Source: Universal Basic Income / Andrew Yang for president
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''This was a session at the August 2018 [[Resilient Communities Mini-Unconference]].''
== Participants ==
* [[Brandon]] (convener)
* [[Ben]] (note-taker)
* [[Shawn]]
* [[Eric]]
* Judy
* Steve
* [[Shelley]] (briefly)
== Discussion ==
* Judy: Should UBI be provided only to people who really need it?
** Perhaps on an honor system? I want to have faith in people
** Shawn: The idea is similar to the negative income tax for the poor
* Brandon: I've listened to one podcast on UBI, with Sam Harris interviewing presidential candidate [https://www.yang2020.com/ Andrew Yang]
** Side note: Harris is a New Atheist, but more spiritual than most
** Yang has run companies and been a professor at Harvard Business School (where the students are motivated by just wanting to make lots of money)
** Yang also supports social currency that aligns purchasing power with work that isn't currently paid, e.gg. caring for the elderly
*** Everyone starts with an equal amount of "esteem" points and hands them out to each other as reward for work they appreciate
*** Related to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_currency time banking]
** The context of Yang's UBI proposal is that automation is rapidly replacing jobs, and there may be no replacement jobs coming
*** Yang proposes a UBI of $1000 per month, which is below the poverty line, and would be mutually exclusive with other assistance programs for the poor
*** At one point he and Harris express the motivation of "not wanting to have to buy bulletproof cars for their children" due to crime arising from immense income inequality
*** Steve (much later): I don't see a problem with a world where robots do all the hard labor
**** Shawn: Tell that to people whose family identities are wrapped up in that labor, and who want to feel valued for their contributions
**** Judy: But if you had UBI, it would give you time and resources to figure out another way to contribute to society
* Issues with UBI
** Shawn: "Rentier states" are using something like UBI to buy off their own citizens, e.g. with oil money, making the government unaccountable to those citizens
** Judy: I thought I saw an article in [https://www.yesmagazine.org/ Yes Magazine] saying UBI would be somehow destructive to the Black community
** Shawn: How do we pay for it?
*** Judy: Get the wealthy and corporations to pay
*** Brandon: Yang wants to use a European Union-style value-added tax
**** Steve and Shawn: That would be paid by consumers, which seems to defeat the purpose
**** Brandon: Trades in the economy add value; this tax and UBI distribution means more money moving around and therefore adds the value needed to make it worthwhile
* Argument about perpetual growth and whether or not it's motivated by compound-interest loans
** Brandon: The three origins of value are:
*** Using up stored value (e.g. oil)
*** Accelerating the movement of money (not counting banks' financial tricks and automated trading algorithms)
*** New ideas and inventions
**** Steve: e.g. if we find a more valuable use for rhodium, the world supply of rhodium suddenly has more value without having to mine any more
**** Shawn: But you pay a resource cost for every invention, generally underpinned by cheap fossil energy
**** Argument about replacing fossil fuels with renewables
* Brandon: I support UBI because it makes me feel like things would be possible that weren't before, e.g. for new college graduates who don't currently see a positive future for themselves
* Shawn: I see UBI as life support for the current system, when what we need is system change
** More argument about compound interest and "unpayable" debt
*** Eric and Judy: In Canada, they have rules so that banks can't lend more money than the borrower can pay back
** Steve: Lenin viciously attacked reformers as enemies of revolution
* Ben: What can the SolSeed Movement do about any of this huge national economic stuff?
** Brandon: Support UBI