UBI — Universal Basic Income
A Utopian idea or real life?
It is a 500-year-old concept that may be time to finally arrive.
What would it do?
It would help the homeless to get off the streets and pay for some lodging and get some relief from danger.
It would help the teens that are on the streets to find a safe place for the night so they don’t have to sell themselves and be able to rest.
It would help the single mom that has no other choice to be able to feed her kids a bit more. This would of course help the single dad who is also making the choice to either pay for food or pay for a light bill.
This is how it works. The government would pay every adult citizen a salary, regardless of wealth, employment income or if they worked at all. Doing this, theory goes, might solve a host of endemic economic problems, from poverty to chronic joblessness, that are only likely to worsen in the coming century.
Jobs will be lost in the coming century through the use of more AI and technology taking away the jobs that can be done now more mechanically. As well as, the coronavirus losses.
This concept recently has often made odd bedfellows: Martin Luther King Jr., Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. In the late 1960’s the Nixon…