UBI is one of the more polarizing ideas I talk about in conversation with people. What do you think about UBI? If you’re against the idea — why? And, how do you see UBI, and to a broader degree, poverty and our modern day structures of indentured servitude, in relation to the cascading ecological crises we face?
I like to take it one step further. I support worldwide UBI because:
1. It's the humane thing to do
2. Our challenges are global so should UBI
3. In a time of rapid and unprecedented change people need stability to cope
4. Uncertainty (for survival) creates all kinds of very negative feedback loops in people that will mentally and physically destabilize a person and the community as a whole. We see that everywhere.
5. More equal distribution of money, less competition between people, nations and continents will make us more collaborative, and we need that to make the change
6. No more poverty worldwide will drastically increase potential of humanities resilience and innovation
7. Less migration because of survival, more options/time/hands to regenerate the ecosystem that community is part of.
8. More money between people in the real economy will give space for change, more room for local community investments in projects that benefit everybody in the community.
9. More options for local communities to be more independent from the global economy which in its current form of exploitation of people and planet is unsustainable.
10. The power to say no to exploitation as a person, community, state, nation.
11. More options for employer/community owned business /COOP's
12. More headspace to reevaluate what's important in live and what has the most value for a community and humanity.
13. A more equal and independent relationship between employer and employee. What should a certain job pay and is the employee save and secure while doing it?
14. And like Flora said. More room for personal growth and creativity and that's needed.
15. More options to choose to be a caregiver to you direct family and others.
I could go on, but you will know all of them too :) And thanks for your newsletters that take people like me on a journey to a new and more inclusive perspective on life and the challenges we face.
Erik, this is a nice list and much more comprehensive than my hurried comment yesterday. The idea of a global UBI is interesting, and I wonder how that could be implemented with the degree of inequity among nations. Among the students I currently teach (environmental studies courses @ a selective private college), it seems like arguments encompassed by #1, 6, 10 seem logical to them, but they don't necessarily feel a personal connection. The pressure, even for those who may not feel aligned with the path, is to enter the corporate recruiting/med school/law school pipeline. That's made me curious about ways to make the issue more personal for them- this includes personal growth + creativity but also is directly connected to 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and finally, 15 (though most college students aren't thinking about this yet).
I haven't chosen to work in ways that directly support the destruction of Earth's support systems (though I know plenty who have felt they needed to for financial reasons) but also haven't found a way to do work that's aligned fully with my values. I never thought fear ruled me when I was younger, but now with a family to support, I have become acutely aware of how hard it is to find a way to sustain us that feels "secure enough" and also aligned w/ our values.
Re: funding on a global level -- I actually buried a link that has something to do with this in the introduction of the last issue. The UN has called for "temporary basic income" (in response to COVID) in 132 countries in the Global South and suggested it could be financed entirely using the costs of debt servicing that those countries face. The wealthy countries of the world collect $3.1 trillion a year in debt repayment (and interest) from what the UN calls "developing and emerging economies." That doesn't answer how we pay for it in the "developed" world -- but it does offer an idea for a major portion of the world's population. (https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/news-centre/news/2020/Temporary_Basic_Income_to_protect_the_worlds_poorest_people_slow_COVID19.html)
Thanks for that link. Great to see that this is discussed and that it is even plausible if there was enough political will to do it.
And there are more ways to do it. Look at how money being created by the EU the last couple of months and during the crisis of 2008. Money isn't the problem. It's how it's distributed. And even money as a concept can be reinvented. Not based on debt.
Ultimately it is the power game that keeps it from happening. And that struggle will only get more intense. So I know my global UBI is utopian, but I still believe that is the way humanity will get trough the challenges ahead.
And yes a lot of young people are not aware of it. Because we don't teach them properly. We still teach/feed them crumbeling systems and concepts as the one and only way. But I also met a lot of young people here in the Netherlands who are way more aware of what's happening than I was at their age. They are not the ones that block progress. They are open for new ways of doing things.
