A Radical Critique Of Universal Basic Income

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

This critique reveals the unintended consequences of UBI.

Readers have been asking me what I thought of Universal Basic Income (UBI) as the solution to the systemic problem of jobs being replaced by automation. To answer this question, I realized I had to start by taking a fresh look at work and its role in human life and society. And since UBI is fundamentally a distribution of money, I also needed to take a fresh look at our system of money.

That led to a radical critique of Universal Basic Income (UBI) and an outline for a much more sustainable and just system of money and work than we have now. To adequately explore these critical topics, I ended up writing a 50,000 word book, Money and Work Unchained.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is increasingly being held up as the solution to automation"s displacement of human labor. UBI combines two powerful incentives: self-interest (who couldn"t use an extra $1,000 per month) and an idealistic commitment to guaranteeing everyone material security and reducing the rising income inequality that threatens our social contract--a topic I"ve addressed many times over the past decade.

UBI"s goals - guaranteeing material security and reducing income inequality - are not just worthy; they are essential. The question then becomes: how do we achieve these goals?

The conventional critiques of UBI focus on the practicalities of funding such a substantial universal entitlement. Where will the trillions of extra dollars required come from? Can we pay for UBI by "taxing the robots" or borrowing/ printing more currency?

But a radical critique must go much, much further, and ask: is UBI the best that we can do? If we provide the basics of material security--the bottom level of Maslow"s hierarchy of human needs--what about all the higher needs for positive social roles, meaningful work, and the opportunity to build capital?

This critique reveals the unintended consequences of UBI: rather than deliver a Utopia, UBI institutionalizes serfdom and a two-class neofeudalism in which the bottom 95% scrape by on UBI while the top 5% hoard what every human wants and needs: positive social roles in our community, meaningful work that makes us feel needed, and the opportunity to build capital in all its manifestations.

UBI is the last gasp of a broken, dying system, a "solution" that institutionalizes all the injustices of serfdom under the guise of aiding those left behind by automation. We can do better--we must do better--and I lay out how to do so in this book.

A radical critique must also examine the widely accepted assumption that automation will destroy most jobs. Is this assumption valid? It turns out this assumption rests on a completely false understanding of the nature of work, the economics of automation and the presumed stability of an unsustainable global economy.

Read the first section for free in PDF format.

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I"m offering Money and Work Unchained to my readers at a 25% discount ($7.45 for the Kindle ebook and $15 for the print edition) through Saturday, December 9, after which the price goes up to retail ($9.95 and $20). If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Great News From McKinsey: Robots Will Take 800 Million Jobs Worldwide By 2030

Stories about robots taking over from humans have become prevalent. Recently we’ve written about a new Manhattan Shake Shack replacing human cashiers with robots, killer robots (a.k.a. lethal autonomous weapons systems), a Californian real estate company replacing commission-based human agents with robots, a cocaine workshop in Brazil with robots packing 150,000 baggies a day and the first robot to be awarded citizenship which hopes for “harmony with humans”. No chance.

In June, we discussed a McKinsey & Co. report which stated that US manufacturing could be poised for a recovery and not because of Trump’s policies. Indeed, McKinsey’s rationale was based on automation weakening the case for labour arbitrage. James Manyika, McKinsey Global Institute director, commented.

“Even if we rebuild factories here and you build plants here, they’re just not going to employ thousands of people -- that just doesn’t happen. Find a factory anywhere in the world built in the last 5 years -- not many people work there.”

Pressing home the bad news for humans everywhere, both in developed and emerging nations. McKinsey has published a new report with truly dire conclusions, as Bloomberg reports.

As many as 800 million workers worldwide may lose their jobs to robots and automation by 2030, equivalent to more than a fifth of today’s global labor force. That’s according to a new report covering 46 nations and more than 800 occupations by the research arm of McKinsey & Co.

The consulting company said Wednesday that both developed and emerging countries will be impacted. Machine operators, fast-food workers and back-office employees are among those who will be most affected if automation spreads quickly through the workplace.

This fits with a Bloomberg chart we’ve used before showing industries most at risk to automation.

There is some "moderately" good news, if the robotic takeover is “less rapid” than McKinsey is currently forecasting.

some 400 million workers could still find themselves displaced by automation and would need to find new jobs over the next 13 years, the McKinsey Global Institute study found.

If you’re one of the 800 million, or maybe 400 million, displaced workers, don’t despair if you like gardening or looking after the elderly. Bloomberg continues.

The good news for those displaced is that there will be jobs for them to transition into, although in many cases they’re going to have to learn new skills to do the work. Those jobs will include health-care providers for aging populations, technology specialists and even gardeners, according to the report.

“We’re all going to have to change and learn how to do new things over time,” Michael Chui, a San Francisco-based partner at the institute, said in an interview.

Somehow, we doubt that the optimistic Mr. Chui is referring to himself, although you never know. We remember working for a high-profile British merchant bank in the 1990s, let’s just call it S.G. Warburg, which, after decades of success had lost its way slightly. The Chairman – often referred to as the “Fat Controller” by his underlings - invited the bank’s leading shareholders to dinner. We’re paraphrasing, but his message was “Don’t worry, we’ve got McKinsey coming in.” Hearing that, the major shareholders decided that the “game was up” and the bank lost its independence afterwards. Meanwhile, after another robot report from McKinsey, we like to find solace in previous predictions of labour market demise.

"We are being afflicted with a new disease of which some readers may not have heard the name, but of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come—namely, technological unemployment" - Keynes, 1930
 
“Labor will become less and less important..More and more workers will be replaced by machines. I do not see that new industries can employ everybody who wants a job” -Leontief, 1952

Fed Hints During Next Recession It Will Roll Out Income Targeting, NIRP

In a moment of rare insight, two weeks ago in response to a question "Why is establishment media romanticizing communism? Authoritarianism, poverty, starvation, secret police, murder, mass incarceration? WTF?", we said that this was simply a "prelude to central bank funded universal income", or in other words, Fed-funded and guaranteed cash for everyone.

prelude to central bank funded universal income

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 31, 2017

On Thursday afternoon, in a stark warning of what"s to come, San Francisco Fed President John Williams confirmed our suspicions when he said that to fight the next recession, global central bankers will be forced to come up with a whole new toolkit of "solutions", as simply cutting interest rates won"t well, cut it anymore, and in addition to more QE and forward guidance - both of which were used widely in the last recession - the Fed may have to use negative interest rates, as well as untried tools including so-called price-level targeting or nominal-income targeting.

