Don't be distracted by the temporary nature of the government's help during the Covid-19 epidemic. Look what's happening;
1. The U.S. government is being required to supply the American people with all the "radical" things that Democrats have been criticized for proposing during the campaign.
2. Free health care (testing).
3. Paid sick leave.
4. Waivers for the GOP's wrongheaded work requirements under unemployment and food stamps.
5. And the not so radical idea of a universal basic income (a possible $1000 per adult, $500 children for pandemic. This is estimated to cost around $250 to $600 billion, but a payroll tax cut would cost over $950 billion).
Yes, all at once, and it took a pandemic to shock some into reality! This shows how bad Republicans have ignored serving the American people.
“We will never have the elite smart people on our side,” as former US Senator Rick Santorum put it in a 2012 speech,“because they believe they should have the power to tell you what to do.”
This is how it all started, Trump cutting the pandemic team because they "haven't been used for many many years." For those who love having a business person like Trump around managing the country...
Trump: "As a business person, I don't like having thousands of people around when you don't need them."
Another set up clips documenting how Trump never took the coronavirus seriously:
Here's another video of Trump's moments of genius. Note, we could do without the overly dramatic soundtrack:
While our poor excuse for a president keeps our national attention on "the wall," we're allowing ourselves to be purposely distracted from the real job of governing, planning for the future.
I'm going through a mild panic thinking about the Robin Vos/Scott Fitzgerald threat to protect, at all cost, policies they put in place over the last 8 years. Having already neutralized Gov. Evers and AG Josh Kaul's biggest campaign promises, Republicans are promising to maintain their biggest failures while ignoring America's future.
I've written about the need to take seriously the idea of a "basic income," knowing robotics and changing consumer norms will no doubt turn the marketplace upside down. We now have research that bears this out. Strikingly, none of this is on the GOP's radar, and to be honest, just barely on the Democratic agenda.
Rural Jobs Most Affected: The party least interested in change will negatively impact their rural voting base in a big way, and they won't even know it.
cnet: A new report from the Brookings Institution adds some additional projections to the pile of stats on whether we'll all be replaced by robots one day. Among the report's main findings;
1. 25 percent of US employment will face what the report authors called "high exposure" to automation in the next few decades. That translates into about 36 million jobs. 2. Another 36 percent (52 million) will face medium exposure. 3. Rural communities are more vulnerable. There are demographic implications, as well. Hispanic and black workers are also have greater exposure.
4. Among the most vulnerable “high risk" jobs are those in office administration, production, transportation, and food preparation ... with over 70 percent of their tasks potentially automatable, even though they represent only one-quarter of all jobs ... occupations requiring a bachelor’s degree runs to just 24 percent, less than half the 55 percent. 5. At the community level smaller, more rural communities significantly more exposed to automation-driven task replacement— and smaller metros more vulnerable than larger ones. The average worker in a small metro area with a population of less than 250,000, for example, works in a job where 48 percent of current tasks are potentially automatable. 6. Male workers appear noticeably more vulnerable to potential future automation than women do, given their overrepresentation in production, transportation, and construction-installation occupations—job areas that have aboveaverage projected automation exposure. 7. By contrast, women comprise upward of 70 percent of the labor force in relatively safe occupations, such as health care, personal services, and education occupations. 8. The young facing the most disruption ... between the ages of 16 and 24 face a high average automation exposure of 49 percent, which reflects their dramatic overrepresentation in automatable jobs associated with food preparation and serving.
There are a number of ways to protect ourselves...
I just discovered this graphic heavy presentation of this research, HERE.
Okay, I promise to ease up on the idea of a basic income after this post. At least until the next relevant discussion is researched and reported on.
NPR has been covering this fascinating topic for a long time, and I almost missed it covering the backward movement Scott Walker and the Republicans have been pushing for the last 7 years. Let's face it, their bizarre "every day is opposite day" supposed "forward" agenda is an amazing distraction that even got to me.
