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Steve Bosserman

Y Combinator Learns Basic Income Is Not So Basic After All - 0 views

www.wired.com/...amp

universal basic income

shared by Steve Bosserman on 27 Aug 18 - No Cached
  • Steve Bosserman on 27 Aug 18
     
    "Altman says he's just as hopeful about the potential for basic income as he was in 2016. Guaranteed income could unlock incredible human potential, when people no longer have to worry about their basic needs, he says. Even with their basic needs met, people will still be motivated to work and be productive. "Human desire for status and other silly things is totally limitless," he says."
Steve Bosserman

Universal Basic Assets: A Smarter Fix Than Universal Basic Income? | Fast Forward | OZY - 0 views

www.ozy.com/...90019

universal basic assets uba income disparity

shared by Steve Bosserman on 01 Dec 18 - No Cached
  • For 40 years, Robert E. Friedman and his Washington-based nonprofit Prosperity Now have helped millions of people from economically vulnerable communities gain financial security and stability. Income disparity, however, has only grown across the United States. Now, the 69-year-old Friedman is arguing for a macroeconomic fix — and it doesn’t involve the government just doling out cash. Instead, he advocates giving everyone assets like savings, education and homeownership, instituting a system of universal basic assets (UBA). And Friedman isn’t alone.
  • As cities and countries across the world experiment with the currently in-vogue idea of universal basic income (UBI), a small but growing number of scholars, nonprofits and researchers are beginning to argue for an alternative framework for prosperity. At its heart, they’re pushing for a 21st-century version of the age-old proverb that it’s better to teach a man how to fish than to simply give him fish. Just four years ago, UBA as a modern concept was unknown. Today, it’s emerging as a challenger to UBI as a means to the same goal: less income disparity and greater opportunities for all.
  • It’s an idea that has appeal on both sides of the political aisle. Liberals are drawn to UBA’s “provide for everyone” ethos, while libertarians see it as a reason to cut the “safety net” of government subsidies like welfare and unemployment, says Friedman. The bipartisan appeal comes from the notion that asset-building gives people more options, says C. Eugene Steuerle, former deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury for Tax Analysis under President Ronald Reagan and co-founder of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. ”UBA is a middle-of-the-road policy,” he says. “It’s an ideal compromise between left and right because it promotes mobility and opportunity, and less dependence on government.”
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  • At the Institute for the Future, Gorbis is convinced that assets are a critical determinant of an individual’s resources, especially with the rise of the gig economy where many don’t have access to benefits like health insurance and retirement savings. “When you look at data, a lot of inequality is deeper than income — it’s also about debt,” she says, adding, “for poor people, housing is the main asset.” That’s why Gorbis suggests UBA should start with access to housing, but also include access to public resources like transit. If you can take public transit, you don’t need to own a car, she says. When basic assets were first discussed, the crowning jewel was land — upon which the Homestead Act was based. Then, all eyes turned to jobs as the ultimate means of security. Today, Gorbis says, we should begin to look at data. Access to data — the internet, online education and resources — significantly affects socioeconomic status.
Bill Fulkerson

Anatomy of an AI System - 1 views

anatomyof.ai

AI amazon

shared by Bill Fulkerson on 14 Sep 18 - No Cached
  • Bill Fulkerson on 14 Sep 18
     
    "With each interaction, Alexa is training to hear better, to interpret more precisely, to trigger actions that map to the user's commands more accurately, and to build a more complete model of their preferences, habits and desires. What is required to make this possible? Put simply: each small moment of convenience - be it answering a question, turning on a light, or playing a song - requires a vast planetary network, fueled by the extraction of non-renewable materials, labor, and data. The scale of resources required is many magnitudes greater than the energy and labor it would take a human to operate a household appliance or flick a switch. A full accounting for these costs is almost impossible, but it is increasingly important that we grasp the scale and scope if we are to understand and govern the technical infrastructures that thread through our lives. III The Salar, the world's largest flat surface, is located in southwest Bolivia at an altitude of 3,656 meters above sea level. It is a high plateau, covered by a few meters of salt crust which are exceptionally rich in lithium, containing 50% to 70% of the world's lithium reserves. 4 The Salar, alongside the neighboring Atacama regions in Chile and Argentina, are major sites for lithium extraction. This soft, silvery metal is currently used to power mobile connected devices, as a crucial material used for the production of lithium-Ion batteries. It is known as 'grey gold.' Smartphone batteries, for example, usually have less than eight grams of this material. 5 Each Tesla car needs approximately seven kilograms of lithium for its battery pack. 6 All these batteries have a limited lifespan, and once consumed they are thrown away as waste. Amazon reminds users that they cannot open up and repair their Echo, because this will void the warranty. The Amazon Echo is wall-powered, and also has a mobile battery base. This also has a limited lifespan and then must be thrown away as waste. According to the Ay
Steve Bosserman

