I just walked into a store, picked up something to eat, walked out, and automatically paid for it. No lines. No cashiers. No human interaction whatsoever. Relatively cheap prices. And in my 9 mins of shopping I created valuable data based on what I looked at. This is the future. Something I want to stress here too is that I created data even by NOT buying things. What did I do? What did I look at? What did I almost buy? What did I pick up and put back? I could have bought nothing and still enriched @amazon with my ambient data.

basicincome.org/wp-content/upl…

You know how those who don't know any better can hug something to death? That's what those who love capitalism but hate #BasicIncome remind me of. Automation is here. We must now decouple income from work. Not implementing UBI means capitalism eats itself. Capitalism *needs* UBI. Meanwhile, those who hate capitalism and want it to die, and who subsequently don't like UBI because it will save capitalism, are like butterfly lovers who hate caterpillars who believe caterpillars should die. Yes UBI will save capitalism, but from UBI postcapitalism can emerge.

"It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages."

Money is meant to circulate through economies. Customers buy stuff. That money becomes wages. Those wages buy stuff, etc.

Here's a diagram of how this works. As factors of production become machines, factor incomes are reduced, which in turn reduces personal consumption, which in turn further reduces factor incomes.

Automation breaks this system without the provision of income external to the loop, aka unconditional basic income.

Today is #MayDay and #InternationalWorkersDay and #LabourDay and beyond recognizing the past victories of the labor movement in achieving milestones like the 8-hour day, we really need to talk about the future of the labor movement in a world increasingly automated by machines... As automation continues, potentially eliminating 1/2 of all existing jobs by 2030, eroding security & buying power through the growth of part-time jobs, low-paid work, temp labor, gig labor and freelancing, unconditional basic income represents the ability to empower ALL workers.

Yes, an unconditional basic income sufficient to start everyone each month above the poverty line will most likely require more taxes in some form, BUT the amount YOUR taxes will increase is unlikely to be larger than the amount you receive in UBI, unless you're in the top 20%. And that's exactly what makes the most sense because it's only the top 20% that have been gaining a larger and larger share of the US economy as a result of the technological advancements that have been transforming our economy for decades. UBI should reduce 80% of tax burdens.

"Why should the rich who don't need it get Unconditional #BasicIncome (UBI) too?" asks the person who would never think of suggesting that public K-12 schooling and access to police & fire protection only be made available to those households earning less than $100,000 per year. Don't worry about the rich when it comes to UBI. They will all be net payers, paying more in than they get out, just as they already do with schooling where they pay for public school but instead opt to pay even more for private school. The universality of UBI is its strength.

If we put jobs underneath a microscope, we see they're comprised to varying degrees of income, work, purpose, and security.

Once we realize this, it's that much easier to understand that what we need isn't jobs themselves, but what they're supposed to provide us.

#BasicIncome An unconditional basic income not only provides the income component of jobs directly, but it also better enables the earning of additional income, especially compared to welfare programs that punish the earning of additional income through withdrawal of conditional benefits.

There's a new book coming out in April with an urgent call for Universal Basic Income. It's titled "The War on Normal People" (@WoNP_Book) and the author is @AndrewYangVFA. It's a must-read! Stay tuned to this thread for excerpts.

Pre-order: amzn.to/2iRRByv #BasicIncome Here's the Table of Contents to get an idea of just how many important points this book covers, and the fact it also offers real and entirely necessary solutions like Unconditional Basic Income as America's Freedom Dividend. Make no mistake, we need UBI ASAFP.

#BasicIncome #UBI