Whether you're for or against the idea of a "universal basic income" (UBI), the following podcasts will dissect every question you might have right now. From their archives...:
The basic income is a hot topic of social policy. It's a steady payout to citizens. Liberals argue it provides support to struggling citizens with dignity and freedom. Libertarians like that it can be dispensed without an expensive, and controlling, bureaucracy. The rest argue that it's a giveaway that will inspire laziness. In Finland, unemployment is 8.8 percent, and most of the time, citizens can't collect unemployment if they're making additional money, discouraging recipients from finding jobs. So the Finnish government has set up something unusual: a live experiment. A test to help settle the debate, or figure if it's even worth having. A test group of 2,000 unemployed Finns receive 560 euros each month from the government. No strings attached. For unemployed researcher Sanna Leskinen, that meant being able to apply for part time jobs and plan for the future. Avery Trufelman went to Finland to see how the experiment was working ... how does the basic income work in practice? And could it work in the U.S.?
Here's another perspective, answering even more questions...(click on the image for the TED video presentation):
Historian Rutger Bregman says a lack of cash is the cause, not the symptom, of poverty. He proposes a simple but radical solution: give those in need a guaranteed basic income. Bregman's most recent book, Utopia for Realists, explores universal basic income and other provocative ideas. Bregman also writes for The Correspondent and has been featured in The Washington Post, The Guardian, and on the BBC.
If you have the time, the report below is a great overview as well:
Much of the anger and anxiety in the 2016 election is fueled by the sense that economic opportunity is slipping away for many Americans. Misha Chellam is a tech entrepreneur in San Francisco and is part of the burgeoning basic income movement … "I have this gut sense from having been in the Valley for a while now that there will be a coming wave of automation that's going to get rid of a lot of jobs." While technological advances make some jobs obsolete, the past has shown that tech has also created new opportunities. Then there's Uber, which is experimenting with driverless taxis and trucks. "And that would affect 3.5 million truck drivers, another 5 million people who support the truck-driving industry," Chellam says. "And that's just one example of automation." Chellam says software is eating white-collar jobs, too, and everyone from bookkeepers to doctors and lawyers will be affected. Chellam criticizes politicians for not talking about this automated future. At best, he says, they talk about "retraining," which doesn't address the scope of the problem. Chellam believes as technology replaces more workers, the traditional 40-hour-a-week job could become a thing of the past. If that happens, how will families get health insurance or save for retirement? Some experts say the only answer is a government-guaranteed paycheck that would allow people to buy food and housing. That would not only help the individuals but would help keep economic wheels spinning and generate tax revenues. Natalie Foster, a fellow at the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit research organization in Palo Alto said some technologists suggest setting the basic income at $10,000 a year. Others have proposed raising carbon emission taxes to pay for it. They're hosting panels asking what would it mean to give people money they didn't work for. In Oakland, they're about to find out. Y Combinator is funding a research project on basic income, where it will pay 100 people enough money for food and shelter — no strings attached. The prestigious tech accelerator helped launch companies that include Airbnb and Reddit. Y Combinator in a blog post by its president, Sam Altman, predicted that "at some point in the future," some version of basic income will be rolled out nationally. Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook who is active in the basic income movement says that whether you like the idea or not, there won't be an alternative because decent-paying jobs are disappearing for millions of people. "The reality is that work has changed. Forty percent of jobs are now contingent, meaning they're part-time, independent contractors, Uber drivers," he says. And he says that shift has already left middle-class Americans economically insecure. A recent study by the Federal Reserve found that 46 percent of Americans surveyed didn't have enough cash to cover a $400 emergency expense. "I think there is a sense that our economy is broken in many ways," Hughes says. "But rather than try to restructure our economy so it looks like the 1950s, I think we have to be honest with ourselves." Hughes says that means basic income isn't an idea for the distant future but one we need to consider today.
