UBI Lesson #2: Give People Money, Chapters 1-3
Essay #3 Due 4-23-19
In the context of Annie Lowrey’s Give People Money, support, refute, or complicate the argument that Universal Basic Income is a necessary implementation for human rights, social order, and permanent unemployment.
For other sources:
Read Oren Cass’ “Why a Universal Basic Income Is a Terrible Idea” and write an essay that supports, defends, or complicates the author’s position that UBI will do more harm than good. For sources, I refer you to Universal Basic Income explained, UBI being used in other countries, UBI explained by Jordan Peterson as a life-purpose problem.
Option B (New Addition): Should Community College be Free?
Develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the claim that community college should be free.
"Free Cheese in the Mousetrap?"
Look at pros and cons from Forbes article.
3-21 Essay #2 due on turnitin. Homework #7: Read Give People Money, Chapters 1-3 and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains how the job market will change in ways that make a compelling case for Universal Basic Income. We will go over essay 3 options. Read Oren Cass’ “Why a Universal Basic Income Is a Terrible Idea” and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains the author’s position. You can also consult Nathan Heller's New Yorker essay "Who Really Stands to Win from Universal Basic Income?" See YouTube video explained; Wall Street Journal on YouTube; Yuval Noah Harari argues life without work will result in meaning of life crisis. Other sources:
Case for and against UBI in USA according to Vox
No Strings Attached in LARB, 2018
3-26 Homework #8: Read Give People Money, chapters 4 and 5, and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains how the kludgeocracy makes a compelling case for Universal Basic Income.
3-28 Homework #9: Read Give People Money, chapters 6 and 7, and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains how America’s racial injustice makes a compelling case for Universal Basic Income.
4-2 Homework #10: Read Give People Money, chapters 8 to end of the book, and in a 3-paragraph essay explain the practical, economic, and philosophical problems raised by trying to give everyone a Universal Basic Income.
4-4: Give People Money, chapter 8 to end of the book;
4-16 Develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the claim that community college should be free.
4-18 Peer Edit for Essay 3 and Portfolio Grading Part 1
4-23 Essay #3 Due.
UBI Sources & Ideas
UBI LifeHacker
New Yorker, 2018
UBI, Bloomberg
UBI, Dissent
UBI, New Republic
Videos
UBI Explained (10 minute video)
UBI Jordan Peterson (11 minutes)
Andrew Yang (18)
Sam Harris (8)
What countries have tried UBI? (8)
Next Homework #15: Read Garrett Hardin's "Lifeboat Ethics" and write a 3-paragraph essay that identifies 3 possible objections to his argument.
Study Questions
What is Universal Basic Income?
You get a check, perhaps $1,000, every month with no questions asked and no questions. The money can help you barely survive and essentially protect you from destitution. You could live in a shared apartment, buy food, and have money for public transportation. That’s it. Everything above that would require some kind of job or side hustle.
Not all the details are ironed out. Countries haven’t agreed upon an age or a policy for recently settled immigrants.
UBI is response to shrinking middle class, shrinking real wages, unaffordable housing, overpriced education, technological-fueled unemployment, and an over complicated welfare system. Countries all over the world are seriously considering UBI. Some are already implementing it.
UBI will give workers more leverage with their employers. They won’t feel as desperate to work for a horrible boss and/or a horrible job.
UBI will give an escape route to abused spouse who needs to get out of a hellish marriage or relationship.
UBI may give protection to over 3 million jobs lost due to self-driving cars in the next 10-20 years.
Concerns
Some are concerned that UBI would motivate people to permanently drop out of job market and reduce productivity.
Lowry estimates the cost of UBI to be $3.9 trillion to US government every year.
Two. What is appealing to Annie Lowrey about UBI?
Lowrey writes that she is less interested in policy and more interested in the ethical foundation. She writes:
“What I came to believe is this: A UBI is an ethos as much as it is a technocratic policy proposal.” It contains within it the principles of universality, unconditionality, inclusion, and simplicity, and it insists that every person is deserving of participation in the economy, freedom of choice, and a life without deprivation.”
