Economics

"We will need to adopt the concept of an absolute constitutional right to an income."

"For perhaps the first time in history, we have the resources, the know-how and the technology to make starvation and dependency relics of the past. But do we have the will?"

"All these things God created, He put them in ... the world, without surrounding them with walls and gates, so that they would be common to all His children."

"The principle of an economic floor under each individual must be established. It would apply equally to every member of society and carry with it no connotation of personal inadequacy or implication that an undeserving income was being received from an overgenerous government."

"There is no evidence whatsoever that a basic income would reduce work and labour. The evidence is strong that it would do the reverse. What we have found in the pilots is that people with basic security work more and work more productively."

"Imagine if the government provided a basic minimum income, like Richard Nixon once proposed. ... Suddenly having to quit your job would no longer be such a huge leap — there’d be a real social safety net to catch you. ... If governments really want to promote startups and the economic innovation they bring, ... they need to start rebuilding the social safety net, so that their citizens know that if they go out on a limb and try something risky, someone will be there to catch them if things don’t work out."

"As a technologist, I see the trends, and I see that automation inevitably is going to mean fewer and fewer jobs. And if we do not find a way to provide a basic income for people who have no work, or no meaningful work, we’re going to have social unrest that could get people killed. When we have increasing production—year after year after year—some of that needs to be reinvested in society. It doesn’t need to be consistently concentrated in these venture-capital funds and things like that. I’m not a communist, a socialist or a radical. But these issues have to be addressed."

"Now what happens then when you introduce technology into production? You produce enormous quantities of goods by technological methods, but at the same time you put people out of work. You can say, "Oh but it always creates more jobs. There will always be more jobs." Yes, but lots of them will be futile jobs. They will be jobs making every kind of frippery and unnecessary contraption, and one will also at the same time have to beguile the public into feeling that they need and want these completely unnecessary things that aren't even beautiful. And therefore an enormous amount of nonsense employment and busy work, bureaucratic and otherwise, has to be created in order to keep people working, because we believe, as good Protestants, that the devil finds work for idle hands to do."

"The basic principle of the whole thing has been completely overlooked, that the purpose of the machine is to make drudgery unnecessary. And if we don't allow it to achieve its purpose, we live in a constant state of self-frustration. So then, if a given manufacturer automates his plant and dismisses his labor force, and they have to operate on a very much diminished income (say, some sort of dole), the manufacturer suddenly finds that the public does not have the wherewithal to buy his products. And therefore he has invested in this expensive automotive machinery to no purpose. And therefore obviously the public has to be provided with the means of purchasing what the machines produce. People say, "That's not fair. Where's the money going to come from? Who's gonna pay for it?" The answer is the machine. The machine pays for it, because the machine works for the manufacturer and for the community."

"We advocate a Universal Basic Income, received by all citizens on an unconditional basis: that is, detached from the labor market. This offers a choice between work and leisure. To offer such a choice is both a fruit of an affluent society and a solution to the problem of technological unemployment."

"Whatever merit there may be in the production of goods must be entirely derivative from the advantage to be obtained by consuming them."

"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."

"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."

"This sort of thing, is the result of regarding the virtue of hard work as an end in itself, rather than as a means to a state of affairs in which it is no longer needed."

"True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men are not free men." ... we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being."

"No man can be a good citizen unless he has a wage more than sufficient to cover the bare cost of living, and hours of labor short enough so that after his day's work is done he will have time and energy to bear his share in the management of the community, to help in carrying the general load."

"There must be a guarantee that people receive what they need in order to live a dignified life."

"A certain small income, sufficient for necessaries, should be secured to all, whether they work or not."

"The coming age of the machine is part of a new time, and offers unprecedented possibilities to re-design the way we live. Technological innovation will, we are told, destroy more jobs than it creates. This will liberate human beings from lives of drudgery, allowing time to explore life, be creative and collectively redefine what civilization can be. But, as Yanis Varoufakis, Professor of Economic Theory at the University of Athens, makes clear, in order for everyone to benefit from these opportunities, “every citizen must be granted property rights over part of the wealth that the machines produce”. This requires a new approach to how we think about the economy and the way it operates."