The bolded is a tacit admission that as a result of the aging workforce and the dramatic slack which still remains in the labor force, the US central bank will have to take drastic steps to preserve social order and cohesion.

According to Williams", Reuters reports, central bankers should take this moment of “relative economic calm” to rethink their approach to monetary policy. Others have echoed Williams" implicit admission that as a result of 9 years of Fed attempts to stimulate the economy - yet merely ending up with the biggest asset bubble in history - the US finds itself in a dead economic end, such as Chicago Fed Bank President Charles Evans, who recently urged a strategy review at the Fed, but Williams’ call for a worldwide review is considerably more ambitious.

Among Williams" other suggestions include not only negative interest rates but also raising the inflation target - to 3%, 4% or more, in an attempt to crush debt by making life unbearable for the majority of the population - as it considers new monetary policy frameworks. Still, even the most dovish Fed lunatic has to admit that such strategies would have costs, including those that diverge greatly from the Fed"s current approach. Or maybe not: "price-level targeting, he said, is advantageous because it fits "relatively easily" into the current framework."

Considering that for the better part of a decade the Fed prescribed lower rates and ZIRP as the cure to the moribund US economy, only to flip and then propose higher rates as the solution to all problems, it is not surprising that even the most insane proposals are currently being contemplated because they fit "relatively easily" into the current framework.

Additionally, confirming that the Fed has learned nothing at all, during a Q&A in San Francisco, Williams said that "negative interest rates need to be on the list" of potential tools the Fed could use in a severe recession. He also said that QE remains more effective in terms of cost-benefit, but "would not exclude that as an option if the circumstances warranted it."

"If all of us get stuck at the lower bound” then "policy spillovers are far more negative,” Williams said of global economic interconnectedness. "I’m not pushing for" some "United Nations of policy."

And, touching on our post from mid-September, in which we pointed out that the BOC was preparing to revising its mandate, Williams also said that "the Fed and all central banks should have Canada-like practice of revisiting inflation target every 5 years."

Meanwhile, the idea of Fed targeting, or funding, "income" is hardly new: back in July, Deutsche Bank was the first institution to admit that the Fed has created "universal basic income for the rich":

The accommodation and QE have acted as a free insurance policy for the owners of risk, which, given the demographics of stock market participation, in effect has functioned as universal basic income for the rich. It is not difficult to see how disruptive unwind of stimulus could become. Clearly, in this context risk has become a binding constraint.

It is only "symmetric" that everyone else should also benefit from the Fed"s monetary generosity during the next recession. 

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Finally, for those curious what will really happen after the next "great liquidity crisis", JPM"s Marko Kolanovic laid out a comprehensive checklist one month ago. It predicted not only price targeting (i.e., stocks), but also negative income taxes, progressive corporate taxes, new taxes on tech companies, and, of course, hyperinflation. Here is the excerpt.

What will governments and central banks do in the scenario of a great liquidity crisis? If the standard rate cutting and bond purchases don’t suffice, central banks may more explicitly target asset prices (e.g., equities). This may be controversial in light of the potential impact of central bank actions in driving inequality between asset owners and labor. Other ‘out of the box’ solutions could include a negative income tax (one can call this ‘QE for labor’), progressive corporate tax, universal income and others. To address growing pressure on labor from AI, new taxes or settlements may be levied on Technology companies (for instance, they may be required to pick up the social tab for labor destruction brought by artificial intelligence, in an analogy to industrial companies addressing environmental impacts). While we think unlikely, a tail risk could be a backlash against central banks that prompts significant changes in the monetary system. In many possible outcomes, inflation is likely to pick up.

 

The next crisis is also likely to result in social tensions similar to those witnessed 50 years ago in 1968. In 1968, TV and investigative journalism provided a generation of baby boomers access to unfiltered information on social developments such as Vietnam and other proxy wars, Civil rights movements, income inequality, etc. Similar to 1968, the internet today (social media, leaked documents, etc.) provides millennials with unrestricted access to information on a surprisingly similar range of issues. In addition to information, the internet provides a platform for various social groups to become more self-aware, united and organized. Groups span various social dimensions based on differences in income/wealth, race, generation, political party affiliations, and independent stripes ranging from alt-left to alt-right movements. In fact, many recent developments such as the US presidential election, Brexit, independence movements in Europe, etc., already illustrate social tensions that are likely to be amplified in the next financial crisis. How did markets evolve in the aftermath of 1968? Monetary systems were completely revamped (Bretton Woods), inflation rapidly increased, and equities produced zero returns for a decade. The decade ended with a famously wrong Businessweek article ‘the death of equities’ in 1979.

Kolanovic"s warning may have sounded whimsical one month ago. Now, in light of Williams" words, it appears that it may serve as a blueprint for what comes next.

Is Capitalism Dead Or Merely Dying?

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

New Zealand’s new prime minister Jacinda Ardern calls capitalism a blatant failure. Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis says capitalism is ‘merely’ coming to an end because it is making itself obsolete. Mathematics professor Bruce Boghosian claims that without redistribution of wealth, our market economy would not be stable, because wealth always tends to concentrate. The people at Artemis Capital Management write that the stock market has begun self-cannibalizing like a snake eating its tail, and the only reason we’re not in a recession already is ‘financial alchemy’.

At the very least we can say that the system is under pressure. But what system is that? It would be nice to have a clearcut definition of capitalism, but alas, there are many, about as many as there are different forms of it. That doesn’t make this any easier. Americans call many European economies ‘socialist’, which seems to mean they are not capitalist. But Scandinavian countries don’t function like the Soviet Union either.

And if you see how much money is involved in transfer payments to citizens in the US, the supposed bastion of free market capitalism, it’s tempting to conclude the system has already failed. But even with transfer payments, inequality is at record levels. That would seem to confirm Boghosian’s statement that “even if a society does redistribute wealth, if it’s too small an amount, “a partial oligarchy will result..” So what then?

Varoufakis and others want a “universal basic dividend”, or “universal basic income”. Would that be the end of capitalism as we know it? Or is it just a -perhaps more extreme- form of ‘state capitalism’? Varoufakis deems it inevitable because technology will eradicate so many jobs from societies that people won’t be able to make money from work. Personally, I’ve long thought that the pending large-scale demise of pensions systems will lead to some form of UBI.

