Blog
UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift
Earlier this week, I attended The BIG Conference, where OpenResearch presented results by Vivalt et al. from their three-year study of people who received unconditional money. Unsurprisingly, the study participants became less inclined to work jobs.
Noah Smith, among others, interpreted this as bad news for Universal Basic Income. But the key insight that the Noah Smiths of the world seem to be missing is that, in today’s world, we artificially elevate labor demand to keep people employed. UBI means not having to do that anymore.
Universal Income: Basic or High?
I wanted to respond to an article recently posted by Scott Santens because he’s highlighted something I see as a major problem in basic income discourse. Elon Musk has been talking about “Universal High Income,” which he distinguishes from regular Universal Basic Income (UBI) in two ways: a) it’s higher, and b) it presumably exists somewhere in the medium-to-long-term future, not the short term. This has annoyed Scott in ways that I both agree and disagree with. The debate reflects a broader misconception about the relationship between technology and UBI.
UBI vs MMT 1: What Do Words Mean?
Ellis Winningham recently wrote a ten-part blog series examining Universal Basic Income (UBI) through the lens of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Here, I will respond to the first post in the series, entitled “Terms Matter.”
Printing Money Cures the "Covid-19" Crash
What the soft-currency theory of the business cycle tells us about the current crisis and how to escape it.
There’s no doubt that the economic carnage that has rocked the world in the last week or so was triggered by a contraction in economic activity associated with Covid-19 and the efforts to contain it. But there’s also no doubt that this shock exposed underlying issues, setting off a cascade of chaos and fear through an economic system overloaded with private debt, especially in the business sector.
Photo by Pepi Stojanovski
The Robots Are Not Coming
If you follow technology, you could be forgiven for believing that humanity is standing the precipice of a robot apocalypse. It’s only a matter of time before automation eliminates so many jobs that humans will simply no longer be “needed.” Right?
Five years back, YouTuber CGP Grey made this case in his popular Humans Need Not Apply video.
Give Immigrants Money
People move to a new country if they expect their lives to improve. Robust infrastructure, favorable climate, and stable governance all contribute to a country’s appeal. Basic income takes this to the extreme. A country with basic income actually pays people to live there.
Photo by Nitish Meena
Money Does Not Circulate
Money is a claim on goods and services in the same way that airline tickets are claims on seats. It is standard practice for airlines to overbook their flights — they sell more tickets than there are seats. They do this because they know that some passengers won’t show up.
Photo by Nicole Geri
Poverty Is Optional
Basic income is commonly described as an amount of money that’s sufficient to ensure some pre-determined minimum standard of living. I have previously dismissed this characterization as inaccurate. But who am I to insist that the popular definition of basic income is wrong? Why should I not admit that this blog is about something slightly different?
Photo by Andrea Sonda | Castelfranco Veneto, Italy
Life Is Just a Game
Does humanity need to exist? No. If we disappeared, nobody would be around to notice. But since we’re here, why not make the most of it? The first step is to keep ourselves alive and healthy. We feel better when we’re not sick or dying. This might seem self-evident, but there’s a reason why dying feels bad: Without an aversion to death, humanity would not have survived. Things start to get interesting when we move past basic physical health.
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Inequality Is Not the Problem
When people ask me about whether basic income addresses inequality, I tend to punt on the question. I explain to them that basic income solves the problem of how to provide spending money to consumers. I remind them that there are important problems that basic income doesn’t solve. Specifically, basic income does not address inequality. It takes nothing from the rich. It merely gives the poor better access to the economy’s resources.
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