This is Where We (briefly) Talk About Universal Basic Income.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time writing about Universal Basic Income (UBI) because frankly there is more than enough written about it from people much smarter than me. (BasicIncome on reddit is a good place to start by the way).

If you aren’t familiar with UBI it’s a concept in which a nation provides monthly payments to each one of its citizens that’s large enough to afford them their basic life needs. It’s not designed to replace work but rather to supplement it enough to reduce poverty and give everyone an equal chance of living, a very modest, but decent life. How it works in practice though is an entirely different story since one of the biggest arguments against it is that it would be too expensive to implement across a nation; though there are many different and interesting answers to this.

You might be hearing more about UBI in the US soon though because it’s the chief platform of 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate, Andrew Yang’s election campaign. Yang isn’t a politician but he’s an accomplished entrepreneur and also the author of the book The War On Normal People, which focuses on the country’s coming job crisis. In the book he makes the case for UBI as being a practical response to the disappearing jobs that aren’t coming back, and it’s certainly worth a read regardless of your political views.

UBI isn’t a new concept. Its origins trace back to early 16th Century and nearly came to pass in the early 1970’s by President Nixon of all people. UBI has laid a low profile since then aside from isolated pilot experiments in various countries and a micro-version of it currently existing in Alaska funded by oil revenues, but with Yang being it’s most prominent champion, it’s sure to get national attention during the next election cycle.

Yang is proposing giving every American $1,000 a month, regardless of their personal wealth, as a way to protect them against an increasingly automated workforce that may have no place for them anymore. Right now that $12,000 a year might not seem life changing but that could be the difference for a single mother no longer having to work two jobs to feed their child, it could be enough to help a young couple put themselves on a track to saving for their first home, and it might even help some aspiring entrepreneur in creating something remarkable instead of taking any job that sticks and in-turn neglecting their true passions. In this sense Yang’s UBI plan, which he calls the Freedom Dividend, isn’t designed to get people to stop working, it’s meant to foster a more wholesome life where fighting to stay out of poverty isn’t as much of a full-time struggle.

UBI may seem like some seductive panacea that’s too good to be true for anyone to take seriously though. Still, Yang argues that it’s not as complicated as it seems since consolidating current social welfare programs and implementing a federal value-added tax on consumer goods could provide enough to cover it, but if you really think about it UBI is not that different than Social Security; you just wouldn’t have to wait until retirement to get it.

Though a number of UBI experiments have already taken place, perhaps most famously in Finland, it seems unlikely any of them will be comprehensive enough to get economists to agree on whether it’s proof enough to work on a wider scale. However, some argue that it doesn’t matter if economists can’t form a unified opinion of it because UBI isn’t a math problem, it’s an ethical issue we’ll need to confront soon since there isn’t going to be enough jobs going around to support us all.

Personally I find the ethical view of UBI most compelling because ever since I’ve had my first job in High School, I’ve long felt that our national work culture is unnecessarily toxic. Aside from corporations having too much pull in government policies, separate from unions being crushed decade after decade, and different than work being overly fetishized, my view is that UBI can serve as corrective force that will require companies to value workers as human beings rather than as receptacles of labor.

The Right to (a meaningful) Life.

If it seems like I’m focusing too much on Andrew Yang it’s probably because I read his book recently but there’s also one more book that’s been on my mind that I wasn’t expecting to make me think about UBI: Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.

You’ve might have had Frankl’s landmark book given to you as a reading assignment back in High School but if you haven’t read it yet, please do. His personal story of surviving life in a Nazi concentration camp thanks to his belief that every life has meaning is eternally inspiring and has become a legitimate school of psychotherapy. I guess the reason why his book struck a chord with me on the subject of UBI is because I question how many people are actually finding meaning in their everyday lives.

For many Americans, I think finding meaning in their life is something that just doesn’t make it very high on their priority list, especially for those struggling to get by. For others, their identity is largely tied to their careers. Everyone knows people like this and it may seem admirable from a distance, but when you observe how quickly a person like that unravels when they retire (or laid off) it makes you reconsider if winning the rat race is really worth the energy.

Let’s be clear, there’s nothing wrong with having a good work ethic and career success. The value of a hard work’s day is something I don’t think can be matched and is important to instill in our children. I also think that if we don’t get out the habit of measuring the value of our lives by career success, we are setting up future generations for cataclysmic failure. You don’t have to look far for the effects of a toxic work culture that’s crushed our internal searches for meaning either.

Maybe it’s just me, but walking around New York City today it seems like a lot of people are just out of it. I’m not referring to the visible rise of people walking around with severe mental illnesses; I’m just talking about the people you interact with in your daily routines like ordering breakfast, returning an item at customer service, or simply asking for help at the Post Office. I’m not disparaging anyone’s job but I have noticed that many people just seem to be numb at work these days and I don’t think it’s their fault.

The harsh reality is that many people hate their jobs but are forced to take them in order to survive. Often times there’s resentment towards having to deal with a job you can’t stand but since there’s no channel at work to air those feelings, the anger seeps out later and often towards people that have nothing to do with it; like when you get screamed at by a Manhattan traffic cop for daring to ask a question.

When I observe the vacant faces seen on the packed subway, I can’t help but feel as if people are worn out from the same soul crushing routines and solely operating on muscle memory. With that said, if work is where our life’s meaning comes from, than what’s there to say about the millions of people that have no connection to their jobs other than it giving them a paycheck? This isn’t healthy for our society and if we are approaching a ferocious reduction of jobs, there’s going to be millions of Americans that aren’t just out of work, but spiritually lost as well.

We are already aware that countries known for overworking their citizens, such as South Korea and Japan, have high rates of depression but what about countries that have lost jobs? I’m not sure if there are examples of this but based on my own travels, I’m reminded of my visit to Greece a few years ago. At the time the people of Greece were suffering from the austerity measures put in place to save their economy and when I spoke with people on the effects it was having I was alarmed by how many people said it’s literally killing the country. By that they meant suicide and the stories of people who lost hope became quantified in 2015 when it was revealed there was a 35% increase in the suicide rate.

If Greece is an example of what happens to a country when a massive workforce contraction occurs, it should be alarming because Greece is a nation where family, religion and a laid-back Mediterranean approach to life is deeply ingrained into society. If a culture like that can’t ward off the attraction of suicide as a response to grim work outlooks, than how would America handle itself?

This is a major reason why I think UBI could be fundamentally transformative because it will help people prioritize their life differently. Many people wouldn’t be forced to endure a low-paying job just to pay for groceries and basic living expenses and many employers would now have to work harder to keep workers happy since it would be easier for a disgruntled employee to leave. In effect, these two realities could alter how future generations shape their lives. With someone’s life meaning no longer being so dependent on a job, it could open us up to exploring other ventures like artistic pursuits, social causes, or just being a parent which is the most important job of all.

The United Nations has started to measure happiness around the world but it’s probably not going to be added on to it’s Human Rights charter anytime soon. That’s fine but I do wish world governments would start to look at other things besides GDP as a measure of how well life is going for it’s citizens. I don’t think happiness is something that will ever be considered a human right, but I do feel we should be the ones holding ourselves accountable for having a meaningful life.

No government could ever manage that but we could start from the bottom by demanding we care more for ourselves than just securing a paycheck. If we could imprint this on our children, future generations won’t tolerate a culture that prioritizes work over meaning and slowly we’ll see a difference in the elected officials we choose to lead us.

At the moment, I’m not sure if there is a better way to make this happen but it does seem like UBI is a step in the right direction.