Scott Santens | Universal Basic Income

00:05 Those puppet masters almost surely have a clearly maybe something heavy And until you've thoroughly tested every last course justice You know the less you really do That's true, Dr. Seuss They're wood without THC Cause they're lying to us Just don't know Without THC The higher side chat show On Wood Company

00:44 Alright, Hiresight Chatters. We spend a lot of time dissecting the problems of the world and there are many from multi-generational criminal families of control from behind the curtain of our so called democracy to the complete corporate rape and pillage of anything and everything leaving the planet and its people a virtual wasteland in its wake And that's just the stuff you can talk about in polite company. Yes, the rabbit hole goes much deeper but are the secrets of Templar magic really going to make your cubicle any less miserable? Will a conversation about spider beans on their moon-based control center contribute to finding your true passion in life? As fun as it is, I'm doubtful. Although what's key is that we find solutions to problems long identified and circumvent the debt-based system of rule—not grandiose ideas of a technocratic utopia, not pipe dream paradigms of exotic technologies firmly locked behind the gates of possibility for decades

01:34 Today we want a real, practical solution we can fight for now. A viable option for providing maximum optionality for all—something within our grasp that breaks the chains of economic slavery and frees each individual to pursue their long-stagnant true will." Ladies and gentlemen, for me I see no better answer than that of a universal basic income. And today we're going to explore it inside and out with our guest Scott Santens the king of the basic income concept and the moderator of The Basic Income Community on Reddit A true honor and pleasure Scott my man welcome to The Higher Side Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah man thanks for being here as you can tell we can be a weird show but this is the topic that I really do think is the best option for quick and meaningful change and I hope we can look at it from every angle and get more people on board who might have the wrong impression or might just be entirely unfamiliar so to start this off let's uh just lay out there how do you define this concept for the uninitiated?

02:31 Yes, so a basic income is an amount of money sufficient to cover one's basic needs and it's based on the individual levels. It's not given to households and it's given without any conditions whatsoever. So you get regardless of work or not. And now permanent income stream of the US would be like around a thousand dollars a month or something to start with. But it's just this completely unconditional amount that everybody receives, that they can use any way they want to and of course they would just have so many effects in so many different things which I'm happy to discuss because it really is kind of very wide-reaching

03:08 idea to like essentially build a new foundation or floor underneath people and society on which to build. Right, it is exactly what it sounds like universal basic income and how much money is typically proposed because I do hear some debate here Oh sure, so to be considered a basic income it needs to meet one's basic needs of like say food and rent electricity clothing. Like these most basic needs its not supposed to be any kind of lavishing amount that essentially vault people into middle class lifestyle

03:45 It's just purely basic. So then, of course – how do you define that? And different countries will define essentially the poverty line in different ways and it's like in the US the poverty line right now for an individual is about $1. is $11,880. So when I say a basic income in the United States has to be at least $12,000 that's why I'm saying it has to be there because you have to be above the poverty line and that's just how we've defined it now you can say we pretty arbitrarily defined it and it could be some other number as well but I think that's another debate to have but I think that as far as each country goes

04:23 It's up to that country to decide what is that most basic amount and whatever that is, you know That's where you can start with the basic income. Yeah I like the idea that it should be around The poverty level that way people can survive but if they work a side gig or a creative passion They can do pretty well for themselves and that guaranteed safety net keeps people from being stuck at low-paying jobs They hate they have a little more bargaining power because your shitty corporate boss doesn't have complete leverage over your life Yeah, exactly. That really is possibly the most transformational power of this idea is that it does grant people the power to say no and that's something that just doesn't exist yet You can't say no to let's say working for $7 an hour if like that's all you can find and you have to be able to eat

05:13 And so you just, you know accept this and there's so many things other things you accept as well Like let's say we're staying in relationships that we don't want to be a part of because we can't really afford to go out On our own. This inability to say no is actually very wide-reaching and it has You know effects on even depressing wages So that's another kind of effect of this as well Is that if you can actually say no? To low wage work and then you suddenly you can say well I I'll happily work for you for fifteen dollars an hour or i'll happily work for you, forty hours a week instead of forty hours a week but it is my conditions to work for you and so as all the power right now with employers. Basic income suddenly that's more of a balance power between employers employees and also for the previous point as well

