2noame

I wrote about this when it started:

https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/marshall-islands-just-im...

FYI, so far it has barely impacted inflation there or to quote, "zero or very minimal."

https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/sundayextra/universal...

Meanwhile, here is a growing list of people who feel UBI is absolutely necessary in response to AI.

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/the-ai-pledge-for-humani...

The tech sector needs to start putting resources into getting UBI going ASAP. Just mentioning UBI here and there isn't good enough.

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/the-ai-pledge-for-humani...

Poor understanding of UBI. It's a floor. A foundation. All income is earned on top of it. It does nothing to discourage work, unlike welfare that disappears with work. UBI is activating. It is empowering. People fund the work that's best for them, paid or unpaid. They start their own business. They go to school to learn something. They pursue volunteer work and caring for others.

Over and over again, the evidence shows that UBI is activating not demotivating. No one wants to do nothing. People want to feel like they are contributing to society in some way. And people definitely want to earn as much as they can to spend what they want to spend.

UBI is not the only thing we need to do. It is just a key thing we need to do because it makes other things easier to do. It's the bottom of Maslow's pyramid. It's money to buy boots with straps. It reduces poverty, insecurity, and inequality. That leads to less crime, better health, and more productivity. The spending of UBI creates jobs. It grows the economy due to people with lower incomes spending it mostly locally on local goods and services.

If you don't support UBI, you either don't understand it, refuse to study the mountain of evidence, or simply distrust others and/or want to control them.

UBI is the power to say no. It is power to the People. It is a redistribution of power. People will use that power in so many good ways you can't imagine and aren't giving them credit for.

UBI is the correct answer. It is not the only answer. But it is a very important one.

This is a silly piece that makes a false assumption after false assumption. It's just not the case that UBI creates excess inflation. It can, but in order to do so, it has to be designed in a particular way in a particular economic environment.

This piece of mine gets into the variables to consider:

https://www.scottsantens.com/17-key-variables-that-determine...

As a counterpoint to this article, I suggest this one written by a Marxist back in 2015.

https://jacobin.com/2015/12/erik-olin-wright-real-utopias-an...

Articles like this are so annoying and no surprise coming from a Manhattan Institute guy.

Of course UBI is effective. We have hundreds of studies to look at to determine this, not just two.

The NYT article was shit too. It's one thing to say that $333/mo of UBI to a family of 2 or more didn't appear to have brain development impacts that were measurable within the first few years of life. It's another to say UBI isn't effective.

We know that a guaranteed monthly income floor has all kinds of positive impacts especially on kids, and especially if kids are prevented from living in poverty for their entire childhood.

Read a 30-year study like this article covers.

https://archive.ph/ps8k1

And never forget that a key component of UBI is universality. It's one thing to study the impact on an individual. It's another to test the impact on an entire community.

In the Dauphin pilot where an entire town got it, crime went down 15%, violent crime went down 37%, and hospitalization rates went down 9%. You aren't going to find stuff like that in any pilot that isn't a saturation pilot testing universality.