It's my generation and the one before and after me. We are holding humanity back. Because of the enormous the power of the few and the complex entanglement and interdependence of the rest within the current system.
I support UBI for many of the reasons stated in the post. I wonder if you've come across another argument in researching this topic: for myself and my family, UBI (and universal health care, to be honest) would greatly increase our capacity for innovation and risk taking. I'm an ecologist, recent PhD recipient, and have a 3 year old daughter. My husband is a creative designer-builder. We have a long list of innovative ideas we'd like to pursue and would like to commit to lifestyles that support a degrowth economy. But with limited family wealth or savings to invest in ideas, and child care going basically unrecognized as work, we feel that the risks may be too high. Where going without insurance can lead to a lifetime of debt and choosing not to prioritize a higher salary over one's value and ethics can mean losing meager financial stability, the potential costs of (sometimes) chance events are astronomical. So might UBI actually catalyze innovation (beyond typical entrepreneurship) across a diverse socioeconomic spectrum?
This is one of the most convincing arguments for UBI that I ascribe to, though it's one that hasn't been studied extensively (for a few reasons, I think). In my mind, UBI has the potential not just to resolve wide-scale poverty -- an immensely important mission in its own right -- but also to free the broader working class from the day-to-day constraints of the modern capitalist economy that prevent us from pursuing radical transition to a liveable future. Your example is great: highly educated and wanting to pursue lifestyles and "work" in radical and innovative (degrowth) ways that have the potential to transform how we live on Earth, and through that transformation, to protect humanity's very ability to continue surviving (let alone thriving) beyond the end of this century...but because of economic insecurity (in the US, confounded by a lack of public healthcare), you're unable. I don't know what you're doing for work post-PhD, but I know many people in a similar situation who aren't just unable to work in regenerative ways, but find themselves "forced" to actively work towards the destruction of Earth's life support systems (for oil and gas or whatever else) because of a feeling of economic insecurity. We live in an economic system that self-perpetuates through fear. UBI removes that fear.
I like to take it one step further. I support worldwide UBI because:
1. It's the humane thing to do
2. Our challenges are global so should UBI
3. In a time of rapid and unprecedented change people need stability to cope
4. Uncertainty (for survival) creates all kinds of very negative feedback loops in people that will mentally and physically destabilize a person and the community as a whole. We see that everywhere.
5. More equal distribution of money, less competition between people, nations and continents will make us more collaborative, and we need that to make the change
6. No more poverty worldwide will drastically increase potential of humanities resilience and innovation
7. Less migration because of survival, more options/time/hands to regenerate the ecosystem that community is part of.
8. More money between people in the real economy will give space for change, more room for local community investments in projects that benefit everybody in the community.
9. More options for local communities to be more independent from the global economy which in its current form of exploitation of people and planet is unsustainable.
10. The power to say no to exploitation as a person, community, state, nation.
11. More options for employer/community owned business /COOP's
12. More headspace to reevaluate what's important in live and what has the most value for a community and humanity.
13. A more equal and independent relationship between employer and employee. What should a certain job pay and is the employee save and secure while doing it?
14. And like Flora said. More room for personal growth and creativity and that's needed.
15. More options to choose to be a caregiver to you direct family and others.
I could go on, but you will know all of them too :) And thanks for your newsletters that take people like me on a journey to a new and more inclusive perspective on life and the challenges we face.
Erik, this is a nice list and much more comprehensive than my hurried comment yesterday. The idea of a global UBI is interesting, and I wonder how that could be implemented with the degree of inequity among nations. Among the students I currently teach (environmental studies courses @ a selective private college), it seems like arguments encompassed by #1, 6, 10 seem logical to them, but they don't necessarily feel a personal connection. The pressure, even for those who may not feel aligned with the path, is to enter the corporate recruiting/med school/law school pipeline. That's made me curious about ways to make the issue more personal for them- this includes personal growth + creativity but also is directly connected to 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and finally, 15 (though most college students aren't thinking about this yet).
