Could Universal Basic Income in America Boost Global Interest in Cryptocurrencies?
2020 is going to be an interesting year. A year of epic events, many of which are going to be overhyped, underdelivered, or just end up missing-in-action. 2020 is just too nice of a number to ride on.
To me, these are maybe the most notable events:-
- Tokyo 2020.
- Flying cars.
- Bitcoin's halving.
- Steem's SMTs & Communities.
- Tau Alpha.
- My midlife crisis.
- United States presidential election.
Item (7) is what I'm going to be talking about today.
2020 United States presidential election.
Like it or hate it, what happens in this event could have a huge impact on the world's economy. If you've not been following the campaigns this year, there's actually a "Asian" dude called Andrew Yang trying to run for president. And he wants to give everyone $1,000 a month. It's more well known to be Universal Basic Income, but he calls it the Freedom Dividend.
Here's the basis behind the Freedom Dividend as explained on Yang2020.com:-
In the next 12 years, 1 out of 3 American workers are at risk of losing their jobs to new technologies—and unlike with previous waves of automation, this time new jobs will not appear quickly enough in large enough numbers to make up for it. To avoid an unprecedented crisis, we’re going to have to find a new solution unlike anything we’ve done before. It all begins with the Freedom Dividend, a universal basic income (UBI) for all American adults, no strings attached – a foundation on which a stable, prosperous, and just society can be built.
As technology improves, workers will be able to stop doing the most dangerous, repetitive, and boring jobs. This should excite us, but if Americans have no source of income—no ability to pay for groceries, buy homes, save for education, or start families with confidence—then the future could be very dark. Our labor participation rate now is only 62.7 percent – lower than it has been in decades, with 1 out of 5 working-age men currently out of the workforce. This will get much worse as self-driving cars and other technologies come online.
This basic income—funded by a simple Value Added Tax—would guarantee that all Americans benefit from automation, not just big companies. An additional $1,000 a month would provide money to cover the basics for Americans while enabling us to look for a better job, start a business, go back to school, take care of loved ones or work toward our next opportunity.
If this is the first time you've heard of this, you must have plenty of questions now. For that you may visit the FAQ page to get your questions answered. Personally I like the idea and its positive effects, although I'm not sure of its economic soundness. And getting big government involved?
He's rising up the national polls though, so I guess there's a growing public confidence. But I'm not here to convince you about him and his plans. Instead, I'm going to fast forward into a possible future where he becomes president and somehow gets the Freedom Dividend up and running.
What could happen to cryptocurrencies?
With $12,000 per year given to each American adult, there will be a total of $1.2 trillion per year coming out of the Freedom Dividend, assuming a conservative sign up figure of 100 million people. That's about 8 times the market capitalization of Bitcoin at the time of writing.
Obviously, cryptocurrencies are not the only thing that people can get into and the Freedom Dividend isn't actually adding more money into the pool out of thin air, but that large amount alone in the hands of many people could mean that a substantial amount would end up seeping into Bitcoin and perhaps the rest of the legit useful altcoins as the industry matures. Plus, if the Freedom Dividend works well for America, that could very well influence the rest of the world to consider something similar. That will likely further increase the chances of global crypto adoption.
So to answer the question of this post: Maybe a decent chance if UBI is sound in the near future.
Here's another interesting tidbit, Andrew Yang himself claims to be a crypto enthusiast. Here's a brief conversation about it in a recent Ryan Higa's Off The Pill podcast from the 29:25 mark, with Michelle Phan even mentioning the possibility of a Universal Bitcoin Income:-
Here's another talk on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, although I don't remember any mention of cryptos:-
If Andrew Yang gets elected in 2020, I think speculators would probably consider jumping into crypto. Couple that event with Bitcoin's halving could be a boon for my favorite crypto projects, Steem and Tau. But maybe that's just me hoping that I could get a toy cannon for my midlife crisis. Or a flying car. #Vision2020
Anyway, what do you think about his UBI plan? And can crypto help execute a similar plan, but in a much better way? What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below.
Image from Pexels.
Disclaimer: Not to be taken as financial advice.
Vote @kevinwong as witness today.
I'll not go into details and lenghty comments here, but I do think UBI is absolute necessary since I see a future in which most of the work is carried out by robots and AI, hence we will only have a very few jobs for humans to handle. Hence we need a different compensation system for people to be able to get to the basic necessities (food and roof).
