation/socialcostofcarbon%5Fsei%5F20100401.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), meaning that adding at least a $40 per ton fee is not only a smart idea to fight climate change, and returning the revenue to everyone is not only a smart idea to increase incomes and market choices, but *it corrects inefficient market outcomes*. In economic terms, it’s called a “[**Pigovian tax**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian%5Ftax?ref=scottsantens.com).” Instead of distorting markets, it corrects market failures. Think of it this way. If you and I were neighbors and I polluted the air with noxious gases on a daily basis such that you developed health problems, who should pay your bill? You or me? Right now, **you are the one being told to pay the bill** because you’re the one that got sick. This is what’s happening with [increased cancer rates](http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/air-pollution-radon-gas-and-cancer/how-air-pollution-can-cause-cancer?ref=scottsantens.com). A carbon fee and rebate says that it should cost me money to use the atmosphere as my personal gas toilet because I’m the one who made you sick, and you should be the one that money goes to because you co-own the air. It’s your right. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1200/1*IeX2KwSi0_W4Wm3M5T4bwA.png) It’s all about the net transfer. ## Progressive Not Regressive It’s true that a carbon tax alone is regressive. Carbon taxes disproportionately impact those with the least money, because spending an extra $50 each month is a much bigger deal to someone who only earns $1,000 each month than someone who earns $1 million each month. However, for the same reason, receiving $100 extra each month is also a much bigger deal to those earning $1,000 than $1 million. What it comes down to is who has the larger carbon footprint, and the answer is those with the most money. [**Estimates show that on average, those in the top 30% of earners will pay more due to the carbon tax than they receive in the flat rebate, and the bottom 70% will receive more in the flat rebate than they pay in higher costs**](http://theweek.com/articles/696282/how-make-carbon-tax-insanely-popular?ref=scottsantens.com). That’s a highly progressive outcome that is not achieved by just reducing other taxes. ## Basic Income 101 Additionally, the best thing in my opinion about a carbon fee and rebate approach to fighting climate change is that it also happens to be a big and immediate step toward [**unconditional basic income**](https://medium.com/basic-income/could-oregon-s-cap-and-dividend-proposal-help-bring-about-a-basic-income-f40355b91c23?ref=scottsantens.com#.xk5y9b4wo)(UBI). Using [a model provided by the Carbon Tax Center](http://www.komanoff.net/fossil/CTC%5FCarbon%5FTax%5FModel.xlsx?ref=scottsantens.com), if we applied a $40 per ton fee to CO2 tomorrow, and increased it by another $15 every year, in just three years every US citizen would be receiving around $100 per month. That’s about 10% of the way to a basic income, and thus [the cost of implementing a basic income](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-is-the-net-transfer-amount-not-the-gross-price-tag-acb8aa5eab73?ref=scottsantens.com) would be nicely reduced. In another 9 years, every US citizen would be receiving $200 per month. By 2040, it would be $300 per month. Meanwhile, people would quickly become accustomed to receiving a monthly dividend check in their mailbox or bank account independent of and in addition to any other income, and we’d also learn how that money tends to get spent right back into the economy to stimulate it and create new jobs. Even better, we’d also surpass our goal of reducing our emissions by [28% below 2005 levels by 2026,](http://www.usnews.com/opinion/economic-intelligence/articles/2015-12-15/to-meet-the-paris-climate-pledge-pass-a-bipartisan-carbon-tax?ref=scottsantens.com) by reducing them instead **by a whopping 50%**! ## Global Evidence Iran actually managed to accomplish something very close to both a carbon tax and a universal basic income by eliminating their oil subsidies that made fossil fuels super cheap, and instead giving 96% of their citizens cash to afford the newly unsubsidized prices. One of the reasons they did this was that they found cheap gas led to the richest wasting a lot of gas, and therefore all the money they were putting into subsidizing oil to help the poor was actually disproportionately helping the rich. By replacing the subsidies with cash, they instead began disproportionately helping those with lower incomes as originally intended. The story in Iran is a bit more complicated than this though, and still ongoing, so I recommend reading [From Price Subsidies to Basic Income: The Iran Model and Its Lessons](http://www.bien2012.org/sites/default/files/paper%5F156%5Fen.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), and [Cash Transfers and Labor Supply: Evidence from a Large Scale Progam in Iran](http://erf.org.eg/publications/cash-transfers-and-labor-supply-evidence-from-a-large-scale-program-in-iran/?ref=scottsantens.com) to learn more. Canada as usual is ahead of the curve with [a revenue neutral carbon tax already in place in British Columbia since 2008](https://www.carbontax.org/where-carbon-is-taxed/british-columbia/?ref=scottsantens.com) and with national policy planned to begin in 2018\. However, the BC carbon tax is not a true dividend model, instead mostly lowering individual and business taxes and for the poorest providing a tax credit. However, even if not optimally designed IMO, it is still a success. It has dropped fuel consumption, decreased greenhouse gases, and has even slightly increased economic growth compared to the rest of Canada. In short, it’s already been tested, and we already know it works. ## Resilience As a resident of New Orleans, I also look at this from a resilience perspective. Climate change causes climate disasters. It means more houses burning to the ground while other houses end up underwater due to unprecedented flooding. When disaster strikes, people through no fault of their own are forced to evacuate their homes and live in hotels far away. They then return home to begin the entire rebuilding process, possibly without a job, and possible waiting months before any insurance payouts or government grants/loans arrive, that is if they’re not unlucky enough to get nothing at all. A monthly carbon dividend of $200 may not sound like much to you, but when you’re in the position of having just lost everything you own, it makes all the difference in the world. That’s why [Dolly Parton provided people with $1,000 per month](https://news.utk.edu/2017/11/16/ut-releases-preliminary-findings-people-fund-evaluation/?ref=scottsantens.com) who lost their homes to wildfires in Tennessee, and why [GiveDirectly showed up in Texas to give out $1500 debit cards](https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/11/8/16480166/givedirectly-houston-cash-relief-hurricane?ref=scottsantens.com). **Money may not be the *only* thing we need after disaster strikes, but it’s pretty much something we *always* need when disaster strikes.** Not convinced yet? Maybe this guy’s support and reasoning will help…Our favorite billionaire Martian > All we are doing \[with a carbon tax\] is trying to match the inherent subsidy for fossil fuels . . . on the sustainable energy side. Fossil fuels are already getting a massive subsidy… The real right way to correct \[the subsidy\] would be to establish a carbon tax. **If you ask any economist they will tell you that is the obvious thing to do**, put the correct price on carbon because we currently have an error in the economy which misprices carbon at zero or something closer to zero. It is a fundamental economic error. — [Elon Musk](http://www.carbontax.org/blog/2016/08/02/elon-musks-powerful-case-for-a-carbon-tax/?link%5Fid=1&can%5Fid=f457af79036a86351ec4d78c1b2b7201&source=email-another-good-week-for-the-carbon-tax-cause-studies-and-high-profile-support&email%5Freferrer=another-good-week-for-the-carbon-tax-cause-studies-and-high-profile-support&email%5Fsubject=another-good-week-for-the-carbon-tax-cause-studies-and-high-profile-support) ## Not Left or Right There [are many more than Elon Musk who support putting a price on carbon](https://theclimatesolution.com/?ref=scottsantens.com#who), and from all over the world, including conservatives. Believe it or not, even [the former CEO of ExxonMobil and now Secretary of State Rex Tillerson supports a revenue neutral carbon tax](http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/01/08/exxons-tillerson-give-me-a-carbon-tax-not-cap-and-trade/?ref=scottsantens.com), and [ExxonMobil is now lobbying for it](http://www.forbes.com/sites/beltway/2016/06/30/exxon-yes-exxon-backs-a-carbon-tax/?ref=scottsantens.com#665317c04aea). ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*vYt72p48TrxRNHo1qdH65w.png) Conservative authors of The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends An organization called the Climate Leadership Council in 2017 even published “[**The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends**](https://www.clcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/TheConservativeCaseforCarbonDividends.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com).” Its authors were James Baker, Henry Paulson, Martin Feldstein, George Shultz, Ted Halstead, Thomas Stephenson, Greg Mankiw, and Rob Walton. Ted Halstead even went on soon after to deliver a TED talk about it, which you can watch below. And, even more recently, [a **bipartisan coalition** of 34 student groups](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/college-republicans-carbon-climate-change-plan/554465/?ref=scottsantens.com) in the US (including 23 College Republican groups, 6 College Democrat groups, and 5 environmental groups) announced the formation of [**Students for Carbon Dividends**](https://www.s4cd.org/?ref=scottsantens.com), endorsing the above CLC plan. Basically a carbon fee and dividend policy is a good idea for the same reason unconditional basic income is a good idea. It’s an idea both the left and the right can get behind. It’s market friendly and even market correcting, while also reducing poverty, inequality, and climate change all at the same time. For the good of the entire planet, there is perhaps no policy (other than UBI itself) that makes more sense in *immediately* adopting everywhere possible — as soon as possible — than this policy. I also believe there is no policy with the intent of functioning as a foot-in-the-door for full UBI that is more superior than fully universal carbon dividends. ## Partial vs. Targeted For supporters of UBI, there are mainly two roads to achieving full UBI which even if passed tomorrow would likely be phased in over a matter of years. One is to begin by paying a full amount to part of the population and then growing it in time to cover the rest of the population, and the other is to provide a partial UBI to the entire population and then growing it in time to a full UBI. Two notable recent examples of the former are the [RSA’s proposal for a universal basic opportunity fund or UBOF](https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/reports/pathways-to-universal-basic-income-the-case-for-a-universal-basic-opportunity-fund?ref=scottsantens.com), and [Chris Hughes’ proposal for guaranteed income or GI](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-finance-income/facebook-co-founder-wants-u-s-citizens-to-have-fair-shot-at-guaranteed-income-idUSKCN1G42LK?ref=scottsantens.com). The UBOF would only be available two years out of ten, and only for those between 18 and 55 (hypothetically). And GI would be $500 per month for everyone working but earning less than $50,000 per year (hypothetically). Both are steps forward, but targeted instead of universal. However, being that [I already have a crowdfunded basic income](https://medium.com/basic-income/what-if-you-got-1-000-a-month-just-for-being-alive-i-decided-to-find-out-9e8591976c37?ref=scottsantens.com), I’ve learned from experience that **the most important element of UBI is in fact the “U**.” Unconditionality is where most of its power lies, and unconditionality is inherently universal by reaching everyone via lack of imposed conditions. It’s for this reason, that I’d prefer to see every single citizen of the US, rich and poor alike, receive even $100 per month as a right of citizenship, than I would an arbitrarily defined group receive $1,000 per month while others receive nothing for being too old, or too young, or for earning “too much”, or for working in a way not considered “work.” A fully universal dividend can always be raised over time, and its popularity is already evidence-backed by the Alaska dividend that all Alaskans receive, where it’s so popular [they’d rather begin paying state income taxes than lose their dividend,](https://qz.com/1018413/new-survey-by-the-economic-security-project-finds-alaska-residents-strongly-support-preserving-a-universal-basic-income-ubi-from-the-alaska-permanent-fund-dividend-rather-than-cut-taxes/?ref=scottsantens.com) and where [the dividend has increased part-time employment by 17%](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=3118343&ref=scottsantens.com). Universality works. Limiting receipt to certain approved groups I think risks unpopularity in the same way existing conditional benefits suffer damaging stigma. As a partial UBI, a carbon dividend would carry no stigma. A carbon dividend would grow over time. A carbon dividend would not be withdrawn as income is earned, unlike welfare which effectively punishes paid work, thus carbon dividends would reward *all* work. And a carbon dividend would immediately help to decelerate climate change and accelerate sustainable energies. It would be the entire country following Alaska’s lead, but instead of being based on shared ownership of oil, **it would be based on shared ownership of the** ***air***. > “It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race.” — [Thomas Paine](http://fermatslibrary.com/s/agrarian-justice?ref=scottsantens.com) ## Atmospheric Justice As [Thomas Paine himself wrote in Agrarian Justice](http://fermatslibrary.com/s/agrarian-justice?ref=scottsantens.com) over 200 years ago, “In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity, that I am pleading for.” Our atmosphere belongs to all of us equally, and thus by right, those who pollute it, and thus dispossess us of what is rightfully ours, should compensate us. By taking our first step toward UBI in this kind of way, one that treats everyone as equals but where some pollute more than others and thus should pay more than others for the privilege, **UBI is born as a right, not a charity, and as justice, not redistribution**. As soon as we remove the U from UBI, even just temporarily, we risk it being hated by those not fortunate enough to receive it, but unfortunate enough to pay for it. A carbon tax implemented in a revenue neutral way, where the revenue is distributed universally as citizen dividends, is in my opinion perhaps the single most transformative policy option available right now. It can be implemented immediately. It is an unconditional income that will reduce both poverty and inequality while also better enabling all forms of work, paid and unpaid, and in a way that [can be extended to other revenue sources like land value and patent protection](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/extreme-wealth-inequality-alaska-model/?ref=scottsantens.com). For example, imagine an annual patent fee that doubles every year as the price paid for continued monopolistic exclusion from the public domain, where all the revenue goes to a dividend. And of course most importantly of all, [carbon dividends very well could save us from climate catastrophe before it’s too late](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/01/alive-in-the-sunshine/?ref=scottsantens.com). They could save us from ourselves. As long as people are forced with the fear of starvation to work for others to earn any income whatsoever, employment is our primary concern. It doesn’t matter what the nature of the employment is, it’s do that or starve. By establishing a citizen dividend of any size, even a small one, people will have *more* of a choice about how they work, how long, for whom, and for what. And if enough people are able to make more environmentally sustainable choices, surviving may just finally begin to give way to truly *thriving*. **Let’s change the world with carbon dividends for all, because the sky belongs to *all* of us.** > “To preserve the benefits of what is called civilized life, and to remedy at the same time the evil which it has produced ought to be considered as one of the first objects of reformed legislation.” — [Thomas Paine](http://fermatslibrary.com/s/agrarian-justice?ref=scottsantens.com) --- ## Call to Action If you live in the United States, there is already a bill for carbon dividends that you can [call up your representatives in Congress](https://www.callmycongress.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) to request they co-sponsor. It’s called the [Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act](https://energyinnovationact.org/?ref=scottsantens.com). --- ***Special thanks to: Steven Grimm, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Larry Cohen, Andrew Stern, Floyd Marinescu, Roy Bahat, Stephane Boisvert, Topher Hunt, Sasha Barrese, Aaron Schultz, Daryl Smith, Dominic Wyler, Kian Alavi, Joanna Zarach, Ace Bailey, Justin Walsh, Gisele Huff, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Chris Smothers, Natalie Foster, Michael Hrenka, Stephen Warley, Jack Canty, Will Ware, Chris Rauchle, BoNster, Richard Just, Rachel Perkins, Che Wagner, Jordan Lejuwaan, Carrie Mclachlan, Paul Godsmark, Daniel Brockman, Vladimir Baranov, Gray Scott, David Ihnen, Joe Ballou, Jack Wagner, Gerald Huff, Michael Honey, Danielle and Michael Texeira, Max Henrion, Catherine MacDonald, Arjun Banker, Dan O’Sullivan, Saura Naderi, Bryan Herdliska, Oliver Bestwalter, Kev Roberts, Chris Boraski, Christopher Anderson, Ron Lisle, Dylan Taylor, Brian Schwartz, Kai Wong, Nicolas Pouillard, Georg Baumann, Lisa Hallman, Jill Weiss, Stuart Mark, Andreas, Lawrence W Lee, Robert F. Greene, Erhan Altay, Robert Solovay, Elizabeth Balcar, Casey Young, Thomas Welsh, Kirk Israel, Lee Irving, Walter Schaerer, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** ## [Would you like to see your name here too?](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Will the Cost of Basic Income be Borne on the Shoulders of the American Middle Class? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/will-the-cost-of-basic-income-be-borne-on-the-shoulders-of-the-american-working-class/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T21:19:33.000Z [There are many arguments against the idea of an unconditional basic income](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq), most based on a complete lack of any actual research. These arguments happen to be entirely logical, and even plausible, but simply aren't supported by [the evidence that has already been accumulated over the decades to apply to them](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/wiki/index?ref=scottsantens.com#wiki%5Fthat.27s%5Fall%5Fvery%5Fwell.2C%5Fbut%5Fwhere.27s%5Fthe%5Fevidence.3F). There are other arguments however, that are not simply based on ignorance, but on an utter lack of critical thinking or rational thought. One such argument I wish to highlight below is the notion that UBI would be paid for, not by the rich, but by the middle class, and even the poorest themselves. To disprove this argument requires only a rudimentary mathematical analysis. It simply isn't possible for the rich to be net receivers of UBI. The only possible way is to make entirely unrealistic assumptions or to redefine UBI so that we're no longer talking about UBI. But if we were to do that, the argument has already been disproven, and is thus pointless to make. Don't believe me? Keep reading... ![Silvrback blog image ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/a11dadcb-0580-4b9c-8089-612bc8d073af/16687016624_caedfa2c01_b.jpg) First of all, we have to define and understand what UBI is. UBI is a non-withdrawable tax-free cash stipend provided to an entire population, without conditions or requirements, sufficient for the purchasing of basic needs. Now, what is considered to be "basic" is arguable, but is usually considered as being somewhere near the poverty line, such that [UBI functions as a vaccine](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com) against hunger and homelessness. In the United States, [our poverty line in 2018 is defined as being $12,140 per year for a household of one person, with an additional $4,320 required per additional person in the household](https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines?ref=scottsantens.com). So a UBI in the US would need to be somewhere in this range, perhaps a bit above or below, but certainly in that ballpark. $100 per month is not UBI, neither is $10,000 per month. Now, let's take a "typical" American family of four, with two parents and two kids. The total UBI received by this household would be around $32,000 ($12,000 x 2 + [$4,000 x 2](http://www.scottsantens.com/why-should-adults-with-kids-get-more-basic-income-child-allowances)). That same family has a before-tax income right now of $60,000, and using the new GOP tax plan a taxable income of $32,000 after deductions ($24,000 standard deduction + $4,000 in child tax credits). [Their effective tax rate is around 12%](https://qz.com/74271/income-tax-rates-since-1913/?ref=scottsantens.com), so they're paying around $3,840 in taxes, and being left with $56,160 after taxes. In order for this typical family to receive no benefit whatsoever from UBI, their taxes would need to go up to being $35,840 ($32,000 + $3,840), because everyone receives UBI, so they would need to pay more in new taxes than they receive in UBI. That's the math. $35,840 represents a 933% increase in their taxes, such that their new effective tax rate would be just shy of 60%. Does anyone out there truly believe that it's politically possible to raise taxes on the typical American family from 12% to 60%? And that wouldn't even include additional state and local taxes. At no point in American history has our effective tax rate ever been that high on the middle class. The highest effective tax rate on a family earning $60,000 in today's dollars was in [1945 at the height of WWII, and that rate was 24.4%](https://qz.com/74271/income-tax-rates-since-1913/?ref=scottsantens.com). Let's now then round up and establish 25% as a realistic upper limit for our typical American household of four. That's the maximum effective tax rate a median income earning household in the US can be expected to pay for UBI without qualifying as being higher than ever before in our history. That's about double today's rate. With that in mind, we can work backwards to find how much UBI would be realistically clawed back from middle income households via federal taxes on earned income above the basic income. A family of four earning $60,000 and receiving $32,000 in UBI would have a total of $92,000 before taxes. Their taxable income would be the full $60,000 instead of $32,000 (because UBI would replace most all tax credits, especially the standard deduction and child tax credits). 25% of $60,000 is $15,000, which means after taxes they have $45,000 in earned income and $32,000 in UBI for a total of $77,000\. That is equivalent to a $17,000 raise and a 0% tax rate, despite paying $15,000 in taxes instead of $3,840 like they do now under the new tax code. So their taxes go up to pay for UBI, but the **UBI is equivalent to such a large refundable tax credit, that it essentially eliminates their entire tax burden, and refunds them an additional $17,000**. What is true for the middle class is even more true for lower income earners here. A family of four earning less than $60,000 and thus paying less in taxes, would receive an even larger monthly refund with the receipt of the same $32,000 UBI every other household of four receives. So at what point does a household of four realistically become a net payer of UBI due to paying more than $32,000 in new taxes to pay for the UBI? Well, it depends on the tax rate, so let's use historic maximum effective tax rates again to help calculate a number. A household with $165,000 in taxable income right now had the highest effective tax rate in 1981 of 33.4%. Right now that same family has an effective tax rate of 20.2% which is a tax bill of around $33,000\. Because the difference between their pre-UBI tax bill ($33,000) and theoretical post-UBI tax bill ($64,000) is $31,000, they are essentially at the breakeven point, where their tax burdens go up the same amount as the UBI they begin to receive. A realistic threshold is therefore around $165,000 for a family of four. Families earning more than that amount will be net payers, and families earning less than that will be net receivers. Using a traditional definition of middle class as having an upper limit of twice the median income, $165,000 exists outside that range. All but the richest 20% or so of households will see their tax burdens *reduced* under UBI. This can also be understood as Milton Friedman's negative income tax in action, where the net amount received or paid depends on one's income. In fact, [a UBI paired with a 40% flat income tax would be entirely identical to a negative income tax with a 40% clawback rate, both in cost and net outcome](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-is-the-net-transfer-amount-not-the-gross-price-tag-acb8aa5eab73?ref=scottsantens.com), and [the result of both would be a more progressive tax system than we have now](http://www.scottsantens.com/does-basic-income-reduce-income-inequality-gini), where those with the most money spend more into the system. [As automation continues eliminating jobs, this becomes increasingly important](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-real-story-of-automation-beginning-with-one-simple-chart-8b95f9bad71b?ref=scottsantens.com) so as to neutralize the concentration of wealth and the collapse of consumer demand, and thus the economy itself. ![basic income effective tax rates](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/iHJwTWa.png) Hopefully it should now be clear that because everyone receives UBI, it is nonsense to say that the burden of increased taxes will be borne by the working class. After taxes, **the working class will finally, after far too many decades of stagnant wages, see a raise because of UBI**. This can be seen as either earning more income or paying less taxes, but either way, around 8 out of 10 households are economically better off with UBI. For that statement to not be true, would require a much smaller UBI, to the point it could not be called UBI, or such massive elimination of existing government services and tax credits that the UBI received is less than what is required to purchase the equivalent amount of lost services in the market. This fear tends to mostly be a fear of those on the left, but it too requires closer analysis, which I've done in [a previous post](https://steemit.com/basicincome/@scottsantens/the-progressive-case-for-greatly-replacing-the-welfare-state-with-unconditional-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com). #### TL;DR: Any UBI that can realistically be called an actual UBI by meeting the definition of UBI will *significantly reduce* the tax burdens of the poor, AND the American middle class. --- *Speaking of UBI fears that require closer analysis, [please consider reading this next about the fear of inflation as a an unintended consequence of UBI](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7?ref=scottsantens.com).* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Whitepaper and wallet now available for Universal Basic Income cryptocurrency "Manna", formerly known as Grantcoin URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/manna-universal-basic-income-cryptocurrency-whitepaper-news/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T21:20:34.000Z ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/435e6720-8316-47b8-95e2-9732113bf9e7/Mannabase-20-20Blockchain-20Platform-20for-20Universal-20Basic-20Income-202.png) On January 29, 2018, [The People's Currency Foundation](http://peoplescurrency.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) (a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit) published [their whitepaper for Manna](http://www.grantcoin.org/documents/manna-whitepaper.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), a relaunching of the basic income cryptocurrency formerly known as [Grantcoin](http://www.grantcoin.org/?ref=scottsantens.com), which was the first publicly traded blockchain currency to be distributed universally to all those verified as unique applicants. Its first distribution occurred on [June 30, 2016](http://www.grantcoin.org/2016/07/01/grantcoin-foundation-distributes-first-basic-income-grants/?ref=scottsantens.com). Four more disbursements occurred on [October 1, 2016](http://www.grantcoin.org/2016/10/03/grantcoin-foundation-distributes-basic-income-grants-to-over-750-people-in-69-countries/?ref=scottsantens.com), [January 31, 2017](http://www.grantcoin.org/2017/02/02/grantcoin-foundation-distributes-basic-income-grants-to-1132-people-in-79-countries/?ref=scottsantens.com), [June 17, 2017](http://www.grantcoin.org/2017/06/17/web-based-wallets-automated-distribution-to-2500-people/?ref=scottsantens.com), and [August 9, 2017](http://www.grantcoin.org/2017/08/11/august-distribution-complete-transaction-batching-implemented/?ref=scottsantens.com). *Note: In the interest of full disclosure, I was a recipient of each of these disbursements.* ![Manna basic income recipients](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/albums/ee294/sss1977/Untitled-2010-20-20-20manna-20whitepaper-202.png) Since the last disbursement in August of 2017, disbursements have been paused as Grantcoin began the transition to Manna. Disbursements are expected to begin again this month as Manna, and on a new weekly basis to all verified accounts, of which there now number over 6,000 from over 100 countries around the world. Since May of 2017, Grantcoin (now Manna) has seen a significant increase in value, and as of this writing can be exchanged on the [SouthXchange](https://www.southxchange.com/Market/Book/MANNA/USD?ref=scottsantens.com) for $0.011 USD. As shown in the chart below, the market price approximately doubled in 2015, more than doubled again in 2016, and increased more than 16-fold in 2017 – for a total gain of **over 8,000%** through January 1, 2018\. (Note: The price has continued to increase, with another doubling already in 2018, not shown on this chart.) ![Manna basic income value](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/albums/ee294/sss1977/Untitled-2010-20-20-20manna-20whitepaper-203.png) Considering each disbursement was around 7,000 coins per recipient, that's an unconditional grant of about $75 per person per disbursement in today's USD cash equivalent market value, and more for those receiving referral bonuses. That may not sound like much to those in countries like the US, UK, and Canada, but for those in countries like Kenya, that's a full basic income sufficient to cover basic needs. In fact, to give some further context, the largest basic income experiment ever devised is going on in Kenya right now, where [the NGO GiveDirectly is providing monthly basic incomes of around $22 USD for the next 12 years](http://www.businessinsider.com/what-basic-income-is-like-according-to-kenyan-villagers-2018-1?ref=scottsantens.com). With the above in mind, Manna appears therefore an entirely realistic way of immediately providing basic incomes anywhere in the world, given sufficient access to currently available technology. And over time, as the value of Manna increases, it could potentially reach sufficient value to be considered enough for securing of basic needs in countries like the United States, especially in more rural areas, and in turn be considered far, far more than basic in places like East Africa where hundreds of dollars a month would be sufficient to provide median-level incomes as a monthly starting point. Manna is planned to be distributed on a weekly basis, and divided equally among all recipients. A desktop wallet is now available in beta form ([for Windows and Linux with Mac coming soon](http://www.grantcoin.org/use-grantcoin/wallets/?ref=scottsantens.com)), with a web-based wallet also expected to be released soon. A [block explorer for Manna](https://chainz.cryptoid.info/manna/?ref=scottsantens.com) is also now available for use. The Manna money supply is planned to increase at an annual rate of 3.5%, chosen because it's close to the historical average inflation rate of the US. *For comparison, the inflation rate on Steemit is around [9%](https://steemit.com/steem/@steemitblog/final-review-of-steem-economic-changes?ref=scottsantens.com) right now.* The value of Manna is determined not only by the market exchange rate, but unlike most other cryptocurrencies, it is also backed by tax deductible donations to the 501(c)(3) People's Currency Foundation. One future goal is to go even further with this model by pursuing something similar to [Alaska's Permanent Fund](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/extreme-wealth-inequality-alaska-model/?ref=scottsantens.com), where a diverse portfolio of investments would further back the cryptocurrency. A referral process is in place for Manna where those who sign up through a referral link ([such as this one](https://www.mannabase.com/?ref=gws5597g76)), will receive a 50% bonus for one year, and those who refer others with their own referral links will receive their own bonus as well. The referral system is however temporary as a means of accelerating adoption, like how PayPal started, with plans to phaseout in time. Because recipients of Manna are all over the world, this provides a very interesting way to help others all over the world. Through the Mannabase platform, users will be able to send a chosen percentage of their own Manna to others by region, for example, a place like Puerto Rico because of a hurricane, or a handful of countries based on their lower GDPs, or even a percentage of their weekly UBI to all other Manna UBI accounts. ![Manna basic income disbursement options sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/IoNsXv6.png) Furthermore, with the addition of profiles on Mannabase, it will be possible to send Manna to specific people based on specific criteria for those who choose to provide that information. For example, someone may wish to provide 10% of their weekly Manna UBI to those who are over 65, to help boost their incomes further. Another interesting element is the ability to send Manna to those under the age of 18\. Parents will be able to sign up their kids with sufficient proof of identity, but those under 18 will not be able to withdraw their Manna until 18\. This opens the potential for those turning 18 to receive potentially quite large unconditional capital grants along the lines of what [Thomas Paine advocated in *Agrarian Justice*](http://fermatslibrary.com/s/agrarian-justice?ref=scottsantens.com). Last but not least, here's the roadmap for Manna to see what the plan is over the next year. Notice the intention to provide entire communities with Manna to test full universality. ![Manna basic income roadmap sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/albums/ee294/sss1977/Mannabase-20-20Blockchain-20Platform-20for-20Universal-20Basic-20Income.png) For those interested in beginning to receive a basic income via Manna, [sign on up](https://www.mannabase.com/?ref=gws5597g76), and click follow on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MannaCurrency?ref=scottsantens.com) and [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/MannaCurrency) for regular updates. For those interested in other UBI cryptocurrencies as well, here's a list of those you can immediately start receiving: - [SwiftDemand](https://www.swiftdemand.com/?referred%5Fby=scottsantens&ref=scottsantens.com) - [Solidar](https://solidar.it/join/?ref=scottsantens.com) - [Duniter](https://duniter.org/en/get-g1/?ref=scottsantens.com) Additional UBI cryptocurrencies in the works include: - [Circles](https://joincircles.net/?ref=scottsantens.com) - [UBU](https://www.projectubu.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) - [Cicada](http://iamcicada.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) - [Intercoin](https://intercoin.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) - [Greshm](http://www.greshm.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) - [DUBI](https://www.prps.io/?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you know of one not listed above? Please let me know. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Top 10 Basic Income Videos of 2017 URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/top-10-basic-income-videos-of-2017/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T21:22:56.000Z ![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/f1d4cbbc-d61e-4f17-aabf-02ef04001740/top-10-featured_medium.jpg) I've done a top ten list of basic income articles for both [2016](http://www.scottsantens.com/top-10-basic-income-articles-of-2016) & [2017](http://www.scottsantens.com/top-10-basic-income-articles-of-2017), but this is the first time I've put together a top ten list of basic income videos. There were so many new UBI videos created this year (you can watch most of them [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLN8WjRGdzP3pIAahs8oCKmOibDz4ipzmF&ref=scottsantens.com)), but in my opinion, the following are the ones that absolutely must be watched and shared widely. --- ##### 10) 'Capitalism will always create bullshit jobs' | Owen Jones meets Rutger Bregman After the publication of Rutger Bregman's book, [*Utopia for Realists*](http://amzn.to/2mqnP6K?ref=scottsantens.com) in March of this year, he sat down with Owen Jones of The Guardian for this great interview. ##### 9) Robots Will Take Our Jobs - HOW TO SURVIVE - What is the Universal Basic Income? by SourceFedNerd hosted by Filup Molina Clocking in at 22 minutes, Filup Molina does a comprehensive job of describing technological unemployment and UBI as a response to it. ##### 8) Social Justice, Safe Spaces, and Universal Basic Income (Dr. Mike Munger Pt. 3) | The Rubin Report I consider this a must-bookmark video. Any time a conservative or libertarian suggests UBI is somehow leftist or about government control, consider sharing this with them. As libertarian economist Mike Munger says in this interview, "We're already giving people money. Let's do it in a way that's more efficient and increases liberty." Skip to 18m45s if you want to get right to the UBI discussion. ##### 7) Mark Zuckerberg At Harvard: We Should Explore Ideas Like Universal Basic Income | CNBC This was a big moment in the UBI movement that will go down in the history books. That Mark Zuckerberg, one of the richest people in the world, would openly endorse UBI in a major speech, and in a framing about the potential for UBI to better enable people to find their purpose, and that he and those graduating from Harvard should pay for it, was a historic moment. ##### 6) Automated Economy Explained: Mechanics of a Basic Income | [The Rest of Us](https://www.patreon.com/TheRestOfUs?ref=scottsantens.com) Unlike the other videos on this list so far, this one was accomplished by just one person, and I think that's pretty amazing. Consider supporting [The Rest of Us on Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/TheRestOfUs?ref=scottsantens.com) to enable the creation of more such videos. ##### 5) Basic Income: The "Free Money" Experiments | Moving Upstream | Wall Street Journal This is a good recent overview of the UBI experiments, and the fact it's from the Wall Street Journal is in itself pretty notable. ##### 4) Group gives cash aid to rural Kenyans, then studies its effects | PBS NewsHour It was great seeing all the coverage of GiveDirectly's UBI experiment that began this year in Kenya and will continue for the next 12 years. This piece by PBS involves a visit and interviews with recipients. Also, if you'd like to directly support this incredible program, please consider donating to [GiveDirectly](https://www.givedirectly.org/basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com). ##### 3) Basic Income for the U.S. (and [Basic Income for Canada](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlwyTtPY0vY&ref=scottsantens.com)) | Adam Animates This video was actually inspired by [one of the articles I wrote back in 2015](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/the-job-market-a-game-of-%5Fb%5F7581704.html?ref=scottsantens.com). After reaching out to me about doing a video, Adam hand-animated this through all of 2016, finally finishing it this year. I wish this video had far more views than it does because of how good it is, and how much work it took by just one person doing something of great meaning to them in their spare time. ##### 2) Universal Basic Income Explained – Free Money for Everybody? UBI | [Kurzgesagt](https://www.patreon.com/Kurzgesagt?ref=scottsantens.com) Kurzgesagt is one of my favorite channels on YouTube so I was extremely excited to discover they were working on creating a UBI video as a follow-up to [their automation video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSKi8HfcxEk&ref=scottsantens.com). I was even more excited to be asked to assist with and give feedback on the script before the animation work began. With over 2 million views to date, this is now the single most watched video about basic income on all of YouTube. Let's get this to 10 million views! ##### 1) Poverty isn't a lack of character; it's a lack of cash | Rutger Bregman | TED 2017 It's only fitting for Rutger to both begin and end this list. This TED talk he gave this year has been viewed over [1.6 million times on TED's site](https://www.ted.com/talks/rutger%5Fbregman%5Fpoverty%5Fisn%5Ft%5Fa%5Flack%5Fof%5Fcharacter%5Fit%5Fs%5Fa%5Flack%5Fof%5Fcash?ref=scottsantens.com), and resulted in a standing ovation by those attending. He nails point after point, and in 15 minutes gives one of the best talks about basic income of any I've seen. Everyone needs to watch this video. --- *Bonus video:* My keynote about unconditional basic income at Øredev 2017 in Sweden. This is almost an hour long, but I also try to include just about everything. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Top 10 Basic Income Articles of 2017 URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/top-10-basic-income-articles-of-2017/ Last updated: 2024-01-10T20:41:39.000Z ![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/a770d040-a6a1-4827-b918-cff62bb87521/Top-10_large.jpg) As a moderator of the /[r/BasicIncome subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/?ref=scottsantens.com), I read a lot of links every year about the idea of unconditional basic income, hundreds actually. Once again, as I did last year, I've compiled a list of the ten articles/papers/reports I consider the most important to read out of everything published this year. Please bookmark, read,and share away! --- ######10) [**"The Indestructible Idea of the Basic Income"**](http://reason.com/archives/2017/06/03/the-indestructible-idea-of-the?ref=scottsantens.com) by Jesse Walker for Reason Every year there are multiple introductory summaries of basic income written for a variety of publications that are meant to catch people up on the history of the idea who are new to it. This one by Jesse Walker for the libertarian publication Reason wins my vote for being the best historical summary of 2017\. If you're looking for a link to use to introduce your right-leaning friend or family member to UBI, consider using this one. ######9) [**"Modeling the Macroeconomic Effects of a Universal Basic Income"**](http://rooseveltinstitute.org/modeling-macroeconomic-effects-ubi/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Michalis Nikiforos, Marshall Steinbaum, Gennaro Zezza + [**"No Strings Attached: The Behavioral Effects of U.S. Unconditional Cash Transfer Programs"**](http://rooseveltinstitute.org/modeling-macroeconomic-effects-ubi/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Ioana Marinescu Yes, these are two links, but both were published by the Roosevelt Institute this year, and both are must-reads for anyone interested in deep analysis of UBI. First, Marinescu tackles the evidence side of the discussion with a review of the existing experimental data in regards to the impact of UBI on work, and then Nikiforos, Steinbaum, and Zezza incorporate this as part of their model of the macroeconomic impact of UBI in the US. Together, they are a one-two punch for seeing how positively transformative UBI will be for the economy. ######8) [**"Basic Income: A Psychological Impact Assessment"**](http://www.psychchange.org/basic-income-psychological-impact-assessment.html?ref=scottsantens.com) by Psychologists for Social Change Psychologists for Social Change is "a network of applied psychologists, academics, therapists, psychology graduates and others who are interested in applying psychology to policy and political action." In this report, they cover the many psychological effects of UBI and conclude by recommending more UBI trials that specifically look at a range of important measures of mental and emotional well-being that tend to go overlooked in experimental designs. ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/529663be-c98f-494d-81b7-f83ac7af90f3/ubi_for_web_updated.pdf.png) ######7) [**"The Free Banquet"**](https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/free-banquet?ref=scottsantens.com) by George Scialabba for Commonweal This article is a wonderful review of the book [*Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy*](http://amzn.to/2BomeaF?ref=scottsantens.com) written by economist and co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Philippe van Parijs and political scientist Yannick Vanderborght. There are plenty of reviews out there of this book, but this particular one is told from a religious faith perspective, which in my opinion is a perspective we need a lot more of in order to reach a great many more otherwise unreachable people. Also, read the book! ######6) [**"Mothers And Basic Income: The Case For An Urgent Intervention"**](https://newmatilda.com/2017/02/23/mothers-basic-income-case-urgent-intervention/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Petra Bueskens for New Matilda Articles and blog posts written about UBI from a female perspective are another perspective I think we need much more of, and this piece by Petra Bueskens was my favorite of the year. She effectively asks the question, "Is it acceptable that we as a society free-load on the unpaid care work without which society would cease to function?" She identifies mothers, most especially single mothers, as a specific socioeconomic and political group in urgent need of basic income. ######5) [**"My Own Private Basic Income"**](https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/karl-widerquist/my-own-private-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) by Karl Widerquist for openDemocracy In this article, Karl Widerquist describes how he effectively already has a basic income thanks to income from rental properties, and that he got it "thanks to privilege, nepotism, and two big lucky breaks." Unlike far too many people, Karl knows full well the amount of luck involved in his success and argues that his stuff is working for him so he doesn't have to, thanks to society rewarding the owning of stuff with more and more stuff. This is the basic income that people with wealth have. As Karl concludes, "the most common objection to basic income is that it’s supposedly wrong to give things to people who don’t work for it, when actually, the economy already gives billions of dollars of unearned income to people who are already wealthy. The problem is we don’t share it." It's time we change that. ######4) [**"Utopian thinking: the easy way to eradicate poverty"**](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/06/utopian-thinking-poverty-universal-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) by Rutger Bregman for The Guardian For those who haven't read Rutger Bregman's book [*"Utopia for Realists"*](http://amzn.to/2DgVSV3?ref=scottsantens.com), or seen [his TED Talk](https://www.ted.com/talks/rutger%5Fbregman%5Fpoverty%5Fisn%5Ft%5Fa%5Flack%5Fof%5Fcharacter%5Fit%5Fs%5Fa%5Flack%5Fof%5Fcash?ref=scottsantens.com), this single article captures what in my opinion are the most important points in each. Poverty is not a lack of character, it's a lack of cash, and if we provide everyone with basic income, poverty can be eliminated. As a result, our perspectives will be shifted from ones of scarcity and short-term thinking, to ones of abundance and long-term thinking. We can essentially upgrade the IQ of human civilization, and however utopian you may think that is to suggest, it is entirely realistic with UBI. ######3) [**"Basic income isn’t just a nice idea. It's a birthright"**](https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/mar/04/basic-income-birthright-eliminating-poverty?ref=scottsantens.com) by Jason Hickel for The Guardian If you've never heard of the Charter of the Forest, it's even older than the Magna Carta, 800 years old this year to be exact, and it's as powerful a justification for basic income as it is historic. Simply put, it is centered around the right of habitation, "a right that humans nearly everywhere had long just presupposed: that no one should be debarred from the resources necessary for livelihood." The enclosure of the commons resulted in the requirement for people to work for wages in order to live. Jason Hickel here argues that funding UBI with the commons using ideas like a land value tax and the Alaska model of annual dividends would function as a kind of de-enclosure, bringing back the Charter of the Forest and the right of access to the commons, and so the right of habitation with it. ######2) [**"Atlas Nods: The Libertarian Case for a Basic Income"**](http://www.law.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/upload%5Fdocuments/The%20Libertarian%20Case%20for%20a%20universal%20Basic%20Income.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) by Miranda Perry Fleischer and Daniel Hemel This 58-page paper is my new go-to link for any libertarian under the mistaken belief that UBI is anti-libertarian, and any progressive who thinks UBI is a trap. To the contrary, UBI has strong support on libertarian grounds, not as a "Trojan horse", but as a permanent policy objective in and of itself. As this paper concludes, "Our analysis of the libertarian foundations for a basic income has left us less perplexed by the UBI’s popularity among libertarian thinkers—and more convinced that a UBI can be a libertarian destination rather than a waystation. But for that to happen, and for a UBI to become a reality, many political mountains must be moved. Ultimately, any successful pro-UBI coalition will need to encompass individuals with diverse philosophical commitments. We believe that committed libertarians ought to be part of that coalition, and non-libertarians ought to embrace them with open arms." In other words, the left and the right need to work together to achieve UBI, with the understanding that the support on the other side is a strength, not a trap. ######1) [**"Basic income and the new universalism"**](https://www.sitra.fi/en/articles/basic-income-new-universalism/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Roope Mokka and Katariina Rantanen for Sitra This is actually one of my favorite UBI articles I've ever read. It's very challenging to succinctly open minds to the magnitude of change possible through UBI, but this does it beautifully. Not since the United States set and achieved its goal of landing men on the Moon has an idea been this big. Achieving UBI would be nothing less than one of humanity's greatest achievements, not only in its actual achievement, but in its pursuit. And seeing UBI as a provision of the capacity to produce, instead of just as money, helps reveal just what becomes newly possible with UBI - a true unifying vision for post-industrial humanity. --- *Bonus Link:* If there's one article of my own among those I've written this year that I'd select for such a list, it's probably [my plan for going about funding UBI in the US](https://medium.com/economicsecproj/how-to-reform-welfare-and-taxes-to-provide-every-american-citizen-with-a-basic-income-bc67d3f4c2b8?ref=scottsantens.com). For those looking for numbers and "where the money comes from", you'll find it all there. Cheers, and here's to 2018 being an ever bigger year for the basic income movement than 2017! --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Someday we will look back and interpret the Constitution as having called for unconditional basic income all along URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/someday-we-will-look-back-and-interpret-the-constitution-as-having-called-for-unconditional-basic-income-all-along-grant-cordone/ Last updated: 2023-08-18T15:47:01.000Z *[A blog post by Grant Cordone](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/universal-basic-income-constitution-grant-cardone/?ref=scottsantens.com) was brought to my attention recently to which I replied on LinkedIn. To summarize what he wrote, it was an argument that basic income is not in the Constitution of the United States, and is thus anti-freedom and a terrible idea because people should be pulling on their bootstraps like he did instead of being enslaved by government-provided income. My reply was promptly removed by Grant, and so I post it now here in its entirety as originally posted.* --- First of all, the US Constitution doesn't talk about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. [The Declaration of Independence does](http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/document/?ref=scottsantens.com). The fact you got even that wrong says to me a quite a lot about just how much thought and research you've put into forming your opinion about [the idea of basic income](https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq) \- **virtually none**. Let me ask you this one question, and this one is actually from the Constitution. Why did we form the United States? The answer is in [the Preamble](http://www.ushistory.org/documents/constitution.htm?ref=scottsantens.com): > "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Now imagine Grant Cordone was a country of one person. Would he be free? Or would Grant Cordone be at the whims of those with the power to tell Grant Cordone what to do? Here's the thing. **Liberty requires nondomination**. Escaping domination is possible only to the extent that we are able to occupy a protected position and are empowered against such control on the part of others. Our freedom exists in that protected and empowered status. Our founding fathers recognized this, and so they got together to provide for the common defense and promote the general Welfare (with a capital W), so as to secure liberty. They knew that **liberty doesn't just happen. We have to MAKE IT HAPPEN**. That's also why the 2nd Amendment exists by the way, to make sure individual citizens are able to maintain a protected position to be empowered against the control of others. This is exactly how you need to understand unconditional basic income. **UBI is required so as to provide all citizens a protected position of nondomination**, in the same way our military exists to protect us from foreign domination. I recommend reading Philip Pettit's entire paper, [" A Republican Right to Basic Income"](https://www.princeton.edu/~ppettit/papers/2008/A%20Republican%20Right%20to%20Basic%20Income.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), but if you choose not to, here's some important excerpts: "The argument is straightforward. Others will control me, if only in the merely invigilatory fashion, only to the extent that the division of powers between us means that they can interfere with me at will – that is, without prevention – and at tolerable cost, i.e. with a degree of impunity. **If I am not assured a basic income, there will be many areas where the wealthier could interfere with me at tolerable cost, without their being confronted by legal prevention of that interference...** Suppose there are just a few employers and many available employees, and that times are hard. In those conditions I and those who like me will not be able to command a decent wage: a wage that will enable us to function properly in society. And in those conditions it will be equally true that we would be defenseless against our employers’ petty abuse or their power to arbitrarily dismiss us. Other protections, such as those that strong trade unions might provide, are possible against such alien control. But **the most effective of all protections, and one that should complement other measures available, would be one’s ability to leave employment and fall back on a basic wage available unconditionally from the state...** Next suppose that you live in conditions where you, and perhaps your children, depend financially on your husband. In such conditions he is likely to control you, even though he never resorts to violence or other abuse. He may let you act as you please within certain limits, while being disposed to stop you – at the limit, by leaving you – if you breach those limits. You would live under your husband’s control, almost certainly straining to keep within his restrictions, **unless there is an effective, financially viable alternative such as that which a basic income would provide.** Other protections may be available here as in the first case – for example, he may be legally required to provide maintenance should you separate – but these are unlikely to be equally effective and in any case they will be powerfully supplemented by a basic income... Such examples show it to be entirely plausible that **promoting the resilient, republican possession of basic liberties argues for establishing a legal right to a basic income. Such a right would mean that people had adequate income for functioning properly in society.** And that income would mean that people would not have to beg the favor of the powerful, or even of the counter-clerk." So you see, **those without access to sufficient money are at the whims of others**. They must accept anything because they do not have the power to refuse the domination of others. If your choice is starvation or being someone's slave, you'll be their slave. This is also [why minimum wage exists](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/minimum-wages-vs-universal-basic-income%5Fb%5F7957850.html?ref=scottsantens.com) by the way. People are willing to work for poverty wages because it's better than nothing. People underbid each other in a race to the bottom. The government then has to come in and manipulate the labor market through an enforced wage floor. Now imagine we just simply make sure everyone has the power to refuse insufficient wages by providing them a wage independent of work sufficient for their basic needs, aka basic income? Well, now we don't need minimum wages anymore, because people have individual bargaining power. In other words, [**UBI creates a truly free market for labor, where all employment is purely voluntary thanks to everyone having the freedom to refuse the domination of others.**](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-we-should-all-have-a-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) [Alaska has provided every resident of Alaska a cash dividend since 1982](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/extreme-wealth-inequality-alaska-model/?ref=scottsantens.com). Are they less free? Are they somehow dominated by the state of Alaska because unlike other states that provide no cash independent of work, they are more dependent on the state? Of course not. That's not how it works at all. Ask any resident of Alaska if they feel their dividend makes them more free or less free. I doubt you would find a single person who would say their dividend *decreases* their liberty. Instead, it better enables them to save for emergencies, avoid debt, start businesses, be a customer at businesses, and be a bit less stressed thanks to a bit more economic security. Look at Social Security. Are all seniors less free thanks to receiving a monthly check from the government than they would be if they received nothing and were instead forced to work until they died? Of course not. In fact seniors are the segment of the population that votes in higher numbers and government seems to cater to more than others. Seniors aren't afraid of the government. [The government is afraid of seniors.](https://steemit.com/basicincome/@scottsantens/will-universal-basic-income-give-too-much-power-to-whomever-distributes-it?ref=scottsantens.com) Now look at our welfare system built on conditions, [where people must jump through bureaucratic hoops like good little circus animals](https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e?ref=scottsantens.com), and where instead of cash they are given housing, and instead of cash they are given vouchers that can only be spent on certain types of food that have been approved by the government, not hot food mind you, or fancy foods like fish, etc. Meanwhile, welfare punishes work by being withdrawn with earned income. This creates a trap where people are better off unemployed, and where their decisions are being made for them by the state. **That's not freedom.** Unconditional basic income is never withdrawn. Therefore, earned income is rewarded. [With welfare it's possible for those not working to be better off not working, and better off than those working](http://www.learnliberty.org/blog/the-welfare-cliff-and-why-many-low-income-workers-will-never-overcome-poverty/?ref=scottsantens.com), but **with UBI, everyone working is ALWAYS BETTER OFF than not working and those not working**. Welfare is a ceiling. UBI is a floor, a foundation, a launchpad. Welfare is controlling. UBI is not controlling. It's cash that can be spent on anything. It's about agency, and yes, it's about freedom. [**Actual freedom... REAL freedom... TRUE FREEDOM requires the power to say "NO" to those who would control us based on control of the resources we need to live**](https://medium.com/basic-income/true-freedom-comes-with-basic-income-7ff1368e170?ref=scottsantens.com). Just as We the People got together to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity", thereby creating entities like the military to protect us from the domination of others, and the right to bear arms to protect us from the domination of others, **we must recognize the need for an unconditional basic income to further protect us from the domination of others.** One of our Founding Fathers specifically recognized this by the way. [His name was Thomas Paine](https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/agrarian-justice-excerpt?ref=scottsantens.com). And he said: > "It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race… it is the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is in individual property. Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community a ground-rent for the land which he holds; and it is from this ground-rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to issue." The fact the Earth is owned through a system of private property we created that creates the non-natural condition where those born on the Earth must pay to live on it, and therefore must work for those who own the Earth in exchange for money to live on it, that **rent must be paid by those who own the Earth, and that rent must be paid to everyone.** **If freedom and liberty are important to us, then we must ensure it to each other, and if we are to ensure it to each other in a world where existence has a price, that price must be guaranteed to all as a starting point on which to build our lives as free men and women. That price is unconditional basic income.** **Just as we reinterpreted the Constitution to mean all people are created equally, not just white land-owning men, decades from now we will look back and interpret the Constitution as having called for basic income all along, *so as to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity*.** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### What would I do if everyone had a basic income? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/what-would-i-do-if-everyone-had-a-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T21:28:09.000Z > What would you do if you had an unconditional basic income? I regularly ask people this question, because the answer is the true definition of basic income. Basic income isn't really about the money. It's about what money enables us to do in our lives that we'd otherwise be prevented from doing without enough money to meet our basic needs, and without enough time to really live, due to all of our time being spent just trying to stay alive. [I already have a basic income via crowdfunding](https://medium.com/basic-income/what-if-you-got-1-000-a-month-just-for-being-alive-i-decided-to-find-out-9e8591976c37?ref=scottsantens.com), which I use to advocate for basic income for everyone, so a question people ask me is what I would do if tomorrow *everyone* had basic income. I've answered this question a few times in various interviews, but I've never written about it. So here's my answer. **I'd write more.** **More specifically, I'd write more science fiction.** **Even more specifically, I'd write more science fiction screenplays.** I've always loved writing. As a kid, I'd love to just find a quiet place with a stack of paper, and just write. In school, I loved writing assignments that involved writing fiction. One of my favorite experiences back in elementary school was writing a story inspired by *Airplane!*, and reading it in front of my fifth grade class. It was absolutely absurd, but I wrote it to make me laugh, and it ended up making the whole class laugh too. It was such a great feeling to imagine something into existence, and for that creation to then reach the minds of others. A few years later, one of my favorite experiences in high school was an assignment in German class to write a short story in English and translate it into German. I took that assignment and ran with it by using my story (and my love of computer animation) to create a computer animated short film. That was an even greater feeling, to imagine something into existence, and for that to be transformed into something people could watch. Sure it was just an animated short about 7-Up's Cool Spot bringing to life a Listerine bottle Frankenstein-style inside a castle that ended up in a battle between Hershey's kisses and Life Saver Minis set to the song "Line Up" by Aerosmith, but it was something I imagined that became real enough for other people to enjoy too, and that to me was an amazing feeling. Years later, in 2011, I decided to write my very first screenplay for a full-length feature film, purely for the fun of it. It involved months of research, and months of writing, a total of nine months actually. It wasn't all day every day of course, but it was something I worked on pretty much every day, for at least a few hours a day. The best way to learn something is to just do it, right? So that's what I did. I didn't take any classes or read any books on screenplay writing. I just studied the screenplays of movies I loved most, and tried to make my own using them as a blueprint. The result was a 120 page screenplay I titled, "[**The Stories Within**](https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ac4mp2kt0yjpp4/The%20Stories%20Within%20%28ver.%20no%20contact%20info%29.pdf?dl=0&ref=scottsantens.com)." (*Click the link if you'd like to read it.*) Here's the logline I wrote for it to give you an idea of what it's about. > *A New Orleans writer's work of science fiction involving the two greatest conspiracies of the 1960s unknowingly makes him a target for his own assassination.* It's written as a story inside a story inside a story, where each layer is meant to have a different style on screen. One layer kind of makes fun of Hollywood and is full of [common tropes](http://tvtropes.org/?ref=scottsantens.com), while another is meant to be more reflective of reality in contrast to those tropes, and another is docudrama style. The docudrama layer looks at the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the Apollo 11 Moon landing mission, and depicts two new conspiracy theories for each that I created myself for the purpose of the story. It's science fiction. It's thriller. It's fun. It's the kind of movie I'd like to see, and that's why I wrote it. I wrote this spec script over a span of almost a year, over six years ago, and in that time it's probably been read by maybe a dozen people. I did it for the pleasure of writing it. I did it to learn something new. I did it to create something original. For those who choose to read it now, I imagine some of you will quite enjoy it and wish it actually was a movie you could watch. Others, especially professional screenwriters will probably loathe it as a poorly written excuse for a script that deserves to be burned with fire. To me, it doesn't really matter, because the fraction of my life I spent writing it was for me. It was work. It was creation. And it was *meaningful*. Getting better at something takes time. It takes doing it over and over and over again. Thanks to my basic income, I've been free to focus on writing for the first time in my life really, and I feel my writing has not only improved as a result, but that I've been slowly developing my own style. Years ago, I would have thought it crazy to be told that one day my writing would be used to help teach college students how to write, but here I am now with pieces in multiple college textbooks. For someone who originally went to school for a degree in engineering physics, I never thought I'd be where I am right now, absolutely free to spend entire days writing absolutely anything. So what would I do if everyone had a basic income? I'd write even more. I've actually got a second screenplay that's been halfway complete for years that I'd absolutely love to get back to, and many other story ideas waiting to be written, but I just feel writing about basic income is too important to write about anything else. Now that you know what I'd do if you and everyone else had a basic income, consider for a moment how many other people are out there with ideas just sitting there, due to simply not having the time or energy to work on them in a world without basic income. Imagine what you yourself have a passion for that you'd do far more of, or instead. Imagine the **tsunami of creativity** that will be unleashed once everyone is free to spend their lives working on the things that they're most passionate about instead of what they're essentially forced to do, simply to "earn a living." More than anything, I want that world to exist for us. We can create that world together by making sure everyone has an [unconditional basic income](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-we-should-all-have-a-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com). And that's not science fiction. ![Buckminster Fuller quote sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/42eaa2ef-394a-4d6f-b57d-9a76291c64aa/ar0hAZI.jpg) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Real Story of Automation Beginning with One Simple Chart URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-real-story-of-automation-beginning-with-one-simple-chart/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T23:27:23.000Z ## Robots are hiding in plain sight. It’s time we stop ignoring them. There’s a chart I came across in 2017, and not only does it tell an extremely important story about automation, but it also tells a story about the state of the automation discussion itself. It even reveals how we can expect both automation and the discussion around automation to continue unfolding in the years ahead. The chart is a plot of oil rigs in the United States compared to the number of workers the oil industry employs, and it’s an important part of a puzzle that needs to be pieced together before it’s too late. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*TKeXB4jzbsJKq6plJVXQCQ.jpeg) Source: [ZeroHedge](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-03/rig-count-surges-again-16-month-highs-wheres-oil-industry-jobs?ref=scottsantens.com) What should be immediately apparent is that as the number of oil rigs declined due to falling oil prices, so did the number of workers the oil industry employed. But **when** **the** **number** **of oil rigs began to rebound, the number of workers employed didn’t**. That observation itself should be extremely interesting to anyone debating whether technological unemployment exists or not, but there’s even more to glean from this chart. First, have you even heard of automated oil rigs, or are they new to you? They’re called [“Iron Roughnecks”](https://www.nov.com/Segments/Rig%5FSystems/Offshore/Iron%5FRoughnecks/AR3200%5FAutomated%5FIron%5FRoughneck/AR3200%5FAutomated%5FIron%5FRoughneck.aspx?ref=scottsantens.com) and they automate the extremely repetitive task of connecting drill pipe segments to each other as they’re shoved deep into the Earth. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*4A2WfIZIbVVWiZvi.jpg) *Pictured: National Oilwell Varco’s AR3200 Automated Iron Roughneck* Thanks to automated drilling, a once dangerous and very laborious task now requires fewer people to accomplish. Automation of oil rigs means that one rig can do more with fewer workers. In fact, it’s expected that [**what once took a crew of 20 will soon take a crew of 5**](http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Robots-Over-Roughnecks-Next-Drilling-Boom-Might-Not-Add-Many-Jobs.html?ref=scottsantens.com). The application of new technologies to oil drilling means that of the 440,000 jobs lost in the global downturn, as many as **220,000 of those jobs may** ***never*** **come back**. Now look back at the chart again, and notice how quickly this all happened. It took **TWO YEARS**. How did it happen so fast? Because the oil industry didn’t really need the workers it lost in the first place. It’s the oil industry. It’s used to making lots of money, and when you’re making money hand over fist, you don’t need to focus on efficiency. Being lean and mean is not your concern. However, that changes when times get tough, and times got very tough for the oil industry as oil prices plummeted thanks to new competition from yet another technological advancement — fracking. So once it became important to increase efficiency, that’s exactly what the oil industry did. It let people go and it invested in automation. In the summer of 2016, oil prices were no longer under $30 per barrel, and had gone back up to around $50 per barrel where they remain. That’s half of the $100 per barrel they’d gotten used to, which is fine as long as they’re able to produce at twice the efficiency. As a result, like a phoenix rising, they emerged transformed. Oil rigs returned to drilling, but all the rig workers didn’t. Those who were let go became simply unnecessary overhead. # Sleeping Through a Wake Up Call This is a story of technological unemployment that is crystal clear, and yet people are still arguing about it like it’s something that may or may not happen in the future. It’s actually a very similar situation to climate change, where the effects are right in our faces, but it’s still considered a debate. Automation is real, folks. Companies are actively investing in automation because it means they can produce more at a lower cost. That’s good for business. **Wages, salaries, and benefits are all just overhead** **that can be eliminated by use of machines**. But hey, don’t worry, right? Because everyone unemployed by machines will find better jobs elsewhere that pay even more… Well, about that, that’s not at all what the history of automation in the computer age over the past 40 years shows. Yes, some with highly valued skills go on to get better jobs, but they are very much the minority. [Most people end up finding new paid work that requires less skill, and thus pays less.](https://medium.com/basic-income/everything-you-think-you-know-about-the-history-and-future-of-jobs-is-likely-wrong-4f84e3a8945e?ref=scottsantens.com) The job market is steadily polarizing. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1234/0*4illfcThvLB1MTVS.png) Source: [David Autor](http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.29.3.3?ref=scottsantens.com) Decade after decade, medium-skill manufacturing/office jobs have been disappearing, and in response, the unemployed have found new employment in new low-skill service jobs. People unemployed by machines still require income, so they end up finding what they can get. At the same time, they are competing against others doing the same thing ([as long as the labor market remains involuntary](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com)) and thus **people are bidding down their own wages and taking any job they can get in a** **race against the machines**. This also serves to make investments in automation less attractive. As an added bonus, [the jobs that are being automated are more productive jobs than most of the jobs being newly created](https://medium.com/@geraldhuff/a-tale-of-two-economies-27dddb6c5059?ref=scottsantens.com). Cheaper human labor and an increasing number of low productivity jobs together then result in [a “paradoxical” deceleration of productivity growth](https://medium.com/basic-income/our-paradoxical-economy-courtesy-of-technology-and-the-lack-of-basic-income-361f40051de0?ref=scottsantens.com). Long story short, the middle of the labor market is disappearing. That’s the reality, and it’s been happening for decades. [A landmark 2017 study](https://economics.mit.edu/files/12763?ref=scottsantens.com) even looked at the impact of *just* industrial robots on jobs from 1993 to 2007 and found that **every new robot replaced around 5.6 workers**, and **every additional robot per 1,000 workers reduced the percentage of the total population employed by 0.34% and also reduced wages by 0.5%**. During that 14-year period of time, the number of industrial robots quadrupled and between 360,000 and 670,000 jobs were erased. And as the authors noted, ***“Interestingly, and perhaps surprisingly, we do not find positive and offsetting employment gains in any occupation or education groups.”*** In other words, the jobs were ***not*** replaced with new jobs. [It’s expected that our industrial robot workforce will quadruple again by 2025](http://ebusiness.mit.edu/research/Briefs/Brynjolfsson%5FMcAfee%5FRace%5FAgainst%5Fthe%5FMachine.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) to 7 robots per 1,000 workers. ([In Toledo and Detroit it’s already 9 robots per 1,000 workers](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-18/this-company-s-robots-are-making-everything-and-reshaping-the-world?ref=scottsantens.com)) Using Acemoglu’s and Restropo’s findings, that translates to **a loss of up to 3.4 million jobs by 2025**, alongside depressed wage growth of up to 2.6%, and a drop in the employment-to-population ratio of up to 1.76 percentage points. Remember, we’re talking about industrial robots only, not *all* robots, and not *any* software, especially not AI. So what we can expect from all technology combined is undoubtedly larger than the above estimates. Automation has been happening right under everyone’s noses, but people are only beginning to really talk about the potential *future* dangers of automation reducing the incomes of large percentages of the population. In the US, [the most cited estimate is the loss of half of all existing jobs by the early 2030s](http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The%5FFuture%5Fof%5FEmployment.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s great that this conversation is finally beginning, but most people have no idea that **it’s already happening**. And about half of those people who know it’s happening, are relying on magical thinking to support their beliefs that automation is of no concern. To the contrary, it is of massive concern. # Charting the Course of History One of the most telling statistics I’ve come across in regards to the automation discussion is how almost everyone in the US knows we’ve lost manufacturing jobs over the past three decades. 81% know that very real fact [according to a poll of over 4,000 adults by Pew Research](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/25/most-americans-unaware-that-as-u-s-manufacturing-jobs-have-disappeared-output-has-grown/?ref=scottsantens.com). What few people know however is that at the same time the total number of jobs has decreased, *total manufacturing output has* *increased*. The US is manufacturing more now than it ever has, and only 35% of the country knows that’s true. **The percentage of Americans who know both of the above facts are true is a mere 26%** **.** ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*k1rbe6VyZDWKTjJf.png) *Source:* [*Business Insider*](http://www.businessinsider.com/robots-have-already-taken-over-america-2016-3?ref=scottsantens.com) Only one out of every four Americans knows that thanks to technology, we’re producing as a country far more with less. Most people don’t know that, or blame things like immigrants or offshoring for job losses, even though offshoring is only possible due to technology improvements and only accounts for [13% of manufacturing job loss](http://projects.cberdata.org/reports/MfgReality.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). That’s a problem. We can’t make the changes we need to make if people aren’t aware the problem exists, or think the existence of the problem is something to be debated. We can’t agree on solutions like [unconditionally guaranteeing everyone a basic income as a rightful ](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq)[**productivity dividend**](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq) if people are actively being unemployed by growing productivity and the discussion is framed as a *future* danger to our social fabric instead of a *clear and present* danger. Consider this: What happens when the next recession hits? Falling oil prices simulated a recession in the oil industry, which responded with mass unemployment and investment in automation. **What happens when** ***all*** **industries respond with mass unemployment and investments in automation**? If we look at recent history, each successive downturn has resulted in the permanent shrinkage of the labor market. Peak labor appears to have already occurred back in 2000. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*w6Ab-Kz5ThjbrbrJ.png) *Source:* [*Janus Capital*](https://www.janus.com/bill-gross-investment-outlook?ref=scottsantens.com) Meanwhile, technology is only getting cheaper, so each successive drop squeezes out more human labor, and is able to automate more lower-skill labor that is newly more expensive than machines. Expect the next recession to put over ten million of people out of work, and for the economy to realize they didn’t really need those people as workers after all to produce what was being produced. Where 79% of eligible workers aged 25–54 were employed, expect that to fall to 69% or below. **The economy simply doesn’t need the number of** **people it currently employs with the technology we already have available**. To add insult to injury, [**it’s taking longer for the unemployed to find employment**](https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2017/10/06/september-jobs-report-33k-jobs-lost-likely-affect-of-hurricanes?ref=scottsantens.com), so those suffering next will suffer longer. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*swnhqXigyj-AlHCR.png) *Source:* [*Advisor Perpsectives*](https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2017/10/06/september-jobs-report-33k-jobs-lost-likely-affect-of-hurricanes?ref=scottsantens.com) ## The Automation of an Increasingly Divided Country ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*AZqpJtyp8c_yRZqa0ukW4g.png) Source: [Daily Yonder](http://www.dailyyonder.com/rural-america-enters-2017-with-fewer-jobs-than-in-2016/2017/03/28/18377/?ref=scottsantens.com) To add further insult to injury, the story of automation in America is one where mostly liberal metro areas enjoy the benefits while mostly conservative rural areas suffer the consequences. According to [a Daily Yonder analysis](http://www.dailyyonder.com/rural-america-enters-2017-with-fewer-jobs-than-in-2016/2017/03/28/18377/?ref=scottsantens.com), 80% of jobs created in 2016 were in the 51 metro areas of a million people or more. These **metro areas gained 1.2 million jobs** between January 2016 and 2017 — just one year. Meanwhile, **rural areas ended up with 90,000 fewer jobs** over the same time span. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*xtg0EuC1y8H2mjd3gnZXGg.jpeg) [More than 52 million Americans are now currently living in counties considered as being in economic distress](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/09/26/every-county-in-america-ranked-by-economic-distress/?utm%5Fterm=.aceda4537c51&ref=scottsantens.com). A report by the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), a bipartisan research and advocacy organization, discovered a close link between community size and prosperity, where **counties with under 100,000 people are 11 times more likely to be distressed** than counties with more than 100,000 people. Understand how automation is helping to divide the country along “red” and “blue” lines, and the growing polarization of our politics will immediately make more sense. **This is perhaps the** **most** **dangerous** **effect of technological unemployment of all,** [**the erosion of democracy itself**](http://www.mamartino.com/projects/rise%5Fof%5Fpartisanship/?ref=scottsantens.com)[ **as partisanship tears our nation apart in a process that is difficult to differentiate between that of a living cell mitotically dividing in two**](http://www.mamartino.com/projects/rise%5Fof%5Fpartisanship/?ref=scottsantens.com). ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*UI2rA2sb5_wVnoFY6Oog8w.png) Source: [Mauro Martino](http://www.mamartino.com/projects/rise%5Fof%5Fpartisanship/?ref=scottsantens.com) ## The Ignored Math of Increasingly Productive New Businesses Another thing to recognize is that as technology enables businesses to hire fewer workers, that means to obtain “full employment”, where everyone who wants a job has one, the economy requires that everyone work shorter work weeks, or else an ever growing number of businesses is needed in order to employ the same amount of people. If the average amount of people the average business employs is 10, it would take 10 businesses to employ 100 people. Assuming “full-time” continues to be defined as 40 hours, if technology allows 1 person to do the work of 10, the average people a business employs drops to 1, so the number of businesses needed to employ everyone grows to 100\. *(note: compensating for population growth would require even more than 100)* So is that happening? No. That’s not happening. The reverse is happening. **New business creation is slowing, not accelerating** **.** ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*Mf4H-nXiK27s6xhy.jpg) But the new businesses being created are rising in value every year, which matches what we’d expect to see from each new business using the latest technology to do far more with far less. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/790/0*qctzv9rx3CDOpuM8.png) Every year there are more new businesses worth over $1 billion. Look at Tesla versus early 20th century Ford Motors, or Instagram versus Kodak, or Facebook versus all the newspapers that used to exist. These companies are worth hundreds of billions of dollars and employ a fraction of the people as the most valued companies of the past once did. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*DYi0NM9Mo7u8Kb-6SRTnbg.png) There’s also an assumption that human demand is infinite, and so no matter how many jobs are eliminated by technology, a human demand for infinitely more stuff will always create new jobs. This belief exists alongside **continually shrinking** **discretionary spending** **as a share of total spending**. This should also not surprise anyone. People can’t spend money if they don’t have any. # The More You Know… Now, let me ask you a question. How much all of the above information were you already fully aware of, to the point none of it was new to you? Now ask yourself why? Automation clearly exists, and clearly is already affecting the economy. So why is the debate about automation even a debate at all? That’s perhaps the scariest thing about the oil rig automation chart, along with the rest of the charts I’ve included here, the fact **existing evidence is not part of the debate**. Just as climate change has been something we’ve debated for decades while the effects have only grown more extreme, so too is automation being denied as it grows more extreme. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*_DFnfyjhn95QGY_UuyEC8w.jpeg) My fear is that ignoring the problem will continue. Why not? We’ve ignored manufacturing being automated. Yes, we know it happened, but we’ve pretended that everyone just went on to find new paid work, without critically evaluating the nature of that paid work. Unemployment isn’t a problem, right, because the unemployment rate is at a record low? Tell that to the person who went from a 40-hour per week career with benefits and a sense of security to three different jobs/gigs without any benefits, working 80 hours per week to earn less total income in a far more insecure life just trying to get by each month. Tell that to the person who feels [marriage has become something only the rich can afford any more](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/upshot/how-did-marriage-become-a-mark-of-privilege.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Tell that to [the person who attempted suicide, or self-medicated their depression with opioids](https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/6%5Fcasedeaton.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) after their town’s manufacturing plant closed down, obliterating their town’s local economy and leaving them with no means of paying others for their own existence. **Technological unemployment is real**.The only honest debate to be had is over the nature of *re*\-employment, and all evidence points to [a shrinking employment-to-population ratio](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/EMRATIO?ref=scottsantens.com), [a growth in low-skill jobs](https://medium.com/basic-income/everything-you-think-you-know-about-the-history-and-future-of-jobs-is-likely-wrong-4f84e3a8945e?ref=scottsantens.com), [a transition to alternative work arrangements like temporary and “gig” labor](http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/lkatz/files/katz%5Fkrueger%5Fcws%5Fv3.pdf?m=1459290955&ref=scottsantens.com), [rising variance in monthly incomes](https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/rsa-blogs/2016/04/basicincomeinsecurity/?ref=scottsantens.com), erosion of benefits, [longer terms of unemployment](https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2017/10/06/september-jobs-report-33k-jobs-lost-likely-affect-of-hurricanes?ref=scottsantens.com), and what can only be called [a pandemic of economic insecurity](https://medium.com/basic-income/human-park-a-mammals-guide-to-stress-free-living-17f6cab007b3?ref=scottsantens.com) as **survival** — instead of the American Dream — increasingly becomes the primary goal of the majority of Americans. Meanwhile, some other Americans are doing extremely well. Why? Because they own the machines. They own the lobbyists. They write the laws. They write the tax code. They have the power. And so they are now the sole beneficiaries of the machine labor producing greater and greater amounts of national wealth, where once that wealth was more widely shared with those producing it. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*7jLjwei2BQUZEADc.png) Source: [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/opinion/leonhardt-income-inequality.html?ref=scottsantens.com) Hundreds of thousands of jobs were just lost due to oil rig automation and no one (except for those unemployed and their families) batted an eye. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost over the years to industrial robots. [Hundreds of thousands more jobs were just lost this year in retail](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/the-silent-crisis-of-retail-employment/523428/?ref=scottsantens.com) due to the unstoppable efficiency of Amazon and [the more than 100,000 robots](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/10/technology/amazon-robots-workers.html?ref=scottsantens.com) it employs. And yes, Amazon is creating lots of new jobs too, but for every job it creates, it has eliminated two or more by eliminating its far less efficient brick and mortar competition. Unless you’re talking about *net* job creation, and the details of those jobs created, you’re dishonestly talking about employment. The question is, at what point will enough people recognize that automation is a very real problem that must be confronted immediately. [When millions of trucking jobs are automated](https://medium.com/basic-income/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us-like-a-human-driven-truck-b8507d9c5961?ref=scottsantens.com)? When millions more retail jobs are automated? How many jobs need to be erased before we collectively create the will to do something? And at what point will we recognize that [**the problem of automation should not be a problem at all**](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/humanity-needs-universal-%5Fb%5F9599198.html?ref=scottsantens.com)**, and that** [**we want as much work automated as possible**](http://www.zpub.com/notes/black-work.html?ref=scottsantens.com)? When will we realize that automation is a blessing, not a curse, and that the benefits of machine labor should be spread across *all* of society instead of concentrated in the hands of a relative few, especially when [**all the technology originated from taxpayer-funded R&D**](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/opinion/americas-underappreciated-entrepreneur-the-federal-government.html?ref=scottsantens.com)and represents [**a technological inheritance from those long dead who passed their knowledge down to us generation after generation**](https://medium.com/economicsecproj/technological-inheritance-and-the-case-for-a-basic-income-ded373a69c8e?ref=scottsantens.com)? And when will the so far sole beneficiaries of that inheritance realize that **although they need fewer laborers, they still need consumers**? I hope that time is soon, very soon, because I look around at our reality, and I wonder if we’re going to get our act together before it’s too late, if it isn’t already. As long as we force each other to work for money in order to live, automation will work against us instead of for us. [**I**](https://medium.com/basic-income/cutting-the-gordian-knot-of-technological-unemployment-with-unconditional-basic-income-e8df7f8eaa16?ref=scottsantens.com)[**t is a civilizational imperative that we decouple income from work**](https://medium.com/basic-income/cutting-the-gordian-knot-of-technological-unemployment-with-unconditional-basic-income-e8df7f8eaa16?ref=scottsantens.com)so as to create economic freedom for all. Without an unconditional basic income, the future is a very dark place. With unconditional basic income, [especially one that rises as productivity rises as a rightful share of an increasingly automating economy](https://medium.com/economicsecproj/how-to-reform-welfare-and-taxes-to-provide-every-american-citizen-with-a-basic-income-bc67d3f4c2b8?ref=scottsantens.com), the future is finally **a place for humanity**. --- ***Special thanks to: Steven Grimm, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Larry Cohen, Andy Stern, Floyd Marinescu, Stephane Boisvert, Topher Hunt, Albert Wenger, Chris Smothers, Natalie Foster, Gisele Huff, Kian Alavi, Justin Walsh, Daragh Ward, EastBeachGames, Dominic Wyler, Joanna Zarach, Ace Bailey, Daryl Smith, Danielle and Michael Texeira, Paul Godsmark, Vladimir Baranov, Rachel Perkins, Chris Rauchle, David Ihnen, Taressa Strong, Daniel Brockman, Carrie Mclachlan, Katie Doemland, Victor Vurpillat, Jordan Lejuwaan, Michael Honey, Mybasicincome.org, Che Wagner, Gerald Huff, BoNster, Joe Ballou, Richard Just, Jack Wagner, Lainie Petersen, Gray Scott, Catherine MacDonald, Max Henrion, Arjun Banker, Dan O’Sullivan, Saura Naderi, Kai Wong, Jill Weiss, Nicolas Pouillard, Christopher Anderson, Stuart Mark, Justin Hebert, Elizabeth Balcar, Erhan Altay, Robin Ketelaars, Georg Baumann, Matt DeKok, Lisa Hallman, Dylan Taylor, Ron Lisle, Kirk Israel, Lee Irving, Darrell Bouldin, Andreas, Lawrence W Lee, Casey Young, Brian Schwartz, Robert F. Greene, Martin Jordo, Robert Solovay, Amy Shaffer, Victor Lau, Thomas Welsh, Walter Schaerer, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** ## [Would you like to see your name here too?](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Unconditional Basic Income is a Pigovian Subsidy for Unpaid Work URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/unconditional-basic-income-is-a-pigovian-subsidy-for-unpaid-work/ Last updated: 2022-03-24T16:33:53.000Z There's something about unpaid work that I've never actually seen discussed, and that's the cost of the work that's paid... ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/d11545f1-fa41-4a55-abab-6ff2f1573965/DEH25m8XkAASJ55.jpg) Take for example the amount of unpaid care work in the US that's estimated as being [around $700 billion per year](http://www.washington.edu/news/2015/06/16/study-reveals-surprising-truths-about-caregivers/?ref=scottsantens.com) (and [mostly done by women](https://www.gatesnotes.com/2016-Annual-Letter?ref=scottsantens.com)). That's an invisible work force comprised of [1/3 of Americans putting in over a billion hours of free work per week](http://www.ozy.com/acumen/americas-unpaid-billion-hours-a-week-workforce/61897?ref=scottsantens.com). What if they all went on strike and refused to work for free anymore? Perhaps because they're tired of being seen as lazy simply because the work they do isn't remunerated. Well, that work still needs to be done, right? That means the demand for paid caregivers rises considerably. Now, some of the unpaid caregivers would become paid caregivers, but they wouldn't all do that. So the price everyone pays for care work would go up due to demand exceeding supply. Additionally, government spending on care work would go up, and therefore taxes would also need to go up. Now the interesting thing to realize here is that everyone right now is enjoying low prices and low taxes thanks to all those people choosing to do entirely necessary work for free. Everyone's taxes are lower because of unpaid work. Everyone's prices are lower because of unpaid work. Everyone keeps a larger percentage of the money they get for doing paid work, because of the free work unpaid workers are doing. Now consider [unconditional basic income](https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq). It will go to all unpaid workers (and paid workers), and it will be paid by [those being paid large enough incomes that their own basic incomes don't cover the increase in their taxes required to pay for the basic income](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/07/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-might-be-lower-than-you-think?ref=scottsantens.com). Remember though, unpaid work is currently lowering prices and tax burdens. So a higher tax burden is simply eliminating the artificially low tax burden, and subsidized costs. ![universal basic income](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/v3avO69.png) If right now, because of unpaid work you are benefiting from invisibly, you're paying say $700 per month on care work, and it would be $1,400 per month if all unpaid workers stopped working, then you owe $700 per month to those workers. If your taxes are 30% of your income but they would be 40% if all unpaid care workers stopped working, then you owe 10% of what you earn to those workers. Basically, just like how [carbon tax](http://theweek.com/articles/696282/how-make-carbon-tax-insanely-popular?ref=scottsantens.com) is a [Pigovian tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian%5Ftax?ref=scottsantens.com) meant to correct for the unpriced negative externalities of greenhouse gas emissions, the tax increase required to fund a full basic income can be seen as Pigovian in nature too. It would be a market correcting tax where what's currently not being calculated in markets are the positive externalities of unpaid work. UBI is thus a [Pigovian subsidy](http://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Pigouvian%5Fsubsidy?ref=scottsantens.com). Everyone right now is benefiting from unpaid work. There is a ton of unpaid work going on. With unconditional basic income there will be even more unpaid work as that option opens up to many more people than those to whom it's currently limited - those who can afford to do unpaid work. That UBI will require an increase in taxes is simply recognizing that right now because of all the unpaid work going on, we're all receiving positive externalities without paying for them. Complaining about higher tax rates for UBI is akin to not paying any taxes at all for roads, but driving on them every day, and enjoying the prices of goods and services that are only as low as they are because of roads, and complaining about a tax being introduced to pay for them. Paying for public roads isn't stealing. NOT paying for public roads is stealing. One final note if it isn't obvious for those like [Joe Biden](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/my-friend-joe-biden-i-humbly-disagree%5Fus%5F59ca86cae4b0f2df5e83b1cf?ref=scottsantens.com). Unpaid work is work. It also tends to be more meaningful than paid work, because why else would people be doing it for free? Work that you can only get someone to do in exchange for money tends to be far less meaningful than the work people do because they simply want to do it. That should be obvious, but it unfortunately isn't because we're all just so used to money helping define one's worth. ![work jobs meaning](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/Hq2VN4n.jpg) Money does not define work's value. Wealth does not define YOUR value. Money is what we use to get people to do work they wouldn't do otherwise. If we want a world full of far more meaning, [we'll automate the work people don't want to do](https://medium.com/basic-income/deep-learning-is-going-to-teach-us-all-the-lesson-of-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines-7c6442e37a49?ref=scottsantens.com), pay people far more for the work people don't want to do and machines don't yet make sense to do, and we'll enable everyone to pursue unpaid work over paid work. **[Unconditional basic income is the foundation of that new world](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-we-should-all-have-a-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com).** --- *Additional UBI images for sharing:* ![unpaid care work basic income](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/cmmrky7.jpg) ![mother basic income](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/6NPrQXJ.jpg) ![father basic income](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/nuqGbeG.jpg) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Stop Teaching Students WHAT to Think. Teach Them HOW to Think. URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-future-of-education-and-work-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T21:31:55.000Z 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 information upload in which students are to be filled with all the appropriate data and applications to function as cogs in the machinery of factories and offices, or in the parlance of today, as walking hard drives. ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/e5cce9ec-b77e-4e10-aad4-059e779d771f/duracell-robots-classroom.jpg) [*Image source: Inspiration Room*](http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2008/duracell-robots-last-longer/?ref=scottsantens.com) Modern mass production did more than increase efficiency. It chopped up work into simpler components in which one small task could be repeated day in and day out without thought and without knowledge of the whole. Centuries ago, shoes were made by hand, by one skilled person who made the entire shoe. And then hundreds of people became involved in making one shoe with one relatively unskilled person doing nothing but attaching soles all day, every day. Now that machines can perform all the tasks in making an entire shoe, what happens to the humans who were programmed to operate the machines? Human-automaton creation must end. To succeed in a world of automation will require being as unmachinelike as possible. The entire education system will need to be retooled around no longer teaching kids what to think but how to think. Memorization of facts is pointless in a world where everyone carries around the entire knowledge base of the human species on their person. The challenge is not information storage but information processing. It's not about information itself but how to use information. The teaching of creativity, curiosity, critical thinking, analytical thinking, problem-solving, and a love of learning itself will be critical to transitioning from the industrial age to the automated age. Learning how to collaborate and empathize with others will be key. To be human is not to be a lone robot performing a singular task in a vacuum but to be a member of the whole of humanity contributing in countless interdependent ways, including even entirely unpaid ways. This will require nothing less than a redefinition of work itself. Most people when they talk about the future of work are talking about the future of paid work. But the future of work must recognize all work. Take, for example, someone editing Wikipedia, or contributing code to the open-source code-sharing platform GitHub, or even simply taking care of a family member in the same way any paid care worker would. All of that is important work but would be done for purpose, not pay. It is for this reason that unconditional basic income—a cash stipend starting everyone above the poverty line each month—needs to be a key characteristic of the future of work. That way, as paid work is automated, humans can focus more on all the work that needs to be done, in the ways that most engage them. For some, there will be jobs as we know them today, although perhaps in far shorter shifts than eight hours a day, five days a week. For others, this will be a return to the universe of self-employed artisanship, in which unique creations are handmade from beginning to end, where platforms, like Etsy, reveal a glimpse of what the future could hold. And for still others, this will be creation for the sake of creation by prosumers, who both create and consume goods and services, all for free, in a new kind of economy built around reputation, instead of remuneration. To succeed in the future will require rediscovering what it means to be truly human. Mark Twain once said the two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. In the decades ahead, our jobs as humans will be finding our ways to our "whys." And education must be reoriented accordingly. --- *This article of mine was originally published on [Education Weekly](http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/09/27/stop-teaching-students-what-to-think.html?ref=scottsantens.com) as part of their [Special Report on Schools and the Future of Work](http://www.edweek.org/ew/collections/schools-and-future-of-work/index.html?ref=scottsantens.com).* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Expanse's Basic Support vs. Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-expanse-basic-support-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T21:40:18.000Z The Expanse is [a series of science fiction novels](http://amzn.to/2fGiLas?ref=scottsantens.com) that is also now [a TV series](http://amzn.to/2wMJjwx?ref=scottsantens.com) 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 throughout the system are colonized, and Earth is a planet with 30 billion people where only half the population has a job. The solution to technological unemployment in this universe, and only available on Earth, is something called "basic support," commonly referred to by most characters as simply "Basic". After reading debates online about whether Basic is basic income or something else, I decided to read the series for myself. Having now read every book currently available, and having watched both seasons in full, I can faithfully say, **basic income does NOT exist in The Expanse universe**. However, many people perceive basic income in the same way as Basic is portrayed, and therefore it provides an excellent opportunity to point out how hugely different the two policies are. The Expanse's Basic is bad policy, but also an entirely realistic policy based on existing misconceptions. Basic is essentially [basic goods and services instead of cash](http://www.scottsantens.com/giving-goods-and-services-vs-giving-money). It's also not something that everyone gets, but something people must choose as an alternative to employment. People with jobs get cash income and no Basic. People without jobs get Basic and no cash income. This choice means that those on Basic are not allowed to earn income. They are forced to live with only their basic needs met. Even worse, education is not part of Basic. Education is not universal. College educations are seen as an investment that only those who wish to be employed are worthy of, and so everyone wishing for a college education must first prove they enjoy employment by working for two years beginning at age 16\. If they succeed at those two years, they can go to college. If they succeed at college, they can get a job. If at any point they fail, they must choose between Basic or military service. Being on Basic means free housing, but very basic housing, in specific locations housed with and alongside others on Basic in government blocks of thousands of people. Basic income means being able to choose where you want to live, because it's cash that you can use to live anywhere. Basic is being told by government where you will live because it's free and beggars can't be choosers. Being on Basic means free healthcare, but very basic healthcare that involves long waiting lists and sub-standard treatment. It's basically what far too many people in the US thinks everyone in Canada gets. > "... the place reminded him of a medical clinic for people on basic. A cheap plastic hospital bed, a steel toilet on the wall without so much as a screen around it, a battered medical expert system, a wall-mounted screen set to an empty glowing gray..." Basic also means being able to access kiosks where free clothing is available, and access to certain approved goods and services, like coffee in coffee shops. Being on Basic is kind of like having an EBT card. They get "basic ration cards" full of "basic ration credits." Those on Basic have no actual money, and are not allowed to earn money. At one point in the series, a crowdfund is setup that goes viral across the solar system, and one of the messages is from someone on Basic who wishes they could donate to the crowdfund, but can't. They can't because they have no access to money. Dollars are only for people with jobs. Those on Basic can only barter and do work under-the-table too small for government to notice. This is the misconception I see many people having about basic income, that it will create a system of the haves and the have-nots where those with basic income live at the poverty line barely getting by, and those with jobs live happy fulfilling lives. That's not at all how basic income works. Everybody gets basic income. It's a new starting point. Everyone starts above the poverty line. Everyone can earn money on top of their basic income. No one is prevented from earning additional income. In fact, unlike welfare which punishes work by disappearing with earned income, basic income never disappears, and is kept with any amount of earned income. This means that any and all employment increases total income. Basic income is a floor. The Expanse's Basic is a ceiling. Because basic income is cash, it can be spent on anything. Basic can only be spent on what the government has approved Basic can be used to obtain. Basic income is freedom. The Expanse's Basic is control. Basic income can be used as capital to start businesses, and in fact [according to multiple experiments usually is](https://medium.com/basic-income/its-time-to-shift-the-economy-into-fourth-gear-capitalism-with-basic-income-f13e0d6ec057?ref=scottsantens.com). Basic cannot be used as capital. I don't think it's even legal to start a business if you're on Basic. I do not recommend creating a future as envisioned in The Expanse where half of Earth is forced to just exist, while jobs are treated as having scarcity that only those who prove themselves are worthy to pursue. If there's half as much paid work to do, that also means we can all work half as much and be just as employed. Why no one on The Expanse's Earth considered a 20-hour work week so that everyone could share the available work better is beyond me. Why education is treated as something only some people should have access to and not others is also beyond me. An educated population is good for everyone. Money too is a public good. Preventing half the population from having any is a terrible idea. Preventing people from becoming entrepreneurs is a terrible idea. [Basic income on the other hand encourages and better enables entrepreneurship](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-will-accelerate-innovation-by-reducing-our-fear-of-failure-b81ee65a254?ref=scottsantens.com). The Expanse depicts a dystopian future where humanity chooses to construct a ceiling over half the population of Earth. Instead of lifting everyone above the poverty line and giving people the freedom to pursue anything they wish to pursue, paid or unpaid, work or leisure, with a universal cash floor sufficient for securing basic needs as a monthly starting point, humanity instead forces people to choose between earning income and existing in a way approved by the government. We too face this choice. Making the right decision requires understanding what basic income actually is, and how alternatives like Basic are not at all the same thing. It's one thing to give *everyone* money every month that can be spent on *anything*. It's entirely another to decide for other people what they need, and limit them to what you think is best for them. It's one thing to enable everyone to pursue whatever work they wish to pursue, paid or unpaid, for however many hours per day they wish to work. It's entirely another to decide that jobs must consist of 40 hours per week or more, and that if there's no jobs available, people aren't allowed to make their own jobs. Those like [Joe Biden](https://www.sppa.udel.edu/bideninstitute/research-policy/biden-institute-blog/Let%E2%80%99s-Choose-a-Future-That-Puts-Work-First?ref=scottsantens.com) who ignorantly claim that basic income is anti-work are those who will foolishly help make dystopian visions like The Expanse our reality because of an inability to understand the difference between Basic and unconditional basic income. Those like Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck who together are known as James S. A. Corey, the author of The Expanse, are those who will help inspire us to make better decisions through collective imagination. What can the future be like? What choices can we make in the years ahead to create the kind of future we want instead of one we regret? This is the power of fiction. It is only through visualizing different versions of the future, that we can decide which ones we'd rather avoid, and which we'd rather pursue. Do we want Star Trek? Or do we want The Expanse? Or do we want Mad Max? Decisions decisions... --- ### UPDATE: Daniel Abraham "largely agrees" with this essay. > I have read that essay, and largely agree with it. UBI is, imho, a much better, less paternalistic welfare system than the planned economy of basic in the Expanse. > > — Daniel Abraham (@AbrahamHanover) [September 11, 2019](https://twitter.com/AbrahamHanover/status/1171870818457882625?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### If you think basic income is "free money" or socialism, think again URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/if-you-think-basic-income-is-free-money-or-socialism-think-again/ Last updated: 2022-05-17T22:12:44.000Z 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 people, what goods and services should be made, using what, going where, by whom, of what quantity, etc. It's an incredible act of decentralization built upon supply and demand signaling. When someone has money and wants to buy something, that is a demand signal. Businesses meet this signal with supply. Basically, [buying is like voting](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com). We vote on what we want using money as our ballots, and we do this over and over and over again, every day. Now imagine someone has no money in a system built around markets. How do they vote? They can't. The market thus confuses this lack of a vote as a "no" vote. These two signals are of course very different. One is zero and one is [null](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null%5F%28SQL%29?ref=scottsantens.com), but markets don't know that. They can't differentiate between them. This means [markets containing people who don't have enough money to signal their demand can't function properly](http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/2016/04/22/the-unconditional-basic-income-and-the-hayekian-price-system/?ref=scottsantens.com). Have you ever played the game Monopoly? I'm sure you have. Is that a game about socialism? According to "free money is socialism" logic it is, because everyone starts the game with free money and everyone gets money for simply passing Go. But I'm sure you know the game is actually about capitalism, right? It's just a smart enough game to know that a game involving money requires that all players get a minimum amount of money. Have you ever heard of [the Alaska dividend](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/extreme-wealth-inequality-alaska-model/?ref=scottsantens.com)? Every year since 1982, all residents of Alaska receive an equal dividend as their share of the dividend of the Alaska Permanent Fund (APF), now worth [over $61 billion](http://www.apfc.org/home/Content/home/index.cfm?ref=scottsantens.com). Rich or poor, adult or child, everyone has received a Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) of $1,000 per year on average for over 30 years. Is Alaska a socialist utopia? Do people move to Alaska to worship at the altar of Karl Marx? Nope. Alaska is a red state, but not that kind of red state. It's a conservative state where everyone gets what too many media outlets refer to as "free money". Of course, it's not actually free is it? It comes from someone. It comes from the oil companies. How? Well, Alaska owns the land and charges oil companies for the right to drill in it. They then put 25% of the earnings in the APF. Being the conservative state it is, they figure that the government should keep it's damn hands off that money. The APF is not to be touched, and the dividends go directly to Alaskans because Alaskans know far better what to do with that money than government does. As a result, the dividend boosts and stabilizes the economy, and every year come dividend time, local businesses compete against each other for the business of Alaskan consumers armed with dividend checks. Does that sound like socialism to you? It didn't to [Milton Friedman](https://medium.com/basic-income/why-milton-friedman-supported-a-guaranteed-income-5-reasons-da6e628f6070?ref=scottsantens.com#.zb80jmveo) or [Friedrich Hayek](https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/why-did-hayek-support-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com), both of whom supported the idea of basic income, and both of whom can be considered fathers of free market economics. Hayek was even from the Austrian school. If you are confused why free market economists could like the idea of basic income, that's because you probably don't actually know what basic income is. But that's not the only problem in such thinking. A bigger problem appears to be a preference of ideological thinking over scientific thinking. Here's what you need to do to avoid this mental trap. Go out and find experimental studies that show how given two populations, one a control group, and one a group where the experimental variable is cash without conditions, that the one given money ends up worse off. Also, good luck with that. Because I've been looking for years now, and all I keep finding are [study after study of people ending up better off](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/wiki/index?ref=scottsantens.com#wiki%5Fthat.27s%5Fall%5Fvery%5Fwell.2C%5Fbut%5Fwhere.27s%5Fthe%5Fevidence.3F). Imagine that, right? One of the biggest problems with government, and believe me, I recognize its many problems, is that it's full of people who think they know what's best for other people. But the thing is, it's that way because that's how *we* are. We vote for people who think they know what's best for people because we think we know what's best for people. It's *our* problem. And it's a big problem. Why? Because that's how places get to be what Americans think of when they think of the Soviet Union. Don't trust people by giving them money and letting them spend it as consumers in markets. Give them food. Don't let them choose what kind of food. They don't know what's best. Give them approved food as determined by a board of health specialists. Give them housing. Don't let them choose their housing. Build public housing that's best for them. Give them this. Give them that. Just don't give them money, because money enables too much freedom. Money can be spent on anything. And don't give money unconditionally, because money without conditions means lack of control. Money with conditions means people must do what we want them to do. No having kids out of wedlock. Two kids maximum. Fill out 10 job applications per day. No refusing a job no matter what it is or what it pays. Work eight hours a day. Go to school. Retrain. Do what we say, or else. That's control. Conditions are control. Lack of conditions is freedom. Do you think seniors receiving Social Security are under the control of government, because they're all so scared that it can be removed at any time? Hell no. [The exact opposite is true](https://steemit.com/basicincome/@scottsantens/will-universal-basic-income-give-too-much-power-to-whomever-distributes-it?ref=scottsantens.com). Seniors vote in large numbers to make damn sure government responds to their needs. Government is afraid of seniors. And seniors can use their Social Security checks on anything. It's cash. They can also work to the day they die if they so choose. No one is stopping seniors from earning additional income. Their Social Security checks are simply an absolute minimum. It's a monthly non-zero income floor from age 65 or so till death, possibly 50 years. Do you honestly think seniors are worse off with Social Security? That someone receiving it for 30 years is suffering under an oppressive socialist government that's controlling them, and if only they stopped receiving it, they would be free and private charity would step in and lift them up just as high or even higher? Because there's [really clear evidence](http://www.nber.org/aginghealth/summer04/w10466.html?ref=scottsantens.com) that before Social Security seniors were far worse off than after, and as Social Security spending per capita has risen, poverty rates have fallen in lock step. ![Social Security and poverty](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/mEg1i16.png) But again, such understanding requires looking at actual evidence doesn't it? It requires comparing the map that's in our heads with the actual ground. Do they match? Always remember, [**the map is not the territory**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory%5Frelation?ref=scottsantens.com). Here's some more of the actual ground. UBI and UCT (unconditional cash transfer) experiments & programs have shown decreased hospitalization rates via reduced stress, lower crime rates, higher education rates, better education scores, healthier eating, reduced drug/alcohol use, increased entrepreneurship (3x more than control groups), economic multipliers ($1 grows the economy more than $1), healthier baby weights due to better maternal nutrition, higher rates of home ownership, reduced teen pregnancy rates, etc. [The list goes on and on](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/wiki/index?ref=scottsantens.com#wiki%5Fthat.27s%5Fall%5Fvery%5Fwell.2C%5Fbut%5Fwhere.27s%5Fthe%5Fevidence.3F). It's really hard to look at the evidence and say giving people money is wrong, because having enough money means being able to buy enough food. It means being able to have a roof over your head. For those without money, money means everything. It can even mean the difference between life and death. Now maybe you're so extreme in your ideology that you don't care about how basic income improves lives. Maybe you only care that the money had to come from someone in the top 20% (because the bottom 80% would all benefit), and that it's stealing and therefore wrong. It's wrong to eliminate poverty if it means yachts are a foot smaller, right? Okay, let's look at that. Once upon a time, none of the land was owned. Sure, in the US, natives lived here, but fuck them, right? We started to carve it up with invisible lines. It was done all over the world. What once wasn't owned, became owned. That was a great deal for the new owners, not so much for those whose land was taken, or who lost access to the land or even just free passage through it. That land was passed down generation after generation and here we are now with everything owned where human beings are born onto a planet [they aren't allowed to exist on unless they work for those who own the planet](https://steemit.com/basicincome/@scottsantens/universal-basic-income-as-compensation-for-the-creation-and-defense-of-private-property-rights?ref=scottsantens.com). Now that should be a problem to anyone who cares about voluntaryism. Should you be able to force someone to work by withholding the access they would have otherwise had to meeting their basic needs, had you not put walls up everywhere? [I for one think the labor market should be fully voluntary](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com). ![Nation A - involuntary labor market](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2otlWRL.png) ![Nation B - voluntary labor market](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/mNS6Gp3.png) Everyone should get enough money to be able to refuse to work. That way, the incentive is shifted to employers where it should be. Want someone to do something? Pay them enough to do it. If you refuse to pay anyone enough thanks to their ability to tell you to go fuck yourself, then either automate that job, or let it go undone. If the work needs to be done, you'll sweeten the deal or hand it to a robot. By the way, the best work is work done voluntarily. People are more engaged and productivity is higher. You should know that, but if you are fighting against a free labor market and for forcing people to do the bidding of those who own enough property to command people to do their bidding, maybe you don't. Or maybe you're the one enjoying the involuntary labor force? Now, one of America's founding fathers looked at this whole loss of common property situation and thought wait a second, when someone owns land, that land used to belong to everyone who no longer has access to it, and so they owe a rent to everyone to compensate everyone for their loss in exchange for the right of private ownership. That man was Thomas Paine, and he thought the revenue from that rent should supply everyone an unconditional grant when reaching the age of adulthood and also pay for seniors and the disabled. Sound familiar? Let's also look at what's been happening in the economy. For decades, almost all the economic growth has gone to the top ONLY. Our productivity has been going up and up and up, but wages haven't. ![growth at the top versus the bottom half](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/Y15DZvq.jpg) *Source: [HBR](https://hbr.org/2017/03/the-inequality-story-in-charts?ref=scottsantens.com)* And it didn't used to be this way. ![1982 versus now](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/K8cddWr.png) *Source: [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/opinion/leonhardt-income-inequality.html?ref=scottsantens.com)* Even weirder, why did hours worked stop going down as they had for centuries back in 1980, and instead start creeping back up? Does this make any sense in a world where productivity is increasing that people are working more and earning less? ![More hours worked after 1980](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/nvzDK73.jpg) *Source: [Fast Company](http://www.fastcoexist.com/3058710/heres-why-you-should-support-a-universal-basic-income/2?ref=scottsantens.com)* So then let's take a quick look at the technology picture where so many appear to subscribe to the silly notion that technology is nothing to worry about because jobs are always created. Yes, we've been creating jobs as we've lost jobs, but [let's look closer](https://medium.com/basic-income/everything-you-think-you-know-about-the-history-and-future-of-jobs-is-likely-wrong-4f84e3a8945e?ref=scottsantens.com). We've been automating mid-skill, fairly high productivity jobs because the tech capability was there and the price point was right. Those unemployed were then put into new low-skill low productivity jobs, because the tech ability to automate those jobs wasn't there (yet), and the price point wasn't right (yet). ![skill polarization](http://i.imgur.com/E6Zc5e2.png?3) *Source: [Journal of Economic Perspectives](http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.29.3.3?ref=scottsantens.com)* In other words, here many are saying everything is just fine and dandy when someone loses their $60,000 full-time 40-hour per week career to a machine and gets handed two part-time $20,000 total 60-hour per week shit jobs. Notice how this explains the rise in hours worked? People need to in order to try to prevent their incomes from falling. Meanwhile, what happens to these new low-skill jobs once technology is cheap enough to even handle minimum wage jobs? What jobs are left when technology is not only doing all the routine labor, but also the non-routine thanks to artificial intelligence breakthroughs like [deep learning neural nets](https://medium.com/basic-income/deep-learning-is-going-to-teach-us-all-the-lesson-of-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines-7c6442e37a49?ref=scottsantens.com)? There's nowhere else to go except for the lucky few. Game over. **Yes, it really is different this time.** Let's also make sure and notice that income variability has increased as well so even if someone is making the same amount of income per year doing something else now, their pay may vary a lot month to month which introduces the ability to fall behind and fall into downward spirals. ![US income variance](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/RTlJuRG.png) *Source: [JPMorgan Chase](https://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/institute/report-paychecks-paydays-and-the-online-platform-economy.htm?ref=scottsantens.com)* Suffice to say, our entire safety net is built around an antiquated notion of jobs, and **universal basic income is a *key component* of a 21st century system built as a solid foundation** instead of a hole-filled net. By the way, about those holes, in the US about 1 in 5 people living under the federal poverty line get TANF (our cash welfare program). About 1 in 4 people who qualify for housing assistance get it. About 1 in 5 people with a disability get disability income. Basically, [the way the system works is to exclude far more people in need than it includes](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-progressive-case-for-replacing-the-welfare-state-with-basic-income-e8bd02c5875e?ref=scottsantens.com). Even worse, due to targeting of benefits, those who receive them see the highest marginal tax rates of all. No billionaire sees as high a tax rate. How does that work you ask? Well, by providing a targeted benefit, it gets pulled away when they earn income. Essentially, welfare punishes work. It's built as a ceiling instead of a floor. Would you work a shit job if you were promised 10 cents on the dollar? Of course not. Why would you? Because any job, even a shit job that effectively pays 75 cents an hour provides the meaning of existence? One final thing. Universal basic income need not be done via taxation, just as the Alaska dividend isn't via taxation. It can be done in many ways including by [non-debt-based money creation](http://www.bien2012.de/sites/default/files/paper%5F170%5Fen.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), which by the way is mostly done by private banks right now, not the government. And yes, even cryptocurrencies could be designed to provide UBI. So an issue against taxes is not necessarily an issue with UBI itself, at least it shouldn't be, but with how it's funded. In that case, be a part of the solution instead of part of the problem by talking about the best way to go about basic income instead of lying to people purposely or out of ignorance about what basic income actually is. Basic income is not left or right. It's forward. Basic income is also not charity. It's not a handout. It is owed to you. It's your dividend. It's your compensation for your loss of access to this rock in space called Earth. It's your return on investment for the tax dollars invested in technological R&D and thus the technology unemploying you. It's your royalties for the big data which everything you now do (and even don't do) is increasingly generating. It's your share of rising productivity that used to go to you before it was stolen from you. It's your right to life, and just as no one has the right to take your life, no one has the right to force you to do anything for them in order to stay alive. Basic income is not free money. It's freedom. And freedom belongs to you. I like markets. I want to reduce the size of government. I want less bureaucracy. I want less administration. I want fewer government jobs. I want lower taxes for everyone who hasn't been benefiting from our economic growth for decades. I want a simpler tax code. I want fewer subsidies. I want less market distortion. I want a voluntary labor market. I want more freedom. If we appear to want many of the same things, I urge you to question what you think you know, and spend some real time looking into basic income. With that said, [here's how I recommend we go about doing basic income in the US in a way that doesn't raise anyone's income taxes](https://medium.com/economicsecproj/how-to-reform-welfare-and-taxes-to-provide-every-american-citizen-with-a-basic-income-bc67d3f4c2b8?ref=scottsantens.com). --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### For Want of a Dollar URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/for-want-of-a-dollar-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T22:51:26.000Z ![For want of a nail sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/cXlsL.jpg) **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 unfamiliar, the above proverb describes the massive consequences that can result from seemingly unimportant items or lack thereof. I now wish to fashion a new variation of this proverb... **For want of a dollar the bus ride was lost. For want of a bus ride the job was lost. For want of a job the paycheck was lost. For want of a paycheck the housing was lost. For want of housing the health was lost. For want of health the lawfulness was lost. For want of lawfulness social cohesion was lost. For want of social cohesion democracy was lost. For want of democracy the nation was lost. And all for the want of a goddamn dollar.** Not having a single dollar can lead to hugely expensive consequences, and this isn't only a theoretical. It happens every day. Think about a recent time where not having enough money to afford something seemingly small, ended up costing you or others way more. Or from the other side of things, can you think of a time where having just enough money saved you from something that could have been potentially disastrous? Not having enough money is expensive, and not just to the person in need, but everyone. For example, all over the US, there are people in jail simply because they can't afford not to be. According to [a study by the Vera Institute of Justice](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-jails-are-warehousing-those-too-poor-to-make-bail/?ref=scottsantens.com), 730,000 people around the US are locked up in jails right now, 75% of whom are nonviolent, presumed innocent, and simply awaiting trials. Many of these people are there simply because they can't afford to pay bail or court-imposed fines. The total cost to taxpayers is $22 billion per year. If we look at just the New York City jail system alone, about a third of the non-felony defendants are in jail because they don't have $500\. How much does it cost the taxpayer to keep someone in jail for not having $500? [The cost to jail someone in NYC is $167,731 per year](https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2015/jul/1/cost-jail-someone-new-york-city-167731-year/?ref=scottsantens.com) (or $459.54 per day). In other words, taxpayers are paying about $500 every day to keep someone behind bars for not having $500 period. We see the same kind of extreme wastefulness in the US healthcare system where [someone without the $100 required to treat a boil ends up in the ER where they instead end up receiving $90,000 in emergency treatment](http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2012/02/14/more-evidence-that-universal-h/?ref=scottsantens.com). Who pays for that? Not them. Instead we all do in the form of higher taxes and insurance premiums. Put all of this together and we can imagine someone who is $100 short, who then falls behind on their bills, gets their car repossessed, loses their job, gets sick, ends up in prison, gets out and earns 11% less than they otherwise would have for the rest of their lives, and thus pays less in taxes for the rest of their lives. By the time of death, which is most likely years before they otherwise would have died if they'd had money when they needed it, the total cost can be millions of dollars that otherwise would have never been spent, for want of just $100. "A stitch in time saves nine." "[An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com)." We've all heard these sayings before, but we're terrible at applying them to government policy. Just think of all the money being spent that would not be spent if we just made sure that everyone started each month with an [unconditional basic income of $1,000](https://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/11/14/13513066/universal-basic-income-crowdfund?ref=scottsantens.com). How many people would not end up in jail? How many people would not end up in hospitals? How many people would not be dying before their time? How many people wouldn't drop out of school, or eat so much junk food, or get obese, or hurt other people? Does it make any sense whatsoever to refuse to give someone $12,000 while simultaneously being okay with spending $90,000 to keep that person in prison, or $900,000 to treat that person in a hospital? We can go on ignoring the lesson of the horseshoe nail, or we can realize the good sense in making sure everyone has enough money so that the entire kingdom isn't lost. Which do you think makes more sense? --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### It’s Time to Shift the Economy into Fourth Gear Capitalism with Univeral Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/its-time-to-shift-the-economy-into-fourth-gear-capitalism-with-universal-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T23:21:10.000Z The economy is in between gears right now, and that’s a growing problem because as is true with all higher gears, we could be accomplishing so much more with so much less and prosperity could be greatly increased for not only the lucky few, but everyone. What do I mean? Well let’s look at the gears of capitalism, of which there have so far been three, before moving on to what fourth gear is, what’s stopping us from it, and how we can achieve it. # The Gears of Capitalism First gear was made possible by the invention of the steam engine which allowed for the beginnings of industry and the bridging of great distances with trains and steam-powered ships. Second gear was made possible by the invention of electricity which allowed for industrialization to go into overdrive while bridging even greater distances with the telegraph and telephones. Third gear was made possible by the invention of the computer which allowed for full globalization and the connection of everyone to each other all over the world with information technology and the internet. So what is fourth gear? **Fourth gear is the handing over of labor to machines**, and that does not only include muscle labor as was already true in lower gears, but mental labor. It is the long awaited freeing of humanity to pursue human interests, paid or unpaid, as payment is of less concern when machines are working for us… that is ***as long as we humans are earning the machines’ paychecks to purchase what they’re producing***. And that’s the rub. That’s why we’ve so far refused to shift into fourth gear capitalism, because in fourth gear, **human labor necessarily becomes unnecessary**. This can be an obstacle within the mind, for capitalism itself was built to combat scarcity, and the division of labor meant everyone need pull their weight so that all may survive. But each gear along the way has enabled us to do more with less energy expended, so where once a majority of humanity’s time was spent in the fields, now about *one percent* is. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*jVzQTKt4BPiXig0Az5YSvw.jpeg) Source: [Co.Exist](http://www.fastcoexist.com/3058710/heres-why-you-should-support-a-universal-basic-income/2?ref=scottsantens.com) Where once we worked 3,000 hours per year on average in the US in the late 19th century, we now work 1900 hours per year here in the early 21st century. This has always been the direction of our ultimate aim, to leverage technology so as to work less, so that we can as humans live more. And yet we are now stymieing ourselves. [**In the mid 1980s, we actually began working *more***](https://medium.com/utopia-for-realists/the-solution-to-just-about-everything-working-less-1120e941710a?ref=scottsantens.com#.6vbogl7g0), after reaching a low of around 1800 hours per year. Why are we working 100 hours more per year in the US despite productivity doubling in that same period of time? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1240/1*YOIdkJenrT0KCx5lmu7gEA.gif) Known now as the Great Decoupling, our productivity entirely detached from our earned incomes in the mid 1970s, skyrocketing upwards with the advance of technology while the great majority was left behind. Where all incomes once rose with productivity, now only the incomes of those at the top do. For the rest, there is instead an increasingly dangerous cocktail of growing inequality, falling security, increasing precariousness, and an anger whose source can’t quite be pinpointed. What’s going on? How can capitalism have created so much abundance that there are now even digital goods of zero scarcity due to infinite supply, *and* the entire planet is a global marketplace for goods and services, *and* robots are building our cars and phones, *and* software is providing an increasing number of services, yet capitalism itself can be argued as being responsible for actually eroding the middle class lives of hundreds of millions all over the world? What’s going on when technology is growing at an exponential rate and yet [70% of households in 25 advanced economies saw their earnings drop this century](http://fortune.com/2016/07/13/middle-class-death/?ref=scottsantens.com)? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*es9wVPYC0f6vnrdKEAhCXA.jpeg) What’s going on is that **we’ve conquered scarcity and yet have refused to acknowledge it**. As William Gibson has said, “*The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed*.” Our world no longer physically requires everyone to work so as to successfully meet everyone’s daily demand for basic goods and services, and yet it does still require the spending of money to acquire those goods and services. Markets require money and people, and yet money isn’t *getting* to people. [**There is thus a wrench in the machinery of our own making.**](https://medium.com/basic-income/cutting-the-gordian-knot-of-technological-unemployment-with-unconditional-basic-income-e8df7f8eaa16?ref=scottsantens.com) Just as in any manual transmission car, shifting gears requires pushing in the clutch to disengage the current gear, and whereas that’s usually something we must decide to do, in our case, technology has made that decision for us. **Technology has its foot on the clutch** and so here we are in a global economy that is [paradoxically *slowing* down](https://medium.com/basic-income/our-paradoxical-economy-courtesy-of-technology-and-the-lack-of-basic-income-361f40051de0?ref=scottsantens.com#.bq8f36zf1), despite our being surrounded by more amazing technology at this moment than at any moment in human history. So what do we do? # The Fourth Great Shift Shifting into fourth gear requires the fundamental severing of human labor and income. It critically depends on the provision of [**unconditional basic income**](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com#.jqpnmol5h) **—** a universal dividend set above the poverty line — provided to all as [a birthright as the descendants of those who came before us who created the technology](https://medium.com/economicsecproj/technological-inheritance-and-the-case-for-a-basic-income-ded373a69c8e?ref=scottsantens.com), who paid the taxes that were put into the government-funded research that made all the technology possible, who shifted the previous gears of humanity and enabled us all to reach this point in time where we now face our next great collective choice: Do we provide money to all unconditionally and even [index it to productivity growth](https://medium.com/world-economic-forum/is-the-solution-to-extreme-wealth-inequality-really-alaska-41872632960a?ref=scottsantens.com) so that everyone can forever purchase what the machines are producing? Or do we continue to insist that money must be earned with human labor despite existing in a world where human labor will be increasingly out-competed by machines and robots don’t buy anything? Fourth gear capitalism is not even the great unknown we think it is. We’ve actually seen glimpses of it in action. We’ve seen it in [Namibia](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) where money was provided to all unconditionally and entrepreneurship tripled, **thanks to increased abilities of both producers to** ***produce*** **and consumers to** ***consume***. We’ve seen it in [India](http://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/resources/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Indias-Basic-Income-Experiment-PP21.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) where money was provided to all unconditionally and entrepreneurship tripled compared to control groups. We’ve seen it in [Kenya and Uganda](http://www.forbes.com/sites/hollieslade/2014/02/10/give-directlys-breakthrough-free-money-model-grows-as-evidence-mounts/?ref=scottsantens.com#48230dc8654f) thanks to the charity [GiveDirectly](https://givedirectly.org/basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com), and we’ve seen it in [Liberia](http://www.scottsantens.com/guess-what-happened-when-liberia-tested-a-pilot-program-of-cash-transfers-to-the-extreme-poor) and [Lebanon](https://www.rescue.org/sites/default/files/document/631/emergencyeconomiesevaluationreport-lebanon2014.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) thanks to unconditional cash transfer programs. Entrepreneurship thrives in markets with basic income operating as both startup capital and consumer spending. [F. A. Hayek himself knew this](http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/2016/04/22/the-unconditional-basic-income-and-the-hayekian-price-system/?ref=scottsantens.com). [Milton Friedman knew this](https://medium.com/basic-income/why-milton-friedman-supported-a-guaranteed-income-5-reasons-da6e628f6070?ref=scottsantens.com). Both advocated free markets. Both advocated basic income. Why? Because **markets require everyone has at least some money in order to participate in them**. A market full of customers without cash is like a democracy full of citizens without the right to vote. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1324/1*qKPuu2N2l8G5JljInzIWXQ.jpeg) We even see beyond capitalism itself every time someone with the time and resources to do so, spends their time contributing pages to Wikipedia or open source code to GitHub for no money in return. We see it in [video after video on YouTube](http://www.scottsantens.com/youtube-intrinsic-motivation-window-basic-income), shared with the world for free, created by those with the time and resources to create what they wanted to create for the sake of creation. We see it whenever any [scientist](http://simonthorpesideas.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/science-and-unconditional-basic-income.html?ref=scottsantens.com) or inventor pours their time and resources into the next great discovery, not to get rich, but to peel back the layers of reality to show what is, and what might be. This is the power of intrinsic motivation in action, and [it far surpasses that of extrinsic motivation](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com#.qm7520hse), where people only do things for external rewards like money. It’s a recognition of [Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs](http://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html?ref=scottsantens.com) where once one’s most basic needs are met, one’s focus shifts towards meeting higher needs like social relationships, creativity, learning, and personal achievement. The removal of the daily burden of chasing survival creates an abundance of new potential within the mind, and when that happens, scarcity — humanity’s oldest enemy — is soundly defeated. [No longer weighed down by scarcity, the mind shifts towards long-term thinking, and it’s even comparable to a gain of 14 IQ points](http://www.harvardmagazine.com/2015/05/the-science-of-scarcity?ref=scottsantens.com). Imagine what’s possible when that happens to *billions* of people. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*VAifHomtueZBPSXlL0QE0Q.png) No one stops at levels 1-2 by choice. Suicide is even a response to being stuck there. The ultimate goal for all is the top. We simply no longer live in a world of immutable scarcity. **We live in a world of maldistributed abundance**. The first three gears of capitalism made that possible. But shifting into capitalism’s fourth gear must yet be done and it must be done manually. It will not be done for us. It’s a collective decision, and just like any collective decision, it is best done democratically, not passed down from up on high, but voted up from below. We can even use our newest technologies like the internet, and smartphones, and software to empower us in inventive new ways to finally grasp that great lever of capitalism and pull it together. And with that then accomplished, fifth gear finally becomes possible — [**postcapitalism**](https://medium.com/basic-income/post-capitalism-rise-of-the-collaborative-commons-62b0160a7048?ref=scottsantens.com)— the great undiscovered country of human civilization. It is for this reason I invite you all to do your part in engaging in this collective decision and many more. Become part of the changes like universal basic income and universal health care that need to be made. Lend your voice. Lend your time. Lend your passion. Connect with each other. Connect with your representatives. Connect with ideas. Be a part of the cultural shifting of gears we need to make here in the 21st century. Be a part of humanity, and of your communities. **Engage and together we can move the world forward.** --- ***Special thanks to: Steven Grimm, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Floyd Marinescu, Larry Cohen, Andy Stern, Patrick, Dominic Wyler, Kian Alavi, Evelyn Lawig, Joanna Zarach, Ace Bailey, Justin Walsh, Daragh Ward, Natalie Foster, Gisele Huff, Albert Wenger, Victor Vurpillat, Chris Rauchle, BoNster, Richard Just, Rachel Perkins, Che Wagner, Harmony Klohr, Taressa Strong, Jordan Lejuwaan, Carrie Mclachlan, Paul Godsmark, Daniel Brockman, Allan Free, Lainie Petersen, Vladimir Baranov, Gray Scott, David Ihnen, Katie Doemland, Joe Ballou, Mybasicincome.org, Jack Wagner, Gerald Huff, John David Hodge, Michael Honey, Chris McCoy, Jan Smole, Danielle and Michael Texeira, Stephane Boisvert, Chris Smothers, Joel Leoj, Saura Naderi, Kai Wong, Miranda Midgely, Darrell, Nicolas Pouillard, Georg Baumann, Lisa Hallman, UBIGinc.org, Justin Hebert, Stuart Mark, Jill Weiss, Mark Witham, David Bijl, Andreas, Lawrence W Lee, Allen Bauer, Robert F. Greene, Erhan Altay, Robert Solovay, Masud Shah, Elizabeth Balcar, Casey Young, Thomas Welsh, Amy Shaffer, Kris Roadruck, Dave Shelton, Lee Irving, Kirk Israel, Tony DeStefano, Paolo Narciso, Victor Lau, Martin Jordo, Max Henrion, Catherine MacDonald, Arjun Banker, Walter Schaerer, Topher Hunt, Dan O’Sullivan, Louise Whitmore, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** ## [Would you like to see your name here too?](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Cost of Universal Basic Income is the Net Transfer Amount, Not the Gross Price Tag URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-is-the-net-transfer-amount-not-the-gross-price-tag/ Last updated: 2022-05-17T22:18:15.000Z Imagine a group of 5 people. They have an income distribution of **$10, $20, $30, $50, and $100**. Someone gets [the BIG idea](https://medium.com/basic-income/inequality-and-the-basic-income-guarantee-c8f84d936640?ref=scottsantens.com) 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**. Another way of looking at this result is that the amounts paid were **\-$12.80, -$8.80, -$4.80, $3.20, and $23.20**. The poorest three people paid negative amounts (negative taxation), meaning they received money, and the richest two people paid positive amounts (positive taxation), meaning they lost money. If we add up the negative amounts and the positive amounts, we see that the poorest three received a total of **$26.40**, and the richest two lost that same amount. That is the amount of money that physically changed hands, even though everyone put money into the hat, and everyone got money from the hat. Okay, so here's the question: How much did it cost to make sure everyone received $16.80? Was it $16.80 multiplied by 5, so $84? Or was it $26.40? **The answer is $26.40, which is 31.4% of $84\. The true cost is less than one-third the false cost!** This math problem is what's needed to understand the cost of basic income. Every time someone multiplies the number of people receiving basic income by the amount of basic income, they are saying the correct answer to the above math problem is $84, and that is entirely incorrect. They're calculating the false cost. Such a mistake can also lead to assumptions of inflation, [**which are just as mistaken**](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7?ref=scottsantens.com). Here's another math problem. What is the cost to provide you $12,000 in basic income if you are asked to pay $12,000 to receive it? The answer is $0\. **It carries no cost**. If 1,000 people fit the exact same example, the cost is 1,000 x 0, and that's still zero. Multiplying 1 million by 0 is still 0\. That's how zero works. The true cost of basic income is thus the amount of money provided to net receivers, not net payers (who all cost nothing), *minus* the amount net receivers put into the hat. I calculate this as [**around $900 billion in the U.S.**](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-we-should-all-have-a-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) (based on $12,000 per adult citizen and $4,000 per child) , and this is true for both a [negative income tax](https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-nit-and-unconditional-basic-income-ubi-what-makes-them-the-same-and-what-makes-them-different) (with a 40% clawback rate) and a universal basic income (with a 40% flat tax). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2022/02/0-l8lfakXyxtU6zAgC.png) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2022/02/0-bwhJJz-fSYQlph-Z.png) Fun fact: [Milton Friedman himself knew UBI and NIT had the same cost](http://www.basicincome.org/bien/pdf/NewsFlash3.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). So does [Greg Mankiw](http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2016/07/a-quick-note-on-univeral-basic-income.html?ref=scottsantens.com). > *A basic or citizen's income is not an alternative to a negative income tax. It is simply another way to introduce a negative income tax if it is accompanied with a positive income tax with no exemption. A basic income of a thousand units with a 20 percent rate on earned income is equivalent to a negative income tax with an exemption of five thousand units and a 20 percent rate below and above five thousand units.* \- Milton Friedman So does [Greg Mankiw](http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2016/07/a-quick-note-on-univeral-basic-income.html?ref=scottsantens.com). > “I have seen smart people argue as follows: Policy A is crazy. Why should Bill Gates get a government transfer? He doesn’t need it, and we would need to raise taxes more to pay for it. Policy B is more progressive. It targets the transfer to those who really need it, and the transfer is financed by a smaller tax increase levied only on those with above-average incomes. But here is the rub: The two policies are equivalent. If you look at the net payment (taxes less transfer), everyone is exactly the same under the two plans. The difference is only a matter of framing.” *— Greg Mankiw, Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard University* However, for a cost estimate to be even more accurate, we then need to subtract out all the programs replaced by basic income, and all the tax credits replaced by basic income. That total is in the **hundreds of billions of dollars range** depending on the choices we make, certainly not the $3 trillion gross range or even the $900 billion net transfer range. Meanwhile the full costs of people not having basic income, aka the costs of not eliminating poverty...? Yeah, [**that's well over $3 trillion**](https://www.scottsantens.com/what-america-spends-per-citizen-per-year-40000). Isn't math fun?! With the net cost of basic income now understood, [**here's how I'd fund basic income in the U.S.**](https://medium.com/economicsecproj/how-to-reform-welfare-and-taxes-to-provide-every-american-citizen-with-a-basic-income-bc67d3f4c2b8?ref=scottsantens.com) --- Have a question about basic income? [**Here**](https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq) is a list of links that answers frequently asked questions. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Eating food will fail to reduce malnutrition, new report warns URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/eating-food-will-fail-to-reduce-malnutrition-new-report-warns/ Last updated: 2024-03-05T21:39:04.000Z The OECD recently published [a report](http://www.oecd.org/social/soc/Basic-Income-Policy-Option-2017.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) 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"](https://www.ft.com/content/82334db2-414d-11e7-9d56-25f963e998b2?ref=scottsantens.com) which leads me to explain the title of this here post, which you may have already noticed is satirical. As someone who eats food, you probably realize that there are some issues to be had with stating that eating food can lead to more malnutrition. First of all, what type of food are we talking about here? Meat and vegetables? Or candy and food made out of plastic? The type of food is an important detail. Secondly, if we are talking about actual food, how much food are we talking? Are we talking 2,000 calories per day or 2 calories per day? The amount of food is thus also an important detail. So when someone suggests that eating food will increase malnutrition, we all have enough personal experience to know that although it's theoretically possible, a more accurate title would read, "Eating food that isn't nutritious, or in insufficient quantities, will fail to reduce malnutrition." Hopefully this already makes it a bit more clear that the problem with those reporting on the OECD report is that an example of a more accurate title would read, **"Revenue-neutral partial basic income may fail to reduce poverty in certain countries, OECD says."** Basically the OECD report didn't really look at basic income, because by definition basic income is sufficient to cover basic needs. Instead what the authors did was assume that because the implementation of basic income would require increasing the total revenue pool, that really the only likely way to implement basic income is through what is known in basic income circles as **partial basic income**, or in other words an amount insufficient to eliminate poverty and thus not a full basic income. ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/e480a0a3-b408-4707-91cd-df3bb5987520/Basic-20Income-20Policy-20Option-202017-2.png) What they did then was conclude that **eliminating poverty programs would lead to more poverty if poverty programs were replaced with lower amounts of income that would worsen poverty**. If that sounds like circular logic, that's because it is. Of course a partial basic income of say $100 per month instead of a basic income of $1,000 per month won't decrease poverty if it replaces existing programs that now give $500 per month. That's entirely obvious. That's why $100 per month cannot be called a basic income, at least in the US,but that's exactly what the authors essentially did in many cases. They redefined all amounts of universally provided unconditional cash, however small, as basic income instead of partial basic income, universal income, or base income. On top of this primary assumption and redefining of "basic income", they then focused mainly on revenue neutrality where no taxes are increased, and only cash benefits and tax free allowances are cashed out and provided universally, which means a much smaller revenue pool than could otherwise be obtained by eliminating a lot of tax expenditures and programs they left untouched. On top of this, they made their partial basic income taxable, which again is no longer basic income and instead more like [a negative income tax](https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-nit-and-unconditional-basic-income-ubi-what-makes-them-the-same-and-what-makes-them-different), but with clawback rates that vary according to tax bracket, so isn't really a negative income tax either. It's kind of curious to me why the authors of the OECD report did it in the way they did it. Literally no one seriously interested in basic income is talking about going about basic income in the way they decided to go about it. I would say they likely did it purely to poor cold water on the global basic income discussion, but at the same time, there's actually some really interesting discussion points in the report that show a solid conceptual understanding of basic income's potential, especially in increasing bargaining power through the power to say to no to low wages, and in improving incentives to work by removing the existing disincentives to work that means-tested benefits create through removal of benefits with earned income. It's also quite interesting to see that *it is actually possible* in countries like Italy to go about universalizing cash grants in a revenue neutral way that actually does decrease poverty, due to existing benefits being **so small for the poorest and disproportionately allocated to the richest.** ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/44d62333-c54c-45a9-80dc-e2a1cc1caf95/Basic-20Income-20Policy-20Option-202017.pdf.png) By and large however, I don't find what the OECD did all that interesting. If we cash out existing programs and divide it universally, it is most likely going to leave current beneficiaries worse off. This is why most basic income advocates talk about an amount that is set at or above existing benefits, and which [replaces some welfare programs and tax subsidies, but not others](https://www.scottsantens.com/will-replacing-current-benefits-with-cash-tomorrow-leave-todays-recipients-better-or-worse-off-basic-income-single-parents-welfare). What I would find far more interesting, and something I'd love to see the OECD do next, is to **assume the entire point of basic income is to eliminate poverty, then go country by country figuring out the best way of going about that goal** in a way that would leave everyone but the topmost earners better off. What would the amounts need to be? Which programs and subsidies should be eliminated? Which should be kept entirely or partially? Because revenue will need to be raised to achieve actual basic income, what are the best options in each country for raising that revenue? All of these questions I find far more interesting than "*How much worse off will people be if we eliminate a bunch of programs and give people less money in return?*"The question itself assumes taxes will need to be raised to unrealistic amounts to achieve full basic income, and that right there is the OECD's biggest misconception. They also aren't alone. This misconception is extremely common, and I believe it arises from how different basic income is from any other policy. ### The Instant Rebate of Basic Income Karl Widerquist is in the process of getting [a paper published about this very topic](https://works.bepress.com/widerquist/75/?ref=scottsantens.com), which you can already read, and [I've covered it before as well](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-we-should-all-have-a-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com), but I'll try to summarize it again more plainly here. No other program but universal basic income gives everyone cash in return for everyone paying into it, in the right here and now. Programs like food stamps are mostly funded by those not receiving food stamps. Programs like Social Security are funded by people in their working years and received by people in their retirement years. Programs like Medicaid and Medicare transform their funding into a service. Basic income is unique in being a two-way street. Everyone will give and everyone will get. Here's why it's so important to understand how this works and what it means. What is the cost to me of giving you $100? It is $100 of course. But what's the cost to me of giving you $100, if in return you give me $70? Well, my cost is $30, and your net gain is $30\. But according to OECD logic, and the logic of many others, the cost is $100\. But the only thing that matters is the *net* cost. You would not walk into a store with $20 and decide you couldn't buy a $50 item that includes a $40 instant rebate, because you don't have $50\. All you need is $10\. That's the difference between the price tag and the rebate. That's the actual cost. So when anyone panics over tax increases required for basic income, the actual cost requires subtracting out what people get in return. In other words, **basic income functions like a fully refundable tax credit**. If your annual tax bill right now is $30,000 and to achieve a $12,000 basic income it needs to be raised $10,000, your taxes did not just go up $10,000\. They actually went down $2,000\. You now owe less money in taxes than before. If your taxes go up $24,000 to pay for your $12,000, your actual tax increase is half what the price tag says. This is already how the tax code works for all the tax credits, allowances, and deductions we have. Tax expenditures aren't seen as having any cost and since basic income replaces many tax expenditures, that part shouldn't be seen as costing anything either. Basic income is a way of simplifying the tax code with one large universal fully refundable credit that everyone gets, instead of [the mess of a tax code we have now](http://cfed.org/assets/pdfs/Upside%5FDown%5Fto%5FRight-Side%5FUp%5F2014.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) that's been bought and paid for by special interests. ![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/c4502664-072b-4eb1-a407-a741e879b860/kbjE2bmv_medium.jpg) See, when it comes to basic income, we're all paying different amounts of cash to receive the same amount of cash. Set the basic income high enough, be smart about what it replaces, and the result can be [only 1 out of 5 people paying higher taxes](https://medium.com/basic-income/inequality-and-the-basic-income-guarantee-c8f84d936640?ref=scottsantens.com), and when basic income is taken account as a functioning like a large tax credit, requires of the top 20% of earners tax increases of 10% or less, not 50% or more. For 4 out of 5 people, basic income will increase or at least not in any way reduce their after-tax incomes, and that's true too for existing recipients, as long as making sure no existing recipients are worse off is part of the goal. The details of how we go about basic income are important, and achieving optimal design should be our goal. Since optimal is in the eye of the beholder, this will require discussions across the aisle, and settling on a design will indeed be a challenging process, nation by nation. But [**the goal of such a process should be how to go about basic income in the best way possible**](https://medium.com/economicsecproj/how-to-reform-welfare-and-taxes-to-provide-every-american-citizen-with-a-basic-income-bc67d3f4c2b8?ref=scottsantens.com), not how to go about it based on false assumptions and an insistence on cannibalizing existing programs so as to avoid any revenue increases. Note that I said *revenue* increases not *tax* increases, because [taxes aren't even theoretically necessary for basic income, especially not income taxes](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/extreme-wealth-inequality-alaska-model/?ref=scottsantens.com). There are other ways of creating the basic income revenue pool, like for example [removing the ability of banks to create our money supply out of debt, and instead making it ourselves debt-free without expanding the total money supply](http://www.basicincome.org/bien/pdf/2000Huber.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Or we may even want to [expand the money supply in a technologically deflationary environment](https://medium.com/emergent-culture/an-exciting-new-idea-in-basic-income-b1b7bf622845?ref=scottsantens.com) with an actual goal of inflation to fight deflation, in which case we could just create everyone's entire basic income out of thin air, and index the basic income to inflation to maintain purchasing power. That may sound crazy, but [helicopter money is already starting to be seriously considered all over the world](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/29/upshot/helicopter-money-why-some-economists-are-talking-about-dropping-money-from-the-sky.html?ref=scottsantens.com). The point is we have options. I suggest we look into them instead of just assuming the status quo is etched in tablets handed down by sky gods. We live in a time of clickbait and fake news. Don't just get your information from titles. Don't even just read the articles. Check the sources. Don't even just check the sources. Read the sources. I know I know, it's a pain in the ass to spend that kind of time digesting news and applying critical thinking. This is one of the reasons I think basic income is so important, so that we can all take the time necessary to look deeper into things. But until we all do have basic income, this is just a friendly reminder to not trust everything you read, even from sources like the OECD or those quoting the OECD. The details matter, and details can be left out or altered for the purposes of clicks. Heck, don't even trust me either. Read the OECD report yourself because any summary leaves out details that you may personally find extremely important or interesting, and look into basic income for yourself because no one article will contain everything you need to know to reach your own conclusion. [There's a lot to read out there and there's more every day](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/?ref=scottsantens.com). I urge you to dive on in. You can even start [**here**](https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq) with this list of frequently asked questions! --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### How to Reform Welfare and Taxes to Provide Every American Citizen with a Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/how-to-reform-welfare-and-taxes-to-provide-every-american-citizen-with-universal-basic-income-ubi-funding-plan/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T23:12:58.000Z ## A detailed funding plan for cross-partisan implementation of universal basic income in the United States Some of the most common questions ever asked in regards to the idea of a [universal basic income (UBI)](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-we-should-all-have-a-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) are in regards to the details. “*How much income? Who gets it? Who pays for it? How is it paid for? What does it replace?*” These are all great and important questions, but the answers vary from person to person, because the answers are a matter of personal and political preferences when it comes to fine-grained details. With that said, after years of studying basic income, below you will find what I currently believe in May of 2017 are the details of an optimally designed UBI blueprint. First, how much are we talking about? In the United States, I suggest starting with the definition of poverty we already use, and eliminating poverty entirely. According to [2017 federal poverty guidelines](http://familiesusa.org/product/federal-poverty-guidelines?ref=scottsantens.com), this means if we were to pass legislation tomorrow, it would need to be $12,060 per adult citizen and $4,180 per dependent under 18\. [The amount for kids is imperative](http://www.scottsantens.com/why-should-adults-with-kids-get-more-basic-income-child-allowances) so that income floors scale according to household sizes. A child basic income is also in large part a revenue neutral consolidation of existing expenditures presently unequally distributed. However, for reasons I will explain below, I suggest adding 10% to each amount, so **$13,266 ($1,105/mo) per adult citizen and $4,598 ($383/mo) per citizen under 18**. Taking into consideration that we are talking about US citizens only (which would also incentivize legal immigration) who comprise an estimated 92.8% of the population, this particular basic income design requires finding about $3.4 trillion in total (not net) revenue. This may sound like a very big number. It is. Some people even just stop right there or decide we have to eliminate ALL government programs to do it. But it’s not as big as you may think, and we don’t have to eliminate everything to use a great deal of existing revenue. ## Welfare state reform First, there are [welfare programs](https://singlemotherguide.com/federal-welfare-programs/?ref=scottsantens.com) we can eliminate entirely once basic income is enacted into law. Food and nutrition assistance programs ([$108 billion](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year%5Fspending%5F2017USbn%5F18bs6n%5F20303135%5F609%5F604%5F551%5F605?ref=scottsantens.com#usgs302)) and temporary assistance for needy families ($17 billion) for example would both be better accomplished by simply giving people money without conditions. TANF especially needs to be fully replaced for [reasons I’ve described previously](http://www.scottsantens.com/tanf-is-terrible). It’s important to note my plan will **not** touch health care, child care, or housing, although we will still spend less on all of these for reasons I’ll explain further down. ***Basic income revenue pool: $125 billion | Remaining need: $3.27 trillion*** ## Invisible welfare state reform ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1058/1*GTzmxcDyuYQG-iXUjxGFFw.png) Source: [From Upside Down to Right-Side Up](http://cfed.org/assets/pdfs/Upside%5FDown%5Fto%5FRight-Side%5FUp%5F2014.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) Second, there are welfare programs in existence that we don’t tend to see as welfare because they are targeted mostly toward those at the top of the income and wealth spectrum. They’re called [tax expenditures](https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/Documents/Tax-Expenditures-FY2016.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Such invisible welfare programs that disproportionately reduce tax bills are essentially the same thing as not reducing taxes and just giving people money, and so they too can be entirely replaced by basic income. They include: the earned income credit ($73 billion), the child tax credit ($56 billion), home ownership tax expenditures ($340 billion), married filing jointly preferential tax treatment ($70 billion), the tax break on pensions ($160 billion), fossil fuel subsidies ($33 billion), and treating capital gains differently than ordinary income ($160 billion). ***Basic income revenue pool: $1.02 trillion | Remaining need: $2.38 trillion*** ## Social Security reform Next, there are existing programs that can be considered as proto-basic incomes that are mostly achieved through the Social Security system like retirement pensions and disability incomes. I believe these programs should be reduced because they were designed without basic income in mind, but should function supplementally in a way that shifts some revenue to the basic income revenue pool, in a way that leaves all recipients better off. This can be achieved by replacing just one of every three dollars with basic income. For example, someone receiving $1,500/mo in Social Security right now would instead receive $1,000/mo in Social Security in addition to their $1,105/mo in basic income, for a new total of $2,105/mo leaving them $605/mo better off. Someone receiving $2,100/mo in disability income would instead receive $1,400/mo in addition to their $1,105/mo in basic income for a new total of $2,505/mo leaving them $405/mo better off. Applying this method yields the following revenue shifted to UBI: Social Security ($324.2 billion), SSI ($20.6 billion), veteran pensions ($29 billion), and unemployment insurance ($13 billion). I also recommend lifting the cap on Social Security so that everyone pays in no matter how much they earn, which would raise an additional $380 billion. ***Basic income revenue pool: $1.78 trillion | Remaining need: $2.25 trillion*** At this point I’d like to introduce some new taxes, none of which involve raising any tax rates on ordinary salaries and wages, and all of which are highly progressive when combined with basic income. ## Carbon tax (fee and dividend) ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1200/1*IeX2KwSi0_W4Wm3M5T4bwA.png) The best way to implement a carbon tax is to rebate the money back to everyone so that people are economically better off despite higher prices. ([Graph by Jeff Spross](http://theweek.com/articles/696282/how-make-carbon-tax-insanely-popular?ref=scottsantens.com)) The most important new tax for the survival of our species is in my opinion [a revenue-neutral carbon tax](https://www.peri.umass.edu/media/k2/attachments/WP434.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). I suggest starting at $50/ton with annual increases of $15/ton. The result would be an immediate $150 billion in the first year that would grow annually in a way that results in a basic income that also grows annually, and carbon pollution that shrinks annually. Using [a model provided by the Carbon Tax Center](http://www.komanoff.net/fossil/CTC%5FCarbon%5FTax%5FModel.xlsx?ref=scottsantens.com), I’ve calculated that In just five years, it could be providing everyone over $100 per month and have reduced CO2 pollution levels to a third of what they were back in 2005, while going on to cut them in half by 2030\. By 2040 it could be distributing $1.5 trillion to all citizens as co-owners of the sky they’re paying more to pollute 60% less. ***Basic income revenue pool: $1.93 trillion | Remaining need: $1.47 trillion*** ## Robin Hood tax (FTT) ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1086/1*0y34Y4E01vgOqTqBU6DLMw.png) [Who Rules America?](http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html?ref=scottsantens.com) I suggest a financial transaction tax starting at 0.34% based on [a microsimulation by Urban-Brookings](https://www.brookings.edu/research/financial-transaction-taxes-in-theory-and-practice-2/?ref=scottsantens.com) which concluded it as the maximum rate before changes in behavior result in revenue decline. This would be a tiny but very progressive tax on the financial transactions of mostly the wealthiest (the top 1% own about 50% of all financial investments and the bottom 50% own about 1%) that would raise an estimated $75 billion and make financial markets more stable by putting a price on destabilizing and rent-seeking high frequency trading. ***Basic income revenue pool: $2.01 trillion | Remaining need: $1.39 trillion*** ## Seigniorage reform ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*5JmBVLynrg5TW17r-Xl6QQ.png) Private expansion of money supply that could have benefited citizens instead of banks It may come as a surprise to learn that money itself is a public good that’s now almost entirely created into existence not publicly by government “printing” but privately as digital accounting entries on commercial bank ledgers. Since this money creation is free for banks, and interest on it is charged, the interest is essentially a private tax that serves as a tool of upward redistribution. **It’s welfare for bankers**. By replacing debt-based private money creation through[ seigniorage reform](http://www.basicincome.org/bien/pdf/2000Huber.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) with debt-free public money creation, and simultaneously removing the ability of banks to create new money, we could not only fund basic income in a way that requires no taxes, but it could also help prevent future bank-created market crashes. Considering that the [M1 money supply has been expanded by $2 trillion since 2008](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL?ref=scottsantens.com), that’s about $213 billion per year we could have instead just created ourselves in the hands of all citizens equally, no taxes required. *(Note: worried about inflation? Read* [*my deep dive analysis*](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7?ref=scottsantens.com) *of that fear.)* ***Basic income revenue pool: $2.22 trillion | Remaining need: $1.18 trillion*** ## Value-added tax (VAT) Whereas income taxes are direct and unavoidable as long as earning income through work is required to live, consumption taxes are indirect and avoidable because they’re only paid upon purchase. We are familiar with this in the US in the form of sales taxes, but sales taxes are only applied on the final product. A value-added tax is applied at each step along the chain of production, and thus is a tax far more difficult to evade paying. [A 10% VAT could generate around $750 billion per year](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2012-05-02/value-added-tax-would-raise-tons-for-u-s-coffers?ref=scottsantens.com) in new revenue. It would also function as a clawback mechanism for basic income similar to a [negative income tax](http://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-nit-and-unconditional-basic-income-ubi-what-makes-them-the-same-and-what-makes-them-different) with a 10% clawback rate, where individuals consuming more than $132,660 per year would pay more in taxes than what they receive in UBI, while all those consuming less would receive more in UBI than they pay. Essentially, with a 10% VAT, everyone spending more than $132,660 would be funding their own $13,266 basic income and thus carry no cost to any other taxpayer. A 10% VAT applied to all purchases in the US would also raise the poverty line about 10%, which is the reason the basic income I recommend is 10% above the existing federal poverty line. Also, for those who fear the idea of people taking their basic incomes and earning no additional income, it would mean that aside from the other 90% that gets transformed into wages and salaries through purchases of goods and services, 10% of their basic incomes would go right back into funding everyone else’s basic income. *(Note: an alternative to VAT could be* [*a tiny tax on* ***all*** *electronic transactions*](https://www.academia.edu/5305083/The%5FAutomated%5FPayment%5FTransaction%5FAPT%5FTax?ref=scottsantens.com)*)* ***Basic income revenue pool: $2.97 trillion | Remaining need: $428 billion*** ## Land-value tax (LVT) Last but not least, in fact in my opinion [**most important of all**](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/extreme-wealth-inequality-alaska-model?ref=scottsantens.com) economically in the long-term as a new tax to increasingly replace existing taxes with, is a tax on the unimproved value of land — aka land-value taxation or LVT. Not to be confused with property taxes that tax what’s built on land, LVT taxes the total value of real estate minus what’s built on it. The owner of a high-rise apartment building providing homes to hundreds of families would pay the same tax as an identical adjacent lot that stands empty, thus providing a disincentive to idle speculation and an incentive to develop unused and underused space. The value of land is perhaps the best example of all of the wealth we all co-create, because the value of land depends entirely on everything and everyone that exists *around* it, not on it. If all your neighbors burn down their houses, your house will be worth less. If all your neighbors fix up their houses, your house will be worth more. The increase in value is clearly *collectivel*y (not individually) generated. Since the 1980s, housing prices in the US have increased by 5% on average (minus the real estate bubble creation and burst), which means a 5% tax levied on land values and distributed to all as basic income would be distributing the value created *by* everyone *to* everyone. It would raise an estimated $750 billion and function as an entirely unavoidable tax on both corporations and individuals alike. It would also serve alongside the VAT as an additional clawback mechanism, where all owners of land totaling more than $265,320 would pay more in LVT than received in basic income. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1048/1*rV_JLHpEiAFTY0dOpdTXCw.png) Source: [Who Rules America?](http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html?ref=scottsantens.com) This combination would be hugely progressive, not only economically but racially, because the top 10% own 78% of all non-home real estate, and where the median white household has around $76,000 in home value wealth, the median black household has only around $1,500 in home value wealth. In other words, under this plan, median white households (not counting any other taxes but LVT) would potentially be net receivers of $9,466 in basic income and median black households would be net receivers of $12,966 in basic income. For those hoping for [a UBI that provides extra as reparations](http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality-race/undercommons-no-racial-justice-without-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com), this plan achieves that by clawing back less from African Americans, not for being African American, but for being systematically excluded from property ownership for centuries. ***Basic income revenue pool: $3.72 trillion | Remaining need: -$322 billion*** This proposed basic income plan is not only fully funded at this point, but has surpassed the mark by over $300 billion. However, I’m still not done, as I firmly believe basic income needs to (aside from being indexed to inflation) grow as productivity grows, so now we need to look at ways of accomplishing what is effectively indexation of basic income to the automation of labor. ## Prosperity dividend ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*E40e_LeUq8ApJJtoYiY7Fw.png) As I’ve written about previously, [**Alaska points the way forward**](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/extreme-wealth-inequality-alaska-model?ref=scottsantens.com) as a model to expand upon. Economic rent should be diverted from rentiers and back to citizens through recognition of citizen co-ownership of [natural common assets like water and minerals, and social common assets like big data and patent royalties](https://www.academia.edu/20148953/Applying%5Fthe%5FAlaska%5Fmodel%5Fin%5Fa%5FResource-Poor%5FState?ref=scottsantens.com), with that revenue feeding into a national fund whose purpose is universal dividends. There are some very clever methods of achieving this already being proposed. Renowned economist[ Yanis Varoufakis](https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/basic-income-funded-by-capital-income-by-yanis-varoufakis-2016-10?ref=scottsantens.com) has suggested that because taxpayer money has funded so much of the technology around us, like for example [the iPhone](https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/basic-income-funded-by-capital-income-by-yanis-varoufakis-2016-10?ref=scottsantens.com), the process of filing for every new IPO should involve a percentage of those shares being added to a giant sovereign wealth fund, like in Alaska, whose dividends will pay into the total basic income pool.[ ](http://robertreich.org/post/128058937635?ref=scottsantens.com)[Robert Reich](http://robertreich.org/post/128058937635?ref=scottsantens.com) has suggested that because governments are the ones providing patent and trademark protections for the technologies that are eliminating jobs, that a share of the profits from that protection should go to citizens as the condition of such protection. Just as an annually rising carbon fee could be returned to us all as a dividend for our co-ownership of the air, I suggest that **an annually rising intellectual property fee** could be added to any intellectual property wishing to be monopolistically excluded from the public domain, with the revenue returned to us as co-investors of the government granting such protection. I also suggest that big data should be seen as a new form of property being digitally created by everyone through everything we do, and that as a result, citizens should see a percentage of the money derived from it as a [big data dividend](http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/universal-basic-income-data-advertising-facebook-google-profit-from-posts-reward-hard-work-data-a7567751.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Companies like Facebook could pay into the basic income pool a percentage of what they earn from selling our data as a royalty for mining us like oil fields. There are a lot of ways to grow basic income from something that just covers the purchase of essentials into something more like a prosperity dividend that covers far more than the basics over the decades to come. Let’s figure them out. The automation of human labor demands it, as does human flourishing. ## Overall savings One of the main points of division among supporters of basic income is the choice of eliminating the welfare state or supplementing it. I’ve already covered how this is a false choice with my suggestion of a partial transformation of the Social Security system into a top-up program of payments of reduced size, but there is I think a key point to consider as a grand compromise. **If considered identical to ordinary income for the purpose of welfare qualification, the basic income will raise people’s total incomes above the point of qualifying for many existing welfare programs due to their very means-tested nature**. This would greatly reduce the benefits many programs provide, some even to nothing, just as working a job would, without actually eliminating anything at all. Take Medicaid for example. Right now to qualify, one must be earning less than 138% of the poverty line. This means that if we treat a basic income set at the poverty level as an increase of everyone’s earned incomes, only those earning 38% of the poverty line right now will still qualify for Medicaid after UBI, just as they would no longer qualify after getting an equivalent raise through their employer right now. That could effectively lower the total Medicaid bill from $650 billion per year to under $200 billion. Those earning more than 38% of the poverty line who previously received Medicaid would instead receive ACA (assuming it isn’t repealed and replaced) subsidies to afford private health insurance in their state market exchanges, and those currently receiving subsidies who are earning more than 300% of the poverty line right now would no longer qualify for them. Looking beyond Medicaid at all means-tested programs designed to help those living in poverty, lifting everyone above the poverty line would result in many programs becoming entirely pointless based on their own existing definitions of deciding who is deserving of help and who isn’t. If the only people deserving of help are those earning less than $12,000 per year, then after UBI is enacted, no one is deserving of that help anymore having newly joined the ranks of the undeserving. With that said, when it comes to Medicaid in particular, [I think the money we no longer spend on Medicaid should instead be used to help fund true **universal health care**](https://medium.com/basic-income/love-loss-and-a-greater-society-a236d0f98f6b?ref=scottsantens.com), but when it comes to all other non-healthcare-related programs that people no longer qualify for, that is money already being raised that I think should instead go to lowering taxes, paying down the national debt, increasing the basic income, or some politically palatable mix of all three. Additionally, no discussion of the cost of basic income and the savings it stands to provide is complete without asking the cost of *not* implementing basic income. How much are we spending right now on the full costs of poverty, inequality, and insecurity in the form of all the crime, poor health outcomes, worse educational outcomes, and reduced productivity for example that would not exist with basic income? [I’ve attempted to calculate this myself](http://www.scottsantens.com/what-america-spends-per-citizen-per-year-40000), and I think the amount, whatever it is, is greater than the cost of this UBI plan. In other words, basic income entirely pays for itself by reducing countless other costs that we currently consider entirely normal to pay, across all of society. Basic income is akin to a vaccine, or a strategy of fire prevention versus fire fighting. [**It’s an ounce of prevention instead of a pound of cure**](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com). ## Short-term strategy The above combination of revenue sources and entirely new funding methods has the potential to bring in multiple existing constituencies — each already advocating for these ideas albeit separately — while also enhancing the ability to adjust the basic income over time by creating a series of new economic dials. Additionally, by simplifying the income tax code and implementing these new taxes, fees, and royalties [universally](https://www.tulevaisuustalo.fi/en/articles/basic-income-new-universalism/?ref=scottsantens.com) as part of putting money into the pockets of citizens directly without strings instead of indirectly with strings, citizens may show greater support for further improvements over time, to increase the basic income or further redistribute existing tax burdens. There is also a purposeful modularity to this plan, where parts can be pulled out and implemented on their own, as strategic steps toward the larger plan. For example, the passage of a national carbon fee and dividend policy should be seen as successfully taking a big step toward a full UBI, as would initiatives to get such policies implemented at the state level. If everyone is already receiving a $100 per month carbon dividend, a full basic income policy is then $100 per month cheaper to implement. Full UBI implementation would then also be less of a shock to the economy with people going from $100 per month to $1,100 per month instead of from $0 per month to $1,100 per month. (Note: phasing in UBI over a matter of say five years may still be wise though.) ## Long-term strategy A key detail of any well-designed basic income plan is to make sure it is at the very least indexed to rise automatically with inflation so that the value does not erode over time. But an optimally-designed basic income in my opinion will rise with the growth of the economy as a whole. At the moment, this means automatic indexation with inflation-adjusted GDP. However, being that [GDP itself needs to start being questioned](https://medium.com/basic-income/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a?ref=scottsantens.com), especially after the adoption of basic income where everyone is more able to engage in unpaid work untracked by GDP, we will at some point need to index basic income to this new measure, whatever it ends up being, that’s a more accurate reflection of our increasing wealth generation and our growing technological ability to do more with less. Additionally, a counter-cyclical element is optimal, so that during recessions, the basic income does not shrink along with the economy. This is one of the reasons I believe the citizen seigniorage element to be so important, so that in times of economic contraction or even inability to hit yearly inflation targets due to [exponential technological deflation](https://medium.com/emergent-culture/an-exciting-new-idea-in-basic-income-b1b7bf622845?ref=scottsantens.com), this component can be ramped up by the Federal Reserve without the need for legislative process, to function as essentially quantitative easing for the people (QEP), and also ramped down in the case of an overheating economy. To illustrate this, think of a basic income of $1,500 per month where $1,200 of it is indexed to real GDP, $100 is new money, $100 is the carbon dividend component, and $100 is the natural and digital resource-based national wealth fund dividend component. In the case of economic contraction, the $1,500 part may shrink to $1,400, but the Fed could then decide to increase their $100 to $300 to stimulate the economy in time of need. Once the economy is growing again, this amount could then be reduced back to $100, or even $0 if inflation targets are surpassed and it would be preferred to interest rate hikes. Meanwhile, the $1,500 component could be adjusted at any time by adjusting the tax components. Perhaps the LVT would be seen as especially effective and thus increased from 5% to 10% for an extra $200 per month for everyone. Or the VAT could be increased or decreased to disincentivize or incentivize consumption while adjusting the amount of basic income or other taxes. And the $100 national wealth fund component? That would be growing year after year as IPO stock after IPO stock gets added to it, such that it would hopefully after decades, surpass the tax-funded component of the entire basic income package. In total, it could all then be considered as far more than basic income. It could be **prosperity income**. ## Conclusion Hopefully this all helps illustrate what I mean by economic dials and UBI optimization. The basic income should be designed with flexibility and long-term viability in mind. It should operate as a platform we construct above the poverty line, that we can continue ratcheting up year after year ever further above the poverty line, but at any point adjust and optimize through ongoing funding method decisions. By combining tax reform and welfare reform along with the introduction of new **non-income-based** taxes, especially [those designed to correct for market externalities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian%5Ftax?ref=scottsantens.com), where the resulting revenue goes to all citizens equally, I believe basic income can more strongly appeal to both the left and the right, and through its adoption, we can simultaneously introduce long-needed additional improvements like the public creation of money, the reduction of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the discouragement of rent extraction, the sharing of naturally created and collectively created wealth, and the predistribution of the great wealth being generated by the technology we all effectively paid to research and develop. **This is my proposal for a better future. What’s yours?** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Cutting the Gordian Knot of Technological Unemployment with Unconditional Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/cutting-the-gordian-knot-of-technological-unemployment-with-unconditional-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T22:58:49.000Z ## Invisible Sheep, the Missing Right, and the Return of Common Wealth *The following essay is a pre-edited and updated version of my chapter published in the book: [Surviving the Machine Age](https://amzn.to/3sPQG5k?ref=scottsantens.com), published by Palgrave Macmillan.* In the opening of the film *2001: A Space Odyssey*, viewers are shown a historic moment in time where primitive man used the first tool. It was a bone, and used like a club, it allowed a physically weaker group to overpower a physically stronger group. The story is of course fictional, but at some point in time we as humans did use our first tool, and ever since that day, directly because of our tool usage, we as a species have been able to accomplish increasingly more with increasingly less. Buckminster Fuller referred to this process as “[ephemeralization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeralization?ref=scottsantens.com).” The theoretical endpoint of this process exists as an asymptote that we can only approach but never reach, where we gain the ability to accomplish everything with nothing. This should sound great. It is. But there’s a catch. There’s always a catch. ## What’s the catch? The catch is of our own making. The catch, and it’s a big one, is two-fold. First, we require the exchange of money for the basic necessities of life like food and shelter. And second, we require the exchange of work in order to obtain money. The result of this pairing is that we systematically require the exchange of work to stay alive. So as long as everyone can exchange their labor for income, moral issues of involuntary servitude aside, everyone can then theoretically survive in a system where private property is established and enforced. However, tool use throws an unavoidable wrench into this system. **That wrench is technological unemployment.