Raw LLM Responses

UBI_3 WHAT DO THE BEST ECONOMISTS SAY ABOUT UBI? TOP NOBEL PRIZE LEVEL ECONOMISTS ENDORSE UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME. UBI is endorsed  by winners of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, commonly referred to as the “economics Nobel prize”. The economists were participating in the 6th Lindau meeting on economic sciences, which ran from 22nd to 26th of June this year in the picturesque town of Lindau, Germany. • Speaking in a panel discussion on the garden island of Mainau, Sir Chris Pissarides advocated universal basic income as a solution to the inequality that arises from both globalisation and the rise of robots and AI. - “We should not try to deal with inequality by stopping these global processes, because these have the capacity to bring more prosperity to the world,” he said. “We should welcome expansion of trade and the opening up of India and Africa, and improve R&D to bring robotics into production. After all, if there aren’t enough jobs for us all to do, we can take more leisure. We are ageing, so we can feel comfortable that machines will do more of the work that human beings currently do.” He warned that a high proportion of jobs are at risk, including skilled jobs. The social and political problems arising from automation need a policy response that doesn’t impede the march of technology. “We don’t need a new Luddite movement”, he said. “There are better ways of dealing with it.” • In the same discussion, Daniel McFadden advocated unconditional income transfers to relieve poverty. As an example, he explained how introducing casinos in native American communities along the Rio Grande enabled them to deliver a basic income to the poor. “A lot of economists would think that was not a good thing to do,” he said. “But what happened was that child abuse dropped drastically, spousal abuse dropped drastically, crime dropped. Simply handing money to poor people was salutary. It really helped them. Being trapped in poverty, with the stress and insecurities associated with that, is progressively debilitating. Sometimes even the simplest kind of transfers can break the cycle.” • Separately, labor economist Peter Diamond advocated universal basic income in a conversation with Steve Schifferes of City University, London. Professor Diamond, who shared the 2010 Nobel with Sir Chris Pissarides, has become increasingly concerned about income and wealth inequality in the United States, and in particular, about rising child poverty and lack of social mobility. In a recent paper, he approvingly cites Tony Atkinson's book, Inequality: - He argues for a capital endowment, a minimum amount given to each person on reaching adulthood. And he also argues for an annual child benefit, which the United States doesn't have, but many European economies do, to help support the finances it takes to help children have better opportunities. It appears to me that these are two very interesting ideas. • Professor Diamond notes that Thomas Paine advocated using the estate tax to provide a dividend to young people turning 21, to help them launch their careers, and to provide benefits for sick, disabled and elderly. • But how to pay for all of this? Both Sir Chris Pissarides and Professor Diamond advocate higher taxes on high earnings. They also recommend wealth taxes, though they disagree about how these should work: Professor Diamond is strongly in favor of a well-functioning estate tax, while Sir Chris prefers capital gains taxes on property transactions, including family houses. Perhaps the strongest endorsement of wealth taxes came not come from these economists, however, but from their fellow Nobel memorial prize winner, James Heckman. Speaking on the inequality panel, Professor Heckman noted that the falling cost of capital was driving down wages. To correct this, he advocated shifting the burden of taxation to capital rather than labor. • Universal basic income is a radical policy that requires a radical funding solution. Reform of taxation must go hand in hand with any attempt to introduce it. For most of history, labor has been abundant and capital scarce, so it made sense to tax labor more highly than capital and demand that people work for their living. But as we enter an ageing world in which capital is abundant and labor relatively scarce, it may make sense to tax capital at least as highly as labor. And if the need for humans as workers and producers declines, as Sir Chris Pissarides predicts, then some form of capital redistribution will be needed to enable the many, not just the few, to take their leisure and enjoy it. - https://www.forbes.com/sites/francescoppola/2017/08/31/top-economists-endorse-universal-basic-income/#110e59d115ae • EFFICIENCY AND IMPARTIALNESS OF UBI. Making Basic Income UNIVERSAL -- 1. ELIMINATES the hated and counterproductive WELFARE CLIFF, which disincentivizes people from contributing, producing, creating, and working more; 2. ELIMINATES STIGMA, resentment, recriminations, and potential strife between those who receive it and those who don't; 3. ELIMINATES the angst, the invasion of privacy, the fear and BUREAUCRACY OF MEANS TESTING; 4. ELIMINATES the temptation and INDUSTRY OF FRAUD, allegations of fraud, investigations for fraud; 5. ELIMINATES tying up the CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM into determinations of fraud, obtaining restitution for fraud, and punishment for fraud; and 6. GIVES the LIBERTY of CHOICE to citizen shareholders receiving the Freedom Dividend. • THE LIBERTY TO SAVE AND ENRICH LIVES The argument that UBI disincentivizes work is usually rooted in a longstanding criticism of welfare: Giving people free money makes them lazy. The fundamental difference between welfare and UBI is that: Welfare essentially rewards people for not getting a job, because doing so would mean they can't receive money anymore. This disincentivizes work. In contrast, people wouldn't have to meet any conditions to receive Yang's Freedom Dividend, meaning there'd be NO DISINCENTIVE to contribute their services, to be creative, to produce, or to work. The Mother of Invention is Our Laziness and our need to create better, easier solutions to the difficulties in our Lives. Technology is how we make things easier for ourselves, our lives, our loved ones, our family, our society. Technology is the product of our inventive search to reduce the hardship of our survival, our labors, in the procurement of our needs. Technology is the child of our capitalistic organizational product to increase efficiencies and reduce costs. Our focus on the benefits of technology overlooks the harmful effects from its displacement of human labor. More and more lower income people, lesser skilled people, lesser educated and lesser trained people, lesser adaptable people, and now even skilled workers, professional workers, and competent managers are being displaced from their sources of livelihood and income. The technological causes of their displacement are often obscured and not visible to those displaced. There is not a one-for-one in-situs displacement. Technology is remotely centered in different office parks, in different industrial parks, in different automated warehouses, in a bank of servers linked to the 'cloud.' The resulting financial hardship for those of us displaced by technology, however overloads our senses with multiple stresses and the mindset of scarcity, and our IQ actually drops 13%. https://www.princeton.edu/news/2013/08/29/poor-concentration-poverty-reduces-brainpower-needed-navigating-other-areas-life By providing core basic financial resources, Yang provides a base foundation of abundance and allows us to think harder in alternative creative ways when our jobs are displaced by technology. When things get tough, the tough get thinking harder. Andrew Yang says, "if we mistake money for the worth of a person, we are lost." Yang is making it possible for Americans to think harder in times of stress, become creative and inventive, with their time and energy to contribute, work and thrive in local communities of abundance in spite of technological displacement. • MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. in advocating for a Guaranteed Basic Income (UBI) said, "We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of proceeding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished. The poor transformed into purchasers will do a great deal on their own to alter housing decay. Negroes, who have a double disability, will have a greater effect on discrimination when they have the additional weapon of cash to use in their struggle.   "Beyond these advantages, a host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the assurance that his income is stable and certain, and when he knows that he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts between husband, wife and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on a scale of dollars is eliminated." http://www.scottsantens.com/martin-luther-king-jr-basic-income-mlk https://medium.com/@0rf/why-martin-luther-king-jr-supported-a-guaranteed-income-c2188b559978 See also, 5 Reasons Why Martin Luther King Jr. Supported a Guaranteed Income, a UBI for All Americans https://medium.com/@0rf/why-martin-luther-king-jr-supported-a-guaranteed-income-c2188b559978