06:03 As far as the amount goes, like it's just there so much more combinatorial power with this as well. So you know yeah $1000 a month for one person might sound like not a whole lot but then of course You just imagine like say four people living together in the same house and like a four bedroom house or something. That's $4,000 a month for the total household so you know suddenly when you start looking at sharing of costs and stuff it really enables people to do so much more which is kind of like the success of crowdfunding and what now? You see what can be accomplished with a bunch of people who are able to contribute a little bit and this is another along that almost same lines

06:44 Absolutely. I think that's how both of us pay the bills now, the first criticism that I have faced when talking about this to some people is that they immediately jump on this welfare for all kind of idea and that's not really a fair criticism isn't it? No, welfare is an entirely different animal. You can think of welfare as paying people not to work or let's say welfare is paying people to do nothing and basic income is paying people to do anything like when you have welfare, welfare has a targeted system so because it's targeted, you're using bureaucratic system

07:24 and you're introducing a bunch of type 2 errors, which means that it's not getting to people that should get it even by your own definition. And then because its targeted then that means you withdraw it when they no longer qualify for it so somebody gets it let say because he don't have a job and the get a job in the no longer get it in which case that creates the conditions where lets say your earning $1500 dollars a month via benefits And then you get a job and suddenly you're working 40 hours a week in this job that you hate, and you're still essentially earning $1500 dollars a month. It's just now cash from work instead of your benefits.

08:04 You're no better off. Why would we you know work in these jobs that we hate? Why would we do like part-time work or a gig worker anything if all it does is remove the assistance that we're getting so the basic income is not welfare because Everybody gets it and it's always there So, you know If you're getting $1,000 a month in basic income and you get a job then your earning, you know If your job is paying you $1500 a month now, you're earning twenty five hundred dollars a month Like it adds instead of replaces Yeah, I think that's a great point because a lot of people who are on welfare they are incentivized not to work because it's not like their resume has them stacked up for 100 thousand-a year jobs. So when they do get a job its gonna be pretty low wage and pretty close to that welfare amount and that is definitely going have an impact in their life if you could just get a job make $100 grand then yeah but the welfare money isn't as big deal in your life anymore and you can probably pass that up but thats really not realistic

09:04 Yeah, exactly. Because we have all these different programs they can add on top of each other and then they create something that are called welfare cliffs or poverty cliffs And so what this is is that let's say someone it is receiving five different programs at you know They've got like housing assistance and EITC and food stamps, TANF welfare assistance, Medicaid. All these different systems stacked up on top of each other. Child care too – all these things. Let's say they're receiving around the equivalent of $40,000 in benefits If that person gets a minimum wage job, then they can drop down to a total of earnings from their income and benefits as being $20,000 or $25,000 or less. There's a steep drop off in which case

09:51 Really, there's no point. Why would anybody get any kind of job if you lose a drop down so that you're not even better off but way worse off? That's even why Finland is also looking to experiment with this as well is that the entire reason they're really looking into this and they're really interested because they think that by testing a basic income, they can actually increase the amounts of people working. Because right now with the current system it seems to disincentivize working for part-time or doing a little bit of work here contractual temp labor there's so many people who are disincentivized from doing that where if you get that floor then they think that people will take that part time job but they will take that temp job

10:36 Absolutely, and there is the argument that some people will be lazy and do nothing but that exists in our current system. And you know go to any intersection in San Diego and I see four homeless people asking for change There are people doing the minimum now and wouldn't it be better if we knew they at least had some quality of life That would disincentivize them from going into areas of crime? That's a big one I think Yeah, I think that we do need money to make money. It is very disincentivizing to have nothing and not be able to... This idea that we've got bootstraps we can all pull ourselves up by. You can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you don't have any boots!