"The present model – while it can boast of successes – is ill-equipped to respond to the challenges and opportunities of the time, and must go. Materialistic values are built into the system: selfishness, desire and excess promoted, and (speaking generally throughout) while philanthropy is part of some corporate strategies, presented with the choice of saving lives but losing money, administrators side with the money. Fundamental change has been needed for some time. The advance of automation adds one more imperative to the process. A new, sustainable, humane economic model is required, worthy of the 21st Century and beyond. The revolution in work requires an evolution in living: a new approach, in which the acknowledgment that humanity is One is primary. We are brothers and sisters of One humanity; the systems that govern our lives should be based on and encourage the realization ofthis fact. Sharing as a principle that animates human affairs naturally follows such an understanding and when pragmatically applied will allow everyone tolive dignified lives free from fear of poverty. Everyone is entitled to the means required to meet their needs, irrespective of whether they have a job and income or are unable to secure either…."

"A minimal guarantee with regards to income seems to me as almost inevitable."

"People should receive an income without conditions attached... It's a fragment of the massive inheritance we owe to nature, to previous generations, to technological progress, to the know-how, and all these gifts which we receive from nature, and the past."

"It is proposed that the payments ... be made to every person, rich or poor ... because it is in lieu of the natural inheritance, which, as a right, belongs to every man, over and above property he may have created, or inherited from those who did."

"Since the advances in technology are going to mean fewer and fewer jobs in the market economy, the only effective way to ensure those permanently displaced by machinery share the benefits of increased productivity is to provide some kind of government-guaranteed income. ... With guaranteed income independent of their jobs, workers would be more free to set their own schedules and adapt to changing conditions. That adaptability would in turn allow greater flexibility for employers, plus many benefits for society as a whole."

"Is this not utopian? Of course it is, in the sense in which ... the social security system was utopian before Bismarck put together its first building blocks."

"I do [support a UBI], but that is not where we are. I think that is a very correct idea... that’s kind of a step too far right now for the United States."

"There are, in every country, some magnificent charities established by individuals. It is, however, but little that any individual can do, when the whole extent of the misery to be relieved is considered. He may satisfy his conscience, but not his heart. He may give all that he has, and that all will relieve but little. It is only by organizing civilization upon such principles as to act like a system of pulleys, that the whole weight of misery can be removed."

"Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came."

"Despotic government supports itself by abject civilization, in which debasement of the human mind, and wretchedness in the mass of the people, are the chief criterions. Such governments consider man merely as an animal; that the exercise of intellectual faculty is not his privilege; that he has nothing to do with the laws but to obey them; and they politically depend more upon breaking the spirit of the people by poverty, than they fear enraging it by desperation."

"I care not how affluent some may be, provided that none be miserable in consequence of it. But it is impossible to enjoy affluence with the felicity it is capable of being enjoyed, while so much misery is mingled in the scene."

"Artificial intelligence is here and it is accelerating, and you're going to have driverless cars, and you're going to have more and more automated services, and that's going to make the job of giving everybody work that is meaningful tougher, and we're going to have to be more imaginative, and the pact of change is going to require us to do more fundamental reimagining of our social and political arrangements, to protect the economic security and the dignity that comes with a job. It's not just money that a job provides; it provides dignity and structure and a sense of place and a sense of purpose. And so we're going to have to consider new ways of thinking about these problems, like a universal income, review of our workweek, how we retrain our young people, how we make everybody an entrepreneur at some level. But we're going to have to worry about economics if we want to get democracy back on track."

"Men did not make the earth... It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. ... Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds."

"The State owes all its citizens a secure subsistence, food, suitable clothes and a way of life that does not damage their health."

"An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot; it will succeed where diplomatic management would fall: it is neither the Rhine, the Channel, nor the ocean that can arrest its progress: it will march on the horizon of the world, and it will conquer."

"A full-fledged UBI — one that unconditionally provides every person with enough income to meet their basic needs—would fundamentally alter the paradigm of capitalism that has locked workers into the dominant system ever since its inception. Capitalism has endured by commoditizing people’s lives, forcing them to sell the bulk of their available time and energy, or else face destitution and starvation. A true UBI would transform the relationship between labor and capital and weaken the power of the wealthy elite to control the population."

"Computers and robots replace humans in the exercise of mental functions in the same way as mechanical power replaced them in the performance of physical tasks. As time goes on, more and more complex mental functions will be performed by machines. Any worker who now performs his task by following specific instructions can, in principle, be replaced by a machine. This means that the role of humans as the most important factor of production is bound to diminish—in the same way that the role of horses in agricultural production was first diminished and then eliminated by the introduction of tractors."

