Tag: universal basic income

AI can mean leisure – with UHI

November 2023

Look into my eyes…you will subscribe to X Premium | Detail of book cover photo: Art Streiber/August | Book: Elon Musk / Simon & Schuster, 2023

At a 2023 UK conference on artificial intelligence, visiting US billionaire Elon Musk surprisingly put forward a good idea: universal high income. But it’s not original.

100 years ago the UK Social Credit movement (unrelated to the current Big-Brother Chinese ‘social credit’ system) said in effect – there was some complex economic and religious theory – that technology could mean leisure if the state paid a ‘dividend’ to all.

The dividend proposed wasn’t a handout. It was owed to the people for the underpaid contribution made by them and their ancestors to the current wealth. (That debt remains unpaid.)

Back then, it never happened – apart from some half-baked Canadian experiments – but the movement has survived (as the UK Social Credit Secretariat). Also, currently trending, there’s a highly diluted version: universal basic income (UBI).

At the 2023 AI conference, multi-billionaire Musk – owner of Tesla and X – said artificial intelligence means no one will need to work, but only if they get a universal high income – a universal basic income would be insufficient.

Discounting his ridiculous implication that AI can replace all jobs, unusually for Musk, this makes sense: a state-provided universal high income (UHI) could replace wages, thereby allowing civilisation to continue without wage-slavery or mass ‘unemployment’.

And there’s no need to hang it on the futuristic threat of mass job-losses caused by AI. We can do it right now.

But how can a UHI be funded? At, say, £20,000 a year for all adults, it’ll cost the UK over £1tn a year – which obviously can’t be tax-funded.

A UHI can only be funded by the state issuing money as social credit – meaning money issued as credit for the good of society – rather than banks issuing money as profit-making debt.

States currently – historically – outsource their legal responsibility for issuing money: they delegate it to banks. Almost all money is issued by banks as debt and is then lent to the state! It’s legalised bank robbery: robbery by the banks.

This creates the international debt economy, where environment-destroying growth is needed purely to service debt.

But states can reclaim their responsibility for issuing money and end their debt economy by issuing all money as social credit.

Such social credit will replace tax and state borrowing. It can fund a UHI and all social spending: green energy, transport, water, health, care, housing, justice, education, infrastructure, defence, etc.

All debt, personal and business, can be paid off. That includes mortgages. Privatised utility shareholders can be paid off and utilities run as non-profits. It’s a new start.

£3tn to pay off the current debt and then
£3tn a year should do it for the UK. The Bank of England can finally make itself useful and stop kowtowing to neoliberal ‘market forces’.

The £200bn or so a year currently invested in UK businesses can be given interest-free to monitored business accounts on receipt of sound business plans which include green, social and inclusive considerations.

The UK stock market will reform to facilitate this. Savings accounts and pension funds can contribute to investment by trading in the reformed stock market and sharing the profits of successful companies.

However, the ‘growth’, consumerism and built-in obsolescence currently needed to service debt will no longer drive business policy.

The unconditional UHI will replace benefits and the state pension. People will, of course, be free to take whatever work is available or to run businesses – for extra money or for personal fulfillment.

There’ll be no hyperinflation: the social credit money issued wil be spent into the economy in a virtuous cycle.

There there’s the pleasure of telling the ‘markets’ – the bond market, the international money market, the World Bank, the IMF etc – to go fuck themselves. A nation’s social credit money will be intrinsically acceptable for international trading purposes.

As for banks, deprived of their scam they’ll have to find a more useful – if less lucrative – role.

(See also my post Robots could mean leisure.)

Please feel free to comment. (I answer all comments.)

Universal Basic Income is too basic

The Money Tree | Image: Shutterstock

UBI, Universal Basic Income, is wrong because it’s basic. The ‘B’ should stand for ‘Big’, not ‘Basic’.

UBI is basic because it’d be tax-funded. But a Universal Big Income big enough to replace wages could be funded by social credit.

The pandemic has shown there’s a money tree and it’s not magic. Historically, governments have allowed banks to issue almost all money – as debt. The consequent debt economy, with growth needed to service debt, is inherently destructive of our life-support environment. It also obliges governments to be funded by tax – and by borrowing!

If governments take back their right and responsibility to issue money, they can issue it as social credit. This would fund social spending – healthcare, education and infrastructure – and could also fund a universal big income.

People would then be free to work as much or as little as they want. People might choose to work – for more money, for the pleasure of it, or as a volunteer.

With a generous state income funded by social credit, increasing automation would mean increasing leisure, as it always should have.

Top 🔼

Robots could mean leisure

Guardian letters: November 2015, June 2016, July 2016, June 2017, July 2017 and June 2109 (Chris Hughes).

Rolling post begun February 2016, last updated June 2019

picsay-1467846340246.jpg
Image: Futurama

According to a 2015 newspaper report, Bank of America Merrill Lynch forecast the increasing use of robotics, and warned that this would exacerbate social inequity. Perhaps they were really more worried about unrest than inequity.

The Social Credit movement addressed this issue 100 years ago, saying that increased automation should mean increased leisure. However, this would need a radical reform of the banking system, so that a national dividend income can be paid to all.

This income, paid regardless of whether and how much people work, would be linked to national productivity and should be enough to live comfortably. The income wouldn’t be a gift. It’s money owed in lieu of the underpayed contribution by many generations to the current general wealth.

image

Original illustration: Elizabeth Webbe from The Little Mailman of Bayberry Lane by Ian Munn

Redistribution by taking the wealth of the super-rich might be a Good Thing, but it isn’t needed to fund this. If governments fulfil their responsibility to control the money supply, they can end the debt economy and pay the income by issuing, yes, social credit (which can also fund infrastructure projects and social services such as health and education).