37-year-young Jacinda Ardern is very clear in her assessment of New Zealand’s form of capitalism. If you’ve got the worst homelessness in the developed world, you have a broken system. If the system fails the people, it’s no good. Other people might argue that capitalism never promised to take care of everyone. Or rather, not through state interference. Labour’s Ardern has her view:

New Zealand’s New Prime Minister Brands Capitalism A ‘Blatant Failure’

[Jacinda] Ardern, has pledged her government will increase the minimum wage, write child poverty reduction targets into law, and build thousands of affordable homes. In her first full interview since becoming prime minister-elect, she told current affairs programme The Nation that capitalism had “failed our people”. “If you have hundreds of thousands of children living in homes without enough to survive, that’s a blatant failure,” she said. [..] “When you have a market economy, it all comes down to whether or not you acknowledge where the market has failed and where intervention is required. Has it failed our people in recent times? Yes. How can you claim you’ve been successful when you have growth roughly 3%, but you’ve got the worst homelessness in the developed world?”

So to which extent should a state interfere in markets, and in society at large? There are obviously wide ideological divides when it comes to answering that one. Does that mean there is no answer possible at all? Perhaps not. Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that the system is predestined to fail, as Boghosian’s mathematical models suggest: “Our work refutes the idea that free markets, by virtually leaving people up to their own devices, will be fair..”

That doesn’t necessarily demand a lot of interference, we could ‘simply’ write the rules of the game in such a way that the ‘natural tendency’ towards wealth concentration is blocked. An example is the history of the top US income tax rate. Arguably, the nation was doing a lot better under Eisenhower and Kennedy, with a top rate of 91%, than it is today. If you put a few rules like that in play, perhaps including Varoufakis’ idea of a ‘common welfare fund’, maybe the state doesn’t have to interfere much otherwise.

One of the main underlying claims of capitalism, and of macroeconomics in general, is that markets -and societies- will sort themselves out if left alone. Bruce Boghosian says this is not true, and that he has the math to prove it. The entire notion of markets tending towards a ‘supply-demand equilibrium’ is nonsense, he says (echoing Minsky, Steve Keen et al). Trickle-down economics is a figment of the imagination, while trickle up-economics flourishes.

This refutes much of what our economic systems are based on, which would appear to indicate that we need an urgent revision of these systems. Unless we would agree that Darwin-on-Steroids is a good idea. We don’t and won’t, because it would mean Stephen Foster’s “frail forms fainting at the door” all over the place. A market ideology that causes widespread misery has no future.

The Mathematics of Inequality

Seven years ago, the combined wealth of 388 billionaires equaled that of the poorest half of humanity , according to Oxfam International. This past January the equation was even more unbalanced: it took only eight billionaires, marking an unmistakable march toward increased concentration of wealth. Today that number has been reduced to five billionaires.

 

Trying to understand such growing inequality is usually the purview of economists, but Bruce Boghosian, a professor of mathematics, thinks he has found another explanation—and a warning. Using a mathematical model devised to mimic a simplified version of the free market, he and colleagues are finding that, without redistribution, wealth becomes increasingly more concentrated, and inequality grows until almost all assets are held by an extremely small percent of people.

 

“Our work refutes the idea that free markets, by virtually leaving people up to their own devices, will be fair,” he said. “Our model, which is able to explain the form of the actual wealth distribution with remarkable accuracy, also shows that free markets cannot be stable without redistribution mechanisms. The reality is precisely the opposite of what so-called ‘market fundamentalists’ would have us believe.”

 

While economists use math for their models, they seek to show that an economy governed by supply and demand will result in a steady state or equilibrium, while Boghosian’s efforts “don’t try to engineer a supply-demand equilibrium, and we don’t find one,” he said. [..] The model tracks the data with remarkable accuracy, he said. He and his team will soon publish a paper on how it relates to U.S. wealth data from 1989 to 2013.

 

“We have also begun to apply it to wealth data from the ECB, and so far it seems to work very well for certain European countries as well,” he said [..] It turns out that when agents do well in early transactions, the odds are so increasingly stacked in their favor that—without redistribution from taxes or other wealth-transfer mechanisms—they will get more money, and keep accruing wealth inevitably.

 

“Without redistribution of wealth, our market economy would not be stable,” said Boghosian. “One person would run away with all the wealth, and it would keep going until it came to complete oligarchy.” And even if a society does redistribute wealth, if it’s too small an amount, “a partial oligarchy will result,” Boghosian said.

If markets and societies cannot survive under current rules, theories and ideologies, what do we do? The Artemis guys strongly suggest we stop the practice of excessive stock buybacks- even if they’re the only thing propping up the whole market system. Because they’re leading us straight into a recession. Because they’re making that recession a lot worse.

Volatility and the Alchemy of Risk

The Ouroboros, a Greek word meaning ‘tail devourer’, is the ancient symbol of a snake consuming its own body in perfect symmetry. The imagery of the Ouroboros evokes the infinite nature of creation from destruction. The sign appears across cultures and is an important icon in the esoteric tradition of Alchemy. Egyptian mystics first derived the symbol from a real phenomenon in nature. In extreme heat a snake, unable to self-regulate its body temperature,will experience an out-of-control spike in its metabolism. In a state of mania, the snake is unable to differentiate its own tail from its prey,and will attack itself, self-cannibalizing until it perishes. In nature and markets, when randomness self-organizes into too perfect symmetry, order becomes the source of chaos.

 

The Ouroboros is a metaphor for the financial alchemy driving the modern Bear Market in Fear. Volatility across asset classes is at multi-generational lows. A dangerous feedback loop now exists between ultra-low interest rates, debt expansion, asset volatility, and financial engineering that allocates risk based on that volatility. In this self-reflexive loop volatility can reinforce itself both lower and higher. In a market where stocks and bonds are both overvalued, financial alchemy is the only way to feed our global hunger for yield, until it kills the very system it is nourishing.

[..] At the head of the Great Snake of Risk is unprecedented monetary policy. Since 2009 Global Central Banks have pumped in $15 trillion in stimulus creating an imbalance in the investment demand for and supply of quality assets. Long term government bond yields are now the lowest levels in the history of human civilization dating back to 1285. As of this summer there was $9.5 trillion worth of negative yielding debt globally. Last month Austria issued a 100-year bond with a coupon of only 2.1%(6) that will lose close to half its value if interest rates rise 1% or more. The global demand for yield is now unmatched in human history. None of this makes sense outside a framework of financial repression.

