Here I will keep my up-today main comments on Universal Basic Income (UBI)

Years ago I wrote: “We need decent and worthy unemployments”. With ever growing structural unemployment threatening, I am sure that a Universal Basic Income is a fundamental tool for achieving that. 

Here follows my current thinking on UBI:

Universal Basic Income eats directly into the redistribution profiteers’ franchise value, and so they will be its strongest opponents. Their opposition can take many forms, like that of enthusiastically supporting UBI, but cleverly backstabbing it at any possible opportunity. We must always be alert!

There are some fundamental mistakes that could kill UBI, even after its inception, and so therefore we must see to that the enemy does not exploit any of its possible Achilles’s heels.

1. UBI is strictly for the population of working age. Children and elderly have their very specific needs that should be satisfied with different tools.

2. UBI shall strictly be related to working conditions, like 70% of the lowest fulltime salary; and NOT to any poverty related threshold.

3. UBI needs to be 100% funded with real and clearly identifiable sources of income, and not with any debts. One possibility is to apply to robots and similar automations those payroll taxes and similar that applies to humans. As am added benefit that would also allow for a more efficient allocation of labor/capital resources.

4. The more UBI is funded by sources linked to other socially relevant matters, like from carbon taxes to help stop pollution, the better.

5. UBI must always be kept as a citizen to citizens affair and so, ideally, it should be enshrined in some type of constitutional protection, so that populists trying to serve their own ambitions do not capture it.

http://myubi.blogspot.com

Here some disorderly loose cannon questions about life in the just around the corner Robot/Automation La-La-Land

The more varied and crazy questions we pose, the better chance we have to prepare ourselves... and so, in no special order, here we go with some tweet-sized ones!!!

When Mexicans, Chinese and American compete for the jobs the robots are taking, is that not just a Lilliput/Blefuscu war?

If you built that Mexico wall who would benefit the most, the U.S. low-skill workers, or the robots?

Why is how to handle jobs being productively taken over by robots/automation, not sufficiently high on our agendas?

Who will be able to separate delivery robots with good intentions from those with bad ones?

How will net salaries not paid to robots be used: Lower prices, higher salaries, bonuses or dividends?

And when robots substitute for humans, what are the consequences for a nations tax base?

Should we tax robots low enough for these to do all possible jobs for us humans, or high enough for us humans to remain competitive for the jobs? (I guess that if in Sweden they could respond with a not so helpful “Tax them lagom”)

Should we allow 3rd class robots, only because of unfair competition, like no payroll taxes, to replace humans?

Since it is hard to define the work of robots, in order for humans to to compete with these for jobs on a level playing field, and for production to be structured in the most economical way, it would seem that current payroll taxes need to be eliminated... or;

Since payroll taxes help finance programs such as Medicare, should we not impose payroll taxes on robots?

Is not falling working-age population numbers quite irrelevant with so many robots volunteering to work? 

When 2nd class robots don’t cut it, how to we assure ourselves we get the 1st class ones?

The higher the minimum wage for humans, the more jobs for robots. Are those predicating higher minimum salaries just lobbyists contracted by robot manufacturers?

No minimum wages for humans. Those are just subsidies to robots. Robots must compete, so that we get the best robots.

Having your nation being “Second” is livable, but is having your robots not being “First” that?

The better the robots, the more we lose human jobs, the more the need of a Universal Basic Income (UBI). Are we prepared?

Universal Basic Income threatens the redistribution profiteers so they will try to stop it. How can we stop them?

The lower trade tariffs and human salaries are, the more competition do robot manufacturers face. Is that good?

The higher the trade tariffs and human salaries are, the more will robot manufacturers profit. Is that good?

The better the robot, the more it can produce for us, but the more human jobs it can take from us. So what do we do?

In order to force our robots to become 1st class, do we not need to tax them, a lot? 

If land A has the better robots how can B compete: with tariffs or with lower dividends, salaries, bonuses and UBIs?

If my grandchildren’s future depends on the quality of their robots, is it really a sin to engage in some industrial espionage?

To who does robot productivity that supplants human productivity belong: to all, or to the 0.00000001 percenters?

How can I help my grandchildren to be needed as sane and happy humans, in tomorrows’ Robot/Automation-land?

With so much automation possibilities, how does one answer “Grandfather what to you think I should study?”

What are unions to do with a shrinking labor base? Will tomorrows CEO’s need a union? What if robots want to unionize?

With unions vigorously defending the employed, their clientele, don't the unemployed need to create their own unions? 

What’s better intelligent artificial intelligence or sort of dumb artificial intelligence we can still sort of better control?

In case Artificial Intelligence becomes too intelligent for our own good, should we put some dumbing brakes on it?

I can’t wait for artificial intelligence to take over from those dumb human bank regulators who believe that what’s perceived risky is more dangerous to our bank system than what is ex ante perceived as safe.

When supplanted by robots how can we avoid being thought of as an unneeded human surplus?

Will drones and robot soldiers send the drill sergeants home? 

If we humans are supplanted by robots, are we doomed to join Jethro Tull’s “Heavy Horses” in retirement? 

What if we had a thousand times more of more capable robots, would that not make it so much easier to stay home fighting coronavirus?

PS. 3D house printers also classify as robots

 

PS. We need decent and worthy unemployments

PS. Let robots make us an offer we can't refuse

PS. My Universal Basic Income 

Where are those Mexicans? (and the robot is laughing)

Canada: A Universal Basic Income, should never be more than a step-ladder to help reach up to the real economy.

Had Venezuela’s oil revenues over the last 15 years been distributed directly to the Venezuelans by means of a (in this case a variable) Universal Basic Income (UBI), instead of by redistribution profiteers, the poorest of my homeland would have received at least six times more of it, and the country would not be so close to being a totally failed state.

Be sure, the best way to increase the efficiency of our citizen-to-citizen solidarity, everywhere, is to avoid the redistribution profiteers’ tolls.

I am not a Canadian but I have two Canadian granddaughters, and so I have a vested interest in Canada’s future. I firmly believe that a UBI is a very important tool in order to meet many actual and future social and economic challenges.

But the number one objection to a UBI, and which your local redistribution profiteers will try to argue in order to keep their franchise, is that it could reduce the willingness for work.

In this respect, and referring to Andre Picard’s “Basic income is not just about work, it’s about health” Globe and Mail, November 8, I believe that the UBI to be tested, should not be set as is proposed as 75% of low income measure before tax (LIM-BT), $1,320, but as a percentage of the salary you could obtain working, for instance 60% at the minimum salary level. As I calculate it, that would yield $1,100.

For me the biggest benefit of UBI is as a step-ladder that facilitates reaching up to that gig-economy that seems to have arrived as a fixed feature. We do need worthy and decent unemployments.

UBI should never be seen as lifting anyone out of poverty but allowing millions to lift themselves out of poverty.

UBI has much less to do with human rights, "doing good", than with an intelligent society organizing itself for challenging times, "doing smart".

UBI should always be a beautiful citizens to citizens affair. At no moment should it be soiled by referring to it as a government handout. 

Of course UBI has to be funded with real money, no cheating paying it with inflation or public debt. Besides natural savings in the redistribution costs, one interesting alternative is the use of revenues from high carbon taxes. That would align the incentives between the fights for a better environment and against inequality.

PS. Joking but not really joking: Perhaps a payroll tax on robots and driverless cars could also be used as funding mechanism; that would also help us humans workers to be able to compete on a more level playing field.

http://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-wealthy-and-poor-should-all-be.html

http://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2016/10/how-to-start-discussions-and.html