The case for a universal basic income

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The case for a universal basic income
by Sebastian Johnson 7-29-17


By now you’ve heard rumblings of the policy idea known as “universal basic income.” This is the notion that the government should give every citizen enough no-strings-attached money to cover basic living expenses.

In the last year alone, Mark Zuckerberg called on Harvard’s graduating class to “explore ideas like universal basic income,” Elon Musk told a gathering of world leaders in Dubai that “some kind of universal basic income is going to be necessary,” and President Obama remarked that universal basic income is a subject we’ll be debating “over the next 10 or 20 years.”

Though universal basic income, or UBI, has become downright trendy in Silicon Valley, the concept is not actually new. Thomas Paine proposed a basic income for every citizen as early as 1792. Milton Friedman and Martin Luther King Jr. endorsed the idea in the 1960s as a way of fighting poverty. In 1971, a basic income for poor families almost became law under President Nixon.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-johnson-universal-basic-income-20170629-story.html

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1. Capitalism as we know it is dead.

People are going to have to face the fact that 18th century economic model is not going to work in the 21st century. Robotics and AI is the future. There simply will be more people than jobs. UBI is the only sane and moral solution.