 

Amid this mania for investment, the stock market has begun self-cannibalizing… literally. Since 2009, US companies have spent a record $3.8 trillion on share buy-backs financed by historic levels of debt issuance. Share buybacks are a form of financial alchemy that uses balance sheet leverage to reduce liquidity generating the illusion of growth. A shocking +40% of the earning-per-share growth and +30% of the stock market gains since 2009 are from share buy-backs. Absent this financial engineering we would already be in an earnings recession.

 

Any strategy that systematically buys declines in markets is mathematically shorting volatility. To this effect, the trillions of dollars spent on share buybacks are equivalent to a giant short volatility position that enhances mean reversion. Every decline in markets is aggressively bought by the market itself, further lowing volatility. Stock price valuations are now at levels which in the past have preceded depressions including 1928, 1999, and 2007. The role of active investors is to find value, but when all asset classes are overvalued, the only way to survive is by using financial engineering to short volatility in some form.

Yanis Varoufakis doesn’t so much argue that capitalism has already failed, he says it is bound to fail in the near future. Because new technology, including artificial intelligence, will destroy too many jobs for society to continue to function intact. That is already happening, in that we both produce and consume Google’s ‘products’, but we get none of the profits. An example:

Google’s Plan To Revolutionise Cities Is A Takeover In All But Name

Alphabet’s weapons are impressive. Cheap, modular buildings to be assembled quickly; sensors monitoring air quality and building conditions; adaptive traffic lights prioritising pedestrians and cyclists; parking systems directing cars to available slots. Not to mention delivery robots, advanced energy grids, automated waste sorting, and, of course, ubiquitous self-driving cars. Alphabet essentially wants to be the default platform for other municipal services. Cities, it says, have always been platforms; now they are simply going digital.

 

“The world’s great cities are all hubs of growth and innovation because they leveraged platforms put in place by visionary leaders,” states the proposal. “Rome had aqueducts, London the Underground, Manhattan the street grid.” Toronto, led by its own visionary leaders, will have Alphabet. Amid all this platformaphoria, one could easily forget that the street grid is not typically the property of a private entity, capable of excluding some and indulging others. Would we want Trump Inc to own it? Probably not. So why hurry to give its digital equivalent to Alphabet?

Google aims at taking over our entire communities, and claims this will be to our benefit. We let the new technology companies expand far and wide, to a large extent because our ‘leaders’ don’t understand what is happening any better than we do. But that is not a good thing, for many different reasons. It’ll be very hard to whistle them back later, both because of the wealth they’re building, and because of the intensifying links they have to government, including -or especially- the intelligence community.

Capitalism Is Ending Because It Has Made Itself Obsolete

Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has claimed capitalism is coming to an end because it is making itself obsolete. The former economics professor told an audience at University College London that the rise of giant technology corporations and artificial intelligence will cause the current economic system to undermine itself.

Mr Varoufakis [..] said companies such as Google and Facebook, for the first time ever, are having their capital bought and produced by consumers. “Firstly the technologies were funded by some government grant; secondly every time you search for something on Google, you contribute to Google’s capital,” he said. “And who gets the returns from capital? Google, not you. “So now there is no doubt capital is being socially produced, and the returns are being privatised. This with artificial intelligence is going to be the end of capitalism.”

 

Warning Karl Marx “will have his revenge ”, the 56-year-old said for the first time since capitalism started, new technology “is going to destroy a lot more jobs than it creates”. He added: “Capitalism is going to undermine capitalism , because they are producing all these technologies that will make corporations and the private means of production obsolete. “And then what happens? I have no idea.”

 

Describing the present economic situation as “unsustainable” and fearing the rise of “toxic nationalism”, Mr Varoufakis said governments needed to prepare for post-capitalism by introducing redistributive wealth policies. He suggested one effective policy would be for 10% of all future issue of shares to be put into a “common welfare fund” owned by the people. Out of this a “universal basic dividend” could be paid to every citizen.

Has capitalism failed already, as Jacinda Ardern claims, or will that happen only in the future, as Varoufakis says? It may be a moot question once the system and the markets start collapsing. That they will, and must, is not a question but a certainty, even a mathematical one. Whatever your ideology, that is not a good thing. And the current ideology has caused this, that much is clear.

If the remaining wealth is not divided better than it is today, those who have gathered most of it will also find themselves in non-functioning societies and communities. Unless perhaps you’re George W. and have property in Paraguay.

But even then. We’re eating our tails.

Guaranteed Income And Living Wage Schemes Cannot Possibly Work

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg Supports Universal Basic Income.

In its basic form, universal basic income means “everyone gets a paycheck, whether they have a job or not.”

Many expect even more. They want a guaranteed “living wage”.

Useless Trials

Such schemes cannot possibly work. But that does not stop fools from trying.

For example, Finland is giving out a guaranteed monthly income of nearly $600 to 2,000 citizens.

Canada’s province of Ontario, which includes Toronto, started a pilot program in April that provides 4,000 citizens with an unconditional income of about $12,600 a year. Applicants must be between ages 18 and 64 and living on a limited income.

Those studies cannot prove anything, no matter what the results.

Free Money Proposals Do Not Scale

Sure, one can do a trial and show that 20,000 or whatever sample size is better off.

However, any benefit to the trial participants must at the expense of a bigger deficit or higher taxes on everyone else.

Imagine giving 200 million people a guaranteed living wage. Who is going to pay for it?

Next, imagine all of Europe doing this coupled with freedom of movement.

Why stop there? Imagine the same program for the entire world? Free money for everyone!

Yes, This is a Real CNBC Article on “Economics”

Via The Daily Bell

A chicken in every pot, and a unicorn in every garage. That’s the progressive dream.

No, seriously, they are dreaming, and they must have smoked something crazy before bed.

I almost couldn’t even write about this subject because I just kept staring at my computer screen wide-eyed and shaking my head. Really? Is this seriously being passed off as economics and news?

The larger the universal basic income, the greater the benefit to the economy, according to the report.