Sadly, the first vote for a basic income in Switzerland failed. Yet maybe a whole country shouldn't try something until a few smaller attempts were made with tweaks and improvements:
Swiss voters over the weekend dealt a stern backslap to a ballot proposal that would have guaranteed a basic monthly income for all 8.1 million residents — regardless of their employment status — of that wealthy European nation. The vote wasn't even close. Almost 77 percent of voters rejected the proposal that the government give every adult in Switzerland about $2,500 every month. (Children would have received a smaller subsidy of $650.) Supporters had argued that the bold social experiment would help eradicate poverty and protect workers in an increasingly automated economy. Opponents said the measure, with an estimated price tag of more than $200 billion a year, was too costly and would lead to public spending cuts.Switzerland was the first country to offer its voters their choice on the idea of a government-guaranteed monthly income, USA Today reports. The newspaper says the proposal is being debated in other countries, including the Netherlands, Finland, Canada and New Zealand.
Having been a sole proprietor and independent contractor for the last 15 years, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the nation is also moving in that direction. While "old economy" Republicans like Scott Walker salivate over filling big manufacturering plants with warm bodies, the 21st century jobs on online and populated with independent contractors and freelancers is picking up steam.
The fact that the new economy isn't even on the Republicans radar yet is scary. We need to plan now, not ten to twenty years from now. The NPR story fits perfectly with the rising talk of a "basic income" for every American. You'll see why below:
A new NPR/Marist poll finds that 1 in 5 jobs in America is held by a worker under contract. Within a decade, contractors and freelancers could make up half of the American workforce. Workers across all industries and at all professional levels will be touched by the movement toward independent work — one without the constraints, or benefits, of full-time employment. Policymakers are just starting to talk about the implications. Machines are siphoning off basic tasks, and temporary workers allow flexibility to size up and down. In the legal field, there are online platforms that match freelance lawyers with clients. It's not just business driving the trend. Surveys show a
large majority of freelancers are free agents by choice. The NPR/Marist poll
shows that 34 percent of part-time workers are looking for full-time work. That may be increasingly difficult. Currently, 1 in 5
workers is a contract worker. According to economists
Alan Krueger and Lawrence Katz, almost all — or 94 percent — of net jobs
created from 2005 to 2015 were these sorts of impermanent jobs. Within a decade, many labor economists believe freelancers
will outnumber full timers. Arun Sundararajan, a management professor at New York
University and author of The Sharing Economy, says "this is the
work arrangement for the future." The new normal will be freelance work.
"Twenty years from now, I don't think a typical college graduate is going
to expect that full-time employment is their path to building a career,"
Sundararajan says.
20 years from now we'll still be doling out taxpayer money to Foxconn, at time we may need to spend money on never dreamed of education and social structures:
Sundararajan says that will ultimately lead to many other changes,
from education to social structures and public services. Those looser ties will shift more responsibility to contract
workers. They must handle saving for retirement and their health insurance on
their own. "But some people, despite their best efforts, just
aren't going to be successful in doing that," Wheeling's mayor, Glenn Elliott says. "What's
going to happen to those who fall through the cracks? Because the 1950s model
of retirement and getting your pension check every year from your company is
not a realistic model for a lot of people, increasingly." The public safety net — the budgets for fire departments and
social services — is already strained, he says, by the area's opioid problems,
among other things. A future where fewer workers have benefits won't help.
