Building a Case for Universal Basic Income
Is UBI the Green New Deal of the next political movement
“If we want to combat the loss of jobs due to emerging technologies and democratize our economy, progressive reforms made must include Universal Basic Income.”
this article contributed by Emmanuel Alcantar, a community organizer and advocate in Los Angeles California
For decades, we have seen how our economy has been uniquely captured by corporate power and rigged against the working class of this country. According to a report by Bloomberg, the world’s five hundred wealthiest individuals “added $1.2 trillion, boosting their collective net worth 25% to $5.9 trillion.” The rich get wealthier and wealthier while the poor find themselves struggling to make ends meet.
In this current election cycle, there have been multiple proposals to tackle the country’s rising income and wealth inequality. One of those proposals has been Universal Basic Income or, as popularized by Andrew Yang’s presidential run, the “Freedom Dividend.” There has been a lot of debate as to whether this is an idea whose time has come. Spiritual author Marianne Williamson has also voiced support for the idea and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, in an interview with the Joe Rogan Experience, said she was studying the idea, looking at different pilot programs. One pilot program, in the Canadian province of Ontario, will be nearing the end of their three-year trial run with one form of basic income. French candidate Benoît Hamon won the 2017 Socialist Party nomination running on another form of basic income as part of his platform. All of these public figures are in agreement, if we want to combat the loss of jobs due to emerging technologies and democratize our economy, progressive reforms made must include Universal Basic Income.
While the idea of robots taking our jobs seems like something in the distant future or from a science fiction, a Pew Research study asked 1,896 experts about the impact of technologies like automation and artificial intelligence and found that 48 percent of them “envision a future in which robots and digital agents have displaced significant numbers of both blue- and white-collar workers.” And working class Americans are already experiencing the effects. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that retail sales workers are expected to decline 2% from 2018–2028 as well as occupations in production are expected to lose 5% in the same time period. An Oxford University report from 2013 estimated that 47 percent of US employment are at “high risk” of having some part of their job automated.
The advancement of technology is supposed to allow us to pick and choose jobs most suitable for us. But instead, we have seen these technologies weaponized by elites in favor of profits. This is where UBI allows for the democratization of our economy as well as the separation of a dignified life from work. Workers would be allowed to leave jobs where they face rampant harassment or exploitative bosses without the fear of losing their home. People with disabilities would not be forced to work physically demanding jobs that threaten their health. New parents would be allowed to be homemakers and caregivers would begin to be valued more. One should not be barred from participating in our society if they do not or cannot work.
There is also the universal aspect of this proposal in which working class people would not have to deal with the bureaucracy or forms that come with means-tested proposals. This is positive because means-tested policies often come with “humiliating bureaucratic requirements” as described by Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs in his article advocating for universality within the context of tuition-free college (another policy that Agatha supports). The universality and simplicity of UBI as a supplement is important because it benefits people that are not being adequately assisted by our current social welfare system.
In regards to how to pay for it, a question that is never asked about our defence budget, the reality is we are already paying for it. “The Commons” — we now understand — includes the planet, its outer space and inner sub-surface, and all public property, including land, buildings, infrastructure, etc. An immeasurable amount of investment has gone into The Commons, including a large percentage of what is now considered ‘public debt’. While the public debt can and is measured and accounted for, the assets on the public balance sheet are not. Therefore, the dividends associated with such prior investment are not properly accounted for nor distributed. In essence, UBI is already partially paid for and will eventually be 100% paid for.
We therefore can view “UBI” more like a “UID” — a Universal Investment Dividend — and simply created such new money in the same way we create new money by lending to a credit-worthy commercial entity. Distributing a UID directly to all global citizens is not only be the ‘right’ thing to do relative to properly distributing the returns from investments made at great cost by all of our collective ancestors, many economists and businesses would argue that such stimulus is actually necessary liquidity to properly signal demand and stimulate the economy in a very broad and equitable way.
There has been a lot of discussion online about a Federal Jobs Guarantee instead of a UBI as a method to combat inequality. It is the idea that the federal government will provide working people a job as an employer of last resort. A Federal Jobs Guarantee is important because there will need to be a lot of work done to repair our crumbling infrastructure and environment in regards to the Green New Deal. It would force private industry to compete by raising their wages, offering better benefits, and job security. As well as the fact that it would help address wage disparity between white communities and communities of color.
However, the idea that we have to pick between a jobs guarantee and basic income is false one; this is not a zero-sum game. Firstly, not everyone derives their value from their work, but the idea that we must pick between these solutions is a capitalistic way of thinking. Advocating for Universal Basic Income would allow for people to thrive because it addresses one of the material conditions — economic disparity in this instance — that determine much of human nature, subtly incentivizing our society to be more communal. This brings us to a point that Agatha made about UBI.
Agatha Bacelar, in a speech addressed to the SF Basic Income March, explained she supported Universal Basic Income because she believed that everyone was “intrinsically valued just for being alive.” Every person regardless of their background is entitled to live a dignified life. Technological innovation is not something we should be afraid of, it should liberate us from the day to day toil of menial repetitive work that we spend much of our short lives doing. While our hope for a future that empowers working people requires a Federal Jobs Guarantee, it also includes Universal Basic Income.
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