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As computers and robots increasingly replace workers in retail, manufacturing and other sectors of the economy more and more people are going to lose their jobs and not be able to find another one. Adopting a Universal basic income (UBI) government program in which every adult citizen receives $12,000 per annum is going to become necessa…
As computers and robots increasingly replace workers in retail, manufacturing and other sectors of the economy more and more people are going to lose their jobs and not be able to find another one. Adopting a Universal basic income (UBI) government program in which every adult citizen receives $12,000 per annum is going to become necessary for people to survive.
UBI would alleviate poverty and homelessness and replace all other needs-based welfare programs that require greater bureaucratic overhead.
Support for a government-supplied income stream has been endorsed by prominent economists on the left and the right. Among them is the late conservative economist Milton Friedman, who in 1962’s “Capitalism and Freedom”, argued that a UBI—would help overcome a mindset where citizens aren’t inclined to make sacrifices if they don’t believe others will follow suit. “We might all of us be willing to contribute to the relief of poverty, provided everyone else did,” he wrote.
Libertarian philosopher Charles Murray proposed a $12,000-per-year UBI, as well as basic health insurance, which he says would allow the government to cut other welfare programs to pay for UBI.
The Freedom Dividend, as Andrew Yang called it. Yang’s website includes favorable quotes about the idea from everyone from Martin Luther King Jr., to Richard Nixon, who weighed a similar proposal while president, as well as modern-day tech entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
Yang says the payments would be offset by a 10% value-added tax, VAT, and by replacing duplicative social-welfare spending. Current recipients could choose between their existing benefits and $1,000 in cash. A guaranteed, unconditional income would give disadvantaged people leverage to say no to exploitative wages and abusive working conditions. And solve the problem whereby computers and robots make a large percentage of people lacking the means to provide for themself.