What Is Universal Basic Income?

Universal basic income. Universal basic income. I think it's going to be necessary.

So it means that unemployed people will be paid across the globe?

Yeah.

Because there is no job, machine, robot is taking over?

That's simply the— and I want to be clear, these are not things that I think, that I wish would happen. These are things, simply things that I think probably will happen. And since, if my assumption If my assessment is correct, and they probably will happen, then we need to say, what are we going to do about it? And I think some kind of a universal basic income is going to be necessary. Now, the output of growth will be extremely high. So with automation, there will come abundance.

Guaranteed minimum income for all people and for all families of our country. It seems to me that the civil rights movement must now begin to organize for the guaranteed annual income, begin to organize people all over our country and mobilize forces so that we can bring to the attention of our nation this need. And this is something which I believe will go a long, long way.

Fundamentally, by giving them money. With the positive income tax, you're entitled to a certain amount of personal exemptions and deductions, and above Above that amount, you pay tax. But suppose you have no income. Under a negative income tax, a fraction of your unused exemptions would be paid to you by the government, guaranteeing at least a minimum income. If you earned something, you'd still get a fraction of your unused exemptions, and you'd end up better off. As your earnings rose, the supplement to your income would become smaller and smaller until your earnings equaled your exemptions. At that point, you'd break even, neither paying tax nor receiving a subsidy. It's not an ideal system. It's not the system we might have liked to get into, but it's a system which would have the effect of eliminating the separation of the society into those who receive and those who pay, a separation that tends to destroy the whole social fabric. It would mean that we could— that we could each of us— social fabric. It would mean that we could— that we could each of us take advantage of opportunities that opened up without fearing that if by some chance we lost our jobs, it would be a long time before we could get back on assistance. It would be a system that would give all of us an incentive gradually to improve our lives, would perhaps enable us over time to work ourselves out of the kind of mess we've gotten ourselves into, a mess we've gotten themselves into for the very best of motives, but with the very worst of results.

Ladies and gentlemen, today I'd like to share a big idea with you. In fact, I believe it could be one of the biggest ideas of the 21st century. It's an idea that could unite politicians from the left to the right in fixing our broken social security system. It's an idea that could give dignity to millions and accomplish what we should have accomplished long ago, especially in our rich and wealthy countries: eradicating poverty. But first, I have to be honest with you. It's actually not my idea. No, in fact, it's the idea of this man, Thomas Paine, who sadly wasn't able to make it today because, well, he died 200 years ago. But it was also the idea of these guys, some of history's greatest thinkers. Now I can hear you think, what kind of idea could unite men so different, such as the civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King on the one hand, and the free market economist Milton Friedman on the other hand? What kind of idea could unite thinkers so different, such as Thomas Paine, who thought that the government is the solution to most of our problems, and on the other hand, Friedrich von Hayek, the Austrian economist who said that, well, the government that history's greatest thinkers have been dreaming about for centuries, yet which has failed to come true so far? Well, some people call it the citizen's dividend. Other people call it the basic income. Now, I like to call it free money for everyone. Now that sounds good, right? I know it obviously also sounds like a utopian fantasy, something that will never come true, especially not in our lifetime. But I want to remind you beforehand, utopias have a tendency of coming true. Just think of how the end of slavery, equal rights for men and women, and democracy, they were all regarded as impossible ideals once.