Basic Income may be our Future Safety Net, and Job Creator: I cut and pasted the important points and argument for a basic income, which again is still a pretty undeveloped idea that has worked well in a few early experiments:
Since 1980, average income for the top
.01 percent of Americans has more than tripled. For the bottom 90 percent, it’s
basically flat-lined. Facebook's Chris Hughes is among those who view the disparity as a
national crisis. And so he recently launched the Economic Security Project, a
two-year effort to invest $10 million from Hughes and others into research on
universal basic income. This investment comes amid a sudden wave of interest in
universal basic income in the tech industry. Y Combinator, the Palo Alto–based
startup accelerator, announced in early 2016 that it was starting its own basic
income experiment in which a small number of Oakland residents would receive a
cash payment and be compared to a control group. Tesla’s Elon Musk, meanwhile,
has warned about the rise of the robots, arguing at the World Government Summit
earlier this year that a basic income is “going to be necessary.” And when Mark
Zuckerberg delivered his commencement speech at Harvard in May, he advocated
for a basic income, saying it would provide people with “a cushion to try new
ideas." Hughes was looking for basic income
studies that the Economic Security Project might like to finance. The goal of
the organization is to provide the money so that researchers can investigate
the impact of a basic income on people’s lives. His group has contributed $1 million to Stockton,
California’s basic income experiment, as well as to GiveDirectly, a
Google-backed charity that is studying the impact of unconditional cash
transfers in Kenya, and other projects. The Economic Security Project team also recently conducted
its own survey of more than 1,000 Alaskans who receive roughly
$2,000 per person, per year, through the Alaska Permanent Fund, which is drawn
from oil revenues. It found that when faced with a choice between lowering
taxes or keeping their cash payments, 71 percent of Alaskans say they want to
keep the payments. “It feels like security,” Hughes says, “and in an economy
that zigs and zags and has more part-time jobs, security is hard to come by.” Hughes is no basic income purist. He believes, for instance,
that for this economic moonshot to be politically palatable, it would have to
be tied to work. “Work is a key source of purpose in our lives.” But the
changing nature of work, particularly among top tech employers, is still a
critical problem for the American workforce. One illuminating New York
Times article illustrated how the men and women who scrub toilets and do
other low-skilled work for companies like Apple are hired from contracting
companies which set the terms of their employment. Those workers are cut off
from the benefits and upward mobility that the company’s engineers and
marketers enjoy. Because the workers are contractors, the big tech companies
feel no pressure to raise their wages, and aren’t responsible for offering
health-care coverage. In a new economy that mints billionaires
overnight, giving millions of dollars away for experimentation is the easy part.
It’s taxpayers, after all, not individual tech companies, who would have to pay
for a basic income should one ever come to pass. A legislated basic income is in the realm of fantasy at the
moment. Even among its proponents there is almost no agreement about the
fundamentals, starting with how much money would be an optimal basic income. Ioana Marinescu, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of
Social Policy and Practice, who researches basic income, says that research on
the Alaska fund is enlightening, but not dispositive. “We know $2,000 a year
makes a real difference to many people,” Marinescu says. “But would something
lower still make a difference? We don’t know.” Others argue that the problem with a universal basic income
is the “universal” part. In a world in which every American gets a check, some
of that money would necessarily be squandered on rich people. Some libertarian
groups like the Cato Institute support the idea, seeing it as a way to replace
the country’s existing social safety net programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and
food stamps, an idea liberals deplore. Even in a fever dream scenario in which a basic income could
pass in Congress, there is so far little evidence that it would help the
“forgotten men and women” whom Trump described in his campaign. After
all, $2,000 a year hardly feels like an adequate substitute for a disappeared $50,000
union job at the local steel mill. Still, if anything is to be learned from the experiment, it’s this: To imagine that a basic income, or something like it,
would suddenly satisfy the disillusioned, out-of-work Rust Belt worker is as
wrongheaded as imagining it would do no good at all, or drive people to stop
working. There is a third possibility: that an infusion of cash into struggling
households would lift up the youth in those households in all the subtle but
still meaningful ways Costello has observed over the years, until finally, when
they come of age, they are better prepared for the brave new world of work,
whether the robots are coming or not.
As I try to keep up with the Republicans unfolding political disaster, here are the stories the I never got a chance to explore. I may add to them in the future, but regardless, important must reads...
While Madison gets ripped for its liberal bias, it also leads the state in jobs, tech and everything else:
Basic Income idea is taking off, and Republicans are missing it. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians have found success doling out a basic income from their casino earnings:
As the story goes, Ryan wants to raise campaign money for other candidates, win reelection, and then step down. That assumes voters are that dumb? He's denied the story, but in the weakest way.
People should have...People (babies): Paul Ryan's latest stunning condescending statement about labor? He foresees a shortage of "people," and because we're all dumb as boards and can't make these decisions on our own, he's got some advice; give birth to "people."