Finland's Basic Income Pilot Was Never Really A Universal Basic Income - 0 views

www.fastcompany.com/...eally-a-universal-basic-income

universal basic income poverty finland

shared by Steve Bosserman on 28 Apr 18 - No Cached
  • The whole premise of a true universal income program is that people can be eligible to receive the supplemental payment regardless of whether or not they work. While the income threshold for receiving the benefit necessarily varies by context, generally the idea is to help people clear the poverty threshold wherever they live.
  • In contrast, a significant part of the appeal of true UBI programs now comes from the fact that jobs–especially for less highly skilled workers–have not proven to be an adequate source of economic stability. And with automation threatening to make low-skilled jobs like cashier or waiter redundant, we can’t continue to rely on jobs as a path out of poverty. A UBI could certainly enable people to work if they would like to, but the point of it is that economic well-being should be a guarantee for all, regardless of labor.
  • Since 1982, the Alaskan government has sent a check to every resident from an investment fund established with oil revenues. In 2015, when oil prices were high, the Alaska Dividend Fund sent every individual an annual check for $2,072, or $8,288 for a family of four. Nobody is arguing that this annual stipend is enough to live on, or to qualify as a true UBI (especially because it fluctuates with the price of oil), but it’s a proven model for how a government can collect and redistribute revenue. Perhaps, Marinescu says, Alaska could be instructive in how states could put a tax on carbon and use the revenues to boost incomes.
Bill Fulkerson

The Federal Job Guarantee Is Not Just "Better" Than a Universal Basic Income. It's the ... - 0 views

www.nakedcapitalism.com/...sal-basic-income-sinister.html

ubi

shared by Bill Fulkerson on 28 Apr 18 - No Cached
  • UBI adds money to the economy without increasing production or output. This is how you cause inflation: The creation of money without consideration of the real resources available to you.
  • FJG adds money to the economy by increasing productivity and output. This is how you avoid, or greatly reduce the severity of, inflation. It forces private industry and the military to up their game, in order to be competitive with the FJG: better than bare-minimum living wage, benefits, and working conditions.
  • If the FJG creates “busywork” pointless jobs, it is not a problem of the FJG itself, but rather a reflection of poor implementation of the FJG at the local level. There are basically an infinite number of genuinely useful things to be done at the local level, throughout the country.
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  • The fear of automation is nonsense. We should embrace automation. Robots can cook our cheeseburgers, wash our cars, and accept and dispense cash better and faster than humans. But robots cannot take care of our children or seniors, they cannot entertain us, create works of art, write our books, or be our primary care physicians or psychologists. Leave the more physically taxing and repetitive drudgery work to the robots. Leave the infinite number of more satisfying and productive jobs for us humans.
Steve Bosserman

Could a Basic Income Plan End Poverty in Washington, D.C.? - 0 views

undark.org/...yd-blog-universal-basic-income

universal basic income

shared by Steve Bosserman on 12 May 18 - No Cached
  • The 86-page report, from the District’s Office of the Budget Director, applies evidence-based methodology and economic forecasting to compare two approaches to alleviating poverty: a negative local income tax (similar to the federal earned-income tax credit for poor families) versus a straightforward cash grant, known as guaranteed or universal basic income (UBI for short).
  • “There are certainly a lot of advantages to a UBI program,” one of the researchers, Susanna Groves, a senior budget analyst for the city, said on a recent episode of “The Basic Income Podcast.” “It doesn’t have a social stigma attached to it. It provides a benefit for everyone and could really help. But what we found is that a negative income tax was a more feasible approach for the District to provide a minimum income benefit.”
Bill Fulkerson

Why a 400-Year Program of Modernist Thinking is Exploding | naked capitalism - 0 views

www.nakedcapitalism.com/...ernist-thinking-exploding.html

capitalism power society

shared by Bill Fulkerson on 11 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • Bill Fulkerson on 11 Mar 17
     
