To what extent is it possible to implement basic income independently from the government?  What challenges and constraints might face such a system?  Conrad Shaw joins us to discuss these questions as well as a new app he's working on called Comingle that hopes to achieve a privately-implemented basic income. Conrad has been a UBI researcher since 2016.  Before Comingle, he designed and implemented the UBI pilot program featured in Deia Schlosberg's forthcoming "Bootstraps" documentary series.  He has also written extensively on the subject of UBI and built a "UBI calcula ..read more

What is money?  What is *modern* money?  In what ways is state-issued fiat money different from a commodity-based money?  What is the relationship between money and the state?  To what extent can a state have "sovereign" control over its currency?  What is the relationship between money and taxes?  We will explore these and other questions as they relate to the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) framework. BBI has explored MMT before.  But this time, we have MMT proponents James Keenan and Adam Rice—hosts of the NYC Deficit Owls Meetup group—joining us to discuss ..read more

How does basic income interact with the various programs that make up the welfare system?  To what extent does basic income solve some of the same problems that the welfare programs are designed to solve?  What does an effective welfare system and/or social safety net look like in a world with basic income?  When does it make sense to adapt existing income support programs to more closely resemble basic income? Michael Lewis and Steve Nuñez join us to discuss. Michael is a professor at Silberman School of Social Work, Hunter College.  He has published widely on the topic ..read more

In 2018, Oren Cass wrote a book called "The Once and Future Worker" in which he argues for creating labor market conditions that give everyone the opportunity to contribute to society as productive workers.  This position is based on an assumption that he calls "The Working Hypothesis": "[A] labor market in which workers can support strong families and communities is the central determinant of long-term prosperity and should be the central focus of public policy." Why does Oren Cass believe this?  To what extent is it true?  Is basic income compatible with this goal?  Doe ..read more

To kick off 2021, we discuss basic income's effect on the agency of individual people to live their lives how they choose.  We've previously talked about how basic income gives people the power to say no.  Consenting power is the power to say yes. When society is structured such that people have no choice but to work a job, to what extent is this analogous to slavery?  Can we say that basic income gives people more consenting power without also arguing that the absence of basic income reduces labor-market efficiency? The reading this week is a chapter from Henry George's Progr ..read more

We often discuss the extent to which the economy needs labor to produce its output.  But to what extent do people need to work jobs in order to live meaningful and fulfilling lives?  Is it a coincidence that people happen to have a "need" to do the very thing that society expects of them?  To what extent do cultural and economic incentives shape human psychology? Does it become a problem if the economy needs less labor?  Is it a problem if basic income leaves some people jobless?  How adaptable are psychology and culture to these kinds of changes? This clip from Down ..read more

Fiscal policy is what we call government spending and taxation.  Monetary policy is what we call it when the central bank participates in financial markets to influence private-sector lending and borrowing. So, where does our money come from?  Does it come from the government (fiscal authority) or is it the central bank (monetary authority) that creates our dollars?  How does basic income to fit in?  Is it a form of fiscal policy or monetary policy?  Can it be both?  Is it neither? For optional reading this week, we have an article by Brent Schrotenboer in USA T ..read more

Basic income adds new money to the economy for consumers to spend.  And that money has to have somewhere to go.  The first place it goes is toward the purchase of goods and services, but where will it end up?  Two of the most common answers are savings and taxes. Even without basic income, the government is always adding new money to the economy.  Where *has* it been ending up?  For a long time, one part of the answer is that oil exporters sold oil for dollars and liked to accumulate Treasury debt.  This so-called "petrodollar recycling" allowed the US to issue e ..read more

Henry Ford famously insisted on paying his workers enough money to be able to buy the very cars they were producing.  But to what extent does that make sense?  When is it useful to think of workers and consumers as the same people?  Does basic income create a disconnect between these two roles?  Is that a problem? We have two optional readings this week.  The first is a 2011 blog post by former labor secretary Robert Reich entitled "Stock Tip: Be Worried. Workers are Consumers" The second is a 2012 article on Big Think by David Berreby entitled "When Consumers Forget ..read more

At the turn of the 20th century, many of the world's currencies were pegged to gold.  Gold was an international monetary standard.  And then it wasn't.  What happened?  Was there something special about gold that led us to choose it as our standard money?  Did something happen that caused gold to stop being special?  Under what conditions is gold a useful form of money? Some people say that abandoning the gold standard gave us more flexibility to properly manage the stability of our economy.  If that's true, why did we adopt a gold standard in the first plac ..read more