11:20 So, basic income is like a way of giving everybody boots and saying that okay now actually it is possible. Like you do have the ability so let's say imagine seeing those people on the street corners again like those people with signs asking for money right now they don't have any boots but with the basic income they have that money and everybody knows they have that money so you actually know that they do have something and then your wondering why is it that their out here? Do they need extra help? Is there some mental illness going on here you know that they already have something. And that makes all the difference in the world, I think and that's also where this idea has been tested and there is a lot of different places as far it has been actually tested full universal based game experiments have done in Namibia and India and we've got very similar kind of experiments that had been done using unconditional cash transfers in places like Kenya and Uganda and Liberia and Lebanon

12:17 This is a tool that's being increasingly used to just give people money without conditions. And when we do that, we do see that it does actually enable more people to work. There seems to be an almost innate desire to self-employ like everyone – A lot of people have this idea what they would like to do, start up some kind of business or whatever. But because there's essentially like a built-in scarcity to money, you know if you have to take out a loan for this or if you don't even have access to that at all then how can you do these things? So when you give people money and we've seen this that when we do give people money that people do do that. They start up their own businesses and it expands those local markets too. It really frees people to make more choices as to whatever work they feel is most important

13:03 to do. circle around this bureaucracy. There's no need for this, this is giving directly to people it's not there are no conditions it's not that you have to figure out who should be the ones to get this and why and then there's all that bureaucracy goes into that and all these errors creep into this as well just say no what we're doing is just like essentially what they have been in Alaska with the annual Alaska dividend

13:42 All you gotta do is just prove that you are a resident of Alaska and we see here. You get that dividend it's there's nothing else and Once you have that, I mean it's just so much simpler. And like they're really the costs of running the social security system is actually a very small fraction of that is administrative cost because all they're doing is just cutting checks to people with a social security number that are old enough to qualify there in the system. So with this we actually get around all these administrative bureaucratic problems. You just give it directly to people And that's also an interesting point you bring up Alaska. Some people might not realize this and as we talk about this, they might think well this sounds like some fantasy pipe dream that'll never happen it's kind of happening in Alaska because citizens get broken off from the oil industry for using the land up there so basically they're getting a basic income right now and you can kind of study that to see effects right?

14:42 Yeah, yeah. So Alaska has been achieving what we call essentially a partial basic income but it's the closest thing to universal basic income I think anywhere because the entire state gets it and so this is not targeted any way whatsoever. The entire state gets this this. They've been getting it since 1982 and what happens is Alaska takes some of the revenue they charge oil companies, essentially a rent to drill and then they put a portion of that money into a huge fund, a permanent fund which is now $50 billion in size. That fund is invested in the markets and then that fund earns a huge dividend each year and then that dividend is divided up between everybody

15:26 And so you know this is a permanent thing as well. People wonder, oh like that's going to disappear as soon as the oil disappears? No that's what they were smart about doing is they actually essentially converted a non-renewable resource into a renewable resource. They converted oil into cash and into a fund and so every year since 1982 they've been getting around $1,000 a year and that's per man woman and child even most recently it was around twenty one hundred dollars so you know for a family of let's say our household of six then that's twelve thousand dollars for the households. So we get that actually quite a bit of money for these larger families in there really gets

16:10 Because of that, Alaska has often been at the very top in as far as lowest amounts of poverty goes. Lowest inequality and even as far looking at states measurements of well-being Alaska is right up there at the top as far as states with highest well being people who are happier and more connected with each other and more connected with their work healthier like it's all you know right there in Alaska I think Partially at least to do with the space income because everyone there does have this income floor. Nobody earns zero dollars per year You know At least they get this certain amount that they always have to look forward to each year They're able to spend stuff on and

16:51 And you also touched on something with the kids that I have been reading about as a possible wrinkle in this system is that there are going to be people if we give it to every individual, they're gonna be people who just have kids for extra checks. Just a small minute detail and it could be ironed out really easily by saying you only like, you either put it a cap on at three kids or you could say people don't get the checks until they're 18. Something could be put in place but how do you address that issue that people might just be incentivized to have a bunch of kids to get more checks which is something that I think our welfare system to some degree does now anyway?