Funny thing about having more people...they're going to need jobs. Paul Ryan assumes we're going to see future labor shortages...behind the times Paul. Robotics, automation...:
"Artificial intelligence and automation is going to have a lot of impact on the workforce," said Steve Jahn, executive director of Momentum West, an economic development group in northwestern Wisconsin. "There is forced automation because of forced challenges with workforce." The implications extend from farming and manufacturing to fast food servers being replaced by kiosks, or taxi drivers and truck drivers being replaced by self-driving vehicles. Loan officers, financial advisers, retail clerks and workers in dozens of professions face likely replacement due to automation, according to a 2013 Oxford University study. The Oxford University study found such jobs as lawyers, journalists and teachers to be least likely to be replaced by automation.
"It's getting very competitive out there," GEA regional equipment sales representative Rudy Sennhenn said. "It means he either pays up now (to automate) or he's going to lose a good employee to another farmer or he's going to end up paying (the worker) more." The loss of low-skilled, manual jobs to automation is a well-worn tale, especially in a state like Wisconsin with its concentration of agriculture and manufacturing. Wisconsin has 2.5 robots per thousand workers, the 10th highest concentration among the 50 states, according to an analysis of Moody's Analytics data by the Brookings Institution. Between 2010 and 2015, the number of industrial robots grew 124 percent in Wisconsin, only 36th highest in the country. Demand for robots is expected to accelerate as a result of the state's growing worker shortage. In the past few years, (many companies) raised hourly wages from $8 to $10 an hour, but workers are asking for as much as $14 an hour now, a sign of the tight labor market and the economic reality of how difficult it is to live on less.
Basic Income Coming: Which brings us back to the oncoming debate over a "basic income." Heck, even Nixon wanted to provide a subsidized income once:
The idea is not exactly new—Thomas Paine proposed a form of basic income back in 1797—but in this country, aside from Social Security and Medicare, most government payouts are based on individual need rather than simply citizenship. Lately, however, tech leaders, including Facebook founders Mark Zuckerberg and Chris Hughes, Tesla’s Elon Musk, and Y Combinator president Sam Altman, have begun pushing the concept as a potential solution to the economic anxiety brought on by automation and globalization—anxiety the tech industry has played its own role in creating. If robots and offshoring take all the jobs, or at the very least displace the low-skilled ones, the thinking goes, there may come a time when there simply aren’t enough jobs to go around. What then?In "What Happened," Hillary Clinton writes that she considered rolling out a basic income policy during her 2016 campaign. In September, Silicon Valley congressperson Ro Khanna introduced a bill calling for a $1.4 trillion expansion of the earned income tax credit, which would effectively create a small basic income for low-income working people via tax credits. And the mayor of Stockton, California, recently announced that beginning in August 2018, the city plans to give some of its 300,000 citizens $500 a month, an experiment being funded by Hughes’s organization, the Economic Security Project.
And maybe what Republicans keep referring to as "bad public schools" would do much better if poverty didn't hammer kids down and set them down the wrong path. A basic income solves the crime problem as well:
In two studies, one published in 2003 and a follow-up in 2010, Jane Costello, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, compared children who were lifted out of poverty after the casino opened to those who had never been poor. She scored them based on the presence of emotional disorders, as well as behavioral disorders, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Before the casino opened, Costello found that poor children scored twice as high as those who were not poor for symptoms of psychiatric disorders. But after the casino opened, the children whose families’ income rose (casino payments) above the poverty rate showed a 40 percent decrease in behavioral problems. She found something else: The younger the Cherokee children were when the casino opened, the better they fared compared to the older Cherokee children and to rural whites. This was true for emotional and behavioral problems as well as drug and alcohol addiction.
One fear about basic income is that people will be content living on their subsidies and stop working. But a 2010 analysis of the data, led by Randall Akee, who researches public policy at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs, found no impact on overall labor participation.
Akee also looked at the effects of the money on education and found that more money in the household meant children stayed in school longer. The impact on crime was just as profound: A $4,000 increase in household income reduced the poorest kids’ chances of committing a minor crime by 22 percent.
