UBI Gaining Traction

What does a universal basic income (UBI) and a board game have in common? Free money. When the game Monopoly was originally invented as The Landlord’s Game back in the early 1900s by Elizabeth Magie, it was created as a teaching tool to help people understand the consequences of David Ricardo’s Law of Economic Rent and Henry George’s concept of economic privilege and land value taxation. Hence, a player buys a piece of property and then puts a railroad on it, if another player lands on that property they have to pay a price to the land’s owner. Magie’s intent in creating the game was to teach and help people understand that renting property enriches the owner while impoverishing the tenant into bankruptcy, especially those not under rent control. The concept of this game has been used as a teaching tool internationally, as well. It’s the game’s “Pass Go Collect $200” that brings it around to the UBI concept. Trump has ensured the rich receive a UBI of sorts by cutting their taxes. Hedge funders and people like Mitt Romney also receive free money because these hedge funds and private equity firms are not taxed as businesses but rather the money is doled out it is seen as individual income. The people who can afford to do these types of investing are wealthy and looking to get wealthier at other people’s expense. These are also the people who are most likely against a UBI because why should the average person benefit just because they didn’t have the money to rape and pillage a business, like Sears and sell off its greatest assets thereby screwing the employees out of a job and anything else they may have gotten from working in a retail job. Do a search on UBI and see the increase in articles attacking the policy as a failure, a welfare program and an incentive killer, which all have been proven to be false and a scare tactic for the uninformed. There are just as many if not more articles that tout the benefits of a UBI on the economies where the stipend is implemented. One of the biggest issues that causes some the vapors is how to fund a UBI. Funding would come from charging corporations for the use of our Commons—our water, roads, oil, airwaves, and now personal information, among many others. Funding would also come from taxing the corporations and the wealthy to include hedge funders and private equity firms. Some propose a value-added tax placed on goods or services, some advocate consolidating social programs, like food stamps, which if the cost of these benefits versus a small stipend makes no sense. Some are proposing that the military industrial complex be cut off at the knees. It’s one thing to be militarily prepared and quite another to be throwing money at corporations that waste and misappropriate the funding on lobbying efforts to get more money from the government. A crash course for those not familiar with how the capitalist system works. If the common people, us 99 percenters, have no money or extra money to spend, the capitalist system dies on the vine. If we have extra money after paying our bills and living expenses, then we’re most likely to spend money on nonessential items thereby feeding the capitalist system. It’s been proven many times that putting money into the hands of spenders grows the economy whereby allowing greedy people to hoard it doesn’t. In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr said a guaranteed income or UBI would abolish poverty and reduce income inequality. Here we are fifty-two years later and still talking about the same thing. More of the uber rich are starting to see what hoarding is doing to our economy and how they can’t get richer if the 99 percenters aren’t out there spending their money. Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes wrote the book “Fair Shot” in which he argues that workers, students and caregivers making less than $50,000 a year or less receive a guaranteed income of $500 a month and pay for it by taxing the 1 percent. That’s a start but it doesn’t go far enough. First off, greedy people will say, “What about me?” So, the UBI should be for everyone, and $500 a month is a mere drop in the bucket to meet the basic needs, especially those with children. Economists Kalle Moene and Debraj Ray write that a UBI should be tied to a country’s Gross Domestic Product and automatically rise with national prosperity and inflation. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft inventor Bill Gates, Sir Richard Branson and Tesla’s Elon Musk are advocating for a UBI as inevitable as automation/artificial intelligence continues to take over jobs. Alaska has long had a type of UBI called the permanent fund that pays citizens $1,200 a year from its oil reserves. Other U.S. cities looking into implementing or have begun issuing UBI funds are Oakland and Stockton in California, Chicago, Illinois, and the state of Hawaii. Countries considering or have implemented a UBI are Canada, Finland, Utrecht, Holland, Kenya, Scotland and Taiwan. There is enough information out there, one just has to sort through the propaganda articles meant to dissuade those trying to educate themselves. If a board game meant to teach people about economics can demonstrate how the rich can get richer in our country while giving away “free money,” one should ask themselves why anyone nowadays would be against the betterment of their fellow human—could it have anything to do with greed?