James Giago Davies: It's time to make universal basic income a reality

Friday, February 15, 2019

A universal basic income

It’s time to make it reality
By James Giago Davies
Native Sun News Today Columnist
nativesunnews.today

Universal Basic income (UBI) is an idea that has been bounced around for years, and attempted in a few limited settings.

The idea is that an unconditional income is provided to every adult citizen, in addition to whatever else they might earn from whatever source(s) their income is normally derived. The hope is UBI will pull people from poverty, relieve enough stress and provide enough basic resources that they can make a better life for themselves.

Opponents claim it will make already shiftless people that much lazier, and make previously productive people consider laziness as a viable option to effort, and the UBI will be wasted on drugs and recreational pursuits. Limited experiments in many settings in many societies have shown that although unemployment among the select groups does increase slightly, less than five percent, it is more than offset by a boost in the local economy from the UBI money spent.

Taking a page from real life, we see where the Obama Administration bailed out the auto industry to the tune of some $80 billion, of which over $10 billion was never repaid. The industry immediately gave the very corporate knuckleheads who had put them in such financial calamity, bonuses.

The smart play, the very DO-ABLE play, was to hand that $80 billion out in vouchers to you and me, in fact, why not make it $160 billion, or $260 billion, to actually purchase product from the auto industry. This product could have been hybrid, dramatically cutting your fuel budget, and dramatically cutting our dependence on foreign oil, and dramatically cutting our contribution to climate change.

So, you would get a fuel efficient vehicle for pennies on the dollar, the auto industry would get their $80 billion by actually having to work for it. The auto industry could have borrowed the operating capital from the Federal Reserve, almost interest free, until they got back their $80 billion from voucher-generated profit.

None of this happened, because the rich don’t give a rip about us, and you continue to think that they do, that they are just you, but with lots of money. They have utter contempt for you, and for your comic book plan to someday, be one of them.