** The ability to find paid work is rooted within supply and demand. If there is a demand for your labor, and few can supply it in the same way you do, you will do well. If many can supply it just like you, you may not do so well, but you may also manage to get by if you’re lucky. However, [we’ve been busy building tools far beyond those made out of bone](https://medium.com/basic-income/deep-learning-is-going-to-teach-us-all-the-lesson-of-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines-7c6442e37a49?ref=scottsantens.com), and these newer tools are increasingly able to meet our demand for labor without any need for us. So the question becomes, if machines can supply the demand for labor, and at a lower price point, what happens to the ability of living human beings to work, and therefore to live, and even to obtain what all the machines are producing? There can only be three solutions to this self-created conundrum based on our two-fold catch. We can either stop requiring the exchange of money for basic needs, essentially making certain things like food, water, and shelter entirely free. Or we can guarantee that everyone can always find paid work for enough income to exchange for the fulfillment of basic needs. Or we can stop requiring the exchange of work for money by paying everyone an income whether they work or not, and the amount would just need to be sufficient enough to cover basic needs. The first option would destroy the price system for basic goods and services. This would in turn destroy the ability to calculate just what to produce, how much of it produce, and where it’s needed. This option is a [planned economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned%5Feconomy?ref=scottsantens.com) for basic goods and services. The second would guarantee that in a world of machines able to do an increasing amount of work better than us humans, the work we could guarantee to ourselves would be increasingly pointless — the equivalent of digging holes and filling them. This is the [job guarantee (JG)](http://www.widerquist.com/usbig/efficiency.html?ref=scottsantens.com). The third would fully preserve the price system and entirely avoid the pitfalls of unnecessary work. In fact, it would not only preserve the price system, but [enhance it](http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/2016/04/22/the-unconditional-basic-income-and-the-hayekian-price-system/?ref=scottsantens.com), and it would not only avoid the creation of unnecessary work, it would [reduce it](https://aeon.co/essays/what-if-jobs-are-not-the-solution-but-the-problem?ref=scottsantens.com). That third option is the [unconditional basic income (UBI)](https://medium.com/world-economic-forum/why-we-should-all-have-a-basic-income-7177d5b339ec?ref=scottsantens.com). ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*rJjbz92-JYJKEut47Zg0hQ.jpeg) “Gordian what?” — Alexander the Great If technological unemployment is the Gordian knot of the 21st century, basic income is the sword that cuts through it. By simply severing the connection between income and work through the unconditional provision of an income for life always sufficient for basic needs, the fear of technological unemployment is removed. It doesn’t stop there though, because the right to a basic income has [repercussions beyond the removal of fear](https://medium.com/basic-income/human-park-a-mammals-guide-to-stress-free-living-17f6cab007b3?ref=scottsantens.com), and these repercussions are themselves systemically transformative. To understand just how transformative basic income thus stands to be, we must first more closely examine the full magnitude of technological unemployment as something that is not a problem that exists in the future, but one that is already here. To claim everyone is just crying wolf is false. Sheep are actively being eaten as we speak. We just don’t choose to see it. Then we must look at the economic system we’ve created with new eyes to see the core problem that’s been with us for so long we accept it as normal, and that’s the inability of anyone without sufficient property to say no to working for those who own most of it. And finally we must come to recognize our interdependence within an economic system where our growing productivity is our common heritage, and thus our common wealth no one person or group can claim a monopoly to. As productivity grows with ongoing automation, as too should the basic income grow as a kind of prosperity dividend. What is at first basic should eventually be the right of every citizen shareholder to the vast wealth of an automated nation. ## Invisible Sheep Warnings of oncoming technological unemployment have been with us for over a century. Over and over again someone has called attention to the ability of capital in the form of machines to replace labor in the form of humans. This fear has been expressed so often, people refer to it as the [Luddite Fallacy](http://www.scottsantens.com/debunking-the-debunking-of-humans-need-not-apply-and-more-the-fallacy-of-the-luddite-fallacy). It’s actively considered fallacious to point out the very real potential that machines can do the work of humans to the point that human labor sees as much demand as horse labor after the introduction of cars. And so here we are today, where very smart people are looking around at all the jobs that still exist and are actively being created, and then claiming it as evidence in support of a perceived fantasy of technological unemployment. The thing is, we aren’t looking closely enough at the jobs we have, because we need jobs, and thus it’s in our own interest to not look closely enough. Never underestimate the unwillingness of someone to see the reality, if their lives depend on seeing a fantasy. The invention of the computer did indeed change the way we work forever. Beginning in the 70s, [we have been eliminating jobs involving a medium amount of skill](https://medium.com/basic-income/everything-you-think-you-know-about-the-history-and-future-of-jobs-is-likely-wrong-4f84e3a8945e?ref=scottsantens.com) — consider, for instance, manufacturing as we replaced car assembly line workers with robots. And what jobs we couldn’t automate, we used our new technologies to pack up and ship offshore to places like China and India where labor was cheaper. In place of those jobs that made up the heart of the middle class, we created and grew the service industry in its place. For decades we’ve created more and more low skill jobs — think fast food restaurants — to fill the holes in the labor market cored out by technology. [Since 1990 even the growth of jobs defined as involving routine tasks has ended](https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2016/january/jobs-involving-routine-tasks-arent-growing?ref=scottsantens.com). More than that, because not having a job and simultaneously not being impoverished is something we’ve never really allowed as a real choice, we’ve perpetuated and even created jobs that need not exist. In an article for *Strike! Magazine* in August of 2013, David Graeber refers to this kind of employment as “[bullshit jobs](http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/?ref=scottsantens.com),” e.g. lobbyists and telemarketers as opposed to actually important work like refuse collection and nursing. This is what’s likely behind the huge percentages of people all over the world who don’t feel engaged or even feel actively disengaged by their jobs — [estimated at 87 percent](http://www.gallup.com/poll/165269/worldwide-employees-engaged-work.aspx?ref=scottsantens.com). People are increasingly spending their days in jobs where they are not actually working, plastered instead to their social network feeds and smartphones. People are clocking in [47 hours](http://www.gallup.com/poll/175286/hour-workweek-actually-longer-seven-hours.aspx?ref=scottsantens.com) of work a week in jobs that require only 40 and oftentimes working for only [25–30 hours](https://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=1719&aid=-1&ref=scottsantens.com). This is a huge [drag on productivity](https://medium.com/basic-income/everything-you-think-you-know-about-the-history-and-future-of-jobs-is-likely-wrong-4f84e3a8945e?ref=scottsantens.com) and a monumental waste of human potential. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/348/1*vnmwS16RWB3LAWlCQAYYUw.png) Meanwhile, it’s more than just the binary situation of job or no job. [Jobs themselves have been in the process of transforming](http://www.horizons.gc.ca/eng/content/canada-and-changing-nature-work?ref=scottsantens.com) from full-time decades-long careers to a series of non-full-time alternative jobs that are bounced among in terms of years, months, and even hours instead of decades. This century alone something new has taken over, and that’s the growth of these forms of alternative work where people are no longer really considered employees but alternative workers. Such alternative work is in the form of temp agency workers, on-call workers, independent contractors, and freelancers. Some call it the 1099 economy, short for the different form required by the IRS at tax time for “nonemployees.” In fact, [since 2005, all nine million net newly created jobs are in this sector](http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/lkatz/files/katz%5Fkrueger%5Fcws%5Fv3.pdf?m=1459290955&ref=scottsantens.com). It’s the rise of short-term and self-employment where employee benefits and rights have gone by the wayside, and though [many love the greater sense of autonomy](https://www.slideshare.net/IntuitInc/dispatches-from-the-new-economy-the-ondemand-workforce-72248688?ref=scottsantens.com), a greater sense of insecurity comes right along with it. Even more recently the gig economy has been born, where self-employment has been taskified, and it’s up to everyone to patch together sufficient income on a minute by minute basis, never knowing for sure if they’ll be able to cover the rent like they once could with a long-term, steady paycheck. All the above is the invisible flock of sheep being eaten one by one as we turn our heads away and claim technological unemployment is a fantasy. Technological unemployment cannot exist in the way we’ve always feared, where no new jobs are created as a result of elimination, as long as we require the existence of jobs. We will instead fill that hole with [useless jobs](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/humanity-needs-universal-%5Fb%5F9599198.html?ref=scottsantens.com), and jobs ripe for replacement as soon as the technology becomes cheaper than the cost of desperate workers willing to work for handfuls of pocket change in order to get by. Technological unemployment is so much more than actual unemployment. Because technology allows the greater granularity of breaking jobs into tasks — taskification — another facet of technological unemployment is technological underemployment. In other words, it’s not just about automation, it’s about *atomization*. Meanwhile [our existing safety nets are not built to handle such realities](https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s one thing to maybe once in a lifetime need to meet with a program administrator and jump through their hoops for financial assistance. It’s entirely another for bureaucracy to become a perpetual fact of life, where you never know if you’ll meet the requirements, and you must make the decision of whether taking that part-time job/gig as an Uber driver is even worth it if you’re going to lose your benefits and be faced with the possibility of trying to jump through all those hoops all over again. [Our safety nets are not built for flexibility](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-progressive-case-for-replacing-the-welfare-state-with-basic-income-e8bd02c5875e?ref=scottsantens.com). They are sticky. They ensnare. They trap. What we need is a firm non-stick springboard of a floor that lies underneath everyone and requires no bureaucracy. It would always be there. It would be under full-timers. It would be under part-timers. It would be under sub-contractors. It would be underneath everyone in the gig economy. It would even be under [would-be entrepreneurs](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-will-accelerate-innovation-by-reducing-our-fear-of-failure-b81ee65a254?ref=scottsantens.com). Unconditional basic income would be such a bureaucracy-free universal floor built for maximum flexibility and propulsion. The time to prepare ourselves for the future was yesterday. The effects of technology are not around the corner. They’re in our past and they’re here right now. And it’s directly because we’ve never instituted basic income, and in so doing made working fully voluntary, that we’ve not allowed our jobs to disappear without replacement. **The boy cried wolf, and the boy was right**. We just happen to have created a world where seeing dead sheep is considered delusional, when really the world where we create useless work and look the other way as inequality grows and economic security shrinks is what’s truly delusional. The granting of a basic income will release us all from this collective delusion. ## The Missing Right What lies at the heart of the invisible sheep problem is our inability to say no to jobs. [Without that power, we are effectively enslaved](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com). To live we must eat. To eat we must have money. To have money we must sell our labor. There is no real option to just live off the land with our own sweat because all the land is owned. And so we must toil for those who own land. There is no other name for that but slavery, but we don’t call it that. Instead we call it the labor market. But **anyone interested in free markets must care about free people within those markets**, and the only way for people to be free is to be granted the right of refusal to work for others. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*xuycRCXoDx-x0vUipxW69w.png) Once one understands how important the right of refusal is, much more comes into focus. [There can be no individual bargaining power without the right to refuse](https://medium.com/basic-income/true-freedom-comes-with-basic-income-7ff1368e170?ref=scottsantens.com). Being able to walk away means being able to negotiate the true value of human labor. If human labor were thus priced accurately in a free labor market, low demand jobs would be rewarded more because fewer people would be willing to do them unless paid sufficiently, and where the cost of human labor becomes higher than the cost of automation, machines can be welcomed to fill that job. Think [garbage collector](http://evonomics.com/why-garbage-men-should-earn-more-than-bankers/?ref=scottsantens.com). If no one wanted to do that work for $30,000 per year because they already have a basic income of $12,000 per year, an offer of $100,000 per year in additional income would attract many to do that job. If the cost of automating that job is the equivalent of $90,000 per year, automation is then the cheaper option and no one need do that job anymore. The result is the complete transformation of a social system built around a goal of full employment, where everyone has a job, to a new goal of [full unemployment](http://www.philorum.org/speech/20051207JohnBentley.html?ref=scottsantens.com) where as many jobs as possible are offloaded to machines, granting people the ability to pursue whatever is most important to them as living breathing humans with limited lifespans. The right to refuse is even so important it lies underneath all other rights. Do you really have the right to free speech as long as you’re afraid of being fired? How many times have you wanted to say something, and decided against it, just in case? When was the last time you considered taking to the streets in an act of civil disobedience, but feared the repercussions to your present and future employment? How many times has someone somewhere not voted out of fear they’d be late for their job, and potentially lose it? For those who most value the right to bear arms, do you really have that right if you can’t afford to purchase the arms? To what else can that be applied? How many things in life do we think of as right that don’t truly exist due to lack of money or fear of economic destitution? Arguably, it’s the right to a basic income that makes all other rights actually possible. People become free to speak their minds with the fear of destitution off the table. People become free to march in the streets and to get to work late because voting was more important. With a guarantee of economic security, all other rights are empowered. Without the recognition of economic rights, all other rights are infringed. **Basic income is our missing economic right, from which our other incomplete rights become complete**. Finally achieving the ability to say “No” after the adoption of basic income changes the rules of the game entirely. It represents the dawn of recognition that **any advanced society should pursue not full employment, but full unemployment**. Society prospers when every member within it is fully free to prosper. ## The Return of Common Wealth No one person can claim 100% ownership of their wealth. It’s all fractions of the whole. As the saying goes, [no one person can make a pencil](http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s2%5F8733.html?ref=scottsantens.com). As simple a creation as that seems, it is the collective work of humanity. The wood comes from somewhere. The graphite comes from somewhere else. The eraser and what comprises it comes from elsewhere. Shipping networks transport raw materials that are made into component parts that are manufactured into a finished product that is shipped all over the world. More than that, no one alive thought of the pencil. That person is long dead. We all prosper because of knowledge from the past, passed down to us. This is our collective “something for nothing” we all enjoy on the one hand, while deriding the idea of something for nothing on the other. Civilization itself is something for nothing. It is the result of billions of interdependent parts working together as part of a social system known as humanity. [Land value too is its own clear example of wealth created collectively](https://medium.com/world-economic-forum/is-the-solution-to-extreme-wealth-inequality-really-alaska-41872632960a?ref=scottsantens.com). When something we own goes up in value as the result of our doing nothing, that added value is the result of everything and everyone around the land, not anything we ourselves did. Similarly, transport a piece of high-priced metropolitan land into the middle of nowhere, with no one else around, no resources, no infrastructure, no nothing, and the value of the land becomes nothing. It should be clear that the increasing value of land should be shared with the ones creating the value, which is *everyone*. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*UtLhRYmKl_W1C4QP-TIJQA.png) Source: [More Courageous Bets and Equitable Returns by the Broadbent Institute for the Atkinson Foundation](http://betsandreturns.ca/?ref=scottsantens.com) Advancing technology is also common wealth, [the result of those today standing on the shoulders of the giants of the past](https://medium.com/economicsecproj/technological-inheritance-and-the-case-for-a-basic-income-ded373a69c8e?ref=scottsantens.com). Additionally, it’s even the result of tax dollars being invested into the public research and development that makes all the advancements possible. The iPhone wasn’t created in a vacuum by Apple. [It was built on the technologies pioneered by government-funded research](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/15/george-osborne-public-spending-taxpayers-money?ref=scottsantens.com). Big data isn’t created in a vacuum either. It is the result of our collective interactions. It is the mining of natural resources where the mines are each and every one of us, and the ore is the information we all create through our interactions with each other. Market research firm IDC has estimated that by 2019, the US market alone for big data and the tech to mine it (and by it I mean us) will be worth [$98 billion](http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/big-data-analytics/big-data-analytics-sales-will-reach-$187-billion-by-2019/d/d-id/1325631?ref=scottsantens.com). We are completely surrounded by uncompensated commonly created wealth. Now, this isn’t to say that 100% of all wealth should be shared among all equally. It’s simply the recognition that [a fraction of all wealth should be justly shared with everyone, because that fraction is created by everyone](https://medium.com/world-economic-forum/is-the-solution-to-extreme-wealth-inequality-really-alaska-41872632960a?ref=scottsantens.com). And as productivity continues to grow, as our society continues to achieve more and more with less and less — Fuller’s ephemeralization process — that productivity should be recognized as the shared creation it is and compensated appropriately. This is where basic income becomes more than basic income. The idea of a basic income is simply the starting point. It is the recognition that at the very least, our collective wealth creation and our right to say no to each other in a technologically advancing world should be met with an absolute minimum of sufficient access to resources to have all our basic needs met. And as technology continues to advance and productivity continues to grow, our unconditional access to all resources should grow as well because we are all in some way contributing to all of it. In ways impossible to measure, we interdependently grow our collective prosperity, and it should be recognized with a growing dividend — **a prosperity dividend** — universally provided without condition. As prosperity continues to grow, the eventual endpoint of basic income is thus an amount of access to resources that can only be considered effectively infinite. By effectively infinite, I mean the ongoing process of ephemeralization through advancing technology will allow the meeting of wants and needs with fewer and fewer resources. Whereas 20% of a $20 trillion economy is $4 trillion, 20% of a $200 trillion economy is $40 trillion, which is the difference between a $12,000 per year basic income and a $120,000 per year prosperity dividend. The higher the minimum amount, and the cheaper the goods and services possible to spend it on, the harder it is to spend all of it, and therefore it increasingly becomes effectively infinite. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*4cV97RVkQY_guLb3yvyQeQ.jpeg) Star Trek economics Once everyone receives as a minimum an amount of access to resources that goes so far that most people find it difficult to ever actually “spend” it, and work is increasingly motivated not by money but by the pursuit of meaning, money itself loses meaning. The result is something more like [an economy based on resources instead of money](http://www.scottsantens.com/shouldn-t-all-this-talk-about-money-actually-be-talk-about-resources), where what is possible is measured by if we can physically achieve it instead of if we can “afford” it. Some may call this postcapitalism. Others may call it a Star Trek economy. Still others may call it a resource-based economy. But it doesn’t really matter what we call it, because it lies beyond, and only if we make that first all important step together — unconditional income. The connection between work and income must be severed. That Gordian Knot of our own creation must be undone. Our growing insecurity must be ended. Our inability to say no must be abolished. And our interdependent creation of our thus far uncompensated common wealth building must be compensated. An unconditional basic income achieves all of these things. It is far more than what some see as “a few crumbs” tossed to the great masses as compensation for technological unemployment. Basic income is the abolition of enslavement once and for all, and the beginning of a new kind of society built on higher achievements of purpose than just toil for paychecks. It is the destiny of a species that picked up its first tool and imagined a way to use it to achieve all that could not otherwise be achieved without it. Is basic income a sufficient response to technological unemployment? It’s more than that. It’s the most important response of all. It is a collective step that is [**humanity’s next giant leap**](https://medium.com/basic-income/basic-income-and-the-new-universalism-a934d1a81714?ref=scottsantens.com). --- ***Special thanks to: Steven Grimm, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Larry Cohen, Andy Stern, Patrick, Stephane Boisvert, Topher Hunt, Joanna Zarach, Ace Bailey, Justin Walsh, Daragh Ward, Natalie Foster, Gisele Huff, Albert Wenger, Chris Smothers, Joel Leoj, BoNster, Richard Just, Rachel Perkins, Che Wagner, Harmony Klohr, Taressa Strong, Jordan Lejuwaan, Carrie Mclachlan, Paul Godsmark, Daniel Brockman, Allan Free, Lainie Petersen, Vladimir Baranov, Gray Scott, David Ihnen, Katie Doemland, Kian Alavi, Joe Ballou, Mybasicincome.org, Jack Wagner, Gerald Huff, Michiel Dral, John David Hodge, Kai Wong, Michael Honey, Chris McCoy, Jan Smole, Danielle and Michael Texeira, Max Henrion, Catherine MacDonald, Arjun Banker, Dan O’Sullivan, Louise Whitmore, Saura Naderi, Georg Baumann, Lisa Hallman, UBIGinc.org, Justin Hebert, Stuart Mark, Jill Weiss, Mark Witham, David Bijl, Andreas, Lawrence W Lee, Allen Bauer, Robert F. Greene, Erhan Altay, Robert Solovay, Masud Shah, Elizabeth Balcar, Casey Young, Thomas Welsh, Amy Shaffer, Kris Roadruck, Dave Shelton, Lee Irving, Kirk Israel, Rise & Shine PAC, Tony DeStefano, Paolo Narciso, Martin Jordo, Victor Lau, Walter Schaerer, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** ## [Would you like to see your name here too?](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Is the solution to extreme wealth inequality really – Alaska? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/extreme-wealth-inequality-solution-alaska-model-dividend-universal-basic-income-ubi-lvt/ Last updated: 2022-02-21T22:18:14.000Z *This article was originally published on the [World Economic Forum](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/extreme-wealth-inequality-alaska-model/?ref=scottsantens.com)* Consider the following two headlines and the fact they describe events that are occurring simultaneously: “[Grains piled on runways, parking lots, fields amid global glut](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-grains-storage-analysis-idUSKBN17D0EO?ref=scottsantens.com)” and “[Famine looms in four countries as aid system struggles to cope, experts warn](https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/feb/12/famine-looms-four-countries-aid-system-struggles-yemen-south-sudan-nigeria-somalia?ref=scottsantens.com).” How can it be that human civilization is producing so much food we’re running out of places to put it, and at the same time famine is spreading? It’s a question like this that lies at the heart of the 21st century. It’s the question of inequality. > "The future is already here – it's just not very evenly distributed." — William Gibson Something is wrong. If degrees of inequality can be thought of as degrees of temperature, climate change isn’t our only man-made heating problem. Our distributional thermostat appears to have broken decades ago, and as a result the world is now sweating profusely and looking at 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius) as some kind of utopian fantasy. Where economic inequality was once thought of as a way to drive innovation, [the IMF and OECD among others now see too much inequality as pulling against economic growth](https://medium.com/basic-income/trickle-down-economics-must-die-long-live-grow-up-economics-5b8334a0db76?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s one thing to turn up the temperature a few degrees to get a bit more comfortable. It’s entirely something else for [eight people on a planet of over 7 billion to own as much wealth as half the other 7 billion combined](https://actions.oxfam.org/international/davos-international/petition/?ref=scottsantens.com). How did it get this way and what can we do, if anything? The answer requires putting together a puzzle that includes three major pieces: land, the power to say no – and the state of Alaska. ### Piketty 101 A few years ago, a French economist by the name of Thomas Piketty made waves with the publication of *Capital in the 21st Century*, a prodigiously weighty economic tome that simplified the perpetual problem of inequality down to three symbols: “r > g”. Translated, this equation claims that wealth begets wealth faster than economic growth creates wealth, or in other words, the rich get more of the pie faster than the pie itself can grow the size of the slices for everyone. Assuming this is true, there is then no way around redistribution of wealth outside of another wealth-destroying world war or social revolution, because humans have their inequality limits. The internet, however, is full of surprises, and [a critique of Piketty’s hypothesis](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-03-27/piketty-s-three-big-mistakes-in-inequality-analysis?ref=scottsantens.com) by a college student called Matt Rognlie bubbled up from an online comments section to gain notoriety. Rognlie is now credited with adding an incredibly important insight to this discussion by pointing out that if one looked really closely at the letter “r” in Piketty’s equation, only one part appeared to be responsible for almost all the growth, and that lone part was *land ownership*. ### The value of land As it turns out, those who accumulate wealth tend to invest it in real estate, and the value of the land part of property trends upwards over time. There are a few reasons for this. Land, for the most part, does not increase in quantity. In fact, if we take rising sea levels into account, land is actually becoming scarcer. At the same time, demand for land will always exist, especially in cities. There are great benefits to living in cities. That’s where the people are. That’s where the jobs are. That’s where the stores are. That’s where the infrastructure is. And so living in and near cities is in high demand, in fact [increasingly so](http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/world-urbanization-prospects-2014.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Limited supply combined with increasing demand means rising prices. It then also means rising costs for renters and soaring windfall gains for owners. Now, as a thought experiment, take a building that just sold for $1 billion and magically swap it with an empty plot of land in the middle of the desert. What happens? The building is now worth only the value of its component parts, and the previously worthless lot of sand would sell for hundreds of millions of dollars. This dramatic change in land value reveals something extremely important. **The value of land is socially created**. It is not created by the owner of the land. It is created by everyone and everything else surrounding it. This is not a new revelation. Back in the late 1800s, an American named [Henry George](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry%5FGeorge?ref=scottsantens.com) saw the problems created by treating land value like everything else, instead of something unique and socially created, and wrote a worldwide bestseller titled *Progress and Poverty* about the need for a land-value tax. This tax would be a tax not on what’s built on land, but on the land itself, or more specifically the unimproved value of land. An empty lot and an adjacent skyscraper would cost the same to their respective landowners, and this would incentivize owners to develop land to its fullest potential, and discourage sitting on undeveloped land to gain unearned windfalls. A land-value tax has yet to catch on, despite promising to replace all other forms of taxes, and despite its popularity among economists, including [Milton Friedman](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS7Jb58hcsc&ref=scottsantens.com), who saw it as “the least bad tax” of all. Imagine a company like McDonald’s or a billionaire such as Bill Gates avoiding land-value taxes. They couldn’t. We all see where each store and mansion exists. It would also be [an extremely progressive tax on both corporations and individuals](http://www.salon.com/2013/11/22/end%5Fthe%5F1%5Fpercents%5Ffree%5Fride%5Fhow%5Ftaxing%5Fland%5Fwould%5Fsolve%5Famericas%5Fbiggest%5Fproblems/?ref=scottsantens.com) because land is so unequally distributed towards the top, with so little owned at the bottom. And most importantly, it would be a tax on [rentierism](http://evonomics.com/they-dont-just-hide-their-money-economist-says-billionaire-wealth/?ref=scottsantens.com) instead of actual work. Taxes can’t tackle excessive inequality all on their own, though, no matter the form they take. There’s a second key element of rising inequality to consider. This element requires looking not at reducing inequality after the fact, but reducing inequality from the get-go. ### The importance of bargaining power Even with a land-value tax functioning to create a more progressive distribution of wealth after taxes, it still doesn’t confront the question of why national productivity is being so unequally distributed in the first place. By what mechanism in the United States are incomes being distributed in such an unbalanced way, such that [labour’s share of GDP has been falling precipitously](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-24/cracking-the-mystery-of-labor-s-falling-share-of-gdp?ref=scottsantens.com) since 1970? The answer, I believe, can be found in the following graph. ![ ](https://assets.weforum.org/editor/hTSiJdjcNTtTxA6lklb_x9As11v48OvvJbDcXQpxB30.png) Image: Economic Policy Institute Union membership is an [extremely strong predictor of the share of income going to the top 10%](http://www.epi.org/publication/unions-decline-inequality-rises/?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s virtually a mirror. As union membership rises, inequality falls, and as union membership falls, inequality rises. So are unions themselves the key, or is it what union membership provides: **collective bargaining power?** Workers have little ability to demand a greater share of the fruits of their labour without unions because they can’t refuse to work, and if they do refuse to work, they’re simply replaced by another desperate worker. Unions introduce into this equation the power of strikes, where workers can together refuse to work until their demands are met. Production grinds to a halt under a strike, where people are only able to stop working thanks to strike funds. The power wielded by unions is therefore the power to say no to work for as long as workers can hold out for a better deal. But unions aren’t the only way of achieving this power. [There is another way](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/automation-frase-robots/?ref=scottsantens.com). Like strike pay, it’s through the provision of income regardless of work, that is enough to refuse work, or in other words an [Unconditional Basic Income (UBI)](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-we-should-all-have-a-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com). UBI (or “basic income”) is a regular income provided to all citizens, sufficient to meet basic needs like food and housing, independent of and in addition to, all other sources of income regardless of any amount earned on top of it. It is presently talked about mostly as a means of supporting people whose jobs have been replaced by machines, but really the most transformative aspect of UBI is [the power it gives people say no to their employers](https://medium.com/basic-income/true-freedom-comes-with-basic-income-7ff1368e170?ref=scottsantens.com). Anyone with a basic income can potentially refuse to work for $7 per hour. Those same people, however, could agree to do that exact same job at some higher wage, or for stock options, or for something else that would represent a greater share of their labour going to them and their follow workers instead of to the owners of capital. This would be a more equal distribution of profit, requiring less redistribution after the fact, thanks to a more balanced footing for negotiations between labour and capital. In other words, UBI is more than redistribution of money. It is redistribution of **power**. However, technology cannot be left out of this discussion. For jobs where people with bargaining power refuse to do work for less than the amount it would cost to automate that work, capital itself (in the form of technology) increasingly has the ability to replace that labour, and the wages that would have been paid out are instead kept by the owners of capital. This process of automation drastically increases inequality [by eliminating wages and salaries entirely, and putting downward pressure on the wages/salaries that remain](http://www.nber.org/papers/w23285?ref=scottsantens.com). So something is missing for those jobs where machines are affordable enough and fully capable of taking the place of people demanding a greater share of the fruits of their labour. What’s missing is a means of **predistribution of capital**, and the world’s prime example of this exists in the US state of Alaska. ### The Alaska Model Alaska is the only place in the world where everyone, rich or poor, young or old, is seen as having equal ownership of land. As equal co-owners, everyone receives [an annual cash dividend](https://motherboard.vice.com/en%5Fus/article/only-state-free-money-alaska?ref=scottsantens.com) that represents their share of the revenue derived from their land, through the oil reserves buried under it. This is not a tax. It is a voluntary contract between the owners of land and the companies who wish to drill into it. The oil companies agree to pay money to Alaska up front as a cost of doing business. As a result, they see less profit than they otherwise would if they were given free access, but they still profit handsomely. Most of this revenue goes to the government of Alaska to spend on government services so as to avoid a state income tax, but a quarter of it bypasses government coffers entirely, and is instead added to the Alaska Permanent Fund. This fund, which is now over $50 billion in size, is invested and pays out dividends which are [equally shared by all Alaskans once a year](http://www.iser.uaa.alaska.edu/Publications/bien%5Fxiii%5Fak%5Fpfd%5Flessons.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). This is predistribution as opposed to redistribution, because the funds are diverted past state coffers and directly into the hands of people, and as a result Alaska is [consistently among the most equal of all US states, with the lowest rates of poverty](https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/karl-widerquist/alaska-model-citizens-income-in-practice?ref=scottsantens.com), and the highest [Well-Being Index](http://info.healthways.com/hubfs/Gallup-Healthways%20State%20of%20American%20Well-Being%5F2016%20State%20Rankings%20vFINAL.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) scores. What even Alaska has not yet realized, though, is that their model can be extended to many other forms of capital beyond oil, and this model can be exported anywhere in the world. In [a study by Gary Flomenhoft](https://www.academia.edu/20148953/Applying%5Fthe%5FAlaska%5Fmodel%5Fin%5Fa%5FResource-Poor%5FState?ref=scottsantens.com) that looked at the possibility of exporting the Alaska model to “a resource-poor state”, it was estimated that despite a lack of oil, Vermont could achieve dividends on par with Alaska’s on the low end, and the size of full basic incomes of $10,000 per year per person on the high end. This could be achieved through rents on natural common assets (air, fish and wildlife, forests, water, minerals, broadcast spectrum rights, wind) and social common assets (land value, the internet, financial trading, money creation). By recognizing some of these many ways in which citizens should be seen as stockholders, [economic rent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic%5Frent?ref=scottsantens.com) could start to be diverted from rentiers directly to citizens before any of it reaches the hands of governments *or* corporations. There are some very clever additional methods of achieving this, which are already beginning to be discussed. The economist [Yanis Varoufakis](https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/basic-income-funded-by-capital-income-by-yanis-varoufakis-2016-10?ref=scottsantens.com) has suggested that because taxpayer money has funded so much of the technology around us, like for example how [everything in an iPhone is the result of government funding](https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/basic-income-funded-by-capital-income-by-yanis-varoufakis-2016-10?ref=scottsantens.com), that the process of filing for every new IPO should involve a percentage of those shares being added to a giant sovereign wealth fund, like in Alaska. [Robert Reich](http://robertreich.org/post/128058937635?ref=scottsantens.com) has suggested that because governments are the ones providing patent and trademark protections for the technologies that are eliminating jobs, that a share of the profits from that protection should go to citizens as the condition of such protection. ### Intellectual property and the 'data dividend' Just as [an annually rising carbon fee](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/opinion/a-conservative-case-for-climate-action.html?ref=scottsantens.com) could be added to sources of carbon emissions, with the revenue returned to citizens universally as a dividend for their co-ownership of the air, I suggest that an annually rising intellectual property fee could be added to any intellectual property wishing to be monopolistically excluded from the public domain, with the revenue returned to citizens universally for their co-ownership of the government granting such protection. I also suggest that big data should be seen as a new form of digital property being created by everyone through everything we do, and that as a result, citizens should see a percentage of the money derived from it. Call it a [netizen dividend](http://basicincome.org/news/2014/04/opinion-facebooks-purchase-of-oculus-is-the-new-best-example-of-21st-century-inequality-and-the-need-for-unconditional-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com). Call it a [data dividend](http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/universal-basic-income-data-advertising-facebook-google-profit-from-posts-reward-hard-work-data-a7567751.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Whatever we call it, it’s overdue. It’s overdue because the internet has introduced to the world a new form of land value in the form of ones and zeroes. Just as the source of rising land value is everyone collectively, so are we all the source of rising digital land value in the form of big data. Remember how we swapped a skyscraper with a piece of desert land? Now swap all users on Facebook with a new app that has 0 users. Is Facebook still worth a $425 billion market cap? What about the app? The bulk of Facebook’s value is a result of the [1+ billion people](https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/?ref=scottsantens.com) who feed it free data every day, not the company itself. Just like how it’s not free to drill in Alaska, should it be free for Facebook and countless others to digitally drill big data? Additionally, money itself is a public good that’s now almost entirely created into existence not by government but as digital accounting entries on commercial bank ledgers. Since this money creation is free, and interest on it is charged, that interest is essentially a private tax that serves as a tool of upward redistribution. Replacing debt-based private money creation through [seigniorage reform](http://www.basicincome.org/bien/pdf/2000Huber.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) with debt-free public money creation (and removing the ability of banks to create new money) would thus further reduce both inequality and the need for taxation itself. All of the above are ways of extending the Alaska model beyond Alaska so as to maximize predistribution as a tool of reducing inequality and increasing shared prosperity. There is no scarcity of options. There is only scarcity of imagination and will. Inequality exists to the degree it does most simply because we let it, just as we sit back and let climate change happen. The kind of world we wish to live in is up to us on both accounts. ### The end of extreme inequality Fully tackling excessive inequality will require a mix of the above strategies. By combining all three methods together, redistribution via land-value taxes, better distribution via more bargaining power, and predistribution via the Alaska model, we arrive at the optimal solution to prevent inequality once and for all from its penchant for extremes. The answer is individual bargaining power through a fully universal and unconditional basic income that incorporates a tax on land value, and by design captures economic rent through the Alaska model of treating citizens like stockholders. Over time, this basic income would then grow with rising productivity and collective value generation to become something else beyond basic. It would be a prosperity dividend, a monthly inheritance for all, [effectively provided by all preceding generations, to all present and future generations](https://medium.com/economicsecproj/technological-inheritance-and-the-case-for-a-basic-income-ded373a69c8e?ref=scottsantens.com). It would be humankind finally investing in itself. The challenge of implementing such a three-pronged strategy reveals one final component of inequality built into the system itself, and that is [the extent to which democracy actually exists](https://mic.com/articles/87719/princeton-concludes-what-kind-of-government-america-really-has-and-it-s-not-a-democracy?ref=scottsantens.com#.tF1aZj8Nc) in a nation. Inequality grows within nations when those in whose hands wealth has concentrated use that wealth to support laws being passed and repealed in their favour. It is for this reason that democracy must be strengthened everywhere through ideas like [open primaries](http://www.openprimaries.org/?ref=scottsantens.com), [proportional representation](http://www.fairvote.org/fair%5Frepresentation?ref=scottsantens.com), [ranked choice voting](http://www.fairvote.org/rcv?ref=scottsantens.com), public-funded elections, [postal voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal%5Fvoting?ref=scottsantens.com), national voting holidays, and more. Barriers to voting must be torn down, and the franchise must be expanded. The expansion of democracy has always been a challenge through the centuries since its conception, and the 21st century is no different. The answer to more inequality is not only more redistribution, better distribution and more predistribution; it is more democracy. It is the decentralization of power. These are the four roads along which we must make progress all over the world so as to walk away from systems of extreme inequality, and walk instead towards systems where [technologically enabled abundance](https://alexdanco.com/2015/12/17/taylor-swift-ios-and-the-access-economy-why-the-normal-distribution-is-vanishing/?ref=scottsantens.com) is more evenly distributed. Equality of outcomes will never exist, but equality of opportunity certainly can. A steadily rising floor of unconditional prosperity would accomplish such a goal. It would abolish scarcity. And when everyone no longer experiences scarcity, that’s the kind of world where everyone is free to think beyond [just getting by](https://medium.com/basic-income/human-park-a-mammals-guide-to-stress-free-living-17f6cab007b3?ref=scottsantens.com). That’s the kind of world where we don’t just survive as a species: we thrive. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my ceaseless UBI advocacy. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Basic Income is JUST Compensation URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-is-just-compensation/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T23:00:59.000Z Let's say the cost to produce a widget is $1\. What's the cost to produce 1 million widgets? This may sound like an extremely simple word problem that even some preschoolers could solve. However, if you think the answer is $1 million, you would be entirely wrong. The cost to produce 1 million widgets is far below $1 million thanks to the savings inherent in mass production. It's a lot cheaper per something to make a lot of something, than it is to create one of it, or even a few. A couple secondary understandings extend themselves as a result of this primary understanding. First, [it's wrong to assume that providing people with more money will necessitate rising prices](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7?ref=scottsantens.com). Increased demand can lead to greatly increased production, which then leads to *lower* prices. Just how much production can be ramped up in response to increased demand is a key factor in price determination. Where supply cannot be increased, and therefore more money is chasing the same amount of goods, price increases can be expected. Where supply can be greatly or even infinitely increased, lower prices can be expected, especially where true competition exists. Second, and I find this point extremely compelling and the real point of this post, is a recognition of our interdependence, and [the collective debt we owe each other](https://medium.com/economicsecproj/technological-inheritance-and-the-case-for-a-basic-income-ded373a69c8e?ref=scottsantens.com). Take whatever device you're reading these words on as a prime example. Whatever its cost to you, it only cost that because millions of others like you expressed their demand for the same device. Without everyone else, that device would have cost you ten times, a hundred times, or even a thousand times more than it would have to create just one, just for you. In other words, **we all subsidize each other**. It's kind of like every time we buy something for ourselves, everyone else is chipping in too ,to make that possible. It can be compared to buying something in a store somewhere with a price tag of $1,000 that only ends up costing us $100 because 900 other people each provided us a $1 gift card to help us buy it. What we're doing right now is spending $100 on a $1,000 item, and ignoring the $900 in help we got, pretending instead that we afforded it all on our own. We didn't. We couldn't. Much of what we buy only costs what it does because of so many other people buying the same thing. Aside from this truth, when it comes to technological purchases, [our tax dollars paid for their research and development](https://medium.com/@KellyGerling/video-review-yanis-varoufakis-basic-income-is-a-necessity-an-amazing-reframe-9951936c5c4e?ref=scottsantens.com). Our tax dollars also often pay to directly subsidize the very corporations that then turn said research funding into commercial products. Additionally, said commercial products are increasingly reliant on big data, and where does big data come from? It comes from all of us, through the actions of our daily existence. Meanwhile, what is all of this stuff that we’re making made out of? It’s made of minerals, metals, pieces of the Earth, which in turn were forged in the explosions of stars, just like you were. Who owns that star stuff? On the one hand, no one does, and on the other hand, everyone does. In Alaska, [Alaskans are paid on average about $1000 per year for being an Alaskan](https://motherboard.vice.com/en%5Fus/article/only-state-free-money-alaska?ref=scottsantens.com). Why? Because the oil companies didn't make the oil in Alaska. They're merely bringing it up out of the ground and processing it. The oil is considered owned by all Alaskans, and so they should as owners see some of the revenue generated by its sale. Now apply this logic to the rest of what was not created by humankind. Apply it to what is not created by any one human individually, but everyone together, like for example land value. Take a million dollar mansion and swap it with an empty lot in the middle of the desert. The mansion becomes worth only the sum total of what its parts can sell for. The empty lot shoots up in value. Why? Because [the unimproved value of land is socially created](https://medium.com/basic-income/basic-income-basic-solutions-for-basic-problems-df8d629cf8b9?ref=scottsantens.com). That value exists because YOU exist. Do you see now that basic income is not "free money" or "money for nothing?" **You are owed it**. It is your just and due compensation as part of this interdependent system we call society. We are all stakeholders in it. We are all owed a dividend as investors. No investor in Apple would ever be okay with being told that in return for their investment in Apple, they merely get the privilege of purchasing Apple products. Their reward is a return on their investment in the form of cash dividends. That’s fair and just. What is true for corporate stockholders should also be true for you. Don't accept anything less than a cash dividend for your investments in this grand organization called human civilization. Claim what you are owed and [demand unconditional basic income](https://medium.com/world-economic-forum/why-we-should-all-have-a-basic-income-7177d5b339ec?ref=scottsantens.com). Furthermore, demand that it be indexed to rise with national wealth so as to reflect your share of rising productivity due to automation. The more labor that technology is doing for us, the higher your technological dividend should be. Nothing less is sufficient ROI. We must recognize our profound interdependence and begin to treat each other accordingly. Basic income is **just** compensation. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2022/02/16194970_1895054207396297_5934936110443217160_n_large-1.png) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### What if you got $1,000 a month, just for being alive? I decided to find out. URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/what-if-you-got-1000-a-month-just-for-being-alive-i-decided-to-find-out-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T22:53:59.000Z # My father has a basic income. As a retired United States Air Force officer, he has received a paycheck from the US government every month for about 30 years now, since he was 42 years old. His government pension is a monthly starting point above the poverty line — an income floor — always guaranteeing that no matter what, he won’t starve or end up on the streets. My grandfather had a basic income. His father built up a small fortune and put that fortune into a trust. Upon my great grandfather’s death, my grandfather received the income from the interest of that fund on a monthly basis for the rest of his life. That money was his guaranteed basic income floor. No matter what, regardless of anything that happened in the world around him, he never knew poverty. [**I too now have a basic income**](http://www.scottsantens.com/press-release-american-achieves-first-crowdfunded-monthly-basic-income). Mine is crowdfunded. Leveraging the Kickstarter-like platform called [**Patreon**](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com), I’ve grown a large enough base of patrons through my writing and talking about basic income to perpetually start each month with $1,000 in total monthly pledges. I chose $1,000 as my monthly goal because the poverty line in the US is currently defined as $11,880 per year and I wished to create a floor directly above it. Since attaining my basic income, I’ve learned some things from this new vantage point. The very first thing I learned is possibly the most important of all, and one I guarantee you dear reader won’t fully appreciate, until or unless you feel it yourself: **basic income is about basic** ***security***. # What is basic income? Basic income is money an individual receives regardless of whether he or she works or not, sufficient to meet our most basic human needs for necessities like food, water, shelter, and clothing. It’s an amount sufficient to keep us above the poverty line, not living lavishly, but basically. And most importantly, it’s a stream of income independent of all other income that functions as a baseline. It *enables*, and never in any way prevents, additional income. Take my father as an example: Did he stop working the day he retired from the Air Force? No — he went on to pursue multiple jobs before finally retiring, and even then, he started his own small business for the fun of it in his late 60s. [**Basic income for all**](https://medium.com/world-economic-forum/why-we-should-all-have-a-basic-income-7177d5b339ec?ref=scottsantens.com) people is also a government policy idea being increasingly discussed worldwide, where it’s primarily seen as the way to make unemployment brought on by [**self-driving vehicles**](https://medium.com/basic-income/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us-like-a-human-driven-truck-b8507d9c5961?ref=scottsantens.com) and [**machine learning algorithms**](https://medium.com/basic-income/deep-learning-is-going-to-teach-us-all-the-lesson-of-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines-7c6442e37a49?ref=scottsantens.com) work for us all instead of the few. By simply cutting every citizen a monthly check and getting rid of most of the welfare state and tax code complexities we use today, everyone could be better off tomorrow, rich and poor alike. If machines are laboring in our stead, and aren’t buying any of the fruits of that labor, [**should we not receive the paychecks that aren’t going to them or us, so as**](https://medium.com/@2noame/if-labor-is-being-replaced-by-capital-which-it-is-then-the-revenue-should-come-mostly-from-12fc4985c90?ref=scottsantens.com)[ **to buy those fruits**](https://medium.com/@2noame/if-labor-is-being-replaced-by-capital-which-it-is-then-the-revenue-should-come-mostly-from-12fc4985c90?ref=scottsantens.com)? Because these technological advances are driving so much of the discussion today, some think basic income is a new idea. [**It’s not**](http://basicincome-europe.org/brief-history-basic-income-ideas/?ref=scottsantens.com), and goes back as far in the US as founding father Thomas Paine. And some fortunate people have received it for decades or even centuries, for example recipients of Social Security, and winners of [**genetic**](http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/dear-mona-how-many-kids-have-trust-funds/?ref=scottsantens.com) and [**state lotteries**](http://www.basicincome.org/bien/pdf/2004MarxPeeters.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Anyone who receives an income regardless of any work they do or other income they receive, sufficient to prevent poverty, has a basic income. # Why I decided to crowdfund my own basic income In 2013, I read a fascinating discussion on the front page of Reddit about how quickly technology was advancing and how most people just have no idea how fast. Looking for solutions, I came upon basic income, and after looking deeper and deeper into it, [I concluded it was ](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/832612818813845505?ref=scottsantens.com)[the single most important change we needed to make as a civilization](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/832612818813845505?ref=scottsantens.com), in countries all over the world, for countless more reasons than just a solution to technological unemployment. At the time I was working as a self-employed freelancer. Part of my interest in basic income was the recognition that all other work in my life was now an impediment to the work that truly needed to be done. As long as I was spending time managing websites or social media accounts, or writing about anything else for anyone else, that was a hindrance to far more important work — the work of advancing the adoption of basic income. I couldn’t just stop earning money though, because rent, and that’s when I came upon Patreon. It hit me that there was the potential through my blogging to crowdfund a basic income that would not only enable me to focus 100% on helping make it a reality for everyone, but also to learn for myself what it was like to have a basic income. It took all of 2014 to go from $0 per month in pledges to $1,000 per month, but I did it, and walking in these shoes is already teaching me there’s far more to basic income than I thought. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*RSJFqhd3eCXifXQEYVedVQ.png) Illustration by [Amanda Wray](https://www.patreon.com/amandawray?ref=scottsantens.com) # Basic income is a safety net when terrible things happen A couple months ago, I was driving home and without any warning, a large traffic barricade blew across the street in front of my car, followed by a garbage bin. Then my car started rocking. Then I heard a loud thump on the roof of my car — some debris had apparently fallen on it. As quick as it all started, it was over, and I completed my drive home. To my surprise upon closing my car door and hearing glass fall to the concrete as a result, I found a shattered rear window and even cracks in my windshield that I hadn’t noticed in all the rain. When I listened to a news broadcast later that day, I found out that[ a ](http://www.theadvocate.com/new%5Forleans/news/article%5Fca6c8f52-5b53-11e6-9729-5fe4b29d13cc.html?ref=scottsantens.com)[*tornado*](http://www.theadvocate.com/new%5Forleans/news/article%5Fca6c8f52-5b53-11e6-9729-5fe4b29d13cc.html?ref=scottsantens.com)[ had passed right behind me](http://www.theadvocate.com/new%5Forleans/news/article%5Fca6c8f52-5b53-11e6-9729-5fe4b29d13cc.html?ref=scottsantens.com). A tornado touching down in the French Quarter of New Orleans is about as likely as an elephant stampede on Bourbon Street. But it happened, and my shattered window was an entirely unexpected and unbudgeted expense. I was able to handle it though, because my basic needs were already covered. I wasn’t faced with a decision of a mortgage payment or car repairs. I was faced with a decision of discretionary spending or car repairs, and that kind of decision is something entirely different, with a whole lot less stress involved. Not too long after that tornado, so much rain fell in Louisiana that in some places it was measured as the kind of event that happens only [every thousand years](http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/08/27/climate-change-and-1000-year-flood-baton-rouge-when-will-we-learn?ref=scottsantens.com). Over 100,000 homes were damaged and 13 people lost their lives. Such flooding was so unexpected that many people didn’t have flood insurance. Tens of thousands of people were forced into spending money they didn’t have, and just as many were unable to go to work. Federal assistance was given, but such assistance requires many a hoop to be jumped through, effectively excluding many. Nor does it cover everything. It’s also only paid when all is said and done. When the flooding happened, though I was not affected, I couldn’t help but wish every single person who was affected by it had a basic income too. They could have all more easily paid for emergency shelter and food. For those no longer able to work, they would still have had income, and for businesses left with far fewer customers, they could have had more customers, because people would still have had money to spend. Through a vantage point of freak tornadoes and crazy flooding, universal basic income can also be seen as universal insurance. It’s always there. There’s no one saying you will be reimbursed, *maybe*, if you meet all the requirements. It’s *unconditional*, and that lack of conditions makes it the only kind of insurance that covers everyone, universally, all the time. It’s therefore also **universal peace of** **mind**, because that’s what insurance to a large degree is. It’s so that we can focus on all the important things in life that can go right, instead of all the terrible things in life that can go wrong. # Basic income transforms your relationship with work Perhaps the most transformative effect of basic income I’ve personally experienced is the power it gives in any negotiation. For many people, this will be experienced as the power to refuse to work for insufficiently low wages ([**p**](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/minimum-wages-vs-universal-basic-income%5Fb%5F7957850.html?ref=scottsantens.com)[**otentially nullifying the need for minimum wage laws**](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/minimum-wages-vs-universal-basic-income%5Fb%5F7957850.html?ref=scottsantens.com)), or unacceptable terms of any kind, be it work conditions, hours, benefits, etc. For freelancers like me, it means asking for what I’m worth, and also being able to choose to work for free on anything I consider important enough. When I didn’t have a basic income, I’d accept a writing assignment for $50 even if it took me an entire week to research and write, because $50 is better than $0\. If someone wanted to publish something I’d already written, I’d worry about asking for any compensation in case asking meant not only not getting paid but not getting republished. I don’t think I’m alone in these ways either. Now that I have a basic income, I know my work has value. I know my time has value. I know *I* *have value*. I’m never again going to spend a week writing an article for $50 that’s going to be owned by someone else, but I will and have done it for $1,000\. I’m not going to just allow some publishing company to profit off of something I’ve previously written without at least asking for a fee. If they say no, that’s okay, and we can go from there. But I’m not afraid to ask. Too many people are afraid to stick up for themselves due to economic insecurity. This even affects relationships. How many people aren’t confronting their partners about something because of the fear of the economic costs of that confrontation not going well? How many people are in entire relationships only because they effectively can’t afford the cost of escaping them? I now think [**the conditionality of income is a root cause of a lot of society’s problems**](https://medium.com/basic-income/human-park-a-mammals-guide-to-stress-free-living-17f6cab007b3?ref=scottsantens.com). # What people miss when they ask about the downsides of basic income I get asked often about the potential downsides of basic income. One of the first questions people seem to have is if all prices will rise as a result, nullifying the entire point of it all. This is actually [**the first question I confronted in-depth**](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7?ref=scottsantens.com). The answer is basically that it depends on a lot of variables, but for the most part not in any way to the degree people fear. Another frequent question is if everyone will stop working once they have that ability. That is [**another question I’ve studied in-depth**](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com), where the answer is basically that very few people want to earn and spend only $1,000 per month, and that basic income is not giving people money to do nothing, but enabling people with money to do *anything*. Immigration is another big concern for people, usually because they’re assuming UBI will be given to everyone instead of only citizens, and therefore [**the potential for UBI to actually incentivize** ](http://www.anotherpanacea.com/2011/02/does-basic-income-vat-solve-immigration/?ref=scottsantens.com)[***legal***](http://www.anotherpanacea.com/2011/02/does-basic-income-vat-solve-immigration/?ref=scottsantens.com)[ **immigration**](http://www.anotherpanacea.com/2011/02/does-basic-income-vat-solve-immigration/?ref=scottsantens.com) is missed. [**There are many other questions**](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq), and most all have likely answers for those willing to spend the necessary time to study [the available evidence](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/wiki/index?ref=scottsantens.com#wiki%5Fthat.27s%5Fall%5Fvery%5Fwell.2C%5Fbut%5Fwhere.27s%5Fthe%5Fevidence.3F), but for me personally, these questions are translated in my brain at this point to sound more like, “What are the potential downsides of abolishing slavery? Will cotton get more expensive? Will former slaves just kind of sit around reading and dancing all day? Will the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free decide to walk in greater numbers through our lamp-lit golden door?” This is what I hear as someone who already has a basic income, so it’s not to say such questions aren’t valid, it’s that the very fact we’re asking them is *itself* something to question. Why should only the lucky few have any choice but to do paid work? What is our infatuation with work, and why is it only paid work that seems to matter so much? What about unpaid work? Why is it considered valuable work worthy of pay when two people are paying each other to watch each other’s kids, but not valuable work when they’re each raising their own kids? If one concern is that people given basic incomes will work less, and another concern is that there will be half as many jobs due to automation, then everyone working half as much is exactly what we want so as to better share the available employment, isn’t it? Plus productivity tends to increase as hours worked decrease, so [we’d accomplish more with less as well](https://medium.com/basic-income/our-paradoxical-economy-courtesy-of-technology-and-the-lack-of-basic-income-361f40051de0?ref=scottsantens.com). Perhaps most curious of all is the question of consumption without production — this fear that people given basic incomes will do nothing but consume. Why is making bread considered valuable but eating bread considered frivolous? Bertrand Russell once questioned why getting money is good and spending money is bad. He wrote, “[**Seeing that they are two sides of one transaction, this is absurd; one might as well maintain that keys are good**](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html?ref=scottsantens.com)[**, but keyholes are bad**](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html?ref=scottsantens.com).” So if people decide to use their basic incomes to just buy what’s being produced (by lots of machines mind you) and we have a problem with that, what’s the point of producing it all? There is really but one main thing to consider about the potential downsides of basic income, and we should consider it well. **Basic income means more** ***choice***, and therefore the ability to take risks and make decisions we might judge to be mistakes made by ourselves or others. Of all potential drawbacks of basic income, I think this one helps further define what basic income is. [**It’s freedom**](https://medium.com/basic-income/true-freedom-comes-with-basic-income-7ff1368e170?ref=scottsantens.com). Freedom is the ability to make our own choices, and therefore our own mistakes. Who better to make choices, and to learn from them, than ourselves? Thomas Edison said he never once failed in making the light bulb. He merely learned thousands of ways of not making one. I think we should consider the possibility that what we currently see as preventing others from making mistakes for “their own good,” through the paternalistic application of strict conditions, [**is actively preventing people from learning how to succeed**](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-will-accelerate-innovation-by-reducing-our-fear-of-failure-b81ee65a254?ref=scottsantens.com). It robs people of agency, and it inhibits the pursuit of happiness upon which our country was founded. With basic income, people may make new choices that you personally would not make. You may also make new choices others would not make. Some may decide to sell less of their labor. Some may decide to watch more Netflix. Some may eat more, or smoke more, or forget to pay an important bill, or neglect to plan for retirement, but all of these are choices. Should the government prevent us from making these choices through withholding of basic income? Or are these choices ours to make for ourselves as free men and women? # As I see it, the benefits far outweigh the potential drawbacks Making at least some income unconditional, of sufficient amount to cover basic needs, is a game changer of epic proportions. Basic income is far more than just some tool for increasing freedom and reducing both [**poverty**](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/universal-basic-income-is%5Fb%5F10251176.html?ref=scottsantens.com) and [**inequality**](https://medium.com/basic-income/inequality-and-the-basic-income-guarantee-c8f84d936640?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s far more than just some idea to shrink the size of government, or increase entrepreneurship, or unleash new Einsteins, or value all unpaid work, or improve [**health outcomes**](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com), or reduce crime rates, or [**transform technological unemployment from a fear to a goal**](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/humanity-needs-universal-%5Fb%5F9599198.html?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s all of these, but it’s also more. There’s something more fundamental about basic income. If human civilization is a skyscraper we’ve been building together for thousands of years, unconditional basic income is [**the foundation**](http://www.scottsantens.com/wouldn-t-a-basic-income-just-be-stealing-from-those-who-earned-their-money) we neglected to place underneath it all. Our lives require a minimum amount of security. Our bodies require a minimum amount of access to food and shelter. Our minds require a minimum amount of access to knowledge, and to each other. We’ve created a system where money provides the most efficient access to all of these needs, and yet our system is missing the crucial component to accomplish it all — **a minimum provision of** ***money***. I have that minimum monthly provision. Others do as well, perhaps even you or someone you know, in the form of a pension or a dividend or a lottery win, something that is there every month no matter what, regardless of how much you earn on top of it. If you don’t have anything like a basic income, instead consider for a moment how your life would change if you *did* have one. What would *you* do if *you* had a basic income? What new choices would *you* make? Think about it. It’s a question we all need to start asking each other. *(This article was* [*originally published on Vox.com*](http://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/11/14/13513066/universal-basic-income-crowdfund?ref=scottsantens.com) *on November 14, 2016 and is republished here on Medium with permission of Vox Media, Inc.)* --- ***Special thanks to:*** ***Steven Grimm, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Larry Cohen, Aaron Marcus-Kubitza, Chris Hughes, Andy Stern, Stephane Boisvert, Topher Hunt, Gisele Huff, Natalie Foster, Justin Walsh, Daragh Ward, Joanna Zarach, Ace Bailey, Richard Just, Albert Wenger, Danielle and Michael Texeira, Paul Godsmark, Vladimir Baranov, Kai Wong, Kian Alavi, David Ihnen, Taressa Strong, Harish Venkatesan, Michiel Dral, Daniel Brockman, Carrie Mclachlan, Katie Doemland, Jordan Lejuwaan, Michael Honey, Cameron Ottens, Che Wagner, Gerald Huff, Jan Smole, Joe Ballou, Harmony Klohr, Jack Wagner, Allan Free, Lainie Petersen, Gray Scott, Catherine MacDonald, Arjun Banker, Dan O’Sullivan, Saura Naderi, David Bijl, Jill Weiss, Stuart Mark, Justin Hebert, Tony DeStefano, Johan Grahn, Elizabeth Balcar, Erhan Altay, Kris Roadruck, Mark Witham, Kirk Israel, Lee Irving, Masud Shah, Tammy Allen, Lawrence W Lee, Andreas, Casey Young, Robert F. Greene, Martin Jordo, Paolo Narciso, Allen Bauer, Robert Solovay, Amy Shaffer, Victor Lau, Rise & Shine PAC, Thomas Welsh, Walter Schaerer, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** ## [Would you like to see your name here too?](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Basic Income and Soylent URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/soylent-and-basic-income/ Last updated: 2023-10-12T16:44:07.000Z Many of you reading this already know this, but for those who don't, [I have a crowdfunded basic income](http://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/11/14/13513066/universal-basic-income-crowdfund?ref=scottsantens.com). This means that I start every month with $1,000 as my absolute minimum for the month no matter what. I'm free to then earn any amount on top of that $1,000, but I never earn less than that in any given month. That's a basic income. It's an unconditional income floor. Some confuse this idea with welfare but the two ideas are like night and day. Because welfare is removed with earned income, instead of kept in addition to earned income, there is a distinct disincentive to earn additional income with welfare, but not with basic income. Welfare also involves the provision of things like food stamps instead of money to buy food, and housing vouchers instead of money to buy housing. Welfare is paternalistic. Basic income is trusting. In short, **conditional welfare is about the limiting of choices, and unconditional basic income is about creating choices without limit.** With that said, there's a new choice I've been making that I'd like to talk about. I've recently become a huge fan of [Soylent](https://prz.io/e3gQxLRi2?ref=scottsantens.com). I absolutely love the stuff. It's a 400-calorie meal replacement drink that's about $3 per bottle. It's technically possible to live on it and only it. It's something that takes zero seconds for me to make and less than a minute to consume, which is great for me because despite my love of cooking, I hate spending time eating breakfast and lunch on weekdays. It's something I've always wanted since I was a kid dreaming of sci-fi meals in pill form. It's even something I actually contributed to [on Kickstarter](http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/21/soylent-crowdfunding-campaign-attracts-755k-so-people-can-survive-without-food/?ref=scottsantens.com) to help make it a thing. It's vegan, so two-thirds of my meals can now be meat-free. It's proudly [GMO](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-people-oppose-gmos-even-though-science-says-they-are-safe/?ref=scottsantens.com), which the scientist in me loves. And it's also a food I would [not be allowed to purchase](https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/200838619-Paying-with-food-stamps-?ref=scottsantens.com) if I were receiving food stamps. It's that last part that really bothers me. Why should some politician or bureaucrat be allowed to control what foods we can or can't buy to best meet our own daily dietary needs? Should certain companies and the foods they sell get preferential treatment for lining the right political pockets? Should politicians be able to [prevent their constituents from buying seafood](http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/04/should%5Ffood%5Fstamps%5Fbe%5Fused%5Fto.html?ref=scottsantens.com) because they themselves personally see that as a *luxury* food? If the big concern is that people won't responsibly buy healthy food or even food at all if given money to spend on anything, we've studied this stuff. [Mexico](http://www.vox.com/2014/6/26/5845258/mexico-tried-giving-poor-people-cash-instead-of-food-it-worked?ref=scottsantens.com) compared giving food to giving cash and found that people used cash to buy food. That should not be shocking, but for some reason for many it is, especially those who think it would be spent on "temptation goods" which we conclusively know is false from [a review of 30 studies](http://www.humanosphere.org/social-business/2016/11/poor-people-dont-spend-cash-transfers-on-booze-and-cigarettes-studies-show/?ref=scottsantens.com) that even shows the opposite effect. If that surprises you, what may be even more surprising is how [Kenya](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-kenya-aid-idUSKBN0NW0C120150511?ref=scottsantens.com) started giving people cash instead of food and years later discovered 9 out of 10 recipients had at some point used some of it to start a business or restock their herds. In other words, 90% treated it as capital instead of just money for food! This is why what people fear most about giving people cash is also its greatest strength. [**Cash can be used on anything in an infinite number of creative ways**](https://www.scottsantens.com/giving-goods-and-services-vs-giving-money). It allows maximum flexibility whereas non-cash welfare provides very little flexibility. That is of course by design, but that design is [truly counterproductive](https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e?ref=scottsantens.com) and shockingly [full of holes](https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/09/the-progressive-case-for-replacing-the-welfare-state-with-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com). Having a basic income means that I get to make my own choices. I therefore choose to spend about 10% of my basic income on Soylent, such that it is my breakfast and lunch five days a week every week for the foreseeable future. How much do you spend in total on breakfasts and lunches, Monday through Friday, every month? For many of you, that amount will exceed $100\. That's your choice. This is mine. Those on food stamps don't even get that choice. They have no choice but to accept the limits imposed on them, even if such limits cost them (and therefore the taxpayer) more money than the lack of limits would. With a basic income, I am free to get creative in meeting my dietary needs. By creative, I don't only mean Soylent itself, but how I go about buying it. A 12-pack of Soylent costs $34 on Amazon. That's $2.83 per bottle. However, there's a 15% discount for subscribing to at least five products on Amazon. Soylent is shelf-stable. That means I can stock up and therefore setup six different subscriptions such that I receive six cases every two months instead of three every month. That drops the price to $2.41 per bottle. According to what I've seen on [/r/Soylent](https://www.reddit.com/r/soylent/?ref=scottsantens.com), there are other creative ways out there of dropping the price even further. The above example is also meant to show how [**it is counterintuitively more expensive to be poor**](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/08/why-the-poor-pay-more-for-toilet-paper-and-just-about-everything-else/?ref=scottsantens.com). Greater access to money can save money. Everyone who shops at Costco knows how much cheaper food is to get in bulk, despite the greater upfront costs and membership fee. $100 per month in food stamps is not the same thing as $1,000 per month in basic income, not only because of the amount, but because basic income allows someone the new option of spending $300 on far more groceries than would have been possible with $100 per month in food stamps for three months, despite the total amount spent on food in both cases being $300. Another important aspect of choice is competition. Imagine for a moment you have food vouchers and have ten stores around you, but only one accepts your vouchers. For you, there exists no competition. That store can overcharge because of its artificial monopoly just like company stores once did by paying their workers in [company scrip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company%5Fscrip?ref=scottsantens.com) instead of cash. This can mean that even though a gallon of milk is around $4 at the other nine stores who are in competition with each other, a gallon of milk is $6 at the only store you can buy milk at with your voucher. Replacing that voucher with cash however, means all stores have to compete for your business, which also means lower prices for everyone, not just you. Cash means more choice, because everyone is competing for that cash. It is this aspect of basic income I really want to emphasize with this post. **Basic income creates new choices**. The existing system makes lots of choices for people, while also actively preventing even more choices from ever being made. Such a paternalistic system of strings and walls actively inhibits both creative thinking and long-term thinking. [It therefore also means less innovation](http://evonomics.com/universal-basic-income-accelerates-innovation-reducing-fear-failure/?ref=scottsantens.com). ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_left](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/99a82a31-bba3-46b8-93f9-c551ae603b7f/20170307_190629_medium.jpg) With my basic income, I have full control over my own daily nutritional requirements. And my personal preferences are my own. Most people want to take time out of their days to eat breakfast and lunch. I don't. I'd rather drink my Soylent and get back to work. However, you likely have some other preference, and whatever that preference is, you should not be prevented from it, "for your own good", by those who get off on feeling like they've saved you from yourself, thereby validating them to themselves as somehow better than you. It's time we stop treating each other like children, and start treating each other like adults capable of making our own decisions without a nanny state controlling our behavior. Unconditional basic income is an adult policy. It is a policy of trust and agency and freedom. It says that no one knows what's best for you, except for YOU. As for what's best for me? I choose Soylent. In fact, it makes me so happy that [you're more than welcome to ship some my way anytime](https://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/2YYE9Q7WIPE8Q/?ref=scottsantens.com), because I'm just going to buy it anyway, and a stockpile would make me that much readier for any potential zombie apocalypse scenario... --- **UPDATE:** A reader has provided such a great reply to this post, that I'm including it here: > Here in Europe it's not as easy to get the original Soylent -- instead, I've been consuming Joylent (which is powdered and flavored), for about a year now, also as breakfast and lunch during weekdays. It is hard to convey to other people how liberating it is, since everyone tends to focus on the flavor and texture aspects that I'm renouncing. Just like with poverty, the hidden costs in time and money, stress and even health (a more balanced diet) are largely ignored. > I do spend less on food, and am less concerned about the nutritional value and balance of my meals, but the main advantage for me is the freedom from constraints like time, location, and "infrastructure" (table, cutlery, etc). In a very close parallel with UBI, which decouples income from work thus allowing us to do the work we want to do rather than the work we have to do to pay the bills, so does Soylent decouple the pleasure of eating (the taste of the food, the social aspect, cooking as a creative activity) from the need to satisfy our bodies' hunger. We get to *choose* when we want to have a nice meal, rather than be forced to prepare meals all the time because the alternative is hunger or malnutrition. I think this is a very interesting parallel to draw from what basic income frees us to from, to what Soylent frees us from. Not having to spend the mental energy or physical time on food really is freeing for me in a similar way to how basic income is freeing for me. Both allow me more time to focus on what I wish to focus on, instead of what I'd otherwise be forced to focus on instead. --- *The above is in no way a paid advertisement for Soylent. I seriously just love the stuff and think it provides a great example of a new food option.* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Love, Loss, and a Greater Society URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/love-loss-and-a-greater-society/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T21:07:38.000Z On February 4th, I lost one of my closest friends I’ve ever had. Because I’ve always worked at home, we were together virtually 24 hours a day for almost 13 years. He felt like a part of me. His name was Stormy Waters and he was my dog. No other death in my life so far has left me feeling so empty as this one, and whereas it was his heart that failed him, I feel that in some ways, so did I, not because of lack of love, but because of lack of money. If only I could have afforded to take him to the dentist, maybe he’d have lived longer. If only I could have afforded to take him to a heart specialist when I was first told he had a heart murmur, maybe he’d have lived longer. If only I could have afforded to go back to the vet over and over again for more tests and medicine, maybe he’d have lived longer. But I couldn’t do those things. I didn’t do those things. A lack of money proved too high an obstacle for those things. ## The Great Unknown I can’t help but think of all the parents out there trying to do the best they can for their children on the tightest of budgets, faced with similar decisions every day and never knowing for sure the full ramifications of those decisions, just as I don’t know now. How many parents are buying foods high in fat, salt, and sugar, and turning to packaged dinners out of expediency instead of home-cooking healthier but more time-intensive meals? How many are frequently stopping at unhealthy but incredibly convenient drive-thrus on the way home or even between jobs due to lack of time? How many have insurance policies with high deductibles or even no insurance at all, and perform the mental math about hospital costs versus their kids being okay without that potentially entirely unnecessary trip to the ER? How many are living in neighborhoods they’d rather not live in, and sending their kids to schools they’d rather not send them to? How many of these decisions happen every single day, everywhere, because of lack of money? It makes me sick to think of all the unnecessary pain and unknowing. For every parent who hears their child now has diabetes, how much does that hurt to know they could have been fed differently, albeit at a higher cost of both time and money, both of which weren’t really options? For every child who watches a parent die at the hands of an opiate overdose, how much does it hurt to know their lives could have been different if only they’d been more [economically secure](http://economicsecurityproject.org/?ref=scottsantens.com)? For every sibling who watches their brother commit suicide or sister suffer chronic depression, how much does it hurt to wonder how much a lack of sufficient money played a role in that suffering, and how large that role may have played? It pains me to think of what I could have done differently if only I could have afforded it. Unfortunately, I will never know the answer to that painful unknown. Fortunately, pain is also not the only thing on my mind right now. I’m happy that aside from over a decade of loving companionship, Stormy had a few final parting gifts that I will never forget, because that’s the kind of friend he was. ## Gifts of Love The moment he died in my arms, I immediately sobbed uncontrollably. I didn’t even recognize my own sounds. I didn’t know I could make them. They were reflexive. In that moment I had no control over myself. No amount of conscious effort could override the overwhelming tide of loss I felt in that chair in that moment with my friend’s newly lifeless body in my embrace. For the next week, it was like traveling back and forth between two states of existence. My waves of [grief](http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/11/21/on-losing-a-dog/?ref=scottsantens.com) were an automatic physiological response, like breathing, something done without thinking, the result of a biochemical cascading of neurotransmitters within my brain. Scientifically detached as this may sound, it was this observation that caused me to fully comprehend something to my core that before I only merely believed — **we truly are a social species**. Why else would it *hurt* in such a physically profound way to experience the loss of a loved one, if we weren’t biologically wired in such a way so as to love in the first place? **We as a species are entirely interdependent**. It is a mass illusion to think any of us can go it alone. Adult humans put in solitary confinement experience hallucinations, anxiety, apathy, and even a loss of sense of self. It’s a form of torture. Baby humans provided the rest of their basic needs except for mere physical contact with other humans [can actually die](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maia-szalavitz/how-orphanages-kill-babie%5Fb%5F549608.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Baby monkeys raised in isolation can only exist in such a state for a maximum of around three months before reaching a point that after release [one in six stop eating and die five days later](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/03/30/hellhole?ref=scottsantens.com). We as primates need social bonds. We seek out connections with others. This need is biologically fundamental. Our need for each other even goes beyond personal connections to a reliance on people we will never meet, thanks to the division of labor. It’s how we constructed this civilization of ours — on each other. Where once we were each required to do just about everything ourselves, we eventually decided it made more sense to allow each other to specialize. Instead of everyone needing to be somewhat proficient in many different things, we could each become incredibly proficient in just one thing, and through our combined efforts, for the centuries since, we’ve continually raised the bar of what’s possible through the power of specialization due to our division of labor. Every single one of us was born into a world and handed everything it has to offer us, through the efforts of all those who walked on this world before us. The dead never asked us for anything in return. All civilization is a gift from the past. It is the absolute pinnacle of [**something for nothing**](https://medium.com/economicsecproj/technological-inheritance-and-the-case-for-a-basic-income-ded373a69c8e?ref=scottsantens.com). No amount of work done by any of the living can ever be enough to consider our debt to all of the dead, paid in full. This is also something I viscerally felt with the loss of my friend. As part of my grieving process, I was able to look through hundreds of photos and videos I captured of him during his life. These recordings will never fade. I will always be able to look at them. Such technology did not exist just 200 years ago. Whereas now we are constantly all taking photos and videos with devices we keep with us at all times, back then it would have been considered magic. The earliest known photo of a person was in [1838](http://mashable.com/2014/11/05/first-photograph-of-a-human/?ref=scottsantens.com). It took 7 minutes to capture . How many photos of loved ones existed prior to then? Zero. Why am I so lucky so as to have images of those I love that take fractions of a second to capture forever in unlimited number? What did I ever do to deserve that ability where those hundreds of years ago without that ability did more hard work than I’ve probably ever done? The answer is I don’t deserve it because of anything I’ve ever done. None of us do. It’s a gift from the past freely given, along with many other gifts of knowledge and technology for which I for one am eternally grateful. ## Basic Needs I also consider myself extremely lucky that because of [my crowdfunded basic income](http://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/11/14/13513066/universal-basic-income-crowdfund?ref=scottsantens.com), I was able to control without any worry how my time was spent in the days directly following his death. He died on a Friday night and I realized on Monday how difficult it would be for someone to have no choice but to go to work, regardless of their emotional state. I certainly couldn’t think of anything else that day. Not only is that a nightmare to imagine how people are forced to work in such a state of grief, but I can only imagine how unproductive that would be anyway. Everyone needs time to grieve without feeling the taking of such time has the potential to end up impoverishing them. My friend also taught me something else I will never forget: [**there is no true market for healthcare, and there never will be**](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130222/03254422068/healthcare-isnt-free-market-its-giant-economic-scam.shtml?ref=scottsantens.com). When you are told someone you love is dying, there is no amount you won’t pay, if at all possible to pay it. Last November, when I first rushed Stormy to the vet to save his life, the only reason he was able to live for the three extra months he did was through an approved credit line, which is money I didn’t and still don’t have. Repaying that, which I will likely be doing for months to come was only made more possible through the generosity of others through a [GoFundMe campaign](https://www.gofundme.com/stormy-waters-life-saving-fund?ref=scottsantens.com) I set up, and that was just a veterinary bill. Health insurance for humans is an entirely different animal, and if some amount of money can bring years or even months of additional life for a loved one, we will say yes in a heartbeat if we’re covered for that amount. It is absolutely absurd to think we can ever treat life itself like we do clothing and electronics. There is a point that something becomes too expensive, and where competition exists, there is someone who will try to meet that demand at a lower price, but when it comes to healthcare, that all goes right out the window. There is no limit to what we’d spend for those we love most. If you were told your child required a billion dollars in treatment and your insurance company offered to cover that, would you say no? Of course not, and so the cost of healthcare will continue to rise because no one cares how much everything costs to prevent profound loss. The patients don’t care. The families don’t care. The doctors don’t care. And thanks to competition not really existing where people shop around for the best deal when it comes to hospitals and insurance companies (which will never exist like it does for other goods and services) there’s no reason for anyone to care. All that matters is that those we love not be taken from us. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*zfmXkU-XnQ3khSnnum2vgQ.jpeg) [Source: Our World in Data](http://www.visualcapitalist.com/u-s-healthcare-system-global-outlier-not-good-way/?ref=scottsantens.com) **We must in the U.S. at some point achieve real universal healthcare**. There is no reason aside from the combination of greed and stupidity that we should ever allow ourselves to continue spending [more money than everyone else for worse outcomes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/danmunro/2014/06/16/u-s-healthcare-ranked-dead-last-compared-to-10-other-countries/?ref=scottsantens.com#e4ca9b576fd0). And if you think health insurance is the same thing, you obviously have never been in the position of being unable to afford co-pays or deductibles or prescriptions. Life is sacred, and we need to realize that and recognize that, by treating our health as something fundamentally different than everything else we obtain with money. ## A Greater Society It is for all of the above that I assert a demand for both [universal basic income](https://medium.com/world-economic-forum/why-we-should-all-have-a-basic-income-7177d5b339ec?ref=scottsantens.com) and universal healthcare as the two primary pillars of a **Greater Society**. We all need, without any conditions, sufficient income to meet our most basic needs. No one should have to choose between food and rent. No one should ever have to look back after the death of a loved one, and wonder how much [a lack of insufficient money to cover basic needs played a role throughout their lives](https://medium.com/basic-income/human-park-a-mammals-guide-to-stress-free-living-17f6cab007b3?ref=scottsantens.com). The basics should be covered for everyone as a bare minimum, with everything we earn from employment being additional income to cover everything else we may want instead of need. Furthermore, when it comes to meeting basic needs, simple cash can never function to achieve universal healthcare because free market private insurance within an unregulated healthcare market isn’t healthcare. It’s a license to take advantage of our inability to say no to any expense to save those we love most. It makes no real sense to only have one or the other. If we only have universal healthcare, then we will spend more on that than we otherwise would on a population of healthier people with basic incomes. If we only have universal basic income, then the costs of healthcare will continue to rise (albeit more slowly), and people will continue needlessly suffering with a lack of fully universal coverage, or even no coverage at all. Together however,[**a basic income will create a healthier population**](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com)**, and universal healthcare will protect that population in ways money can’t**. I miss my friend. My heart goes out to everyone in this world without basic income and without real healthcare who has lost someone they loved, and will lose someone they love in the years ahead, until that day comes when we do finally achieve a Greater Society, and in so doing finally know that when death and suffering does happen, it wasn’t because basic needs weren’t met. I would give anything for that knowledge, and will continue giving everything I can to make that world happen. Will you? *In Loving Memory of Stormy Waters (July 26, 2004 — February 4, 2017)* ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/260/1*gxe2-65RwcL2B6pmQDj2eg.png) Stormy's pawprint --- ***Special thanks to:*** ***Steven Grimm, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Larry Cohen, Aaron Marcus-Kubitza, Chris Hughes, Andy Stern, Stephane Boisvert, Topher Hunt, Gisele Huff, Natalie Foster, Justin Walsh, Daragh Ward, Joanna Zarach, Ace Bailey, Richard Just, Albert Wenger, Danielle and Michael Texeira, Paul Godsmark, Vladimir Baranov, Kai Wong, Kian Alavi, David Ihnen, Taressa Strong, Harish Venkatesan, Michiel Dral, Daniel Brockman, Carrie Mclachlan, Katie Doemland, Jordan Lejuwaan, Michael Honey, Cameron Ottens, Che Wagner, Gerald Huff, Jan Smole, Joe Ballou, Harmony Klohr, Jack Wagner, Allan Free, Lainie Petersen, Gray Scott, Catherine MacDonald, Arjun Banker, Dan O’Sullivan, Saura Naderi, David Bijl, Jill Weiss, Stuart Mark, Justin Hebert, Tony DeStefano, Johan Grahn, Elizabeth Balcar, Erhan Altay, Kris Roadruck, Mark Witham, Kirk Israel, Lee Irving, Masud Shah, Tammy Allen, Lawrence W Lee, Andreas, Casey Young, Robert F. Greene, Martin Jordo, Paolo Narciso, Allen Bauer, Robert Solovay, Amy Shaffer, Victor Lau, Rise & Shine PAC, Thomas Welsh, Walter Schaerer, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** ## [Would you like to see your name here too?](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Why We Should All Have a Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/why-we-should-all-have-a-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T21:04:03.000Z Consider for a moment that from this day forward, on the first day of every month, around $1,000 is deposited into your bank account — *because you are a citizen*. This income is independent of every other source of income and guarantees you a monthly starting salary above [the poverty line](http://familiesusa.org/product/federal-poverty-guidelines?ref=scottsantens.com) for the rest of your life. What do you do? Possibly of more importance, what *don’t* you do? How does this firm foundation of economic security and [positive freedom](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/?ref=scottsantens.com) affect your present and future decisions, from the work you choose to the relationships you maintain, to the risks you take? The idea is called [unconditional or universal basic income, or UBI](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s like social security for all, and it’s taking root within minds around the world and across the entire political spectrum, for [a multitude of converging reasons](https://medium.com/economicsecproj/in-the-21st-century-all-roads-appear-to-lead-to-universal-basic-income-d0f56d47999c?ref=scottsantens.com). Rising inequality, decades of stagnant wages, [the transformation of lifelong careers](http://www.horizons.gc.ca/eng/content/canada-and-changing-nature-work?ref=scottsantens.com) into sub-hourly tasks, exponentially advancing technology like robots and [deep neural networks increasingly capable of replacing potentially half of all human labour](https://medium.com/basic-income/deep-learning-is-going-to-teach-us-all-the-lesson-of-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines-7c6442e37a49?ref=scottsantens.com), world-changing events like Brexit and the election of Donald Trump — all of these and more are pointing to the need to start permanently guaranteeing everyone at least *some* income. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/700/0*OPunPcKdqDatBAqG.jpg) ## A promise of equal opportunity “Basic income” would be an amount sufficient to secure basic needs as a permanent earnings floor no one could fall beneath, and would replace many of today’s temporary benefits, which are given only in case of emergency, and/or only to those who successfully pass the applied qualification tests. UBI would be a promise of equal opportunity, not equal outcome, a new starting line set above the poverty line. It may surprise you to learn that [a partial UBI has already existed in Alaska since 1982](http://www.iser.uaa.alaska.edu/Publications/bien%5Fxiii%5Fak%5Fpfd%5Flessons.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), and that a version of basic income was experimentally tested [in the United States](http://www.widerquist.com/karl/Articles--scholarly/Failure2communicate.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) in the 1970s. The same is true in Canada, where the town of [Dauphin](http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20%282%29.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) managed to eliminate poverty for five years. Full UBI experiments have been done more recently in places such as [Namibia](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), [India](http://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/resources/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Indias-Basic-Income-Experiment-PP21.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) and [Brazil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quatinga%5FVelho?ref=scottsantens.com). Other countries are following suit: [Finland](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/17/business/economy/universal-basic-income-finland.html?ref=scottsantens.com), the Netherlands and Canada are carrying out government-funded experiments to compare against existing programmes. Organizations like [Y Combinator](https://blog.ycombinator.com/moving-forward-on-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) and [GiveDirectly](https://www.givedirectly.org/basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) have launched privately funded experiments in the US and East Africa respectively. I know what you’re thinking. It’s the same thing most people think when they’re new to the idea. *Giving money to everyone for doing nothing*? That sounds both incredibly expensive and a great way to encourage people to do nothing. Well, it may sound counter-intuitive, but the exact opposite is true on both accounts. What’s incredibly expensive is not having basic income, and what really motivates people to work is, on one hand, *not* taking money away from them for working, and on the other hand, not actually about money at all. ## Basic income in numbers What tends to go unrealized about the idea of basic income, and this is true even of many economists — but not all — is that it represents a *net* transfer. In the same way it does not cost $20 to give someone $20 in exchange for $10, it does not cost $3 trillion to give every adult citizen $12,000 and every child $4,000, when every household will be paying varying amounts of taxes in exchange for their UBI. [Instead ](https://medium.com/basic-income/inequality-and-the-basic-income-guarantee-c8f84d936640?ref=scottsantens.com)[it will cost around 30% of that, or about $900 billion](https://medium.com/basic-income/inequality-and-the-basic-income-guarantee-c8f84d936640?ref=scottsantens.com), and that’s *before* the full or partial consolidation of other programmes and tax credits immediately made redundant by the new transfer. In other words, for someone whose taxes go up $4,000 to pay for $12,000 in UBI, the cost to give that person UBI is $8,000, not $12,000, and it’s coming from someone else whose taxes went up $20,000 to pay for their own $12,000\. However, even that’s not entirely accurate, because the consolidation of the safety net and tax code UBI allows could drive the total price even lower. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/700/0*_SWolpHOTHNb-2Wx.png) Now, this idea of replacing existing programmes can scare some just as it appeals to others, but the choice is not all or nothing: partial consolidation is possible. As an example of partial consolidation, because most seniors already effectively have a basic income through social security, they could either choose between the two, or a percentage of their social security could be converted into basic income. Either way, no senior would earn a penny less than now in total, and yet the UBI price tag could be reduced by about $220 billion. Meanwhile, just a few examples of existing revenue that could and arguably should be fully consolidated into UBI would likely be food and nutrition assistance [($108 billion](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year%5Fspending%5F2017USbn%5F18bs6n%5F203031%5F605%5F609?ref=scottsantens.com#usgs302)), wage subsidies ($72 billion), child tax credits ($56 billion), temporary assistance for needy families [($17 billion](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year%5Fspending%5F2017USbn%5F18bs6n%5F203031%5F605%5F609?ref=scottsantens.com#usgs302)), and the home mortgage interest deduction (which mostly benefits the wealthy anyway, at a cost of at least [$70 billion per year](http://www.cbpp.org/research/mortgage-interest-deduction-is-ripe-for-reform?ref=scottsantens.com)). That’s $543 billion spent on UBI instead of all the above, which represents only a fraction of [the full list](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us%5Fwelfare%5Fspending%5F40.html?ref=scottsantens.com), none of which need be healthcare or education. **So what’s the true cost?** The true net cost of UBI in the US is therefore closer to an additional tax revenue requirement of a few hundred billion dollars — or less — depending on the many design choices made, and there exists [a variety of ideas out there for crossing such a funding gap](https://medium.com/@2noame/if-labor-is-being-replaced-by-capital-which-it-is-then-the-revenue-should-come-mostly-from-12fc4985c90?ref=scottsantens.com) in a way that many people might prefer, that would also treat citizens like the shareholders they are ([virtually all basic research is taxpayer funded](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/magazine/uber-would-like-to-buy-your-robotics-department.html?ref=scottsantens.com)), and that could even reduce taxes on labour by focusing more on capital, consumption, and [externalities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian%5Ftax?ref=scottsantens.com) instead of wages and salaries. Additionally, we could eliminate the [$540 billion in tax expenditures](http://cfed.org/assets/pdfs/Upside%5FDown%5Fto%5FRight-Side%5FUp%5F2014.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) currently being provided disproportionately to the wealthiest, and also some of the [$850 billion spent on defence](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year%5Fspending%5F20XXUSbn%5FXXbs2n%5F3031%5F051?ref=scottsantens.com). Universal basic income is thus entirely affordable and essentially Milton Friedman’s [negative income tax](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM&ref=scottsantens.com) in net outcome ([and he himself knew this](http://www.basicincome.org/bien/pdf/NewsFlash3.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)), where those earning below a certain point are given additional income, and those earning above a certain point are taxed additional income. UBI does not exist outside the tax system unless it’s provided through pure monetary expansion or extra-governmental means. In other words, yes, Bill Gates will get $12,000 too but as one of the world’s wealthiest billionaires he will pay far more than $12,000 in new taxes to pay for it. That however is not similarly true for [the bottom 80% of all US households](http://www.scottsantens.com/does-basic-income-reduce-income-inequality-gini), who will pay the same or less in total taxes. To some, this may sound wasteful. Why give someone money they don’t need, and then tax their other income? Think of it this way: is it wasteful to put seat belts in every car instead of only in the cars of those who have gotten into accidents thus demonstrating their need for seat belts? Good drivers never get into accidents, right? So it might seem wasteful. But it’s not because we recognize the absurd costs of determining who would and wouldn’t need seat belts, and the immeasurable costs of being wrong. We also recognize that accidents don’t only happen to “bad” drivers. They can happen to anyone, at any time, purely due to random chance. As a result, seat belts for everyone. The truth is that the costs of people having insufficient incomes are many and collectively massive. It burdens the healthcare system. It burdens the criminal justice system. It burdens the education system. It burdens would-be entrepreneurs, it burdens both productivity and consumer buying power and therefore entire economies. [The total cost of all of these burdens well exceeds $1 trillion annually](http://www.scottsantens.com/what-america-spends-per-citizen-per-year-40000), and so the few hundred billion net additional cost of UBI pays for itself many times over. That’s the big-picture maths. ## The real effects on motivation But what about people then choosing not to work? Isn’t that a huge burden too? Well that’s where things get really interesting. For one, conditional welfare assistance creates a disincentive to work through removal of benefits in response to paid work. If accepting any amount of paid work will leave someone on welfare barely better off, or even worse off, what’s the point? With basic income, all income from paid work (after taxes) is earned as additional income so that everyone is always better off in terms of total income through any amount of employment — whether full time, part time or gig. Thus basic income does not introduce a disincentive to work. [It removes the existing disincentive to work that conditional welfare creates.](https://surlysubgroup.com/2016/06/13/universal-bassic-income-and-marginal-rates/?ref=scottsantens.com) Fascinatingly, improved incentives are where basic income really shines. Studies of motivation reveal that [rewarding activities with money is a good motivator for mechanistic work but a poor motivator for creative work](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/motivation.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Combine that with the fact that creative work is to be what’s left after most [mechanistic work is handed off to machines](https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2016/january/jobs-involving-routine-tasks-arent-growing?ref=scottsantens.com), and we’re looking at a future where increasingly the work that’s left for humans is not best motivated extrinsically with money, but intrinsically out of the pursuit of more important goals. It’s the difference between doing meaningless work for money, and using money to do meaningful work. Basic income thus enables the future of work, and even recognizes all the unpaid intrinsically motivated work currently going on that could be amplified, for example in the form of the [$700 billion in unpaid work](http://www.washington.edu/news/2015/06/16/study-reveals-surprising-truths-about-caregivers/?ref=scottsantens.com) performed by informal caregivers in the US every year, and all the work in the free/open source software movement (FOSSM) that’s [absolutely integral to the internet](https://medium.com/@nayafia/how-i-stumbled-upon-the-internet-s-biggest-blind-spot-b9aa23618c58?ref=scottsantens.com). There is also another way basic income could affect work incentives that is rarely mentioned and somewhat more theoretical. UBI has the potential to better match workers to jobs, dramatically increase engagement, and even transform jobs themselves through the power UBI provides to refuse them. ## A truly free market for labor How many people are unhappy with their jobs? According to Gallup, worldwide, only [13%](http://www.gallup.com/poll/165269/worldwide-employees-engaged-work.aspx?ref=scottsantens.com) of those with jobs feel engaged with them. In the US, 70% of workers are not engaged or actively disengaged, the cost of which is a productivity loss of around [$500 billion per year](http://screenwerk.com/2013/06/25/gallup-70-of-workforce-not-engaged-costs-billions-in-lost-productivity/?ref=scottsantens.com). Poor engagement is even associated with [a disinclination to donate money, volunteer or help others](http://www.gallup.com/poll/179987/countries-disengaged-workers-less-charitable.aspx?ref=scottsantens.com). It measurably erodes social cohesion. At the same time, there are those among the unemployed who would like to be employed, but the jobs are taken by those who don’t really want to be there. This is an inevitable result of requiring jobs in order to live. With no real choice, people do work they don’t wish to do in exchange for money that may be insufficient — but that’s still better than nothing — and then cling to that paid work despite being the “working poor” and/or disengaged. It’s a mess. **Basic income — in 100 people** Take an economy without UBI. We’ll call it **Nation A**. For every 100 working-age adults there are 80 jobs. Half the work force is not engaged by their jobs, and half again as many are unemployed with half of them really wanting to be employed, but, as in [a game of musical chairs](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/the-job-market-a-game-of-%5Fb%5F7581704.html?ref=scottsantens.com), they’re left without a chair. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/700/0*HvN0LH-EMxfj4RHd.png) Basic income fundamentally alters this reality. By unconditionally providing income outside of employment, people can refuse to do the jobs that aren’t engaging them. This in turn opens up those jobs to the unemployed who would be engaged by them. It also creates the bargaining power for everyone to negotiate better terms. How many jobs would become more attractive if they paid more money or required fewer hours? How would this reorganizing of the labour supply affect productivity if the percentage of disengaged workers plummeted? How much more prosperity would that create? Consider now an economy with basic income. Let’s call it **Nation B**. For every 100 working age adults there are still 80 jobs, at least to begin with. The disengaged workforce says “no thanks” to the labour market as is, enabling all 50 people who want to work to do the jobs they want. To attract those who demand more compensation or shorter work weeks, some employers raise their wages. Others reduce the required hours. The result is a transformed labour market of more engaged, more employed, better paid, [more productive](http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20160714-is-full-time-work-bad-for-our-brains?ref=scottsantens.com) workers. Fewer people are excluded, and there’s perhaps [more scope for all workers to become self-employed entrepreneurs](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-will-accelerate-innovation-by-reducing-our-fear-of-failure-b81ee65a254?ref=scottsantens.com). ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/700/0*WeXgngCQDo3YXWge.png) Simply put, a basic income improves the market for labour by making it [optional](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com). The transformation from a coercive market to a free market means that employers must *attract* employees with better pay and more flexible hours. It also means a more productive work force that potentially obviates the need for [market-distorting minimum wage laws](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/minimum-wages-vs-universal-basic-income%5Fb%5F7957850.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Friction might even be reduced, so that people can move more easily from job to job, or from job to education/retraining to job, or even from job to entrepreneur, all thanks to more individual liquidity and the elimination of counter-productive bureaucracy and conditions. Perhaps best of all, the automation of low-demand jobs becomes further incentivized through the rising of wages. The work that people refuse to do for less than a machine would cost to do it becomes a job for machines. And thanks to those replaced workers having a basic income, they aren’t just left standing in the cold in the job market’s ongoing game of musical chairs. They are instead better enabled to find new work, paid or unpaid, full-time or part-time, that works best for them. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2022/02/14116990617743084909-copy.jpg) ## The tip of a big iceberg The idea of basic income is deceivingly simple sounding, but in reality it’s like an iceberg with far more to be revealed as you dive deeper. Its big picture price tag in the form of investing in human capital for far greater returns, and its effects on what truly motivates us are but glimpses of these depths. There are many more. Some are already known, like the positive effects on [social cohesion](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/universal-basic-income-wi%5Fb%5F8354072.html?ref=scottsantens.com) and [physical and mental health](https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/alphaweb.site-ym.com/resource/collection/86D31666-E7EA-42F1-BDA1-A03ECA0B4E3D/OnPhysicians%5FLetter%5FBIG%5F170815.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) as seen in the 42% drop in crime in Namibia and the 8.5% reduction in hospitalizations in Dauphin, Manitoba. Debts tend to fall. Entrepreneurship tends to grow. Other effects have yet to be discovered by further experiments. But [the growing body of evidence](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/wiki/index?ref=scottsantens.com#wiki%5Fthat.27s%5Fall%5Fvery%5Fwell.2C%5Fbut%5Fwhere.27s%5Fthe%5Fevidence.3F) behind cash transfers in general point to basic income as something far more transformative to the future of work than even its [long history of consideration](http://basicincome-europe.org/brief-history-basic-income-ideas/?ref=scottsantens.com) has imagined. It’s like a game of Monopoly where the winning teams have rewritten the rules so players no longer collect money for passing Go. The rule change functions to exclude people from markets. Basic income corrects this. But it’s more than just a tool for [improving markets by making them more inclusive](http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/2016/04/22/the-unconditional-basic-income-and-the-hayekian-price-system/?ref=scottsantens.com); there’s something more fundamental going on. [Humans need security to thrive](https://medium.com/basic-income/human-park-a-mammals-guide-to-stress-free-living-17f6cab007b3?ref=scottsantens.com), and basic income is a secure economic base — the new foundation on which to transform the precarious present, and build a more solid future. That’s not to say it’s a silver bullet. It’s that our problems are not impossible to solve. Poverty is not a supernatural foe, nor is extreme inequality or the threat of mass income loss due to automation. They are all just choices. And at any point, we can choose to make new ones. Based on the evidence we already have and will likely continue to build, I firmly believe one of those choices should be unconditional basic income as a new equal starting point for all. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) \- Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Top 10 Basic Income Articles of 2016 URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/top-10-basic-income-articles-of-2016/ Last updated: 2024-01-10T20:42:01.000Z ![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/a770d040-a6a1-4827-b918-cff62bb87521/Top-10_large.jpg) As a moderator of the /[r/BasicIncome subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/?ref=scottsantens.com), I read a lot of links about the idea of basic income on a daily basis. If I were to guess a number for the quantity of them I read in 2016 that somehow involved or alluded to the idea of basic income, it would be over a thousand. With that said, here are the ten I loved the most, that if you somehow missed, I suggest reading and sharing as soon as possible. 10) [**"More Normal Than Welfare: The Mincome Experiment, Stigma, and Community Experience"**](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cars.12091/full?ref=scottsantens.com) by David Calnitsky for the Canadian Review of Sociology The Canadian Mincome experiment may have happened in the 70s, but that doesn't mean we don't still have more to learn from it. With this new and original look at the data, David Calnitsky shows that the universality of Mincome in Dauphin resulted in a complete lack of stigma. Those who were against welfare had no problem accepting Mincome because they didn't see it as welfare. Bookmark this link and remember it every time someone claims basic income will carry a stigma. 9) [**"The Unconditional Basic Income and the Hayekian Price System"**](http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/2016/04/22/the-unconditional-basic-income-and-the-hayekian-price-system/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Jason Kuznicki for Ordinary Times Out of this entire list, this article may be the one I share the most in my online interactions about basic income. Jason Kuznicki provides a wonderful explanation of how basic income improves price signals by making markets more inclusive. It serves to also inform readers of Friedrich Hayek's support for universal basic income, and how basically capitalism needs basic income in order to work better than ever. Bookmark this link and consider sharing it with anyone who dismisses basic income as communism or socialism. 8) [**"How Basic Income Solves Capitalism's Fundamental Problem"**](http://evonomics.com/how-universal-basic-income-solves/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Tom Streithorst for Evonomics I saw this piece get a lot of shares throughout 2016, and it remains my own favorite link for explaining the growing problem of shrinking demand. Robots can make iPhones but they can't buy them, so as automation continues to grow, people will be less and less able to purchase what machines are producing. The only way around this otherwise unsolvable problem is to sever the connection between work and income, and start providing people a basic income. Either that or World War III. As Tom Streithorst argues here, basic income will be just as economically stimulative as war, but without all the genocide. 7) [**"Why do the poor make such poor decisions?"**](https://thecorrespondent.com/4664/why-do-the-poor-make-such-poor-decisions/179307480-39a74caf?ref=scottsantens.com) by Rutger Bregman for the Correspondent With the translation of his [book about basic income](http://amzn.to/1TwXakK?ref=scottsantens.com) from Dutch into English and its subsequent release this year, Rutger Bregman published more than a few fantastic articles in different places to help promote it. However, this one seemed to really resonate the most with people by getting into how poverty functions as an imposed mental tax on the mind, and how some of the best long-term evidence there is for basic income can be found in North Carolina where a casino started giving out large dividends such that existing social costs went down further than the cost of the dividends themselves. Poverty is not in the genes. Poverty is a lack of money. And eliminating poverty with basic income is the smart thing to do that will effectively make people smarter by lifting poverty's 13-14 IQ point tax on the mind. 6) [**"Scrapping Welfare"**](http://www.thepearsoncentre.ca/platform/scrapping-welfare/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Hugh Segal for the Literary Review of Canada republished by The Pearson Centre for Progressive Policy Originally published back in 2012, this absolute gem escaped me until it was republished this year. The author of this piece is Hugh Segal, who also happens to be the main guy behind the basic income experiment being designed and planned in Canada. You don't need to read [his 101-page discussion paper](https://www.ontario.ca/page/finding-better-way-basic-income-pilot-project-ontario?ref=scottsantens.com) to get that Hugh Segal was a marvelous choice for heading up Ontario's testing of UBI. Just make sure and at least read this. 5) [**"It's Payback Time for Women"**](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/opinion/sunday/payback-time-for-women.html?ref=scottsantens.com) by Judith Shulevitz for the New York Times Full disclosure, I talked to Judith on the phone to help her in researching this piece, and she took that conversation as a framework and transformed it into possibly the best article I've yet read that functions as an introduction to basic income from a female perspective. That it also happened to be published in the New York Times was the cherry on top of a great UBI article sundae. Bookmark this piece and share it with any feminist interested in learning more about basic income. 4) [**"What Would Happen if We Just Gave People Money?"**](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) by Andrew Flowers for FiveThirtyEight Full disclosure part two, as with the previous entry, I spoke on the phone with Andrew for this piece as well, and the end result absolutely blew me away. I was already excited to see FiveThirtyEight finally publishing a piece about basic income, but this one went far beyond my expectations. It was heavily shared on social media and remains something I see frequently shared. Of all articles ever published about basic income, I believe this one serves as one of the best introductions to the idea for the general reader completely new to it. 3) [**"Canada and the Changing Nature of Work"**](http://www.horizons.gc.ca/eng/content/canada-and-changing-nature-work?ref=scottsantens.com) by Policy Horizons Canada for the Government of Canada An absolute must-read, this report for the Canadian government clearly explains how the way we work is being transformed, and that transformation points directly to basic income. Full time jobs are 20th century relics. Going forward, work will be increasingly diced up into tasks. This means that even assuming the potential for new jobs to be created at the same rate as technology destroys old ones, the nature of those new jobs will still require a basic income to function as a 21st century safety net. 2) [**"Replaced by Robots: Human Capital is Under Threat"**](http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/morningstar/magazine%5F20160809/index.php?ref=scottsantens.com#/36) by Hal Ratner for Morningstar Magazine This was my favorite article of the entire year, at least until it was bumped from my top spot with just weeks to go until 2017\. It is also probably the one least likely on this list to have been read by anyone due to the annoying way it exists behind a paywall outside of reading it in virtual magazine form. Writing for Morningstar Magazine, Hal Ratner provides a very large big picture look at the past, present, and future of work in an impressively succinct piece, including some ideas about the future that I absolutely agree seem likely to happen, like the homogenization of goods made by machines leading to an explosion of artisan goods created by people with basic incomes. 1) [**"Fuck Work"**](https://aeon.co/essays/what-if-jobs-are-not-the-solution-but-the-problem?ref=scottsantens.com) by James Livingston for Aeon After reading this piece by James Livingston, I think I may have cheered. I also think more than a few others reacted in the same way, because it was read and shared like crazy. As I write this, it shows over 66,000 shares on Facebook alone. The title says all you need to know about the point of the article, though "Fuck Jobs" would have been technically more accurate. For anyone who thinks that the elimination of jobs by machines means that we should create more jobs, you're grounded. Go read this. Then read it again. Then read it one more time. --- *Bonus Link:* If there's one basic income article of my own I most want you to not have missed reading and sharing, it's [**"Human Park"**](https://medium.com/basic-income/human-park-a-mammals-guide-to-stress-free-living-17f6cab007b3?ref=scottsantens.com)**.** Happy New Year, and here's to 2017 being the biggest year yet for the growing basic income movement! --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### In the 21st century, all roads appear to lead to universal basic income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/in-the-21st-century-all-roads-appear-to-lead-to-universal-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-19T01:01:02.000Z # The idea of unconditionally providing all citizens an income floor sufficient for existence —[ a basic income](https://medium.com/basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) — looks to be at the intersection of an unstoppable congruence of events involving accelerating automation, growing inequality, the fragmentation of work, and the rise of the sharing economy. First, automation is here and [it actually arrived decades ago](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/future-of-jobs%5Fb%5F8011296.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Technology is accomplishing its purpose by allowing us all to do more with less. It’s been estimated that with existing technology [we could even eliminate half of our workload](https://hbr.org/2015/12/how-many-of-your-daily-tasks-could-be-automated?ref=scottsantens.com) right *now*, [let alone with the technology the future will bring](https://medium.com/basic-income/deep-learning-is-going-to-teach-us-all-the-lesson-of-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines-7c6442e37a49?ref=scottsantens.com#.rrxznibus). That means less paid work, but as long as income is coupled to work, that also means less ability to purchase what is being produced. This crisis of silenced demand amidst abundant supply leads inevitably to a need to decouple income from work by providing income independent of work. Without that change, automation eats its own demand. Consumer buying power must be maintained because robots only work at Amazon, they don’t shop there. Next is that the working class has finally exhausted all its options for trying to maintain itself after decades of entirely stagnant wage growth. Credit cards are no longer the way out. Home refinancing is no longer the way out. College educations are no longer the way out. In our globalized world, inequality between nations has decreased, but inequality within nations has increased. Movements like Occupy Wall Street were only the beginning of a growing sense of populism as [the many watch the few siphon up all prosperity for themselves](https://medium.com/basic-income/trickle-down-economics-must-die-long-live-grow-up-economics-5b8334a0db76?ref=scottsantens.com#.g4odvtk6d). There is a growing sense that the game is rigged, and it’s this sense that underlies historic shocks like Brexit and Trump, with undoubtedly more such surprises to come. Who knows what they will be? Want to gamble? Another unstoppable change is how [the nature of work has itself changed](https://medium.com/basic-income/why-the-changing-nature-of-work-means-we-need-a-universal-basic-income-e099118bf05b?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s being chopped up from wholes into fragments. Although a fairly recent invention as a result of the Industrial Revolution, jobs were for decades synonymous with careers. Working in one whole job for forty hours a week for thirty years became considered normal. Obtaining one’s benefits through that employer, from healthcare to unemployment insurance to retirement pensions also became considered normal. There is however a new normal in the act of becoming. [All new work since 2005 can be classified as alternative work](http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/lkatz/files/katz%5Fkrueger%5Fcws%5Fv3.pdf?m=1459290955&ref=scottsantens.com). This means it’s part-time, or temporary, or contractual, or freelance, or gig labor. These ways of earning money do not come with the same pay or benefits. They do not come with a safety net, period. Therefore, where they excel at a sense of independence, they entirely lack a sense of security. This work requires a new safety net — a trampoline even — entirely decoupled from jobs as we once knew them, that allows for work transitions without friction. Finally, there is a new economy being born within the confines of the old — the sharing economy. In this economy, [people exist as prosumers instead of producers and consumers](http://www.scottsantens.com/future-of-work-consumption-and-basic-income). In the 20th century, people got paid in exchange for work and then used that money to purchase what others were paid to produce. In the 21st century, people will increasingly do work at no cost and consume that which has no cost. Wikipedia is the classic example of this new economy, a collaborative creation that has become the world’s de facto encyclopedia with the unbeatable cost of free. The newest generation spends their time creating and sharing, not buying and selling. For companies, and for their employees, this trend towards free represents a clear and present danger to “earning a living.” Those born this century aren’t cord cutters. They are growing up in a world without cords, and understandably reject them. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*ZtfeYZFBZ4l4kkQVB2RBVg.jpeg) [Photo](https://www.flickr.com/photos/allenran917/6297519732/in/photolist-aAurdq-PwE2j-4GUodR-5FBmj8-4HaS7T-ND83E-621kab-7rmoDH-bqJ7Mg-dYUo2-9wTNhb-rF8ASa-nS28iS-9YjQ6h-nhVztZ-6myCct-6joA9b-4ee9Qb-qgxmAx-fx3bu1-5zVogj-8Fw31Q-fyaxKd-97W23e-d9NXB6-ro6moY-amhVG-68LcgM-9nxRdC-6cLHkW-4Lxffo-p9CeSP-5d5rGW-3Gj8w6-awRcHZ-bWn91W-anbjnR-9ryY7y-aTgZg6-4eB3ta-7BScH2-oR3p6W-8fTw94-8bLNr8-ecbaKY-mYWCYZ-HjnCg-cbeVMS-vszVH-neU9Rd?ref=scottsantens.com) by Ran Allen licensed under [CC 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=scottsantens.com) All of the above are trends that are converging. Technological unemployment, rising inequality, the transformation of work, the sharing economy, all of these can only go so far before something gives. Income must be decoupled from work and provided unconditionally, or like an anchor tied to our ankles, we will together be dragged down by our own unwillingness to evolve. The rope must be cut, and if we do that, not only will we not drown, but [we’ll be truly ](https://medium.com/basic-income/true-freedom-comes-with-basic-income-7ff1368e170?ref=scottsantens.com#.7n02i17ip)[*free*](https://medium.com/basic-income/true-freedom-comes-with-basic-income-7ff1368e170?ref=scottsantens.com#.7n02i17ip). For me personally, it’s that last part that drives my imagination the most in advocating the idea of universal basic income. Although true that there are multiple forces pushing us towards UBI as the way to avoid *dystopia*, it’s all the positive benefits of implementing it that excite me as the way to instead pursue *utopia*. Yes, I just used that word. Somewhere along the way we lost the ability to picture a better future and invent it together. Utopia became a bad word, replaced by the normalcy of accepting the status quo. But here is an idea with the potential I think to change that. Our goal should always be to create a better future. Continual improvement should be our constancy of purpose. How do we achieve that? Evidence-based policies over politics. What drives me is not party. What drives me is not authority. What drives me is what *works*. Show me what works. Where tried, the provision of unconditional income simply works. It has worked well in Alaska since 1982\. It worked phenomenally in universal basic income experiments in [Namibia](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) and [India](http://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/resources/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Indias-Basic-Income-Experiment-PP21.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). It works incredibly as unconditional cash transfers in [Kenya, Uganda](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/04/givedirectly-cash-transfers%5Fn%5F7339040.html?ref=scottsantens.com), [Liberia](http://www.scottsantens.com/guess-what-happened-when-liberia-tested-a-pilot-program-of-cash-transfers-to-the-extreme-poor), and [Lebanon](https://www.rescue.org/sites/default/files/document/631/emergencyeconomiesevaluationreport-lebanon2014.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). [The evidence for cash transfers is solid and growing](http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/415491467994645020/pdf/97882-PUB-REVISED-Box393232B-PUBLIC-DOCDATE-6-29-2015-DOI-10-1596978-1-4648-0543-1-EPI-1464805431.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) as more and more countries and organizations adopt its usage. The simple fact is that people themselves know better what’s better for them than anyone else does. In addition, we are all far more creative than we give each other credit for. Give someone a voucher for food and all they can buy is food. Give them cash and they can buy food, or housing, or clothes, or medicine, or school supplies, or use it [as capital to start a new business](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-will-accelerate-innovation-by-reducing-our-fear-of-failure-b81ee65a254?ref=scottsantens.com). The possibilities are endless. Perhaps most important of all is how [the idea of basic income is not “left” or “right”, it’s forward](https://medium.com/tech-and-inequality/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com). This is not just another idea that won’t go anywhere because one side hates it and sees the other side as evil for supporting it. Basic income is an idea that free market supporters like [Milton Friedman](https://medium.com/basic-income/why-milton-friedman-supported-a-guaranteed-income-5-reasons-da6e628f6070?ref=scottsantens.com#.7uafxxamj) and [Friedrich Hayek](https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/why-did-hayek-support-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) supported as much as civil rights activists like [Martin Luther King, Jr.](https://medium.com/basic-income/mlk-on-guaranteed-income-bfd060fd5314?ref=scottsantens.com#.2xc2ygfw9) and populists like Huey Long. [Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, there is something for everyone to like about basic income](http://basicincome-europe.org/brief-history-basic-income-ideas/?ref=scottsantens.com). It gets everyone talking to each other again. It gets people to cross aisles. In our age of extreme partisanship, it’s an idea whose time has come, but it’s still up to us to finally bring it to fruition together. It will not be easy, but it can be done and I believe it must be done. What would you do with an extra $1,000 per month? [I know what I would do](http://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/11/14/13513066/universal-basic-income-crowdfund?ref=scottsantens.com). What new choices would you make? Think about it. Visualize it. And help make that vision real. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### A Basic Income Sermon for Christians URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-sermon-for-christians/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T23:07:48.000Z **For some who are new to the idea of universal basic income, it may reflexively strike them as being somehow immoral. Be it seen as [a form of theft](http://www.scottsantens.com/wouldn-t-a-basic-income-just-be-stealing-from-those-who-earned-their-money), or in violation of the Protestant work ethic, or just plain [feeling wrong](http://www.scottsantens.com/for-those-who-believe-a-basic-income-is-morally-wrong), basic income can pose a challenge to those of faith. The following sermon makes the very strong Christian case that what's truly immoral, is not *already* having established an unconditional basic income for all.** *(The video below is courtesy of Reverend Dr. Roger Lee Ray of [Community Christian Church in Springfield, Missouri](http://www.spfccc.org/?ref=scottsantens.com), which I have transcribed into text. For more sermon videos you can subscribe to [his YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeF1t9dro%5FUwXa5qO%5FFH7bg?ref=scottsantens.com) and for more sermon texts you can visit [his archive](http://archives.spfccc.org/?ref=scottsantens.com). You can also follow him [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/RevDrRay?ref=scottsantens.com).* For most of human history, poverty was caused by scarcity. There simply was not enough food, not enough drinkable water, not enough housing. There were not enough seats in classrooms for everyone to receive a quality education, to be comfortably housed, to be adequately fed, but the past half century has changed that. For the first time in human history, the world has more than enough to provide all these things for everyone. **What we have now is not a lack of resources. What we have now is a lack of morality, a lack of will, a lack of basic common decency.** Our poverty, especially in the United States, is created by those who both hoard wealth and who cling to power. By the mid-1990s this fact was being broadly discussed among both economists and agricultural specialists. There was no longer a need to focus on how to produce more food. We were already producing much more food than was being eaten and, in fact, more than could be eaten. We are subsidizing turning food into gasoline to find a way to get rid of it all while we're still surrounded by starvation. And when arguably there is no longer a shortage of gasoline, but a glut of it. I've been involved in poverty and hunger related charities for most of my adult life. I've helped build feeding centers in rural Nicaragua. I've cooked for our local homeless and still every week I'm on the serving line feeding as many homeless and hungry people as I can find, but I know that charity is not the answer. **Charity is not a solution to poverty**. And I don't want to diminish charity in any way. I don't want to slight it. I sent a gift to Nicaragua this week because I still really believe in what the Rainbow Network is doing there. I know that these gestures are symbolic. You never have to explain that to me. I get it. It's like trying to put out a forest fire with a squirt gun. **The problem is not that food is not available. The problem is that most people can't *buy* it.** They can't get into the economic flow of people who get a regular pension or paycheck that lets them go to the marketplace and buy what they need to eat and take it home and cook it the way they should be able to. As Dorothy Day was fond of saying, **"The problem is our stinking rotten system, and our acceptance of it."** Our ancient scriptures, our hymns, our cultural myths and stories, all evolved in a context of food shortage, so that they derived images of generosity, of sharing, of showing charitable concern for those less fortunate... but all of those tenderhearted, well intended images are not accurate in the 21st century. They are not accurate descriptions or reactions to what is going on in the economy of the present moment. I've seen [Dickens' A Christmas Carol](http://www.scottsantens.com/the-science-behind-a-christmas-carol) maybe a hundred times. I've personally played the Ghost of Christmas Present at least three times on stage myself, and I still cry every time Scrooge has his epiphany at the end. I have cried watching the Mr. Magoo version of the Christmas Carol. But I'm telling you, charity is a kind of a feel good tipping in the face of the real problem, and **the real problem is an economic system that keeps nearly half of the population locked into poverty when we have more than enough to take care of them.** There are more empty repossessed houses in the United States than there are homeless people. **There are more empty houses, than there are homeless people.** There is more food going into the landfill every day than would be needed to feed every hungry person in the world. Our problem is not scarcity, unless what you mean by scarcity is a lack of conscience, a dearth may I say, of giving a damn. The system is so corrupt, and yet we have come to accept it as a necessity, that we forget to challenge it. There's been a conversation around for the last fifty years about paying a [basic income](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com#.k7y8s8q08), not a minimum wage, not food stamps, not public housing, but paying a basic income to every living human being. And if you just did it in the United States, you pay a minimum basic income that is livable to everyone,and then if you want a better life, you work, and you try to start jobs, and you try to be creative. If we did that, and this is mind-boggling, now I'm not an economist and I don't want to go too far chasing this rabbit into the woods, but what it costs to administer, our public housing, our food stamps program, our aid for mothers programs... if we simply took all the bureaucratic costs out and paid everyone a basic income, [**we would literally *save* money.**](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com) Now why wouldn't we do that? Because Americans are horrified of giving someone something for nothing. We are horrified by the concept. But where they've done it, like in Alaska, where there's been so much oil income in Alaska for years that every Alaskan, whether you're a millionaire or a pauper, [everyone gets a check every year](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/only-state-free-money-alaska?ref=scottsantens.com). It's not a basic income. It's a couple thousand dollars, but what they've discovered is that it multiplies in the economy. If you give a poor person a couple thousand dollars, they will not establish an offshore savings account to invest it in. They will spend it. They will spend it in local stores, and they will spend it on housing, and they will spend it on trading in a car, and it stimulates the economy. In American Indian reservations, where their income is large enough that they give a distribution to everyone, they discover it multiplies in the economy. [It really makes a huge difference](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/08/the-remarkable-ways-a-little-money-can-change-a-childs-personality-for-life/?ref=scottsantens.com). **A basic income to all Americans would change everything... but somehow we are suspicious.** Now, is that a *personal* statement? If you got a barely subsistent amount of income, would *you* not work? Or might you be brave enough to start your own business... to do something genuinely adventuresome? If we had health care for everyone, like every other civilized nation in the world, and if we had a basic income, wouldn't that *inspire* you to work rather than taking away your incentive? It would keep you from getting captured in a dead-end job doing the same thing over and over again, then you'd have the courage to go to school. Then you'd have the courage to create new economies. My favorite historian Howard Zinn said, "The rule of law does not do away with the unequal distribution of wealth and power, but reinforces that inequity with the authority of law. It allocates wealth and poverty. . . in such complicated and indirect ways as to leave the victim bewildered." You have to wonder about a lot of the people who vote for the most austere, horrible political candidates when they are living in poverty themselves. But **they have been educated literally to loathe their own peer group and to blame themselves for being poor.** Advertising does this to us constantly. Coca-Cola is now investing in children's athletic events, which is to say that this epidemic of childhood obesity is not because they are poisoning your children but because you are bad parents and you don't make them exercise enough. It's a complete shifting of blame and we have spent generations training the poor to believe that their poverty is their own fault. One of the smartest, most talented people that I know is on public assistance and has been off and on for 20 years, and this is a woman who can do carpentry and plumbing and electrical work. She can fix almost anything on cars. She can cook any form of game and has managed to feed the homeless and dispossessed kids on her street with food stamps and good wishes. But she can't break into the universe of employment of having real insurance, of ever having a hope of retirement or home ownership. She is hardworking. She is talented. She has some health issues, some complicated family hurdles, but absolutely cannot break out of the cycle of poverty. If she was only one person in that predicament, I'd solve it myself. I am so sympathetic with her situation that if that was a unique situation, I would personally make the sacrifices necessary to change it. But her situation is not a standalone circumstance. It is repeated over and over and over again. My phone rings everyday with calls from people with very legitimate needs asking for assistance. I was awakened at five-thirty this morning. I got home about 1 a.m. and my phone rang at five-thirty with a woman asking if our church helps people pay their rent. How desperate must she be to think that even if we were a huge church that you hand out hundreds or thousands of dollars to total strangers on the telephone who just say they can't pay their rent? The whole system of what would be necessary in background checks and stuff to operate that kind of thing... but at that level of desperation, waking a preacher up at five-thirty on Sunday morning is the most rational thing going on in her universe. Yesterday, a woman called who had fled from a violent spouse. She was staying in a local cheap hotel and she needed someone to help her stay there. Our local spousal abuse shelter is full and has a waiting list, literally months long. If we could quadruple the number of beds in our abuse shelter today, we could fill every bed by tonight. So should she subject herself and her children to violence and possibly murder waiting for her turn to get safe shelter? **I'm telling you the system is dirty. It's rotten. It's stinking. It's not fit for human beings.** It isn't like Dorothy Day and Gandhi and Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King and me just discovered this fact in the last 50 years. We have a biblical text before us today. I know some of you had almost given up on me ever using a biblical passage again, but today, we actually have a Gospel lesson from the third chapter of Luke. If we were the kind of church that really was a slave to the lectionary, the Christian calendar, the cycle of readings, you would know that today is the third Sunday of Advent. It's not something that we talk about a lot, but that's today. On the third Sunday of Advent, there's always a reading about John the Baptist and the rest of the world is trying to get in the Christmas spirit, but whatever smart persons put the lectionary together, they invite John the Baptist to every year's Christmas party. Just when everybody is wanting to get happy... "Repent!" You get the guy eating grasshoppers, wearing animal skins and standing at the punch bowl glaring at you. Who wants the prophet at any Christmas party? Yet, every year, here he shows up again. This year we're in what's called year C, so our readings are from the Gospel of Luke. This is the only year that you even get a suggestion of what John prays. It's the only year where he really gets a decent line. Now, John actually enjoyed a good deal of fame in the first century probably more than Jesus did for a long time. There was actually a church of John the Baptist. There was a religious sect that continued to meet in his name long after he was dead, a quasi-Jewish sect that gathered until it was finally eclipsed by the Jesus movement. So the four canonical Gospels that we have in the New Testament, all are obliged to tip their hat to John. John was too historically important, too well-known to not at least tip their hat. They had to somehow polemically make the claim that even John personally acknowledged that Jesus was more important than he was. I've never met a preacher that said there was another preacher that was more important than he was, so you know that's not historical. That's literary. The Gospels even insist that John was beheaded before Jesus began his public preaching career. Josephus has it the other way around. Josephus says that John outlived Jesus, but the Gospel writer sometimes had to play fast and loose with the facts in order to make their point. Josephus may have gotten it wrong too. It's hard to say. I can certainly see why it was convenient for the Gospel writers to say that John died first so that Jesus kind of took over the family business, but it could have been the other way around. In the version of Luke as we have it today, there are these verses of a message that is an anti-empire message. There's nothing about a messiah. There's nothing about dying for your sins. There's nothing about going to heaven or avoiding hell. It's much more down to Earth. It's Economics 101\. It is practical theology. If you've got two coats and somebody doesn't have one, you give him one. If you're a soldier, you've got an actual job and that job is not extorting money through false accusations and lies about the people that you are supposed to be protecting. If you are a government official, you've got a job to do. Don't try to make yourself rich at the expense of others. It's very very practical advise against abuses of power. When I was in seminary, one of our professors dared to offer a course entitled "Practical Theology", which made everybody else on the faculty quite angry because if someone can offer a course in *practical* theology, that implies that all the other courses were *impractical* theology. Even in a prestigious university, the simple fact that the shoe fits doesn't mean that they have the slightest interest in wearing it. I don't have any idea if these seven verses are a historical reflection of what John really stood for, what he actually said, what he actually was about, but I like to think that it is. I like to think. There's no hard historical evidence either way so scholars will disagree, but as it turns out at this present moment, I have the only active microphone in the room. It turns out that it pleases me to believe that this is an echo of John's real preaching because it is consistent with how other historical religious reform movements began. If we have any sense of the genuine history of Moses or Buddha or Zoroaster or even the Maccabees or Jesus or Muhammad, Frances, maybe even Martin Luther, **there was an opposition to the abuses of power, and an advocacy for the poor.** It seems that almost every meaningful religious reform movement begins when someone manages to see through the stinking rotten system and to advocate for the rights of the poor, the marginalized, the enslaved, the landless, the homeless, the poor and say, **"Look, you jerks! Just because you've got the spears and the swords doesn't mean that you get to lock most of us into poverty and get fat yourself. If you've got more than enough to eat, you share your bread with someone who is going hungry."** No one could be much more cynical than I am about organized religion. Yet, here I am, I'm the pastor of a church. I'm the voice on a religious podcast. I'm the image on a [YouTube religion channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeF1t9dro%5FUwXa5qO%5FFH7bg?ref=scottsantens.com), and even though when someone on a plane next to me asks me what I do, I tell them that I teach philosophy. The truth is when I get my W-2 form every year, it says that I'm a pastor. I am an ordained tax exempt institution of organized religion and yet what I hold onto is that I am not a part of the guilt-ridden, manipulative, self-serving purveyors of misinformation and magic. I want to lay claim to being a part of the history of the prophets who fought to free slaves, to liberate the oppressed. The guys that spoke up for the poor and demanded that people open their closets and send their extra shoes to Nicaragua, their coats and hats to Bill's place, and devote in a way that brings the poor *into* the economy rather than keeping the laws and the banking rules in place that awards the few with great wealth and the many with endless generations of suffering. No one here is in realistic danger of hunger, but **we are all in danger of being on the wrong side of history** if we don't work and sacrifice and prophesy and vote to actively seek to change the dirty rotten system that leaves hundreds in danger of freezing to death this week right here in the Ozarks while many of the rest of us argue over what we are going to watch on HBO. John said that the axe is already laid at the root, ready to throw the useless into the fire. He may have been guilty of overstatement. Without overstatement, there's not much preaching really, but maybe it was pretty close to the truth, so Merry Christmas you all. --- **Thank you for reading this and if you attend church somewhere, please share this with your own pastors as something to consider creating their own sermons around.** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Universal Basic Income Will Accelerate Innovation by Reducing Our Fear of Failure URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-will-accelerate-innovation-by-reducing-our-fear-of-failure/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T20:45:13.000Z # Almost two centuries ago an idea was born with such explanatory power that it created shock waves across all of human society and whose aftershocks we’re still feeling to this day. It’s so simple and yet so powerful, that after all these years, it remains capable of making people question their very faith. The idea of which I speak is that through random mutation and natural selection, every living thing around us was created through millions and even billions of years of what is effectively trial and error, not designed by some intelligent creator. It is the process of **evolution** through natural selection. It’s almost impossible for many people to accept that everything around us, including our own lives, could ever be the result of trial and error, but that’s what the scientific method has revealed. Mutations happen. Some of them work better than others depending on the environment. A longer beak here and a longer neck there can be the difference between life and death. Successful mutations are passed on. Iterations continue generation after generation. Discovering this process of evolution was one of the great accomplishments of our species. It’s also possibly the most powerful reason to support another world-changing idea — an **unconditional basic income**. Let me explain. ## Markets as Environments Our economy is a [complex adaptive system](http://www.neweconomicthinking.org/downloads/HEEDnet%20Seminars%5FEric%5FBeinhocker.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Much like how nature works, markets work. No one central planner is deciding what natural resources to mine, what to make with them, how much to make, where to ship everything to, who to give it to, etc. These decisions are the result of [a massively decentralized widely distributed system called “the market,”](http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/2016/04/22/the-unconditional-basic-income-and-the-hayekian-price-system/?ref=scottsantens.com) and it’s all made possible with a tool we call “money” being exchanged between those who want something (demand) and those who provide that something (supply). Money is more than a decentralized tool of calculation however. It’s also like energy. It powers the entire process like the eating of food powers our own bodies and the sun powers plants. Without food, we starve, and without money, markets starve. A *sufficient* amount of money for all market participants is absolutely key to the market system for it to work properly. If you’ve ever played Monopoly this should be apparent. The game would not work if all players started the game with nothing. Some wouldn’t even make it once around the board. Additionally, if no one received $200 for then passing Go, the game would end a lot sooner. Ultimately the game always grinds to a halt once everyone but one person is all out of money, [which is inevitable](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120307112614.htm?ref=scottsantens.com). No money, no purchases, no market, no game. Game over. ## Supply and Demand as Trial and Error With sufficient money however, markets adapt and evolve based on trial and error. Someone thinks of something to create or do. If people like it, it does well. If people don’t like it, it goes away. What does well is modified. If people like the modified version, it does well. If they don’t, it goes away. If they like it enough, the original version goes away. Survival of the fittest we call it. This is the *evolution* of goods and services, which runs on supply and demand, which both in turn run on money and one other thing — the willingness to take *risks*. ## Risks as Genetic Mutation Taking risks is equivalent to random genetic mutation in this biological analogy. A new product or service introduced into the market can result in success or failure. The outcome is entirely unknown until it’s tried. What succeeds can make someone rich and what fails can bankrupt someone. That’s a big risk. We traditionally like to think of these risk-takers as a special kind of person, but really [they’re mostly just those who are economically secure enough to feel failure isn’t scarier than the potential for success.](http://qz.com/455109/entrepreneurs-dont-have-a-special-gene-for-risk-they-come-from-families-with-money/?ref=scottsantens.com) As a prime example, Elon Musk is one of today’s most well-known and highly successful risk takers. Back in his college years [he challenged himself to live on $1 a day for a month](http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-living-off-a-dollar-a-day-startalk-2015-3?ref=scottsantens.com). Why did he do that? He figured that if he could successfully survive with very little money, he could survive any failure. With that knowledge gained, the risk of failure in his mind was reduced enough to not prevent him from risking everything to succeed. This isn’t just anecdotal evidence either. Studies have shown that the very existence of food stamps — just knowing they are there as an option in case of failure — [increases rates of entrepreneurship](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/26/wonkbook-how-welfare-encourages-people-to-start-businesses/?ref=scottsantens.com). A study of a reform to the French unemployment insurance system that allowed workers to remain eligible for benefits if they started a business found that [the reform resulted in more entrepreneurs starting their own businesses](http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/entrepreneurship-side-risks-social-insurance/?ref=scottsantens.com). In Canada, a reform was made to their maternity leave policy, where new mothers were guaranteed a job after a year of leave. A study of the results of this policy change showed a [35% increase in entrepreneurship](http://www.nber.org/papers/w22446?ref=scottsantens.com) due to women basically asking themselves, “What have I got to lose? If I fail, I’m guaranteed my paycheck back anyway.” ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*d54TBIRHxFuuFSwskL6gXA.jpeg) Meanwhile, entrepreneurship is currently on a downward trend. Businesses that were less than five years old used to comprise half of all businesses three decades ago. [Now they comprise about one-third](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-small-business/post/united-states-new-business-formation-rate-continues-dropping-steadily/2012/05/02/gIQAjKOewT%5Fblog.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Businesses are also closing their doors faster than new businesses are opening them. Until recently, [this had never previously been true](http://www.aei.org/publication/americas-free-enterprise-system-crisis-2-charts/?ref=scottsantens.com) here in the US for as long as such data had been recorded. Startup rates are falling. Why? **Risk aversion** due to rising insecurity. ## Growing Insecurity For decades now [our economy has been going through some very significant changes](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/future-of-jobs%5Fb%5F8011296.html?ref=scottsantens.com) thanks to advancements in technology, and we have simultaneously been actively eroding the institutions that pooled risk like trade unions and our public safety net. Incomes adjusted for inflation have not budged for decades, and the jobs providing those incomes have gone from secure careers to insecure jobs, part-time and contract work, and now recently even gig labor in the sharing economy. Decreasing economic security means a population decreasingly likely to take risks. Looking at it this way, of course startups have been on the decline. [How can you take the leap of faith required for a startup when you’re more and more worried about just being able to pay the rent](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/prostartup?ref=scottsantens.com)? None of this should be surprising. The entire insurance industry exists to reduce risk. When someone is able to insure something, they are more willing to take risks. Would there be as many restaurants if there was no insurance in case of fire? Of course not. The corporation itself exists to reduce personal risk. [Entrepreneurship and risk are inextricably linked](http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/protecting-against-risk-can-help-boost-u-s-entrepreneurship/?ref=scottsantens.com). **Reducing risk aversion is paramount to innovation** **.** ## Failure as Evolution So the question becomes, how do we reduce the risks of failure so that more people take more risks? Better yet, how do we *increase* the rate of *failure*? It may sound counter-intuitive, but [failure is not something to avoid](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/welcome-to-the-failure-age.html?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s only through failure that we learn what doesn’t work and what might work instead. This is basically the scientific method in a nutshell. It’s designed to rule out what *isn’t* true, not to determine what is true. There is a very important difference between the two. This is also how evolution works, through failure after failure. Nature isn’t determining the winner. Nature is simply determining all the losers, and those who don’t lose, win the game of evolution by default. So, the higher the rate of mutation, the more mutations can fail or not fail, and therefore the quicker an organism can adapt to a changing environment. In the same way, the higher the rate of failure in a market economy, the quicker the economy can evolve. There’s also something else very important to understand about failure and success. **One success can outweigh 100,000 failures**. Venture capitalist Paul Graham of Y Combinator has described this as [Black Swan Farming](http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html?ref=scottsantens.com). When it comes to truly transformative ideas, they aren’t obviously great ideas, or else they’d already be more than just an idea, and when it comes to taking a risk on investing in a startup, the question is not so much if it will succeed, but if it will succeed BIG. What’s so interesting is that the biggest ideas tend to be seen as the least likely to succeed. Now translate that to people themselves. What if the people most likely to massively change the world for the better, the Einsteins so to speak — the Black Swans, are oftentimes those least likely to be seen as deserving social investment? In that case, the smart approach would be to cast an extremely large net of social investment, in full recognition that even at such great cost, the ROI from the innovation of the Black Swans would far surpass the cost. This happens to be exactly what [Buckminster Fulle](http://2noame.tumblr.com/post/63692184264?ref=scottsantens.com)r was thinking when he said, “We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest.” That is a fact, and it then begs the question, “How do we make sure we invest in every single one of those people such that all of society maximizes its collective ROI?” What if our insistence on making people earn their living is preventing those one in ten thousand from making incredible achievements that would benefit all the rest of us in ways we can’t even imagine? What if our fears of each other being fully free to pursue whatever most interests us, including nothing, is an obstacle to an explosion of entrepreneurship and truly huge innovations the likes of which have never been seen? > “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear.” — Frank Herbert, Dune ## Fear as Death What it all comes down to is ***fear***. FDR was absolutely right when he said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Fear prevents risk-taking, which prevents failure, which prevents innovation. If the great fears are of hunger and homelessness, and they prevent many people from taking risks who would otherwise take risks, then the answer is to simply **take hunger and homelessness off the table**. Don’t just hope some people are unafraid enough. **Eliminate what people fear so they are no longer afraid.** ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*-z5hbWAaB9q_3SVYeu6gjA.png) “The first time Peter Thiel spoke at YC he drew a Venn diagram that illustrates the situation perfectly. He drew two intersecting circles, one labelled ‘seems like a bad idea’ and the other ‘is a good idea.’ The intersection is the sweet spot for startups.”-[Source](http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html?ref=scottsantens.com) If everyone received as an absolute minimum, a sufficient amount of money each month to cover their basic needs for that month no matter what — [**an unconditional basic income**](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com) — then the fear of hunger and homelessness is eliminated. It’s gone. And with it, the risks of failure considered too steep to take a chance on something. But the effects of basic income don’t stop with a reduction of risk. Basic income is also **basic capital**. It enables more people to actually afford to create a new product or service instead of just think about it, and even better, it enables people to be the *consumers* who purchase those new products and services, and in so doing decide what succeeds and what fails through an even more widely distributed and further decentralized free market system. Such market effects have even been observed in universal basic income experiments in [Namibia](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) and [India](http://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/resources/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Indias-Basic-Income-Experiment-PP21.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) where local markets flourished thanks to a tripling of entrepreneurs and the enabling of everyone to be a consumer with a minimum amount of buying power. Basic income would even help power the sharing economy. For example, imagine how much an unconditional monthly income would enable people within the Open Source Software (OSS) and free software movements (FSM) to do the unpaid work that is [essentially the foundation of the internet itself](https://medium.com/@nayafia/how-i-stumbled-upon-the-internet-s-biggest-blind-spot-b9aa23618c58?ref=scottsantens.com#.lzgotdgh7). ## Markets as Democracies Markets work best when everyone can vote with their dollars, and have enough dollars to vote for products and services. The iPhone exists today not simply because Steve Jobs had the resources to make it into reality. The iPhone exists to this day because millions of people have voted on it with their dollars. Had they not had those dollars, we would not have the iPhone, or really anything else for that matter. Voting matters. Dollars matter. Evolution teaches us that failure is important in order to reveal what doesn’t fail through the unfathomably powerful process of trial and error. We should apply this to the way we self-organize our societies and leverage the potential for universal basic income to dramatically reduce the fear of failure, and in so doing, increase the amount of risks taken to accelerate innovation to new heights. Failure is not an option. Failure is the goal. And fear of failure is the enemy. **It’s time we evolve.** --- ***Special thanks to:*** ***Arjun Banker, Steven Grimm, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Larry Cohen, Aaron Marcus-Kubitza, Chris Hughes, Andy Stern, Patrick, Stephane Boisvert, Albert Wenger, Topher Hunt, Joanna Zarach, Chris Smothers, Gisele Huff, Jeff Schulman, Natalie Foster, Justin Walsh, Daragh Ward, Richard Just, Danielle and Michael Texeira, Paul Godsmark, Vladimir Baranov, Kai Wong, David Ihnen, Harish Venkatesan, Michiel Dral, Daniel Brockman, Carrie Mclachlan, Katie Doemland, Victor Vurpillat, Michael Honey, Ace Bailey, Joe Esposito, Cameron Ottens, Gerald Huff, Jan Smole, Joe Ballou, Jack Wagner, Allan Free, Lainie Petersen, Gray Scott, Catherine MacDonald, Louise Whitmore, Dan O’Sullivan, Saura Naderi, Kevin Baker, David Bijl, Tony DeStefano, Johan Grahn, Elizabeth Balcar, Erhan Altay, Kris Roadruck, Mark Witham, Kirk Israel, Andrew Henderson, Lee Irving, Lawrence W Lee, Andreas, Casey Young, Robert F. Greene, Martin Jordo, Paolo Narciso, Allen Bauer, Robert Solovay, Amy Shaffer, Victor Lau, Rise & Shine PAC, Thomas Welsh, Walter Schaerer, Jordan Lejuwaan, Jill Weiss, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** ## [Would you like to see your name here too?](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### True Freedom Comes With Universal Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/true-freedom-comes-with-universal-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T20:41:00.000Z > “I can’t *not* do this, because I need the money…” — The thought underlying all exploitation which can be eliminated with one BIG idea I attended [a national economic conference](https://medium.com/basic-income/notes-of-discussions-in-the-north-american-basic-income-guarantee-congress-of-2015-56607ceb9362?ref=scottsantens.com) in New York in 2015, and in one of the presentations, the speaker presented the following claim: human trafficking is not so much a criminal issue as it is an economic vulnerability issue, and therefore the best tool we have to strike at the very root of the problem, is a **universal basic income**. This idea of a basic income guarantee — an amount of money given to all without any conditions aside from mostly citizenship ([and perhaps age](http://www.scottsantens.com/why-should-adults-with-kids-get-more-basic-income-child-allowances)) — is [an idea that has been around for centuries](http://basicincome-europe.org/brief-history-basic-income-ideas/?ref=scottsantens.com) and yet only recently is really starting to noticeably catch fire in the minds of the public at large. It is being referred to in such terms as “[an idea whose time has come](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/11/basic-income-for-all-a-500-year-old-idea-whose-time-has-come?ref=scottsantens.com)”, “[an end to poverty](http://www.vox.com/2014/11/14/7220291/basic-income-poverty-plan?ref=scottsantens.com)”, and “[venture capital for the people](http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/5066.html?ref=scottsantens.com).” Fast Company has dubbed it a “[bipartisan world changing idea](http://www.fastcoexist.com/3040832/world-changing-ideas/a-universal-basic-income-is-the-bipartisan-solution-to-poverty-weve-bee?ref=scottsantens.com).” The New York Times has even asked, “[Why Not Utopia?](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/why-not-utopia.html?ref=scottsantens.com)” in light of growing warnings of structural unemployment due to accelerating technological advancements like [self-driving cars](https://medium.com/basic-income/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us-like-a-human-driven-truck-b8507d9c5961?ref=scottsantens.com#.1g61u9th7) and [artificial intelligence](https://medium.com/basic-income/deep-learning-is-going-to-teach-us-all-the-lesson-of-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines-7c6442e37a49?ref=scottsantens.com#.3kivrti08). [Outlet](http://www.newsweek.com/2014/12/26/how-fix-poverty-write-every-family-basic-income-check-291583.html?ref=scottsantens.com) after [outlet](http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/01/opinion/sutter-basic-income/index.html?ref=scottsantens.com) is beginning to seriously discuss this policy once considered outside the [Overton Window](http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=7504&ref=scottsantens.com) of political possibility. So what’s all the fuss? Is basic income really that powerful of an idea? The short answer is [**yes, it really is that powerful of an idea**](https://medium.com/basic-income/human-park-a-mammals-guide-to-stress-free-living-17f6cab007b3?ref=scottsantens.com#.aazhi1yad). It’s such a powerful idea for the same reason it has even been suggested in a conference full of economists as the best tool for reducing human trafficking. That reason is actually quite simple, but very far reaching. **As long as we face starvation and homelessness, we are at the whims of others.** This is the face of economic vulnerability and it lies at the very heart of a great deal of systemic issues. Think for a moment about what difference it would make in your own life, to be guaranteed $1,000 would always appear in your bank account, at the beginning of every month, for the rest of your life, no matter what you did. How would that money change your life? How would it affect the decisions you face every day? How would it affect your relationships with others from your boss to your spouse? How would it affect your *choices*? Consider that word: “choice.” What is choice, really? When it comes to any real choice in life, what it all boils down to is the ability to simply say “No.” Without that ability, nothing is truly voluntary. [All work isn’t voluntary](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com). All relationships aren’t voluntary. All market exchanges aren’t voluntary. The choices we make that we think are choices aren’t truly voluntary whenever the option to say “No” is off the table. Therein lies the full potential of the idea of a universal basic income and it lays bare the lack of power many of us are under the illusion of having. Having a basic income creates the ability to look someone in the eye who holds more power than you, and firmly say, “**No.** **Not today. Not until things change. These are my terms. Take them or leave them.**” ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*SN3lcz5alowqqfzwqosSHw.png) That power only arises with unconditional access to the means of survival, which is what a basic income essentially is. As long as we are refused access to the resources required to live, we will make choices we would not otherwise make. We will do things to make money we would not otherwise do. We will say things where we would otherwise stay quiet and keep silent where we would otherwise be heard. Italy recently acknowledged this in their call for [a citizen’s income to reduce mafia power](http://www.basicincome.org/news/2015/04/italy-anti-mafia-campaign-dignity-income/?ref=scottsantens.com), to “remove oxygen from those who exploit the need to work and turn it into economic blackmail.” Living in a climate of perpetual shakedowns has made clear to Italians the need for the enhanced ability to decline. Without that ability, people have little choice at all but to accept exploitation as part of everyday life. We are all making choices right now that aren’t really choices at all, and if we look around, we can begin to see them for what they truly are — **compulsions**. We are *compelled* to sell ourselves to others. We are *compelled* to put our trust in others. And we are *compelled* to hope in ways that are destructive. # **The Compulsion to Sell Yourself** Sex work is known as the world’s oldest profession for a reason, and that reason is because as soon as money was invented, there was someone wanting to obtain sex in exchange for it, and also someone who needed money to exchange for food and housing. For thousands of years, to this day, that has remained true. In a 1998 study of 475 people engaged in prostitution across 5 countries (including the US), [92% claimed they wanted to leave prostitution but couldn’t due to a lack of money or food](http://prostitutionresearch.com/ProstitutioninFiveCountries01182013.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). In other words, potentially only 8 out of every 100 prostitutes are voluntarily engaged in sex work. > “From the perspective of those we interviewed in five countries, prostitution might at best be called a means of survival: if one wants a place to sleep, food to eat and a way to briefly get off the street, one allows oneself to be sexually assaulted.” That prostitution appears to primarily exist as a means of escaping starvation and homelessness is additionally supported by the finding that in the US, [84% of 130 prostitutes living in the San Francisco Bay Area when interviewed reported being homeless at the time, or were once homeless](http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/Farley%26Barkan%201998.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). This is not only reported in America. In the same five-nation study cited above, on average, 72% reported current or past homelessness. There are those who will look at such numbers and claim they are false — that they are created to serve an agenda that wishes to abolish all sex work. So let’s assume for a moment they are inaccurate, and that the number is closer to 50% or even 25% instead of 92%. Just how low does that number need to get before it is entirely acceptable for that percentage of people to feel forced into sex work for lack of options? Sex work is not a fully free choice. It is largely the means for those without means to obtain the requirements of life from those with means. And that’s exactly how it will continue to exist, until everyone is freely given access to the requirements for life. However, sex work is also not the only way of being compelled to sell ourselves. This method of compulsion is also to be found in any job that involves accepting a rate of pay below which anyone would ever actually accept if not for the overwhelming fear of going without anything at all. The all too common belief that something is better than nothing, in a world that guarantees nothing, lies underneath *every* wage and salary negotiation. For example, the movement for a higher minimum wage is gaining prominence in the national discussion as the “[Fight for 15](http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/04/economic-collapse-prediction-minimum-wage-raise?ref=scottsantens.com)” wages on. But how many fast food workers would’ve ever accepted a lower wage to begin with, if they’d already been receiving a check for citizenship at the end of every month, along with everyone else, sufficient to cover their most basic needs? [If every worker had more bargaining power as individuals, would we all be so willing to sell ourselves to so many for so little](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/minimum-wages-vs-universal-basic-income%5Fb%5F7957850.html?ref=scottsantens.com)? > “The all too common belief that something is better than nothing, in a world that guarantees nothing, lies underneath every wage and salary negotiation.” Exploitation is also not only about wages and salaries. [It’s about time](http://www.salon.com/2015/04/21/robert%5Freich%5Famericas%5Fflexible%5Feconomy%5Fis%5Fmaking%5Fworkers%5Flives%5Fhell%5Fpartner/?ref=scottsantens.com). How many people are working in jobs that aren’t offering them enough hours or anything resembling a sane work schedule that doesn’t vary by the week? These are manifested in the [decline of full-time jobs and the rise of part-time jobs](http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/commentaries/Full-Time-vs-Part-Time-Employment.php?ref=scottsantens.com) where [6.9 million workers in the US](http://www.epi.org/publication/irregular-work-scheduling-and-its-consequences/?ref=scottsantens.com) report working part-time not because they choose to but because they have to. It’s in the rise of zero-hour contracts and irregular work schedules where [17% of workers now report having irregular schedules](http://www.epi.org/press/at-least-17-percent-of-workers-have-unstable-schedules/?ref=scottsantens.com). All of this is essentially about working conditions. How many workers globally now work in jobs with conditions they would never otherwise agree to, were they armed with basic incomes they’d keep either way? How many workers would refuse conditions they personally deem insufficient if they were guaranteed a separate income stream independent of employment? When we consider a question like this, let us too consider being in the shoes of one of the employees who upon walking up to the doors of [the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh on April 24th 2013](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27107860?ref=scottsantens.com), wondered if it would collapse that day and walked inside any way. Is someone more likely or less likely to walk into a building they worry might collapse in order to avoid losing their job, if not walking in no longer represents the risk their families may go hungry? These are our *compulsions* and they do not even stop here. Without a basic income, we also have a compulsion to believe others, taking them for their word when we shouldn’t. # **The Compulsion to Trust** As the saying goes, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Unfortunately, such victims tend to be among those most economically vulnerable. Fraud has been on the rise for decades thanks to: the technology that makes it even easier to accomplish, the incomes that have been falling for decades when adjusted for inflation, and the dramatic shift in federal manpower post-9/11 from fraud to terrorism. As a result, [we’re now spending $50 billion a year on scams](http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/10/protect-yourself-from-the-latest-scams/index.htm?ref=scottsantens.com), and even worse this rising level of fraud prominently includes “last dollar” fraud, a moniker for the type of fraud aimed at taking *the very last dollar* from the hands of those most in need of every dollar they can get. For every ad on the internet that claims you’ve won an iPad, for every request for personal information to claim the airline tickets you never bought or package you never ordered, for every coupon claiming to be worth $50, for every amazing deal where something can be purchased at 50% off or more, for every job offering a high wage for seemingly little effort and [especially in the comfort of one’s home](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6MwGeOm8iI&ref=scottsantens.com), there’s a scam artist looking to exploit trust. And there’s also someone willing to make that leap of faith because if it just so happens to be true, there’s a light finally shining at the end of a very dark tunnel. Having no other real choice but to trust doesn’t stop at individual scammers. It extends also to private corporations and government itself. Consider the trust we put in companies like Google to stay true to their word of “Do no evil”, so that we may continue happily using their free products as fewer and fewer people can afford to pay for all that isn’t free. Consider how we learned [that trust had been betrayed](http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/edward-snowden-google-facebook-92937.html?ref=scottsantens.com) in the NSA revelations brought forth by Edward Snowden. Would more people boycott companies that violate their privacy if they could afford the alternatives that cost more than zero dollars? > “Need makes us vulnerable to those who wish to take advantage of it.” Think of the trust we place in government to represent our common interest, despite the growing awareness [it doesn’t](http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9354310&ref=scottsantens.com). What recourse do citizens have but to trust and hope for the best when they are so busy working to just barely scrape by? When only [30% of those earning less than $15,000 are likely to vote versus the 80% likely to vote earning more than six figures](http://theconversation.com/failing-union-of-capitalism-and-democracy-fuels-rise-in-inequality-27217?ref=scottsantens.com), just how much time do the poorest really have to actually exercise their rights of citizenship? This is all a compulsion to trust. The person with limited options is the one far more likely to ignore the voice in all of our heads that tells us something is too good to be true. **Need makes us vulnerable to those who wish to take advantage of it**. Need leaves us open for betrayal. The best way to combat this is to strike at [the very foundation of it](https://medium.com/basic-income/human-park-a-mammals-guide-to-stress-free-living-17f6cab007b3?ref=scottsantens.com#.51s0a4ep7), and reduce need itself. Finally, and possibly most destructively of all, there exists the compulsion for something so precious, it perpetually remains our Achilles Heel — our desire to focus on something so precious and so powerful, we become blinded to everything else. # **The Compulsion to Hope** Hope is everything. Hope drives us in ways so incredible we can actually accomplish the impossible. It also drives us in ways that destroy. It is hope that lies at the heart of our most extreme risk-taking, where we can be told the odds of victory are 1%, and we will consider those odds entirely acceptable. The odds of winning a Mega Millions lottery jackpot is about [1 in 259 million](https://wilottery.com/lottogames/megamillionsinfo.aspx?ref=scottsantens.com). Because states use their collective [$27.9 billion on lottery ticket sales](http://www.statisticbrain.com/casino-market-and-revenue-statistics/?ref=scottsantens.com) in place of taxes, this kind of revenue functions as [an implicit additional tax at a rate of 26%-56%](http://taxfoundation.org/blog/how-much-implicit-tax-revenue-did-lotteries-raise-fy2010?ref=scottsantens.com) varying by state. In other words, if all you have is $10 in the state of Louisiana and you spend it on lottery tickets, you effectively just gave $5.60 to the Department of Revenue. Meanwhile, even though all income quintiles spend about the same amount each year on lottery tickets, every ticket purchased by those with little money represents a much larger share of their total available income. A recent estimate places this percentage of income spent on lottery tickets by those earning $13,000 or less at [around 2%-3%](http://www.businessinsider.com/households-earning-less-than-13000-a-year-spend-9-of-their-income-on-lottery-tickets-2012-3?ref=scottsantens.com), while those earning more than $70,000 (in 1991 dollars) are spending [less than 0.18%](http://www.scribd.com/doc/14945786/Lottery-Demographics?ref=scottsantens.com). What makes someone with $10 to their name spend $1 on a lottery ticket at the same rate as someone with a six figure savings account? The answer is those with the means can afford to gamble. Those without can’t. But [those without are still spending their money in hopes it can change their lives](https://medium.com/basic-income/robin-hoodwinked-how-billion-dollar-powerballs-reflect-21st-century-inequality-e45542d56fe0?ref=scottsantens.com#.77swtr6on), even though all it does is make their lives worse. Why? They do it for the same reason they take out loans at interest rates [above 1000%](http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-trap-of-payday-loans-can-lead-to-triple-digit-interest-rates/2014/03/25/ca1853dc-b471-11e3-8cb6-284052554d74%5Fstory.html?ref=scottsantens.com). They do it for the same reason [hundreds of migrants died on a capsized boat](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32390941?ref=scottsantens.com). They do it for the same reason [20.9 million people worldwide](http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/news/WCMS%5F182109/lang--en/index.htm?ref=scottsantens.com) are estimated by the ILO to be “trapped in jobs into which they were coerced or deceived and which they cannot leave.” They do it because for them, money is scarce, the potential for money exists elsewhere, and because **jobs — of any kind whatsoever — represent the only means of life**. If anyone claims we don’t know how to solve all of this, they’re either lying or ignorant of what’s already been proven to work. > “As long as people remain walled off from access to the resources they need to live, through the withholding of cash on the condition of working for others, the powerless will continue to be exploited.” # **What We Know** In [a 2014 global review of empirical evidence on the impact on child labor of cash transfers](http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/IW3P/IB/2014/03/31/000158349%5F20140331135854/Rendered/PDF/WPS6826.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) with and without conditions, the World Bank found “broad evidence that conditional and unconditional cash transfers both lower children’s participation in child labor and hours worked, and cushion the effect of economic shocks that may lead households to use child labor as a coping strategy.” Such findings are important to know because **child labor is greatly connected to human trafficking**. Parents in need of extra family income will put their children to work, and this can open them up to (or even directly result in) forced labor or sexual exploitation, of which [6 million kids are currently trapped](http://www.dol.gov/ilab/issues/child-forced-labor-trafficking/?ref=scottsantens.com). There also exists data from actual basic income experiments, where money is given to entire areas instead of targeted only at the poor. In one such experiment [in India](http://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/resources/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Indias-Basic-Income-Experiment-PP21.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), findings included strong “capability” effects where the socio-economic statuses of women, the elderly, and the disabled all improved. Additionally there were strong “equity” effects where the largest improvements were seen among lower castes and those considered more vulnerable such as the disabled and frail. There were also “emancipatory” effects where those in debt paid their way out of bondage by paying down high interest loans. Additionally, people were enabled to avoid taking on new debts and even build savings. The money helped everyone, but had greater effects on the traditionally marginalized. When people in Namibia were given basic incomes in their pilot experiment, [self-employment there increased by 301%](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). It was the main source of income growth. Income from self-employment actually reached the level of income from wages. People with little to no incomes, when given money, put *themselves* to work. Crime rates were reduced by over 40%. Illegal hunting — something that can be considered a crime born of utter desperation and the need to eat — was reduced 95%. This is what reduced need looks like. It is well known and well-studied that [just giving people money reduces their need to make hard choices](https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/18376/879840WP0FINAL00Box385208B00PUBLIC0.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). When your body is all you have, it’s all you can sell. When you have at least some money unconditionally, [it functions as starting capital](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/st-gallen-symposium/small-yet-big-the-basic-i%5Fb%5F7123938.html?ref=scottsantens.com) to open up a whole range of new choices. This is why basic income experiments show increased entrepreneurship. GiveDirectly — a charity built entirely around unconditional cash transfers and also embarking on [a 12-year universal basic income experiment](https://www.givedirectly.org/blog-post?id=1661453965212133714&ref=scottsantens.com) in East Africa— refers to this phenomenon in stating, “[There’s no charity for power saws](https://www.givedirectly.org/blog-post.html?id=5453927471971916970&ref=scottsantens.com).” Naturally, someone who wants to start a business chopping trees needs a saw, but if they have no money they can’t obtain one. Meanwhile it’s difficult to get a loan for one or ask a charity for one. It’s cash that people need so as to afford the work they wish to pursue, and in these pursuits, they are very creative. Without the necessary cash, they must pursue the work they might not wish to pursue, and that might leave them worse off. As long as people remain walled off from access to the resources they need to live, through the withholding of cash on the condition of working for others, the powerless will continue to be exploited. Slavery will continue. Human trafficking will continue. Violence and crime will continue. ## **Compulsion Ends with Basic Income** This is why [Sex Worker Open University has actively called for a universal basic income](http://www.sexworkeropenuniversity.com/blog/swou-statement-on-poverty-sex-work-and-the-swedish-model-poverty-is-objectifying-demeaning-and-coercive1?