My post last week about UBI had over 1,000 hits in just a
few days! In addition, it was shared across the internet, including the Basic
Income Reddit thread. Several readers reached out to me, both for and (a few)
against the concept. These interactions led me to write about the idea once
more, this time focusing on some key items that came up: demographics,
feasibility and housing.
On the demographics front, I found that most of the big supporters
of UBI are millennials and younger. This isn’t surprising, as they have the
most to lose if we do nothing about the rising costs of being alive in the US,
and the least to lose if we do change our economic policies from scarcity to
abundance. Millennials have come of age
in a terrible job market combined with huge student debt. Many of them live at
home, because they lack the basic income needed to launch an adult life. Their earnings-to-debt ratios define them as
a group. They will also be the ones to watch the job market automate
completely—more than 40% of them will be replaced by robots before the age of
retirement. Our future depends on this group of individuals, yet they need more
than a lucky break if they’re going to enter their mid-life as secure adults.
It’s no wonder that they support UBI, regardless of political background.
From conservatives to liberals, our twenty-somethings are searching for new
ways to build the world they’ll inherit. Universal Basic Income, combined with
technology, is not simply appealing, but necessary.
Yet how feasible is UBI? Readers on Reddit pointed out that
my suggested $30K per US adult would be twice our current budget! Yes, you’re
correct. I purposefully did NOT look at the current economic system when coming
up with that number. Instead, I looked at how much a person would need to
afford shelter, food and health care, in the majority of market spaces in the
US. Why would I do this? Because we can
never evolve out of our situation if we remain focused on CAN’T. We must use
our imaginations and find a way to overcome it. So I started with what we
need, and from there we shall create a world where our needs are met.
The US Government poverty guideline for a single household for 2015 is $11,770. This guideline is
used for determining whether or not you qualify for SNAP, welfare, Head Start
and a host of other programs. The point of UBI is to rid ourselves of having to qualify or prove that we lack our basic needs. Instead, our needs are covered
and we can turn our efforts towards bettering our lives beyond that, if we so
choose.
Some recommended a UBI of $12K, with an increase of $4K a
year per child, but that means you still need government help to get that roof
over your head and see the doctor, and eat, as well as leaving us in the strange situation where having a ton of kids in order to increase your income is desirable. Yes, $30K is twice that, but actually it turns
out I wasn’t far off. Numbeo.com puts the minimum monthly income to survive in
the US at $2,642.30, or $31704, after taxes. **note this actually includes clothing, utilities, transportation,
etc.**
Thus, if this is what’s needed, then the next step is to see
how to implement it. It’s obvious that currently we don’t collect enough money
to redistribute it in this way. In order
for us to truly take care of one another, we need a new story about money. The entire economic system may need an
overhaul, and this is what scares most people.
It’s not just the 1% who fear the overhaul. It’s anyone who
owns a home, pension plan or 401K. If we’re going to make UBI possible, it will
require rethinking housing, land ownership, and money.
Approximately 30% of our income each month goes towards
paying for housing. Land ownership has made this the most volatile of costs,
for as the housing market rises and falls, so do rents and the cost of living,
making it very difficult for wages to keep up. While health care and food costs do vary from state to state, it’s
housing that really drives the cost of living in any area. For example, the minimum hourly wage needed to afford a
two-bedroom apartment in California is $26.02, but in Illinois the amount is
$16.78. The reasons for the inflation are many, however most people find that
they can’t make enough, even in Illinois, to afford shelter. UBI would help
close this gap and make housing a given, rather than the most stressful part of
paying the bills.
In lieu of UBI, there are movements to create affordable
housing in the US. Tiny Home projects, like the Emerald Village, aim to help get low income folks into a home. This
idea really isn’t new, the housing projects of the 70’s and 80’s attempted to
do just this. Yet many low income housing projects turned into high-crime high-rises,
rather than clean, safe housing. There are many reasons for this, but at its
heart is the land ownership issue—how can the government create affordable
housing for the struggling yet still guarantee that the housing market doesn’t
tank? UBI helps in that the government stays out of the housing market and
supply and demand take over. Tiny, affordable houses can be purchased by those
who desire them, and McMansions can still spring up right next door.
The Venus Project
also tries to overcome these issues by combining technology with the idea of
inexpensive, affordable, sustainable communities in order to grant shelter,
food and health care to all. Once again,
the story of money must change in order for these ideas to be liberated.
Liberation from the story of money is what we really
seek. Since land ownership began, humanity has fallen into to classes--land lords and serfs. We’ve used
our brilliant minds to create a system where some thrive while most barely get
by. It surprises me that we haven’t moved on yet, that still so many suffer. What is the point of consciousness, if not
to figure out the puzzle of abundance? Why chain ourselves to scarcity,
when it just isn’t necessary?
In their book, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think, authors Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler focus the bottom
billion people—our brothers and sisters in the Third World who live on less
than $2 a day. Ironically, with advances is technology, these bottom billion
are now considered the rising billion. They aren’t mired in the world of Wall
Street finance, minimum wage wars and debt, like the working poor of America.
Instead, they barely get by at all. Yet in this huge poverty vacuum, there is
space for 3D printed houses, solar powered electricity, waterless toilets,
Lab-On-A-Chip medical technology and cheap smartphones. Combined with
microfinance and technophilanthropy, the bottom billion might just have a
fighting chance.
Thus it seems that the technical advancement of the Third
World will eventually grant them a guaranteed basic income. The two really do go
hand-in-hand.
Wouldn’t it be ironic
if America becomes the nation left behind?
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