Universal Basic Income—The Foundation of a Technically Advanced Society, PART TWO

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?

One Nation, Left Behind

My sister lives in Phoenix, Arizona. This time of the year it’s damn hot. Sometimes it’s 110 degrees. Luckily my sister lives in an apartment that came completely wired to the electrical grid. At no effort on her part, except to work and pay the bill, she can turn on the AC and is able to sleep in what would otherwise be an unreasonable temperature.

Modern life in America is a miracle we often take for granted. But it doesn’t stop with electricity.

Did you know that in my house, at no extra effort on my part, I can make a phone call? This is incredibly handy, especially if it’s my mother’s birthday. Even better, if there’s an emergency, I can dial 911 and instantly be transferred to an operator who’ll send an ambulance.

Again, I did nothing to make this happen. It’s just a part of American life.

As a matter of fact, our nation is one of the few where most people, even the lower class, have access to electricity, roads, hospitals and telephones. Yet this state of commonwealth is not one of mere happenstance. The phones and electrical wires didn’t just install themselves to houses across the nation. In 1910 there were 5.8 million telephone lines in the nation. By 1948, the 30 millionth phone was connected in the United States and by 1980 there were 175 million telephone subscribers.

The same story can be told about electricity. Already in the late 1800’s, cities had begun to install electricity to make life easier for those who could afford it. But by 1910, only about 10% of the farms had electricity. By 1945, after various legislative acts, almost 50% were wired up. Today, 95% of our rural areas have electricity, and more than 50% of the power lines installed rurally were funded by government programs.

Both the phone and electricity were revolutionary. They modernized our nation and gave us opportunities we never thought possible. Access to telephone and electricity, as well as other utilities like sanitation, roads and airports, have made our nation worthy of admiration.

In each case, when the technologies were invented, only the rich and powerful, or those living in cities who could afford the fees, had the opportunity to use them. It was only with legislation that both the telephone and electricity became affordable to the average American. While both were funded and created by the elite, it was our government that made sure that eventually, each of us would have the ability to turn on the AC when it’s hot, or call 911 when there’s an emergency. In short, our government worked for the people, laying down the infrastructure needed to build the next generation of our great nation.

Here we stand, yet again, at a technological crossroads. The digital revolution has changed the entire playing field. This time, we quickly attempted to get everyone online, and almost 78% of our households have internet access. This is incredible, given that it only took about ten years. The rate of implementation seems to be speeding up.

But is it enough?

For us to truly realize the full potential of the digital revolution, and all the technology that goes with it, we need more than just bandwidth to our houses. To have Smart Houses, Cars and Cities, we’ll need major investments in housing, the electrical grid and our roads. We can’t have self-driving cars unless a coordinated effort is made to install our roads and highways with the proper technologies to do such a thing. We can’t move to all electric cars until we organize ourselves to have charging stations, like gas stations, in every town and city across America. We can’t utilize green technologies such as wind and solar without major upgrades to our electrical grid and American houses.

It seems that the technology we need to create a greener, cleaner and more convenient world has been already been invented. The time has come to roll it out to the population at large. Similar to the way our government invested in the electrical grid, airports, roads and telephony, we need our leaders to now fund upgrades to all of those systems, and then some. It’s the only way we’ll continue to grow and be a nation of opportunity.

Yet I don’t see our politicians funding anything of the sort. Contrary to the work done in the 1920’s and 1930’s to regulate telephone and electricity, our current government is ready to sell the internet off to the highest bidder. Rather than a New Deal that would upgrade our roads and electrical grids to be ready for Smart Cars and Smart Houses, money is being pulled from state budgets in order to cover an ever growing debt. This is a very different group of politicians than those who funded the last technological era of our country. Rather than working for the people, our government now spends about 20% of its budget on the military, compared to 3% for transportation and infrastructure. Add another measly 2% that goes towards science and technology and it’s not hard to see that improving our society to meet the digital age is pretty low on the priority list of those in Washington.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not a fan of big government. I’m a fan of efficient government for the people. An inter-state project like the implementation of driver-less cars is a perfect example of how a federal government could serve the people. The militarization of our police force with left-over technologies the Armed Forces isn’t using, not such a good thing.

And while we’re on the subject of the Armed Forces, it seems not all technological advancement is being neglected by Washington. Designing drones to accurately kill others in remote locations is a high priority for our legislators. So are robots used to install land mines. But spend a little more money upgrading the information highway and our roadways so that they can work together seamlessly?

Forget it.

Which makes me wonder, will we be a nation left behind this time? Will Germany, Singapore and South Africa have driverless, electric cars before we do? Will Japan and South Korea install green Smart Grids that power their Smart Houses using solar energy collecting windows, while Washington continues to stalemate on any advancements in this area?

The chances are high. Very high.

Unless Silicon Valley can figure this one out, it’s likely we’ll find pockets of America that move forward in technological advancement, while others are left with nothing but their AC and telephones. On the surface that might seem okay, but history has shown us that when the majority of our citizens have access to the basic utilities needed to be a part of modern society, we all benefit.

Those left behind tend to riot. The new era will be no exception.