A $1,000 cash handout to all adults would grow the economy by 12.56 percent after eight years, the study finds. Current Congressional Budget Office estimates put the GDP at $19.8 trillion. The cash handout would therefore increase the GDP by $2.48 trillion. (Vox first did this extrapolation in their coverage of the report, and Steinbaum confirmed the accuracy of the extrapolation to CNBC Make It by email.)

Wow! You’re saying that by the U.S. government simply creating money out of thin air, we can increase the amount of money in existence! Why didn’t we think of this before? Why are we only $20 trillion in debt! why not go $200 trillion in debt. Why not $900 trillion?! Who cares, it just boosts the economy.

The super-serious-legitimate-intellectual study found that the larger the handout, the more the economy grows! Hear that? We can all be millionaires! It’s easy street from here on out.

We can all quit our jobs at the factories, farms, grocery stores, and office buildings. Things will keep being produced, sold, and organized according to the report.

What they didn’t add is that in order to finance these handouts without taxation, the U.S. would add $24 trillion of debt. The already insane national debt would more than double in 8 years.

And what would a cash influx of that kind cause?

Exactly what the study did not take into consideration. Inflation.

The factor that other models emphasize which is not present in the Levy Model is “potential output”—that the size of the macroeconomy is theoretically limited by supply constraints, and that once these bind, the effect offurther expansion in aggregate demand is primarily to increase inflation.

I love it. “Theoretically” the economy is limited by the supply of goods.

The grocery store has 100 loaves of bread, so theoretically, they can only sell 100 loaves of bread. Good thing only 100 people want to buy a loaf of bread.

But this study adds 1,000 more people who want to buy that bread. They conclude that this will not increase the price of the bread and that the extra 1,000 people who want bread will not be constrained by the fact that there are only 100 loaves.

It is utter nonsense! They are basically saying that they can drastically increase the consumption of goods without having to increase supply, and without the price of the goods rising.

And why do they believe this baloney? Because they are still using Keynesian economics, explained in the image below.

At very least the study concluded that raising taxes would have no net benefit to the economy. So they understand that taking from one person and handing to another would not grow the economy.

These estimates are based on a universal basic income paid for by increasing the federal deficit. As part of the study, the researchers also calculated the effect to the economy of paying for the cash handouts by increasing taxes. In that case, there would be no net benefit to the economy, the report finds.

But they apparently don’t believe that demand is enabled by supply. Have they tried to consume something that doesn’t exist? It’s a difficult task.

And they also don’t believe in inflation. But when the supply stays the same, and the demand grows, prices will rise. If the demand is enabled by increasing the monetary supply by going into more debt, that means that the value of the new dollars is derived from the old dollars. Every dollar gets a little bit more worthless because nothing about the real physical economy has changed. Supply has not grown to match increased demand.

And finally, maybe they don’t want to finance the universal basic income with taxation, but how are they going to pay the interest on the extra debt? Currently, it costs almost half a trillion dollars per year just to pay the interest on the $20 trillion national debt. They want to more than double that in just eight years. Who in their right mind would keep lending the U.S. money?

You can play with numbers, but you can’t change reality. This model would DESTROY the economy in 8 years, not improve it. Yes, there will be more money in supply, and therefore the economy has “grown” if you don’t factor in real purchasing power, which will collapse.

It would be a transfer of wealth from people with savings, to people in debt.

This trash is clearly being sold so that idiots can cite a study that says a universal basic income is a good thing. The chorus grows in the media, training the sheep how to sing their song of ignorance.

Baaa if you support a universal basic income!

Hawaii Considers A "Universal Basic Income" As Robots Seen Stealing Jobs, There's Just One Catch...

Forget social security, medicaid and WIC, today"s progressives have moved well beyond discussing such entitlement relics of the past and nowadays dedicate their efforts to the concept of a "Universal Basic Income" for all...call it the New "New Deal".  You know, because having to work for that "car in every garage and chicken in every pot" is just considered cruel and unusual punishment by today"s standards.

Of course, it should come as little surprise that the progressive state of Hawaii, which depends on easily automatable jobs tied to the tourism industry, is among the first to pursue a Universal Basic Income for its residents.  And while the idea of passing out free money to everyone seems like a genius plan, if we understand it correctly, as CBS points out, there is just one catch...figuring out who will pay for it.

Driverless trucks. Factory robots. Delivery drones. Virtual personal assistants.

As technological innovations increasingly edge into the workplace, many people fear that robots and machines are destined to take jobs that human beings have held for decades--a trend that is already happening in stores and factories around the country. For many affected workers, retraining might be out of reach —unavailable, unaffordable or inadequate.

Over the past two decades, automation has reduced the need for workers, especially in such blue-collar sectors as manufacturing, warehousing and mining. Many of the jobs that remain demand higher education or advanced technological skills. It helps explain why just 55 percent of Americans with no more than a high school diploma are employed, down from 60 percent just before the Great Recession.

Hawaii state lawmakers have voted to explore the idea of a universal basic income in light of research suggesting that a majority of waiter, cook and building cleaning jobs — vital to Hawaii"s tourism-dependent economy — will eventually be replaced by machines. The crucial question of who would pay for the program has yet to be determined. But support for the idea has taken root.

"Our economy is changing far more rapidly than anybody"s expected," said state Rep. Chris Lee, who introduced legislation to consider a guaranteed universal income.

Lee said he felt it"s important "to be sure that everybody will benefit from the technological revolution that we"re seeing to make sure no one"s left behind."

But taking billions from hard working Americans to "spread the wealth around" has never been all that difficult before so presumably this too should prove to be a relatively minor issue.

In all seriousness, where does Representative Lee and CBS figure Hawaii will get the funding for their guaranteed income plan?  Well, as it turns out, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes made a very generous $10mm donation to support programs just like this...the only problem, of course, is that Hawaii would need about 1,000 times that amount to fund Chris Lee"s plan for just one year.

For now, philanthropic organizations founded by technology entrepreneurs have begun putting money into pilot programs to provide basic income. The Economic Security Project, co-led by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and others, committed $10 million over two years to basic income projects.

Tom Yamachika, president of the Tax Foundation of Hawaii, a nonprofit dedicated to limited taxes and fairness, has estimated that if all Hawaii residents were given $10,000 annually, it would cost about $10 billion a year, which he says Hawaii can"t afford given its $20 billion in unfunded pension liabilities.

That said, it"s difficult to argue with Karl Widerquist"s argument that Hawaiians deserve a "beach dividend" for their heroic efforts in being born and continuing the difficult task of breathing day in and day out.