    " Fearless commentary on finance, economics, politics and power Follow yvessmith on Twitter Feedburner RSS Feed RSS Feed for Comments Subscribe via Email SUBSCRIBE Recent Items Links 3/11/17 - 03/11/2017 - Yves Smith Deutsche Bank Tries to Stay Alive - 03/11/2017 - Yves Smith John Helmer: Australian Government Trips Up Ukrainian Court Claim of MH17 as Terrorism - 03/11/2017 - Yves Smith 2:00PM Water Cooler 3/10/2017 - 03/10/2017 - Lambert Strether Why a 400-Year Program of Modernist Thinking is Exploding - 03/10/2017 - Yves Smith Links 3/10/17 - 03/10/2017 - Yves Smith Why It Will Take a Lot More Than a Smartphone to Get the Sharing Economy Started - 03/10/2017 - Yves Smith CalPERS' General Counsel Railroads Board on Fiduciary Counsel Selection - 03/10/2017 - Yves Smith Another Somalian Famine - 03/10/2017 - Yves Smith Trade now with TradeStation - Highest rated for frequent traders Why a 400-Year Program of Modernist Thinking is Exploding Posted on March 10, 2017 by Yves Smith By Lynn Parramore, Senior Research Analyst at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website Across the globe, a collective freak-out spanning the whole political system is picking up steam with every new "surprise" election, rush of tormented souls across borders, and tweet from the star of America's great unreality show, Donald Trump. But what exactly is the force that seems to be pushing us towards Armageddon? Is it capitalism gone wild? Globalization? Political corruption? Techno-nightmares? Rajani Kanth, a political economist, social thinker, and poet, goes beyond any of these explanations for the answer. In his view, what's throwing most of us off kilter - whether we think of ourselves as on the left or right, capitalist or socialist -was birthed 400 years ago during the period of the Enlightenment. It's a set of assumptions, a particular way of looking at the world that pushed out previous modes o
Steve Bosserman

The Future of the Labor Movement Rests on the Achievement of Unconditional Basic Income - 0 views

medium.com/...onal-basic-income-217f26500d83

universal basic income

shared by Steve Bosserman on 02 May 18 - No Cached
  • The ability for everyone to say “No” to any and all employers would have an undeniable effect on bargaining power. It’d mean greater profit sharing, higher wages, shorter days and/or weeks, improved working conditions, more flexibility, etc. UBI can even function as a universal strike fund.
  • Everyone should have the power to refuse to work for another as a condition for their existence. The right to exist is unconditional, and so no one has the right to command your wage labor with the threat of destitution.What unconditional basic income achieves is nothing less than profoundly historic. UBI is the declaration that all wage labor should be fully voluntary, all work, both paid and unpaid should be recognized, and that the goal of technology is to increase our control over our time.
Bill Fulkerson

It's Time for Technology to Serve all Humankind with Unconditional Basic Income - 1 views

medium.com/...onal-basic-income-e46329764d28

ubi technology

shared by Bill Fulkerson on 13 Apr 18 - No Cached
  • Steve Bosserman on 15 Apr 18
     
    Quick link to the speech Scott Santens mentions in his article Bill bookmarked: https://soundcloud.com/scottsantens/unconditional-basic-income-speech-by-scott-santens
Steve Bosserman

Want a more equal society? Universal Basic Income might not be the policy you are looki... - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...ncome-might-not-policy-looking

universal basic income

shared by Steve Bosserman on 04 May 18 - No Cached
  • Those who seek a radical departure from capitalism see UBI as part of a radical platform to move away from a world in which work is central to our lives, identities and economies. In their book Inventing the Future, Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek argue that UBI is a fundamental part of delivering a new economy in which citizens have much greater freedom over when and if they work.
  • What this shows is that for UBI to be a viable proposition at these levels, there would need to be a fundamental transformation in the ownership of the economy. Williams and Srnicek acknowledge this, arguing that UBI will only work in combination with large scale and collectively owned automation, a reduction in the working week and a shift in social attitudes around the value of the ‘work ethic’.
  • Action on relative poverty is important, and inequality is not cost free. As Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson show in their book ‘The Spirit Level’, countries with higher rates of inequality perform worse against a range of social outcomes – physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, obesity, social mobility, trust and community life.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • However, unless we are to engage in a radical economic transformation which drastically increases common ownership of economy, it is unlikely that Universal Basic Income on its own will do more than lock us into our current predicament. In the meantime, we need to look for equally radical policies which make a much more material difference to the lives of those on low incomes and who suffer from structural inequalities. Proponents of UBI need to go big or go home.
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