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s also why there are now [calls for the anti-slavery movement to do the same](https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/neil-howard/basic-income-and-antislavery-movement?ref=scottsantens.com). This is why [a Rape and Women’s shelter in Vancouver](https://vimeo.com/104960634?ref=scottsantens.com) actively supports universal basic income. It’s also why the [Women’s Campaign of the UK’s National Union of Students](http://www.basicincome.org/news/2015/04/united-kingdom-national-union-of-students-womens-campaign-adopts-universal-basic-income-calling-it-an-extremely-important-feminist-issue/?ref=scottsantens.com) has resolved to “widely publicize the societal need for a Universal Basic Income” as “an extremely important feminist issue.” This is all why Ashley Engel stated in [her presentation](http://www.usbig.net/papers/Basic%20Income%20Conference.docx?ref=scottsantens.com) about fighting human trafficking with basic income, “only when a person is not monetarily vulnerable enough to be trafficked can trafficking be reduced. A UBI offers an effective mechanism to prevent such a horrific trade and is key to ensuring freedom for all.” **Freedom for all**… this is an idea so far only spoken about in rhetoric and hypotheticals. There will never be true freedom from exploitation and all forms of slavery until freedom is actually granted unconditionally to all, with unconditional basic income. Until that day comes, the decisions we make will remain compulsory instead of free. --- ***Special thanks to:*** ***Arjun Banker, Steven Grimm, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Larry Cohen, Aaron Marcus-Kubitza, Chris Hughes, Andy Stern, Patrick, Stephane Boisvert, Albert Wenger, Topher Hunt, Chris Smothers, Gisele Huff, Jeff Schulman, Natalie Foster, Justin Walsh, Daragh Ward, Richard Just, Danielle and Michael Texeira, Paul Godsmark, Vladimir Baranov, Kai Wong, David Ihnen, Harish Venkatesan, Michiel Dral, Daniel Brockman, Carrie Mclachlan, Katie Doemland, Victor Vurpillat, Michael Honey, Ace Bailey, Joe Esposito, Cameron Ottens, Gerald Huff, Jan Smole, Joe Ballou, Jack Wagner, Allan Free, Lainie Petersen, Gray Scott, Catherine MacDonald, Louise Whitmore, Dan O’Sullivan, Saura Naderi, Kevin Baker, David Bijl, Tony DeStefano, Johan Grahn, Elizabeth Balcar, Erhan Altay, Kris Roadruck, Mark Witham, Ryan Weisgerber, Kirk Israel, Andrew Henderson, Lee Irving, Lawrence W Lee, Andreas, Casey Young, Robert F. Greene, Martin Jordo, Paolo Narciso, Allen Bauer, Robert Solovay, Amy Shaffer, Victor Lau, Rise & Shine PAC, Thomas Welsh, Walter Schaerer, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** ## [Would you like to see your name here too?](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### How to Make Our Votes for President of the United States Actually Count URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/how-to-make-our-votes-for-president-of-the-united-states-actually-count/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T20:35:43.000Z After what feels like the longest election in the history of the United States, Election Day 2016 is finally coming up on November 8th, and once again, because of the Electoral College system and how it works, for the majority of citizens, myself included, our votes won’t actually matter. We don’t actually vote for President. We vote to suggest to a group of 538 electors who we think *they* should vote for. Not only that, but each state’s electors (with the exception of [Nebraska and Maine](http://archive.fairvote.org/e%5Fcollege/me%5Fne.htm?ref=scottsantens.com)) are winner take all, which has some surprisingly undemocratic consequences. Yep, we’ve got a big problem. We like to pretend we have a democracy, but we don’t. Whoever gets the most votes, does not necessarily win. In fact, because of the Electoral College, **it’s actually theoretically possible for someone to lose after getting 78% of the popular vote** to someone who only got 21.91% of the popular vote. Don’t believe me? I’ll just let CGP Grey explain. He’s really good at this stuff. As if it’s not bad enough that someone so wanted by the overwhelming majority of the country could ever be beaten by someone the country absolutely doesn’t want, thanks to our peculiar use of electors, I would argue its effect on our participatory democracy is even worse, because it begs the question, “What’s the point?” Take my state for example. I live in Louisiana. According to the latest polls on [FiveThirtyEight](http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/?ex%5Fcid=rrpromo&ref=scottsantens.com#plus), there is a 99.5% chance that Trump will win this state, and therefore all 8 of this state’s electoral votes. The thing is, if he won with one vote over 50% of the vote, he’d still get all 8 electoral votes, and therefore the votes of anyone above that mark don’t matter. If you vote for Trump or you vote for Hillary, it really doesn’t matter because this state is not even close to being a swing state. It’s a decided-in-advance state. The situation is different in Florida where there are 29 electoral votes up for grabs, and a 51% chance currently that Hillary will win them versus a 49% chance that Trump will. That’s basically a flip of a coin, and so in Florida every vote counts because even one vote could sway the election, and all its 29 electors along with it. It doesn’t have to be this way though. And it arguably shouldn’t because someone barely winning all of the votes is another way of saying the people are in [a state of maximum disagreement](https://groupincome.org/2016/06/what-makes-a-good-voting-system/?ref=scottsantens.com). There’s no shorter way to tearing a country in half than making sure half of its electorate feels entirely unrepresented. Thankfully, the Constitution allows each state to allocate its electors however they see fit, so if all states apportioned their electors according to their respective popular votes, a really close election in Florida could result in 15 electors voting for the winner and 14 electors for the loser. Someone barely winning is thereby reflected in the results and more people feel represented. Meanwhile, back here in Louisiana, it could mean 5 votes going to Trump and 3 votes going to Hillary. Because electors would be allocated based on percentage, it would incentivize everyone to vote just like being a swing state incentivizes everyone in Florida to vote. It’s the difference between your vote being heard, and your vote being silenced. Winner-take-all is a bad idea. The trick though, and why this seemingly simple fix to a flawed system hasn’t been enacted yet, is because to do it one by one could flip elections for decades to come. Imagine if California decided to apportion its electors by popular vote and 49% voted Republican. That would mean an extra 27 electoral votes for Republicans and 27 fewer electoral votes for Democrats going forward. And the same is true for a state like Texas, but the other way around. However, some bright people have figured out a way around this quandary, and it’s called the [**National Popular Vote bill**](http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/?ref=scottsantens.com). Basically, it’s like a Kickstarter for democracy, where state after state pledges to apportion their electors by popular vote, but only after enough states all together pledge to do so, such that the sum total of their electors reaches the 270 electoral votes required for a candidate to win the presidency. Clever, isn’t it? If we care about democracy, and if we want everyone’s vote to count each time we go to the polls to choose our next president, we’ll do this. We’ll contact our representatives and we’ll demand they support it. And if we don’t, we’ll just keep on making every Election Day mostly pointless for all states but swing states. ## Election 2020 So is there a way to make our votes count this year if we happen to live in a solid “red” or “blue” state like Louisiana? Yes, there is. The results of the national popular vote do actually matter for something, but not for *this* presidential election. They matter for the *next* presidential election. Here’s the thing. If a candidate gets **5%** of the popular vote nationally, that party’s candidate will qualify for federal matching funds the next time around. Basically, we may not have a democracy when it comes to the presidency, but we do have a democracy when it comes to deciding which political parties get money, and therefore which parties get on all the ballots, and therefore most importantly, which third parties are seen as [threats](http://billmoyers.com/content/third-party-candidates-from-lincoln-to-nader/?ref=scottsantens.com). > “Their function has not been to win or govern, but to agitate, educate, generate new ideas, and supply the dynamic element in our political life. When a third party’s demands become popular enough, they are appropriated by one or both of the major parties and the third party disappears. Third parties are like bees: once they have stung, they die.” — Richard Hofstadter So if you want your vote to matter if you happen to not live in an all-votes matter swing state, vote for a third party. If that party gets 5% of the popular vote nationwide, the policies of its platform are more likely to be added to the platforms of the two main parties out of fear of losing votes to them next time around. You have nothing to fear in a solid red or blue state. You can vote strategically. For me personally, as a US citizen residing in Louisiana, my vote will be going to the Green Party in hopes I can help it get federal matching funding in 2020, because the two most important issues to me are taking action on climate change and adopting [**universal basic income**](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com#.epkx8w5c3). Both are part of the [Green Party platform](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/comments/5298p9/green%5Fparty%5Fusas%5Fplatform%5Fincludes%5Fbasic%5Fincome/?ref=scottsantens.com). For anyone who might get upset with that, again, there is a near-zero chance of Hillary winning my state and a virtual lock for Trump. The only way for my vote for President to actually matter is by popular vote. By the way, there are a lot of other great ideas out there to strengthen our democracy than just making sure we reform our Electoral College system so that the electoral votes of each state are not winner take all. ## Fair Representation The way we draw our districts are simply insane. Gerrymandering is destructive to democracy. Our districts should be redrawn in a way that makes sense, and our representatives should represent who we actually are. We need fair representation. ## Ranked Choice Ranked choice voting or (instant runoff) is also a key part of the democratic reform we need. Third parties should never be considered spoilers. We should always be able to vote for who we most want to represent us, in a way that doesn’t make it more likely for someone to win who we’d never want to represent us. There are even more and [better ideas than this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI&ref=scottsantens.com), but ranked choice would be a definite improvement. Another big improvement would be allowing everyone to vote in our primaries. ## Open Primaries 43% of the country considers itself as independent and yet in all states with closed primaries, they aren’t allowed to vote in the primaries unless they pick a party they don’t feel actually represents them. This is hugely problematic because their taxes are paying for the elections they aren’t allowed to vote in. But even worse than that, the result is that those with extreme views win primaries, because they are trying to win the support of their respective bases instead of the independent voters that aren’t allowed to vote for them. Then come the general election, independents are forced to choose among two candidates they never would have voted for, had they been allowed to vote previously. [Closed primaries are a recipe for bad government](http://www.openprimaries.org/?ref=scottsantens.com). ## Election Holiday Finally, perhaps the most common sense improvement of all, is to simply make it easier for people to vote. Make it a national holiday or move it to the weekend. Or both, by moving it to a Friday or a Monday and making it a three-day weekend. If we can’t take the day off, at least allow everyone to vote by mail. Let’s stop putting up barriers to voting by pretending voter ID laws are a good idea. [They’re not](https://www.propublica.org/article/everything-youve-ever-wanted-to-know-about-voter-id-laws?ref=scottsantens.com). They didn’t even exist before 2006 and are a blatant attempt to engineer election outcomes through selective disenfranchisement. Our goal should be to grow and strengthen our democracy over time. The changes we can make that will empower more people to vote and make sure their voices are actually counted and heard are the changes we need. Anything we do to prevent that or even go in the other direction are dangerous and should be reconsidered. Don’t be fooled into protecting the status quo. It is in the interest of our two major parties to claim voting for anyone else but them is a wasted vote. That they don’t immediately do something like implement ranked-choice voting after each election to make sure that no one’s vote serves as a “spoiler” the next time around simply goes to show they want it this way. They want you to feel forced to vote R or D, red or blue. They even want you to only vote against who you don’t like instead of who you actually want, because if all you’re voting for is against something, they never have to support what you’re *for*. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/876/1*WJUOpWm3kxsXAE5BUYOIFQ.jpeg) What the national vote looks like by county instead of state Democracy is not a country of red and blue. Democracy is essentially purple. It’s also green, and orange, and yellow, and all the rest. This is the country we actually live in, and if we want to “make it great again” improving our elections to be more democratic should be front and center. And considering the ideals our country was founded upon, no one, no matter how conservative or liberal, should be against the idea that voting is perhaps the most important right of citizenship, and even the price of [freedom](https://medium.com/basic-income/its-time-we-take-a-closer-look-at-americas-three-favorite-words-f512f8a1ad6f?ref=scottsantens.com#.p37gbm85q) itself. **This is America. Let’s make *all* our votes actually count.** *For further reading, I recommend* [***this***](http://www.systemsthinker.com/politics/polissues/nationalpopularvote.shtml?ref=scottsantens.com)*next, and also a visit to* [***FairVote.org***](http://www.fairvote.org/?ref=scottsantens.com). --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### From Rats in Cages to Primates in Paradise — The Scientific Story of Stress in Society URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/from-rats-in-cages-to-primates-in-paradise-the-scientific-story-of-stress-in-society/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T20:32:47.000Z ## The immediate need for basic income in recognition of the effects of chronic stress and the importance of improving environments At the end of 2015, after a year-long journey, I achieved the realization of an idea with the help of about 140 people that has already forever changed the way I look at the very foundations — *or lack thereof* — upon which all of society is based. I now firmly believe we have the potential through its universal adoption to systemically transform society for the better, even more so than many of those most familiar with the idea have long postulated, because for me, the idea is no longer just an idea. It’s not theory. It is part of my life. It’s real. And the effects are undeniable for someone actually living with it. The idea of which I speak goes by the name of “**basic income**” but is best understood not by name, but by function, and that function is simply to provide a monthly universal starting point located above the poverty line as a new secure foundation for existence. It’s an irrevocable stipend for life. In the U.S. it would be something like $1,000 for every citizen every month. All other income would then be earned as additional income on top of it so that employment would always pay more than unemployment. This may sound overly expensive, but [it would save far more than it costs](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com). It would also really only require an additional [net transfer of around $900 billion](https://medium.com/basic-income/inequality-and-the-basic-income-guarantee-c8f84d936640?ref=scottsantens.com#.7f5v74rh5), and that’s without subtracting the existing welfare programs it could replace, and also without simplifying the tax code through the replacement of all the many credits, deductions, and subsidies it could also replace. Basically we’re already handing out money to everyone, rich and poor alike, but in hundreds of different ways through thousands of government middlemen who only serve to disincentivize employment by removing government supports as a reward for working. Odds are this idea is new to you, but [it’s not a new idea](http://basicincome-europe.org/brief-history-basic-income-ideas/?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s been considered for hundreds of years from as long ago in the U.S. by founding father Thomas Paine in the 18th century, to Richard Nixon, Martin Luther King, Jr., and free market-loving Milton Friedman in the 20th century, to a quickly growing list of new names here in the 21st century. Its advocates know no ideological lines. Supporters include Nobel prize-winning economists, libertarians, progressives, conservatives, climate change activists, tax reformers, feminists, anarchists, doctors, human rights defenders, racial justice leaders, and [the list goes on](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y1ahKuNd8abBgLRU5jmqWi%5FewC0HdHZ8rjDfx7LYiOc/edit?ref=scottsantens.com#gid=0). For such an old idea that’s been endorsed by so many for so long and yet has obviously never yet come to be, you may be thinking, “Why now?” The answer to such a question has economic reasoning rooted in the globalization of labor and the exponential advancement of [technologies capable of entirely replacing labor](https://medium.com/basic-income/deep-learning-is-going-to-teach-us-all-the-lesson-of-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines-7c6442e37a49?ref=scottsantens.com), but as important as this particular discussion is to have, it’s centered more around the idea of a future problem and less a present one. However, our problems are very much in the present and to see why, we need to go deeper, much deeper, beyond technology and economics, and into human biology itself. To do that, we’ll first need to look at what we as humans have learned from some animals in the lab and in the wild, because I think doing so pulls back the curtain on our entire social system. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*_82pzrSEGK8ICChZHKIttg.jpeg) [Photo](https://flic.kr/p/r1NLVf?ref=scottsantens.com) by Shankar S. / CC [BY 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=scottsantens.com) # Animals in Cages As is true with many scientific discoveries, they tend to be accidental, and the story of Martin Seligman and some dogs back in 1965 is no different. Seligman wanted to know if dogs could be classically conditioned to react to bells in the same way as if they’d just been shocked, so he put them in a crate with a floor that could be electrified, and shocked them each time he rang a bell. The dogs soon began to react to the bell as if they’d just been shocked. Next however, he put them in a special crate where they could leap to safety to avoid the shock, and this is where the surprise happened. **The dogs wouldn’t leap to safety**. It turns out they’d learned from the prior part of the experiment that it didn’t matter what they did. The shock would come anyway. They had **learned helplessnes** **s**. Seligman then tried the experiment with dogs who had not been shocked and they leaped to safety just as expected. But the dogs who had learned helplessness, they just sadly laid down and whimpered. Fast forward to 1971 where a scientist named[ Jay Weiss](http://faculty.uncfsu.edu/tvancantfort/Syllabi/Gresearch/Readings/A%5FWeiss.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) explored this further with rats in cages. He put three rats into three different cages with electrodes attached to their tails and a wheel for each to turn. One rat was the lucky rat. No shocks were involved. Another would get shocks that could be stopped by turning its wheel. The third was the unlucky one. It would get shocked at the same time as the second rat, but it could do nothing about it. The third rat would only stop getting shocked when the second rat turned its wheel. Can you guess what happened? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1000/1*5-sBOh0VYkfBMD3hmg4zvw.jpeg) [Photo](https://flic.kr/p/hePp1H?ref=scottsantens.com) by David Noah / CC [BY 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=scottsantens.com) Even though the two rats that were shocked got shocked at the same time and for the same duration of time, their outcomes were very different. The rat who had the power to stop the pain was just a bit worse off than the rat who experienced no pain at all. However, the rat who had no control whatsoever, stuck with a lever that did nothing, became heavily ulcerated. Like the dog, it too had learned helplessness. The cost of this lesson was its health. ## The Power of Perception Of course humans are not dogs or rats. There’s a bit more complexity when it comes to us and our physiological responses. For us, perception is a key factor. This is where something called **attribution** comes into play, of which there are three important kinds that lead to humans learning helplessness: internal, stable, and global. Think back to when you first started school and try to remember your first math test. What if after taking that first test you did poorly on it, and instead of all the other possible reasons for why that could happen, you decided it was because you sucked at math? That’s an internal attribution. Now imagine you applied that attribution to all math tests. That’s a stable attribution. It’s not a one time thing. Now imagine you applied it beyond math to all classes. That’s a global attribution. Consider the results of such perceptions. Maybe that first math test was simply too hard for everyone in the class. Maybe it wasn’t just you. Maybe your poor grade was due to not studying hard enough, or because you were too hungry or too tired. But instead, because you decided it was your fault and it meant you were stupid, your entire life went down a different path. Even though at any point along the way, you could have escaped that path, just like Seligman’s dogs could have escaped the shocks, what if you had learned helplessness from that first math test? > “We can learn to be helpless in an environment that actually offers us control, and the *feeling* itself of control can be the difference between a life full of unending stress, and a relatively stress-free life.” It’s even been shown that we only need to be *told* there’s nothing we can do in order for us to feel there’s no point in trying. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Tell everyone there’s no point in voting, and fewer people will vote. What all of this shows is two-fold and extremely important to remember. We can learn to be helpless in an environment that actually offers us control, and the *feeling* itself of control can be the difference between a life full of unending stress, and a relatively stress-free life. ## Fight or Flight Stress is more than a feeling. Stress is a physiological response, and it has important evolutionary reasons for being. Back in the day, many thousands of years ago, our ancestors who could shift into a kind of emergency gear where long-term higher-order creative thinking shut down, and the body was enabled to think faster, react quicker, be stronger, move faster, run longer, and think only about survival… those were the humans who survived. We call this now the fight-or-flight response, and where this once incredibly important response was evolutionarily adaptive, it is now maladaptive. We don’t live in that same world anymore where it made so much sense. We aren’t being chased down by lions or being eaten by wolves while sitting in front of our computers in our air-conditioned offices, and yet our fight-or-flight responses are still being activated. In fact, for far too many, daily existence is nothing but fight-or-flight. Long-term stress is a real problem, and I would argue, it’s not just a health problem. **It’s a problem for human civilization**. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1200/1*0l9DqFBwuYJrR-GbrIH32A.jpeg) Dr. Robert Sapolsky in the field ## Sapolsky and Stress One of the most knowledgeable scientists in the world in this area is Robert Sapolsky, a pioneering neuroendocrinologist and professor at Stanford University who has spent more than thirty years studying the effects of stress on health, of which there are many. Over the years, Sapolsky has found that long-term stress increases one’s risk of diabetes, cardiac problems, and gastrointestinal disorders. Stress suppresses the immune system. It causes reproductive dysfunction in men and women. It suppresses growth in kids. It affects developing fetuses. Newer evidence even shows it causes faster aging of DNA. But potentially worst of all is what it does to the human mind. Prolonging fight-or-flight into a chronic condition means that neurons in the brain related to things like learning, memory, and judgment all suffer the consequences thanks to the wide-ranging effects of our double-edged sword stress hormones called **glucocorticoids**. Recent research has even shown this response made chronic is a self-perpetuating cycle.[ A constantly stressed out brain appears to lead to a kind of hardening of neural pathways](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201402/chronic-stress-can-damage-brain-structure-and-connectivity?ref=scottsantens.com). Essentially, feeling chronic stress makes it harder to not perceive stress, creating a vicious cycle of unending stress. On top of this, and related back to Weiss’s rats and human attribution theory, is the coping responses of those who are stressed out. Think of the “off-lever” in the second rat’s cage. There are many such levers around us and although they can be effective in reducing our stress levels, many of them are arguably pretty bad off-switches. These responses include acting out against others, otherwise known as **displacement aggression** or bullying. Yes, bullying is an effective coping mechanism. As the saying goes, shit rolls downhill, and there’s actually a scientific reason for that other than gravity. In a hierarchy, it is healthier after a loss to start another fight with someone you can beat, than to mope about the loss. The former is the abdication of control, a form of learned helplessness, and the latter is the creation of control, a kind of learned aggressiveness. > “A society full of unhealthy people getting sick more than they otherwise would be, saddled with difficulties learning and remembering, suffering from weakened judgment and short-term survival thinking, and violently turning on each other as a means of coping is not a recipe for success. It’s a recipe for disaster.” Life in the 21st century is full of both. On the learned helplessness side, there have been an estimated[ 45,000 suicides per year](https://www.liberationnews.org/capitalism-kills-unemployment-cause-of-45k-suicides-per-year/?ref=scottsantens.com) since 2000, with a sharp rise since 2007, that can all be attributed to the stresses surrounding the economic insecurities of unemployment and underemployment. The U.S. is even confounding the world, with[ a mysterious and dramatic rise in mortality rates among middle-aged white men and women,](http://www.pnas.org/content/112/49/15078.full.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) who all appear to be drinking and overdosing themselves to death. On the displacement aggression side, we see bullying of traditionally marginalized groups and a global and marked increase of anti-immigrant sentiment which has already led directly to the election of Donald Trump and as a result, cries for border walls and travel bans. We are seeing[ a rise in authoritarianism](http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism?ref=scottsantens.com), which is fundamentally a cry for more control and predictability. A society full of unhealthy people getting sick more than they otherwise would be, saddled with difficulties learning and remembering, suffering from weakened judgment and short-term survival thinking, and violently turning on each other as a means of coping is not a recipe for success. It’s a recipe for disaster, especially faced with species-endangering challenges like climate change that demand long-term thinking. But there is hope, and that hope springs from the same well as our problems. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*CBNRkOE7Fpbul5cVu_yy-Q.jpeg) [Photo](https://flic.kr/p/xoPhu?ref=scottsantens.com) by Rucker Sewell / CC [BY-NC-ND 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/?ref=scottsantens.com) # Stressed Out Primates There is an animal out there, one of our cousins actually in the primate family, who lead somewhat similar lives to us. They are high enough in the food chain to generally not be bothered and smart enough to be the primary cause of each other’s problems. Or as Sapolsky has described it: “They’re just like us: They’re not getting done in by predators and famines, they’re getting done in by each other.” That animal is the baboon and it’s the animal Sapolsky has been studying for decades. In doing so, he’s found three primary factors in predicting stress levels. ## Hierarchy The first predictor is the social hierarchy itself. Those at the top tend to live the most stress-free lives thanks to having more control, and those at the bottom tend to live the most stressful lives, thanks to having less control. There is however an important caveat to this. The stability of the social hierarchy matters. If the top baboon faces what is effectively a baboon revolution, that can be pretty stressful. In other words, more unequal societies lead to more stress, for everyone. ## Personality The second primary factor is personality. Just as primates are smart enough to be stressed where other animals wouldn’t, they’re also able to not be stressed where others would. A baboon who worries for his life every time another baboon walks by is going to be far more full of stress hormones than a laid-back baboon. Personality is therefore a factor that can override one’s position in the hierarchy for better or worse. It can even strongly predict one’s rank. ## Social Connections The third primary factor actually trumps all. It turns out that stress-related diseases are powerfully grounded in social connectedness. At the bottom of the social hierarchy and prone to stressing out based on your personality? That can still be okay for your health and well-being as long as you have strong social supports — friends, family, and community — to override it all. Sometimes all we really need is to know **we are not alone**. This social trump card even helps explain the prevalence of religion in human societies. It’s the creation of a perceived control lever that reduces stress across all factors including the all important social support factor. The result is that[ attending religious services regularly is actually surprisingly good for human health](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/religious-service-attendance-womens-mortality-risk/?ref=scottsantens.com). ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1000/1*a1CW7P8FMqgb1WzGJhmVDg.jpeg) [Photo](https://flic.kr/p/5dLoGA?ref=scottsantens.com) by Stephen Poff / CC [BY-NC-ND 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/?ref=scottsantens.com) # Stressed Out Humans All of this goes a long way toward explaining a great deal of human behavior. The construction of a social hierarchy is a naturally emergent phenomenon of our biology. Being “above” someone else in rank offers a level of control and predictability. Our personalities help determine our ranks and also how we cope with a lack of control and predictability. Our social relationships help put our lives and the world around us into perspective. However, this is no meritocracy and much depends on the circumstances of birth. ## Growing Immobility Because our personalities are greatly determined by our environments, especially as kids, a positive feedback loop can emerge where those born and raised in high stress environments full of impoverishment and inequality are unable to escape those environments. This can then become self-perpetuating through each successive generation that follows. We see this happening right now. For all those born into the bottom fifth of American society,[ about half remain there as adults](http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/el2013-06.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). The same is true for the top fifth. Meanwhile, the middle 60% are twice as mobile as either one. If we care about the American Dream, we should consider the implications. ## Growing Violence What’s the result of such generational stratification of little social mobility? One need look no further than our coping mechanisms — the levers of control we create — to understand why so many things we don’t want, emerge from highly unequal societies. Remember displacement aggression? A 1990 study of 50 countries concluded economic inequality is so significantly related to rates of homicide despite an extensive list of conceptually relevant controls, that[ a decrease in income inequality of 0.01 Gini (a measure of inequality) leads to 12.7 fewer homicides per 100,000 individuals](https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/sites/default/files/research-digest-violent-crime-final.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Simply put, and this is a robust finding, **g** **rowing inequality leads to growing violence**.[ A meta-analysis of 34 separate studies even found 97% of the correlations reported between social inequality and violent crime to be positive,](http://cjr.sagepub.com/content/18/2/182.abstract?ref=scottsantens.com) meaning as one got bigger or smaller, the other got bigger or smaller. ## Growing Addictions Addictions are another result. Drug use is a lever of control that is also an escape. We may not be able to control anything around us, but we can control an entirely personal decision that is as simple as drinking that vodka or smoking that cigarette. It can function as the middle finger to everything and everyone around us as a way of saying, “I may be stuck in this cage, but you can’t stop me from using this to feel like I’ve escaped, if only temporarily, and if even only an illusion. This is me controlling the one thing I can control — myself.” Consider again the mysteriously growing mortality rates of middle-aged white people due to overdoses and liver disease. As economic inequality increases, other scientifically correlated effects include: reduced trust and civic engagement, eroded social cohesion, higher infant mortality rates, lower overall life expectancy, more mental illness, reduced educational outcomes, higher rates of imprisonment, increased teen pregnancy rates, greater rates of obesity, and the list continues to grow as inequality-related research grows. Additionally, if you look closely at such a list of effects, it shows the erosion of social supports. If you are less likely to trust your neighbor, if you aren’t as involved in your community, if you or those you interact with are more aggressive, if you are depressed and just want to be alone, that means the all important trump card for handling stress — social connectedness — vanishes. This too is its own feedback loop. Less social connection means more stress which means less social connection. It’s an unending cycle for human misery. It’s also exactly what we’ve been observing in the United States for decades. Robert Putnam wrote an entire book about it back in 2000 titled “[Bowling Alone](http://amzn.to/2dMcO8r?ref=scottsantens.com).” The title originated from the statistic that although more people are bowling, less people are doing it in leagues. As observed by Putnam: > “Community and equality are mutually reinforcing… Social capital and economic inequality moved in tandem through most of the twentieth century. In terms of the distribution of wealth and income, America in the 1950s and 1960s was more egalitarian than it had been in more than a century… Those same decades were also the high point of social connectedness and civic engagement. Record highs in equality and social capital coincided. Conversely, the last third of the twentieth century was a time of growing inequality and eroding social capital… The timing of the two trends is striking: somewhere around 1965–70 America reversed course and started becoming both less just economically and less well connected socially and politically.” Viewed through Sapolsky’s decades of scientific investigation into the physiology of stress, and backed by everything we’ve observed since the[ Great Decoupling](https://hbr.org/2015/06/the-great-decoupling?ref=scottsantens.com) in 1973 where national productivity has continued to grow but wage growth has been non-existent, it becomes disappointingly clear that all of this is actually of our own making. Through the policy decisions we’ve made to increase inequality in the blind pursuit of unlimited growth through the cutting of taxes and subsidizing of multi-national corporate interests, and through the pursuit of globalization without regard for its effects on the middle classes of developed nations such that[ 70% of households in 25 advanced economies saw their earnings drop in the past decade](http://fortune.com/2016/07/13/middle-class-death/?ref=scottsantens.com), **we’ve created a societal feedback loop for chronic stress**. And we’re paying the price. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Just as we know more about why things are the way they are because of some rats in cages and some baboons in East Africa, those same animals point the way forward. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*ZRzMwxZzOqfeNvIfGOClbQ.jpeg) [Photo](https://flic.kr/p/2emXS4?ref=scottsantens.com) by thornypup / CC [BY-NC-ND 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/?ref=scottsantens.com) # Creating Better Environments In what was a sad day for Sapolsky but a remarkable day for science, he discovered back in the mid-1980’s that the very first baboon troop he’d ever studied had experienced a die-off. Half of the troop’s males had died of tuberculosis from eating tainted garbage. Because those at the top did not allow weaker males and any of the females to eat their prize trash, all of them died.[ The result was a truly transformed society of baboons](http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/featured%5Farticles/20040413tuesday.html?ref=scottsantens.com). ## Baboon Paradise A greater sense of egalitarianism became the new rule of the jungle, so to speak. Bullying of females and lower males became a rarity, replaced with aggression limited to those of close social rank. Aggressive behaviors like biting were reduced while affectionate behaviors like mutual grooming were increased. The baboons got closer, literally. They sat closer to each other. Stress plummeted, even among those at the very bottom of the new hierarchy. Even more amazingly, this happier more peaceful society of baboons has lasted over the decades, despite members leaving and joining. In what appears to be a transmission of societal values, new baboons are taught that in this particular society, bullying is not tolerated and tolerance is more the general rule, not the exception. Essentially, a new feedback loop was created, where the sudden reduction in inequality led to less stress and greater community, which led to a new normal of less stress and greater community. As Dr. Frans B. M. de Waal, the director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University put it in a 2004 interview with the[ ](http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/featured%5Farticles/20040413tuesday.html?ref=scottsantens.com)[*New York Times*](http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/featured%5Farticles/20040413tuesday.html?ref=scottsantens.com) about the baboon findings, “The good news for humans is that it looks like peaceful conditions, once established, can be maintained.” As much as the story of these baboons have to reveal about the importance and the hope of a less stressed-out, more peaceful society, there is another animal story that in my opinion shows the most potential for mankind of all. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/864/1*glgtLgruuOcIHDcPEqEbQw.jpeg) [“Aerial view” of Bruce Alexander’s Rat Park](http://www.brucekalexander.com/articles-speeches/rat-park/148-addiction-the-view-from-rat-park?ref=scottsantens.com) ## Rat Heaven In what has become a very well-known and discussed kind of study, rats were put into cages and given the opportunity to press a lever to self-administer drugs like cocaine. They medicated themselves to death and thus went down in history as the kind of experiment to point to that reveals the helplessly addictive dangers of drugs and how we must be protected from their usage for our own good. This is the ammunition for the War on Drugs in a nutshell. Meanwhile, in what has become a far too little known variation of this study, but I consider to be one of the most important ever devised, a new kind of experiment was run in an entirely different environment called “[Rat Park](http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics%5Fen/rat-park/?ref=scottsantens.com).” Hypothesizing that perhaps having nothing to do but just exist alone in a cage may have something to do with drug usage, a psychologist named[ Bruce Alexander](http://www.brucekalexander.com/articles-speeches/rat-park/148-addiction-the-view-from-rat-park?ref=scottsantens.com) decided to create a kind of rat heaven before offering rats drugs. Instead of a cage, rats were given a huge space to roam between tree-painted walls and a forest-like floor, full of toys and other rats to play and mate with, food to eat, obstacles to climb, tunnels to traverse, etc. Within this paradise for rats, morphine-laced water was introduced. The rats could drink as much of it as they wanted. Incredibly, the rats didn’t care for it, opting for plain water instead. The morphine-water was then made sweeter and sweeter until eventually the rats finally drank it, but only because it apparently tasted so good, not for the narcotic effects. This was even confirmed by adding a drug to the water, Naltrexone, that nullified the effects of the morphine, which resulted in the rats drinking more of the water. All of this was in strong contrast to solitary rats in cages given the same choices, who took to the morphine-water immediately and strongly. In fact, it’s even been found that solitary existence within a cage actively prevents[ neurogenesis](http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the%5Freinvention%5Fof%5Fthe%5Fself/?ref=scottsantens.com) — the growth of new neurons within the brain. It turns out neuroscientists for decades thought it impossible for adults to grow new neurons because they were studying solitary animals in cages the whole time. It’s therefore only recently that we’ve learned that impoverished environments actively limit brain development. > “Building a paradise for humans is up to us, where because everyone has enough, and inequality is low enough, we won’t reach for those levers of control that end up being against our better interests.” What this all reveals is more than the great lie of the Drug War. It reveals the vast importance and great differences of living alone in a cage, and living in a world of abundance and social bonds. Viewed in the context of everything else discussed, it shows the importance of constructing an environment for the purpose of bringing out the best in us, instead of the worst in us. Building a paradise for humans is up to us, where because everyone has enough, and inequality is low enough, we won’t reach for those levers of control that end up being against our better interests. **So how do we build “Human Park?”** ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*c6E6hCUfnK0bwG85riTkMA.jpeg) [Image](https://www.patreon.com/posts/basic-income-6925155?ref=scottsantens.com) by Amanda Wray. For more basic income illustrations, [click here](https://www.patreon.com/amandawray?ref=scottsantens.com). # Creating Human Park It is only in my studies of the idea of basic income that I’ve seen glimpses into this idea of a Human Park. Like a bunch of puzzle pieces that can be collected to form into a picture, the evidence behind simply giving people money without strings forms a profound image of a better world that can exist right now, if we so choose. Remember the three primary factors that determine our levels of stress? ## More Equality Creating a less unequal society is step one. There exists in the world today, and has since 1982, something as close to a fully *universal* basic income as anything yet devised. It’s[ the annual Alaska dividend](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/only-state-free-money-alaska?ref=scottsantens.com) where thanks to every resident receiving a check for on average around $1,000 per year for nothing but residing in Alaska, inequality is consistently among the lowest of all states. Not only that, but we see what we’d expect to see in lower stress populations, where Alaska is also consistently among the happiest states. In[ Gallup’s 2015 ranking of states by “well-being,”](http://info.healthways.com/hubfs/Well-Being%5FIndex/2015%5FData/Gallup-Healthways%5FState%5Fof%5FAmerican%5FWell-Being%5F2015%5FState%5FRankings.pdf?t=1472069666735&ref=scottsantens.com) Alaska was second only to Hawaii. This annual ranking is a combined measure of five separate rankings: purpose (liking what you do each day and being motivated to achieve your goals), social (having supportive relationships and love in your life), financial (managing your economic life to reduce stress and increase security), community (liking where you live, feeling safe and having pride in your community), and physical (having good health and enough energy to get things done daily). Alaska scored 5th, 5th, 1st, 7th, and 6th respectively in each of these measures. In other words, in the only state in the U.S. to provide a minimum amount of income to all residents every year, such that no one ever need worry about having *nothing*, they feel the greatest amount of basic economic security and the least amount of stress than any other state. As a result they’re also among the most motivated, the healthiest, and have strong family, friend, and community social supports. Alaska is essentially a glimpse at Human Park, but only a glimpse because even the $2,100 they all received in 2015 is not enough to cover a year’s worth of basic human needs. ## Improving Personality Some more of the best evidence we have in the world for what happens in the long-term when people are provided something that looks even more like a basic income than is found in Alaska, can again be found in the U.S., in North Carolina. In 1992, the [Great Smoky Mountains Study of Youth](http://devepi.duhs.duke.edu/gsms.html?ref=scottsantens.com) began with the goal of studying the youth in North Carolina to determine the possible risk factors of developing emotional and behavioral disorders. Because Native Americans tend to be underrepresented in mental health research, researchers made the point of including 349 child members of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation. About halfway into the ten-year study, something that is the dream of practically any researcher happened as a matter of pure serendipity. All tribal members began receiving a share of casino profits. By 2001 those dividends had grown to $6,000 per year. By 2006, they were $9,000 per year. The results were nothing short of incredible. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1000/1*N4YjMmSeSbCw6NtH2RcAhg.jpeg) [Photo](https://flic.kr/p/cz6cEY?ref=scottsantens.com) by Rachel Samanyl / CC [BY 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=scottsantens.com) The number of Cherokee living in poverty declined by 50%. Behavioral problems declined by 40%. Crime rates decreased. High school graduation rates increased. Grades improved. Home environments were transformed. Drug and alcohol use declined. Additionally, the lower the age the children were freed of poverty, the greater the effects as they grew up, to the point the youngest ended up being a third less likely to develop substance abuse or psychiatric problems as teens.[ Randall Akee](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/18/what-happens-when-the-poor-receive-a-stipend/?ref=scottsantens.com), an economist, later even calculated that the savings generated through all the societal improvements actually exceeded the amounts of the dividends themselves. However,[ the most powerful finding of all was in personality effects](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/08/the-remarkable-ways-a-little-money-can-change-a-childs-personality-for-life/?ref=scottsantens.com). These changes were observed as a result of better home environments that involved less stress and better parental relationships. Incredibly, the children of families who began receiving what we can call something very close to a basic income, saw long-term enhancements in two key personality traits: conscientiousness and agreeableness. That is, they grew up to be more honest, more observant, more comfortable around other people, and more willing to work together with others. And because personalities tend to permanently set as adults, these are most likely lifelong changes. If we remember how important personality is to the perception of stress and one’s location within social hierarchies, these children will end up far better off, and as a result, their own children likely will as well. This is another glimpse into a basic income-enabled Human Park. ## Increasing Social Cohesion Although what’s been happening for years in both Alaska and North Carolina are close to universal basic income in practice, they are not actually UBI. UBI requires regularly giving everyone in *an* *entire community* an amount of money *sufficient to cover their basic needs*. This has been done in three places so far: the city of[ Dauphin](http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20%282%29.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) in Canada, the[ Otjivero-Omitara](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) area of Namibia, and the[ Madhya Pradesh](http://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/resources/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Indias-Basic-Income-Experiment-PP21.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) area of India. It’s in these areas that humanity has achieved what’s closest to creating Human Parks. As a direct result of guaranteeing everyone a basic income in Dauphin, hospitalization rates decreased 8.5% and high school graduation rates surpassed 100% as dropouts actually returned to school to finish. In Namibia, overall crime rates were cut almost in half and self-employment rates tripled. In India, housing and nutrition improved, markets and businesses blossomed, and overall health and well-being reached new heights. But if it’s one thing I find most interesting across all experiments, it’s[ the improved social cohesion](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/universal-basic-income-wi%5Fb%5F8354072.html?ref=scottsantens.com) — a proliferation of new and strengthened social supports. In Namibia, a stronger community spirit developed. Apparently, the need to ask each other for money was a barrier to normal human interaction. Once basic income made it so that no one needed to beg anymore, everyone felt more able to make friendly visits to each other, and speak more freely without being seen as wanting something in return. In India, where castes can still create artificial social divisions, those in villages given basic income actually began to gather across caste lines for mutual decision-making. And in Canada, the basic income guarantee had a notable impact on caring, with parents choosing to spend more time with their kids, and kids spending more time with each other in schools instead of jobs. Remember, social supports are the trump card of societies with less stress, and it appears that providing people with UBI strengthens existing social supports and creates new ones. Freed from a focus on mere survival, humans reach out to each other. This is also something that makes us different from every other animal on Earth — our ability to reach each other in ways unimaginable even to ourselves until only recently. We as humans are entirely unique in our ability to belong to multiple hierarchies, and through the internet create connections across vast distances and even time itself through recorded knowledge. Our place in a hierarchy matters, but we can decide which hierarchies matter more. Is it our position in the socioeconomic ladder? Is it our position in our place of employment? Or is it our position in our churches, our schools, our sports leagues, our online communities, or even our virtual communities within games like World of Warcraft and Second Life? > “No other policy has the transformative potential of reducing anywhere near as much stress in society than the lifelong guaranteeing of basic economic security with a fully unconditional basic income.” # Reaching Our Potential We as humans have incredible potential to create and form communities, and realize world-changing feats of imagination, and this mostly untapped potential mostly just requires less stress and more time. If all we’re doing is just trying to get by, and our lives are becoming increasingly stressful, it becomes increasingly difficult to think and to connect with each other. It’s the taxation of the human mind and social bonds. Studies even show the burden of poverty on the mind depletes the amount of mental bandwidth available for everything else to the tune of about[ 14 IQ points](http://www.harvardmagazine.com/2015/05/the-science-of-scarcity?ref=scottsantens.com), or the loss of an entire night’s sleep. Basically, scarcity begets scarcity. On the other hand, if we free ourselves to focus on everything else other than survival, if we remove the limitations of highly unequal and impoverished environments, then we’re increasingly able to connect with each other, and we minimize learned helplessness. As a result, our health improves. Crime is reduced. Self-motivation goes up. Teamwork overtakes dog-eat-dog, and long-term planning overtakes short-term thinking. Presumably, many an IQ *jumps* the equivalent of 14 points. [A greater sense of security has even been shown to reduce bias against “out” groups](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111201174227.htm?ref=scottsantens.com), from immigrants to the obese. And if we take into account the importance of security in people deciding to invest their time and resources in bold new ventures, innovation also has the chance of skyrocketing in a society where everyone always has *enough* to feel comfortable in taking risks without fear of failure. Basically, abundance begets abundance. If what we seek is a better environment for the thriving of humans — a “**Human Park**” full of greater health and happiness — then what we seek should be the implementation of basic income, in nation after nation, all over the world. There is no real feeling of control without the ability to say no. Because UBI is unconditional, it provides that lever to everyone for the first time in history. No other policy has the transformative potential of reducing anywhere near as much stress in society than the lifelong guaranteeing of basic economic security with a fully unconditional basic income. Plus, with that guarantee achieved, the fear of technological unemployment becomes the ***goal*** of technological unemployment. Why stress about automation, when we could embrace it? No more fight-or-flight. **It’s time for live long and prosper.** --- ***Special thanks to Arjun Banker, Steven Grimm, Larry Cohen, Aaron Marcus-Kubitza, Joel Cabrera, Andy Stern, Patrick, Stephane Boisvert, Albert Wenger, Richard Just, Topher Hunt, Chris Smothers, Chris Hughes, Joel Leoj, Jeff Marshall, Mark Witham, Gisele Huff, Lainie Petersen, Vladimir Baranov, Victor Vurpillat, Catherine MacDonald, David Ihnen, Danielle and Michael Texeira, Katie Doemland, Paul Wicks, Jan Smole, Joe Esposito, Jack Wagner, Joe Ballou, Stuart Matthews, Natalie Foster, Chris McCoy, Michael Honey, Gary Aranovich, Kai Wong, Louise Whitmore, Dan O’Sullivan, Harish Venkatesan, Michiel Dral, Gerald Huff, Cameron Ottens, Allan Free, Gray Scott, Saura Naderi, Andreas, Kevin Baker, David Bijl, Lawrence W Lee, Kirk Israel, Robert Solovay, Jeff Schulman, Andrew Henderson, Robert F. Greene, Martin Jordo, Victor Lau, Shane Gordon, Paolo Narciso, Johan Grahn, Tony DeStefano, Erhan Altay, Rise & Shine PAC, Luke Sampson, Lee Irving, Kris Roadruck, Amy Shaffer, Thomas Welsh, Casey Young, Elizabeth Balcar, Allen Bauer, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** ## [Would you like to see your name here too?](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Progressive Case for Replacing the Welfare State with Universal Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-progressive-case-for-replacing-the-welfare-state-with-universal-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T20:28:07.000Z *(This article was originally published on* [*techcrunch.com*](https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/09/the-progressive-case-for-replacing-the-welfare-state-with-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com)*)* It appears some establishment voices have picked up on a way of opposing the idea of the monthly citizen dividend of about $1,000 per month, known as **universal basic income (UBI)**, in a way that successfully leaves some progressively minded people afraid. The fear inspired is that those with the greatest need may be left worse off with UBI compared to the existing status quo of more than 100 government programs that currently comprise the U.S. safety net that UBI has the potential to entirely or mostly replace. The argument goes that because we currently target money to those in need, by spreading out existing revenue to everyone instead, those currently targeted would necessarily receive less money, and thus would be worse off. Consequently, the end result of basic income could be theoretically regressive in nature by reducing the benefits of the poor and transferring that revenue instead to the middle classes and the rich. Obviously a bad idea, right? This new argument has been made most notably by the [White House’s own chief economic adviser, Jason Furman](https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/20160707%5Fcea%5Fai%5Ffurman.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), perhaps after himself reading the words of [Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP)](http://www.cbpp.org/poverty-and-opportunity/commentary-universal-basic-income-may-sound-attractive-but-if-it-occurred?ref=scottsantens.com). The problem is that those who make this particular argument are building somewhat of a straw man, not only because of the blanket assumptions they are making around a very specific tax-neutral design, but also because they aren’t publicly acknowledging just how poorly our present means-tested programs are targeted by virtue of their applied conditions, and just how unequal one dollar can be to one dollar, however counterintuitive that may seem. Basically, this particular argument would only make sense if we in no way altered our tax system to achieve UBI, and if our programs worked as we assume they work because that’s how they should work. The problem is they don’t work that way. Assuming things work as we think they work is exactly one of the biggest obstacles we’ve always had to improving anything, because to fix something we first need to understand it’s broken. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Well, guess what? Our safety net is broken, and it’s broken at such a fundamental level, there’s no fixing it, because it is by design. A net full of holes must be replaced by a floor free of holes and that floor is unconditional basic income. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*owyqYlv0pZV-6xb94LV7fw.png) # Nothing but net holes In the United States today, on average, just about one in four families living underneath the federal poverty line receives what most call welfare, which is actually known as [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF](http://mlwiseman.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/TANF-is-Broken.072515.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). It gets worse. Because states are actually just written checks to give out as they please in the form of “block grants,” there are states where far fewer than one in four impoverished families receive cash assistance. In Oklahoma, [seven out of 100 families living in poverty receives TANF](http://www.slate.com/articles/news%5Fand%5Fpolitics/moneybox/2016/06/%5Fwelfare%5Fmoney%5Foften%5Fisn%5Ft%5Fspent%5Fon%5Fwelfare.html?ref=scottsantens.com). In Wyoming, merely [one in 100 of those living in poverty receives TANF](http://www.scottsantens.com/tanf-is-terrible). Where does the money go instead? It goes to educate the children of those earning over six figures. It goes to programs trying to convince women to get married. And it goes directly to state government treasuries so they can cut taxes on the rich. The fact is that cash welfare, as it exists today, is not given to the overwhelming majority of those living in poverty who need it. Single adults without children know this better than anyone. They even have their own moniker: ABAWDs (Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents). ABAWDs have the lone distinction of being the only demographic in the U.S. to be literally taxed into poverty, [all 7.5 million of them](http://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/childless-adults-are-lone-group-taxed-into-poverty?ref=scottsantens.com). Because they earn income and because they do not have the child necessary to qualify for virtually any assistance — even the earned income tax credit (EITC), which is meant as a boost for low-income workers through the tax code — those earning enough to be above the federal poverty line can end up beneath the poverty line after paying taxes. And those already beneath the poverty line are pushed even deeper, effectively punished for being childless and working. Combine all of those without dependents with all of those with dependents but without sufficient income to qualify for EITC and living in states averse to cash assistance, and the reality is that tens of millions of adults and children fall straight through the net purportedly designed to catch them. Any net is mostly nothing but holes, and nowhere is that more true than in the United States. **Assumption:** Everyone living beneath the poverty line receives cash assistance. **Observation:** Most don’t. The same is true of housing assistance. There is a belief that poor people galore are sitting on easy street with affordable living conditions, where housing vouchers are given away like Halloween candy to anyone with a hand out. The truth is that [24 percent of those who qualify for housing assistance get it](http://www.vox.com/2014/5/31/5764262/76-percent-of-people-who-qualify-for-housing-aid-dont-get-it?ref=scottsantens.com), and getting it can mean years of waiting on lists. Here in New Orleans, where I live, the wait list is opened about every seven years or so, and when it is, tens of thousands apply despite fewer than 1,000 people becoming new recipients of vouchers each year. Additionally, vouchers are not at all “just like cash.” Cash is accepted in payment by all landlords everywhere. Section 8 vouchers, meanwhile, are accepted only by those who choose to accept them, which is few and far between, and certainly not in what are considered to be “high opportunity” neighborhoods. This is true even of “[supervouchers](http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/cha-supervoucher-program-fair-housing-integration-controversy/Content?oid=21891804&ref=scottsantens.com)” that are specifically designed for that purpose. **Assumption:** Everyone living in poverty receives housing assistance. **Observation:** Most don’t. Food stamps, too, are not given to everyone living under the poverty line. [About one-quarter of those living in poverty get no government food assistance](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/14/food-stamps%5Fn%5F3757052.html?ref=scottsantens.com), and of those who do, [a third of them still need to visit food banks](http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/03/03/468955099/the-snap-gap-benefits-arent-enough-to-keep-many-recipients-fed?ref=scottsantens.com) for added assistance because the amount given is nowhere close to being sufficient to get people through each month. Estimates point to food stamps lasting on average about three weeks of every month. Worse yet, food stamps can even have harsh time limits (e.g. three months of SNAP every three years), growing restrictions on how they can be used (sorry, no seafood allowed) and work requirements (30 hours per week). This is food we’re talking about. Why should any bureaucrat ever exist between the most basic human need of all — the need to eat — and access to food? **Assumption:** Everyone living in poverty receives food assistance. **Observation:** Some may temporarily, but the amount is insufficient and full of costly strings. However, one of the best examples of all the vast differences between the assumption and the observation of how government benefits work is how we target those with disabilities. It has been estimated that [22 percent of adults in the U.S. have some form of disability](http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/infographic-disability-impacts-all.html?ref=scottsantens.com). At the same time, [4.6 percent of adults](http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/?ref=scottsantens.com) age 18–64 in the U.S. are receiving disability income. So again, about one-quarter of those we say we should be targeting actually receive anything, while the bulk get nothing. The absolute worst thing though, and what too few people seem to know, is that when it comes to disability income, you are essentially not even allowed to earn additional income. [If you’re on SSDI and earn one dollar over $1,090 in a month, you are dropped from the program and lose 100 percent of your benefit](http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/jun/23/disabled-people-grow-increasingly-frustrated-at-being-denied-the-chance-to-work?ref=scottsantens.com). That is the steepest of “benefit cliffs” and it’s the equivalent of taxing those with disabilities at rates far greater than 100 percent as a reward for their labor. It’s also the exact opposite of a basic income that is never taken away. It is this clawback of means-tested benefits with the earning of income that is possibly the single greatest flaw of all targeted assistance, and also the single most ignored detail when people defend the current system over the introduction of a basic income that would replace it. Simply put, $1,000 per month in welfare is not at all the same thing as $1,000 per month in basic income. It’s not just apples and oranges. It’s rotten apples and ripe oranges. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1170/1*D37wQgMiGgPEjfE6Ey0ulQ.png) More about this chart [here](http://www.scottsantens.com/will-replacing-current-benefits-with-cash-tomorrow-leave-todays-recipients-better-or-worse-off-basic-income-single-parents-welfare) With welfare, because it is targeted and therefore withdrawn as income is earned, people on welfare are effectively punished for working. Their total incomes don’t really increase with employment. Welfare functions in many ways as a ceiling. With basic income, because it is unconditional and therefore never withdrawn as income is earned, people with basic incomes are always rewarded for working. Their total incomes always increase with any amount of employment. Basic income therefore functions as a floor. **Do you see the difference?** So when someone says the details matter when it comes to the idea of basic income and suggests the possibility that it could be regressive, and even increase inequality by taking money being targeted at the poor and giving it to the non-poor, understand that the details of the details matter even more than just the details. The regressive argument operates on the myth that for every four people living under the poverty line, four people get an amount of assistance that lifts them far above the poverty line, and that $1 of welfare is exactly equivalent to $1 in basic income. The basic income argument operates on the reality that for every four people living under the poverty line, only about one person gets an amount of assistance that does more to trap them in poverty than to lift them out of it, and that $1 of welfare is worth far less than $1 of basic income. It’s really important to understand this, so let’s zoom in a bit on a worst-case scenario. Let’s assume we replace all of our programs targeted at the poor with UBI, including even Medicaid (which I don’t recommend unless we replace it with universal healthcare instead), and that we provide the UBI to adults only, with nothing for kids ([something else I don’t recommend](http://www.scottsantens.com/why-should-adults-with-kids-get-more-basic-income-child-allowances)). Using [an example of a single parent with two kids](http://www.scottsantens.com/will-replacing-current-benefits-with-cash-tomorrow-leave-todays-recipients-better-or-worse-off-basic-income-single-parents-welfare) within the current system, we could regressively replace around $45,000 of benefits (if we also eliminate child care, which is yet another detail I don’t recommend) with $12,000 in cash. That is a worst-design scenario and totally regressive right? No. It’s actually partially regressive and mostly progressive. Although true that one in four would be worse off in such an inferior UBI design, it’s also true that three of four would be far better off because they would no longer receive little to nothing. As an oversimplified example for the sake of clarity, that means instead of the distribution across four adults being $45,000/$0/$0/$0, it would be $12,000/$12,000/$12,000/$12,000\. That is more progressive as a whole than it is regressive, and inequality is reduced overall, not increased, because the total at the bottom went from $45,000 across four people to $48,000 across four people. And that is for basically the worst possible, most unrealistic of UBI designs. But again, those numbers cannot be compared dollar for dollar. Welfare dollars disappear with work and basic income dollars are kept with work. That same parent receiving $45,000 for nothing, if they got a job paying $30,000 right now would receive $20,000 in benefits. That would be a gain of $30,000 combined with a loss of $25,000\. That’s a gain of $5,000 for a $30,000 job, or in other words, an income tax of 83 percent. Who else is taxed at 83 percent? No one. In fact, the richest are taxed the least because their income, which isn’t derived from work, is special. It’s simply capital gains, which is taxed at 20 percent. Even more troubling, welfare dollars themselves are not equivalent to each other. Despite it being against the law to vary welfare dollars along racial lines, that’s exactly what we do. How? It’s again due to the nature of block grants for states. When Bill Clinton signed his welfare reform into law, he agreed to write checks to the states and let them handle how they dish out welfare. As a result, just five years after welfare was reformed into what it is today, 63 percent of those in the programs with the least-harsh conditions were white and 11 percent were black, while 63 percent of those in the programs with the most-harsh conditions were black and 29 percent were white. In other words, a dollar in welfare has about three to five times as many strings for someone who is black than someone who is white. These strings absolutely affect end results. Joe Soss, co-author of [Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race](http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo12120768.html?ref=scottsantens.com) describes his findings thusly: > “The stringency of the rules matter tremendously for outcomes. The tougher the rules — and the more frequently people are punished for breaking them — the worse the outcomes are for people after they finish the program. In fact, in the toughest programs, people actually end up in worse shape after they get through them than they were before they got the benefits to begin with. And remember, they were in such a bad situation that they had to turn to a welfare program that’s been so stigmatized that pretty much everyone wants to avoid it. We also found that people who go through the toughest programs learn lessons about government that lead them to retreat from participating in politics. They become less likely to make their voices heard, and less likely to participate in elections and community organizations.” Does this sound like a just and equitable system? Or does it sound more like a racist meat-grinder? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1340/1*HvRWE9Oxn-BGE1aH_aL3Dg.png) The bare naked truth of our present welfare system is a racially biased, overly paternalistic, unnecessarily controlling, grossly exclusionary system of punishment and blame that limits opportunity and taxes working beneficiaries more than any other worker in any income tax bracket. It doesn’t abolish poverty. It helps sustain it. And this is the system establishment voices wish to improve upon in piecemeal fashion, possibly because they’re not the ones being chewed up and spit out by it, or even neglected by it entirely. However, even if all of the above is clearly understood, there is one absolutely vital thing remaining to understand about basic income that cannot be replicated in any other way, by any other means. Because basic income lacks conditions and is paid regardless of work, it provides recipients the power to refuse to work. This is the real fear of those who worry a basic income will result in people working less, but it is also its greatest strength. The ability to say no to an employer provides people the bargaining power and the choice to determine how they work, where they work, for how much and for how long. No other policy does that. [A minimum wage certainly doesn’t](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/minimum-wages-vs-universal-basic-income%5Fb%5F7957850.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Wage subsidies certainly don’t. Without basic income, the labor market is coercive, and that means people accept what they can get. With basic income, wages for low-demand jobs must go up and/or hours must go down in order to attract people with incomes independent of work to do them, or those same jobs must be automated to be performed by machines instead, whichever is cheaper. A basic income is most simply aminimum income **floor**. It’s a new starting point above the poverty level instead of below it. There will still be jobs for people to earn additional income and those jobs can pay more if people hate doing them. Additionally, considering a potential future where there’s half as much employment, that also means just as many can be employed if we all work half as much so as to better share the remaining employment. And with the increased bargaining power UBI provides, that can also mean getting paid more for less work. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*p3p0h6g-9HCc3-OhN1Nhbg.png) Basic income is not some regressive conspiracy of the Silicon Valley elite to create a neo-serfdom where the entire population only earns a maximum of $12,000 per year. That is the exact opposite of how it works. With basic income, $12,000 becomes the new absolute minimum for everyone and no one is a serf because everyone’s basic needs are covered. Poverty is eliminated. Inequality is reduced. Additionally, everyone is free to earn any additional income, and on their terms. For the first time, everyone will have the individual negotiating power to dictate terms to employers that must be met. People who have this fundamental power are those who can then make further desired changes in the economy, in their businesses, in their governments and in their lives. So you tell me. Would you prefer conditional welfare nets or would you prefer an unconditional basic income floor? Because one of these options is a relic of history, and the other is a road to the future. --- ***Special thanks to Arjun Banker, Steven Grimm, Larry Cohen, Aaron Marcus-Kubitza, Andrew Stern, Patrick, Stephane Boisvert, Albert Wenger, Richard Just, Topher Hunt, Chris Smothers, Chris Hughes, Joel Leoj, Jeff Marshall, Mark Witham, Gisele Huff, Lainie Petersen, Vladimir Baranov, Victor Vurpillat, Catherine MacDonald, David Ihnen, Danielle and Michael Texeira, Katie Doemland, Paul Wicks, Jan Smole, Joe Esposito, Jack Wagner, Joe Ballou, Stuart Matthews, Natalie Foster, Chris McCoy, Michael Honey, Gary Aranovich, Kai Wong, Louise Whitmore, Dan O’Sullivan, Harish Venkatesan, Michiel Dral, Gerald Huff, Cameron Ottens, Allan Free, Gray Scott, Saura Naderi, Andreas, Kevin Baker, David Bijl, Lawrence W Lee, Kirk Israel, Robert Solovay, Jeff Schulman, Andrew Henderson, Robert F. Greene, Martin Jordo, Victor Lau, Shane Gordon, Paolo Narciso, Johan Grahn, Tony DeStefano, Erhan Altay, Rise & Shine PAC, Luke Sampson, Lee Irving, Kris Roadruck, Amy Shaffer, Thomas Welsh, Casey Young, Elizabeth Balcar, Allen Bauer, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** ## [*Would you like to see your name here too?*](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Olympians and the Great Myth of Meritocracy URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/olympians-and-the-great-myth-of-meritocracy/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T23:12:52.000Z The Olympics provides a great opportunity to take a closer look at the popular myth of meritocracy, where winners come out on top thanks to hard work and losers simply just weren’t good enough. That the discussion during this most recent Olympics has been centered so much around performance-enhancing drugs really drives this point home in a way I have not seen discussed, but I think should be, because we should really stop and question our seemingly unquestioned beliefs of a world that rewards the deserving and punishes the undeserving. The truth behind contests of physical prowess like the Olympics is that they are largely a celebration of genetics. Of course hard work and access to resources are involved too, because genes can rarely be entirely independent of environment, but given two Olympians who worked exactly as hard as each other and with access to identical training and resources, then all else being equal, the gold medal will essentially be rewarding the winner’s parents. It’s one thing if our stated goal is to celebrate DNA instead of hard work, but it isn’t. We celebrate the hard work and skill that goes into winning. Or at least we say we do, but performance enhancing drugs lays bare that lie to ourselves. Performance enhancing drugs are commonly discussed as providing an unfair advantage, and that we need to level the playing field by doing everything we can to prevent their use. However, the unpopular truth is there are cases where drugs can actually be responsible for a *more* level playing field, if we care more about hard work that is, instead of how genes work. Let’s take an imaginary case of two Olympians and let’s call them Bill and Ted. Bill was born with a body whose muscle cells function at a slightly higher level than Ted’s. Bill and Ted both train incredibly hard for years, but Ted puts in just a bit more effort than Bill. In the end, Bill wins the gold medal though, not because he worked harder, but because his parents’ gametocytes together provided an advantage that Ted's effort couldn't overcome. No one really considers sperm or eggs as unfair advantages though, and so in this case, Bill is celebrated as a true champion. Now let’s imagine an alternate timeline where Ted used performance enhancing drugs, but in a way that essentially granted his muscle cells the exact same abilities as Bill’s. In such a circumstance, Ted has not given himself an advantage at all. He has simply leveled the playing field. Again, both Bill and Ted train for years, but with Ted putting in just a bit more work. This time, because their genetics are effectively identical but Ted put in more effort, Ted wins the gold. This should be considered a meritocratic outcome, but it’s not. Ted is later tested positive for drugs and his medal is stripped away. He’s not seen as a champion, but a cheater. How odd is it that we can celebrate uneven starting points as equal, and denigrate equalized starting points as cheating? But that’s what we do, day in and day out, not only in the Olympics, but in our everyday lives. There is no level playing field. There is no meritocracy. Every day “winners” are born thanks to sperm, eggs, money, and pure randomness. Every day “losers” start races way behind the starting line, on empty stomachs, without any shoes, with weights shackled around their ankles and their bodies covered in life’s daily bruises, and when they don’t win, we look down on them for not trying hard enough. To be clear, I’m not making an argument here for the unbanning of all performance-enhancing drugs, because it is indeed possible to go beyond leveling the genetic playing field and into the realm of uncrossable physical performance gaps regardless of any amount of skill and effort. I’m simply pointing out that this argument is more complex than “drugs are bad.” The complexity arises in acknowledging that some bodies effectively manufacture their own drugs, and without acknowledging that, we perpetuate unequal starting points and the great myth of meritocracy. As a further example, imagine for a moment that it was considered unfairly "performance-enhancing" for an Olympic swimmer to shave their body or a wear a cap. Those swimmers who were naturally hairless, would of course have a genetic advantage, but it wouldn't be seen that way because it was a product of genes that prevented hair, and not technology like a razor or wax. In this case, would you argue that technology could level an unlevel field, or that technology would provide an unfair advantage? What if someone had so much money they could afford the technology to alter their genes to remove their hair? Would that be cheating, or would it be playing by the rules? We say we want a world where everyone starts on the same starting line, where no one races toward the finish line without shoes or shackles or empty stomachs, but we celebrate the crowning of those with unfair advantages as matter of course. We put our billionaires on pedestals, even when their parents were billionaires, and lie the great lie that they earned it just as if they had started with nothing. In what world can someone like Donald Trump claim to be a self-made man who started from nothing despite [starting with far more than most of us can even dream of](http://www.politifact.com/florida/article/2016/mar/07/did-donald-trump-inherit-100-million/?ref=scottsantens.com) ever attaining in an entire lifetime of the hardest work imaginable? *This* world is the unfortunate answer. However, perhaps the greatest lie of all, is how we even confuse complete randomness with what is earned and deserved. Pure dumb luck can be the difference between a gold medal and never even crossing the finish line because a bee just happened to sting you and you just happened to be allergic to bees. Random variation can be such a powerful and yet largely unacknowledged predictor of outcomes. I think one of the strongest examples of the power of randomness is revealed in a study of judges and their stomachs. ![Silvrback blog image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/5f72a5d2-739f-4938-9220-7987ecc9dc0f/Justice_large.jpg) Most of us tend to believe in a justice system where justice is served blindly. The law is the law, right? Well, it turns out that [**judges vary their sentences according to how hungry they are**](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/04/11/justice-is-served-but-more-so-after-lunch-how-food-breaks-sway-the-decisions-of-judges/?ref=scottsantens.com#.VQc4-OGFHm4). Randomly appear before a judge right before their lunch, and you will end up worse off than had you randomly appeared before that same judge right after their lunch break, on a full and happy stomach. Recognize that and consider just how many lives have been altered based on that pure randomness. How many people got a second chance because their last name put them first? How many people were given harsh sentences because they drew the short straw? Considering our Olympic analogy again, how many people have won medals and how many never even placed, based not on genetics, hard work, or performance enhancing drugs, but ultimately the luck of the draw? If we truly do want a meritocracy, we need to stop lying to ourselves and recognize uneven starting lines whenever we see them. If we want the winners of races to be the ones who most “deserved it" based on effort and skill, then we should want to make sure the winners are winning because they should have won fair and square, and not because their competition had no shoes. So how can we do this? One of the greatest steps we can take toward a more real meritocracy is to provide everyone an [**unconditional basic income**](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq). The only way we can make sure winners aren't just winning because their competition had insufficient access to resources is to make sure everyone has the same minimal access. It's starting line logic. Just provide everyone an amount of money sufficient to eliminate poverty as a new starting line to race from. All income earned above that amount is kept so there are still winners and losers, but the winners won’t win simply because those who could have beaten them were weighed down, and the losers won’t lose simply because the race had beaten them before it even began. There are other steps we can take to level our playing fields by increasing opportunity, and how to best go about doing so is a great discussion to have, especially during the Olympics. What kind of world do we want? Do we want a world where people can be born with nothing and achieve everything? Or do we want a world where the circumstances of our births increasingly determine the courses of our lives more than any other factor? Do we want our champions to win on level playing fields? Or do we want our champions to be the sons and daughters of those who *own* our playing fields? I offer that the answer to these questions could very likely determine the very fate of our species, for the owners can only own so much before the Olympic Games become the Hunger Games. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Forget the future of work. What about the future of consumption? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/future-of-work-consumption-and-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T23:13:44.000Z Discussing the future of work is all the rage these days. Some say we're on the verge of the robot apocalypse of jobs. Others say jobs will always be created in sufficient numbers (and at sufficient rates) and that everything will be fine. Regular readers know where I fall on this particular question, that either way, [our goal should be eliminating as many of the jobs as possible that we as humans don't enjoy doing](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/humanity-needs-universal-%5Fb%5F9599198.html?ref=scottsantens.com). However, what doesn't tend to get discussed is the flip side of all of this, which is the fruits of the all the work by humans and machines, the limited amounts any of us as humans can consume them simply because of limited time, and how our consumer preferences are being permanently and irrevocably altered by short-sighted greed. ![The Great Decoupling sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/a15c5e26-459c-4677-b29b-e35c55585b09/9261_medium.png) It's that last one that's caught my attention recently, and I've noticed it through my own consumption patterns. The irony of it all is that had corporations simply paid their workers more over time as productivity increased, as we used to until 1973, our tastes would be potentially different than they now are. But because we as consumers have been forced to spend less as consumers year after year due to stagnant incomes and rising costs, we're accelerating right into a new economy where far less paid work is required. I used to have cable. It was expensive, but I had the discretionary income to pay for it way back when. I also used to frequently go to movies. I loved going to movies. I'd go to the local theater every week, sometimes more than once a week. What I was consuming helped pay for the wages and salaries of thousands of people being paid tens of thousands of dollars. In exchange for two hours of entertainment during my leisure time, I paid money. And that money ended up finding its way into a lot of different wallets and purses. ![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/d5af5f21-0043-4314-a2aa-b19bdcd1104f/9vH6sjB_large.jpg) That all changed for me as it did for many back in 2008 when the economy crashed. Some very wealthy people felt their great wealth wasn't quite enough, and they took global markets down with them when their bubble of greed burst in the faces of everyone. Many jobs vanished and with them incomes. Only recently have we even reached the number of jobs we once had, and yet there are also more people and most of the new jobs don't pay as much. People were forced to change their consumption patterns as a result and to this day that's still true. That reduced consumption is itself part of the problem because it's not being transformed into other people's incomes. Instead it's just sitting there, accumulating at the top, in an astounding feat of ignorant short-term thinking. Once someone gets used to new patterns of consumption, it can become a new preference. Remember how I used to pay for cable? I will never pay for cable ever again. Even if my discretionary income skyrocketed tens of thousands of dollars every month, I will never again pay for cable. Why? Because I was forced into not having it, and I've discovered I prefer not having it. What's my substitute? I've written about this before, [multiple](http://www.scottsantens.com/youtube-star-wars-future-of-work) [times](http://www.scottsantens.com/youtube-intrinsic-motivation-window-basic-income), but I mention it here again from the other side... **YouTube is a prime example not only of the future of work, but of the future of consumption.** The other day I found and subscribed to a new channel. The guy who runs it is a collector of military rations aka MREs. He has [130,900 subscribers on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA?ref=scottsantens.com) at the moment and [37 patrons on Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2821334&ref=scottsantens.com). He records himself opening ration kits, some as old as World War II and even earlier, and when the food appears edible, he eats it. I showed the channel to my girlfriend and we watched it for hours. It was absolutely fascinating to both of us to watch video after video. It was that channel that got me thinking... here is a guy just sharing his hobby with everyone for free on YouTube and I was happier spending hours of my life watching his videos than spending the same number of hours in a theater watching the latest movie that cost $200 million dollars to create and another $200 million to market. In other words, the unpaid work of one man out-competed Hollywood to lay claim to hours of my time as a consumer. Those same hours could have been spent adding to the incomes of tens of thousands of people, but it wasn't. Right now, an entire generation is being raised in this environment. For them, they have the highest rates of unemployment at [around 9-17% for those age 16-24](http://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea10.htm?ref=scottsantens.com). They also have the highest rates of debt burden. The greed at the top to keep money for themselves instead of paying it out as wages, and to charge higher and higher amounts for college educations is helping accelerate the creation of a new kind of consumer. That consumer has very limited discretionary income, and potentially a lot more time or a lot less time, the combination of which creates the conditions for the consumption of that which costs little to nothing, or in other words, that which creates little to no jobs. Think about that for a second. Here we are surrounded by people claiming that because jobs have always been created, jobs will always be created, and at the same time, we are creating an entire generation of consumers who are learning they're just as happy or happier not spending money into the economy to consume. This is part of the reason why it's so popular to watch others play video games online, and also why that so confuses older generations. It's fun to watch someone play a game. It's entertaining. And it costs nothing. Yes, one could buy a gaming system, and games for it, and play them, and that would help power a consumer economy, paying for the wages and salaries of those who created and sold the system and games. But if you can't afford it, and you learn it's still fun and possibly even more fun to watch others play, than why ever buy into that cycle? The current system is built around the perceived normality of 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, and 8 hours of leisure. It is normal for every day to have a limit of 8 hours to consume the fruits of what others are spending their 8 hours of work on. The purchase as a consumer of another's work creates their income, which they then spend as a consumer on the work of another, and around and around it goes, that is... as long as people are earning and spending enough to power the cycle. That cycle is breaking down. Who knows for how long it could have lasted, had those at the top not been so greedy, but greedy they were and now here we are. The sharing economy is growing within the old economy and there's no stopping it. If one person can entertain millions of people during their leisure hours with no money exchanging hands, that leaves the work of millions of people as pointless. What they are being paid to do will dry up without the consumers to consume it, and then they too, without incomes for normal consumption, will find their way into the sharing economy. The sharing economy is truly a different kind of place. Outside it, there are producers and consumers. Inside it, there are prosumers who prosume, that is, they both produce and consume. Take Facebook for example, another example of something that entertains people for hours a day for free, where people consume the content others have freely created. One person's post is another person's consumption good. No money is changing hands, and yet the hours spent on Facebook are taking away from the hours spent spending money into the economy. Value is obviously being created and yet the prosumers responsible for it all see none of the monetary value. Instead a small group of people responsible for the platform itself see it. I want to make sure and emphasize the importance of this from a different perspective. We've all heard how Facebook is an example of how a company worth billions of dollars need only employ a small fraction of the people a comparable company would have decades ago. But what is not really discussed is the consumption side of this, how its 1.65 billion active users are spending hours of their time not paying to consume goods and services, and therefore not creating the incomes of others. The same is true with SnapChat. Look at the SnapChat generation as a generation raised within the sharing economy. They aren't paying for movies. They aren't paying for TV; not to the degree previous generations did. They are spending hours freely consuming the new content that they themselves are producing every day. Those born into the sharing economy are finding that the way older generations look at work is antiquated. The entire consumer economy is antiquated. The engine of the economy is antiquated. If there's no jobs, and education has way too high a price, there's potentially 16 hours a day of leisure instead of 8 if basic needs are covered, or no hours of leisure because of multiple jobs. And if that leisure time for those who have any can be filled with 16 hours of free goods and services that they themselves are freely helping to create, then just how much sense does it make to tell them they should get a job? Just how much sense does it make to claim that jobs define them? And just how much sense does it make to claim that jobs will be created where there is no demand within the economy to create them, and no demand to fill them? Those who have not shared the fruits of the economy for decades, instead keeping all the spoils for themselves have not only slowed the engine of wealth creation by reducing consumer buying power, they have effectively eroded it. There's no going back now. The old economy will continue to fade away, and the sharing economy will replace what it can, for the same reason I love watching YouTube and will never again buy cable. The greedy have screwed themselves, and yet again, everyone else too, for just how do we distribute goods and services outside of the sharing economy, if the sharing economy itself is removing demand? All of this again is just another reason universal basic income is so important. If the wealthy want to continue being wealthy, they should be really interested in increasing consumer buying power. Meanwhile, if there's far less paid work to do, due to both automation and also the effects of the sharing economy on the old economy, that work should be divided up better, not only so that more people are able to earn more income to spend as consumers, but also so that instead of 8 hours of work and 8 hours of leisure time, we can have 4 hours of work and 12 hours of leisure time. Covering everyone's basic needs means more potential leisure time. That extra leisure time is important to power both the old economy as consumers and the sharing economy as prosumers. It's in everyone's best interests to make sure people have more time as consumers to consume and prosumers to prosume. It's in everyone's worst interests to reduce leisure time and reduce discretionary incomes. The growth of the sharing economy demands an unconditional basic income. Until then, the engine of the consumer economy will continue to erode. If we never adopt UBI, the engine will seize. We really need to start thinking about all of this more from the consumption/leisure angle instead of the production/work angle, because the sharing economy is growing, and it represents just as great a danger to paid jobs by way of reduced paid consumption as automation does directly to paid jobs. The future of work cannot be separated from the future of consumption. And the future of both will rest entirely on the foundation of basic income. --- **Recommended additional reading:** [*"In Praise of Idleness" by Bertrand Russell*](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html?ref=scottsantens.com) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Giving Goods vs. Giving Money URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/giving-goods-and-services-vs-giving-money/ Last updated: 2023-01-06T20:29:30.000Z I love watching documentaries and one of my recent favorites on Netflix, aside from Noam Chomsky's "Requiem for the American Dream", is "Poverty, Inc." I highly recommend just watching the entire film yourself, but there is one story from it that is one of my new favorites to share onward, and that's the story by Peter Greer who is the CEO of Hope International. As soon as I first saw it, I immediately even recorded it onto my phone and [shared it on Twitter](https://twitter.com/2noame/status/747490631220498433?ref=scottsantens.com). It is such a short and simple lesson of the unintended consequences of giving goods instead of cash to buy goods. **Transcript:** *Growing up, the model that I saw was this model that we would have a shoe drive at church, and we'd all give our excess shoes. We never knew what happened but we knew we were responding to this desire that we had to help the poor... the vulnerable. What I experienced living overseas, especially in Rwanda, was the end of the story. The collection in some ways is the easy part. The distribution is where there are a lot of complications, and I had my eyes opened to this through a friendship with Jean.* *Jean was a friend in Rwanda and he told me this story that after the Rwandan genocide, that he had a church from Atlanta that started sending over eggs, and ended up just distributing eggs in a small community outside of Kigali.* *And this seems like a great thing to do, right? The church wanted to help after the genocide. But Jeano a few years before had started this small egg business himself. He put this investment in all the materials that he needed to start this egg business. His business was starting to grow. It was starting to take off and then all of a sudden in one summer, there comes this surplus of eggs that were flooding the market in his area. And so this desire that the church had to really take care of a need, it did take care of a need, but the problem is that it put Jeano out of business. He ended up selling his hens, and then the next year the church decided to focus its attention to somewhere else in the world.* *Jeano was out of business. No one else was there providing eggs, and so they had to bring the eggs in from another community. So this desire to help in that community, according to Jeano, actually had a long-term negative impact on that community.* --- Yet another [frequent response to the idea of giving people an unconditional basic income](https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq), is why not just give them goods like food instead of money? Money can be spent on anything, and if we want to help people, isn't the best way to be paternalistic about it and limit people from making any choices save for those we decide for them are the right ones? In the example above, the logic of the church was absolutely paternalistic. It was also naive. It knew people were hungry and decided eggs were the right thing to eat. It also either assumed that there were no local markets there capable of providing eggs, or that there were but if they gave people money, they might be too stupid and/or irresponsible to buy eggs. So this church got together a bunch of eggs, and shipped the eggs, and distributed the eggs and this unavoidably involved all kinds of costs in the form of human labor and time, to the point a great deal of money was likely spent on stuff other than actual eggs, and the end result was not only a short-term positive impact (at least for those not put out of business and who enjoy eggs) but more importantly a long-term negative impact that was also extremely inefficient and wasteful. Now if the church had provided money instead, it would have been extremely efficient because money is now just 1s and 0s. And because money can be used to buy anything, including eggs, chickens, and chicken feed, among other things, the money would have helped on both the supply end and the demand end. Jeano could have invested more in his business, and he also would have had more customers, which would have further grown his business. He may even have seen new competition or business partners from others going into business for themselves. Meanwhile, those who don't like eggs would have been happier too. They could have used that money on other things in their local stores, and the entire local economy would have been better off. New businesses could have sprouted and flourished. More goods and services of many other kinds could have been introduced making everyone better off in both the short-term and the long-term. But that's not what happened because some paternalistic-minded people thought eggs would be better than money. The above story is a great window into how we go about trying to solve poverty. Instead of simply giving people money to engage in markets we give them what we want them to buy, which is bad for the local markets of which they are part. We depend on food banks where people can get free food instead of just giving people money to buy food in stores. We subsidize the hell out of our agricultural goods and then ship our huge surplus of unrealistically cheap goods like rice and corn all over the world which distorts markets and only helps sustain poverty instead of alleviating it. Worst of all, [an entire industry now exists to profit off of and perpetuate poverty](http://www.citylab.com/politics/2016/06/when-poverty-is-profitable/488267/?ref=scottsantens.com). And it's all based on a lack of trust, and an unfortunate desire to maintain control over others. Some organizations are different though. Some do trust because they care about data and the scientific method. ![Silvrback blog image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/179d8190-e7a9-4946-ba8c-80d51561c075/bucket_givedirectly_large.png) GiveDirectly is an organization that isn't trapped in paternalistic thinking. They know giving cash to people is the most efficient thing one can do, and is also something that allows an infinite number of creative possibilities because money can be spent on anything. They know money helps grow markets. They know money creates new choices. And they care about what works through rigorous focus on data and actual human behavior. This is also why [GiveDirectly is planning the biggest test of universal basic income to date, by giving at least 6,000 people in East Africa basic incomes for 10-15 years](http://www.vox.com/2016/4/14/11410904/givedirectly-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com). The data has spoken. Giving people cash works, so now the question is just what happens when entire communities have permanent free access to markets via cash for at least a decade. [We've seen it work for years at a time](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/the-job-market-a-game-of-%5Fb%5F7581704.html?ref=scottsantens.com) in places like Namibia where it tripled self-employment, and in places like India where it resulted in three times as many businesses being created than in control groups not given basic income, and in Liberia where one third of those who received the income started their own business. We know people use money as capital for business formation and we know people use money as consumers to be their customers. But what else happens? Just what is possible when we give people money for over a decade instead of eggs? We're going to find out. [Would you like to help?](https://givedirectly.org/basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) --- Next also watch: --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Why Switzerland’s basic income idea is not crazy URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/why-switzerlands-basic-income-idea-is-not-crazy/ Last updated: 2022-02-21T19:27:31.000Z ## Seven out of 10 voters fully expect another referendum in Switzerland, and the beginning of a necessary national conversation *This article was originally published on [POLITICO](https://www.politico.eu/article/unconditional-basic-income-news-why-switzerlands-basic-income-idea-is-not-crazy-vote-referendum/?ref=scottsantens.com)* Switzerland has voted [against](https://www.politico.eu/article/switzerlands-voters-reject-plan-provide-base-income-for-all-francs-referendum-welfare-democracy/?ref=scottsantens.com) providing everyone a monthly pay check for life, but Sunday’s unsuccessful Yes vote of 23.1 percent won’t be the country’s last word on the issue. Opinion polls and long experience indicate this is just the beginning. For those[ like me](https://twitter.com/2noame?ref=scottsantens.com) who have advocated the idea of a universal basic income, or UBI, a Yes vote was not at all expected. Anything over 20 percent would have been a win in the eyes of the campaigners. In the end, 568,905 people in Switzerland voted Yes. But that’s only part of the story. Seven out of 10 voters [expect another referendum](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7iTMz8wLbifYk13d3l2TEFhQm9MeHJPd2xiUDRQLTQ2cTBJ/view?ref=scottsantens.com), meaning that this result is best seen as the start of a national conversation. The numbers are even more encouraging among those younger than 39, eight out of 10 of whom see Sunday’s first referendum as just the beginning. Meanwhile, [72 percent](https://www.dropbox.com/s/32g08yqqc2c1fr8/Grafikset%5FEnglisch%5FReihenfolge%5F03.06.2016.pdf?dl=0&ref=scottsantens.com) of those surveyed in Switzerland believe traditional types of work will become redundant in the years ahead and see basic income as a way of adapting to this new environment. So why did the Swiss reject the idea? Forty percent felt very strongly the idea was not financially feasible. Given that the exact amount of the basic income was not being voted on, and neither was any explicit funding plan or potential replacement of existing programs, this makes sense. These details were not really part of the discussion. Essentially, people were asked to vote on something like the right to free speech, not how to pay for, or implement, free speech. The point was to establish the right to a basic income, and leave the details up to the government. But people got stuck on the “how,” instead of focusing on the “why.” > Discussion in the years ahead will now focus on the specifics of different parties’ “ideal” basic income plans. There was also a concern that the floodgates to immigration would be opened, with 65 percent fearing the measure would attract foreigners. These fears require greater discussion and will take time. Despite the referendum being rejected, the vote has put basic income on the agenda of every major political party in Switzerland. Discussion in the years ahead will now focus on the specifics of different parties’ “ideal” basic income plans, such as which existing programs and subsidies to replace, how to adjust the tax code, and whether minimum wage should be dropped or expanded. ### Existential relief The idea of basic income forces people to think about what they would spend their time on if they had more choice in the matter. So it’s encouraging to see that 49 percent of all Swiss see basic income as valuing and encouraging unpaid household and volunteer work. In other words, half of Switzerland sees UBI as a way to finally recognize all the unpaid and unrecognized work that is going on outside of employment. This could also be why women feel more strongly than men that this referendum heralds a larger change. A [national survey](http://www.basicincome.org/news/2016/01/switzerland-only-2-of-people-would-stop-working-if-they-had-a-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) showed a mere 2 percent of Swiss citizens would discontinue any employment if given a basic income, whereas two-thirds felt it would “relieve people from existential fears.” And 40 percent said they would volunteer more as a result. My own involvement in this cause began in 2013 when I watched the documentary,“[Basic Income: A Cultural Impulse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViywrpAyVdY&ref=scottsantens.com),” made by the referendum’s co-initiators Daniel Häni and Enno Schmidt in 2008. On the day their team triggered the referendum vote in October, 2013 — by delivering [125,000 signatures](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/magazine/switzerlands-proposal-to-pay-people-for-being-alive.html?ref=scottsantens.com) (25,000 more than they needed) — campaigners dumped [8 million five-cent coins](https://youtu.be/iqKkERp-ias?ref=scottsantens.com) outside parliament, enough for every single Swiss citizen. And it was then the entire world took notice. Those hearing about the idea for the first time learned the idea was not actually new. There had been experiments in the [1970s in both the United States and Canada](http://www.widerquist.com/karl/Articles--scholarly/Failure2communicate.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Some people living in cities like [Seattle, Denver](https://aspe.hhs.gov/report/overview-final-report-seattle-denver-income-maintenance-experiment?ref=scottsantens.com), and even [Gary, Indiana ](http://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/October-2014/Want-to-Help-Gary-Indiana-Why-Not-Just-Give-Them-Money/)had once been given basic income guarantees. All people in the city of [Dauphin, Manitoba](http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20%282%29.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) in Canada had been given a basic income guarantee as well, for five years. The results of these once forgotten experiments, where people found themselves healthier and more in control of how they chose to work, were now being discussed anew. There’s a historical precedent for returning referendums too. In 1959 Switzerland held a referendum that was soundly rejected by 67 percent of voters. Then too, many considered the idea “crazy.” Twelve years later, in 1971, that same issue was brought to a vote again, and passed. Women in Switzerland finally got the right to vote. Sometimes when an idea is considered crazy, that’s what’s considered crazy decades later. As for UBI, over half a million people just voted for an idea that could change everything, because a core group of about 20 people passionately pursued that idea. That’s the real result to take away: that such a relatively small but determined group of people can have such a large influence on public opinion and policy. Millions more people all over the world are now thinking about this idea for the first time, and that reminds us all of the power of an idea whose time has finally come … even if, in Switzerland, that time is not quite yet. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my ceaseless UBI advocacy. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Results of the Basic Income Referendum in Switzerland URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-results-of-the-basic-income-referendum-in-switzerland/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T20:22:40.000Z Today is the day Switzerland voted on the idea of an unconditional basic income. It is a first. It is historic. It is direct democracy in action. As I write this here from inside the campaign headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, the polls are still open and people are still voting, but as soon as they close, I will publish this and update it throughout the day with results as they come in and also the results of a representative survey that questioned Swiss voters in detail about how they feel about basic income now. For those who wish to follow what’s going on throughout the day on video, here is the livestream. Yes, it’s in German. No, there is not an alternate version where they’re all speaking English. First, I want to say that it is not at all expected for basic income to pass here today, however anything over 20% is a big deal. Anything over 30% is a HUGE deal. And anything over 40% would absolutely blow everyone’s mind. I put my money on 41% because someone has to be the crazy optimistic one, right? ## Results of Representative Survey of Swiss Voters We dove through [all the data last night](https://www.dropbox.com/s/32g08yqqc2c1fr8/Grafikset%5FEnglisch%5FReihenfolge%5F03.06.2016.pdf?dl=0&ref=scottsantens.com), which you can now do as well, and here are the seven main points we discovered. **1\. The debate has now just begun** - 69% of all voters believe they will be voting on another basic income referendum in the future. - 83% of YES-Voters believe there will be another referendum. - 63% of NO-Voters believe there will be another referendum. *The question about basic income as the social policy of the future is now on the table. Seven out of ten Swiss citizens believe there will be another referendum for it, and even a large majority of those who voted no agree.* **2\. Basic Income is the answer to automation** - 72% believe that many traditional types of work will become redundant and that basic income is needed to attain new lifestyle models. *The Swiss believe the strongest argument for basic income is the changing nature of work due to advancing technologies and that new lifestyle models are consequently needed. The other biggest reasons were* **3\. Millennials: Generation Basic Income is real** - Of the young voters (18–29 years old) 41% imagine basic income will be introduced in the years ahead. - 78% think that questions concerning UBI have to be discussed and UBI is a case to be made. - Eight out of ten voters under 39 see this first vote as just the beginning. *The youngest generation sees the greatest need for basic income and they are optimistic it will happen sooner rather than later.* **4\. The entire political establishment was wrong** - In every single party in Switzerland a greater percentage of people within that party believe basic income is on the agenda instead of off it. - Basic income in Switzerland is more than just a proposal. It’s a movement. *Establishment politics considered basic income as not even in the same room let alone on the table. Their Parliament practically laughed at it, but it turns out basic income is most certainly up for serious discussion.* **5\. Basic income will value and encourage unpaid work** - 49% see a basic income as valuing and encouraging unpaid household and volunteer work. *Half of Switzerland sees basic income as a way to finally recognize all the unpaid and unrecognized work that is going on outside of employment.* **6\. Women support basic income** - 64% of women see a NO vote for basic income as only just the beginning. - More women than men support the concept of UBI, but women are less sure it will be introduced in the coming years. *Women feel more strongly than men that the discussion about basic income is just beginning, but are also less confident it will actually happen.* **7.** **Switzerland wants to test UBI** - 77% of the Swiss want to test UBI in local municipalities versus 14% who would prefer it be tested elsewhere. *Innovative Switzerland wants to be a country that leads the way on basic income. It does not want to wait for anyone else to first show the way.* On this last point, I just want to stress how personally frustrating it is for me to see those in the US having the opposite opinion. The United States should have this mentality as well. It used to. We used to want to be the first to do great things. Now we say things like, “Let Switzerland do it. Let Finland do it. Let Canada do it. And then maybe we’ll do it *if* it works.” Switzerland however appears to want to be the leader the US once was and be seen as a global innovator. ## Live Results **12:40 PM:** *The general guess right now is around 25% voted yes. A better number will be available at 1PM in about 20 minutes…* **1:26 PM:** Estimates now show that perhaps 22% of Switzerland voted YES. 34% of Basel looks to have voted YES, as has 33% of Lausanne. The first fully counted canton is also in, and that was 18% in Glarus. ***3:46 PM*** *:* Best estimates still show 22% total support across all of Switzerland. ***4:44 PM*** *: Highest amount of support in one place is 36% in Basel-Stadt followed by 35.8% in Jura and 34.7% in Genf. Lowest support was 12.6% in Appenzell Innerrhoden.* ***4:50 PM*** *: Final number is 23.1% of Swiss voters voted YES.* --- ***Special thanks to Arjun Banker, Steven Grimm, Larry Cohen, Topher Hunt, Aaron Marcus-Kubitza, Andrew Stern, Patrick, Stephane Boisvert, Albert Wenger, Richard Just, Chris Smothers, Joel Leoj, Jeff Marshall, Mark Witham, Gisele Huff, Lainie Petersen, Skye MacLeod, Vladimir Baranov, Victor Vurpillat, Catherine MacDonald, David Ihnen, Danielle Texeira, Katie Doemland, Paul Wicks, Jan Smole, Joe Esposito, Jack Wagner, Joe Ballou, Stuart Matthews, Natalie Foster, Chris McCoy, Michael Honey, Gary Aranovich, Kai Wong, John David Hodge, Louise Whitmore, Dan O’Sullivan, Harish Venkatesan, Michiel Dral, Gerald Huff, Susanne Berg, Cameron Ottens, Kian Alavi, Gray Scott, Andreas, Kevin Baker, Lawrence W, Lee, Kirk Israel, Robert Solovay, Jeff Schulman, Andrew Henderson, Robert F. Greene, Martin Jordo, Victor Lau, Shane Gordon, Paolo Narciso, Johan Grahn, Tony DeStefano, Erhan Altay, Bryan Herdliska, Dave Shelton, Rise & Shine PAC, Luke Sampson, Lee Irving, Kris Roadruck, Amy Shaffer, Thomas Welsh, Olli Niinimäki, Casey Young, Elizabeth Balcar, Masud Shah, Allen Bauer, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** [*Would you like to see your name here too?*](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Last Month in Basic Income... A Summary of April 2016 URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/last-month-in-basic-income-a-summary-of-april-2016/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T20:19:33.000Z Continuing my pledge to monthly summarize the growth of the basic income movement worldwide (*that’s the bipartisan call to change your monthly starting point from $0 to somewhere above the poverty line instead*), it’s time again to look back at the previous month. You can read last month’s [**here**](https://medium.com/basic-income/basic-income-on-the-march-a-month-in-review-3466b9964259?ref=scottsantens.com). As I write this, it feels like basic income has officially exploded in just the past couple days let alone the past month. I’ve seen more articles and blogs published in one day about basic income this week, than I ever have before. And this is not because of one singular event in the news, like it usually would be to see basic income all over, but instead, on its own, basic income is seemingly **everywhere**. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*DQMwmNn42X9oav-9AGucAg.jpeg) The call for basic income is taking to the streets… demand the future! ## BIG News The biggest news of all was the cash-transfer specializing charity [**GiveDirectly’s BIG announcement**](https://www.givedirectly.org/basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com)to do an unprecedented experiment with unconditional basic income in East Africa. With the intention of both [full universality and a duration of 10–15 years for an estimated 6,000 people at a cost of at least $30 million](http://www.vox.com/2016/4/14/11410904/givedirectly-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com), they are undoubtedly going to play a major role in the history books looking back at how basic income came to finally be in the world. They’re also going to need our help, so [please consider donating to their universal basic income fund](https://givedirectly.org/give-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com). Not to be left out of the experiment arena, a city in Switzerland, [Lausanne](http://fortune.com/2016/04/19/basic-income-experiment-switzerland-lausanne/?ref=scottsantens.com), decided they want to experiment with basic income in a similar way to more than twenty cities in the Netherlands, regardless of how the rest of **Switzerland votes on the June 5th basic income referendum**. Also, a very large poll came out that showed [40% of Swiss voters in favor and 57% against](http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/schweiz/standard/eine-mehrheit-will-besseren-service-public-erzwingen/story/24901379?ref=scottsantens.com), which happens to be an almost doubling in support since the start of the year. In even more experimental news, [a small 2-year project will take place in Uganda where a village will be given basic income as the basis for a documentary](http://www.basicincome.org/news/2016/04/uganda-new-two-year-basic-income-pilot-project/?ref=scottsantens.com). ## BIG Media It was big news to see both a thoroughly researched article about basic income published by [**Five Thirty Eight**](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com), as well as an episode of the [**Freakonomics** podcast](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mincome/?ref=scottsantens.com) entirely devoted to the idea. I think the most widely read/shared basic income article of the month was [Colin Holtz’s piece in the Guardian](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/07/panama-papers-taxes-universal-basic-income-public-services?ref=scottsantens.com) about how the Panama Papers prove we can definitely afford it. [John Harris](http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/13/should-we-scrap-benefits-and-pay-everyone-100-a-week-whether-they-work-or-not?ref=scottsantens.com) too had a very widely read article in the Guardian. Basic income also appeared in the [The Telegraph](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/01/could-paying-everyone-benefits--rich-and-poor--be-the-best-way-t/?ref=scottsantens.com), [the New York Times](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/opinion/handouts-are-often-better-than-a-hand-up.html?ref=scottsantens.com), [Mother Jones,](http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/04/it-finally-time-ubi?ref=scottsantens.com) [The World Bank](http://blogs.worldbank.org/jobs/moving-towards-universal-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com), [New Statesman,](http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/welfare/2016/04/what-would-society-look-universal-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) [The Verge](http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/18/11441536/universal-basic-income-givedirectly-ngo-tech-sector?ref=scottsantens.com), [The Independent](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/charity-experiment-to-see-thousands-of-kenyans-given-universal-basic-income-a6985366.html?ref=scottsantens.com), [Tech Insider](http://www.techinsider.io/sam-altman-praises-basic-income-on-freakonomics-podcast-2016-4?ref=scottsantens.com), [The Huffington Post](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/humanity-needs-universal-%5Fb%5F9599198.html?ref=scottsantens.com), and [Quartz](http://qz.com/667208/all-of-the-problems-universal-basic-income-can-solve-that-have-nothing-to-do-with-unemployment/?ref=scottsantens.com). Rutger Bregman’s new book resulted in [article](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/18/solution-everything-working-less-work-pressure?ref=scottsantens.com) after [article](http://gawker.com/a-universal-basic-income-is-the-utopia-we-deserve-1771011574?ref=scottsantens.com) after [article](http://fusion.net/story/288907/why-free-money-beats-bullshit-jobs/?ref=scottsantens.com) and [review](http://www.fastcoexist.com/3058710/heres-why-you-should-support-a-universal-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) after [review](http://bigthink.com/natalie-shoemaker/rutger-bregmans-utopia-for-realists-shows-us-why-we-deserve-universal-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) after [review](https://www.opendemocracy.net/neil-howard/utopia-for-realists-review?ref=scottsantens.com) about it, and **Collision 2016**, America’s fastest growing tech conference with over 7,500 attendees from more than 50 countries, [invited me to their Center stage to talk basic income with Jack Smith IV of Mic.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq1RqbSSslg&feature=youtu.be&t=4h56m31s&ref=scottsantens.com). ## BIG Activism In activism news, basic income took to the streets! [The No Jobs bloc marched in London, UK to demand a future of automation and basic income](https://demandthefuture.com/2016/04/20/peoples-assembly-march-no-jobs-bloc-media-roundup/?ref=scottsantens.com), and [robots protested on the streets of Switzerland with the demand to let humans work for them](https://www.rt.com/news/341511-robots-guaranteed-income-humans/?ref=scottsantens.com). The second ever basic income [Create-A-Thon](http://createathon-la.universalincome.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) took place in Los Angeles, and in the Bay Area a [Care and Cash](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FwzN5VBD0c&ref=scottsantens.com) event was held that assembled a panel of social service sector workers to discuss basic income. [An Oxford style debate](https://vimeo.com/163878118?ref=scottsantens.com) about basic income was held in London, Ontario, and [a basic income conference was held in Halifax](http://globalnews.ca/news/2628940/time-to-take-a-serious-look-at-basic-annual-guaranteed-income-halifax-mayor/?ref=scottsantens.com) that included the mayor. Meanwhile, in Switzerland [a group successfully crowdfunded a fifth of a million euros in order to make the world’s biggest question](http://www.basicincome.org/news/2016/05/geneva-switzerland-unfurling-of-the-worlds-biggest-poster-reading-what-would-you-do-if-your-income-were-taken-care-of-may-14-2016/?ref=scottsantens.com) — essentially, “What would you do with a basic income?” — into literally the world’s biggest question by printing it out in Guinness Book of World Record size. It’ll be about the size of a soccer stadium and weigh around 7 tons. Additionally, another group in Switzerland [successfully crowdfunded a year of basic income](https://wemakeit.com/projects/basic-income-for-you?ref=scottsantens.com) for someone, which makes them the fourth country to have done so [following Germany, the Netherlands, and the US](http://www.scottsantens.com/raffling-basic-income-first-germany-then-the-netherlands-and-now-the-us). Speaking of the Netherlands, [40,000 signatures were gathered to get their Parliament to discuss basic income](https://twitter.com/SjirHoeijmakers/status/723781729274728448?s=09&ref=scottsantens.com), and in Minnesota, [a caucus resolution was passed in support of basic income by BIG MN’s Liane Gale,](https://www.facebook.com/BasicIncomeAction/photos/a.1620288984909028.1073741828.1594030454201548/1683655975238995/?type=3&theater) and [a new local BIG group formed in Taiwan](http://www.basicincome.org/news/2016/04/taiwan-a-group-for-ubi-formed/?ref=scottsantens.com). ## BIG Names With each passing month, it’s incredible to see the new names coming out in support of basic income. In April, it was economist and **former Finance Minister of Greece** [**Yanis Varoufakis**](http://www.basicincome.org/news/2016/04/basic-income-essential-approach-varoufakis/?ref=scottsantens.com), former Chief Economist of UBS [George Magnus](http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/blogs/george-magnus/does-future-growth-depend-on-the-universal-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com), International VP of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) [David Rolf](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-NIJ35w9qw&t=14m4s&ref=scottsantens.com), MSNBC’s [Chris Hayes](https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/720744024559206400?ref=scottsantens.com), VICE’s [Eddie Huang,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4ZsVVunUeM&ref=scottsantens.com) Founder and CEO of Nationbuilder [Jim Gilliam,](https://twitter.com/jgilliam/status/724417239517032449?s=09&ref=scottsantens.com) Founder and CEO of Stocktwits [Howard Lindzon,](https://twitter.com/howardlindzon/status/724816031324209152?ref=scottsantens.com) world record-setting ocean biker [Ebrahim Hemmatnia,](https://twitter.com/Oceaanfietser/status/724282190155112448?ref=scottsantens.com) and just this week, even though I should wait till next month but I can’t because it’s so huge, **multi-billionaire** [**Bill Gross of Janus Capital**](https://www.janus.com/bill-gross-investment-outlook?ref=scottsantens.com). ## BIG Left and Right Support From the right, it was asked [if basic income could save free market economies](http://www.cambridgeday.com/2016/04/02/could-a-guaranteed-basic-income-system-save-americas-free-market-economy/?ref=scottsantens.com), the Adam Smith Institute made [the neoliberal case for basic income,](http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/a-neoliberal-case-for-a-basic-income-or-something-like-it?ref=scottsantens.com) CATO wrote about [ending welfare as we know it with basic income](http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/ending-welfare-we-know-it?ref=scottsantens.com), and Ordinary Times posted a great piece by the editor of Cate Unbound about how [basic income would improve Hayekian price signaling](http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/2016/04/22/the-unconditional-basic-income-and-the-hayekian-price-system/?ref=scottsantens.com). From the left, [the Weekly Worker argued that basic income is urgently needed,](http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1098/basic-income-urgently-needed/?ref=scottsantens.com) Irish Socialist Economic explained [why the left should support basic income,](https://socialisteconomic.wordpress.com/2016/04/18/why-the-left-should-support-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) and [Feminist Current showed how basic income is feasible and feminist](http://www.feministcurrent.com/2016/04/13/a-basic-income-guarantee-is-feasible-and-feminist/?ref=scottsantens.com). There was even a great piece on the Student Christian Movement blog arguing that [it’s time for Christians to embrace basic income](http://www.movement.org.uk/blog/universal-basic-income-kingdom-idea-whose-time-has-come?ref=scottsantens.com). ## BIG Reminders The North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress 2016 is taking place May 12–15 in Winnipeg, Canada at the University of Manitoba. You can still register and also look at the schedule of speakers [over here](http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/social%5Fwork/about/879.html?ref=scottsantens.com). On [May 13](http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BD6AB/%28httpEvents%29/7E701F6EE24258B1C1257FA400358D4B?OpenDocument=&ref=scottsantens.com) the UNRISD will discuss UBI, on [May 17](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/rsa-scotland-angus-millar-lecture-basic-income-with-prof-guy-standing-tickets-23040774577?ref=scottsantens.com) RSA Scotland will discuss it, and on [May 23](http://www.meetup.com/GlobalNet21/events/229122956/?ref=scottsantens.com) it will be discussed in the House of Commons. ## BIG Thanks Well, those are the highlights for April. My apologies if I missed anything and please feel free to send me news you feel absolutely needs to make the next newsletter. I don’t want to leave anything out, and I’m trying hard not to. Thank you for helping to grow the movement for basic income, and I will update you again next month! --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### A Guide to Basic Income: Frequently Asked Questions about UBI URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq/ Last updated: 2026-09-12T18:15:17.000Z Over the years I've been asked many questions about the idea of an unconditional universal basic income guarantee. Some questions are asked far more than others, and so I've made a point of writing various articles to answer many of these questions. Whatever question you may have about UBI, please look below and see if there's a link for it. There's a good chance there will be. If there isn't, please let me know what you'd like to see me add next. [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2024/03/button_support-my-work-on-patreon-3.png)](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership?ref=scottsantens.com) --- ### UBI FAQ [What is basic income and in general why should I support it?](https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-for-all-unconditional-why-ubi-is-necessary-now-evidence-experiments/) [Won't basic income simply lead to higher prices (e.g. inflation or hyperinflation), defeating the entire point of it?](https://www.scottsantens.com/17-key-variables-that-determine-ubis-inflationary-impact/) [Won't people given basic income just stop working?](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-200-year-experiment-how-a-privileged-basic-income-in-brazil-proves-we-can-afford-to-be-universal/) (Note: a peer-reviewed systematic review of the evidence can also be found [here](https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9459?ref=scottsantens.com)) [Where does the money come from for basic income?](https://www.scottsantens.com/how-money-is-born-out-of-public-spending-and-dies-by-taxes-mmt/) [Wouldn't it cost more than the entire federal budget to provide everyone basic income?](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-is-the-net-transfer-amount-not-the-gross-price-tag) [What's the correct way to calculate the cost of any particular UBI proposal?](https://www.scottsantens.com/how-to-calculate-the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-ubi/) [Isn't basic income just communism/socialism/Marxism?](https://www.scottsantens.com/if-you-think-basic-income-is-free-money-or-socialism-think-again/) [Should universal basic income really go to *everyone*, or would it be better to target it to those who need it the most?](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-universality-argument-for-basic-income/) [Would it be better to use a phased-out design like a negative income tax (NIT) or a guaranteed income (GI) that phases out with income to exclude the rich?](https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-is-not-cheaper-than-universal-basic-income-ubi-nor-is-guaranteed-income-more-progressive-by-excluding-the-rich/) [Is basic income something that the rich and powerful are trying to trick the population into supporting in order to control the rest of us?](https://www.scottsantens.com/is-unconditional-basic-income-ubi-a-trap-being-laid-by-wef-global-elites-to-control-and-enslave-us-all/) [Won't basic income give the government too much power and make everyone easier to control by nurturing dependence?](https://www.scottsantens.com/wont-basic-income-give-too-much-power-to-whomever-distributes-it) [What right if any do we have to unconditional basic income?](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-spaceballs-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi/) [Do we need basic income because of automation?](https://www.scottsantens.com/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us-like-a-human-driven-truck/) [... Are you *sure*?](https://www.scottsantens.com/deep-learning-is-going-to-teach-us-all-the-lesson-of-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines/) [Isn't basic income something we may need in the future, but not right now?](https://www.scottsantens.com/everything-you-think-you-know-about-the-history-and-future-of-jobs-is-likely-wrong) [Is technological unemployment even real enough in an economy considered to be at full employment to warrant basic income?](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-real-story-of-automation-beginning-with-one-simple-chart/) [Has the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that basic income should have already been implemented?](https://www.scottsantens.com/2020-revealed-that-universal-unconditional-basic-income-cannot-wait-any-longer-ubi) [Didn't the stimulus checks cause high inflation and therefore prove UBI would too?](https://www.scottsantens.com/understanding-pandemic-inflation-how-to-best-reduce-and-alleviate-it/) [Don't policies like increased education and job training programs make more sense than basic income?](https://www.scottsantens.com/a-game-of-musical-chairs-over-hot-coals/) [Why not just give people stuff like food and housing instead of cash they can use to buy food and housing?](https://www.scottsantens.com/giving-goods-and-services-vs-giving-money) ([Additional answer involving Soylent](https://www.scottsantens.com/soylent-and-basic-income)) [Why not just lower taxes instead of providing universal basic income?](https://www.scottsantens.com/ubi-why-universal-basic-income-instead-of-just-lower-taxes) [I heard the Republican's FairTax proposal contains a basic income. Is that true?](https://www.scottsantens.com/fair-tax-would-implement-universal-basic-income-ubi-fairtax/) [Can we make robots pay for basic income?](https://www.scottsantens.com/yeah-but-who-is-going-to-pay-for-it-basic-income-alan-watts) [Is there enough money for basic income?](https://www.scottsantens.com/do-we-have-enough-space-bucks-for-basic-income) [No matter where the money comes from, isn't it just stealing earned money from those who work, to give unearned money to those who don't?](https://www.scottsantens.com/wouldn-t-a-basic-income-just-be-stealing-from-those-who-earned-their-money) [Is it true that basic income can even *save* us money?](https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-ubi/) [In what ways?](https://www.scottsantens.com/what-america-spends-per-citizen-per-year-40000) [Can UBI reduce crime and violence by improving mental health?](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-big-red-button-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi/) [What kind of taxes should exist alongside basic income?](https://www.scottsantens.com/let-there-be-money-book-understanding-modern-monetary-theory-universal-basic-income-mmt-ubi-unconditional/) [How does basic income relate to climate change?](https://www.scottsantens.com/escaping-together-surviving-disasters-with-universal-basic-income-ubi-resilience/) [Would a carbon tax and dividend be a good first step toward a full UBI?](https://www.scottsantens.com/this-idea-can-literally-change-the-world-universal-basic-income-through-carbon-pricing/) [The enhanced child tax credit was essentially universal basic income for kids. Did it work? What were the impacts?](https://www.scottsantens.com/one-year-after-the-expiration-of-the-enhanced-child-tax-credit-ctc-what-all-have-we-learned-about-its-effects/) [Have you crunched the numbers and have a somewhat detailed funding plan for basic income?](https://www.scottsantens.com/how-to-reform-welfare-and-taxes-to-provide-every-american-citizen-with-universal-basic-income-ubi-funding-plan/) ([Here also is a very detailed plan from 2006](http://www.usbig.net/papers/144-Sheahen-RefundableTaxCredit.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)) [How will people work if all they have is a basic income and robots take all the jobs?](https://www.scottsantens.com/jobs-work-and-universal-basic-income/) [Won't basic income hurt the economy and lead to lower productivity?](https://www.scottsantens.com/economic-paradox-technology-automation-basic-income-ubi-slowing-productivity/) [What are the effects of basic income on entrepreneurship?](https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-will-accelerate-innovation-by-reducing-our-fear-of-failure/) [Won't many people just waste their basic incomes on things like drugs, alcohol, and gambling?](https://www.scottsantens.com/what-do-we-do-about-drug-users-with-basic-incomes) [Won't many people just waste their time watching movies and playing video games with basic income?](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-quentin-tarantino-argument-for-universal-basic-income-ubi-people-watch-movies-and-play-video-games/) [Won't immigration skyrocket as everyone rushes into the US to get their basic income?](http://www.anotherpanacea.com/2011/02/does-basic-income-vat-solve-immigration/?ref=scottsantens.com) [What about kids? Should kids get basic income too?](https://www.scottsantens.com/why-should-adults-with-kids-get-more-basic-income-child-allowances) [Can universal basic income replace minimum wage?](https://www.scottsantens.com/minimum-wages-vs-universal-basic-income/) [Aren't jobs greatly responsible for our sense of community? So won't universal basic income decrease social cohesion?](https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-ubi-increases-social-cohesion-capital-trust/) [Isn't basic income anti-freedom/anti-liberty?](https://www.scottsantens.com/its-time-we-take-a-closer-look-at-americas-three-favorite-words-freedom-liberty-and-democracy/) [Is basic income anti-market or can it actually improve the way markets function?](https://www.scottsantens.com/unconditional-basic-income-would-fix-a-major-flaw-in-markets) [Don't we already have basic income, and we just call it welfare?](https://www.scottsantens.com/breaking-down-without-a-spare/) [Won't the wealthiest be worse off with basic income?](https://www.scottsantens.com/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-with-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi/) [Why would those in power ever support a basic income?](https://www.scottsantens.com/if-you-want-to-pass-stuff-like-tpp-we-are-going-to-need-basic-income) [Why should we give money to anyone who doesn't need it?](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-water-room-analogy-why-giving-basic-income-to-even-the-richest-makes-sense) [Why is the unconditional aspect of UBI so important?](https://www.scottsantens.com/engineering-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi-fault-tolerance-graceful-failure-redundancy/) [Isn't $1,000 per month too low to be considered sufficient for basic needs?](https://www.scottsantens.com/is-it-actually-possible-to-live-on-a-basic-income-of-12000-per-year-in-the-united-states) [Should the amount of basic income vary by city because some places cost more than others?](https://www.scottsantens.com/should-the-amount-of-basic-income-vary-with-cost-of-living-differences) [Shouldn't all this talk about basic income actually be talk about basic resources?](https://www.scottsantens.com/shouldn-t-all-this-talk-about-money-actually-be-talk-about-resources) [Does basic income reduce or increase income/wealth inequality?](https://www.scottsantens.com/inequality-and-the-basic-income-guarantee-universal-ubi/) [I've read that basic income will actually increase poverty. Is that true?](https://www.scottsantens.com/eating-food-will-fail-to-reduce-malnutrition-new-report-warns) [Are you sure?](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-progressive-case-for-replacing-the-welfare-state-with-universal-basic-income/) [How can we design basic income policy in a way that does the most to reduce both income and wealth inequality permanently and sustainably?](https://www.scottsantens.com/extreme-wealth-inequality-solution-alaska-model-dividend-universal-basic-income-ubi-lvt/) [How will basic income affect education and student debt?](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-potential-effects-of-a-universal-basic-income-guarantee-on-student-loans) [Doesn't basic income leave traditionally marginalized groups and those with special needs worse off?](https://www.scottsantens.com/disproportionate-effects-universal-basic-income-reparations) [Will basic income leave single parents worse off?](https://www.scottsantens.com/will-replacing-current-benefits-with-cash-tomorrow-leave-todays-recipients-better-or-worse-off-basic-income-single-parents-welfare) [Will basic income encourage new parents to work less?](https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-as-paid-parental-leave) [Can basic income be considered a form of reparations?](https://www.scottsantens.com/disproportionate-effects-universal-basic-income-reparations) [Is there anyone who will be worse off with universal basic income?](https://www.scottsantens.com/payday-loan-lenders-are-unstoppable-except-with-the-help-of-universal-basic-income-ubi/) [Will the cost of basic income be borne on the shoulders of the middle class?](https://www.scottsantens.com/will-the-cost-of-basic-income-be-borne-on-the-shoulders-of-the-american-working-class) [Isn't basic income simply just plain wrong in a moral sense?](https://www.scottsantens.com/for-those-who-believe-a-basic-income-is-morally-wrong) [Is basic income constitutional?](https://www.scottsantens.com/someday-we-will-look-back-and-interpret-the-constitution-as-having-called-for-unconditional-basic-income-all-along-grant-cordone) [Did Finland's basic income experiment succeed or fail?](https://www.scottsantens.com/what-is-there-to-learn-from-finlands-basic-income-experiment-did-it-succeed-or-fail/) [By what year at the latest will there be universal basic income in the United States?](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-us-could-adopt-universal-basic-income-ubi-in-less-than-20-years/) [Can we circumvent government and directly implement basic income via cryptocurrencies?](https://www.scottsantens.com/manna-universal-basic-income-blockchain-cryptocurrency-decentralized-targeting) | ([See also: $UBI](https://www.scottsantens.com/proof-of-humanity-and-the-universal-basic-income-ubi-coin-crypto)) [I read the above links and I laughed. Basic income is impossible. Are you stupid?](https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-is-impossible) --- ### Questions About Me [Have you written any books about basic income?](https://www.amazon.com/Scott-Santens/e/B09NLLBDQ3?ref=scottsantens.com) [What got you so into the idea of basic income?](https://www.scottsantens.com/reddit-robots-and-resources-why-I-got-into-the-idea-of-basic-income-and-how-we-can-go-about-implementing-it) [What do you mean when you say you personally already have a basic income?](https://www.scottsantens.com/press-release-american-achieves-first-crowdfunded-monthly-basic-income) [What's it like having a basic income?](https://www.scottsantens.com/what-if-you-got-1000-a-month-just-for-being-alive-i-decided-to-find-out-basic-income-ubi/) [What kind of work do you do every day other than writing?](https://www.scottsantens.com/social-network-basic-income-complex-systems-theory-emergence) [Where can I watch the interviews and podcasts you've done?](https://www.scottsantens.com/media-appearances) [Have you created any basic income slide decks I could study and even adapt/use?](https://www.slideshare.net/ScottSantens/?ref=scottsantens.com) [Have you created an ongoing list of names of well-known people and organizations who support the idea of basic income?](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y1ahKuNd8abBgLRU5jmqWi%5FewC0HdHZ8rjDfx7LYiOc/edit?ref=scottsantens.com#gid=0) --- ### Basic Income Movement Materials [What organization can I join to be a part of the basic income movement?](https://www.incomemovement.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) [Where can I find a list of books about or involving basic income so I can study it in greater depth?](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-big-library-books-about-basic-income-b9763071b987?ref=scottsantens.com) [Where can I find a list of YouTube videos to learn more and share about basic income?](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLN8WjRGdzP3pIAahs8oCKmOibDz4ipzmF&ref=scottsantens.com) [What are the top 25 best videos to watch about UBI?](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXhMtYULkYuFFqTdwAMlpxLsK6bOqYqcm&ref=scottsantens.com) [Where can I study and discuss the idea of basic income with others?](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/?ref=scottsantens.com) [Do you have a list of evidence I can research and use?](https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1040683616488103936?ref=scottsantens.com) [How do I add the rounded #basicincome hashtag to my name like you have on your Twitter account?](https://twibbon.com/support/basicincome-twitter-overlay/?ref=scottsantens.com) [How can I keep up to date on everything basic income all over the world?](http://www.basicincometoday.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) [What can I do to help grow the movement for basic income?](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/wiki/support?ref=scottsantens.com) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my ceaseless UBI advocacy. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Last Month in Basic Income... A Summary of March 2016 URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/last-month-in-basic-income-march-2016/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T20:17:26.000Z Basic income as a global movement around an idea is officially spreading like wildfire. According to Google Trends, interest in the idea has quadrupled just in the past three months. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*yrVBc7JLqdueLMtMT9vAJA.png) Source: [Google Trends](https://www.google.com.sg/trends/explore?ref=scottsantens.com#q=%22basic%20income%22&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-8) The rate at which the discussion is accelerating makes it increasingly difficult to stay up to date on all things basic income without putting a lot of time into doing so, so you can now expect to start getting a monthly letter like this one to help fill you in on some basic income news you may have missed, and also give you a sneak peek at what’s right around the corner. ## March in Review To start off, probably the biggest news in March was [the addition of Canada](http://www.fastcoexist.com/3057309/ontario-is-the-latest-place-to-test-a-basic-income-guarantee?ref=scottsantens.com) to the countries looking at experimenting with basic income, [hopefully sometime later this year](http://www.businessinsider.com/ontario-announces-basic-income-plan-2016-3?ref=scottsantens.com). This was followed soon after by [Scotland’s SNP party’s decision to consider basic income in an independent Scotland,](https://twitter.com/AlexKerr3/status/708973914429513728?ref=scottsantens.com) and then [New Zealand’s Labor Party](http://www.businessinsider.com/basic-income-talks-hit-new-zealand-2016-3?ref=scottsantens.com) after that. [Nigeria also had some rumblings](http://newsrescue.com/era-calls-for-high-level-panel-on-national-basic-income-scheme/?ref=scottsantens.com), as did [Namibia](http://www.basicincome.org/news/2016/02/namibia-basic-income-grant-request-newest-step-toward-poverty-eradication/?ref=scottsantens.com). Finally, Finland [completed its preliminary report](http://vnk.fi/en/article/-/asset%5Fpublisher/ideasta-kokeiluun-perustulokokeilun-esiselvitys-valmistui?ref=scottsantens.com) for its basic income experiment plans, with the final report due in November. Also, in case you missed it, back in February [a bill was introduced in Vermont’s state legislature](http://legislature.vermont.gov/assets/Documents/2016/Docs/BILLS/H-0689/H-0689%20As%20Introduced.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) to setup up a commission to “study and analyze the adoption of universal basic income in Vermont.” Some new big names came out in support of basic income in the past month and they are: Greece’s former Minister of Finance [Yanis Varoufakis](http://www.economist.com/ESDvaroufakis?ref=scottsantens.com), The Guardian’s [Owen Jones,](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/03/retirement-retiring-age-77-strive-work-less-progress-challenge-bleak-prospect?ref=scottsantens.com) Westpac chief economist [Dominick Stephens](http://www.radiolive.co.nz/Universal-basic-income-is-worth-considering---economist/tabid/506/articleID/117161/Default.aspx?ref=scottsantens.com), and Silicon Valley billionaire [Tim Draper](http://www.businessinsider.com/venture-capitalist-tim-draper-wants-to-give-everyone-15000-2016-2?ref=scottsantens.com). Some major outlets publishing pieces about basic income included: [The New York Times](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/03/technology/plan-to-fight-robot-invasion-at-work-give-everyone-a-paycheck.html?ref=scottsantens.com) ([twice](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/09/business/economy/a-future-without-jobs-two-views-of-the-changing-work-force.html?ref=scottsantens.com)), [The Boston Globe](http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/02/24/robots-will-take-your-job/5lXtKomQ7uQBEzTJOXT7YO/story.html?ref=scottsantens.com), [The Guardian](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/03/retirement-retiring-age-77-strive-work-less-progress-challenge-bleak-prospect?ref=scottsantens.com), [Smithsonian Magazine](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/when-robots-take-our-jobs-should-everyone-still-get-paycheck-180958483/?no-ist&ref=scottsantens.com), and [Gawker](http://gawker.com/automation-and-basic-income-1767059378?ref=scottsantens.com). From the right, the libertarian think tank [Niskanen Center endorsed basic income](https://niskanencenter.org/blog/do-libertarians-want-freedom-or-not/?ref=scottsantens.com) as a “long overdue affirmation of principle”, and from the left the Weekly Worker (a “paper of Marxist polemic and Marxist unity”) proclaimed that [a basic income is “urgently needed.”](http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1098/basic-income-urgently-needed/?ref=scottsantens.com) The defeat in March of 18-time world Go champion Lee Sedol by an AI named AlphaGo will also likely go down in the history books as [a pivotal moment in the discussion for basic income](https://medium.com/basic-income/deep-learning-is-going-to-teach-us-all-the-lesson-of-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines-7c6442e37a49?ref=scottsantens.com) as people all over the world got a real glimpse of how quickly technology is advancing. The idea of helicopter money ([aka quantitative easing for the people or QE4P](http://www.qe4people.eu/?ref=scottsantens.com)) is also spreading, and [Japan is leading the way](https://www.rt.com/business/337138-japan-free-money-budget/?ref=scottsantens.com) by giving vouchers to their youth to spend into the economy. In BIG activist news, a group in [Switzerland is crowdfunding the action of making the biggest question on Earth into literally the biggest question on Earth](https://www.startnext.com/groesstefrage?ref=scottsantens.com) by printing out a giant size question asking “What would you do if your income was taken care of?” Another group in [Switzerland handed out free $10 dollar bills](http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/cash-for-all%5Ffree-money-stunt-highlights-basic-income-initiative/42021050?ref=scottsantens.com) as their official flyer to promote their upcoming vote on June 5th, and Finland held their first “[Basic Income Hack](http://www.sitra.fi/en/artikkelit/capacity-renewal/basic-income-hack-paves-way-basic-income-experiment?ref=scottsantens.com)”. A website was setup to showcase [all the business support for basic income](http://www.business-for-basic-income.com/?ref=scottsantens.com). A live art show was put on in London that included [a basic income exhibit](http://galleryell.com/reviews/the-maximum-wage/?ref=scottsantens.com). And [a petition was started in Australia](https://www.communityrun.org/petitions/introduce-a-basic-income-to-australia?ref=scottsantens.com). ## **On the Horizon** Some upcoming events in April include [the 2nd Create-a-Thon for basic income April 15–17 in Los Angeles](http://www.universalincome.org/createathon-la/?ref=scottsantens.com), and [a march in the streets of London, England for a basic income](https://www.facebook.com/events/669957979812721/) and a future without work on April 16\. Both of which you can still and please do register for. On April 21 in San Francisco there will be an event called “[Care and Cash](https://www.facebook.com/events/556143687879659)” that will involve a discussion about basic income from a variety of social service sector viewpoints. In May, there’s [Basic Income Day](http://basicincomeday.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) on May 1, a [Future of Work conference](http://www.socialpolicy2016.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) that’s been organized to discuss basic income in Zurich on May 4, and the annual [NABIG Congress on May 12–15](http://www.basicincomecanada.org/nabig2016?ref=scottsantens.com), this time in Winnipeg. A new book about basic income will be available on April 19th by Rutger Bregman titled “[Utopia for Realists](https://thecorrespondent.com/utopia-for-realists/?ref=scottsantens.com).” Rutger is well known in the Netherlands for accelerating the discussion there with [his massively popular article about basic income](https://decorrespondent.nl/541/why-we-should-give-free-money-to-everyone/35246939860-ec3a6c3e?ref=scottsantens.com) published back in December 2013\. Also, you can already pre-order Andrew Stern’s book about basic income titled “[Raising the Floor](http://amzn.to/23n9ipF?ref=scottsantens.com)” that comes out in June. Finally, expect [a ballot initiative for a city-wide basic income in San Francisco](https://medium.com/the-ferenstein-wire/ending-income-inequality-in-san-francisco-a-democratic-approach-8493e965185a?ref=scottsantens.com) soon… Thank you for helping to grow the movement for basic income, and I will update you again next month! --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Humanity Needs Universal Basic Income in Order to Stop Impeding Progress URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/humanity-needs-universal-basic-income-in-order-to-stop-impeding-progress/ Last updated: 2022-02-19T01:55:19.000Z ## Human beings are waking up early in the mornings to drive to offices to perform imaginary business in imaginary markets involving imaginary customers using imaginary money to buy imaginary goods and services instead of simply enjoying their non-imaginary and most definitely real lives with each other. *I believe [Richard Feynman](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRmbwczTC6E&ref=scottsantens.com) was [one of our greatest scientific minds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIJw3OLB9sI&ref=scottsantens.com). He had a very particular way of looking at the world thanks to his father, and it was to look at the world around him* [*as if he were a Martian*](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DCJ8MzWncFfQ&ref=scottsantens.com)*. Like a fish born into water, it's hard to actually see water as being water, because it's all a fish ever knows. And so as humans, it's a good idea to try and step outside of our usual frame of mind, to see what it is we as humans think and do, from the perspective of a mind totally alien to our everyday environment. With that in mind, here's what humans are doing right now, from the perspective of someone from far, far away...* What an interesting place and an interesting time it is for a visit. Earth's most intelligent primates are busy creating technologies that allow them all to do less work, freeing themselves from millennia of senseless toil and drudgery. Strangely, however, they are using such technologies to force each other to work longer and harder. In one area called the United States, responsible for so much of the world's technological innovation, at a time when [productivity has never been higher](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fscott-santens%2Four-paradoxical-economy-c%5Fb%5F7750222.html&ref=scottsantens.com), the number of hours spent working for others in exchange for the means to live is now [just shy of 50 hours per week](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwreg.com%2F2015%2F05%2F05%2Fthe-death-of-the-40-hour-work-week%2F&ref=scottsantens.com), where it was once 40 and [soon supposed to be 20](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vice.com%2Fread%2Fwho-stole-the-four-hour-workday-0000406-v21n8&ref=scottsantens.com) on its way to [eventually approaching **zero**](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philorum.org%2Fspeech%2F20051207JohnBentley.html&ref=scottsantens.com). Humans are even performing [work that doesn't actually need to be done at all](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fstrikemag.org%2Fbullshit-jobs%2F&ref=scottsantens.com), even by a machine. One of the craziest examples of such completely unnecessary work is in Europe where an entire fake economic universe has been created under the label of "[Potemkin companies](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2015%2F05%2F31%2Fbusiness%2Finternational%2Fin-europe-fake-jobs-can-have-real-benefits.html&ref=scottsantens.com)" like Candelia. > Candelia was doing well. Its revenue that week was outpacing expenses, even counting taxes and salaries... but in this case the entire business is fake. So are Candelia's customers and suppliers, from the companies ordering the furniture to the trucking operators that make deliveries. Even the bank where Candelia gets its loans is not real. More than 100 Potemkin companies like Candelia are operating today in France, and there are thousands more across Europe... All these companies' wares are imaginary. Incredibly, human beings are waking up early in the mornings to drive to offices to perform imaginary business in imaginary markets involving imaginary customers using imaginary money to buy imaginary goods and services instead of simply enjoying their non-imaginary and most definitely real lives with each other. Another example of humans coming up with excuses for more work, which may come as a surprise, is actually [firefighting](https://r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fopinions%2F2015%2F09%2F04%2F05316abe-517c-11e5-933e-7d06c647a395%5Fstory.html&ref=scottsantens.com), which thanks to technology has been fighting fewer and fewer fires: > On highways, vehicle fires declined 64 percent from 1980 to 2013\. Building fires fell 54 percent during that time. When they break out, sprinkler systems [almost always](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nfpa.org%2Fresearch%2Freports-and-statistics%2Ffire-safety-equipment%2Fus-experience-with-sprinklers&ref=scottsantens.com) extinguish the flames before firefighters can turn on a hose. But oddly, as the number of fires has dropped, the ranks of firefighters have continued to grow -- significantly. There are [half as many fires](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nfpa.org%2Fresearch%2Freports-and-statistics%2Ffires-in-the-us%2Foverall-fire-problem%2Fnumber-of-fires-by-type-of-fire&ref=scottsantens.com) as there were 30 years ago, but about [50 percent *more* ](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nfpa.org%2Fresearch%2Freports-and-statistics%2Fthe-fire-service%2Fadministration%2Fus-fire-department-profile&ref=scottsantens.com)people are paid to fight them. How can this be? If there are far fewer fires, why are there far more firefighters? The short answer is because of something called labor unions, who at some point just up and stopped fighting to reduce hours worked. But why? The reason labor unions now fight so hard to keep humans laboring is because humans require each other to work in order to obtain the resources required to live happy lives, or even to live at all for that matter. Here lies the greatest obstacle to human progress -- the longstanding connection between work and income. As long as [everything is owned and the only way to obtain access to that which is owned is through money](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scottsantens.com%2Fwouldn-t-a-basic-income-just-be-stealing-from-those-who-earned-their-money&ref=scottsantens.com), and the only way to obtain money is to be born with it or through doing the bidding of someone who owns enough to do the ordering around -- what humans call a "job" -- then jobs can't be eliminated. As a worker, any attempt to eliminate jobs must be fought and as a business owner, the elimination of jobs must involve walking a fine line between greater efficiency and public outcry. The elimination of vast swathes of jobs must be avoided unless seen as absolutely necessary so as to avoid angering too many people who may also be customers. > Here lies the greatest obstacle to human progress -- the longstanding connection between work and income. Nowhere is the above more clear than in two recent pieces of news: Google's announcement that Boston Dynamics is up for sale, and Johnson & Johnson's announcement that the Sedasys machine would be discontinued. ### Atlas Shrugged Off by Google You probably already saw it, as over ten million others did within days of it being posted to YouTube, but [the demonstration video of the new version of Atlas from the robotics team at Boston Dynamics](https://r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DrVlhMGQgDkY&ref=scottsantens.com) was a stunning display of engineering that shocked the world. Similar to [the victory of the AI AlphaGo over world champion human Go player Lee Sedol](https://medium.com/basic-income/deep-learning-is-going-to-teach-us-all-the-lesson-of-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines-7c6442e37a49?ref=scottsantens.com) just weeks later, it dumbfounded people with the realization of how quickly technology is advancing. People naturally saw with their own eyes how close they are to having robots fully capable of doing physical tasks previously thought to be decades down the road, and the result was a discussion sprinkled with more than a bit of human panic based in entirely legitimate fears of income insecurity. This ended up being a discussion Google had no interest in, and so Boston Dynamics is now up for sale. To be fair, Google already wanted to sell BD, but leaked emails do show [the concerns of negative PR as a direct result of advanced robotics:](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ftechnology%2F2016%2Fmar%2F18%2Fboston-dynamics-put-up-for-sale-google&ref=scottsantens.com) > In yet more emails wrongly published to wider Google employees, Courtney Hohne, a spokeswoman for Google X, wrote: "There's excitement from the tech press, but we're also starting to see some negative threads about it being terrifying, ready to take humans' jobs ... We're not going to comment on this video because there's really not a lot we can add, and we don't want to answer most of the questions it triggers." Google wants to advance technology but at the same time, it doesn't want to answer the questions those advancements will raise. This appears to be a clear example of a major obstacle for human progress. It's the same likely reason companies like McDonald's haven't dived in with both feet to greatly automate their operations and vastly reduce their labor forces. [The technology exists, but they aren't doing it](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsingularityhub.com%2F2013%2F01%2F22%2Frobot-serves-up-340-hamburgers-per-hour%2F&ref=scottsantens.com). Why? Perhaps it's because as long as people need jobs as their sole source of income, companies have the potential of stepping onto a public relations landmine by automating their jobs out of existence, or being seen as responsible for others doing so. Eliminating jobs also means not only cutting employees, but [demand itself](http://evonomics.com/argument-for-universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com). > Putting humans out of work should be a public relations win, not a loss... Putting humans out of work should be a public relations win, not a loss, and so mankind needs to make sure no one left without a job, for any amount of time, is ever unable to meet their most basic needs. Everyone needs a non-negotiable guarantee of income security, so that the elimination of jobs breeds not fear, but excitement. The loss of a job should be seen as an opportunity for new real choices. And so [some amount of basic income should be guaranteed to everyone -- universally -- as a starting point ](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fscott-santens%2Fwhy-should-we-support-the%5Fb%5F7630162.html&ref=scottsantens.com)upon which all can earn additional income. However, negative PR is just one obstacle along the road to full automation. Another obstacle is something originally devised to make sure employed humans had some amount of bargaining power, so as to not be walked all over by those who employed them, and that's the forces of organized labor. In an unfortunate turn of events, [that which once helped drive prosperity](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.epi.org%2Fpublication%2Funions-decline-inequality-rises%2F&ref=scottsantens.com) is beginning to hold it back. Organized labor is organizing to perpetuate the employment that tech labor is working to eliminate. ![2016-04-02-1459616995-3496906-chart_11.png](https://images.huffingtonpost.com/2016-04-02-1459616995-3496906-chart_11-thumb.png) **Source: [TechCrunch](http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/29/why-labor-unions-and-silicon-valley-arent-friends-in-2-charts/?ref=scottsantens.com)* Organized labor in the form of [taxi driver unions have set cars on fire in France](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Fjan%2F26%2Ffrench-taxi-drivers-block-paris-roads-in-uber-protest&ref=scottsantens.com) in protest of the labor disruptions created by Uber. Fast food workers in the US are busy organizing new unions, the goal of which is [not to make sure fast food restaurants heavily invest in automation](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fscott-santens%2Fmachine-labor-day%5Fb%5F8101478.html&ref=scottsantens.com) to free them from such work. None of this however compares to what an organized group of anesthesiologists just did. ### Doctors Pulling Plugs The American Society of Anesthesiologists just killed the first machine to come along capable of eliminating a great deal of need for anesthesiologists -- [the Sedasys](https://r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fbusiness%2Feconomy%2Fnew-machine-could-one-day-replace-anesthesiologists%2F2015%2F05%2F11%2F92e8a42c-f424-11e4-b2f3-af5479e6bbdd%5Fstory.html&ref=scottsantens.com). It was a machine not only capable of performing the same work, but at one-tenth the cost. It was a machine that some innovative humans invented to make becoming healthier far less costly for all humans, over 90% less costly in fact. And another group of humans saw that as competition [so they pressed the abort button](https://r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fnews%2Fthe-switch%2Fwp%2F2016%2F03%2F28%2Fits-game-over-for-the-robot-intended-to-replace-anesthesiologists%2F&ref=scottsantens.com). > No longer did you need a trained anesthesiologist. And sedation with the Sedasys machine cost $150 to $200 for each procedure, compared to $2,000 for an anesthesiologist, one of healthcare's best-paid specialties. The machine was seen as the leading lip of an automation wave transforming hospitals. But Johnson & Johnson recently announced it was pulling the plug on Sedasys because of poor sales. So what caused the poor sales if the device could do so much more for so much less? > Sedasys was never welcomed by human anesthesiologists. Before it even hit the market, the American Society of Anesthesiologists campaigned against it, backing down only once the machine's potential uses were limited to routine procedures such as colonoscopies. The Post's story back in May provoked an outpouring of messages from anesthesiologists and nurse anesthetist who claimed a machine could never replicate a human's care or diligence. Many sounded offended at the notion that a machine could do their job. The proverbial plug was pulled on a life-saving new technology because a well-paid group of humans saw it in their own best interests to fight against its use to do their work for them. Pretend for a moment what was invented was a tractor, and the makers of the tractor had to stop making them because of the power of a bunch of oxen who were offended by the claim that tractors could ever replicate an oxen's care or diligence. > As humans drive forward into the future, they may just have their foot on the brakes and the accelerator at the same time. Imagine it was an elevator, and the American Society of Elevator Attendants was offended by the idea of everyone simply pushing buttons to operate elevators without the paid help of any attendant. Would all of human society be better off right now with every elevator being operated by a paid attendant? Or imagine that back in the day, trains were upgraded from coal-based steam engines to today's diesel engines, and railroad unions fought and won to keep the position of coal-shovelers so that there'd be a job for people on trains doing absolutely nothing for the next 60 years. [Believe it or not, that one actually happened.](http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote%5Fblog/2005/08/great%5Fmoments%5Fi-4.html?ref=scottsantens.com) Such thinking is not progress. It's regress. Humans have the ideas of work and income so tied up in their minds, that even though they've now successfully reached the point where toil is no longer necessary to survive on Earth, they are demanding their toil not be lifted off their shoulders. Humans are actually demanding that machines not do their work for them. Humans are creating work that does not need to be done, and perhaps worst of all, they are continuing [extinction-endangering work like coal mining that should have been stopped decades ago for the good of the species](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fgrist.org%2Fcoal%2F2011-09-30-coal-is-enemy-of-human-race-mainstream-economics-edition%2F&ref=scottsantens.com). ### Cutting the Cord To put an end to all this nonsense, it seems in humanity's best interests to finally sever the self-imposed connection between work and [access to the common planetary resources required for life](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scottsantens.com%2Fshouldn-t-all-this-talk-about-money-actually-be-talk-about-resources&ref=scottsantens.com). For as long as humans must toil to live, they will toil for life. Unemployment is not a disease. It's the opposite. Employment is the malady and automation is the cure. [It is the job of machines to handle as much work for humans as possible](https://r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DN8n5ZL5PwiA&ref=scottsantens.com), so as to free them to pursue that which each and every individual human being most wishes to pursue. That pursuit may be [work](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fscott-santens%2Fa-future-without-jobs-doe%5Fb%5F8254836.html&ref=scottsantens.com) or it may be [leisure](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zpub.com%2Fnotes%2Fidle.html&ref=scottsantens.com). That pursuit may be knowledge or it may be play. That pursuit may be companionship or it may be solitude. Whatever it may be, the goal is happiness and the pursuit itself [self-motivated](https://r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DzPHOvuZmCG4&ref=scottsantens.com), the journey its own reward. So when those like Robert Reich say "There are still a lot of jobs" before suggesting mankind [may not yet be ready for universal basic income, but soon most definitely will be](https://r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newshub.co.nz%2Fpolitics%2Fsociety-not-quite-ready-for-universal-basic-income--reich-2016032610&ref=scottsantens.com), perhaps humans should ask if not having a basic income is actually part of the reason there are any jobs still left for humans. Perhaps it's the insistence on the existence of jobs that creates jobs, whether they need to exist or not. As humans drive forward into the future, they may just have their foot on the brakes and the accelerator at the same time. If so, is this in the best interests of humanity? Why not instead [stop pressing the brakes by adopting basic income immediately](https://medium.com/basic-income/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us-like-a-human-driven-truck-b8507d9c5961?ref=scottsantens.com), so as to fully accelerate into an increasingly automated future of increasing abundance and victory over scarcity? That seems to make a lot more sense than perpetuating -- and even artificially creating -- scarcity. But then again, these are simply the thoughts of a tourist, in observance of life on the third planet from an average yellow star in a somewhat ordinary spiral galaxy. Pay me little mind if you choose. I'm just passing through on the suggestion this place is incredibly entertaining in all its grand backwardness. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Deep Learning Is Going to Teach Us All the Lesson of Our Lives: Jobs Are for Machines URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/deep-learning-is-going-to-teach-us-all-the-lesson-of-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines/ Last updated: 2022-05-17T22:31:29.000Z *(An alternate version of this article was originally published in* [*the Boston Globe)*](http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/02/24/robots-will-take-your-job/5lXtKomQ7uQBEzTJOXT7YO/story.html?ref=scottsantens.com) On December 2nd, 1942, a team of scientists led by Enrico Fermi came back from lunch and watched as humanity created the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction inside a pile of bricks and wood underneath a football field at the University of Chicago. Known to history as [Chicago Pile-1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tKf7R2XncM&ref=scottsantens.com), it was celebrated in silence with a single bottle of Chianti, for those who were there understood exactly what it meant for humankind, without any need for words. Now, something new has occurred that, again, quietly changed the world forever. Like a whispered word in a foreign language, it was quiet in that you may have heard it, but its full meaning may not have been comprehended. However, it’s vital we understand this new language, and what it’s increasingly telling us, for the ramifications are set to alter everything we take for granted about the way our globalized economy functions, and the ways in which we as humans exist within it. The language is a new class of machine learning known as **deep learning**, and the “whispered word” was a computer’s use of it to seemingly out of nowhere [defeat three-time European Go champion Fan Hui](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUbqykXVx0A&ref=scottsantens.com), not once but five times in a row without defeat. Many who read this news, considered that as impressive, but in no way comparable to a match against Lee Se-dol instead, who many consider to be one of the world’s best living Go players, if not *the* best. Imagining such a grand duel of man versus machine, China’s top Go player predicted that Lee would not lose a single game, and Lee himself confidently expected to possibly lose one at the most. What actually ended up happening when they faced off? Lee went on to lose [***all but one***](http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/15/11213518/alphago-deepmind-go-match-5-result?ref=scottsantens.com) of their match’s five games. An AI named AlphaGo is now a better Go player than any human and has been [granted the “divine” rank of 9 dan](http://phys.org/news/2016-03-google-alphago-divine.html?ref=scottsantens.com). In other words, its level of play borders on godlike. Go has officially fallen to machine, just as Jeopardy did before it to Watson, and chess before that to Deep Blue. > “AlphaGo’s historic victory is a clear signal that we’ve gone from linear to parabolic.” So, what is Go? Very simply, think of Go as Super Ultra Mega Chess. This may still sound like a small accomplishment, another feather in the cap of machines as they continue to prove themselves superior in the fun games we play, but it is no small accomplishment, and what’s happening is no game. AlphaGo’s historic victory is a clear signal that we’ve gone [from linear to parabolic](http://about.bankofamerica.com/assets/davos-2016/PDFs/robotic-revolution.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Advances in technology are now so visibly exponential in nature that we can expect to see a lot more milestones being crossed long before we would otherwise expect. These exponential advances, most notably in forms of artificial intelligence limited to specific tasks, we are entirely unprepared for as long as we continue to insist upon employment as our primary source of income. This may all sound like exaggeration, so let’s take a few decade steps back, and look at what computer technology has been actively doing to human employment so far: ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1072/1*yPLHq5HEBTIs0VCdpe7KYA.jpeg) Source: [St. Louis Fed](https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2016/january/jobs-involving-routine-tasks-arent-growing?ref=scottsantens.com) Let the above chart sink in. Do not be fooled into thinking this conversation about the automation of labor is set in the future. It’s already here. **Computer technology is already eating jobs and has been since 1990.** ## Routine Work All work can be divided into four types: routine and nonroutine, cognitive and manual. Routine work is the same stuff day in and day out, while nonroutine work varies. Within these two varieties, is the work that requires mostly our brains (cognitive) and the work that requires mostly our bodies (manual). Where once all four types saw growth, the stuff that is routine stagnated back in 1990\. This happened because routine labor is easiest for technology to shoulder. Rules can be written for work that doesn’t change, and that work can be better handled by machines. Distressingly, it’s exactly routine work that once formed the basis of the American middle class. It’s routine manual work that Henry Ford transformed by paying people middle class wages to perform, and it’s routine cognitive work that once filled US office spaces. [Such jobs are now increasingly unavailable](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/future-of-jobs%5Fb%5F8011296.html?ref=scottsantens.com), leaving only two kinds of jobs with rosy outlooks: jobs that require so little thought, we pay people little to do them, and jobs that require so much thought, we pay people well to do them. If we can now imagine our economy as a plane with four engines, where it can still fly on only two of them as long as they both keep roaring, we can avoid concerning ourselves with crashing. But what happens when our two remaining engines also fail? That’s what the advancing fields of robotics and AI represent to those final two engines, because for the first time, we are successfully teaching machines to *learn*. ## Neural Networks I’m a writer at heart, but my educational background happens to be in psychology and physics. I’m fascinated by both of them so my undergraduate focus ended up being in the physics of the human brain, otherwise known as [cognitive neuroscience](http://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/cognitive%5Fneuroscience.htm?ref=scottsantens.com). I think once you start to look into how the human brain works, how our mass of interconnected neurons somehow results in what we describe as the mind, everything changes. At least it did for me. As a quick primer in the way our brains function, they’re a giant network of interconnected cells. Some of these connections are short, and some are long. Some cells are only connected to one other, and some are connected to many. Electrical signals then pass through these connections, at various rates, and subsequent neural firings happen in turn. It’s all kind of like falling dominoes, but far faster, larger, and more complex. The result amazingly is us, and what we’ve been learning about how we work, we’ve now begun applying to the way machines work. One of these applications is the creation of [**deep neural networks**](http://www.wired.com/2016/01/microsoft-neural-net-shows-deep-learning-can-get-way-deeper/?ref=scottsantens.com) \- kind of like pared-down virtual brains. They provide an avenue to machine learning that’s made incredible leaps that were previously thought to be much further down the road, if even possible at all. How? It’s not just the obvious growing capability of our computers and our expanding knowledge in the neurosciences, but the vastly growing expanse of our collective data, aka **big data**. ## Big Data Big data isn’t just some buzzword. It’s information, and when it comes to information, we’re creating more and more of it every day. In fact we’re creating so much that a 2013 report by SINTEF estimated that [90% of all information in the world had been created in the prior two years](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130522085217.htm?ref=scottsantens.com). This incredible rate of data creation is even [doubling every 1.5 years](http://www.datamation.com/applications/big-data-analytics-overview.html?ref=scottsantens.com) thanks to the Internet, where in 2015 ***every minute*** we were liking 4.2 million things on Facebook, uploading 300 hours of video to YouTube, and sending 350,000 tweets. Everything we do is generating data like never before, and lots of data is exactly what machines need in order to learn *to learn*. Why? Imagine programming a computer to recognize a chair. You’d need to enter a ton of instructions, and the result would still be a program detecting chairs that aren’t, and *not* detecting chairs that are. So how did *we* learn to detect chairs? Our parents pointed at a chair and said, “chair.” Then we thought we had that whole chair thing all figured out, so we pointed at a table and said “chair”, which is when our parents told us that was “table.” This is called reinforcement learning. The label “chair” gets connected to every chair we see, such that certain neural pathways are weighted and others aren’t. For “chair” to fire in our brains, what we perceive has to be close enough to our previous chair encounters. Essentially, our lives are big data filtered through our brains. ## Deep Learning The power of deep learning is that it’s a way of using massive amounts of data to get machines to operate more like we do without giving them explicit instructions. Instead of describing “chairness” to a computer, we instead just plug it into the Internet and feed it millions of pictures of chairs. It can then have a general idea of “chairness.” Next we test it with even more images. Where it’s wrong, we correct it, which further improves its “chairness” detection. Repetition of this process results in a computer that knows what a chair is when it sees it, [for the most part as well as we can](https://research.facebook.com/publications/deepface-closing-the-gap-to-human-level-performance-in-face-verification/?ref=scottsantens.com). The important difference though is that [unlike us, it can then sort through *millions* of images **within a matter of *seconds***](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4kyRyKyOpo&ref=scottsantens.com). This combination of deep learning and big data has resulted in astounding accomplishments just in the past year. Aside from the incredible accomplishment of AlphaGo, [Google’s DeepMind AI learned how to read and comprehend what it read](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/538616/google-deepmind-teaches-artificial-intelligence-machines-to-read/?ref=scottsantens.com) through hundreds of thousands of annotated news articles. [DeepMind also *taught itself* to play dozens of Atari 2600 video games better than humans](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v518/n7540/full/nature14236.html?ref=scottsantens.com), just by looking at the screen and its score, and playing games repeatedly. An AI named Giraffe taught itself how to play chess in a similar manner using a dataset of 175 million chess positions, [attaining International Master level status in just 72 hours by repeatedly playing itself](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/541276/deep-learning-machine-teaches-itself-chess-in-72-hours-plays-at-international-master/?ref=scottsantens.com). In 2015, [an AI even passed a visual Turing test by learning to learn](http://news.mit.edu/2015/computer-system-passes-visual-turing-test-1210?ref=scottsantens.com) in a way that enabled it to be shown an unknown character in a fictional alphabet, then instantly reproduce that letter in a way that was entirely indistinguishable from a human given the same task. These are all *major* milestones in AI. However, despite all these milestones, when asked to estimate when a computer would defeat a prominent Go player, the answer even just months prior to [the announcement by Google of AlphaGo’s ](http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2016/01/alphago-mastering-ancient-game-of-go.html?ref=scottsantens.com)victory, was by experts essentially, “[Maybe in another ten years](http://www.wired.com/2014/05/the-world-of-computer-go/?ref=scottsantens.com).” A decade was considered a fair guess because Go is a game so complex I’ll just let Ken Jennings of Jeopardy fame, [another former champion human defeated by AI](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2016/03/google%5Fs%5Falphago%5Fdefeated%5Fgo%5Fchampion%5Flee%5Fsedol%5Fken%5Fjennings%5Fexplains%5Fwhat.html?ref=scottsantens.com), describe it: > Go is famously a more complex game than chess, with its larger board, longer games, and many more pieces. Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence team likes to say that there are more possible Go boards than atoms in the known universe, but that vastly *understates* the computational problem. There are about 10¹⁷⁰ board positions in Go, and *only* 10⁸⁰ atoms in the universe. That means that if there were as many parallel universes as there are atoms in our universe (!), then the *total* number of atoms in *all* those universes combined would be close to the possibilities on a single Go board. Such confounding complexity makes impossible any brute-force approach to scan every possible move to determine the next best move. But deep neural networks get around that barrier in the same way our own minds do, by learning to estimate what *feels* like the best move. We do this through observation and practice, and so did AlphaGo, by analyzing millions of professional games and [playing itself millions of times](http://www.wired.com/2016/03/googles-ai-viewed-move-no-human-understand/?ref=scottsantens.com). So the answer to when the game of Go would fall to machines wasn’t even close to ten years. The correct answer ended up being, “**Any time now.**” ## Nonroutine Automation Any time now. That’s the new go-to response in the 21st century for any question involving something new machines can do better than humans, and we need to try to wrap our heads around it. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1390/1*4hNt7iSp_JtWjxoFgllSkg.png) We need to recognize what it means for exponential technological change to be entering the labor market space for nonroutine jobs for the first time ever. Machines that can learn mean *nothing* humans do as a job is uniquely safe anymore. From [hamburgers](http://singularityhub.com/2013/01/22/robot-serves-up-340-hamburgers-per-hour/?ref=scottsantens.com) to [healthcare](https://deepmind.com/health?ref=scottsantens.com), machines can be created to successfully perform such tasks with no need or less need for humans, and at lower costs than humans. [Amelia](http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245827?ref=scottsantens.com) is just one AI out there currently being beta-tested in companies right *now*. Created by IPsoft over the past 16 years, she’s learned how to perform the work of call center employees. She can learn in seconds what takes us months, and she can do it in 20 languages. Because she’s able to learn, she’s able to do more over time. In one company putting her through the paces, she successfully handled one of every ten calls in the first week, and by the end of the second month, she could resolve six of ten calls. Because of this, it’s been estimated that she can put 250 million people out of a job, *worldwide*. [Viv](http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a34630/viv-artificial-intelligence-0515/?ref=scottsantens.com) is an AI coming soon from the creators of Siri who’ll be our own personal assistant. She’ll perform tasks online for us, and even function as a Facebook News Feed on steroids by suggesting we consume the media she’ll know we’ll like best. In doing all of this for us, we’ll see far fewer ads, and that means the entire advertising industry — that industry the entire Internet is built upon — stands to be hugely disrupted. A world with Amelia and Viv — and the countless other AI counterparts coming online soon — in combination with robots like [Boston Dynamics’ next generation Atlas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVlhMGQgDkY&ref=scottsantens.com) portends, is a world where machines can do ***all four* *types of jobs*** and that means serious societal reconsiderations. If a machine can do a job instead of a human, [should any human be forced at the threat of destitution to perform that job](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8n5ZL5PwiA&ref=scottsantens.com)? Should income itself remain coupled to employment, such that having a job is the only way to obtain income, when [jobs for many are entirely unobtainable](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/the-job-market-a-game-of-%5Fb%5F7581704.html?ref=scottsantens.com)? If machines are performing an increasing percentage of our jobs for us, and not getting paid to do them, [where does that money go instead](http://mic.com/articles/119896/after-robots-take-our-jobs-basic-income-is-the-best-solution?ref=scottsantens.com)? And [what does it no longer buy](http://www.cabot.net/issues/cwa/archives/2015/11/guaranteed-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com)? [Is it even possible that many of the jobs we’re creating don’t need to exist at all](http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/?ref=scottsantens.com), and only do because of the incomes they provide? These are questions we need to start asking, and fast. ## Decoupling Income From Work Fortunately, people *are* beginning [to](http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/techtank/posts/2015/10/26-emerging-tech-employment-public-policy-west?ref=scottsantens.com) [ask](http://futurism.com/interview-chris-eliasmith-talks-reverse-engineering-the-brain-dangerous-ai-and-universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) [these](http://www.businessinsider.com/ai-expert-jeremy-howard-on-universal-basic-income-2015-12?ref=scottsantens.com) [questions](http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2016/01/28/ai-guru-andrew-ng-government-must-play-big-role-in-rollout-of-self-driving-cars/2/?ref=scottsantens.com#5ca975ed6971), and there’s an answer that’s building up momentum. The idea is to put machines to work for us, but empower ourselves to seek out the forms of remaining work we as humans find most valuable, by simply providing everyone a monthly paycheck independent of work. This paycheck would be granted to all citizens unconditionally, and its name is [**universal basic income**](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com). By adopting UBI, aside from [immunizing](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com) against the negative effects of automation, we’d also be decreasing [the risks inherent in entrepreneurship](http://www.geektime.com/2015/12/17/how-a-universal-basic-income-could-fuel-entrepreneurship/?ref=scottsantens.com), and [the sizes of bureaucracies](http://www.usbig.net/papers/144-Sheahen-RefundableTaxCredit.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) necessary to boost incomes. It’s for these reasons, it has [cross-partisan support](http://www.fastcoexist.com/3040832/world-changing-ideas/a-universal-basic-income-is-the-bipartisan-solution-to-poverty-weve-bee?ref=scottsantens.com), and is even now in the beginning stages of possible implementation in countries like Switzerland, [Finland](http://www.vox.com/2015/12/8/9872554/finland-basic-income-experiment?ref=scottsantens.com), the [Netherlands](http://www.basicincome.org/news/2015/07/dutch-municipalities-experiments/?ref=scottsantens.com), and [Canada](http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/guaranteed-minimum-income-merits-further-study-pre-budget-report-says-1.3490157?ref=scottsantens.com). The future is a place of accelerating changes. It seems unwise to continue looking at the future as if it were the past, where just because new jobs have historically appeared, they always will. [The WEF started 2016 off by estimating the creation by 2020 of 2 million new jobs alongside the elimination of 7 million](http://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs?ref=scottsantens.com). That’s a net loss, not a net gain of 5 million jobs. In a frequently cited paper, [an Oxford study estimated the automation of about half of all existing jobs by 2033](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/519241/report-suggests-nearly-half-of-us-jobs-are-vulnerable-to-computerization/?ref=scottsantens.com). Meanwhile self-driving vehicles, again thanks to machine learning, have the capability of drastically impacting all economies — [especially the US economy as I wrote last year about automating truck driving](https://medium.com/basic-income/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us-like-a-human-driven-truck-b8507d9c5961?ref=scottsantens.com) — by eliminating millions of jobs within a short span of time. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/696/1*DmAswJfSRjbimEAA82s2eg.gif) And now even the White House, [in a stunning report to Congress](https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/ERP%5F2016%5FBook%5FComplete%20JA.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), has put the probability at 83 percent that a worker making less than $20 an hour in 2010 will eventually lose their job to a machine. Even workers making as much as $40 an hour face odds of 31 percent. To ignore odds like these is tantamount to our now laughable “[duck and cover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0K%5FLZDXp0I&ref=scottsantens.com)” strategies for avoiding nuclear blasts during the Cold War. All of this is why it’s those most knowledgeable in the AI field who are now actively sounding the alarm for basic income. During a panel discussion at the end of 2015 at Singularity University, prominent data scientist [Jeremy Howard](http://www.businessinsider.com/ai-expert-jeremy-howard-on-universal-basic-income-2015-12?ref=scottsantens.com) asked “Do you want half of people to starve because they literally can’t add economic value, or not?” before going on to suggest, ”If the answer is *not*, then the smartest way to distribute the wealth is by implementing a **universal basic income**.” AI pioneer [Chris Eliasmith](http://futurism.com/interview-chris-eliasmith-talks-reverse-engineering-the-brain-dangerous-ai-and-universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com), director of the Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience, warned about the immediate impacts of AI on society in an interview with Futurism, “AI is already having a big impact on our economies… My suspicion is that more countries will have to follow Finland’s lead in exploring **basic income guarantees** for people.” Moshe Vardi [expressed the same sentiment](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-moral-imperative-thats-driving-the-robot-revolution%5Fus%5F56c22168e4b0c3c550521f64?ref=scottsantens.com) after speaking at the 2016 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science about the emergence of intelligent machines, “we need to rethink the very basic structure of our economic system… we may have to consider instituting a **basic income guarantee**.” Even Baidu’s chief scientist and founder of Google’s “Google Brain” deep learning project, [Andrew Ng](http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2016/01/28/ai-guru-andrew-ng-government-must-play-big-role-in-rollout-of-self-driving-cars/?ref=scottsantens.com#46bb8e8a6b12), during an onstage interview at this year’s Deep Learning Summit, expressed the shared notion that **basic income** must be “seriously considered” by governments, citing “a high chance that AI will create massive labor displacement.” When those building the tools begin warning about the implications of their use, shouldn’t those wishing to use those tools listen with the utmost attention, especially when it’s the very livelihoods of millions of people at stake? If not then, what about when [Nobel prize winning economists](http://www.basicincome.org/news/2016/02/international-christopher-pissarides-a-nobel-economist-argues-for-ubi-at-a-debate-in-davos/?ref=scottsantens.com) begin agreeing with them in increasing numbers? No nation is yet ready for the changes ahead. High labor force non-participation leads to social instability, and a lack of consumers within consumer economies leads to economic instability. So let’s ask ourselves, what’s the purpose of the technologies we’re creating? What’s the purpose of a car that can drive for us, or artificial intelligence that can shoulder 60% of our workload? Is it to allow us to work more hours for even less pay? Or is it to enable us to choose *how* we work, and to decline any pay/hours we deem insufficient because we’re already earning the incomes that machines aren’t? What’s the big lesson to learn, in a century when machines can learn? **I offer it’s that jobs are for machines, and life is for people.