Karl Widerquist, co-founder of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network, an informal group that promotes the idea of a basic income, suggests that Hawaii could collect a property tax from hotels, businesses and residents that could be redistributed to residents.

"If people in Alaska deserve an oil dividend, why don"t the people of Hawaii deserve a beach dividend?" he asked.

And while we have little doubt that Widerquist has fully thought through his suggestion that Hawaii just raise an incremental $10 billion every year via a tax on hotel stays...we thought we"d run the math just to make sure his plan holds water.  As it turns out, roughly 3 million families visit Hawaii for a little R&R every year which means each family would only have to pony up an extra $3,400 per hotel stay to cover Hawaii"s Universal Basic Income plan.  Seem more than reasonable, right?

How Can America Afford A Universal Basic Income? Simple: "Tax The Robots"

By replacing low-wage cashiers and other retail workers with robots, the retail sector’s struggling companies can engineer a potentially life-saving boost in profits. But as advances in artificial intelligence continue to accelerate, according to the World Economic Forum, large swaths of laborers are going to lose their jobs, leading to unprecedented levels of unemployment.

How to distribute the profits that will accrue to corporations thanks to this paradigmatic shift in labor-market conditions has been the subject of intense debate, as it has the capacity to create a sharp drop in living standards across developed economies.

So how can governments ameliorate this diminution of the American workforce? The WEF has an idea: Tax the robots and use the proceeds to fund a universal basic income for all Americans. As the paper notes, the once-controversial UBI has never been more poplar, thanks to tech luminaries like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Bill Gates – all of whom have spoken in glowing tones about the policy’s potential to save America from dystopia. Yet, for all this talk, Zuckerberg & Co. have glossed over a crucial question: How, exactly, will taxpayers afford this?

The WEF says it looked to the private sector for answers, and came up with this simple conclusion: Tax the robots.

“Companies will profit significantly from workforce automation,” WEF writes. “So the private sector will be able to afford shouldering this burden, while at the same time still making greater profits.”

The WEF cites a small, yet successful, experiment that was conducted in the UK, and Ontario, as justification for its plan, which it fleshes out in greater detail below:

“As the robots take over, people will begin to lose their jobs, but companies will be fine. More likely than that - they’ll thrive. The profits generated from automation could be used to pay a basic wage to those displaced by robots. To use the welder example from before, a company could slash the cost of their production by at least a third in a short period of time, and would continue to see greater profits as efficiencies increase and the price for parts drops. If that company eventually arrives at the $2 an hour mark that BCG predicts, the company’s bottom line would have been improved by 1250%.

Given all of the savings and massive profits companies are going to reap from these new technologies, they should be responsible for using part of this monetary kick-back to help the workers they’ve displaced. Legislators might consider a sliding-scale automation tax, where a company qualifying itself as using an automated workforce would be taxed depending on how many human workers they have performing tasks compared to how many tasks are performed by automated workers that a human could rightly do. This money could then be put into a UBI fund that is then distributed by the government to citizens affected by automation—or to the entire population.”

While startup costs associated with building a robotic workforce might appear daunting, the WEF notes that they’ve fallen sharply in recent years, and will likely continue to decline as advances in AI technology sharpen robots’ ability to work side-by side with humans.

Some of the largest some of the largest food-service and retail companies have announced initiatives centered around providing customers with a more seamless shopping experience. Cowen"s Andrew Charles, the analyst calculates the jump in sales at McDonald’s as a result of the company"s new Experience of the Future strategy which anticipates that digital ordering kiosks (shown above) will replace cashiers in at least 2,500 restaurants by the end of 2017 and another 3,000 over 2018.

This trend will only continue to accelerate. McDonald’s, an early pioneer of automation, is already replacing human workers with automated kiosks. They expect a 5% to 9% return on investment in just the first year; in 2019 they expect this return to balloon to double digits. And this is only one sector: PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that 38% of US jobs will be in danger of being replaced by automation by 2030.

To this, WEF adds that Micky D’s expects a 5% to 9% return on investment in just the first year; in 2019 they expect this return to balloon to double digits.

Amazon.com’s nearly $14 billion acquisition of Whole Foods Market has spurred (long overdue) calls from a handful of Congressional Democrats for an investigation into Amazon’s business practices on anti-trust grounds. Over the past few years, the company’s push for speedier delivery times (it offers same day delivery in certain markets through its Amazon Prime service) and an increasingly expansive away of products is devastating smaller retails and brands.

Some smaller retailers, having ascertained the existential threat Bezo’s blatantly monopolistic business practices pose, have started to push back, setting the stage for a full-scale battle between Amazon and its smaller rivals. In an email sent to authorized retailers, the CEO of Birkenstock USA threatened to cut off any retailers who violate the company’s strict policies surrounding reselling by turning over their stock to Amazon. The e-commerce giant has allegedly been reaching out to individual Birkenstock retailers, offering to buy out their entire stock at full price. Amazon has denied these claims. Already, retail bankruptcies have surged 110% in the first half of this year, according to a report by Fitch as retail surpasses battered energy as the most distressed industry in the US.

Unfortunately, US officials aren’t treating the problem of creeping automation with the deference that the WEF says it deserves. Case in point:

“At the exponential rate of robotization, there isn’t a lot of time for legislators to figure out the intricacies of a solution - but they don’t seem to be in too much of a rush. Steven Mnuchin, the US’s treasury secretary, is already completely ignoring this issue, for example.”

Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen acknowledged the severity of the problem during her Congressional testimony following questions from two Republican senators. To be sure, the Fed doesn’t have the authority to raise taxes (though it could easily choose to monetize these handouts by agreeing to buy more government bonds). Stagnant wages, worsening labor-force participation and expanding deflationary prices have been linked by economists to increasing automation. In a recent study, PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that 38% of US jobs will be in danger of being replaced by automation by 2030.
 

Factories May Be Coming Back To The U.S., But The Jobs Aren't: McKinsey

Trump effectively owes his election to the promise of bringing factories and manufacturing jobs back to the United States.  His relentless, targeted attacks against the "Big 3" U.S. auto manufacturers for outsourcing jobs to Mexico was undoubtedly a key reason that he was able to shock the world and win Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania...an accomplishment which has eluded Republicans since Ronald Reagan.

