Since you are a citizen, consider that from this date onwards, about $ 1,000 will be credited to your bank account on the first day of every month. This is your basic income, independent of all other sources of income, and guarantees a monthly starting salary that crosses the poverty line for the rest of your life. 

 How are you? Perhaps more importantly, what are you not doing? How does this solid foundation of economic security and positive freedom influence current and future decisions, from the work of choice to the relationships and risks cultivated? This idea is called unconditional or basic income or UBI. It’s like social security for everyone, and for a variety of consistent reasons, it’s rooted around the world and throughout the political spectrum. Widening inequality, decades of wage stagnation, lifelong careers turning into less-than-hour tasks, breakthroughs in technologies such as robots and deep neural networks, potentially replacing half of the human workforce World-changing events such as Brexit and  Donald Trump’s elections that will be able to more than that shows that we need to permanently guarantee at least a certain income to everyone. 

 

 An equal opportunity promise 

 

 “Basic income” is sufficient to meet basic needs as a permanent low-income limit that no one falls below, and is only granted in an emergency or only to those who have passed the aptitude test used. It replaces many of today’s temporary benefits. UBI is a promise of equal opportunity, not an equal result, and will be a new starting line beyond the poverty line. You may be surprised to learn that partial UBI has existed in Alaska since 1982 and that a version of Basic Income was experimentally tested in the United States in the 1970s. The same is true for Canada, where the city of Dauphin has succeeded in eradicating poverty for five years. Recently, complete UBI experiments have been conducted in  Namibia, India, Brazil, etc. Other countries follow suit. Finland, the Netherlands, and Canada are conducting state-funded experiments to compare with existing programs. Organizations such as Y Combinator and Give Directly have begun privately funded experiments in the United States and East Africa, respectively.  I know what you are thinking. That’s what most people think when they’re new to ideas. Would you like to give everyone money by doing nothing? It’s incredibly expensive and sounds both a great way to encourage people to do nothing. Well, that may sound counter-intuitive, but in both cases the exact opposite is true. Incredibly expensive is the lack of basic income. The motivation for people to work is, on the one hand, not to spend money on work, and on the other hand, not money.

 

Basic income is expressed in numbers 

 The idea of ​​basic income tends to go awry, and this is true for many economists, but not all, it’s a net transfer. Similarly, if each household pays a different amount of tax in exchange for UBI, it costs less than $ 20 to give someone $ 20 for $ 10, $ 12,000 for all adult citizens, and $ 4,000 for all children. It costs less than $ 3 trillion to give. Instead, it costs about 30% of that, or about $ 900 billion. This will soon be redundant with the new transfer, before the full or partial integration of tax credits with other programs. In other words, if a person has a $ 4,000 tax increase to pay UBI $ 12,000, that person’s UBI cost is $ 8,000 instead of $ 12,000, and another person who has risen $ 20,000 to pay his $ 12,000. Comes from. However, the integration of safety nets and BGE tax law can further reduce overall prices, which is still not entirely true.

This thought of replacing existing programs may frighten some as much as appeal to others, but it is not all or nothing: partial consolidation is conceivable. Because most seniors already get a basic income through social security, they could choose between the two, or a component of their social security might be transformed into basic income as an example of partial consolidation. In either case, no senior would earn a penny less than they do currently, and the UBI cost might be decreased by around $220 billion. Meanwhile, food and nutrition guidance ($108 billion), wage subventions ($72 billion), child tax ($56 billion), momentary guidance for struggling families ($17 billion), and the home personal exemption (which mostly benefits the wealthy anyway, at a cost of at least $70 billion per year) are just a few examples of existing revenue that could and should be fully consolidated into UBI. That is $543 billion spent on UBI rather than all of the above, which is only a portion of the whole list, none of which must be healthcare or education.

 

So how much does it cost? 

 

As a result, the true net cost of UBI in the US is closer to the need for additional tax revenue of several hundred billion dollars – or less – subject to many design choices made and many ideas over that financial account. in a way that many might like, that also treats citizens like their shareholders (almost all basic research is funded by taxpayers) and that can even reduce taxes on labor by focusing more on capital, consumption, and externalities rather than wages and salaries. In addition, we could eliminate  $540 billion in tax spending that is currently disproportionately distributed to the richest, as well as a portion of the $850 billion spent on defense. 

 Thus, a universal basic income is perfectly affordable, and Milton Friedman essentially taxes negative income  (and he knows this himself), on those who earn below a certain amount. will receive additional income, and those earning above a certain level are taxed on the additional income. . RUB does not exist outside of the tax system unless it is provided by pure monetary expansion or non-governmental means. In other words, yes, Bill Gates will also get $12,000, but as one of the richest billionaires in the world, he will have to pay over $12,000 in new taxes to pay for it. However, this is not true for the bottom 80% of  US households, who will pay the same amount or less in total taxes. 

  To some, this may seem unnecessary. Why give someone money they don’t need and then tax their other income? Think of it this way: is it a waste to fasten seat belts in every car instead of just the cars of those involved in an accident, which proves they need to wear a seat belt? Good drivers never get into an accident, right? So it doesn’t seem necessary. But that’s not because we recognize the ridiculous costs of determining who needs and doesn’t wear seat belts and the incalculable costs of being wrong. We also realize that accidents don’t just happen to “bad” drivers. They can happen to anyone, at any time, just by accident. Accordingly, seat belts for everyone.  

 The truth is that the costs of those with inadequate basic incomes are numerous and overall enormous. This weighs heavily on the health system. This places a heavy burden on the criminal justice system. This weighs heavily on the education system. It weighs heavily on potential entrepreneurs, it weighs both on productivity and on consumer purchasing power and therefore on the economy as a whole. The total cost of all these burdens is more than $1 trillion per year, and thus several hundred billion additional net  UBI costs have to pay for themselves many times over. This is a general calculation.

