Billionaire Discovers UBI

“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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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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A UBI Is Now A Moral Imperative

“The solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

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

A new research paper has found that a Universal Basic Income sufficient to eliminate poverty across the entire EU would cost about as much as defence and, in some modelled scenarios, would cost less than the poverty it eliminated. In other words, bringing in a Universal Basic Income could cost less than the price we’re currently paying by not doing it.

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