Unfortunately, while factories may once again be making a comeback in the United States, after chasing low wages all around the globe for decades, they"re unlikely to bring the jobs with them.  As a new study from McKinsey highlights, if a new factory opens up in the United States you can bet it"s only because most of the jobs that used to be performed by humans have since been automated.  Per Bloomberg:

American manufacturing could be poised to rebound as technological disruption shakes up global production chains, but that will offer little relief to displaced factory workers, according to new research by the McKinsey Global Institute.

Now, McKinsey sees conditions changing in a way that could favor U.S. producers: automation is weakening the case for labor arbitrage as wages rise in emerging market economies and developing market residents are coalescing into a new consumer class, among other factors.

While the U.S. could seize on those manufacturing growth opportunities, especially if the government and companies invest to make production more competitive, there are catches. Importantly, production might bounce back without bringing a lot of jobs in tow.

“Even if we rebuild factories here and you build plants here, they’re just not going to employ thousands of people -- that just doesn’t happen,” said report co-author and McKinsey Global Institute Director James Manyika. “Find a factory anywhere in the world built in the last 5 years -- not many people work there.”

Not surprisingly, the biggest beneficiary of the decimation of the America"s manufacturing base has been China...which also means they have the most to lose as those jobs get automated.

Looking at the likelihood of automation by industry, McKinsey finds that factory employment ranks near the top of the list -- behind accommodation and food services and just ahead of agriculture. Investment in re-training could help employees who are displaced, Manyika said, but it won’t happen overnight.

"It’s a bit of a heavy lift -- in the skilling, the investment in the right places, the right skills -- it’s not going to happen by itself."

Of course, this wouldn"t be the first time that economists had prematurely predicted the demise of labor markets due to technological advances:

"We are being afflicted with a new disease of which some readers may not have heard the name, but of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come—namely, technological unemployment" - Keynes, 1930

“Labor will become less and less important. . . More and more workers will be replaced by machines. I do not see that new industries can employ everybody who wants a job” - Leontief, 1952

Free Money: Potential Presidential Candidate Mark Zuckerberg Suggests That All Americans Should Get A ‘Universal Basic Income’

Should everyone in America receive a “basic income” directly from the federal government?  Considering the fact that we are already 20 trillion dollars in debt, such a concept may sound quite foolish to many of you, but this is an idea that is really starting to gain traction in leftist circles.  In fact, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested that this was something that we should “explore” during the commencement speech that he just delivered at Harvard.  For quite a while it has been obvious that Zuckerberg is very strongly considering a run for the presidency in 2020, but up until just recently we haven’t had many clues about where he would stand on particular issues.  If he is serious about proposing a universal basic income for all Americans, that would make Zuckerberg very appealing to the far left voters that flocked to the Bernie Sanders campaign.

Yesterday, I discussed the fact that the number of Americans that are receiving money from the government each month has reached an all-time high, but Zuckerberg would take things much farther.  According to Zuckerberg, society would be far better off if everyone got an income from the government…

“Every generation expands its definition of equality. Now it’s time for our generation to define a new social contract,” Zuckerberg said during his speech. “We should have a society that measures progress not by economic metrics like GDP but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to make sure everyone has a cushion to try new ideas.”

Zuckerberg said that, because he knew he had a safety net if projects like Facebook had failed, he was confident enough to continue on without fear of failing. Others, he said, such as children who need to support households instead of poking away on computers learning how to code, don’t have the foundation Zuckerberg had. Universal basic income would provide that sort of cushion, Zuckerberg argued.

Such a proposal is going to look really good to a lot of people at first glance.

But who is going to pay for this?

Of course the truth is that the money for the people that are not working would come from taxing the people that are working.

I don’t think that Zuckerberg has really thought this through.  Are young people going to have an incentive to work if they can just stay home and watch movies and play video games all day while collecting their “universal basic incomes” from the government?

And why would anyone want to bust their rear ends working for a living when their incomes are just going to be taxed extremely heavily to pay for all the people that aren’t working?

We are already 20 trillion dollars in debt, but politicians on the left just want to keep giving even more free stuff to people.  During his presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders suggested that everyone in America “deserves a minimum standard of living” and that every citizen is “entitled” to universal health care, free college education and basic housing…

So long as you have Republicans in control of the House and the Senate, and so long as you have a Congress dominated by big money, I can guarantee you that the discussion about universal basic income is going to go nowhere in a hurry. But, if we can develop a strong grassroots movement which says that every man, woman and child in this country is entitled to a minimum standard of living — is entitled to health care, is entitled to education, is entitled to housing — then we can succeed. We are living in the richest country in the history of the world, yet we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country and millions of people are struggling to put food on the table. It is my absolute conviction that everyone in this country deserves a minimum standard of living and we’ve got to go forward in the fight to make that happen.

In previous generations, very few people would have ever taken someone like Bernie Sanders seriously.

But in our day and time socialism is really starting to catch on.  In fact, one survey found “that four out of every ten adults say they prefer socialism to capitalism”…

The American Culture and Faith Institute recently conducted a survey of adults 18 and older. It shows not only how deeply divided Americans are on some issues but also how their view of the nation stands in many cases in stark contrast to our nation’s founding principles. Most Americans (58 percent) see themselves as politically moderate, while a quarter identify as conservative, and 17 percent as liberal. Those who were both socially and fiscally conservative, the group tracked by the ACFI in greatest detail, were 6 percent of the population.

But those differences don’t reveal the greatest divide and danger to America’s future. “The most alarming result, according to [George] Barna, was that four out of every ten adults say they prefer socialism to capitalism,” the ACFI noted in its commentary on the poll. “That is a large minority,” Barna said, “and it includes a majority of the liberals — who will be pushing for a completely different economic model to dominate our nation. That is the stuff of civil wars. It ought to set off alarm bells among more traditionally-oriented leaders across the nation.’” That 40 percent of Americans now prefer socialism to capitalism could spell major change to the policies advanced by legislators and political leaders and to the interpretations of judges ruling on the application of new and pre-existing laws.

And as I noted yesterday, Millennials are particularly attracted to socialism.  This could have dramatic implications for our society as older generations of Americans slowly die off.

Unfortunately, there is just one huge problem with socialism.

It doesn’t work.

If you want to see the end result of socialism, just move to Venezuela or North Korea for a while.

In socialist nations, there is very little incentive to work hard.  Instead, people tend to become very lazy and expect the government to provide everything that they need.