All of this amounted to substantial financial benefits for the community as a whole. “This translates to fewer kids in jail, fewer kids in in-patient care,” Costello says. “Then there are the other costs you can’t calculate. The cost of people not killing themselves? That’s a hard one.” One fear about basic income is that people will be content living on their subsidies and stop working. But a 2010 analysis of the data, led by Randall Akee, who researches public policy at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs, found no impact on overall labor participation. Akee also looked at the effects of the money on education and found that more money in the household meant children stayed in school longer. The impact on crime was just as profound: A $4,000 increase in household income reduced the poorest kids’ chances of committing a minor crime by 22 percent. All of this amounted to substantial financial benefits for the community as a whole. “This translates to fewer kids in jail, fewer kids in in-patient care,” Costello says. “Then there are the other costs you can’t calculate. The cost of people not killing themselves? That’s a hard one.”
Note: Spell correct nailed me on "Stash," which should have been "Stache." Heck, just elect Randy Bryce.
Finland is getting rid of the welfare state in 2017 and replacing it with something called a "universal basic income."
Tired of wealth redistribution to the poor? Well this is it. No cheating, fraud and no purposely embarrassing hoops to make poor people jump through. Everybody gets the same un-taxed monthly check regardless of income. Simple, but can it work, and how will it cover those who will still fall through the cracks? Here's the fascinating story:
In 2017, Finland will introduce a type of universal basic income scheme, in which most of the country's welfare state will be abolished and replaced with a single €800 (£579, $879) per month stipend, payable to all Finns, regardless of their income, tax-free. Citizens of Finland will be allowed to spend it in any way they want. No longer will state benefits be doled out based on the status, personal circumstances, or the qualifications of the applicant. Everyone gets €800 a month. Basic income is one of the most-discussed, least implemented macro-economic ideas. Basic or universal income enjoys support ... Both Marxists and libertarians have proposed basic income schemes. Milton Friedman was an early proponent. Left-wingers like it because it dramatically allows the collective wealth of a nation to be shared in way that provides support for all. It does away with the punitive, humiliating nature of collecting welfare benefits. No more food stamps, credits, or housing benefit, where the state decides for you what its largesse can be spent on. Conservatives like it because it kills off the massive administrative bureaucracy required to handle hundreds of micro-benefits and all the application paperwork they generate. It makes the state smaller. And because it leaves the money directly in the hands of individuals — rather than as credits or forced payments for certain services like energy or food — it lets the market decide what the cash gets spent on. The poor can now pay the rent or play the casino, with no further moral requirement for the state to step in. In Finland, €800 a month will cost the government €52.2 billion a year. The government's revenue for 2016 is €49.1 billion. In theory, the shortfall should not be a problem because not every Finn is an adult (only those of working age will receive it) and richer Finns' payments will be taxed. In addition, the end of other social programmes should produce savings. This is the other part of the huge appeal of basic income: it's technically neutral on the government's income statement, but everyone will instantly be able to see how much tax they're paying and how much welfare they're receiving in return. One of the criticisms of basic income is that it would kill off the desire to work. Few studies have been done of this, but those that have indicate that people only reduce their work hours by a small amount on average. The fact that a fiscally neutral basic income scheme would pay out only £423 per month per adult (€585 or $644) means almost everyone receiving it would still need a job. £423 a month is simply not enough to survive — or even pay rent — in most areas of Britain. It might disincentivize some work, however. Young people living for free with their parents might suddenly feel rather rich. And that would mean employers currently offering unpleasant jobs with low pay might need to increase their pay rates or go out of business. That might not be a bad thing: A basic income pre-supposes that most people want to work anyway, because productive activity is how we create meaning and identity. Basic income would give workers the freedom to not be forced into the jobs that no one wants — think about rubbish collectors — or to let people grow richer by taking on those onerous tasks. It might force society to revalue unpleasant but necessary tasks, and reward them more justly. It would alter the labour market in favour of labour, in other words.
Check out this Wisconsin research experience, similar to the basic income, but known back then as a "negative income tax."
Researchers in the Office of Economic Opportunity, the brain trust for Lyndon Johnson's Great Society in the midsixties, began planning a large-scale field experiment of the idea. Several sites in New Jersey were ultimately selected for the test, which was launched in 1968 with the University of Wisconsin's Institute for Research on Poverty in charge of the research and a Princeton-based firm, Mathematica Inc., in charge of field operations and data collection.