In my country the Nertherlands it is calculated UBI would not cost our government more money, since the expectation is that when implementing UBI today, most people will still do some kinda work; Maybe more voluntary work, but still turn labour into some value. Tests showed groups of people getting free money from the government, mostly will not sit still and do nothing anymore. The money our government spend on unemployment, can be used to pay for UBI and all the money the government will save from not checking up those who receive unemployment benefits, increases the amount of money that can be spend on UBI.
I dont see the reference of UBI and crypto. I actually think UBI will be implemented with our fiat money, no need for Bitcoin. Although it would be nice to use crypto, crypto is still by far to difficult for the mass. And even when handling and using crypto becomes as easy as handling fiat, I still don't see the need for crypto, or the necessity for the people to use crypto in a UBI world. Can you elaborate on that statement you made?
Which statement? The last part where I asked if crypto could do a better job with implementing something like UBI? There are a number of write ups about it from some google searches, but maybe my major concern is about assigning UBI to actual identities 1:1 and system of delivery. Maybe a blockchain is better suited for such a task? Plus, UBI necessarily takes from automation, some work unit, so viewing a blockchain as the simplified unit might make sense too.
A blockchain has certainly some good features that can be used in distributing money as well as handle identities. If this would be an implementation as how crypto is implemented today, de-coupled from fiat, no control, volatile, I wonder. Although I really would like to see crypto getting mature, and was hoping for a much shorter maturity adoption rate as so many other technologies; I start doubting this fact. Crypto to reach maturity may take another 1 or 2 decades. UBI we need sooner. Hence I believe, UBI will be implemented in different ways, using fiat, maybe powered by blockchain, but this could be a private one, or semi-private/public version; But I don't see Bitcoin or any of the altcoins playing a role anytime soon.
Added to that: It seems the fast majority trusts our financial institutions; They trust identity services used left and right by digital services; And the governments have identity information of its citizens. Hence distribution of UBI is as simple as the governments are distributing unemployments benefits today.
It is interesting that there are candidates in high politics who know the UBI at all.
The UBI's reputation at the beginning of the millennium was almost non-existent. At that time I heard about it for the first time. Later, in 2008, I founded a blog specialized only on the UBI, which brought me 700 visitors to an article at peak times.
In Switzerland, the referendum on the UBI in 2016 won 23% approval at the first attempt. Let's see how far the initiative will go next time.
In Germany we basically have such an income, but not unconditionally. UBI is a long-term view that basically takes into account the fact that in consumer-oriented external supply societies everyone needs an income, regardless of whether he goes to work for it or not. Every person always spends the minimum income because he has to live and eat. This money goes one hundred percent back into the cycle and it is economically only logical that everyone must have it, because no person can provide himself with shelter and food.
Decoupling work from income is the basic idea and those who do not understand this do not understand much about modern societies. If it is wanted, it will come. There is definitely no problem in financing.
Politics will change from letting go of the notion that politics needs to take care of "giving work to people".
There are some counter-arguments, but I am too tired to name them.
Midlife crisis? How old are you? LOL :D
It's definitely interesting that a lot of the tech / crypto community views UBI in a good light. It does seem somewhat sound with unprecedented automation in a consumer-oriented society.
Being on drama steem is reducing my life expectancy, that's why :p
Maybe the best thing to do is to ask Yang what can make his Freedom Dividend plan to fail. It's always easy to find reasons why something will work. How about why it may not work? Thats a better way to gauge the economic soundness.
In any case, America should go ahead with it. If it fails/wrecks their ass, the rest of the world will gain by learning WHAT NOT TO DO; a much much better knowledge imo.
Lol what's more likely to happen are test communities. Too much at risk if it fails large scale. But then again, there are several communities already running with something like an UBI, with good results.
Hey there, Mister, you're too young to be talking about a midlife crisis (wait, at least, till you hit forty).
We could do far worse than Yang for US president -- still haven't made my mind up who to vote for...
Though I, certainly, know who not to vote for!
Good to see you still here and hope to post more :)
Lol good 2 see u. Is that pic your new dig now?
Hah! I wish... Just spinning around, looking for the light :)
Wafting warm ocean breeze your way from Sunny Florida
I'll start to worry when my robot sex doll asks for a universal basic income. Barely can afford the lithium batteries as it is now
UBI chat has been few and far between for the past year or two but this could well spark a revival. The reasoning is sound, and self-driving cars (and lorries) could have a sizable impact on jobs, although this sounds a little way down the, err, road.
p.s. Sad that i am unauthorized to view your midlife crisis.
