A Universal Basic Income (UBI) and rent for our Commons are ways to provide for the working class, who are losing their jobs to automation. With robots and wage inequality, this will be a disaster for the capitalist system as we know it. There will be no cash for the spenders who support the capitalist system by around 77 percent in spending.
This can be overcome by non-labor income just like the 1 percent gets their income from dividends and property. Non-labor income in the form of UBI could be paid for by charging rent for our Commons, such as air, water, wind, sun, ecosystem, and minerals. Then there are the human-made technology, legal, roads, dams and bridges. All things our taxes pay for, which makes money for corporations. Some of these are artificial or acquired property and the invention of people.
Education will not cure inequality or create more jobs, in fact, it will invent things which will end jobs. Income fell 30 percent since 1970. That was the time when one person could provide for his whole family, house, car, education, and entertainment. Now it takes two people to just to survive today with little healthcare and no pension.
The middle class is the group sandwiched in between the lap of luxury and the yaw of poverty. These people could be the ones who would benefit the most from a UBI. They would probably still work at gig jobs and some UBI plans would allow them to make $6,000 a year and still keep their UBI. There are at this time, countries experimenting with some type of UBI or a combination of it and so far the results are positive.
Jobs are going away. The country of China wants to replace all workers with robots. Apple’s goal is to hire 1 million robots; Dell-Hewlett Packard, Google and Amazon all want to have driverless cars and trucks, which will put drivers, both cab and freight, out of work. The same goes for FedEx and UPS drivers. The job loss goes on and on until there is very little left. What happens then is millions of people find themselves with no way to feed their families.
This is the time to embrace a UBI and start charging rent for our Commons. Another thing to consider is that maybe if corporations had to pay for the use of these Commons, maybe they’d adopt more eco-friendly practices. Charging for the Commons is not welfare, but rent to use the Commons that belong to and is owed to all of us.
Instituting a UBI is not a new concept. Back in the 1500s, England’s Johannes Ludovicus Vives is credited with coming up with the UBI concept, and his friend Thomas More wrote a book, “Utopia”, outlining the merits of UBI. In the U.S., one of the Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine, proposed the idea, but he called it “citizen’s dividends” in his book, “Agrarian Justice.”
Giving citizens a UBI may very well save the capitalist system as we know it, plus retain workers, who will be needed in the future for the gig jobs.
Unions’ long game is to get all union contracts to expire on the same day nationwide. The United Auto Workers combines contracts ends on April 28, 2028. This could then result in a mass national strike starting on May Day beeginning that year. This could then put enormous pressure on employers, but also on lawmakers. It’s the muscle and sweat of the workers that keeps this country great, not the individual company or corporations. This May Day strike would be the time to change the workers’ world for the better by negotiating for a 32-hour week with the same pay, and the U.S. adopts a healthcare for all with no out of pocket costs. This would also help the employers as they would no longer have to provide healthcare. By striking, the UAW won same pay for new workers, all UAW contracts will end on the same date, a 25-percent pay increase, a cost of living adjustments, a guaranteed right to strike over potential plant closures, and also the right to vote to unionize through the card che
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