Sure. If I had a billion in the bank, I'd be 100% for bribing the common folk with their own tax revenues. As a rich person, the only thing preferable to no taxes is exorbitantly high taxes so no-one else can get rich and my relative purchasing power remains high. Brilliant plan.
What you want as a plutocrat is a system where you have (high) taxes redistributed in a way so that you can recollect the taxes through the organizations (companies) you control by having the recipients of the redistribution purchase your organizations' goods and services.
A guy worth ~$62 Billion talking basic income; someone who's looking to lead the world in automation alongside Google and Amazon. Not to get all nutty, but it seems strange that billionaires are the ones to lead the conversation in basic income.
Sure they know more than anyone that automation is coming, but exactly how soon and far stretching?
I'm really surprised and disappointed by some of the responses in this thread. It boggles my mind that some people can consider themselves "hackers" and/or follow tech news, but not understand that automation is going to require UBI for most of humanity to have any sort of quality of life. UBI is and should be a bipartisan idea. It may even be necessary for the survival of our Republic, if not or species.
But UBI doesn't fix one of the most core issues caused by automation: loss of satisfaction brought about by meaningful work. Humans have an inate need to work; when that need goes unfulfilled, depression and a whole host of mental illnesses commonly follow. Giving people free money via UBI may enable them to purchase food, but it doesn't give them self respect or mental health.
UBI may become necessary someday but until unemployment rises to unprecedented levels the potential for gdp loss is enormous. Right now we should be focussed on allocating human resources, not letting young people retire.
Yeah this is the thing I always come back to. UBI is without question needed in a highly autonomous society, but we fail to have proper flow on our already existing systems like Social Security.
I'm all for some implementation of UBI, or more broadly, less inequality in society, but the numbers just don't add up to support it (yet).
Even if you took all of the US Federal transfer programs (Social Security, Medicare, etc...) AND taxed the top 1% at a 90+% rate, you'd still fall short of the amount needed to distribute a basic income to reach the minimum poverty level for the masses.
To get your free money you just need to join facebook. Make at least 3 posts a day to let everyone know how great the free money is... this is such a great idea!
You know who is going to kindly donate the money required for this grand bipartisan plan? Thats right mr. Z. This is the best example of 'put your money where your mouth is'.
Secondarily and importantly Alaska may be conservative but its so far north and so cold that it requires an alternative approach, which is exactly what is going on here. Look at any cold place and you will see initiatives aimed at keeping people from freezing to death. Scandinavia, russia, Canada are similar on this matter. Ideology gets pushed aside when your neighbour cannot keep warm through winter. In the end humans are social animals.
Paying dividends to everyone out of a natural resources fund is of course not the usual 'small government' approach. Not at all, because it is essentially a state owned enterprise in all but name. The usual 'small government' approach would be privatisation: to simply sell the rights to oil to the highest bidder.
It starts looking like Mark is taking politics seriously. I actually wonder if someone from the valley or the tech world in general could do something radically different to improve peoples lives more than someone who is a traditional politician.
People talk about whether or not it can be afforded and then point out the dollar coat of living, taxes and so on. Money is not a real thing, its a construct. Its so complicated that nobody here is going to be able to prove we couldnt afford ubi. But rhat doesnt even matter since money is only a framework we use for our markets and economies. Instead of fussing with money figures, which will never do anything besides confuse people, we can look at concrete things instead. The physical and chemical reality of this world. It is undeniable that because of automation, a complete restructuring of our society will be needed. The only limits in such a reorganization are those of the physical world, not those of our current paradigm. So, how much energy is there to go around? How much food and how many materials? What is the maximum amount of any of those things that we might collectively have? What are the limits of physics for how much energy we can harvest from the sun? That is where the conversation needs to begin. And i think we will all find that even with todays technology there is plenty of everythong to go around.