** --- ***Special thanks to Arjun Banker, Steven Grimm, Larry Cohen, Topher Hunt, Aaron Marcus-Kubitza, Andrew Stern, Keith Davis, Albert Wenger, Richard Just, Chris Smothers, Mark Witham, David Ihnen, Danielle Texeira, Katie Doemland, Paul Wicks, Jan Smole, Joe Esposito, Jack Wagner, Joe Ballou, Stuart Matthews, Natalie Foster, Chris McCoy, Michael Honey, Gary Aranovich, Kai Wong, John David Hodge, Louise Whitmore, Dan O’Sullivan, Harish Venkatesan, Michiel Dral, Gerald Huff, Susanne Berg, Cameron Ottens, Kian Alavi, Gray Scott, Kirk Israel, Robert Solovay, Jeff Schulman, Andrew Henderson, Robert F. Greene, Martin Jordo, Victor Lau, Shane Gordon, Paolo Narciso, Johan Grahn, Tony DeStefano, Erhan Altay, Bryan Herdliska, Stephane Boisvert, Dave Shelton, Rise & Shine PAC, Luke Sampson, Lee Irving, Kris Roadruck, Amy Shaffer, Thomas Welsh, Olli Niinimäki, Casey Young, Elizabeth Balcar, Masud Shah, Allen Bauer, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** > [*Would you like to see your name here too?*](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Social Network and Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/social-network-basic-income-complex-systems-theory-emergence/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T23:18:35.000Z There's something I do every single day, throughout the day, even on weekends, and I've done it since 2013\. There's a reason I do it beyond what might be typically presumed, and the basis for that reason is my appreciation for [complex systems theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex%5Fsystems?ref=scottsantens.com). So I'm going to go over in this post what it is I do, as a way of both encouraging others to join me in doing the same, and also as a way of providing a bit of an introduction to the power of networks. ### Forests of Interconnected Nodes If you've ever heard the saying of not being able to see the forest through the trees, you're at least somewhat familiar with the idea that systems are more than the sum of their parts. Systems are full of interconnected interdependent components, and so a bunch of trees is not just a bunch of trees, but an ecosystem full of emergent properties that would not arise from a single tree or from just as many trees entirely separate from each other. Study a single tree all you want, and no matter how much you know about a tree, you will not know about a forest what you think you know. The same is true of knowing one person and knowing society as a whole. Look closer at the components and links of the systems that surround us. An atom is a component. Forces like gravity and electromagnetism are links. The system is the known universe. The computer I'm writing this on is a component. My WiFi is a link. The system is the Internet. My Twitter account is a component. My Twitter followers and those I follow are links. The system is a social network. Social networks are not just a bunch of users. They're user forests, and they have emergent properties. We are forests of living cells. Our shared emergent property is consciousness. Emergence is where the incredible happens. It is emergence that allows the flapping of a butterfly's wings to potentially result in a hurricane, and it was emergence in social networks that was the Arab Spring. **From small to big, it's all about connections.** ![Silvrback blog image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/727382e0-b0c5-49f9-a92f-45ec261ef2a5/2446650870_ecd307da9b_o_large.jpg) Networks are powerful things, and they are strengthened by an increase in nodes, a diversity in node types, greater interconnectivity between nodes, and stronger connections. Know this, and you'll know not only why the Internet has been transforming our society since we all increasingly started spending our time online, but also why ideas like democracy and market economies work so well. Instead of hierarchical, centrally-planned, top-down structures like dictatorships and planned economies, democracies and [markets are built from the bottom-up, where decisions are made in non-centralized and distributed forms](http://www.neweconomicthinking.org/downloads/HEEDnet%20Seminars%5FEric%5FBeinhocker.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). ### What I Do With the above in mind, and with the goal of advancing the timeline for universal basic income, [I began working in 2013](http://www.scottsantens.com/reddit-robots-and-resources-why-I-got-into-the-idea-of-basic-income-and-how-we-can-go-about-implementing-it) to build up a network, and to connect existing networks, of people interested in the idea. It does no good for tens of thousands of people to think the idea of basic income is a good idea, or at least worth discussing, if they think they're the only ones. They need to connect to each other. They need to see other people talking about it. They need to begin to coalesce into more local networks for local activism. And so every day, throughout the day, I search on Twitter for the words ["basic income,"](https://twitter.com/search?q=basic%20income&src=savs&ref=scottsantens.com) and I then favorite tweet after tweet about it, add some replies, and follow those I haven't already followed. Every link I find that is directly or indirectly linked to basic income, I read, bookmark,and share on to others, usually on at least both [Twitter](https://twitter.com/2noame?ref=scottsantens.com) and [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/user/2noame/submitted/?ref=scottsantens.com). I've done this for years now. At the beginning it took around a half hour per day or less. As the discussion around basic income has rapidly expanded since 2013, it became hours, and I usually do it every few hours, instead of once every 24\. Whereas I started with under 2,000 followers, I now have over 60,000\. Where once the [/r/BasicIncome](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/?ref=scottsantens.com) community on Reddit had under 1,000 subscribers, it now has over 40,000\. I've seen people find the idea of basic income through me, and I've seen people find each other through each other. It's a very empowering thing, to watch an idea bouncing back and forth with greater frequency across a rapidly expanding network of people. ### What You Can Do I feel it's important to describe what I've been doing because I want those who agree with the importance of the idea of basic income to help expand the network even faster, and help create more interconnections within it for a more robust network. No network works best if built around a handful of supernodes. The failure of such a centralized node can damage the network. Information that would have gotten from one person to another, won't. This idea is what the entire Internet is built upon. The more nodes the better, and the more interconnections the better. Damage can be routed around without issue. With that said, please join me in spending some of what time you have available to do so, finding other supporters of basic income in your social networks, both online and offline. Follow each other on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snap, Steemit, whatever social platform you use the most. If a person is talking about basic income, welcome them into your network. Here's a tip to find supporters: When a tweet about basic income is retweeted by many people, follow everyone who retweeted that tweet. When an article about basic income is shared on Facebook, like it, and make new friends. Help grow the entire basic income network. Also know that algorithms are at work on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. The more likes something gets, the higher its visibility. Just like in democracy, it may feel like your one vote is nothing, but it's not. [Every like/favorite/share/reply is another vote, and every vote increases the likelihood of that particular bit of information being spread more widely, and drawing more votes in turn. Vote regularly. Vote often.](http://www.scottsantens.com/what-can-we-do-to-grow-the-basic-income-movement-in-2015) Like and share everything basic income, everywhere. The idea of basic income is snowballing, and it's in large part because people are leveraging the power of social media. A media outlet that publishes a story about basic income and gets ten times the views it would get normally, is going to publish something about basic income again because it means more money for them. Every time you read something about basic income, you are voting for basic income. Every time you share something, every time you like something, everything you do as part of the social network matters. You are part of the system, and so the result of the system is up to you and your connections within it. Recognize that and be a more active part of it. All of this too is why universal basic income itself is so important. It is a tool of network expansion and strengthening. People without access to money are disconnected from many networks. They are disconnected from friends and family. They are disconnected from markets. And they are disconnected from democracy. We want to strengthen networks and so we want those connections made. We know society is stronger when people have deeper and more numerous ties to friends and family. We know [markets are stronger when more people have money to exchange within markets](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/why-should-we-support-the%5Fb%5F7630162.html?ref=scottsantens.com). We know [democracy is stronger when more people can vote and regularly vote](https://medium.com/basic-income/its-time-we-take-a-closer-look-at-americas-three-favorite-words-f512f8a1ad6f?ref=scottsantens.com). The key to all of this is more nodes and more connections. It's this that's even responsible for the human mind itself. [Our brains are a mass of billions of interconnected neurons](http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/02/24/robots-will-take-your-job/5lXtKomQ7uQBEzTJOXT7YO/story.html?ref=scottsantens.com), and our consciousness is the emergent property. Make an exact copy of your brain, with all the same neurons and all the same connections, and it won't be you. What's you is the overall pattern of neuronal activity that emerges. If we're to relate that back to the systems of which we're part, be it family, friends, the economy, or democracy and more, it's important to be connected to others, but what's most important of all is sending signals through those connections. Emergence requires activity. So be active. You can be a part of forging a better social system. [Access to basic resources through basic income](http://www.scottsantens.com/shouldn-t-all-this-talk-about-money-actually-be-talk-about-resources) is the key, and you can help basic income become reality by focusing right now on growing the global basic income network. Introduce new people to the idea. Welcome supporters into your social networks. Like what they share about basic income and boost that signal by sharing it on. Create messages to share for others in your networks to boost and share in turn. Help spread the idea across the planet, and help better connect ourselves to each other in the process. We are humanity. [We are a complex adaptive system](http://www.neweconomicthinking.org/downloads/HEEDnet%20Seminars%5FEric%5FBeinhocker.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). And we shall eventually guarantee everyone on Earth an unconditional basic income as an evolution of our civilization. --- Learn more about complex systems: Learn more about networks: --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### YouTube as an Intrinsic Motivation Window URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/youtube-intrinsic-motivation-window-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T23:19:34.000Z As I've blogged about previously, being a cord cutter I watch YouTube instead of TV, and it's because of this I think I don't see people in the same way many do, where there's a mistaken belief people do nothing unless paid to do something. To the contrary, it's clear on YouTube that people love doing all kinds of things when they have the ability to do them. Therefore, [YouTube to me is a window into a post-basic income world full of intrinsic motivation](http://www.scottsantens.com/youtube-star-wars-future-of-work), where video after video is made for the love of making and sharing videos with those who enjoy watching them. This in itself is interesting, but there's also a flip side to it, where that which is shared on YouTube isn't purely consumed as is par for the course for a simple TV program, but is used as an educational tool of learning and even eventual mastery. This too is an important key to understanding intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is doing something for some external reward, like money. Intrinsic motivation is doing something for one's own internal reward, which [Dan Pink describes as being mainly the three-fold desire for autonomy, mastery, and purpose (AMP)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y&ref=scottsantens.com). ### Self-Driven Work ![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/0a5e8145-eca9-4628-83b0-3ca1d7f2a5d0/autonomy-1_large.png) The work we pursue because we want to pursue it, is work that's self-driven. No one needs to tell us to do something we already want to do, and so we desire **autonomy**. It feels good to get better and better at something, and so we'll work on something repeatedly for the **mastery** of it. Just doing something we love can lead to this, because we don't get tired of it and "practice makes perfect" as the saying goes. It also feels good to do something that fills us with a sense of **purpose.** We desire meaning in our lives. What's the point of doing something, if there is no point? This is also why so many people are detached from their jobs. In the US, [less than half of the employed find any satisfaction in their work](http://singularityhub.com/2015/04/01/the-end-of-meaningless-jobs-is-a-win-for-us-all/?ref=scottsantens.com) \- because they know there's no real point to it, and it's a meaningful point we all desire. Autonomy, mastery, and purpose is what most powerfully drives us, not money, or fear of poverty. With that said, the following videos were posted on [Fusion's YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/user/thisisfusion?ref=scottsantens.com) earlier this year, and I think they each provide fantastic examples of what's possible when someone has the time and ability (and access to YouTube) required to put a lot of work into something they love, purely for the reward of mastering something new. I would like you to keep in mind as you watch these, that this is what we will most likely see more of once everyone has a basic income - not mass laziness, but mass creation. Once no one needs to worry about obtaining the money for basic survival, people will be able to spend more time pursuing their passions. The result will be more videos uploaded onto YouTube, more people enjoying those videos, more people being inspired, more people learning, more people mastering, and more people then sharing that mastery with others which will loop the process around into a positive feedback loop. Also keep in mind while watching that no money exchanged hands. Jobs were not created for teachers to be paid to teach students either. Instead, students used technology to teach themselves. Going further, I'd even argue they're now good enough to be paid by someone to do it or teach it. And for anyone who didn't know better, all of this could have been thought of by an outside observer as people wasting their time watching YouTube. Let me reiterate that. Who are we to say what's the proper way to spend one's time? Quentin Tarantino spent an untold number of hours watching movies before we ever watched Reservoir Dogs. Today we can look back in retrospect and see that time as time well spent, but could we say the same thing looking at a younger unknown Tarantino watching movie after movie? Of course not, and yet that's what we do every time we judge how someone is spending their time. Who are we to know what is time well spent or time poorly spent, when we're talking about someone else's time? More Quentin Tarantinos is just one example of what we have to look forward to, as soon as we decouple work from income, and thus shift from a world of extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation. The power to better choose how we spend our time is nothing short of transformative. [A universal basic income world is a world where everyone is truly free to work autonomously, masterfully, and purposefully](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPHOvuZmCG4&feature=youtu.be&ref=scottsantens.com). ### Windows into our future of intrinsic motivation > Adilyn Malcolm mastered dubstep dancing by just using YouTube as her teacher. The 12 year old used the internet to stop, rewind, and watch videos of the best dubstep music dancers in the world like Marquese Scott (youtube.com/user/WHZGUD2), something she admits a traditional dance class wouldn't allow her to do. The results are incredible. > When Amira Willighagen was seven years old she took it upon herself to learn how to sing opera music. Barely old enough to operate a computer, she would watch one YouTube video after another of her favorite opera performers, singing along, and mimicking their body and lip movements. In no time, she had mastered the skill. Now, at 11 years old, she continues to capture the hearts of her audiences and hopes to create a new generation of opera lovers. > Growing up in Pakistan, there were no instructors in town that could teach Usman Riaz how to play percussive guitar. There was only one place available for him to watch the best players in the world and learn from them: YouTube. > Patrick McCabe always liked building things so when he stumbled upon a website that gave him step-by-step instructions on how to build electronics, he became an instant robot-making junkie. Utilizing websites like instructables.com and letsmakerobots.com, he was able to hone his skills leading him to snag a spot at his dream school MIT. > Josh Wardlow wanted to learn how to train in jiu-jitsu, but he had a big problem: he lived in a small town and the nearest training center was four hours away. Luckily, he discovered an online jiu-jitsu school and is now a leading example that the sport can be successfully mastered from the internet, so long as you have the passion and dedication to learn it. Now, you tell me... is watching videos on YouTube a waste of time? And does creating videos for YouTube not count as work? When people have the time and the space to pursue their own interests, do they sit around doing nothing? Human beings have a desire to be so much more, if only we have access to the necessary resources. [Basic income is basic access to those resources](http://www.scottsantens.com/shouldn-t-all-this-talk-about-money-actually-be-talk-about-resources). With the fear of poverty eliminated, our futures will be self-driven. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Inequality and the Basic Income Guarantee URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/inequality-and-the-basic-income-guarantee-universal-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T20:05:00.000Z *This essay is part of a collection of 37 from the* [*Wicked Problems Collaborative*](http://www.wickedproblemscollaborative.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) *of which I’m part, titled “* ***What Do We Do About Inequality?*** *” The book is available* [*on Amazon*](http://amzn.to/2bRRDGP?ref=scottsantens.com) *in Kindle and paperback formats.* The use of cash transfers as a tool for reducing poverty and inequality is not a new policy, nor are the positive social effects limited to these issues alone, with additional observed effects on a vast array of dimensions like nutrition, entrepreneurship, economic multipliers, economic stability, social cohesion, and more. It is because of this solid and growing evidence for such effects, that in recent years, cash transfers have been becoming increasingly implemented worldwide. Calling this growth exponential in its [2014 report on The State of Social Safety Nets](https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/18376/879840WP0FINAL00Box385208B00PUBLIC0.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), the World Bank described conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs as having doubled since 2008 and unconditional cash transfer (UCT) programs as having doubled since 2010. The efficiency of cash transfer programs is also widely known among economists. According to the chairman of the economics department at Harvard University, as far as policy propositions with greatest consensus among professional economists go, [84% are in agreement that cash payments increase the welfare of recipients to a greater degree than do transfers-in-kind of equal cash value](http://gregmankiw.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/news-flash-economists-agree.html?ref=scottsantens.com). And yet case after case of the economic efficiency of cash transfers somehow continues to surprise or confound the public at large, as people continue to insist instead on transfers in-kind and attached conditions despite the evidence of observed human behavior where cash is given with no conditions. This continuing misinformation trend seems likely related to media bias and long perpetuated myths by those looking to exploit popular assumptions for their own gain. There is one idea however, that although not new in itself, is rapidly experiencing a renaissance of renewed interest. It is this idea and its growing potential to be carried forward as a mass social movement that warrants its own discussion regarding its potential impacts on inequality. The BIG idea is to universally provide an identical cash income floor that is essentially a UCT large enough to guarantee everyone a minimum level of financial resources on an individual basis entirely absent of imposed conditions — the basic income guarantee (BIG) or [unconditional basic income](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com). This essay contributes to the discussion of inequality by identifying the possible forms and potential effects of the BIG on reducing inequality. Covering [the two favored forms known as a negative income tax (NIT) and a universal basic income (UBI)](http://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-nit-and-unconditional-basic-income-ubi-what-makes-them-the-same-and-what-makes-them-different), I show that although both can function quite similarly on an economic level in reducing inequality, the UBI is the potentially stronger candidate on the political level due to its universality. I end this essay with a look at the numerous ways basic income could reduce both income and wealth inequality by reviewing the direct and indirect effects of a BIG on each. ## An Island of Inequality To understand [how basic income could affect inequality](http://www.scottsantens.com/does-basic-income-reduce-income-inequality-gini), we first need to illustrate the current levels of both income and wealth inequality. To do this, we will imagine an island with a population of ten Americans, divided into fifths by income and wealth. Using 2012 data, the income and wealth distribution on the island is as follows. The richest two Americans have 85% of the wealth and 52% of the income. The second richest two have 11% of the wealth and 20% of the income. The middle pair has 4% of the wealth and 15% of the income. The next two have 9% of the income and the poorest two have 4% of the income. The bottom four collectively have so little wealth, it is essentially zero. Now, let’s imagine these ten people together decide there is something wrong with how the distribution of wealth and income has worked out on this island. First focusing on income, they consider various plans so as to ensure each of them has at least the bare minimum income required to meet all of their basic needs, together concluding this minimum is 4 coins per person. Deciding it would be both the fairest and simplest plan of all for each of them to put the same percentage of their incomes into a pot, and then equally share the pot’s resultant contents with each other to obtain this minimum, the outcome is the following. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1236/1*1BFA8V6y693-oh1gcmJnVA.png) Deciding that 40% is fair knowing they will all pay the same percentage and get the same mutually defined minimum amount of coins back, the richest two put 20 coins into the pot. The next two put in 8 coins, followed by the middle two with 6 coins. The second poorest two together chip in 4 coins, and the poorest two add 1 each. The pot now holds 40 coins, so each person individually gets their 4 coins defined as a basic income back. The island now has a new income distribution of decreased income inequality. The richest two now have 40 coins, which is still twice that of the next richest pair who ended up with the same number of 20 coins as they had before, for no net change. The middle two have 17 coins, experiencing a small net gain of one coin each. The second poorest two now have 13 coins, for a gain of two coins each, while the poorest now have 10 coins, for a net gain of three coins each. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1036/1*mON-HiEK-zTjrJHpzE0Asg.png) Source: [Building a Better America - One Wealth Quintile at a Time](http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely%20in%20press.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) One interesting observation to note about this particular income distribution, is to compare it to what those earning over six figures in the U.S. feel is [the ideal distribution of wealth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM&ref=scottsantens.com). We use this particular ideal knowing that wealth inequality is far more extreme than that of income, and that the ideal of those with the largest incomes shows the most extreme greatest ideal inequality of any income group. In other words, an ideal distribution of wealth as defined by those earning the most money and applied to distribution of income, reveals an upper limit to income inequality that can be defined as acceptable by all of society — a limit which we currently far exceed. Adapted for this island example, preferred coin distribution is for the richest two to have 39 coins, the next two to have 24 coins, the middle two to have 19 coins, the fourth two to have 11 coins, and the poorest two to have 7 coins. The distribution of maximally acceptable inequality is actually very close to the island’s new distribution after basic income, and so this could be viewed as an ideal outcome. Another note to make is that when asked about wealth redistribution, according to [Norton and Ariely](http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely%20in%20press.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) all groups agreed that such redistribution should take the form of moving wealth from the top quintile to the bottom three quintiles, without touching the second quintile. This is exactly what we see with this basic income example, and so we can safely assume that at least in theory, all quintiles could support the idea of basic income in practice as effectively redistributing income from the top to the bottom in the attempt to reach something closer to an ideal redistribution that even the richest view as ideal. ## UBI vs. NIT Now, one may look at this island example and think it wasteful for everyone to have put coins into a pot, only to pull them back out. Why couldn’t the richest two have just taken 12 of their coins and given 6 to the poorest two, 4 to the second poorest, and 2 to the middle? The outcome would be identical, and the 2nd richest pair need never even be involved in the process at all. Plus the total amount of coins changing hands could be merely 12 instead of 40\. Why not just use this plan instead? This is exactly what [the debate between a NIT and a UBI](http://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-nit-and-unconditional-basic-income-ubi-what-makes-them-the-same-and-what-makes-them-different) boils down to. The example of everyone pooling their money together in the same pot is UBI (funded by a flat income tax), and the example of just getting the top to give more money directly to the bottom is a NIT (funded by increased income taxation on only the richest). The UBI can be seen as appealing to a sense of universal fairness and simplicity, while the NIT can be seen as just making sure the top quintile guarantees the bottom three quintiles have enough in a way that requires lower taxation than UBI. The former can be seen as potentially more efficient from an administrative perspective while the latter can be seen as potentially more efficient from a distributional perspective. However, these two ideas diverge in how they are perceived not by economists, but by the public. A UBI includes all groups. Each group contributes to the pot and everyone gets the same amount from the pot in return. Being universal, [a UBI increases social cohesion](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/universal-basic-income-wi%5Fb%5F8354072.html?ref=scottsantens.com), in the sense that everyone is working together to make sure everyone benefits. A NIT lacks the potential to increase social cohesion to the same degree, instead putting the responsibility entirely on the rich to pay for the poorest. Although efficient, this could have unintended consequences, and could result in the rich using their riches to fight against such a policy. It might also leave the poor feeling the stigma attached to income received by only mostly them and no one else. Whichever form of BIG is put into practice, be it UBI or NIT, its immediate effect of reducing income inequality should now be apparent. However, if we wish to fully evaluate the effects of basic income on inequality in a wider sense, we must take a closer look at each of the direct and indirect effects on both income and wealth inequality, according to the varying ways a basic income could be made possible. It is important to understand that the effects of a BIG can vary according to the way or combination of ways in which it is funded. ## Direct effects of basic income on income inequality The direct effects of basic income come in two flavors depending on whether it is the result of moving already existing money around to new hands, or by creating entirely new money. ## Income redistribution Funded through income taxation, basic income would function as a form of income redistribution, directly reducing extreme levels of inequality to levels considered more ideal. This could be achieved through either flat income taxation or increased progressive income taxation. Both methods would have the effect of redistributing income from the top 20% to the bottom 60%, with the least going to the middle and most to the bottom. ## Expansionary monetary policy Funding through money creation would also directly decrease income inequality but it would not be advised as the sole source of funding, as inflation would serve to impact the poor disproportionately, increasing costs of living and eroding the effective value of the basic income. For this reason a basic income should either be funded entirely or mostly by redistribution with only [partial funding](http://www.soziologie.uni-halle.de/emeriti/huber/docs/fundingbasic.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) through any expansion of the money supply. ## Indirect effects of basic income on income inequality The indirect effects of basic income on inequality are less obvious but very much there. The most notable indirect effects are possible through two channels: large multiplier effects, and increased entrepreneurship. ## Multiplier effects A recent macroeconomic model showed the surprising results of food stamps not only having the greatest stimulus effects of all U.S. transfer programs, but also the greatest stabilizing effects of any current fiscal policy. The origin of the stimulus is in the redistribution to those with the highest propensity to consume — the poorest. This is known as the multiplier effect, and although food stamps have been found as showing the highest multiplier effect of U.S. programs of [1.79](http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err-economic-research-report/err103.aspx?ref=scottsantens.com#.UwUgZoWzsvg) (where the spending of $1 adds $1.79 to the economy), even higher levels have been observed in countries with basic income-like unconditional cash transfers. Some examples of UCT multipliers: [Malawi (2.45), Lesotho (2.23), and Ethiopia (2.50)](https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/18376/879840WP0FINAL00Box385208B00PUBLIC0.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). In contrast, [the multiplier effect of Wall Street bonuses was calculated to be 0.39](https://medium.com/basic-income/trickle-down-economics-must-die-long-live-grow-up-economics-5b8334a0db76?ref=scottsantens.com). Giving money to the rich slows the economy, while giving money to the poor grows it. ## Entrepreneurship One notable effect across all projects and pilot experiments of basic income is the increase in numbers of people starting their own businesses. [GiveDirectly](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/04/givedirectly-cash-transfers%5Fn%5F7339040.html?ref=scottsantens.com) — a charity creating troves of valuable data by transforming the lives of the poorest in places like Kenya and Uganda through nothing but cash has referred to this on their blog with the observation that “[there’s no charity for power saws](https://www.givedirectly.org/blog-post?id=5453927471971916970&ref=scottsantens.com).” In surveying the villages of those given basic incomes, they discovered that people were using their money as startup capital. One couple bought a solar panel to charge others’ cell phones. One person bought a power saw to employ himself as a tree trimmer and wood seller. Another person bought a motorbike to leave the farm behind and go into business for himself. Another person bought a tractor and was then able to create employment on her farm for others in the village. The examples go on. What are the effects of all this enhanced entrepreneurship on future incomes? [In Uganda a 49% increase in earnings was found over the first two years and a 41% increase remained another two years later](http://cega.berkeley.edu/assets/cega%5Fevents/53/WGAPE%5FSp2013%5FBlattman.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Meanwhile in Kenya, incomes were found to be [33% higher one year later](http://poverty-action.org/project/0522?ref=scottsantens.com). These are increases in earnings above and beyond the basic incomes only made possible by receiving them. This kind of result is not an anomaly, but a common finding where a basic income is given. People use the cash given to them to increase their labor market incomes. This effectively decreases income inequality even further than a basic income alone. ## Direct effects of basic income on wealth inequality Basic income can be funded in a variety of ways and so extends beyond taxing incomes to methods of directly taxing forms of wealth. Although not limited to these four, wealth-based basic income funding options include: land-value taxation, transaction taxes, natural resource royalties, and taxation of corporate stock. ## Land-value taxation (LVT) [A tax on land values](http://www.salon.com/2013/11/22/end%5Fthe%5F1%5Fpercents%5Ffree%5Fride%5Fhow%5Ftaxing%5Fland%5Fwould%5Fsolve%5Famericas%5Fbiggest%5Fproblems/?ref=scottsantens.com) would serve as a means of transferring wealth from land-owners to non-land owners when used in combination with a basic income. Advocates of LVT have long seen it as a means of eliminating income taxes entirely, which could have the end result of being regressive in nature. If added as an additional tax to pay for basic income, LVT would serve to redistribute towards those who own no land, helping make it possible for more people to acquire their own land. ## Natural resource royalties Funding a basic income using natural resources is essentially the Alaska Model. By taking 25% of the revenue earned by charging oil companies for the rights to drill on Alaska-owned land, and depositing it in a large wealth fund, Alaska is able to annually distribute a dividend universally to all its residents. The size of this dividend in [2015 was $2,072 per resident](http://pfd.alaska.gov/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=Vot96zQNn2w%3d&tabid=503&portalid=6&ref=scottsantens.com). By charging companies rent for the use of public resources, this method can be seen as a way of making citizens partial owners of all natural resources, reducing the wealth of corporations without actually raising their taxes. Essentially this is a way of transferring money from corporations to the public as a cost of doing business instead of a tax. ## Transaction taxes A transaction tax could take the form of taxing all transactions as [a tiny tax on everything](https://www.academia.edu/5305083/The%5FAutomated%5FPayment%5FTransaction%5FAPT%5FTax?ref=scottsantens.com). It could also just focus solely on the financial sector by taxing all trades in general, or more specifically [tax only high-frequency trades](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/opinion/the-case-for-a-tax-on-financial-transactions.html?ref=scottsantens.com). In any case, this form of tax would have the largest effect on those with the most money doing the most transactions, reducing wealth gains at the top. Paired with a basic income, this lessened wealth at the top would help grow wealth at the bottom. ## Stock taxation With most wealth at the top existing in the form of private investments, a tax on corporate stocks might possibly be the most direct taxation of wealth possible. Paired with a basic income, this would serve as a transfer of wealth from the richest (who own most of the stock) to the poorest (who own no stock), also enabling the poorest to actually obtain some of their own stock. ## Indirect effects of basic income on wealth inequality Aside from the potential direct ways of reducing wealth inequality through a basic income, there exist more long-term secondary effects which go on to reduce wealth inequality even further. These secondary effects of basic income on wealth arise in the same way basic income enhances entrepreneurship – it increases opportunity. [It expands on the ability of people to take actions they could not otherwise take](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/prostartup?ref=scottsantens.com). These actions can lead to greater wealth through the newly granted opportunity to gain wealth that would not otherwise exist at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. ## Increased education Possibly the greatest long-term effect of basic income is the positive effect it has on education. One of the most impressive observations of such an effect was seen in [Canada’s “MINCOME” experiment](http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20%282%29.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). In the 1970s, residents of Dauphin were guaranteed a minimum income regardless of work. Although striking in itself that teenagers chose to reduce their hours worked as a result — instead choosing to focus more on school in order to graduate — even more striking was that graduation rates met and then exceeded 100%. This was possible because those who had dropped out of high school actually *returned* to finish. Aside from high school graduation rates, [basic income also has the potential to increase access to higher education](http://www.scottsantens.com/the-potential-effects-of-a-universal-basic-income-guarantee-on-student-loans), making it more affordable to young students just reaching college age. In addition, workers presently in the labor market looking to return to school to retrain for a new career path would be better enabled to do so. Education is almost universally thought of as a means of increasing one’s wealth, and so more people choosing to pursue their education — all else being equal — would likely result in further reduced wealth inequality. ## Enhanced citizenship At present, it should be clear what happens when political power concentrates within a small group of only the wealthiest citizens. This inequality exists due to the undue influence of money on the political process, and it is this inequality that can be reduced through basic income. Although true that each citizen has one vote, vast amounts of cash serve as artificial votes and citizens tired of being [effectively disenfranchised by wealthy special interests](http://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materials/Gilens%20and%20Page/Gilens%20and%20Page%202014-Testing%20Theories%203-7-14.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) drop out of the process entirely as a result. Basic income has the potential to reverse this through two routes. On the one hand it would enable citizens to outspend even the rich on a small donation level. Enough voters spending just $50 of their basic income in an election would be sufficient to outspend big money. This would be much more possible than it is now, where currently so many are living paycheck to paycheck. On the other hand, it would enable citizens to actually be citizens, spending more of their time becoming informed of issues and also volunteering their time as active participants of democracy. It is this potential effect of basic income on citizenship that could possibly have the greatest effect of all in decreasing inequality across the board. By transferring political power concentrated at the top of the wealth and income spectrums back to the great majority of people from whence political power is supposed to arise, a basic income may not stop at the redistribution of money. It could extend to the redistribution of political power. ## Conclusion This essay introduced an island example as a simplified way of explaining the most direct effect a basic income guarantee would have on decreasing income inequality to a point considered more ideal by even those desiring the greatest amounts of inequality. Continuing with the island example as a way of explaining the difference between unconditional basic income and a negative income tax, this essay left the choice open to further debate. However, I do lean toward a UBI as possibly having greater potential for political advocacy and long-term stability despite its perceived greater cost, due to its universality. Finally, breaking inequality down into income and wealth differences separately, this essay showed how a BIG could reduce each through both direct and indirect effects. By functioning as a means of direct redistribution, a BIG would directly reduce inequality by transferring income from the top to the bottom, and this transfer could take place by means of income or wealth depending on funding choices. Meanwhile the indirect longer-term effects a BIG would have on the economy through enabling increased entrepreneurship and large multiplier effects, and the effects a BIG has on the choices of the people receiving it to pursue their educations or participate in democracy, all lead to even greater reductions of inequality than might be immediately apparent. --- ***My thanks to Chris Oestereich and the rest of the WPC for putting this book together and special thanks to Arjun Banker, Steven Grimm, Larry Cohen, Topher Hunt, Aaron Marcus-Kubitza, Andrew Stern, Keith Davis, Albert Wenger, Richard Just, Chris Smothers, Mark Witham, David Ihnen, Danielle Texeira, Katie Doemland, Paul Wicks, Jan Smole, Joe Esposito, Jack Wagner, Joe Ballou, Stuart Matthews, Natalie Foster, Chris McCoy, Michael Honey, Gary Aranovich, Kai Wong, John David Hodge, Louise Whitmore, Dan O’Sullivan, Harish Venkatesan, Michiel Dral, Gerald Huff, Susanne Berg, Cameron Ottens, Kian Alavi, Gray Scott, Kirk Israel, Robert Solovay, Jeff Schulman, Andrew Henderson, Robert F. Greene, Martin Jordo, Victor Lau, Shane Gordon, Paolo Narciso, Johan Grahn, Tony DeStefano, Erhan Altay, Bryan Herdliska, Stephane Boisvert, Dave Shelton, Rise & Shine PAC, Luke Sampson, Lee Irving, Kris Roadruck, Amy Shaffer, Thomas Welsh, Olli Niinimäki, Casey Young, Elizabeth Balcar, Masud Shah, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** [*Would you like to see your name here too?*](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Robots Will Take Your Jobs URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/robots-will-take-your-jobs-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T23:21:55.000Z My first ever article to be published in the Boston Globe is now available online. It's titled ["Robots Will Take Your Job"](http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/02/24/robots-will-take-your-job/5lXtKomQ7uQBEzTJOXT7YO/story.html?ref=scottsantens.com). For those in and around the Boston area, this story will also be in the Sunday print edition on February 28th. So please pick up a copy if you can. In it I explain how quickly artificial intelligence (AI) is now advancing thanks to the use of deep neural networks for machine learning, a branch of AI known as "deep learning," and that experts in the field are now increasingly calling for universal basic income as a direct result of the great labor market disruptions they believe exist right around the corner because of it. If something like the game of Go can be mastered in a way thought at least 10 years down the road (if possible at all), then technology is advancing exponentially and without a basic income guarantee underneath us all, we aren't yet ready for what lies ahead. \--> [**Read the article on Boston Globe**](http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/02/24/robots-will-take-your-job/5lXtKomQ7uQBEzTJOXT7YO/story.html?ref=scottsantens.com) <-- --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Disproportionate Effects of a Universal Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/disproportionate-effects-universal-basic-income-reparations/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T23:22:37.000Z **One very interesting but not so easy to understand element of [universal basic income](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com) is how it disproportionately helps traditionally marginalized groups more than anyone else.** That sentence alone may be confusing. If everyone gets the same amount, how can one group benefit more than another group? Isn't the result really just "welfare for the rich" if everyone gets the same thing? Not at all, and I think the difficulty in understanding this is tied directly into a popular misconception of [what money actually is](http://www.scottsantens.com/yeah-but-who-is-going-to-pay-for-it-basic-income-alan-watts) and how [taxation will likely be involved](http://www.scottsantens.com/does-basic-income-reduce-income-inequality-gini). The fundamental thing to recognize is the moment everyone gets a basic income for the first time, it will not be because we suddenly have more stuff than the moment right before UBI is distributed, or more resources, or more productive capability via human or machine workers. [The resources themselves will remain unchanged](http://www.scottsantens.com/shouldn-t-all-this-talk-about-money-actually-be-talk-about-resources). Only what we use to measure these things will have been changed. Money is not real, just like inches are not real. [Money, like inches, is an unlimited tool of measurement](http://www.scottsantens.com/do-we-have-enough-space-bucks-for-basic-income). If you can see that, it's more clear how what's really important is percentage shares of our economy, not absolute values of money. As an extreme example for sake of clarity, consider an island population of two people where one has $1 million and the other has just $1\. Thus one has 1/1,000,000th the spending power of the other; basically none whatsoever. Now give each of them an additional $1 million out of thin air. The size of the million dollar gap may be unchanged, but one will now have $2 million and the other $1,000,001\. At this point, instead of having a million times the spending power, the rich one has only twice the spending power of the poor one. Are these labels now even still accurate? Is the rich one still rich or the poor one still poor if one now only has twice as much as the other, and their money can be used to buy an unchanged amount of stuff? This example of course is a printed money example, but it also shows how [inflation](http://www.scottsantens.com/do-we-have-enough-space-bucks-for-basic-income) isn't [necessarily bad](https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/a-new-golden-age-part-iii-the-basic-income-guarantee?ref=scottsantens.com). Yes, everything on the island will get more expensive, but if we look at spending power disparity, it's gone from 1,000,000:1 to 2:1\. And nothing else has changed. Productive capacity is still the same. The resources are unchanged. It's inequality that has been reduced, and access to existing resources now has a more equitable distribution. So what's the effect on prices? If there were twenty [Big Macs](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/22/business/big-mac-test-shows-job-market-is-not-working-to-distribute-wealth.html?ref=scottsantens.com) available on the island prior to the $2 million in new money, the rich person could buy all twenty for $5 a piece, and the poor person couldn't even afford just one. Big Macs represented 1/10,000th of the economy. After the big money drop they still do, but likely cost $15 because the money supply has tripled. However, both people can now easily afford all twenty $15 Big Macs because both would be millionaires. Now, what about [supply and demand interactions](http://www.neweconomicthinking.org/downloads/HEEDnet%20Seminars%5FEric%5FBeinhocker.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)? Maybe both people really want those Big Macs, so the prices go up accordingly. Let's say they REALLY want those Big Macs (and there's no way of making more), and are willing to spend every penny on them. The result could be one would get 13 of them, and the other 7, because their wealth ratio is 2:1\. This outcome, although involving some extremely expensive sandwiches, is clearly more equitable than the original outcome where one got all twenty and the other none. So expanding the money supply causes inflation, but if the expansion is spread equally per capita, those towards the bottom benefit more than those towards the top. However, most universal basic income proposals are not about vastly expanding the money supply, especially to the point of tripling it. Most proposals involve taxes and transfers. E.g. in such an island example, the one with $1 million could be taxed $200,000 and receive $100,000, going down to $900,000\. Meanwhile, the other could get the same $100,000 and go up to $100,001\. The amount of money hasn't changed, it's been transferred. But spending power differential has gone from 1,000,000:1 to 9:1\. Big Macs still cost $5, and both can still afford all twenty. Under extreme demand, it might result in one getting 18 Big Macs and the other 2, but this is still a more equitable outcome than one getting all and one getting none. Clearly, universality can drastically shift the scales in favor of those the scales are usually tipped against, especially when taxation is involved that targets the top. As further analogy, imagine a race where it's thought to be fair that everyone is starting at the same starting line, but some participants have the best shoes and training, while some have old worn out shoes, some have no shoes at all, and some have bear traps for shoes. Now imagine everyone is given the same pair of running shoes. They aren't the best, but they're good. It makes the biggest difference of all for anyone going from bear trap to running shoe, to the point they could even finally realistically beat the one with the best shoes and training. It still even makes a big difference (but not as big a difference) for everyone else, except the ones with nicer shoes. And even though they get the good shoes too which they don't need, it won't be as easy for them to win, because the race has been made more fair. Now let's apply this kind of logic to something much larger, like [**reparations**](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/?ref=scottsantens.com). Right now, [black median incomes are around $30,000](http://blackdemographics.com/households/african-american-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) and white median incomes are around $50,000\. That is a result of a complex system that structurally picks winners and losers along racial lines, and consequently [distributes access to total resources inequitably as a direct result](http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/21/news/economy/black-white-inequality/index.html?ref=scottsantens.com). I would argue we don't want that. So what happens if we apply universal basic income? Is the effect negligible because everyone gets the same income boost regardless of skin color? Assume we give everyone $12,000\. Black median income is now $42,000 and white median income is $62,000\. So what, right? The gap is still the same $20,000 size. Well, remember, it's the percentage that counts, not the absolute value, because what the economy can produce is unchanged. $12,000 is therefore a 40% greater slice of the economy for blacks but a 24% slice for whites. That means the entire US black population would receive almost twice the benefit than whites (unless you're low income and white). Can such a disproportionate effect be considered reparations? I don't know, but considering the same effect will also apply to other marginalized groups like [women](http://www.scottsantens.com/women-have-lower-incomes-than-men-gender-wage-gap-inequality), the [LGBT](https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/lgbt/news/2012/04/16/11494/the-gay-and-transgender-wage-gap/?ref=scottsantens.com) population, and those who are [disabled](http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/infographic-disability-impacts-all.html?ref=scottsantens.com) as just a few examples, I think such an effect is something we absolutely want for a less unequal society full of greater opportunity for all. Is universal basic income all that needs to be done to fix everything? Of course not. We need election reform, drug reform, prison reform, police reform, banking reform, education reform, and so much more, but the special attribute of money is that it can help make those other reforms more possible. A huge problem underlying many other problems is the complete lack of [economic rights](http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Fisher1919.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). This needs to be addressed with the demand of a universal minimum income floor. If the effect of UBI is to disproportionately help those in most need and those we tend to systematically attach anchors to, without any of the racial divisions and bigotry such egalitarian goals would usually involve, I say that's the kind of unequal outcome we desperately need for the sake of justice itself. --- ![Silvrback blog image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/6d06b6e1-97ba-4ea2-a8f3-3871d377f7d6/quotescover-PNG-56_large.png) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### On the Record: Bernie Sanders on Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/on-the-record-bernie-sanders-on-universal-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2024-01-10T17:44:37.000Z There’s [an increasing number of people](https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=%40sensanders%20basic%20income&src=typd&ref=scottsantens.com) asking Bernie Sanders if he supports the idea of [**universal basic income**](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com)**.** You may be surprised to learn that he has in fact directly responded to these questions on multiple occasions, once even to a question posed to him myself. This first exchange took place during his [Reddit AMA on December 16, 2013:](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1t174t/i%5Fam%5Fsenator%5Fbernie%5Fsanders%5Fivt%5Fama/ce3aeny?ref=scottsantens.com) > **Scott Santens**: First of all, thank you for taking the time to do this IAMA, Senator Sanders. > > Back in May of this year, you asked the question of *us*, “[What Can We Learn From Denmark?](http://www.bernie.org/news/what-can-we-learn-from-denmark/?ref=scottsantens.com)”, and in that piece you mentioned their basic income guarantee. I’m sure you are also familiar, (though many reading this might not be), that [we did actually pass a basic income guarantee of our own that passed the House but died in the Senate in 1970](http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/guaranteed-income%E2%80%99s-moment-sun?ref=scottsantens.com), back when we as a country thought poverty was systemic and not the fault of individuals. > > Now in 2013, especially within the past few months since [Switzerland made headlines](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/04/us-swiss-pay-idUSBRE9930O620131004?ref=scottsantens.com) with their gathering the necessary signatures required to vote on the implementation there of their own [monthly income for all Swiss citizens regardless of employment](http://idealoblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/were-facing-shift-in-what-work-means.html?ref=scottsantens.com), there have been a flurry of articles, from both the [right](http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-ryan-should-support-a-basic-income-2013-11?ref=scottsantens.com) and the [left](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/10/how-to-cut-the-poverty-rate-in-half-its-easy/280971/?ref=scottsantens.com), discussing the implementation of a truly **unconditional basic income (UBI)** here in the U.S. as well. > > With that said, this is my question for you: > > ***Would you support a bill for the establishment of our own unconditional basic income, and if so, have you even already considered sponsoring such a bill?*** > > It does seem to be one of those rare ideas drawing support from both [conservatives](http://reason.com/archives/2013/11/26/scrap-the-welfare-state-give-people-free?ref=scottsantens.com) and [liberals](http://www.opendemocracy.net/guy-standing/precariat-why-it-needs-deliberative-democracy?ref=scottsantens.com) alike, and being that we stand to lose half of our jobs to automation within 20 years, it seems like [an inevitable choice](http://simulacrum.cc/2013/07/10/three-trends-that-push-us-towards-an-unconditional-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) between technological unemployment causing great suffering or great liberation. > > Thank you for your time, and I would be happy to do whatever you recommend as a means of helping to accomplish such legislation. > > For those interested, there’s an entire subreddit to discuss this idea in greater depth. [/r/BasicIncome](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome?ref=scottsantens.com) His response: > **Bernie Sanders:** “There is no question that when we have today more people living in poverty than at any time in American history and when millions of families are struggling day by day just to keep their heads above water, we need to move aggressively to protect the dignity and well being of the least among us. Tragically, with cuts in food stamps, unemployment compensation and other important benefits, we are moving in exactly the wrong direction. There are a number of ways by which we can make sure that every man, woman and child in our country has at least a minimum standard of living and that is certainly something that must be explored.” This next exchange took place during his next [Reddit AMA on May 7, 2014](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/24zdnn/i%5Fam%5Fsenator%5Fbernie%5Fsanders%5Fivt%5Fama/chc506v?ref=scottsantens.com), when Sanders was asked again about basic income, this time by /u/LoveAllHarmNone: > **Q:** What do you think of a Basic Income Guarantee if/when unemployment rises due to automation? > > **Bernie Sanders**: I think that as a nation we should be deeply troubled by the fact that we have more people living in poverty today than ever before and that millions of seniors are finding it difficult to survive on about $1,200 a month from Social Security. I think we need to take a very hard look at why real income has gone down for millions of Americans despite a huge increase in productivity. In my view, every American is entitled to at least a minimum standard of living. There are different ways to get to that goal, but that’s the goal that we should strive to reach. A year later, during another [Reddit AMA on May 19, 2015](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/36j690/i%5Fam%5Fsenator%5Fbernie%5Fsanders%5Fdemocratic%5Fcandidate/creelfw?ref=scottsantens.com), Sanders was once again asked about universal basic income, this time by /u/Stack0verf10w. > **Q:** Hello Senator Sanders, what is your stance on Universal Basic Income(UBI)? If in favor how do you see the United States progressing towards realizing UBI? If against, what alternatives come to your mind for combating rising inequality and poverty in the United States? > > **Bernie Sanders:** So long as you have Republicans in control of the House and the Senate, and so long as you have a Congress dominated by big money, I can guarantee you that the discussion about universal basic income is going to go nowhere in a hurry. But, if we can develop a strong grassroots movement which says that every man, woman and child in this country is entitled to a minimum standard of living — is entitled to health care, is entitled to education, is entitled to housing — then we can succeed. We are living in the richest country in the history of the world, yet we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country and millions of people are struggling to put food on the table. It is my absolute conviction that everyone in this country deserves a minimum standard of living and we’ve got to go forward in the fight to make that happen. In perhaps the most visible of all occurrences, [Ezra Klein during his Vox Conversation with Bernie Sanders](http://www.vox.com/2015/7/28/9014491/bernie-sanders-vox-conversation?ref=scottsantens.com), chose to ask the basic income question as his final question. > **Ezra Klein:** Let me end on a question about a policy that is getting, seems to be, some momentum but it’s not often talked about in Washington, which is a universal basic income. You’ve begun to have people go back to both Milton Friedman and Martin Luther King Jr., saying we should really have a fundamentally guaranteed standard of living in this country. > > **Bernie Sanders:** I am absolutely sympathetic to that approach. That’s why I’m fighting for a $15 minimum wage, why I’m fighting to make sure that everybody in this country gets the nutrition they need, why I’m fighting to expand Social Security benefits and not cut them, making sure that every kid in this country regardless of income can go to college. That’s what a civilized nation does. > > Here’s the point. This is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, but nobody in America knows it because their standard of living is going down and almost all of the new wealth is going to the top 1 percent. That is an issue that we have to deal with. > > In the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, the top one-tenth of 1 percent should not own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. Everybody in this country should in fact have at least a minimum and dignified standard of living. All right? Sanders’ interview with Vox is also not the only time he has been asked the BIG question on video. On October 10, 2014, this occurrence was recorded at the University of New Hampshire: > **Question:** Do you support a Universal Basic Income for all US residents and why? > > **Bernie Sanders:** I think the goal to deal with this, as I’ve been saying tonight, is to make sure that we eliminate poverty in America. If we have wages for people — living wages that sustain a family, there are various ways to do it. So I mean — different ways to reach that goal. But if the goal is that in America everybody should have at least a modest standard of living — with health care, with educational opportunity,the answer is absolutely yes. **UPDATE: May 31, 2017:** Berlin, Germany > **Question:** You support minimum wage for all Americans, do you also support a UBI, Universal Basic Income? > > **Bernie Sanders:** I do, but that is not where we are. I think that is a very correct idea. In other words, what that essentially says is that no family — I think Finland is beginning to move in that direction, right? I absolutely support that, but right now where we are, I mean that’s kind of a step too far right now for the United States. **UPDATE: A Town Hall in Michigan, 2017** > **Question(paraphrased):** I’m working on technologies for autonomous vehicles. What can be done so that these new technologies don’t hurt so many people? > > **Bernie Sanders:** Nobody knows what the impacts of robots and automation will be, but it’s clear we’re seeing it already. There used to be in Detroit and all over this country where you had automobile manufacturing, they’re now producing more cars with fewer workers and that trend will only continue. In terms of transportation, we have millions of people today who make their living by driving a truck or taxi or using a car. The day will come when we have driverless trucks and cars. What does that do to the millions of people earning their living now? I think the fundamental issue that has to be dealt with is that **technology is not a bad thing in itself. But technology cannot simply be used by the owners of the technology, it’s got to be used to benefit all of our people**. So if we replace a dangerous job with a machine, that’s a good thing. That doesn’t mean you simply displace the worker and throw him or her out on the street, and **that raises the question of basic income for everybody** and so forth. It is an issue that has not gotten the attention it deserves, but it’s hovering in front of us and we have to deal with it. **UPDATE: April 7, 2019 (Malcolm, Iowa)** > **Audience member:** “I know you’ve expressed support for universal basic income in the past in your interviews, but there’s this guy Andrew Yang who wants to give everybody a thousand bucks a month with a VAT tax, and I think to win the Democratic primary, you’ve gotta do that.” > > **Bernie Sanders:** Nah. I’ve got a better idea. > > **Audience member:** You won’t do it? > > **Bernie Sanders:** Nope. Sorry you came all the way from Alabama. Here’s a better idea. I understand that idea. I have a better idea, and the better idea I think is that in a nation in which there is so much work to be done, just think about it. You’ve got an infrastructure which is crumbling. We can put millions of people to work doing that. Transforming our energy system in terms of weatherizing homes all over this country, building a more efficient transportation system. Putting more money into wind and solar and other sustainable technologies. We can create millions of jobs doing that. Think about daycare. You want a world class child care center? You need well-educated, well-trained, well-paid child care workers. We need many of them. We need more doctors in rural areas and in urban areas. We need more nurses. We have a dental crisis all over this country. We need to train dentists and get them out there. We need more social workers. You want to reform our criminal justice system? You’re going to need people to start working with prisoners. You want kids not dropping out of high school? You’re going to need mentors working with them. > > There is an enormous amount of work to be done and what we believe in is guaranteeing a job in this country to anybody who is prepared to work. I think that’s the better approach. ## Update: August 27, 2019 (Interview with The Hill’s Krystal Ball) > **Krystal Ball:** Why is a Federal Jobs Guarantee better than a Universal Basic Income? > > **Bernie Sanders:** I will tell you why. A simple reason. I think most people want to work. They want to be a productive member of society. I think that’s a deeply ingrained feeling people have. They don’t want to sit on the side. Yes of course, getting a guaranteed income is better than having nothing and sleeping out on the street. That’s for sure. But I think people want to be part of our humanity, to be truthful, and how we feel good about ourselves is when we are productive members of our society. We’re contributing something. And I think people feel that very strongly. I think there is more than enough work to be done in so many areas, and our job is to say, “If you’re able to work, we have a job for you.” Because the truth is we have so much work to do to rebuild this country in so many ways. ## Concluding Remarks The above responses by Bernie Sanders to being asked about the idea of universal basic income are all those of which I know, though undoubtedly there are more. If you know of one you’d like to see added here, [please let me know](mailto:scott@scottsantens.com) so I can add it. Also, I think it would be a good strategy to continue asking Bernie Sanders about basic income as frequently as possible. The more he is asked, the more support for the idea he will see, and undoubtedly the more credence he will lend to the idea having more political potential than he may currently think. Being that he appears to now think [a job guarantee is a superior alternative to a basic income guarantee](http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/16/basic-income-not-basic-jobs-against-hijacking-utopia/?ref=scottsantens.com), I believe everyone should now begin asking him **why he believes universal basic income should not exist underneath a job guarantee** so as to prevent guaranteed jobs from devolving into [workfare](https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2017/06/14/from-welfare-to-workfare-rich-barlow?ref=scottsantens.com), aka welfare with a work requirement, aka the return of [Victorian Workhouses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workhouse?ref=scottsantens.com). JG and UBI are of course not mutually exclusive. So [why not support both](https://medium.com/basic-income/kanoodling-with-the-enemy-2c01eb113884?ref=scottsantens.com)? In other words, the question to ask now is **why does Bernie Sanders believe that money to live free of poverty should be withheld from people on the condition they work to obtain it**? --- ***Special thanks to Steven Grimm, Arjun Banker, Larry Cohen, Aaron Marcus-Kubitza, Andrew Stern, Topher Hunt, Keith Davis, Chris Smothers, Richard Just, Albert Wenger, Mark Witham, Kian Alavi, Cameron Ottens, Susanne Berg, Gerald Huff, Michiel Dral, Louise Whitmore, Dan O’Sullivan, Harish Venkatesan, John David Hodge, Gary Aranovich, Kai Wong, Michael Honey, Katie Doemland, Stuart Matthews, Natalie Foster, Chris McCoy, David Ihnen, Joe Ballou, Jack Wagner, Joe Esposito, Jan Smole, Danielle Texeira, Paul Wicks, Masud Shah, Elizabeth Balcar, Jeff Schulman, Olli Niinimäki, Casey Young, Thomas Welsh, Amy Shaffer, Kris Roadruck, Lee Irving, Rise & Shine PAC, Kirk Israel, Luke Sampson, Robert Solovay, Dave Shelton, Bryan Herdliska, Stephane Boisvert, Andrew Henderson, Erhan Altay, Johan Grahn, Tony DeStefano, Shane Gordon, Paolo Narciso, Martin Jordo, Victor Lau, Robert F. Greene, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** [*Would you like to see your name here too?*](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Basic Income Observations Log: Entry One URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-observations-log-entry-one-security/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T23:23:49.000Z If you're reading this as a subscriber to my blog or as one of my followers on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/2noame?ref=scottsantens.com) or [Facebook](https://facebook.com/scottsantens), you likely already know this, but if you're new to my writing, you may not yet know that [I have a crowdfunded basic income through Patreon](http://www.scottsantens.com/press-release-american-achieves-first-crowdfunded-monthly-basic-income). Beginning my campaign for $1,000 per month in late 2014, I reached that goal at the end of 2015, and so this year, at the beginning of every month, I will start the month with $1,000 per month, guaranteed, through the patronage of around [150 supporters on Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) who incredibly make it possible. So, what's it like to have a basic income? How are things different? What is there to learn? I intend to publish an ongoing series of these observations, made through the eyes of a life being lived with basic income. This is the first entry in my *"Basic Income Observations Log,"* and it's about the first thing I learned so far, which was last year, when I was actually only a few months into my campaign: **security**. ![Silvrback blog image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/3aaade16-a520-41a9-bed0-a8cfd280a022/4762384399_f126047d2b_b_large.jpg) Security is one of those words that we all know, but I think few of us fully understand, because I for one didn't understand it the way I do now until I actually experienced it in a new way. Here's the thing. We all have a minimum basic income guarantee right now. It is a guarantee of $0\. No one is guaranteed anything more than nothing. So we all know what insecurity feels like. We can get a job and reduce that feeling of insecurity, but even when we get a job, that feeling of insecurity is still there. At any moment, we could get fired. At any moment, our employer could go out of business, or downsize, or outsource. Any number of things could happen that could result in our incomes falling back down to a minimum of $0\. That possibility is omnipresent. Oh sure, we've developed some things we like to call ["safety nets"](https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e?ref=scottsantens.com) here in the US, where if you have a job and something happens, maybe you'll get disability money if you're able to fill out the forms and pass the tests, of which many who are disabled don't, so don't count on that. Maybe you can get unemployment money, if you fill out the right forms and pass the tests, of which many who are unemployed don't. And if you do get it, that is temporary, so don't count on that for too long. Maybe you can get [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (welfare)](http://www.scottsantens.com/tanf-is-terrible), or [Supplementary Nutrition Assistance (food stamps)](http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe50s/money%5F09.html?ref=scottsantens.com), if you fill out the right forms and pass the tests, of which many who are in need don't. And if you do get it, these both too are temporary and also insufficient, so don't count on them for too long either, or at all for that matter given how small they are, and [who's making the decisions](http://www.basicincomeaction.org/the%5Fbig%5Fsneaky%5Fpoverty%5Fforum?ref=scottsantens.com). So yeah, basically, don't count on our safety nets for a feeling of security, because that's not what they are there for. There is one program intended for actual security, and it's called Social Security. The way it's calculated is a little messed up, where what you get for the rest of your life all depends not only on how much you earned up till qualifying, but on [how long you can wait to start receiving it](http://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/articles/2010/08/09/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-social-security?ref=scottsantens.com). But once you're on it, it is a source of income you can count on as an American, until the day you die. And unlike the way other programs work, you are allowed to earn anything you want on top of it, without losing your monthly Social Security checks. Essentially, we already have basic income in the US, it's just means-tested based on age, and the amount varies based on lifetime earnings. But for a significant number of Americans, seniors, [they actually do know what it's like](http://www.scottsantens.com/wont-basic-income-give-too-much-power-to-whomever-distributes-it) to be able to count on a monthly minimum income guarantee that is greater than $0\. In fact, for many it is close to $1,000 per month. *So what have I learned so far as a non-senior with basic income security?* ### Observation One As a 38-year-old American who is experiencing a minimum income guarantee of $1,000 per month decades before I'm "supposed to", I can tell you that income security is a **big** deal. It's a bigger deal than I think anyone without it fully realizes. And the thing is, it doesn't even need to be above the poverty level to feel. It just needs to be greater than $0, and basically enough to afford not to starve. I felt more secure earning only $250 per month, because that amount is enough to afford groceries, or pay half my rent. Believe me, it's a load off your mind to know there is a smaller gap you need to cover through paid labor to meet your most basic needs. Starting every month with a minimum of $250 is definitely better than starting every month with $0\. It is not nothing. It is a small amount, and not what I'd call a basic income, but it provides a feeling of increased security, and that *feeling* is not small at all. Since having achieved my $1,000 per month new minimum income floor, I have to say, there is definitely a difference between $1,000 and $500 and $250, but learning that something as seemingly insufficient as $250 still made a difference in my feeling greater security, I consider a notable lesson I've learned thus far. And I think it's something people discount when they worry that [$1,000 per month may be too low of an amount](http://www.scottsantens.com/is-it-actually-possible-to-live-on-a-basic-income-of-12000-per-year-in-the-united-states), or that anything lower than that amount would be pointless. ### Observation Two There's another lesson I've learned as well in regards to security, that was an entirely unexpected lesson in how what I have is both like and unlike basic income. What I have is like a basic income, in that I can count on it at the beginning of every month regardless of paid work, and its size is sufficient to lift me above [the federal poverty line](http://familiesusa.org/product/federal-poverty-guidelines?ref=scottsantens.com), but it is unlike a basic income in that it relies on about 150 people as I write this, whereas a basic income would be a legal right backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. Say what you want about that, but it doesn't change that such backing is considered the most secure in the world. So unlike a government-backed basic income, it is possible for me to lose my crowdfunded basic income, if everyone stops being a patron. However, that same reason is why I feel more security than anyone with a normal paycheck, and I consider this a very interesting observation. For anyone with a normal job, they can be fired by one person. As a result, their income can fall from $1,000/mo to $0/mo. For me, I would have to be "fired" by 150 people to fall from $1,000/mo to $0/mo. If "fired" by one person, I can fall from $1,000/mo to $990/mo. It is this decentralization of income that creates for me a greater sense of security that is far greater than a standard full-time job situation, but still less than the security a US government provided basic income would provide. It is this observation that prompted me to create a new milestone on Patreon, where my new goal is not to gain a larger income, (anything over $1,000 will still be pledged to others making the same pledge) but to instead create a more widely distributed income floor. If I were to reach the point of being supported by 1,000 patrons, then I think that would provide a sense of security much closer to that of a true basic income. For if I have 1,000 people all pledging $1/mo, then the loss of 1 person is $1, not like now, where the loss of one person could immediately drop me back down to $900/mo. I now think creating a greater sense of security is key to better duplicating the effects of a basic income, so that's my new goal on Patreon - **greater security**. ### Observation Three One other observation I've made in regards to security is the effect it has on family. When you are part of a household, increased security of one spills over onto other members of the household. Because I have a basic income, my girlfriend even feels greater security. She has a great job, and she loves it, but again, a job can always be lost, so she worries about what can happen if that were to happen. That's natural. We all worry about what can happen, however unlikely. But now because I have a basic income, even though she doesn't, the worst case scenario isn't as scary. It's a notable reduction of stress. And therefore, the security of a basic income has household-spanning effects. I would argue there's even evidence for this, thanks to $4,000 per year casino dividends in North Carolina that resulted in incredible outcomes for the kids. > They know, based on the interviews with parents, that the relationship between spouses tended to improve as a result. They also know that the relationship between the parents and their children tended to improve. And they know that parents tended to drink less alcohol. "There is a lot of literature that shows in order to change outcomes among children you are best off treating the parents first," said Simeonova. "And these are really clear changes in the parents." There's also the question of stress, which the extra money helps relieve—even if only a little. While the added income wasn't enough to allow parents to quit their jobs, it's a base level that helped with rent and food and other basic expenses. That, Akee said, is powerful enough itself. "We know that the thing poor couples fight about the most is money," he said. "Off the bat, this means a more harmonious family environment." Definitely read [the full article in the Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/08/the-remarkable-ways-a-little-money-can-change-a-childs-personality-for-life/?ref=scottsantens.com), but the takeaway is that the stress in households, that exists largely due to a lack of income security, has profoundly negative effects, and when that stress is reduced through greater income security, it has profoundly positive effects, especially on young children. Basically, a feeling of security is hugely important, and most of us are so used to not having any, that we entirely underestimate the transformative effects that basic income will have on any society that adopts it as policy. Guaranteeing a minimum amount of income security for every member of a society, through a universal basic income sufficient to meet basic needs, will create the conditions for a society to truly flourish. Of that, I have no doubt. And it will be in large part, due to the mass achievement of one word - **security.** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Robin Hoodwinked: How Billion Dollar Powerballs Reflect 21st Century Inequality URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/robin-hoodwinked-how-billion-dollar-powerballs-reflect-21st-century-inequality-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T19:58:23.000Z ## State lotteries take from the poor to give to the rich, but we have options and there is a game-changing alternative - basic income Back in 2015, I drove past the same sign I drive past daily, but looked at it with fresh eyes. It was a Powerball sign and it suddenly struck me how it was over a quarter of a **billion** dollars, and how that massive amount so perfectly fit the economy of the US, where a few really big winners are made, and everyone else loses year after year after year. I wondered when that sign would need a fourth digit. I apparently didn’t have to wonder for that long... Here in 2016, we just experienced a lottery frenzy thanks to a [world record-breaking Powerball jackpot of **$1.6 billion**](http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/01/11/powerball-jackpot-biggest-in-history-world-lottery-official-says.html?ref=scottsantens.com), where there existed the distinct possibility one lucky winner could walk away having beaten odds of **1 in 292 million**, to win a lump sum payout of [**$983.5 million**](http://abcnews.go.com/US/powerball-lottery-drawing-record-15b-jackpot-tonight/story?id=36275166&ref=scottsantens.com). FYI, [you are 8 times more likely to die in a car accident driving one mile to purchase your lotto ticket, than to beat those odds](http://www.durangobill.com/MegaMillionsOdds.html?ref=scottsantens.com). But if you did win, after federal and state taxes, you stood to be vaulted immediately halfway to the three comma club. Is this kind of instant and massive windfall of wealth a perfect example of an alive and well American Dream? Or is it a troubling reminder of an increasingly maldistributed nation where just 1% of the population owns more of the wealth than 92% of Americans think would be ideal for the entire top 20% to own, and a world where [1% now owns more than the other 99% combined](http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35339475?ref=scottsantens.com)? Answering such a question will involve looking more closely at lotteries. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*bPKGWmZCwr0cXDS_pMIsfg.jpeg) US Inequality: What it is, what we guess, and what we want Prepare to get angry as we dive into the economics and politics of state lotteries that are being used as an incredibly regressive invisible tax, then take some deep breaths by looking at alternative lottery designs in other countries and what they have to teach us, before finding new hope in a possibility that could change the game entirely - universal basic income. ## A Regressive Problem Lotteries were not always so popular here in the US. In fact, thanks to my own state of Louisiana and its historic penchant for massive corruption, they went by the wayside in the late 1800s and didn’t return until the 1960s when New Hampshire rediscovered them, before then booming in the 1980s. It turns out lotteries are extremely alluring to US legislators, especially post-Reagan when lawmakers found themselves starved for new sources of revenue. State lotteries are so alluring because they provide a way for governments to raise hundreds of millions of dollars without raising the usual taxes. On top of this, once one state does it, bordering states must follow, or lose out on the revenue of their residents crossing borders to buy tickets in other states. And so, state lotteries spread like wildfire at the end of the 20th century to all but four of the contiguous United States. On its face, this can sound pretty great. It did to me at first. What a wonderful idea to have what is effectively a voluntary tax, right? A problem reveals itself however when the statistics are put under scrutiny, and it turns out that poor and minorities are far more likely to be frequent purchasers. Here we are arguing over flat taxes being good or bad where everyone pays the same percentage, and it turns out lotteries are an invisible tax that are the exact opposite of a progressive tax and far more regressive than a flat tax. There is no getting around the fact that the inordinate share of the burden of state revenue from lotteries falls squarely on those at the bottom. This is how it actually breaks down, and it should be somewhat unsettling: ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/908/1*H4YKT8dIXHmAuI-yd-__TA.png) Source: 1991 Detroit Metropolitan Area Public Policy Survey The above Detroit study found their state lottery to be an additional **1.3% tax** on those earning **under $10,000** while only being a **0.18% tax** on those earning **over $70,000**. This is despite both demographics spending an identical $139 annually in 1991, because again, that amount of money is a larger chunk from smaller wallets. In South Dakota, the average per person spent on lottery tickets is [$755](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/lotteries-americas-70-billion-shame/392870/?ref=scottsantens.com), which is a whopping **6.4%** of a federal poverty level income of $11,770 while being 1.8% of a [$43,000](http://bber.unm.edu/econ/us-pci.htm?ref=scottsantens.com) US per capita income. Admittedly all this kind of data varies by state and city, but if we were to extrapolate these numbers as an average to the rest of the US, the poor would be spending almost 10 times as much of their income than the rich in state lotteries.Is this why they’re poor? Or is it because they’re poor? The simple fact is that lotteries represent a way out of poverty, and those who run lotteries [market them most heavily in poorer neighborhoods](http://stoppredatorygambling.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/The-State-Sponsored-Lottery1.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), because they damn well know it. > “Lotteries represent a way out of poverty, and those who run lotteries market them most heavily in poorer neighborhoods, because they damn well know it.” ## How States Use the Money This is where you may be thinking that the revenue earned by states is actually invested in government services which then disproportionately benefit the poor, and to a degree, you’d be right. But not as right as you would likely hope. Here’s the three-fold rub: **First:** If we’re going to fund public services, shouldn’t we do it more efficiently than applying a tax and only using less than half of that tax revenue? [About 30–50% of lottery revenue goes to government](http://taxfoundation.org/blog/how-much-implicit-tax-revenue-did-lotteries-raise-fy2010?ref=scottsantens.com) (before federal taxes), which means 50–70% of everything spent is going to the winners, and to the costs of lottery administration, not to public services. It’s such an inefficient way of raising government revenue that more revenue could be raised by simply increasing sales tax [**by just 1%**](http://chrestomathy.cofc.edu/documents/vol2/tomlinson.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). **Second:** Lottery revenue once raised, problematically [tends to replace instead of add to existing revenue](http://fortune.com/2016/01/13/where-the-money-from-the-1-5-billion-powerball-lottery-goes/?ref=scottsantens.com). > Patrick Pierce, a political science professor at St. Mary College, has studied lotteries and how states spend the revenue lotteries generate. He found that education spending does jump in the first year after a state adopts a lottery system. But after that, the pace of education spending tends to slow. **By the eighth year, education spending is actually lower than it likely would have been if the lotto had not been adopted**. Pierce says the money that would have gone to school spending is diverted elsewhere or used for voter-friendly tax cuts. Most states do indeed spend the bulk of their lottery revenue on education, but if a school district is for example receiving $2 million, and they get $1 million in new lottery money, instead of ending up with $3 million and better education, states tend to shift $1 million in tax revenue away from that district elsewhere, or even cut it entirely by reducing taxes. This is where the comparison to a regressive tax really becomes clear. It’s because states are using lottery revenue to avoid raising taxes, even though it’s functioning just as a tax would, but in a hugely inefficient and regressive manner. Some states are even surprisingly blatant in this. [In Wisconsin, 99% of its lotto revenue goes to lower property taxes](http://fortune.com/2016/01/13/where-the-money-from-the-1-5-billion-powerball-lottery-goes/?ref=scottsantens.com). Who tends to own the most property? Not those with low incomes. **Third:** Even in the best possible circumstances, in states considered to be shining examples of how to use lottery revenue to fund educations to provide greater opportunity, the outcomes disproportionately assist in the educational successes of the rich and middle classes. Our intent may be to help those with lower incomes by providing scholarships, but because [recipients of these scholarships end up being firstly, primarily white, and secondly children of those who don’t or rarely buy lottery tickets](http://chrestomathy.cofc.edu/documents/vol2/tomlinson.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), the actual end result is not what we intend. What is the end result? Here’s a study that attempted to reveal the answer: ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/904/1*LsmGLJctKm-c50k56e73wA.png) Where spending is what is spent on lottery tickets, and benefits are the services provided by government in return**,** despite there being a net benefit for all, **there is only a net benefit for whites. There is a greater net *loss* for non-whites.** Furthermore, **there is a net benefit for all those earning more than $50,000 per year, but a net *loss* for all those earning less than $25,000.** Imagine if a tax like this was put on a ballot and you got the option of voting for said tax. It would promise to hit the bottom more than the top, and use that revenue to benefit the top more than the bottom. **How would *you* vote?** The uncomfortable truth is that state lotteries are doing more to amplify and exacerbate our growing inequality than they are to alleviate it. States use lottery funds to primarily benefit the rich, white, and middle classes. Thus, in many ways lotteries function as a blatant reversal of Robin Hood’s motto: they systematically take from the poor and give to the rich. > “In many ways lotteries function as a blatant reversal of Robin Hood’s motto: they systematically take from the poor and give to the rich.” ## Alternative Solutions Let’s face it. Americans love games of chance. We love beating the odds and getting rich. It’s like the American Gold Rush never died. It’s seemingly in our blood. But are there ways of distributing the revenue that could have better outcomes than giant windfall jackpots? And do such alternative outcomes potentially have something important to teach us about human behavior? Imagine instead, a form of lottery where you have a monthly subscription. Every month, you pay into the pot. When the winning number is drawn, it does not go to one person, but to an entire neighborhood. If your neighbor wins, you win too. Everyone around you wins who has subscribed to play. This model exists and it’s called the [People’s Postcode Lottery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's%5FPostcode%5FLottery?ref=scottsantens.com). It was born in The Netherlands in 1989\. Instead of one person walking away with $500 million dollars, up to around [a hundred households](http://www.bph-postcodes.co.uk/guidetopc.cgi?ref=scottsantens.com) in one community can walk away together with $50,000 dollars each. The revenue not distributed to winners goes into a trust fund. Again, it would usually be spent on government services of some kind, but in the case of the Dutch PCL, it goes to funding charities and community projects. What if instead, that fund was setup in the same way [the Alaska Permanent Fund](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/only-state-free-money-alaska?ref=scottsantens.com) is setup? Started in 1982, [the APF is now worth $50 billion](http://www.apfc.org/home/Content/home/index.cfm?ref=scottsantens.com) after 34 years. **In 2014 alone, the US spent** [**$70 billion on state lotteries**](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/lotteries-americas-70-billion-shame/392870/?ref=scottsantens.com). Furthermore, last year the APF paid a dividend like they do every year, of $2,072 to every resident of Alaska, man, woman, and child with their $50B trust fund. What if we did the same thing by creating lottery dividends? ([*We already have casino dividends*](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/08/the-remarkable-ways-a-little-money-can-change-a-childs-personality-for-life/?ref=scottsantens.com)) Well, for one, that would incentivize everyone in the state to buy monthly subscriptions, as the more who subscribed the larger the fund would grow, and in addition, the better their chances would be for their neighborhood to win. Through the dividends, they’d always win something, and through the lottery, they’d always have a chance of winning much more on top of it. Secondly, because everyone would get the same dividend, the regressivity could be negated. If you’re poor and spend $100 on tickets, but get a $100 dividend, you effectively just got taxed 0%. Finally, because it was a fund that always grew, and that fund was invested in the market, it would grow even more over time paralleling productivity growth in the national economy. People would get more money as GDP grew. So what could we learn from such a lottery system aside from [what we’ve already learned from Alaska](http://www.iser.uaa.alaska.edu/Publications/bien%5Fxiii%5Fak%5Fpfd%5Flessons.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)? Well, fortunately for us, there’s [a study that was done on winners of the Dutch PCL](http://members.ziggo.nl/peterkooreman/pcl.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), who on average won around $18,000\. Since a common concern is how people spend free cash like this, how did they end up spending it? > Consistent with a simple life-cycle model of consumption, we do not detect any effect of winning the postcode lottery on most components of winning households’ expenditures, including food at home, transportation, and total monthly outlays. However, we do find effects on car expenditures and other durable expenditures of winners… We also find that participants in winning codes were 4.5 times as likely to initiate major exterior home renovations during this period and spent over €500 more on noncar durables than participants in nonwinning codes. In other words, lottery winners didn’t really alter their behavior all that much, except for basically buying new cars, new washer/dryers, and investing in home improvements. They did not stop working. They did not burn their money on [drugs and alcohol](http://blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluations/do-poor-waste-transfers-booze-and-cigarettes-no?ref=scottsantens.com). They essentially treated their winnings like ordinary raises, and went about their lives as normal, driving slightly nicer looking cars, to slightly nicer looking homes. However, there were some truly fascinating effects observed on their *neighbors*. > Turning to social effects, we detect statistically significant effects of lottery prizes on the car consumption of neighbors of winners. For example, having an immediate neighbor win the PCL raises the probability that a household will buy a car in the next six months by close to 7 percentage points... Relative to the modest effects of the lottery prizes on the consumption choices of winning households, **these effects on neighbors are large**. Thus a surprising effect was that nearby neighbors who didn’t win anything, were far more likely to buy a new car, simply because they lived sufficiently close to a lottery winner. This matches a “Keeping Up With the Joneses” hypothesis, and is described by the study’s authors as “*encouraging news for fiscal policies such as unexpected tax rebates designed to stimulate consumer spending in developed economies.*” Essentially, this is neat evidence of social multiplier effects, where a boost in income doesn’t just increase consumption of durables among those receiving the boost, but also among those nearby who don’t receive a boost but spend more anyway to try to keep up. These multi-thousandaire instead of multi-millionaire winnings may sound small, but they have [real economic multiplier effects](https://medium.com/basic-income/trickle-down-economics-must-die-long-live-grow-up-economics-5b8334a0db76?ref=scottsantens.com). Consumers consume a bit more, and inspire fellow consumers to consume a bit more too. But that’s only the economics. What are some of the emotional impacts described by winning households of such seemingly small amounts? Here are [some quotes from actual PCL winners in the UK](http://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/61-Grimsby-residents-celebrate-People-s-Postcode/story-21308436-detail/story.html?ref=scottsantens.com) and the amounts they won: Katie B. **(£8,162)**: *“It’s just astonishing. I burst out crying because it’s a life-changing amount of money for us.”* Mark B. **(£20,407)**: *“I couldn’t believe it. It’s a life-changing amount of money.”* Lisa Q. **(£24,489)**: *“As a single mum this is a life-changing amount of money. I was just excited that I can buy a new phone for the first time in 20 years!”* These are not million dollar jackpots. They are equivalent to small annual salaries, and they are still described as “**life-changing amounts of money**.” Apparently, changing lives does not require millions of dollars. It merely requires meeting the [most basic needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's%5Fhierarchy%5Fof%5Fneeds?ref=scottsantens.com) of life, so as to provide a sense of security. > “Changing lives does not require millions of dollars. It merely requires meeting the most basic needs of life.” ## Winning for Life What about wins of a very basic size, but given on a regular basis, forever? That kind exists too, with its own lessons to teach us, and one such lottery is called “Win for Life” in Belgium, and it provides around €1,000 every month for as long as the winner is alive to receive it. Here is an interview with one such winner: After winning the WFL lottery, Anja became self-employed and now works more than ever, but it doesn’t feel like work to her because she enjoys it so much. She doesn’t feel the kind of pressure she once felt. If she loses her job, it’s not the end of the world. She’d also have never started her business otherwise, out of fear of failure and even bankruptcy. Her income security increased the amount of risk she felt comfortable taking, and the result was entrepreneurship. The case of Anja is just one story and of course results may vary, but there actually is some data that’s been gathered on other W4L recipients like her, in the form of [a fascinating study of 82 winners](http://www.basicincome.org/bien/pdf/2004MarxPeeters.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Here are some of the highlights: - **Most singles worked both before and after winning.** - **Most winners in steady relationships did not change their working behavior. Only 7 out of the 45 cases who were working before W4L and 2 out of 21 who were not working changed their behavior.** - **Two winners decided to work less. Of these two, one decided to work 27 instead of 38 hours a week, the other 24 hours instead of 32.** - **Of the 4 winners who were unemployed at the time, one started working after winning. The 3 remaining winners that stayed unemployed after winning were all women with children, 2 of whom explicitly related their staying at home to having time to raise their kids.** These results are actually very similar to the results observed in both the [American Income Maintenance Experiments](http://www.widerquist.com/karl/Articles--scholarly/Failure2communicate.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) and the [Canadian Mincome Experiment](http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20%282%29.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) performed in the 1970s, where people given a small income by the government separate from work mostly all continued working as they were before. The only real work disincentive effect was slight and seen in new mothers deciding to spend a bit more time parenting at home, and students returning to school, which can both readily be argued ([just as Judith Shulevitz did recently in The New York Times](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/opinion/sunday/payback-time-for-women.html?ref=scottsantens.com)) as not a work disincentive at all, but instead a shift in work from paid to unpaid. If we add all of this up, the Dutch Postcode Lottery, the Belgian Win for Life lottery, and both the economic and psychological benefits of winning smaller amounts of money on a perpetual basis, it all seems to draw a picture of a more ideal lottery system that is entirely antithetical to the Powerball system we have now in the US, where one person can walk away with many millions of dollars. Contrary to such a distributional model that mirrors our growing inequality where the system benefits a few, alternative model lottery findings instead point to a distributional model that actually mirrors the idea of a [**universal basic income**](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/opinion/sunday/payback-time-for-women.html?ref=scottsantens.com), where the system benefits the many by providing entire communities small amounts of money, paid individually and regularly, for life. ## Universal Basic Income Pilot, USA [Now discussed all over the world](http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/20/free-money-for-everyone-whats-the-world-coming-to/?ref=scottsantens.com), in more and more countries, with ever increasing frequency, **universal basic income** (the idea of everyone winning for life without even purchasing a ticket), though backed by a lot of supporting evidence, is still mostly theoretical, as described by [Federico Pistono](http://federicopistono.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) at TEDx. Yes, there have been pilot projects done for a year or two at a time covering [1,000 people in Namibia](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) and [6,000 in India](http://www.guystanding.com/files/documents/Basic%5FIncome%5FPilots%5Fin%5FIndia%5Fnote%5Ffor%5Finaugural.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), but as critics are fond of pointing out, neither of those are the United States. Yes, there have been experiments done with something similar to a universal basic income in the United States, but those experiments took place decades ago, again for a matter of years, and again for just [a population of thousands](https://aspe.hhs.gov/report/overview-final-report-seattle-denver-income-maintenance-experiment?ref=scottsantens.com). Yes, there has existed [the annual Alaska dividend](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/only-state-free-money-alaska?ref=scottsantens.com) since 1982, paying everyone every year universally, but it’s currently only about 1/6th of a basic income. Yes, [Finland is planning an experiment to study universal basic income](http://www.vox.com/2015/12/8/9872554/finland-basic-income-experiment?ref=scottsantens.com), by testing it in various ways using around 100,000 people for two years, but that is again not the United States, and even though the sample size will be the largest ever, the duration is still short and the location is Europe. Something is missing… **A decade long, region-wide, privately-funded universal basic income experiment done in the United States.** ## What? How? The Powerball jackpot we just witnessed had a lump sum payoff amount of $983 million. Let’s not worry about the federal taxes owed for a moment and consider what else could be done with such an amount. That’s enough to fully saturate [a micropolitan area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%5Fof%5Fmicropolitan%5Fstatistical%5Fareas?ref=scottsantens.com) of almost 10,000 people with $1,000 every month, ([and $300 for all under 18](http://www.scottsantens.com/why-should-adults-with-kids-get-more-basic-income-child-allowances)) unconditionally, for 10 years. If we were to do that, and compare it to a similar micropolitan area as an appropriate control group, it would be an experiment with a larger sample size than either the Namibia or India experiments. It would be an experiment within the US, and thus not one to hand wave away as being nonapplicable to the US. And it would be powerfully longitudinal in length, allowing us to evaluate [long-term effects over the course of a decade](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/08/the-remarkable-ways-a-little-money-can-change-a-childs-personality-for-life/?ref=scottsantens.com). So where could we come up with the $1 billion in funds to do this? Consider a hybrid between Powerball, the Postcode Lottery, and Win for Life. What if we created a new multi-state lottery in the US, where entire neighborhoods of players win $1,000 per month, for life, and the revenue not spent on winnings went into a BIG pot. Then upon reaching $1 billion, the universal basic income pilot would begin in a suitable geographic area. Further revenue could go towards another pilot or simply Alaskan-style state dividends. This kind of setup could provide more data on basic incomes from day one by being given in identical amounts all over the country, and to entire neighborhoods. Winners would immediately know [what it’s like to feel basic security](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-germany-basic-income-20151227-story.html?ref=scottsantens.com) for the rest of their lives, and non-winners would still know their money is going to a full-blown basic income experiment that would advance the date of the receipt of their own unconditional basic incomes once the idea had reached a critical mass in the minds of the voting public. And once everyone has a basic income, [no one need buy a lottery ticket out of desperation](http://blog.eros.com/universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) ever again, and [inequality will be returned to productive levels](http://www.scottsantens.com/does-basic-income-reduce-income-inequality-gini). Think about it. **This wouldn’t be Powerball. It would be** ***Empowerball***. How many people are purchasing lottery tickets right now, simply because they don’t have a basic income? How much of this invisible taxation could be avoided by simply providing people the income floor everyone needs for basic security, and funding it in an entirely visible and functionally progressive manner? Instead of invisible regressive taxation like lotteries, [we could use methods like carbon taxation, land value taxation, financial transaction taxation, and even simply the elimination of loopholes and subsidies](http://www.scottsantens.com/reddit-robots-and-resources-why-I-got-into-the-idea-of-basic-income-and-how-we-can-go-about-implementing-it). Taxing poverty as a means of funding a variety of government programs intended to make educational outcomes less unequal to try to fight poverty, instead of just giving everyone the same starting point above the poverty line as [a bipartisan American birthright](http://www.fastcoexist.com/3040832/world-changing-ideas/a-universal-basic-income-is-the-bipartisan-solution-to-poverty-weve-bee?ref=scottsantens.com), makes no sense. [**We can do better**](https://medium.com/basic-income/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a?ref=scottsantens.com), especially in lieu of advancing income-eliminating technology [like self-driving trucks and AI](https://medium.com/basic-income/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us-like-a-human-driven-truck-b8507d9c5961?ref=scottsantens.com). ## Robin Hoodwinked The way state lotteries work right now are the exact opposite of any system we would ever as a democratic society actually vote for. It disproportionately takes revenue from the pockets of those with mostly empty pockets, and in turn disproportionately stuffs that revenue into the pockets of those with mostly full and even overflowing pockets. It is a clear reflection of the society we’ve spent decades building, one that serves [as an ongoing engine built for upward redistribution](http://billmoyers.com/2014/01/06/2013-was-a-banner-year-for-the-upward-redistribution-of-americas-wealth/?ref=scottsantens.com). Simply stated, the net result of our state lotteries is a significant exacerbation of our already worsening inequality. In a country where our public officials treat their terms of office as internships for lucrative positions in the private sector, it only makes sense that even Robin Hood himself has now walked through [the revolving door](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving%5Fdoor%5F%28politics%29?ref=scottsantens.com) to apply his skills for the enrichment of the wealthy at the expense of the poor. But this need not continue forever. [The odds may be against us](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-is-impossible), but as every Powerball drawing reminds us, and [our casino-like society](http://works.bepress.com/widerquist/35/?ref=scottsantens.com) pleads we remember, we *can* win. We *can* be lucky. We *can* be the one to beat the odds. So how about it, America? **Are we ready to bet on** [**Basic Income**](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com)**?** Or do we wish to continue incessantly arguing as we are **Robin Hoodwinked**? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*a90atpsHFRyXX6EiIbb_fg.png) **Pictured: The Great American Robbery** Suggested further reading: - [*The Economic Inequalities of State Lotteries by Martin Tomlinson*](http://chrestomathy.cofc.edu/documents/vol2/tomlinson.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) - [*WIN FOR LIFE: What, if anything, happens after the introduction of a Basic Income? by Axel Marx and Hans Peeters*](http://www.basicincome.org/bien/pdf/2004MarxPeeters.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) - [*Can Money Change Who We Are? Estimating the Effect of Unearned Income on Incentive-Enhancing Personality Traits by Nattavudh Powdthavee, Christopher J. Boyce, and Alex M. Wood*](https://www.academia.edu/2675981/Can%5FMoney%5FChange%5FWho%5FWe%5FAre%5FEstimating%5Fthe%5FEffect%5Fof%5FUnearned%5FIncome%5Fon%5FIncentive-enhancing%5FPersonality%5FTraits?ref=scottsantens.com) --- ***Special thanks to Steven Grimm, Arjun Banker, Larry Cohen, Aaron Marcus-Kubitza, Andrew Stern, Topher Hunt, Keith Davis, Chris Smothers, Richard Just, Albert Wenger, Mark Witham, Kian Alavi, Cameron Ottens, Susanne Berg, Gerald Huff, Michiel Dral, Louise Whitmore, Dan O’Sullivan, Harish Venkatesan, John David Hodge, Gary Aranovich, Kai Wong, Michael Honey, Katie Doemland, Stuart Matthews, Natalie Foster, Chris McCoy, David Ihnen, Joe Ballou, Jack Wagner, Joe Esposito, Jan Smole, Danielle Texeira, Paul Wicks, Masud Shah, Elizabeth Balcar, Jeff Schulman, Olli Niinimäki, Casey Young, Thomas Welsh, Amy Shaffer, Kris Roadruck, Lee Irving, Rise & Shine PAC, Kirk Israel, Luke Sampson, Robert Solovay, Dave Shelton, Bryan Herdliska, Stephane Boisvert, Andrew Henderson, Erhan Altay, Johan Grahn, Tony DeStefano, Shane Gordon, Paolo Narciso, Martin Jordo, Victor Lau, Robert F. Greene, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** [*Would you like to see your name here too?*](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Who Wants a Free Sample of Basic Income? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/raffling-basic-income-first-germany-then-the-netherlands-and-now-the-us/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T23:27:45.000Z One thing I've learned so far in observing the world increasingly discuss the idea of basic income, is that this discussion, as is true with any discussion, can be like the [Telephone Game](http://www.wikihow.com/Play-the-Telephone-Game?ref=scottsantens.com). A reported fact can be tweeted, blogged, shared, re-reported, re-blogged,re-shared, and suddenly the world is talking like the first person said "waffles are amazing" when they actually said, "I prefer Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk." This happened recently with news out of Finland, where the news of a 2-year long social experiment in the planning stages was transformed into all of Finland already having basic income and already building a starship capable of going 0.5 past lightspeed. Okay, I may be exaggerating a bit on that last detail (Finland is not building the Millennium Falcon), but really, the Finland news got somewhat out of hand to the point Finland itself had to call a timeout and [drop a mic](http://www.kela.fi/web/en/news-archive/-/asset%5Fpublisher/lN08GY2nIrZo/content/contrary-to-reports-basic-income-study-still-at-preliminary-stage?ref=scottsantens.com) to calm the world down a bit by reiterating they are merely planning to experiment to see what works and what doesn't like any intelligent government should be doing. --- *Bonus trivia: The award for best reporting of the Finland news goes to [Dylan Mathews over at Vox](http://www.vox.com/2015/12/8/9872554/finland-basic-income-experiment?ref=scottsantens.com). Also recommended: [this](http://www.demoshelsinki.fi/en/2015/12/08/this-is-why-finland-is-able-to-implement-the-basic-income-experiment/?ref=scottsantens.com) from Demos Helsinki, and for extra credit to really understand what's up in Finland, [this 2012 summary](http://www.transform-network.net/journal/issue-112012/news/detail/Journal/the-basic-income-debate-in-finland.html?ref=scottsantens.com) from transform! that goes into how the discussion around basic income has been evolving for years now.* --- But I digress. This post is not about what's happening in Finland. It's about [what's happening in Germany](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-germany-basic-income-20151227-story.html?ref=scottsantens.com), The Netherlands, and now the US. If you're under the impression Germany has joined the list of governments experimenting with basic income, you're misinformed. What's happening instead is the crowdfunding of basic incomes to lone individuals one at a time, for one year at a time, to start changing lives right now, outside of governments. This idea was born in the mind of [Michael Bohmeyer](http://www.vice.com/read/a-german-guy-wants-to-give-you-a-bunch-of-money-for-nothing?ref=scottsantens.com) in Germany, who after deciding to test out living with his own form of basic income in 2014 thanks to a successful startup, by limiting himself to €1,000 each month without working, discovered such a simple self-experiment was profoundly transformative. Effectively retiring at the age of 29, he no longer needed to work for money, but he found himself energized to do more than ever. His mind full of ideas, he then decided to implement one of them, which was to share this transformative experience with others by providing them with their own basic incomes for one year each. Not too long thereafter, in September of 2014, [Mein Grundeinkommen](https://www.mein-grundeinkommen.de/start?ref=scottsantens.com) (My Basic Income in German) raffled off the first crowdfunded basic income, and has since then raffled off 25 others. --- > "The unconditional basic income offers one of the biggest potentials to move our society one step forward." — [Michael Bohmeyer](http://www.thelocal.de/jobs/article/this-man-wants-to-give-you-12000?ref=scottsantens.com) --- Interestingly, one of the recipients so far is actually entirely unique from the others, in how the basic income was awarded in the form of an "unconditional internship." What does this mean? It means that she was hired as an intern to work as part of the My Basic Income project, without any condition to do any work. It is entirely up to her as a fully voluntary employee to pursue the work she wishes to pursue. She gets paid no matter what. It's essentially a proof of concept of the potential of basic income on employer/employee relations. What happens when employers are dealing with fully voluntary employees? Well, one very intriguing thing that happened to the surprise of everyone was when one day Meera got upset about not being given enough responsibilities and told Bohmeyer she wouldn't be showing up the next day. This led to a discussion between the two not of the ancient *"Do this or else!"* variety, but instead a novel *"What can I do so you choose to work here tomorrow?"* variety. The result was [an entirely new experience by Bohmeyer](https://medium.com/basic-income/intern-gets-paid-no-matter-what-3d3707783631?ref=scottsantens.com) as a boss. > When she showed up at the office the next morning I was really happy because I knew she was not just coming because she has to but because she really wants to and I can be sure she’s here because that’s what she wants. That made me feel really good and I think in the long term that’s the way it should be, right? I mean I could’ve just played the boss and said “You’re coming tomorrow no matter what. I don’t care.” And this may have worked too. But in the long term I think it’s much better to have motivated people who love what they do. And to have an unconditional basic income might be a way for many people to achieve just that. Fascinating isn't it? The ability of basic income to [increase the bargaining power of workers](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/minimum-wages-vs-universal-basic-income%5Fb%5F7957850.html?ref=scottsantens.com) by providing everyone the ability to say no to insufficient wages, hours, and working conditions is [a widely discussed effect](http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/09/18/the-real-value-of-a-universal-basic-income-is-that-it-raises-the-reservation-wage/?ref=scottsantens.com), and is often seen as something detrimental to employers through their loss of coercive power. And yet here is an example of a new sense of pride it can bring to employers too, in knowing the people working for them are doing so not because they **have** to, but because they really **want** to. The My Basic Income idea is not however just about seeing what the various winners will do with one year's worth of basic income and what the observed effects are, but what the more than 60,000 people who have entered the raffle and more than 30,000 who have donated to the fund so far say they would do with a basic income of their own. That itself is the BIG question. "What would you do if $1,000 per month were to appear in your bank account at the beginning of every month, for the rest of your life?" It's an inspiring thought to contemplate isn't it? --- > "The students keep studying, the workers keep working and the pensioners are still pensioners. But there is a big change that takes place in their minds. People feel liberated and they feel healthier." — [Michael Bohmeyer](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-germany-basic-income-20151227-story.html?ref=scottsantens.com) --- This question and this model, has inspired others,not only within Germany, but globally. The Netherlands was the second location this seed took root, there by the name [Ons Basisinkomen](http://onsbasisinkomen.nl/?ref=scottsantens.com) (My Basic Income in Dutch). So far, two basic incomes have been crowdfunded and awarded, with a third on the way. As a consequence, more than 1,800 more people have answered the same BIG question. They are all in Dutch, but you can read all 170 pages of them [here](https://onsbasisinkomen.nl/category/vertel-en-lees/?ref=scottsantens.com). So the Dutch aren't only [about to experiment with basic income in dozens of cities at the level of government](http://www.occupy.com/article/another-money-possible-part-iii-holland-leads-experiment-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com), by seeing what happens when **distrust** (aka conditional welfare that is removed with work) is replaced with **trust** (aka unconditional basic income that is kept with work), but they are also doing as those in Germany are doing, in bypassing government altogether, and just immediately seeing what happens when someone gets basic income. Theory is theory, and [theory should be tested](http://www.demoshelsinki.fi/en/2015/12/08/this-is-why-finland-is-able-to-implement-the-basic-income-experiment/?ref=scottsantens.com) using the scientific method, but there is still something to be said for a persuasive anecdote. *([We just need to be wary they are effectively one-person studies.](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-study/?ref=scottsantens.com))* Like it or not, that's how human think, and so we need these immediate human stories to help convey the message. It's this need for human stories that drove the diaspora of the My Basic Income idea from Germany, to The Netherlands, and now to the United States where it was brought by Michael Bohmeyer himself to [the first Basic Income Create-A-Thon](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/something-is-happening-ba%5Fb%5F8635392.html?ref=scottsantens.com) in San Francisco last November. It was there and then during the final day's presentations, that the crowdfunding campaign for the first American [My Basic Income](http://www.mybasicincome.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) project went live. To be a part of it and even potentially be the lucky winner, head on over to **[MyBasicIncome.org](http://www.mybasicincome.org/?ref=scottsantens.com)** to share what you would do with a basic income. If you'd like to just help make it happen for the lucky winner, and in so doing also help spread the idea of universal basic income in the US, you can donate to [the Indiegogo campaign](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-my-basic-income-project--2?ref=scottsantens.com#/). Note: Entering to win and donating to the fund are two entirely separate things. If the first US My Basic Income campaign succeeds, and after the third success in The Netherlands and the 27th in Germany, that will be 31 basic incomes for 31 people on a planet of over 7 billion people. That's not so much a drop in a bucket as a drop in all the oceans combined, so is the creation of such drops just kind of dumb? As Bohmeyer said in an interview, with Vice back in 2014: > Sure, my project is totally dumb for two reasons. First it’s limited to one year, so you still have to worry about making a living next year. And secondly, of course it makes a difference if it’s just me not having to worry about money or if nobody around me does. So no, it’s definitely not representative. But at least we get a whiff of what having a basic income might feel like. And we're having a discussion about this. It’s also about the 21,000 people who wrote on the website what they’d do if they had the money. They aren't looking to put their feet up. They want to continue working without having to stress so much—they’d like to volunteer more or start their own company. The core idea behind the My Basic Income project, which I would argue isn't dumb at all and why it's spreading around the world along with the much larger idea of a fully universal basic income, is to get people thinking about: 1) What they would do with their very own basic incomes, 2) Get them talking about what others say they would do, and 3) Get a lucky few tasting and showing us all what a life with basic income might be like through a one-year free sample. And we all like free samples, right? So what about you? What would **you** do with $1,000 per month, no strings attached? What would I do you ask? Well, [**I have one and you're looking at it.**](http://www.scottsantens.com/press-release-american-achieves-first-crowdfunded-monthly-basic-income) --- *Having read this post, you may next want to watch this video which is a great 50-minute-long documentary titled "Money For Free" that covers both the German and Dutch My Basic Income projects.* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Press Release: American Achieves First Crowdfunded Monthly Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/press-release-american-achieves-first-crowdfunded-monthly-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T23:30:28.000Z FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 14, 2015 Contact: Scott Santens [scott@scottsantens.com](mailto:scott@scottsantens.com)Twitter: [@scottsantens](https://twitter.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) ### American Achieves First Crowdfunded Monthly Basic Income (New Orleans, La.) – Writer and basic income advocate Scott Santens has become the first person to successfully crowdfund a perpetual monthly “basic income.” Starting his campaign on [October 13th, 2014](http://www.basicincome.org/news/2014/10/international-basic-income-advocate-founds-the-big-patreon-creator-pledge/?ref=scottsantens.com) on the crowdfunding platform Patreon, Santens achieved his goal of [$1,000 per month](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) fourteen months later on December 11th with the help of 143 funders ranging from venture capitalists and Facebook engineers to women’s rights advocates and artists who all believe everyone needs a basic income. Quickly gaining prominence in think tanks and policy circles worldwide due to growing concerns brought on by advancing technologies like self-driving vehicles and artificial intelligence, and also growing inequality, [basic income is the idea that everyone should receive, individually and without conditions, an income floor sufficient to cover the most basic needs of life like food and shelter](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/why-should-we-support-the%5Fb%5F7630162.html?ref=scottsantens.com). All income earned through the labor market would then be earned on top of one’s basic income as additional income, and many existing government programs would no longer be required as a direct result. This idea is not new, having at one time been advocated by both Milton Friedman and Martin Luther King Jr., but today’s advocates from both the right and left think its day may have come. “Basic Income has been taking off with incredible speed in the last few years,” says co-chair of [Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN)](http://www.basicincome.org/about-bien/?ref=scottsantens.com) and author [Karl Widerquist](http://works.bepress.com/widerquist/?ref=scottsantens.com) of SFS-Qatar, Georgetown University. “Activists movements for Basic Income are growing, and it's already getting serious attention from governments in Finland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and other places. The success of Scott's campaign for the first crowdfunded basic income in the United States is both a reflection of the growth in the basic income movement and a catalyst for further growth as Scott's life now demonstrates how basic income can work.” Such a real-life demonstration is possible through Patreon. As a Kickstarter-like crowdfunding platform, but for creators instead of products, Patreon supports ongoing campaigns for content creators like musicians, artists, bloggers, vloggers, podcasters, and photographers that are funded by fans of their work with small pledges of monthly support. "Patreon is supporting the emerging creative class. We see a future where creators like Scott can earn a living doing what they are passionate about," says Graham Hunter, Director of Marketing for [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/about?ref=scottsantens.com). "A recent grad from Art or Music school right now doesn't necessarily feel confident that the value that they provide will be valued by the world; Patreon is changing that." Having reached his goal, Scott plans to continue his advocacy for universal basic income and has also promised to pledge any and all future pledges of support to others on Patreon who have pledged to do the same. This is what he calls “The BIG Patreon Creator Pledge” to assist others on Patreon in attaining their own basic incomes. “Creators *want* to create. Creators don't need to be paid to create. However, creators also need to eat. Creators need to have homes. Creators can't create so long as they aren't free to create,” wrote Santens earlier this year on his blog in [an open thank you letter to Patreon](http://www.scottsantens.com/dear-patreon-a-letter-from-a-quarter-liberated-creator). “People need to be *free to create* and until universal basic income exists, Patreon helps make that possible.” You can follow Scott’s writings on his [personal blog](http://scottsantens.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) and also on [The Huffington Post](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/?ref=scottsantens.com). On social media, you can find him on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com), [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/scottsantens), and Reddit where he moderates the [/r/BasicIncome](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/?ref=scottsantens.com) community. --- *Scott Santens is a New Orleans-based writer and basic income advocate. His pieces about universal basic income have appeared on such sites as The Huffington Post, the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), The Daily Dot, and Quartz. As a basic income speaker, he has presented at the first World Summit on Technological Unemployment and participated as a panelist at the Brookings Institute. As an organizer, he helped plan the first Basic Income Create-A-Thon. He is an advisor to the Universal Income Project, a founding committee member of the nonprofit D.C.-based organization Basic Income Action, a coordinating committee member of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network, and founder of the BIG Patreon Creator Pledge.* ### Something Is Happening: Basic Income Create-A-Thons Are Here URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-create-a-thons-are-here/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T19:55:00.000Z Something is happening in San Francisco. Perhaps someday we will look back and call it an epicenter of the 21st century. Walking the streets as a stranger in a strange land, I couldn’t help but feel signs on every corner of the imminent breaking of a great technological wave, and [like a tsunami](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us%5Fb%5F7308874.html?ref=scottsantens.com) that warns with an otherwise puzzling withdrawal of the tide, there hides a warning in plain sight. This warning lies within every human being sleeping on the streets, its silent alarm sounding underneath the pleading voices of passers-by for spare change, an anachronism in a city of digital wallets and contactless payments. The impoverished just aren’t taking advantage of Square Cash or the wonders of the blockchain. They aren’t getting jobs as engineers or coders. They are society’s lost and unfound. Amidst [great technology](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/machine-labor-day%5Fb%5F8101478.html?ref=scottsantens.com), human beings are being stranded on the silicon shores of our collective tomorrow. And so it only makes sense, that it was in San Francisco that [the first ever Basic Income Create-A-Thon](http://createathon-sf.universalincome.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) was held. Gathering together from as far as Germany and Finland, sixty developers and artists, filmmakers and musicians, writers and photographers, all came together in one office space for a weekend. They were not employees. They were not paid to work through their weekend. They met, many if not most for the first time, to brainstorm and pursue ideas for the acceleration of the idea of [**Universal Basic Income**](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/why-should-we-support-the%5Fb%5F7630162.html?ref=scottsantens.com) in the national consciousness of the United States. Why Universal Basic Income? Well, funny you should ask, as one of the eight projects created out of this weekend marathon of creativity was designed to answer just that question by [YouTuber “Orf”](http://http//www.Youtube.com/Orf?ref=scottsantens.com). And it was through the recorded voices and faces of everyone there. *Created by* [*Matt Orfalea*](https://www.patreon.com/Orf?ref=scottsantens.com) The medium of storytelling is a powerful thing isn’t it? We all have our personal stories to share, in the form of so many small windows into our lives, and so another group decided to focus on building those stories one person, one basic income, one year at a time. That is the goal of the [My Basic Income](http://www.mybasicincome.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) project which is now live. Through crowdfunding, one person will randomly receive a life of basic income for one year. How will it affect them? What will they feel? In what ways will their life be changed? We will find out thanks largely in part to the organizers of this same model [in Germany](https://www.mein-grundeinkommen.de/start?ref=scottsantens.com) (which has already funded over 23 years of basic incomes) crossing the Atlantic to attend the Create-A-Thon. In addition, they’d also like you to think about what you would do with a basic income of your own, and share your 20-second response with the world on [a new website](http://www.bohmedia.de/video/?ref=scottsantens.com) that makes it easy to do so. The personal stories don’t stop there. Another group even went so far as to make a documentary using in-depth interviews, titled “[Tell It To the Sun](https://vimeo.com/146338788?ref=scottsantens.com).” Watching it premiere on the final day was an emotional experience and truly inspiring. The interviews got to the heart of how having a basic income will change lives, through the touching stories of those who have lived lives in a world without it, and yet also a world where so much is given freely without recognition. *Created by Ken Fisher, Byron Go, Alan Webb, Juliana Bidadanure, Tania Ku, Jared Scheib* To further drive home that point of what a world with basic income would look like, another group spent their time envisioning it together. What institutions would change if we were actually for the first time “All in it together?” How would our values change? How would our health change? How would our democracy change? What would happen to education and [science](http://simonthorpesideas.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/science-and-unconditional-basic-income.html?ref=scottsantens.com)? Evaluating these questions, this team developed a “[Basic Income Manifesto](http://stage.universalincome.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Basic-Income-Manifesto.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)” of nine areas of likely change from greater empowerment to eventually even a more [resource-based economy](http://www.scottsantens.com/shouldn-t-all-this-talk-about-money-actually-be-talk-about-resources). On the other hand, what are the downsides of basic income? What are the objections? It was this question that another group set their sights on as an “Opposition Research” team, and in doing so created [a “strategy memo” of 100 objections](https://docs.google.com/document/d/12%5FsmWy21QDsUKXm-4GbS3CsUWieo82ITOWnl4J3K6DU/edit?ref=scottsantens.com) to be used as a form of debate preparation for basic income advocates. These objections fell into three general categories of objectors: the Shouldn’ts, the Can’ts, and the Won’ts. Those who believe we shouldn’t adopt UBI take issue with the concept itself. Those who believe we can’t may like the idea but think it won’t work for some reason. Those who believe we won’t may like the idea and think it will work, but cynically believe it just won’t happen anyway. Only the Shouldn’ts contain those who may never agree with the idea, but despite all the many potential objections to UBI, the team concluded the main obstacle is public unfamiliarity with the existence of the idea itself, and that if the idea can be introduced with sensitivity to the diversity of American interest groups, it will fare well, and we can win. Another step toward that win is some serious number crunching to see just what the costs of taxation might be based on policy design, and so another group formed around the idea of creating a [basic income calculator](http://www.bettertaxes.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) to model this via different routes. Describing the result, one project leader stated “our greatest success has been in actually finding all of the relevant information and assimilating it into a piece of software that can continue to develop and refine over time.” Now on its own website, this software will allow all interested users to vary the size of distribution and compare the results against existing cash transfer programs. The results may surprise. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1280/1*2NVm73T-vkj-tlBhqSLmxQ.png) GroupIncome concept prototype But wait, does a basic income even require government involvement? Is it perhaps possible to implement basic income outside of the government and within fully voluntary group associations? One team thought so, and went about designing “[Group Income](http://stage.universalincome.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Group-Income-BI-Createathon.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)” because the market doesn’t always recognize that people are valuable, but some groups recognize all people are. Group Income is for them and represents a form of “voluntary automated decentralized income sharing.” Each group can use the software to setup a minimum amount of income that everyone in the group will earn, and each member of that group can setup a maximum amount of income they are willing to contribute to the group. Keep an eye on [groupincome.org](http://groupincome.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) for the rollout of the first available working version. Finally, to conclude the list of projects born of the first Create-A-Thon, we return to the city in which it was held, that epicenter of the 21st century, San Francisco. Is it perhaps possible, that aside from exemplifying the need for basic income, it could also lead the way as its own example? Could San Francisco adopt basic income at a city level? One team thought so and went about designing a pathway of what might be required as the groundwork to make it happen. That team was Owen Poindexter and his conclusions included among others: expanding IDs to all using post offices, expanding the Bank on San Francisco program or using post offices as banks so as to expand banking to everyone, and putting a [land value tax](http://www.salon.com/2013/11/22/end%5Fthe%5F1%5Fpercents%5Ffree%5Fride%5Fhow%5Ftaxing%5Fland%5Fwould%5Fsolve%5Famericas%5Fbiggest%5Fproblems/?ref=scottsantens.com) on the ballot with the purpose of distributing 100% of that revenue equally to all residents. You can read the full plan [here](http://createathon-sf.universalincome.org/post/133498434037/the-basic-plan-for-san-francisco?ref=scottsantens.com). So there you have it. That’s eight projects completed over a total of around 24 hours across three days, without anyone paid to do any of it. As one of the organizers myself, I can personally attest to the [fully intrinsically-motivated nature](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPHOvuZmCG4&ref=scottsantens.com) of the entire event. No one did anything because of a paycheck. No one got any rewards or awards. The only thing anyone received was the satisfaction of [meaningful work](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/a-future-without-jobs-doe%5Fb%5F8254836.html?ref=scottsantens.com), the forging of new friendships, and the hope for a better tomorrow. (And perhaps also a sleep deficit) If sixty people can accomplish all of this great work in a matter of hours, just imagine what the entire country can accomplish with their entire lives freed to pursue the projects they are most passionate about. That’s the potential possible through achieving a fully universal and unconditional basic income. That’s our future, if we choose to create it. And that’s the heart of the first and [all future Basic Income Create-A-Thons](http://www.universalincome.org/?ref=scottsantens.com). That’s right. There will be more. Anyone can use what was learned from the first Create-A-Thon to create more all over the U.S. and even all over the world. [**Will that person be you**](http://www.universalincome.org/organize/?ref=scottsantens.com)? It’s time we start creating our better future — together. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*sizGT_FoUbc7LH8yHO8DqQ.jpeg) Pictured: First Basic Income Create-A-Thon participants --- ***Special thanks to Steven Grimm, Arjun Banker, Topher Hunt, Stern Andrew, Keith Davis, Mark Witham, Albert Wenger, Larry Cohen, Chris Smothers, Richard Just, Danielle Texeira, Paul Wicks, Liane Gale, Jan Smole, Joe Esposito, Jack Wagner, Stuart Matthews, Natalie Foster, Chris McCoy, Peter Titus, Michael Honey, Gary Aranovich, Kai Wong, Robby Olivam, John David Hodge, Louise Whitmore, Dan O’Sullivan, Harish Venkatesan, Michiel Dral, Gerald Huff, Susanne Berg, Katie Doemland, Robert F. Greene, Martin Jordo, Victor Lau, Shane Gordon, Paolo Narciso(?), Johan Grahn, Tony DeStefano, Andrew Henderson, Erhan Altay, Bryan Herdliska, Stephane Boisvert, Rise & Shine PAC, Kirk Israel, Luke Sampson, Lee Irving, Kris Roadruck, Amy Shaffer, Tod Backe, Thomas Welsh, Olli Niinimäki, Casey Young, Jeff, Elizabeth Balcar, Masud Shah, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** [*Would you like to see your name here too?*](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### What YouTube and Star Wars Fans Are Showing Us About the Future of Work URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/youtube-star-wars-future-of-work/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T23:31:55.000Z ![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/27642f45-94fe-446e-9833-937df90c3eaa/Star-Wars-Logo-feature_large.jpg) In 2015 I was invited to take part in [a panel at the Brookings Institution](http://www.brookings.edu/events/2015/10/26-robotics-employment-social-benefits-west?ref=scottsantens.com) about the future of work in light of accelerating technological advances, and during that panel [(which is available on YouTube)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt-Hqn9qiDs&ref=scottsantens.com), I mentioned YouTube as an example of the kind of work I see right now that is new to this world, and yet remains mostly unrecognized as being work. I'd like to expand on that here using another of my passions as an example - **Star Wars**. ### A New New Hope Not so long ago in a world not so far away, I watched one of the Internet's first viral Star Wars videos. It was called [Troops](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troops%5F%28film%29?ref=scottsantens.com) and appeared in 1997\. It was a parody of the show COPS within the Star Wars universe and was released onto the Internet for free by its creator, Kevin Rubio who just really loved Star Wars and wanted to make a fan film. If you've never watched it, here you go. This single viral fan film had a ripple effect, and is considered one of the films that helped create the modern fan film movement. It inspired people to grab their cameras and go out and do the same. The key here is that it *inspired*. Kevin put a lot of work into its creation and gifted it to the world for free. Fans then watched it, loved it, shared it, and some went about creating their own videos to give back to the world in return. In effect, a video led to more videos, and thus more video makers. ### The Creative Force Awakens Fast forward to 2015 where the official trailer for the first new Star Wars sequel in decades was released onto the Internet. Released on October 19th, it was quickly viewed over 50 million times. Upon its release, thousands of fans immediately recorded themselves reacting to the trailer, and uploaded those reactions to YouTube. One of these fans was even one of the stars of the movie. Some fans immediately created reviews of the trailer. Then a few fans took some of those recordings, combined them together, and created reaction mashups of multiple fans all reacting simultaneously. It's these mashups I find particularly compelling, as the level of emotion across so many faces and voices is palpable. There's something in a video like this that I think illuminates how far we've come and where we're going. [We are so much more connected](http://www.wsj.com/articles/no-your-children-arent-becoming-digital-zombies-1444400129?ref=scottsantens.com) and we feel joy in watching each other feel joy. It's almost like YouTube is a prototype for [an empathy machine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXHil1TPxvA&ref=scottsantens.com). ### The Present Future of Work [Everything we've created has always been a remix of what came before it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coGpmA4saEk&ref=scottsantens.com), but now thanks to digital media, it's easier to recognize. What we create is not only consumed, but serves as soil and seed for new creations which we want to widely share with each other in turn. We are driven by our passions to use our new tools to create in positive feedback loops of creation. I also find it fascinating that every aforementioned video is at its core a commercial for a new product. Disney created a trailer to help sell the movie, and fans responded by not only consuming the trailer, but amplifying the signal with more commercials. We are essentially doing Disney's work for it, for free, out of love for the product we haven't even consumed yet. We have become *creative consumers*. I am constantly amazed by what I find on YouTube. It is so full of boundless creativity. This creativity has always existed, but people were limited by a lack of tools. Digital technologies and the Internet have changed this, enabling content to be created and widely distributed at a greatly reduced cost. **Consider the following work:** Star Wars itself was recreated shot for shot by fans as Star Wars Uncut. A New Hope was chopped up into 473 15-second scenes to be claimed and recreated by thousands of Star Wars fans all over the world in any way they wished. The result was a brilliant crowdsourced gumbo of global creativity that was viewed over 4 million times. It was followed up with The Empire Strikes Back Uncut, which was orchestrated by Lucasfilm itself. A fan edit of Star Wars: A New Hope created by Adywan called Star Wars Revisited is in my opinion better than any official version out there. He went through and cleaned everything up frame by frame and even added new effects and corrections which are impossible to tell are new unless you're a hardcore fan. He went on to create a version of The Empire Strikes Back which took years because [the amount of minute detail he added is mind boggling](https://swrevisited.wordpress.com/2013/08/06/han-in-carbonite-shirt-fix/?ref=scottsantens.com). Possibly my favorite channel on all of YouTube is [RedLetterMedia](https://www.youtube.com/user/RedLetterMedia?ref=scottsantens.com), who became world renowned with their hour-long review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, which they then followed up with similar length reviews of the rest of the prequels and many more films since through a variety of YouTube show formats. Everything RedLetterMedia creates is freely watchable on YouTube, but because they're on Patreon, fans choose to voluntarily support them to the tune of [$25,000+ per month](https://www.patreon.com/redlettermedia?ty=h&ref=scottsantens.com). This I believe shows an excellent example of the future of creative funding. If creators have the funds to create, they *will* create, and they then have the option of not having to sell what they create, but gifting it to the world instead. This also points the way toward what Paul Mason has recently described as [*Postcapitalism*](http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun?ref=scottsantens.com) by way of an expanding sharing economy. Next, there are those who record their playthroughs of Star Wars games which they then edit and compile into movies to watch. This is Star Wars: The Force Unleashed as a one hour movie. Not everyone can afford video game systems or the time to play them, but they can watch others play through YouTube. These are effectively a new kind of movie, only made possible by someone playing all the way through a video game successfully, and in my opinion, far more enjoyable to watch than many if not most movies currently being released in theaters and costing tens of millions of dollars to produce. By the way, there's a lot of value being created by people recording themselves playing video games and sharing it all with others. [The video game streaming site Twitch was sold to Amazon for about $1 billion](http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/26/6068993/this-is-why-people-want-to-watch-other-people-play-video-games?ref=scottsantens.com). Believe it or not, playing video games is now a new kind of work. If you think that doesn't make any sense, some work makes even less sense than that. This is an edit of Star Wars: A New Hope, chopped up by individual word and alphabetized. [It reportedly took 42 hours](http://www.wired.com/2014/06/star-wars-alphabetizer/?ref=scottsantens.com) by a Google engineer to create and has been viewed over 1 million times. The above might seem an example of some amazingly useless work, but who knows what the software that created it could be applied to? My personal favorite duo of creators goes by the name of [Auralnauts](https://www.patreon.com/auralnauts/posts?ref=scottsantens.com). They went through both the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy, edited each film into a new film complete with new plot, voices, sound effects, and music. The result is "I can't breathe" level of funny. Do yourself a favor, and binge watch all six videos. And finally, this animated short film was created by [a single fan over the course of four years](http://www.slashfilm.com/star-wars-anime-fan-film-tie-fighter/?ref=scottsantens.com) in the attempt to realize his dream of an anime version of a Star Wars battle. It is this last example that amazes me more than all others. Consider again it was created by a single individual in their free time over the course of four years, for zero compensation. He didn't even have [his Patreon page](https://www.patreon.com/otaking77077?ref=scottsantens.com) at the time, and instead said if you wanted to thank him, ["give someone at your workplace, uni, school or whatever a random bar of chocolate or can of Coke or something."](http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/03/24/glorious-star-wars-tie-fighter-anime-short-finally-complete?ref=scottsantens.com) All of the aforementioned examples are of intrinsically motivated work, but this last one... this is transparent passion. Could he have ever created it without the time and resources to do so? He also did it mostly on weekends. What if he'd had more time than just weekends? This is all also just a tiny slice of the whole. It's just one fandom on one platform. There are countless more out there, and countless other forms of unpaid and unrecognized work than found within our digital realms. And even if we look at all of it, it's still just the work being done by those with sufficient time and resources. **What if everyone had more time and resources?** How much more passion work will we see with an [unconditional basic income](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/why-should-we-support-the%5Fb%5F7630162.html?ref=scottsantens.com)? If no one need worry about hunger and homelessness, [how much more creativity will we see](http://www.scottsantens.com/dear-patreon-a-letter-from-a-quarter-liberated-creator)? If everyone has a platform on which to build, what will be created? If people can choose to do the work that provides them meaning, and leave the jobs best left to machines to machines, [imagine the amount of unleashed creativity we all have to look forward to from each other](http://mic.com/articles/125420/basic-income-studies-higher-minimum-wage-and-living-wage-creative-renaissance?ref=scottsantens.com). This idea that [we must force people to work](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com#.b2siqgfb0) is bunk. It's bunk because [the best work any of us do is the work we voluntarily do](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPHOvuZmCG4&ref=scottsantens.com), and even though we are today already surrounded by this work, we don't even see it. We don't see it because we are blind to it, and we are blind to it because our eyes have yet to focus on our new machine age of abundance. We are living in a new world. Scarcity is behind us. Where we once toiled in fields, technology now increasingly toils for us. Those who are free from toil use technology to create, and these creations when digital exist in infinite supply and can be enjoyed anywhere in the world, by anyone, at little to no cost. [This is the world of work we have to look forward to](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/a-future-without-jobs-doe%5Fb%5F8254836.html?ref=scottsantens.com), *if* we choose to fully free everyone from toil with a universal basic income, so as to enable anyone to pursue their passions, and as a society pursue [full automation and full unemployment](http://www.philorum.org/speech/20051207JohnBentley.html?ref=scottsantens.com). It is our new new hope. If we don't choose to do this, what's the point of all this technology anyway? [To construct Death Stars in pursuit of full employment](https://web.archive.org/web/20150203195522/https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/isnt-petition-response-youre-looking)? That is not the future we're looking for... (*waves hand*) --- *Want to try a little experiment to see if in doing so, you begin to better see the future of work? Cut the cord. For one month, watch only free YouTube content instead of anything on broadcast or cable TV. Subscribe to those producing content you enjoy. Thank them by liking and sharing their videos, or even becoming their patrons. Suggest others do the same.* --- ### Bonus Must-Watch Video --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### You can register to watch my panel live at the Brookings Institute URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/my-panel-at-brookings-on-10-26/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T23:32:46.000Z I will be part of a panel at Brookings tomorrow, Oct 26, at 3pm in Washington, DC. For those interested in watching it, it will be live streamed online. Here's [the link to use to register for the webcast](http://connect.brookings.edu/register-to-watch-robotics-employment-social-benefits?ref=scottsantens.com). My fellow panelist will be [Nick Hanauer](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014?ref=scottsantens.com#.U6x1rLFWjBZ). ### Topic for panel: > The modern workforce is changing in response to rapidly emerging technological innovation. Technology, long seen as a driver of economic growth, is replacing workers in many fields. This raises questions about the economic and social effects of innovation. If society needs fewer workers due to automation and robotics, how will social benefits be delivered? Will those outside the workforce for a lengthy period of time be able to obtain health care, pensions, and other forms of social insurance? > On October 26, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings will host a forum to explore the impact of robots, artificial intelligence, and machine learning on the workforce and the provision of benefits traditionally supplied by—or in conjunction with—employers. A panel of experts will discuss the social impacts of the upcoming robotic revolution and the influence of greater technological advancements on the way humans work and live. > After the session, panelists will take audience questions. The event will also be live webcast. Please follow @BrookingsGov and #robotwork. Thanks, all! I hope you will be able to watch it. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Universal Basic Income Will Likely Increase Social Cohesion URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-ubi-increases-social-cohesion-capital-trust/ Last updated: 2022-02-18T19:52:08.000Z I think we should avoid letting our ideologies inform our opinions on matters of social and economic policy. What matters is scientifically observed evidence. I support the idea of providing everyone with an [unconditional basic income](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/why-should-we-support-the%5Fb%5F7630162.html?ref=scottsantens.com) not because I just think it’s the right thing to do, and the best way to make ongoing [technological unemployment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE04%5Fs9Bd5Q&ref=scottsantens.com) work [for us instead of against us](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/machine-labor-day%5Fb%5F8101478.html?ref=scottsantens.com), but because such an overwhelming amount of human behavioral evidence points in the direction of basic income. In their opinion pieces for the [week-long series about universal basic income published in September by *The Washington Post*](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2015/09/28/universal-basic-income-a-primer/?ref=scottsantens.com), I was struck by how both [Oren Cass](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2015/09/29/basic-income-wont-fix-americas-social-divide/?ref=scottsantens.com) and [Jonathan Coppage](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2015/10/01/selling-out-civil-society/?ref=scottsantens.com) expressed a distinct lack of knowledge of the evidence we have available to inform our opinions on giving people money without strings attached, by citing *none of it*. Science involves testing our hypotheses. They both expressed the shared hypothesis that giving people additional income in the form of a basic income would somehow reduce social cohesion, and that it is growing social inequality that’s leading to economic problems and not the other way around. We can test such a hypothesis by simply looking at what actually happens when people are provided unconditional cash, and comparing it to a control group of those who aren’t. **Have we done this? Yes we have. The evidence is out there for anyone seeking to find it.** In Namibia, an experiment took place for years that involved a thousand people in a single village all being given basic incomes. What happened? Did social cohesion go down thanks to free money? Not according to [the official report](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com): ## Namibia > The experience of the BIG pilot suggests that the universal cash grant liberated people and the community from the individually and collectively draining and devastating impact of poverty. Many people living in Otjivero-Omitara said that they had only survived previously by asking and begging for food. This was profoundly embarrassing and undermined their capacity to have normal social interactions and the development of constructive community relations and real community spirit. The payment of the BIG has dramatically changed this. Begging has basically stopped and people reported that they can now visit and speak freely to each other, without the fear of being seen as a potential beggar. Judging from the observations of community members, researchers and members of the BIG Coalition, it would appear that **a stronger community spirit developed over the period of the first year of the BIG** **.** Not only did a greater sense of community grow, but the very first thing the village even did was to organize an 18-member committee to mobilize the community and advise residents. This was an immediate effect described in the report as “community mobilization and empowerment.” There were also other notable effects, like a 42 percent drop in crime, huge reductions in child malnutrition and school dropout rates, and a 301 percent increase in self-employment. It would be one thing if these kinds of effects have only been observed in one place, but the findings have also since been replicated in a more recent series of basic income experiments in India. There in a larger basic income experiment that spanned multiple villages and thousands more people than in Namibia, again a multitude of positive effects were found, including community effects. For example, recipients actually pooled their cash together to make shared community purchases like temple repairs, the formation of credit unions, wedding loan funds, and even TVs everyone could watch. Additionally, [separate castes actually began to work together](https://www.opendemocracy.net/openindia/stuart-weir/basic-income-transforming-lives-in-rural-india?ref=scottsantens.com), which was surprising even to them. ## India > The village organizers told me that the castes don’t normally “come together”, but the women of different castes in the villages did come together, for animal husbandry, buying cows and livestock, other financial and other training and SEWA meetings. Again, as in Namibia, [there were numerous additional positive effects](http://isa-global-dialogue.net/indias-great-experiment-the-transformative-potential-of-basic-income-grants/?ref=scottsantens.com) including a marked increase in economic activity, improvements in nutrition and overall health, improved school attendance and performance, increased savings, lowered debts, and improvements in housing among others. These effects were above and beyond what were seen in the control villages. These were effects due to increased incomes across the board as the independent variable. What I consider to be the most fascinating evidence though for increased social cohesion from unconditional cash transfers comes from Lebanon, where [a natural experiment was created by giving everyone cash above a certain elevation line and not below it](http://www.rescue.org/sites/default/files/resource-file/Emergency%20Economies%20Evaluation%20Report%20FINAL%2009.09.14%20%282%29.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). This made it possible to compare the populations right above and below an arbitrary line as being two identical populations with only a single variable — free money. What happened? ## Lebanon > Thirty-one percent of households in the treatment group report having received help at some point from Lebanese community members, compared to 26 percent in the control group. At the same time, treatment group households are more likely to provide help to Lebanese community members. This suggests that **cash assistance increases mutual support between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries**. This is in line with results of previous studies. Angelucci & DeGiorgi (2009) find that cash recipients share part of the cash transfer with other community members. This is because beneficiaries assume that they will need the help of these community members in the future (“I help you today, you help me tomorrow”). Another possible pathway could be triggered when beneficiaries have more non-monetary resources (e.g., time and emotional energy) to invest in building social ties… As economic pressures are reduced, beneficiaries will have more time to meet other needs, such as developing mutually supportive social ties. The increase in mutual support may then explain why the treatment group is less likely to be insulted by Lebanese community members: 90 percent of households in the control group report to have never been insulted by Lebanese community members, compared to 94 percent in the treatment group. Fascinating isn’t it? Giving people cash without conditions can actually lead to people being insulted less. This is a psychological finding. It involves personality. Is there even more evidence for the effects of cash without conditions on personality factors? Yes there is, and [we see it in lottery winners](https://www.academia.edu/2675981/Can%5FMoney%5FChange%5FWho%5FWe%5FAre%5FEstimating%5Fthe%5FEffect%5Fof%5FUnearned%5FIncome%5Fon%5FIncentive-enhancing%5FPersonality%5FTraits?ref=scottsantens.com). ## Lotteries > Using surveys of lottery winners, we analyze the effects of unearned income on the well-known Big Five personality traits. After correcting for potential endogeneity problems associated with the size of lottery prizes, we find that unearned income improves traits that predict pro-social and cooperative behaviours, preferences for social contact, empathy, and gregariousness, as well as reduce individuals’ tendency to experience negative emotional states. When people win small and medium-size size lotteries, not the huge ones, but closer to the size of basic incomes, they become more cooperative, agreeable, and social. This is pretty amazing, but perhaps the most amazing of all findings in regards to increased incomes and improved personality traits, comes from a 10+ year study in North Carolina, where just four years into it, about a quarter of the households being studied saw an increase in their incomes of about $4,000 per year per tribal member as a result of casino dividends. Because of this, and because this just so happened to take place during a long-term longitudinal scientific study, some incredible effects have been observed in the children as young adults that would be virtually impossible to study outside of full-on implementing universal basic income. The entire [summary by *The Washington Post*](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/10/08/the-remarkable-ways-a-little-money-can-change-a-childs-personality-for-life/?ref=scottsantens.com) is a must read, but the following two passages are key: ## Citizen Dividends > Not only did the extra income appear to lower the instance of behavioral and emotional disorders among the children, but, perhaps even more important, it also boosted two key personality traits that tend to go hand in hand with long-term positive life outcomes. > > The first is conscientiousness. People who lack it tend to lie, break rules and have trouble paying attention. The second is agreeableness, which leads to a comfort around people and aptness for teamwork. And both are strongly correlated with various forms of later life success and happiness. > > “All of the evidence points to the idea if they change in the teenage years, they will stay changed forever,” said Akee. “In this case, the kids will likely maintain a different level of conscientiousness and agreeableness for life.” Imagine a population where this is applied to everyone when they were kids? Consider an entire population of adults who are both more conscientious and more agreeable due to being raised in households with less or even no poverty. Does this sound like a population with reduced social cohesion? When people are given additional income without conditions, we repeatedly observe gains in social and community relations. Personality traits improve. People begin to work together more. They set mutual goals. They help each other more. A belief that a breakdown in social cohesion is somehow the cause of our economic woes and not the result of it is just plain wrong. It’s demonstrably false. **Increasing incomes results in greater social cohesion.** For anyone who thinks welfare proves otherwise, [it doesn’t](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150331074345.htm?ref=scottsantens.com). Because we attach conditions, we actually introduce certain harmful effects. By targeting assistance to households instead of individuals, we create an incentive for the formation of single parent households. By removing assistance as incomes increase, we create an incentive to stay out of the labor market. By giving only to those determined to be deserving, we attach a stigma to the assistance and to its recipient. These are not problems with the provisioning of cash assistance itself. These are problems with the way we go about designing our assistance programs. They are the result of non-universality and the inclusion of conditions that are actually and [provably counterproductive](https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e?ref=scottsantens.com). The problems we see around us in the form of decades of stagnant wages and growing inequality are correlated with a loss of social cohesion, but if experiments show that increased incomes lead to increased social cohesion, it becomes really hard to argue that basic incomes will lead to complete social breakdown. Instead, it makes it easier to see that universal basic income has the potential to reverse a great many of the indicators around us that are symptomatic of a society experiencing a severe maldistribution of abundant resources due to as yet unrecognized [economic rights](http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Fisher1919.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). ## Alaskan Dividends Such rights do not go unrecognized in the conservative state of Alaska where everyone received $2,072 this year [simply for living and breathing](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/only-state-free-money-alaska?ref=scottsantens.com). In fact, they’ve been receiving an annual dividend of around $1,000 on average since 1982\. Have decades of “free money” eroded their social cohesion and led to a society full of social decay? To the contrary, Alaska’s rates of poverty and inequality are the lowest in the country, and individuals there report having [the highest rate of well-being of any state in the US](http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/162029/file-2513997715-pdf/Well-Being%5FIndex/2014%5FData/Gallup-Healthways%5FState%5Fof%5FAmerican%5FWell-Being%5F2014%5FState%5FRankings.pdf?t=1437575309454&ref=scottsantens.com) across an index of five indicators including *social and community well-being*. Instead of ignoring all of the above data and more, including all the evidence we’ve already gained from [collected studies of cash transfer programs all over the world](https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/18376/879840WP0FINAL00Box385208B00PUBLIC0.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), let’s instead learn from it all, and use it to design economic policies informed by science. That’s the way forward. Let’s stop using only our hearts or our guts to inform our policy decisions, and instead [start using the scientific method](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/04/givedirectly-cash-transfers%5Fn%5F7339040.html?ref=scottsantens.com). **Unconditional income works. As shocking as that may be, that’s what’s been repeatedly observed**. --- ***Special thanks to Steven Grimm, Arjun Banker, Topher Hunt, Andrew Stern, Keith Davis, Mark Witham, Albert Wenger, Larry Cohen, Chris Smothers, Richard Just, Danielle Texeira, Paul Wicks, Liane Gale, Jan Smole, Joe Esposito, Jack Wagner, Stuart Matthews, Natalie Foster, Chris McCoy, Peter Titus, Michael Honey, Gary Aranovich, Kai Wong, Robby Olivam, John David Hodge, Louise Whitmore, Dan O’Sullivan, Harish Venkatesan, Michiel Dral, Gerald Huff, Susanne Berg, Robert F. Greene, Martin Jordo, Victor Lau, Shane Gordon, Paolo Narciso, Johan Grahn, Tony DeStefano, Andrew Henderson, Erhan Altay, Bryan Herdliska, Stephane Boisvert, Rise & Shine PAC, Kirk Israel, Luke Sampson, Lee Irving, Kris Roadruck, Amy Shaffer, Tod Backe, Thomas Welsh, Olli Niinimäki, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** [*Would you like to see your name here too?*](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Jobs, Work, and Universal Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/jobs-work-and-universal-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T23:35:27.000Z I recently spoke at the first [World Summit on Technological Unemployment](http://www.wtn.net/technological-unemployment-summit?ref=scottsantens.com) that took place in the Time Life Building in New York City on September 29, 2015\. I was not the only one. Very well known names like Robert Reich and [Joseph Stiglitz](http://www.basicincome.org/news/2015/09/united-states-nobel-laureate-joseph-stiglitz-endorses-unconditional-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) were also there to speak, and others just as well known like Larry Summers and John Markoff spoke via Skype. One very interesting thing we all shared, is that we spoke **for FREE**. Think about that for a second. Traditionally speaking, most of the work going on around us is only considered work, if one gets paid to do it. Are you a parent? Sorry, that's not work. Are you in paid childcare? Congratulations, that's work. Are you an open source programmer? Sorry, that's not work. Are you a paid software engineer? Congratulations, that's work. It was the context of all this unpaid work at a conference focused on what happens in an entirely possible future where we all find it extremely difficult as humans to be paid for our work, that I think really brings clarity to the world we have to look forward to. **We are not facing [a future without work](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/world-without-work/395294/?ref=scottsantens.com). We are facing [a future without jobs](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/future-of-jobs%5Fb%5F8011296.html?ref=scottsantens.com).** There is a huge difference between the two, and we must start seeing the difference, and making the difference more clear to each other. A job is what you are paid to do. It can either enable you to do work that you enjoy, or it can compensate you for doing work that you do not at all enjoy. It can also even involve a whole lot of work or a complete lack of any work. The most important thing about a job is that we trade our time for monetary compensation. Work is different. Work is better defined [in the scientific sense](http://www.studyphysics.ca/30/work.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), as the application of a force over some distance (W = F d). If we think about it this way, it's easier to see how money has nothing whatsoever to do with work. It's not part of the equation at all. Neither is anything involving value, worth, or meaning. Work can be necessary [or entirely unnecessary](http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/?ref=scottsantens.com). Work can be valuable [or worthless](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/business/international/in-europe-fake-jobs-can-have-real-benefits.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Work can be meaningful [or empty](http://mashable.com/2014/12/17/bad-jobs-mental-health/?ref=scottsantens.com). But all work is doing *something instead of nothing*, and no one can say the same thing about jobs. **There are a lot of people out there getting paid to do absolutely *nothing*.** **There are also a lot of people out there getting paid nothing to do *everything*.** ### Invisible Work A [new estimate](http://www.ozy.com/acumen/americas-unpaid-billion-hours-a-week-workforce/61897?ref=scottsantens.com) put the amount of unpaid care work in the US economy as 5% of GDP, $691 billion, or 1.2 billion unpaid hours of work per week. Meanwhile, [2 million people spend 8.4 million hours every month in the US volunteering their time just for hunger relief](http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/08/18/3472568/disturbing-facts-american-hunger/?ref=scottsantens.com). These numbers are massive and help show just how much unrecognized work is going on every day invisibly, without our recognizing it, because no money is exchanging hands. And all of this work will continue being unrecognized until everyone is paid a salary regardless of employment status. Only through [**universal basic income**](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/why-should-we-support-the%5Fb%5F7630162.html?ref=scottsantens.com) will we recognize the billions of hours of invisible labor going on all around us without end. [Without UBI, there's no other way of recognizing this work, because of its invisibility.](http://www.bien2012.de/sites/default/files/paper%5F197%5Fen.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) I actually experience this personally every day of my life. Every day I work, from around 10am to around 7pm, and regardless of how much work I do, how many people it reaches, and how much value it may potentially be seen as having, I rarely get paid anything for it. Take as most recent example, my presentation at the WSTU. I spent a week planning, writing, and creating [my slides](https://prezi.com/7fsj2kqx-nba/?ref=scottsantens.com). It was hard work. I am happy to do such work, because I consider it work that needs to be done, and it's work that provides me great meaning, but the only reason I'm in any way able to actually do such work, is because [**I've crowdfunded a monthly basic income**](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/what-if-everybody-didnt-have-to-work-to-get-paid/393428/?ref=scottsantens.com). Consider this for a moment, and you may see work in an entirely new light. When you hate what you do as a job, you are definitely getting paid in return for doing it. But when you love what you do as a job or as unpaid work, you're only able to do it because of somehow earning sufficient income to enable you to do it. Put another way, extrinsically motivated work is work done before or after an expected payment. It's an exchange. [Intrinsically motivated work is work only made possible by sufficient access to money](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com). It's a gift. The difference between these two forms of work cannot be overstated... ![Maslow's hierarchy of work productivity](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/1739d44c-21a9-4fd3-a6bf-5b7be5082431/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAJeAAAAJDk4MzQ4YjljLWQ4ZTItNDgxMy04ZDJkLTlhNWE4ODI3N2NhOQ_large.jpg) Because [money functions as access to resources](http://www.scottsantens.com/shouldn-t-all-this-talk-about-money-actually-be-talk-about-resources), and we need access to resources to stay alive, and thus to perform any work, it's having money that enables work. We see this over and over again in studies of cash transfers to the poor, where suddenly [self-employment **explodes** to the degree three to nine of every ten recipients uses it in such as way so as to empower the growth of their own capital and their own employment](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/the-job-market-a-game-of-%5Fb%5F7581704.html?ref=scottsantens.com). We've got it all backwards thinking that work enables money. Work is not possible without money. As long as we have a monetary system, money comes first. And so we need to make sure everyone starts every month with enough money to be enabled to perform intrinsically motivated work. We don't start Monopoly with zero dollars. Why do we start our economy with zero dollars? Universal basic income then allows a shift towards an entirely new system, where anyone can actually choose to do their work for free. Imagine the size of the [Creative Commons](https://creativecommons.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) and the Public Domain, where money is no longer needed in order to live and work? Imagine how much passion-fueled work could get done, and how much knowledge could be shared. Imagine [how much science would be better enabled](http://simonthorpesideas.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/science-and-unconditional-basic-income.html?ref=scottsantens.com)? ### Seeing New Work With New Eyes The future of work will also involve new forms of work that are very difficult for older generations to wrap their heads around as being work. I see this even today in games like World of Warcraft as just one example. Many of us could watch someone playing such a game, and see it as only a game, nothing at all but pure entertainment; a complete waste of time and the creation of zero value. And yet it's a game that has its own economy based on gold made of 1s and 0s, where it can be exchanged for real world dollars. Characters that people spend thousands of hours playing can even be sold for thousands of dollars. It's a game that can involve many hours of time and practice developing skills, and yet it's all entirely digital. Everything in the game has no actual scarcity, and yet a digital sword can be found and sold for hundreds of real dollars. Value is being created by those who perceive it has value. This is a new form of work. For some [it's even an actual job](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold%5Ffarming?ref=scottsantens.com). We are experiencing an evolution of human work. We are so far away from scarcity, that we now farm 1s and 0s inside of games instead of grains and cereals inside of farms. We are entering a world of digital abundance where we find meaning in play and value in each other. Crossing the threshold of this world will require saying goodbye to old ways that cling to scarcity and an antiquated belief that jobs as we once knew them define us. We are not defined by our jobs. We never have been. We are defined by our actions, and by the ways in which we seek meaning in our lives and with each other. And in this new world past the threshold, we'll finally begin to understand and appreciate the other side of creation - the enjoyment of what's created and the value in enjoying it. ### Valuing Consumption Bertrand Russell described our historical lack of understanding both sides of the creation coin back in 1932 as the "divorce between the individual and the social purpose of production" in [In Praise of Idleness](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html?ref=scottsantens.com). > The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake. Serious-minded persons, for example, are continually condemning the habit of going to the cinema, and telling us that it leads the young into crime. But all the work that goes to producing a cinema is respectable, because it is work, and because it brings a money profit. The notion that the desirable activities are those that bring a profit has made everything topsy-turvy. The butcher who provides you with meat and the baker who provides you with bread are praiseworthy, because they are making money; but when you enjoy the food they have provided, you are merely frivolous, unless you eat only to get strength for your work. **Broadly speaking, it is held that getting money is good and spending money is bad. Seeing that they are two sides of one transaction, this is absurd; one might as well maintain that keys are good, but keyholes are bad**. Whatever merit there may be in the production of goods must be entirely derivative from the advantage to be obtained by consuming them. The individual, in our society, works for profit; but the social purpose of his work lies in the consumption of what he produces. It is this divorce between the individual and the social purpose of production that makes it so difficult for men to think clearly in a world in which profit-making is the incentive to industry. We think too much of production, and too little of consumption. One result is that we attach too little importance to enjoyment and simple happiness, and that we do not judge production by the pleasure that it gives to the consumer. Our immediate future involves recognizing old forms of work differently, new forms of work entirely, and the inherent value of simply enjoying our collectively-created bounty together. Writing something like this is work, and what use is there in writing it and sharing it, if no one has the time or energy to read it? What is labor without play? What use is there for the idea of full employment in a world of abundance? Should we not instead aim for [**full unemployment**](http://www.philorum.org/speech/20051207JohnBentley.html?ref=scottsantens.com) by way of full automation so that we can each seek our own ways of most enjoying our lives on this Earth? I **almost** have a basic income above the poverty level. I'm not even there yet, but I can already see where this will lead if everyone else has it too. It's a world not to fear, but to fight every day for, so that's exactly what I do. And I can, and will never cease, only because I've been given sufficient access to resources as **a new monthly starting point**. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The U.S. Could Adopt Universal Basic Income in Less Than 20 Years URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-us-could-adopt-universal-basic-income-ubi-in-less-than-20-years/ Last updated: 2022-02-21T22:28:36.000Z *This article was originally published on [Futurism](https://futurism.com/interview-scott-santens-talks-universal-basic-income-and-why-the-u-s-could-adopt-it-by-2035?ref=scottsantens.com).* **Daniel Araya:* Scott, everyone seems to be talking about universal basic income as a way to resolve technological unemployment. How do you define basic income? How did you come to embrace the idea of basic income?* **Scott Santens:** I define basic income as a universal income floor set above the poverty level. It’s essentially a monthly income starting at around $1,000 instead of $0– and it might just help us better play this game we play called globalized capitalism. Imagine if we sat down to play a game of Monopoly and were given nothing with which to start playing? Does that even make any sense? And yet in the real world, that’s exactly what we expect everyone to do – start with nothing. Then we are surprised when so many people are unable to participate in our economy. “Manna” is a short science-fiction story that describes two potential paths in the years ahead and I was impressed by the story’s theme. I decided that I, for one, would not sit idly by as we keep walking down the present dystopian path. Once I saw basic income as the road that leads to a much better destination, I started absorbing everything I could read about it and could apply to furthering the discussion. That was in 2013 and to this day I continue reading what I can, but also writing to contribute to enlarging the discussion on basic income. **DA:* The main argument for universal basic income is that basic income will serve as an income floor for displaced workers and help to rectify growing income inequality. Critics, however, argue that ‘free money’ will only incentivize laziness (despite studies in India and elsewhere that suggest otherwise). How much of this debate is really rooted in cultural assumptions about human nature?* **SS:** I would say really that the only reason UBI is a debate at all– and not immediately accepted using everything we know from observations we’ve already made– is that deeply-ingrained thinking from centuries of cultural hand-me-down practices has limited us to scarcity economics. Alan Watts described this decades ago when he said “what we have to find out how to do is to change the psychological attitude to money and to wealth, and furthermore to pleasure, and furthermore to the nature of work,” referring to this as our “formidable problem.” He wasn’t kidding. It’s a hugely formidable problem to shift people’s thinking from scarcity to abundance by way of scientific reasoning. I mean, what is called “common sense” today may as well be called “common nonsense”. We have got to figure out a way to start accepting what actually *is* over what we think should be true. What has become reality today is a world that is powered by tools that we label as technology. Human beings are self-driven to do incredible things when empowered to do so. But what feels right to many of us is the idea that the world must be dog-eat-dog and that despite the tools that long ago negated the actual need for human toil, we must toil for our daily bread. The truth is that humanity is moving beyond toiling for bread. We have machines for that now. We must change our thinking from “toil to survive” to “freedom to live.” **DA:* We’re seeing some experiments in basic income in Europe (e.g., Finland and the Netherlands). How likely do you think we will see policies designed around basic income in the United States? Is there an argument for making basic income a component of citizenship or a kind of social investment?* **SS:** It’s not going to be easy, but I do think we will see basic income in the U.S. within 20 years, especially in some embryonic form. The question is not really if, but when. Will we see it before our economy becomes quickly transformed by technologies like self-driving vehicles and deep learning AI? I don’t know, but my own goal is to move whatever that date is outside of sufficient intervention, to some time before 2025. I’m of the opinion that basic income is not only an existing right of citizenship (not yet recognized) but that it must be seen to be so in order for UBI to succeed. The problem is that welfare programs are divisive. By treating people differently, by giving help to some and not to others, we divide ourselves artificially. We see that in every comment about “makers and takers”, or “strivers and shirkers”. To get past this, we must do as Alaska does with their dividend, and provide cash equally to all, regardless of income. That’s how we eliminate artificially created divisions. It’s time we acknowledge we’re all in this together, rich or poor, male or female, majority or minority. We all share the same basic needs. **DA:* What are the various models that exist for funding basic income? I know, for example, that Milton Friedman has suggested a negative income tax while Alaska already offers a citizen’s dividend. Could you highlight two or three approaches to basic income that you think would be effective for mitigating poverty and unemployment within rich countries?* There are different ways of guaranteeing a basic income floor. It can vary according to income (negative income tax), or taxes (UBI), but I think that only one way avoids dividing the population. I don’t think the [Alaska dividend](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/only-state-free-money-alaska?ref=scottsantens.com) would be as popular as it is today (and as it has been since 1982), if dividends varied according to income level. So I just don’t recommend that approach. I don’t think anything but a universal basic income would be as popular as it needs to be. The challenge then becomes how best to go about funding it in a way that’s functionally progressive and also popular. This will vary according to country, but in the US I think we could use a collection of methods like a new small value-added tax, a small financial transaction tax for Wall Street, and a carbon tax that grows larger year after year. Combining indirect taxes like this in a way that lowers taxes on wages and salaries (but not on capital gains) for 100% of the population is, in my opinion, a potentially successful way to go, at least in the United States. **DA:* My own assumption about universal basic income is that capitalist countries will actually begin to embrace the idea once they realize that basic income could lead to significant market expansion (i.e., as larger numbers of people with a disposable income consuming and potentially saving money). The question, however, is would basic income simply lead to inflation? Alternatively, if more people have a greater capacity to spend then won’t this simply speed climate change and greater environmental degradation?* **SS:** The thought that basic income might lead to rising prices and even hyperinflation is a very common first response to the idea– which is also why I’ve written a very comprehensive article to address that particular question. Essentially, there are a lot of factors involved in an equation like this, and the result of acknowledging all of these factors is that a fear of inflation is mostly just that – fear. Could some prices go up? Sure, and some probably will, but also some won’t change and others will go down. The most important thing to keep in mind concerning the particular fear of inflation is that competition will not only still exist with basic income, but likely increase. Entrepreneurs are born when more people have more money and overall risk is reduced. Basic income will be good for business and in this new world of ours where platforms like Uber and Airbnb can quickly and efficiently take on well-entrenched industries, preventing competition in a UBI-turbocharged consumer economy is going to be even more difficult. **DA:* Assuming universal basic income becomes foundational to a postindustrial (post labor?) society, does that suggest that we might begin to design and build a different kind of society altogether? What’s the long game for a society that integrates universal basic income?* UBI is at its’ heart, an unconditional access to basic resources. Providing that access will unlock doors that have remained locked for as long as these doors have existed. As one example, we’ve never really made it possible for anyone to engage in free labor. What happens when we do that? Well, that means more creators can stop caring about selling their work or even copyrighting it. More people can choose to give the results of their passion-derived labor away for free, and instead, contribute to the public domain or the creative commons. Take me for example. I’m a writer at heart. I love to write. I don’t write for the money. I write for my words to be read and enjoyed. The more people who read what I write, the happier I am, and so what I write, I like to give away at no cost. I also use creative commons licensing because I believe the richer the commons, the richer we all are. I’m able to do this because I basically already have a basic income, made possible through my crowdfunding on Patreon. I couldn’t do this if I needed to sell everything I write in order to live. Our present system effectively limits creation and distribution. Now imagine the reduction of these creative limits applied in other areas, like science and technology. Imagine scientists more able to freely pursue their interests. Imagine more coders able to contribute to the open source world. Imagine parents more able to care for their kids, activists more able to organize, and citizens more able to engage in democracy? All of these things point to a different kind of world that is really only possible through UBI. A world where no one has to prove their *right to live* anymore through traditional employment. In a world where work has been transformed from something we *must* do to something we *can* do, money itself becomes less important and that’s a different kind of world with profoundly different human outcomes. Scarcity becomes history, as does poverty, and the future becomes one of growing abundance and increasing prosperity. Is this a world we want? I hope so. It’s certainly got my vote. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my ceaseless UBI advocacy. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### One Happy Story - The Citizens Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/one-happy-story-the-citizens-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T23:40:01.000Z When I met Senator Eduardo Suplicy of Brazil earlier this year at the [NABIG15 Congress](https://medium.com/basic-income/notes-of-discussions-in-the-north-american-basic-income-guarantee-congress-of-2015-56607ceb9362?ref=scottsantens.com) in New York, he handed me and many others there this cute little children's book about basic income in Brazil. For those who aren't aware, Brazil is the first country to pass basic income into law, [and did so back in 2004](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic%5Fincome%5Fin%5FBrazil?ref=scottsantens.com). They just haven't implemented it yet, because it's up to the President to do so, and so far they've avoided it. I've been meaning for quite awhile to make this book more available to people by taking some photos of the pages and making an album available online, but then more recently I thought it would be neat to somehow make it into a video, so that's what I've done here, including my own narration. I hope this is now able to reach more people, and if you want the images themselves, I've uploaded them to [an imgur album](http://imgur.com/a/tWynA?ref=scottsantens.com). So by all means, if you make videos and think I did a terrible job with this version, please use the images to make a far better version. Thanks! And my thanks as well to all those who originally created this story and its images. **Credits:**Art: Megaterio Estudio de Criacao Writing: Ziraldo, Gustavo Luiz, and Miguel Mendes Illustrations: Miguel Mendes and Marco Antonio J. Ferreira Colors and Graphic Design: Fabio Tenorio Ferreira Translation: Andreza Akuska de Sousa Santos --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Everything You Think You Know About The History and Future of Jobs Is Likely Wrong URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/everything-you-think-you-know-about-the-history-and-future-of-jobs-is-likely-wrong/ Last updated: 2022-05-17T22:32:04.000Z 47 percent... That's the [highly cited estimate out of Oxford by Frey and Osbourne](http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The%5FFuture%5Fof%5FEmployment.