Top 🔺

Postscript

Amazingly, the world has caught up with me. I thought the idea was languishing in the archives of Social Credit, and that the UK Green Party’s sickly citizens’ income had been strangled at birth by its mean anti-scrounger nannies, but, hallelujah, it’s been reborn (in the 1980s – who knew?) as the currently trending idea UBI (Universal – or Unconditional – Basic Income).

I think there’s a problem with ‘basic‘. The income should be more than basic – it should be comfortable. But it’s good that the, er, basic idea has a new lease of life.

There’s a Social Credit response to UBI. They say the income should be basic – plus a share of the economy’s productivity. (However, my understanding is that the Social Credit national dividend doesn’t actually guarantee a basic income, but is entirely dependent on the performance of the economy.)

For UBI see, for example:
🔸Campaign groups Basic Income UK and BIEN (Basic Income Earth Network). BIEN has a good history of UBI (although its section on Social Credit doesn’t explain that SC’s national dividend is funded by government-issued credit, not by taxation).
🔸An informative Guardian article

Some relevant books:
🔸Inventing the Future, by Nick Srnicek (pronounced ‘Sirnichek’, I think) and Alex Williams
🔸Utopia for Realists, by Rutger Bregman
🔸The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class by Guy Standing
🔸Real Freedom for All: What (if anything) can justify capitalism by Philippe Van Parijs

Some related ideas:
🔸Accelerationism
🔸helicopter money
🔸people’s quantitative easing.

June 2016 – still trending:
An excellent Guardian article by Philip Oltermann reports a poll finding: 68% of people across Europe would vote for UBI. Also, Switzerland is about to vote on a proposed unconditional national basic income of £1,750 a month. That’s more like it. But another poll shows 60% of the Swiss against it. The problem is, UBI advocates don’t seem to understand the funding solution (control the money supply), and witter about funding it by tax, which obviously puts people off.

Missing the point – the watered-down version trudges on

An interesting but flawed report on UBI by economists Howard Reed and Stewart Lansley published by leftish campaign group Compass is to get a high-profile launch by Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell. The report proposes an income of £70 a week funded by tax increases. Readers will search in vain for ‘money supply’ or ‘social credit’.

I asked the report’s authors about this. Stewart Lansley said they considered including funding options, but decided that anything radical would detract from the their central idea – that UBI would be feasible within existing institutional arrangements. Hmm. There’s a danger that the new UBI baby is being strangled – as was the Greens’ citizens’ income – by Nanny Normal. With something like this, you have to – as the Guardian says (see below) – dream big.

UBI proponents need to understand that their dismal basic income isn’t enough – and that a universal income big enough to replace wages (Universal Big Income?) can only be sustainably funded by the government issuing social credit. To be fair, there are different approaches in the UBI movement. For instance, BIEN co-founder Guy Standing argues for a social dividend funded by income from publicly owned assets. Not as good as social credit – but better than basic income funded by tax.

Straw man burns – quite a week for UBI
🔸The Swiss, as predicted, turned down the generous but unfunded UBI proposal (77% against).
🔸The Grauniad weighed in with an editorial on UBI (it’s OK to dream big, but proceed with caution).
🔸Reporting on McDonnell’s launch of the Compass report, the Guardian said that Labour is considering the idea of a UBI.
🔸The Guardian had a Saturday sum-it-all-up above-the-fold letters section on UBI which included – ahem – one from me (Chris Hughes) about funding UBI.


imageTwo out of five ain’t bad | The Guardian, Saturday 11 June 2016

Of the five printed letters, two were supportive of UBI. LSE economist Ian Gough (against – it’ll drain the energies of the left) said pithily of the Compass proposal, ‘Thus a powerful new tax engine will pull along a tiny cart (a partial and inadequate basic income). Why bother?‘ Quite.

Progressive alliance could implement UBI
The Brexit result of the UK referendum on whether to leave or stay in the EU surprised nearly all commentators and pollsters. (However, see my prophetic post, The east European elephant, about the danger of ignoring the views of poor whites – Guy Standing’s ‘precariat‘, perhaps.) In the post-referendum political turmoil, Labour MPs tried and failed to remove leftwing leader Jeremy Corbyn (elected in 2015 with huge support from Labour members). This brings the new progressive movement into focus. If Labour splits, there could be some interesting reorganisation. But as (anti-Corbyn) Labour veteran and former leader Neil Kinnock said recently, realignnent without proportional representation is fragmentation. There’d need to be (as someone else has probably said) a pre-election progressive pact with one item on the agenda: enact PR, then hold a second general election. It’d be a happy coincidence of party self-interest (sustainable survival) and political principle (improving democracy). That way, the political landscape can open up; new political eco-systems can develop; existing institutional arrangements can be changed; and the government can control the money supply and fund a Universal Big Income. Bingo! (UBIngo!)

Update: January 2017

Labour didn’t split. However, it’s lost so much support, it might need an alliance. But it probably won’t be a progressive one. Oh well.

Meanwhile, Finland has launched a two-year experimental scheme to pay the unemployed an unconditional £475 a month. It’s basic, but it’s not UBI. But it’s the first unconditional state income for the unemployed in Europe. Which is something. Better than nothing.

Since then, nothing much, I’d say…

Top 🔺

Please feel free to comment…