When people work hard and are productive, the overall wealth of a society goes up.  And when people sit around and wait for someone else to provide for them, the overall wealth of a society goes down.

Would Mark Zuckerberg have worked so hard to develop Facebook if he knew that the government would just come in and take most of the money away so that others could have a “universal basic income”?

Yes, we want to do all that we can to reduce poverty and to build a strong, vibrant middle class.

But socialism is not the answer and it never will be.

What Does The Future Hold For 'Average Joes'? (Spoiler Alert: Feudalism)

It is difficult to say exactly how, or when, the next collapse will be triggered, but, as SHTFPlan.com"s Mac Slavo notes, of course all the conditions are ripe for it.

What can be certain is that the technocrats intent on controlling the future are already engineering the post-collapse society. Many of the Davos elite have been pushing “universal basic income” for all countries across the globe, and are leading people not only into a digital grid where cash is banned, but also into a society where private property and ownership are outlawed.

They are designing a future in which you must borrow or rent everything you need from corporations or the government, if you are allowed to have them at all.

You Realize The Universal Basic Income Is Feudalism, Right?

Authored by Daisy Luther

What does the future hold for average people?

Feudalism.

And they’ll welcome it with open arms, convinced that they are embracing a smart, fair system that eliminates poverty. The greed, entitlement, and lack of ambition that seems inherent in many people today will have them slipping on the yoke of servitude willingly.

Here’s what I mean.

Have you ever been around people who say things like,

“I can’t afford it, but I deserve it…”

“Having [fill in the blank with a material object] is a basic right…”

“Losing that right is okay with me because it’s for the greater good.”

But the thing is, what we “deserve” is the right to pursue our dreams freely.

• We deserve what we earn.


• We deserve to be secure in our life, liberty, and property.


• We deserve the freedom to go about our lives and decisions as long as we aren’t harming the life, liberty, and property of others.

No one owes us anything other than that.

But quite a few people are ready to give up their freedom so that someone else can take care of them.

A lot of people disagree with that list of rights.

They feel like they deserve a living just for drawing breath. As Gawker’s headline reads, “A Universal Basic Income Is the Utopia We Deserve.”

The idea of a universal basic income for all citizens has been catching on all over the world. Is it too crazy to believe in? We spoke to the author of a new book on the ins, outs, and utopian dreams of making basic income a reality.The basic income movement got a significant boost this week when the charity GiveDirectly announced that it will be pursuing a ten-year, $30 million pilot project giving a select group of Kenyan villagers a basic income and studying its effects. As an anti-poverty solution, universal basic income appeals to impoverished people in Africa, relatively well-off Scandinavians, and Americans automated out of their jobs alike.

Sure, money for nothing sounds great on the surface.

But what would the real result of a Universal Basic Income be?

Feudalism. Serfdom. Enslavement.

UBI would fast track us back to the feudalism of the Middle Ages. Sure, we’d be living in slick, modern micro-efficiencies instead of shacks. We’d have some kind of modern job instead of raising sheep for the lord of the manor.

But, in the end, we wouldn’t actually own anything because private property would be abolished for all but the ruling class. We’d no longer have the ability to get ahead in life. Our courses would be set for us and veering off of those courses would be harshly discouraged.

People will be completely dependent on the government and ruling class for every necessity: food, shelter, water, clothing. What better way to assert control than to make compliance necessary for survival?

(If you’re like me and a life of serfdom is not the future you want, you have to take your independence into your hands. Go here for a bundle of self-reliance downloads, absolutely free, to help you do just that.)

Here’s a quick glimpse at peasant life in the Middle Ages, for comparison’s sake.

The period of history from the 5th to the 15th century was known as the Middle Ages.  During this time, the law of the land in Europe was the “feudal system.”  This system was the manner in which the upper 10% (the nobility) controlled the lower 90% (the serfs or peasants).

It is estimated that just over 90% of the population of Europe were peasants.  Most peasants were basically slaves. They were provided with a small shelter on an inferior piece of land and the “protection” of the noble in charge of that area. In return, they worked for the estate, farming the land with no recompense, paying taxes and having no control over their lives.  Some peasants were “free” and had small businesses: blacksmiths, carpenters, bakers, etc.  They paid for the protection of the “Lord” with money, goods, and services.

Peasants had few rights.  They could be taxed at any time, were obligated to use (and pay for) services of the manor like mills or large ovens, and had to request permission for marriages, change of locations or educating their children.

Each year, the peasant was required to give the best part of his harvest to the lord of the manor. The peasants were not allowed to own things that made their lives easier, like oxen or horses, for example. A peasant did not own the land on which he lived and was therefore obligated to live where he was told, grow what he was told, and farm in the manner in which he was told. They were not allowed to hunt on the lord’s land – poaching was an offense punishable by death.  They were not permitted to cut trees for firewood but forced to gather fallen branches to stay warm.  A peasant was not allowed to have real, effective weapons – those were reserved for the armies of the nobility, to keep the peasants in line and immediately quell any quest for dignity and independence.

Most of the peasants seemed content with the arrangement because they received security and safety from the Lord.  He was obligated to protect them from marauders and barbarians and provide enough land for subsistence. (Learn more about feudalism here.)

People will be trapped into servitude because they feel entitled to a lifestyle.

Over the past years, the education has drummed a sense of entitlement into students. And now, world leaders are counting on using that feeling of entitlement to march society willingly right into a tiny gilded cage.

The World Economic Forum is held yearly in Davos, Switzerland. It is at this meeting where a couple thousand of the world’s top economic and political leaders meet to plot our future.

If you think I’m crazy for the comparison between UBI and serfdom, wait until you see this year’s vision for our future.

Ida Auken, a Danish politician who is a contributor to the World Economic Forum, doesn’t believe we should own things. She doesn’t stop at personal possessions, though. She believes we should eschew privacy in our homes, that cash is unnecessary, and that even our thoughts and dreams are not really ours. You can read about her idea of a perfect future in an article for the Annual Meeting of the Global Futures Council titled “Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better.”

In her article, Auken idealizes feudalism, and the kinds of people who believe they “deserve” certain entitlements, like the UBI will welcome this loss of individuality and freedom with open arms.

Watch the video below. I couldn’t make this up if I tried.

For more information about a futuristic feudal society, watch the documentary Obsolete, available for free with an Amazon Prime membership.