Wellbeing

Billionaire Discovers UBI

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“The coronavirus pandemic is exactly the kind of cataclysmic event that brings about drastic changes. I think Medicare For All and UBI are now inevitable. It’s either that, or complete chaos.” – Oliver Markus Malloy

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image_2024-07-24_131253905-1

Techbro Billionaire and founder of OpenAI, Sam Altman, has just concluded one of the longest running Universal Basic Income experiments to date. He launched the project after becoming intrigued albeit unconvinced by the idea (and as accusations grew that tools like his AI could become an increasing threat to jobs) and he made a show of personally funding the scheme that saw 1,000 low income people being paid $1,000 a month plus 2,000 people receiving $50 as a control group. All participants had a household income below 300% of the federal poverty line (the limit below which people start to qualify for federal low income support – the various thresholds can be found here) and the average household income of participants was $29,000 (approx £22,500 as of current exchange rates).

The results of the study have been overwhelmingly positive and entirely in line with other studies of UBI.

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Unburdening Myself

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“Sometimes, sitting here in the dark, slowly slowly creating strategy, she wondered if she was only fooling herself to think her plans were clever.” – Vernor Vinge

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Virus

I spent last Thursday reading the first of the UK Covid inquiry reports and I really can’t tell you how unburdened it made me feel. A stain on my soul that I’ve carried for years may well be healing.

As someone in the world of think (and do) tanks and in lobbying I don’t expect to have everything I say adopted before the ink is even dry on the page. That’s not how it works. Our greatest policy successes have been long, hard struggles and because much of the hardest work happens in the background, when the success does come folk can wonder why we felt we had to fight so hard because, in hindsight, how could it have gone any other way? It led me to coining the phrase that everything in politics seems impossible until the moment it becomes inevitable.

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A Workers’ Gala

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

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Band

One of the highlights of my summer growing up involves a tradition that appears a wee bit strange to many of my friends living in other parts of Scotland, across the UK, or beyond. And that’s our annual village gala day. It’s usually marked by the council coming around the week before to tie plastic bunting to the lampposts (the section directly outside my house is red, white and blue in contrast to the standard rainbow of the rest of the street. I’m absolutely sure that has nothing to do with the prominent pro-indy sticker in our window…) and then on the morning itself – usually a Saturday – when some of the houses flagrantly breach copyright and trademark laws by decorating their houses with various cartoon characters, superheroes or some other commercially exploitable symbol of Capitalism directed at kids this year before finally, just after most folk have probably woken up…the band starts playing.

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Work For Life

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / 1 Comment

“Somewhere along the way we’ve gotten the message that the more we struggle and the more we suffer, the more valuable we will become and the more successful we’ll eventually be. And so we overwork ourselves, overschedule ourselves, and become “busier than thou” because we think there’s some sort of prize on the other side of the pain we cause ourselves. And you know what? There’s no prize. All you get from suffering is more suffering.” – Kate Northrup

(This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here.)

We’re currently living through an era of great change – “Interesting Times”, as the old curse goes – and the way we work is changing with it. During these moments of change we often wonder what it would take to make things go “back to normal” even if there is no “normal” to go back to – or whether we should even try given the problems we all knew existed in that “old normal”.

During the Covid lockdowns of the last few years many of us were suddenly thrust into a new normal when it came to work as our offices were closed and we started working from home (and yes, I’m one of the lucky ones who were able to do this. Not every job can be worked from home. Not every home can be easily worked from).

For many, the transition was a difficult one. For many others though, the transition to home working brought many positives, including no longer having to spend several hours a day commuting. One of the advantages I’ve personally found is the increased flexibility to step away from my desk for a few moments to take a break or get something done around the house (even if it’s just to put a load of washing on) rather than having to wait till I’m home, knackered and would rather do anything else.

image_2022-09-05_103902942(Image Source: The Centre for Ageing Better)

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