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) of the percentage of existing jobs that are likely to be automated away with the help of technology within the next two decades. According to this paper, flip a coin and call heads or machines to see if your job will exist in 20 years. This is the 21st century fear for many called ["technological unemployment."](https://medium.com/basic-income/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us-like-a-human-driven-truck-b8507d9c5961?ref=scottsantens.com) There is also a conception among many [(*about half of those considered experts, so again flip a coin*)](http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/08/06/future-of-jobs/?ref=scottsantens.com) that there is [no technological unemployment problem](https://www.scottsantens.com/debunking-the-debunking-of-humans-need-not-apply-and-more-the-fallacy-of-the-luddite-fallacy) because even though technology eliminates jobs, it also creates new and better ones of sufficient supply such that pretty much everyone is better off than they would be in otherwise "undisrupted" lives. There does tend to be one caveat to this dismissal of automation fears that most of all of these high-skill jobs will require high-skill labor, and thus a highly skilled work force which will require more education. So of course the answer to what could otherwise be a somewhat thorny future, is simply education, education, and more education. Well, David Autor of MIT just published a fascinating paper (*though we reach different conclusions*) in the Summer 2015 Journal of Economic Perspectives titled, ["Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation"](http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.29.3.3?ref=scottsantens.com). In this paper he compiled the following chart, and it should blow anyone's mind who holds a strong opinion about the historical effects on jobs of computing technology since [it took off in the 1970s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline%5Fof%5Fcomputing%5F1950%E2%80%9379?ref=scottsantens.com), and so the possible future we should expect if the trends continue. ![Employment changes by occupational skill](http://i.imgur.com/E6Zc5e2.png?1) This chart has some very interesting complexity to it, which I'll attempt to simplify with snippets from Autor's paper. The most important thing to recognize is that all points above the flat red line show relative growth in jobs while points below show relative loss in jobs. Points to the left show jobs with less skill required and points to the right show jobs with more skill required. Each curve represents basically a different decade. ### Three Important Employment Observations > First, the pace of employment gains in low-wage, manual task-intensive jobs has risen successively across periods, as shown at the left-hand side of the figure. If we look at the far left of the chart, **we see growth in jobs with the least skill, increasing decade after decade after decade**. As the story goes, technology should have the opposite effect. The simpler a job is, the easier it should be to automate, and yet we're not seeing this at all. Instead we're seeing more and more low-skill jobs being *created* not destroyed. > Second, the occupations that are losing employment share appear to be increasingly drawn from higher ranks of the occupational distribution. For example, the highest ranked occupation to lose employment share during the 1980s lay at approximately the 45th percentile of the skill distribution. In the final two subperiods, this rank rose still further to above the 75th percentile—suggesting that the locus of displaced middle-skill employment is moving into higher-skilled territories. Where these curves intersect the red line has been moving to the right, meaning that **more and more middle-skill jobs have been lost in a way that even increasingly eats into higher and higher skill ranges**. This is a hollowing out of the middle and even upper-middle. Jobs that require what's considered between a low and high amount of skill have been disappearing. This appears to reflect the loss of the middle class. As each decade passes, the jobs that require mostly a medium amount of skill are simply going away, replaced instead with jobs requiring less skill ,not more skill, and thus jobs that tend to pay less, not more. > Third, growth of high-skill, high-wage occupations (those associated with abstract work) decelerated markedly in the 2000s, with no relative growth in the top two deciles of the occupational skill distribution during 1999 through 2007, and only a modest recovery between 2007 and 2012\. Stated plainly, the growth of occupational employment across skill levels looks U-shaped earlier in the period, with gains at low-skill and high-skill levels. By the 2000s, the pattern of occupational employment across skill levels began to resemble a downward ramp. We should expect to see what we see on the left of this chart on the right instead, but we don't. Between 1979 and 2007, a span of almost 30 years, there was less and less growth in jobs requiring the most skill. Only since 2007 has there been a reversal with a small amount of growth in these jobs. Other than that, as Autor himself describes it, it looks like a "downward ramp", meaning that **both middle and high-skill jobs are being steeply replaced with low-skill jobs, and have been since the 1970s**. This is not the story we are told. Instead we read story after story like [this latest one from the Guardian](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/17/technology-created-more-jobs-than-destroyed-140-years-data-census?ref=scottsantens.com), claiming that 140 years of job creation show that jobs will always be created. And yet the ongoing trend of such articles is to mostly ignore the potentially unnecessary nature of the jobs themselves, the level of skill involved to perform them, and the lower pay they can command than the jobs they are replacing. Take for example the following excerpt: > Their conclusion is unremittingly cheerful: rather than destroying jobs, technology has been a “great job-creating machine”. Findings by Deloitte such as a fourfold rise in bar staff since the 1950s or a surge in the number of hairdressers this century suggest to the authors that technology has increased spending power, therefore creating new demand and new jobs. So there's no need to worry about technological unemployment, because there will always be a need for more bar-backs and haircuts? Is that bar-back better off no longer having a manufacturing job paying $40,000 per year and instead having a job paying $20,000 per year in the service industry? Is that an important job to the human species, bringing empty glasses from Point A to Point B? And is this a job that just can't possibly be done by a machine, or outright eliminated? Ever? Is the service industry *really* safe? We should also probably keep in mind that [the percentage of the population in the labor force peaked back in the year 2000, and has been falling since](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CIVPART?ref=scottsantens.com). The above chart of employment skills polarization only examines the makeup of those employed, and ignores all those unemployed and all those not even looking for work anymore. The amount of those employed within the total population is at a record 38-year low of 62.6%. Meanwhile, [despite slowing, GDP is still growing](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/our-paradoxical-economy-c%5Fb%5F7750222.html?ref=scottsantens.com), so all the work is still obviously getting done somehow... ### Many Questions Unasked Centuries of data may show us how jobs have been both destroyed and created but recent decades worth of more nuanced data more importantly show us there's more to this story. Whenever we see someone claiming new jobs are being created and will continue to be created so as to provide everyone a job, we need to look deeper and ask, **"What kind of job? What are the skills required? How much does it pay for how many hours? Does it provide more security or less? What are the benefits it offers? Is the job really necessary? Does the job provide meaning to those tasked with it? Are jobs and work the same thing? Is there [work to do that's more important than what the job involves](http://www.ozy.com/acumen/americas-unpaid-billion-hours-a-week-workforce/61897?ref=scottsantens.com)? [Is working in the job actually better than not working at all?](http://mashable.com/2014/12/17/bad-jobs-mental-health/?ref=scottsantens.com)"** Regarding that last question in particular, there's [this important finding](http://mashable.com/2014/12/17/bad-jobs-mental-health/?ref=scottsantens.com) which should not go ignored in any discussion celebrating job creation: > Those who moved into optimal jobs showed significant improvement in mental health compared to those who remained unemployed. **Those respondents who moved into poor-quality jobs showed a significant worsening in their mental health compared to those who remained unemployed.** That's right, having no job at all can be better than having [a bullshit one](http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/?ref=scottsantens.com). Thanks, science. And if low-skill jobs are more likely to be worse on mental health than medium and high-skill jobs, then for decades we've been increasingly working in newly created jobs that are depressingly worse for us than not working in *any* job. All of the above questions are important to actually ask because when we get right down to it, the mere existence of a job means very little. We have to ask additional questions about the nature of the job itself. Those not asking these additional questions are simplifying the story in such a way it becomes even simpler than a story. It becomes a *fairy tale*. Yes, our economy is so far creating more and more jobs as our technology destroys old ones, but these jobs are not at all the jobs we may assume they are. They are mostly low-skill jobs, and that means [mostly low-paying jobs](http://imgur.com/no5Bklh?ref=scottsantens.com). For every new job as a Facebook engineer, there are countless more jobs in fast food, and there are a whole lot fewer jobs in car assembly plants. [There are also not as many total jobs available for everyone as we may think](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/the-job-market-a-game-of-%5Fb%5F7581704.html?ref=scottsantens.com). What does this all mean to us and to our country as a whole? What does it mean for [the great increases in productivity we could otherwise see](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/our-paradoxical-economy-c%5Fb%5F7750222.html?ref=scottsantens.com) if job elimination were instead actually [our *goal*](http://www.philorum.org/speech/20051207JohnBentley.html?ref=scottsantens.com)? This also means that [more education isn't the answer](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/03/robots-are-hurting-middle-class-workers-and-education-wont-solve-the-problem-larry-summers-says/?ref=scottsantens.com). As the decades have passed, the population has gotten more and more educated. [Our workforce now is the most educated workforce in US history](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/02/28/for-millennials-a-bachelors-degree-continues-to-pay-off-but-a-masters-earns-even-more/?ref=scottsantens.com), and a great deal of this education is being put to work in jobs that don't need it, because the jobs that do need it aren't being created in sufficient numbers. Are bar-backs [*with PhDs*](http://www.mybudget360.com/phd-food-stamps-rise-advanced-degrees-government-aid-benefits/?ref=scottsantens.com) a triumph of new job creation? **The true story of technology and jobs is a story of an eroding middle, a relatively slowing top, and a vastly growing bottom.** So unless we all wish to pursue [insecure lives of low-skill underpaid mostly meaningless employment](http://www.guystanding.com/files/documents/forum%5Fpoverta%5Fnapoli%5F-%5Fguy%5Fstanding.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) thanks to all the machines increasingly doing all the rest of the work ([not really for us but mostly for the benefit of those who own them](http://mic.com/articles/119896/after-robots-take-our-jobs-basic-income-is-the-best-solution?ref=scottsantens.com)), we will need to break the connection between work and income by providing everyone an income floor sufficient to both meet basic needs and purchase the goods and services the machines are providing. It's as simple as that. Without that decoupling, there will be no economy, because there will be insufficient consumer buying power to drive it. If we look at the details of the last few decades of job creation and destruction, we're either going to make enough new low-skill jobs in numbers sufficient to keep unemployment numbers low enough to actually run a society... or we're not. Either way, consumer buying power is likely to steeply erode, even after we account for the effects technology has on lowering prices because [the costs of basic needs like food and housing are the costs technology has had relatively little effect on this century](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/its-expensive-to-be-poor/361533/?ref=scottsantens.com). Meanwhile, if we can eliminate half of our jobs in just 20 years, do we really even *want* to create that many tens of millions of new ways to work for someone else? Why? There appears to be no happy ending to this story that doesn't involve **[universal basic income](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/why-should-we-support-the%5Fb%5F7630162.html?ref=scottsantens.com)**. So instead of continuing to ask if jobs are going to be automated in sufficient quantities to *need* basic income, let's instead start to increasingly ask if there's any job we can't automate so we're all more *freed to live* by it. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Should the Amount of Basic Income Vary With Cost of Living Differences? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/should-the-amount-of-basic-income-vary-with-cost-of-living-differences/ Last updated: 2022-02-21T23:56:19.000Z A common first question in response to the idea of unconditionally guaranteeing a monthly cash stipend to everyone sufficient to meet their basic needs is in regards to a potential need for *differing amounts* of [basic income](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/why-should-we-support-the%5Fb%5F7630162.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Let's examine this question from two perspectives: that of **the individual** and that of **the location**. ### First Perspective: The Individual It's a lot more expensive to live in New York City and San Francisco than it is to live in Detroit or somewhere out in small town rural America. With this in mind, the logic goes that perhaps we need to make sure and vary the amount of universal basic income, so as to make sure that wherever anyone is currently living, they can stay there. If someone needs $2,000 to live unemployed and alone in a 1-bedroom apartment in NYC or SF, then that's what their basic income should be, so goes the argument. This may sound fair enough on its face, until we look at basic income as a guarantee of a minimum amount of *opportunity*. Right now people are guaranteed zero opportunity. However, if you happen to live in New York City, you are fortunate enough to have a much greater amount of opportunity than if you lived in rural America. In NYC, there are jobs, public transportation, people, services, commerce, and everything else the Big Apple provides. This is also why it costs so much more to live there versus rural America. It's an **opportunity premium** originating from the added value created by a dense population of people and wealth. In Small Town USA, population: 500, there are few jobs, few people, few services, little commerce, and no public transportation. It costs a lot less to live there than in NYC because there is far less opportunity and far less wealth. It's an **opportunity deficit**. A universal basic income however, provides increased opportunity to all in the form of additional *cash*. It's an **opportunity bonus.** Everyone can use their UBI on anything they want. They can spend $500 on rent and $500 on food, or $333 on rent, $333 on food, and $334 on starting a business. They can live with relatives for $0 and use $1,000 per month on the pursuit of their passion, whatever it is. Someone could move to a big city to become an actor, or move to a small town to take life a bit easier. Whatever someone decides, that $1,000 per month will always be there, deposited in their bank account without fail every four weeks (or $500 every two weeks). As cash, it will always be able to be exchanged for something else of infinite variety, especially now where anything can be purchased online and delivered anywhere. There are no limits on how the money can be used. [Creativity would have full free reign](https://www.givedirectly.org/blog-post.html?id=5453927471971916970&ref=scottsantens.com). With this now in mind, let's look again at NYC versus Small Town USA, with a hypothetical location opportunity ratio of 3:1. **NYC:** $1,500/mo effective location opportunity plus $1,000/mo UBI opportunity bonus minus $2,000/mo rent and food = **$500 total opportunity** **Small Town USA:** $500/mo effective location opportunity plus $1,000/mo UBI opportunity bonus minus $1,000/mo rent and food = **$500 total opportunity** With an identical UBI of $1,000 per month for each person, **they both end up netting the same amount of total opportunity** because one has more location opportunity and the other has more opportunity in the form of cash after covering basic expenses.They also both have new *choices.* ### Choose Your Own Adventure If the person in NYC wants more opportunity, they can choose to spend less on rent and food by sharing expenses with other people. It may cost $2,000 per month to live alone, but it could only cost $500 per month to live with three roommates. Or location opportunity could be sacrificed by moving somewhere cheaper in order to spend less on food and rent elsewhere anywhere in the country. Living anywhere is possible for the first time because with basic income, income is decoupled from jobs, and whereas jobs don't exist everywhere, people can. Meanwhile, the person in Small Town USA could make the same choices, but from the other side of the coin. They can save even more money by sharing expenses, or move somewhere *more* expensive and exchange cash opportunity for location opportunity. Maybe they've always wanted to try to be an actor in NYC and now they can, whereas before UBI, they were unable to leave rural America. We all have a right to live anywhere in the country, but no one has a right to live specifically in NYC, and to do so living alone and with no job in the heart of the city. People have a right to live, and if they choose to live in NYC, they also get a ton of unique opportunities right along with that choice. And that additional opportunity compared to others living elsewhere should bear some kind of additional cost. It should be a tradeoff. If someone wants increased cash opportunity without changing their location opportunity, all they need do is cut their spending and/or share expenses with others to a greater degree than those receiving the same UBI elsewhere. If they'd rather keep more of their basic income instead of keeping their higher location opportunity, they can move anywhere else cheaper where there's less location opportunity. Basic income unlocks these kinds of choices that would not exist otherwise, but it's one or the other and the decision concerning what kind of opportunity is more important is up to the individual. And these decisions will also have important impacts on the cost of living itself. ### Second Perspective: The Location There is another issue to consider here, which is if UBI is scaled by location, that location can get as expensive as it wants, [**like tulips**](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidies/?ref=scottsantens.com). Where is the incentive for a city to keep its costs of living down, if it knows the federal government will guarantee any price to cover basic needs? The point of a universal amount, is to say *"this is the average minimum amount of money in this country required to cover basic needs."* For those in lower cost of living areas, they can stay where they are and be even better off financially, or move to a more expensive location. For those in higher cost of living areas, they can earn income on top of their basic income, move to a cheaper location, or the cities or states themselves can make living there more affordable through lowering costs or increasing incomes. What do I mean by increasing incomes? There is nothing stopping states and metro areas from creating resident dividends like in Alaska to increase the total incomes of those who live there. Vast oil deposits are also entirely unnecessary to accomplish this. Yes, even resource-poor states can do it. [A study in Vermont showed just how effective this could be](http://www.uvm.edu/giee/pubpdfs/Flomenhoft%5F2012%5FExploring%5Fthe%5FAlaska%5FModel.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com): > $1.2 billion of additional revenue would be available in Vermont each year if common assets were rented out instead of given away. That’s enough for a $1,972 dividend for every Vermonter... Our highest estimate of common asset value of Vermont is $6.45 billion. If all of that revenue were devoted to a dividend, it could be as large as $10,348. So in Vermont, it would be possible for everyone to have a basic income at the federal level of $12,000 and at the state level of as much as $10,000 for a total of $22,000\. In Alaska, their total income outside the labor market would actually be more like $14,000 with the added income from their existing dividend. California could do the same thing, and provide an additional $200 per month or more to its residents through something like a carbon tax or a land value tax. Any state or even city can do this, if they so choose. Basic income gives people the basic freedom to move. This introduces downward pressure on prices, as cities suddenly find themselves competing for residents. If those charging rent charge too much, people are free to move where people are charging less. There will be more movement between small towns and cities nationwide. This creates the incentive to not raise rents. There's even [an incentive to *lower* rents within cities through the introduction of smart new businesses looking to capture the new low-end housing market created by everyone having basic income](https://medium.com/basic-income/google-homes-and-wikihouses-8609c917ad14?ref=scottsantens.com). If we guarantee rent at any level, there is no incentive to move to a cheaper location. We'd be removing competition between cities and encouraging those setting rent prices to raise them. **If the cost of housing is guaranteed at any level, then that level will rise.** This same effect has been seen [in Australia](http://www.cis.org.au/media-information/opinion-pieces/article/311-subsidies-increase-child-care-prices-not-mothers-participation-in-work?ref=scottsantens.com), where increasing child care has resulted in increasing child care prices. And we see this in [the US college education system](http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2011/11/23/why-the-government-is-to-blame-for-high-college-costs?ref=scottsantens.com), where education is guaranteed at any price through loans, so prices just keep on being raised. Giving more money for more expensive cities would say to those places, *"Go right on ahead and raise prices. We will pay it, no matter what."* And why would they not want that? More federal money per person in the state of California would be good for California. And then what of those in Mississippi? They aren't worth as much? They are less valuable as US citizens because it's cheaper to live there? Adjusting a basic income instead of making it fully universal is not a good idea if we want to lower costs of living in high cost of living areas. Let everyone and everything be treated equally where all can adjust to the universal level, instead of perpetually adjusting the level around locations. The former would introduce competition between cities, where the costs of living would go down in expensive areas and up in cheaper areas. The latter would encourage rising costs of living in already expensive areas, which is something I believe we would want to avoid. ### Existence Unchained Basically, one of the most powerful effects of a truly universal basic income is the decoupling of income from jobs. People are at present effectively chained to cities. They're fenced in. They have little choice but to live near all the jobs. Once people no longer are forced to live near metro areas in order to obtain the income required to live, the demand to live near densely-populated cities will likely fall while the demand to live in Small Town USA will rise. Together this will reduce the extreme price disparity between these options such that if the national average cost of living anywhere is $1,000, the extremes could go for example from $200-$2,000 to $500-$1,500\. It goes up at the bottom and down at the top. But this only happens if we don't vary the value of the UBI and instead make sure every citizen is treated equally regardless of location. ### Implementation Granted, there will be people who want to move to cheaper areas, but may find it financially difficult to do so, even with their basic income, and so we should consider this. How will we handle this particular circumstance? Well, I don't see the problem in covering moving expenses, either through a loan or grant as part of the introduction of UBI. [We already do this to a degree](http://homeguides.sfgate.com/grants-housing-moving-8493.html?ref=scottsantens.com). > Other agencies, such as the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, also provide housing and moving grants to low-income individuals who are facing financial hardship. Or we could possibly avoid such added administration costs by just giving a one-time additional amount that people can either use to move or treat as a stimulus bonus. Or we could potentially avoid all of this by just introducing UBI slowly, giving people time to adjust as it goes. These kinds of details are implementation details, but that's all they are. They're certainly no obstacle to the idea of basic income itself. We just need to keep these kinds of details in mind to best design the eventual policies we end up enacting. When it comes to the detail of setting the amount of a national basic income, whatever amount is decided upon needs to be *the same amount for all citizens*, regardless of location, not only for all the economic reasons above, but because in the eyes of government, all citizens should be treated equally. **Basic income is basic *economic rights*, and when it comes to rights, they should be *equal*.** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Minimum Wages vs. Universal Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/minimum-wages-vs-universal-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-21T23:51:37.000Z *Below is the full audio (with text) of my commentary originally recorded for WNYC's The Takeaway for a discussion about [reconsidering the minimum wage](http://www.thetakeaway.org/story/reconsidering-minimum-wage/?ref=scottsantens.com), of which only a small portion was aired. It is available here now in its entirety.* ### Audio: **Text:** I think that wherever possible, [we should look to permanently eliminate underlying causes instead of treating symptoms without end](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com). When it comes to minimum wage laws, we're perpetually treating a symptom and not a cause. The problem we wish to solve is that employees aren't getting paid enough to work. So the government then has to step in and say, "Hey, employers, you can't pay less than this amount, and employees, you can't *accept* less than this amount." Well, why do we need to do this? Why aren't people getting paid enough? What's the core issue? I think people aren't getting paid enough because they can't really ask for more out of fear of getting nothing at all. [They have no individual bargaining power](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/automation-frase-robots/?ref=scottsantens.com). All negotiating power is in the hands of those offering the jobs and not those looking for them. Outside of unions, we can't say "No" to the terms of employment offered by employers. As long as our primary concern is that of paying for our basic needs like food and rent, [all we can really say is "Yes"](http://blog.eros.com/universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com). If an employer can pay less, they will. They will even pay nothing wherever possible. Just look at unpaid internships. And because people prefer to eat and live indoors, and anything is better than nothing, people accept wages that or too low or even zero (in combination with work experience) because it's all better than the alternative - nothing. So really, what we need to do is create a better alternative than nothing. If everyone were to start with $1,000 per month as a right of citizenship, a [universal basic income](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com), that's enough money outside of work to cover our most basic living expenses. That means no one is desperate for money anymore. In fact, according to our own [federal poverty guidelines](http://familiesusa.org/product/federal-poverty-guidelines?ref=scottsantens.com), poverty would be effectively abolished, [as long as every child also got around $300 a month](https://www.scottsantens.com/why-should-adults-with-kids-get-more-basic-income-child-allowances), because the amount required to not live in poverty varies by household size. Now consider how a wage negotiation would go with a basic income in existence. Suddenly, $7 an hour may no longer be enough. Why work for $7 an hour when you're already getting $1,000 every month as a starting point for being alive? Maybe in order for an employer to find people willing to say "Yes" to work now, they need to pay $15 an hour. Maybe one employer needs to only pay $5 hour now because it's a fun job, and another employer needs to pay $25 an hour because everyone hates that job. Even better, people can actually start sharing jobs. Maybe a job everyone hates can only get any one person to work ten hours a week at it, so instead of one person doing it 40 hours and hating it, 4 people do it for 10 hours and find it an entirely acceptable way to earn additional money. This right here is possibly the best reason to go with basic income instead of [a hodgepodge of minimum wage laws, earned income tax credits, welfare programs, food stamps, housing assistance, tax deductions, and all the rest](https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e?ref=scottsantens.com). Because basic income provides an income floor, there's no longer any reason to keep any of these bureaucracy-filled ways of easing but never ending poverty. Instead, poverty would be gone. And because poverty is gone, all jobs have to either pay enough for people to accept them, or those jobs will be automated. If automated, no one has to do that job anymore. They can do something else instead. They could do [work in the gig economy](http://continuations.com/post/124069363855/debating-the-gig-economy-going-past-industrial?ref=scottsantens.com), driving people for Uber, without all the desperation it involves now racing around trying to find enough riders to scrape by each month. People could even do entirely unpaid work like volunteering or open source programming. All sorts of doors become opened as options to walk through instead of traditional labor. Some people will then say this is paying people not to work. But that's actually what we're already doing. Right now, if you're receiving assistance, it will be pulled away with higher earnings. [A better word would probably be yanked](https://www.scottsantens.com/will-replacing-current-benefits-with-cash-tomorrow-leave-todays-recipients-better-or-worse-off-basic-income-single-parents-welfare). That help is yanked away at steep rates, so steep that it's actually possible for someone without a job to earn $12,000 in benefits, get a job, and then earn $12,000 in income. So right now, work doesn't always pay, and we even pay others to make sure it doesn't pay, by monitoring those on assistance to make sure they either aren't working or report additional income. With a universal basic income, work would always pay. $12,000 would be a floor that no one would earn any amount below, and everyone would earn everything on top of. No job? You get $12,000\. Got a job? You get $30,000 more for a total of $42,000. With a basic income, everyone would get a raise. That also doesn't happen with policies like minimum wage, or tax credits like the home mortgage interest rate deduction. Those only affect certain portions of the population, and they certainly don't help the portion of the population unable to find a job. Meanwhile the programs for them, don't help them as much as we think they do. In Wyoming, [1% of those living below the federal poverty line receive temporary assistance for needy families](https://www.scottsantens.com/tanf-is-terrible). Food stamps tend to only last to the third week each month. Only [1 out of 4 people](http://www.vox.com/2014/5/31/5764262/76-percent-of-people-who-qualify-for-housing-aid-dont-get-it?ref=scottsantens.com) who qualify for housing assistance actually get it. Referring to our system as a safety net is actually very appropriate because it's full of holes. [There are no holes with a universal basic income](https://www.scottsantens.com/the-water-room-analogy-why-giving-basic-income-to-even-the-richest-makes-sense). Everyone gets it. No questions asked. No forms to fill out. No classes to go to or middlemen to meet with. No stigma attached because everyone gets the same thing no matter how much is earned. Instead, some people just pay more in taxes than others, and those taxes can even be financial transaction taxes or [carbon taxes](http://org.salsalabs.com/o/423/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action%5FKEY=17744&ref=scottsantens.com) or consumption taxes. Income taxes can actually even go down as a result [for over 80% of all households](https://www.scottsantens.com/does-basic-income-reduce-income-inequality-gini), because a household of two adults and two kids could all together get the equivalent of a $32,000 refundable tax credit. So this idea that a basic income would have to raise everyone's income taxes is overblown. Some taxes would go up, but [certainly not the taxes of the middle classes and below](https://medium.com/basic-income/trickle-down-economics-must-die-long-live-grow-up-economics-5b8334a0db76?ref=scottsantens.com). [Minimum wage is a tool of a previous century](https://medium.com/basic-income/machine-labor-day-d77931dca9a8?ref=scottsantens.com). When we wield it now with technology as advanced as it is, we will only increase technological unemployment. Why pay someone $15 an hour, when touchscreen kiosks are enough to do the job more efficiently at a lower cost? Mandatory higher wages only help those with jobs, and many of these jobs are jobs people would refuse to take without sufficient pay. If people could refuse jobs that don't pay enough because they already have enough to get by, and the result would be that people either get paid more or no one has to do them anymore, why not immediately do this instead? [Why not give people the ability to refuse jobs entirely, and instead pursue the work most important to them?](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com) If we can do that, [if we can use a 21st century tool like basic income instead, we can obviate the need for minimum wage laws](https://agenda.weforum.org/2015/07/should-we-replace-the-minimum-wage-with-a-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) and a whole lot of other needless things as well, up to and including [the existence of poverty itself](http://www.fastcoexist.com/3040832/world-changing-ideas/a-universal-basic-income-is-the-bipartisan-solution-to-poverty-weve-bee?ref=scottsantens.com). --- **As long as we don't have universal basic income, we need minimum wages for those with jobs, and welfare for those who don't. As soon as we have universal basic income, such policies, along with poverty itself, become entirely unnecessary.** ![min wage basic income](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/gZld79p.png) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Trickle-Down Economics Must Die, Long Live Grown-Up Economics URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/trickle-down-economics-must-die-long-live-grown-up-economics/ Last updated: 2023-09-26T19:24:53.000Z ## The myth of inequality-driven economic growth and how to achieve real prosperity for all > “Economics, as it has been practiced in the last three decades, has been positively harmful for most people.” — Economist Ha-Joon Chang For over thirty years we’ve treated something as fact which is actually false. Economists we trusted to know better, didn’t, and so people have suffered and continue to suffer. This pernicious economic myth is the idea that **a rising yacht lifts all tides**, or as more popularly described, “trickle-down economics.” If we are to start running our economy in a way we could one day describe as notably less insane, we must finally come to see it for what it actually is. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1168/1*f6qxx2l9rCAX9E6o-8QvPw.jpeg) ## An Undead Idea This belief that it’s good economics to give a relatively greater and greater share of the pie to the top of the economic spectrum because the absolute sizes of all remaining shares will grow, has taken some mortal hits in recent years by some major players, most notably even the OECD and IMF. In fact, it has now reached the point that the idea even being left alive at all in the minds of anyone, makes it a good candidate as an extra in The Walking Dead. Surveying the data, we’ll start with Wall Street bonuses versus the economic multiplier effects of higher velocity money, go on to economic growth research in relation to distributional inequality, and end with what we know from global cash transfer evidence and the economic effects of billionaires. Let’s burn this undead idea of inequality-driven economic growth with napalm and bury it in concrete shall we? # Section 1: Multiplication After looking at some numbers, Mother Jones back in March 2015 tweeted a memorable chart along with possibly an even more memorable comment. > This is one of the most fucked up charts you will see in the foreseeable future [http://t.co/BlHNmufut0](http://t.co/BlHNmufut0?ref=scottsantens.com) [pic.twitter.com/utvG1squcQ](http://t.co/utvG1squcQ?ref=scottsantens.com) > > — Mother Jones (@MotherJones) [March 16, 2015](https://twitter.com/MotherJones/status/577613111101882368?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) This chart alone is perhaps enough to warrant a trip to the nearest window to shout out, “[I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WINDtlPXmmE&ref=scottsantens.com)” > *Wall Street earned twice as much in year-end bonuses alone as* ***all full-time minimum wage workers combined*** *earned the entire year.* What Mother Jones neglected to mention however is something that goes well beyond “fucked up”, and something which did not go unmentioned in [a piece by the Institute for Policy Studies](http://www.ips-dc.org/wall%5Fstreet%5Fbonuses%5Fand%5Fthe%5Fminimum%5Fwage/?ref=scottsantens.com) after identical news the year prior. > Every extra dollar going into the pockets of low-wage workers, standard economic multiplier models tell us, adds about $1.21 to the national economy. Every extra dollar going into the pockets of a high-income American, by contrast, only adds about 39 cents to the GDP. These pennies add up considerably on $26.7 billion in earnings. If the $26.7 billion Wall Streeters pulled in on bonuses in 2013 had gone to minimum wage workers instead, **our GDP would have grown by about $32.3 billion**, **over triple the $10.4 billion boost expected from the Wall Street bonuses**. Yeah, you just read that right. In 2013, by giving huge bonuses to those on Wall Street instead of low-wage workers, **we actively prevented the creation of about $22 billion in additional national wealth**. In 2014, we did the same thing, but to an even larger degree, preventing about **$23 billion in additional national wealth** that would have otherwise been created, had those billions in bonuses been distributed to low-income earners instead. > *In 2013 and 2014, by giving huge bonuses to those on Wall Street instead of low-wage workers, we actively prevented the creation of almost $50 billion in new national wealth.* Year after year, we prevent new wealth creation. Why is this the case? What causes such a big difference in wealth creation, such that **money at the bottom is over *three times* more effective at driving economic growth than money at the top**? Well, economists call it the “multiplier effect” whose origins are in what’s called the “[marginal propensity to consume](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal%5Fpropensity%5Fto%5Fconsume?ref=scottsantens.com).” It describes how those with little money spend it quickly and those with lots of money don’t. ## Fast Money vs. Slow Money Simply put, monetary exchanges have a frequency rate — a “[velocity](https://medium.com/basic-income/unearned-income-and-the-velocity-of-money-ddf9b19fcb8a?ref=scottsantens.com)” — and this velocity is far higher at the bottom than at the top. When you have a lot of money, each individual dollar for the most part just kind of sits around. Sure, it may be put to use eventually, but these dollars are more like gold coins inside Scrooge McDuck’s bank vault. Occasionally they get swam in, but they’re really just there to be counted and look shiny. Additionally, they can even get sent overseas, to sit around in vaults elsewhere. Looking at the latest money velocity charts and comparing today’s numbers to the historical record, is all one need do to see what happens to the overall rate of market exchanges when we start letting the top accumulate more and more of the total money supply. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*twqbschdM_UI2o26E4bcRA.png) Source: [St. Louis Fed](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=1d1j&ref=scottsantens.com) > *The velocity of each dollar in our total money supply is now lower than it’s ever been recorded, in all of U.S. history.* We are exchanging the dollars in our money supply more slowly than even during the **Great Depression.** The result has been an economy growing more and more tilted everyday, such that even Disney itself, a company built on middle class consumption, [is actively leaving it behind](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2015/06/12/how-theme-parks-like-disney-world-left-the-middle-class-behind/?ref=scottsantens.com) in an accelerating sprint towards that shrinking population with money to spend in greater and greater amounts. Meanwhile, that shrinking amount of money that’s still accessible in hands at the bottom? It’s changing hand after hand, and quickly. That dollar is no coin in a bank vault. It helps buy a gallon of milk, which pays a cashier, which helps buy a haircut, which pays a hair stylist, which helps buy a ticket to a movie, which pays a concession stand worker, which helps buy a dinner for two, and on and on it goes, like a fiery hot lava potato. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1140/1*RsR4myCxBSQwwukCJuQv_g.png) Source:[ CRS](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-clemente/when-congress-cooks-the-b%5Fb%5F6444352.html?ref=scottsantens.com) Food stamps are perhaps the best example of how quickly money gets spent at the bottom. When you have so little income that you need SNAP to eat, you’re spending every dollar of it. There’s no not spending it, because it has to be spent in order to stay alive. The result? **For every dollar spent on food stamps, GDP grows almost $2.** The mechanism of how this works is effectively illustrated in [a parable Tim Ellis shared on his blog that I recommend reading](http://tim-ellis.com/post/80787565427/on-stimulus-and-the-velocity-of-money-a-parable?ref=scottsantens.com) to further illustrate how money at the bottom does not stand still. Such money instead facilitates exchanges within the economy, which is the entire point of it all. That’s what an economy is. It’s all the exchanges that take place between the people who comprise it. When these exchanges aren’t taking place, there is no economy. But it’s also not only about the rate of exchange. # Section 2: Subtraction and Addition It’s not just that someone with little money has enough money to spend that expands an economy. The most effectual part is that a dollar is also removed from the hand overflowing with dollars. Who knew Robin Hood oversaw such an effective economic stimulus program? But that’s how it works and also in a way that stabilizes the entire economy according to [a new model built by Ricardo Reis and Alistair McKay](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=2258943&ref=scottsantens.com) of Columbia University and Boston University. > “[It’s the redistribution that has a lot of kick,” Reis said in an interview. “The usual argument for transfers is basically Keynesian. We find that has very low impact in our model](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-05-06/best-stimulus-package-may-be-food-stamps?ref=scottsantens.com).” According to Reis and McKay, there is no better way of creating a more stable economy than to expand tax-and-transfer programs that specifically reduce inequality; like food stamps, and social insurance. A healthy economy is not one of extreme inequality, but one where everyone has *enough* money to spend into it, to the point they can start saving what they don’t need to spend. > *A healthy economy is not one of extreme inequality, but one where everyone has* enough *money to spend into it, to the point they can start saving what they don’t need to spend.* When the only ones capable of making exchanges are a small percentage of the population, the entire economy suffers because the many are excluded for the benefit of the few, but this benefit too is an illusion. **There is no real benefit**. Pretending otherwise is like thinking that cutting off the blood in your body to everything except the brain is good for business. It’s not. It’s good for gangrene. ## OECD Findings In a December 2014 report titled, “Trends in Income Inequality and its Impact on Economic Growth”, [the OECD found that inequality slows economic growth](http://www.oecd.org/newsroom/inequality-hurts-economic-growth.htm?ref=scottsantens.com). ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*1JjPxkhB10E-SedUalhbnQ.png) Source: OECD > “Rising inequality is estimated to have knocked more than 10 percentage points off growth in Mexico and New Zealand over the past two decades up to the Great Recession. In Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States, **the cumulative growth rate would have been six to nine percentage points higher had income disparities not widened**, but also in Sweden, Finland and Norway, although from low levels. On the other hand, greater equality helped increase GDP per capita in Spain, France and Ireland prior to the crisis. One sentence from the report stands out in particular, as something absolutely vital to focus on to achieve strong economic growth. > The impact of inequality on growth stems from the gap between the bottom 40 percent with the rest of society, not just the poorest 10 percent. Anti-poverty programs will not be enough, says the OECD. **It is not enough to tax and transfer only from the top to the bottom.** Transfer recipients must include at least about half of the entire population. The incomes of the middle class must be increased alongside those living under or near the poverty line, and all of this entirely at the expense of the top. By not doing this, we all lose, even the rich. Between 1990 and today, US GDP grew from $6 trillion to what is now almost $20 trillion. The OECD is saying that had we not allowed our inequality to grow alongside it, our GDP would have grown *an extra trillion dollars*. And had we reduced our inequality, our GDP would now likely be somewhere well north of $20 trillion. But we didn’t do that. We instead shoveled money hand over fist into the pockets of those with already overstuffed pockets, and to this day we continue to do so. However, this behavior is beginning to be questioned by even more growth experts than the OECD. The IMF is now asking them too. ## IMF Findings In June of 2015, the International Monetary Fund upped the ante with an even more damning report on the effects of income inequality on economic growth than the OECD. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/800/1*gFc8eJ_O-FHobJmllCMOSg.jpeg) Source: [IMF](http://blog-imfdirect.imf.org/2015/06/15/growths-secret-weapon-the-poor-and-the-middle-class/?ref=scottsantens.com) [According to the IMF](http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2015/sdn1513.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), increasing the share of the total pie of the top 20% by just 1%, (by say throwing bonuses at them*)* ***decreases* economic growth by 0.08 points**. It actually damages the economy. Overall wealth decreases. On the other hand, increasing the share of the bottom 20% by the same 1%, ***increases* economic growth by 0.38 points,** that makes it five times more effective and in the direction we actually want. Similar growth increases are seen in decreasing amounts for the middle three quintiles, with 0.33 points, 0.27 points, and 0.06 points respectively. In other words, transferring money from the bottom to the top actually slows GDP. It erases national wealth. It shrinks the pie. Whereas doing the opposite, transferring money from the top to the bottom, is the equivalent of throwing Viagra at GDP. It quickly grows the pie. When the bottom 60% get a larger share, everyone greatly benefits, including the top 40%. The OECD data points to redistributing from the top to the bottom 40%. The IMF data points to redistributing from the top to the bottom 60%. **No data points to redistributing to the top from the bottom**, which is — unfortunately for everyone — exactly what we’ve been doing for decades. Redistribution actively already exists, and it’s in the wrong direction for GDP growth. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*a90atpsHFRyXX6EiIbb_fg.png) The United States: Taking from the working poor and middle classes to give to the rich for 40 years. So this idea that we should ever let inequality increase because it grows the total pie is completely and utterly false. By letting inequality increase, the entire pie actually shrinks. If we want the pie to grow we need to shift some of that stagnant wealth of the top 20% over to the other quintiles, and the more we shift towards the bottom and middle, the faster the pie will grow for everyone. > “Policies that help to limit or reverse inequality may not only make societies less unfair, but also wealthier.” — OECD, 2014 This is a huge reason, if not the best reason, for everyone to support the idea of [**unconditional basic income**](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com): increased economic growth [that benefits everyone](https://medium.com/basic-income/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a?ref=scottsantens.com). By reducing the rate of wealth accumulation of the top 20% in a way that better distributes that income to everyone else, we see the potential to build national wealth at historic new rates. ## A BIG Economy I’ve estimated before that the total additional cost required to give every adult citizen a basic income guarantee (BIG) of $1,000 per month and every citizen under eighteen $300 per month would be around [$300–500 billion after the elimination of expenses](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-is-the-net-transfer-amount-not-the-gross-price-tag-acb8aa5eab73?ref=scottsantens.com) no longer required with a basic income. This is less than [the total cost of child poverty](https://source.wustl.edu/2018/04/childhood-poverty-cost-u-s-1-03-trillion-in-a-year-study-finds/?ref=scottsantens.com) alone. (Note: the total cost of child poverty is $1.03 trillion or 5.3% of GDP) If that revenue is removed from the vaults of the top 20% where it is sitting stagnant, and distributed to the bottom 60% (no need to alter the distribution for the 60–80% according to the OECD or IMF), that’s about a 2.83% increase for each quintile combined with the growth from the 8.5% decrease in the 5th quintile. If these are then multiplied by the IMF numbers per 1% increase, the total combined result is a 3.45% growth estimate, for a new total GDP growth rate of potentially 6.44% with a unconditional basic income in place. This may sound high, and admittedly quite wonkish, but I believe it’s also likely we’ll see second and third order effects along the lines of [increased productivity, and wage increases through higher bargaining power,](https://medium.com/basic-income/our-paradoxical-economy-courtesy-of-technology-and-the-lack-of-basic-income-361f40051de0?ref=scottsantens.com) which would both result in potentially even larger increases to GDP growth with basic income than the IMF or OECD data points to. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*mtCQuWll14a8G9x5u2DMoQ.png) Source: [multpl](http://www.multpl.com/us-real-gdp-growth-rate?ref=scottsantens.com) Our GDP growth rate right now is 3%, and we’ve had around this growth rate for decades. With a basic income functioning as a means of reducing the share of the top 20%, and increasing the shares of the bottom 60% by giving everyone $1,000 per month, we should expect to see a new GDP growth rate of around 5–7%. We haven’t seen anywhere near this kind of growth since the 1980s, but perhaps we can see it again, if we start crafting policies that make sense using what we know, instead of continuing to rely on myth-driven policies that only serve to benefit — **in an illusory way —** an extremely small portion of our society. This sounds too good to be true, right? Transferring cash from high income earners to low and middle income individuals and families can’t possibly result in as high of growth rates in the real world as on paper. What evidence is there for such claims? It must be [impossible](https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-is-impossible). Well, let’s look at the observed economic effects of basic income and basic income-like policies, and also the observed evidence of anti-UBI, reverse Robin Hood policies, which further enrich the already rich. # Section 3: Evidence for Growth Conditional and unconditional [cash transfer programs have been spreading all over the world](https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/18376/879840WP0FINAL00Box385208B00PUBLIC0.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) for decades now. At first it may have been surprising to observe large multiplier effects, but today it surprises no one. It’s expected. What we see with raises for the rich however, is not. ## Effects of Cash Transfer Programs Every dollar given to the bottom of the socioeconomic spectrum in cash transfer program after cash transfer program results in more than a dollar being added to the economy, sometimes even more than two. An [unconditional cash transfer program in Lebanon of sufficient size to be considered a basic income](http://www.rescue.org/sites/default/files/resource-file/Emergency%20Economies%20Evaluation%20Report%20FINAL%2009.09.14%20%282%29.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) illustrated this especially well with a result of $2.13 for every $1. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*0rYQOkqDCRdrbehBXapsow.png) Source: [International Rescue Committee](http://www.rescue.org/sites/default/files/resource-file/Emergency%20Economies%20Evaluation%20Report%20FINAL%2009.09.14%20%282%29.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) Nothing in the above graph is below $1.50 for every $1\. The World Bank found similar multiplier effect results in Lesotho, Ghana, Ethiopia, and Zambia. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*kE8jJxODnKW-xdlvIPYTnA.png) Source: [The World Bank](https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/18376/879840WP0FINAL00Box385208B00PUBLIC0.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) Combined with all the evidence we have for [the entrepreneurial effects of unconditional cash transfers](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/the-job-market-a-game-of-%5Fb%5F7581704.html?ref=scottsantens.com), it’s no surprise at all why these multiplier effects exist. > In Namibia, when given basic incomes, [self-employment jumped 301%](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). In Liberia, when given basic incomes, [1/3 of recipients started their own businesses](https://www.scottsantens.com/guess-what-happened-when-liberia-tested-a-pilot-program-of-cash-transfers-to-the-extreme-poor). In India, when given basic incomes, [recipients were twice as likely to increase their productive work as those in control villages](https://www.opendemocracy.net/openindia/stuart-weir/basic-income-transforming-lives-in-rural-india?ref=scottsantens.com). In Kenya, when poor people were given cash unconditionally, [90% of them used it to start their own businesses or purchase livestock.](http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/11/us-kenya-aid-idUSKBN0NW0C120150511?ref=scottsantens.com) Remember again the evidence from food stamps in the US where every $1 adds almost $2, and know how [it too increases entrepreneurial activity](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/welfare-makes-america-more-entrepreneurial/388598/?ref=scottsantens.com). The above multiplier effects are not just due to the data being from less-developed countries. When cash is given to those without enough cash to meet all their basic needs, economies grow. This is in stark contrast to what’s observed when the same dollar is handed as a bonus or a tax cut to a millionaire or billionaire. ## Effects of Multi-Millionaire CEOs Possibly the best example of taking from the poor to give to the rich is what we’ve seen with executive compensation trends for decades. Adjusted for inflation, wages and salaries have gone down, while CEO pay has gone up. The argument is that the better a CEO is paid, the more valuable they are to the company and thus warrant being paid over 300 times more than everyone else in the company. The problem is, the exact opposite is true. > Research from the U.’s David Eccles School of Business found that CEOs who receive higher incentive pay often lead their companies to decreased financial performance. The study found that the highest paid CEOs earn significantly lower stock returns for up to three years. Additionally, **CEOs with an average compensation of more than $20 million were associated with an average yearly loss of $1.4 billion for their firms**. Paying CEOs more money results in companies that perform worse. Again, just as modeled by the IMF, overall wealth is erased by shifting more of it into the hands with most of it already. Companies that avoid raises for rank and file employees to instead give raises to chief executives perform worse, and contribute to negative growth in the same way as nations doing the same thing collectively. ## Effects of Billionaires The very presence of billionaires in a nation’s economy has now been looked at specifically in hopes of discovering [how it affects the economic growth of the national economies of which they are part](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/15/billionaires-drive-economic-growth-crony?ref=scottsantens.com). > Leaving aside moral questions, do billionaires accelerate or slow down a country’s economic growth? Depending on the answer to these questions, even those generally inclined in the media and politics to boost the fortunes of billionaires might have to rethink their stance. After all, if it turns out that having more billionaires doesn’t favor GDP growth, **the policy suggestion to reduce income concentration at the top moves from a moral argument to one about economic growth and prosperity**. These questions led to some very interesting research findings by Jan Svejnar and Sutirtha Bagchi after applying econometric techniques to data on billionaires published by Forbes. > We discovered that **billionaire wealth that arises from being politically connected has a strongly negative effect on growth**. In contrast, the effect of politically unconnected billionaire wealth on the overall economy is indistinguishable from zero. That means that billionaire cronies constrain economic growth, while billionaires who aren’t cronies on average don’t do so. Why are these findings important for the rest of us? They indicate that public policy toward income and wealth distribution needs to take into account the nature of wealth accumulation. So not only does the presence of billionaires in an economy *not* result in stronger economies as trickle-down economics would suggest, but the type of billionaire actually matters. A billionaire who does not invest money into politics for economic gain has essentially **zero effect on GDP growth**. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/766/1*Vcb5cySCuNcMhz8VzBnAfA.png) Looking again at the IMF chart to the left, this time with green bars I’ve added to reflect billionaires, the effect on growth of politically unconnected billionaires is located between the 4th and 5th quintiles, right at the 0.0 line. They add nothing to economic growth, nor do they slow it. The politically connected billionaires though — [the Koch brothers as a prime example](http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/03/charles-koch-brothers-wisconsin-walker?ref=scottsantens.com) — they are off the chart with a bar so far into the negative they make the other billionaires look responsible for the damage their political machinations are wreaking. # Conclusion: Division Our politics have become a twisted version of [the principles we claim to hold dear](https://medium.com/basic-income/its-time-we-take-a-closer-look-at-americas-three-favorite-words-f512f8a1ad6f?ref=scottsantens.com), where everyone is to have a voice in this supposed democracy of ours. Instead, dollars have become speech, and where dollars are speech, the voices of the many are drowned out in a deluge of the best speech money can buy. When 1% of the electorate has [the majority of the voice](http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FPPS%2FPPS12%5F03%2FS1537592714001595a.pdf&code=a41529b8706befcc968140bc4db80943&ref=scottsantens.com), democracy does not exist. When 1% of the electorate owns [the majority of the stocks and bonds](http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/03/334156/top-five-wealthiest-one-percent/?ref=scottsantens.com), the economy is effectively privately owned. The phrase “going public” with each new IPO holds little actual meaning today. When 1% of the electorate is able to rig the game in their favor, they do, but as if that isn’t bad enough, a rigged game destroys the game itself. By allowing our inequality to grow to the point it exists now, every single one of us is supporting something against our own best interests, poor and rich alike. To continue to allow our economy to fallaciously serve only the interests of a small fraction of the population, everyone will be worse off. We need to recognize myths where they are perpetuated and the myth of trickle-down economics can not be allowed to stand any longer [in the 21st century](http://mic.com/articles/119896/after-robots-take-our-jobs-basic-income-is-the-best-solution?ref=scottsantens.com). To grow our economies we need to accept the policies that enable economies to flourish. Policies that reduce our inequality — policies like [unconditional basic income](https://www.scottsantens.com/does-basic-income-reduce-income-inequality-gini) designed to move stagnant money from the hands at the top not spending it into the hands of all those who will — are the policies we need. **No more trickle-down economics.** Without a pump to circulate money throughout our entire economy, systemic failure is inevitable. Essentially, the economy needs a heart, not more blood, because [on its own, money has one net direction — up](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110721172334.htm?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s time for our economics to grow up too, in realization that all economies are built from the ground up, upon the shoulders of the many — [not the few](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120307112614.htm?ref=scottsantens.com) — who comprise them. The fact that even the phrase “trickle down” as a description of government policy was [born in the mind of a comedian](http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/trickle-down-economics-is-indeed-a-joke?ref=scottsantens.com), should serve as a sober reminder of how the joke has always been, and without needed changes will continue to remain, entirely on us. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*4QBF8WwmQalKTesgBozD1Q.png) Read the full quote and context [here](http://wiredpen.com/2015/01/30/will-rogers-trickle-economics/?ref=scottsantens.com) --- ***Special thanks to: Haroon Mokhtarzada, Andrew Stern, Stephen Starkey, Larry Cohen, Roy Bahat, Floyd Marinescu, Aaron T. Schultz, Gisele Huff, Robert Collins, Stephane Boisvert, Justin Walsh, Joanna Zarach, Ace Bailey, Daryl Smith, Albert Wenger, Steven Grimm, Peter T. Knight, Danielle and Michael Texeira, Jack Canty, Paul Godsmark, Vladimir Baranov, Rachel Perkins, Chris Rauchle, David Ihnen, Michael Hrenka, Natalie Foster, Reid Rusonik, Matt DeKok, Carl Watts, Daniel Brockman, Carrie Mclachlan, Michael Honey, George Scialabba, Che Wagner, Jess Allen, Gerald Huff, Will Ware, Jan Smole, Joe Ballou, Gray Scott, Myi Baril, Chris Smothers, Alvin Miranda, Kai Wong, Jill Weiss, MARK4UBI, Elizabeth Balcar, Robin Ketelaars, Georg Baumann, E. Davies, Dylan Taylor, Bryan Herdliska, Mark , Kirk Israel, Valentina Petricciuolo, Elizabeth Corker, Meshack Vee, Kev Roberts, Chris Boraski, Lee, VilliHaukka, Casey L Young, Oliver Bestwalter, Thomas Welsh, Max Henrion, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** ## [Would you like to see your name here too?](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Multimedia Appearances URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/media-appearances/ Last updated: 2022-02-21T22:37:36.000Z *Note: I'm no longer updating this list. Please use [my YouTube playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXhMtYULkYuH85n9HcJBd3p4dnrzPCzUI&ref=scottsantens.com) instead.* ### A collection of my appearances in order of newest to oldest: **The Tim Black Show** (September 5, 2019) **Hill of Roses Candidate Supporter Debate** (September 1, 2019) **Nerds for Yang** (August 22, 2019) **Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer** (August 20, 2019) [A Skeptic's Guide to Universal Basic Income](http://www.pitchforkeconomics.com/episode/a-skeptics-guide-to-universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) **DisruptEd TV's Dismissed with Jeremy Williams** (May 15, 2019) [Episode 320 - Putting Humanity First Through Basic Income](https://anchor.fm/dismissedpodcast/episodes/320-Scott-Santens---Putting-Humanity-First-Through-Basic-Income-e41p5c?ref=scottsantens.com) **Chat with the Movement For a People's Party Nick Brana about UBI** (May 8, 2019) **Something Good Happened** (May 4, 2019) [Season 2, Episode 5: Scott Santens and Harvey the Hero](https://anchor.fm/somethinggoodhappened/episodes/Season-2-Ep-5-Scott-Santens-and-Harvey-the-Hero-e3ubh9?ref=scottsantens.com) **Transform U Podcast with Nick J. Murphy** (March 11, 2019) [Episode 54 - The Case for Exploring Unconditional Basic Income – Scott Santens](https://www.nickjmurphy.com/054-the-case-for-exploring-unconditional-basic-income-scott-santens/?ref=scottsantens.com) **Euronews** (February 8, 2019) > [#TheCube](https://twitter.com/hashtag/TheCube?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) | "People just weren't able to find work at increased rates but they didn't work less". > > A two-year guaranteed basic income trial in Finland failed to spur increased employment. However, [@scottsantens](https://twitter.com/scottsantens?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) argues that the goal posts were shifted. [pic.twitter.com/mredKWPYOJ](https://t.co/mredKWPYOJ?ref=scottsantens.com)[February 8, 2019](https://twitter.com/euronews/status/1093946107409850373?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=scottsantens.com) **talkRADIO's The Saturday Show with Alexis Conran** (January 12, 2019) [Why UBI should replace Universal Credit](https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/UK-Talk-Radio-Appearance--January-12--2019-e30o8d?ref=scottsantens.com) **District 34 Podcast with Tina-Desiree Berg** (January 7, 2019) [Universal Basic Income with Guest Scott Santens](https://shows.pippa.io/district34/episodes/universalbasicincome?ref=scottsantens.com) **TrueChat's The State of Us Podcast** (December 19, 2018) [Should We Be Skeptical of Basic Income?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02X6Hn-eyRk&ref=scottsantens.com) **Value Through Vulnerability Podcast with Garry Turner (September 10, 2018)** [Episode 17 - Scott Santens](https://anchor.fm/value-through-vulnerability/episodes/Episode-17---Scott-Santens--Basic-Income-Advocate-e2506o?ref=scottsantens.com) **CHATs by Actify Press** (June 27, 2018) **AI Disruption of Work and Education Summit** (June 16, 2018) **Humans 2.0 Podcast with Mark Metry** (June 4, 2018) **Cable14 News** (May 24, 2018) [City Matters](https://cable14now.com/video-on-demand/video/?videoId=3179&ref=scottsantens.com) **Block2theFuture 2018** (April 24, 2018) **The JB Podcast** (April 20, 2018) [Episode 29 - Scott Santens](https://youtu.be/Z11gexbaD6c?ref=scottsantens.com) **People with Purpose with Sylvain Rochon** (April 18, 2018) **MetaCert with Jeremy Nation** (April 11, 2018) **Let's Fix Work Podcast with Laurie Ruettimann** (March 30, 2018) **Speech in Canada's House of Commons** (March 28, 2018) **Life Skills That Matter with Stephen Worley** (March 3, 2018) [Learn all about basic income with Scott Santens](https://lifeskillsthatmatter.com/podcast/learn-all-about-basic-income-with-scott-santens/?ref=scottsantens.com) **Interview with Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook and author of Fair Shot** (February 19, 2018) [Facebook Live video](https://www.facebook.com/FairShotBook/videos/334008693760454/?hc%5Fref=ARSQCK8ddtneOcCTuDmw15IQ-Kmjoxpr-Hs2A1u5fLzYvxGSBK-pzFFUsplpty4U5VM) **Øredev 2017 Keynote** (November 9, 2017) [Øredev 2017 - Scott Santens - Cutting the Gordian Knot of Technological Unemployment](https://vimeo.com/242456791?ref=scottsantens.com) **In All Seriousness Podcast with Peter Joseph** (October 14, 2017) **BlockCon 2017** (October 11, 2017) **Maker Bayou Radio Show** (August 29, 2017) [Episode 19: Basic Income](https://www.blubrry.com/makerbayou/26553597/maker-bayou-ep-19-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) **Become Remarkable Podcast** (August 14, 2017) **This New Economy** (June 21, 2017) - [Episodes 1 and 2: Can Basic Income Save Us?](http://thisneweconomy.com/episodes/can-basic-income-save-us/?ref=scottsantens.com) **The Karen Hunter Show on SiriusXM Radio** (May 31, 2017) **Wait What If Podcast** (May 26, 2017) - [Episode 65: Scott Santens - Writer and advocate for basic income for all](https://waitwhatif.podbean.com/e/wwi-65-scott-santens-writer-and-advocate-for-basic-income-for-all/?ref=scottsantens.com) **Exponential View Podcast with Azeem Azhar** (April 24, 2017) **Managing the Disruption Conference** (April 12, 2017) **Quantumrun Podcast** (April 10, 2017) - [Season 1, Episode 9: Life after robots take all our jobs](http://www.quantumrun.com/podcast/episodes/life-after-robots-take-all-our-jobs-s1e9/?ref=scottsantens.com) **The Last Turtle Podcast** (February 9, 2017) - [Episode 2: Universal Basic Income - Scott Santens](https://lastturtle.com/podcast/2-scott-santens-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) **The Stream** (January 5, 2017) **2016 Global Action Summit** (November 14, 2016) **The Atlantic's Future of Work Summit** (October 26, 2016) **Out of the Box Podcast with Rosie Tran** (October 3, 2016) - [Episode 105: Scott Santens - Universal Basic Income Advocate/Writer](http://www.outoftheboxpodcast.com/podcast/2016/10/3/episode-105-scott-santens-universal-basic-income-advocate-writer?ref=scottsantens.com) **The Higherside Chats with Greg Carlwood** (September 21, 2016) - [Universal Basic Income with Guest Scott Santens](http://thehighersidechats.com/scott-santens-universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com) **Future Left Podcast** (September 9, 2016) - [Episode 33: Universal Basic Income: Change We Can Believe In](http://www.futureleft.org/home/2016/9/12/future-left-podcast-ep-33-universal-basic-income-change-we-can-believe-in?ref=scottsantens.com) **Future Thinkers Podcast** (July 29, 2016) - [Episode 031: What Happens When We Give People a Basic Income?](http://futurethinkers.org/basic-income-scott-santens/?ref=scottsantens.com) **The Boss Show** (July 24, 2016) - [Part 3 of 3 - What If You Didn't Have to Work?](http://thebossshow.com/2016/07/25/paid-just-exist-part-2/?ref=scottsantens.com) **The Boss Show** (July 17, 2016) - [Part 2 of 3 - What If You Were Paid Just to Exist?](http://thebossshow.com/2016/07/17/paid-just-exist/?ref=scottsantens.com) **The Boss Show** (July 10, 2016) [Part 1 of 3 - Robots Will Take Your Job](http://thebossshow.com/2016/07/10/robots-will-take-job/?ref=scottsantens.com) **Singularity Bros Podcast** (July 4, 2016) - [Episode 046: The Heart of Basic Income with Scott Santens](http://singularitybros.com/episode-046-the-heart-of-basic-income-with-scott-santens/?ref=scottsantens.com) **The New Work Order Podcast** (May 11, 2016) - [Universal Basic Income with Scott Santens](http://www.newworkorder.com/blog-post/universal-basic-income-with-scott-santens?ref=scottsantens.com) **Collision 2016, New Orleans** (April 27, 2016) \*Starts at 4 hrs, 56 min, 30 seconds\* **The Current Issues Show on TrueChat** (March 21, 2016) - [Basic Income, Bernie Sanders, and Cuba](https://soundcloud.com/truechat/monday-mashup-basic-income-bernie-cuba?in=truechat/sets/current-issues-show&ref=scottsantens.com) **The Jon McComb Show, CKNW Talk Radio Vancouver** (March 16, 2016) - [Is A Basic Income Better Than Welfare?](http://omnyapp.com/shows/the-john-mccomb-show/is-a-basic-income-better-than-welfare-the-jon-mcco?ref=scottsantens.com) **Keiser Report Winter Wonder Why Special** (December 22, 2015) **Smart Enough to Know Better Podcast** (December 5, 2015) \*[Episode 106.0: "Default Minimum Incoming"](http://smartenough.org/episode/106.0?ref=scottsantens.com) **"Tell It To the Sun": A documentary about basic income** (November 20, 2015) **Emerge Podcast** (November 20, 2015) - [Episode 003: Scott Santens "Basic Income](http://www.emerge.is/episodes/2015/11/20/emerge-003-basic-income-with-scott-santens?ref=scottsantens.com) **Singularity Bros Podcast** (November 16, 2015) - [Episode 013: “Scott Santens”](http://singularitybros.com/episode-013-scott-santens/?ref=scottsantens.com) **My panel at the Brookings Institute along with Nick Hanauer and Darrell West** (October 26, 2015) **My presentation at the World Summit on Technological Unemployment** (September 29, 2015) **Review the Future Podcast** (July 30, 3015) - [Episode 60: “Is Basic Income Part of Our Future and Should It Be?”](http://reviewthefuture.com/?p=533&ref=scottsantens.com) **WNYC's The Takeaway** (July 28, 2015) - [What Are You Worth? Reconsidering the Minimum Wage](http://www.thetakeaway.org/story/reconsidering-minimum-wage/?ref=scottsantens.com) **Redacted Tonight with Lee Camp on RT America** (July 10, 2015) **Occupy Radio** (June 24, 2015) - [Fight the Robot Uprising with Universal Basic Income](http://www.occupyradio.org/occupy-radio-episodes/occupy-radio-fight-the-rise-of-the-robots-with-universal-basic-income-check-in-on-pope-francis-climate-encyclical?ref=scottsantens.com) **WNYC's The Takeaway** (June 22, 2015) - [Self-Driving Trucks Take to America's Roads](http://www.thetakeaway.org/story/self-driving-trucks-are-real-and-theyre-road-now/?ref=scottsantens.com) **Musings of a Shibe Podcast** (May 25, 2015) - [Basic Income with the moderators of /r/BasicIncome](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2ApK40yrRM&ref=scottsantens.com) **HuffPost Live** (May 20, 2015) - [The Case For A Basic Income Guarantee](http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/segment/guranteed-basic-income/555a300502a7607afe00008c?ref=scottsantens.com) **KNPR's State of Nevada** (May 20, 2015) - [Self-Driving Trucks Being Tested In Nevada](http://knpr.org/knpr/2015-05/self-driving-trucks-being-tested-nevada?ref=scottsantens.com) **P2P Connects Us** (March 25, 2015) - [Episode 15 - Scott Santens](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFchw5Ox5mo&ref=scottsantens.com) **Robot Overlordz** (March 12, 2015) - [Episode 153 - Basic Benjamin$!](https://robotoverlordz.fm/show/200-ep00153-notes?ref=scottsantens.com) **LIG** (November 23, 2014) - [Basic Income as Basic Resources](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16RtLOiO%5F3E&ref=scottsantens.com) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Our Paradoxical Economy Courtesy of Technology and the Lack of Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/economic-paradox-technology-automation-basic-income-ubi-slowing-productivity/ Last updated: 2022-02-17T21:50:22.000Z ## The Question of Slowing Productivity Amidst Rising Automation [The latest numbers are in](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/c4f2a1cc39df4ed0ae6e9b1cea53b2c9/job-markets-new-normal-smaller-workforce-sluggish-pay?ref=scottsantens.com), and there are now more people not working in the U.S. as a percentage of the total population, than ever in the last 38 years. Some are already asking if this may very well be the “new normal” here in the 21st century. > The percentage of Americans in the workforce — defined as those who either have a job or are actively seeking one — dropped to **62.6 percent, a 38-year low**, from 62.9 percent… The share of Americans in the workforce had been steadily climbing through early 2000, and a big reason was that more women began working. But that influx plateaued in the late 1990s and has drifted downward since. ## The Fall of Human Labor ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1140/0*PpsjowUYk3IiR9cH.png) *Source:* [*St. Louis Fed*](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CIVPART?ref=scottsantens.com) The above linked report goes on to point to retiring seniors and the youth staying in school as major reasons for the dropping labor force participation rate. I’ve referred previously to the job market as [a game of musical chairs](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/the-job-market-a-game-of-%5Fb%5F7581704.html?ref=scottsantens.com). This game doesn’t have enough chairs for everyone to find a seat. Now, if Baby Boomers are getting up out of chairs, and Millennials are opting not to sit down in them, then *why aren’t there a bunch of empty chairs?* [**Because hardware and software are both now sitting in those chairs.**](http://www.businessinsider.com/technology-is-destroying-jobs-and-it-could-spur-a-global-crisis-2015-6?ref=scottsantens.com) “Job creators” were taught an important lesson after the Great Recession: [**human labor is no longer needed to the degree it once was**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&ref=scottsantens.com). Huge numbers of people were fired from their jobs, and [those employers only became more profitable](http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/08/11/3469654/profits-outstrip-job-growth-five-to-one-at-largest-us-corporations/?ref=scottsantens.com). The entire purpose of technology is to allow us to do more with less, and *that’s exactly what it’s doing*. ## The Rise of Productivity and a Paradox ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1140/0*HTsYB4qll5WxWaI3.png) *Source:* [*St. Louis Fed*](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CIVPART?ref=scottsantens.com) It should be apparent in looking at productivity, that although growing, it appears to be growing more slowly. How can this be the case if more and more people aren’t working and more and more technology is? This question actually has its own name. It’s called the [“productivity paradox”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity%5Fparadox?ref=scottsantens.com) , and [it is perplexing more than a few very smart and knowledgeable people.](https://hbr.org/2015/06/robots-seem-to-be-improving-productivity-not-costing-jobs?ref=scottsantens.com) I believe the confusion rests in how we measure our productivity. Productivity is commonly calculated as GDP divided by total hours worked. When GDP grows or hours go down, productivity goes up. When GDP falls or hours go up, productivity goes down. So what’s going on right now? The answer is something somewhat nonsensical. > *Technology has paradoxically begun requiring more hours.* [The combined effects of technology and the globalization enabled by it are eating jobs](http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/538401/who-will-own-the-robots/?ref=scottsantens.com), but for those left working — because they are by and large earning less — they actually need to work *more*. Instead of jobs requiring the [5–6 hours of work a day they actually on average now require instead of 8](http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=1719&aid=-1&ref=scottsantens.com), we clock in [more than 8 hours](http://wreg.com/2015/05/05/the-death-of-the-40-hour-work-week/?ref=scottsantens.com) as a matter of survival. Instead of working one full-time job 40 hours a week, [we work one full-time job 47 hours a week](http://www.salon.com/2015/06/29/i%5Fthink%5Famerica%5Fis%5Fout%5Fof%5Fhand%5Fthe%5Fshocking%5Fnumbers%5Fthat%5Freveal%5Fjust%5Fhow%5Fburnt%5Fout%5Famerican%5Fworkers%5Fare/?ref=scottsantens.com) to make sure to keep it, or multiple part-time jobs even [more than 50 hours per week to compensate for the lower pay](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB120180029637632435?ref=scottsantens.com). What’s going on here is something those like [Marc Andreessen](http://blog.pmarca.com/2014/06/13/this-is-probably-a-good-time-to-say-that-i-dont-believe-robots-will-eat-all-the-jobs/?ref=scottsantens.com) seemingly choose to ignore, when they say that although technology is eliminating jobs, it’s also creating new ones, and because prices are going down, everyone is better off. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*qaUGqhlbYBg1P6sIm1Hhtg.png) Source: [National Employment Law Project](http://www.nelp.org/content/uploads/2015/03/Low-Wage-Recovery-Industry-Employment-Wages-2014-Report.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) We are indeed creating new jobs, but these jobs are not 1:1 replacements. When someone who graduated from a free high school loses a 40 hours per week manufacturing job with benefits they’ve worked for 20 years that paid $50,000 per year because technology has eliminated the need for a human to fill that role, and the only job they can find without taking out a second mortgage to go back to school is a 30 hours per week temp job without benefits in the service industry that pays $20,000 per year if they’re lucky, they’ve indeed gone from one job to another, but are they better off? Is the consumer economy better off with the notable hit to consumer spending power? Does the fact that robotic manufacturing allows this person to buy a dishwasher for $500 instead of $700 counteract the $30,000 loss in salary and security? Does the ability to purchase an iPhone 6 for the same price they paid for an iPhone 3 a few years ago make up for that loss in income either? Advancing technology is not being allowed to improve our lives to the degree it could, if we were to make other decisions as a society. Instead, we’re actively forcing ourselves to work a greater number of hours thanks to the effectiveness of the tools we created to require fewer hours. Does this outcome make any real sense? Is all this new and extra work in the labor market truly necessary or are we performing it because a job, however unnecessary is currently necessary to live? We’re also increasingly disengaged from all this new and extra [(and sometimes entirely pointless)](http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/?ref=scottsantens.com) work we’re forced to do, and [it’s carrying a large productivity cost](http://screenwerk.com/2013/06/25/gallup-70-of-workforce-not-engaged-costs-billions-in-lost-productivity/?ref=scottsantens.com) as well. > According to a report from Gallup 70% of American workers are either not-engaged or actively disengaged, which means they’re disruptive and undermining workplace productivity. And here’s a related stat: “Gallup estimates that actively disengaged employees cost the US **$450 billion to $550 billion** in lost productivity per year.” When we invent work that doesn’t need to exist at all, productivity suffers. When we pay people less per hour, forcing them to work more total hours, productivity suffers. When we feel forced to do work thanks to the inability to decline it, productivity suffers. [Just simply having the option to decline a task has been shown to boost productivity by 40%](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201404/why-having-the-choice-do-nothing-is-so-important?ref=scottsantens.com). We also need to consider how much productivity would increase if the people who didn’t want their jobs were replaced by those who do. Right now there are people who really want specific jobs but can’t get them because they’re not available and instead performed by those who hate them. We could instead create the situation where all those who want specific jobs have them, and those who don’t want them, don’t have them. At the same time we’re fully voluntarily creating incredible world-changing value in our *free time*. Creations like [Wikipedia](http://www.businessinsider.com/companies/wikipedia?ref=scottsantens.com) and open-source code are not being counted as part of GDP calculations, meaning productivity is rising *invisibly*. The numbers aren’t showing it because we’re not even counting it. ## Our BIG Choice We all know how the saying goes about giving someone a fish and teaching someone to fish. [But what happens when we build a robot to fish? Do we all starve or do we all eat?](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/what-if-everybody-didnt-have-to-work-to-get-paid/393428/?ref=scottsantens.com) Well, right now the robots we’ve built to fish are feeding an extremely small percentage of people more fish than they could ever possibly eat, while reducing the ability of everyone else to find any fish at all. This predicament requires some questioning. Is it what we want? We need to step back and look at the big picture. Our technology has reached the point that it is now partially pulling our economy down instead of fully propelling it forward. [Jobs being filled by technological labor should be something to celebrate](https://medium.com/basic-income/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us-like-a-human-driven-truck-b8507d9c5961?ref=scottsantens.com), freeing us to pursue the kind of work and the number of hours we wish to pursue. But it’s hard to celebrate when we are instead left decreasingly able to earn incomes, and subsequently unable to purchase goods and services as consumers. Remember, our economy is [nearly 70% a consumer economy](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/31/business/economy/us-gdp-fourth-quarter-economic-output.html?ref=scottsantens.com). What we spend is what others earn. So when we can’t earn, we can’t spend, and the economy contracts. Everyone is worse off. When capital replaces labor, [inequality increases, and the economy contracts](http://www.theindychannel.com/decodedc/why-wall-street-is-finally-tackling-income-inequality?ref=scottsantens.com). Again, everyone is worse off. Technology is providing an increasing abundance of goods and services, while simultaneously preventing people from being able to purchase them. It’s also increasing the number of unemployed while increasing the hours of those left employed. It’s kind of a [Gordian Knot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian%5FKnot?ref=scottsantens.com) isn’t it? So what do we do? > *We have to fundamentally sever the connection between work and income.* If technology has reached the point where hardware and software are together doing much of our work for us, then [we have to pay each other what our technology is not earning as income and not spending into the economy as a consumer](http://www.scottsantens.com/yeah-but-who-is-going-to-pay-for-it-basic-income-alan-watts). We have to give it to ourselves and spend it ourselves, because our technology is not going to. This can be thought of as a technological dividend required to [upshift our economy](http://blog-imfdirect.imf.org/2015/06/15/growths-secret-weapon-the-poor-and-the-middle-class/?ref=scottsantens.com) instead of letting it slowly grind to a halt, and it’s more widely known as the idea of [**basic income**](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com). We need to make sure everyone starts earning a non-work related income so that everyone can be consumers in an economy increasingly populated by non-consuming non-human labor. By doing this, we will also be transforming all work into voluntary work, and see all the effects this makes possible from the economic growth of increased engagement to [the higher wages of increased individual bargaining power](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/automation-frase-robots/?ref=scottsantens.com). If we take that path, the basic income path, then we can automate even more labor away and grow the basic income even further as productivity reaches new heights. If we don’t take that path, and continue along the path we’re on, we’re going to continue reading increasingly worse news of the “new normal”, and be led to believe it’s actually normal. To quote Martin Wolf writing about [this collective decision we face in light of advancing technology](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-06-16/same-it-ever-was?ref=scottsantens.com): > … the ultimate result might be a tiny minority of huge winners and a vast number of losers. But such an outcome would be a choice, not a destiny. Techno-feudalism is unnecessary. Above all, technology itself does not dictate the outcomes. Economic and political institutions do. **If the ones we have do not give the results we want, we will need to change them**. Nothing about the way our economy works is “normal” or “natural”. It’s all a bunch of choices, and we can make different ones. We’re the ones making the rules, and it’s time for a new rule. Instead of all starting the month at zero dollars, we can all start at greater than zero. It’s a minor rule change, but [a profound improvement to our entire system](https://medium.com/basic-income/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a?ref=scottsantens.com). **What are we waiting for?** --- ***Special thanks to Arjun Banker, Topher Hunt, Keith Davis, Mark Witham, Albert Wenger, Larry Cohen, Joshua Grant, Chris Smothers, Danielle Texeira, Paul Wicks, Liane Gale, Jan Smole, Joe Esposito, Jack Wagner, Richard Just, Stuart Matthews, Natalie Foster, Brad Sorensen, Chris McCoy, Michael Honey, Daniel Brockman, Gary Aranovich, Kai Wong, Peter, Robert F. Greene, Martin Jordo, Victor Lau, Shane Gordon, Paolo Narciso, Johan Grahn, Tony DeStefano, Andrew Henderson, Erhan Altay, Bryan Herdliska, Stephane Boisvert, Rise & Shine PAC, Kirk Israel, Luke Sampson, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** [*Would you like to see your name here too?*](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### If You Want to Pass Stuff Like TPP... We're Going to Need Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/if-you-want-to-pass-stuff-like-tpp-we-are-going-to-need-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T23:56:16.000Z The [Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)](https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp?ref=scottsantens.com) is a "[free trade](http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/24/what-weve-learned-from-nafta/nafta-successfully-undermined-regulations?ref=scottsantens.com)" treaty that at this point may be [Dead on Arrival (DOA)](http://www.cnbc.com/id/102760609?ref=scottsantens.com) (though the loss is not guaranteed). If passed, it would drop a lot of trade barriers between the US and eleven other countries around the Pacific region. > American unions rallied together for a show of power after years of losing members and political influence. They garnered enough Democratic votes to shoot down their own president, Barack Obama. Sunday's New York Times explained how this coalition came together. The feature pointed out that the unions threatened Democrats who voted for the bill with loss of funding and support. Money talks louder in politics than sound policy. Whether or not you view this news as something to celebrate or something to lament, there's an important lesson here to learn for those who would most benefit from a treaty like this. [**People are afraid of losing their jobs.**](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/the-job-market-a-game-of-%5Fb%5F7581704.html?ref=scottsantens.com) As long as work is directly linked to income, this will always hold true. So if you want to do something that somehow threatens jobs domestically, be it an international trade agreement, or [the outright replacement of human labor with machine labor](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-robots-are-here-to-take-jobs-2015-6?ref=scottsantens.com), you're going to want to remove the biggest obstacle, and that obstacle is simply *fear of poverty*. Remember when Ross Perot made the claim that TPP's older cousin - [the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North%5FAmerican%5FFree%5FTrade%5FAgreement?ref=scottsantens.com) \- would result in a "[giant sucking sound](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkgx1C%5FS6ls&ref=scottsantens.com)" as companies closed up shop in the US to re-open in Mexico where they would have lower costs of labor? It doesn't even really matter at this point if he was right or not, because that accurately described - and to this day describes - the biggest fear of such agreements. **"Will I lose my job because of this? What will happen to me?"** That's the fear. But let's quickly look at what happened with NAFTA itself. Did it end up causing a giant sucking sound? Well, [yes and no](http://www.npr.org/2013/12/08/249079453/economists-toast-20-years-of-nafta-critics-sit-out-the-party?ref=scottsantens.com). On the one hand, it greatly increased trade overall and was good for business. > The real advantage for the United States has been in services. American exports of services to Canada and Mexico tripled from $27 billion in 1993 to $82 billion in 2011, resulting in a trade surplus of roughly $30 billion. On the other hand, although it created jobs in some states, it definitely eliminated them in others: > Some states have lost a lot of manufacturing jobs to Mexico, particularly Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. The Economic Policy Institute, a research group supported by unions, released a report in 2011 saying U.S. workers have seen nearly **700,000 jobs** go to Mexican competitors. [According to the Congressional Research service](http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R42965.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), *"NAFTA did not cause the huge job losses feared by the critics or the large economic gains predicted by supporters. The net overall effect of NAFTA on the U.S. economy appears to have been relatively modest."* So the overall effect was relatively neutral, but it wasn't neutral for everyone. Twenty years after NAFTA became the law of the land, Dean Baker effectively summarized the winners and losers in his contribution to the debate in [the New York Times](http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/24/what-weve-learned-from-nafta/nafta-lowered-wages-as-it-was-supposed-to-do?ref=scottsantens.com). > ... one of the main purposes of the agreement was to make U.S. firms feel confident that they could locate operations in Mexico without having to fear that their factories could be nationalized or that Mexico would impose restrictions on repatriating profits. This encouraged firms to take advantage of lower cost labor in Mexico, and many did. **This can produce economic gains; they just don’t go to ordinary workers.** The lower cost of labor translates to some extent into lower prices and to some extent into higher corporate profits. **The latter might be good news for shareholders and top management, but is not beneficial to most workers.** Lower prices are helpful to workers as consumers, but are not likely to offset the impact on wages. This is the problem with NAFTA in a nutshell, and with TPP it's just a bigger nutshell. **The big winners would be those at the top**, who would enjoy higher stock prices and better returns, while those at the bottom and middle would enjoy disappearing jobs and decreasing incomes. And lower prices would not come close to offsetting these effects. So what's a stock portfolio-owning American to do? Reducing trade barriers is great for business but not for workers, and workers are the ones with all the votes. Meanwhile, unions want to protect jobs, because the more union jobs, the more union dues. So anything that stands to eliminate union jobs, [despite whether or not those jobs should even exist](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-day-is-a-great-idea-and-especially-on-may-day), is going to be fought tooth and nail by unions with the full support of their members. One strategy - [and the one taken this time](https://wikileaks.org/WikiLeaks-issues-call-for-100-000.html?ref=scottsantens.com) \- is trying to sneak stuff like the TPP past the electorate by holding closed-door talks and keeping the text of the treaty itself secret. This used to work better before everyone carried the world in their pockets. Now such strategies just encourage people to fear these kinds of treaties even more than they otherwise would if presented openly. Is there a real solution to this quandary for the 1% to support? In this 21st century of globalized labor and growing automation, **the fear of losing one's job needs to be eliminated for both globalization and technology to create positive instead of negative outcomes**. This can be accomplished by simply making sure that when anyone no longer has a job, for any reason, their incomes only fall to $1,000 per month instead of $0 because everyone always gets it. [It's as simple as that.](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/what-if-everybody-didnt-have-to-work-to-get-paid/393428/?ref=scottsantens.com) Create an income floor with a universal basic income, and suddenly people look at losing their jobs entirely differently. In fact, they may even be happy about it. If the loss of a job results in someone being free to take [a bit of vacation](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-as-paid-parental-leave), or retire early, or [encourages them to go back to school](http://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/October-2014/Want-to-Help-Gary-Indiana-Why-Not-Just-Give-Them-Money/) or find a better job or even [make their own job](http://www.scottsantens.com/a-game-of-musical-chairs-over-hot-coals), then the fear of job loss is gone. It's no longer a barrier. It's not a barrier to trade agreements. It's not a barrier to automation. It's not a barrier to [human progress](https://medium.com/basic-income/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a?ref=scottsantens.com). So if we want to remove barriers to international trade, and barriers to the replacement by machines of human labor itself, we're going to need to recognize that fear is one of these barriers, and then remove it as soon as possible with [**universal basic income**](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com). (Also, let's stop pretending that [intellectual property laws have anything at all to do with open markets](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130715/01343223799/nobel-prize-winning-economist-intellectual-property-reinforces-inequality-hurts-economy.shtml?ref=scottsantens.com) and [greater innovation](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150203/16551429899/study-confirms-that-revealing-secrets-rather-than-hoarding-info-is-good-inventors.shtml?ref=scottsantens.com). The only appearance IP laws should make in international trade agreements is getting rid of them.) **TL;DR: TPP is one of the answers to the question, "Why should the rich support UBI?"** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### A Game of Musical Chairs Over Hot Coals URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/a-game-of-musical-chairs-over-hot-coals/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T00:01:46.000Z There's a common belief that people who don't have jobs somehow just aren't trying hard enough, and this belief is therefore based on the idea that there are enough jobs for everyone. To get a job, all one really needs to do is just try hard enough. *"Just go get a job."* ### The Harsh Reality of Jobland ![people per job](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/vNn5kCn.png) *Source: [BLS](http://www.bls.gov/web/jolts/jlt%5Flabstatgraphs.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)* The number of unemployed people per job opening varies by year, but it is never 1 to 1\. In mid 2009 it was 7 to 1, meaning there were seven unemployed people for every one job opening. Today we hear how great the job market is and there's still two unemployed people for every job opening. We must also keep in mind that those who have dropped out of the labor market entirely - as in they've given up looking for a job - means **they aren't actually even counted anymore as unemployed even though they are not employed.** So there are actually *more* than two people for every one job right now. It's just that some are waiting for more and better jobs to open up before they bother to start looking. For those who are aware of this perpetual job shortage, there is then a belief that if we only break apart the data, and look at unemployment by job sector, we'll see that those who are unemployed are actually just "fools" who went to art school, instead of "wise" STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) degree holders. So let's take a look. ![jobs by sector](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/XvhbNJH.png) *Source: [EPI](http://www.epi.org/blog/still-no-sign-of-a-skills-mismatch-unemployment-is-elevated-across-the-board/?ref=scottsantens.com)* As we can see, there are more unemployed people than jobs available across each sector of the job market, even including health care, and that one's considered practically a slam dunk at this point in terms of finding employment. **There are simply not enough jobs for everyone to have a job all at the same time.** Doesn't this sound kind of familiar? This idea that we walk around and around looking for something along with others looking for the same thing, only to find that some, and possibly even us, must in the end be excluded from what we seek? It sounds like a game we all played as kids... **The job market is actually a game of musical chairs.** There is however a key difference between a game of musical chairs and the way our job market works, and that's that when the music stops in musical chairs, the winner is sitting while the loser is just left standing. But because the only way to gain [access to the resources we need to survive](http://www.scottsantens.com/shouldn-t-all-this-talk-about-money-actually-be-talk-about-resources) is through the earning of income, those unable to earn an income aren't just left standing. They are left in poverty. [And poverty hurts](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com). So now let's imagine **a game of musical chairs played on a hot bed of coals**. There are 10 people and 5 chairs, the same ratio as exists right now in 2015\. Everyone is hopping around trying not to get burned, when the music stops. Five people are rewarded with security from pain, and five people begin to *burn*. Let's look closer at these five burning people. Can we say anything about them in regards to ability or education knowing what we know about job scarcity? Can we truthfully say that all five sitting are the ones who rightfully deserve to sit, and all those standing rightfully deserve to burn? Has luck played no role in this? According to Matt Bruenig writing for Demos using Census data, [1/3 of people experience poverty in any given year, and over the course of three years only 3.5% experience it the whole time](http://www.demos.org/blog/7/28/14/two-theories-poverty?ref=scottsantens.com). Looking at our entire working lifetimes, [40% of us will at some point live in poverty for a full year](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/a-shockingly-high-number-of-americans-experience-poverty/281172/?ref=scottsantens.com). Is this because four out of every ten people somehow deserve it? This data instead appears to point to a large degree of luck in sitting or standing, with only around 3% of people having some kind of personal inability to find a chair. So at the absolute most, if we choose to view poverty as being somehow a matter of personal choice, only 3% can even potentially fit this description. For the other 97%, **it's really just a matter of when the music stops.** Now let's look closer at the chairs themselves. We want to assume that if we are sitting, our feet are no longer burning and that we're entirely safe from the hot coals. But that's not actually the case. Some of the people sitting actually burn too. ![Majority who can work do](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/vvaagjx.png) Source: [EPI](http://www.epi.org/publication/poor-people-work-a-majority-of-poor-people-who-can-work-do/?ref=scottsantens.com) For every three people in poverty who are eligible to work, two are working. So, **having a job does not prevent poverty**. Or in other words, being fortunate enough to successfully grab a chair does not mean our feet are out of the coals. So not only are people being punished for being unlucky when the music stops, but so are some of the people lucky enough to grab a chair. Does this make any sense at all? Does this sound like a fun game with fair rules? If not, why are we playing it? [**I say it's high time we change the rules.**](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/what-if-everybody-didnt-have-to-work-to-get-paid/393428/?ref=scottsantens.com) Here's how we can do it, and also why we *have* to do it. Thanks to technology, [there are going to be fewer and fewer chairs as the music plays on](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-robots-are-here-to-take-jobs-2015-6?ref=scottsantens.com). The chairs themselves are going to offer [less and less protection](http://www.forbes.com/sites/elainepofeldt/2015/05/25/shocker-40-of-workers-now-have-contingent-jobs-says-u-s-government/?ref=scottsantens.com) from the hot coals, and we'll never really know how good of a chair we're sitting in until our feet start burning. So here's what we do... **We build a concrete floor a few inches over the coals with a [universal basic income](http://www.reddit.com/r/basicincome/wiki?ref=scottsantens.com).** With basic income, no matter what, no one's feet will burn. No matter whether you are sitting or standing, no more burning for anyone. This also [doesn't mean that no one will play the game anymore](http://www.cpj.ca/files/docs/orking%5FThrough%5Fthe%5FWork%5FDisincentive%5F-%5FFinal.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Don't we usually play musical chairs over an actual floor instead of hot coals? In fact, looking at it this way, doesn't it now seem kind of sadistic to not already be playing this particular game with a concrete floor instead of hot coals? With basic income, the music will still start and stop. Some people will still get to enjoy sitting while others are still left standing, but **no one will burn**. No matter how many chairs are removed from the game, no one will burn. So what effect will this have? Will all that *not* burning make people lazy? [Do we need coals to motivate us?](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com) Not according to what we newly know about safety nets. [Their existence actually provides *greater* motivation.](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/welfare-makes-america-more-entrepreneurial/388598/?ref=scottsantens.com) > Take food stamps. Conservatives have long argued that they breed dependence on government. In a 2014 paper, Olds examined the link between entrepreneurship and food stamps, and found that the expansion of the program in some states in the early 2000s increased the chance that newly eligible households would own an incorporated business by 16 percent. (Incorporated firms are a better proxy for job-creating startups than unincorporated ones.) > Interestingly, most of these new entrepreneurs didn’t actually enroll in the food stamp program. It seems that expanding the availability of food stamps increased business formation by making it less risky for entrepreneurs to strike out on their own. Simply knowing that they could fall back on food stamps if their venture failed was enough to make them more likely to take risks. Just *knowing* food stamps existed as an option, encouraged people to take the risk to start their own businesses. This is also the same reason [Denmark has year after year been considered the best place for business](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2014/12/17/u-s-slides-again-as-denmark-tops-forbes-best-countries-for-business/?ref=scottsantens.com). > One of the keys to Denmark’s pro-business climate is the flexible labor market known as “Flexisecurity,” where companies can easily hire and fire workers with out-of-work adults eligible for significant unemployment benefits. Unemployed workers are also eligible for training programs. It creates one of the most productive workforces in Europe. “The model encourages economic efficiency where employees end up in the job they are best suited for,” says Weis. “It allows employers to quickly change and reallocate resources in the workplace.” Denmark is one of the most entrepreneurial countries in the world. So in Denmark, we see a game of musical chairs being played where people are encouraged to stand up from one chair and go sit in another. Chair owners can even more easily dump people out of chairs or get rid of them when no longer needed. People standing can take their time finding new chairs, and the result is a country full of people not only finding chairs they like ([which is great for productivity](http://screenwerk.com/2013/06/25/gallup-70-of-workforce-not-engaged-costs-billions-in-lost-productivity/?ref=scottsantens.com)), but making new ones and destroying old ones, all with little if any burning. It should also be no surprise that [playing musical chairs on something other than coals actually leads to greater happiness, even in the midst of disappearing chairs.](http://www.citylab.com/work/2015/06/finding-happiness-in-creative-destruction/395441/?ref=scottsantens.com) > When the researchers control for various factors like the unemployment rate, they find that happiness of people experiencing job destruction is higher in states with more generous unemployment benefits and lower in states with stingier benefits. This is likely because people are less worried about the job-destroying effects of technological change when there is a social safety net they can count on. A feeling of **security** makes all the difference. Basic income provides that security in the most efficient and universal way possible, where everyone is guaranteed the same minimum level of **opportunity** with maximum freedom of choice. Even [F.A. Hayek](http://lamar.colostate.edu/~grjan/hayekwelfarestate.html?ref=scottsantens.com), a [Nobel prize-winning economist](https://mises.org/library/hayek-and-nobel-prize?ref=scottsantens.com) considered far to the right of center with his advocacy of free markets for free societies, believed a minimum income made sense as a means of "limited security"through the assurance by government of minimal sustenance. > There is then the important issue of security, of protection against risks common to all, where government can often either reduce these risks or assist people to provide against them. Here, however, an important distinction has to be drawn between two conceptions of security: a limited security which can be achieved for all and which is, therefore, no privilege, and absolute security, which in a free society cannot be achieved for all. The first of these is security against severe physical privation, the assurance of a given minimum of sustenance for all; and the second is the assurance of a given standard of life. Basic income does not mean everyone earns the same amount of money. It means everyone *starts* with the same amount of money. It is a guarantee of opportunity, not of outcome. Few would suggest a game of Monopoly where no one has a minimum amount with which to start playing. It makes no sense to start Monopoly with $0\. Why not just make it so that we all as citizens start each month with $1,000 instead of $0? Then all income earned from our labor can be earned *on top* of our basic income. Some will use it to earn much more than others, but no one will start with less. **We can do a lot more with something than we can with nothing.** In Namibia, when given basic incomes, [self-employment jumped 301%](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). In Liberia, when given basic incomes, [1/3 of recipients started their own businesses](http://www.scottsantens.com/guess-what-happened-when-liberia-tested-a-pilot-program-of-cash-transfers-to-the-extreme-poor). In India, when given basic incomes, [recipients were twice as likely to increase their productive work as those in control villages](https://www.opendemocracy.net/openindia/stuart-weir/basic-income-transforming-lives-in-rural-india?ref=scottsantens.com). In Kenya, when poor people were given cash unconditionally, [90% of them used it to start their own businesses or purchase livestock.](http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/11/us-kenya-aid-idUSKBN0NW0C120150511?ref=scottsantens.com) When people have a minimum amount of money to start with, they use it to *enable* work. They use it to earn *more* money, or to pursue unpaid work they wish to pursue, like [being a parent](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-as-paid-parental-leave) instead of paying someone else to be a parent for them. They also use it to pursue education. [Students focus on school](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-mincome-experiment-dauphin?ref=scottsantens.com) and even [get better grades](http://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/October-2014/Want-to-Help-Gary-Indiana-Why-Not-Just-Give-Them-Money/). Giving everyone the same basic amount of cash - **a basic income** \- is how we change the rules to make our fiery game of musical chairs work better for everyone through the creation of a room temperature protective floor. Or we can just continue burning together, [and watch as our machines begin sitting in the chairs themselves...](https://medium.com/basic-income/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us-like-a-human-driven-truck-b8507d9c5961?ref=scottsantens.com) It's **our** choice. --- This post inspired the creation of a video that took years to animate. It was created by adamanimates and is available on his channel in both US and Canada versions. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Do We Have Enough Space Bucks? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/do-we-have-enough-space-bucks-for-basic-income/ Last updated: 2024-01-04T18:02:31.000Z Possibly the most [frequently asked question](http://www.reddit.com/r/basicincome/wiki?ref=scottsantens.com) of all by those newly introduced to the idea of [a truly universal and unconditional basic income](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com) is essentially: > That sounds way too expensive... Can we actually afford such an idea? Now, others have responded to this question [conceptually](https://www.scottsantens.com/yeah-but-who-is-going-to-pay-for-it-basic-income-alan-watts), and I've even recently replied to this question [economically](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/07/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-might-be-lower-than-you-think?ref=scottsantens.com), but I want to take a moment to explain this from a slightly different angle. I want to describe it through **South Park**. ![Stan's dad sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/4sOiWZx.jpg) In one of my favorite episodes, "[Pinewood Derby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinewood%5FDerby%5F%28South%5FPark%29?ref=scottsantens.com)", alien cops visit Earth in pursuit of an alien criminal. This criminal has a ship full of **"space bucks"**, which are taken and divided among Earth's nations. Mexico then immediately builds a bunch of hospitals and water parks while China builds 48 soccer stadiums. This of course is very funny, but what's not so funny is that we actually do think this way. We think that money is real and that money is wealth. But it's neither. **Money does not actually exist.** I like to describe its true nature in the same way Alan Watts did, [as a tool of measurement like inches](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-JMHiaYIiU&ref=scottsantens.com). Money is purely a means of calculating and distributing access to resources. The resources are what's real. All the water, air, wind, land, trees, sunlight, minerals, metals, and all the amazing technology we make out of it, and every human body and mind that imagines it and creates it... that's what's real. Money is not. Money is like inches. Looking at it this way, thinking we don't have enough inches doesn't make any sense at all, does it? But that's what we continue to do. [The Great Depression is such a great example of this weird mental hangup of ours regarding the nature of money](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6LrqLaDOmU&ref=scottsantens.com), because the money basically disappeared but nothing else did. All the resources were still there entirely unchanged. The companies were there. The machines were there. The people were there. Our capacity for production was absolutely untouched, and yet we stopped producing. Why? Because we thought money was real. People went to work one day and were told to go home because even though they had all the wood they needed, and all the metal, and all the tools, and all the labor, they were simply **out of inches**. This delusion continues to this day because it's the system we all exist inside of. We are born into it and thus is extremely difficult to question. Money is money and of course it's real because we hold it in our hands, and receive it in exchange for work. But is it really real? I love the space bucks analogy, because it's the exact opposite of what happened during the Great Depression. Instead of the resources being unchanged and people producing less, in the South Park episode, countries cranked up production and produced more than ever. They did this despite no change whatsoever in their ability to produce. Space bucks didn't make them richer. They just simply felt richer. The Earth itself gained no new resources, no new technology, no new people. The Earth was just as wealthy as before space bucks arrived. But because Earth felt it got more inches, it built more. If all the money in the world disappeared tomorrow, it wouldn't matter at all. Nothing would change. All of our actual wealth would be exactly the same as it was before. All of the resources would still be there. All of the people would still be there. All of the technology would still be there. And if we wanted, [we could actually let the technology do most all of the work for the people](http://robotenomics.com/2014/04/16/study-indicates-robots-could-replace-80-of-jobs/?ref=scottsantens.com) using the resources. This needs to be better understood. Money is how we measure access to resources, but it is not in itself resources. And it's also all entirely relative. If one country has 10 space bucks divided among 10 people in a way that everyone gets 1, then they all have the exact same access to their resources. If another country with the exact same resources has 100 space bucks divided among 10 people such that one person has all 100 and the rest have 0, then there's one person with all the access to their resources and the other 9 have no access at all. Which is the wealthier nation? The one with 10 space bucks or the one with 100 space bucks? **Both nations have the exact same resources so the question is irrelevant.** However, the one with fewer space bucks is arguably a better place to live because each person has 10% access to the total amount of resources, whereas the one with 100 space bucks only gives 1 person 100% access. I don't think that person can be considered lucky either, because he's kind of likely to get a [pitchfork to the face](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html?ref=scottsantens.com#.U6x1rLFWjBZ). So when it comes to this question of having enough space bucks for basic income, we should look at it as a pretty silly question. Space bucks? Space bucks are imaginary. The question is ["Do we have the resources for basic income?"](https://www.thecrimson.com/column/a-time-for-new-ideas/article/2020/4/16/gilbert-making-basic-income-a-reality/?ref=scottsantens.com) Do we have the technology for basic income? Do we have the people for basic income? Our GDP ([which does not even measure our entire economic output](http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/06/05/the-problems-with-using-gpi-rather-than-gdp/?ref=scottsantens.com)) is measured in our space bucks as being over $21 trillion and the additional cost of a $1,000 per month basic income [requires about **4%** of that](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-is-the-net-transfer-amount-not-the-gross-price-tag-acb8aa5eab73?ref=scottsantens.com). Is that really too high a percentage of our total capability here in the "[greatest country on Earth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMqcLUqYqrs&ref=scottsantens.com)?" Especially if we also consider the fact that the aggregate burden of crime is also [about 8% of GDP](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=147911&ref=scottsantens.com) and the economic cost of child poverty alone is [about 6% of GDP](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com)? If we recognize those costs and [all the others](https://www.scottsantens.com/what-america-spends-per-citizen-per-year-40000), we're actually spending more of our resources not having basic income, than we would be if we already ***had*** it. Meanwhile, the current distribution of our total access to resources via space bucks looks like this, with essentially **one person *actually* having *all* the space bucks, and therefore *all* the access.** ![distribution](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/pZNA462.png) So the answer is quite simple. **Yes, we have enough space bucks.** But do we have the will to *feel* like we have enough space bucks, as Mexico and China displayed in a silly episode of South Park? Will we provide ourselves universally a minimum amount of unconditional access to our total resources for the purposes of securing equal opportunity and unleashing human creative freedom in a quickly technologically advancing world? [***Let's hope so.***](https://medium.com/basic-income/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us-like-a-human-driven-truck-b8507d9c5961?ref=scottsantens.com) --- *Having read this, if you'd really like to dive into the idea of money itself, and happen to have an extra four hours or so, I recommend watching,* [*"Understanding Money."*](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLu5uG1sCEDiiUllfodXXsOzS3EI7adhDp&ref=scottsantens.com) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Basic Affordability of Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-basic-affordability-of-basic-income/ Last updated: 2022-02-22T00:08:24.000Z ## This is actually even what the richest should want, because although they would pay more in taxes for universal basic income, leaving them a slightly thinner although still very thick slice of the overall pie, the slice of the pie itself would grow, leaving even them better off as well. In a somewhat surprising turn of events, The Economist in its May 23rd edition, published a piece with no name attached, where it labeled the idea of a basic income for all as "[basically unaffordable](http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21651897-replacing-welfare-payments-basic-income-all-alluring?ref=scottsantens.com)." It then followed the publication with share after share via social media, with tweets such as "[Why a 'basic income' for all is a bad idea for all](https://twitter.com/EconBizFin/status/602902998449266688?ref=scottsantens.com)", and "[Why the Green Party is wrong to support a 'basic income' for all](https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/601792415972884480?ref=scottsantens.com)." All of this would seem pretty damning to the many becoming recently interested in learning more about the idea of [a universal basic income](http://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/wiki/index?ref=scottsantens.com) \-- that is the idea that each and every citizen should be provided an income floor sufficient to cover life's most basic needs like food and shelter -- if The Economist had not curiously undermined their case by simplistically basing their entire argument on a single equation. If important economic discussions were really as simple as discounting entire areas of study with a short paragraph involving a single equation, there wouldn't even be a need for The Economist to exist in the first place, now would there? Imagine if all of this back and forth about increasing minimum wages could be ended by just pointing to an equation written half a century ago. We can't do that though, because [minimum wage discussions involve a lot of variables](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-study/?ref=scottsantens.com), and study after study has been published about them. [Study](http://www.basicincome.org/research/basic-income-studies/?ref=scottsantens.com) after [study](http://www.basicincome.org/research/basic-income-studies/?ref=scottsantens.com) has also been published about the idea of universal basic income over the years, and if we extend the discussion to [unconditional cash transfers](https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/18376/879840WP0FINAL00Box385208B00PUBLIC0.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), the discussion involves piles of papers from hundreds of academics across multiple fields of science and economics. And this is because the idea of basic income, although seemingly simple sounding, is a very complex discussion in which to engage. So let's dive into the complexities that The Economist entirely ignored, shall we? ### The Argument > In 1970 James Tobin, an economist, produced a simple formula for calculating their cost. Suppose the government needs to levy tax of 25 percent of national income to fund public services such as education, policing and infrastructure. Paying for a basic income worth 10 percent of the average income requires average taxes to rise by ten percentage points, to 35 percnet. A basic income worth 20 percent of the average income requires average taxes to be 20 percentage points higher, at 45 percent, and so on. Eradicating relative poverty, defined as income beneath 60 percent of the median, would require tax rates approaching 85 percent. The heart of The Economist's argument therefore lies in the belief that if 25 percent of everyone's income tax goes to fund government, then a basic income given to all, of sufficient size to raise everyone above the federal poverty line, would require raising everyone's taxes an additional 60 percent to a new grand total of 85 percent. This is the entire argument. And all of the following is what it ignores. The Economist estimate: **60 percent additional income tax** ### Average income? Really? Due to how far our income distributions have skewed in the past half century, it should be no surprise that average incomes have shifted upwards considerably, while [the median income adjusted for inflation has actually fallen](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/07/29/the-middle-class-is-20-percent-poorer-than-it-was-in-1984/?ref=scottsantens.com). So whereas Tobin could have been considered safer in making such a statement in the 20th century, we can't make the same statement in the 21st century, because our income distribution now looks like this. ![2015-05-27-1432689936-51888-i9dIUjN.png](https://images.huffingtonpost.com/2015-05-27-1432689936-51888-i9dIUjN-thumb.png) *Source: [New York Times](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/why-so-many-rich-people-dont-feel-very-rich/?ref=scottsantens.com)* With a chart like the above in mind, let's not even look at the average and instead look at the total of all income in the US, and that's [$8.4 trillion](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=United+States+aggregate+household+income&lk=1&a=ClashPrefs%5F%2ACountry.UnitedStates.ACSProperty.AggregateHouseholdIncome-&ref=scottsantens.com). So, if we wish to discuss a universal basic income of $12,000 per adult and $4,000 per child, which is the least expensive design possible capable of eliminating [poverty across all household sizes](http://familiesusa.org/product/federal-poverty-guidelines?ref=scottsantens.com), this would cost about $3 trillion and therefore require an additional income tax of 35.7 percent. Nowhere near 60 percent is it? New estimate: **35.7 percent additional income tax** **What about all our current spending?** However, even this estimate is too high, because The Economist also left out something else that's very pertinent to this discussion, which is the ability to eliminate [the 100+ programs we are already funding that we'll no longer require with a basic income](http://www.usbig.net/papers/144-Sheahen-RefundableTaxCredit.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), like [TANF](https://www.scottsantens.com/tanf-is-terrible), SNAP, EITC, WIC, CTC, etc. in addition to all the many subsidies and deductions we could eliminate from the tax code itself. It may be of great surprise just how much this amounts to, in the form of the taxes and transfers we're already providing to all five income quintiles. *(A quintile is economist speak for 20 percent of the population)* ![2015-05-27-1432690200-1802037-hqUDugQ.png](https://images.huffingtonpost.com/2015-05-27-1432690200-1802037-hqUDugQ-thumb.png) *Source: [Tax Foundation](http://taxfoundation.org/blog/60-percent-households-now-receive-more-transfer-income-they-pay-taxes?ref=scottsantens.com)* Those blue bars basically represent the universal basic income we already have, which remains mostly invisible even to those receiving it, save for those in the lowest quintile who get to experience [the full extent of the federal bureaucracy we put in place to administrate it](https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e?ref=scottsantens.com). For the most part, those in the higher quintiles receive their transfers without ever thinking of them as transfers, like the mortgage interest rate deduction for example. Now, to be fair, a basic income would not entirely eliminate each of these blue bars, as these bars include programs like Medicaid which would be inadvisable to eliminate with basic income. But a great deal of money can be saved by eliminating a substantial portion of them. By my own calculations, we could eliminate about $1.5 trillion dollars of spending on present programs. So going back to the $3 trillion estimate of UBI, it would actually be more like $1.5 trillion. And so again using total income for our calculation, we would require an additional income tax of not 60 percent, or even 35.7 percent, but 17.8 percent. New estimate: **17.8 percent additional income tax** ### Speaking of flat taxes... One might now think The Economist is already pretty much as far off as they could possibly get in their calculation, claiming 60 percent instead of 17.8 percent in additional taxes, but this estimate is built off of a flat tax universally applied. We don't actually have flat income taxes, so in reality, the additional 17.8 percent could come in the form of a higher increase for the top quintile, with no increase for the bottom four quintiles. But let's instead pretend we use a flat income tax to fund a UBI. Imagine someone earning $20,000\. To fund their basic income, we would need to raise their taxes by 17.8 percent, but let's use 20 percent for ease of calculating. Their tax burden goes up $4,000\. However, because they also receive a basic income of $12,000, they actually see their overall tax burden decreased by $8,000\. For them, the UBI is essentially a giant tax rebate. If their current tax burden is $2,000, their tax rate before basic income is 10 percent. After basic income, their tax rate is **negative 30 percent** because they end up with $26,000 for earning $20,000. New estimate: **Negative income taxation (aka tax rebates for most)** **So a basic income *is* basically affordable after all** This is how a universal basic income would actually work. Because inequality has reached such extreme degrees, and because we already spend so much money on existing government programs no longer necessary with a basic income for all, the required price tag is not an income tax increase of 60 percent. It's not even an income tax increase of 35 percent or 25 percent. It's a potential income tax increase of under 20 percent. And because a very small amount of people have an almost unimaginable amount of money at the very top, a basic income could actually decrease almost everyone else's income tax burdens except for theirs. Keeping in mind [our present level of inequality](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM&ref=scottsantens.com) and its [negative effects on economic growth](http://www.oecd.org/newsroom/inequality-hurts-economic-growth.htm?ref=scottsantens.com), this is actually even exactly what the richest should want, because although they would pay more in taxes for universal basic income, leaving them a slightly thinner although still very thick slice of the overall pie, the slice of the pie itself would grow, leaving even them better off as well. This is largely due to economic multiplier effects where [$1 given to those with lower incomes has three times the growth effects on GDP as giving the same $1 to those who already have a great many dollars](http://www.ips-dc.org/wall%5Fstreet%5Fbonuses%5Fand%5Fthe%5Fminimum%5Fwage/?ref=scottsantens.com). Meanwhile, as if all of the above isn't enough to show how affordable a $1,000 per month universal basic income actually is, it's vital we understand [just how much less we can spend as a society](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com), simply by preventing all the costs of poverty that we'd never have to pay in the first place anymore. And if we also care about what we're going to do about [all the jobs technology stands to eliminate in the years ahead](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us%5Fb%5F7308874?ref=scottsantens.com), we should definitely care about figuring out how we can all be better off in an economy that actually works better with fewer jobs instead of worse off in an economy that's fundamentally broken. It's disappointing all of this economic complexity in regards to the affordability of basic income is nowhere to be found within The Economist. For this is a discussion we need to be having, and not one to be so easily dismissed as too expensive. Instead, we should consider the distinct possibility that continuing on without basic income is what potentially carries the highest price tag of all. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Do you want more content like this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my ceaseless UBI advocacy. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Self-Driving Trucks Are Going to Hit Us Like a Human-Driven Truck URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us-like-a-human-driven-truck/ Last updated: 2022-05-17T22:29:13.000Z ## The imminent need for basic income in recognition of our machine-driven future Late last year, I took a road trip with my partner from our home in New Orleans, Louisiana to Orlando, Florida and as we drove by town after town, we got to talking about [the potential effects self-driving vehicle technology](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/10829791/Google-very-actively-working-on-self-driving-cars-project.html?ref=scottsantens.com) would have not only on truckers themselves, but on all the local economies dependent on trucker salaries. Once one starts wondering about this kind of one-two punch to America’s gut, one sees the prospects aren’t pretty. We are facing the decimation of entire small town economies, a disruption the likes of which we haven’t seen since [the construction of the interstate highway system itself bypassed entire towns](http://guardianlv.com/2013/08/ghost-towns-and-memories-of-missouris-route-66/?ref=scottsantens.com). If you think this may be a bit of hyperbole… let me back up a bit and start with this: ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*FAOTYaCoYpUhjiAe3sjofA.png) Source: [NPR](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state??ref=scottsantens.com) **This is a map of the most common job in each US state in 2014.** It should be clear at a glance just how dependent the American economy is on truck drivers. According to the American Trucker Association, [there are 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the US](http://www.alltrucking.com/faq/truck-drivers-in-the-usa/?ref=scottsantens.com), and an additional 5.2 million people employed within the truck-driving industry who don’t drive the trucks. That’s 8.7 million trucking-related jobs. We can’t stop there though, because the incomes received by these 8.2 million people create the jobs of others. Those 3.5 million truck drivers driving all over the country stop regularly to eat, drink, rest, and sleep. Entire businesses have been built around serving their wants and needs. Think restaurants and motels as just two examples. So now we’re talking about millions more whose employment depends on the employment of truck drivers. But we still can’t even stop there. Those working in these restaurants and motels along truck-driving routes are also consumers within their own local economies. Think about what a server spends her paycheck and tips on in her own community, and what a motel maid spends from her earnings into the same community. That spending creates other paychecks in turn. So now we’re not only talking about millions more who depend on those who depend on truck drivers, but we’re also talking about entire small town communities full of people who depend on all of the above in more rural areas. With any amount of reduced consumer spending, these local economies will shrink. One further important detail to consider is that truck drivers are well-paid. They provide a middle class income of [about $40,000 per year](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Transportation-and-Material-Moving/Heavy-and-tractor-trailer-truck-drivers.htm?ref=scottsantens.com). That’s a higher income than [just about half](http://www.whatsmypercent.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) (46%) of all tax filers, including those of married households. They are also greatly comprised by those without college educations. Truck driving is just about the last job in the country to provide a solid middle class salary without requiring a post-secondary degree. Truckers are essentially the last remnant of an increasingly impoverished population once gainfully employed in manufacturing before those middle income jobs were mostly all shipped overseas. If we now step back and look at the big national picture, we are potentially looking at well over 10 million American workers and their families whose incomes depend entirely or at least partially on the incomes of truck drivers, all of whom markedly comprise what is left of the American middle class. So as long as the outlook for US trucking is rosy, we’re fine, right? ## The Short-Term Job Outlook of the American Trucker The trucking industry expects to see [21% more truck driving jobs by 2020](http://www.alltrucking.com/faq/truck-drivers-in-the-usa/?ref=scottsantens.com). They also expect to see an increasing shortfall in drivers, with over 100,000 jobs open and unable to find drivers to fill them. Higher demand than supply of truckers also points to higher pay, so for at least the next five years, the future is looking great for truck drivers. The only thing that could put a damper on this would be if the demand for truck drivers were to say… drive off a sharp cliff. > *That cliff is the self-driving truck.* The technology already exists to enable trucks to drive themselves. Google shocked the world when it announced its self-driving car it had already driven over 100,000 miles without accident. These cars have since driven over [1.7 million miles and have only been involved in 11 accidents](https://medium.com/backchannel/the-view-from-the-front-seat-of-the-google-self-driving-car-46fc9f3e6088?ref=scottsantens.com), all caused by humans and not the computers. And this is *mostly within* metropolitan areas. > “And as you might expect, we see more accidents per mile driven on city streets than on freeways; we were hit 8 times in many fewer miles of city driving.” — *Chris Urmson, director of Google’s self-driving car program* So according to Google’s experience, the greater danger lies within cities and not freeways, and driving *between* cities involves even fewer technological barriers than within them. Therefore, it’s probably pretty safe to say driverless freeway travel is even closer to our future horizon of driverless transportation. How much closer? It has *already* happened. > ***On May 6, 2015, the first self-driving truck hit the American road in the state of Nevada.*** Self-driving trucks are no longer the future. They are the present. [They’re here](http://www.wired.com/2015/05/worlds-first-self-driving-semi-truck-hits-road/?ref=scottsantens.com). > “AU 010.” License plates are rarely an object of attention, but this one’s special — the funky number is the giveaway. That’s why Daimler bigwig Wolfgang Bernhard and Nevada governor Brian Sandoval are sharing a stage, mugging for the phalanx of cameras, together holding the metal rectangle that will, in just a minute, be slapped onto the world’s first officially recognized self-driving truck. According to Daimler, these trucks will be in a decade-long testing phase, racking up over a million miles before being deemed fit for adoption, but the technology isn’t even anything all that new. There’s no laser-radar or LIDAR like in [Google’s self-driving car](http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/14/5716468/i-took-a-ride-in-a-self-driving-car?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s just ordinary radar and cameras. The hardware itself is already yesterday’s news. They’re just the first ones to throw them into a truck and allow truckers to sit back and enjoy the ride, while the truck itself does all the driving. If the truck needs help, it’ll alert the driver. If the driver doesn’t respond, it’ll slowly pull over and wait for further instructions. This is nothing fancy. This is not a truck version of KITT from Knight Rider. This is just an example of a company and a state government getting out of the way of technology and letting it do what it was built to do — **enable us to do more with less**. In the case of self-driving trucks, one big improvement in particular is fewer accidents. > In 2012 in the US, 330,000 large trucks were involved in crashes that killed nearly 4,000 people, most of them in passenger cars. About 90 percent of those were caused by driver error. **That’s like** [**one and a half 9/11s**](http://www.statisticbrain.com/911-death-statistics/?ref=scottsantens.com) **yearly. Human-driven trucks kill people.** Robot trucks will kill far fewer people, if any, because machines don’t get tired. Machines don’t get distracted. Machines don’t look at phones instead of the road. Machines don’t drink alcohol or do any kind of drugs or involve any number of things that somehow contribute to the total number of accidents every year involving trucks. For this same reasoning, [pilots too are bound to be removed from airplanes](http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2014/11/21/would-air-travel-be-safer-without-pilots-steve-jurvetson-thinks-so/?ref=scottsantens.com). **Humans are dangerous behind the wheel of anything.** Robot trucks also don’t need salaries — salaries that stand to go up because fewer and fewer people want to be truckers. A company can buy a fleet of self-driving trucks and never pay another human salary for driving. The only costs will be upkeep of the machinery. No more need for health insurance either. Self-driving trucks will also never need to stop to rest, for any reason. Routes will take less time to complete. All of this means the replacement of truckers is inevitable. It is not a matter of “if”, it’s only a matter of “when.” So the question then becomes, how long until millions of truckers are freshly unemployed and what happens to them and all the rest of us as a result? ## The Long-Term Job Outlook of the American Trucker First, let’s look at the potential time horizons for self-driving cars. Tesla intends to release a software update *next month* that will turn on “autopilot” mode, immediately allowing all Tesla Model S drivers to be driven between [“San Francisco and Seattle without the driver doing anything”](http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/19/8257933/tesla-model-s-autopilot-release-date?ref=scottsantens.com), in Elon Musk’s own words. The cars actually already have the technology to even drive from “parking lot to parking lot”, but that ability will remain unactivated by software. Tesla-driven humans won’t be able to legally let their cars do all the driving, but who are we kidding? There will be Teslas driving themselves, saving lives in the process, and governments will need to catch up to make that driving legal. This process is already here in 2015\. So when will the process end? When will self-driving cars conquer our roads? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1150/1*kg2IBv4Rah6It0-u9_B4mA.png) Source: [Morgan Stanley](http://www.dailyfinance.com/2014/02/25/morgan-stanleys-utopian-society-will-be-built-by-t/?ref=scottsantens.com) According to Morgan Stanley, [complete autonomous capability will be here **by 2022**](http://www.dailyfinance.com/2014/02/25/morgan-stanleys-utopian-society-will-be-built-by-t/?ref=scottsantens.com), followed by massive market penetration **by 2026** and the cars we know and love today then entirely extinct in another 20 years thereafter. Granted, this is only [one estimate of many](http://www.driverless-future.com/?page%5Fid=384&ref=scottsantens.com) and it’s all educated guesswork. So here are some other estimates: - Navigant Research: “**By 2035**, sales of autonomous vehicles will reach 95.4 million annually, representing 75% of all light-duty vehicle sales.” - IHS Automotive: “[There should be nearly 54 million self-driving cars in use globally **by 2035**.](http://www.kurzweilai.net/fully-self-driving-cars-expected-by-2030-says-forecast?ref=scottsantens.com)” - ABI Research: “[Half of new vehicles shipping in North America to have driverless, robotic capabilities **by 2032**.](https://www.abiresearch.com/press/half-of-new-vehicles-shipping-in-north-america-to-/?ref=scottsantens.com)” - Nissan: “[**In 2020** we’re talking more autonomous drive capability. It’s going to be an evolutionary process and 2020 will be the first year to truly see some of these capabilities start to be introduced in the vehicle.](http://www.hybridcars.com/us-likely-to-see-nissans-first-production-autonomous-car-in-2020/?ref=scottsantens.com)” > *Take all of these estimates together, and we’re looking at a window of massive disruption starting* ***somewhere between*** ***2020 and 2030*** *.* There is no turning the wheel in prevention of driving off this cliff either. Capitalism itself has the wheel now, and what the market wants, the market gets. Competition will make sure of it. Tesla and Google are not the only companies looking to develop autonomous vehicles. There are others. A company named **Veeo Systems** is developing vehicles as small as 2-seaters to as large as 70-seat buses, and will be testing them [in 30 US cities by the end of 2016](http://observer.com/2015/03/self-driving-cars-will-be-in-30-u-s-cities-by-the-end-of-next-year/?ref=scottsantens.com). > At 25 to 40 percent cheaper, the cost to ride the driverless public transit vehicles will be significantly less expensive than traditional buses and trains… The vehicles are electric, rechargeable and could cost as low as $1 to $3 to run per day. [**Apple is also developing its own self-driving car**](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-14/apple-said-to-be-working-on-electric-car-to-challenge-tesla?ref=scottsantens.com)**.** > *The project is code-named Titan and the vehicle design resembles a minivan, the Wall Street Journal reported… Apple already has technology that may lend itself to an electric car and expertise managing a vast supply chain. The company has long researched battery technology for use in its iPhones, iPads and Macs. The mapping system it debuted in 2012 can be used for navigation…* [**And Uber is developing its own self-driving car**](http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/03/technology/innovationnation/uber-self-driving-cars/index.html?ref=scottsantens.com)**.** > *Uber said it will develop “key long-term technologies that advance Uber’s mission of bringing safe, reliable transportation to everyone, everywhere,” including driverless cars, vehicle safety and mapping services.* It’s this last one that fully intends to transform the transportation landscape. Uber is going all-in on self-driving vehicles to the point it wants to [entirely eliminate car ownership](http://citypaper.net/uberdriver/?ref=scottsantens.com) as a 20th century relic. > Travis Kalanick, the CEO and founder of Uber, said at a conference last year that he’d replace human Uber drivers with a fleet of self-driving cars in a second. “You’re not just paying for the car — you’re paying for the other dude in the car,” he said. “When there’s no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes cheaper than owning a vehicle.” That, he said, will “bring the cost below the cost of ownership for everybody, and then **car ownership goes away**.” That’s the potential of self-driving cars —[ **the outright extinction of car ownership**](http://gizmodo.com/the-rise-of-automated-cars-will-thousands-of-jobs-and-n-1702689348?ref=scottsantens.com). And with that, the elimination of entire industries built up around the existence of car ownership like: mechanics, car washes, parking, valets, body shops, rental companies, car insurance, car loans, and on and on. Even hugely expensive and capital intensive mass-transit infrastructure projects like streetcars and light rail can be dropped in favor of vastly cheaper on demand robotic “[transportation clouds](http://www.businessinsider.com/how-self-driving-cars-could-solve-new-yorks-traffic-woes-2014-6?ref=scottsantens.com)”, and all those construction and maintenance jobs right along with it. Big players are already in the game. There are huge savings to be found, huge profits to be created. Higher quality and safety is assured. Driverless vehicles are coming, and they are coming fast. But again, what about **trucks** specifically? Any realistic time horizon for self-driving trucks needs to look at horizons for cars and shift those even further towards the present. Trucks only need to be self-driven on highways. They do not need warehouse-to-store autonomy to be disruptive. City-to-city is sufficient. At the same time, trucks are almost entirely corporate driven. There are market forces above and beyond private cars operating for trucks. If there are savings to be found in eliminating truckers from drivers seats, *which there are*, these savings will be sought. It’s actually really easy to find these savings right now. Wirelessly linked truck platoons are as simple as having a human driver drive a truck, with multiple trucks without drivers following closely behind. This not only saves on gas money (7% for only two trucks together), but can immediately eliminate half of all truckers if for example 2-truck convoys became the norm. There’s no real technical obstacles to this option. It’s a very simple use of present technology. Basically, the only real barrier to the immediate adoption of self-driven trucks is purely legal in nature, not technical or economic. With self-driving vehicles currently only road legal in a few states, many more states need to follow suit unless autonomous vehicles are made legal at the national level. And Sergey Brin of Google has estimated this could happen [**as soon as 2017**](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/10829791/Google-very-actively-working-on-self-driving-cars-project.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Therefore… > *The answer to the big question of “When?” for self-driving trucks is that they can essentially hit our economy at* ***any time*** *.* ## The Eve of Massive Social and Economic Disruption Main Street USA has already taken a big hit, [and increasingly so](https://medium.com/basic-income/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a?ref=scottsantens.com), over the past few decades. Manufacturing has been shipped overseas to areas where labor is far cheaper because costs of living are far cheaper. Companies like Walmart have spread everywhere, concentrating a reduced labor force into one-stop shopping facilities requiring fewer total workers than what was needed with smaller, more numerous, and more widely spread Mom & Pop type stores. Companies like Amazon have even further concentrated this even further reduced labor force into automated warehouse centers capable of obviating stores entirely and shipping directly to consumers. All of the above means fewer ways of securing employment in fewer places, while commerce has become more geographically concentrated and access to money has become increasingly shifted away from the bottom and middle of the income spectrum towards the top. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1260/1*Ecuvog60xd45Uu3m2Yoe5g.png) Source: [Mother Jones](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/09/charts-income-inequality-middle-class-census?ref=scottsantens.com) This is what happens when good-paying jobs are eliminated, and that money not spent on wages and salaries instead stays in the hands of owners of capital, or is given in smaller amounts to lower-paid employees in lower-wage jobs. Inequality grows more and more extreme and our land of opportunity vanishes. [**Economic growth slows to a crawl**](http://www.theindychannel.com/decodedc/why-wall-street-is-finally-tackling-income-inequality?ref=scottsantens.com). This is where we’re at and this is what we face as we look towards a quickly approaching horizon of [**over 3 million unemployed truckers**](http://marshallbrain.com/second-intelligent-species4.htm?ref=scottsantens.com) *and millions more* unemployed service industry workers in small towns all over the country dependent on truckers as consumers of their services. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1088/1*vQSgYVSn6xrqOW8NTl7iwA.jpeg) Glenrio, TX — Source: [Reader’s Digest](http://www.rd.com/slideshows/ghost-town-pictures/view-all/?ref=scottsantens.com) The removal of truckers from freeways will have an effect on today’s towns similar to the effects the freeways themselves had on towns decades ago that had sprung up around bypassed stretches of early highways. When the construction of the interstate highway system replaced [Route 66](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.%5FRoute%5F66?ref=scottsantens.com), things changed as drivers drove right on past these once thriving towns. The result was **ghost towns** like [Glenrio, Texas](http://www.rd.com/slideshows/ghost-town-pictures/view-all/?ref=scottsantens.com). > With the patience that carved the Grand Canyon over eons, nature reclaims Glenrio, where the clock stopped with the bypass of Route 66\. The replacement of Route 66 with a four-lane superhighway that allowed motorists to zip past rather than wander through ultimately allowed Glenrio to decline. With self-driving cars and trucks, here again we face the prospect of town after town being zipped past by people (if even present) choosing to instead just sleep in their computer-driven vehicles. Except this time, there is no new highway being made for businesses to relocate closer to and new towns to emerge along. This time, [as is true of the effect of technology on jobs](https://www.scottsantens.com/debunking-the-debunking-of-humans-need-not-apply-and-more-the-fallacy-of-the-luddite-fallacy), it’s different. This time, there’s no need for entire towns to even exist *at all*. ## The Road Left to Take As close as [2025](http://qz.com/403628/autonomous-cars-will-destroy-millions-of-jobs-and-reshape-the-economy-by-2025/?ref=scottsantens.com) — that is in a mere 10 years — our advancing state of technology will begin disrupting our economy in ways we can’t even yet imagine. [Human labor is increasingly unnecessary and even economically unviable compared to machine labor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&ref=scottsantens.com). And yet we still insist on money to pay for what our machines are making for us. As long as this remains true, [we must begin providing ourselves the money required to purchase what the machines are producing](https://www.scottsantens.com/yeah-but-who-is-going-to-pay-for-it-basic-income-alan-watts). Without a **technological dividend**, [the engine that is our economy will seize,](http://www.salon.com/2015/03/17/robert%5Freich%5Feconomic%5Fredistribution%5Fis%5Four%5Fonly%5Fhope%5Fpartner/?ref=scottsantens.com) or we will fight against technological progress itself in the same way [some once destroyed their machine replacements](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/luddites-definition-wrong-labor-technophobe?ref=scottsantens.com). Without non-work income, we will actually fight to keep from being replaced by the technology we built to replace us. Just as our roads a decade from now will be full of machine drivers instead of human drivers, a 21st century economy shall be driven by human *consumers*, not human workers, and these consumers must be freely given their purchasing power. If we refuse, if we don’t provide ourselves [**a universal and unconditional basic income**](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com)soon, the future is going to hit us like a truck — a truck driven solely by ourselves. To allow this to happen would be truly foolish, for what is the entire purpose of technology but to free us to pursue all we wish to pursue? Fearing the loss of jobs shouldn’t be a fear at all. It should be welcomed. It should be freeing. No one should be asking what we’re going to do *if* computers *take* our jobs. **We should all be asking what we *get* to do once *freed* from them.** ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*ZFcd_MllGwIvwr3avl7DTQ.jpeg) --- ***Special thanks to Arjun Banker, Topher Hunt, Keith Davis, Albert Wenger, Larry Cohen, Danielle Texeira, Paul Wicks, Liane Gale, Jan Smole, Joe Esposito, Robert F. Greene, Martin Jordo, Victor Lau, Shane Gordon, Paolo Narciso, Johan Grahn, Tony DeStefano, Andrew Henderson, Erhan Altay, Bryan Herdliska, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** [*Would you like to see your name here too?*](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Basic Income as Paid Parental Leave URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-as-paid-parental-leave/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T00:06:42.000Z Once again John Oliver has shone a light on something important we tend to not discuss, and that is the way we in the United States collectively treat those who just gave birth. **We force them right back to work.** That part at the end... where they show the mothers involuntarily forced to return to their jobs... imagine that one of those jobs was taking care of someone else's kid. Does that idea make this even more absurd? Because it should. **Why is it only considered work worthy of pay when a mother is paid to raise a kid other than her own?** [Raising kids is work](http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/09/09/wages-for-housework/taking-unpaid-housework-for-granted-is-wrong?ref=scottsantens.com). A recent calculation that went viral was costing a stay-at-home parent as equivalent to [about $74,000 in free labor](http://www.weareglory.com/blog/fathers-you-cant-afford-a-stay-at-home-mom?ref=scottsantens.com). This idea that parenting is work that should not go unpaid is not new either. Starting in the late 60s and peaking in the 70s, groups of women in the UK referring to themselves as "unsupported mothers" went about forming ["Claimants Unions"](http://www.academia.edu/4509927/Missing%5FWomen%5FThe%5FForgotten%5FStruggles%5Fof%5FSingle%5FMothers%5Ffor%5FBasic%5FIncome?ref=scottsantens.com)with one major goal. > Here “claimants” refers to the people who claim various social benefits and services; pensioners,the disabled, the sick, social assistance recipients, single parents, students, the unemployed, etc. While these people were not perceived as having common interests before, claimants unions sought to make their common interests explicit by recognizing a common enemy; i.e., the department of social security, and then pressing the same demand; i.e., **Basic Income**. They sought this goal for two decades. And they were not alone. Another movement in the 70s was the [Wages for Housework](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wages%5Ffor%5Fhousework?ref=scottsantens.com) movement started in Italy that went global in the attempt to get home care work recognized as work worthy of pay. This image from around the same time explains the reasoning well at a glance. ![wages for housework sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/FMc0YiN.jpg) Workers get paid but those who are making the workers don't. Their labor is free and their value to the entire system goes unrecognized. Now here we are decades later, and we're still not recognizing the work of mothers (and fathers), despite all of our empty talk to the contrary as pointed out so well in John Oliver's piece. We are hypocrites. We are hypocrites who go on and on about the value of mothers and how much they mean to us out of one corner of our mouths in America, while outright punishing them out of the other, in our refusal to legislate paid parental leave as almost every other country in the world has already done. ![paid parental leave](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/XbSnXIo.png) So what can we do? If we as Americans hate mandates so much, and refuse to force businesses to offer paid time off to new parents, what can we do? Is there a way to effectively enable it without a mandate? Yes. And guess what the answer is? **It's still basic income.** We tested the idea of a basic income guarantee here in the US in the 70s, and we did it specifically to look at [the effect it would have on hours worked](http://www.cpj.ca/files/docs/orking%5FThrough%5Fthe%5FWork%5FDisincentive%5F-%5FFinal.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). ![NIT experiments](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/B2sKtiO.png) The far right column shows the effect on single mothers. The largest effect in terms of fewer hours worked was 134 hours in Denver and Seattle. The largest effect in terms of percentage reduction in hours worked was in Gary, Indiana at 23%. Since 134 hours is equivalent to about seventeen 8-hour days, single mothers in Denver and Seattle effectively took just about a month in paid vacation. It's important to note too that this effect was mainly only among new mothers. New mothers used their basic incomes to extend their maternity leave, not all mothers. Single mothers with older kids continued to work as usual. Now, since one of the biggest fears of basic income opponents is the reduction of hours worked, let's assume the "worst-case scenario" of all new parents, mothers and fathers both, reducing their hours by 23%, as was seen in Gary, even though that reduction was actually only 84 hours, which was the national average. A 23% reduction in hours for a full-time worker working 40 hours a week (1,700 hours per year) would be 391 hours. That works out to just about 10 weeks. In other words, it's possible that if everyone had a basic income, new parents would use their basic incomes to voluntarily take about 10 weeks of parental leave on average. And where would that put us compared to other countries? ![parental leave by country](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/Os9HXgR.gif) We'd still be at the bottom but we'd be just about on par with Switzerland and the UK, and it would be entirely voluntary instead of mandated. For those who are against government mandates, this should be an extremely appealing alternative to mandated leave. If new parents choose to work a bit less so as to spend some weeks or months away from the office and instead at home with their newborns when given basic incomes, why not make that choice possible? Why force people to work or force people not to work, when you can just [make work itself voluntary in the first place](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com), and trust [the evidence we have](http://www.widerquist.com/karl/Articles--scholarly/Failure2communicate.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) that shows how primary earners with basic incomes continue working? It only makes sense. Your parents had a right to basic income. You have a right to basic income. We all have a right to basic income. Let's make sure everyone gets one so we don't have to continue Mother's Day after Mother's Day being massive hypocrites. Without our parents, all the work we do would not exist. They created the entire labor force. Their work should no longer go unrecognized, and they should all have the option to voluntarily take some time off to start off our lives on the right foot, and doing so should not go unpaid. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Basic Income Day is a Great Idea, and Especially on May Day! URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-day-is-a-great-idea-and-especially-on-may-day/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T00:07:38.000Z In [a recent opinion piece](http://www.basicincome.org/news/2015/05/basic-income-day-is-a-great-idea-but-not-on-may-day/?ref=scottsantens.com) published on May 2nd, Jurgen De Wispelaere made a case for the need to change [Basic Income Day](http://basicincomeday.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) to a date other than May 1st. As the organizer of [the Reddit Basic Income community](http://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/wiki?ref=scottsantens.com)’s involvement in [promoting Basic Income Day](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/happy-basic-income-day?ref=scottsantens.com) for the past two years, I’ve been invited to respond to his criticism. This is my response and I will start with a question. **Why does the labor movement exist?** Think about that question for a moment. What is the ultimate goal and purpose of the entire labor movement? From whence did it arise? Where is it now? Where will it be in 50 years? And how do we best respect the history of the movement as time goes on? In a recent piece titled “[Ours to Master](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/automation-frase-robots/?ref=scottsantens.com)”, Peter Frase writing for Jacobin magazine makes the case for what he refers to as “enlightened Luddism,” where there should no longer exist in the logic of labor a short-sighted push against innovative new technologies. Advancing technology should be embraced for all it is capable of achieving. If a machine can do someone’s work, better and cheaper, it should. The problem is not technology’s elimination of jobs. The problem is in not properly distributing the resulting gains. So how should labor best go about doing that? Well, according to Frase… > *Winning a share of the fruits of automation for the rest of us requires victory at the level of the state rather than the individual workplace. This could be done through a universal basic income, a minimum payment guaranteed to all citizens completely independent of work. If pushed by progressive forces, the UBI would be a non-reformist reform that would also quicken automation by making machines more competitive against workers better positioned to reject low wages. It would also facilitate labor organization by acting as a kind of strike fund and cushion against the threat of joblessness. A universal basic income could defend workers and realize the potential of a highly developed, post-scarcity economy; it could break the false choice between well-paid workers or labor-saving machines, strong unions or technological advancement.* A few very important ideas need to be understood here. In the 21st century, the labor movement will require winning basic income as a key victory, so as to not only win the gains of technology away from only continuing to fall into the hands of owners of capital, but to actually further empower the labor movement itself through enabling a massive general strike potential the likes of which has never before existed in all of history. Additionally, by achieving the ability for all workers to say “No” to unsatisfactory wages and conditions, the bargaining power of every single worker will be increased. **In other words, basic income is not the enemy of the labor movement. It’s its best friend.** It’s for this reasoning that a day such as Labour Day in the years ahead should galvanize labor around the idea of making technology work for workers – all workers – including those involved in all forms of unpaid labor involving care work like parenting (you know, that kind of work that makes new workers). And it should do so through a 21st century fight for universal basic income. Basic Income Day is not antagonistic to Labour Day. It is synergistic. Its purpose is not to step on the accomplishments of labor in previous centuries, but to honor them and to propel the movement into a future of even greater accomplishments. Yes, people have died for the labor movement. [People died on May 1st, 1929 fighting for the rights of workers too](http://www.brainyhistory.com/days/may%5F1.html?ref=scottsantens.com). And they were there for the same reason a group of coal miners went on strike on May 1st, 1926\. They were there for the same reason the 1st International Workers Day was organized on May 1st, 1889\. They were there for the same reason workers in the US called for a general strike for an 8-hour workday on May 1st, 1886, days prior to the bombing in Chicago on May 4th. And they were essentially there for the same reason the American Equal Rights Association was formed on May 1st, 1866\. What is that reason? The ultimate reason is the answer to the question I posed at the beginning: “Why does the labor movement exist?” The labor movement exists because it is its right to exist, because humans have a right to exist. The labor movement exists because work should not only benefit the individual worker, but all workers in solidarity and even all of humanity in ultimate solidarity, not just the owners of capital. And the labor movement will cease to exist, if it does not rally around the idea of **a basic income guarantee for all**. The owners of technology will see to that, and so the labor movement must come to see it as well. This is a matter of equal economic rights, and these rights must be fought for and won. Without fighting for and winning a basic income for all, unions will continue losing power through [a continuing shift in the way we all work](http://www.salon.com/2015/04/21/robert%5Freich%5Famericas%5Fflexible%5Feconomy%5Fis%5Fmaking%5Fworkers%5Flives%5Fhell%5Fpartner/?ref=scottsantens.com) from what was once secure full-time jobs in manufacturing that complemented a labor movement, to what is increasingly insecure part-time jobs and globalized freelance labor involving zero-hour contracts and continually varying schedules. What work is shifting to makes it extremely difficult to gain leverage over capital. The labor movement needs basic income if it is to not only survive but flourish. Workers need the ability to choose to work for themselves and to decline working for others, and that is only possible through basic income. Workers also should be able to benefit from technological gains, through either increased incomes or decreased work hours or greater benefits or even ownership. Working for others should be a choice, and that choice needs to be won by workers for all workers, whether traditionally seen as work or not. **That is universal solidarity and that is Basic Income Day.** I also personally see Basic Income Day as far more respectful to all that workers have fought for over the years – and some even died for – than to watch the modern labor movement continue fighting *to* work, instead of for the freedom *from* work, or to let the labor movement fade away entirely as human labor gets replaced by machine labor. What is the purpose of a labor union, anyway? I mean, when we get down to the core aim. Well, what is the purpose of a car company? The CEO who believes a car company’s purpose is to make cars is actually both incorrect and short-sighted. The real purpose of a car company is to enable the transportation of its customers in a way that always improves. Getting stuck on an existing means of providing transport, such as a car, is an obstacle to progress. A company should always seek ways to improve quality for its consumers. Cars are not the endpoint of the how to get a consumer from point A to point B problem, and the company that fails to see this will fail as a company because another company will innovate a new and better way. It’s for the same reasoning that unions should stop to consider their own purpose. Is the purpose of labor unions to perpetuate themselves in current form? Is their purpose to increase wages and decrease hours through greater bargaining power for only those who are members? What will happen to labor unions in a world that no longer requires human labor? Is there a desire to celebrate May 1st, 2050 looking back at how people used to be able to live good lives, back when labor unions still existed? The labor movement needs to recognize what year it is, just as all the rest of us do. Technology and globalization exist and we must recognize the effects these are already having on all of us. Basic income is the real “fight of the century”, and labor must not only join the fight, but lead it. If a truly universal basic income is to be won, in a way that grows over time to be more than basic, it must come from the left. The right, although also supportive of basic income, seems more likely to support a version that favors capital over labor. To be won in progressive form as a growing share of continually increasing national productivity will be a fight for the left to win. Winning this fight for a universal basic income will begin at step one and that is realizing basic income is what the labor movement has actually been fighting for all along, without even knowing it – the right of a human being to the fruits of one’s own labor and to life itself. We all have the right to greater bargaining power. We all have the right to never again need to worry about our next meal or about a roof over our heads. We all have the right for our labor to be replaced by machines and to benefit from this replacement. And so we all have the right to a basic income. That’s the message of Basic Income Day, and it’s a message for all workers, past and present, to convey every Labour Day, and International Workers’ Day, and May Day from now until the day we come together to remember how we all once were compelled to labor for others in order to live. --- *(This piece was originally published in [Basic Income Earth Network's opinion section](http://www.basicincome.org/news/category/opinions-reviews/opinion/?ref=scottsantens.com))* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### A Basic Income Day Toolkit URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-day-toolkit/ Last updated: 2022-05-17T22:17:30.000Z [Happy Basic Income Day, everyone](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/happy-basic-income-day?ref=scottsantens.com)! (*<-- you're definitely going to want to read this*) To all basic income supporters, there are some actions taking place today that are important to be aware of for those who would like to take part, and there are also some ways to leverage those actions, amplify them further, and to better organize [the global movement for basic income](http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/20/free-money-for-everyone-whats-the-world-coming-to/?ref=scottsantens.com). First and most importantly, there's [the Basic Income Day thunderclap](https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/24575-basic-income-day-is-1st-of-may?ref=scottsantens.com) taking place at 10:30 AM EST. Over 700 people will be taking part in reaching out to over 700,000 others. ### The Thunderclap You should know that if you aren't able to sign up in time to be part of the thunderclap, you can still be a part of it after the fact. One of the goals of the action is to get #Basicincome trending. With over 700 people all messaging the hashtag at the same time, this will be a big boost. It doesn't end there though. The more people use #Basicincome as a hashtag and share posts that use them, the more it will be boosted. This is our best chance. The Thunderclap itself is only a starting point. It's a rallying cry. Use it as a base to reach out to others. Share and re-share. Build the trend. ### Twitter The top hashtags in use today are #LabourDay, #WorkersDay, May Day, and hopefully #MayDay. It makes sense to include at least one of these along with #Basicincome to connect them. ### Facebook Share basic income articles, images, and videos on Facebook, preferably with the privacy setting set to public for maximum visibility. Like posts from major basic income pages on FB like [Basic Income Europe](https://www.facebook.com/ECI.BasicIncome), [Basic Income Ireland](https://www.facebook.com/BasicIncomeIreland), [BIEN](https://www.facebook.com/Basic.Income.Earth.Network), and [Basic Income](https://www.facebook.com/basic.income). Also, here's [an entire list of other Facebook pages for basic income that are EU based](http://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/comments/1xin4z/list%5Fof%5Fall%5Festablished%5Ffacebook%5Fpages%5Fin/?ref=scottsantens.com). ### Profile Photos ![Basic Income Day image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/wfgNvMC.png) Change your profile photos on Twitter and Facebook and anywhere else with an image of your choice from basicincomeday.org and/or [add a #basicincome ribbon](http://twibbon.com/Support/basic-income-for-all?ref=scottsantens.com) to your Facebook and Twitter photos using the Twibbon campaign. ![Twibbon for basic income](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/Z0fHMTe.png) ### Social Media Ammo You're going to need some great content to share. Here's a short list: [This article from Jacobin](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/automation-frase-robots/?ref=scottsantens.com) about the need for labor unions to embrace basic income. Both [this](https://blogs.eui.eu/neilhoward/2015/05/01/capitalism-coercion-and-modern-day-abolition/?ref=scottsantens.com) and [this](https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/neil-howard/basic-income-and-antislavery-movement?ref=scottsantens.com) from Neil Howard about basic income and the abolition of slavery. [This list of videos](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLN8WjRGdzP3pIAahs8oCKmOibDz4ipzmF&ref=scottsantens.com) I've compiled about basic income on YouTube. [This list of images](http://imgur.com/a/2HfZa?ref=scottsantens.com) I've compiled about basic income on Imgur. [The Basic Income Collection on Medium](https://medium.com/basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com). And of course anything from the massive archive that is [r/basicincome](http://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/?ref=scottsantens.com). ### Engaging Others No one is an enemy out there. Everyone is an ally in waiting. Treat people with respect, no matter how much they may disagree. [Engage non-violently in your communications](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent%5FCommunication?ref=scottsantens.com) to best connect. If you'd like to learn more about what I mean, you can watch [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBGlF7-MPFI&ref=scottsantens.com) sometime and go from there. There are a lot of frequently asked questions about basic income. Refer to [the FAQ on /r/BasicIncome](http://www.reddit.com/r/basicincome/wiki?ref=scottsantens.com) for help, and even just refer people directly to it. ### Connecting There are going to be over 700 people sharing at least one message about basic income today. **Find them**. Add them as friends. Reach out to them. This is especially easy on Twitter. Just do a search for "basic income" or "#basicincome". Go through the results and be generous in your favorites, retweets, replies, and follows. Take the opportunity to make a list of basic income supporters for future reference. ### Ready Set Go! I'm sure there's plenty more to add to this toolkit, but it's a start. And it's also something useful to keep in mind in general. A successful movement for basic income will require people to use their voices. Be heard. People need to hear the words "basic income" and they need to hear it frequently. It needs to be something heard so often, everyone knows exactly what it is. So be that voice. Write a blog post. Share links. Engage with people on social media. Start conversations with friends, and family, co-workers and fellow students. Talk about it. Ask questions. Answer questions. Let people know that [the idea of basic income is not left or right, but forward](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com). Let people know that [the entire point of the machine is to free humans from labor](https://medium.com/basic-income/machine-labor-day-d77931dca9a8?ref=scottsantens.com). Let people know [this is the 21st century, and **it's time for universal basic income**](https://medium.com/basic-income/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a?ref=scottsantens.com). --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Motherboard interview about Basic Income Day URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/motherboard-interview-about-basic-income-day/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T00:09:58.000Z Brian Merchant of Motherboard contacted me in regards to doing a piece about Basic Income Day and the [successful campaign](https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/24575-basic-income-day-is-1st-of-may?ref=scottsantens.com) I've organized with the help of [/r/BasicIncome](http://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/?ref=scottsantens.com) and our international friends behind [BasicIncomeDay.org](http://basicincomeday.org/?ref=scottsantens.com). Here's a link to the piece: [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/happy-basic-income-day](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/happy-basic-income-day?ref=scottsantens.com) One excerpt: > “\[B\]asic income must be seen as the rallying cry of the 21st century,” Santens said. “Machines were built by man to reduce our labor, and so they should. Let machines do the work, and pay humans to buy what the machines produce, freeing us to pursue what we all wish to pursue—life.” If this piece gets around enough in time, I wonder if we might just be able to push past a social reach of one million? We'll see! --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### What America Spends Per Citizen Per Year URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/what-america-spends-per-citizen-per-year-40000/ Last updated: 2024-04-23T17:46:17.000Z ***(This is an excerpt from my piece titled "***[***How We Can Transform America’s Broken Economic System to Work for EVERYONE***](https://medium.com/basic-income/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a?ref=scottsantens.com)***". You can read it in full on Medium. Per citizen calculations are based on 92.8% of the US population being legal citizens.)*** The following is a short list of our shared expenditures as a society. On the left is the total cost and on the right is the cost per American citizen. We spend [$2.7 trillion for health care](http://www.commonwealthfund.org/interactives-and-data/us-compare-interactive?ref=scottsantens.com#?ind=1&compare=CAN) — $9,090 per citizen per year We spend over [$1.4 trillion on crime](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=147911&ref=scottsantens.com) — $4,713 per citizen per year We spend [$1.3 trillion on Social Security](http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/?ref=scottsantens.com) — $4,376 per citizen per year We spend [$1.2 trillion on education](http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2013-06-25/study-us-education-spending-tops-global-list?ref=scottsantens.com) — $4,040 per citizen per year We spend [$840 billion on our military](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us%5Fmilitary%5Fspending%5F30.html?ref=scottsantens.com) — $2,828 per citizen per year We spend [$544 billion on the “empty labor” of workers](http://www.inc.com/news/articles/200608/time.html?ref=scottsantens.com) not actually working while at work — $1,831 per citizen per year We spend [$500 billion on welfare](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us%5Fwelfare%5Fspending%5F40.html?ref=scottsantens.com) — $1,683 per citizen per year We’ve spent [$260 billion each year since 2001 to wage a “War on Terror”](http://costsofwar.org/article/economic-cost-summary?ref=scottsantens.com) in a way that [has increased terrorism](http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/10/u-s-war-on-terror-has-increased-terrorism.html?ref=scottsantens.com) — $875 per citizen per year We spend [$200 billion on work presenteeism](http://jobsearchtech.about.com/od/workplaceissues/a/Presenteeism.htm?ref=scottsantens.com) — $673 per citizen per year We waste [$180 billion on unpurchased food](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-10/living-in-the-united-states-of-food-waste?ref=scottsantens.com) — $606 per citizen per year We lose [$160 billion by not using our vacation days](http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/05/13/how-unused-vacation-days-are-costing-the-economy-b.aspx?ref=scottsantens.com) — $539 per citizen per year We spend [$110 billion on federal corporate subsidies](http://www.ctj.org/corporatetaxdodgers/CorporateTaxDodgersReport.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) — $370 per citizen per year We spend [$108 billion on the cost of hunger](http://turkeyclubamerica.com/index.php/our-mission/hunger-facts?ref=scottsantens.com) — $364 per citizen per year We spend at least [$100 billion on a patent system that *decreases* innovation](https://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20111107/03541716657/which-causes-more-harm-copyright-patents.shtml?ref=scottsantens.com) — $337 per citizen per year We spend [$100 billion buying illegal drugs](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/13/americans-trillion-dollars-drugs%5Fn%5F4943601.html?ref=scottsantens.com) — $337 per citizen per year We spend [$51 billion fighting our buying illegal drugs](http://www.drugpolicy.org/drug-war-statistics?ref=scottsantens.com) — $172 per citizen per year We spend [$92 billion on gambling](http://www.statisticbrain.com/casino-market-and-revenue-statistics/?ref=scottsantens.com) — $310 per citizen per year We lose [$90 billion commuting](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/07/the-worlds-worst-commutes/59062/?ref=scottsantens.com) to and from work — $303 per citizen per year We spend [$70 billion on the mortgage interest deduction](http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3948&ref=scottsantens.com) — $236 per citizen per year We lose [$70 billion by not legalizing and taxing marijuana like we do alcohol](http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2010/03/legalize%5Fmariju.html?ref=scottsantens.com) — $236 per citizen per year We are spending [$1.5 trillion over 30 years for the F-35](http://gizmodo.com/inside-the-pentagons-trillion-dollar-f-35-embarrassmen-1325863089?ref=scottsantens.com) — $168 per citizen per year We actually *subtract* [$53 billion from the economy by using coal power](http://grist.org/coal/2011-09-30-coal-is-enemy-of-human-race-mainstream-economics-edition/?ref=scottsantens.com) — $178 per citizen per year We lose $40 billion to suicides ([40,000 x $1 million each](http://www.usatoday.com/longform/news/nation/2014/10/09/suicide-mental-health-prevention-research/15276353/?ref=scottsantens.com) but the true cost is incalculable) — $135 per citizen per year We spend [$8 billion the Pentagon can’t account for](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/18/us-usa-pentagon-waste-specialreport-idUSBRE9AH0LQ20131118?ref=scottsantens.com) — $27 per citizen per year We spent about [$4 billion in 2014 on our midterm elections](http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/cost.php?ref=scottsantens.com) — $13 per citizen per year We spend [$2.3 billion](http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/08/18/3472568/disturbing-facts-american-hunger/?ref=scottsantens.com) in [volunteering](http://independentsector.org/volunteer%5Ftime?ref=scottsantens.com) over 100 million hours of our time at food banks to feed those of whom [a majority have jobs](http://www.chn.org/2014/11/19/many-working-families-dependent-food-banks-us/?ref=scottsantens.com) but aren’t paid enough to not need food banks — $8 per citizen per year ### Updated: 4/27/2015 We spend [$40-50 billion on financial fraud](http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/10/protect-yourself-from-the-latest-scams/index.htm?ref=scottsantens.com) — $151 avg per citizen per year We lose [$203 billion on occupational licensing restrictions](http://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2015/01/29/hair-braiding-and-occupational-licensing/2/?ref=scottsantens.com) — $683 per citizen per year We gave away [$130 billion in natural resources to a foreign mining company in 2014](http://www.thenation.com/article/198129/did-gop-just-give-away-130-billion-public-property?ref=scottsantens.com) — $438 per citizen We spend [$229 billion on the costs of gun violence](https://medium.com/mother-jones/what-does-gun-violence-really-cost-382ca589b7e4?ref=scottsantens.com) — $770 per citizen per year We spend [$71 to $277 billion on the costs of air pollution](http://www.oecdobserver.org/news/archivestory.php/aid/2351/Pollution:%5Fcosts%5Fof%5Finaction.html?ref=scottsantens.com) — $586 avg per citizen per year We spend over [$100 billion on state and federal disaster relief payouts](http://www.alternet.org/environment/you-may-be-surprised-how-much-our-climate-inaction-costing-you?ref=scottsantens.com) — $337 per citizen per year We spend [$80 billion on state, county, and city subsidies to corporations](http://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/09/23/add-it-average-american-family-pays-6000-year-subsidies-big-business?ref=scottsantens.com) — $269 per citizen per year We give [$83 billion in interest rate subsidies to the largest banks](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/21/why-its-a-bad-idea-that-w%5Fn%5F2733777.html?ref=scottsantens.com) — $269 per citizen per year We spend [$270 billion more than we need to on the cost of medications](http://www.cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/washington-post-and-kaiser-conceal-role-of-government-in-economy?ref=scottsantens.com) — $909 per citizen per year We give [$181 billion to all businesses in the form of special exemptions and exclusions, credits, deductions, deferrals, and preferential tax rates](http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-339?ref=scottsantens.com) — $609 per citizen per year We lose [$142 billion to corporate tax havens](http://www.uspirg.org/news/usp/offshore-tax-havens-cost-average-taxpayer-1026-year-small-businesses-3067?ref=scottsantens.com) — $478 per citizen per year We lose [$885 billion in lost GDP (5%) due to not paying women the same as men](https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2013/sdn1310.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) — $2,979 per citizen per year **As a society, we are now spending or throwing away about $11.9 trillion dollars or $40,000 per citizen every year** There exists overlap between some expenditures, but the above also represents only a partial list of all expenditures. This is what we're seemingly entirely okay right now spending or wasting our money on. Somehow, we just don't have a problem with $40,000 per citizen every year. ***To understand how we can reduce these expenditures and losses by more than $12,000 per citizen by spending an additional $12,000 per citizen, next read "***[***How We Can Transform America’s Broken Economic System to Work for EVERYONE***](https://medium.com/basic-income/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a?ref=scottsantens.com)***"*** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### "Won't basic income give too much power to whomever distributes it?" URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/wont-basic-income-give-too-much-power-to-whomever-distributes-it/ Last updated: 2023-02-25T18:06:40.000Z One of the more common responses to first hearing about [the idea of a basic income guarantee](http://www.reddit.com/r/basicincome/wiki/index?ref=scottsantens.com), is the fear that it would give too much power to government. The thinking goes that if government is giving money to everyone, then they could threaten to discontinue doing so at any time, preventing any dissent and potentially creating an authoritarian regime where all citizens are afraid to say "No" to their government. The answer to this question is as simple as looking at an existing basic income program. Senior citizens already have their own form of basic income and it is paid by the government. [It's called Social Security](http://www.vox.com/2014/7/30/5948907/basic-income-poverty-inflation-details-paternalism?ref=scottsantens.com). If the government decided to cancel Social Security tomorrow, this would throw millions of seniors into poverty immediately. How likely do you feel it is that this would happen? And if it did actually happen, how do you feel seniors would react? As a secondary question, would you say that seniors are more involved in politics or less and why? Do governments not need to worry about anyone over about age 65 and act accordingly? According to the logic behind such a fear, because the government gives seniors the money they need to survive, the government can do anything they want with them. Seniors should accordingly not be involved in politics at all, or if they are, they should always support whichever party is in power, and they should always support ruling government policies, whatever they may be. Seniors according to this theory, should be the puppets of government. Are they? Do we know a lot of seniors who are fully behind the President and support everything he does in fear he will cancel Social Security? Do we know a lot of seniors who are fully behind Congress and support everything they do in fear Congress will cancel Social Security? Do we know a lot of seniors who refuse to say anything negative about the government whatsoever, out of fear they will lose their Social Security? The theory behind this fear requires that the answers to these questions are a resounding "YES." If the answers to these questions aren't "yes", the theory needs some revision because the evidence we have doesn't appear to support it. Here's the reality. [Senior citizens turn up at the polls in greater numbers than any other age demographic, and they do so largely due to programs like Social Security and Medicare](http://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/articles/2012/03/19/why-older-citizens-are-more-likely-to-vote?ref=scottsantens.com). These programs give them skin in the game, and so they make sure their voices are heard. They vote like crazy. They are also more organized. Do you know what the publication is with the highest readership of all? [It's published by the AARP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%5Fof%5Fmagazines%5Fby%5Fcirculation?ref=scottsantens.com#United%5FStates). The same goes for Medicare. If the US government doesn't need to listen to seniors because they wield power over them through Medicare, why did Medicare Part D ever happen? They had Social Security and Medicare already. According to this fear's logic, the government should entirely ignore their interests. Why would the government instead do something that helps only seniors? **Because seniors have more political power than the rest of us. That's why.** When it comes to senior citizens and government, who is at whose beck and call? Seniors get what they want. They get it because they come out in droves to vote, and they have a lot of time on their hands compared to the rest of the population. There exists somewhat of a misunderstanding that the government doesn't give a shit about voters. Although true that [the government cares more about rich voters than poor voters](http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9354310&ref=scottsantens.com), it cares relatively more about seniors than other age demographics because they are mobilized and actually vote. They have big reasons to vote. This gives them more power, and so they tend to get more of what they want than the rest of us. It could also be argued based on the above reasoning that because seniors have so much power, the government should frequently threaten to entirely eliminate Social Security. It should hold it over their heads, and seniors should be afraid of the government as a result and keep their mouths shut. But that's clearly not the case. **It's the government that is afraid of seniors.** It requires ignoring all of this, to support a hypothesis that if the government provides everyone sufficient money to survive, that suddenly the government will hold all the cards. Such a belief entirely ignores what we know from seniors and Social Security. There's also another basic income program in place elsewhere and it too tells us something. It tells us that once a basic income is established, it's going nowhere. ### Alaska's Permanent Fund Dividend [Every resident of Alaska gets a partial basic income](http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/cities-are-now/in-alaska-everyone-gets-paid-thousands-in-oil-dividends-per-year/?ref=scottsantens.com), and that program has been going on [since 1982](https://www.scottsantens.com/consumer-price-index-of-alaska-vs-u-s-before-and-after-existence-of-alaskan-dividend). Like Social Security, it too is going nowhere. And there too, Alaskans don't live in fear of it being pulled. Alaskan politicians are the ones who are afraid to not support it. [They know it can mean the end of their careers](http://www.iser.uaa.alaska.edu/Publications/bien%5Fxiii%5Fak%5Fpfd%5Flessons.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Contrary to what some people fear, once we have a universal basic income, it will be practically untouchable. No politician will be able to threaten to eliminate it without committing political suicide. Meanwhile, more people will be more involved in politics, just as seniors are. [They will have more reason](http://www.fastcoexist.com/3044484/the-interested-bystander-effect-why-even-people-who-care-about-the-world-dont-vote?ref=scottsantens.com) and time, to be more engaged just as seniors are now. They will have more money to engage in politics, which [we already know increases with income](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105353571300005X?ref=scottsantens.com). Voting will increase, not decrease. There are also [reasons to believe a basic income will actually strengthen direct democracy over representative democracy](http://www.usbig.net/papers/245-BIEN2014%5FGajewska.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). This particular fear of basic income is the kind of fear founded on a fear or dislike of government. It thinks of government as being something separate from people, and somehow our enemy. It's understandable this kind of thinking has developed over the years, as it seems so unresponsive and worthless lately for anyone who doesn't earn around seven figures, but that doesn't mean the government is a bogeyman. **We are the government. The government is us.** If we want to make it work better, it requires our involvement. And [it definitely requires reforms of elections to be more responsive to everyone instead of merely the few](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo&ref=scottsantens.com). But this fear that the government is just going to stop major programs and use this fear to control us... it's entirely unsupported. Such actions are political suicide. And if someone wants to believe in conspiracy theories and how the big bad government is out to get them, that's certainly a choice, but really, all one need look at is Social Security and seniors to realize how unfounded such fears are. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### "Yeah, but who's going to pay for it?" URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/yeah-but-who-is-going-to-pay-for-it-basic-income-alan-watts/ Last updated: 2023-02-01T23:21:17.000Z "Money, Guilt, and the Machine" by Alan Watts *(The following text is what I personally transcribed from [a video](https://youtu.be/oMfGWPrB0T8?ref=scottsantens.com) originally uploaded to YouTube by* [*AlanWattsLectures*](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC848b72MStS%5F1twAV97p0yQ?ref=scottsantens.com) *of a lecture given by* [*philosopher Alan Watts*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan%5FWatts?ref=scottsantens.com) *circa late '60s)* --- So this goes very deep into us. It goes deep, deep, deep into a problem we have about guilt. I wonder often if there's any relationship between guilt and gold - that the love of money is the root of evil. It's a very true saying. Because you see I was saying yesterday that **the difference between having a job and having a vocation is that a job is some unpleasant work you do in order to make money, with the sole purpose of making money.** And there are plenty of jobs because there is still a certain amount of dirty work that nobody wants to do and that therefore they will pay someone to do it. There is essentially less and less of that, that kind of work because of mechanization. But if you do a job, **if you do a job with the sole purpose of making money, you are absurd.** Because if money becomes the goal, and it does when you work that way, you begin increasingly to confuse it with happiness - or with pleasure. Yes, one can take a whole handful of crisp dollar bills and practically water your mouth over them. But this is a kind of person who is confused, like a Pavlov dog, who salivates on the wrong bell. It goes back you see to the ancient guilt that if you don't work you have no right to eat; that if there are others in the world who don't have enough to eat, you shouldn't enjoy your dinner even though you have no possible means of conveying the food to them. And while it is true that we are all one human family and that every individual involves every other individual... while it is true therefore **we should do something about changing the situation.** The one way of not doing anything about a situation is feeling guilty about it, because when people feel guilty about a situation they most usually, instead of doing something practical to change it, they resort to all sorts of symbolic methods of expiation. They go to confession. They see an analyst. They do all kinds of things which will be ways of actually not doing anything about the problem, but feeling all right about it instead. And guilt invariably produces that sort of reaction. It is a destructive emotion. And instead **we need to have a different attitude to our mistakes and to our misdeeds**. Walt Whitman always admired animals because they do not lie awake at night and weep for their sins. Animals are practical in the real sense as are children who haven't been taught this extraordinary hang-up of guilt. Because if you have done something wrong and you've made a mistake and somebody makes you ashamed of it and guilty, you run around licking the sores of your wounded ego because you feel your pride has been hurt. The first thing to understand is that **it is not a serious failing in a human being to make mistakes. Everybody has to make mistakes. There is no way out of it. You can't learn anything unless you make mistakes.