But in history, Welcome back to the channel. I hope you're all having a great day. So we want to answer a question today on what is Universal Basic Income. If you clicked on this video, you've probably heard the term, but what is it exactly? So the beginning of our video kind of gives you an idea of what this is exactly, why so many people champion it, and the reasons why Um, but what we're going to do in this video is try to, at a very basic level, explain what universal basic income is and, um, hopefully try to distinguish between the various types of it, which sometimes get confused, uh, as generally what universal basic income is. And I think that's why it can be a bit complicated as to exactly what it is for some people. So let's start with the very basic idea of universal basic income. Obviously, it's some type of income you're going to receive every month, and generally the idea is it's free. Now, we use the term free loosely, and it's led some of us to better champion terms like dividend. So if you can kind of understand what a dividend is, you get an idea of what universal basic income is, right? Think of a dividend that an investor might gain from some stock holding, um, which is basically a payment generally from a surplus or abundance of what a company has made, right? Um, now this surplus is then rewarded back to all of the participants and investors. Universal basic income, or what people like Thomas Paine, a conservative American champion, calling it the citizen's dividend, is best described as that— a dividend from citizens as the group who makes the country better, the group better, and they're rewarded back from all the surplus that as a group they've created, right? I think that's one of the best explanations of what universal basic income is. And that's why I feel like terms like free money harms the idea of universal basic income, makes the idea worse. Right, makes it not compute with many people. If you think in terms of— let's give an example of a business that's paying its, um, workers, uh, dividends in that business. In that job, there may be different contributions going out to every person in that job. And every person in that job may actually be doing, um, a different level of work or contributing less than the other, or, uh, the job may be less paying, right, or something. But the way a dividend works is, as a whole, as the group contributes, everybody receives the same thing. Uh, based, uh, that's why, um, when dividends are sent out, it's sent out in relation to the stock, right? The stock you hold. Whether you're a janitor on the job or whether you're whatever your, your job position is, or you're the CEO of the company, um, we hear stories about, uh, many people becoming wealthy in companies simply because they were participants and they were part of the whole to make that better, right? If you live in a prosperous country, if you live in a rich country with a surplus, being a citizen of that country in one form or another, you have contributed to that, to that group. You contributed to the success of that country, right? Now you might go, well, I haven't done much. But it's more about the group, right? The group functioning as a whole to success. Think of it like a sports franchise, an NFL team, an NBA team, right? We know that we have our star athletes on that team, but when a Super Bowl is won, when a World Cup series is won, Right? When an NBA championship title is won, everyone on that team gets a championship ring, right? There is no championship ring that is less valuable than the other. So I think in terms like that, that's a good way to think about universal basic income in the form of a dividend. And that's why ideas like dividend test better than universal basic income. Free money, basic income, because it gives off the idea that people are getting some for free, yet they're not producing. We want to stay on course with universal basic income and helping to explain this also in the way that in universal basic, income. Um, the universal means everybody, right? And sometimes there's confusion about who gets it. Oftentimes people think that people are rich and they don't need it, but they misunderstand the concept of universal basic income. It is not a type of welfare system. Universal basic income is No one is under the stigma of not being accepted into the program or being, uh, the, the option to the program being available to them, right? This is an, um, equal for all type program, right? Um, and I think that's very important that we do not misunderstand what this is, right? This is a universal program for every citizen. It's not a welfare program. It's not a bringing aid to certain groups programs. Those type programs exist for various reasons, and this is not what universal basic income is about, right? Um, so it's important to understand that and not confuse that. Uh, the confusion as well is that things are being labeled universal basic income that I feel shouldn't be. For example, a very popular experiment done in Finland was given to low-income people, people on welfare, people without jobs, to see what they would do with universal basic income, with a basic income every month. The problem is That plays out more like a welfare system than universal basic income. It's very important that we don't confuse the ideas of these. And for me, that made the experiment in Finland void. Some people still rely on it, and although it did yield some positive results, I still would say that that is not what universal basic income is. Universal basic income is not about punishing rich people and saying that they shouldn't get the money because they don't need it. That's beyond the principle and that's beyond the concept. Also, we have to understand that Universal Basic Income— a big part of the economic stimulus behind Universal Basic Income has nothing to do with giving money to the poor or downtrodden people or people in need. That's not what it's about. The stimulus actually occurs as well from encouraging people who have money to spend and overall it could produce a prosperous economy. The big mistake is people again confuse, uh, universal basic income as some type of socialistic system. That is incorrect. Thomas Paine was quite conservative. Many conservatives have championed the idea. In fact, conservatives seemingly appreciate universal basic income more than most policies out there when it comes to helping, uh, people who are finding themselves in difficult times. And that is because many conservatives feel that the mismanagement of funds comes from the government and it not being their money, and have not much of a problem with money being handed directly to citizens to spend. The immediate injection of cash to citizens' hands when it comes to economic stimulus generally works better than any other option. I hope this gives you a better, clearer idea of what universal basic income is. I want to— and let's go into real quick some of the reasons why we might need it, right? Why it may not be a choice. Why we don't feel it's a choice. The first reason is the period we're living in now and the pandemic we're trying to get out of. Look at the devastation it did to the job markets, right? People needed to find a way to support themselves and work. It is, um, ideas like universal basic income, giving, injecting money directly into people's hands, that has eased the pressure of that. Unfortunately, that's not the end. Predicted in the next 5 to 10 years, 47% of major jobs that we do will be displaced and done by workers. We can see it now happening around us from self-checkout lines to automation to Amazon to a variety of things and businesses we see closing down due to either online algorithms that sell products, speaking to your Alexa and it ordering for you, possibly speaking to another robot that's taking an order, driverless cars replacing truck drivers, and it just goes on and on, right? Any type of repetitive work And beyond that, even getting up to psychology and law are in danger, are in danger, professional-level jobs. Now, the next part is, what is the best type of UBI? And which one should we be using if we're really going to address this issue? I would say that it is the UBI that is not government-run. What are some of the problems with government-run UBI? It can be controlled by the government, the citizens can be controlled by it, and it can be shut down. But what if I were to tell you there was a way that UBI could function and that it didn't need to be shut down? If I could tell you a way that UBI could function and that it couldn't be shut down. And that's due to blockchain technology. And what if I told you today, right now, you can start earning some of that money, some of that universal basic income, earning it right now today by using our site absolutely free, BitcoinMYK. You can get a wallet and actually start earning money Watch our video series, we'll show you exactly how to use it, how to spend it. If you can use PayPal, if you use Cash App, you will be able to use this product and you don't have to worry about it being shut down. If you'd like more information about BitcoinMYK, how you get registered today, how you get started today, keep a lookout on our description. You can also, uh, join our website and you can be in line to start receiving UBI. Get a wallet, use our referral code BitcoinMYK. You'll actually earn money today without delay, without wait. So make sure you subscribe to our channel, watch it, um, and I think we're going to really love the direction this is going in. That's all I want to say in this video. If you like content like this, don't forget to like, subscribe, And until next time, take care.