17:28 Oh yeah, so this is something that again it's great to dive into and it's something I've learned a lot about through actually diving into basic income literature and what are the effects of income on welfare programs or fertility rates. But if you look at the system as designed right now, Essentially a worse incentive than what people worry about with basic income so essentially right now if you're in able bodied adult without dependence which called like an abod then you don't really have any access to welfare assistance. It's only if you have a kid right now that you're able to get some kind of assistance. If you're single, you don't really get anything so what you are doing right now is saying that if you are a single individual and having a hard time then you get nothing but if you have a kid then we'll give you let say $16000 a year in benefits whereas with the basic income everybody will already have $12000 a year

18:30 in benefits. And then if they have a kid, they'll get an extra $4000 so this is the difference you know right now we're talking about incentive of $16000 with the basic income we talk about additional center for thousand dollars it's just smaller incentives in the way that people worried about now if you also look at the evidence like if you look around the world at the effects of you know if you look at developed countries and those countries higher incomes and even within those countries at the income levels You can see this pattern is as people earn more money, they have fewer kids. So you have actually got countries all over the world who are actually worried about not reaching their replacement level, which is around 2.2. You have to have at least if you have two people and need to have two kids in order to replace that then they're actually a little bit over that so you have countries that are like at replacement levels of 1.5 or 1.6 or whatever and they're like crap we need to figure out a way to incentivize

19:30 having kids. So this is an example where people are afraid of something that countries are actually trying actively to do because they need to, the only reason the US isn't shrinking is because of our immigration and if it had just been due to fertility rates we aren't having enough kids to actually prevent a shrinking of the country therefore the entire economy. I love it man Everyone knows the saying, if you give a man of fish he eats for day teach him and efficient he eats for life. How do you look at that analogy in the context of what we're talking about?

20:08 Yeah, I asked if we build a robot to fish do all men starve or do all men eat this is uh if we're building technology. I want people to think like what is the purpose of the technology that were building it seems to me that the purpose of technology is to reduce the amount of work that we have as humans have to do and enable us to do more with less Cheers. Yeah, as we create all this great technology we should actually continue along those lines that we should always be working less they should always be less toil I want to make the distinction too is that there's actually a great deal of work valuable work that people want to do

20:48 But we're locked into lives of toil and I say let the machines do all the toil if there's something that a human doesn't want to do or something. The machine can do better faster for longer hand that work over the machines and humans pursue what it is that we most want to pursue And right now we're not doing that. We're building these great machines, this great technology and the benefits are accruing to a very small percentage of the population while the rest of us are becoming worse and worse off. I mean incomes, wages and salaries have been stagnant since they decoupled from productivity back in 1973 here in the US. That's just crazy! If you look at

21:34 You know just what it is, what kinds of work have we been doing? Like what are the effects of technology so far and what we've been seeing is that technology has been essentially eroding all these middle skill jobs. All these which is essentially built at the middle class if you think of the way that Cars used to be built by people if you look at old photos of Ford Motor Company I mean these were just like tens of thousands of people who worked on these things and now over the years Thanks to technology. They were some of the first two would be placed by machines So now there's so many machines that are building These cars and there's far fewer People that are doing this as well You just don't need as many if you look at photos of a Tesla factory in action

22:17 Even there's just so many fewer people and if you look at as Elon Musk has described of the new gigafactory I mean, I haven't seen photos of this yet But he's ever described it is an alien spaceship kind of thing It's just like there's so much technology in no people around. And so we've We've been shifting the way that we work from these middle class, high wage paying manufacturing jobs and we've been getting rid of those and replacing them with these low wage, low skill service sector jobs because those are just the jobs that haven't been automated yet. And that is a fact man you know automation is coming for people who might be thinking oh this sounds too risky and i wanna upset the economic model too much like how it is well tough because its changing regardless automation is getting better and less costly all the time so it's dumb to just wait until we're out on our asses or have a serious problem to do something about it exactly yeah.

