A Universal Basic Income Based on Services Rendered

Here’s my suggestion as to how a UBI could be funded. It’s strategic not tactical. The details can be worked out in committee negotiations.

Corporations are data mining nearly every piece of online data that we as individuals produce and then selling it to the highest bidders including the NSA for hundreds of billions per year. It’s an unregulated modern day gold rush happening under our very noses without notice. We as individuals should be compensated for our data in the same way that corporations are compensated for their data. Copyright law should protect us in the same way it protects corporations. Terms of Service Agreements should be outlawed. Copyright laws should be amended or rewritten.

There’s a reason we aren’t billed by Google and Facebook. We’re not their consumers, we’re their product. The lion’s share of profits made by Google, Facebook, AT&T, Verizon, and scores of other corporations are from the data we produce. Facebook’s billion plus users are the largest unpaid workforce in history.

If a corporation profits from our data, whether it be browsing history, emails, buying habits, contact lists etc. then they should have to pay us for it just as we have to pay for their movies, music, software and more. Such compensation might go a long way toward alleviating our chronic employment problems as well as help the working class who are losing jobs faster than any other demographic. It would not be welfare nor would it involve raising taxes. It would be payment for services rendered in the form of a subsistent guaranteed income similar to the Alaskan model.

The royalties could be paid into a government administered fund similar to Social Security or Medicare. Or they could be paid to a non-profit private organization like ASCAP which oversees royalty fees for musicians.

Manufacturing jobs are not going to come back. And in time automation will begin to affect the professional class as well. Those who depended on such jobs will have to be dealt with or our nation is going to suffer catastrophic consequences.

This and many more initiatives should be included in a robust strategy. We have to be bold.