** We find for example in Japan the Japanese have a terrible hang-up about making mistakes. They therefore never have the courage to practice their English properly. They've had seven years of English in school, most it very, very, badly taught. And it's irrelevant English. They learn all about Shakespeare and Dickens and Thackeray and Thomas Hardy and so on, and therefore they can't carry on an everyday conversation. It's like the way the English study French - all about pens of gardeners' aunts and things like that. And so they are ashamed to try out their English unless drunk. So if you want to get into conversation with the Japanese in English you have to go to bars and then they say university students and so on there will loosen up and talk, because they no longer have the inhibition, the shame of saying the wrong thing. So likewise I know a very great anthropologist who was taught music, playing the piano in the same way I was. When I was taught music the school mom who taught me used to put an India rubber, an eraser it's called in this country, on the top of each hand so that I would have my hands in good posture. And every time I'd play a wrong note she'd hit my fingers with a pencil. And this great anthropologist that had a similar thought about musical education, and when confronted with the piano in the presence of an absolutely marvelous teacher in San Francisco, she said she was amazed he was completely incapable of reading notes. He blocked out everything. So another great teacher of the piano I knew said simply: > *“You must not be afraid of playing wrong notes. Just forget it. Play it wrong and then eventually go over it again and you'll eventually get it right. But you must not block. Always keep the same rhythm going, even if you have to slow it down. But keep the proportionate rhythm of one note to another and if it's the wrong note, play the wrong note, as long as you play something, in the right rhythm.”* So you know this is a way of taking away peoples' blockage, peoples' guilt and shame about making mistakes. So you absolutely... [**freedom means basically the freedom to make mistakes, the freedom to be a damn fool.**](https://medium.com/basic-income/its-time-we-take-a-closer-look-at-americas-three-favorite-words-f512f8a1ad6f?ref=scottsantens.com) And then not to recriminate with yourself when you do finally realize that it was a mistake, but simply don't do it again. Or at least do it less often. So you know this is the puzzle when you go to confession in the Catholic Church, which is an enormous method of inculcating a sense of guilt, very subtle. One says of course that Catholics are on the whole less guilty than Protestants. They're more relaxed, and there's some truth in that, but only some. Protestants of course have chronic guilt, and you can work this out by a very simple little formula. That when the Protestants in England abandoned what is called auricular confession, to a priest, they inserted in their prayer book a general confession in which the congregation all made its confession together. Now what does a Catholic say when he makes his confession? The formula is: > *"I confess to God Almighty, the Blessed Mary of a virgin, Blessed John the Baptist, the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul and all the Saints that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, and deed, by my fault, by my own fault, by my own most grievous fault. Wherefore I beg Blessed Mary etcetera and you Father to pray for me to the Lord our God."* And the priest says: > *"Almighty God, have mercy upon you forgive you your sins and bring you to everlasting life by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ committed unto me I absolve thee from all thee sins in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."* Now instead of that, what they had to introduce into the Anglican formulary was instead of this very simple confession of sins and before the whole company of Heaven, an absolute grovel wherein they say that they have sinned so horribly and that the remembrance of these sins is grievous unto us. The burden of them is intolerable. Have mercy upon us. Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father. And all this cringing and crying, breast-beating and wallowing in guilt, and then the priest instead of saying a simple formula of absolution, quotes all kinds of scriptural texts to prove from the Bible that those who DO truly and earnestly repent will be forgiven by God. (Cause they're very uncertain about it therefore they have to quote all of the authorities.) And this absolutely groveling form of confession replaces the old one because they were a little bit scared about abandoning direct confession of sins to the priest. And now going back to the Catholic problem about guilt, you say when you have confessed after saying this formula about and to all the saints, you confess the specific sins you've committed and you know I stole something, committed adultery three times and so on whatever it was, and then you say at the end for these and all my sins (which I cannot now remember), I firmly purpose amendment and humbly ask pardon of God, and of you Father, absolution. Now I firmly purpose amendment… that is where the fly in the ointment consists because the doctrine is that you have made a true confession if at the same time you have a sincere intention of acting differently in the future. Now no sensitive Catholic can say that without having grave doubts as to whether actually he isn't going to do some of these things again. So if you're a work-a-day Catholic, like a Mexican peasant or something like that, you know that the confession is just a safety valve. You're going to go on living just as lackadaisically as ever but you go to church every so often and you get rid of the guilt and the evil. It's like going to the bathroom. But when you get to get thoughtful about these things then you wonder whether you do really mean what you say, whether your motive is pure and your intention is right. You get into a frightful hang-up. And **one of the reasons that our technology is impeded and prevented from feeding the world properly is the failure of one of our networks. It's an information network and it's called money**, about which we have the most unbelievable superstitions and psychological blocks which have been gone into at some length by Freud who equates our valuation of money with our attitude to excrement and a very complicated lot of complexes grow up around that. But **money and our psychological attitude to money is a major obstacle to [a proper development of technology enabling it to do what it is supposed to do](https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/24575-basic-income-day-is-1st-of-may?ref=scottsantens.com) \- that is to save labor, and to produce goods, services, and so on adequately**. So I must introduce this with a story which is entirely legendary, indeed quite apocryphal. The great banks of the world at one time got absolutely sick of the expense and security measures involved in shipping consignments of gold from one bank to another and so they decided that all the chief banks of the world would open offices on a certain island in the South Pacific which was balmy and comfortable and there they would store all the gold in the world. And they put it in great subterranean vaults reached by deep elevator shafts and then all they had to do when one bank, one country owed gold to another was to trundle it across the street. And this was very efficient. It went on beautifully for five or six years. And then the presidents of the world banks got together and said, "Let's have a convention out on this island and take our wives and families.” So about seven years from the date of opening, all those presidents and their wives and families went out to this Pacific island and they inspected the books. And everything was beautifully in order. Then the children said, "Oh Daddy can't we see the gold?" They said, "Of course you may see the gold." And they said to the managers, "Let's take our children down to the vaults and show them the gold."And the manager said, "Well it's a... it's a little bit inconvenient at this time and perhaps the children would not really be very interested, after all it's just only old plain gold." And the president said, "Oh no, no, come now, they'd be thrilled. Let's go down and see."And there was further humming and hawing and delays and finally it came out that a few years before there had been a catastrophic subterranean earthquake and all the vaults had been swallowed up and all the gold had disappeared. But so far as the bookkeeping was concerned everything was in perfect order. What this means then is that **money is nothing but bookkeeping. It is figures. It is a way of measuring what you owe the community and what the community owes you**. It is of course as you all know a substitute for barter. If you worked on a farm and the farmer paid you in terms of ears of corn, onions, cabbages, and other vegetables, and yet you wanted a pot and pan of some kind, then you took a few vegetables over to the man who so made pots and pans and you swapped. Some people used cowry shells to stand for money so that you wouldn't have to barter and carry around all these inconvenient loads of goods and then of course gold was used because gold was rare and because gold was supposed to have a constant value. You might ponder the question when a banker buys gold with what does he pay for it? The answer is a mystery called credit. Credit is bookkeeping and as the economy of the Western world developed it was found that there was not enough gold around, if it were to remain constant in value, to exchange goods and services. You could of course have changed the picture by putting down the price of goods and services to keep pace with the amount of gold in circulation, but nobody will ever put down the price. There's something in our psychology whereby prices always tend to go up. But at the same time therefore because the amount of gold in the world did not provide an adequate channel for the circulation of goods and services, all great industrial nations went heavily into debt. They created a thing called the national debt which year by year gets bigger and bigger and bigger to the horror and consternation of old-fashioned Republicans who pay their bills. But the reason for the increase of the national debt is extremely obvious. It is that **with an expanding gross national product there needs to be more and more money, that is to say tokens of exchange, in order to circulate the amount of goods produced, which is ever increasing.** Now I'm not an economist, and I can refer you to the work of those who really are, but any fool can see certain extremely fundamental principles about this whole situation. And I'm speaking of the thought today of a man called [Robert Theobald](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUTwZUHJRTI&ref=scottsantens.com) who sort of ties in with the general picture of people like McLuhan and [Buckminster Fuller](http://i.imgur.com/ar0hAZI.jpg?ref=scottsantens.com) in having very far-out thoughts and very adventurous thoughts about what we should do about money. But he is in the following of a man like Frederick Soddy, who was a Nobel Prize chemist, who was one of the first people to think really freshly about economics. Or people like Silvio Gesell in Austria and Major Douglas in England, he's in that following. And the proposition that he puts forward is very simple - that **money is a circulation of information and in itself has no value**. Gold of course has some value. It has some value for industry and some value for dentistry and some value for jewelry. But as a means of exchanging the goods and services of the world it is as primitive as post horses for carrying the mail. We must recognize then that **money is a pure abstraction.** I was on a television show a little while ago with Ted Sorensen and Raymond Moley and they were having a long, long discussion which sounded like something that goes on in a smoke-filled backroom of party bosses, where they were talking about the prospects for Republican-Democratic parties in 1968\. And then they got onto the question of automation and the problems of unemployment that it was making and the difficulties of transferring workers from this to that when they were only trained for this. Finally I said, "The trouble with you gentlemen is you still think money is real.” And they looked at me and sort of said, "Oh ha ha ha, someone who doesn't think money is real. Cause everybody knows money is money and it's very important." But it just isn't real at all because it has the same relationship to real wealth, that is to say to actual goods and services, that words have to meaning - that words have to the physical world. And as words are not the physical world, money is not wealth. It only is an accounting of available energy - economic energy. Now what happens then when you introduce technology into production? You produce enormous quantities of goods by technological methods but at the same time you put people out of work. You can say, "Oh but it always creates more jobs. There will always be more jobs." Yes, but lots of them will be futile jobs. They will be jobs making every kind of frippery and unnecessary contraption, and one will also at the same time have to beguile the public into feeling that they need and want these completely unnecessary things that aren't even beautiful. And therefore an enormous amount of nonsense employment and busy work, bureaucratic and otherwise, has to be created in order to keep people working, because we believe as good Protestants that the devil finds work for idle hands to do. But the basic principle of the whole thing has been completely overlooked, that the purpose of the machine is to make drudgery unnecessary. And if we don't allow it to achieve its purpose we live in a constant state of self-frustration. So then if a given manufacturer automates his plant and dismisses his labor force and they have to operate on a very much diminished income, (say some sort of dole), the manufacturer suddenly finds that the public does not have the wherewithal to buy his products. And therefore he has invested in this expensive automative machinery to no purpose. And therefore obviously the public has to be provided with the means of purchasing what the machines produce. People say, "That's not fair. Where's the money going to come from? Who's gonna pay for it?" [The answer is the machine. The machine pays for it, because the machine works for the manufacturer and for the community](https://medium.com/basic-income/machine-labor-day-d77931dca9a8?ref=scottsantens.com). This is not saying you see that a... **this is not the statist or communist idea** that you expropriate the manufacture and say you can't own and run this factory anymore, it is owned by the government. It is only saying that **the government or the people have to be responsible for issuing to themselves sufficient credit to circulate the goods they are producing** and have to balance the measuring standard of money with the gross national product. That means that **taxation is obsolete - completely obsolete. [It ought to go the other way](http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/02/23/corporate-debt-society-10000-per-household-per-year/?ref=scottsantens.com).** Theobald points out that **[every individual should be assured of a minimum income](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome?ref=scottsantens.com)**. Now you see that absolutely horrifies most people. “Say all these wastrels, these people who are out of a job because they're really lazy see... ah giving them money?” Yeah, because **otherwise the machines can't work**. They come to a blockage. [This was the situation of the Great Depression when here we were still, in a material sense, a very rich country](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-JMHiaYIiU&ref=scottsantens.com), with plenty of fields and farms and mines and factories...everything going. But suddenly because of a psychological hang-up, because of a mysterious mumbo-jumbo about the economy, about the banking, we were all miserable and poor - starving in the midst of plenty. Just because of a psychological hang-up. And **that hang-up is that money is real, and that people ought to suffer in order to get it. But the whole point of the machine is to relieve you of that suffering.** It is ingenuity. You see we are psychologically back in the 17th century and technically in the 20th. And here comes the problem. So **what we have to find out how to do is to change the psychological attitude to money and to wealth and further more to pleasure and further more to the nature of work. And this is a formidable problem.** It requires the best brains in public relations, in propaganda, in all that kind of thing, in all the media: television, radio, newspapers, everything...to try to get across a message to the vast general public about what money is. You see the difficulty is this. When the public suspects that the money that is being issued, the dollar bills being issued by the government are only paper, and stand only for paper, they start putting up prices so you get [an inflationary situation](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7?ref=scottsantens.com) where the more paper money there is, the higher and higher and higher the prices go… which is a very stupid psychological maneuver. And people have to be persuaded. **The least effective way of persuading people is passing laws**, but they have to be persuaded somehow not to put up the prices, but to play fair with each other and keep some sort of standard correspondence between how much is produced and how much credit is issued. (**Alan Watts, you are missed. Thank you for your wisdom, wherever you are. And to whoever reads this, you might also now be interested in reading a paper about the option of [funding a basic income using a "citizen-centered monetary regime" aka distributed seigniorage.](http://www.bien2012.de/sites/default/files/paper%5F170%5Fen.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)**) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### John Oliver, Edward Snowden, and Unconditional Basic Income URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/john-oliver-edward-snowden-and-unconditional-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-17T20:02:55.000Z ## How all three are surprisingly connected In what is arguably the most important piece to come out of John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” show on HBO so far, John tackles the subject of government surveillance and does so in a way that is guaranteed to win awards in the near future. Here is the historic segment. Now, you may have just noticed it’s 33 minutes long and have decided to read on instead of stopping to watch it, but I urge you to just take the time to watch it. If you absolutely must save time, at least click to about the halfway point and watch the second half before continuing. All done? Okay, now that you’ve been washed in the cleansing waters of creative genius, there are a few very important points I’d like to stress. # Point 1: This Conversation is Really Important [The conversation opened up to the world by Edward Snowden](http://glenngreenwald.net/?ref=scottsantens.com) and now creatively re-framed by John Oliver is one of the most important conversations to be having in any even [remotely functioning democracy](https://medium.com/basic-income/its-time-we-take-a-closer-look-at-americas-three-favorite-words-f512f8a1ad6f?ref=scottsantens.com). Unfortunately, it is also a conversation so big, and so hard to wrap our heads around without sufficient knowledge of the dirty details of our present state of technological growth and government “oversight”, that it absolutely requires proper framing that makes it more easily understandable for everyone — no voting citizen excluded. John Oliver and team recognized this need and have now done something about it. By making it truly personal through **changing the conversation from one about privacy to one about *privates***, everyone can better understand that what is going on right now affects everyone *intimately*. Our surveillance programs are not only about extremists in foreign lands. **They are about *us***. They are copying *our* emails. They are recording *our* voices. They are noting *our* associations. They are following *our* every move. **And they are looking at *our* privates.** This is about *your* privacy and *your* rights, just as it is about mine and everyone else’s. And because it’s *our* government doing this to all of us, it is entirely up to us as the voting public to have the discussion about finally reigning it in to at least some degree, or just resigning ourselves to being okay with all of it for the comforting illusion of increased safety. This conversation needs to be had. And for this to happen, everyone needs to understand it better. **The key problem in understanding it however, is its hugely *technical* nature.** That’s an exceedingly large obstacle, and it brings us to the second hugely important point and how it directly relates to the topic of basic income. # Point 2: Most People Don’t Understand Technology I propose here that a basic income guarantee and government surveillance are alike, in that [**they are both extremely important conversations we need to be having as a direct result of our advancing technology**](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/world/europe/after-jobs-dry-up-what-then.html?%5Fr=0&ref=scottsantens.com). Technology has reached a point where we’re all walking around with tiny touchscreen supercomputers in our pockets, and yet at the same time, we mostly all have no idea how they work, how to fix them when they break, what they do, when they do it, and [what they have replaced by all the ways in which they can be used](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sT%5FAyaer7c&ref=scottsantens.com) and by whom. Did you know it’s possible for someone to hijack your smartphone’s microphone or camera and record you without your knowing? [Well, it is](http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/02/report-fbi-can-remotely-turn-on-phone-microphones-for-spying/?ref=scottsantens.com). Did you know it’s possible for someone to hack the systems within your car, while you’re driving it, and take control of your vehicle’s key navigation systems? [Well, it is](http://www.wired.com/2015/03/60-gadget-thatll-make-car-hacking-easier-ever/?ref=scottsantens.com). Did you know that new companies [like Tesla Motors](http://www.scottsantens.com/yes-it-really-is-different-this-time-and-humans-already-need-not-apply) only need a fraction of the employees of yesteryear’s Ford Motor Company (10,000+ vs. 200,000+), Instagram a fraction of yesteryear’s Kodak (13 vs. 145,000), and WhatsApp a tiny fraction of yesteryear’s AT&T (55 vs. 1 million)? [Because, they do](http://www.salon.com/2015/03/17/robert%5Freich%5Feconomic%5Fredistribution%5Fis%5Four%5Fonly%5Fhope%5Fpartner/?ref=scottsantens.com). Did you know [new companies like Uber, Airbnb, Homejoy, and TaskRabbit don’t even really have (and decreasingly need) employees](http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2015/02/04/google-cabs-and-uber-bots-will-challenge-jobs-below-the-api/?ref=scottsantens.com) while directly competing against taxi, hotel, maid service, and [just about any other companies](http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/17/5816254/taskrabbit-blows-up-its-auction-house-to-offer-services-on-demand?ref=scottsantens.com) that do? [Because, they don’t](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/10/at-the-uber-for-home-cleaning-workers-pay-a-price-for-convenience/?ref=scottsantens.com). Did you know that [bots in the form of both hardware and software are no longer purely elements of science fiction stories](http://onpoint.wbur.org/2014/06/18/robots-emotions-ai-killer-robots?ref=scottsantens.com), that they actually exist, [are actively taking jobs in the labor force](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/apr/02/how-robots-algorithms-are-taking-over/?ref=scottsantens.com), and are playing [a big role in most all of our jobs paying less and offering less security](http://www.fastcompany.com/3027355/pixel-and-dimed-on-not-getting-by-in-the-gig-economy?ref=scottsantens.com) while simultaneously increasing income and wealth inequality by mostly enriching the few at the top at the expense of the many? [Because, they are](https://hbr.org/2014/12/what-happens-to-society-when-robots-replace-workers?ref=scottsantens.com). Did you know [our economy is 70% based on consumption](http://www.businessinsider.com/companies-need-to-pay-people-more-2015-3?ref=scottsantens.com), and that hardware and software bots neither get paid nor buy the goods and services they are producing for humans increasingly less able to be consumers in a quickly approaching future of [self-driving cars](https://medium.com/@mitchturck/i-find-your-lack-of-faith-in-autonomous-cars-disturbing-c5f249e9e623?ref=scottsantens.com) and [Watsons](http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/15/4837828/ibms-watson-wants-to-fix-americas-doctor-shortage?ref=scottsantens.com) where [Humans Need Not Apply](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&ref=scottsantens.com)? All of this should be more alarming to people in the same way government surveillance should be more alarming to people. It’s all happening and we aren’t really talking about it yet to anything close to the degree we should. Well guess who, because of his technical knowledge, is fully aware of all of the above and the inherent dangers it represents to us? > [***Edward Snowden***](http://www.thenation.com/article/186129/snowden-exile-exclusive-interview?ref=scottsantens.com)***.*** ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*exmTXXHNouHyd10msakvnQ.jpeg) > As a technologist, I see the trends, and I see that automation inevitably is going to mean fewer and fewer jobs. And if we do not find a way to provide a basic income for people who have no work, or no meaningful work, we’re going to have social unrest that could get people killed. When we have increasing production — year after year after year — some of that needs to be reinvested in society. — [Edward Snowden](http://www.thenation.com/article/186129/snowden-exile-exclusive-interview?ref=scottsantens.com) Why Edward Snowden sees both problems and the need for discussing both government surveillance *and* a basic income guarantee is important to know. If you keep up with technology, you are more likely to see the importance in implementing a basic income, because you recognize our present state of technology and can see [the problems the ongoing trends will create if we don’t have a conversation about it and change some of our policies](http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/08/06/future-of-jobs/?ref=scottsantens.com), just as you’ll be more likely to recognize the need to do the same in regards to government surveillance. If you don’t keep up with technology, if you give it little thought and just use it or don’t use it — which tends to be most people — you are far less likely to see any need to have any discussion at all about basic income, or to enact any policies in recognition of [fully structural technological unemployment](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/03/robots-are-hurting-middle-class-workers-and-education-wont-solve-the-problem-larry-summers-says/?ref=scottsantens.com). Among those of us who are technologically-minded, [many do see the importance](http://singularityhub.com/2015/03/23/future-of-work-interview-with-neil-jacobstein/?ref=scottsantens.com), and are trying hard to get everyone else to see it as well. However, this message is extremely challenging to convey for the same reason that was demonstrated to Ed Snowden so effectively by John Oliver, and it goes beyond a lack of technical understanding. The primary challenge to both conversations is the plain and simple (and somewhat depressing) fact that [we as humans don’t tend to really listen about much of anything, unless it immediately and directly affects *us* instead of those we don’t know](http://www.cracked.com/article%5F14990%5Fwhat-monkeysphere.html?ref=scottsantens.com). This is absolutely vital to recognize. # Point 3: We Don’t Care Unless It’s Personal John Oliver’s central thesis in his piece about government surveillance is that in order for the conversation surrounding it to really advance to the point everyone is talking about it, we should just circumvent understanding barriers by simply getting each other to think about our own naked bodies being looked at and shared by strangers without our explicit permission. If we do that, instead of our conversations needing to be informed by large amounts of technical know-how to even begin to really comprehend them ([like XKeyscore and Prism and all our myriad of other highly technical NSA programs few can easily understand in part let alone as a whole](http://www.dailydot.com/politics/nsa-spy-prgrams-prism-fairview-blarney/?ref=scottsantens.com)), we really only need to be informed by **a single direct and entirely personal effect on us as individuals**. In the case of government surveillance, the conversation then is as simple as asking… > ***“Do you want strangers looking at your private photos?”*** **In the case of basic income, the conversation can be as simple as asking…** > ***“Do you want an extra $1,000 per month?”*** ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1114/1*bekBvp0Obl_L0UG0VPnuzw.png) Middle class? Where? (source: [New York Times](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/why-so-many-rich-people-dont-feel-very-rich/?ref=scottsantens.com)) As long as people think basic income is solely about poverty, and don’t follow advancing technology and its many effects, this incredibly important conversation won’t be had. It won’t be had because people will think it doesn’t really affect them, or if it does, it’ll only raise their taxes. They will think this because everyone thinks they are a member of the middle class, when [they aren’t](http://imgur.com/pZNA462?ref=scottsantens.com), and that taxes on the middle class will have to increase, which [they won’t](http://www.scottsantens.com/reddit-robots-and-resources-why-I-got-into-the-idea-of-basic-income-and-how-we-can-go-about-implementing-it). This complex conversation instead needs to be simplified, and I suggest down to the following: > ***“What will* you *do with* your *extra $1,000 per month and $300 for each of your kids?”*** This question is even more personal than just asking if someone wants money, because it asks people to think about what they themselves will do with *their* money, not just money*,* and also *when* they get it, not *if* they get it. This question also implies we’re discussing [the fully universal and unconditional version of basic income](http://www.scottsantens.com/the-water-room-analogy-why-giving-basic-income-to-even-the-richest-makes-sense), and not the negative income tax variant, because that variant, [although identical in outcome](http://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-nit-and-unconditional-basic-income-ubi-what-makes-them-the-same-and-what-makes-them-different), is less personal and therefore potentially suffers from the same problems as already discussed. What I mean by that is that if we reduce the basic income with earnings (as we would with a NIT), many people will think they won’t personally benefit, in the belief they earn too much to benefit, even though they don’t and assuredly will. If we don’t reduce the basic income with earnings (as we would with a UBI), then everyone will clearly get it. [Unconditional basic income, unlike welfare or food stamps or housing assistance, is fully universal](https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e?ref=scottsantens.com). UBI does not care whether you are rich or poor, or a member of the middle class. UBI only cares if you are a citizen. UBI is a check that everyone will get regardless of anything but right of citizenship. This is why I feel we need to focus on **unconditional basic income**, because it is the simpler conversation that is easier to understand in how it will directly affect each and every one of us regardless of present earnings. We all as adults get an extra $1,000 per month and every child gets an extra $300 per month. That’s as simple as it gets. Every legal citizen gets the same amount. You will get that amount. I will get that amount. A billionaire will get that amount. We will all get that amount. **So do you like that idea or do you dislike that idea?** That’s the discussion we need to have. The effects of technology aside, do *you* want a $1,000 raise whether *you* work or not? Do *you* want *your* kids to be able to eat, whether *you* are able to find work or not in an economy with [more job seekers than jobs](http://imgur.com/vNn5kCn?ref=scottsantens.com)? **The question of universal basic income is universally personal.** The next question of [how to pay for it](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com) is actually a separate discussion, just as it is a separate discussion to figure out just how we should go about balancing our concerns for privacy and our concerns for safety in regards to the details of our government surveillance programs. It doesn’t so much matter *how* we go about this balancing act, as it matters that we together decide a new balance *needs* to be found in the first place. *Do we want our dick pics seen by countless strangers without our knowing?* *Do we want paychecks regardless of work so we can always afford to survive?* These are two questions we each must find our own answers for, and they are both at the center of two very important conversations we all need to be actively engaging in with each other here in the 21st century, whether we fully understand [the incredible rates of advancement and effects of our technologies](http://www.scottsantens.com/debunking-the-debunking-of-humans-need-not-apply-and-more-the-fallacy-of-the-luddite-fallacy) or not. --- ***Special thanks to Arjun Banker, Topher Hunt, Albert Wenger, Larry Cohen, Danielle Texeira, Paul Wicks, Liane Gale, Jan Smole, Joe Esposito, Robert F. Greene, Martin Jordo, Victor Lau, Shane Gordon, Paolo Narciso, Johan Grahn, Tony DeStefano, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** [*Would you like to see your name here too?*](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Reddit, Robots, and Resources URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/reddit-robots-and-resources-why-i-got-into-the-idea-of-basic-income-and-how-we-can-go-about-implementing-it/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T00:18:02.000Z *(The following is an edited transcript from my appearance on the Robot Overlordz podcast adapted for article form. [You can read the original unedited transcript and also listen to the show in full here](https://robotoverlordz.fm/show/200-ep00153-notes?ref=scottsantens.com). A big thank you to Mike Johnston and Matt Bolton for the raw transcript and for having me on their show!)* ### The Origins of My Interest I've been a redditor for over four years now and am currently a moderator for [Reddit's basic income community](http://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome?ref=scottsantens.com). I don’t know how much you know about how Reddit works, but it’s nicknamed the “Front Page of the Internet,” and [there’s millions of people who use it](http://www.basicincome.org/news/2014/04/international-ten-thousand-people-are-discussing-basic-income-on-reddit/?ref=scottsantens.com). It works off people’s ability to post whatever they want to, and people can vote this content up or down. Stuff that gets voted up can make it to the very front page, and this page is read by millions of people. Something that made the front page one day in late 2013 was that people don’t seem to understand how quickly technology is advancing. I've always considered myself as someone who is very interested in technology and keep tabs on this myself. But the stuff I learned there, I too was shocked at how quickly we were advancing--the stuff that people just don’t talk about. The thing that got me was [the robotic trucks in the Rio Tinto mines](http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c%5Fid=3&objectid=11236395&ref=scottsantens.com); just this idea that we’ve actually reached the point where a whole mining industry is getting rid of the human element and it’s becoming just robots. You’ve got robots mining this stuff, robots transporting it. Soon they’re going to have the trucks going to the actual trains, which are going to transport to the ports. It’s all getting automated. You can look at [the Amazon warehouse robots](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/536086/amazon-robot-contest-may-accelerate-warehouse-automation/?ref=scottsantens.com) as another big one. People don’t think about the work that’s going on in these Amazon warehouses, but as soon as you see [a simple .gif of these little orange robots moving stuff around from here to there](http://i.imgur.com/0E0Wnlt.gifv?ref=scottsantens.com), it’s like “Holy crap!” So, there was this big reminder on the front page of Reddit about where we’re at technologically, and that got me looking into basic income. So, I started doing a lot of research into that and I found the Basic Income subreddit after also reading [Marshall Brain’s Manna](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm?ref=scottsantens.com). Marshall Brain founded How Stuff Works. He then went on to write some books. He’s really well-known in the technology and futurology community. He wrote something called Manna. Manna itself is the name of this piece of software in the story that actually automates management itself. We like to think of the jobs that are eliminated as being, say, server jobs, the hard labor jobs, the physical stuff. His twist on this was to show that actually the first thing that could be eliminated is **middle management.** [(*he was right*)](http://rein.pk/replacing-middle-management-with-apis/?ref=scottsantens.com) Let’s say you work at Burger King and instead of having a manager telling you what to do, you just have a piece of software that tells you what to do and it leads you step by step; it really simplifies stuff and allows people to just break these jobs down into very simple elements. Well, as soon as you do this, just as it essentially makes us into machines, it allows actual machines to more easily do it for us, leaving us with less to do, and therefore with less means of trading our labor for income. So what then? In Manna, you’ve got these buildings set up where--what do you do with people instead of giving them food stamps or housing assistance? You actually just build these giant warehouses for people. They can’t work anywhere and you don’t want to allow them to cause harm or whatever, so you just lock them all up in these giant "projects." That's one way we could go about this. [As jobs are eliminated](http://www.technologyreview.com/view/519241/report-suggests-nearly-half-of-us-jobs-are-vulnerable-to-computerization/?ref=scottsantens.com), what do you do about people who can no longer find work? What are you going to do with growing unemployment? On the negative side, the scenario is this kind of nightmarish dystopia. Then on the other side, Marshall calls it the "Australia Project", where instead it turns out in Australia they’ve changed things to be more of [a resource-based economy](http://www.scottsantens.com/shouldn-t-all-this-talk-about-money-actually-be-talk-about-resources). So, instead of dystopia you have people being freed by technology. They’re only limited by the resources themselves. They’re using technology to create abundance. In this alternate existence, instead of a dystopia it’s a [*utopia*](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/why-not-utopia.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Those are really our choices, that we can either go down a road towards things getting worse because we refuse to leverage technology for our own good, or we can go down the road of leveraging technology for the good of everybody. So, I think that made a very good point. Then Marshall also wrote something called [Robotic Nation](http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm?ref=scottsantens.com), which goes into how quickly in the real world things are being automated and what we we’re going to do about it. In that, he talks about a basic income. That’s really what got me thinking about it in a different way. It was at that point I started getting really deep into basic income, reading a lot about it, and I found the subreddit on Reddit and starting posting a lot on there, as well as reading a lot and engaging a lot. I was soon welcomed to be a moderator on the sub. At the time, there were under 2,000 subscribers and that was in late 2013\. [Since then, we have now reached about 25,000 subscribers](http://www.scottsantens.com/what-i-have-observed-since-2013-in-the-discussion-about-a-basic-income-guarantee). It’s been growing quickly as the conversation about basic income grows. This was also very much kicked off by [the initiative in Switzerland](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25415501?ref=scottsantens.com). Switzerland has this really neat ability to engage in direct democracy, and so they can vote on anything they want to, it just requires getting enough signatures. So, for whatever they want, if they can get enough signatures on it, the entire country gets to vote on it. What they decided to do was get together a petition to give everyone in Switzerland a basic income. It’s a fairly high basic income--as far as US dollars, it will vary depending on exchange rates, but you’re looking at about $2,500 to $3,000 a month USD. They got enough signatures and so they’re going to vote on it probably in some time around 2016\. At that point, we’ll see what happens. We’ll see if every citizen in Switzerland is going to get a guaranteed amount of money universally, or are they going to say it’s too high? Are they going to say they don’t want to do it? We’ll see. ### So What is Basic Income Really? A basic income is the idea that every single citizen in a country, although it does vary between countries, gets a certain and same amount. So, let’s say in the US everybody gets $1,000 a month, and that’s rich or poor, and that’s on an individual level, so it’s not going to a household of three--it’s going to every single individual. A similar way of looking at this: there is actually a partial basic income that’s in Alaska. Everyone in Alaska--child, woman, man, everybody--all they have to do is prove that they’re a resident of Alaska, and they then get around [$1,000 every year](http://www.iser.uaa.alaska.edu/Publications/bien%5Fxiii%5Fak%5Fpfd%5Flessons.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). This most recent year in 2014, [they got about $2,000](http://pfd.alaska.gov/Content/Payments/2014DeductionCalcInfoWeb.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s guaranteed. It’s not like you lose a certain amount of money depending on if you’re working, it’s not that you don’t get it depending on anything else. **Everybody gets it**. That’s what basic income is: everybody gets a certain amount, and that amount is decided on by the citizens of the country. The “basic” part of basic income is the idea that it’s not meant to make everybody *rich*, it’s not about giving everybody $50,000\. The amount is meant to give people a floor in which they can cover their basic needs of food, shelter, electricity, internet, phone, etc. So, you cover the basics with the basic income and that allows everybody to earn above that. If you choose not to work, then you’ll earn your basic income. Everybody that does work **earns more** than that. It actually increases the incentive to work because you get to keep more, whereas right now you get what are called [poverty traps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare%5Ftrap?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s possible right now for someone *not* working to earn the exact same amount as someone who *is* working because you pull the assistance away as you get a job. A basic income means that you don’t take it away as you work, and because of that then everybody who works earns more. So, there’s a greater incentive that way. The fact that you pull money away as people work is actually a big deal. One way of looking at it is to say that **the problem isn’t paying people who aren’t working, the problem is pulling assistance away from people as they work**. ![Poverty trap](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/EiQzTgz.gif) This idea that there’s a big disincentive to work with a basic income is actually kind of a misunderstanding of [the current structure of welfare](https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e?ref=scottsantens.com). With the current welfare system, we actually hire people to make sure that when someone is working, they don’t get help. We’re policing to make sure that the money only goes to people who aren’t working. As soon as you work, you no longer get that assistance. People are actually trapped. If they can’t find a job and they also are disallowed from earning extra income, they’re stuck there. You can’t just work a part time job and earn a little bit on top of your assistance. You lose that assistance. So, that’s a big deal as far as incentives go and [we can actually create better incentives with basic income](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com). ### We've Even Already Tested Basic Income It’s also important to look at evidence. It’s not just about what we think makes sense, so we’ve tested this before. We’ve tested this in the ‘70s, both in the United States and in Canada. In the United States, it was called [the American Income Maintenance Experiment](http://www.widerquist.com/karl/Articles--scholarly/Failure2communicate.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), and in Canada it was called the [Mincome Program](http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20%282%29.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) in Manitoba. What these experiments showed is that there was no extreme work disincentive, people didn’t start working less. Now, there was actually a reduction in hours worked. But what’s interesting is you can’t just look at the number, it requires knowing [what actually happened](http://www.cpj.ca/files/docs/orking%5FThrough%5Fthe%5FWork%5FDisincentive%5F-%5FFinal.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). If you look at primary household male earners, they didn’t really reduce their hours; let’s say they had a 40-hour a week job--they didn’t go down to 39 or 38 hours, or something like that. What they did is between jobs, they spent a longer amount of time looking for the next job. So, that was the reason for the reduction in work hours. Why did they do that? Were they just being lazy and thinking “Oh, I don’t need to get a job because I’ve got minimum income guaranteed?" Or were they looking at this and saying “Hey, I’ve got a minimum income, so I’m going to make sure that the next job I get is the job that I *want*?” That’s something that we really want because we know that [productivity is higher for people who actually like their jobs](http://screenwerk.com/2013/06/25/gallup-70-of-workforce-not-engaged-costs-billions-in-lost-productivity/?ref=scottsantens.com). You also want people to get a higher wage job. If you’re not guaranteed anything, you’re more likely to take that $10/hour job you hate versus holding out and waiting for that $20/hour job you like. This is also something to look at when you look at these findings; it’s very interesting to compare this to [paid vacation in other countries](http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922052.html?ref=scottsantens.com), which is the way I like to look at this. In the US, we have no mandatory paid vacation. So, on average, I think it’s around 13 days paid vacation is what we take, and [we actually don’t take a lot--we just leave it on the table](http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/05/13/how-unused-vacation-days-are-costing-the-economy-b.aspx?ref=scottsantens.com). With this compared to other countries, [you have to take 20+ days of paid vacation](http://www.epi.org/publication/webfeatures%5Fsnapshots%5F20050824/?ref=scottsantens.com). ![Paid vacation worldwide](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/bkH4Hkb.gif) If you look at this and say “Okay, what if basic income actually caused a reduction of work if it was a work disincentive and people lowered their hours?” Well, saying “What if people reduced their hours 10% and worked 10% less per year?” is the equivalent to countries who force 20 days of paid vacation. So, it’s a way, instead of mandating that people take paid vacations, to have them voluntarily take them. You saw this too in Manitoba--they reduced their hours but it was mostly among new mothers. It wasn’t that new mothers stopped working, it was that there was no real maternity leave, because [we don’t offer that either](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/upshot/the-economic-benefits-of-paid-parental-leave.html?ref=scottsantens.com). These new mothers decided to use their guaranteed minimum incomes to stay at home longer and be new mothers for a longer amount of time before they went back to work. They didn’t drop out of the labor force, they just took an actual maternity leave, which is something like in other countries where you can actually get maternity leave for a year. You don’t see that here. Basic income enables us to voluntarily look like countries elsewhere who *force* it, where they say “You have to take this amount of vacation or maternity leave.” With basic income we can just say “Well, if you want vacation, you can take it. If you don’t, you don’t.” ### How Can We Pay for Basic Income? Beside the question of work disincentive effects, another big question for people to wrap their heads around with basic income, is “Where will the money come from?” Especially in this day and age, where people seem to hate taxes more and more. Well, it’s very simple to say that [we could actually pay for it with a conversion to a flat tax system](https://basicincomenow.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/how-to-fund-a-universal-basic-income-in-the-usa/?ref=scottsantens.com). I’m not necessarily saying this is the best way to go about it, but just to show how easily we could do this in a way that’s easy to understand: [we could create a flat tax that’s about 40%](http://imgur.com/Lx0GkBv?ref=scottsantens.com). That may sound high, but because everyone gets in return this $12,000 a year, the effective tax rate is lower than what it is right now for most people because you’re basically getting a giant tax rebate. ![Flat basic income tax](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/iHJwTWa.png) A flat tax set at 40% could pay for basic income and the effect of that would be a reduction in taxes for about 60% to 80% of the population, depending on how many people are in the household and if you’re single, etc. So, the majority of the United States would pay less in taxes. [It would be a shift from the bottom 60% to 80% to the top 20% to 10%](http://www.scottsantens.com/does-basic-income-reduce-income-inequality-gini). There’s certainly plenty of arguments to be made that we need to do that anyways, that that would reduce inequality by reducing the taxes for most people and by raising them at the top. People would say “Oh my gosh, that’s horrible, [that’s impossible](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-is-impossible).” Maybe it is politically difficult to pass that, but maybe it isn’t. Maybe if 80% of the population gets a tax cut, then that’s enough to pass it. I don’t know. I’d be really interested to see polls asking people what their favorite way is, “Do you prefer this? Would you vote for this as a means of paying for it?” [There are numerous ways to go about it](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com). Another option would be [a value-added tax](http://jetpress.org/v24/walker.htm?ref=scottsantens.com). Again, this could be a partial thing. If you combine a value-added tax with a flat tax, then let’s say you could actually have a flat tax of around 20-30% and then you could have a value-added tax to make up the difference. There’s a good amount of logic behind wanting a value-added tax anyways. [This is something that’s actually in most OECD countries now except for the US](https://medium.com/@alanbell%5Flibsol/may-you-live-in-interesting-vat-times-56411df75c8?ref=scottsantens.com). We’re the only ones not doing this. It actually helps a lot for exports--you’re able to squeeze out the price of the products and sell them cheaper to other countries by using a value-added tax. It’s also more difficult to evade that tax because it’s consumption tax and because the calculations are made each step along the way. I look at the ways of funding basic income as kind of **a toolkit** that we could use anyways. Like, we want a value-added tax, that’s a smart thing to add. So, what kind of level would it be? I think it would make sense to have a flat tax; [a lot of people are behind it](http://reason.com/poll/2014/04/15/62-percent-of-americans-say-they-favor-a?ref=scottsantens.com) (*62%*). It’s just you can’t do that right now because if you did a flat tax without a basic income, then that’s very regressive, it hurts people at the bottom. If you’re going to make these changes, you have to adjust for the people who would be hurt by it. The same way for the value-added tax--you’re going to make stuff more expensive at the bottom and they need to be compensated for it. There’s other funding levels too. You can look at a [Wall Street financial transaction tax](http://www.robinhoodtax.org/how/everything-you-need-to-know?ref=scottsantens.com), which could raise a lot of money. You could have a [land value tax](http://www.salon.com/2013/11/22/end%5Fthe%5F1%5Fpercents%5Ffree%5Fride%5Fhow%5Ftaxing%5Fland%5Fwould%5Fsolve%5Famericas%5Fbiggest%5Fproblems/?ref=scottsantens.com), which may make more sense to do on a local level, such as state by state or city by city. If you look at the pure revenue involved in land value tax, [it could raise almost two trillion dollars in revenue](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/10/17/land%5Fvalue%5Ftax%5Frevenue%5Fhow%5Fmuch%5Fcan%5Fwe%5Fraise%5Fby%5Ftaking%5Funimproved%5Fland.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Also, when you’re looking at how to fund basic income, [you are cutting out a lot of these existing programs that you don’t need anymore](http://www.usbig.net/papers/144-Sheahen-RefundableTaxCredit.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), especially depending on how high it is. If you have a high enough basic income, then you can eliminate a good amount of social security, a good amount of the current welfare programs, Section 8, food stamps, [TANF](http://www.scottsantens.com/tanf-is-terrible), all this other assistance, and you could just replace it with cash. [Because of all these programs and subsidies we’re actually already giving a lot of a UBI amount per quintile](http://taxfoundation.org/blog/60-percent-households-now-receive-more-transfer-income-they-pay-taxes?ref=scottsantens.com). ![Existing taxes and transfers](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/hqUDugQ.png) With the calculations that I’ve done, the cheapest we would need is around $800 billion dollars if we implemented basic income in [a negative income tax version](http://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-nit-and-unconditional-basic-income-ubi-what-makes-them-the-same-and-what-makes-them-different). If we did a full on universal unconditional income, then that would be a little bit more, around a trillion and a half. So, a land value tax is something that already covers it, just like a flat tax would--neither requires anything else. There’s a lot of options out there depending on what you want to do. [Another way would be like Alaska](http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/cities-are-now/in-alaska-everyone-gets-paid-thousands-in-oil-dividends-per-year/?ref=scottsantens.com). They get their dividend money from the oil that they consider to be owned by everybody in Alaska because it’s Alaskan land that this oil is in. A larger funding revenue would be possible by saying “[Okay, let’s look at everything owned by everybody or owned by nobody](http://www.uvm.edu/giee/pubpdfs/Flomenhoft%5F2012%5FExploring%5Fthe%5FAlaska%5FModel.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com),” so you look at oil, water, wind, minerals, fracking, the electromagnetic spectrum, Big Data, all our commonly owned resources. There’s also the pricing of stuff higher that we don't want, like pollution--[carbon tax would help](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/right-5k-dividend-uncle-sam/?ref=scottsantens.com), since carbon in the air affects everybody you could price it so that it gets more expensive to use. [The revenue generated by that would be compensatory](http://daily.sightline.org/2015/04/02/what-if-polluters-paid-and-you-got-the-money/?ref=scottsantens.com). For example, if you make gas prices more expensive, that hurts people at the bottom but we want that because we want to reduce our usage. But since it hurts people at the bottom, you could give them a dividend, a basic income, then they’re no longer hurt by it. We can actually do a lot of these things that can raise money and do stuff that we want to do, like reduce carbon pollution. ### The Question of Technology To me, what it really comes down to is this: **What is the job of technology? Who is it supposed to work for?** Is it supposed to work for everybody? Is it supposed to work for just a tiny few? What is its purpose? Right now, we’re not leveraging it for everybody. Recently there was a big deal about [a CNN article about basic income](http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/01/opinion/sutter-basic-income/index.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Any time basic income gets mass media attention through some outlet like that, it’s a big deal. The one before that was [Newsweek](http://www.newsweek.com/2014/12/26/how-fix-poverty-write-every-family-basic-income-check-291583.html?ref=scottsantens.com). With CNN’s article, it was funny, looking at the comments when they posted it to Facebook, it seemed like the most popular comment of all was people immediately dismissing it and saying “Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.” We look at that and we think “Oh, well that makes sense.” Like, “Of course, we want independence. We don’t want people to be dependent on others. Just teach them self-dependence. If they need a fish, teach them to fish.” It’s completely ignorant of technology though. This is a saying that has existed for thousands of years and it makes sense, but it’s completely devoid of where technology exists today. So, I think a better saying would be **"Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime. Build a robot to fish, do all men starve, or do all men eat?"** This cuts down to the question of what technology is for. [Elon Musk and Henry Ford are good examples for seeing the way things used to be and how they are now](http://www.scottsantens.com/yes-it-really-is-different-this-time-and-humans-already-need-not-apply). Henry Ford required hundreds of thousands of employees, and because of that you had a lot of people getting income from their work for the Ford company. Now you’ve got Elon Musk and the factory that’s set up to build these Tesla cars is heavily automated. It’s amazing to look at, to see all these robots building these cars. You just need fewer employees. You can see a photo of the old Ford motor factory and it’s massive amounts of people. Then you look at a picture of the Tesla employees and it’s a small group of people in a room with robot after robot after robot in the background, all of these machines. Elon Musk owns all of these machines; these machines represent people that no longer need to work. Essentially Henry Ford needed tens of thousands of people to work for him, and Elon Musk is single-handedly equivalent to these same tens of thousands of people. So there’s fewer of these jobs and the income is more concentrated at the top now because it never needed to be given in the form of wages. There’s no more income for people with the jobs that are done by robots. Because of this, you’re seeing this concentration. It’s in business after business. Facebook needs fewer employees, Google needs fewer employees; Instagram, Tumblr. Uber is a great example too. These businesses are based off of just connecting people now. It’s not really building an industry using people and employees, it’s just connecting one person to another person. Uber, they’re just connecting people who want to drive people and people who want rides. You don’t need a lot of employees for that. In fact, a lot of these drivers aren’t employees--[they’re considered to be subcontractors, they’re independent, they’re freelancers](http://www.salon.com/2015/02/24/robert%5Freich%5Famerica%5Fis%5Fwinning%5Fthe%5Frace%5Fto%5Fthe%5Fbottom%5Fpartner/?ref=scottsantens.com). Because of that, there’s no pension, there’s no unemployment. If they get into a car accident, then it’s on them. It’s a completely different setup. This is part and parcel with our growing inequality, is that the technology right now is owned mostly by the 1%. It’s a small fraction of society that gets to accrue all of this extra. Until we figure out a way of doing something about that, things are just going to get worse because we need fewer and fewer employees. People think that there’s always going to be new jobs [but these jobs are different](http://singularityhub.com/2015/03/30/the-growing-precariat-why-a-basic-income-is-needed/?ref=scottsantens.com). You just don’t have full-time 40 hours a week, 40-year career jobs any more. Also because of this, as more and more people are no longer required to work, this creates a surplus in the labor market for the labor supply, which has to do with wages going down. You get these jobs that are being created that pay less. They have less hours, there’s less security, and this is the direction that we’re going in. We’re going to keep going in that direction. ### How to Change Our Direction So what can we do? Well, **I believe we need basic income**. And if you want to help and you want to be a part of the growing movement for it, I would suggest going to the subreddit, and that’s [reddit.com/r/basicincome](http://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome?ref=scottsantens.com). Start reading the many links and discussions. I’d recommend going to [Basicincome.org](http://www.basicincome.org/?ref=scottsantens.com), which is more of an international source for news and information. You can subscribe to what’s called [the newsflash](http://www.basicincome.org/newsflash/?ref=scottsantens.com) there. Stay informed. If you’re in the US, you can become part of the US Basic Income Guarantee Network at [USBIG.net](http://usbig.net/?ref=scottsantens.com), where you can [become a member](http://usbig.net/membership.php?ref=scottsantens.com#application). You can also help me help advocate for it. [I’ve got a Patreon account](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com)\--I’m actually crowdfunding my own basic income and I’m about 30% of the way there right now. What I’m trying to do is not only achieve my own basic income, but I’m also looking to help others do the same. What’s going to happen is when I reach 100%, then anything I earn over that is going to go to people who have taken the same pledge to do the same to build up their own basic incomes and those of others. What I want to do is I want to create a group of people who can create content for basic income. We need people who make videos, images, but not only that, but just [anybody who wants to follow their passion in life, which is what basic income should be about--freeing people to do what they most want to do](http://www.scottsantens.com/dear-patreon-a-letter-from-a-quarter-liberated-creator). If that means creating content that has nothing to do with basic income, like [CGP Grey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&ref=scottsantens.com), just making videos that you want to make - that’s the direction I think we should be going in. If you want to help with that, you can go to [Patreon.com/ScottSantens](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) and find what I’ve done there. You can even take the pledge yourself, and that’s the **BIG Patreon Creator Pledge**, which is saying that you want to crowdfund your own basic income and want to help others do the same. I've also written [some tips](http://www.scottsantens.com/what-can-we-do-to-grow-the-basic-income-movement-in-2015) to help provide some more ideas on how you can help grow the movement for basic income, and if you'd like to go so far as to even organize a local chapter, please email me at the address at the bottom of this page and let me know your name and city to connect you with others. And last but not least, start asking yourself, what would you do with a basic income? Because once we start asking ourselves that question, we start seeing the world a bit differently. What's most important? Time is a limited resource. How would you like to spend it? **What will a basic income free *you* to do?** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### TANF is TERRIBLE URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/tanf-is-terrible/ Last updated: 2022-05-17T22:19:58.000Z There is a belief in this country that we help the poor, and the poor take advantage of this help to become welfare kings and queens. Both the left and the right perpetuate this myth in their own way. The left believes the government is helping people and the right believes the poor are getting too much. Both sides need to understand how the system actually works, in that **it doesn't**. *(Note: The following is an adapted excerpt from [my full report on the 2015 North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress](https://medium.com/basic-income/notes-of-discussions-in-the-north-american-basic-income-guarantee-congress-of-2015-56607ceb9362?ref=scottsantens.com))* In her session, Diane Pagen gave a presentation that in my eyes represents the final damning nail in the coffin that should be our welfare system. (You can [download the PowerPoint file](http://www.usbig.net/papers/BIGUnspentTANFpresentationdraft22215updated.pptx?ref=scottsantens.com) \[.pptx\] and see for yourself.) Essentially, [block grants are being given to the states](http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/07/24/3463723/paul-ryan-poverty-proposal-contracts/?ref=scottsantens.com) by the federal government to spend on their populations living in poverty, and the states, free to use the money as they please, aren’t using the bulk of the money on those in poverty. They are instead trying as hard as they can to **not** spend the money, so they can treat it as basically profit, for other expenditures instead. Take Wyoming for example. Wyoming spent $32 million and did not spend the other $21 million in 2011 it had from the federal government to help its **64,154** citizens living under [the federal poverty line](http://familiesusa.org/product/federal-poverty-guidelines?ref=scottsantens.com). How many people received temporary assistance with the money they did spend? ###674 of 64,154 under the federal poverty line received TANF. That’s right. **1% of those *living in poverty* in Wyoming got TANF**. It also means Wyoming spent $48,643 on each of those 674 people to give each less than $5,000\. Even *worse*, Wyoming is *not* spending an additional **$31,509 per person** that it actually has *been given to allocate to those in need*, and is instead spending that money elsewhere. Looking at this another way, imagine if Wyoming said it would use its free federal money to give every single one of its citizens in poverty $842, which it could, and it instead gave them each a $100 dollar bill and pocketed the rest? That’s how block grants work. It allows states to rob the poor as middlemen in a transaction that would have **no middlemen with Unconditional Basic Income**. Sounds kind of familiar doesn’t it? We can’t just give people money, because [they won’t spend it wisely?](https://www.scottsantens.com/what-do-we-do-about-drug-users-with-basic-incomes) Other people know better how to spend that money? Wyoming spends 12% of its free federal money on 1% of the poor for whom it is intended, and **it spends the rest elsewhere**, not on meeting basic needs, but on job training, job searching, job readiness, job skills, work activities, resume writing… all in a country where [**at the time there were five times as many people looking for jobs than jobs available** (it’s now 2:1)](http://www.bls.gov/web/jolts/jlt%5Flabstatgraphs.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). And Wyoming is not alone. It’s only one example. ![Silvrback blog image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/1e70b26b-f07e-42d7-ba87-25ee28347075/BIGUnspentTANFpresentationdraft22215updated_large.png) So what’s another example of what states are spending their welfare money on, if not for welfare? In 2013, all 50 states combined spent over **$1 BILLION** on attempted prevention of *out of wedlock pregnancies*. Yep, the states are blowing money on **behavior modification** based on outdated views of religion-based morality, instead of on basic needs like food and housing. TANF really isn’t a program as much as it is purely a **funding stream for states** they can use however they please. [An actual welfare system **does not exist** in America](https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e?ref=scottsantens.com). The welfare system as we know it, is actually just **welfare for state governments and bureaucrats**, and even corporations, **not** the American people. > Large bureaucracy and infrastructure are being funded to deliver aid to tiny percentages of all Americans in need. Behavior modification has become the main purpose of \[welfare\], not income support. America is spending billions of dollars a year on a massive behavior modification program that is anti-child, anti-gay, and anti-woman. — Diane Pagen --- Federal tax money tagged for distribution to those living in poverty is being siphoned off by middlemen, and those middlemen are government employees. Our system of welfare for the poor is actually a system of welfare for the powerful. American tax dollars are not fighting a "War on Poverty." They are waging a war on efficiency and individual decision-making, by funding bureaucracies that need not exist, in a perpetuation of the false belief they are helping. The federal government does not know what's best for you. Your state government does not know what's best for you. Only *you* know what's best for you. And if we only stopped creating federal and state bureaucracies to make decisions for us, we could waste less tax money and allow better outcomes for everyone. We can make government work for us. [We can make government work with unconditional basic income](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com). --- ![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/c582a303-ab6e-4545-8375-61dffdf5ce77/1-20A5T3a8K4JR2TlT4G6x9Z4A_large.png) Like my blog? **Please subscribe** and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) of support. --- Want to crowdfund a basic income? Take [The BIG Patreon Creator Pledge](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com). --- *[Subscribe to my blog](https://www.scottsantens.com/email%5Fsubscriptions/new) | [Follow me on Twitter](https://twitter.com/2noame?ref=scottsantens.com) | [Like me on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/scottsantens) | [Follow me on Tumblr](http://2noame.tumblr.com/?ref=scottsantens.com)* ### Dear Patreon: URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/dear-patreon-a-letter-from-a-quarter-liberated-creator/ Last updated: 2022-05-17T22:19:06.000Z First off, I just want to thank you for creating [your platform](https://www.patreon.com/?ref=scottsantens.com). It's really something for which to be proud in the difference you are making in people's lives, mine included. So I'm writing you to let you know a bit about me, how I'm using Patreon, my success so far, and something I call ["The BIG Patreon Creator Pledge"](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com). A little about me I'm a writer/blogger/freelancer, a moderator for [the /r/BasicIncome community on Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome?ref=scottsantens.com) (now with almost 25,000 subscribers), and I spend the majority of my time actively advocating for [the idea of a basic income guarantee](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com). If you're not familiar with it, it's the idea that states everyone should get a citizen's paycheck, independent of any work in the labor market, sufficient to cover our most basic needs so that everyone has *enough to survive*, so that all income from work can become **discretionary**. *(Note: This last part is extremely important as [technology eliminates jobs faster than they can be created, so that we can continue to enable purchasing power in our consumer economy](https://www.scottsantens.com/debunking-the-debunking-of-humans-need-not-apply-and-more-the-fallacy-of-the-luddite-fallacy).)* I started using Patreon as a creator back in late October ([you can read a press announcement here](http://www.basicincome.org/news/2014/10/international-basic-income-advocate-founds-the-big-patreon-creator-pledge/?ref=scottsantens.com)) with the goal of crowdfunding my own basic income of $1,000 per month through my basic income advocacy. Five months later **I'm now a quarter of the way there**, with 38 patrons as I write this, including a well-known name in the venture capital world you may be familiar with, [Albert Wenger](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8qo7pzH%5FNM&ref=scottsantens.com).(*<--watch his TEDx talk*) Part of my final goal is a pledge to limit my earnings to $1,000 per month (post fees), and to give any money earned over this amount, to other creators on Patreon who pledge to do the same thing. I've dubbed it the "BIG Patreon Creator Pledge". ### The BIG Patreon Creator Pledge > Taking a page from [the Creative Commons concept of Share Alike](https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Share%5FAlike?ref=scottsantens.com), any and every patron dollar pledged above $1,111 per month I will consider to be greater than a basic income and will pledge away to other creators here on Patreon also creating content in support of their own basic incomes by making the same pledge to limit their own final goals to $1,111/mo (plus $333/mo per kid for creator parents) and pledging to give the rest to others making the same pledge. My goal here is to create a community of content creators all working toward their own basic incomes with the same shared goal of achieving basic incomes for others. So far three creators have taken the pledge, and I expect more to do so, as word gets around, and as I approach my final goal. ### A little about Patreon I feel Patreon is a platform that is actively spreading [the importance and the power of basic income](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com) even if none of you explicitly realize it. By encouraging people to pursue their passions and at the same time earn incomes from doing so, people are one by one becoming emancipated in a way that is new in the world. [This kind of freedom hasn't really existed before for people](https://medium.com/basic-income/its-time-we-take-a-closer-look-at-americas-three-favorite-words-f512f8a1ad6f?ref=scottsantens.com). **Patreon is emancipatory because patrons aren't *paying* creators to *work*. They're *freeing* creators to *create*.** That may seem like a small difference, but the difference is night and day. Creators *want* to create. Creators don't need to be paid to create. However, creators also need to *eat*. Creators need to have *homes*. Creators can't create so long as they aren't *free* to create. You have actively enabled consumers to free creators to create. Your platform is allowing people to liberate each other. And I think it's a huge achievement. However, Patreon also functions just like the rest of society does now, [where a few can become mega-stars and the many barely get by](http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/21/welcome-to-extremistan/?ref=scottsantens.com). My pledge is created to reduce that inequality on Patreon. By allowing people to voluntarily limit their Patreon incomes, and give to others limiting their own, it can be possible for a great number of creators on Patreon to achieve basic incomes right now, [before the rest of the world does](http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/20/free-money-for-everyone-whats-the-world-coming-to/?ref=scottsantens.com). Creators would be passing on the idea of becoming *rich*, but they would be *free*, and they would help *free others* to create too. That's the idea at least. By the way, I just want to mention that the effects of a feeling of security for creative people are not unknown. We know that [even just knowing food stamps are an *option*, increases entrepreneurship](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/26/wonkbook-how-welfare-encourages-people-to-start-businesses/?ref=scottsantens.com). We know that (*contrary to the prevalent myth*) [social benefits can actually increase motivation to work](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/generous-welfare-systems-actually-make-people-more-keen-to-work-europewide-study-finds-10144712.html?ref=scottsantens.com). We know that [acts of imagination with no apparent value to anyone can pay off in spades down the road for *everyone*](http://eamonnfkelly.com/?page%5Fid=573&ref=scottsantens.com). And we know that opening up acts of patronage to the many instead of continuing to limit it to the few — in a post-internet world of digital arts and vanishing scarcity — has a profound effect on the arts, [the extent of which we're only seeing the tip of a very large creative iceberg](http://www.usbig.net/papers/Thomas%20-%20Vanishing%20Scarcity%20copy.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Or [as artist Brian Eno said after he first heard of the idea of basic income](https://www.scottsantens.com/artist-brian-eno-just-learned-about-basic-income-and-loves-the-idea)... > I like the idea that it says we believe that all people are potentially creative and that they should be given the chance to express that. And [Molly Crabapple agrees](http://boingboing.net/2014/11/04/molly-crabapples-rules-for-c.html?ref=scottsantens.com). > The number one thing that would let more independent artists exists in America is a universal basic income. **People need to be free to create. Until UBI exists, Patreon helps make that possible.** I just wanted to share all of this with you, so that you know, and to thank you for empowering me to eventually become a **fully liberated creator**, and to actively help others do the same. Thanks for the freedom. Warmest regards, Scott Santens --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### "What do we do about drug users with basic incomes?" URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/what-do-we-do-about-drug-users-with-basic-incomes/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T00:23:06.000Z Any discussion about basic income and drug use first needs to be informed by learning more about drug users and their actual behavior. To start with, please first read this: [The Rational Choices of Crack Addicts](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/science/the-rational-choices-of-crack-addicts.html?pagewanted=all&ref=scottsantens.com) > \[Dr. Carl Hart\] hoped to find a neurological cure to addiction, some mechanism for blocking that dopamine activity in the brain so that people wouldn’t succumb to the otherwise irresistible craving for cocaine, heroin and other powerfully addictive drugs. But then, when he began studying addicts, he saw that drugs weren’t so irresistible after all. . **"Eighty to 90 percent of people who use crack and methamphetamine don’t get addicted**,” said Dr. Hart, an associate professor of psychology. “And the small number who do become addicted are nothing like the popular caricatures.” . **“They didn’t fit the caricature of the drug addict who can’t stop once he gets a taste,” Dr. Hart said. “When they were given an alternative to crack, they made rational economic decisions.”**. When methamphetamine replaced crack as the great drug scourge in the United States, Dr. Hart brought meth addicts into his laboratory for similar experiments — and the results showed similarly rational decisions. He also found that **when he raised the alternative reward to $20, *every single addict, of meth and crack alike, chose the cash*.** They knew they wouldn’t receive it until the experiment ended weeks later, but they were still willing to pass up an immediate high. . **“If you’re living in a poor neighborhood deprived of options, there’s a certain rationality to keep taking a drug that will give you some temporary pleasure,”** Dr. Hart said in an interview, arguing that the caricature of enslaved crack addicts comes from a misinterpretation of the famous rat experiments. . **"The key factor is the environment, whether you’re talking about humans or rats,” Dr. Hart said. “The rats that keep pressing the lever for cocaine are the ones who are *stressed out* because they’ve been raised in solitary conditions and have *no other options*. But when you *enrich their environment*, and give them access to sweets and let them play with other rats, *they stop pressing the lever*.”** Changing an impoverished environment to *an enriched one*, results in drug rewarding levers no longer being pressed. This is really important to understand. Now knowing that most poor drug users aren't poor because they use drugs, and instead that **most poor drug users use drugs *because* they are poor**, we can better see what kind of potential effect a basic income would have on drug use. It could very well **decrease** it. How? What's the possible mechanism of reversal? In some incredible newer studies of the process of adult neurogenesis (the creation of new neurons in the brain as an adult) long thought to be nonexistent, [it's been discovered that impoverished environments actually detrimentally affect our brains](http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the%5Freinvention%5Fof%5Fthe%5Fself/?ref=scottsantens.com), and enriching environments (aka increasing access to resources) actually neurologically **reverse** the detrimental effects of impoverished environments. > The structure of our brain, from the details of our dendrites to the density of our hippocampus, is incredibly influenced by our surroundings. Put a primate under stressful conditions, and its brain begins to starve. It stops creating new cells. The cells it already has retreat inwards. The mind is disfigured. The social implications of this research are staggering. If boring environments, stressful noises, and the primate’s particular slot in the dominance hierarchy all shape the architecture of the brain—and Gould’s team has shown that they do—then the playing field isn’t level. **Poverty and stress aren’t just an idea: they are an anatomy**. Some brains never even have a chance. . On the other hand, enriched animal environments—enclosures that simulate the complexity of a natural habitat—lead to dramatic increases in both neurogenesis and the density of neuronal dendrites, the branches that connect one neuron to another. **Complex surroundings create a complex brain.** So there's a very good chance that here we are worrying that those in poverty will blow their basic incomes on drugs, and yet neurobiological findings seem to indicate that lifting people up out of poverty will reduce drug use, and actually make for healthier, [and even smarter](http://www.citylab.com/work/2013/08/how-poverty-taxes-brain/6716/?ref=scottsantens.com) brains. There's more though. This conversation also needs to be informed with a better understanding of what addiction really is, in all its forms. I think Dr. Gabor Mate is the most knowledgeable in the area of addiction, and so I recommend [watching him talk about it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ-FAX4Pz8I&ref=scottsantens.com), or reading [his written words](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/155643880X/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=155643880X&linkCode=as2&tag=theheaandthet-20&linkId=7JPV7DGXUDFDM6JO&ref=scottsantens.com). Here's a short 3-minute clip for a quick summary of what he's learned: **Addictions are the result of pain. They are pain relievers. It's self-medication.** > The hardcore drug addicts that I treat, are, without exception, people who have had extraordinarily difficult lives. The commonality is childhood abuse. These people all enter life under extremely adverse circumstances. Not only did they not get what they need for healthy development; they actually got negative circumstances of neglect. I don’t have a single female patient in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver who wasn’t sexually abused, for example, as were many of the men, or abused, neglected and abandoned serially, over and over again. That’s what sets up the brain biology of addiction. In other words, **the addiction is related both psychologically, in terms of emotional pain relief and neurobiological development, to early adversity**. There is also an inequality in the way we look at addictions, where **the addictions of the poor carry a stigma, and the addictions of the rich, do not**. When was the last time we heard concerns about all the cocaine those on Wall Street will use with [all their huge bonuses](http://www.ips-dc.org/wall%5Fstreet%5Fbonuses%5Fand%5Fthe%5Fminimum%5Fwage/?ref=scottsantens.com)? What about the addictions of power we see in the rich? Or shopping? Or even money itself? There are many forms of addiction that can consume our lives, and yet we mostly just look down at those in poverty, from atop our crates of entirely acceptable fine red wines. But wait, there's more. We can also look to evidence from actual basic income experiments that increases in usage of drugs like alcohol just aren't observed. In [Namibia](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) where people were given basic incomes, aside from *a first payout spike*, **alcohol use did not increase as feared.** The same observation was made in [India](https://www.opendemocracy.net/openindia/stuart-weir/basic-income-transforming-lives-in-rural-india?ref=scottsantens.com) with the basic income experiment there. Here's a quote from one of the villagers of what they learned about others: > Everyone, all the official people, had to laugh at the idea of giving poor people money. They said, ‘The poor are irresponsible, they don’t know what to do with money, they are unbankable, they can’t manage bank accounts. The whole idea is crazy.’ Even we were sometimes unsure, but we were really surprised each time that we had a story to tell. This is our story: **poor people are responsible for themselves and their families. It is prejudice that they will drink it all away. We have learned that we can always trust the poor**.” The same observation was again made in [Kenya and Uganda](http://www.givedirectly.org/blog%5Fpost.php?id=5453927471971916970&ref=scottsantens.com) by GiveDirectly: > One of the main benefits of giving cash is that people can use the cash to buy whatever they want or need. When people first hear about cash transfers, this freedom is sometimes one of the things they worry about - “and… they can just spend it on *anything*?” But it turns out that, **on average, people don’t use cash transfers to increase consumption on things like alcohol or tobacco**. Instead, cash transfer recipients are more likely to use the money to make investments (buying tin roofs or livestock) that have big dividends over time. There's also a very interesting story learned from [a GiveDirectly survey](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApxlwnWjy4hedEQxVGw5Ti1pMks1NlBHNDNEOFZLZUE&usp=sharing&ref=scottsantens.com#gid=0) where it was discovered one of the villagers addicted to alcohol used his money to start his own business: > Someone who had saved some money and was now able to buy a second hand motorbike and is now helping in as it is for business. **people never thought he could do this because he is a drunkard** and no one thought he would have a clear mind to think of something such big. If we look at [evidence from cash transfer programs all over the world](http://blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluations/do-poor-waste-transfers-booze-and-cigarettes-no?ref=scottsantens.com), we find the same observations *everywhere*: > **When we examine 44 estimates of spending on alcohol and tobacco across 19 studies and 13 interventions, we find that the vast majority of estimates (82%) are negative**. More than a quarter are negative and significant, and only 2 are positive and significant. With both of the positive and significant estimates, estimates within the study are discordant (i.e., one positive and one negative). Of course, not all estimates are created equal. If we restrict the analysis to randomized trials, we find that again, more than 80% of estimates are negative, albeit now most are statistically insignificant. Note that **no randomized trial finds a statistically significant increase in expenditures on alcohol and tobacco.** We can even look at [an experiment where actual drug users and dealers on the streets were given cash](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/opinion/let-them-eat-cash.html?ref=scottsantens.com) to see what they did with it. The results? > A few years ago, I started working in Liberia’s urban slums. My colleagues and I sought out men who were homeless or made their living dealing drugs or stealing. Many abused alcohol and drugs. We tested different programs in a randomized trial of a thousand men. One thing we tried was giving out $200 in cash. **[Almost no men wasted it](http://www.poverty-action.org/project/0166?ref=scottsantens.com).** It's kind of mind boggling isn't it? All of this shows how it's pretty clear giving people money is unlikely to increase drug use among current drug users, and may even decrease it. But what about *future* drug users? Again, according to Gabor Mate, all forms of addictions are mostly born in childhood at the hands of both impoverishment and *abuse*. So what about the potential effects of basic incomes on childhood abuse? > The notion that economic hardship leads to increases in child abuse is not new -- scientific research and anecdotal reports have long shown a relationship. For example, the Los Angeles Times reported during the recession in 1994 about [increases in child abuse and neglect](http://articles.latimes.com/1994-03-20/news/ci-36413%5F1%5Fchild-abuse?ref=scottsantens.com) in Los Angeles County. In recent years, the co-authors noted in the Pediatrics study, articles in the popular press including [this one](http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE53F00Y20090416?ref=scottsantens.com) and [this one](http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/05/20/business/childofrecession/main5029133.shtml?ref=scottsantens.com) have again stoked concerns that abuse was on the rise as the economy worsened. [\-Source: Los Angeles Times](http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/19/news/la-heb-child-abuse-recession-20110919?ref=scottsantens.com) As economies worsen for families, child abuse rates increase. As economies improve for families, child abuse rates decrease. Why this is should be common sense. Those living on the edge of poverty or within it experience far greater amounts of stress, and that [stress manifests itself in a variety of ways](http://cjr.sagepub.com/content/18/2/182.short?ref=scottsantens.com), one of which is taking matters out on one's family, both mentally and physically. [Lack of money also makes it difficult for family members to escape from these situations](http://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/cws/article/viewFile/6261/5449?ref=scottsantens.com). Stress is further a result of relative inequality, through hierarchical mechanisms of perceived lack of power and control. Fortunately, [basic income will also directly reduce income inequality](http://www.scottsantens.com/does-basic-income-reduce-income-inequality-gini), and so will likely have the effect of reducing the stresses that arise from our current extreme levels of inequality. We even have support for reduced stress through [Manitoba's reduced hospitalization rates during its 5-year Mincome experiment which was pegged to reduced stress](http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20%282%29.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Basic income therefore not only stands to reduce drug use among adults, but also stands to reduce child abuse rates through reductions in stress through increases in incomes. These reductions in child abuse and enriching of childhood environments stand to then bear further fruit years down the road in the form of decreased addiction rates across the board. With universal basic income there is the potential for all of this because [**UBI is a "social vaccine**](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com)." It vaccinates kids and their entire families against poverty and a potential emergent effect of this is to further decrease addiction rates decades later, in addition to decreasing rates immediately among adults. So, if we put all of this together, and read all the real-world observations for ourselves, it becomes very difficult to fear a future where universal basic income allows people to live in a subsidized drug-addicted world. A basic income could indeed allow people the *freedom* to use drugs, but that's not the decision people actually tend to make with their freedom when they suddenly have increased access to resources. **Drug use at its core, like poverty itself, is the result of a lack of access to resources.** Addictions dull the emotional pain of an impoverished life. Sufficiently [increasing access to resources with basic income](http://www.scottsantens.com/shouldn-t-all-this-talk-about-money-actually-be-talk-about-resources) allows for choices other than drugs, and most people *do prefer* those choices over drugs, and actually *make* those choices when finally given the chance. When are we going to start giving ourselves a chance? --- ###### Think UBI leads to inflation? [**Here's a list of answers to frequently asked questions.**](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### My Guest Appearance on the P2P Connects Us Podcast URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/my-guest-appearance-on-the-p2p-connects-us-podcast/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T00:23:44.000Z A new podcast with me as a guest is up today. This one is the [P2P Connects Us](https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/category/p2p-connects-us?ref=scottsantens.com) podcast. I talk about the state of technology, why it requires basic income, and how UBI would actually create a more distributed system as opposed to the idea it would further centralize it. This is something I've been meaning to write about in-depth, but have not yet gotten around to it. You can [listen to it here](https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/p2p-connects-us-episode-fifteen-scott-santens?ref=scottsantens.com). Or you can also listen to it [on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFchw5Ox5mo&ref=scottsantens.com). You can follow the P2P Connects Us podcast [on Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/p2pconnectsus?ref=scottsantens.com), and you can also support the creator of the podcast - [John Light - on Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/p2pconnectsus?ref=scottsantens.com), where he has become the latest creator on Patreon to take my [BIG Patreon Creator Pledge](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) to crowdfund a basic income through his creations. My thanks to John for having me on the show, and to [Greg Slepak](https://twitter.com/taoeffect?ref=scottsantens.com) for guest-hosting! --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### New Medium Article: Notes of Discussions in the North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress of 2015 URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/new-medium-article-notes-of-discussions-in-the-north-american-basic-income-guarantee-congress-of-2015/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T00:24:19.000Z **Read the article I published [on Medium](https://medium.com/basic-income/notes-of-discussions-in-the-north-american-basic-income-guarantee-congress-of-2015-56607ceb9362?ref=scottsantens.com) on March 23rd, 2015.** **Summary:** This is what I've spent the past three weeks writing. It's a full summary of the North American Basic Income Congress I attended in NYC earlier this month. I hope it serves as a faithful record of the event, and allows those interested to learn and share what transpired there. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Water Room Analogy URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-water-room-analogy-why-giving-basic-income-to-even-the-richest-makes-sense/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T00:26:56.000Z *"You want to even give basic income to the rich?! That doesn't make any sense at all because they don't need it, it'll cost more, and you'll be taxing them only to give it back to them."* This a common response to the idea of providing *everyone* an [unconditional basic income](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com). Yes, everyone. That means that even Bill Gates will receive $1,000 per month. Why? ### The Water Room Analogy Imagine you enter a room full of 1,000 people. You are told that water will soon be pumped into the room and those who cannot swim will drown. You have a limited amount of time and $20,000 to determine who can't swim, and how to prevent their imminent deaths. What is your best course of action? **Option 1: The way we do things now** Knowing all about [how our current safety net system works](https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e?ref=scottsantens.com), you decide to interview each and every person there. To do this, you hire 100 interviewers and pay them each $50, which is a quarter of your budget, leaving you with $15,000\. Each interviewer is responsible for 10 people. Everyone is asked if they can swim. Those who say they can't swim are given lessons in how to swim using virtual reality goggles courtesy of Oculus and an additional expenditure of [$3,500 for 10 DK2 headsets](https://www.oculus.com/order/?ref=scottsantens.com), which leaves you with $11,500\. Some people feel they will be able to swim thanks to the lessons, but others worry they still won't be able to swim. These people ask for life vests. **"Give a man a life vest, and he can't drown for a day. Teach a man to swim, and he can't drown for a lifetime," is your response.** Makes sense, right? Everyone can and [*should be forced*](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com) to learn how to swim, right? Meanwhile, one of the people in the room asks for $5,000 so he can buy an [Aquaflyer Jetpack](http://aquaxflyer.com/?ref=scottsantens.com). He's already got more than enough to buy one himself, but he thinks it's important you pay for half, because of how important he is. He promises that if you give him the money, [he will use it to show people how awesome jetpacks are, so they can want one enough to build one for themselves](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8iSTGQWQuw&ref=scottsantens.com). This sounds like a good idea, so you hand over the cash. Another person in the room says [they've heard that terrorists from Mars are looking to blow up the room, so they need $5,000 to make the room Martian terrorist proof](http://time.com/3746034/bobby-jindal-defense-spending/?ref=scottsantens.com). You point out that the room is going to fill with water, which will most certainly kill more people than Martian terrorists ever have, but he convinces you that the danger is real and you must have a strong room if you are going to guarantee the freedom of those in it. Now you have $1,500 left. Water begins to fill the room. There's panic. Some people are definitely going to die, but you have no idea who. People have been taught to virtually swim, but you don't really know if that will work. You don't know who has lied and who has been truthful. You don't know who really thinks they can swim but actually can't. In a last ditch attempt to save lives, you buy 70 $20 life vests for $1,400 and give them to your interviewers to hand out only to those they believe absolutely can not swim, and who promise to continue their Oculus training and build their own boats out of thin air. The remaining $100 you use to buy yourself a gun. **End Result 1:** 100 people drown. Hundreds more get water in their lungs and develop pneumonia. 50 people with life vests are killed for their life vests, and hundreds more are beaten and bloodied in a frenzy of panic and rage. The guy you gave a water-propelled jetpack to gets stabbed with a pitchfork, and the guy who was afraid of Martians stands proud as a true defender of freedom in a room full of corpses. ###### Option 2: Unconditional Basic Income You use your $20,000 to buy 1,000 life vests which are dropped from the ceiling. Everyone grabs one... **And you're done.** Congratulations. You didn't need to hire any additional help and everyone is protected now whether they can swim or not. As the room begins to fill with water, it becomes apparent that some people need some extra help. Some have trouble putting their vests on, but those next to them help with that. Some appear to be too heavy to be supported by just one vest, so those excellent swimmers who don't need a vest give them theirs. It becomes apparent that in a room filling with water and full of a thousand people who all have life vests, it's really easy to determine who needs extra help and who doesn't, and others actually help them all on their own. It's almost like people who have their own safety secured are more willing to help others. Laughter erupts. Here [people were originally worried others would choose not to put on their life vests even when given them](https://www.opendemocracy.net/openindia/stuart-weir/basic-income-transforming-lives-in-rural-india?ref=scottsantens.com), i.e. instead trading them for cocaine, so they laugh at how silly it was to ever think people didn't want to actually keep living. It's funny to think how anyone ever thought people couldn't just be given life vests. **End Result 2:** 0 people drown. A few people still get water in their lungs, but only a few. No one gets beaten or stabbed with a pitchfork. People are not only alive but [happier](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/02/3-reasons-alaska-is-the-healthiest-place/385646/?ref=scottsantens.com). Some are [especially creative](https://www.givedirectly.org/blog-post.html?id=5453927471971916970&ref=scottsantens.com) and repurpose unused life vests to together build a raft. Others start [entertaining each other](https://composerjude.wordpress.com/2015/03/04/vanishing-scarcity-at-nabig-2015/?ref=scottsantens.com) with stories and jokes and riddles and poems. Now, which scenario makes more sense to you? Does it make more sense to spend a lot of time and resources making sure that only those that absolutely require help get it? Or does it make more sense to just guarantee everyone gets help and make adjustments after the fact? What's more efficient? All the interviewers, interview equipment, calculations, personal judgments, and spending of resources on stuff we don't even need? Or is it more efficient to just skip all of that, and cover everyone, no questions asked? If you were in this room and it was filling with water, what kind of help would *you* want? If you were in this room and got a life vest along with everyone else, what would *you* do? Unconditional basic income is an answer, but it's also a series of questions. What you yourself would do with your basic income is a question we all need to ask ourselves. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Robot Overlordz Podcast Appearance URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/robot-overlordz-podcast-appearance/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T00:27:52.000Z I was asked recently to be the guest for an episode of the Robot Overlordz podcast. As of today, the ep's now available to listen to [over here](https://robotoverlordz.fm/show/200-ep00153-notes?ref=scottsantens.com). My thanks to the guys over at Robot Overlordz for having me on the show! You can find more of their shows [here](https://robotoverlordz.fm/?ref=scottsantens.com). And you can also follow their podcast on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/RobotOverlordz?ref=scottsantens.com) and [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/robotoverlordz). --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### What I've observed since 2013 in the discussion about a basic income guarantee URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/what-i-have-observed-since-2013-in-the-discussion-about-a-basic-income-guarantee/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T00:29:03.000Z As I publish this on the eve of the **[14th Annual North American Basic Income Congress in New York this weekend](https://www.facebook.com/events/1545751005694031/)**, which I will be attending [thanks to the amazing support from my patrons](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ty=p&ref=scottsantens.com), and even heading up social media interaction for *(watch [/r/BasicIncome](http://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome?ref=scottsantens.com) for the live feed and [#NABIG15](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NABIG15&src=typd&ref=scottsantens.com) on Twitter)*, it occurs to me I need to share some of what I've witnessed since I read [Marshall Brain's "Manna"](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm?ref=scottsantens.com) in late 2013, forever altering the course of my life. In the fall of 2013, there was a thread on [Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) that made the front page about how quickly technology is advancing and how few people have any idea just how quickly it is advancing, and the consequences of not understanding this. In that thread, was the recommendation to read Manna, and after reading it followed by the ["Robotic Nation" series](http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm?ref=scottsantens.com), I became absolutely convinced basic income needed to happen not in the future, but [**as soon as possible.**](http://marshallbrain.com/basic-income.htm?ref=scottsantens.com) Spend some time studying this, and you will see we are not ready for [what is to come](http://io9.com/computers-wrote-the-caption-for-this-photograph-and-ch-1660450610?ref=scottsantens.com). [Bill Gates too has tried to tell us this](http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/05/bill-gates-says-robots-and-automation.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Many people who spend their lives thinking about the future [have tried to tell us this](http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/08/06/future-of-jobs/?ref=scottsantens.com). The best messenger so far, has been [CGP Grey](https://www.patreon.com/cgpgrey?ref=scottsantens.com). His video, [Humans Need Not Apply](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&ref=scottsantens.com) will surely go down in the history books as Thomas Paine's Common Sense of Technological Unemployment in YouTube form. People click play on that video believing one thing or having no belief at all, and 15 minutes later are worried about the future of mankind and potential solutions to avoid impending societal collapse. It is often at this stage, people begin to stumble upon the idea of basic income, or have it recommended to them. I have made it my goal over the past year to help accelerate this, and to help people connect with the idea in the ways they are most open to. At first, as I hungrily ate up the material I could find online, I focused mostly on sharing links on Reddit and discussing it there with others. I quickly was invited to become one of the moderators of the [/r/BasicIncome community](http://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome?ref=scottsantens.com), which at the time had under 2,000 subscribers. **It now has over 23,000 subscribers and is growing every day.** ![rbasicincome growth](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/ueb1lRa.png) I next began focusing increasingly [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/2noame?ref=scottsantens.com), sharing more links and building a following from what was then around 2,000 to what is now over 3,300\. When I first started doing this, I would search for "basic income" and could be caught up with all relevant links in a just a few *minutes*. Today it takes *hours* to stay caught up on mentions of basic income on Twitter, and I do this almost EVERY day. There is not a doubt in my mind that soon it will be impossible for me stay up to date on the growing conversation on Twitter. Since publishing [my first article on Medium in June 2014](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com), it in combination with my succeeding articles, have together been viewed 125,000 times. Since launching my own blog on Halloween of 2014, it has now already been viewed over 40,000 times. [I founded The BIG Patreon Creator Pledge and began reaching toward the goal of crowdfunding my own and other's basic incomes in October 2014](http://www.basicincome.org/news/2014/10/international-basic-income-advocate-founds-the-big-patreon-creator-pledge/?ref=scottsantens.com), and am now already 20% of the way there. I may even possibly reach this goal by the end of the year, but the support I have found *already* has been truly inspiring. **It is for these reasons that for *me*, what gives me the most hope of all, is *you*.** The conversation for basic income is **taking off**. Thanks to [the success in Switzerland in getting it on a future ballot](http://www.bbc.com/news/business-25415501?ref=scottsantens.com), and so in headlines across the globe, the world is again talking about basic income in ways it hasn't since the early 70s when [we Americans almost passed it into law](http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/loss-support-guaranteed-income-reflects-radical-shift-values?ref=scottsantens.com), and Canadians almost extended [a pilot program](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-mincome-experiment-dauphin?ref=scottsantens.com) across Canada. [More](http://www.vox.com/2014/7/23/5925041/guaranteed-income-basic-poverty-gobry-labor-supply?ref=scottsantens.com) and [more](http://www.newsweek.com/how-fix-poverty-write-every-family-basic-income-check-291583?ref=scottsantens.com) outlets are publishing pieces about basic income. When people find out about the idea, it tends to grab them, especially when they learn that [there have been successful experiments](http://www.thebigpush.net/uploads/2/2/6/8/22682672/basic%5Fincome%5Fprograms%5Fand%5Fpilots%5Ffebruary%5F3%5F2014.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), and especially when they learn that [software and hardware is inevitably going to come for their jobs](http://io9.com/how-universal-basic-income-will-save-us-from-the-robot-1653303459?ref=scottsantens.com). So as to better visualize the growth of the BIG idea on the Internet, here's the Google trending of "basic income". ![Google Trend basic income](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/Ltui9IB.png) As you can see, since 2013, it's gone up **sharply.** The conversation is growing and will continue to grow. It's also already [being talked about by some very influential people...](https://basicincomenow.wordpress.com/2015/01/13/15-quotes-that-show-basic-income-is-the-way-forward/?ref=scottsantens.com) ![Edward Snowden basic income](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/v9KxesE.jpg) ![Robert Reich basic income](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/pfo6tob.jpg) ![Jaron Lanier on basic income](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/pkVVPeJ.jpg) It has also not yet been mentioned but studied by some other very influential people... ![Bill Clinton basic income](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/dGxxEct.jpg) However, although there is much to be excited about in how quickly the conversation is growing, there is still a large gap to cross to compete with conversations like minimum wage. ![basic income versus minimum wage](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/j5dzZem.png) The red line is "minimum wage" and see that blue line? That tiny one at the bottom with the little blips? That's "basic income." So, yeah, we've got our work cut out for us. We need to raise that blue line above the red line, and that's going to take *years*. But it's not impossible. [Virtually nothing is impossible, however improbable](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-is-impossible). What is often claimed as being impossible, tends to be disproved. Most recently, [even the impossibility of self-driving cars was disproved](http://www.wsj.com/article%5Femail/what-clever-robots-mean-for-jobs-1424835002-lMyQjAxMTA1OTIwNTkyODUwWj?ref=scottsantens.com), and it is this that also shows the importance of basic income. > ... only six years before Google’s startling driverless car announcement, fellow MIT economist and automation expert Frank Levy had published a well-regarded book that said driverless cars were impossible. Technology is fast. [It grows in ways we as humans aren't familiar with](http://www.scottsantens.com/debunking-the-debunking-of-humans-need-not-apply-and-more-the-fallacy-of-the-luddite-fallacy). One moment something seems far off and science-fictional, and the next, it's already a new normal. The only way to avoid what is coming, is to get out ahead of it. Technology does not automatically make our lives better. We have to leverage it in ways that do. The elimination of [half our jobs in 20 years](http://www.technologyreview.com/view/519241/report-suggests-nearly-half-of-us-jobs-are-vulnerable-to-computerization/?ref=scottsantens.com), even if replaced by more jobs, will still require a stronger safety net system than we have now. The way we work is changing. The days of working the same full-time job for 40 years are gone, never to return. Now we have 53 million [freelancers](https://www.freelancersunion.org/blog/dispatches/2014/09/04/53million/?ref=scottsantens.com). We have [Uber drivers and TaskRabbits](http://www.salon.com/2015/02/24/robert%5Freich%5Famerica%5Fis%5Fwinning%5Fthe%5Frace%5Fto%5Fthe%5Fbottom%5Fpartner/?ref=scottsantens.com). We have training and retraining and [jobs that shouldn't even exist](https://contributoria.com/issue/2014-12/543d1c2487628e9a6500001b?ref=scottsantens.com). Technology is already changing the way we work. It has been for decades. But we have yet to all *agree* it's happening and collectively *decide* to do something about it. It is our job to bring that decision closer, and I for one will continue working to do so. I hope you will too by talking about it more, and sharing information both online and offline with friends and family. **What else can you do?** Leverage [the community on Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome?ref=scottsantens.com) to inform yourself and your conversations. Bookmark [BasicIncome.org](http://www.basicincome.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) and [sign up for its NewsFlash](http://www.basicincome.org/newsflash/?ref=scottsantens.com). Take part if you can in the [#NABIG15](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NABIG15&src=typd&ref=scottsantens.com) Congress in New York this weekend by either attending [one of the events](http://www.basicincome.org/news/2015/02/new-york-ny-the-basic-income-guarantee-movement-will-have-events-in-three-new-york-boroughs-on-the-last-weekend-in-february/?ref=scottsantens.com), watching [the live stream](http://live.basicincomeproject.org/?ref=scottsantens.com), or [interacting with participants online](http://www.basicincome.org/news/2015/02/online-cyberspace-interactive-coverage-nabig-congress/?ref=scottsantens.com). There is much to be excited about concerning the coming prospect of [a universal basic income](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com), but it will require a movement akin to the Civil Rights Movement to make it happen. What is happening is happening quickly, but it still needs *you* to be a part of it. At the very least, it requires all of us *knowing* about it, and understanding the need for it. So please, help grow the conversation in the ways you can. Together, we can all provide ourselves our most basic needs, so that technology no longer works against us, but *for* us, arguably the entire purpose of technology. Together, we can begin to step away from our infatuation with jobs and let technology finally begin to fulfill its purpose. **Together, we can guarantee ourselves an unconditional basic income before technology gives us little other choice.** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Guess What Happened When Liberia Tested a Pilot Program of Cash Transfers to the Extreme Poor in Bomi URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/guess-what-happened-when-liberia-tested-a-pilot-program-of-cash-transfers-to-the-extreme-poor/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T00:30:42.000Z I'm always on the lookout for more scientific evidence of what happens when people are provided cash incomes unconditionally. Recently I found something new, **[a pilot program tested in Bomi and Maryland Counties in Liberia](http://www.unicef.org/liberia/Transformative%5FTransfers%5FLiberiaCashTransferProgramme.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)** that started in 2009 and ended in late 2014\. Implemented by the Liberian Ministry of Gender and Development with support from UNICEF and funded by the EU and Japan, it was called the "Social Cash Transfer Programme (SCT)" and was aimed at the "ultra-poor" - the poorest of the poor. [A final study remains to be completed and published](http://www.unicef.org/liberia/RFP%5FSCT.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), but the Center for Global Health and Development (CGHD) at Boston University did do a study of the results halfway through. What they found actually closely matches [the evidence we see from basic income experiments and other cash transfer programs elsewhere](http://www.thebigpush.net/uploads/2/2/6/8/22682672/basic%5Fincome%5Fprograms%5Fand%5Fpilots%5Ffebruary%5F3%5F2014.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). It's hard to deny real observed results of what happens when people are given cash without conditions. We can debate hypotheticals all day long, but it's actual results that speak for themselves. *So what was observed in Bomi? Did the poor spend all their money on alcohol? Did they gamble it away? Did businesses fail? Did school attendance decrease? Did overall health decline? Did cats begin living with dogs?* ### Summary of Results > The study found compelling evidence that the SCT program improved the food security, health, education and economic conditions of participating households. Cash transfer program households reported improved food intake and larger food stores that lasted longer. When faced with illnesses they were more likely than in previous years to seek healthcare for all members of the family, especially children. School attendance improved and 66% of children had improved school marks. Participating households also generally reported improved economic statuses. Indeed, two-thirds of the heads of program households reported satisfaction with their quality of life, compared to just 20% of a comparison population. The study also found evidence of multiplier effects that enable the benefits of the SCT program to reach beyond the immediate beneficiaries to the community at large. Thus the evidence Bomi provides is in further support of the evidence we already have. **[As is observed repeatedly](http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141214/christopher-blattman-and-paul-niehaus/show-them-the-money?ref=scottsantens.com)**, when cash is given to the poor, they use it as most anyone else would use it: for food, school, housing, health, savings, clothing, household items, etc. Without being forced, they make decisions they feel are best for them and their families, and the results are remarkable compared to similarly poor control groups who don't receive unconditional cash. *So how much cash was involved in the Liberia SCTs?* ### The Cash Received in Bomi ![bomi cash transfers](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/KHX6gkr.png) These payouts might seem small, but they were regularly dispersed over the course of each year, and actually relatively high. How high? A one-person household got 700 Liberian dollars ($10 USD) per transfer. Each additional person resulted in an extra 350 LD ($5 USD) up to a maximum of four people. A bonus was given on top of this for each and every kid in school (unlike conditional programs where school is required to receive anything). The result was an average household amount per transfer of 1,750 LD ($25 USD). To get an idea of the relative size of this amount, the payments were intended to bridge the gap between what the poorest had to spend, and the national average standard of living in Liberia as measured by their per capita GDP of 15,825 Liberian dollars ($211 USD). So, relatively speaking, this is no small amount. As one comparison, it was very similar to the payments in [the Namibia Basic Income Guarantee Pilot](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), where every Namibian under 60 got 100 Namibian dollars per month (727 LD or $9 USD) as a basic income. So the payment amounts in Namibia and Liberia were basically the same, it's just that in Namibia, it went to everyone not already covered and not just the poorest. As another comparison, if we were to test a similar pilot program in the United States as in Bomi, it would be like bridging the gap between the poorest 8% of Detroit and the US per capita GDP of $53,000 by guaranteeing all pilot participants an income floor of around $1,000 per week, and comparing how well they did with those equally poor who weren't included in the pilot. ([Note: I'm actually not the first to suggest a basic income pilot be carried out in Detroit. See: Venture Capitalist Albert Wenger](http://continuations.com/post/89767419625/a-basic-income-experiment-i-would-like-to-see?ref=scottsantens.com).) Essentially, in Bomi an income floor was created at the national average. Try to imagine an income guarantee of that size, in essence guaranteeing you your share of the country's total productivity; basically the same share we used to have but lost when [productivity decoupled from wages decades ago](http://i.imgur.com/OYQTNIU.gif?ref=scottsantens.com). *So how was all this money spent?* Surprise surprise... it was food. It was spent mostly on food. Also, other basic needs. ### The Purchases in Bomi ![spending patterns](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/wkMUsPP.png) > The main categories of transfer spending were food, savings, education, clothing and healthcare. Almost every household (88%) used their transfer to purchase food, which was also the item on which recipients spent the most money. Indeed, households who purchased food with their transfer spent, on average, LD$750 on it. The next two most common expenditures were savings and education. Households that purchased these goods/services spent an average of LD$528 and LD$694 respectively. While families saved for many different reasons, reports from the field indicate that a large portion went into longer term home repairs (such as the upgrading of a roof) and small business development. Other spending categories of note include agricultural inputs and businesses. While the number of families that purchased these items was limited, those that invested, invested significantly. This suggests a commitment to small businesses and agricultural production for families ready to make that leap. We hear over and over again that the poor just can't handle money, and that the more poor someone is, the more true this is. And yet here we have the ultra-poor in a relatively poor nation, spending the cash given to them on food, savings, education, health care, and even entrepreneurship. A whopping **one third** of pilot participants reported starting their own businesses. And these new businesses along with existing businesses did well, because what these transfers also created were **consumers**. > The clear majority of program households (65%) reported an improved economic situation over the past year... Because 93% of the transfer money was spent within Bomi County, the impact of the program was felt beyond the immediate beneficiaries. Business owners reported that they were coming to rely on SCT recipients as important customers. Seventy-five per cent of business owners noticed positive impacts on their businesses. They attributed 20-50% of their growth to the SCT program. A number of program households reported even more direct forms of spill-over effects – 19% shared money and 48% shared food. Interviews also found that program households directly supported their neighbors in times of serious healthcare needs. Those that started businesses were also able to contribute to the broader local economy by offering new and improved goods and services. Not only did new businesses start, and old businesses thrive, but people also even used their increased incomes to directly **help each other**. About a fifth of the pilot participants shared their money with others, and about half of them shared the food they purchased with others. *What else happened?* ### The Effects in Bomi While 74% of non-pilot participants experienced *worsened* food insecurity, 90% of those in the pilot experienced **improved** food security. Pilot children were less likely to miss school, and two-thirds of them received higher grades. These results were also due to kids no longer being forced to work. ([Note: Similar experimental results have been observed in Manitoba](http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20%282%29.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) and [in Gary, Indiana, rural North Carolina, and rural Iowa](http://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/October-2014/Want-to-Help-Gary-Indiana-Why-Not-Just-Give-Them-Money/)). Half of pilot participants reported an improved housing situation, versus only 12% of those who weren't included in the program. And 76% reported being happy with their home, versus 17% for non-participants. 65% of those in the pilot reported being happy with their lives, while only 19% of those not in the pilot reported the same happiness. Pilot participants were about two times more likely than non-participants to seek medical care when needed, both for themselves and their children, and both adults and children alike were also twice as likely to have improved health. # “From where I sit as a health worker, I can with no doubt say that the impact on health is there and it is great.”—Bomi County Community Health Worker These results are not trivial. They are transformative. They are transformative to the point [$5.1 million in funding from the World Bank for more cash transfers has already been secured for **six** more counties in Liberia](http://allafrica.com/stories/201502060847.html?ref=scottsantens.com). We can claim that because this pilot took place in Liberia, there is nothing to learn from the results, but that would be pretending that human beings are different on a fundamental basic needs level. It would be pretending that although the poor in less developed nations are certainly likely to spend cash on food and school and small business creation and consumption, Americans are far more likely to starve in the streets while methed-out clutching brand new iPads. Human behavior is human behavior. Observations made from cash transfer programs in country after country **continue to report the same general results**. [People spend their money on food that even involves more fruits and vegetables](http://www.vox.com/2014/6/26/5845258/mexico-tried-giving-poor-people-cash-instead-of-food-it-worked?ref=scottsantens.com). [People spend their money on new homes and improving their homes](http://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/October-2014/Want-to-Help-Gary-Indiana-Why-Not-Just-Give-Them-Money/). [People invest their cash as capital to start new businesses](https://www.givedirectly.org/blog-post.html?id=5453927471971916970&ref=scottsantens.com). Students focus on school. Parents focus on kids. Communities focus on each other. These are the effects of unconditional cash transfers. These are the effects of people being given some form of minimum income. How many times and in how many places do we need to observe these effects for us to believe they are representative of what happens when people are given money without conditions? At what point will we look back at today and wonder how we ever thought guaranteeing some form of minimum income was not a common sense idea? The sooner we reach that point the better, because the results are already in. **Basic income works.** --- **Read the full 20-page UNICEF report in pdf format: [Transformative Transfers: Evidence from Liberia's Social Cash Transfer Programme](http://www.unicef.org/liberia/Transformative%5FTransfers%5FLiberiaCashTransferProgramme.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### “If we no longer force people to work to meet their basic needs, won’t they stop working?” URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-will-they-stop-working-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-05-17T22:27:57.000Z ## Acknowledging our one option society What underlies a question like this is that *it’s okay to force people to work by withholding what they need to live*, in order to force them to work for us. And at the same time, because they are forced, we don’t even pay them enough to meet their basic needs that we are withholding to force them to work. **What is a good word to describe this?** Now, what if we no longer withheld [access to basic resources](https://www.scottsantens.com/shouldn-t-all-this-talk-about-money-actually-be-talk-about-resources) to meet fundamental shared basic needs? What if work in the labor market was then fully *voluntary*? What if we could no longer force people to work for low wages? Maybe wages would go up? [Maybe productivity would go up](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201404/why-having-the-choice-do-nothing-is-so-important?ref=scottsantens.com)? Maybe the automation of human labor with technology would be *accelerated*? We could find the answers to these questions. [We already know from experiments what they are likely to be](http://www.thebigpush.net/uploads/2/2/6/8/22682672/basic%5Fincome%5Fprograms%5Fand%5Fpilots%5Ffebruary%5F3%5F2014.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Until [universal basic income](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com) is policy though, we won’t know for sure, and we will continue forcing each other to work by withholding food and shelter from each other. So what’s one belief that seems to be a major stumbling block in keeping people from more readily accepting the idea of paying everyone a basic income, in addition to the importance of it? ## We all have three choices: 1. **Work for others** 2. **Work for ourselves** 3. **Do zero work** If you believe option 2 exists, you might believe there’s no need for basic income and that it’ll only enable option 3. I don’t believe option 2 actually exists yet, but that it needs to, and can with basic income. Why don’t I believe option 2 exists? Can everyone actually just work for themselves? Doesn’t this require some form of starting capital? What if none exists? What if the education doesn’t exist? What if there are barriers to entry? What if competition at the top actively prevents this? What’s the percentage of the population that actually has option 2 in practice and not just in theory? Regarding option 3, is this truly an option as well? Let’s take being homeless for example. Let’s say someone *chooses* to be homeless because they don’t want to do any work. They sleep under bridges and eat out of dumpsters in order to avoid any work. Is there really no *work* involved here? This seems like it can involve a lot of work. Finding food in dumpsters can take hours of work, and finding places to sleep can take hours of work, and also involve moving frequently from place to place. It seems to me that homelessness can be exhausting. Then there are the laws. [Here in my town, we like to tear down homeless camps](http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/10607541-123/city-clears-homeless-from-central?ref=scottsantens.com). This happens in lots of other places too. Being homeless is not allowed. There also exist laws against dumpster diving and companies even will do stuff to tossed food to actively prevent people from being able to eat it. We put up homeless spikes, and toss homeless people in jails. I think the best example though is [this one](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/24/1287167/--Albuquerque-Police-fatally-shoot-homeless-man-found-camping-in-desert-area-illegally?ref=scottsantens.com), where a guy was not even allowed to exist on his own in the middle of nowhere. He was shot and killed. So no, I just don’t think we really allow any options except for option 1. > ***We are a one option society. Work for others, or else.*** That is [our system as constructed](https://medium.com/@2noame/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a?ref=scottsantens.com). Those who can work for themselves must first work enough for others, and those who wish to do no work must first work for others, or be born to parents that make it and option 2 possible without any working for others. How can we make it possible for option 2 to actually exist? My favorite story is Garrison Frazier. It’s a story I first learned about from [Karl Widerquist](http://works.bepress.com/widerquist/?ref=scottsantens.com), and included in [this article](https://medium.com/basic-income/its-time-we-take-a-closer-look-at-americas-three-favorite-words-f512f8a1ad6f?ref=scottsantens.com). He was a freed slave and chosen as the spokesperson for other freed slaves. He was asked about slavery and how he could be truly free from ever being enslaved again. > Slavery is, receiving by irresistible power the work of another man, and not by his consent. The freedom, as I understand it, promised by the proclamation, is taking us from under the yoke of bondage, and placing us where we could reap the fruit of our own labor, take care of ourselves and assist the Government in maintaining our freedom… The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor…” This is to say that without owning a minimum amount of land, it is not possible to truly live by your own labor. One must have this ability in order to not be forced to work for others. If you can’t grow your own food or build your own house, you can’t live by your own hands. This option *must* exist. But does it make any sense in this day and age to give everyone land? How would we even accomplish this? How would it be universal and equal in quantity and quality? What if some land didn’t grow food? How would this work in cities where our markets have created the dense populations of labor required for them to exist? Universal basic income is how we can accomplish what universal land would accomplish, in a far more efficient, flexible, and equitable way. By giving everyone enough cash to purchase food and shelter, we meet the requirements needed for option 2 to exist. And yes, we also then meet the requirements for option 3 to exist. But really how different is it from option 2 anyway? If everyone got enough land to be free, and they refused to work for others, they would have to either work it or die. In the same way, if someone gets a basic income and refuses to use it to buy food and shelter, they will die. But seriously, how many people refuse to eat and don’t want shelter? Are we not deluding ourselves when we think that the only reason people eat right now, is because we are limiting their choices with food stamps, or that [drug addicts somehow don’t eat](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/science/the-rational-choices-of-crack-addicts.html?pagewanted=all&ref=scottsantens.com)? Everyone needs to eat. It’s a basic need. Meanwhile, this concern that people with their basic needs met don’t have other needs, is incorrect. We know [we all have many more needs than our most basic ones](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham%5FMaslow?ref=scottsantens.com). ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*fssc9tSDEq5pmH8G.png) *Source:* [*Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs — Wikimedia Commons*](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maslow%27s%5FHierarchy%5Fof%5FNeeds.svg?ref=scottsantens.com) We aren’t going to stop working to meet *all* our needs, just because we make it easier to meet *some* of them. Why do we pretend otherwise? I personally believe our collective belief so many of us feel, that we all really want to do nothing whatsoever, is due to [our systematic devastation of intrinsic motivation from birth](http://i.imgur.com/ggmhuCY.jpg?ref=scottsantens.com). ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1110/0*Ho4eqKpZ2QrXqudK.jpg) *Source:* [*The New Economics*](https://www.scottsantens.com/what-we-can-learn-about-systems-from-w-edwards-deming-the-new-economics) We pummel intrinsic motivation into the goddamn ground, so that many of us feel extrinsic motivation is the only kind to exist. We look forward to vacations so that we can do nothing. We come home from work excited to do nothing. So when we think of actually enabling everyone to do nothing, we imagine a world of everyone doing absolutely nothing. We think this, because in our everyday experience, intrinsic motivation feels rare. It feels rare because we don’t see it. We don’t see it because we ignore it, and because we do everything we can to reduce it. Here’s an example of destroyed intrinsic motivation. Imagine you are a kid again. You enter a science fair because you love science. Lots of kids get ribbons for theirs and you don’t. Crushed, you decide you aren’t good at science after all. The core problem here is *we gave anyone ribbons*. Another example. Again, you are a kid. You love learning. You’re an amazing visual learner. Your class involves little visual learning and you get Ds on your report card. Now you hate school and think you’re dumb, even though you’d get As if there was more visual learning in both teaching and testing. The problem here is *we graded anyone at all*. Not only are we good at destroying intrinsic motivation, we’re also great at ignoring it. Imagine your mother cooks you your favorite meal because she loves you, and after, to thank her, you put a $50 bill on the table. No one would ever actually do that, right? Why? Because her motivation for the meal was not extrinsic in motivation. Paying her might even lead to her never wanting to cook for you again. This seems to be our major problem. We have oriented ourselves so extrinsically, that we think no one would do anything for any other reason whatsoever, without cash as part of the equation. And yet at the same time, [we know this flat out isn’t true](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&ref=scottsantens.com). We also know that our use of [extrinsic rewards can actually be harmful](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y&ref=scottsantens.com), and as we automate the labor extrinsic rewards don’t hurt, [we’re going to increase negative impacts on what work remains](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com). As for the science we have to confirm how little work is actually reduced when people are guaranteed basic incomes, we need only look to [our own Income Maintenance Experiments in the 70s](http://www.vox.com/2014/7/23/5925041/guaranteed-income-basic-poverty-gobry-labor-supply?ref=scottsantens.com), Canada’s Mincome Experiment, basic income experiments in [Namibia](http://www.bignam.org/BIG%5Fpilot.html?ref=scottsantens.com) and [India](http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2014/dec/18/incomes-scheme-transforms-lives-poor?ref=scottsantens.com), and [GiveDirectly’s](https://www.givedirectly.org/blog.html?ref=scottsantens.com) unconditional cash experiments in [Uganda and Kenya](http://www.forbes.com/sites/hollieslade/2014/02/10/give-directlys-breakthrough-free-money-model-grows-as-evidence-mounts/?ref=scottsantens.com). This is not all the evidence we have. [There’s more](http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141214/christopher-blattman-and-paul-niehaus/show-them-the-money?ref=scottsantens.com). There are cash transfer programs in place all over the world. From all of this we know that when people are given money to live, on one extreme end some like students and mothers work *a bit less*, and on the other extreme end, people *work even more* because they are enabled to do so. The problem is that despite all of this data, we still have our various mental stumbling blocks. We think people have no intrinsic motivation. We think people can’t be motivated externally to work by something as simple [as just paying them more](http://www.post-gazette.com/business/employment/2014/04/17/Joblessness-not-due-to-skills-gap-experts-say/stories/201404170207?ref=scottsantens.com#ixzz2z9dwRd54). And we think option 2 exists, because it *should* and we want to believe it does because otherwise we’re left with supporting a system withonly one option. **And we really don’t want to believe that’s true, because that says something about us, we as a society really don’t want to face.** --- *If you want to go deeper down into this particular rabbit hole of our one and only current choice, I suggest reading the same book I have,* [***Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income***](http://amzn.to/28N5jNF?ref=scottsantens.com)***.*** --- ***Special thanks to Arjun Banker, Topher Hunt, Albert Wenger, Danielle Texeira, Paul Wicks, Robert F. Greene, Martin Jordo, Victor Lau, Shane Gordon, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** [*Would you like to see your name here too?*](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ## ## ### Is It Actually Possible to Live on a Basic Income of $12,000 Per Year? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/is-it-actually-possible-to-live-on-a-basic-income-of-12000-per-year-in-the-united-states/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T00:33:45.000Z As you may already know, [I'm actively crowdfunding a basic income of $12,000 per year, and am currently about 20% of the way there](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com). (Thank you, [Patreon patrons](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ty=p&ref=scottsantens.com)!) I chose this amount because I advocate the starting level of a basic income guarantee in the U.S. be set here, defined as being just above the poverty level ([in 2015](http://familiesusa.org/product/federal-poverty-guidelines?ref=scottsantens.com)). One of the common responses to this idea of a basic income of $12,000 is then the concern that it can't *possibly* be enough in the USA. It may seem too low to live on. So is it? Well, [if you go here](http://www.whatsmypercent.com/?ref=scottsantens.com), and plug in $12,000 for an individual, you'll find the result is 31%. Yes, 3 out of every 10 single tax filers in the US are currently living on less than $12,000 per year. That means tens of millions of people *already are* living day by day with this amount of money. **And I am one of them.** This is also why I so strongly support this level as workable, aside from the great amount of people in the same boat. I have personal experience. This is not to suggest anecdotal evidence is strong evidence. I merely mean to stress the numbers mean more to me than just numbers. My own story is that I've been lucky enough to be successfully self-employed for my entire adult life - about 20 years now - thanks to the Internet. Because of this, my income has always fluctuated. I've had great years and I've had not-so-great years. I've also lived in a lot of places, so I appreciate how costs of living can vary. 2008 was my last good year of middle class earnings. After the economy collapsed that year, so did my income. This is also why I understand so strongly that **your spending** **is** **my income**. When people aren't spending because they have nothing to spend, we all suffer. I suffer because you suffer. I flourish when you flourish. Wanting others to suffer is the same as wanting yourself to suffer. It's stupid and backwards. **The better you do, the better I do, the better we all do.** From 2009 to 2012, I lived on my own in New Orleans on about $12-14k each year. My rent was $650 during these years. I had a car payment (which I paid off in 2010 I think) and school loans to pay ([which did make things even harder](http://www.scottsantens.com/the-potential-effects-of-a-universal-basic-income-guarantee-on-student-loans)), but I did manage to get by just fine. Sure, I wish I could have earned more to eat better and spend more time with friends, and just plain do more stuff, but what I learned from these years was that as my income got lower, each time I thought I just wasn't going to be able to make it, but I always have. And that's without government assistance because you might be surprised how little you have to earn to qualify, as someone without any dependents. Starting in 2013, I've since earned *less* than $12k, but now I'm no longer living alone, and am very lucky to have found an amazing partner with whom to share this adventure called life. That I'm even happier now despite earning less reflects our other forms of wealth not measurable by money. Had we never met though, I don't think it would have been possible to continue living alone while earning less than $12k, unless I moved out of the city or in with others. Faced with such a choice between living alone in a more rural area and living in a city with housemates, I'd have chosen housemates. That would have been fine with me and I'm sure I would have continued making ends meet. For these personal reasons, [and for political and economic reasons](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com), $12,000 a year in my opinion represents a potential sweet spot amount for basic income. It makes sense to me that the federal poverty level is set here because from my own experience, earning less than this seems to begin to more heavily limit options and makes things much more difficult. However, even then, three friends earning $10,000 each and choosing to live together in the same home is a household with $30,000 total income. Poverty guidelines set a household of three at $20,000 so it should seem clear that sharing expenses will always make a big difference. Basically, $12,000 is right around the line in the U.S. that living on your own becomes no longer possible without perceiving potentially large personal sacrifices such as having to live with others when you want to live alone, or having to live outside of cities when you want to live in them. Not that it *isn't* possible living somewhere extremely cheap, or *is* possible somewhere extremely expensive, but as far as the median goes, less than $12,000 means likely needing to share expenses with others, and living alone is still possible but challenging. This seems to represent a noteworthy fuzzy line. I also want to make special note that I am not including costs like health care and child care costs in what is necessary to cover basic needs. [A basic income should reflect the replacement of programs better served by cash, and not serve as a replacement for *everything*](http://www.scottsantens.com/will-replacing-current-benefits-with-cash-tomorrow-leave-todays-recipients-better-or-worse-off-basic-income-single-parents-welfare). Its focus should be on the covering of costs like food, shelter, electricity, phone, internet, clothing, etc. These are the costs that can be met by $12,000 per year. However, all of this also is assuming ZERO other income. With a basic income guarantee, it is very easy to earn a bit extra here and there when you're not spending all your time just trying to get by. An artist earning $12,000 basic income per year who spends a month painting one painting, who then sells it a month later for $1,000 is now at $13,000\. Someone who earns $12k who decides to do some babysitting can end up with $15k for the year. Someone with a part time job can double their income to $24k working less than 20 hours per week, or a few months out of the year. **A $12,000 basic income is a new *starting* point.** If we look at the entire country as a whole, there are relatively few who earn absolutely nothing year after year after year. [Matt Bruenig calculates the number of the able-bodied and non-working as 3% of the population](%28http://www.demos.org/blog/11/13/14/does-white-working-class-hate-welfare-poor%29) (and this includes those who do unpaid work like volunteering). Earning nothing in the labor market also [tends to be a temporary thing](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/a-shockingly-high-number-of-americans-experience-poverty/281172/?ref=scottsantens.com), and so I don't expect many to earn absolutely nothing at all with a basic income. It might not even be 1% of us. Having a single bake sale, and selling merely a dozen cupcakes can earn an extra $20\. With a basic income, this is $20 on top of $12,000, and so $12,000 represents an absolute guaranteed *minimum*. **No one with a basic income is prevented from earning anything *above* it.** That really is the important thing to understand. Basic income is fundamentally an income floor, whereas [the current system as designed is something more like a net that traps you or a ceiling that limits you.](https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e?ref=scottsantens.com) Basic income is a **floor** that allows everyone to **stand** on it and anyone to **build** on it. Any effort in the labor market whatsoever, *increases* someone's **total income**. Basic income is not about encouraging people to do absolutely nothing. It's about providing that *option*, but it frees everyone to do so much more than that, and [experiments with basic income show doing more is exactly how people actually use it](http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2014/dec/18/incomes-scheme-transforms-lives-poor?ref=scottsantens.com). Essentially, basic income is not about allowing us to do nothing, but allowing us to do *anything*. ### Four Experimental Effects of Small Basic Incomes > Recently, we have conducted three unconditional basic income schemes in India, funded by Unicef. A basic income is a modest cash payment (in this case, **a third of subsistence**), paid individually, unconditionally, universally and monthly, guaranteed as a right. Altogether, more than 6,000 men, women and children received it, with the children’s money paid to the mother... It had four effects, most accentuated by the presence of the collective body. > **First**, it had strong welfare, or “capability”, effects. There were improvements in child nutrition, child and adult health, schooling attendance and performance, sanitation, economic activity and earned incomes, and the socio-economic status of women, the elderly and the disabled. > **Second**, it had strong equity effects. It resulted in bigger improvements for scheduled caste and tribal households, and for all vulnerable groups, notably those with disabilities and frailties. This was partly because the basic income was paid to each individual, strengthening their bargaining position in the household and community. > **Third**, it had growth effects. Contrary to what skeptics predicted, **the basic incomes resulted in more economic activity and work**... There was a big increase in secondary economic activities, as well as a shift from casual wage labor to own-account farming and small-scale business. > **Fourth**, it had emancipatory effects. These are unappreciated by orthodox development thinkers. The poor’s liberty has no value. But the basic income resulted in some families buying themselves out of debt bondage, others paying down exorbitant debts incurring horrendous interest rates. For many, it provided liquidity with which to respond to shocks and hazards. (*To learn more, read: [Basic Income: A Transformative Policy for India](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1472583116/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1472583116&linkCode=as2&tag=theheaandthet-20&linkId=GYTAFFHEFVVURJZL&ref=scottsantens.com)*) Basic income experiments therefore show us that even with income guarantees set at *below* the poverty level, people can still be far better off than without them. They have more choices. There are more doors to open and walk through. The effects are *transformative*. So I also feel that whenever we show concern about $12,000 per year possibly being too low to live on in the US, we should also look at what we have right *now*. Right now we guarantee **$0 per year**. How many people are asking if $0 per year is too low? I pass by a lot of people who appear to be in dire straits these days. I'm sure you have as well. The next time we see someone sitting on the ground against the wall of a building or standing on a street corner with a sign, alone, homeless, and hungry, perhaps we should ask them if $12,000 a year is too low for them to get by on? I get the feeling they might just consider this question differently than the rest of us do. --- **If you'd like to see how $12,000 is also more than enough in Canada, please next read ["How I thrived on a Basic Income of $11,000 last year in Montreal" by Jamie Klinger](https://medium.com/basic-income/how-i-thrived-on-a-basic-income-of-less-than-11-000-last-year-in-montreal-9c6e925a7a25?ref=scottsantens.com)** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Debunking the Debunking of "Humans Need Not Apply" and More URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/debunking-the-debunking-of-humans-need-not-apply-and-more-the-fallacy-of-the-luddite-fallacy/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T00:36:43.000Z **[This gif](http://i.imgur.com/0E0Wnlt.gifv?ref=scottsantens.com)** is the kind of imagery that gets our attention and [gets us all wondering](http://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/2vey03/amazons%5Frobot%5Farmy/?ref=scottsantens.com) about what is going to happen to the people who did these jobs now being done by robots. There are a lot of [people wondering about the answer to this question](http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/08/06/future-of-jobs/?ref=scottsantens.com), and drawing conclusions like [47% of all current jobs are at risk of being automated within 20 years](http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The%5FFuture%5Fof%5FEmployment.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). It's also possible such estimates are *conservative* because according to [this recent report](http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/article9654257.html?ref=scottsantens.com), the work being done by robots is actually growing faster than predicted. > **[The amount of jobs now done by robots will more than double in the next 10 years. (10% to 23%)](https://twitter.com/2noame/status/565326043670921217?ref=scottsantens.com)** The term for this growing phenomenon is **[technological unemployment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological%5Funemployment?ref=scottsantens.com)**. Not everyone believes in it though. Right now, [it's actually about 50/50](http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/08/06/future-of-jobs/?ref=scottsantens.com). Something known as ["the Luddite Fallacy"](http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6717/economics/the-luddite-fallacy/?ref=scottsantens.com)is what tends to be a common response to any notion of technological unemployment, and any suggestions we might find ourselves in trouble unless we prepare for its effects. It's what allows someone to watch [Humans Need Not Apply](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&ref=scottsantens.com) and think, *"That's silly. People have been saying technology will eliminate jobs for centuries now and it just hasn't happened. So it never will. New jobs will always be created, and technology will always make everything cheaper anyway, so no worries."* Regarding this belief, there are a few other beliefs we should be sure to consider as well... **"Luddites were afraid of technology!"** About that, [we've got Luddites all wrong](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/luddites-definition-wrong-labor-technophobe?ref=scottsantens.com). > The Luddites weren't technophobes. They were labor strategists. "This strategic interpretation of the Luddite movement is confirmed by the fact that the workers often destroyed only those machines which were turning out faulty goods," Boudon wrote. "It was still true, of course, that a worker who went on strike could easily be replaced by somebody from the army of unemployed people willing to be strike-breakers, at a time when nascent trade-unionism was harshly suppressed. Since machine-breaking brought the factory to a halt, it was not only a functional substitute for striking, it was also much more effective." They didn't break machines out of *fear*. They broke machines as a *tactic*. **"You futurist types have *always* talked about mass unemployment due to technology and are *always* wrong!"** The logic that because something *has* always been the case it always *will* be, can be really dangerous logic to cling to. ### Examples from people who might want to reconsider the use of this logic: "Chimps love me. I hear they can be dangerous, but a chimp has never once ripped my face off, so it obviously never will." "Condoms? I've never once gotten an STD or anyone pregnant. Obviously that will always be the case." "I used to always wear my seat belt but I've never actually gotten into a car accident, so obviously that's never going to happen. So, why bother?" Just because something hasn't been perceived by us as happening, doesn't mean it's not happening or that it never *will* happen. **Believe it or not, yes [it really is different this time](http://www.scottsantens.com/yes-it-really-is-different-this-time-and-humans-already-need-not-apply) because it's already happening.** **"But new jobs will always be created!"** [We are actively experiencing job loss due to technology RIGHT NOW](http://imgur.com/a/wMepo?ref=scottsantens.com). It's just harder to see, because we're not looking at a bunch of walking talking robots, but mostly software. And the job loss we are experiencing isn't necessarily in the form of 0 hours of work available, but in the form of [part-time jobs](http://i.imgur.com/XCXIoAz.png?ref=scottsantens.com), [underpaid jobs](http://www.businessinsider.com/middle-class-jobs-are-being-replaced-by-lousy-low-pay-jobs-2012-9?ref=scottsantens.com), and [freelance work](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/against-sharing/?ref=scottsantens.com). It also seems to rarely occur to anyone, that when we say jobs haven't been reduced by technology, it's because **[we've been making up bullshit jobs to replace the ones we're eliminating](http://www.vice.com/en%5Fuk/read/david-graeber-pointless-jobs-tube-poster-interview-912?ref=scottsantens.com)** because we're the ones still requiring jobs to exist. When we no longer require jobs to exist, it seems likely we'll reconsider this behavior. ![our need for jobs](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/JSEY3i6.jpg) Another thing people seem to fail to understand, is that the new jobs we're creating by technology can *themselves* be more easily automated or globalized. **New Job Example:** Web design is a newer job. It hasn't been around very long. However, it's already easier for people to create their own websites, and it's also easy for someone in India or China to design a website at a much lower cost than others can possibly bid who have higher costs of living. A barber in the US doesn't compete with barbers in India, but a website designer does. And the ease of website creation tools makes web designers less necessary, even though this was a job that was JUST created recently. This last part is what [a Luddite Fallacy article like this](http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6717/economics/the-luddite-fallacy/?ref=scottsantens.com) gets right. We need to create flexibility in the labor market so that when jobs are lost and new jobs (that hopefully aren't bullshit) are created, people can switch from one to the other. And when those new jobs then go away, people can transition again. We should make a point of making these transitions as quick and painless as possible. [Denmark does with its "Flexisecurity" policies, which make it the best for business in the world right now](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2014/12/17/u-s-slides-again-as-denmark-tops-forbes-best-countries-for-business/?ref=scottsantens.com). So basically, even if the Luddite Fallacy is correct, we still need policies that make transitioning from job to job easier, [with no one falling into poverty](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com) between these jobs. **"But technology *always* makes everything cost less!"** This belief that everything is going to get cheaper, and therefore everything will be a-okay, it's just not happening. Basic needs are getting more expensive, and we're also spending more on technology like smartphones, not less. After decades of tech growth, [we even have less discretionary income, not more](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/basic-costs-squeeze-families-002900254.html?ref=scottsantens.com), even with *two adults* working, instead of one. ![rising basic costs](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/q21J2At.jpg) > The American middle class has absorbed a steep increase in the cost of health care and other necessities as incomes have stagnated over the past half decade, a squeeze that has forced families to cut back spending on everything from clothing to restaurants. Health-care spending by middle-income Americans rose 24% between 2007 and 2013, driven by an even larger rise in the cost of buying health insurance, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of detailed consumer-spending data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That hit has been accompanied by increases in spending on other necessities, including food eaten at home, rent and education, as well as the soaring cost of staying connected digitally via cellphones and home Internet service. With income growth sluggish, discretionary spending on things like clothing and movies, live shows and amusement parks has given way. If we read news like this, and then think, "Oh hey, but 3D-printers are going to make everything super cheap, so even though the costs of basic goods and services are rising, it's 3D-printing that will save our hides," then we also need to consider how our incomes are going to look when everyone has their own personal factory. If I no longer need to buy shower curtains, what happens to the companies that sell shower curtains, and their distributors, and their manufacturers, and all of their employees, and all of the other businesses that rely on all of the income generated from all of this? As long as people have to spend money on their most basic needs, and have to work in the labor market to earn the income required to meet them, then a big problem still exists, no matter how cheap 3D-printed goods become. **What it all comes down to though is this right here:** ![exponential technology](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/7Z5ZftF.png) The people who think those like [CGP Grey and the rest of us are Chicken Littles](http://jetpress.org/v24/walker.htm?ref=scottsantens.com) screaming about the sky falling, are looking at the left half of the image and drawing the conclusion that the lines will continue their paths without intersecting. What people tend to fail to understand is the **exponential growth** capability of technology because we're not really wired to conceive this type of growth. Exponential growth is hard to wrap our heads around. Here's [a famous example in the form of a story](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat%5Fand%5Fchessboard%5Fproblem?ref=scottsantens.com): > When the creator of the game of chess showed his invention to the ruler of the country, the ruler was so pleased that he gave the inventor the right to name his prize for the invention. The man, who was very clever, asked the king this: that for the first square of the chess board, he would receive one grain of wheat, two for the second one, four on the third one, and so forth, doubling the amount each time. The ruler, arithmetically unaware, quickly accepted the inventor's offer, even getting offended by his perceived notion that the inventor was asking for such a low price, and ordered the treasurer to count and hand over the wheat to the inventor. However, when the treasurer took more than a week to calculate the amount of wheat, the ruler asked him for a reason for his tardiness. The treasurer then gave him the result of the calculation, and explained that it would take more than all the assets of the kingdom to give the inventor the reward. The story ends with the inventor being beheaded. So how many grains of wheat ended up being calculated by just doubling a single grain 64 times? **18,446,744,073,709,551,615, or about 18.5 quintillion aka 18.5 billion billion.** Exponential growth happens amazingly fast. It catches us humans by surprise. For those paying attention, [some pretty](http://www.wired.com/2014/12/bots-now-outnumber-humans-web/?mbid=social%5Ftwitter&ref=scottsantens.com) [unbelievable headlines](http://edition.cnn.com/2015/02/04/travel/japan-hotel-robots/index.html?ref=scottsantens.com) are [already being made](http://io9.com/computers-wrote-the-caption-for-this-photograph-and-ch-1660450610?ref=scottsantens.com), and they are appearing with greater frequency. [Deep learning by machines is real and is already being used](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx310zM3tLs&ref=scottsantens.com), which opens the door for all kinds of jobs to be automated. **We are on the right half of the above image now.** [Technology is already eliminating jobs faster than new jobs can be created](http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/12/17/0512208/economists-say-newest-ai-technology-destroys-more-jobs-than-it-creates?ref=scottsantens.com). The intersection point is going to happen. It's inevitable. And when it does, [we sure as shit better be ready for it](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com) *or else "job creator" heads might start rolling*. **And why should any heads roll, when we should all be better off thanks to technology anyway?** ![yay robots](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/J47t2R3.jpg) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Universal Basic Income as the Social Vaccine of the 21st Century URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-17T19:48:09.000Z ## Can the savings of basic income exceed the costs? > **“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” —** [***Benjamin Franklin***](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/247269-an-ounce-of-prevention-is-worth-a-pound-of-cure?ref=scottsantens.com) For those not familiar with this old idiom, it means it’s less costly to avoid problems from ever happening in the first place, than it is to fix problems once they do. It also happens to be the entire logic behind the invention of **the vaccine,** and it is my belief that **universal basic income** has the same potential. # The Most Cost-Effective Public Health Tool Ever Devised The savings provided by vaccines are staggering to the point of almost being beyond comprehension. The human suffering avoided through vaccinations are immeasurable, but the economic benefits are not, and in fact have been measured. Let’s start [with polio](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17184390?ref=scottsantens.com). > We estimate that the United States invested approximately US dollars **35** **billion** in polio vaccines between 1955 and 2005… The historical and future investments translate into over 1.7 billion vaccinations that prevent approximately 1.1 million cases of paralytic polio and over 160,000 deaths. Due to treatment cost savings, the investment implies net benefits of approximately US dollars **180** **billion**, even without incorporating the intangible costs of suffering and death and of averted fear. Retrospectively, the U.S. investment in polio vaccination represents a highly valuable, cost-saving public health program. For every **$1 billion** we’ve spent on polio vaccines, we’ve avoided spending about **$6 billion** down the road. And that’s purely the economic costs, not the personal costs. You might think our investment in fighting polio is perhaps as good as it gets, [but it’s not](http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/t990803a.html?ref=scottsantens.com). > Most vaccines recommended are cost-saving even if only direct medical costs—and not lost lives and suffering—are considered. Our country, for example, saves **$8.50** in direct medical costs for **every dollar** invested in diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (DTaP) vaccine. When the savings associated with work loss, death, and disability are factored in, the total savings increase to about **$27 per dollar** invested in DTaP vaccination. Every dollar our Nation spends on measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination generates about $13 in total savings — adding up to about $4 billion each year. **Just $1** spent on a single MMR shot **can save $13** and a DTaP shot **can save $27** that would otherwise have been spent on the costs of the full-blown diseases they protect against. These vaccinations save us incredible amounts of money and suffering as a society, as long as we continue vaccinating ourselves. But what kind of savings are there to be found, when we go *all-in* and invest in a massive vaccine program so large, its aim is to entirely eradicate something? ## The Eradication of Smallpox Reported as eradicated from the face of the Earth in 1977, and in possibly one of the greatest understatements of all time, the eradication of smallpox by the U.S. proved to be a “[remarkably good economic investment](http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/t980520a.html?ref=scottsantens.com).” > A total of $32 million was spent by the United States over a 10-year period in the global campaign to eradicate smallpox. **The entire $32 million has been recouped every 2 months since 1971** by saving the costs of the smallpox vaccine, administration, medical care, quarantine and other costs. According to General Accounting Office (GAO) estimates from a draft report, “Infectious Diseases: Soundness of World Health Organization Estimates to Eradicate or Eliminate Seven Diseases,” the cumulative savings from smallpox eradication for the United States is **$17 billion**. The draft report also estimates the real rate of return for the United States to be **46 percent per year** since smallpox was eradicated. We also didn’t stop at eradicating it from within our own borders. We invested our money [in the world](http://www.cgdev.org/doc/millions/MS%5Fcase%5F1.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). > It has since been calculated that the largest donor, the United States, saves the total of all its contributions **every 26 days**, making smallpox prevention through vaccination **one of the most cost-beneficial health interventions of the time**. Even if we let these numbers sink in for a bit, it’s a huge challenge to fully appreciate because these savings are what we *don’t* experience. **We *aren’t* spending tens of billions of dollars that we otherwise *would* have**. Had we not spent millions then, we’d be spending billions on all of the effects of smallpox to this day and long into the future. Try to imagine a world where we didn’t eradicate smallpox. Aside from the obvious increases in our already sky-high health care costs and the deaths of [over 100 million people](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/sites/givingwhatwecan.org/files/attachments/moral%5Fimperative.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), millions every year would be calling in sick to work to care for themselves or a loved one with smallpox. Businesses would be paying more for sick leave and losing millions of hours of productivity ([estimated at $1 billion lost every year](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/sites/givingwhatwecan.org/files/attachments/moral%5Fimperative.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)). Medical bankruptcies would likely be higher. Crime would likely be higher. The entire economy would suffer along with all of society. **But we didn’t take that path.** We chose instead to pay for an ounce of prevention in order to avoid paying for a pound of cure. Unfortunately we can’t see the effects of what we did, because we made them never happen with the ounce of prevention. We’re saving what will eventually be *trillions* of dollars, and don’t even give this incredible fact a second thought. Not only is it hard to see the pounds we’ve avoided, but we also have a really hard time recognizing the pounds we’re paying for, because we consider them normal, just as smallpox would today still be normal if we’d never chosen to eradicate it through mass vaccinations. It would just be an ugly fact of life… like *poverty*. **What if poverty is like smallpox?** What if the realities of hunger and homelessness aren’t just facts of life, but examples of those costly pounds that we currently consider normal that we could just instead eradicate with an ounce of cure? How much would it cost to eradicate? How much could we save? ## The Eradication of Poverty As I’ve [written](https://medium.com/@2noame/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a?ref=scottsantens.com) about before, [a report by the Chief Public Health Officer in Canada](http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/cphorsphc-respcacsp/2008/fr-rc/cphorsphc-respcacsp09-eng.php?ref=scottsantens.com) looked at this question of potential savings, and estimated that: > **$1** invested in the early years saves between **$3 and $9** in future spending on the health and criminal justice systems, as well as on social assistance. It’s rare to see this kind of return on investment. That is, outside of vaccinations. That’s the power of immunizations. [Spending $1 on a vaccine for a kid can save $10](http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2014/03/03/vaccines-prevent-millions-of-infections-save-billions-in-costs-cdc?ref=scottsantens.com), but also just giving the same kid $1 can save $9 some decades down the road too. How can this be? **Because childhood poverty is** [***hugely* expensive**](http://www.urban.org/publications/901032.html?ref=scottsantens.com)**.** > Our results suggest that the costs to the United States associated with childhood poverty total about **$500 billion per year**, or the equivalent of nearly **4 percent of GDP**. More specifically, we estimate that childhood poverty each year: > > Reduces productivity and economic output by about **1.3 percent of GDP**; > > Raises the costs of crime by **1.3 percent of GDP**; and > > Raises health expenditures and reduces the value of health by **1.2 percent of GDP**. The above numbers are from 2007, and since then [the child poverty rate has increased from 17% to 25%](http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/10/28/early-childhood-poverty-damages-brain-development-study-finds?ref=scottsantens.com), so we can safely assume the hit to GDP has increased as well. Assuming a proportional increase, the 2015 loss to economic growth of child poverty could now be **5.6% of GDP, or $981 billion**. And that’s only *child* poverty, not adult poverty. For the same reason it’s cheaper to just [spend ](http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/05/27/3441772/florida-homeless-financial-study/?ref=scottsantens.com)[**$10,000**](http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/05/27/3441772/florida-homeless-financial-study/?ref=scottsantens.com)[ on the homeless providing a home, than it is to instead spend ](http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/05/27/3441772/florida-homeless-financial-study/?ref=scottsantens.com)[**$30,000**](http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/05/27/3441772/florida-homeless-financial-study/?ref=scottsantens.com)[ in medical and criminal justice system costs](http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/05/27/3441772/florida-homeless-financial-study/?ref=scottsantens.com), it is cheaper to prevent people from ever living in poverty, than it is to pay the *full costs* of poverty. In addition to the costs of child poverty above, these full costs include a significant portion of the estimated [**$1.4 trillion**](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=147911&ref=scottsantens.com)[ spent on crime](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=147911&ref=scottsantens.com), the [**$2.7 trillion**](http://www.commonwealthfund.org/interactives-and-data/us-compare-interactive?ref=scottsantens.com#?ind=1&compare=CAN)[ spent on health care](http://www.commonwealthfund.org/interactives-and-data/us-compare-interactive?ref=scottsantens.com#?ind=1&compare=CAN), and [**the trillions of dollars spent on its many other effects**](https://medium.com/@2noame/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a?ref=scottsantens.com) ***every single year*** in the U.S. These numbers are just economic costs. There are biological costs as well. Poverty even rewires our brains. [The new study of epigenetics show us such biological costs can be paid spanning entire lives](http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/growing-up-poor-is-bad-for-your-brain?ref=scottsantens.com). > Coming of age in poverty may lead to permanent dysfunction in the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala — which, according to the researchers, “has been associated with mood disorders including depression, anxiety, impulsive aggression and substance abuse.” Fortunately, the even newer study of neurogenesis (the growth of new neurons long thought to be impossible) shows us these effects also [need not be permanent](http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the%5Freinvention%5Fof%5Fthe%5Fself/?ref=scottsantens.com). > Chronic stress, predictably enough, decreases neurogenesis. As Christian Mirescu, one of Gould’s post-docs, put it, “When a brain is worried, it’s just thinking about survival. It isn’t interested in investing in new cells for the future.” On the other hand, enriched animal environments — enclosures that simulate the complexity of a natural habitat — lead to dramatic increases in both neurogenesis and the density of neuronal dendrites, the branches that connect one neuron to another. Complex surroundings create a complex brain. Essentially, we’re recently learning that we can potentially reverse the long-term effects of poverty, *if* we eliminate it. Poverty currently affects almost 50 million Americans, [18 million of whom are kids coming of age impoverished](http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1915533&ref=scottsantens.com). To allow poverty to continue in the 21st century or to eradicate it is the same choice between an ounce or a pound as smallpox was in the 20th century, and outside of [an experiment in Manitoba](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/30/city-eliminated-poverty-mincome%5Fn%5F6392126.html?ref=scottsantens.com), we’ve been choosing a pound of poverty for pretty much all of recorded history. > *As another saying goes, so far we’re being penny-wise and pound-foolish.* Decades ago, we developed a vaccine for smallpox and we used it to eradicate smallpox. Today, [we may already have a vaccine for poverty](http://www.vox.com/2014/7/23/5925041/guaranteed-income-basic-poverty-gobry-labor-supply?ref=scottsantens.com). [It’s been tested, and the results are remarkable](https://decorrespondent.nl/541/why-we-should-give-free-money-to-everyone/35246939860-ec3a6c3e?ref=scottsantens.com). **It’s called** [**universal basic income**](http://www.vox.com/2014/9/8/6003359/basic-income-negative-income-tax-questions-explain?ref=scottsantens.com)**.** ## An Ounce of Prevention The idea is to give every citizen enough money to cover their basic needs like food and shelter, no strings attached. For the U.S. to guarantee these basic needs to assure no one would live in poverty would cost about [$1,000 per adult and $300 per child every month](http://familiesusa.org/product/federal-poverty-guidelines?ref=scottsantens.com). For a significant portion of the population here in 2015, this is where the conversation can stop. Once the napkins are whipped out and its $3 trillion price tag is estimated, the idea can be hand-waved away as too expensive. **But is it?** Remember how every $1 spent keeping a child out of poverty can save $3 to $9 as an adult? Well, that means if we started vaccinating kids with a basic income of $300 a month, we would *not* have to spend $900 to $2,700 a month on them as adults. This also means that when kids became adults, **a basic income of $1,000 per month is a savings of up to $1,700 we’d have otherwise spent**. So why not start [*vaccinating our kids against poverty*](http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117453/monthly-child-allowance-best-way-support-strong-families?ref=scottsantens.com), and consider their basic incomes as adults a net savings? ## Upfront Costs vs. Long-term Savings What if we had hand-waved away the costs of eradicating smallpox as too expensive with napkin math? What if we today faced that same choice we did then? What if the price of smallpox eradication now was calculated on a napkin as being $3 trillion? What would we do? What *should* we do? What if the discussion about smallpox eradication never included the reality the investment would be recouped every two months? What if no one talked about the 40% annual return on investment? What if we all kept pretending eradicating smallpox would just be too darn expensive and that it’s just one of those ugly facts of life we just have to deal with until we die? **This is where the conversation about basic income needs to change.** A $3 trillion napkin-math price tag does not reflect a vaccine’s true value. The fact that it’s not even its true price tag doesn’t even really matter ([Note: its true price tag is more like $1 trillion after consolidation and elimination of many existing cash-replaceable federal programs](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com)) because even at $3 trillion instead of $1 trillion, **it’s still an *ounce* instead of a *pound***. Poverty is a disease. It’s an illness that even doctors are beginning to recognize as something that requires [the prescription of cash](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLRT0bvaz98&ref=scottsantens.com) in order to successfully treat its many associated diseases: > “I was treating their bodies, but not their social situations. And especially not their income, which seemed to be the biggest barrier to their health improving. The research evidence was pretty clear on this. Income, poverty, is intimately connected to my patients’ health. In fact, poverty is more important to my low-income patients than smoking, high cholesterol, high-blood pressure, obesity, salt, or soda pop. Poverty wreaks havoc on my patients’ bodies. A 17% increased risk of heart disease; more than 100% increased risk of diabetes; 60% higher rates of depression; higher rates of lung, oral, cervical cancer; higher rates of lung disease like asthma and emphysema… It became pretty clear to me I was treating all of \[my patients’\] health issues except for the most important one — their poverty.” — [Dr. Gary Bloch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLRT0bvaz98&ref=scottsantens.com) We can do more than continually treat poverty’s many economically and physically expensive symptoms. We can eradicate it entirely with a [social vaccine](https://cphe.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/social-vaccine-2006.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) designed to immunize against it. > A social vaccine can be defined as, ‘actions that address social determinants and social inequities in society, which act as a precursor to the public health problem being addressed’. While the social vaccine cannot be specific to any disease or problem, it can be adapted as an intervention for any public health response. The aim of the social vaccine is to promote equity and social justice that will inoculate the society through action on social determinants of health. Basic income is a tested social vaccine. It’s been found to [increase equity and general welfare](http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2014/dec/18/incomes-scheme-transforms-lives-poor?ref=scottsantens.com). It has been found to [reduce hospitalizations by 8.5%](http://basicincome.org.uk/2013/08/health-forget-mincome-poverty/?ref=scottsantens.com) in just a few years through reduced stress and work injuries. It’s been found to [increase birth weights through increased maternal nutrition](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1360980/?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s been found to [decrease crime rates by 40% and reduce malnourishment by 30%](http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/briefings/data/000163?ref=scottsantens.com). [Intrinsic motivation is cultivated](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y&ref=scottsantens.com). Students do better in school. Bargaining positions increase. Economic activity increases. [Entrepreneurs are born](https://www.givedirectly.org/blog-post.html?id=5453927471971916970&ref=scottsantens.com). With experiment after experiment, from smaller [unconditional cash transfers](http://www.princeton.edu/~joha/publications/Haushofer%5FShapiro%5FPolicy%5FBrief%5F2013.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) to [full-on basic incomes](http://www.thebigpush.net/uploads/2/2/6/8/22682672/basic%5Fincome%5Fprograms%5Fand%5Fpilots%5Ffebruary%5F3%5F2014.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), the results point in [positive directions across multiple measures](http://www.princeton.edu/~joha/publications/Haushofer%5FShapiro%5FPolicy%5FBrief%5F2013.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) when incomes are unconditionally increased. > ***Universal basic income is a social vaccine for the disease of poverty.*** We can keep spending [**trillions every year**](https://medium.com/@2noame/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a?ref=scottsantens.com) to treat this disease and its many symptoms, or we can choose to eradicate poverty as we did smallpox through [a mass social vaccination program known as basic income](http://uniter.ca/view/its-time-for-a-universal-basic-income-in-manitoba?ref=scottsantens.com). It costs real money for us to look the other way on poverty. Unlike smallpox and other diseases we can vaccinate ourselves against, the costs of poverty can be more invisible. We don’t get bills in the mail from Poverty, Inc. telling us each month how much we owe, but we still pay these bills because they are included in our many *other* bills. When we pay $10,000 in taxes instead of $7,000 because of welfare and health care, that’s in large part a $3,000 poverty bill. When we pay $500 a month instead $400 on our private health insurance premiums, that’s a $100 poverty bill. When we pay $50 on a shirt instead of $45 because of theft, that’s a $5 poverty bill. When we’re taxed a percentage of our homes to pay for prisons, that’s a poverty bill. What other examples can you think of personally? What might we all be spending on poverty every day? These poverty bills are all around us, but we’re just not seeing them as they are. And let’s not ignore the lack of opportunity bills either. If just one Einstein right now is working 60 hours a week in two jobs just to survive, instead of propelling the entire world forward with another General Theory of Relativity… that loss is truly incalculable. How can we measure the costs of lost innovation? Of businesses never started? Of visions never realized? These are the full costs of not implementing universal basic income, [and they will only *increase* as technology reduces our need for work](http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/technology-labor-automation-robotics-by-nouriel-roubini-2014-12?ref=scottsantens.com) as long as we continue requiring the little work that’s left in exchange for income. These are the full costs of being penny-wise and pound-foolish by not socially vaccinating ourselves against poverty. These are the full costs of continuing to opt for a pound of cure instead of an ounce of prevention. So now, let us consider a new question. Is the question for us to answer in the 21st century, “Can we afford basic income?” **Or is the question,** **“Can we** **afford no basic income?”** --- ***Special thanks to Arjun Banker, Albert Wenger, Danielle Texeira, Robert F. Greene, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** [*Would you like to see your name here too?*](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Why should adults with kids get more basic income? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/why-should-adults-with-kids-get-more-basic-income-child-allowances/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T00:38:03.000Z This is a question that shows a particular perspective in the very way it's framed. What about this question instead: **"Why should kids get basic incomes too, and not just adults?"** They might look like they are basically the same, but they contain different viewpoints. Here's the deal. I advocate a universal basic income of $1,000 per adult and $300 per kid per month. [That's my suggestion as a starting point](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com), and I think the partial basic income for kids is [*extremely important*](http://apps.tcf.org/seven-lessons-about-child-poverty?ref=scottsantens.com). If you view a partial basic income of $300/mo per kid as a bonus for some adults, not others, and nothing for kids, you might view it as unfair. If you view a partial basic income of $300/mo for kids as being for the kids themselves, while all adults earn $1,000, you might view it as entirely fair. So, as is not entirely uncommon, it depends on how we look at it. I want to make sure we understand each of these perspectives and how both can think of themselves as being the fair one, and the other the unfair one, so when we debate about this in the years ahead, we can better understand each other. **Perspective A: (Fair)** - Adult without child: $1,000 - Adult with child: $1,000 - Child: $300 **Perspective B: (Fair)** - Adult with child: $1,300 - Adult without child: $1,300 - Child: $0 **Perspective A's view of B: (Unfair)** - Adult with child: $1,000 - Adult without child: $1,300 - Child: $300 **Perspective B's view of A: (Unfair)** - Adult with child: $1,300 - Adult without child: $1,000 - Child: $0 It is hopefully apparent that both A and B both look fair, and each view's of the other doesn't. So where's the key difference? What's the belief at the center of each perspective? The difference I think is how one looks primarily at kids as being either a human being or a choice. What do I mean? Well first, let's understand that parents require more resources because kids consume more resources. They too eat. They drink water. They use electricity. They require an amount above and beyond the adult's requirement, because without it, [the adult and the child both would be impoverished](http://familiesusa.org/product/federal-poverty-guidelines?ref=scottsantens.com). If we accept that as fair, and then give more to childless adults too, the cost of UBI jumps from $3 trillion to $3.5 trillion ($1,300/mo per adult and none for kids), and it no longer eliminates poverty for larger households. So it costs more and doesn't work as well. Then, if those childless adults become parents, they lose access to resources and become worse off, which again can result in those households living in poverty, which is exactly what we don't want. If you personally feel people should be effectively punished for having kids or rewarded for not having them, it's likely you see it as a personal choice and one to be paid for personally. It's a fair point, but to me that perspective almost views kids as pets or even objects instead of people. Like it's their own fault for adopting a dog, because dogs cost money and basic income is not meant for dog food. And I totally agree with this. Basic incomes should not be increased for pet ownership. **But kids aren't dogs**. Kids require food. And for the same reason adults should have their basic needs covered, children should too, because they too are human beings who also require their own resources to live. I just don't think it's the same thing to say that because someone went out and got themselves a kid like they could have a pet, that their access to resources should not be sufficiently increased because it was their *choice*. For one, oftentimes, there's no choice involved at all. Plenty of people get pregnant without choosing to do so. But more importantly, once a kid is born, that kid needs food, and because the parent also needs food, that parent needs more food to supply to the child who can't really supply it themselves. Giving nothing to kids, or more to those without kids in an attempt to be more fair, does nothing for those who then have kids. They're worse off, and so are the kids. And then [so are the rest of us](http://www.urban.org/publications/901032.html?ref=scottsantens.com). The main point to understand here is that kids cost money... [lots of money](http://money.cnn.com/2013/08/14/pf/cost-children/index.html?ref=scottsantens.com). > It will cost an estimated **$241,080** for a middle-income couple to raise a child born last year for 18 years, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report released Wednesday. That's up almost 3% from 2011 and doesn't even include the cost of college. . > The biggest price tag is for families in the urban Northeast earning $105,360 or more. They will spend **$446,100**, much more than the national average, according to the report. Meanwhile, families earning less than $61,590 a year in rural areas will spend the least, at **$143,160**. This means that even families spending the least, are spending **$8,000 per year per kid**. Since a partial basic income for kids of almost $4,000 would be about half this, that means such an amount would in no way make kids suddenly *profitable* to have. In addition we know that [poorer families prioritize their spending more on their kids than more affluent families](http://policypress.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1332/policypress/9781861345783.001.0001/upso-9781861345783-chapter-12?ref=scottsantens.com), so concerns that the money will be wasted are unsupported. We also know from cash transfer programs all over the world, that giving money to parents for each kid, does not actually result in the fears of welfare queen baby factories that an unfortunate percentage of people hold. ![International study](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/58HWtBs.png) *Source: [Center for Global Development](http://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/impact-conditional-cash-transfer-health.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)* If we are to accept this evidence, would we in any way wish 99.8% of our fellow citizens to suffer by not providing an additional partial basic income for kids so that 0.2% of our fellow citizens don't have an extra kid? Is that where our priorities should lie? But that's not even where the evidence trail ends. [According to the WHO, there's also evidence basic income could reduce long-term fertility rates](http://www.who.int/alliance-hpsr/alliancehpsr%5Fdfidevidencepaper.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). ![WHO report](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/waQZLav.png) So here we are worried about an explosion of kids, and not only does the evidence contradict this, it also supports the possibility of fewer kids over time. Finally, the idea of not providing an additional amount for kids such that parents are effectively punished for having them and childless adults are effectively rewarded, is something that would be extremely less likely to pass as policy. Why? Just look at all of our current policies and our rhetoric. It's all about families. There's just no seemingly conceivable way a basic income guarantee is going to be passed into law that steps on families in favor of single adults and childless couples. That would only be possible if suddenly everyone started demonizing "hard-working families", and we all started elevating the idea of "virtuous singles" and "childless champions" or something. Just how likely is that? And also, is it something we even want? ![Parents and global warming](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/aDhcLiE.png) *Source: [Having Kids Probably Won't Destroy the Planet](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/05/having-kids-wont-destroy-the-planet/370798/?ref=scottsantens.com)* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Potential Effects of a Universal Basic Income Guarantee on Student Loans URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-potential-effects-of-a-universal-basic-income-guarantee-on-student-loans/ Last updated: 2023-10-27T21:51:01.000Z Yes, it's true. I actually made this post's Futurama-inspired image recently to celebrate my life's most recent milestone at age thirty-seven, and [it climbed to the front page of Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/2tcsi0/and%5Fnow%5Fi%5Fcan%5Fdie/?ref=scottsantens.com). The fact it was upvoted by almost 4,000 people I think says something. And what is that something? **There are a lot of people out there with student loans who think they will never pay them off.** Coincidentally, college tuition is also [in the news recently thanks to President Obama looking to make community college free](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/liberate-41-million-ameri%5Fb%5F6547510.html?ref=scottsantens.com). All of this got me thinking, *"How exactly might universal basic income affect college students and graduates?"* ### Increased Discretionary Income The first thing I thought when I finally paid off my student loans was not so much the elation of having achieved something, but that *I just got a raise.* I've had at least $100 every month subtracted from my earnings for two decades, and with this burden finally gone, I now have over $100 more to spend every month. This should be obvious, but I don't know how obvious it really is. Right now when a student graduates from college, [they are losing about $242 per month ( on average) out of their earnings to this debt](http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2014/06/19-typical-student-loan-debt-akers?ref=scottsantens.com). Meanwhile, [16.5% are paying about $450 and 8.5% are paying about $750 or more](http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/my-money/2013/01/30/how-much-student-loan-debt-is-too-much?ref=scottsantens.com). This is money not being spent on restaurant meals, or [movie theaters](http://io9.com/2014-had-the-lowest-movie-ticket-sales-since-1995-1676530230?ref=scottsantens.com), or concerts, or new clothing, or vacations, or gifts, or services, or art, or furniture, or cars, or home appliances, or home improvements, or even homes. [*This is money not being spent into the economy*.](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/basic-costs-squeeze-families-002900254.html?ref=scottsantens.com) In other words, and most importantly, [**this is money not being spent to create each other's incomes**.](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html?ref=scottsantens.com#.U6x1rLFWjBZ) Student debt, which now totals [$1.3 trillion](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/liberate-41-million-ameri%5Fb%5F6547510.html?ref=scottsantens.com), is a massive drag on [our consumer economy](http://dmarron.com/2010/06/25/consumer-spending-is-60-of-the-economy-not-70/?ref=scottsantens.com). Without discretionary income above and beyond the basics and school loans, this economy will continue to underperform because customers are unable to actually consume what they otherwise could. And the effect of consumers being unable to consume in a consumer economy is a shrinking economy. It means lost jobs and lower wages. It means the wastefulness of producing nonpurchasable goods and creation of services few can ever buy or use. A basic income will reduce the burden for those who have already taken out these loans, and the effect will be increased discretionary income for everyone paying student loans, and through this, greater consumption and economic growth. *But how will basic income affect those who haven't yet taken out any loans?* ### Decreased Student Loan Sizes It's not true for everyone, but it's true for many, that the loans taken out for college involve room and board expenses. Sure tuition might be $20,000 which is bad enough, but if we're not living with our families, we have to take out more than this to cover living expenses. Because we need room and board too, this balloons loans to be greater than they need to be to only cover tuition. [How much are we spending on room and board](http://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content%5Fpayarticle%5Ftmpl.jhtml?articleId=10064&ref=scottsantens.com)? > The College Board reports that the average cost of room and board in 2013–2014 ranged from **$9,500** at four-year public schools to **$10,830** at private schools. That's *$1,170-$2,500 less* than a basic income of ***$12,000*** so... **Universal Basic Income is effectively Universal Room and Board.** Not only that, but because the average cost of books and supplies is [around **$1,200**](http://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content%5Fpayarticle%5Ftmpl.jhtml?articleId=10064&ref=scottsantens.com), this means that for college students, *a basic income would even cover those expenses as well.