In other words, there is an ethical message: Deprivation and starvation are morally unacceptable. A fundamental safety net, no questions asked, must be made available to the citizenry. This is the least decent thing a society can and must do.
The above is Lowrey’s central argument.
Three. How is shifting employment affecting the UBI debate?
Lowrey shows evidence that more and more jobs are being permanently lost even during recoveries as AI is becoming more and more self-regulating and less dependent on human engineers.
At the same time, what job growth there is exists in the “crummy jobs” department with fast food and temporary work being the new boom. Over 40% of fast food workers are over 25; in other words, adults are supporting their families with “crummy jobs.”
American workers are becoming more and more part of the odious, dreadful gig economy, a life of hustle without good pay, stability, or benefits.
We have a “good jobs crisis.” That crummy jobs are on the rise gives employers leverage to punk people with those jobs. But UBI will take some of that leverage away.
On page 49, we read of growing economic disparity between 1979 and 2014 in a major study.
Bottom half of earners in 1979 had 20% of income; in 2014, they had gone down to 13%.
In contrast, the 1% top earners jumped from 11% to 20% in that same time period.
Hysteresis
We have a new class of unemployed who suffer from long-term unemployment, about 2-3 years or more. They suffer from hysteresis: They lag behind in every category and has permanent lower earnings even after a recession.
Temporary Jobs on Vice News Video
Four. Why is not working so hard for Americans?
Let us set aside the economic need for work for a second and imagine being economically independent of work. Americans have a psychological dependence on work that does not exist in other countries.
Believe it or not, America has a relationship with work that is unique in the world. In other countries, people work for money, but the job does not define them.
Not so in America. We have cultivated a work ethic that makes one’s personal identity and spiritual virtue synonymous with the kind of work one does.
We see work, or industriousness, as a “social obligation and a foundation of the good life” (70).
This mindset makes us vulnerable for a variety of reasons.
One, should we make any job define who we are? Why is industriousness a “national religion”? Why do we have this mentality but other countries do not?
Two, is this a healthy mindset when crummy jobs are on the rise and desirable jobs are on the decline?
Three, is this a wise mindset in a world where technology could lead to massive permanent unemployment?
Four, have we been brainwashed to our detriment?
Consider the ancient Greeks and Romans argued that the highest quality of life was based on leisure and philosophical contemplation, not industriousness.
But Americans are under the spell of the Puritan work ethic which says idleness leads to the work of the devil.
Therefore, always be busy. Always strive for more. Always incorporate a side hustle.
While European countries see our social and economic class as a matter of fate and circumstance, Americans subscribe to the myth of the self-made man who lifts himself out of his bootstraps.
Unlike Europeans who see poverty as a trap from an unfair system, Americans see poverty as a matter of self-blame, the result of one’s character defects.
Social Validation
Unlike others, Americans are dependent on social validation that results from their job. Identity, self-reliance, moral and social obligation, and social validation connected with job status.
Social Stigma from Joblessness
Being jobless in America leads to shame, social stigma, ignominy, and chronic depression. It becomes a sort of death.
Americans recover from death of loved one, divorce, catastrophe. But they do not recovery from joblessness.
This mental state presents a challenge to UBI and future world of mass unemployment.
Freeloaders?
There is a work mindset in America that would resist UBI: Why should people get money for free? What kind of sick morally bankrupt system would allow such a thing?
However, Lowrey points to program in Iran that is similar to UBI, and it did not result in increased unemployment as a result of making people too lazy to work (82).
Going to School, Caring for Ailing Parent, Parenthood
Another argument for UBI is that rather than make people lazy, people will have more freedom to attend college, care for a sick parent, or do the duties of parenting.
Perhaps it is too extreme to argue that UBI would destroy the labor force.
Four. Why is the question about how UBI will affect our relationship with work “scary”?
Lowrey writes that this question is “scary” because employers won’t have as much leverage over their employees.
People wouldn’t have to do work they don’t want to do and they could gravitate to work they do want to perform.
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