Universal Basic Dividend vs. Income
The policy that could forge a path beyond money.
The Universal Basic Income, once a fringe concept from decades ago, now a legitimate policy platform given credibility by politicians and prominent industrialists alike.
It makes sense why; context is everything as they say, and the emerging context of our time seems to be heading toward what was once considered science-fiction — automation, not just of physical labour but even intellectual work.
So, in the face of a future of mass lay-offs and shrinking public income; where the demand for even those products that are oh-so-cheap to manufacture becomes too low to garner any real profit, a solution has emerged.
A tax-funded policy that entitles every person to a particular figure of basic income in order to offset wholly unsustainable inequality. Industrialists favour it because it would be publicly funded, politicians seem to like it because in a time of political stagnation, it provides something new, a path forward.
But is it? Without addressing the structural mechanisms of economic-inequality itself, the policy seems like a band-aid solution at best.
Que Yanis Varoufakis; the economist whose recent book offers an alternative solution, one that builds on the basic function of its progenitor to go beyond band-aids and even beyond money itself — and, its not even tax-funded.
“…this simple, practical measure would be for a portion of the machines of every company to become the property of everyone — with the percentage of profits corresponding to that portion flowing into a common fund to be shared equally by all.”
— Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy
In simple terms, what Varoufakis suggests is a Universal Basic Dividend, whereby a portion of the profits made by large corporations through publicly subsidized innovations, goes into a public fund disseminated using a basic dividend, similar to what stock traders might receive.
To elaborate, let’s explore the logic behind such a policy; today, much of the most profitable commercial products are based on or are an amalgam of various technologies that were developed through publicly-funded research. Your smartphone for example is a collection of exactly this kind of tech, from the GPS system to the camera, it is literally a product of the public’s taxes.
Even companies like Google, Facebook, and the various others that monetize themselves based on people’s data, can operate based only on your free contributions of your data to those services.
Despite this, practically all the income generated by these technologies goes exclusively to corporations and industrialists who have laid claim upon them. Meanwhile, in a system that touts returns on investment, the public that funded these innovations receive no such return.
“…if a portion of the profits were to go automatically into the bank accounts of the workers as well, then this downward pressure on demand, sales, and prices would be alleviated, turning the whole of humanity into the beneficiary of the machines’ labor.”
— Talking to My Daughter About the Economy
So, what are the implications for such a policy? Amidst skyrocketing inequality and a growing gap between the super-rich and everyone else, a UBD provides a clear way for humanity to equitably participate in the shared prosperity of our machines.
According to Varoufakis however, it has the potential to do even more than that:
“…the effect of distributing profits as I have described would be to ensure that prices remain more or less stable while incomes rise, with the result that products become increasingly more affordable.
And if it ever happens that the production process does become fully robotized, with humans no longer needing to work on the design or the manufacture of the robots that make other robots, then all prices and all incomes will gradually recede until every product is like the air we breathe: so plentiful that no one needs to pay for it, however precious it may be.”
— Talking to My Daughter About the Economy
Such a policy could not only eradicate poverty, but free up public funding for all sorts of programs, from a sustainable transition, to education and community-building.
What could we accomplish, if our communities were empowered, and our politics were to stabilize? Could we finally achieve true democratic aspirations like political power for the 99%? Universal Sovereignty for all?
