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Unconditional Basic Income – an Economic Model for a New Renaissance
24th November 2014
Guest Writer for Wake Up World
How can we solve poverty and boost the economy without causing massive environmental damage?
Here’s how. It’s called a Unconditional Basic Income (UBI).
The fundamental challenge today is that we need redefine the value of work. We need to stop relying on corporations to create jobs. That’s not what they do. They exist solely to create profit. They do this by lowering wages and/or decreasing the number of workers (jobs) required to get that profit. Yet both left and right leaning governments continue to try to induce corporates (through tax breaks and other programs) into creating jobs and/or raising wages.
But corporations don’t create jobs or raise wages. This is a misguided ideology. Instead, corporationstake this ‘corporate welfare’ and hoard the profits in offshore tax havens, getting richer while the country (and others like it) goes deeper and deeper into debt. This ideology has never worked, and it never will.
So let’s get real…
It is a mathematical fact that this ideology does not provide enough jobs (or wages) for the population … period. Unemployment is built into our current model.
It is also a fact that consumers create jobs, not corporations, because no jobs are created if no one buys products. Consumer demand = employment.
It’s time for the “Third Way”…
The U.S. Basic Income Network defines the UBI as “… an unconditional,government-insured guarantee that all citizens will have enough income to meet their basic needs.” [1] While it may sound radical to some people, the idea of a UBI is not new. In fact, English lawyer, social philosopher, author and statesman Thomas More proposed it in his work Utopia in 1516. [2]
This one, simple economic change could solve inequality, homelessness, poverty, unemployment, welfare, pensions and the minimum wage issue all at once, reverse the effects of recession almost overnight and take huge amounts of pressure off the environment and ourselves. It’s this ‘Third Way’ that can break the Left/Right ideological impasse. (Relying on banks and corporations to create jobs is an economic ideology that has proven itself futile.) It supports innovation by allowing corporations (including small businesses) to focus on their trade and frees them from having to provide social services and jobs. It also frees people from living under the thumb of state-run social programs, such as welfare programs and oppressive work situations, reducing bureaucracy in the process.
Most importantly, it recognizes the value of the myriad unpaid work that is done every day by parents, grandparents, volunteers, artists, musicians, writers, students, friends etc.
It would immediately take stress off the environment because people would not be forced to drive en masse to meaningless jobs and make useless widgets for a living. They could afford to buy organic food, and support organic agriculture. They could make ecological lifestyle decisions because they would not be forced to buy the cheapest of the cheap. The planet and the people on it would heave a massive sigh of relief.
As an Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) system, everyone gets the same amount, roughly the equivalent of a US $10 per hour job. Everyone gets it, rich or poor, working or not, and there’s no means testing, so NO new bureaucracies.
But this is not socialism! People can choose to work and can make as much money as they want toabove the UBI, so capitalism remains intact.
The simplicity of the idea is its beauty. The UBI has been supported by both left and right leaning politicians as a way to eliminate poverty and avoid violent revolution. [3] [4] [5] Both Milton Friedman and Martin Luther King supported the idea of a Basic Income.
Switzerland will soon hold a referendum on this. If it passes, it could herald a new day for humanity. [6]
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