Updated link! Just a meme lol
Cryptocurrency has become my second and most important source of income in the past. If I had voting rights, I would have chosen Andrew—of course.
Thanks for spreading the word about Andrew Yang! He is not Chinese though, he is as American as they come :) And his parents are from Taiwan.
Thanks for correcting me! Rectified it "Asian" since that's his own pitch.
Edit: and if you happen to be active in his community, just know i've squatted on @yang2020 on steem in case he wants it!
I think Andrew Yang is genius and has a great idea with freedom dividend. Too much money already is wasted on corrupt deals and military industrial complex. I can see positive and meaningful impact of ubi in people’s lives and economy overall.
The only UBI that I've heard of that didn't involve some sort of theft is this one:
http://iamcicada.com
It involves everyone mining crypto on their phone. If it involves taxation, then likely Keynesian economic theory follows and hyperinflation after that. This is why we invented bitcoin, to avoid bailing out the banks in the future by giving an exit to people who don't want to be held captive to QE theft in their national fiat.
I glimpsed into the website and the white paper. Thanks for the link. Are you open for a debate on that?
Although I prefer a person independent form of government (which is what I find a really good idea as it would diminish this endless people gossiping in politics), I find the majority voting principle in it outdated, or are majorities based on such a principle not synonymous with intelligence.
Sometimes minorities have unusual proposals and if you consider it carefully, it is always minorities who questioned a habitus that was previously taken for granted. On the threshold to a change, which is enforced by the many on the basis of majority voting principle, you will never have consensus, since there will always be winners and losers with this form of principle. In order to appreciate the intelligence and reason of a human being, it is definitely necessary to have a concept that, firstly, develops the proposals in a longer consensually guided manner and then requires more than "yes" or "no" votes in order to accept a proposal as decided by the majority. The principle of systemic consensus always involves a series of proposals, which are evaluated on the basis of the least inner resistance (each proposal is initially taken for itself). With a scaling, for example from 0-10. 0 means: I have no resistance towards this proposal. 10 means: I have the highest resistance towards it. The averages are given according to feeling. The proposal with the lowest total resistance number is then adopted.
People basically do not like losers. Even the winners feel uncomfortable with the losers. A person feels most at ease when he goes home after a community meeting and has the impression that everyone is satisfied. Systemic consensus is therefore a framework that makes reason and consideration possible and turns away from the competition and winner-loser principle. It pays into humans want for weighing up between things.
However, I find the promises on the website rather questionable. No matter what people do, there will never be a real "end" to something, conflicts are and will always be part of human life ... I do not think it is reasonable to offer such a promising full-bodied prospect. Also here the inherent intelligence of the people is faster (the unconscious already knows that rescue promises never keep what they offer). Conflicts can be welcomed because they create space for cooperation. Those parts in a human who rejects conflicts do not want to take the time to grow and work on them.
This is not within the scope of what I was addressing. I am not a proponent of that website at all. I don't believe in democracy. It's a brutal system. I merely point the website out because it does propose a UBI based upon something other than theft.
As for majority / minority issues, I believe everyone should have to "opt in". It's an injustice to tie two cats tails together with the spoils going to who wins. The answer to a better balanced world is secession and localization. Kick the parasites to the curb and prosperity will return.
The average political will should not extend much past 5 acres. Only those issues that could be planet ending, such as nuclear power should be allowed elevation past the bedroom. Everything else handled more locally.
Oh, I see. Thank you for clearing up this misunderstanding. I can well understand your thought process of the local, I have it myself very often and basically live with a part of my existence according to it. But I would go further and say that one does not have to exclude the other. You point out the big issues and indeed, no government can ignore them, because without global cooperation we cannot achieve nuclear phase-out or any other climate goal. But locality only makes sense if part of the supply chain is provided by local units. For example, the question of Perma cultures in urban environments and in areas of single-family houses, where gardens could be reused and edible crops cultivated. Or the question of using products by repairing them and extending their lifespan. But since we live in a completely externally supplied society, this is an undertaking where you first have to free capacities, i.e. make the shortening of working hours possible and abolish full employment, because only in this way can energy be released for a different lifestyle. Niko Paech, a German economist, advocates a subsidiarity economy, he calls it the "post-growth economy". All this will take time as we are still in the cause-effect loop of the industrial age. One half wants to get out with one leg, the other half has only just started, to put it simply.
In my opinion and view of the world I would say that we suffer from exuberance, not from a lack of prosperity.