"The most skilfully combined, and with the greatest foresight of objections, of all the forms of Socialism, is that commonly known as Fourierism. This system does not contemplate the abolition of private property, nor even of inheritance; on the contrary, it avowedly takes into consideration, as an element in the distribution of the produce, capital as well as labour. ... In the distribution, a certain minimum is ... assigned for the subsistence of every member of the community, whether capable or not of labour."

"There shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum. ... as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property."

"Since the state must necessarily provide subsistence for the criminal poor while undergoing punishment, not to do the same for the poor who have not offended is to give a premium on crime."

"I think the fundamental issue that has to be dealt with is that technology is not a bad thing in itself. But technology cannot simply be used by the owners of the technology, it’s got to be used to benefit all of our people. So if we replace a dangerous job with a machine, that’s a good thing. That doesn’t mean you simply displace the worker and throw him or her out on the street, and that raises the question of basic income for everybody and so forth. It is an issue that has not gotten the attention it deserves, but it’s hovering in front of us and we have to deal with it."

"This method of dealing with thieves is both unjust and undesirable. As a punishment, it's too severe, and as a deterrent, it's quite ineffective. Petty larceny isn't bad enough to deserve the death penalty. And no penalty on earth will stop people from stealing, if it's their only way of getting food. In this respect, you English, like most other nations, remind me of these incompetent schoolmasters, who prefer caning their pupils to teaching them. Instead of inflicting these horrible punishments, it would be far more to the point to provide everyone with some means of livelihood, so that nobody's under the frightful necessity of becoming, first a thief, and then a corpse."

"I want to dismantle all the bureaucracies that dole out income transfers, whether they be public housing benefits or Social Security or corporate welfare, and use the money they spend to provide everyone over the age of 21 with a guaranteed income, deposited electronically every month into a bank account."

"A host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the assurance that his income is stable and certain, and when he knows that he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts between husband, wife, and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on a scale of dollars is eliminated."

"There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum – and livable – income for every American family."

"That's why I talk about basic income ... there has to be a stronger social safety net because when people don't have options, they're going to make bad choices. Let's have better choices on the table."

"I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective – the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a new widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income."

"And the biggest question mark of all is whether, at long last, robots and artificial intelligence really will make large numbers of people completely unemployable. If human labor is less needed in the future, that in principle is excellent news: a paradise of robotic servants awaits us. But our economies have always relied on the idea that people provide for themselves by selling their labor. If the robots make that impossible, then societies will simply come apart unless we reinvent the welfare state. Not all economists think that’s worth worrying about just yet. But those who do are reviving an idea that dates back to Thomas More’s 1516 book Utopia: a universal basic income. The idea still seems utopian, in the sense of fantastically unrealistic. Could we really imagine a world in which everyone gets a regular cash handout, enough to meet their basic needs, no questions asked? Some evidence suggests it’s worth considering. From 1974 to 1979, the idea was tried in a small Canadian town, Dauphin, in Manitoba. For five years, thousands of Dauphin’s poorest residents got monthly checks funded jointly by the provincial and federal governments. And it turns out that guaranteeing people an income had interesting effects. Fewer teenagers dropped out of school. Fewer people were hospitalized with mental health problems. And hardly anyone gave up work. New trials are under way to see if the same thing happens elsewhere. It would, of course, be enormously expensive. Suppose you gave every American adult $12,000 a year. That would cost 70 percent of the entire federal budget. It seems impossibly radical. But then, impossibly radical things do sometimes happen, and quickly. In the 1920s, not a single U.S. state offered old-age pensions; by 1935, Frances Perkins had rolled out Social Security across the nation."

"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."

"The problem isn't that we have some inequality. Some inequality is necessary for a high-functioning capitalist democracy. The problem is that inequality is at historic highs today and it's getting worse every day. And if wealth, power, and income continue to concentrate at the very tippy top, our society will change from a capitalist democracy to a neo-feudalist rentier society like 18th-century France. That was France before the revolution and the mobs with the pitchforks. So I have a message for my fellow plutocrats and zillionaires and for anyone who lives in a gated bubble world: Wake up. Wake up. It cannot last. Because if we do not do something to fix the glaring economic inequities in our society, the pitchforks will come for us, for no free and open society can long sustain this kind of rising economic inequality. All highly prosperous capitalist democracies are characterized by massive investments in the middle class and the infrastructure that they depend on."

"I once heard someone defend that belief by declaring that "human nature is to do as little as necessary." This prejudice is refuted not just by a few studies but the entire branch of psychology dealing with motivation. Normally, it's hard to stop happy, satisfied people from trying to learn more about themselves and the world, or from trying to do a job of which they can feel proud."