 

Real effects on motivation 

 

 But what about those who then choose not to work? Isn’t that also a huge burden? Well, this is where things get interesting. On the one hand, conditional benefits create an incentive for work by eliminating benefits in response to paid work. If accepting any paid job leaves someone with only marginally better benefits, or even worse, what’s the point? With basic income, all income from paid work (after taxes) is considered supplementary income, so people are always better off in total income, no matter how much they work, rather than full-time, part-time or part-time. request. As such, a basic income discourages people from working. It eliminates the current jobs that are not encouraged by the conditional social allowance. 

 Fascinatingly, the enhanced offers are where Basic Income shines. Motivation studies show that monetary activities are a good motivator for mechanical work, but a poor motivator for creative work. Combine that with the fact that creative work should be what remains after most of the mechanical work is left to machines, and we envision a future where more and more work is left to machines. people don’t get better because money pays. , but capital is to pursue larger goals. It’s the difference between doing useless work for money and using the money for meaningful work. 

 Thus, the basic income that facilitates the future of work and even recognizes all the intrinsically motivated unpaid work in progress can be amplified, for example, in the form of 700 billion dollars of unpaid work done by informal carers who come to the United States each year, and all of the free/open-source software  (FOSS) movement’s activity, which is entirely indispensability of the Internet. 

 There is also another way that Basic Income can affect work motivations, which is rarely discussed and somewhat theoretical. UBI has the potential to make workers better suited to jobs, significantly increase engagement and even transform jobs themselves through the power UBI offers to deny them.

 

A truly free labor market  

 

How many people are not satisfied with their jobs? According to Gallup, globally, only 13% of people with jobs feel engaged with them. In the United States, 70% of workers are either unemployed or actively working, resulting in an estimated $500 billion in lost productivity each year. Low engagement is even associated with a reluctance to donate money, volunteer, or help others. It significantly erodes social cohesion.  At the same time, some unemployed people want to work, but jobs are taken by people who don’t want to be there. It is an inevitable result of needing a job to live. With no real choice, people do work they don’t want to do because the money may not be enough – but still better than nothing – and then stick to that paying job despite the fact. is that they “work poorly” and/or don’t engage. It was a mess. 

 

  Basic income – per 100 people 

 

 Implement an economy without UBI. We’ll call it Country A. There are 80 jobs for every 100 working-age adults. Half of the workforce isn’t busy with their jobs, and half are unemployed, half of whom want to work, but, as in the musical chair game, they find themselves without a chair. 

Basic income fundamentally alters this fact. By providing unconditional income in addition to work, people can refuse to do jobs they are not interested in. This in turn opens up jobs for unemployed workers who will be hired by them. It also gives people bargaining power to negotiate better terms. How many jobs would become more attractive if they paid more or required fewer hours? How will this reorganization of the labor supply affect productivity if the rate of idle labor falls sharply? How much additional prosperity will that create? 

 Now consider a basic income economy. Let’s call it Nation B. For every 100 working-age adults there are still 80 jobs, at least start. The laid-back workforce is saying ‘no thanks to the inherent job market, which allows 50 people who want to work to get the job they want. To attract people who demand higher pay or shorter workweeks, some employers have raised their salaries. Others reduce the number of hours required. The result is a transformed labor market with more engaged,  employed, better paid, and more productive workers. Fewer people are excluded and perhaps more opportunities for all workers to become independent contractors. Simply put,  basic income improves the labor market by making it optional. The transition from a force to a free market means that employers must attract employees with better wages and more flexible working hours. It also means a more productive workforce that is likely to avoid the need for market-distorting minimum wage laws. Friction can even be reduced, so people can easily move from one job to another, or from one job to another, education/retraining to work, or even work. from one job to another. 

 Better yet, automating low-demand jobs is encouraged by rising wages. Work that humans refuse to do for less than it would cost a machine  to make it machine work. And thanks to these displaced workers having a basic income, they are not simply left in the labor market’s ongoing musical chair game. Instead, they are better able to find new work, paid or unpaid, full-time or part-time, that suits them best.

 

The top of a big iceberg 

 

 The idea of ​​a basic income sounds simple, but in reality, it’s like an iceberg with a lot to reveal as you go deeper. Its overall price in the form of investing in human capital for a much larger return, and its impact on what drives us are only glimpses into those depths. . They are many more. Some things are already known, such as the positive impact on social cohesion and physical and mental health, as evidenced by a 42% decrease in the crime rate in Namibia and an 8 drop in hospital admissions. 5% in Dauphin, Manitoba. Debt tends to decrease gradually. Entrepreneurship tends to grow. Other effects have yet to be explored by further experiments. But growing evidence on cash transfers, in general, indicates that basic income is something far more transformative for the future of work than its long history has been. imagine. 

 It’s like a Monopoly game where the winning teams have rewritten the rules so that players no longer collect money for passing Go. The rule change has the effect of kicking people out of the market. Basic income fixes that. But it’s not just a tool to improve markets by making them more inclusive;  something more fundamental is happening. 

 People need security to thrive, and basic income is the secure economic foundation – the new foundation to transform the precarious present and build a more solid future. That doesn’t mean it’s a silver bullet. That our problem is not unsolvable. Poverty is not a supernatural enemy, nor is it extreme inequality or the threat of massive income loss due to automation. These are just options. And at any time, we can choose to create new ones.  

 Based on the evidence we already have and will likely continue to accumulate, I strongly believe that one of those options should be an unconditional basic income as a new equal starting point for all. everyone.