* With all of these non-tuition expenses covered, students with basic incomes looking to start college will be able to get smaller loan amounts that reflect *tuition only*. This not only means less debt for future students, it also means greater discretionary income after graduation because of this reduced debt, again helping to drive our consumer economy. Let's also not forget how some people are taking out student loans because they feel it's the only thing they *can* do. Unable to find a job, going back to school can be seen as the only way to get by. Effectively, people are currently treating college and graduate school as a means of avoiding homelessness. By reducing this pressure with basic income, an added effect could be reduced tuition rates, or at least slowed increases. Going to college should be about going to college, not about taking out loans to eat and sleep indoors. *And this leads to the next effect...* ### Changed Student Demand A basic income will mean that college becomes less of an absolute necessity. Some students now are only going to college because they believe they have no other choice to avoid living in poverty. The result is that college graduates unable to get jobs that use their degrees are [actively pushing high school graduates out of the labor market](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-06/college-grads-taking-low-wage-jobs-displace-less-educated?ref=scottsantens.com). The degrees many people are getting aren't actually being used, [because the jobs for them don't actually exist](http://mic.com/articles/108934/the-one-huge-problem-that-free-community-college-will-do-nothing-to-fix?ref=scottsantens.com), but [everyone still needs to have a college degree](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/02/11/the-rising-cost-of-not-going-to-college/?ref=scottsantens.com) if they want a real shot at the middle class. **This is part of the reason tuition has exploded and wages are stagnant.** ![Skills gap myth](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/aca68b77-a4f2-483e-aa7c-0039d320b49f/77593_large.png) *(Source: [Economic Policy Institute](http://www.epi.org/blog/still-no-sign-of-a-skills-mismatch-unemployment-is-elevated-across-the-board/?ref=scottsantens.com))* There is a greater supply of college and graduate degrees than jobs that seek these degrees. And this includes Science/Technology/Engineering/Math (STEM) degrees. You would think that the opposite is true, from what people are constantly claiming, but it's not. [The tech worker shortage doesn't really exist](http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-11-24/the-tech-worker-shortage-doesnt-really-exist?ref=scottsantens.com). > Salzman concluded in a paper released last year by the liberal Economic Policy Institute, real IT wages are about the same as they were in 1999\. Further, he and his co-authors found, only half of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) college graduates each year get hired into STEM jobs. “We don’t dispute the fact at all that Facebook (FB) and Microsoft (MSFT) would like to have more, cheaper workers,” says Salzman’s co-author Daniel Kuehn, now a research associate at the Urban Institute. “But that doesn’t constitute a shortage.” So the reason we hear people crying out for a need for more STEM degrees, is because for the most part, they get paid more. As a business owner, if you want to pay people less, you're going to want to increase the pool of available workers. [That's what the claims of STEM shortages and the "skills gap" are about, wanting to pay workers less.](http://mic.com/articles/108934/the-one-huge-problem-that-free-community-college-will-do-nothing-to-fix?ref=scottsantens.com) What this all means for basic income is that because it increases choice and decreases the belief of college being mandatory, college students can voluntarily attend college and pursue the degrees they wish to pursue. Those who find jobs will also be more likely to be paid what they are worth because of a reduced pool of available labor, instead of being paid less than they are worth thanks to an oversupply of available labor. *But won't a basic income also mean more people will want to attend college who otherwise couldn't?* I think it's likely we'll see *both* effects to some degree. Those who would otherwise feel forced to go to college *won't*, and those who wouldn't otherwise have the time or resources to go to college *might*. [They may also choose MOOCs instead](http://www.bdpa-detroit.org/portal/index.php?option=com%5Fcontent&view=article&id=57%3Amoocs-top-10-sites-for-free-education-with-elite-universities&catid=29%3Aeducation&Itemid=20&ref=scottsantens.com). Or they might also attend state colleges, community colleges, and technical schools at increased rates, while decreasing attendance of expensive private and out-of-state schools. If the net effect is that *fewer* people overall go to college, then because those who do will take out much smaller loans, the result will be both decreased tuition rates due to decreased demand and also graduates with much smaller debt burdens. If the net effect is that *more* people overall go to college, tuition might increase for some schools, but debt burdens will still be lower because of students no longer requiring money for room and board, or books and supplies. In either case, a basic income will greatly help students. We just can't say to what degree yet. It may be a lot. Or it may be a *whole lot*. Whether and how the net enrollment rate ends up increasing or decreasing in a world of basic income, the extra income a UBI provides will function as universal room and board, *and* universal books and supplies. It'll also mean decreased student loan burdens for those already graduated. Therefore, it'll mean lower loans for all students, and universal raises for all graduates. ***And that's exactly what our consumer economy needs.*** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### What We Can Learn About Systems from W. Edwards Deming URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/what-we-can-learn-about-systems-from-w-edwards-deming-the-new-economics/ Last updated: 2023-12-20T17:32:52.000Z Japan arose like a phoenix from the ruins of World War II to quickly become the second most powerful economy in the world. This unbelievable feat has been called an “[economic miracle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese%5Fpost-war%5Feconomic%5Fmiracle?ref=scottsantens.com).” **Do you know how they did it?** The answer to this question may surprise you. It involves a single American name and a single visualization. The name is [W. Edwards Deming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W.%5FEdwards%5FDeming?ref=scottsantens.com). The image is this flowchart: ![Production viewed as a system](https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/1400/1*qNweq2R7eW6O7zYaGJEsgg.jpeg) *“Production viewed as a system” — W. Edwards Deming* ## The Lessons of W. Edwards Deming In [*The New Economics*](http://amzn.to/28S7ZeV?ref=scottsantens.com), Deming describes how this chart was on the blackboard of every conference with top management in Japan in 1950 and onward, and was seen by 80% of all owners of capital. It was used to teach their engineers. It was used to inform every part of the **system** of their roles in it. ### Deming Lesson #1: Systems Can you see how this one simple flowchart could be so miraculously transformative? **It’s a circle.** More than that, it’s an interconnected feedback loop designed for continual improvement. The aim of the entire production cycle is always increasing quality. Never stop improving. Never stop innovating. Never stop learning. Never stagnate. Never accept the status quo. Always do better. It begins and ends with ideas. Without ideas, there can be no improvements. It begins and ends with suppliers. Without raw materials, there can be nothing produced. It begins and ends with production. Without production, there can be nothing to distribute. And most important of all, it begins and ends with **consumers.** > The consumer is the most important part of the production line. Quality should be aimed at the needs of the consumer, present and future. — W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis Without consumers, there can be no system. Without listening to the consumer, there can be no improvements. Without being able to hear the consumer through their dollars, a system is destroyed. A system where consumers don’t exist or have no ability to consume, is truly pointless. As a whole, production seen as a cycle *reveals interdependence*. Every part of the loop is a part of the system, and every part works together with every other part for the benefit of the entire system that never stops improving. How exactly did Deming define a system? > A system is a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system. A system must have an aim. Without an aim, there is no system. The aim of the system must be clear to everyone in the system. The aim must include plans for the future. A system must be managed. It will not manage itself. Left to themselves, components become selfish, competitive, independent profit centers, and thus destroy the system. — W. Edwards Deming, The New Economics The year is 2015\. Our markets are globalized. Our technology is advancing exponentially. Our production is increasingly automated. We have come a long way, but is our economy managed like a system? Is our government? Are we working together? What is our aim? Do we even have one? What is our plan for the future? **Are we even asking these questions?** ### Deming Lesson #2: Variation ![Follow the man not the dog](https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/800/1*o8ZRdj4FP8MbxgbeMdANFQ.gif) *“Follow the man, not the dog.” — Neil deGrasse Tyson* Deming considered knowledge of variation key to management of systems, and so in possibly the most important demonstration ever devised, he taught his students the unavoidable reality of random variation. In his seminars, he would bring boxes of colored beads and a paddle. For every 400 white beads, there were 100 red beads, and people would be given the job of using the paddle to capture the beads 50 at a time. All results were recorded. The goal with each swipe of paddle through beads, was to get as few red beads as possible. This was known as the **“[Red Bead Experiment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WeTaLRb-Bs&feature=youtu.be&t=4m29s&ref=scottsantens.com).”** Those who scooped up the most red beads were seen as doing a poor job. Those who scooped up the most white beads were seen as doing a good job. Too many red beads, and one would be punished. Mostly white beads, and one would be rewarded. It should be clear that no matter what anyone did, there would always be red beads drawn, because red beads were part of the system. They would only randomly vary in quantity. Because red beads were built into the system, those taking part in the experiment were rewarded or punished based purely on natural random variation. No amount of reward or punishment would alter the 4:1 ratio of white beads to red beads. This ratio was set by Deming before the lesson even began. The rest was luck. Without understanding systemic variation, aside from the futility of reward and punishment, we also make two common and extremely costly mistakes: > Mistake 1: To react to an outcome as if it came from a special cause, when actually it came from common causes of variation. > Mistake 2: To treat an outcome as if it came from common causes of variation, when actually it came from a special cause. \[The New Economics\] Imagine firing one employee and handing a bonus to another, without knowing neither act will result in any difference. This is Mistake 1. Imagine getting sick and thinking it’s the flu without realizing you just experienced food poisoning. This is Mistake 2. Recognizing and avoiding these mistakes is vital to systemic improvement. ### Deming Lesson #3: Knowledge Nothing can be improved without knowledge. The existence of a hammer does nothing for a human being without understanding how to use it. Facts are just facts. Data is just data. Information is just information. It’s the questions behind our observations that create knowledge through theory. This is how the scientific method works. Noticing that an apple falls is just data. Wondering why it falls, is what leads to formulating the laws of gravity. A system can not be improved without the application of knowledge through theory. If we learn something new, and don’t apply this new knowledge, our systems can’t change for the better. To improve a system we must ask questions, develop theories, test the theories, and apply the theories. This is how systems may be continually improved —\*\* scientific thinking.\*\* > At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes — an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense. — [Carl Sagan](http://www.todayinsci.com/S/Sagan%5FCarl/SaganCarl-Quotations.htm?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Deming Lesson #4: Psychology We are human beings. To improve systems created by human beings, we must understand human beings. We must understand that within a system of human beings, there will always be variation — everyone is different — and that if we wish to improve our systems, we must study the human mind and apply the knowledge we gain to our systems to produce better outcomes. The study of motivation is an important example of this. There is extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. The former involves being given something to do something, and the latter is when something is its own reward. We know how these work, but we don’t leverage this knowledge within our economy. [**Example:** Paying someone to do something can actually destroy motivation.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&ref=scottsantens.com) > This is one of the most robust findings in social science, and also one of the most ignored. I spent the last couple of 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… That’s actually fine for many kinds of 20th century tasks. But for 21st century tasks, that mechanistic, reward-and-punishment approach doesn’t work, often doesn’t work, and often does harm. — [Dan Pink](https://www.ted.com/talks/dan%5Fpink%5Fon%5Fmotivation/transcript?ref=scottsantens.com) Meanwhile, the relatively new study of neurogenesis provides a truly incredible example of the damage we are doing. [**Example:** Poverty and extreme inequality destroy minds](http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the%5Freinvention%5Fof%5Fthe%5Fself/?ref=scottsantens.com). > The structure of our brain, from the details of our dendrites to the density of our hippocampus, is incredibly influenced by our surroundings. Put a primate under stressful conditions, and its brain begins to starve. It stops creating new cells. The cells it already has retreat inwards. The mind is disfigured. The social implications of this research are staggering. If boring environments, stressful noises, and the primate’s particular slot in the dominance hierarchy all shape the architecture of the brain — and Gould’s team has shown that they do — then the playing field isn’t level. Poverty and stress aren’t just an idea: they are an anatomy. Some brains never even have a chance. If as humans, we are to improve our systems in the present and for the future, we must seek out these kinds of scientific findings and actually apply them. These four primary lessons are what Deming referred to as a \*“System of Profound Knowledge.\*” This system provides a map for understanding human systems. **So now that we’ve got such a map, what do we do with it?** **... Continued in "[How We Can Transform America’s Broken Economic System to Work for EVERYONE](https://medium.com/@2noame/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a?ref=scottsantens.com)**" --- ![book sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/images/I/41jfYXp7NzL._SL250_.jpg) You can learn more about systems thinking and how to continually improve *quality* for everyone by reading **"[The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education](http://amzn.to/28S7ZeV?ref=scottsantens.com)"** by W. Edwards Deming --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### For Those Who Believe a Basic Income is Morally Wrong URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/for-those-who-believe-a-basic-income-is-morally-wrong/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T00:42:38.000Z You obviously have very strong feelings of morality, and especially the "rightness" of your own morality, so I'm certainly not about to attempt to change your mind, or to show how [basic income can be seen as somehow being moral](http://www.pieria.co.uk/articles/moral%5Faspects%5Fof%5Fbasic%5Fincome?ref=scottsantens.com) in your eyes. However, I would like to ask you a series of questions in response, if that's okay. **Question 1:** Would you agree that morality is not an absolute but something that exists along a spectrum, such that things aren't necessarily always right or wrong, but degrees of right and wrong, with some things being more right or more wrong than others? The popular example of this type of thinking is the idea of facing the choice between stealing and saving the life of a member of your family. Is it more wrong to steal food or medicine, or is it more wrong to let your family suffer or die? Now, I don't know your answer to this question, but if you do recognize that some things are more wrong than others, the question of basic income then becomes "Is basic income more wrong or less wrong than \_\_\_\_\_?" And this leads to the next question. **Question 2**: Can you think of any situations in which the choice between working and not working is again like the example above, in that your choice is between something wrong (not working in the labor market to earn an income), and something more wrong? I can't answer this question for you, but I can provide some examples that would fit for others. [Karl Widerquist](http://works.bepress.com/widerquist/?ref=scottsantens.com) has thoughtfully provided [a list of possible objections](http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1062&context=widerquist&ref=scottsantens.com) in chapter 4 of [Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1137274727/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1137274727&linkCode=as2&tag=theheaandthet-20&linkId=EKHRTYW7GMBFXLGB&ref=scottsantens.com), 14 of which I will share here: **An objection to the goal or some of the goals of the joint project or of a specific task:** One person might believe that the economic system is wrong, because she believes (even if heavily regulated) that it is too materialistic and detrimental to human wellbeing. Another person might believe that the economic system is wrong because it is overly regulated because society is too concerned with environmentalism or with solidarity and not concerned enough with the flourishing of the strong. **An unrecognized or unrewarded contribution:** Some individuals do things that benefit the community but go unrewarded (e.g. caring for children, volunteering, producing art); others might think they benefit the community when they do not. Some people might choose to fulfill care responsibilities rather than recognized contribution without considering whether it should count as a social contribution. **Insufficient pay (under-recognized or under-rewarded contribution):** Some people might have access to jobs they would be willing to do if the pay or the recognition was reasonable to them, but do not find the jobs offered to them to have sufficient rewards. Anyone might think they are underpaid, but only some (probably mostly those near the bottom of the income distribution) object so strongly that they would rather live off a social minimum than accept employment. **Difficult or unpleasant working conditions:** Laborers might object that their contributory obligation requires them to perform relatively difficult work, while others are (for whatever reason) allowed to satisfy their contributory obligation with more pleasant possibilities. **Unfulfilling opportunities:** People whose only job opportunities are relatively boring, low-status, or unfulfilling might decide to refuse unless they are offered something better. **Insufficient opportunities and unemployment:** Some people might want to contribute in a way that is well rewarded by the community, but for whatever reason can’t get that job. Some people might have lost their job or be unable to find the kind of job they are looking for. Some might lack the required ability, and some might simply lack recognition of their ability. **Improving skills:** Some people would like to drop out of participation temporarily to improve their skills or to begin a project that will allow them to reenter with more desirable opportunities. Society might recognize some reimprovement of skill as a contribution, and so for this to be considered a refusal to cooperate the individual must be improving her skills in some unapproved or unrecognized manner. **Objection to hierarchy:** Some people might be perfectly willing to perform the functions they are offered but might object to the hierarchical structure in which those jobs are placed. But of course, it is always possible that someone might object that the structure of society is not hierarchical enough. **Objection to the specific place in a hierarchy offered to an individual:** Some people might not be opposed to hierarchy in general, but object to the low position in the hierarchy that their functions place them. Individuals might have good or bad reasons for believing they merit a higher place. **Objection to the standard of fairness of the system (including the role of luck, discrimination, nepotism, social advantage, etc.):** Any system with different roles for people and an imperfect ability to give maximal opportunities to everyone will run into somebody with a legitimate complaint about bad luck. Discrimination and social disadvantage are not simply bad luck; they are socially created arbitrary factors. They create similarly arbitrary outcomes that could inspire a similar unwillingness to participate. There might also be people who accept only unfairness in their favor, such as racists who are not willing to cooperate in any project that includes other races. Society might try to reduce these problems, but it is unlikely that they will have the ability to eliminate them. **Objection to the required level of effort:** A person might believe that the effort demanded of her is larger than necessary even if others work hard. Or, she might believe that no one else works hard enough or that her extra efforts are not rewarded sufficiently. **Grievance:** Someone might refuse social cooperation because she believes that she or a member of her family had been wrongly punished or wrongly deprived of rights, property, or privilege. **Insufficient range of options:** A person might refuse to participate just because there aren’t enough varied choices of how to participate. I hesitate to include this objection, because presumably most people who object to the range of options have some specific objection to each offer in the range of options. However, it is conceivable that someone might refuse an option they genuinely like just because they believe they have too few options to choose from. **Mental or physical disorder:** Some people might appear lazy, gaming, or weak-willed who actually suffer from depression or some other mental disorder that inhibits their ability to interact with others and hold a position. Physical disorders (whether recognized or not) might have a similar effect. If you think none of these possibilities have or could ever possibly apply to you, then it will probably continue to make sense to believe in the absolute moral rightness of work and the moral wrongness of not working. But if you think any of these could apply, and that the possibility exists for the moral wrongness of a job to outweigh the moral wrongness of not working, then perhaps enabling the option of not working empowers people to make that choice? If you faced a choice between: - Working for someone who greatly injured or even killed someone you love - Working for a company that sells snake oil - Working for a business that dumps toxic waste in your backyard - Working with other workers who make your life miserable - Working for slave wages insufficient to cover your basic needs - Working a job you love for zero pay, making you unable to live despite all your hard work - Working a job that promises a shortened life, like breathing in asbestos and guaranteeing cancer - Not working until you can find a job or situation that is **none of the above** Would you appreciate that last choice as an *option*? If a side-effect of enabling that option of not working is that it directly results in everyone working suddenly earning larger incomes than anyone not working, then does that not improve upon the current situation of people working earning the same incomes of people not working? Isn't that then too an example of something that is more right or less wrong than what we have right now? **Right now someone can get $12,000 for not working while someone working gets the same. Basic income would double the pay of the worker.** If another side-effect of enabling the option of not working is that it directly results in everyone who pretends to work in their job but actually gets paid to do nothing suddenly gaining the ability to quit their job, while also enabling those who really want to work but can't find work to fill these same jobs, in a way that these jobs are actually done and done happily/well instead of just pretending or done unhappily/poorly, doesn't this too provide an example of an outcome that is more right and less wrong than we have right now? **Do we want to pay people to do nothing at work while preventing those who want to actually work from working?** If you can consider all of these questions and still feel as strongly as you did before you considered them of how wrong basic income is compared to anything/everything else, then that's that and I have no desire to change your mind. Nor will I pass judgment. But if you can consider all of these questions and feel a bit less strongly, concluding that there are possibly some circumstances no matter how remote, where you yourself would not want to be forced to do something even more wrong in your eyes than not working, then I think that's really something to consider in your judgment of [the idea of basic income and those who support it](http://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/?ref=scottsantens.com). --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### How We Can Transform America’s Broken Economic System to Work for EVERYONE URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-with-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-17T17:50:26.000Z ## No matter how poor or rich, ALL of our lives can be better in the 21st century… if we unbreak the system Japan arose like a phoenix from the ruins of World War II to quickly become the second most powerful economy in the world. This unbelievable feat has been called an “[economic miracle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese%5Fpost-war%5Feconomic%5Fmiracle?ref=scottsantens.com).” **Do you know how they did it?** The answer to this question may surprise you. It involves a single American name and a single visualization. The name is [W. Edwards Deming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W.%5FEdwards%5FDeming?ref=scottsantens.com). The image is this flowchart: ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*qNweq2R7eW6O7zYaGJEsgg.jpeg) “Production viewed as a system” — W. Edwards Deming # The Lessons of W. Edwards Deming In [*The New Economics*](http://amzn.to/28S7ZeV?ref=scottsantens.com), Deming describes how this chart was on the blackboard of every conference with top management in Japan in 1950 and onward, and was seen by 80% of all owners of capital. It was used to teach their engineers. It was used to inform every part of the ***system*** of their roles in it. ## Deming Lesson #1: Systems Can you see how this one simple flowchart could be so miraculously transformative? **It’s a circle.** More than that, it’s an interconnected feedback loop designed for continual improvement. The aim of the entire production cycle is *always* increasing *quality.* Never stop improving. Never stop innovating. Never stop learning. Never stagnate. Never accept the status quo. Always do better. It begins and ends with ideas. Without ideas, there can be no improvements. It begins and ends with suppliers. Without raw materials, there can be nothing produced. It begins and ends with production. Without production, there can be nothing to distribute. And most important of all, it begins and ends with **consumers.** > *“The consumer is the most important part of the production line. Quality should be aimed at the needs of the consumer, present and future.” — W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis* Without consumers, there can be no system. Without listening to the consumer, there can be no improvements. Without being able to hear the consumer through their dollars, a system is destroyed. A system where consumers don’t exist or have no ability to consume, is truly pointless. As a whole, production seen as a cycle *reveals interdependence.* Every part of the loop is a part of the system, and every part works together with every other part for the benefit of the entire system that never stops improving. **How exactly did Deming define a system?** > A system is a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system. > > A system must have an aim. Without an aim, there is no system. The aim of the system must be clear to everyone in the system. The aim must include plans for the future. > > A system must be managed. It will not manage itself. Left to themselves, components become selfish, competitive, independent profit centers, and thus destroy the system. — W. Edwards Deming, The New Economics The year is 2015\. Our markets are globalized. Our technology is advancing exponentially. Our production is increasingly automated. We have come a long way, but is our economy managed like a system? Is our government? Are we working together? What is our aim? Do we even have one? What is our plan for the future? **Are we even asking these questions?** ## Deming Lesson #2: Variation ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1120/1*o8ZRdj4FP8MbxgbeMdANFQ.gif) “Follow the man, not the dog.” — Neil deGrasse Tyson Deming considered knowledge of variation key to management of systems, and so in possibly the most important demonstration ever devised, he taught his students the unavoidable reality of random variation. In his seminars, he would bring boxes of colored beads and a paddle. For every 400 white beads, there were 100 red beads, and people would be given the job of using the paddle to capture the beads 50 at a time. All results were recorded. The goal with each swipe of paddle through beads, was to get as few red beads as possible. This was known as the “[**Red Bead Experiment**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WeTaLRb-Bs&feature=youtu.be&t=4m29s&ref=scottsantens.com)**.**” Those who scooped up the most red beads were seen as doing a poor job. Those who scooped up the most white beads were seen as doing a good job. Too many red beads, and one would be punished. Mostly white beads, and one would be rewarded. It should be clear that no matter what anyone did, there would always be red beads drawn, because red beads were part of the system. They would only randomly vary in quantity. Because red beads were built into the system, those taking part in the experiment were rewarded or punished based purely on natural random variation. No amount of reward or punishment would alter the 4:1 ratio of white beads to red beads. This ratio was set by Deming before the lesson even began. The rest was luck. Without understanding systemic variation, aside from the futility of reward and punishment, we also make two common and extremely costly mistakes: > Mistake 1: To react to an outcome as if it came from a special cause, when actually it came from common causes of variation. > > Mistake 2: To treat an outcome as if it came from common causes of variation, when actually it came from a special cause. \[The New Economics\] Imagine firing one employee and handing a bonus to another, without knowing neither act will result in any difference. This is Mistake 1. Imagine getting sick and thinking it’s the flu without realizing you just experienced food poisoning. This is Mistake 2. Recognizing and avoiding these mistakes is vital to systemic improvement. ## Deming Lesson #3: Knowledge Nothing can be improved without knowledge. The existence of a hammer does nothing for a human being without understanding how to use it. Facts are just facts. Data is just data. Information is just information. It’s the questions behind our observations that create knowledge through theory. This is how the scientific method works. Noticing that an apple falls is just data. Wondering why it falls, is what leads to formulating the laws of gravity. A system can not be improved without the application of knowledge through theory. If we learn something new, and don’t apply this new knowledge, our systems can’t change for the better. To improve a system we must ask questions, develop theories, test the theories, and apply the theories. This is how systems may be continually improved — **scientific thinking.** > “At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes — an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense.” — [Carl Sagan](http://www.todayinsci.com/S/Sagan%5FCarl/SaganCarl-Quotations.htm?ref=scottsantens.com) ## Deming Lesson #4: Psychology We are human beings. To improve systems created by human beings, we must understand human beings. We must understand that within a system of human beings, there will always be variation — everyone is different — and that if we wish to improve our systems, we must study the human mind and apply the knowledge we gain to our systems to produce better outcomes. The study of motivation is an important example of this. There is extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. The former involves being given something to do something, and the latter is when something is its own reward. We know how these work, but we don’t leverage this knowledge within our economy. [**Example:** Paying someone to do something can actually destroy motivation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&ref=scottsantens.com). > “This is one of the most robust findings in social science, and also one of the most ignored. I spent the last couple of 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… That’s actually fine for many kinds of 20th century tasks. But for 21st century tasks, that mechanistic, reward-and-punishment approach doesn’t work, often doesn’t work, and often does harm.” — [Dan Pink](https://www.ted.com/talks/dan%5Fpink%5Fon%5Fmotivation/transcript?ref=scottsantens.com) Meanwhile, the relatively new study of neurogenesis provides a truly incredible example of the damage we are doing. [**Example:** Poverty and extreme inequality destroy minds](http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the%5Freinvention%5Fof%5Fthe%5Fself/?ref=scottsantens.com) > The structure of our brain, from the details of our dendrites to the density of our hippocampus, is incredibly influenced by our surroundings. Put a primate under stressful conditions, and its brain begins to starve. It stops creating new cells. The cells it already has retreat inwards. The mind is disfigured. > > The social implications of this research are staggering. If boring environments, stressful noises, and the primate’s particular slot in the dominance hierarchy all shape the architecture of the brain — and Gould’s team has shown that they do — then the playing field isn’t level. Poverty and stress aren’t just an idea: they are an anatomy. Some brains never even have a chance. If as humans, we are to improve our systems in the present and for the future, we must seek out these kinds of scientific findings and actually apply them. These four primary lessons are what Deming referred to as a “System of Profound Knowledge.” This system provides a map for understanding human systems. **So now that we’ve got such a map, what do we do with it?** # Applying the System of Profound Knowledge Crime, poor health, racism, poverty, extreme inequality, unnecessary jobs, wasted productivity, depressed economic growth, environmental degradation, climate change — *these are all red beads.* We can choose to attempt to reduce these red beads by spending trillions of dollars on imprisonment, on health care, on quantitative easing, on bureaucracy, on bailouts, on fighting epidemics, on battling floods, ad infinitum. Or we can choose to *produce* fewer red beads in the first place. **How do we produce fewer red beads?** Producing fewer red beads is the responsibility of all of us. It can’t be accomplished by any one part of the system in competition against each other. It won’t just happen on its own. It requires systemic transformation. > *“I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s market place. But* *one day we must come to see that* ***an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring*** *.” —* [*MLK, Where do we go from here?*](http://www.famous-speeches-and-speech-topics.info/martin-luther-king-speeches/martin-luther-king-speech-where-do-we-go-from-here.htm?ref=scottsantens.com) > > *“In order to produce better systems, a society should be less concerned with producing material goods in increasing quantities than with producing people of a better quality — in other words, (human)* ***beings capable of producing these systems.*** *” —* [*Levi Strauss*](http://variationmatters.blogspot.com/2010/01/government-bureaucracy-should-practice.html?ref=scottsantens.com) If we wish to transform the U.S. to continually produce better outcomes, we must first understand its present state, and the outcomes the system is currently producing. ## The State of the Union: 2015 - Whereas **each generation used to be better off** than the previous generation, [that is no longer the case](http://billmoyers.com/2014/03/24/millennials-didnt-abandon-our-institutions-our-institutions-failed-them/?ref=scottsantens.com). - Child **poverty** is the [highest it’s been in 20 years](http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-child-poverty-20141021-story.html?ref=scottsantens.com). - The U.S. is 1 of only 4 countries in the world where [the **maternal mortality rate** is *rising* instead of falling](http://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/19/ina%5Fmay%5Fgaskin%5Fon%5Frising%5Fus?ref=scottsantens.com). - [Sixty years ago](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howard-steven-friedman/infant-mortality-rate-united-states%5Fb%5F1620664.html?ref=scottsantens.com), the U.S. had the 12th lowest **infant mortality rate** in the world. By 1990, we were 23rd. By 2008, we were 34th. [We are now 49**th**](http://www.geoba.se/population.php?pc=world&type=019&year=2015&st=crworld&asde=d&page=1&ref=scottsantens.com)**.** - **The 40-hour work week is gone**, [to the detriment of productivity](http://www.techvibes.com/blog/long-hours-less-productive-2014-04-29?ref=scottsantens.com). We work an average equivalent of 6 [to 8 more weeks per year](http://www.thenation.com/article/186425/work-speedups-have-consequences-boss-never-imagined?ref=scottsantens.com) than a generation go, with worse results. - The American middle class [has **not seen a raise** in 15 years](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-american-middle-class-hasnt-gotten-a-raise-in-15-years/?ref=scottsantens.com). - [Our middle class is 20% **poorer**](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/07/29/the-middle-class-is-20-percent-poorer-than-it-was-in-1984/?ref=scottsantens.com)than it was 30 years ago. - Middle class families are [increasingly spending **more on basic needs** while earning less](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/basic-costs-squeeze-families-002900254.html?ref=scottsantens.com). - For the first time in over 50 years, [the **majority** of our public school children are poor](http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/majority-of-us-public-school-students-are-in-poverty/2015/01/15/df7171d0-9ce9-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4%5Fstory.html?ref=scottsantens.com). - Our poorest 20% would now be better off [**in 10 other countries**](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/01/05/america%5Fs%5Fpoor%5Fvs%5Fthe%5Frest%5Fof%5Fthe%5Fworld.html?ref=scottsantens.com)**.** - Over 40[% of Americans are now living **paycheck to paycheck**](http://investor.springleaffinancial.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=882764&ref=scottsantens.com), so savings are practically nonexistent amongst any but the richest. - More than 1 **in 3** Americans have **debts and unpaid bills** that have been [reported to debt collectors](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/study-35-percent-us-facing-debt-collectors?ref=scottsantens.com). - **Hunger** among seniors is [up 81% since 20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwpIXwKBpyQ&ref=scottsantens.com)06. - The **gap** between those who eat well and those who don’t [has doubled](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/09/access-to-real-food-as-privilege/379482/?ref=scottsantens.com) in 10 years. - **Food banks** are now helping more than 46 million Americans to eat, and are overstretched to the point that 1 [in 6 is expected to fail](http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/08/18/3472568/disturbing-facts-american-hunger/?ref=scottsantens.com). - We are **losing entrepreneurs.** New business creation has gone from 13[% to under 8% in the last 30 years](http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/2012/05/number-of-new-firms-continues-to-slide-according-to-new-census-bureau-data?ref=scottsantens.com). > These are systemic issues. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1282/1*Xm9eVKZrlW9axRz7pJ8NIQ.png) In the 21st century, **full-time jobs are being replaced by part-time jobs.** This is not any one President in action. This is a systemic shift greatly influenced by advancing technology and growing automation of labor. It just increasingly takes less work to accomplish what we want to accomplish. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1308/1*ka_0wqiUYMCYHs_UiX77WQ.png) **The labor force participation rate peaked in 2000** and has been going nowhere but down ever since, despite continually rising productivity. Less human labor is needed now than ever before thanks to technology, and less American labor is possible thanks to globalization. Jobs are trending downward and have been for almost 20 years. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/800/1*a7YpWGwAwdG2w__IjRYB_A.gif) Source: [Pew Research Center](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/12/05/u-s-income-inequality-on-rise-for-decades-is-now-highest-since-1928/?ref=scottsantens.com) Meanwhile, U.S. income inequality has been skyrocketing for decades. [**Inequality is now the highest it’s been since 192**](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/12/05/u-s-income-inequality-on-rise-for-decades-is-now-highest-since-1928/?ref=scottsantens.com)**8 —** right before the Great Depression. The top 1% has again completely left behind the bottom 99% in [a new Gilded Age](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/may/08/thomas-piketty-new-gilded-age/?ref=scottsantens.com). ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*BcNEvJDuuVonwVvDv7YQvQ.png) [U.S. GDP inflation adjusted growth](http://www.multpl.com/us-gdp-inflation-adjusted/?ref=scottsantens.com) All of this and more in a time when our economy has **more than doubled in size,** and when a whopping 492 of the 1,645 billionaires in the world are American. In fact, if we totaled up the wealth of the top 400 Americans, it would exceed [**$2 trillion**](http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2014/0303/Forbes-richest-people-number-of-billionaires-up-significantly-video?ref=scottsantens.com)**.** This is equivalent to the total wealth of [**HALF**](http://www.cnbc.com/id/101038089?ref=scottsantens.com)of the entire United States. > ***What’s going on here?*** What’s going on is exactly what happens when systems aren’t managed as systems. Parts of the system are destructively competing against each other instead of creatively working together for the good of the entire system. One may be tempted to think that because GDP has more than doubled, this growth is evidence that the system is working. But is it really working if GDP could be even *higher*? ## The Depressing Effects of Inequality ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*xmod1kgDodAjYloe6PXr4g.png) Source: [OECD](http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/Focus-Inequality-and-Growth-2014.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) According to the OECD, thanks to inequality, all but three of these countries have lower GDP than they would otherwise have — [*even Denmark*](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2014/12/17/u-s-slides-again-as-denmark-tops-forbes-best-countries-for-business/?ref=scottsantens.com)*.* The U.S. economy may have grown by almost 30% in 20 years but it could have grown by *over 30*%. And that’s if we had just kept inequality the *same* as it was in 1985\. Had we *reduced* our inequality, our economy could have grown **by over 40% or even 50% or more since 1985.** > *“Policies that help to limit or reverse inequality may not only make societies less unfair, but also wealthier.” — OECD, 2014* So even if we’d just prevented inequality from growing, let alone exploding, *our GDP would be higher.* The rich would have more. The middle classes would have more. The poorest would have more. **We would all be wealthier.** But *decreasing* inequality would also engage economic multipliers for even greater growth. ## The Uplifting Effects of Economic Multipliers It has been calculated that [every $1 going to a low-wage worker adds $1.21 to GDP, whereas every $1 going to a high-income earner adds 39 cents](http://www.ips-dc.org/wall%5Fstreet%5Fbonuses%5Fand%5Fthe%5Fminimum%5Fwage/?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s **three times more economically stimulating** for a dollar to reach the hands of those with few dollars than those with many. And not only that but one shrinks the economy while the other *expands* it. But what if that $1 went instead to a worker in a research field, like a scientist or an engineer? [**The economy would be $5 better off**](http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/2014/12/16/a-black-hole-for-our-best-and-brightest/?ref=scottsantens.com)**.** **That’s** ***thirteen*** **times more economically stimulating** for a dollar to reach the hands of a researcher instead of a broker on Wall Street. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1140/1*RsR4myCxBSQwwukCJuQv_g.png) Policies like tax cuts and spending on infrastructure are thought by many to have the largest multiplier effects. They don’t. Instead, [**policies that put spending power into the hands of those with the least spending power, increases GDP most**](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-05-06/best-stimulus-package-may-be-food-stamps?ref=scottsantens.com)**.** With all of this data available to us, one would think we’d be throwing every dollar we could at researchers, unemployment benefits, and food stamps. Instead [our PhDs are being paid so little they have to increasingly rely on food stamps,](http://www.salon.com/2014/09/21/professors%5Fon%5Ffood%5Fstamps%5Fthe%5Fshocking%5Ftrue%5Fstory%5Fof%5Facademia%5Fin%5F2014/?ref=scottsantens.com) which [we are actually *reducing*, instead of increasing](http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/1/6/report-one-millionpeoplecouldlosefoodstampbenefitsinnextyear.html?ref=scottsantens.com). ## The Destruction of a System That those on Wall Street are earning huge bonuses that actually *reduce* GDP while scientists who massively *increase* GDP are being given food stamps to survive — which we are then cutting despite that even further reducing GDP — is **a perfect example of a system that is *not functioning.*** Does it make sense to *lose 60* **cents** for every dollar, when we could just as easily *gain 5* **dollars** for every dollar? Does it make sense to cut programs that grow the economy and instead depress the economy by increasing the concentration of wealth among those who consume less? These policy decisions are holding all of us back, *every single one of us.* No matter how rich or how poor, these decisions are costing all of us, even the top 1% who will likely require being taxed more to unbreak the system. **How can being taxed more actually result in being better off?** ## The Billion Dollar Question Imagine having a billion dollars two hundred years ago. If you wanted to travel somewhere, you would be limited to horses and boats. You could buy thousands of them, but they’re still horses and boats. If you wanted to start a business, your employees would not be all that educated. Imagine having a billion dollars one hundred years ago. If you wanted to travel somewhere, you would be limited to cars and planes. You could buy thousands of them, but they’re still cars and planes. If you wanted to start a business, your employees would be high school educated. Imagine having a billion dollars now. If you want to travel somewhere, you are limited to nice cars, nice planes, and even nice boats. You can buy thousands of them, but they’re still cars, planes, and boats. If you wanted to start a business, your employees will be college educated. Having a billion dollars is not the most important part of having a billion dollars. **It’s what you can** ***do*** **with it.**Even having a trillion dollars means nothing if there’s nothing to buy. And what there is to buy depends on the strength of the economy, and the knowledge and well-being of all its people. > *Would you rather be a billionaire who can travel from coast to coast in a month, or a multimillionaire who can travel from Earth to Mars in a week?* This is why it’s even in the best interests of those with the most money in the world, to support policies that grow the economy and accelerate entrepreneurship and innovation. Yes, it can mean spending more money, but it can also mean the difference between owning a bright shiny object and owning the starship *Enterprise.* As knowledge grows, as technology advances, every human being can prosper, if we together set that as our aim. The rich are just as much a part of the system as the rest of us, and we need them as much as they need us. The components of a system cannot all be out for their own selfish good. This wisdom is not new. It as old as the Bible. > A body is not one single organ, but many. Suppose that the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it does belong to the body none the less. Suppose that the ear were to say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it does still belong to the body. If the body were all ear, how could it smell?… there are many different organs, but one body. The eye can not say to the hand, “I do not need you.” — St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 12:14–21 We need each other. We always have, and we always will. **So how do we start to work together to spend less and increase quality of life for all?** # Spending More to Spend Less Imagine you’re an engineer in the engineering department of a car company. Right now your department spends $100 on each engine and $80 on each transmission, for a total of $180\. You discover that by redesigning some components, you can entirely remove the need for a transmission by spending an extra $30 on the engine. In other words, you discover **you could spend $30 more to spend $80 less**, ending up $50 ahead with a better product. It only requires you spend the extra money in one area to save money overall, in a way that would also increase overall quality. **What would you do with this knowledge?** What if you suggested this idea to your boss and were told that because spending less money on every part *always* results in a lower total cost, and that anyone with an elementary understanding of math should know this, that spending more on the engine is a terrible idea because spending more can’t possibly equate to spending less? What if you felt so strongly about this idea, that you then went directly to the CEO? What if the CEO then told you he had signed [a piece of paper](http://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-grover-norquist-pledge-signers-list-fiscal-cliff-republicans-tax-2012-11?ref=scottsantens.com) that said he would never raise the cost of anything? And so his hands are tied? **What would you think of your company and its management?** Now imagine you work in the sales department of a company. You and your team will be sent to another city to make some very important deals. Your company’s travel department sets everything up for you and your team at the lowest cost possible. It’s actually very good at this and has won multiple accolades from your CEO for minimizing costs. In this case, they save a total of $5,000. Thanks to these savings, you and your team arrive at the airport at midnight. After a 14-hour flight requiring three different planes, you arrive at your destination with no time to spare. Completely exhausted and worn out, you and your team make **$15,000 in sales.** These sales numbers represent failure. As an additional result, your company will now need to downsize. Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, you don’t even have a travel department (which saves even more than $5,000), and because your tickets were booked with a modicum of forethought, you and your team arrive fully rested and make **$1 million in sales.** As an additional result, not only does no one get fired, everyone gets a raise. **Which makes more sense?** - System A: The one with the parts working against each other, each trying to maximize performance independent of each other? - System B: The one where everyone benefits, including the CEO for running a successful company instead of a failing one? The United States, as a country, by any conceivable measure, is *not* the company existing in the parallel universe… **but it can be.** Remember the engineer’s engine? The one we could spend more on to almost entirely eliminate the need for a transmission? We can do that. But it’ll require a closer look at our transmission… ## The Transmission of the United States The following is a short list of our shared expenditures as *a society.* On the left is the total cost and on the right is the cost per American citizen. - We spend [$2.7 trillion for health care](http://www.commonwealthfund.org/interactives-and-data/us-compare-interactive?ref=scottsantens.com#?ind=1&compare=CAN) — **$9,090** per citizen per year - We spend over [$1.4 trillion](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=147911&ref=scottsantens.com) on crime — **$4,713** per citizen per year - We spend [$1.3 trillion on Social Security](http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/?ref=scottsantens.com) — **$4,376** per citizen per year - We spend [$1.2 trillion on education](http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2013-06-25/study-us-education-spending-tops-global-list?ref=scottsantens.com) — **$4,040** per citizen per year - We spend [$840 billion on our military](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us%5Fmilitary%5Fspending%5F30.html?ref=scottsantens.com) — **$2,828 per citizen per year** - We spend [$544 billion on the “empty labor” of workers](http://www.inc.com/news/articles/200608/time.html?ref=scottsantens.com) not actually working while at work — **$1,831** per citizen per year - We spend [$500 billion](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us%5Fwelfare%5Fspending%5F40.html?ref=scottsantens.com) on welfare — **$1,683** per citizen per year - We’ve spent [$260 billion each year since 200](http://costsofwar.org/article/economic-cost-summary?ref=scottsantens.com)1 to wage a “War on Terror” in a way that has [increased terrorism](http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/10/u-s-war-on-terror-has-increased-terrorism.html?ref=scottsantens.com) — **$875** per citizen per year - We spend [$200 billion on work presenteeism](http://jobsearchtech.about.com/od/workplaceissues/a/Presenteeism.htm?ref=scottsantens.com) — **$673** per citizen per year - We waste [$180 billion on unpurchased food](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-10/living-in-the-united-states-of-food-waste?ref=scottsantens.com) — **$606** per citizen per year - We lose [$160 billion by not using our vacation days](http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/05/13/how-unused-vacation-days-are-costing-the-economy-b.aspx?ref=scottsantens.com) — **$539** per citizen per year - We spend [$110 billion on corporate subsidies](http://www.ctj.org/corporatetaxdodgers/CorporateTaxDodgersReport.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) — **$370** per citizen per year - We spend [$108 billion on the cost of hunger](http://turkeyclubamerica.com/index.php/our-mission/hunger-facts?ref=scottsantens.com) — **$364** per citizen per year - We spend at least [$100 billion on a patent system that decreases innovation](https://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20111107/03541716657/which-causes-more-harm-copyright-patents.shtml?ref=scottsantens.com) — **$337** per citizen per year - We spend [$100 billion buying illegal drugs](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/13/americans-trillion-dollars-drugs%5Fn%5F4943601.html?ref=scottsantens.com) — **$337** per citizen per year - We spend [$51 billion fighting our buying illegal drugs](http://www.drugpolicy.org/drug-war-statistics?ref=scottsantens.com) — **$172** per citizen per year - We spend [$92 billion on gambling](http://www.statisticbrain.com/casino-market-and-revenue-statistics/?ref=scottsantens.com) — **$310** per citizen per year - We lose [$90 billion commuting](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/07/the-worlds-worst-commutes/59062/?ref=scottsantens.com) to and from work — **$303** per citizen per year - We spend [$70 billion on the mortgage interest deduction](http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3948&ref=scottsantens.com) — **$236** per citizen per year - We lose [$70 billion by not legalizing and taxing marijuana](http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2010/03/legalize%5Fmariju.html?ref=scottsantens.com) like we do alcohol — **$236** per citizen per year - We are spending [$1.5 trillion over 30 years for the F-](http://gizmodo.com/inside-the-pentagons-trillion-dollar-f-35-embarrassmen-1325863089?ref=scottsantens.com)35 — **$168** per citizen per year - We actually *subtract* [$53 billion from the economy by using coal power](http://grist.org/coal/2011-09-30-coal-is-enemy-of-human-race-mainstream-economics-edition/?ref=scottsantens.com) — **$178** per citizen per year - We lose $40 billion to suicides (40[,000 x $1 million each](http://www.usatoday.com/longform/news/nation/2014/10/09/suicide-mental-health-prevention-research/15276353/?ref=scottsantens.com) but the true cost is incalculable) — **$135** per citizen per year - We spend [$8 billion the Pentagon can’t account for](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/18/us-usa-pentagon-waste-specialreport-idUSBRE9AH0LQ20131118?ref=scottsantens.com) — **$27** per citizen per year - We spent [about $4 billion in 201](http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/cost.php?ref=scottsantens.com)4 on our midterm elections — **$13** per citizen per year - We spend [$2.3 billion](http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/08/18/3472568/disturbing-facts-american-hunger/?ref=scottsantens.com) in [volunteering](http://independentsector.org/volunteer%5Ftime?ref=scottsantens.com) over 100 million hours of our time at food banks to feed those of whom [a majority have jobs](http://www.chn.org/2014/11/19/many-working-families-dependent-food-banks-us/?ref=scottsantens.com) but aren’t paid enough to not need food banks — **$8** per citizen per year > ***As a society, we are now spending more than $10.2 trillion dollars or* $34,448 *per citizen every year*** There exists overlap between some expenditures, but the above also represents only a partial list of all the money we are *already* spending. **So how can we spend less on this transmission?** ## Election Reform Our use of [first-past-the-post (FPTP) elections](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post%5Fvoting?ref=scottsantens.com) leads directly to our broken two-party system where new voices and proportional representation is actively prevented. As long as we keep this system in place, our democracy will suffer and a great many of our voices will remain unheard, making it exceedingly difficult to enact all/any needed changes. This needs to change. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/700/1*jIIYXMkW349pdTIGfxETFg.png) What we chiefly need is the ability to rank candidates, so that we can all actually choose the candidates we most *want* to win, instead of those we think have the greatest *chance* to win. That ability alone is the difference between our making a choice, and it being made for us. CGP Grey has done an entire series of videos about [the problems with FPTP](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo&ref=scottsantens.com) and [much better methods](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI&ref=scottsantens.com), so if you’d like to learn more, those videos are really the best place to start. *Do we really want to continue not having a functioning democracy?* ## Access to Health Care A system of **universal health care —** the kind that basically everyone else in the world has adopted except us — [would save us thousands of dollars per citizen](http://www.commonwealthfund.org/interactives-and-data/us-compare-interactive?ref=scottsantens.com#?ind=1&compare=UK). If designed like Switzerland, it could save us $832 billion. If designed like Germany: $1.2 trillion, Canada: $1.3 trillion, or like New Zealand or the UK: ***$1.7 trillion in savings — every year.*** It’s safe to say that *not* having a system of truly universal health care, is akin to burning trillion dollar piles of money. *Do we really want to keep doing this?* ## Access to Education A system of **universal education —** the kind that we originally pioneered and then let others surpass us with their own — would drastically reduce the amount we spend on educating ourselves, while drastically increasing the amount of people educated. [College is now **free** in Germany as it is in other nations as well](http://www.salon.com/2014/11/02/7%5Fcountries%5Fwhere%5Fcollege%5Fis%5Ffree%5Fpartner/?ref=scottsantens.com). Meanwhile, in the US, outstanding college loans now exceed ***$1.2 trillion.*** How are people to prosper while saddled with school loan debts? How is the economy to thrive, with so much money spent repaying the loans we require to hopefully secure a job? What’s the point of spending the time and money to get a middle-wage job, if the amount taken to cover the loans is then equivalent to having a low-wage job? How is anyone to function as a consumer — **the Alpha and the Omega of the economy —** if their paychecks go only to basic needs and school loans and not to purchasing the goods and services of others? It’s safe to say that also *not* having a system of truly universal education, is again akin to burning trillion dollar piles of money. *Do we really want to keep doing this as well?* ## Decriminalization Simply reclassifying what constitutes crime would immediately reduce crime. We spend half as much money fighting drugs as we do buying them, and by just ending prohibition on drugs as we did on alcohol — [a more dangerous drug](http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/01/alcohol.harm/index.html?ref=scottsantens.com) — **we could raise revenue and improve lives instead of *wasting revenue and systematically destroying them.*** We could stop spending about $40,000 per year on [the 20% of our prison population of 2.2 million](http://www.vox.com/2014/6/27/5845484/prisons-are-terrible-and-there-is-finally-a-way-to-get-rid-of-them?ref=scottsantens.com) convicted of drug crimes, and instead raise over $70 billion in new revenue. We could save even more money by also [avoiding the imprisonment of those convicted of many other non-violent crimes](http://www.vox.com/2014/6/27/5845484/prisons-are-terrible-and-there-is-finally-a-way-to-get-rid-of-them?ref=scottsantens.com). *Doesn’t this make more sense too, to not fill up our prisons with non-violent offenders?* ## Patent and Copyright Reform The granting of temporary protections for creative works was never meant to function as anything but a head start. They were certainly never meant to be permanent, which is what [they effectively now are](http://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2015/pre-1976?ref=scottsantens.com). By overprotecting and creating too many barriers, these systems no longer foster innovation, but effectively hamper it. Because of this, some economists now believe it shouldn’t just be reformed, [but abolished entirely](http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.27.1.3?ref=scottsantens.com): > “The historical and international evidence suggests that while weak patent systems may mildly increase innovation with limited side effects, strong patent systems retard innovation with many negative side effects…” > > “Why use band-aids to staunch a major wound? Economists fought for decades — ultimately with considerable success — to reduce restrictions on international trade. A similar approach, albeit less slow, should be adopted to phase out patents.” It can be argued that [everything we do is actually a remix of something already known](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9ryPC8bxqE&ref=scottsantens.com). By enriching the public domain instead of keeping ideas from it, we can accelerate the creation of new remixes that propel us all forward. Intellectual property creates artificial scarcity. It is the opposite of creating abundance. *Do we really wish to actively choose scarcity over abundance?* ## Homes for the Homeless [In Colorado](http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/09/05/2579451/colorado-homeless-shelter/?ref=scottsantens.com) it was estimated that the cost to the taxpayer for each homeless individual was **$43,240\.** Just housing them instead costs **$16,813\.** [In Florida](http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/05/27/3441772/florida-homeless-financial-study/?ref=scottsantens.com) the cost of homelessness was estimated at **$31,065** per taxpayer, while just housing them would cost **$10,051\.** [In Utah](http://www.nationofchange.org/utah-ending-homelessness-giving-people-homes-1390056183?ref=scottsantens.com), the cost of homelessness was estimated at **$16,670** per taxpayer, while just housing them would cost **$11,000.** *We know it saves more money to just provide homes, than to let people be homeless.* However, we also know that “[cash payments increase the welfare of recipients to a greater degree than do transfers-in-kind of equal cash value](http://gregmankiw.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/news-flash-economists-agree.html?ref=scottsantens.com).” And it is this knowledge, that leads us to possibly the single most effective change of all, affecting the greatest number of our wasteful and counterproductive expenditures. [**We can just start giving everyone money**](https://decorrespondent.nl/541/why-we-should-give-free-money-to-everyone/35246939860-ec3a6c3e?ref=scottsantens.com)**.** This is how we can stop fiddling with our transmission and instead *improve our entire engine —* [**Universal Basic Income**](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com)**.** ## The Improved Engine of the United States - A basic income would reduce the need for health care. A program tested in [Canada](http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20%282%29.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) **reduced the need for health care by close to 10%.** - A basic income would reduce crime rates. A program tested in [Namibia](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) **reduced all crime by over 40%, and the most extreme crimes by as much as 95%.** - A basic income would [directly reduce income inequality](http://www.scottsantens.com/does-basic-income-reduce-income-inequality-gini). - A basic income could reduce the demand for higher education that is now effectively required, while also increasing the ability of those who wish to pursue their educations to do so. [Basic income experiments reflect this](http://www.thebigpush.net/uploads/2/2/6/8/22682672/basic%5Fincome%5Fprograms%5Fand%5Fpilots%5Ffebruary%5F3%5F2014.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). - A basic income could [eliminate the bureaucracy](http://reason.com/archives/2013/11/26/scrap-the-welfare-state-give-people-free?ref=scottsantens.com) of our welfare and pension programs by nullifying the need for them. - A basic income could eliminate [the waste of people doing nothing at work](http://www.inc.com/news/articles/200608/time.html?ref=scottsantens.com) by allowing them to reduce their hours and to quit “[bullshit jobs](http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/?ref=scottsantens.com)”. - A basic income could reduce the waste of [the military functioning effectively as a jobs program](http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich/2010/0813/America-s-biggest-jobs-program-The-US-military?ref=scottsantens.com) by ending the need for jobs to live. - A basic income could reduce the waste of [work presenteeism](http://jobsearchtech.about.com/od/workplaceissues/a/Presenteeism.htm?ref=scottsantens.com) and [overwork](http://www.thenation.com/article/186425/work-speedups-have-consequences-boss-never-imagined?ref=scottsantens.com), and make it so that people don’t feel forced to go to the office when they should stay home or feel forced to work more than is optimal. - A basic income could help reduce [the waste of unpurchased food](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-10/living-in-the-united-states-of-food-waste?ref=scottsantens.com) by allowing more people to purchase it. - A basic income could reduce [the waste of unused vacation days](http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/05/13/how-unused-vacation-days-are-costing-the-economy-b.aspx?ref=scottsantens.com) by allowing people to actually take them. - A basic income would allow for the elimination of [mostly invisible subsidies and deductions that presently help mostly the few](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rtySUhuokM&ref=scottsantens.com), replacing them instead with [visible cash that helps everyone](http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/cash-transfers-can-work-better-than-subsidies/article6665676.ece?ref=scottsantens.com). - A basic income could decrease the economic losses of commuting by better allowing people to live closer to their jobs or further away from expensive areas where jobs are centralized. - A basic income could reduce [the invisible tax on the poor that is lottery tickets](http://www.businessinsider.com/lottery-is-a-tax-on-the-poor-2012-4?ref=scottsantens.com) and other forms of gambling by their no longer representing the only perceived way of getting ahead. - A basic income could better [enable the transition from coal to green energies](http://www.alternativesjournal.ca/community/blogs/aj-special-delivery/why-environmentalists-should-promote-guaranteed-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com). Much of coal production exists because there are no other jobs to be found. - A basic income would [reduce the epidemic of suicide by increasing mental health](http://phys.org/news/2011-04-income-mental-disorders-suicide.html?ref=scottsantens.com) through the reduction of stress and increases in security. - A basic income would increase productivity by allowing those who hate their jobs to quit and those who want those jobs to take them instead of remaining unemployed. [Fully voluntary work increases commitment](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201404/why-having-the-choice-do-nothing-is-so-important?ref=scottsantens.com). - A basic income would shift work towards intrinsic motivation by allowing people to pursue the work they intrinsically wish to pursue. [This increases productivity and raises wages](https://www.academia.edu/1251609/Productivity%5FWages%5Fand%5FIntrinsic%5FMotivations?ref=scottsantens.com). - A basic income could create a more engaged and active citizenry by [increasing every citizen’s autonomy and ability to participate as citizens](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105353571300005X?ref=scottsantens.com). - A basic income could replace [the role unions once played](http://www.epi.org/publication/unions-decline-inequality-rises/?ref=scottsantens.com), by granting everyone sufficient bargaining power at the individual level thanks to the ability to say “No.” - A basic income would reduce *all* the costs of hunger. **It would eliminate poverty entirely, and every one of its costs right along with it.** [This has already been scientifically tested and long known](http://www.vox.com/2014/11/14/7220291/basic-income-poverty-plan?ref=scottsantens.com). - A basic income would transform *all* income earned from work into discretionary income. With everyone’s basic needs covered, **everyone could power the economy as a consumer.** This means a stronger, wider, [more *decentralized*](https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/27184.html?ref=scottsantens.com), and [more stable people-powered economy](http://www.iser.uaa.alaska.edu/Publications/bien%5Fxiii%5Fak%5Fpfd%5Flessons.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)**.** > ***A basic income guarantee is how we can spend more on our engine to spend less on our transmission.*** **How much more?** Why not start at just above the poverty line with a monthly income of [**$1,000 for adult citizens**](http://hawkins.ventures/post/85265679392/what-is-an-appropriate-level-of-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) **and** [**$300 for youth citizens**](http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117453/monthly-child-allowance-best-way-support-strong-families?ref=scottsantens.com)? This would cost an estimated $3 trillion, but the total savings it stands to introduce in reducing the **more than $10 trillion we** ***already*** **spend**, along with the social and economic growth fostered as a result, are almost *incalculable* in value. ## The Engine Improvement That Pays for Itself Canada did a study to determine how much money could be saved on adults by spending just $1 on them when they’re young. They concluded [**$1 would save $3 to $**](http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/cphorsphc-respcacsp/2008/fr-rc/cphorsphc-respcacsp09-eng.php?ref=scottsantens.com)**9.** **What does this mean for basic income?** It means that tomorrow **if we started just providing $300 a month as a youth citizen allowance, we would** ***not*** **have to spend $900 to $2,700 a month on everyone as adults** as the costs of crime and medical care. This also means that when kids became adults, **a basic income as high as $2,700 per month would cost not a penny more than we *already* spend**, but without all the crime and poor health. So why not start a universal allowance for our children *immediately*, and consider their basic incomes as adults *entirely* paid in full? No more poverty. Less crime. Better health. Higher productivity. Accelerated economy. Expanded democracy. [More happiness](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2019628,00.html?ref=scottsantens.com). [Even greater intelligence](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/976.abstract?ref=scottsantens.com). These are measures of a functioning system working for everyone. This is the systemic production of fewer red beads. It’s also just what the doctor prescribes… # The Return of the American Dream The United States of America used to dream. We used to aspire for greatness. We pushed the envelope of what was possible. When did we lose that? When did the status quo become more important than what could be? When did playing it safe triumph over proving the naysayers wrong? It doesn’t have to be this way. We can push for greatness again. [We can do the “impossible”](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-is-impossible) and show the world what can be done when a nation of mutually empowered individuals recognizes not only our independence but our *interdependence.* America was not built on the idea of every man for himself. It was built on a higher ideal. It was built on our common security and common purpose. It was built on the idea that a government should serve its people — not *some* of its people — ***all* of its people.** > *“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”* Hallowed words, right? One of these words, we can’t even use any more today without a stigma attached, and yet the word “welfare” is in the preamble. This was a primary point of the entire document, to create a system of government that assured we were all better off together than as individuals; that by working together, we could secure our liberty. We could achieve so much more than we ever could as individuals, and we could do this not only for us, but for each and every succeeding generation. > *“* *I must study politics and war, that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, and naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.* *” —* [*John Adams, Founding Father and 2nd President of the United States*](http://smithsonianeducation.org/president/detail.aspx?id=2&ref=scottsantens.com) **We had an aim.** Long-term thinking was built into the national contract. The intent was to build a system that would always improve, and the very basis of this system was the guarantee of our general security. Every generation was to be better off than the last, and with each generation, more would be free to pursue that which they most wished to pursue, because each generation would be more secure than the last. The year is now 2015\. [How secure do you feel in this day and age](https://www.opendemocracy.net/guy-standing/why-precariat-is-not-%E2%80%9Cbogus-concept%E2%80%9D?ref=scottsantens.com)? *We have lost our way.* We have become a nation of got-mines where once we strove for union. We have become a nation seeking war over tranquility, injustice over justice, tax cuts over welfare, lack of opportunity over liberty, and short-term profits over long-term posterity. If we are to rediscover our way as a nation, systemic thinking is required and an aim must be set. My suggestion for our new aim is the same as that of W. Edwards Deming**:** **Everybody wins. Nobody loses.** I submit that if we are to achieve this aim, we should manage our society as a system, and this system should always improve. We should use all our tools and knowledge to make constant improvements. We should not let our individual ideologies hinder us from this goal, and we should put greater importance on what science reveals to us as potential ways forward. **Where science points the way forward, we should step.** This nation was not built for the pursuit of money. It was built for the pursuit of greatness. How do we measure greatness? Is it GDP? Or is it something else? Robert F. Kennedy thought it might be something else. Kennedy was not alone and others continue to join the chorus for [an economic ruler other than GDP](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UROCz70tlMY&ref=scottsantens.com). If we begin to use another ruler, we may learn something new about ourselves and how we compare to others. > *In the case of the “*[*Good Country Index*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X7fZoDs9KU&ref=scottsantens.com)*”, we’re not in the top 10\. We’re* ***21st.*** ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*nw8oFR3GQkKfQXH4ss6EpA.png) [The Good Country Index](http://ideas.ted.com/2014/06/23/guess-which-country-does-the-most-good-for-the-planet/?ref=scottsantens.com) > *If instead we measured happiness,* [*in 2013 we ranked* ***17th***](http://www.businessinsider.com/new-world-happiness-report-2013-2013-9?ref=scottsantens.com)*.* ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*gQd82OQvwLIWK2ouh1nMHQ.jpeg) [United Nations 2nd Annual World Happiness Report](http://www.businessinsider.com/new-world-happiness-report-2013-2013-9?ref=scottsantens.com) Are these the kinds of lists we want to strive to top instead of GDP? Do we only want to be measured as creating the most wealth of all developed countries, or do we also want to be measured as doing the most good or being the most happy? Are we even the most *developed* country? > *“With the storehouse of skills and knowledge contained in the millions of unemployed, and with the even more appalling underuse, misuse, and abuse of skills and knowledge in the army of employed people in all ranks in all industries,* ***the United States may be today the most underdeveloped country in the world.*** *” —* [*Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Out of Crisis, 198*](http://books.google.com/books?id=LA15eDlOPgoC&q=underdeveloped&ref=scottsantens.com#v=snippet&q=underdeveloped&f=false)*2* Focusing on our untapped potential, W. Edwards Deming considered the United States to be possibly *the most* ***underdeveloped*** *country in the world.* **But we can change that.** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Wouldn't a basic income just be stealing from those who earned their money? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/wouldn-t-a-basic-income-just-be-stealing-from-those-who-earned-their-money/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T00:44:33.000Z This kind of question is built on the assumption that *all* money earned is earned fairly and justly, and *all* money taxed is both unfair and unjust. Here's the thing, that idea of private property we take for granted as the foundation of just about everything? Perhaps we shouldn't just take it for granted. Now, by not taking it for granted, I'm not suggesting the idea of private property shouldn't exist or that it shouldn't be enforced. But I am suggesting that by enforcing it as we do, we create a situation that wouldn't exist naturally, and therefore perhaps ethically requires that we compensate for it in some way. Think of it this way. 3... 2... 1... **I own everything**. This is fair, because I called dibs, just like our ancestors did long ago. Because I control access to all resources on Earth, you are no longer allowed to live on it without my permission. Oh sure, if I didn't own everything, you could just pick an apple off a tree, or plant some vegetables, or hunt some deer, or even eat food out of trash cans, but too bad. I own everything. **You aren't allowed to live without *my* permission.** In order to live, you will need to prove your worth to me. Don't worry, as long as you pull your weight according to my eyes, I will give you enough access to my resources to survive. What's that? It's not fair that I own everything? Why not? I called dibs. That's totally fair. What's that? I didn't create the planet so why should I own it? I should only own the added improvements I make using the natural resources no one made? Hmmm, actually, that's a good point. I suppose we should adjust our rules to acknowledge that shouldn't we? If you build a chair out of a tree, until that moment in time that tree was available to everyone else. People could sit under it, eat apples from it. It cleaned the air by taking in carbon dioxide and putting out oxygen. It would have continued to grow and maybe in another decade it could have been more than a chair. Or maybe someone else could have used it along with other trees to build a house? Wow, come to think of it, that tree had a lot of potential uses by a lot of potential people, all born on the same planet, none of whom made the tree. And yet, you felt that tree was yours when it wasn't. It was all of ours. So what's that called? Oh right... **stealing**. But shoot, I want a nice chair, and I want people to be able to make chairs. Don't you? So how do we get around this moral quandary? Well, we could compensate everyone else who lost access to the tree by your turning it into a chair, by slightly increasing their access to all remaining resources. That sounds fair doesn't it? But shoot, how do we do that? Hmmm, maybe we could tax the chair, and acknowledge this tax as the compensation for the theft we allow in order to make trees into chairs, and split this tax among everyone? Or maybe we could charge you for the tree in the first place instead of letting you just take it for free and share that among everyone? Either way, great idea! **Let's call it basic income.** --- **You may also want to read my posts about basic income as basic resources: [Part 1](http://www.scottsantens.com/shouldn-t-all-this-talk-about-money-actually-be-talk-about-resources) | [Part 2](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-and-the-problem-of-freeloading-freeriders-basic-income-as-basic-resources)** *This line of thinking is inspired by my reading of [Karl Widerquist's book, Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1137274727/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1137274727&linkCode=as2&tag=theheaandthet-20&linkId=BFWRPZS5N3SWU22R&ref=scottsantens.com). You can now read [the chapter about this online for free](http://works.bepress.com/widerquist/40/?ref=scottsantens.com).* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Yes, It Really is Different This Time URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/yes-it-really-is-different-this-time-and-humans-already-need-not-apply/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T20:56:23.000Z A conversation of increasing frequency, especially post-CGP Grey's excellent "[Humans Need Not Apply](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&ref=scottsantens.com)": **Bill:** We've been hearing about this technological unemployment crap for a long time. Every time someone has said, "It's different this time, " they've been wrong. **Ted:** It's different this time. **Bill:** *sigh* No, really. It *is* actually different this time. Why? This is a different kind of automation that isn't just muscle labor, but brain labor. We aren't replacing shovels with tractors. We're replacing tractors with mechanical farmers. Technology's effect on employment also isn't something that's just going to happen soon. It's happening already. Look at the difference between old footage of Ford's giant auto factory, and present footage of Tesla. ### THEN ![Ford labor](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/43c40018-416e-49cd-acb0-c3c68456af19/A4273s_large.jpg) ### NOW ![Tesla labor](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/468cc857-c82c-41c2-ab6b-d83a7ccacaef/biw1_0_large.jpg) So the thinking goes, those Ford auto-workers are working elsewhere, which they are. However, they are being paid less now in service industry work and part-time work they can find, and on the other hand, *robots are working 24-7 and not paying taxes.* Nor are they buying anything whatsoever. **Robots aren't consumers**. Now please consider the following: Back in the day, we had 100 farmers farming. Then 90 of them moved into industry and 10 stayed behind, 10 being able to do the work of 90 on the farms thanks to let's say 10 robots (in the form of tractors and such), aka technology. So now we still have 100 workers but more is getting done thanks to 10 robots. So far so good. The point we are at now in 2015 is that we're up to about say 100 robot workers and 100 human workers, but the robots are doing so much work that only about 80 of us are able to find work, and 20 of us are now sitting idle. Meanwhile we still have a system that says those 20 people need to work in order to live, even though they can't find work. In addition, we've also now got the problem of 1 of those 80 workers being really the only one owning all the robots, such that one person is functionally equivalent to 101 people, not only in combined economic power, but political power as well. Basically, one person is standing on the shoulders of a small army of 100 robots built not by one human, but all humans past and present. So as it stands right now, matters are already problematic. But now let's look into the future. As technology increases, we will soon have 1,000 robots working, 40 humans working, and 60 humans idle, unable to find work. In this system, there are the equivalent of 10 robots for every 1 person. An amazing amount of work is getting done, more than ever before and not even by human hands, and yet what if we still require that everyone work to live? This idea is at odds with paid work having become more rare, such that more people are unable to find work than those able to find work. At this point paid work is practically a luxury available only to a minority. Meanwhile, that one person who owned 100 robots is now one person who owns 1,000 robots. The idea of 1 person being the equivalent of 1,001 people is even more problematic, especially when it comes to a functioning democracy. In 2015, [our democracy already only works for the 1 person as it is](http://www.businessinsider.com/princeton-and-northwestern-study-on-elite-influence-in-politics-2014-4?ref=scottsantens.com). Some may think education is the answer, and to a point it is, but it takes years for someone to learn something new, whereas technology can learn something new in *seconds*. There is no way to outpace technology with education. New jobs will always be created, but not as fast as they are destroyed. It takes time, and tech is an exponential function. [Human labor can't compete on that level](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guloPCZJNyY&ref=scottsantens.com). ![Silvrback blog image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/748f27c9-dc20-4a03-b19b-a57833e405a2/wearehere_large.png) A big part of the problem is also the income. Who are these 1,000 robots manufacturing all of this stuff for, in a world where only 40% of the population has jobs? 60% of the population has no means of purchasing anything, and the 40% that can, still has to spend a good portion of their income on basic needs, because they are basic for life, so only a portion of their income is able to go to the goods and services of the 1,000 robots. What's that economy look like? Does it not make more sense to supply everyone a sufficient income to meet their basic needs? This way 40% of the population could use 100% of their earnings as discretionary income, and the other 60% could spend their money on basic needs. Meanwhile because 60% of the population now has some money, they can use that money to make exchanges with other people. They can start up their own businesses, or volunteer their time. Doesn't this setup make more sense? Also, doesn't this setup even make more sense for where we are *right now*? If we're already at 80 people working and 20 people not working, with the equivalent of one robot working per person, why don't we just think of that one robot as being owned by each one person, such that we all benefit from the robots? Why not just use all that work getting done by non-human hands to cover the basic needs of every human? That would create a situation where 80 people with their needs already met get to use their income as discretionary income, and 20 people get their basics covered, and the ability to engage in the economy and their community. It would also create the situation where that one person who owns the 100 unpaid and untaxed robots has to use some of that income they're getting from robot labor, to spend on humans. This would reduce their total wealth and political influence, while increasing the wealth and political influence of everyone else. This is not to say that everyone would be equal, but there would not be [the extreme inequality there already is](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM&ref=scottsantens.com), and should be seen as a good thing, because of all [the effects too much inequality has on society](http://www.scribd.com/doc/7645514/Effects-of-Inequality?ref=scottsantens.com). Basically, a basic income is an improvement that acknowledges the fact we've *already* created enough technology to cover everyone's basic needs, and yet we still currently insist that one person with all the robots should be the one reaping all the rewards of so much non-human labor, while forcing everyone else to work even harder and looking down on those unable to find the work that no longer needs to be done. It's already time our machines start working for 100% of us instead of just 1%. **It's *already* time for universal basic income.** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Basic Income is Impossible URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-is-impossible/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T21:00:46.000Z **"That's impossible."** No, I'm not quoting Luke Skywalker (although we certainly know he was wrong). I'm quoting a lot of people whose responses to the idea of basic income I've read since late 2013 when I subscribed to [/r/BasicIncome](http://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome?ref=scottsantens.com) on Reddit and started heavily studying it. I don't only see this response to universal basic income. I see it to [so many great ideas](http://thinkbig.us/?ref=scottsantens.com). I'm sure you have too, and may have even uttered these words yourself about something: "It's impossible." "That can't be done." "It'll never happen." It always reminds me of a lesson from one of my science teachers I will *hopefully* never forget. The lesson was about how important it is to avoid using words like "always" or "never", or "impossible"; that instead we should replace them with "usually", "sometimes", "rarely", and "improbable." **"That's improbable."** Now that's a statement that ends up matching observed reality much more closely. So many times throughout history, and to this day, some really smart people either never learned or forgot the lesson my science teacher imparted with a class full of kids. One of the purposes of recording history, if not the greatest purpose, is to learn from it, isn't it? Well, with that in mind, I saved a link years ago, and I think of it almost every time someone says basic income or something else is impossible. Here are some highlights from that link. It's [a list of a whole lot of intelligent people claiming to know more than they do and being a whole lot of wrong about a whole lot of **"impossible"** ideas:](http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~fringwal/stoopid.lis?ref=scottsantens.com) --- > Professor Goddard...does not know the relation of action to re-action, and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react....he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools. ###### \-- 1920 New York Times editorial on Robert Goddard's rocket work. \[The New York Times printed a retraction to this---in 1969, when the Apollo 11 astronauts were on their way to the Moon.\] > Landing and moving about on the moon offers so many serious problems for human beings that it may take science another 200 years to lick them. ###### \-- Science Digest, 1948 > While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming. \-- Lee De Forest, 1926 > The actual building of roads devoted to motor cars is not for the near future, in spite of many rumors to that effect. \-- Harper's Weekly, 1902 > Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia. \-- Dr. Dionysus Lardner, 1793-1859 > What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice the speed of stagecoaches? ###### \-- Quarterly Review, 1825 > Railroad Carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 mph by engines which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside, setting fire to the crops, scaring the livestock, and frightening women and children. The Almighty certainly never intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed. \-- Martin Van Buren > I can accept the theory of relativity as little as I can accept the existence of atoms and other such dogmas. \-- Ernst Mach (1838-1916) > Even originally well-defined pencils of cathode rays from the Sun cannot reach the Earth. For Birkeland's theories to be correct, the existence of such cathode rays is clearly presupposed to be necessary...and this assumption is untenable. \-- Arthur Schuster, on Kristian Birkeland's theory of what causes aurorae. The "cathode rays" are now called the solar wind. > X-rays will prove to be a hoax. \-- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895 > Heavier than air flying machines are impossible. \-- Lord Kelvin > Flight by machines heavier than air is impractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible. \-- Simon Newcomb, Director, U.S. Naval Observatory, 1902 > Aerial flight is one of that class of problems with which man will never be able to cope. \-- Simon Newcomb, 1903 > The resistance of air increases as the square of the speed and works as the cube \[of speed\].... It is clear that with our present devices there is no hope of aircraft competing for racing speed with either our locomotives or automobiles. \-- William H. Pickering, Director, Harvard College Observatory, 1910 > The popular mind often pictures gigantic flying machines speeding across the Atlantic carrying innumerable passengers in a way analogous to our modern steam ships. . . it seems safe to say that such ideas are wholly visionary and even if the machine could get across with one or two passengers the expense would be prohibitive to any but the capitalist who could use his own yacht. \-- William Henry Pickering, Astronomer, 1910 > A popular fantasy is to suppose that flying machines could be used to drop dynamite on the enemy in time of war. \-- William H. Pickering, Director, Harvard College Observatory, 1908 > By no possibility can the carriage of freight or passengers through mid-air compete with their carriage on the earth's surface. The field for aerial navigation is then limited to military use and for sporting purposes. The former is doubtful, the latter is fairly certain. \-- Hugh Dryden, 1908 > As far as sinking a ship with a bomb is concerned, you just can't do it. \-- Rear Admiral Clark Woodward, 1939 > Even considering the improvements possible...the gas turbine could hardly be considered a feasible application to airplanes because of the difficulties of complying with the stringent weight requirements. \-- U. S. National Academy Of Science, 1940 > I do not believe in the commercial possibility of induced radioactivity. \-- J. B. S. Haldane > The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformations of these atoms is talking moonshine. \-- Ernest Rutherford, 1930 > There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will be obtainable. \-- Albert Einstein, 1932 > I must confess that my imagination, in spite even of spurring, refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and foundering at sea. \-- H. G. Wells, 1901 > \[Of celestial bodies\] We may determine their forms, their distances, their sizes, and their motions---but we can never know anything of their chemical composition; and much less, that of organized beings living on their surface. \-- Philosopher Auguste Comte, 1835 > Since the 40-inch objective of the Yerkes refractor and the 200-inch mirror of the Palomar reflector have apparently reached the practical construction limits for telescopes of their respective types, it is extremely doubtful if a greater light-gathering eye of either kind will ever again be built. \-- A. Frederick Collins, 1942 > This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the absurd length to which vicious specialization will carry scientists. To escape the Earth's gravitation a projectile needs a velocity of 7 miles per second. The thermal energy at this speed is 15,180 calories \[per gram\]. Hence the proposition appears to be basically impossible. \-- A. W. Bickerton, 1926 > I am bold enough to say that a man-made Moon voyage will never occur regardless of all scientific advances. \-- Lee De Forest, "the father of electronics" > There is no hope for the fanciful idea of reaching the Moon because of insurmountable barriers to escaping the Earth's gravity." \-- Forest Ray Moulton, astronomer, 1932 > Space is clearly the great breakthrough of human knowledge---for centuries to come...We have a long and undistinguished record of America failing to anticipate the promise and potential of each new age of science, invention, and discovery...Even so far-sighted an American as Woodrow Wilson spent time denouncing the automobile. The steamboat, the locomotive, the airplane, all brought prophecies of doom and gloom. We have learned a lesson we surely do not need to be be taught again. \-- Lyndon Baines Johnson, June 1963 > Fooling around with alternating currents is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever. It's too dangerous. . . it could kill a man as quick as a bolt of lightning. Direct current is safe. \-- Thomas Edison > The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible. \-- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service \[Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.\] > If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this. \-- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads > Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy. \-- Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859 > Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction. \-- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872 --- These are smart people. Some of them like Einstein are considered among our greatest geniuses in human history. *And even Einstein was wrong about nuclear energy*. It is important to maintain our humility. Let us steer clear of absolutes. The impossible tends to stay that way until someone who didn't know any better... **does** it. So the next time you want to say something is impossible, ask yourself this first... **"Who am I to say what is impossible?"** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### What Can We Do to Grow the Basic Income Movement in 2015? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/what-can-we-do-to-grow-the-basic-income-movement-in-2015/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T21:02:18.000Z 1... I feel I've already somewhat answered this question in a recent blog post, so here again is that blog post: [5 Steps to Becoming a BIG Contributor](http://www.scottsantens.com/5-steps-to-becoming-a-big-contributor-basic-income-guarantee). I firmly believe that in 2015 we need to focus on [organizing local meetings](http://www.meetup.com/?ref=scottsantens.com). We have got to take this first step. This will be the first thing I do in 2015 and I hope others will do the same. Don't worry about what to say or what to do. Just get a group of BIG supporters meeting all over the world on a regular basis. The more this happens, the further along we will be. 2... We need to get more content created and shared. We also need more coverage in the media, which means we need to create more reasons to cover us. I've combined these in my own attempt to crowdfund a basic income and in encouraging others to do the same. [**The BIG Patreon Creator Pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) My hope is that as I reach for my own final goal, and as others join in pledging to reach for the same final goal, this can both start to get wide press coverage and in addition free people's time and resources to devote more to advancing basic income as a movement. So please, consider taking The BIG Pledge in 2015, and work to spread awareness about basic income by following your own passions, whatever they may be. We should be doing this anyway, shouldn't we? Follow your passion. Help others do the same. This is a core idea of basic income. #3... **EVERY VOTE COUNTS** I can't stress this enough. What do I mean by it? I mean that it may feel you as an individual are powerless but you aren't. You may be just one drop, [but you are one drop in an ocean of drops](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jRfXTtR34g&ref=scottsantens.com). In this knowledge lies our collective power. One vote is one drop. So vote often. I don't just mean on ballots, I mean anywhere and everywhere. Help create the basic income ocean. A top post on [/r/basicincome on Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome?ref=scottsantens.com) about basic income gets somewhere around 100-500 upvotes. In 2015, let's make it 500-1500\. **VOTE.** A popular link about [#basicincome on Twitter](https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=%23basicincome&ref=scottsantens.com) gets say 5-15 retweets. In 2015, let's make it 20-50 retweets. **VOTE.** A popular post on [Facebook about basic income](https://www.facebook.com/basic.income) gets 30-50 likes and say 20 shares. In 2015, let's make it 100-300 likes and 50-100 shares. **VOTE.** There are two Big Ideas about basic income with the potential to be seen by 30 members of Congress and be added as part of the progressive platform, with [2,168 votes](http://thinkbig.us/ideas/17634/?ref=scottsantens.com) and [5,740 votes](http://thinkbig.us/ideas/17108/?ref=scottsantens.com). Let's make it 10,000 votes and 15,000 votes. **VOTE.** My point being that every single little thing you can do, adds to the whole. Something as seemingly small as favoriting a tweet actually does do something. It gives that tweet greater visibility. A single share on Facebook can result in one person talking to their family about basic income. A single seemingly pointless signature on a petition, or vote in a poll, or even a page view on an article about basic income, does something. All of this does something. The only thing that does nothing *IS DOING NOTHING*. So don't do nothing. Do something. Interact more. Share more. Talk more. Just plain do more, whatever it is. If you have the opportunity to do something, then do that. Don't make up excuses as to how useless it is, or how little difference it makes between something having 10 likes versus 11 likes, or 15 upvotes instead of 16 upvotes, or 5 retweets instead of 6 retweets. Make your voice heard. **MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD.** Extend democracy to the rest of your life and start adding your voice to more matters. Take part. Be heard. Add drops to our ocean of drops. If we are to make basic income happen, we have to understand this. Be an active part. Wherever you can, take a more active role. **Add your voice to the many, and together it will be loud, and we will be heard**. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Artist Brian Eno just learned about basic income and loves the idea URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/artist-brian-eno-just-learned-about-basic-income-and-loves-the-idea/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T21:05:30.000Z [Here's the podcast](http://monocle.com/radio/shows/the-briefing/817/?ref=scottsantens.com) where he is interviewed by Georgina Godwin for a special edition of The Briefing. He starts talking about basic income at around 18m30s into it. Transcript by me: > I'm always concerned about, more than anything else, the waste of human potential. That's the thing that upsets me. The waste of intelligence. So much intelligence is wasted from poverty. People who simply don't have the time, the space to use their imaginations. They can't be creative, because to be creative requires that for a little while at least, you let go of the basic concerns of staying alive. You can't really be creative if survival is the primary topic on your mind. > And so I've been thinking about that for a long time, thinking how do we utilize the cumulative intelligence and creativity of people? And recently I heard of an organization called [Basic Income UK](http://basicincome.org.uk/?ref=scottsantens.com) who have a very simple idea. It's rather a beautiful idea, which is **give everyone some money every week**. No matter how rich they are, how poor they are, just make sure that there's a basic income level beyond which people don't fall. > And now of course this will be seen as rampant socialism, perhaps it is, but it's a very good idea because I think as soon as you can release people from the absolutely grinding poverty that so many people are in, you give them the chance, the space to think and the space to get themselves out of a bad situation. Most of the time people who are very poor are just concerned with the next few hours. That's all. That's the only option they have. So basic income is a great idea. I like the idea that it says **we believe that all people are potentially creative and that they should be given the chance to express that.** > One of the things that's happened over the last 40 years I suppose since Thatcherism and Reaganism is that the inequalities that were starting to dissolve a little bit in the post war years have really come back with a vengeance. We have a bigger wealth gap in England now than we ever have in the past I think. That is to say that the poorest are furthest away from the richest than they've ever been. And it's not improving. So we're sort of abandoning a whole echelon of people really, and saying, "We don't really need you." But we do really need them. Brian Eno has over 280,000 followers [on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/brianenomusic). **UPDATE:** Here is Brian Eno advocating basic income a year later: --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Science Behind A Christmas Carol URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-science-behind-a-christmas-carol/ Last updated: 2022-02-17T17:34:24.000Z First published in 1843, *A Christmas Carol* is a timeless story that we have cherished ever since, especially during the holidays. The tale by Charles Dickens has been adapted and re-adapted, modified and satired, with such frequency that we may not even recognize it in all its forms. So why is it so timeless? Why has it had such a lasting cultural impact? What is it that so strongly connects with us? **The crux of the tale, and the brilliance of Dickens, rests within a single word – empathy.** At its core, *A Christmas Carol* is the transformation of a man without empathy, to a man with empathy. It accomplishes this through forcing the character Ebenezer Scrooge to remember the past, witness the present, and to consider the future. It is through seeing other human beings as human beings with lives equal in worth to his own, that forms the basis of Scrooge's transformation. The basis of this need for transformation and how it is accomplished actually has some very interesting science behind it. ### The Rich Have Less Empathy [Studies show that as a person grows in wealth, they lose empathy for their fellow man](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/05/rich-people-just-care-less/?%5Fr=1&ref=scottsantens.com). This is also directly tied in with inequality, because as someone climbs a curve exhibiting exponential growth, that person will have exponentially fewer peers. ![Extreme income inequality sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/i9dIUjN.png) When you are among the bottom 95% of earners, you can look around and feel you are surrounded by those who are doing mostly just as well as you are. Maybe a bit better and maybe a bit worse, but for the most part you feel among good company. However, once you enter the top 5% or so, suddenly [you can feel poor despite having great wealth](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/why-so-many-rich-people-dont-feel-very-rich/?ref=scottsantens.com). Those at the top have fewer peers around them, and so they end up feeling less connected to those around them, and especially far less connected to those far below them. [One particularly interesting study recently found that higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior](http://www.pnas.org/content/109/11/4086.abstract?ref=scottsantens.com) and did this through studying drivers and how they behaved according to the price of their car. > The study involved experiments in the real world as well as laboratory scenarios. In the first two experiments, onlookers watched to see whether drivers obeyed traffic laws (and common courtesy); the drivers’ cars were also ranked on a five-point scale, according to prestige, from used Corolla to new Mercedes. > The first test was whether drivers would follow the proper order at a four-way intersection, with stop signs. Nearly 250 were observed. About 8% of the drivers in the lowest tier of prestige broke the rules, compared with 30% in the highest. > The finding was similar when a pedestrian stepped into a crosswalk on a straight stretch of road. In that case, involving 150 drivers, all five of the drivers on the lowest rung of prestige followed the rules—an admittedly small sample. But the proportion of drivers who ignored the pedestrian rose from 29%, in the second tier of prestige, to 46%, in the fifth and highest. [\-Source](http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2012/02/27/study-high-social-class-predicts-unethical-behavior/?mod=google%5Fnews%5Fblog&ref=scottsantens.com) Make a mental note of this experiment and try it yourself. The next time someone cuts you or someone else off, notice what kind of car they are driving. Is it an old beater that looks like it’s barely running, or is it a brand new Mercedes? Science says that odds are, it’s a Mercedes. This is not to suggest that all Mercedes drivers are assholes, or to somehow demonize the rich as being a different kind of person. This is only to point out how environment impacts behavior, and how the more disconnected someone becomes from the great many, the more they begin to think less of everyone else. This is the science behind Ebenezer Scrooge and why he is a character that is both the richest in town, and the one with the least empathy for others. So what is the science behind his transformation? ### Empathy Can Be Increased by Thinking of People as People Studies show that those with less empathy, which again tend to be those with more money, can show greater empathic brain activity by simply being asked to consider what someone’s favorite food might be, instead of what color their skin is. > When our study participants had to place others into a social category—even if it was by age, not race—they saw black faces differently than white faces. But the gray dot exercise showed it was possible for Whites to look at black faces without getting this effect. More important for everyday interactions, when participants were prompted to judge these people as individuals—individuals with their own unique tastes and preferences—they reacted no differently to black faces than they did to white ones. Similarly, my lab’s latest brain scans indicate that people stop dehumanizing homeless people and drug addicts when they’re made to guess what these people would like to eat, as if the study participants were running a soup kitchen. > What this research suggests is that the environment can interact with human nature for good or ill; social conditions can reduce prejudice, just as they can foster or exacerbate it. [\-Source](http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/look%5Ftwice?ref=scottsantens.com) Science therefore shows us that those without empathy are not lost causes. Anyone can experience more empathy for others if it is properly fostered. Get people who actively dislike each other and constantly disagree to sit down across the same table, and they can begin to reach agreements by just getting them to ask each other questions that are of a personal nature. A “die hard conservative” can consider themselves to be the mortal enemy of a “tax and spend liberal”, agreeing on nothing and thinking of each other as evil and stupid. And yet get them to talk about their lives with each other, and suddenly even they can start finding common ground. This is the science behind Scrooge’s transformation. Empathy can be fostered by getting people to think about other people as actual people with actual lives, actual troubles, actual pain, and actual joys. These details need only be learned and considered. So what is the science behind Scrooge choosing to give away more of his wealth? ### Feeling Less Wealthy Drives Support for Redistribution Scrooge is shown that even though he is financially rich, he is socially poor. He has no friends. He has no one who loves him or would miss him if he died. He is made to recognize he isn’t so rich after all because aside from money there is little else he has. In realizing he has less than he thought, he becomes more willing to give more to others. > Economic inequality in America is at historically high levels. Although most Americans indicate that they would prefer greater equality, redistributive policies aimed at reducing inequality are frequently unpopular. Traditional accounts posit that attitudes toward redistribution are driven by economic self-interest or ideological principles. From a social psychological perspective, however, we expected that subjective comparisons with other people may be a more relevant basis for self-interest than is material wealth. We hypothesized that participants would support redistribution more when they felt low than when they felt high in subjective status, even when actual resources and self-interest were held constant. Moreover, we predicted that people would legitimize these shifts in policy attitudes by appealing selectively to ideological principles concerning fairness. In four studies, we found correlational (Study 1) and experimental (Studies 2–4) evidence that subjective status motivates shifts in support for redistributive policies along with the ideological principles that justify them. [\-Source](http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/11/21/0956797614553947.abstract?ref=scottsantens.com) In other words, it is how wealthy we *feel*, not how wealthy we may actually be, that drives our perspectives on wealth redistribution. If you feel very rich, you are less likely to feel others should have more. The less rich you feel, the more likely you are to feel others should have more. This is the science behind Scrooge's shift in wanting to keep all of his money for himself, to wanting to share his wealth with those around him. It is these three areas of contemporary scientific research that exemplify just how ahead of his time Charles Dickens was. He knew how the wealthiest among us lose empathy for those less wealthy. He knew how this loss of empathy was not permanent and could be reversed. He knew that feeling less wealthy could drive the desire to keep less and give more. A Christmas Carol is a story about the loss of empathy, the gain of empathy, and the act of empathy. Backed by the latest science, Dickens will continue to live on - his recipe for a more empathic society always awaiting rediscovery. This holiday favorite will long remain a lesson ready to be applied to the world around us. The spirit of giving need not exist only once a year. It really can exist within all of us, every day, of every year. **We need only [remember our past](http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/12/extreme-inequality-helped-cause-both-the-great-depression-and-the-current-economic-crisis.html?ref=scottsantens.com), [witness the present](http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesinsights/2014/03/25/the-67-people-as-wealthy-as-the-worlds-poorest-3-5-billion/?ref=scottsantens.com), and [consider our future](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com).** --- **Learn more about the science behind this article:** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Will Replacing Current Benefits With Cash Tomorrow Leave Today's Recipients Better or Worse Off? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/will-replacing-current-benefits-with-cash-tomorrow-leave-todays-recipients-better-or-worse-off-basic-income-single-parents-welfare/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T21:08:48.000Z [Here's an article I wrote that looks at our current welfare system](https://medium.com/@2noame/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e?ref=scottsantens.com). In that article is the following image from [this presentation](http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/-alexander-presentation%5F10063532278.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com): ![Welfare cliffs](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/kM6yxab.png) This image depicts a single parent with two children living in Pennsylvania. Basic income should replace her cash, food, housing, and energy benefits, and not her childcare, Medicaid, and CHIP benefits. Those would be better replaced with universal programs other than universal basic income. **Case $0:** A single parent with two kids and no labor market income currently receives $20,000 from all of these cash replaceable benefits. With a $12k/4k UBI ($12k for adults and $4k for kids), a parent would receive $20,000 in UBI. So this person with no job would see no change. She is no better off and she is no worse off. Basic income is only meant to replace her current benefits with cash instead. So what if she was earning some level of income? If earning income leaves her worse off, this would mean basic income would provide a disincentive to work. Whereas if with basic income she is better off, then basic income will provide a better incentive to work. **Case $5,000:** If she earned $5,000 in income, her income plus benefits now would be $24,000\. With UBI (assuming her incomes tax rates remain unchanged) her total income would be $25,000. *She would be better off with basic income.* **Case $10,000:** If she earned $10,000 in income her income plus benefits would be $28,000\. With UBI her total income would be $30,000. *She would be better off with basic income.* **Case $20,000:** If she earned $20,000 in income her income plus benefits would be $36,000\. With UBI her total income would be $40,000. *She would be better off with basic income.* So as she earns more income, she keeps doing a bit better compared to now, that is until the present welfare cliffs rear their ugly heads. Then she does a LOT better with UBI. **Case $30,000:** The big change happens at $30,000 where right now because of a giant welfare cliff she loses almost $10,000 in benefits for working and her total would only be $31,000 whereas with a UBI it would instead be $50,000. *She would be WAY better off with basic income.* **Case $45,000:** When she earns $45,000 she currently loses all the benefits UBI looks to replace after being deemed as no longer needing any of them and walks away after taxes with $38,000\. With a UBI she'd walk with $58,000. *She would be better off with basic income.* Again, the above cases assume unchanged tax rates, and realistically tax rates will need to go up, although it all depends on how the UBI is funded. If [funded with a flat income tax](https://basicincomenow.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/how-to-fund-a-universal-basic-income-in-the-usa/?ref=scottsantens.com), as she works she might be slightly worse off than she could otherwise be with a basic income. But she would still be no worse off than she is now. For example, at $10,000 she's getting $28,000 but if her income is taxed at a flat 40%, she's going to lose an extra $2,000 or so income tax and have $28,000 instead of $30,000\. So she'll no longer come out $2,000 ahead but she still won't be worse off. She'll just walk away with the same $28,000 she does now. Meanwhile, a UBI funded with [a land value tax](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/10/17/land%5Fvalue%5Ftax%5Frevenue%5Fhow%5Fmuch%5Fcan%5Fwe%5Fraise%5Fby%5Ftaking%5Funimproved%5Fland.html?ref=scottsantens.com) instead would let her stay $2,000 ahead [and might even reduce her rent](http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/cord-steven%5Fwhy-a-tax-on-land-values-will-not-raise-land-rent-1967.html?ref=scottsantens.com) through providing the incentive to make available for rent vacant homes and undeveloped lots, increasing the supply of housing and therefore decreasing the price that can be charged. In this way, perhaps she could walk away $3,000 or $4,000 ahead instead of $2,000. Hopefully it's more clear now how a single parent with kids can be just as well off and even better off with UBI than present benefits, and this will vary depending on how a UBI is funded. We should also remember how much more time she will have not being forced to jump through welfare hoops, and also what that means for her sense of worth and ability to earn more income or spend more time with her kids. This should also make clear how important it is to provide the partial additional amount for kids. There are those who don't like this idea, even some basic income supporters, but without that added amount for kids, many if not most parents receiving benefits now will be worse off with basic income because all current benefits provide more benefits based on number of kids. This is how it's done all over the world. Larger households get more benefits. And no, this doesn't provide a massive incentive for pumping out babies for cash. In fact, there is the case to be made for it decreasing fertility rates because this is all so tied into [poverty and inequality](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/teen%5Fmoms%5Fhow%5Fpoverty%5Fand%5Finequality%5Fcause%5Fteens%5Fto%5Fhave%5Fbabies%5Fnot%5Fthe%5Fother%5Fway%5Faround%5F.html?ref=scottsantens.com). [An evidence paper on cash transfers by the Department of International Development](http://www.who.int/alliance-hpsr/alliancehpsr%5Fdfidevidencepaper.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) found their effects on population to be the following: ![Cash transfer effects on fertility](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/waQZLav.png) This long-term decrease in fertility might be of interest to those who want it to decrease. All of the above has focused on a single parent with kids because they are the ones right now receiving the most aid. Understanding that, those without kids will definitely be better off with UBI because right now people without kids get relatively little help in comparison to those with kids. *Individuals without kids will be better off with basic income.* Also, as soon as we're talking about couples instead of singles, UBI again makes a drastic improvement on the current system because of each getting UBI. *Two-adult households with and without kids will be better off with basic income.* **We will all be better off with basic income.** The only way we can be worse off with basic income, is if we attempt to replace benefits like health care and child care with cash. These programs should remain separate and require their own improvements separate from basic income. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Negative Income Tax (NIT) and Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-nit-and-unconditional-basic-income-ubi-what-makes-them-the-same-and-what-makes-them-different/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T21:09:39.000Z A negative income tax (NIT) and an unconditional basic income (UBI) are two ways of achieving a basic income guarantee (BIG). One gives a varying amount of money according to income, and the other gives the same amount to all and taxes different amounts back. However, among basic income supporters, some of us prefer UBI and some of us prefer NIT even despite the potential for their outcomes to be identical. Why, you might ask? A NIT is like giving someone $50 and asking for nothing back, and a UBI is like giving someone $100 and asking for $50 from their next paycheck. Both result in the person getting an extra $50\. The question of which is better depends on the details involved and how the person feels about them. Here's a less simplified and more accurate description: A basic income of $12,000 per year achieved using a NIT is basically making the top quintile (the top 20% of income earners) give $1,000 per month to the bottom quintile, $666 to the next quintile, $334 to the middle quintile, and $0 to the 2nd richest quintile. Now, these numbers can be different according to what the amount is set at, and the tax rates used, but that's basically the kind of outcome we'd see. Meanwhile, a $12,000 per year UBI looks to give $1,000 per month to every quintile, and tax everyone sufficiently to accomplish that. And this can be accomplished in a variety of ways that don't even necessarily include income taxation. To go a bit further into this comparison here's a hypothetical scenario based on your earning $36,000 right now, with a NIT, and with a UBI. --- ## **Scenario ($36,000 salary):** **Example 1 (Control):** You are currently drawing a salary of $3,000 per month, for a total of $36,000 per year. After taxes you net $31,000\. Your taxes are automatically deducted from each paycheck, leaving you with $2,583 of disposable income each month and you owe nothing and get nothing at the end of the year. **Example 2 (NIT):** You are currently drawing a salary of $3,000 per month, for a total of $36,000 per year. With a NIT threshold set at $40,000 and a tax rate of 30%, you get a NIT refund of $1,200 ($40,000 - $36,000 = $4,000 and 30% of $4,000 is $1,200). However, this isn't just a check at the end of the year. Because your salary was known, this refund was expected. So you actually received an additional check for $100 per month over the course of the year and lost nothing from your paychecks to taxes. The result is that you had $3,100 of disposable income per month ($517 more in your pocket each month), for a new NIT enhanced annual salary of $37,200 (effectively a $6,200 raise) **Example 3 (UBI):** You are currently drawing a salary of $3,000 per month, for a total of $36,000 per year. With a UBI set at $12,000 and a tax rate of 30%, you pay $10,800 in taxes. Because of UBI, this leaves you with a net bonus of $1,200\. However, because a UBI is paid every month, you actually received an additional $1,000 per month. In addition, because your salary was known, and because it was expected that you would be paying $10,800 in taxes (about twice the $5,000 you would have paid without UBI) about twice what would have been withheld from your paycheck is withheld for you each month. The result of this is that each month, your paycheck is $2,100 and your basic income check is $1,000\. So each month you earn $3,100 ($517 more in your pocket each month), for a new UBI enhanced annual salary of $37,200 (effectively a $6,200 raise). **Comparison Summary $36,000 Salary:** $31,000 per year or $2,583 per month after tax salary $37,200 per year or $3,000 after tax salary per month + $100 NIT = $3,100/mo $37,200 per year or $2,100 after tax salary per month + $1,000 UBI = $3,100/mo This example should make it more clear how NIT and UBI can have identical outcomes, but with a NIT focused on taxing and transferring less, and a UBI focused on taxing and transferring more. If we hate taxing and transferring, we're probably going to lean more towards NIT, and if we hate treating people differently based on income, we're probably going to lean more towards UBI. The question becomes how many lean which ways? Maybe a NIT is something more economists might prefer, because they are just looking at numbers, but everyone else would not prefer because of its inequality of distribution? Maybe someone doesn't like the prospect that only poor people get a check that only rich people pay for and would instead prefer the idea of everyone getting a check and everyone paying to make that check possible in varying ways? Maybe someone thinks rich people shouldn't get anything until they meet the definition of needing something, and that it makes no sense to tax more money than necessary, only to give it back. So why might it make sense to tax more, when there's no need to? And what's the point of giving more only to take more back? Well, perhaps the added taxation could be meant to affect behavior. If this increase is added to income taxes such that top marginal tax rates are returned to 90%, maybe this would provide an incentive to not seek huge incomes at the top? If this increase is added to the price of carbon, perhaps this would provide an incentive to reduce our use of carbon and invest in clean renewable energy resources? If this increase is added to the purchase of luxury items, perhaps this would provide incentive for those who can afford luxury items to pay a greater amount for them, and also provide an incentive against that 5th sports car or 3rd vacation home? If this increase is added to the price of owning undeveloped land, perhaps this would be a more fair way of handling land ownership and development in general? If this increase decreases the amount available at the top to buy politicians, perhaps this would result in a stronger democracy that's more responsive to ordinary people? There are a lot of reasons to see taxation as a useful tool and not something to universally hate. Also, maybe there is value in the added complexity? Because a NIT requires people to file their taxes even if nothing is earned, that might leave people out, whereas an amount universally given to everyone would be better at avoiding any holes for people to fall through. Or perhaps it would be far easier to just pay everyone thanks to digital technology, and then figure out what to tax away after the fact? If 80% of the population doesn't need time-intensive calculation, then it would be far more efficient to just calculate the remaining 20% instead of the full 100%. The main difference appears to be that with a UBI, due to its universality, the cost is shifted more, and this has the potential to affect behavior. But due to all the ways in which this cost can be shifted, it can be a more or less of a net good depending on taxation specifics and intended policy goals. A poorly designed UBI can result in worse outcomes than a NIT, but a well designed UBI can result in better outcomes. A UBI can also potentially draw more support and maintain it in the long term, whereas a NIT might be actively fought against by those not receiving it, and could lose support over time. A NIT can only be considered vastly superior if one subscribes to the idea that all taxation is evil, and therefore should always be minimized in all possible cases it can be minimized. A UBI can only be considered vastly superior if one subscribes to the idea that equality of distribution is of utmost importance and that anything that does not give equally is inherently flawed and/or morally wrong. The above is in no way exhaustive and is meant to only provide a better understanding. There is plenty of further studying to be done by those who wish to even better understand the similarities and differences between a UBI and a NIT. Here are three papers for your own research. I recommend reading each of them in their entirety: [Universal Basic Income and Negative Income Tax: Two Different Ways of Thinking Redistribution](http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/7016/1/MPRA%5Fpaper%5F7016.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) [Arguing for Basic Income: Ethical Foundations for a Radical Reform](http://www.modernmoneynetwork.org/uploads/1/2/5/3/12534585/arguing%5Ffor%5Fbasic%5Fincome.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) [Universal Basic Income and the Cost Objection: What are We Waiting For?](http://www.usbig.net/papers/UBI%5FCost%5FObjection%20-%20RPereira%20July-August%202014%5FUSBIG.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) If you read all of these, or even just one of them, you'll probably walk away preferring one or the other, even though both guarantee a basic income and both as a result would profoundly improve the systemic outcomes of our respective societies. And it's that last part I think would serve us all best to keep in mind. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### My Responses to the Responses to the Basic Income Article in Newsweek URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/my-responses-to-the-responses-to-the-basic-income-article-in-newsweek/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T21:10:42.000Z This weekend Newsweek joined the mainstream media club to write favorably of basic income. Please read [the article](http://www.newsweek.com/how-fix-poverty-write-every-family-basic-income-check-291583?ref=scottsantens.com) if you haven't already done so. I think it's important in an article like this to get a feeling for how people are reacting to the idea and try to best answer them appropriately. And so the following are some of the comments to the article and my responses to them. > Give everyone a basic income check and you have just zeroed out everyone. If everyone's starting point is $15,000 instead of $0, then the cost of things will go up to reflect this. It boggles my mind that people don't understand this. It will not work. The bigger question is where is this play money supposed to come from? We are trillion$$$ in debt that we cannot pay off, and now this proposal is to add unconditional gifts of money to everyone? MERRY CHRISTMAS! This article continues to prove that Gruber was right about the stupidity of Americans. I know it sounds really simple, this idea that a basic income will just immediately lead to a new zero and so the idea is just retarded, but there's a lot of variables involved in an equation like this. If you want to learn about what they are, [here's something to read](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7?ref=scottsantens.com). It provides a summary of the many variables and will hopefully lead to a better understanding of the complexities involved. And if you want to learn more about where the money comes from, just read the article it is in response to, at the top of the page. > How about only basic needs coming through the churches and not the government and how about not giving amnesty to illegals. I am sure Mexico is going to follow suit and give each family money. This is about as dumb a system as I have ever heard of. Good grief! Because that doesn't work. Our private safety nets are strained past capacity. They were never meant to pull the weight they are pulling. You may be surprised to learn [they are actively failing](http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/08/18/3472568/disturbing-facts-american-hunger/?ref=scottsantens.com). This is also why we are actually beginning to see [food banks themselves pushing for basic income](http://www.foodbankscanada.ca/getmedia/76907192-263c-4022-8561-73a16c06dd2f/HungerCount%5F2014%5FEN%5FHR.pdf.aspx?ref=scottsantens.com). Food banks know that if everyone can afford their own food, there is less need for food banks, and they can focus their resources on those that will still need help with a basic income. Churches and food banks can not make an industrialized economy in the 21st century work better. Basic income can. > Scott Santens You are kidding right? Mexico already dumps its unwanted into the US. You cannot have open borders and a welfare state. Mexico will never do anything to change its corrupt kleptocracy. Other countries won't follow. They will just do what Mexico does. Ending all welfare will do more to end poverty than expanding it. Apply the Christian model for charity. Those who can help themselves but just need a hand up through no fault of their own, and those who are disabled and unable to care for themselves. And stop all programs that incentivize the destruction of families (LBJ's plan) For those who live entirely on the dole, $15K will be up to a 70% cut in benefits. In MA the total benefits are equal to nearly $50K a year full time work. Mark Kelcourse , No I'm not kidding, but I wish *you were* because the very idea of **dropping all safety nets and hoping private charity will pick up the slack is like uninstalling your car brakes and relying on prayer to prevent future accidents.** > Why should someone get $15,000 for doing nothing? They shouldn't. It's not my responsibility to support anyone but me and my family. PERIOD. Because you get it too. Why should someone on welfare get $15,000 while you earn $15,000 from work? That's the way things currently are. A basic income means that all work pays more than not working, and it's the only way to accomplish that. As soon as we pull benefits away for working, we provide a strong work disincentive, and that's exactly what we have right now. Meanwhile, if you think that anyone not working should get $0 and that only those who can find jobs earn income, which by the way there aren't enough of for everyone who wants one to get, then we will just achieve complete social collapse. People who can't find work or even choose not to work (and instead volunteer and do care work and countless other forms of unpaid work) require a safety net. And the only way to design a safety net without a welfare trap is to not pull it away once someone no longer needs it, and instead treat it as a bonus for work. That's how basic income works, and it'll create a far better system with far better outcomes for everyone, including you. If you want to learn more about our current counterproductive welfare system and how much room for improvement it has, [here's an article to consider](https://medium.com/@2noame/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e?ref=scottsantens.com). > \[Those with higher incomes paying more back than receiving in basic income\] would be defeating of the concept. No it wouldn't. Replacing subsidies with cash actually makes a lot of sense. Right now the poor get stuff like food stamps, the middle class get stuff like the home mortgage interest rate deduction, and the rich get stuff like the laws they pay lawmakers to pass for them. A basic income allows for the elimination of subsidies, making all for this welfare that everyone already gets fully transparent. Seems to me if we're already okay with those with higher incomes paying say $15,000 in taxes and getting $15,000 in deductions or subsidies or whatever else we don't see as welfare because it's for the middle class and the rich instead of poor people, than why not be okay replacing the existing subsidy with money? If someone wants $15,000 a year knocked off the price of their mortgage, why not just not do that and give $15,000 cash? That's the economically more sound thing to do. To read: [Cash transfers can work better than subsidies](http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/cash-transfers-can-work-better-than-subsidies/article6665676.ece?ref=scottsantens.com). > There is one additionall thing missing in article. How much do you spend on police and dealings with side effects of crime and poverty? That could be additionall saving for tax payers. And payoffs? There is nothing more common than wasted talent. In plenty of cases it's because it's really f-k hard to learn well when you are really poor. It's not only cash, it's also social pression, how people look at you, how your parents argue because of lack of money, how your collegues are awesome when they get so needed money by selling weed. It's also really hard to pursue your own talents and ideas when you have to work 40hr/day to pay bills. Exactly! Actually the estimate of how much money we waste on our criminal systems and our medical systems due to allowing poverty to continue and all the effects it has on people and society is [over $1 trillion every year](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=147911&ref=scottsantens.com). Yes, trillion with a "T", annually. Meanwhile, we know from [the Mincome program in Manitoba, Canada that hospital use declined almost 10%](http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20%282%29.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) by providing a minimum income there, and [in Namibia, a basic income experiment there showed a decrease in crime rates of over 40%](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). And that's average. Extreme crimes, as in only those crimes people do because they feel they have no other choice, went down even more. Poaching went down 95%! That is a massive increase in crime that should drop our collective jaw. We should all know the nugget of wisdom that sometimes you have to spend money to make money. Well, that's basic income. By spending money on basic income, we will grow our GDP while simultaneously reducing our wasted spending on crime and health care. Once we understand that, we can understand how [a basic income essentially pays for itself, and does so in spades](http://www.usbig.net/papers/UBI%5FCost%5FObjection%20-%20RPereira%20July-August%202014%5FUSBIG.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). > The free enterprise system that has made the USA the most prosperous country ever on the planet requires incentives. Why go to school if what is needed to survive is provided free to all? Why strive for a higher education, why invest time and money in a business? Communism (or whatever new name you come up with for that system) sounds wonderful and kind, but does not work well in practice. We would be better served unwinding much of the socialism out of our system, leaving only a basic net for those that are not capable of working or producing. Reward what you want more of (production) and not what you want less of (able people surviving on the fruits of others labor). People that are producing and contributing are happy, able people surviving on the dole are not. You ask "why invest time and money in a business?" That's a very good question. Now ask if you are more likely to invest time and money in a business if failure means destitution, or if failure only means failure and the freedom to just try again? Right now very few people are becoming entrepreneurs, and [this number has been trending downwards for a long time](http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-decline-of-self-employment-and.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Do you actually think there will be fewer incentives to create businesses once everyone has a basic income? Because that's not at all what the data shows from basic income pilots. [Entrepreneurship increases. Small businesses thrive](https://medium.com/basic-income/evidence-and-more-evidence-of-the-effect-on-inflation-of-free-money-a3dcc2a9ea9e?ref=scottsantens.com). That' what we want isn't it? Good systems do require incentives, and the free enterprise system really does work, but it could work even better. Making something better does not mean you destroy it and turn it into communism. We can make capitalism work better just as we can shift gears in a car to go faster using less fuel. That's what basic income will do, shift capitalism into a higher gear, where we leverage what we know from actual data and observations to improve the economy for everyone, billionaires included. If you read [this](https://medium.com/tech-and-inequality/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com), it goes into further details of how friendly to capitalism this idea actually is. I for one love capitalism. And I also love basic income. They are not mutually exclusive and actually work very well together. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Women Have Lower Incomes Than Men URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/women-have-lower-incomes-than-men-gender-wage-gap-inequality/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T21:13:03.000Z **Claim 1:** *[Income is access to resources](http://www.scottsantens.com/shouldn-t-all-this-talk-about-money-actually-be-talk-about-resources). When it comes to humans, one gender is given less access to resources than the other.* **Claim 2:** *Women are paid less than men for the same work.* Though it may appear these two claims are the same, they are not. The first claim is entirely true, but the second more widely shared claim should be worded more carefully. We can't just make the claim that women aren't paid as much for the same job, or that they are, as if it applies to all jobs universally. The situation is a lot more complex that that. Women are paid *more* for some jobs, *the same* for others, and *less* for others. Women on average have lower incomes, but this is also due in part to men working more. But there is still more to it than that. There are also choices involved, with women being greater represented in jobs that pay less. However, that too is not so simple, because some of these jobs that pay less pay less because long ago they were considered "women's work" and historically speaking, we have unfortunately tended to value the labor of women less than men, just as we have for the work of minorities (which is kind of ironic considering women are a majority). In general, on average, and even controlling for variables, [women tend to earn less income than men](http://www.politifact.com/georgia/statements/2014/sep/15/connie-stokes/stokes-broadly-right-gender-pay-claim/?ref=scottsantens.com). I for one see that as a problem. > Looking at weekly wages, a 2011 Bureau of Labor Statistics report found **women earned 81 percent of men’s wages for all occupations**. > The gap is smaller than the Census figures, which rely on annual wages and can therefore include pensions, bonuses and other factors that widen the difference. > Those different conclusions show the inherent problem with bold statements on a wage gap, especially when referencing specific numbers. > Numbers also don’t tell the whole story about the second part of Stokes’ claim, that women are paid less "for the same work." > Again, the data overwhelmingly back up the broad claim – but not in every field. > The 2011 BLS report shows women actually earn 12 cents more than men in the food preparation/serving industries, 10 cents more as "billing and posting clerks and machine operators" and 5 cents more than men working as store clerks. > **Yet beyond those three jobs, and looking at broad industry categories, women still earn less than men overall.** [This much longer and more in-depth report from 2009 by the CONSAD research Corporation](http://templatelab.com/gender-wage-gap-final-report/?ref=scottsantens.com) goes further into this, way further, and shows just how complex the situation is. And although it concludes a smaller wage gap by gender of about 4-8% than the 20% gap by the BLS, it too still supports the existence of a gap. In addition, it then goes on to hypothesize that the gap as it exists might just be entirely due to women *wanting* to earn less, because of reasons like preferring benefits, part time work, and more family friendly jobs. Let's just assume that hypothesis is correct for a moment. **Is it okay that women have less access to resources than men because they are women?** Someone has to have babies to continue the species. Women happen to biologically be the ones who get to do this. This requires they take maternity leave. This then usually involves women being the primary care giver. This results in women needing certain jobs that offer certain different things than men. Is that okay that we view all of this as fair if the outcome is that one gender earns less than another for doing the work the entire species needs instead of what the labor market might want instead? That because women are the childbearers and spend more time caring for kids, that they should earn less income because it's a choice? It's all just choice? Is being born with ovaries a life choice? You know what is a choice? Valuing financial instrument creation over human creation. Seems to me that there's actually an argument to be made here that there should be a gap that leans *toward* women instead of away from them. Perhaps women should actually be paid *more* for the same work to balance it all out, because they are doing the unpaid work we actually need as a species, and we should value it accordingly. I'm not going to argue for that though. I just feel we need a universal basic income, and that when it helps certain groups more than others - [which it does](http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/cash-transfers-can-work-better-than-subsidies/article6665676.ece?ref=scottsantens.com) \- that this is yet another plus of basic income. We have seen it in basic income experiments. > The point is that the basic income has three types of effect. First, it improves personal and community welfare. The evidence from the pilots showed improvements in child nutrition, schooling attendance and performance, health and healthcare, sanitation and housing. **It also has desirable equity outcomes, since it benefited women more than men**, the disabled more than others, the least secure and lowest income groups more than others. However, what should please my fellow economists is that it also stimulates growth. ## Society as a System [I think it's important to take a systems level view of the world around us](https://medium.com/basic-income/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a?ref=scottsantens.com). With that said, let's continue assuming women earn less income than men entirely because of free choice. The libertarian viewpoint stops here, having reached the conclusion that no coercion exists, and that women are just choosing to earn less by working less or by taking jobs that pay less, or by being less likely to request raises, etc. I don't think we should stop there. I think we should look at the *reasons* for these choices. If the system is oriented in a way that produces a particular output, and this output varies according to gender, even if we think this difference is entirely just, I think we should look at it. The system produces fewer female CEOs. Why? It produces fewer female representatives in Congress. Why? Are women choosing not to be CEOs? Are women choosing not to be representatives in Congress? This seems an especially odd observation when it comes to political representation considering there are actually more women than there are men. Men and women are different biologically. We are not physically equal. We know this. But does this mean we should look at income inequality by gender as a just outcome? Black Americans earn less than white Americans. Is this also by choice? Some would say it is by choice - that certain people just choose to commit more crimes, and just choose to not be as educated, and just choose to not work as hard or in as good of jobs. I think it's easier to see that these aren't actually *choices*, but **an outcome** of [a system that extends for hundreds of years to create the output of the system we see now](http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/?ref=scottsantens.com). So when it comes to women, there too is a system that goes back a very long time. Our society is built differently for men than it is for women. There are different expectations involved even, and differences in perception. Again let's look at why there are fewer female CEOs. Why? Let's all imagine we are women for a second. Do the actions we can take to climb the corporate ladder have different results for us than if we were male? Can the actions of a man result in being seen as "a real go-getter" while our actions be seen as being "a real bitch"? I think we can all imagine how the same actions taken by different genders can result in different outcomes. So what does this mean for free choice? If one gender can be promoted for doing the same thing another gender can be demoted for, how does that apply to the notion of equal choice? If we can start to ask these questions, I think it's hard to stop at freedom of choice, because choices just stop looking like just choices. Here's something important for us all to understand... **Choices are made for us, while we are still in the womb.** If in your mother's womb, your mother's food intake was restricted, it would be easier for you for your whole life, to put on weight than those who weren't hungry in the womb, because you were programmed to be hungry. [This is environment having a direct effect on genetics through epigenetics and we know this from studying the Dutch Hunger Winter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36HquPzdxf4&ref=scottsantens.com). So whereas a more libertarian or conservative viewpoint might be that overweight people are overweight by choice, because of choosing to eat more and worse, I think it's important to look at why these choices are being made. If these choices are being made because of the environment in the womb, then how much of an actual choice is that? There is a certain amount of unavoidable programming here that has removed or at least restricted real choice. I think it's this kind of more expansive look we need to take on things. Systems cannot be understood from inside them. We have to step outside of them. Concluding that women earn less than men because of free choice is to me, looking at the system from inside it. Stepping outside of it requires us looking at why these choices are made, and just how much free choice is actually involved in the systemic outcomes we see around us. The major reason I support basic income is because it stands to adjust the actual system in its entirety in a way that will produce what I see as better systemic outcomes across **a wide variety** of measures, creating greater equity across the board. **One of these measures is the degree of income inequality between genders.** If a woman earns $8 right now while a man earns $10, and with a $10 basic income a woman earns $18 while a man earns $20, that's a more equal outcome with the disparity going from 20% to 10%. That someone might view this as an improvement to a problem that doesn't really exist is really just fine, because the greater equity happens either way. Women collectively are just one of the groups who will benefit more from basic income than others, and so I view this move towards greater equality across all groups as a major and much desired systemic outcome of basic income. --- **This post originated as a discussion I had with someone on [Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/?ref=scottsantens.com) concerning [this article here](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/women-bear-85-of-burden-after-coalitions-tax-and-benefit-tweaks-9907143.html?ref=scottsantens.com) about how cuts to benefits are affecting women far more than men.** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### 5 Steps to Becoming a BIG Contributor URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/5-steps-to-becoming-a-big-contributor-basic-income-guarantee/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T21:14:32.000Z So you want to help make a basic income guarantee happen? Our primary need is for more materials that are more accessible, more shareable, more impactful, etc. This need is huge and is exactly why there is also such a great opportunity to be a major part of this instead of just another voice pushing for something like a higher minimum wage. There is also a need for more websites to help better spread these materials. I will say that so far, [UBI Europe](http://ubie.org/brief-history-basic-income-ideas/?ref=scottsantens.com) IMO has the best website. I also recommend clicking that link and reading its "Brief History of Basic Income." There are other sites, like [usbig.net](http://www.usbig.net/index.php?ref=scottsantens.com), [binews.org](http://binews.org/?ref=scottsantens.com), and [basicincome.org](http://basicincome.org/?ref=scottsantens.com), but they all need updated layouts to be more shareable. The content they have is great though, like [all the papers](http://basicincome.org/bien/papers.html?ref=scottsantens.com) for example, and all the [breaking news](http://binews.org/category/latest-news/?ref=scottsantens.com) BI News produces regularly ([to which you can help contribute](http://binews.org/contribute.php?ref=scottsantens.com)) With that said, here are five possible concrete steps to becoming a major contributor to the growing movement for basic income: --- **Step 1: Become Knowledgeable** Go directly to [Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/?ref=scottsantens.com). Do not pass GO. If you want to learn everything you can, the /r/BasicIncome sub is it. (*Full disclosure: I'm one of its team of moderators.*) I've read about 95% of everything posted there, in its entirety, for over a year now. If you want to learn all you can, I suggest the same strategy. In doing so, you will not only gain a grasp on basic income itself, but also the many MANY reasons for it, through connecting the dots between the idea and all the "indirect" articles posted that may not be about basic income but point directly to its need to be implemented. **Step 2: Interact with Others** Information is just information. The knowledge gained in Step 1 is the process of applying theory to information, and getting an effective hold on what all the information really means, and how to share it with others in a way they can understand. This is what takes practice. Everyone is different, and you will need to learn how to interact with people with tact, and in a way that is useful and constructive. You will need to practice repeatedly discussing what was learned in Step 1\. Do it on Reddit. Do it in the comment sections elsewhere online. Do it through social media channels like Facebook and Twitter. Do it in person with friends and family. Just do it. Interact. **Step 3: Create Content** Now that you have a good thorough understanding and how to better share it, it's time to start reaching a wider audience. Try your hand at a video. There are [tools](http://www.powtoon.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) out there to help with this. I'm working on this myself. Videos are a great way of reaching a larger audience. Articles and blogs are also a great way. Write them. Start them. I've had great success with [Medium](https://medium.com/@2noame/recommended?ref=scottsantens.com) and have started this blog you're reading right now. Don't stop there. Try to get stuff into more widely read mediums. Submit stuff to [HuffPo](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1gitPnE14Y892kqpbXQEcZMVEcTNO8hkEZv%5Fy386KbnM/viewform?ref=scottsantens.com), [The Atlantic](http://www.theatlantic.com/faq/?ref=scottsantens.com#Submissions%20to%20The%20Atlantic), [BusinessInsider](http://www.businessinsider.com/contributors-faq?ref=scottsantens.com), etc. Most of the time you will hear nothing back. But sometimes, you will get a reply. Stick with it. Keep going. **Step 4: Organize Locally** Now that you have knowledge, know how to interact with others, and have reached others with your words, video, art, etc., it's time to really mobilize people. Create a local meeting place. Lead the way. [Start a regular meetup](https://secure.meetup.com/create/?ref=scottsantens.com) where you can talk with others. No need to have an immediate plan. Just get together. Build relationships. From there each step will happen organically. Maybe your group will decide to create and spread materials through the city. Maybe they will decide to focus on local politicians. Maybe you'll decide to start gathering signatures. Whatever is decided, it'll be a step forward at the local level, which is extremely important to start accomplishing. **Step 5: Organize Nationally (and then Globally)** This is the final step. After growing a multitude of groups at the local level, it's time to start organizing those groups for national action. Groups will need to coordinate together and work towards a common goal or list of common goals. It is at this point where large donors will finally come into play. The movement will be considered serious enough to back, and people will back it. --- Granted, this is my own plan. Others may not agree with it, but to me this makes sense, and I've been following it myself. My next step is Step 4, which I plan to take by the end of this year. However for others, it might make far more sense to just make Step 4 Step 1\. Not everyone wants to create content and would rather just start pushing forward with activism. So if that describes you, start with Step 4, and maybe just skip Step 3 altogether, focusing instead together on Steps 1, 2, and 5. I encourage everyone reading this to consider joining me in [**The BIG Patreon Creator Pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com). If you plan to become so involved in the movement so as to create a lot of content (especially videos which we desperately need), then create your own Patreon page and gather patrons to help fund them. Use my own as a template if you like. Leverage your time-intensive efforts to crowdsource your own basic income, so that you can focus even more time and greater resources on its eventual adoption. Inspire others to do the same. This is what I'm attempting to do, and the more who do the same, the greater the impact we will together have. **Let's all take our own steps toward basic income and a better future for everyone.** --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Does Guaranteeing a Basic Income Reduce Income Inequality? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/does-guaranteeing-a-basic-income-reduce-income-inequality-/ Last updated: 2022-02-09T16:43:28.000Z Universal Basic Income (UBI) **directly** reduces income inequality. I've actually written an as yet unpublished chapter for a book about this very topic, and am working on an article about this as well. Here are two preliminary findings from what I'm still working on: *(For a quick primer on the Gini index, how it's calculated, and why different sources conclude different numbers, [read this](http://inequality.org/unequal-americas-income-distribution/?ref=scottsantens.com). In short, a Gini of 0 represents maximum equality and a Gini of 1 represents maximum inequality.)* 1. My own calculation of the current Gini of the US distribution of income before taxes, using [data from 2010 from all filing categories](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/why-so-many-rich-people-dont-feel-very-rich/?%5Fr=1&ref=scottsantens.com): **Gini = 0.60** ![Gini Now](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/w4VAjiZ.png) 1. This is the theoretical US Gini after applying a 40% flat tax to the same before tax distribution and providing a $12k/4k basic income ($12,000 for adults and $4,000 per child): **Gini = 0.46** ![Gini UBI](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/zF1alW3.png) That's a reduction of the Gini by **0.14**. According to the CBO, our current pre-tax Gini is 0.47 and post-tax Gini is 0.43\. So a basic income flat tax would be an improvement of 0.10, potentially lowering our Gini to 0.33\. That's enough to give us an after-tax Gini index on par with the Nordic states, and lower than even our record low in 1968. *Bonus trivia: Economically optimal Gini is considered to be in the range between 0.28 and 0.38\. [Anything higher than 0.45 is considered a drag on the economy](https://www.globalcreditportal.com/ratingsdirect/renderArticle.do?articleId=1351366&SctArtId=255732&from=CM&nsl%5Fcode=LIME&sourceObjectId=8741033&sourceRevId=1&fee%5Find=N&exp%5Fdate=20240804-19:41:13&ref=scottsantens.com#ContactInfo), and thus harmful to GDP, as well as society itself.* ####Translation: Without taxes and transfers we'd have been screwing ourselves every year since 1995. ![History of US Gini index](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/cJLZ0As.jpg) (Note: Again, different sources claim different Gini coefficients. According to the OECD, the US had a pre and post tax Gini in 2010 of 0.50 and 0.38\. So it's likely the OECD would calculate a different UBI-FIT Gini, but they don't share their method, so it's difficult to guess their guess. It would certainly however be lower than 0.38.) If you're not sure how this works, imagine yourself and four friends with the following amounts of money in your wallets: $6, $18, $30, $46, $100. **Gini index of you and your friends = 0.43** ![Before](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/oFICjrb.png) Now imagine you realize the two with the least don't have enough for all of you to go out and enjoy some drinks together. Your friend with $100 could just buy their drinks, but he knows people feel better about themselves buying their own drinks, and feels they are starting to resent him for always having so much more than them, and always buying their drinks. So he tries something new. Your rich friend suggests that everyone put 40% of their money into a pot, which will then be divided equally amongst all five. The result after doing so is that now the wallets contain: $19, $27, $34, $45, $76. **New Gini index of you and your friends = 0.26** ![Before](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/PSRSLha.png) Now your two poorest friends have enough for a few drinks, and you can all go out, but this time everyone feels independent, with no one being a charity case. Your richest friend just enabled everyone to go out and have a good time, instead of leaving two friends out or straight paying for their drinks for them. The amounts in each wallet reflect **[the actual income distribution by quintile](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2011/10/share-of-aggregate-income-by-quintile-united-states-1967-1979-and-2010-001-001.jpg?ref=scottsantens.com)** in the US in 2010. ![Income distribution by quintile](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2011/10/share-of-aggregate-income-by-quintile-united-states-1967-1979-and-2010-001-001.jpg) The amounts in each wallet after each throws the same percentage into a pot and splits it is **[the actual distribution after a 40% basic income flat tax](http://imgur.com/Lx0GkBv?ref=scottsantens.com)**. ![UBI-FIT](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/iHJwTWa.png) A flat tax funded basic income directly reduces income inequality by taxing those at the top more and transferring this income as extra income for those at the bottom and middle. The pivot point of this modification rests at around the 60-80% point, meaning that about 60% of individuals and 80% of households would have more income after taxes than right now. (Note: I use a flat tax because it is much easier to understand and much easier to model. But other methods of funding a UBI would still reduce income inequality, and even wealth inequality if wealth is taxed, because all forms of UBI function as the means of getting money from the top, and transferring it back down to the bottom and middle where the money came from in the first place.) [*Science: capitalism is a system that is always transferring money to the top from the bottom*](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110721172334.htm?ref=scottsantens.com) Oh no, some might say. That's *communism*. We can't have everyone *entirely equal*. We can't take everything from the rich and give all their money to the poor. ## Look at this chart, then express those concerns again... ![Chart of US income distribution: before taxes now vs. after taxes now vs. after basic income flax tax TOMORROW](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/WAuAItN.png) Basically, a basic income would give us an income distribution more like [the wealth distribution people already think we have](http://www.businessinsider.com/wealth-and-income-inequality-in-america-2013-4?op=1&ref=scottsantens.com), but are entirely mistaken in thinking... ![Silvrback blog image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/7c9a5d99-2aea-47f2-b5b3-c3cb946c5d7d/heres-what-americans-think-wealth-distribution-looks-like_large.jpg) ... And would be a [**BIG**](http://www.usbig.net/index.php?ref=scottsantens.com) step closer to what 92% of Americans consider our ideal wealth distribution should be. ![Silvrback blog image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/87791df8-c673-49c4-b2dc-8e84c418a541/what-americans-want--republicans-and-democrats-alike--is-this-the-top-20-have-the-most-the-middle-class-have-plenty-and-the-bottom-20-have-some_large.jpg) (Note: Wealth inequality is far more extreme than income inequality, so when we compare ideals, we want income inequality to be even LESS than the above ideal image.) It is **imperative** we understand [just how extreme inequality has gotten here in America](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM&ref=scottsantens.com). Only then will we start enacting real changes to the system - *like basic income* \- to do something about it. ![Silvrback blog image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/e709326b-d27b-49d3-b0ed-f485ea5f344b/again-heres-what-people-think-inequality-should-be-compared-to-what-they-think-it-is-compared-to-what-it-actually-is.jpg_large.png) --- ![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/c582a303-ab6e-4545-8375-61dffdf5ce77/1-20A5T3a8K4JR2TlT4G6x9Z4A_large.png) Like my blog? [**Please subscribe**](http://www.scottsantens.com/email%5Fsubscriptions/new) and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) of support. --- ######Want to crowdfund a basic income? Take [The BIG Patreon Creator Pledge](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com). --- *[Subscribe to my blog](http://www.scottsantens.com/email%5Fsubscriptions/new) | [Follow me on Twitter](https://twitter.com/2noame?ref=scottsantens.com) | [Like me on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/scottsantens) | [Follow me on Tumblr](http://2noame.tumblr.com/?ref=scottsantens.com)* ### The Big Easy was noted for its low quality of life... Stop right there. URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-big-easy-was-noted-for-its-poor-quality-of-life-stop-right-there-new-orleans-nola/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T21:15:52.000Z *This is in response to the article "[Economic Innovation in the 'New' New Orleans](http://www.areadevelopment.com/stateResources/louisiana/New-Orleans-economic-innovation-post-Katrina-2929287.shtml?ref=scottsantens.com#comment-1714391079)":* > "Only a decade ago, the Big Easy was noted for its poor business climate, low quality of life..." Woah, woah, woah... stop right there. I think you're confusing quality of life with average income. The Big Easy acquired such a nickname, not because of how easy it was to design a new app to replace someone's job and make their income yours, or how easy it was for those who don't even live here to buy property and rent it out to those who do. It was about a slower pace of living, something more along the lines of Europe. It was the idea that life isn't about how many hours you work or how much money is in your bank account. It was the idea that life has its own value and that enjoying it is what life is really about. Pieces like this that just pretend the world is a better place because rich people are being shoveled money to create jobs so that more people can be wage slaves, is ignorant of years of systemic economic transition. Yeah, technology is creating jobs, and you know what, [it's also eliminating WAY MORE jobs than they are creating](http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21621161-how-governments-can-deal-labour-imbalance-means-and-ends?ref=scottsantens.com). The tech sector is helping drive inequality, not decrease it. Tech jobs, especially based around software instead of hardware, allow small groups of people to make large amounts of money, with little need for job creation to make it all possible. At the same time, this software is actively eliminating jobs. Uber is a microcosm of this. Taxi jobs are threatened by software enabling ordinary people (who can't find steady work) to sell their labor as drivers. The gig economy we are seeing is a direct result of [decades of wage stagnation](http://i.imgur.com/OYQTNIU.gif?ref=scottsantens.com) and the ability of technology to eliminate jobs as we once knew them. New Orleans is now [the city with the 2ND HIGHEST level of inequality of any city in the country](http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst/most-income-inequality-us-cities?ref=scottsantens.com), with a GINI of 0.57 [well above the point 0.45 defined as being depressive of GDP](https://www.globalcreditportal.com/ratingsdirect/renderArticle.do?articleId=1351366&SctArtId=255732&from=CM&nsl%5Fcode=LIME&sourceObjectId=8741033&sourceRevId=1&fee%5Find=N&exp%5Fdate=20240804-19:41:13&ref=scottsantens.com#ContactInfo). Therefore, our own economy suffers from such inequality, as do our people. Our people see fewer jobs they can actually get (by and large) without access to higher education and training, fewer full time jobs, and more jobs with fewer hours and less dependability. Jobs working for Uber aren't careers. [McWages aren't the way to a strong economy.](http://www.mybudget360.com/low-wage-mcjobs-recovery-not-in-labor-force-participation/?ref=scottsantens.com) That last point is hugely important. Wages continue to stagnate. And why wouldn't they? With jobs hard to come by and people desperate, why pay people more? And why pay someone here when we can just pay someone in India much less, again thanks to the technology that allows such globalization of labor? Articles like this do no one any favors. It's equivalent to waving the American flag and claiming "America is #1!" I'm sorry, we aren't number 1\. And New Orleans, a city I loved so much I had to move here, is losing its own identity. As locals are forced to move due to the inability to afford rising rents and prices, we lose what makes New Orleans The Big Easy, THE PEOPLE. Jobs do not make New Orleans. Movies do not make New Orleans. New apps do not make New Orleans. New Orleans is comprised of the people who live here. And as these people are exchanged for those with higher incomes and different values, we become less the Big Easy and more something else. And what that else is... it definitely isn't **easy** for a growing number of New Orleanians. As New Orleans goes, goes the country, and the world. Unless we seriously tackle growing inequality, stagnant wages, falling opportunities, and rising costs, we lose what is most important of all, our connections to each other and to the places we so love and call home. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Google Hangout with Me and Marlen Vargas Del Razo of Living Income Guaranteed URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/google-hangout-with-me-and-marlen-vargas-del-razo-of-living-income-guaranteed-basic-income-basic-resources-video/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T21:17:52.000Z I was asked by [Marlen Vargas Del Razo](https://twitter.com/marlenlife?ref=scottsantens.com) of [Living Income Guaranteed](https://twitter.com/LivingIncome?ref=scottsantens.com) to join her for a Live Google Hangout today about the topic of basic income as basic resources. You can watch the video here: For more info about what was discussed here are some follow up links: [You can help by supporting my BIG advocacy and by taking the BIG pledge](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) [Read the Basic Income FAQ on Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/basicincome/wiki/index?ref=scottsantens.com) [Alaska vs. the U.S. Before and After Existence of the Yearly Alaskan Dividend](http://www.scottsantens.com/consumer-price-index-of-alaska-vs-u-s-before-and-after-existence-of-alaskan-dividend) [Applying the Alaska model in a Resource-Poor State: The Example of Vermont](http://www.uvm.edu/giee/pubpdfs/Flomenhoft%5F2012%5FExploring%5Fthe%5FAlaska%5FModel.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) [The Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend: A Case Study in Implementation of a Basic Income Guara](http://www.iser.uaa.alaska.edu/Publications/bien%5Fxiii%5Fak%5Fpfd%5Flessons.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) [Why We Should Support an Unconditional Basic Income and How to Fund It](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com) [Basic Income as Basic Resources: Part 1](http://www.scottsantens.com/shouldn-t-all-this-talk-about-money-actually-be-talk-about-resources) [Basic Income as Basic Resources: Part 2](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-and-the-problem-of-freeloading-freeriders-basic-income-as-basic-resources) [How to join the USBIG Network](http://www.usbig.net/membership.php?ref=scottsantens.com) Hosted by LIG of ELF: [Living Income Guaranteed Proposal](http://livingincomeguaranteed.wordpress.com/the-proposal/?ref=scottsantens.com) [Living Income Guaranteed by Equal Life Foundation](http://livingincome.me/?ref=scottsantens.com) [LIG on Wordpress](http://livingincomeguaranteed.wordpress.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) [LIG on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/BasicIncomeGuaranteedByEqualLifeFoundation) [LIG on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/user/LivingIncome?ref=scottsantens.com) [LIG on Google+](https://plus.google.com/u/0/106743715342474012987/posts?ref=scottsantens.com) [LIG on Twitter](https://twitter.com/livingincome?ref=scottsantens.com) [Equal Life Foundation](https://www.facebook.com/EqualLifeFoundation) [ELF on Wordpress](http://equallifefoundation.wordpress.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) [ELF on Twitter](https://twitter.com/equallifefndn?ref=scottsantens.com) [ELF on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/EqualLifeFoundation) Thanks so much for all your hard work, Marlen! It was a pleasure to hang out with you today. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Unearned Income and the Velocity of Money URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/unearned-income-and-the-velocity-of-money/ Last updated: 2022-02-17T17:27:42.000Z ## Two lesser known variables in the inflation equation ***Exhibit*** *D of* [*Wouldn’t Unconditional Basic Income Just Cause Massive Inflation?*](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7?ref=scottsantens.com) Two lesser known economic concerns among those who know of them, are possible differences in how we perceive the value of money depending on how it was received, and how quickly it is spent. ## The Value of Free Money There is a popular conception that when we are given money without “earning” it, we don’t value it as highly. Because of this, the logic goes that if people are given basic incomes, they will be more likely to just throw it all away because it just won’t have the same value to them as money they earned in exchange for their labor due to it being unearned. The concern then is this will cause prices to rise because people will be just fine paying $8 for milk instead of $4, because they didn’t actually earn the extra $4 required to buy $8 milk. [So does this reflect real human behavior?](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=2229445&ref=scottsantens.com) > “… the value of the basic income effects no change on the ratio of allocation of income, but merely raises expendable income by the expected amount of the basic income, and, therefore, that there is no theoretical shift in consumption preferences, but merely a shift upwards in the utility maximizing consumption bundle. What has happened, in simple microeconomic terms, is a simple price and substitution shift a la Slutksy…” Translation: People treat basic income just like the rest of their income, and [this is again further backed by the Alaskan PFD](http://www.iser.uaa.alaska.edu/Publications/bien%5Fxiii%5Fak%5Fpfd%5Flessons.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), where the spending by Alaskan residents of their “unearned” dividends supports this permanent income hypothesis with observed behavior. > “Net of federal income taxes, about one-third of dividend income went to saving and debt reduction. The majority went to day-to-day expenses, and about 10 to 15 percent went to special large purchases. However, when asked what was the most significant effect of the dividend on their consumption behavior, most respondents said it had little or no effect, or that it helped with regular expenses.” Does this sound like people throwing their money away? This is not to say there aren’t *any* differences whatsoever between earned and unearned income. [The differences more recently found](https://www.academia.edu/2675981/Can%5FMoney%5FChange%5FWho%5FWe%5FAre%5FEstimating%5Fthe%5FEffect%5Fof%5FUnearned%5FIncome%5Fon%5FIncentive-enhancing%5FPersonality%5FTraits?ref=scottsantens.com) however, may just surprise you as much as it did the researchers. > Using surveys of lottery winners, we analyse the effects of unearned income on the well-known [Big Five personality traits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big%5FFive%5Fpersonality%5Ftraits?ref=scottsantens.com). After correcting for potential endogeneity problems associated with the size of lottery prizes, we find that unearned income improves traits that predict pro-social and cooperative behaviours, preferences for social contact, empathy, and gregariousness, as well as reduce individuals’ tendency to experience negative emotional states; all of which are known in the economics literature as incentive-enhancing personality traits. > > Our results suggest that economists may need to revise their standard conceptual apparatus and come to accept that there may be scope for later intervention to improve the personality traits of adults after all. So it appears that unearned income (of amounts less than $280,000 per year) *is* different than earned income after all, but instead of *our perceiving* ***it*** differently, *it makes* ***us*** perceive differently. And these effects, because they are all valued by employers, can lead to an improved workforce. > *Unearned income makes people more social, more empathetic, more gregarious, and less neurotic* *.* ## The Velocity of Money In any given year, money changes hands at a certain rate. This is referred to as [money velocity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity%5Fof%5Fmoney?ref=scottsantens.com). When an economy is healthy, people exchange a single dollar over and over again. A dollar buys groceries, is given to a cashier as income, is spent by the cashier at a hair salon, is spent by the stylist at a movie theater, and on and on the dollar goes, facilitating exchanges in the market. *So, velocity can be up.* Now imagine an unhealthy economy. There is little buying of haircuts and movies, just groceries. In this economy, the same amount of money exists as in the healthy economy, but no one aside from those with large incomes are really spending it. It’s mostly just sitting idle somewhere, unused. *So, velocity can be down.* ## Which economy do we have? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*xUg5GwZlMGreAdnaYtxnxA.png) Source: [The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis](http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=9wK&ref=scottsantens.com) Our velocity as measured by the St. Louis adjusted monetary base is lower than it’s ever been recorded, *in U.S. history.* We are exchanging our dollars in our money supply more slowly than even during the **Great Depression.** The reason this is important to understand is that there is another fear increasing velocity will lead to higher prices because of an equation known to economists as [the equation of exchange](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation%5Fof%5Fexchange?ref=scottsantens.com), and that therefore a basic income would be a bad idea, because it would allow people to exchange dollars with a greater frequency. This would then lead to higher prices, and higher prices raise fears of runaway prices and 1920's Germany. Now look again at the above chart. Even if prices rose because velocity rose, does this outcome seem like something we in no way want? Are we so afraid of higher prices that we don’t want people actually exchanging money for goods and services more frequently than during or immediately following the Great Depression? *Don’t we instead want some kind of middle ground?* Well that’s not fair to use the adjusted monetary base of the money supply, some economists might say. It’d be much better to use a smaller measure called M1, because it looks only at actual money and not all the imaginary money out there. Fair enough, let’s look at M1. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1320/1*V4tbmhn9O_qnQLlN7oBSwQ.png) Source: [The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis](http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M1V?ref=scottsantens.com) **The velocity of M1 has been crashing since 2007, with no end in sight.** No matter what measure one uses to look at the money supply, be it [M](http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M1V?ref=scottsantens.com)1, [M](http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2V?ref=scottsantens.com)2, [AMB](http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=9wK&ref=scottsantens.com), etc., it all points to systemic and economically problematic underconsumption. Meanwhile, prices need not even rise if the money supply is simultaneously reduced, again because of the equation of exchange. This is one of the tools in our economic toolbox. Additionally, interest rates can also be raised to supply a brake to slow velocity. Different forms of taxes can be raised or lowered accordingly as well. > ***We have powerful tools for both increasing and decreasing inflation.*** (Return to [*Wouldn’t Unconditional Basic Income Just Cause Massive Inflation?*](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7?ref=scottsantens.com)*)* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Wouldn’t Unconditional Basic Income Just Cause Massive Inflation? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/would-unconditional-universal-basic-income-cause-inflation-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-17T17:28:13.000Z ## An answer to the response to the answer to the growing question of the 21st century By far, the most common concern in regards to [my first article on Medium about the idea of an unconditional basic income](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com) was that all prices would inevitably go up as a result, immediately reducing the value of each dollar and essentially creating a new zero. Let’s call it the “New Zero Argument” against basic income. *The New Zero Argument: Although a noble idea to give money to those in need, no one would actually be better off as a result of basic income due to everything costing more — especially rent — and therefore the policy idea is entirely pointless because the only thing it would attain is a new zero.* In economic terms, this concern is the fear of [inflation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation?ref=scottsantens.com) or even [hyperinflation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/hyperinflation?ref=scottsantens.com), and it is possibly the most common reflex to the notion of just transferring more money to the lower and middle classes. So how grounded in reality is this concern? First, a quick three minute TED-Ed lesson about inflation and deflation: # Not Printing Money Now that we know more about what gives money its value, and how we actually *want* a small amount of inflation, we need to understand that basic income is **not** the idea of printing $3 trillion new dollars every year and dropping it on everyone from helicopters. *(Although* [*there are arguments to be made*](http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141847/mark-blyth-and-eric-lonergan/print-less-but-transfer-more?ref=scottsantens.com) *that to a lesser degree this could be done on a temporary and varying basis as economic stimulus according to perceived economic conditions as a kind of “quantitative easing for people” instead of banks)* The money for a basic income guarantee *would be already existing money* circulated through the economic system. It would **not** be new money, just money shifted from one location to another. This means that the value of each dollar has **not** changed. The dollar itself has only changed hands. It is also important to note the observation that even when money supply is vastly expanded, the effects on prices need not be extreme. For example, the Fed’s quantitative easing added over four trillion new dollars to the U.S. money supply, and the results were [***not enough inflation***](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/upshot/quantitative-easing-is-about-to-end-heres-what-it-did-in-seven-charts.html?ref=scottsantens.com), as defined by the Fed. > “But even with the trillions of dollars pumped into the economy, the Fed has been perpetually unable to get inflation up to the 2 percent level it aims for, except for the occasional brief period. There is good news in that predictions by many Fed critics that Q.E. would unleash vicious hyperinflation have come nowhere close to materializing. But neither has it been enough for the Fed to reach its self-imposed goal. In an economy trying to get out from under an overhang of debt, where excessive unemployment is the leading problem, too-low inflation can be deeply problematic and hold back growth. **Q.E. has not been powerful enough to generate as much inflation as the Fed says it wants.**” So even though basic income would **not** be printing new money for everyone, *even if it were*, inflation would **not** be a guaranteed result. With that understood, to then understand how much we should actually fear rising prices as a result of redistributing existing money from one place to another instead of printing new money requires some studying, but the short answer is that capitalism not only *still exists* with basic income, *it is enhanced.* By enhanced, I mean [there is growing evidence from where basic incomes have been actually tried that it increases entrepreneurship](https://medium.com/basic-income/payday-loan-lenders-are-unstoppable-except-with-the-help-of-basic-income-6572bec30210?ref=scottsantens.com). We also have actual examples of partial basic incomes, that we can examine for inflationary evidence. Aside from this evidence, we also need to understand how increased demand leading to higher prices isn’t as simple as we might think is is, and how when it comes to housing prices, in a future where everyone has basic incomes, we are likely to see some very interesting market adjustments. Meanwhile, fears involving unearned income and increased velocity require a closer examination. Because of all the above that needs to be understood in order to more fully examine the question of basic income and inflation, I have split off the above information into four separate smaller articles. Let’s call them Exhibits, A, B, C, and D. If you wish to learn more about each collection of evidence, just read the attached sub-article before moving on. Or you can just keep on reading. # Exhibit A: [Evidence and More Evidence of the Effect on Inflation of Free MoneyFrom Alaska to Kuwait and Beyond Exhibit A of Wouldn’t Unconditional Basic Income Just Cause Massive Inflation? It’s not like we don’t have any evidence of what happens when a lot of money is given universally to a lot of people. Consider the following real world examples.![](https://www.scottsantens.com/favicon.ico)Scott SantensScott Santens![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2022/02/1-pWTo4p-9j-pqmiQ18eNH1w.jpeg)](https://www.scottsantens.com/evidence-and-more-evidence-of-the-effect-on-inflation-of-free-money/) ## A is for Alaska In 1982, Alaska began providing a partial basic income annually to all its residents. Until the first dividend, Alaska had a higher rate of inflation than the rest of the United States. But ever since the dividend was introduced, Alaska has had a *lower* rate of inflation than the rest of the United States. A partial basic income was also provided in Kuwait in 2011, when every citizen was given $4,000\. Fears of increasing inflation were rampant, as Kuwait already had high inflation. Instead of bad inflation getting worse, it actually got *better*, decreasing from record highs to under 4 percent. Elsewhere, where basic income experiments have been actually tried and studied, the result in each case is increased entrepreneurship. People use their basic incomes to invest in themselves and their futures, creating new businesses and helping to drive the economy beyond what would be possible without it. This means more people competing for basic income dollars, with better goods and services and lower costs. *All of this represents* ***real*** *evidence to counter any fear of inflation.* # Exhibit B: [Supply and Demand VariablesHow not all basic income effects lead to rising prices Exhibit B of Wouldn’t Unconditional Basic Income Just Cause Massive Inflation? To inform inflationary fears on a more academic basis, it’s important to understand the basic variability of supply and demand and how it applies to various goods![](https://www.scottsantens.com/favicon.ico)Scott SantensScott Santens![](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1607977027972-e2aae2b5b1e0?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=MnwxMTc3M3wwfDF8c2VhcmNofDZ8fHN1cHBseXxlbnwwfHx8fDE2NDUxMTc2NTc&ixlib=rb-1.2.1&q=80&w=2000)](https://www.scottsantens.com/supply-and-demand-variables/) ## B is for Basics To further inform inflationary fears on a more academic basis, it’s also important to understand the basic variability of supply and demand and how it applies to various goods and services. Where demand already exists and supply is already paid for, demand is unlikely to change as basic income simply replaces one method of payment with another. E.g., replacing food stamps with basic income is unlikely to make people buy more milk. It just means people will likely buy the same amount of milk with cash instead of SNAP. Where demand is actually increased, depending on the good or service, supply can also easily be increased, be increased with some investment in capacity, or not be increased. It is this third case where prices can rise, and points more to increases in prices for luxuries, and not basic goods and services. *All of this represents* ***academic*** *evidence to counter any fear of inflation.* # Exhibit C: [Google Homes and WikiHousesDisruptive ideas that can transform housing markets Exhibit C of Wouldn’t Unconditional Basic Income Just Cause Massive Inflation? Being that many of us spend the greatest portion of our incomes in one place on rent and that they seem to just go up and up without end, rising rent![](https://www.scottsantens.com/favicon.ico)Scott SantensScott Santens![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/2022/02/Coachella-3D-printed-homes.jpg)](https://www.scottsantens.com/google-homes-and-wikihouses/) ## C is for Creation Rising rent is a particularly worrisome fear for many when first introduced to the idea of basic income. However, two very important things in particular need to be understood when it comes to housing. 1. There are five times more vacant homes than homeless people in the United States today. This represents a large unused supply that need only be made available. The reason many people are not living in these homes is because they were at one time but couldn’t afford to keep them. Basic income rectifies this and puts people back in homes. 2. Technology represents a major factor in future housing prices, especially a future where everyone has a basic income. Everyone will receive a monthly check to afford rent, and will want to spend as little of it as possible on rent. Meanwhile, owners will want to compete for this money with other owners. Those offering the lowest rents will win. One example of this would be Google deciding to create Google Homes and leasing them out to people for a fraction of what people are paying now. Another example would be super affordable WikiHouses. For these two reasons in particular, in combination with the ability of everyone to truly live anywhere for the first time in history, a nationwide market for ultra-affordable housing will be created, and smart businesses will step into this space in hopes of dominating it. *All of this represents* ***theoretical*** *evidence to counter any fear of inflation.* # Exhibit D: [Unearned Income and the Velocity of MoneyTwo lesser known variables in the inflation equation Exhibit D of Wouldn’t Unconditional Basic Income Just Cause Massive Inflation? Two lesser known economic concerns among those who know of them, are possible differences in how we perceive the value of money depending on how it was received, and ho…![](https://www.scottsantens.com/favicon.ico)Scott SantensScott Santens![](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1518458028785-8fbcd101ebb9?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=MnwxMTc3M3wwfDF8c2VhcmNofDMwfHxtb25leXxlbnwwfHx8fDE2NDUxMTg3ODM&ixlib=rb-1.2.1&q=80&w=2000)](https://www.scottsantens.com/unearned-income-and-the-velocity-of-money/) ## D is for Depression Two lesser known economic concerns among those who know of them, are possible differences in how we perceive the value of money depending on how it was received, and how quickly it is spent. There is a popular conception that unearned income is perceived differently than earned income, and therefore spent more spuriously. Because people are considered more likely to spend money they didn’t earn, the fear is that people will pay more for goods and services with basic income, and therefore increase prices. This is a misconception though, and not backed by evidence, with the opposite observed in Alaska, where the dividend is treated virtually identically to earned income. The frequency with which a single dollar is spent in the economy — known as the velocity of money — is another variable in the inflation equation. The faster the velocity, the higher inflation can get. However, velocity as measured by the entire money supply is currently lower now than ever in U.S. history. And as measured by the real money supply, it has been crashing since 2007. We want higher velocity for a healthy economy, and the fear that unearned income has less value is unsupported. *All of this represents* ***economic*** *evidence to counter any fear of inflation.* # The Inflation Bogeyman Inflation is not the unmanageable danger it is made out to be. It is a complex equation involving multiple variables, and in the context of evaluating the idea of a universal basic income guarantee, because a basic income will be set at a basic level, there is even less to fear. Because *we have actual evidence*, there is less to fear. Because *capitalism will be* *enhanced*, there is less to fear. Because *technology will continue to advance* and make goods like housing cheaper, there is less to fear. Because *our economic capacity is underutilized* and underconsumption is systemic, there is less to fear. **There is however one real thing to fear…** # Increased Wages and Salaries Basic income could provide an upward force on wages through increased individual bargaining power and slightly decreased labor force participation rates, and businesses as a result of new higher labor costs could raise their prices so as to keep their profits unchanged. This would mean that if you are currently earning $20,000 per year, you’d not only get an extra $12,000 per year in basic income, but also $10,000 in higher wages. Your new yearly income would be $42,000 and groceries might end up costing you [an extra 1.4 percent](http://portside.org/2014-04-12/if-walmart-paid-living-wage-how-much-would-prices-go?ref=scottsantens.com) per month. Would you personally have a problem with *earning an extra $22,000 and paying an extra $50 on groceries*? Let’s assume you would, and that you also think it’s wrong the cost of food would go up for everyone else as well, including those with only $12,000 per year basic incomes, and therefore with tighter fixed budgets. There is one last final detail to understand. > **Any basic income can and should be indexed to match or beat inflation.