Basic Income is a Medium publication with essays on universal basic income, automation and related economic policy.
Commenters link it in debates on UBI, especially inflation, housing costs and rent, and pairing it with a land value tax.
Yes, yes there is! In order of impact:
Write to your representatives to support this bill, or a similar one if not in the USA: https://medium.com/basic-income/this-idea-can-literally-change-our-world-107cbc94057a
Carbon tax the fossil fuel industry to make them switch to green energy faster (they are already investing in this). Distribute the proceeds as UBI to sell t to the public - Alaska’s Permanent Fund already has done this by “nationalizing” their own oil reserves for decades AND they have the lowest inequality of all US states. Win win!
Form a political party in your country to focus on the most pressing issues (and avoid getting mirrd in eg gender bathrooms) and an app to unite everyone (I am doing this with rational.app and rational.party)
REFORESTATION. CARBON SEQUESTRATION. There has been something in the human psyche that associates deforestation with progress. Well, it no longer is (we are bumping up against other limits).
Support efforts like Nori and IBM’s carbon credits blockchain. But on a country level, it would be amazing if they set up a fund to reward countries for trees and carbon sequestration. Have actual incentives to grow it instead of laws punishing deforestation only. Bolsonaro would have something more cashflow positive from the rainforest in his mind finally. We have to PAY FOR WHAT WE WANT, WITH TAXES.
Raise awareness, eg with scandalous art pieces that have a license to pollute with black smoke in a city, and attract people to websites…
Good first approximation but I think there are some limitations. For example, basic Income advocates do not say that everyone (children, for example) get the cash. So your denominator of 360M is incorrect and should be reduced by at least 75M.
A 2006 study put the cost at 1.8Tr. And then goes on to detail how it can be done, largely by eliminating new tax loopholes versus introducing new taxes: http://www.usbig.net/papers/144-Sheahen-RefundableTaxCredit.pdf.
For a less academic answer, the author Scott Saterns has spent a lot of time researching this topic and even lived on a simulated basic income for a year: https://medium.com/basic-income/what-if-you-got-1-000-a-month-just-for-being-alive-i-decided-to-find-out-9e8591976c37
Surprisingly, no.
When companies are making easy money, there is very little incentive to improve efficiency, and a lot of incentive to continue the status quo. It’s only during tight times do companies actually begin to seek out new efficiencies.
Example: automated oil rig machines have existed for quite a while, but they really didn’t see a lot of usage until the oil crash in 2016[0]. After this crash the number of oil rig workers remained at low levels, even as oil rigs starting to produce again. Those jobs were already vulnerable to automation, it just took a financial crisis to trigger it.
[0] https://medium.com/basic-income/the-real-story-of-automation-beginning-with-one-simple-chart-8b95f9bad71b
Read the Tryanny of Kindness. It is from 1993 and is a former welfare mother and advocate who advocates for a guaranteed income.
The book goes into great length of the pathology of the welfare system and its non-profit charity profiteers. Of course that was 27 years ago.
It obviously depends on the UBI. If it covered children, it would be absolutely better for the recipients. If it does not cover children, as in Yang's plan, then it is questionable, but it still could benefit a lot because many do not get it at all:
https://medium.com/basic-income/there-is-no-policy-proposal-more-progressive-than-andrew-yangs-freedom-dividend-72d3850a6245
http://www.scottsantens.com/tanf-is-terrible
Here is the same author in 2014 attempting to explain how basic income won't lead to massive inflation:
https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7#.ajika83kp*
>>>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.*
There is no sure fire way to reduce the value of a dollar then to redistribute it to people that didn't work for it. The fact that you have to work for the dollar is the thing that gives the dollar value.
Copyright law is not supposed to create fairness.
It is supposed to benefit society as a whole. If protection is too long, limited access to (and reuse of) existing work reduces the benefits of having a law. If protection is too short, some works may not get created due to the lack of incentives.
Someone attempted to calculate an optimal duration, and concluded it was about 15 years: https://rufuspollock.com/papers/optimal_copyright_term.pdf (Related article: https://medium.com/basic-income/the-zombification-of-intellectual-property-and-the-tool-that-could-finally-reform-it-2ec037309837)