UBI Is a Win-Win

The net worth of the top 1 percent is $41.52 trillion while the net worth of the bottom 50 percent is $2.62 trillion. This is a good reason for a universal basic income (UBI) of $2,000 a month for all 18 years and older. Consider that the Walmart chain still costs the taxpayers $904,000 a year in entitlement benefits, such as food stamps and medical coverage. Universities abolished tenure and now pay adjunct professors below poverty wages. The universities hold food drives for the workers it is underpaying. Professor Margaret Mary Vojtko, battling ovarian cancer, worked for 25 years as an adjunct and died in abject poverty on wages of less than $10,000 a year. Just look at the explosion in the payday lenders and pawn shops. Corporations do not hire, they just use non-paying internships. Ours is an economy of survival, and at this time the people, when presented with options, will chose food over violence, but for how much longer? The way to pay for the UBI is by charging rent for all of our Commons, like the state of Alaska does for its oil. There are many more areas to charge for, like roads and the air. The proceeds would go into a fund like Social Security and everyone would get a check once a month, which would put stimulate the economy by putting cash into our capitalist system, and the spending would create more jobs for people. Corporations would make even more money and the local and federal governments would get more sales taxes. It’s a win-win so why aren’t we doing it? We must have spenders with money in their pockets to make it all work. The UBI would be a zero cost to the taxpayers. This is not a new concept. The UBI and paying rent for our Commons has been written about in 1700s by Thomas Paine in his book, Common Sense, Rights of Man. It is time for all workers to have some of the non-labors money. Most money is made from non-labor and labor working the non-labor money is derived from dividends, most corporations, bankers and hedge funders. The way for the common person to get to tap into the stream of non-labor income isn’t with taxes, but rather with dividends from wealth we own together, the Commons. Commons are legitimate property income. We must face the fact that jobs alone will not sustain a large middle class in the future. There just aren’t and won’t be enough good paying jobs to re-establish and support a new middle class. This is where we need the non-labor money. Paine wrote, “Every individual is born with legitimate claims on natural property or its equivalent." While a lot of us struggled during this pandemic, U.S. billionaires added an additional $1.8 trillion to their riches. Tell me why we can't establish a UBI. The UBI is so much more productive than a joyride in a rocket ship for no other reason than Branson and Bezos had money to literally burn.