** # Indexing Basic Income Just as the minimum wage has eroded over time because of inflation and the political fight over ever raising it, a basic income should automatically rise each year to match inflation so that it doesn’t erode in the same way. Better yet, instead of just indexing a basic income to CPI, it could even be indexed to [something like productivity](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-important-economic-chart-2014-3?ref=scottsantens.com), so that the gains of society continue to accrue more widely for everyone, instead of only the few. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/700/1*emLstK7BJyxb4QqSjNWdbw.png) Source: [http://www.cwa-union.org/news/entry/89\_out\_of\_100\_workers\_dont\_have\_collective\_bargaining#.VGu38sk--WI](http://www.cwa-union.org/news/entry/89%5Fout%5Fof%5F100%5Fworkers%5Fdont%5Fhave%5Fcollective%5Fbargaining?ref=scottsantens.com#.VGu38sk--WI) **(Because wages and salaries certainly aren’t rising with productivity and haven’t for decades.)** The result of this would be a basic income that always increases faster than inflation, so that each and every year, we would be able to buy a greater amount of goods and services than the year before. [**It cannot be stressed enough that this ability is especially important to enable in advance of the decades ahead of us**](http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21621160-labour-steadily-losing-out-capital-those-have-shall-be-given?ref=scottsantens.com) as software and hardware continue to decrease the need for human labor, and as a result, decreases availability of ever decreasing [incomes derived from human labor](https://medium.com/basic-income/machine-labor-day-d77931dca9a8?ref=scottsantens.com). ## So why again was I ever worried about inflation? Good question. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### "What do we do about bad examples like this one?" URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/what-do-we-do-about-bad-examples-like-this-one-shanesha-taylor-wasted-money/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T21:19:02.000Z *In response to the following news article: [“The money is gone!” Teary mugshot drew $114K in donations, but prosecutors have taken back their deal](http://fox6now.com/2014/11/18/the-money-is-gone-teary-mugshot-drew-114k-in-donations-but-prosecutors-have-taken-back-their-deal/?ref=scottsantens.com)* This is actually a good example of why basic income should be basic and unconditional, and not that basic income is a bad idea. First of all, Shanesha received a one time lump sump of $114,000\. No one is suggesting that level of basic income. With two kids, I think her basic income should be [around $20,000 per year](http://familiesusa.org/product/federal-poverty-guidelines?ref=scottsantens.com). That means she got $20,000 basic income and $94,000 in disposable income. Next, the nature of a large lump sum versus regular income, leads people to spend it spuriously instead of wisely. Had she been given this money in a way that awarded it to her over the course of 5.7 years ($20k/yr), [all signs point to her not spending it in the same way she did as a lump sum.](http://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/October-2014/Want-to-Help-Gary-Indiana-Why-Not-Just-Give-Them-Money/) Also, she was unemployed when she received the sum, versus employed. Studies of lottery winners show [they tend to keep their jobs](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/16/winning-the-lottery-but-keeping-your-job/?ref=scottsantens.com) and treat their winnings as a big bonus. If you're unemployed, winning the lottery will not automatically get you a job. It doesn't suddenly give someone more education, more experience, or a better resume, nor does it make jobs pop into existence. If someone is unable to get a job, be it due to lack of education, or lack of experience, or lack of jobs, they need a regular income that can provide their basic needs. [Period](https://medium.com/@2noame/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e?ref=scottsantens.com). [No questions asked](http://www.scottsantens.com/fit-for-work-and-fit-to-die-a-memorial-for-the-means-tested). They will use this to either increase their education, increase their experience, create their own jobs, focus instead on their communities or families, etc. This woman needs her basic needs covered, just like everyone else. The fact she was given a huge lump sum and squandered it, is not at all a black mark against basic income. She used her money on food and rent, didn't she? She must have because she's still alive. She used her money to feed and clothe her two kids didn't she? She must have because I presume their deaths and nudity would have been mentioned. Once her basic needs were covered, she used what she perceived as $94,000 in disposable income (all the money above and beyond what covers basic needs) to stimulate the economy didn't she? She purchased what appears to be a shitload of designer clothes, and even invested money in studio time for the father of her children. Here's a question. What if the guy had actually succeeded and become the next big star with a record deal? Would we still make fun of her for taking that risk? It seems to me this also supports the idea of increased entrepreneurship through decreased risk. She felt she had the opportunity to make her partner a star, and took the chance on him. Most of the time this will fail, but sometimes it doesn't. This is what basic income is all about. It allows people to make new decisions. Instead of being forced to work in a shitty job for low wages, it allows people to strive for more. It allows people to invest in capital, to create their own businesses, to take a chance on something big. Many of these people will fail. But that's okay, because their basics will always be covered. Some people will not fail. Some people will achieve great things with their new ability to take such risks they'd never be able to take otherwise. And these successes will make basic income worth it for everyone. If 10,000 people follow her example, and spend all their money on designer clothes and studio time, and 1 person spends their money to build a battery that lasts 10 times longer than every other battery in the world, everybody wins. There are no losers. 9,999 people consumed to such a degree the entire economy was lifted. [And 1 person just changed the world](http://i.imgur.com/ar0hAZI.jpg?ref=scottsantens.com). That 9,999 people didn't change the world is not something to care about, because they wouldn't have changed the world anyway. That *one* person changed the world for the better for everyone is what we care about. Because that one would have been **zero**, had we not empowered all 10,000. So how do we address bad examples like this one? We recognize she's a good example, and accept her as a representative of the 9,999. The 1s are still out there without a basic income. And ALL the rest of us are worse off because of it. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Google Homes and WikiHouses URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/google-homes-and-wikihouses/ Last updated: 2022-02-17T17:01:40.000Z ## Disruptive ideas that can transform housing markets ***Exhibit C*** *of* [*Wouldn’t Unconditional Basic Income Just Cause Massive Inflation?*](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7?ref=scottsantens.com) Being that many of us spend the greatest portion of our incomes in one place on rent and that they seem to just go up and up without end, rising rent is a significant fear in general, let alone in regards to giving people more money. To address this fear we first need to look at the particular location in question and understand how many vacant homes there are compared to homeless, as not all places have the same room to grow. ## Housing Supply Here in the United States, [there are about five vacant homes for every one homeless person](https://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/more%5Fvacant%5Fhomes%5Fthan%5Fhomeless%5Fin%5Fus%5F20111231?ref=scottsantens.com). That’s a lot of excess supply and room for development in a future of guaranteed income for food and housing needs. These vacant homes can be developed, alongside entirely new homes, in a market where the poor actually have money to live in them, in contrast to the current market where luxury apartments and large houses are the best bet for developers to see good returns on their investments. In addition, because a universal basic income will be the same amount for everyone wherever they currently live, it will unlock people from the existing requirement of living where the best jobs are. People will therefore be free to move from areas with higher costs of living to areas of lower costs of living. The effect of this decrease in population density will be downward pressure on prices in high cost of living areas. Not all people will want to spend *less* on housing though. Some will want to use the extra money provided by their higher incomes to move into nicer residences. The effect of this will be to open up greater supply at the bottom of the income spectrum, putting even further downward pressure on these prices in high cost of living areas. Meanwhile, new homes are getting cheaper and cheaper to produce as time goes on. 3-D printing stands to be a game changer in the future production of new homes. And I don’t mean far future, I mean immediate future. [In China, a company has already printed ten houses in a single day using recyclable materials and a $5,000 printer](http://www.businessinsider.com/a-chinese-company-3d-printed-10-houses-in-a-day-2014-4?ref=scottsantens.com). This technology *already* exists. It need only be improved and scaled. Combine advancing technology, basic income-powered new business creation, the competition of continued capitalism, as well as the newly gained ability for people with basic incomes to move from more expensive areas to less expensive areas, and it should become apparent how unwise it would be for those who own property to increase their rents to absorb basic incomes. E.g., if your rent is currently $800 and it gets raised by a greedy landlord to $1,800 to fully absorb your $1,000/mo basic income, what would *you* do? Your available options won’t only be to move into a place for the same $800 you’re used to paying. Your options will also include the exit option of moving to a cheaper area where rents are $600, or living in the same area in a newly-3D-printed affordable home that costs half as much to build. And it is this last option that leads us to the truly inevitable game-changer. # The Google Home Let me be clear. The Google Home does not *yet* exist, at least outside of potential top secret drawing boards at [Google X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%5FX?ref=scottsantens.com). But it represents the *idea* of future ultra-affordable housing. It will be the realization of the same idea that Henry Ford applied to cars and that Sam Walton applied to retail goods. > ***If you want to make a million dollars, you sell to the few. If you want to make a* billion *dollars, you sell to the many.*** We seem to have forgotten this knowledge gained long ago, that making a product continually cheaper while maintaining or increasing quality is the path toward complete market dominance. The Model-T was a car anyone could afford without even taking out a loan thanks to Ford continually striving to lower its price. Love it or hate it, Walmart is a living monument to the idea that lowering prices will increase revenue and lead directly to utter market domination. There is one company in particular that exists today, that knows there is an even better price than cheap. That company is Google, and the price is **FREE.** > ***Cheaper is good, but free is best.*** No price beats***free.*** [Dan Ariely](http://bigthink.com/videos/when-free-is-dangerous?ref=scottsantens.com) covers this well in a chapter in Predictably Irrational, as does [Paul Mason](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5teO3W4LrM&ref=scottsantens.com) when he discusses the future of capitalism. And this is the direction we are going, [for better or worse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldhHkVjLe7A&ref=scottsantens.com). If you watch this last video of Aral Balkan’s RSA talk titled “Free is a Lie”, you’ll notice how Google has monetized information to the point it is *already* reaching into our homes. • Its purchase of Nest ([and Nest’s subsequent purchases of Dropcam and Revolv](http://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2014/10/24/googles-nest-acquires-smart-home-hub-maker-revolv/?ref=scottsantens.com)) gives it an increased ability in this regard. • Its [creation of a phone that maps space](http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/02/20/google-introduces-project-tango-3d-mapping-phone?ref=scottsantens.com) gives it an increased ability in this regard. • Its [creation and expansion of Google Fiber](https://fiber.google.com/newcities/?ref=scottsantens.com) gives it an increased ability in this regard. Google makes products and services available to the masses either free or far cheaper and/or better by monetizing the information it can get from the product or service and selling it two third parties instead of asking for money from end users themselves. So where is this going? ***If Google wants inside our homes, why not just* rent *us our homes instead?*** Combine 3D-printing with Google Homes, and 3D-printed Google Homes could be even cheaper than any other form of 3D-printed home, because it is Google who could best subsidize the cost through the data collection it already leverages. Now, I’m not suggesting this in itself is a “good” thing. But, it’s a definite possibility and it’s aligned directly with the direction Google is *already* going. **So, what’s all this got to do with UBI and inflation?** Google *could* decide to create the cheapest houses possible. Meanwhile, *basic income* makes possible a guaranteed ability for people to pay Google for these homes. Together combined, these possibilities mean a market for housing on the low end, *the likes of which we’ve never seen in history.* Imagine a one-bedroom Google Home on the rental market for $250 per month in a future where basic income exists. They could even throw in Google Fiber as a package deal. The effect of Google Homes on the rental market would be the same as Google Fiber on the ISP market — *entirely disruptive where available*. Why pay $100 per month for spotty 10 Mbps internet from Comcast, when you can reliably get 100 times the speed for the same price from Google? In the same way, why spend $1,000 per month on a one-bedroom apartment when you can spend ***$250 per month on a one-bedroom Google Home***? Because privacy? Are privacy concerns going to stop people from spending only 25% of their basic income on rent instead of 50-100%? And will privacy always be a concern, and to everyone? Meanwhile, what about “[Indie Tech](https://indietech.org/?ref=scottsantens.com)”? There remains the possibility that the open source movement ([which also stands to be enhanced with UBI](http://joatu.com/the-other-side-of-basic-income-basic-jobs/?ref=scottsantens.com)) could provide the same goods and services as Google, without the privacy concerns. I believe [the WikiHouse](http://gizmodo.com/the-project-to-let-anyone-download-and-print-their-own-1637795903?ref=scottsantens.com) exists as an early example of this possibility. # The WikiHouse > *“Architects have struggled to find a viable model for building cheap, fast, single-family homes since the earliest experiments with pre-fab in the 1900s. It’s an idea we still grapple with today, and* [*WikiHouse*](http://www.wikihouse.cc/?ref=scottsantens.com) *is its direct descendent: A project to publish open source building plans online for anyone to download, designed to require only the most basic knowledge of construction to create. The average cost of buying a home in America hovers around $300,000 — WikiHouse 4.0 can be built from scratch for less than a third of that.”* Right now, someone can already build their own WikiHouse themselves for about $80,000\. This will only go down with each newer version. What if WikiHouse 10.0 costs $29,000? That’s a monthly mortgage of again about $250 and paid off [in 15 years instead of ](http://www.mortgagecalculator.org/?ref=scottsantens.com)30\. When people have basic incomes, will no one go this route to maximize their basic incomes by spending the least amount as possible on their rents or mortgages? Basically, it seems to me that if Google X isn’t already working on Google Homes, they should be, and with a basic income guarantee in existence in the form of an unconditional basic income or a negative income tax, it seems even more likely. With the arrival of basic income policy, there will be a huge market created for ultra-afforable homes to rent or buy. Combined with everyone’s newly gained ability to live anywhere they choose instead of being anchored to where jobs exist, this will undoubtedly introduce downward pressure on housing prices, *especially* when Google or someone else gets into the game to dominate this new market with new technologies like WikiHouses and large-scale 3D-printing. ***Welcome home to the 21st century.*** *(Return to [Wouldn’t Unconditional Basic Income Just Cause Massive Inflation?](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7?ref=scottsantens.com))* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Evidence and More Evidence of the Effect on Inflation of Free Money URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/evidence-and-more-evidence-of-the-effect-on-inflation-of-free-money/ Last updated: 2022-02-17T17:05:12.000Z ## From Alaska to Kuwait and Beyond ***Exhibit A*** *of* [*Wouldn’t Unconditional Basic Income Just Cause Massive Inflation?*](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7?ref=scottsantens.com) It’s not like we don’t have any evidence of what happens when a lot of money is given universally to a lot of people. Consider the following real world examples. # Evidence from Alaska Every year [every qualifying resident of Alaska receives an annual dividend provided by the Alaska Permanent Fund](https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/karl-widerquist/alaska-model-citizens-income-in-practice?ref=scottsantens.com). The most recent payout was $1,884 in 2014, for every man, woman, and child in Alaska. The first payout of $1,000 occurred in 1982. According to the New Zero Argument that any sizable universal cash transfer leads directly to its own nullification, this dividend paid to everyone should be entirely eroded by inflation. This hypothesis can be tested using the Consumer Price Index (CPI). If inflation is a direct result of giving free money to everyone, we should see the CPI of Alaska begin to rise faster than the CPI of the rest of the country starting in 1982. So what *did* happen? > ***Ever since 1982 Alaska has had LOWER inflation than the entire U.S.*** [CPI data reveals](http://www.scottsantens.com/consumer-price-index-of-alaska-vs-u-s-before-and-after-existence-of-alaskan-dividend) that prior to 1982, $1 did not go as far in Alaska than it did in the U.S. as a whole. 1982 was the last year this was true. Beginning in 1983, $1 in Alaska began to be worth more than in the U.S. as a whole, and this trend continues to this day. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*zmAlfTV5Wrh0SrfACvFJ0w.png) Source: [Author](http://www.scottsantens.com/consumer-price-index-of-alaska-vs-u-s-before-and-after-existence-of-alaskan-dividend) **Alaska CPI** | **US CPI** 1981**: 92.4** | 90.9 (last year without dividend) 1982**: 97.4** | 96.5 (first dividend paid [June](http://pfd.alaska.gov/DivisionInfo/HistoricalTimeline?ref=scottsantens.com) 14) 1983**:** 99.2| **99.6** (first full year with dividend) The partial basic income provided in Alaska in the form of their Permanent Fund Dividend directly counters the fear of inflation with thirty years of a once larger CPI that began to grow at a slower rate than the rest of the country immediately following its introduction. Alaska isn’t even the only evidence we have for the possibility that a basic income might even *reduce* inflation instead of increasing it. # Evidence from Kuwait In 2011, the government in [Kuwait decided to give every one of its 1.155 million citizens $4,000 USD each](http://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/comments/2ioovd/kuwait%5Fgave%5Falmost%5F4000%5Fto%5Fevery%5Fcitizen%5Fin%5F2011/?ref=scottsantens.com). That’s even higher than the Alaskan dividend and about one third of a potential US basic income. It was called the Amiri Grant. Again, the New Zero Argument suggests inflation should increase, and this was a common fear in Kuwait as well. They were even especially worried because inflation was *already* a problem, so it seemed like the worst possible time for such a huge citizen [demogrant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen%27s%5Fdividend?ref=scottsantens.com). So what *did* happen? [Nine months later](http://www.oxfordbusinessgroup.com/economic%5Fupdates/kuwait-keeping?ref=scottsantens.com)… > *“With a great deal of public spending coming on-stream, and the effects of the substantial “Amiri” grant of KD1000 ($3605) awarded to every Kuwaiti, inflationary pressure is a concern. However,* ***inflation dropped to an 11-month low of 4.6 percent*** *in July, the last month for which figures were available, and the rate is expected to average 4.7 percent for full-year 2011, according to international press reports using figures from Kuwait’s Central Statistics Office.”* [Six more months later](http://www.kuwait.nbk.com/InvestmentAndBrokerage/ResearchandReports/$Document/GCCBriefs/en-gb/MainCopy/$UserFiles/NBKGCCBriefKuwaitmacro201203E.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)… > *“Beyond the activity data, Kuwait’s macroeconomic outlook continues to look very solid. After peaking at 6 percent in December 2010,* ***consumer price inflation had decelerated to 3.8 percent*** *by February 2012.”* So in Kuwait, just as in Alaska, giving a large amount of free money to citizens did not only **not** result in increased inflation, but instead in *decreased* inflation. Now what about the evidence for enhanced capitalism through basic income’s increased entrepreneurship effect? And what does this mean for inflation concerns? # Evidence of Increased Competition > *In Uganda, the government* [*gave about a year’s worth of income*](http://cega.berkeley.edu/assets/cega%5Fevents/53/WGAPE%5FSp2013%5FBlattman.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)*, or about $380, to a group of applicants, and denied it to the other half. There were no conditions on the money, but those who got it invested most of it in “skills and business assets,” ending up* ***65*** ***percent more likely to practice a skilled trade.*** *Recipients* ***worked an average 17 hours more*** *than those without the money. And compared to the group that didn’t get the cash, those who did saw a* ***49*** ***percent increase in earnings two years later and a 41 percent increase four years out*** *, indicating that the effects last.* > > *A similar study in Kenya found that after poor families in rural Kenya were* [*given an average of $513 by an NGO*](http://poverty-action.org/project/0522?ref=scottsantens.com)*, their assets and holdings were* ***58*** ***percent higher than a control group a year later, incomes were 33 percent higher*** *, hunger was significantly reduced, and their psychological well-being increased.* > > *Similar programs in* [*South Africa*](http://www.eldis.org/vfile/upload/1/document/0708/doc23659.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)*,* [*Mexico*](http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2809%2961676-7/abstract?ref=scottsantens.com)*, and* [*Liberia*](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/opinion/let-them-eat-cash.html?ref=scottsantens.com) *have all found similar results.* Increased entrepreneurship has also been found in [Madhya-Pradesh, India](https://www.opendemocracy.net/openindia/stuart-weir/basic-income-transforming-lives-in-rural-india?ref=scottsantens.com) where all adults in a number of villages received basic incomes and those with children received additional income. They invested in seeds and pesticides for growing their own food. They invested in livestock like goats, oxen, chicken, and cows. They bought capital like sewing machines for their own businesses making and selling clothing. There was a significant shift from paid labor to self-employed labor. > *…far from encouraging laziness, the cash transfers have brought “more work, more productivity”, largely because they have inspired more “own account” farm and other working opportunities as an alternative to wage labor.* ***Over one in five of the basic income villages increased their work activities, twice as many as in the control villages*** *, and most of the villagers attributed the new farm or new business activity to the provision of the grants.* ***Basic income villagers increased their livestock by 70 per cent*** *Sarath says: “So basic income is not only a welfare story, it is a growth story too — inclusive and bottom-up growth that has stimulated the local economy.”* As repeatedly observed as a direct result of basic income, new businesses are created by those suddenly finding themselves with the capital to create them. In addition, these new endeavors, along with those small businesses already existing, find themselves with more customers with more cash to spend on their goods and services. Unless these businesses next create cartels in order to illegally fix prices, this inevitably leads to increased competition, as each business seeks to be the one to attract new customers and their new dollars. This is important to understand as a business owner. As long as competition exists… > ***If you raise your prices to take the basic incomes of others, those who don’t will get their money instead, and your business could fail as a result.*** (Return to [*Wouldn’t Unconditional Basic Income Just Cause Massive Inflation?*](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7?ref=scottsantens.com)*)* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Supply and Demand Variables URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/supply-and-demand-variables/ Last updated: 2022-02-17T17:09:36.000Z ## How not all basic income effects lead to rising prices ***Exhibit B*** *of* [*Wouldn’t Unconditional Basic Income Just Cause Massive Inflation?*](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7?ref=scottsantens.com) To inform inflationary fears on a more academic basis, it’s important to understand the basic variability of supply and demand and how it applies to various goods and services. # Unchanged Demand Right now milk has a certain cost. Thanks to SNAP (aka food stamps), even those without money are presently obtaining milk. A basic income would just be a cash form of food stamp, and so the demand for milk is unlikely to change much. People who already buy milk are unlikely to buy more milk. They will just be using cash instead of EBT cards. Because demand has not gone up, there is no reason for cost to go up, and where cost does go up due to greed, competition will do its intended job. Why buy $8 milk at greedy **Store A** when you can get it at not-greedy **Store B** for the $4 you’re used to spending on milk? **Store A** should find it difficult to sell $8 milk unless people have no other choices. However, this also provides incentive for **Store C** to enter the market and cater to all these customers who were previously ignored when they had little to no money to spend. As a result, a basic income should also reduce the existence of [food deserts](http://grist.org/list/this-sobering-map-shows-you-all-of-americas-food-deserts/?ref=scottsantens.com). *Additional note:* [*Milk is actually a good now being obtained through robots with vastly less effort*](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/nyregion/with-farm-robotics-the-cows-decide-when-its-milking-time.html?ref=scottsantens.com)*.* # Decreased Demand It’s not even true that greater income necessarily results in greater demand. There are goods and services that actually experience decreased demand when incomes increase. Think buses. Think bologna. Economists call these “[inferior goods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferior%5Fgood?ref=scottsantens.com)”, because when people have the option of purchasing better options, they prefer the better options. Fox example, a lot of people ride the bus and eat bologna sandwiches, because that’s all they can afford to do. As soon as they have more money, instead of riding buses they buy a car. Instead of bologna, they buy roast beef. Therefore, the prices of goods like bologna might actually do *down* with basic income, in the attempts by stores to try to get people to buy stuff when customers no longer want the stuff. # Increased Demand Plus Flexible Supply There will be goods that experience an actual increase in demand. These goods are those that people currently want and aren’t able to afford but will be able to afford with a basic income supplementing their wages like an actual raise would. These particular goods and services will be affected differently based on varying ability to scale-up manufacturing. This is where industrial capacity enters the inflation equation. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1170/1*h2O427-eO-_0hQS3wV90pQ.gif) Source: [Federal Reserve](http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/revisions/current/revchart1.gif) Where supply can be easily scaled up to meet increased demand, prices are unlikely to rise — think digital goods like iTunes. Where it *can’t*, prices will be likely to rise — think original Van Gogh paintings. But how many of us are planning on buying one of those? Another example of the former would be machine-made designer purses and another example of the latter would be hand-made designer purses. So the question becomes what kind of purse and how many can we make using existing production capability? Here in 2014, we are operating in the US at [about 79 percent](http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/current/default.htm) of our current total industrial capacity. If demand shot up across the board tomorrow, prices would only need to rise if our utilization jumped to 100 percent. However, another caveat is that usually businesses invest revenues to increase capacity when they hit their supply ceiling, so that they can obtain even more revenue by meeting increased demand with increased supply. So as capacity tops out, it gets increased wherever possible. To not increase capacity where possible would be bad business, essentially leaving money on the table. In this way price increases due to lack of capacity tend to be temporary *with the exception of very limited goods and services*. It is for these same reasons that it is considered common sense among economists to recommend policies that get more income into the hands of those more likely to immediately spend it (i.e., anyone not rich), whenever the economy is operating at less than full capacity, because [as long as that holds true, GDP will rise and prices won’t](http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3756&ref=scottsantens.com). Understanding that demand will **not** increase across the board (especially for food and other basic goods everyone already purchases), and that where demand does increase, not all supply will be unable to increase to meet it, it is easier to recognize that… > ***Rising prices will be limited to certain goods and services that can be considered more* luxuries *than they are basic essentials.*** So yes, a basic income can definitely result in higher prices, but should we avoid paying higher prices on luxuries like Van Gogh paintings so that those who can’t afford any luxuries at all can continue *not being able to even afford the basics*? Is it more important for someone earning seven figures to be able to afford a 100th pair of hand-made shoes for $225 instead of $200, than it is for the working poor to afford to eat three solid meals a day under a roof? (Return to [*Wouldn’t Unconditional Basic Income Just Cause Massive Inflation?*](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7?ref=scottsantens.com)*)* --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### The Federal Reserve Just Published a Paper Comparing UBI and UI URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/the-federal-reserve-just-published-a-paper-comparing-universal-basic-income-and-unemployment-insurance/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T21:21:08.000Z The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis just released [a November 2014 report comparing universal basic income and unemployment insurance](http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/more/2014-047/?ref=scottsantens.com), to determine which is better under varying conditions. Before I go into their findings and how they arrived at their conclusion, here's their conclusion: ## Conclusion > In this paper, we provide a quantitative comparison of an optimal universal basic income policy and an optimal unemployment insurance program in an economy with idiosyncratic shocks. While an unemployment insurance program is better equipped to respond to employment shocks, it suffers from moral hazard and is costly to manage. Monitoring costs are not trivial and add to the social cost of administering the policy. So does moral hazard, by allowing a fraction of agents to abuse the unemployment insurance program. A universal basic income policy, however, has no such social costs and is very simple to manage. . We test the conjecture that a universal basic income may, under moral hazard and in the presence of monitoring costs, perform better. We conduct a wide variety of experiments and compare the social desirability of these policies. . Our results show that an optimal UBI is feasible. Nevertheless, the UI policy is socially robust to the introduction of UBI in the presence of idiosyncratic shocks. It takes empirically implausible monitoring costs and shirking success probabilities for the optimal basic income policy to dominate in terms of welfare the unemployment insurance policy in the economy calibrated to the 2011 United States labor market. With idiosyncratic shocks of smaller amplitude (such as those characterizing the 1990 US labor market dynamics), UBI may represent a more reasonable alternative, even if the UI policy remains socially preferred. . The superiority of UI is anchored in its ability to help those who are most in need. Even a very crude UI system with no asset tests and indefinite eligibility is able to easily beat UBI, which distributes funds blindly and must be financed through distortionary taxation. . Of course, this paper limits the study of universal basic income to its comparison with a UI policy in a particular model. It does not claim to have the last word on UBI systems. Other paths could be explored. We could consider different skills among the population; in this case we have argued that UBI is likely to reinforce the dominance of UI. One could study the impact of transitions. Indeed, we have only compared steady states so far. Transitions can induce large costs in the short-term that can outweigh long-term advantages. Given that the status quo in industrialized countries is typically a UI policy, it is very unlikely that a transition to UBI would prove to be beneficial overall. First of all, it appears that the definition of "superiority" applied here, is giving the least amount of total money using the least amount of taxation. This appears to represent free-market principles of preferring UI to UBI. I think it's entirely possible however to fund a UBI in ways that "distort" the market in ways we actually want, like in reducing inequality to levels considered better for GDP growth, reducing financial speculation, making it more expensive to pollute, etc. So the conclusion of this paper, even though it appears to also hold up UBI fairly highly for its administrative savings and lack of moral hazard, should be recognized as making such an analysis through the above viewpoint of less market intrusion as being inherently better, without any regard for *how* it intrudes. As for the real meat of this paper, in regards to the model it uses and its assumptions, this paper is a great example of why economics is called the dismal science. They use a model that assumes everyone has the same odds of having or not having a job, aka a lottery model. We know this kind of assumption does not work in the real world. A blind/deaf economist would use this model to claim that because everyone has the same odds of being unemployed at a rate of 12.6%, everything must be fine, while unbeknownst to him, riots have broken out around him because the African American population which comprises 12.6% of the population has an unemployment rate of 100%. In this situation a UBI would be far superior to a UI, because no one who has black skin can ever get a job at all. In other words, the real world does not reflect that everyone has the same odds of getting a job, and therefore a model that assumes this, ignores reality. They use a model built purely on theory and not available evidence even where real data exists and contradicts their assumptions. Their model assumes that a UBI as small as 5% of normal income would lead to a voluntary unemployment rate of 4%. So four percent of the entire population of workers would voluntarily stop working if they received a few thousand dollars. They therefore set the "optimal" UBI at around $2,000\. WTF? We already know from testing work disincentive effects in [the US](http://www.vox.com/2014/7/23/5925041/guaranteed-income-basic-poverty-gobry-labor-supply?ref=scottsantens.com) and [Canada](http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20%282%29.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), that not only do people not entirely drop out of the workforce at all, but that even looking just at the slight work reductions found, it would require a UBI set at 150% of the poverty level, e.g. $18,000 to start seeing worrisome and possibly problematic work reductions. They assume these same problems start as low as $2,000 which is entirely false, and that the result is not working at all instead of reducing hours, which is also entirely false. One interesting assumption in their model is based off of numbers from Oregon, which is that the cost of administering UI is $500 per person per year. That's 4% of a $12k UBI. This number matches other estimates I've seen of the minimum cost of administration, and therefore the amount we could convert to cash and just give instead of wasting on administration. Basically my big problem with this paper is that they completely ignored available evidence for work disincentives and instead chose to just use an equation that assumes massive work disincentive effects. It ignores what we already know, and pretends to discover what we already nullified as a valid hypothesis over thirty years ago. It's great to see The Fed looking at UBI, but it's really disappointing to see them building models entirely lacking in available evidence to inform the model. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### "Fit for Work and Fit to Die": A Memorial for the Means-Tested URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/fit-for-work-and-fit-to-die-a-memorial-for-the-means-tested/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T21:30:18.000Z It may sound like common sense to some, or even many, to expect someone to do work in exchange for benefits. But this force, as is true with any applied force, has its consequences - both intended and unintended. A fellow human being who has witnessed these results first hand recently published a paper titled *There Had to Be a Better Way Than This* ([available on Dropbox](https://www.dropbox.com/s/kqs7cmlyuefjo14/Final%20Document%20on%20WCA%20JSA.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)) which includes a powerful collection of personal stories describing the real world effects of the idea of "workfare" in the UK. For those unfamiliar with workfare, it forces people to work and seek work (who are able to work), in exchange for government benefits. No scrounging allowed is the idea. No leeching from without giving back. That's the idea at least. *So what happens in practice?* I feel the following personal accounts need to be shared, and so I include a selection of some of them here in hopes it will contribute to them and more like them being further shared far and wide. The following is what happens when [we require means-testing for our safety nets](https://medium.com/@2noame/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e?ref=scottsantens.com). The following is what happens when we require people to sell their labor for free, in order to obtain benefits. The following is the true face of [**the work requirement.**](https://medium.com/basic-income/guaranteed-intercourse-choose-your-buddy-3cabc79c6df3?ref=scottsantens.com) Though entirely involving the welfare system in the UK, these stories faithfully represent the direct results of any system that requires a bureaucracy to perform means-testing for the reception of benefits. I will let the author's own introduction to these stories speak for itself before relaying them: > I’ve seen the change in attitude towards society’s disempowered in the last 30 years. The media attacks upon the poor whilst the rich grow richer, and the reduction in freedom and dignity among the disabled; especially among the learning disabled who are in no position to be able to understand the gradual yet escalating reductions in their standard of living. Let’s face it, those who study the issue will never understand a society which has chosen to treat people in such an abhorrent manner. > It is perhaps the time I’ve spent assisting people with legal problems which has been the greatest influence on my opinions. I have, due to difficulties in legalities and ethics, chosen not to relate stories known privately by me in this paper. I do believe the stories I have related from newspapers and other published sources are both demonstrative of the current situation, and are merely to use a colloquialism, “The tip of the iceberg.” In declaring my position I should normally set it aside in my analysis; that is unlikely to happen. I freely admit, this paper will argue for a solution I believe will end what I see as a series of tragedies. > It might be difficult to read through these stories, but it should be remembered that each one is a person in a vulnerable position needing the assistance of the country, who was let down. Each one is a human being with people who love them who are also affected by their mistreatment. Each one represents a huge number of untold stories of people suffering in a similar way. Each and every one of these stories, and the stories untold, matters. *(Emphasis where added is my own and British spellings have been replaced with American...)* **David Clapson** > David had already served his country as a soldier. Many ex-soldiers find that the army asks them to retire well before the national retirement age, or makes them redundant due to cuts. He missed an appointment in May. this left him without money for 18 days. His electricity meter had nothing on it, and he only had £3.44 in his bank account. The insulin he needed for his diabetes could not be kept in the chilled state necessary for it to be effective; his fridge wasn’t working without electricity. That was the situation when [**he was found dead**](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/09/david-clapson-benefit-sanctions-death-government-policies?ref=scottsantens.com) in his flat on 20 July 2014; his stomach completely empty. The DWP are quoted as saying in response to this tragedy involving someone who had given service to this nation and received contempt in response, “It’s only right that people claiming benefits should do everything they can to find work if they are able.” There is no evidence he was doing anything but that. His dead body was found surrounded by Curriculum Vitae and the letters he was writing for jobs. **Christelle Pardoe** > Christelle a 32 year old French lady, had a five month old son, Kayjah. She was a graduate of London Metropolitan University where she studied Philosophy. Foreign claimants need to provide a five year proof that they have either been in work or looking for work and Christelle had a period of around eight months in 2003 where she worked in a cafe but could trace no-one to provide the necessary evidence of this. Her benefits were sanctioned and then stopped; then not being on benefits her child benefit was stopped. Then not being in receipt of anything, her housing benefit was stopped and the local authority demanded she repay £200 in overpaid benefits. Seeing no other way out, **she leapt with her five month old son from a third floor balcony killing them both and her unborn child**. **Kevin Bennett** > Kevin suffered from severe mental illness and schizophrenia. He was sanctioned and his Job Seekers Allowance was stopped. He became a recluse, and **was found dead in his flat having starved aged 40**. **Stuart Holley** > Aged just 23 Stuart was hounded and suffered repeated sanctions until **he took his own life.** **Carl Joseph Foster-Brown** > The wholly unjustified decisions regarding sanctions by the DWP led directly to Carl’s decision to **take his own life aged 58**; the comments on his You Tube tribute video describe him as a big man having a heart of gold. **Colin Traynor** > Suffered from epilepsy which was severe and life threatening. It was decided he was fit for work, and he chose to appeal. It was **five weeks after his death aged 29 that it was accepted he wasn’t fit for work** and he was notified he had won his appeal. Speaking in the House of Commons about his death and the contact he received from Colin’s family, Michael Meacher MP said, “Nothing is going to bring Colin Traynor back to life, but I believe that the Government owe it to his memory, and that of hundreds of others who have lost their lives in similar circumstances, to make fundamental changes to the work capability assessment procedures which are taking such a terrible administrative toll in fear, intimidation, distress and death.” Upon comments by Mark Hoban Minister of State for the DWP that Colin had not adequately communicated his distress to the DWP, Mr Meacher said further, “Irrespective of whether the distress, of which the parents were aware, was made known to the authorities, the crucial point in this case is: how can a 29-year-old who had been subject to grand mal seizures since he was 14 months old, and for whom Remploy had desperately tried for three years to get a job and could not do so, have been regarded as employable?” Mark Hoban avoided this question on more than one occasion saying parliament was not the right place to discuss the details of the case upon the basis of which the session had been called. **Linda Wootton** > Linda had her first double heart & lung transplant in 1985, at the age of 21; after which she bravely returned to work. Unfortunately, the transplant was rejected, and complications in a subsequent operation in 1989 left her an invalid and unable to work. She remained recognized as being unfit for work by all of the medical experts involved in her case; chronically disabled. “She would be listless, falling asleep, feeling faint... she had no stamina,” in the words of her husband; a man who continues to work as a refrigeration engineer and pay into the same system which exists to provide a safety net for those in need. In 2012, new guidance from the DWP meant that it was decided that Linda had to prove she was still unfit to work and her ESA was withdrawn. She was forced to undertake an Atos assessment even though she was barely able to attend the appointment on 3 January 2013\. She typed her appeal letter in a hospital bed on 13 February 2013\. She was still in a hospital bed on 16 April 2013 when the DWP wrote to her to tell her the decision stood and she would no longer receive ESA as by the agreed standards of the Atos assessment she was fit for work. On April 24 **she died aged 49**, again the words of her husband Peter, “Feeling useless like a scrounger.” The DWP showed their sensitivity through a spokesman who said, “A decision on whether someone is well enough to work is taken following a thorough assessment and after consideration of all supporting medical evidence.” As her husband Peter said, “She paid her tax and national insurance, then she is treated like this. it is disgusting.” **David Groves** > David again had severe heart problems, though not suprisingly he was very worried that these would be immaterial to the assessment process used by Atos and the DWP. The night before his medical was due, he **died of a heart attack his condition exacerbated by stress aged 56**. His son Paul, 38, said, “He could hardly walk any distance without needing help from his angina spray. I don’t know why they could not ask the consultants who had told him his heart was too weak to have an elbow operation he needed. They would have made it clear how ill he was.” **Terry McGarvey** > Forty Eight year old Terry knew he wasn’t well enough to attend his WCA, but knew also of the threat to stop his benefits if he didn’t attend. He attended, but the strain was such that an ambulance needed to be called during the examination. Terry **died the next day**. Having told the Atos assessor that an immediate ambulance was needed, as his brother Charlie explained, “They put us into a room next door and lay him on a bed. We waited more than an hour for the ambulance without anyone coming in to even ask how he was.” Atos made the call, but in the words of a spokesman for Scottish Ambulance Service, “The call was clinically triaged as a non-emergency based on detailed information provided by the caller.” Obviously Atos had without any real medical knowledge decided it wasn’t that serious in what could only be described as an unnecessarily callous decision. **Robert Barlow** > Robert Barlow had worked as a government scientist, until at the age of 38 he was diagnosed with severe cardiomyopathy, a degenerative condition which causes failure of the heart muscle. He was awaiting a heart transplant, and also suffering from a brain tumor. he had been slowly growing more ill for nine years, and by the age of 46 he couldn’t walk, his eyesight was so poor he couldn’t read, and he had a tendency for frequent falls. With 18 months to live, his ESA was stopped since he was deemed to be fit for work; despite having grown gradually less fit since having had to give up work eight years earlier. A once great servant to his country, **died penniless**, having spent more than his savings before he died without any state assistance. **David Coupe** > Suffering from cancer, yet still found fit for work by Atos, Farmer David **lost his sight, his hearing, his mobility then his life aged 57**. His widow Lyn said, “David got a very rare form of cancer, it took his sight and his hearing, then finally his life. But months before that Atos took his dignity. His doctors and specialist nurses wrote to the firm but never received a reply.” **Paul Turner** > Despite suffering from Ischaemic Heart Disease, and having suffered heart attacks, 52 year old Paul was told in February 2014 that he was fit for work; by April **he was dead**. His devastated mum Sheila, 76, said: “We believe the claim he was fit to work brought on his death.” A spokesman for the DWP said, ‘‘Job center Plus decision makers look at all available information, including any medical evidence, to support their claim.” **Stephen Hill** > Acutely ill, Stephen was waiting for major heart surgery. It was decided he was fit for work, and within a month **he was dead aged 53**. He died in December, and his brother Anthony said, “Stephen should have been enjoying time with his grandchildren. For this to happen was just terrible.” **Larry Newman** > Larry had a degenerative chronic lung condition which had caused his weight to drop from 10 stones to 7 stones. It was decided after the Atos assessment that he was fit for work, and **he was dead within three months**. **Janet McCall** > Terminally ill and suffering from pulmonary fibrosis, a disease which causes hardening of the lungs, constant breathlessness and repeated coughing, she was found fit for work after an Atos assessment, and **was dead within five months.** **Brian McArdle** > Was passed as fit for work despite his heart condition. The day after his benefits stopped he **died of a heart attack aged 57.** **Jan Mandeville** > A sufferer from Fibromyalgia, which causes scarring to the lungs, had an ongoing battle with the DWP for ESA and Disability Living Allowance driving her to the point of mental & physical breakdown before being **found dead aged 52.** **Graham Shawcross** > Despite suffering from the debilitating Addison’s disease, Graham was found fit for work. At age 63 and just short of pension age, he was under great stress and this resulted in **a heart attack which caused his death**. **Nathan Hartwell** > Had a serious heart condition, but was nevertheless found fit for work; battled for 18 months to have his benefits restored and **died of a heart attack induced by stress aged 36**. **Cecilia Burns** > Was receiving treatment for aggressive breast cancer when found fit for work, managed to win her appeal, but **died just a few weeks later aged 51.** **Chris Smith** > Was declared fit for work by the DWP **as he lay dying** in a hospital bed. **Elenore Tatton** > Elenore was placed in the Work Related Activity group as someone who would return to full fitness in the future despite having an incurable brain tumor which she originally suffered from age 15, had received an operation for, but had returned. She also suffered from epilepsy. She **died within three weeks aged 39** leaving her husband and three children. Raymond, her partner, suffers from gangrene of the appendix, diabetes, and has had to have part of his bowel removed, and is very unsteady on his feet, lacks any stamina and is prone to collapsing. Not long after Elenore’s death Atos called him in for assessment, and he subsequently received notice from the DWP that his benefits would cease as he was fit for work. **Mark Wood** > Mark was a 44 year old man, who weighed only 5 stones 8 pounds when found. Against his doctors assertion that he was not fit for work, it was decided after an Atos assessment that he was. He had complex mental health problems. His benefits were stopped, and he **starved to death**. His sister Cathie said of her, “Gentle and sweet,” brother, “"when the police found him, there was very little food in the house, just half a banana and a tin of tuna." **Tim Salter** > Despite his failing eyesight and agoraphobia, 53 year old Tim was deemed fit for work after an Atos assessment. He went into rent arrears when his benefits were cut, and was about to be evicted when he chose to hang himself instead. His sister Linda said, "Tim ran out of money. He was a proud man and never let on to anybody. It’s so sad. I want everyone to know what this government is doing to vulnerable people on benefits. He had a certificate to say he was blind. When we got into his house there was no food, he **practically starved in the last weeks**.” **Mark Scott** > Had his DLA and benefits stopped, sank into depression, and **was found dead within six weeks** of being assessed as fit for work. **Ian Caress** > Ian, aged 43, was found fit for work despite multiple health problems and deteriorating eyesight; he **died 10 months later, emaciated** and described by his family as looking like a concentration camp victim. **Jacqueline Harris** > Jacqueline was a former nurse with severe mobility problems; she could hardly walk. She had typical conditions connected with a career in nursing, sever arthritis in her neck, and severe back problems; both almost certainly from years of assisting others who had mobility problems. Her sister Christine, also a nurse, recounted the medical, saying, “They asked her one question, ‘Did you get here by bus?'” That was it, she was able to get on and off a bus so they decided she was fit enough to work; it mattered not how much effort had been involved in that one small action. She **chose to take her own life** the day after receiving notice that Atos had found her fit for work aged 53\. As is standard a spokeswoman for the DWP said, “A decision on whether someone is well enough to work is taken following a thorough assessment and consideration of supporting medical evidence.” **Elaine Lowe** > Elaine was a 53 year old lady who suffered from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD); a disease which affect breathing and thus affect the ability to do most things. Chronic means permanent and incurable. Her benefits were threatened and she knew she was incapable of working due to her severe and chronic illness. Not knowing how she would survive and believing she would suffer a slow death by starvation, she instead **chose to commit suicide.** **Paul Reekie** > A sufferer of severe depression, it was decided after an Atos assessment that he was fit for work and despite previous diagnosis by his doctor did not have a sufficient level of depression to affect his ability to work. He then **killed himself.** The founder of Rebel Inc publishing, who knew the author Reekie, sent the following to George Osborne, "It has come to my attention that while many of my friends and I were at the funeral of our good friend Paul Reekie, aged 48, it would appear that you were giving a speech in Parliament announcing your intentions to slash the benefits paid to the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.” **Leanne Chambers** > A sufferer of depression for many years who had in that time been accepted as unable to work. Was called in for an Atos assessment, and **killed herself** soon after. Her body was not found immediately, her mother Val explains the emotions of a family who believe they have lost someone, “Ever since she went missing we have lived with the agony of wondering what had happened to her, reacting to every knock on the door, every phone call or every car which pulled up outside. **Elaine Christian** > Elaine was a fifty seven year old lady with mental health problems who had been told she must attend a Work Capability Assessment and that her benefits were at risk. She was **found with multiple self inflicted wrist wounds** at Holderness Drain, Hull. Her husband said, "She was worried about the assessment, but was never one to complain." Katrina Dennis, who managed the local Cooplands said, "She was one of the nicest people I knew and had a heart of gold.” **Sandra Louise Moon** > Sandra a 57 year old mother, had a degenerative back condition, though worries about losing her Incapacity Benefit and the prospect of a Work Capability Assessment had also done much to exacerbate the depression she also suffered from. She **took an overdose and died**. Blackpool coroner Anne hind put it quite succinctly when she said, “We can only feel so sad for what must have been going through her mind.” **Edward Jacques** > A 47 year old man who suffered from HIV and Hepatitus, was known to have a history of severe depression and self harm. After an Atos assessment it was decided he was fit for work, then being unable to attend the necessary interviews his benefits were stopped. He **chose to commit suicide.** **Peter Hodgson** > Despite having suffered a stroke, a brain hemorrhage, and having a fused leg, the DWP decided to call him in to see if he might be suitable for unpaid work. The actual appointment date arrived after he’d **took his own life aged 49**. **David Barr** > David was known to suffer from severe mental problems, though Atos decided he was fit for work nonetheless. He appealed, and upon his appeal failing, **threw himself from a bridge to his death aged just 28**. **Iain Hodge** > Iain suffered from antiphospholipid syndrome; a disease where white blood cells mistakenly attack the hosts body and the risk of blood clots in arteries and veins. People with this condition are at constant risk of things like heart attacks and strokes. Iain was, nevertheless, passed as fit for work and had his benefits stopped. he **chose to end his life aged just 30.** **Shaun Pilkington** > A father and grandfather, had been suffering from depression when the DWP decided to stop his ESA. Could cope no longer and **shot himself**. As one of his neighbor’s explained, “He was pretty down about it and said he was finding it hard to cope with the decision. He was a lovely man. It is not fair what the Government is doing.” **Craig Monk** > Craig had lost his job when an accident at work led to a partial amputation of one of his legs. He had been in a vulnerable state, depressed because of his situation, and to add to that state his social security had been cut. He had previously attempted suicide by overdose, and was in dire need of support. He was **found hanged**. his neighbor Kevin Martin said he had spoken about his worry that his benefits had been cut. **Chris McGuire** > A deeply depressed man, so much so that the judge in his appeal against being fit for work told the DWP and Atos to leave him alone for at least a year. They chose to ignore the judges direction, and Chris responded to their continued harassment by **killing himself.** **Annette Francis** > A thirty year old mother with sever mental illness, Annette **decided to commit suicide** after her disability benefits were ceased. **Michael McNicholas** > Suffering from severe depression Michael, aged 34, was called in for a Work Capability Assessment by Atos and **chose instead to take his own life.** **Michael Connolly** > A father who, on 30th October, his sixtieth birthday, **decided to take a massive overdose**, after his benefits had been cut, and died. **Carl Paine** > Father of two Carl, aged 42, was demonstrably fearful of losing his benefits before he **chose to commit suicide**. **Victor Cuff** > The DWP stopped Victor’s benefits despite him suffering from severe depression; he **chose to hang himself aged 59**. **Nicholas Peter Barker** > Nicholas had suffered a brain hemorrhage which left him paralyzed down one side. It was decided he was fit for work and his benefits were stopped; he **shot himself aged 51**. **Steven Cawthra** > Steven had his social security payments stopped despite rising debts, and **chose to take his own life as a way out** aged 55. **Chris Cann** > **Found dead** in his home after being told he needed to undergo a Work Capability Assessment. **Paul Willcoxsin** > Paul had suffered for years with mental health problems. His concerns about being tested by Atos led him to **take his own life aged 33**. **Trevor Drakard** > Trevor had always suffered from epilepsy, with frequent and severe fits. The DWP made repeated attempts to stop his benefits until he **chose to commit suicide** aged 50. **Martin Rust** > Aged 36 was found fit for work despite serious mental health problem, schizophrenia with auditory hallucinations. He left a note saying, **“To those I love, I’m sorry, goodbye.”** I'm sorry too. I'm sorry for the present lack of humanity among so many humans who either encourage this, or allow this to continue through their silence. The above is only a small sample of the fatal effects of means-tested welfare requirements. And the cases of non-fatal suffering are even more numerous and commonplace. By choosing to not provide unconditional benefits, we create holes for people to fall through to their deaths. And for every one who dies, there are hundreds and even thousands more who suffer. Our best intentions do not matter. There is no perfect test. Whatever the test, there are those who should pass it who *won't*, and therefore there will always be those who should not suffer who *will*. If you support drug-tested means-testing, then you need to understand there will always be those who don't use drugs who will fail your test and will unjustly starve as a direct result of your own conditions. If you support ability-tested means-testing, the idea that all people should work who are *able* to work, then there will be those who are actually *unable* to work who will be forced to work or suffer the consequences. If you support marriage-tested means-testing, such that only those who are legally married receive help, there will by consequence be those who are married and those who aren't legally recognized as married, who don't receive help. If you support child-tested means-testing, such that only those with children or who are children receive help, you must understand that a real percentage of children will not receive this aid. No test is perfect. No administrator of tests has perfect judgment. No system involving any form of means-testing will ever not accomplish exactly what you don't want it to accomplish. The only way to truly help someone, is to give help unconditionally. If we can't do that, if we can't help our fellow human beings without first asking what they can do for us first, we turn our backs to each other and to a better world. For everyone lost before we achieve the universal right to live in the form of a basic income, and through this achievement a universal recognition of our inherent worth as human beings, I am sorry. I am sorry because I believe firmly in the words of John Donne. > "No man is an island, Entire of itself, Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thy friend's Or of thine own were: Any man's death diminishes me, Because I am involved in mankind, And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee." Let us all become involved in mankind. Let us all stop the tolling of conditional welfare, [and make it unconditional](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com). **Let us all stop asking if one is fit for work, and start asking if we are fit to live**. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### We Know How to Abolish Poverty. Why Don't We? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/we-know-how-to-abolish-poverty-why-dont-we-basic-income-vox-video/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T21:49:05.000Z It's videos like this we need to share more with each other... Everyone should be earning more. Everyone isn't earning more because of globalization and technology mostly. We used to have things called middle class jobs. Those don't exist anymore like we think they do. We lost a ton of them because we no longer need people here to do them. Instead we have cheap labor overseas. Because we have a consumer economy, this decrease in middle class jobs has an adverse effect on the economy through lower spending. Meanwhile jobs have transitioned to part-time work (because profits) and service industry work (because we can't move those jobs overseas for the most part). Look at the numbers. Unemployment may be lowering, but this is due to [all those jobs that once paid good wages having been replaced by jobs that pay shit or jobs that only want you for 20 hours a week](http://www.businessinsider.com/middle-class-jobs-are-being-replaced-by-lousy-low-pay-jobs-2012-9?ref=scottsantens.com). We are only now just starting to realize where we are after decades of structural change. If we want a stronger economy, people have to receive more income, so they can spend more into the economy. Saying shit like people should just work smarter, or get more educated, or that the "free market" will save us all if only we abolish taxes is like clicking your heels together and wishing to go home. Sorry Toto, this ain't Kansas. We're in Oz, where all those manufacturing jobs that created the middle class no longer exist and are never coming back in any substantial quantity. [Automation has arrived](http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/10/opinion/ford-robots-jobs/index.html?ref=scottsantens.com). We have reached a pivotal point in human history. Human labor is no longer required to the degree it once was and it never will be again. We're living in a crazy and exciting time where we have to come to realize that we're going to need to pay people enough to sustain a middle class and we have to make sure we have a strong enough safety net in place to catch all those people who can't find the jobs that no longer exist, and both needs can be accomplished through the establishment of a basic income guarantee. Not only would this substantially reduce poverty, additionally it would supplement the incomes of all jobs and so rebuild, even grow, the middle class. No min wage required. No unions required. Just smaller, smarter government. It's 2014 now and we need to start acting like it. We know how to abolish poverty, reduce inequality, stimulate the economy, grow the middle class, and strengthen our democracy, all through one policy. So what are we waiting for? --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Basic Income and the Problem of Freeloading Freeriders URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-and-the-problem-of-freeloading-freeriders-basic-income-as-basic-resources/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T21:49:52.000Z [(*Click here to also read my introduction to the perspective of basic income as basic resources*)](http://www.scottsantens.com/shouldn-t-all-this-talk-about-money-actually-be-talk-about-resources) A common concern of the idea of basic income is the idea of freeriders lazily freeloading off the hard labor of others, contributing nothing in return. I'm currently reading [Karl Widerquist's latest book](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1137274727/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1137274727&linkCode=as2&tag=bigbooklist-20&linkId=SXZNOWK47XKOTJJU&ref=scottsantens.com), and I like his take on this concern on [page 177](http://i.imgur.com/63Ltcac.jpg?ref=scottsantens.com). He gives an example of a group of people on an island where a well needs to be dug so that everyone can have fresh water. Only one person is needed to do it, and so one volunteer steps forward to do it. The deal is that he'll do it in exchange for a larger claim to resources than everyone else. This isn't to say he's paid for it. It's that instead of the island's total available resources being split say 20% for 5 people, that 4 people get 19% each and the volunteer to dig gets an additional 4% claim. Each person is basically giving up 1% of their claim to resources. No money is exchanged. The person digging the well does so for the rights to a larger share of the island. So now, even though no one paid for the well to be dug, and no one expended any effort themselves, are they free-riding? Are they freeloaders for drinking the well water for the rest of their lives despite not having helped dig the hole themselves? Will their descendants be freeloaders for being born on an island with a well none of them helped dig, with a reduced share of resources handed down to them by their own ancestors in comparison to the greater share of resources handed down to the digger's descendants who also didn't dig the well either? The question of freeloading assumes that not expending labor is freeloading, and it's just a simple equation. But this equation has other variables we all ignore, like time and what resources we give up our rights to claim as our own birthright. We have all given up our own claims to natural resources. These natural resources were accepted as payment for all the work ever done and presently being done. [It is only in places like Alaska that this is recognized](http://www.iser.uaa.alaska.edu/Publications/bien%5Fxiii%5Fak%5Fpfd%5Flessons.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Instead of just letting companies drill for the oil they only found and did not produce, Alaska says that each Alaskan should see payment for the claiming of resources that were mutually shared prior to being sucked out of the ground by oil companies. Once you look at it this way, are Alaskans freeloading? Of course not. It's Alaska's oil and they're just the only state so far to recognize it. In fact, even that is only arbitrary because the lines of Alaska are imaginary. It's not Alaska's oil, it's really Earth's oil, actually Earth itself, and therefore something every human shares a common right to, especially when we burn it all and [this affects the entire world](http://bangordailynews.com/2014/02/04/opinion/one-solution-could-fight-both-global-extreme-poverty-and-climate-change/?ref=scottsantens.com), and not just Alaska. Those in the top 1% are in the top 1% because they and their ancestors dug the wells. They now control almost all the resources, and yet we pretend the rest of us didn't provide them these resources through giving them our own claims, and the future claims of all our descendants. No one with a basic income can ever possibly be a freeloader, because a basic income is compensation for everything no one ever created, and [for everything created by those long dead](http://2noame.tumblr.com/post/89370301120/isnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-getting?ref=scottsantens.com). ![Silvrback blog image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/a1db43c8-63de-4839-822e-42c9c676773f/something4nothing_large.png) Basic income is basic resource compensation. It is a market correction to all the freeloading that has been going on for centuries. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Shouldn't All This Talk About Basic Income Actually Be Talk About Basic Resources? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/shouldn-t-all-this-talk-about-money-actually-be-talk-about-resources/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T21:51:15.000Z A basic income is in a way a minimum claim to resources, with each person using this to claim the resources most important to them. The fact a basic income is given regardless of work, makes it that much more clear it exists as such a claim on resources based on the shared right to such resources. This last point is important. No one of us created the Earth. We were all born here. Its resources therefore can be seen as belonging to all of us or none of us. To use its resources that are free, and transform it into something else using human labor, does not change the fact a portion of it always remains owned by none or all because that portion was never created and only transformed. It is this lack of 100% full individual ownership over anything and everything we create, that provides the justification that every single one of us has a right to a percentage, however small, of everything created by humanity. Therefore a basic income exists as a highly efficient means of representing such a claim to this universally owned portion as well as the means to effect its universal access. For those familiar with a [resource-based economy](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w&ref=scottsantens.com), basic income is a step in that direction. Instead of saying every human should have a 100% equal claim to all globally available resources, a basic income says that every citizen of a nation or state should have an absolute minimum claim to the natural resources of that nation or state, sufficient to secure individual basic needs, such that there will continue to be humans with a much larger claim, but no one will have less claim than a hard minimum limit. In the United States [1.1%](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html?ref=scottsantens.com) of all labor is involved in food production. This is because of how far we've advanced with our food technology, where we can now create all our food ([and even waste half of it](http://gizmodo.com/how-much-food-do-we-waste-every-year-831279806?ref=scottsantens.com)), with relatively miniscule effort. So why do we still insist that everyone work in order to eat it? If it took 1.1% less total effort, such that it took 0% of our total effort to produce our food (perhaps being produced by automated Star Trek style food replicators?), would we still insist people work to obtain food? If so, why? Cash is a very efficient means of resource distribution. It's a distributed non-centralized system. Is it the best of all systems? Probably not, but it's what we've got right now, and it can certainly exist as a means of allocating individual resource rights, and distributing the goods and services people want to use these resource rights to obtain. As for the idea that all prices will rise so much, that any attempt to guarantee a minimum allotment will be eroded, that is a huge oversimplification of how massively complex interconnected markets actually work and purely exists as a fear of change. Think of it this way, what if food stamps didn't exist? Do you think we would hear people saying we can't give out food stamps, because it would raise prices so much that there would effectively be no point in giving them out in the first place? I imagine we would. Would they be right? Of course not, because we *have* food stamps, and they actually do allow more people to eat than would be able to without them. Without food stamps, a lot of people would be far worse off. Has the existence of food stamps raised the price of food for everyone else? If yes, does that mean we are all worse off because of them? The same can be said of Social Security. Does that cause the prices of everything to rise so much, it isn't worth it to seniors to receive it? If we didn't have Social Security, would some people argue that implementing it would drive price inflation? Can you think of anything else we have that if we didn't already have, we'd hear having it would cause the sky to fall? We have the infrastructure in place and the technological capability to increase the quality of life for everyone. We just have to decide to actually *do* it. --- **For more info about resource-based economies, I suggest looking into [The Zeitgeist Movement](http://thezeitgeistmovement.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) and [The Venus Project](http://www.thevenusproject.com/?ref=scottsantens.com)**. --- *Update: The above has been now been translated into Spanish, courtesy of Carlos M. Arias Moreno. It can be read below, or [over here](http://ilprentabasica.org/no-deberia-esta-charla-sobre-renta-basica-universal-hablar-sobre-recursos-basicos/?ref=scottsantens.com).* La Renta Básica es de algún modo el reclamo de un mínimo de recursos, con la que cada persona decide qué recursos son más importantes para sí. El hecho de que la renta básica se perciba independientemente de un empleo, deja aún más claro que se define en base a un reclamo sobre esos recursos como derecho común de cada persona. Este punto es importante. Ninguno de nosotros ha creado la Tierra. Nacimos todos aquí. Por tanto podemos ver sus recursos como pertenecientes a todos o a nadie. Poder utilizar estos recursos que están disponibles libremente y transformarlos en otra cosa con mano de obra humana, no cambia el hecho de que una porción permanece siempre en posesión de todos o nadie, porque esa porción nunca fue creada, tan sólo transformada. La justificación de que todos y cada uno de nosotros tiene derecho a un porcentaje, por pequeño que sea, a todo lo creado por la humanidad, deriva de esta ausencia de propiedad individual sobre el 100% de todas y cada una de las cosas que creamos. Por tanto la renta básica existe como un medio altamente eficiente para representar dicho reclamo a esta porción de propiedad universal, así como de los medios para llevar a cabo su acceso universal. Para aquellos familiarizados con una economía basada en recursos, la renta básica es un paso en esa dirección. En lugar de decir que cada humano debería tener igual derecho a todos los recursos globales, la renta básica dice que cada ciudadano de una nación o estado debería tener derecho a un mínimo absoluto de los recursos naturales de esa nación o estado (Constitución española), suficientes para asegurar las necesidades básicas individuales, tal que seguirán existiendo humanos con una cuota mayor, pero nadie con menos del límite marcado. En los Estados Unidos el 1,1% del empleo está relacionado con la producción de alimentos. Esto es debido a los grandes avances tecnológicos alcanzados donde ahora podemos crear toda nuestra comida (e incluso desechar la mitad), con un esfuerzo minúsculo. Entonces, ¿por qué seguimos insistiendo en que todo el mundo trabaje para comer? Si tomáramos ese 1,1% restante para convertirlo en un 0% mediante la automatización completa del proceso de producción, recolección y distribución (lo cual ya es posible técnicamente), ¿seguiremos obligando a la gente a trabajar para obtener comida? Si así es, ¿por qué? ¿para qué? El dinero es un medio eficiente para distribuir los recursos. Es un sistema distribuido no centralizado. ¿Es el mejor de los sistemas? Probablemente no, pero es lo que tenemos en estos momentos, y ciertamente puede servir como medio de asignación de derechos sobre los recursos individuales, y la distribución de los bienes y servicios que la gente quiere utilizar. Decir que los precios subirían tanto que cualquier intento de establecer una renta básica sería inútil es una enorme simplificación del complejo funcionamiento de los mercados. Piénsalo de esta forma, ¿y si las cartillas de racionamiento no existieran? ¿Seguiríamos escuchando a gente diciendo que no podemos dar cartillas de racionamiento porque los precios subirían tanto que sería inútil darlas? Pienso que sí. ¿Estarían en lo cierto? Por supuesto que no, gracias la existencia de cartas de racionamiento y bancos de alimentos se alimenta más gente de la que lo haría si no existiesen. Sin ellos, mucha gente estaría aún peor. ¿Acaso la existencia de bancos de alimentos ha hecho subir el precio de la comida para el resto? Si es así, ¿somos más pobres por su culpa? Lo mismo se dijo con la Seguridad Social. ¿A causado eso una subida de precios tan desorbitada que no merece la pena mantener las pensiones o el paro? Si no tuviéramos Seguridad Social, ¿podrían algunas personas argumentar que su implantación crearía inflación de precios? ¿Puedes pensar en alguna otra cosa que no tenemos aún con la que seguiríamos escuchando que por su culpa se caería el cielo sobre nuestras cabezas? Tenemos la infraestructura y la capacidad tecnológica para mejorar la calidad de vida de todas las personas. Sólo tenemos que decidir hacerlo. --- **Para más información sobre economía basada en recursos, te sugiero que busques en el Movimiento Zeitgeist y el Proyecto Venus.** **Autor: Scott Santens Traducido por Carlos M. Arias Moreno** --- Thanks, Carlos! If anyone else would like to also contribute a translation, please feel free to do so. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### I Voted for Nader. Twice. URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/i-voted-for-nader-twice-why-its-important-to-vote-for-third-parties-green-party/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T21:53:19.000Z Happy Election Day, everyone! On days like this, I repudiate our two-party system. The year 2000 was a nightmare year for those who support third parties. To this day, people have the fear that not only is voting for a third party equivalent to throwing away their vote, but that the result of voting for the best person for the job can be getting stuck with the worst person for the job. So first things first... **Ralph Nader did not cause Gore to lose to Bush.** > It’s really difficult to make the argument that Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the 2000 election, for multiple reasons. There were only 560 votes separating George Bush from Al Gore. That’s essentially within every margin of error, which when it gets within the margin of error, means that there’s too many other factors that could have affected it to say with any confidence what caused Al Gore to lose and George Bush to win. > Every 3rd party candidate got over 600 votes, which means that if any one of those third party candidates had potentially dropped out and those votes had gone to Al Gore, he would have won too. So once you start to make those arguments, you open up a can of worms that you just cannot put back. Almost half of the Democratic Party voters stayed home, so who’s to say that the people who voted for Ralph Nader, if they didn’t have the choice of Ralph Nader, wouldn’t have stayed home or voted for somebody else anyway? > In Florida, CNN’s exit polling showed Nader taking the same amount of votes from both Republicans and Democrats: 1 percent. Nader also took 4 percent of the independent vote. At the same time, 13 percent of registered Democrats voted for Bush! Again, Gore couldn’t hold his own base and because of this, he lost. The Democrats don’t say one word about the fact that 13 percent of their own party members voted for Bush. [\[-Source\]](http://disinfo.com/2010/11/debunked-the-myth-that-ralph-nader-cost-al-gore-the-2000-election/?ref=scottsantens.com#sthash.T0RAPyDh.dpuf) Though true that many contributed to the outcome, and so many hold a level of responsibility, pinning the blame on Nader in any way but a small fraction is not accurate. One may as well pin the blame on the communist party candidate, or the weather, or the possibility that 600 people were up late that night watching Seinfeld reruns and couldn't be bothered to go vote the next day. Perpetuating the idea that we HAVE to vote for one of two parties in certain circumstances, in my opinion, does more harm than good by suggesting immediate short-term negative effects have greater importance than delayed long-term positive effects. Looking at this another way, let's say Nader had done even better, to the point of gaining 15% of the vote. Bush still wins in this case, but the result is that in 2004, Nader gets to be a part of the debates. The likely result of this would be even more people voting for Nader in 2004, perhaps winning let's say a third of the vote. Another possibility is that one or both of the other two parties has to adopt planks from the third party platform because of its huge and thus dangerous (to them) popularity. Now we have something very interesting. Perhaps Nader actually wins in 2004 or 2008\. Perhaps he doesn't and the people are better off anyway because their policy positions have been adopted by the Democrats and/or Republicans. Perhaps such a strong third party forces changes in the way we vote in general, like [proportional representation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS62N5b5L7Y&ref=scottsantens.com) and [instant run-offs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=%5F5SLQXNpzsk&ref=scottsantens.com). It could have even forced Bush to have had a different second presidency entirely. Whatever the result, I think if *more* people had voted for Nader, we'd all be better off right now, not worse. This is especially considering the fact that he has long supported a basic income guarantee. > "The arguments are overwhelming. I could debate this out of my little finger, against anybody put up to start arguing that giving people a basic income would reduce their incentive. It would give 'em more time to get more skills, to upgrade themselves, to live a better life, to learn how to play a musical instrument. I mean what's life for?" [\[-Source\]](http://binews.org/2014/10/united-states-five-time-presidential-candidate-ralph-nader-supports-a-basic-income?ref=scottsantens.com) A basic income has been part of the Green Party platform for years. Had more people been voting Green this century, it's therefore possible we'd already have it implemented. We also might be a bit further away from roasting our planet by now. And so it's not that too many people voted for Nader. It's that too many *didn't*. (By the way, if you've never seen the documentary about Nader, [it's on Netflix](http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/Ralph-Nader-An-Unreasonable-Man/70058893?ref=scottsantens.com) and a really interesting watch.) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### A Comment on the Massive Inequality in New Orleans URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/a-comment-on-the-inequality-in-new-orleans/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T21:53:58.000Z *I made the following comment in response to [this article published on Nola.com](http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/10/new%5Forleans%5Ftourism%5Findustry%5Fb.html?ref=scottsantens.com).* We need to recognize the systemic nature of all of this, and stop pretending that either "side" is responsible, or that inequality doesn't matter, and that education or jobs is the answer to our ills. This is a process that has been going on for decades mainly due to technology and globalization. We are just only now really starting to feel the effects, because we've run out of coping strategies like credit cards and second mortgages. What we are seeing today, everywhere, and not just here in New Orleans, is the mass export or outright [elimination of our labor](https://medium.com/basic-income/machine-labor-day-d77931dca9a8?ref=scottsantens.com). Where once Ford employed hundreds of thousands of workers, Tesla employs thousands. Where once Kodak employed hundreds of thousands, Instagram employs less than 100\. We are doing more with less, and yet wages decoupled from our productivity in the early 70s. Full-time jobs have also been being replaced with part-time jobs, and no this isn't because of Obamacare because it's been a trend since before Bush even took office in 2000. This is long-term completely systemic stuff we need to deal with here. The nature of technology is exponential growth. We as humans don't naturally understand exponential growth. It can be slow for a long time and then suddenly explode. That's where we are right now, right before things start to change faster than we can ever hope to cope with. Education is great but it's no lone fix. Even if college were free, we'd still be in trouble. No matter how well trained and how educated all of us are, there will never be more jobs created than destroyed. That is the power of technology. Meanwhile, the inequality it accelerates has real effects I don't think any of us want. Yes, inequality is good to a point, but past that point it drags the economy and increases measures like infant mortality, teenage pregnancy, suicide, obesity, crime, imprisonment, while decreasing measures like GDP, trust, and happiness. What is the point in defending any of that? We want more crime because taxation is wrong? Is that really a legitimate argument against doing something to structure society better? Would you prefer we start seeing riots in the streets in city after city due to increased impoverishment for most, who look around at a few doing better than ever? I for one believe we need [a basic income guarantee](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com). Get used to hearing about this idea, because it's going to happen sooner or later. It would just be a lot better for everyone if we started it sooner rather than later. Here's the deal. Every citizen gets $1,000/mo. Everyone with a job earns their wages and salaries on top of this. If you're earning $2,000/mo right now, great, now you earn $3,000\. We fund it in whatever way or mix of ways we feel is best, be it a flat income tax, or consumption tax, or land-value tax, or transaction tax, whichever the electorate as a whole likes best. There are plenty of workable ways to go about it. The money is there. The result of such a policy would be decreased inequality, decreased poverty, increased GDP, and an improvement in all the above measures. What's not to like? Would you prefer not being given an extra grand every month purely to spite someone else not getting it either? Why? Here in New Orleans, this increase in money at the bottom would do a special amount of good, and we could start converting all of our vacant houses to actual homes people could afford to live in. [Multiplier effects](http://www.ips-dc.org/wall%5Fstreet%5Fbonuses%5Fand%5Fthe%5Fminimum%5Fwage/?ref=scottsantens.com) would drive our economy thanks to people actually being able to afford to go out again, and consume other local goods and services. Our own local economy would improve significantly. This is the kind of solution we need to become okay with. For those that have a problem with people getting paid not to work, that's already how the system works. [Our system is flawed](https://medium.com/@2noame/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e?ref=scottsantens.com). It creates welfare traps by removing assistance as work income is earned. Where's the incentive to look for work if it won't make you better off? A basic income would remove this perverse incentive and create the situation where everyone works earns more than anyone not working. How is that not better than what we have right now? We need to be focusing on systemic solutions to systemic issues. Our problems are structural, not political. Whatever your political viewpoint, our problems are not caused by your favorite political bogeyman. Our problems run much deeper than that, and have for a very long time. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### My Interview with Green Party Candidate for Congress Ian Schlakman of Maryland URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/interview-ian-schlakman-maryland-green-party-congress-basic-income-news/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T21:54:58.000Z *This interview with Green Party candidate for Congress Ian Schlakman of Maryland's Second Congressional District was originally published on [Basic Income News](http://binews.org/2014/10/interview-congressional-candidate-ian-schlakman-on-his-call-for-a-basic-income-guarantee-or-%E2%80%9Csocial-security-for-all%E2%80%9D/?ref=scottsantens.com) on October 31, 2014.* --- **When and how were you first introduced to the idea of a basic income guarantee?** I first learned about a negative income tax when I was about 20\. I really liked the idea but the implementation seemed a bit confusing. A year and a half ago I began looking at parties and races for the 2014 elections. I also started seeing news stories about Universal Basic Income (UBI) from Switzerland. While running, I got a crash course in how to create focus and maintain consistency in messaging. I initially entered the race due to my cyber security credentials and to challenge Rep. Dutch Ruppersburger on his handling of Snowden and the NSA (he is the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee). Later on, I decided that my core issue would be a UBI. Messaging a complex idea like UBI definitely posed some challenges. First we came up with “Think BIG with a Basic Income Guarantee”. But then a high-ranking Green Party US (GPUS) staffer suggested that we change, or explain BIG by bringing up Social Security. He also pointed out that BIG has been in the GPUS platform for years. Now we use “Social Security for All” in our messaging. Frankly, it’s the easiest way to explain a UBI to everyday people. An excellent side-effect of this is that in a day and age when Social Security is being attacked, it makes a clear distinction that I would fight to expand Social Security to everyone. **As a candidate for the Green Party, what effects do you believe a basic income will have on traditionally considered key components of the Green Party platform like a cleaner environment, progress on climate change, and the pursuit of sustainability?** The challenge was to show that the Greens are more than just environmentalist. I relied a lot on [the Green Party platform](http://www.gp.org/what-we-believe/our-platform?ref=scottsantens.com). Take a look at it. It’s huge, it’s thorough, and it’s very well- thought-out. The platform already had a lot of great reasons for a BIG and several other economic justice and economic stimulus ideas. Our economic system demands that you make an income to pay for your essentials. I personally believe that’s wrong. In a world of such extreme abundance, we should be moving to a “Post Scarcity” age. But as a Congressman, it’s not my job to turn my opinion into legislation. The reality that you have to work no matter what to pay for life’s essentials has far-reaching consequences on the environment and the health of communities. If someone desperately needs work, (like so many of us do) they have to work anywhere that will hire them. This means if only high-polluting, low-wage jobs that are harmful to the environment are available in your community, such as fast-food or mountaintop removal mining projects, then that’s where you have to work or you won’t be able to survive. A Social Security for All program would be a great step in making sure you don’t have to choose between harming your community and paying your rent. Also, it would allow entrepreneurs a bit of breathing room when they begin their business ventures. So if you wanted to quit your job in fast-food and start a business as a local tailor, a BIG would really help while you’re in the crucial startup months. When we started pushing for a BIG, we started gaining lots of Twitter followers but they were mostly from Europe. A BIG was (and arguably still is) relatively unheard of in the USA. It became clear rather quickly that explaining what a BIG is and why it’s an excellent idea was going to be harder than I anticipated. When we’re on Reddit or Facebook it’s easy to assume that everyone knows what you’re talking about when you mention BIG or UBI. When you have between 30 to 120 seconds to describe what you would do on Social Security in a debate to an audience that’s never heard of BIG, let’s just say it’s tough. When you run for public office and you take on a responsibility to the public, you have to realize that most people spend their spare time with their families, fixing up their homes, working a second job, working a third job, etc. You have to be willing to take on the challenge of explaining big (no pun intended) concepts in very brief sound bites. To answer your question directly, Social Security for All is my preferred method of explaining a BIG. If elected, I would work with a coalition of Democrats who want to expand Social Security and Republicans who are familiar with things like Milton Friedman’s Negative Income Tax. My goal is to create some truly bipartisan legislation that would give everyone a BIG. **[You’ve mentioned](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lfTnvam5Dk&t=0m40s&ref=scottsantens.com) universal healthcare and a $15 minimum wage as part of your platform of “thinking BIG” with basic income. What other big ideas do you want the opportunity to fight for in Congress?** I would like to deescalate our military presence abroad. I would work with progressive Democrats and libertarian Republicans to end current military actions overseas, close foreign military bases (especially in countries that don’t want us there) and bring our troops home. I would take every opportunity to stop military drone operations. I would never authorize spending for what Ron Paul calls “illegal wars”. Congress (including my opponent, Democrat Dutch Ruppersburger) just authorized a half BILLION dollars for military action in Syria. I would have voted against this. I don’t care what party the President is from, if they want money for a war then they need to follow the Constitution and get Congress to declare war. America should be seen as a country that takes military violence very seriously and follows its own Constitution. **Some suggest that having a basic income should lead to a more civic-minded and politically-engaged citizenry. Do you consider basic income one step toward weakening corruption and strengthening democracy? What other steps would you take in Congress to reduce the corrupting influence of money on government?** YES! As I mentioned previously, far too many people are working over 40 hours a week, more than 1 job, etc. This leaves no time for art, mental health, recreation and democratic engagement! This is a huge problem. In Maryland, we have a fantastic organization called [GMOM (Get Money out of Maryland)](http://www.getmoneyoutmd.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) that I’ve worked with. I know they have chapters in all 50 states and I would encourage people to find their state and local chapters. **How can those interested in helping make basic income a reality help you and your campaign?** We as activists, advocates and academics tend to gloss over the need for financial and volunteer support when it comes to elections. A BIG will not just appear one day. We all need to support candidates that take the risk of supporting something as exceptional as a BIG. There are a few Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians and independents that know about and support a UBI. But remember it’s been a staple of the Green Party for years. So make an effort to contact your local Green candidates and donate some money or some time. As for my campaign, please spread the word on social media! Please consider a donation even if you only have $5\. And if you really want to get involved, sign-up to volunteer on our website at [ian42.com/volunteer](http://ian42.com/volunteer?ref=scottsantens.com). We are focusing on making phone calls from now until the end of the campaign to make sure our supporters get out and vote. If you’re able to help out (either in the Baltimore area or from across the country) please let us know! --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Alaska vs. the U.S. Before and After Existence of the Yearly Alaskan Dividend URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/consumer-price-index-of-alaska-vs-u-s-before-and-after-existence-of-alaskan-dividend/ Last updated: 2023-10-05T18:12:55.000Z Every year [every qualifying resident of Alaska receives an annual dividend provided by the Alaska Permanent Fund](https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/karl-widerquist/alaska-model-citizens-income-in-practice?ref=scottsantens.com). The most recent payout was $1,884 in 2014, for every man, woman, and child in Alaska. The first payout of $1,000 occurred in 1982. ![Silvrback blog image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/1a7fb214-6c39-4994-8313-2b5b8dc65df6/Alaska-CPI_large.png) *Data Source:* [*Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development*](http://laborstats.alaska.gov/cpi/cpi.htm?ref=scottsantens.com) CPI data reveals that prior to 1982, $1 did not go as far in Alaska than it did in the U.S. as a whole. 1982 was the last year this was true. Beginning in 1983, $1 in Alaska began to go farther than it did in the U.S. as a whole, and this trend continues to this day. **Alaska CPI** | **US CPI1981:** 92.4 | 90.9 (last year without dividend) **1982:** 97.4 | 96.5 (dividend paid in October) **1983:** 99.2 | 99.6 (first full year with dividend) Is it just pure coincidence that CPI data reveals this flip from worse CPI to better CPI for Alaska relative to the entire United States? It's possible. There could be a variety of confounding variables. What is entirely clear however, is that the dividend did *not* cause any inflation in Alaska. A common fear of providing everyone "free money" in the form of a basic income is that the costs of everything will rise, eroding the value of all money as CPI rockets upwards. The partial basic income provided in Alaska in the form of their Permanent Fund Dividend appears to counter this fear with thirty years of a CPI growing at a slower rate than the rest of the country. It should also be noted that it is in general more expensive to live in Alaska. Due to higher transportation costs, shorter growing seasons, greater heating expenses, etc. [the poverty level in Alaska for an individual with no kids is $14,350 whereas in the contiguous U.S. it's $11,670](http://familiesusa.org/product/federal-poverty-guidelines?ref=scottsantens.com). And yet Alaska has among the lowest poverty rates of any state in the country, [coming in No.2](http://247wallst.com/special-report/2013/09/19/americas-richest-and-poorest-states/2/?ref=scottsantens.com) with only New Jersey having a lower percentage of people living in poverty. Meanwhile, looking instead at the growth of inequality in the U.S. between 1979 and 2012... > More than half of U.S. states—26 plus D.C.—saw inequality increase at a rate higher than the national average over this period. Connecticut led the way with a 26 percent increase, followed by Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, and New York. With the exception of Ohio, these are all larger states with robust knowledge economies. And all but four states— South Dakota, **Alaska**, Arkansas, and Hawaii—saw inequality rise by ten percent or more. [\-Source](http://www.citylab.com/work/2014/05/mapping-three-decades-income-inequality-state-state/9067/?ref=scottsantens.com) Between 1979 and 2012, the Gini coefficient in Alaska rose from 0.393 to 0.415\. In the country as a whole, it rose from 0.413 to 0.471\. Alaska's growth in inequality is thus 38% that of the growth in inequality of the entire U.S. It's barely budged whereas in the rest of the country it's practically exploded. Is all of this just pure coincidence and due to other factors that the only U.S. state to give a universal amount of cash money to its citizens just happens to have a slower rate of inflation, a lower level of inequality, and a lower amount of poverty than most any other state in the Union? How about it, states? Want to test this out for yourselves? Who wants to be the first state to adopt [the Alaska Model](http://www.iser.uaa.alaska.edu/Publications/bien%5Fxiii%5Fak%5Fpfd%5Flessons.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) of providing a partial basic income to your residents? Let me help you out. You can [start right here](http://www.uvm.edu/giee/pubpdfs/Flomenhoft%5F2012%5FExploring%5Fthe%5FAlaska%5FModel.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### It’s Time We Take a Closer Look at America’s Three Favorite Words: Freedom, Liberty, and Democracy URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/its-time-we-take-a-closer-look-at-americas-three-favorite-words-freedom-liberty-and-democracy/ Last updated: 2022-02-16T21:18:53.000Z Freedom, liberty, democracy… these words are used so often that we give them little real thought, rarely holding them up to the realities of what we see around us. What do these words really mean? Do they currently exist for us to celebrate as we appear to think they do? And if not, is there anything we can do about it? **Let’s take a closer look.** ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/750/1*QFmdfIdw-n17u3AIvxIl1Q.jpeg) Photo by Jason Llagan — [Flickr](https://flic.kr/p/DPFGm?ref=scottsantens.com) ## Freedom Simply put, freedom is the idea that we’re free to do as we wish to do. However, there’s more to it than this. In practice it has a caveat, as we are all surrounded by each other and not in a vacuum; freedom is more realistically defined in a social context as the idea that we’re each free to do as we wish to do, so long as we don’t prevent others from having the same ability. We may wish to be free to hurt someone, but that would limit their freedom to continue free of hurt, and if considered acceptable, would open the door to people hurting us. And so freedom in practice has its one condition – it exists for us all only to the social degree that everyone else has equal freedom themselves. However, in addition to this sole condition, freedom can also be thought of in two different ways. On the one hand, there is the freedom from being prevented from doing what you want to do by others. And on the other hand, there is the freedom to actually do what you want to do. The former can be thought of as a lack of binding constraints (negative freedom) and the latter an abundance of real opportunity (positive freedom). Which version of freedom is most important is entirely up to the individual, but referring again to freedom’s one condition, both forms must be available to everyone universally, lest one’s freedom be partial. So how can we universally realize freedom in both forms? What is it that freedom requires? > “The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor.” ## Opportunity Thomas Jefferson contemplated the answer to this question and wrote his solution into [his version of the Virginia State Constitution](http://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/thomas-jefferson-draft-constitution.html?ref=scottsantens.com): > “Every person of full age neither owning nor having owned 50 acres of land, shall be entitled to an appropriation of 50 acres or to so much as shall make up what he owns or has owned 50 acres in full and absolute dominion. And no other person shall be capable of taking an appropriation.” Jefferson felt that to realize freedom more fully, everyone needed to have a minimum amount of land, and this ownership of land would release every individual from the coercive power of others, while also empowering them to actually do what they wish. With this universally guaranteed minimum amount of capital in the form of real property, people could choose to live on their own, off their own land with their own labor, bothered by no one. In addition they could also choose to use that land as a source of income, through their own labor, to actually afford the goods and services of others. In this way Jefferson saw a minimum of 50 acres as a guarantee of both forms of freedom. Decades later, a freed slave and chosen spokesperson of other freed slaves named Garrison Frazier would express the same sentiment as [his own answer](http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/savmtg.htm?ref=scottsantens.com), when asked about slavery and how to best preserve his and his community of freedmen’s newly proclaimed freedom from it. > “Slavery is, receiving by *irresistible power* the work of another man, and not by his *consent.* The freedom, as I understand it, promised by the proclamation, is taking us from under the yoke of bondage, and placing us where we could reap the fruit of our own labor, take care of ourselves and assist the Government in maintaining our freedom… The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor...” The result of this response, is the now infamous [Special Field Order No. 15 ](http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/shermans-field-order-no-15?ref=scottsantens.com)by General Sherman, which included a promise which came to be known as “40 acres and a mule”, where 400,000 acres of land owned by slave owners were to be redistributed to the now former slaves themselves, in 40 acre increments. It was the freed men themselves who knew that to be truly free required more than a lack of chains, but real opportunity and the power to say “No” to being forced to work for others, that land ownership could provide. Essentially, a minimum amount of capital was required for them to be entirely and forever free from slavery. Unfortunately, this promise was broken only months later by President Andrew Johnson, and the land returned to its former owners. How would history be different, if this order had not been reversed? Where would we be now if this same order had been extended to all U.S. citizens? Without this bare minimum of real property, does everyone in America today somehow have the equivalent freedom from coercion plus freedom of opportunity such minimum land wealth ownership would allow? If not, what about liberty? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1280/1*atxGRG0dSS1oXiSUpVuNnw.jpeg) Photo by jirotrom — [Flickr](https://flic.kr/p/5DMnqF?ref=scottsantens.com) ## Liberty One of the more complete and lesser known explanations of liberty can be found in the late 19th century writings of John Milton Bonham in his book “[Industrial Liberty](http://books.google.com/books/reader?id=6bA9AAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&ref=scottsantens.com)” as a passage from Liberty herself: > “You shall be equal to all others before my law; not equal in faculty or endowment, for my gift to you is of political right, not of natural faculty. Political freedom does not, and cannot, confer natural faculty nor can it change the variety of that faculty. I take you as I find you, with those faculties which nature has thus given you in diversity. I would not change these if I could ; nor would I disturb their diversity; since it is by this very diversity that individuality receives its highest expression, and that the largest results of my gift of political freedom and political equality are realized. Bringing, therefore, to me the faculties which nature has given you, I determine that you shall employ them in your own behalf, in my behalf, and behalf of humanity, with the same freedom as that with which every other man may use his. You may bequeath the fruits of your endeavors, within the limits of your natural affection, to your children and grandchildren. This you may do in order that your incentives to acquisition and possession may be complete. Beyond this you cannot tie up your gains to be held against the incentives and activities of the generations to follow.” Here we have Bonham as Liberty notifying the reader that it is impossible for everyone to be absolutely equal, that there will always be inequality, but we are all equally guaranteed the same rights before the law, and that we must use our liberty for the liberty of all and always keep in mind that it is possible to go *too* far — that at some point we end up taking from each other, even long after our own deaths. And so Liberty continues on with again, a sole caveat… > “I confer this gift upon you, upon the condition that you will assist every other unit in the exercise of his like political gift, and that you will not permit any person or combination of persons to exceed the common limit… You may, for the common convenience, permit commerce and industry to be conducted by delegated units; but you must see to it that paramount to all such authority is the supreme equal political right of the individual units, the sacred thing to which all other things must be adjusted…” So, just as freedom exists within social and economic bounds, so does liberty. The achievement of real liberty requires that each individually ensure that all collectively keep and maintain one another’s equal political and economic rights. This is the cost of liberty — that each individual not accumulate so much money or political power, that the ability of others to accumulate their own is reduced or even outright prevented. Though there will always be those with more money, it cannot be allowed to reach a point whereas it reduces the economic liberty of others. And though there will always be those with more potential political power, absolute equality in this regard must be held as paramount. So how can we universally realize liberty? What is it that we need? > There can be no liberty if we do not each contribute as is necessary to achieve it and guard it for everyone — excluding no one. ## Taxes Now come to be known as almost derogatory in nature, taxation is actually the very infrastructure of the more grounded idea of liberty John M. Bonham defined as industrial liberty in 1888: > “Industrial liberty consists in the freedom of each individual citizen, guarded by such delegated authority, contributed by each, as is necessary to preserve this individual freedom equally to each…” In other words, there can be no liberty if we do not each contribute as is necessary to achieve it and guard it for everyone — excluding no one. This idea of industrial liberty recognized how liberty in practice had been affected by the Industrial Age. Where once we were all a bunch of farmers, industrialization allowed all of that to change through advances in technology. These advances, although great in allowing us to do more with less with ever increasing productivity, served to centralize power via corporations to the point of creating monopolies and concentrating great wealth. This was already seen a century ago as problematic. A century later, information technology is only [further accelerating](http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/21/welcome-to-extremistan/?ref=scottsantens.com) the concentration of wealth. Where once a corporation required 100,000 employees to create $1 billion in value, we now find companies like WhatsApp being valued at [$19 billion with 55 employees](http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/facebook-to-buy-messaging-start-up/?ref=scottsantens.com). At the same time we see a continually shrinking [labor force participation rate](http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000?ref=scottsantens.com). This increasing concentration of wealth at the top and decreasing ability to earn income at the bottom poses a problem to the idea of liberty, because those with the most money have the most liberty, and those with the least money don’t have enough to realize any actual liberty. Taxation becomes even more important as a means of correcting this structural imbalance. As an economic system that creates and concentrates wealth, capitalism increasingly concentrates more and more wealth in the hands of those who already have it. Thomas Piketty has confirmed this through centuries of evidence and its thorough analysis in his [Capital in the Twenty-First Century](http://boingboing.net/2014/06/24/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-t.html?ref=scottsantens.com), making clear that capitalism is a system that requires some form of sufficient redistribution in order to avoid a new form of feudalism. Simply put as the equation “r > g”, wealth will not trickle down faster than wealth builds more wealth. Only through the use of taxation can money unceasingly concentrating at the top be cycled back into the system as a whole to keep the entire system from being torn apart by larger factors like the drying up of consumption and [inevitable social unrest](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html?ref=scottsantens.com#.U6x1rLFWjBZ). When liberty exists unequally, accruing mostly at the top along with most of the wealth and income, while disappearing everywhere else, and a sufficiently progressive system of taxation does not exist to help correct for this imbalance, where does this leave the particular system of government we claim to hold most dear? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*V1ZyWgo1k1pg9QL0GLNfyQ.jpeg) Photo by Adam Fagen — [Flickr](https://flic.kr/p/dLdZc7?ref=scottsantens.com) ## Democracy Aristotle defined democracy as a system of government where the people have authority and this authority is distributed among the people — everyone — regardless of wealth or intelligence. He believed that by working together, [the whole could be greater than the parts](http://www.stoa.org/projects/demos/article%5Faristotle%5Fdemocracy?page=8&greekEncoding=UnicodeC&ref=scottsantens.com): > “That the multitude (plethos) should have authority rather than those who are best and few in number \[is a defensible position\]. Even though none of the many is individually a man of excellence, nevertheless they can be better when they are all together, just as a dinner to which many people contribute can be better than one furnished from a single source. With each of the many having a part of excellence and intelligence, when they join together they become like a single person.” Far from seeing two wolves eating one sheep, Aristotle saw what some scientists are only discovering now, about the wisdom of crowds and their incredible collective knowledge and surprising accuracy. Sir Francis Galton was one of the earlier scientists to discover this, when he looked at the guesses at a fair’s weight guessing contest. He suspected most people would be way off the mark, and they were individually. Nobody got the right answer of 1,198 pounds. However, when he took the mean result of everyone’s answers, he found that [it was the crowd itself who won](http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/08/06/wisdom-of-crowds/?ref=scottsantens.com), with a mean guess of 1,197 pounds. His thoughts on this discovery: > “The result seems more creditable to the trustworthiness of a democratic judgment than might have been expected.” This finding has been repeated again and again in other experiments, and was even found on the show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”, where those opting to get help from the audience have been reported as being right [91% of the time](http://www.randomhouse.com/features/wisdomofcrowds/excerpt.html?ref=scottsantens.com). There are however examples of where crowds are unwise and this leads to certain requirements for greater collective wisdom like diversity, independence, and decentralization. Simply put, the larger and more diverse the crowd, the better the result. Another [unexpected finding](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111215141621.htm?ref=scottsantens.com) is the stability of majority rule among large populations of the uninformed. It is widely believed that the more informed people are the better and the less informed the worse, but there is surprising stability found where large populations of the uninformed serve to dilute the power of minority factions who would otherwise dominate. Essentially, it is the weight of the great masses that pushes against individuals of great power attempting to exert influence in any direction. It is this effective inertia that results in long-term stability. Democracy really works. The outcomes of the whole can be better than any one single member or small group of members could otherwise make possible, and with greater overall stability. So what is needed for democracy to be more than just an ideal, but a functioning system realized in practice? What is it that is needed? > Democracy requires a high enough level of political equality and a low enough level of economic inequality to sustain long-term stability. ## Equality Aristotle believed that democracy required one citizen one vote (political equality), but saw a danger in the have-nots taking everything from the haves (economic inequality). He concluded the way to make sure the have-nots didn’t use their greater numbers to vote away the very existence of the haves, was to create in the middle a group of have-enoughs, sufficiently content in their own wealth and circumstances so as to not look upon the rich with want and disdain. In other words, democracy requires a high enough level of political equality *and* a low enough level of economic inequality to sustain long-term stability. If there is too much inequality either way, the system will inevitably break down. [James Madison saw the same problem as Aristotle](http://www.opednews.com/articles/Chomsky-on-Billionaires-W-by-Rob-Kall-Aristotle%5FBillionaires%5FDemocracy%5FJames-Madison-140213-128.html?ref=scottsantens.com), but instead helped create a system with a different solution in mind – a lower amount of democracy with more power invested in those with the most wealth. It was Madison who in his fear of full democracy designed a system of aristocratic representation. Political power would reside in the hands of the wealthy — those who by their wealth were seen as more capable and willing to protect the rights of property owners — to act as representatives for the common man but also protectors of the aristocracy. This is not to say he also didn’t see danger in this solution, as [he later warned of the day when too much wealth would be in the hands of too few](http://jonathanturley.org/2011/10/15/james-madisons-prescient-warning/?ref=scottsantens.com):\* > “A republic cannot stand upon bayonets, and when that day comes, when the wealth of the nation will be in the hands of a few, then we must rely upon the wisdom of the best elements in the country to readjust the laws of the nation to the changed conditions.” *\*(Note: This quote appears to be a paraphrased interpretation by* [*Daniel De Leon in 1900*](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:James%5FMadison?ref=scottsantens.com#Attribution%5Fof%5F.E2.80.8E.22The%5Fday%5Fwill%5Fcome%5Fwhen%5Four%5FRepublic%5Fwill%5Fbe%5Fan%5Fimpossibility%5Fbecause%5Fwealth%5Fwill%5Fbe%5Fconcentrated%5Fin%5Fthe%5Fhands%5Fof%5Fa%5Ffew..22) *of an* [*appendix written by James Madison*](https://books.google.com/books?id=FzlLAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PR9&ref=scottsantens.com#v=onepage&q&f=false)*)* So, what are America’s present conditions? To what degree have they changed and/or need to be changed? According to [a recent study](http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FPPS%2FPPS12%5F03%2FS1537592714001595a.pdf&code=4cf453c8bc9f033d0e528452fc6608c7&ref=scottsantens.com) holding up our system to four different models to see which most accurately reflect the United States in 2014, democracy describes neither of the models that best fit our present conditions. The names that both fail to describe our system of government in practice: Majoritarian Electoral Democracy and Majoritarian Pluralism; the names of the models that both succeed in accurately describing our current system of government: Economic Elite Domination and Biased Pluralism. The results speak for themselves… > “When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” [Another report](http://theconversation.com/failing-union-of-capitalism-and-democracy-fuels-rise-in-inequality-27217?ref=scottsantens.com) found that people with an annual household income greater than $100,000 are 80% likely to vote, while those with an income of $15,000 or less were only 30% likely to vote. So those with little money don’t even really vote at all. Is this because they know their voices aren’t being heard, or is it because being poor somehow translates into greater difficulties actually voting? Either way, the effect is real. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*33w67gxVXjGjP61tbu1lww.jpeg) Photo by Charlie Owen — [Flickr](https://flic.kr/p/8SvSGa?ref=scottsantens.com) So do we at present have freedom, liberty, or democracy in practice? Or are these ideals more theoretical in nature and more illusory in practice? And if that’s the case, how do we go about actually achieving them? First, let’s start with the now having been established mix of necessary ingredients: opportunity, taxes, and degree of equality. Our potential solutions therefore seem to require: 1. Thomas Jefferson’s minimum land guarantee or its equivalent. 2. A sufficiently designed system of taxation high enough to guarantee equal liberty but efficient enough to be as minimal as possible. 3. Low enough levels of both political and economic inequality to guarantee a more stable and fully functioning form of democracy. Commonly considered improvements tend to include: - Minimum wage increases - Minimum wage decreases - Increased taxation - Lowered taxation - More jobs - More growth - More education - More money in politics - Less money in politics - Smaller government in general - Larger government in general The reason little gets done is plainly seen in such a list. There is very little agreement on how best to go forward. Meanwhile, some newer solutions are now being discussed by [those who claim to see a bit further down the road](http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/08/06/future-of-jobs/?ref=scottsantens.com) the potential hazards of a system left unchanged in ignorance of exponential advances in technology and the realities of globalization. These newer solutions include but are not limited to: - Cryptocurrencies ([Bitcoin](http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=bitcoin%5Fend%5Fwelfare&ref=scottsantens.com)) - Massive open online courses ([MOOCs](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/education/moocs-to-be-evaluated-for-possible-college-credit.html?ref=scottsantens.com)) - Some form of job guarantee ([JG](http://www.businessinsider.com/these-economists-think-the-government-should-give-everyone-a-job-2011-12?ref=scottsantens.com)) with government as employer of last resort ([ELR](http://cas.umkc.edu/econ/economics/faculty/wray/papers/Working%20Papers/wp%5F515.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com)) - Work weeks of [under 40 hours](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9249587/Google%5Fs%5FLarry%5FPage%5Ftalks%5Fof%5Fkilling%5Fthe%5F40%5Fhour%5Fwork%5Fweek?ref=scottsantens.com) - Land value taxation ([LVT](http://www.salon.com/2013/11/22/end%5Fthe%5F1%5Fpercents%5Ffree%5Fride%5Fhow%5Ftaxing%5Fland%5Fwould%5Fsolve%5Famericas%5Fbiggest%5Fproblems/?ref=scottsantens.com)) - [Global taxation](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Global%5FTaxation&ref=scottsantens.com) - Financial transaction taxation ([FTT](http://www.robinhoodtax.org/how/everything-you-need-to-know?ref=scottsantens.com)) - Taxing consumption rather than labor ([VAT](http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/05/bill-gates-says-robots-and-automation.html?ref=scottsantens.com)) - Expansions of assistance programs like the earned income tax credit ([EITC](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-04/the-working-poor-get-their-15-minutes?ref=scottsantens.com)) - The elimination of poverty through a basic income guarantee provided through a negative income tax ([NIT](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/whats-welfare-initiative-uniting-liberals-conservatives/?ref=scottsantens.com)) - And potentially the most radical of all, an unconditional basic income ([UBI](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com)) where everyone would get an identical amount of money sufficient to cover their most basic needs such that all income from paid work is earned *on top of and in addition to* everyone’s UBI. The question becomes which solution or mix of solutions makes the most sense and does the most good? And what would the resultant effects be on freedom, liberty, and democracy? If the idea involves a decrease in taxes, would its effect be decreased inequality? Or would it have the opposite effect? If the idea involves larger government, would the effect would be greater freedom? Or would it have the opposite effect? An old favorite to examine, and one still debated heatedly, is raising the [minimum wage](http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2022920936%5Fhanauerprofilexml.html?ref=scottsantens.com). On the one hand it functions to transfer wealth from the rich through increased wages, but on the other hand it can (but does not always) increase unemployment. In this way it can leave those with jobs better off while leaving those without jobs worse off. In a world of increasing elimination of human labor through software and hardware advances, this solution [appears to fall short on its own](https://medium.com/basic-income/machine-labor-day-d77931dca9a8?ref=scottsantens.com) without being combined with [a stronger public safety net](https://medium.com/@2noame/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e?ref=scottsantens.com). Another old favorite, and one now increasingly discussed, is the idea of [a shorter work week](http://time.com/3007430/carlos-slim-three-day-work-week/?ref=scottsantens.com). By shortening the work week to 35 hours or less, unemployment could be reduced through what is effectively the sharing of labor. [We are actually already seeing this](http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/04/29/wage-a29.html?ref=scottsantens.com) as the unemployment rate continues to go down through the replacement of full-time jobs with part-time jobs. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1282/1*xUf4aqz6bWMYb2-d97uyTg.png) Note: This trend existed before even George W. Bush took office. The problem with this is the choice between lowered overall incomes through lowered hours, and maintained overall incomes through increased wages. So, either people suffer through earning a lot less in income, or companies suffer by paying a lot more in wages. Among [the solutions that look to be more widely encompassing and longer-term](http://www.widerquist.com/karl/Articles--scholarly/Efficiency%5FArgument--IJEWE.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), two growing favorites also happen to be two with support along the full political spectrum, from far right to far left. Their goals are opposite to each other and yet similar in outcomes. The opposing ideas come down to 100% full employment through the guarantee of a job paying sufficient income, or the 100% guarantee of sufficient income regardless of even having a job. Supporters of the job guarantee mostly support the idea that [work is valuable in and of itself and that living and breathing should require work](http://www.philipharvey.info/benchmarking.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), or as described in the Bible, “By the sweat of thy brow, thou shalt eat bread.” However, if there is to be no free lunch and work itself has worth, there must be a job for everyone to afford lunch and find their worth in work, and thus a job should be guaranteed. A job guarantee appears to do a lot of good through guaranteeing a job to everyone, an idea even Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted as part of his [Second Bill of Rights](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-01-28/obama-fdr-and-the-second-bill-of-rights?ref=scottsantens.com). However, it’s also important to note that government guaranteed jobs are inherently inefficient in the amount of money required to create each job compared to the pay of each job. In President Obama’s proposed stimulus plan in 2009, an estimate on the low end of the cost to create each job was [$100,000](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/opinion/26krugman.html?ref=opinion&%5Fr=0). On the high end it was [$646,000](http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/how-obamas-last-stimulus-bill-became-comedy-errors?ref=scottsantens.com). Guaranteed jobs would pay nowhere near these amounts, meant instead only to be at least higher than the poverty line, and so we would be spending potentially $50 in taxes for every $1 of job compensation. It’s also important to wonder what kind of jobs these would be, and who would be making these decisions as to what jobs to create and where? Would these be jobs creating vital national infrastructure or would they be digging holes and then filling them? Additionally, would these jobs be in California instead of Wyoming because of who was on the job creation committee? And what would happen as technology is able to replace these jobs? Do we keep doing them by hand because we need the jobs to exist? These are important questions and we need to ask them as we consider such an idea as guaranteeing everyone a job to enable sufficient income for a decent life. Meanwhile, the other option remains the possibility that instead of guaranteeing a job to cover our basic needs, we just guarantee our basic needs be covered without requiring a job. This idea of eating bread without a sweating brow may reflexively feel wrong to us, but by providing everyone the same minimally guaranteed amount of income so as to create an income floor, all those engaging in paid labor would earn incomes above that set floor. Even more interesting, it could actually function as the equivalent to owning land, in a way more equal to all than land itself, which would vary in quality everywhere. Instead of minimum citizen land, a minimum citizen income could allow citizens to choose to live simply on their own with their basics covered or voluntarily sell their labor as laborers in a labor market to earn greater incomes. [There they’d individually have the ability to say “No” to poor wages and conditions](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/how-a-stupid-painter-from-switzerland-is-revolutionizing-work/?ref=scottsantens.com). Also, with one’s basic needs covered, anyone could choose to actually participate in the process of self-government through their time or money and be compensated for currently unpaid labor like care work and volunteerism. In addition, [inequality could be reduced to a more sustainable level](http://www.uscatholic.org/articles/201306/economics-inequality-why-wealth-gap-bad-everyone-27421?ref=scottsantens.com), and automation of human labor could be invested in much more heavily, once the requirement of human labor has been lifted. Through just a cursory examination, a basic income guarantee of some form appears to do even more good than a job guarantee. This is not to say however, that they can’t be somehow [combined](http://heteconomist.com/technology-paves-the-way-for-basic-income-more-than-a-job-guarantee/?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s also important to note that a basic income would involve the elimination of existing federal assistance programs, instead replacing them with cash. To some degree, this could be very advantageous, through shrinking the bureaucracy and paternalism of government. To too great a degree, this could be problematic. The efficiency of just giving cash is about as maximized as government efficiency can get, however the giving of just cash also allows what could potentially be widely considered as giving too great a degree of freedom and liberty. People would indeed be free to spend their basic income on anything they wish. In this way, just how important really is our idea of freedom? Should we be free to make mistakes? Should we be free to not work and as a result live at the potential poverty level a basic income could provide, or should we always be forced to work regardless of technological achievement? Should there effectively be limits to our freedoms and our liberty? Should we maintain limits to our democracy in fear of what democracy could bring? > For every decision we make, others are affected, and to the degree others suffer or prosper, we as individuals do as well. We are all in this together. Though we have many decisions ahead of us, and many options not even discussed or even yet imagined to consider, we need to keep in mind the effects of our present and future choices on the ideals we claim to hold most dear. If we do care about freedom, liberty, and democracy, we need to decide to what degree we care about them and to what degrees we should care about the levels of opportunity, taxes, and equality necessary to achieve them. Above all, we should always remember that not one of us exists in a vacuum or isolated on an island. For every decision we make, others are affected, and to the degree others suffer or prosper, we as individuals do as well. We are all in this together. That’s the simple idea that freedom, liberty, and democracy are all really about isn’t it? --- ***Special thanks to Arjun Banker, Topher Hunt, Albert Wenger, Danielle Texeira, Paul Wicks, Robert F. Greene, Martin Jordo, Victor Lau, Shane Gordon,*** [***all my other funders***](https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ty=p&ref=scottsantens.com) ***for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** [*Would you like to see your name here too?*](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Breaking Down Without a Spare URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/breaking-down-without-a-spare/ Last updated: 2022-02-16T21:12:34.000Z ## America’s lopsided welfare system of counterproductive public assistance ## The Parable Let’s imagine we’re in a car together on a road trip. We’re on our way to visit your family. We’d have actually preferred to fly, but that route wasn’t in the budget, which is very limited. Times have been tough lately. Sometimes it feels like the economy is only working for everyone else. Fortunately, we have just enough gas money to get us to our destination. And then our tire blows… Moments later we’re on the side of the road. Unfortunately there’s no spare. We had no choice but to drive on it. You call for some roadside assistance. After being on hold for a few hours and being transferred between multiple departments, you are eventually told a truck will be there soon to help. Twelve hours later, it does. A woman appears from behind the now open truck door. “Hi. I’ll be your case adviser today. I’m here to help.” She asks you about your driving history and my passenger history. She asks how often we drive together, and if we drive around with anyone else or have another driver in the backseat. She asks to search the trunk to make sure we’re not hiding any extra tires. She asks you why you didn’t just have another spare. Car after car passes by. Hours turn to days. Finally we’re told everything is satisfactory and we will receive our assistance now. She goes back to her car, and pulls out what definitely does *not* look like a spare. “I’m sure you can understand how we can’t just supply you an actual tire,” she says. You could drive *anywhere* on four tires. We will assist you though. Don’t worry. I’m here to help.” Because an actual tire would apparently involve too much freedom, you are handed a voucher that can be used to exchange for an old flat tire in most (but not all) stores. You are also handed vouchers for tire sealant, rubber patches, an electric air compressor with the wrong adapter for the car we happen to be driving, and a balloon half full of air. “So we’re not only *not* getting a spare tire, but you’re giving us a voucher we can’t actually use right here *— where we actually are —* for another flat tire that we’ll still need to fix ourselves along with the tools that won’t allow us to fix it, and air in a form we don’t need?” She nods in a way you can only imagine she’s done before. “How much does all this cost anyway?” you ask. “Oh, about $600." she says. “How does that make more sense than spending $150 on a tire?” You then look at me and together we ask the same question. **“Isn’t there a better way than this?”** ## The Reality The above parable is of course fictional, but the reality it represents is unfortunately not. Here in America, we like to think we have a safety net. We like to think we take great care of those in need. In fact, people like to believe it so much, we actually kid ourselves into thinking it’s a kind of safety hammock, where people with an aversion to hard work and gumption lie back and peacefully sleep their days away in a perpetual state of welfare nirvana next to surfboards covered in lobster and caviar. But is that really the case? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/576/1*HwUrT-RBK1Z-JS_V4i5Hzg.jpeg) Read the full CBPP report: [http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3677](http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3677&ref=scottsantens.com) > A new CBPP analysis of budget and Census data, however, shows that ***more than 90 percent***of the benefit dollars that entitlement and other mandatory programs spend go to assist people who are elderly, seriously disabled, or members of working households — not to able-bodied, working-age Americans who choose not to work. That’s right. Nine out of ten people are people that can never be claimed as sitting in hammocks on easy street. These are kids like you once were. These are grandparents like your own grandparents. These are people working their asses off in jobs that aren’t paying them sufficient enough wages to not require any help. These are the people on the side of the road with a flat tire and no spare. And how often does this happen? How many people end up on the side of the road at some point in their lives? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/594/1*ySGvlvCwRU3PeopihFfn-g.png) Read the full Pew report: [http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/12/18/a-bipartisan-nation-of-beneficiaries/](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/12/18/a-bipartisan-nation-of-beneficiaries/?ref=scottsantens.com) > Pew Research Center finds that **a majority of Americans** (55%) have received government benefits from at least one of the six best-known federal entitlement programs. The survey also finds that most Democrats (60%) and Republicans (52%) say they have benefited from a major entitlement program at some point in their lives. So have nearly equal shares of self-identifying conservatives (57%), liberals (53%) and moderates (53%). That’s right. More people have received benefits than not received them. In other words, flip a coin. You are more likely to end up on the side of the road than you are to see heads or tails. Needing help is not a matter of *if*. It is only a matter of *when*. Even [people with PhDs aren’t immune](http://www.salon.com/2014/09/21/professors%5Fon%5Ffood%5Fstamps%5Fthe%5Fshocking%5Ftrue%5Fstory%5Fof%5Facademia%5Fin%5F2014/?ref=scottsantens.com) to this. And when you do need that help, how do you want it given to you? Do you want it to look like the above fictional account of our road trip gone wrong? Do you want those helping you to spend [$4 to give you the equivalent of $1](http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2013/06/23/welfare-state-doesnt-adequately-describe-how-much-americas-poor-control-your-wallet/?ref=scottsantens.com)? Do you want your help to involve needless work, vouchers with strings, and stuff you can’t even use, or do you just want to get back on the road? **All of that is exactly what we have right *now*.** 1. Our safety nets are [full of needless bureaucracy](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/15/liviing-on-food-stamps-welfare-queen?ref=scottsantens.com). > The first step in the food-stamp application process was turning in every imaginable document regarding my identity, housing, assets and personal finances. I was photographed and fingerprinted, which made me feel like everyone thought I was a criminal. After winding my way through the byzantine bureaucracy, including several hours-long appointments during which I obviously couldn’t be looking for work, I was finally approved; the monthly allotment worked out to about $5 per day. > > To keep receiving food stamp benefits, I had to spend every “work day” at a Human Resources Administration work-search office – my presence there was mandatory from Monday through Friday and from 9am to 5pm. The office was more than an hour from my apartment (that is, when public transportation – which I had to pay for myself – was functioning properly), but arriving even five minutes late earned a strike against my record for “non-compliance”. > > Two strikes, and I would have been out: the US system automatically revokes all benefits for rule-breakers, who then have to start the application process all over again. Would you give someone a loan and then force them to attend classes 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, to teach them how to pay back the loan, instead of letting them use those 40 hours per week to actually pay back the loan? Does this make good sense? 2\. Our safety nets cost far more than just giving people the money required to help them, and this is true even in [the best possible circumstances](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/paul-ryan-anti-poverty-plan-would-cost-billions?ref=scottsantens.com). > Masters degree-level social workers, with tiny caseloads, delivered intensive personalized services, including home visits, to a group of welfare recipients, including a batch of extremely hard to employ single mothers. They attempted to get the women into the workforce and self-sufficient for the long haul. > > The program produced better results than any such program ever had. Almost half of the study participants went to work for at least a year, double the rate of the group without the individualized attention, and their earnings increased significantly. The clients who got the individual casework were less depressed, less likely to lose custody of a child, and more likely to receive child support. But they still faced food and housing hardship; they were still poor, if working poor. And again, only half the study participants went to work. > > Providing all those individualized services cost the state $8,300 per client — so much that researchers who evaluated the program [concluded that](http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/%7E/media/publications/PDFs/family%5Fsupport/bnf%5Fissbrief3.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) the “**benefits to society did not outweigh its costs during the study**.” > > … The families might have been ended up in a slightly better place, at least for a while, but the state of Nebraska would have been better off writing them a $5,000 check and calling it a day. If we spend $8,300 for someone to be just as well off as just giving them $5,000 cash, why should we continue wasting $3,300 per person? Does this make good sense? 3\. In 2006, the late Allen Sheahen looked at the list of [1,607 federal programs funded by the US government](http://funding-programs.idilogic.aidpage.com/?ref=scottsantens.com) and calculated the number of tax loopholes we could close and which programs for the poor we could consolidate into [a single refundable tax credit](http://www.usbig.net/papers/144-Sheahen-RefundableTaxCredit.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). Here’s what he found: > The income tax system is too complex with 138 separate tax loopholes. The welfare system is equally complex with more than 200 separate programs to help the poor. Do we really need all of these programs and loopholes? Is that level of paternalism and inefficiency truly what’s best for us? Instead of all 200 different programs for the poor, let’s just take a closer look at a handful of the biggest ones. We currently spend [**about $300 billion dollars on seven different programs that are essentially cash or easily replaced by it**](http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/43934-Means-TestedPrograms.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) (EITC, CTC, SSI, TANF, SNAP, WIC, and Housing Assistance) on [around 50 million people](http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/about/overview/?ref=scottsantens.com) living below the poverty line. That’s an average of $6,000 per person, and yet instead of cash we insist on benefits in kind despite [84% of economists](http://gregmankiw.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/news-flash-economists-agree.html?ref=scottsantens.com) disagreeing with that strategy over cash. Even if the overhead is [only 5%](http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/pragmatic-libertarian-case-basic-income-doesnt-add?ref=scottsantens.com), that’s five billion dollars wasted for every hundred billion spent, or enough money to instead just give $6,000 to 2.5 million more people, without spending a penny more than we already do. Meanwhile, what if you need $500 for rent and $100 for food, but are given a housing voucher for $400 and a food voucher for $200? You’ve been given just the right amount, and yet you’re $200 short because of being given vouchers instead of cash. And what if there’s no voucher at all for what you need that only costs $50? A $500 voucher wouldn’t help you, except through selling it to someone else who it *could* help. This is also why we can’t actually stop anyone from using vouchers for goods and services we don’t want them to have, and why we sometimes seek refunds for gifts after holidays. It’s the entire reason we invented money in the first place — efficiency of exchange. > ***Money can be exchanged for anything. Everything else has limits.*** 4\. Finally, the worst part of all about our current flawed welfare system is the [welfare trap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare%5Ftrap?ref=scottsantens.com) it creates by pulling assistance away with increased earnings from labor market income. This loss of benefits can be so extreme so as to result in “***welfare cliffs***”. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*9M2y4T12paZmrqGlFKg5Dg.png) Source: [http://www.aei.org/files/2012/07/11/-alexander-presentation\_10063532278.pdf](http://www.aei.org/files/2012/07/11/-alexander-presentation%5F10063532278.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) Notice in the above slide, how someone earning $29,000 has the incentive to not earn more than that, through more hours, or a better job, or a raise, because earning $30,000 (just $1,000 more) would result in the loss of $8,000 in food and housing assistance, leaving them worse off. Notice too the nature of the help. Food and housing are necessities. That’s $8,000 that still needs to be spent, unless she keeps the job but opts for living on the street and eating out of dumpsters to avoid spending it. Another cliff exists at $43,000 where someone has the incentive to not earn $44,000 (just $1,000 more), because that would result in the loss of about $13,000 in childcare assistance. Again, notice the nature of that loss. How can she keep the job that gave her a raise, if she’s no longer able to afford daycare so that she can go to work instead of watching her kid(s)? That’s a cliff that can force her to quit her job and find one that pays less, in order to get that assistance back. Is that the result we seek? In case this is all too abstract, here’s a working mother in this exact situation: [http://youtu.be/qjsrdcbbPBU?t=8m31s](http://youtu.be/qjsrdcbbPBU?t=8m31s&ref=scottsantens.com) > **“A system that works against the system’s own interests… it’s just so counterproductive.”** Our current system is not productive. It is not the fully functional safety net we need, especially as [technology increasingly disrupts our day to day lives](http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/08/06/future-of-jobs/?ref=scottsantens.com). If one day we can be a driver for Uber, and the next day [Uber can buy a fleet of self-driving cars and fire all of us](http://readwrite.com/2014/09/08/uber-travis-kalanick-driverless-cars?ref=scottsantens.com#!), that’s a world where we need a *real* safety net that doesn’t just drop away. We need more than a safety net. We need a floor set above the poverty level, so that regardless of any amount of disruption, we are still allowed to stand on our own two feet and start climbing again. > ***Don’t catch us and trap us with nets. We need a solid foundation that allows all of us a space in which to build our futures.*** We also need to understand that those at the bottom aren’t the only ones receiving welfare. There exists a great deal of netting underneath the feet of all of us. We just don’t see it. It is the invisible safety net, lacking in any stigma. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rtySUhuokM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rtySUhuokM&ref=scottsantens.com) > **“…the U.S. Government spent $24 billion on public housing and rental subsidies for the poor. But in that same year, it spent $72 billion in home ownership subsidies for the middle classes and the wealthy.”** ## Welfare for the Wealthier ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/578/1*SOlzSwsxa08Cno7PiQ9R7A.jpeg) ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/578/1*P8FE7n33JAOHN3SyfFrF1Q.jpeg) According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, when it comes to entitlement benefits, it is false to think those at the bottom receive most of the benefits. To the contrary, entitlement benefits are shared surprisingly *proportionately* according to population. Is this widely known? Do we talk about how our entitlement benefits are mostly distributed evenly to everyone? Meanwhile, if we look at individual tax expenditures, it is the wealthy who represent a smaller percentage of the population and yet receive a disproportionately high percentage of total tax expenditures. Is this widely known? Do we talk about how the richest fifth of the country receives two-thirds of all tax expenditures or how the top 1% receives one quarter of it? What exactly are some examples of this kind of welfare for the rich? [The Home Mortgage Interest Rate Deduction:](http://taxfoundation.org/article/who-benefits-home-mortgage-interest-deduction?ref=scottsantens.com) > The most recent IRS data show few low- and middle-income taxpayers benefit from the home mortgage interest deduction. Those who filed tax returns with under $30,000 in adjusted gross income (AGI) in 2003 received just 9 percent of deductions for home mortgage interest, despite filing 52 percent of all tax returns. In contrast, 36 percent of home mortgage interest deductions were claimed by taxpayers with AGIs over $100,000. This form of housing assistance is virtually identical to giving someone in poverty a housing voucher to help them afford a house, but instead they aren’t at all in poverty and we help them afford a nicer house (which is sometimes resold for a profit as soon as possible). [Capital Gains Taxes:](http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/capital-gains-tax-rates-benefiting-wealthy-are-protected-by-both-parties/2011/09/06/gIQAdJmSLK%5Fstory.html?ref=scottsantens.com) > Over the past 20 years, more than 80 percent of the capital gains income realized in the United States has gone to 5 percent of the people; about half of all the capital gains have gone to the wealthiest 0.1 percent. Warren Buffet has made this particular advantage famous in sharing how he pays a lower tax rate than his own secretary. Some would argue this lower rate for the rich is good for the poor, because it drives job creation, but is that really the case? > Jane Gravelle, a tax expert at the Congressional Research Service, says a rate cut could generate more government revenue for a year or two as investors take advantage of lower rates or a rising stock market, but she says that initial bump in tax revenue would fade. And the government, over time, would collect more overall if it kept the rate higher. The fact that those few at the top are the ones earning the overwhelming majority of capital gains, and that those same people pay a lower tax rate on this income than anyone else, is undeniably a form of handout for the rich. It’s giving barrels full of money to those who already have trucks full of money. Meanwhile, for billionaires who look upon those with trucks full of money as the relatively poor, we give them amounts of money so vast, [it should be considered shocking](http://review.gawker.com/why-being-a-football-fan-is-indefensible-1636531351?ref=scottsantens.com). > The perfect example: Seven of every ten dollars spent to build CenturyLink Field in Seattle came from the taxpayers of Washington State, $390 million total. The owner, \[billionaire\] Paul Allen, pays the state $1 million per year in “rent” and collects most of the $200 million generated. If you are wondering how to become, like Allen, one of the richest humans on earth, negotiating such a lease would be a good start. > > In New Orleans, taxpayers have bankrolled roughly a billion dollars to build then renovate the Superdome, which we are now supposed to call the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. Guess who gets nearly all the revenues generated by Saints games played in this building? If you guessed all those hard-working stiffs who paid a billion dollars, you would be wrong. If you guessed billionaire owner Tom Benson, you would be right. He also receives $6 million per annum from the state as an “inducement payment” to keep him from moving the team. The common counterargument to facts like this, is to point out how much revenue it generates for the people of the city who publicly bankroll such massive private capital investments. [The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City](http://www.kc.frb.org/publicat/econrev/PDF/1q01rapp.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) put an estimate on that value. > …The net present value of the jobs and tax benefits may be no more than $5 million from hosting an NBA or NHL team and no more than $10 million from hosting an NFL or MLB team. Even using the upper-bound estimates from the analysis above suggests that the public outlays on current sports facility projects far exceed any associated jobs and tax benefits. In other words, taking New Orleans (my own city) as an example, it’s entirely reasonable to suggest that economically speaking, the value returned to the city in the form of taxes and jobs for building a billion dollar stadium for billionaire Tom Benson is about equivalent to what the city pays him every year just to provide him further incentive from ever leaving. But that’s all still not the biggest example of welfare for the rich. Such an extreme example requires looking at the richest family on the entire planet — The Waltons of Walmart — who each earn more than [$1.5 million per hour](http://walmart1percent.org/how-rich-are-the-waltons/?ref=scottsantens.com) from their dividend checks alone and have a total net worth of $150 billion equal to [about the bottom *half*](http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2013/dec/08/one-wisconsin-now/just-how-wealthy-wal-mart-walton-family/?ref=scottsantens.com) of the entire United States. How much welfare do they get? ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1278/1*NIP56L5tGuAdX_QxSGgdLA.png) Read the report: [http://www.americansfortaxfairness.org/files/Walmart-on-Tax-Day-Americans-for-Tax-Fairness-1.pdf](http://www.americansfortaxfairness.org/files/Walmart-on-Tax-Day-Americans-for-Tax-Fairness-1.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) It has also been estimated, that if Walmart just raised their prices by merely [1.4 percent](http://portside.org/2014-04-12/if-walmart-paid-living-wage-how-much-would-prices-go?ref=scottsantens.com) and put this added revenue into increased wages, their employees would no longer need welfare assistance, and therefore Walmart would no longer receive welfare assistance either. That they refuse to do this and instead choose to enjoy a free $8 billion or so a year, should make it clear *they want to be on welfare*. **But is that what the working Americans who work for them want?** ## Driving on Spares It may have seemed a small detail and one possibly gone unnoticed, but it’s possibly the most important detail of all in our automotive parable. > **“Unfortunately there’s no spare. We had no choice but to drive on it.”** It’s not that we made the unwise choice to go driving around without a spare tire. It’s that we could not make the wise choice, because our car had already suffered a previous blown tire and there was no money in the budget for a new one. After replacing our blown tire with our spare tire, we could only hope nothing else would happen until there was money for a new tire. But something *did* happen. That’s the nature of unfortunate surprises. It is this fact we must recognize, possibly above all. No one wants to suffer a flat tire, and no one wants to have no options but to call for help when we do get one. And we see this reflected in what we have done for decades now, as we have faithfully sought all possible avenues of increasing our incomes. We went from one earner per household to two. We asked for more hours and sought second, third, and even fourth jobs. We got credit cards, took out second mortgages, and are now even [tapping our own retirement funds](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-06/early-tap-of-401-k-replaces-homes-as-american-piggy-bank.html?ref=scottsantens.com). > It’s a small number that’s part of a much larger picture: The [Internal Revenue Service](http://topics.bloomberg.com/internal-revenue-service/?ref=scottsantens.com) collected $5.7 billion in 2011 from penalties, meaning that Americans took out about $57 billion from retirement funds before they were supposed to. > > The median size of a 401(k) is $24,400 as of March 31, with people older than 55 having $65,300, according to [Fidelity Investments](http://topics.bloomberg.com/fidelity-investments/?ref=scottsantens.com). Those funds can disappear quickly in retirement, and the [early withdrawals](http://www.bloomberg.com/infographics/2014-05-05/americans-raid-their-401k-piggy-banks.html?ref=scottsantens.com) indicate that the coming retirement crisis could be even more acute than expected. > ***This is what it looks like for a country to be driving on its spare tire.*** As citizens, we are doing everything we can. [Some of us are even tragically dying in our attempts to struggle on,](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/29/nyregion/3-jobs-plenty-of-dreams-and-the-fatal-consequences-of-one-dangerous-decision.html?ref=scottsantens.com) while [over 10,000 others have already grown too tired of the struggle to even continue living](http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/6/12/suicide-recessionwork.html?ref=scottsantens.com). As long as wages continue to not rise, and [as long as jobs continue to be eliminated due to advances in technology](https://medium.com/basic-income/machine-labor-day-d77931dca9a8?ref=scottsantens.com), we have nowhere else to turn but our own safety nets. It is for this reason, it will only become ever more increasingly important for us to look with open eyes and minds at our system of public assistance and how it functions for *all* of us, poor and rich alike. If so many of us are already driving on our spare tires, and we recognize the road ahead is only going to get bumpier and more dangerous, then we must together make sure that we either make it quick and painless for us all to get right back on the road when we need assistance, or [finally guarantee that no matter what, there will ***always*** be another spare tire for ***all*** of us](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com). --- ***Special thanks to Arjun Banker, Topher Hunt, Albert Wenger, Danielle Texeira, Paul Wicks, Robert F. Greene, Martin Jordo, Victor Lau, Shane Gordon, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** [*Would you like to see your name here too?*](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Machine Labor Day URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/machine-labor-day/ Last updated: 2022-02-16T21:03:17.000Z ## Tomorrow’s holiday made possible by eliminating our fears of technological unemployment The Labor Movement is back. > “Comparing their campaign to the civil rights movement, fast food workers from across the country voted Saturday to escalate their efforts for $15-an-hour pay and union membership by using nonviolent civil disobedience.” — [Associated Press](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/fast-food-workers-vow-civil-disobedience?ref=scottsantens.com) ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/700/1*d4OTXG-Tw_VJSO11-YJglw.jpeg) Meanwhile, this appeared as a warning on a [billboard in San Francisco](http://pando.com/2014/07/17/new-san-francisco-billboard-warns-workers-theyll-be-replaced-by-ipads-if-they-demand-a-fair-wage/?ref=scottsantens.com): *“San Francisco, Meet your minimum wage replacement (photo depicts a tablet computer). With a new $15 minimum wage, employees will be replaced by less costly, automated alternatives.”* Now imagine the year is 1863 and Abraham Lincoln has just begun giving a slightly different [Emancipation Proclamation](http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured%5Fdocuments/emancipation%5Fproclamation/transcript.html?ref=scottsantens.com): > “In the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves shall be then, thenceforward, and forever guaranteed a MINIMUM WAGE for their forced labor; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the right of such persons to UNION MEMBERSHIP OVER REPLACEMENT BY MACHINE, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for BETTER PAY AND WORKING CONDITIONS.” This may look absurd, and rightly so. The idea that people should be forced to sell their labor at the threat of being replaced by robots, and in response call for the right to better pay instead of the right to be replaced by said robots is kind of absurd, isn’t it? Because, what exactly are robots for anyway? Technological advancement is the boon of human progress, not its bane. Whereas once over 90% of human labor was dedicated to agriculture, [in the U.S. it is now 1.1%](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html?ref=scottsantens.com). What if we had looked at the tractor in fear of it reducing the need for our labor? Where would we be now? We must not be fooled however into thinking that just as agricultural labor moved to manufacturing, and manufacturing is moving to service industry labor, that [service industry labor will be safe](http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/21/welcome-to-extremistan/?ref=scottsantens.com) or move to something else again entirely. For this is no longer about tractors replacing human horsepower, but [hardware and software replacing human brainpower](http://jetpress.org/v24/walker.htm?ref=scottsantens.com). ## Technological Unemployment The potential for humans to become [this century’s horses is real](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/10/why-workers-are-losing-the-war-against-machines/247278/?ref=scottsantens.com), inferior in almost every way for the jobs once best suited for us. More and more jobs will become more cheaply, efficiently, and just plain better done by machines. We have already reached this point for certain jobs, and this trend will only accelerate because that is the nature of technology — exponential growth. As evidence of this, I give you [CGP Grey](http://www.cgpgrey.com/?ref=scottsantens.com)’s recent 15-minute mini-documentary, “Humans Need Not Apply.” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&ref=scottsantens.com) Still believe there is nothing to worry about and everything will be okay? We need to understand and comprehend this ongoing replacement of human labor. **It will not be stopped**, nor should it. Humans need to sleep. Humans need to eat. Humans are slow. Humans make mistakes. Humans get bored. Humans take time to learn. Humans require wages and salaries… and that right there is the biggest issue of all. There are already instances where it costs more to pay a human than to buy a machine or make use of an app. This point is even being reached in places of exceedingly cheap human labor like China, where [even Chinese workers are now being replaced](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303759604579093122607195610?ref=scottsantens.com). However, instead of openly embracing this accelerating automation, wage laborers tend to fight against advancing technology for fear of losing jobs, because again, humans are the ones who need wages and salaries, not machines. There already exists [a hamburger making machine](http://momentummachines.com/?ref=scottsantens.com#product) that can purportedly make higher quality hamburgers perfect every time, and far faster. But where are the fast food employees picketing to be replaced by this machine so they don’t have to make burgers themselves anymore? Applebee’s recently introduced table ordering via tablet computers and yet pledged not to in any way reduce their staff, citing “[It’s not about saving labor](http://www.dailyfinance.com/on/applebees-tablets-tables-customers-order-pay-automation/?ref=scottsantens.com).” ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*28soue5d7_re3M1G0M9o3Q.jpeg) “Master, let me serve my purpose.” [(Photo by Brett Davis)](https://flic.kr/p/7L5Pzm?ref=scottsantens.com) Why not? Shouldn’t saving labor be technology’s entire focus? It certainly seems so, but we would all rather eat than watch robots do our work for us as we starve. But we could eat *and* watch robots do our work for us as we *thrive*. By forcing the false choice between the two instead of embracing both, we push against human progress, just as if we had pushed against tractors on farms. A large increase in the federal minimum wage would mostly only help those at the very bottom of the labor market, leaving out in large part the great majority above the very bottom and all the unemployed denied access to the labor market entirely. Meanwhile, the increase in mandatory labor costs would only serve to increase automation in a way that only increases inequality. Owners of capital would come to own more capital, and those without capital would find it even harder to sell their labor at all. Another group of workers a minimum wage does little to help are those increasingly employed within the “[gig economy](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/technology/in-the-sharing-economy-workers-find-both-freedom-and-uncertainty.html?ref=scottsantens.com)”, where people aren’t actually employees for companies like Uber and Lyft or TaskRabbit and Fiverr. Instead they are just earning microwages as independent contractors precariously gaining $10 here and $5 there from gig to gig, with nothing remotely close to being definable as job security. These are people who labor economist and co-founder of [BIEN,](http://www.basicincome.org/bien/index.html?ref=scottsantens.com) Guy Standing has dubbed the “[precariat](http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/a-precariat-charter-9781472510396/?ref=scottsantens.com)” — the growing class of people who live day to day, never knowing if they will be able to earn enough to meet their needs. To put it simply… > A higher minimum wage is a 20th century solution to a 21st century problem. So what exactly should service industry workers, gig economy workers, and every other kind of worker be fighting for on Labor Day in the 21st century in a world of advancing technological unemployment and increasing financial instability? > ***The right to say “No” to involuntary labor and “Yes” to machine labor.*** ## The Basic Income Guarantee You may have heard of something being discussed [more](http://www.vox.com/2014/7/23/5925041/guaranteed-income-basic-poverty-gobry-labor-supply?ref=scottsantens.com) and [more](http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014%5F07/the%5Fbasic%5Funiversal%5Fincome%5Fget051379.php?ref=scottsantens.com) frequently. Its name is [basic income](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic%5Fincome?ref=scottsantens.com). It goes by other names as well — names like a [negative income tax](http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/welfare-pensions/the-negative-income-tax-and-basic-income-are-pretty-much-the-same-thing/?ref=scottsantens.com) or a [citizen’s dividend](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-sandler/citizens-dividends-basic-%5Fb%5F1936182.html?ref=scottsantens.com). It could also be called the Individual [Opportunity Grant,](http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/07/24/3463128/paul-ryan-credit/?ref=scottsantens.com) or simply a universal income floor. The name however does not matter so much as the idea, and the idea is simple. Every citizen should be freed from involuntary labor by leveraging our massive gains in productivity via technology to universally supply every citizen the means to unconditionally meet their most basic needs. Then, and only then, would selling one’s labor to others in the labor market become fully voluntary and all laborers finally welcome the loss of their jobs to advancing technology. We must as free men and women avoid then suggesting no one would choose to work at all if we weren’t forced to work for others. If we look back at the [writings of the 19th century](http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/f/franklin-slaves.html?ref=scottsantens.com), we will find there as well, this notion that slaves had no work ethic and needed to be forced to work lest they suffer from the ills of not working. This doctrine that forced labor saves us from ourselves needs to be relegated to history’s appropriate dustbin. We need only look around us at all the work being done for free, to see that people do choose to work even when not forced to work. Just look at [open collaboration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open%5Fcollaboration?ref=scottsantens.com) accomplishments like Wikipedia and Creative Commons. Look at open source achievements like GNU/Linux and its derivative Android. Look at all of the [volunteers in our local communities](http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/08/18/3472568/disturbing-facts-american-hunger/?ref=scottsantens.com) (every month nearly 2 million volunteers dedicate more than 8.4 million hours of their time to hunger relief alone), or even within our own homes at the unpaid parental labor that raised us. [Unpaid labor is everywhere](http://www.ozy.com/acumen/americas-unpaid-billion-hours-a-week-workforce/61897?ref=scottsantens.com). ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/700/1*0M1ZPy9oELOlTBJmhj4lhQ.gif) [The Heritage Foundation: Effective Marginal Tax Rates for Low-Income Workers Are High](http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/01/effective-marginal-tax-rates-for-low-income-workers-are-high?ref=scottsantens.com) It’s important to also not look at [the flawed welfare system that exists today](https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e?ref=scottsantens.com) and see it as evidence that people won’t work without force. Our current system creates [welfare traps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare%5Ftrap?ref=scottsantens.com) where the removal of benefits as income rises results in little to no net gain. Would you work if you were living in poverty and a minimum wage job meant keeping fifteen cents for every dollar gained through your efforts? It is exactly this trap [we need to remove by not clawing money back](http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2014/08/25/a-universal-basic-income-and-work-incentives-part-2-evidence/?ref=scottsantens.com) from people who are seen as no longer needing it badly enough. People work. People will always work. Even when [half of our jobs](http://www.technologyreview.com/view/519241/report-suggests-nearly-half-of-us-jobs-are-vulnerable-to-computerization/?ref=scottsantens.com) have been entirely replaced by hardware and software at some point in the next **20 years**, people will continue to work. The work will just be different and not necessarily involve monetary exchanges. We need not require anyone be involuntarily forced to work for work to be done. ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*Qmzg3VnNGQBEiAzfHyxulA.png) [MIT Technology Review: How Technology Is Destroying Jobs](http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/515926/how-technology-is-destroying-jobs/?ref=scottsantens.com) Perhaps you are now thinking this all makes sense, but where will the money come from? [It will simply come from the share of productivity gains made possible by technology that should already be shared](http://www.scottsantens.com/yeah-but-who-is-going-to-pay-for-it-basic-income-alan-watts). Meanwhile, as automation continues, this surplus will only continue to increase. The argument can even be made that [an unconditional basic income will actually save us money](https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073?ref=scottsantens.com). Perhaps you are now thinking this all makes even more sense, but what of the jobs no one likes that need to be done, and can’t yet be done by robots? What about them? [Unattractive jobs people don’t want to take, can and will ](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com)[*always*](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com)[ be made to become attractive by paying people ](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com)[*enough*](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com)[ for them to choose to do them voluntarily](https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-no-longer-force-people-to-work-to-meet-their-basic-needs-won-t-they-stop-working-3996442b7585?ref=scottsantens.com). There exists no job that won’t be done for the right price. So, for everyone with a job and everyone seeking one, as we today celebrate Labor Day and look forward to [a growing new Labor Movement resurgence](http://www.basicincome.org/news/2015/05/opinion-basic-income-day-is-a-great-idea-and-especially-on-may-day/?ref=scottsantens.com), instead of a higher mandated wage for an hour’s labor, let us all consider the alternative idea of *fully voluntary labor* and the ability to just walk away from jobs offering low pay and poor working conditions. Let us put aside notions that the other side must by definition always be wrong, and [consider both the “conservative” idea that no one should be forced to *pay* another a minimum wage, and the “liberal” idea that no one should be forced to *accept* an unlivable minimum wage](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/minimum-wages-vs-universal-basic-income%5Fb%5F7957850.html?ref=scottsantens.com). Wage labor should be based entirely on free choice, but free choice should be fully free. To realistically achieve this freedom of choice, we must achieve the ability of people to have the voluntary choice of *not* working. [If people can’t say “](http://blog.eros.com/universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com)[**No**](http://blog.eros.com/universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com)[”, they are effectively wage slaves with no real choice](http://blog.eros.com/universal-basic-income/?ref=scottsantens.com). As part of enabling this actual choice, we should also all have the freedom to be replaced without fear by cheaper and better technological alternatives. Actually creating these choices will require nothing less than a sufficiently high level of income separate from wage and salary incomes. Without this, we will continue to push against machines, and continue to look for our very survival toward jobs instead of our freedom from them. Is that really what we want? [This is the age of technological emancipation from labor itself](https://medium.com/basic-income/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us-like-a-human-driven-truck-b8507d9c5961?ref=scottsantens.com). We made it. We’re here. **We need only actually embrace it.** *Without* a basic income, today we celebrate Human Labor Day. *With* a basic income, tomorrow we celebrate Machine Labor Day. --- ***Special thanks to Steven Grimm, Arjun Banker, Topher Hunt, Stern Andrew, Keith Davis, Mark Witham, Albert Wenger, Larry Cohen, Joshua Grant, Chris Smothers, Danielle Texeira, Paul Wicks, Liane Gale, Jan Smole, Joe Esposito, Jack Wagner, Richard Just, Stuart Matthews, Natalie Foster, Chris McCoy, Michael Honey, Daniel Brockman, Gary Aranovich, Kai Wong, Peter Titus, Robby Olivam, John David Hodge, Louise Whitmore, Dan O’Sullivan, Robert F. Greene, Martin Jordo, Victor Lau, Shane Gordon, Paolo Narciso, Johan Grahn, Tony DeStefano, Andrew Henderson, Erhan Altay, Bryan Herdliska, Stephane Boisvert, Rise & Shine PAC, Kirk Israel, Luke Sampson, Lee Irving, Dave Shelton, Bryan Herdliska, Amy Shaffer, Tod Backe, all my other funders for their support, and my amazing partner, Katie Smith.*** [*Would you like to see your name here too?*](http://www.patreon.com/bePatron?rid=120769&u=296170&patAmt=7.00&ref=scottsantens.com#/r120769) --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Payday Loan Lenders Are Unstoppable… Or Are They? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/payday-loan-lenders-are-unstoppable-except-with-the-help-of-universal-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2022-02-16T20:53:11.000Z ## The Effects of a Basic Income on Loans and Debt As many may have recently learned from John Oliver in his segment on predatory lending, there appears to be no stopping the viral Whac-A-Mole nature of payday loan lenders. For those who missed this infuriatingly informative yet still hilarious segment, here it is: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDylgzybWAw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDylgzybWAw&ref=scottsantens.com) Payday loans are a massive $9 billion tick feeding on our own human misery. With their legs wrapped around our bought and paid for legislators, and their mouths embedded deep within what is left of our wallets, they continue to suck away our increasingly shrinking incomes [(we are earning almost $6,000 less than we were in 2007 adjusted for inflation)](http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/national/politifact-inflation-adjusted-family-incomes-down-more-that-4000-over-five/2170251?ref=scottsantens.com) despite all attempts to prevent their business model. Why is this? Because of demand. We need money and we’re all out of options. Our first strategy was having two incomes per household instead of one. Our second strategy was finding another job and/or working longer hours. Our third strategy was leaning on credit cards. Our fourth strategy was leaning on our mortgages. There’s nothing left on which to lean to pay our bills. For those with bank accounts, we make use of overdrafting. For those without bank accounts, we make use of payday loans. Both involve extremely high interest rates. Instead of such reliance on high interest loans and debt, what if we just credited ourselves enough income to avoid the demand for high interest loans and debt in the first place? This idea may sound crazy at first, but it’s the basis for the establishment of an **unconditional basic income**, where every citizen would get a base level of income to cover basic needs (around $12,000 for adults and $4,000 for minors potentially based on [2014 Federal Poverty Guidelines](http://familiesusa.org/product/federal-poverty-guidelines?ref=scottsantens.com)), with no work requirement. [I’ve written about this idea before](https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3?ref=scottsantens.com), but for those who are new to it, or who just plain hate the idea of payday loans and cash advances, you may be interested to discover the observed effects of basic income on debt and loans in basic income guarantee (BIG) experiments and programs in Namibia, India, Uganda and Kenya. ## Namibia Some of the best evidence we have for what actually happens when people are outright given a year’s worth of basic income can be found in the experiment in Otjivero-Omitara. > The BIG contributed to the reduction of household debt with the average debt falling from N$ 1,215 to N$ 772 between November 2007 and November 2008\. Six months after the BIG was introduced, 21% of the respondents reported saving some of the money. Savings were also reflected in the increasing ownership of large livestock, small livestock and poultry. [\-Source](http://sange.fi/kvsolidaarisuustyo/wp-content/uploads/Universal-Basic-Income-A-New-Tool-for-Development-Policy.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) More than twice as many people who received a basic income in Namibia reduced their debts than increased it, and those who decreased their debts cut them almost in half. Meanwhile, savings rates also went up, with more people being able to rely on their own surpluses instead of those of others. From the [BIG Pilot Project Assessment Report](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG%5FAssessment%5Freport%5F08b.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com): > In June 2008, 41% of the respondents reported to be using the BIG to help pay back debt, but only 9.4% of total BIG payments were allocated to that purpose. This suggests that a large number of people are paying back debt, but that the amounts are small. This is consistent with the picture provided by total household expenditure during the first six months which saw an increase in the average monthly debt repayment from N$ 186 to N$ 200\. Some households paid off their debts altogether – whereas others increased their debts. It should be stressed that the BIG results in Namibia were found to be so impressive, with numerous other notable effects like reduced crime rates and increased health, that the completed project has recently been [resumed for another year thanks to a church in Italy](http://allafrica.com/stories/201407170971.html?viewall=1&ref=scottsantens.com). ## India Unicef funded an experiment that took place in 20 villages in Madhya Pradesh. It randomly assigned 8 villages where everyone received a basic income. Meanwhile, 12 similar villages were used as a control group where no one got a basic income. Again the effects were impressive across the board, but let’s again draw focus to the effects on debt. > Cash grants were associated with a significant reduction in indebtedness, both because recipients used the money to reduce existing debt and because they were able to avoid taking further debt. Those receiving cash grants were more than twice as likely to reduce debt as those not receiving cash grants. Cash grants also led to a significant increase in savings, even in households with debt. Households often used the money to acquire financial liquidity. Opening bank accounts for remitting the cash grants became in itself an important measure of financial inclusion. [\-Source](http://sange.fi/kvsolidaarisuustyo/wp-content/uploads/Universal-Basic-Income-A-New-Tool-for-Development-Policy.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) Again, people were twice as likely to reduce their debts as they were to increase them, while savings also increased — the same result as found in Namibia. Because of this, [there was only one group to complain](http://www.financialexpress.com/news/column-the-poor-are-responsible-too/1125548/0?ref=scottsantens.com). > “The only group to complain about the \[basic income\] pilots were moneylenders.” ## Uganda and Kenya The pioneering charity [GiveDirectly](http://www.givedirectly.org/?ref=scottsantens.com) is also making some very interesting observations of what happens when money is given unconditionally to those in need, in amounts about equivalent to basic incomes. One might think people would work less with unconditional incomes, or use them unwisely, but instead people become entrepreneurs, increasing their incomes above what they are given, and increasing their overall hours worked. Assets are increased. Businesses are started. Mental health is improved. Diets are improved. Cortisol (stress) levels fall. The one thing that doesn’t seem to change — [money spent on alcohol and gambling](http://www.princeton.edu/~joha/publications/Haushofer%5FShapiro%5FPolicy%5FBrief%5F2013.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com). What we need to come to relearn as a society, is that [usury](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury?ref=scottsantens.com) hurts all of us. Loaning people money at high rates of interest feeds into a system built upon human misery. We’re looking at the world and everyone around us all wrong, believing people need first prove to those with money that they are worthy of money, and owing a pound of flesh in return for the privilege, instead of believing people need not first prove anything, and are inherently worthy of money, owing nothing in return but showing returns on investment anyway. Where money is given without conditions, where we orient ourselves more around social credit, instead of social debt, we observe humanity at its best. If we are to [cleanse our temples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleansing%5Fof%5Fthe%5FTemple?ref=scottsantens.com), as in the biblical tale, we need to flip the table too. And flipping that table will involve establishing an unconditional basic income, paid to every citizen. Then the idea of payday loans can become a part of ancient history, replaced instead with human dignity and mutual prosperity. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com) ### Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income? URL: https://www.scottsantens.com/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi/ Last updated: 2023-05-03T21:37:31.000Z ## An answer to a growing question of the 21st century # 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 is 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 to 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, whether everyone wanted bread or not. This did not work so well, and there were shortages. Plus, those with the connections got more than enough while others got none. Trying to give bread to everyone, although noble in 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 is 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 market 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 (UBI).** 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 basics 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% of the population gets exactly the same amount of bread. Some may want more than others, 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. 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](http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/briefings/data/000163?ref=scottsantens.com): > “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 declined from 86% to 68% (97% to 43% when controlled for migration). Unemployment dropped as well, from 60% to 45%, 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.” 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 [this psychology experiment](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201404/why-having-the-choice-do-nothing-is-so-important?ref=scottsantens.com) as evidence for increased productivity? > “The participants given a choice between either two or three puzzles each spent about 5 minutes working on the puzzle they selected. But those who were also given the option not to participate spent about 7 minutes working on their selected puzzle. Explicitly choosing to do something rather than not to do it greatly increased the amount of time people spent on the task.” 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](https://www.ted.com/talks/dan%5Fpink%5Fon%5Fmotivation/transcript?ref=scottsantens.com) about money as an effective motivator for complex and creative tasks? **Larger rewards lead to poorer performance.** > “This is one of the most robust findings in social science, and also one of the most ignored. I spent the last couple of 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... That’s actually fine for many kinds of 20th century tasks. But for 21st century tasks, that mechanistic, reward-and-punishment approach doesn’t work, often doesn’t work, and often does harm.” —Dan Pink In the 21st century, [as we continue quickly automating away half our jobs in the next 20 years](http://www.technologyreview.com/view/519241/report-suggests-nearly-half-of-us-jobs-are-vulnerable-to-computerization/?ref=scottsantens.com) — jobs less cognitively-complex and more physically-laborious — we need to enable ourselves to freely pursue our 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 our many other open-source community creations, not to mention all the [care work](http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/fiona-ranford/care-work-is-24-hour-day-job-mr-balls-and-should-be-paid-as-such?ref=scottsantens.com) performed for our young and elderly. Basic income is a means of recognizing this unpaid work as having great societal value, and further enabling it. Or how about [the multiplier effect](http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/wall%5Fstreet%5Fbonuses%5Fand%5Fthe%5Fminimum%5Fwage?ref=scottsantens.com) as evidence of enhanced capitalism? > “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, adds about $1.21 to the national economy. Every extra dollar going into the pockets of a high-income American, by contrast, only adds about 39 cents to the GDP.” This means that by redirecting that money pooling at the top doing comparatively very little, accumulating in ever increasing amounts through [continual redistribution upwards from the bottom and middle of the income spectrum](http://billmoyers.com/2014/01/06/2013-was-a-banner-year-for-the-upward-redistribution-of-americas-wealth/?ref=scottsantens.com), and recirculating that clotted money back down to the bottom and middle, this would actually expand the entire economy while 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 in the 21st Century* that our current system is exactly that — one way](http://theweek.com/article/index/258666/why-everyone-is-talking-about-thomas-pikettys-capital-in-the-twenty-first-century?ref=scottsantens.com#axzz33DwXtnOI). 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 pump blood anywhere but the brain. ## Capitalism 2.0 sounds great and all but can we afford it? Basic income is entirely affordable given all the current and [hugely wasteful](http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/over-60000-welfare-spentper-household-poverty%5F657889.html?ref=scottsantens.com) means-tested programs full of unnecessary bureaucracy that can be consolidated into it. And the cost also depends greatly on the chosen plan. A plan of $12,000 per U.S. citizen over 18, and $4,000 per citizen under 18 amounts to a revenue need of $2.98 trillion, which after all the programs that can be eliminated are rolled into it, requires an additional need of $1.28 trillion or so. So where do we come up with an additional $1.28 trillion? • A land value tax has been estimated to be a source of revenue of about [$1.7 trillion](http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3486038?uid=3739688&uid=2480847797&uid=2&uid=3&uid=3739256&uid=60&sid=21104015366787&ref=scottsantens.com). • [A flat tax of around 40%](http://www.parncutt.org/BIFT1.html?ref=scottsantens.com) would be sufficient. Due to the way such a tax works in combination with UBI, this would effectively be a reduction in taxes for about 80% of the population. • A 10% value added tax (VAT) has been estimated to be a source of revenue of about [$750 billion](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-02/value-added-tax-would-raise-tons-for-u-s-coffers.html?ref=scottsantens.com). 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)](http://www.robinhoodtax.org/how/everything-you-need-to-know?ref=scottsantens.com), a carbon tax [($125 billion)](http://www.rff.org/centers/climate%5Fand%5Felectricity%5Fpolicy/Pages/Carbon%5FTax%5FFAQs.aspx?ref=scottsantens.com), or taxing capital gains like ordinary income and creating new upper tax brackets [($160 billion)](http://www.epi.org/publication/options-exist-raising-revenue-smart-progressive/?ref=scottsantens.com). Did you know that for fifty years — between 1932 and 1982 — the top income tax rate averaged [82%](http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/history-of-federal-individual-1.html?ref=scottsantens.com)? Our current highest rate is 39%. • There is a place in the world that already pays a regular dividend to everyone living there, universally to child and adult, through a wealth fund it has created through royalty fees paid by companies for the rights to profit from its natural resources. This place is Alaska, and the [“Alaska Model”](http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/karl-widerquist/alaska-model-citizens-income-in-practice?ref=scottsantens.com) could be applied anywhere as a means of granting a basic income as the social dividend from a [sovereign wealth fund](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/sep/30/norway-oil-sovereign-wealth-fund?ref=scottsantens.com) of resource-based revenue. • We could even get [more creative](http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm?ref=scottsantens.com#sec6) 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](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/25/15-years-ago-congress-kept-mickey-mouse-out-of-the-public-domain-will-they-do-it-again/?ref=scottsantens.com) to protect their profits off of creations like Mickey Mouse. Companies 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 one of which are more than sufficient, that if combined could potentially allow for a larger basic income, or a reduction or even elimination of income taxes entirely. ## Okay, it’s affordable… but wouldn’t people stop working? We studied this question in the 1970s here in the United States, back when Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI) was a goal of President Nixon and [the House even successfully passed a bill](http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/loss-support-guaranteed-income-reflects-radical-shift-values?ref=scottsantens.com) for it. The findings from the accompanying [large-scale experiments done in cities like Seattle and Denver](http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/conf/conf30/conf30a.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com) found that surprisingly, hardly anyone actually stopped working, and instead reduced their hours slightly, with men reducing their hours the least — by a maximum of 8%. This slight reduction in hours was then replicated to even less of a degree in [Canada’s Minimum Income (Mincome) experiment](http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20%282%29.pdf?ref=scottsantens.com), with men choosing to work as little as 1% fewer hours. Meanwhile, [we find ourselves today working too much](http://www.techvibes.com/blog/long-hours-less-productive-2014-04-29?ref=scottsantens.com). Having drifted away from the 40-hour work week, we now find 1 out of every 3 of us working more than 50 hours, with many even working more than 60 hours. And what are the effects of this? > “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. While 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 becomes extremely clear: to boost productivity and foster excellent employees, the best thing businesses can do is to bring back the 40-hour work week.” 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](http://jobsearchtech.about.com/od/workplaceissues/a/Presenteeism.htm?ref=scottsantens.com). It’s called presenteeism, and happens when people refuse to call in sick. > “According to various studies, the total cost of presenteeism to U.S. employers falls anywhere between $150 billion to $250 billion each year, and those costs are on the rise as presenteeism becomes more frequent in tight economic times.” 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 3 [people seeking every 1 available job](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/jan/07/gene-sperling/there-are-3-unemployed-people-every-job-opening-ob/?ref=scottsantens.com), and the obvious solution is that we actually want people to be able to choose to work less, to free up more positions for those seeking jobs who are currently being excluded from the labor market. ## **But still, what about those few who WOULD stop working?** Through the elimination of the [welfare trap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare%5Ftrap?ref=scottsantens.com) 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 fix the situation we have right now, where it’s possible for the unemployed to actually earn more in equivalent benefits than the cash incomes of those who are employed. Plus, the very ability 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, basic income makes work actually pay. ## Why would (insert who you dislike) ever agree to this? The idea of basic income [cuts across all party lines](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/whats-welfare-initiative-uniting-liberals-conservatives/?ref=scottsantens.com). From the [extreme right](http://reason.com/archives/2013/11/26/scrap-the-welfare-state-give-people-free?ref=scottsantens.com) to the [extreme left](http://www.peaceandfreedom.org/home/about-us/platform/summary-platform?ref=scottsantens.com), 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 its potential to reduce inequality and once and for all put an end to poverty. Basic income is not “left” or “right”. [It’s forward](http://www.pieria.co.uk/articles/moral%5Faspects%5Fof%5Fbasic%5Fincome?ref=scottsantens.com). **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 of the Vietnam war, or the beginning of LBJ’s war on poverty? Because you want to make our world a better place. That’s why. --- [![Silvrback blog image sb_float](https://storage.ghost.io/c/89/ec/89ec4ff0-b4ab-4e03-8ead-b213c47c6da7/content/images/uploads/54e7cc45-72c7-4a63-bd1a-6aabc0e92926/patreon-20button_medium.png)](https://patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) Did you enjoy reading this? Please click the subscribe button and also consider making a [**monthly pledge**](http://www.patreon.com/scottsantens?ref=scottsantens.com) in support of my daily advocacy of basic income for all. [![Silvrback blog image sb_float_center](https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/d1ce27b1-9c89-460d-8246-34084cd3e94e/Let%20There%20Be%20Money%20(banner)_large.jpg)](https://amzn.to/30sCdCc?ref=scottsantens.com)