I haven't chosen to work in ways that directly support the destruction of Earth's support systems (though I know plenty who have felt they needed to for financial reasons) but also haven't found a way to do work that's aligned fully with my values. I never thought fear ruled me when I was younger, but now with a family to support, I have become acutely aware of how hard it is to find a way to sustain us that feels "secure enough" and also aligned w/ our values.
Re: funding on a global level -- I actually buried a link that has something to do with this in the introduction of the last issue. The UN has called for "temporary basic income" (in response to COVID) in 132 countries in the Global South and suggested it could be financed entirely using the costs of debt servicing that those countries face. The wealthy countries of the world collect $3.1 trillion a year in debt repayment (and interest) from what the UN calls "developing and emerging economies." That doesn't answer how we pay for it in the "developed" world -- but it does offer an idea for a major portion of the world's population. (https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/news-centre/news/2020/Temporary_Basic_Income_to_protect_the_worlds_poorest_people_slow_COVID19.html)
Thanks for that link. Great to see that this is discussed and that it is even plausible if there was enough political will to do it.
And there are more ways to do it. Look at how money being created by the EU the last couple of months and during the crisis of 2008. Money isn't the problem. It's how it's distributed. And even money as a concept can be reinvented. Not based on debt.
Ultimately it is the power game that keeps it from happening. And that struggle will only get more intense. So I know my global UBI is utopian, but I still believe that is the way humanity will get trough the challenges ahead.
And yes a lot of young people are not aware of it. Because we don't teach them properly. We still teach/feed them crumbeling systems and concepts as the one and only way. But I also met a lot of young people here in the Netherlands who are way more aware of what's happening than I was at their age. They are not the ones that block progress. They are open for new ways of doing things.
It's my generation and the one before and after me. We are holding humanity back. Because of the enormous the power of the few and the complex entanglement and interdependence of the rest within the current system.
Thanks for pulling up this link. I wish the will existed to implement this tomorrow.
I support UBI for many of the reasons stated in the post. I wonder if you've come across another argument in researching this topic: for myself and my family, UBI (and universal health care, to be honest) would greatly increase our capacity for innovation and risk taking. I'm an ecologist, recent PhD recipient, and have a 3 year old daughter. My husband is a creative designer-builder. We have a long list of innovative ideas we'd like to pursue and would like to commit to lifestyles that support a degrowth economy. But with limited family wealth or savings to invest in ideas, and child care going basically unrecognized as work, we feel that the risks may be too high. Where going without insurance can lead to a lifetime of debt and choosing not to prioritize a higher salary over one's value and ethics can mean losing meager financial stability, the potential costs of (sometimes) chance events are astronomical. So might UBI actually catalyze innovation (beyond typical entrepreneurship) across a diverse socioeconomic spectrum?
This is one of the most convincing arguments for UBI that I ascribe to, though it's one that hasn't been studied extensively (for a few reasons, I think). In my mind, UBI has the potential not just to resolve wide-scale poverty -- an immensely important mission in its own right -- but also to free the broader working class from the day-to-day constraints of the modern capitalist economy that prevent us from pursuing radical transition to a liveable future. Your example is great: highly educated and wanting to pursue lifestyles and "work" in radical and innovative (degrowth) ways that have the potential to transform how we live on Earth, and through that transformation, to protect humanity's very ability to continue surviving (let alone thriving) beyond the end of this century...but because of economic insecurity (in the US, confounded by a lack of public healthcare), you're unable. I don't know what you're doing for work post-PhD, but I know many people in a similar situation who aren't just unable to work in regenerative ways, but find themselves "forced" to actively work towards the destruction of Earth's life support systems (for oil and gas or whatever else) because of a feeling of economic insecurity. We live in an economic system that self-perpetuates through fear. UBI removes that fear.