23:15 We should be leveraging this for our own good. Another thing technology is doing is creating this... we're able to be somewhere more efficient with technology, things like Uber, things like Airbnb. Technology has been applied to existing capital and enables us to use these things more efficiently so let's say before Uber there were all the cars that were sitting around that were not being used And now these cars are being used. So there's less need for even more cars and more people are able to earn money doing that, and I think that that's great except the problem is is that as long as we're eliminating all these other jobs which we are because they are inefficient to have these 40 hour a week jobs where people can actually be sitting around doing kind of nothing for hours or days or weeks on end depending

24:05 Why would we do that? We should actually have a labor market where it's more flexible and people can be called into work when they need to, and then not work when they aren't needed to. Do their own thing when they have that free time." The thing right now is that we're existing in this world without basic income and therefore all that's doing is creating more insecurity and People are just barely getting by it's even more stressful trying to figure out How can I possibly pay the rent? And you know, I'll drive a little bit for uber here and I'll work for task rabbit here. So You've got this sharing economy that's coming up That's really having a large effect as well

24:41 And we just need that income floor underneath everybody so that again, it makes things work better for everybody instead of making things worse. Well said and I do like that you talk about this being consistent with any philosophy Why should conservatives and liberals libertarians and socialists alike all give their stamp of approval to this thing? Yeah, there's something about it to like for everyone and the reason is it's kind of a universal thing. It's like saying this is a good idea for someone to be able to live inside of a house or to drink water I mean these ideas aren't divisive There is not a libertarian way of drinking water and a socialist way of drinking water This is a universal idea of just saying hey everybody has basic needs

25:29 and we should have those basic needs met. And then because of that, there's all these different angles from looking at it so with the libertarian angle – for libertarians freedom should be key. Liberty should be key. People should have the choice and the freedom and the power to direct their own lives and that is what this enables if you care about taxation then that is what some people will have a problem with taxation as far So anything that reduces taxes is good and anything that doesn't is bad. Well, with the basic income it's essentially a universal tax credit for everybody. It's a fairly large universal tax credit that's refundable so for the most part most of population would actually be paying less in income taxes versus those at the very top who are getting again most accruing most of the benefits of technology they would be taxed more but then

26:22 And again, we don't even have to do it with income taxes. There are so many ways of doing that as well and as far as the socialist viewpoint you say well basic income enables people the power to say no and therefore they have more bargaining power and unions – The entire point of unions is to increase bargaining power through collective bargaining. So this is bargaining at the individual level It also enables what is effectively a universal strike fund. So whereas unions right now have to use union dues and create it like these war chests for strikes so that people can afford to go on strike, with basic income anyone at any point can actually afford to go on strike. So it enhances that

27:04 And as far as people who don't like government bureaucracy, then this reduces that. You don't need all these administrators and bureaucrats overlooking these things you can just get rid of those jobs don't need to exist anymore and it will just give money directly to people this is less power of government over people because they don't have the same abilities that they have right now where they're essentially reaching into people's lives and bedrooms and trying to force them do this or that through coercion, carrots-and-sticks. With basic income it is just basic income you don't need all that but if you have people who care about capitalism and markets then

27:47 We're looking at Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek like the idea because basic income is essentially a market solution. We have markets, markets need money in order for the price function to work in order for supply and demand to be calculated by this giant distributed computer we call the market people have to have money or to provide those signals as to what they want to purchase and therefore what manufacturers should be creating and shipping where when And so by having more money into the system, that system works better. Like the markets are able to be more efficient in figuring out what it is people want and where these goods and services should go

28:28 And those who are worried about the future and even as it is right now when we're seeing stagnant or falling aggregate demand. If robots and machines and software doing our work for us, they may be doing a work for us but they're not buying anything they're not consumers so you can think of basic income is this consumer kind of dividend where people actually have to have money that machines aren't making in order to purchase what the machines are producing And so you're hearing about calls for helicopter money from bankers and people worried about markets because they're worried about what happens when you've got these shrinking markets even across the world. It's just kind of a stagnant situation right now, So there are just so many ways to look at this

29:12 Right, man. All great points and I wanted to read this little thing you have on the subreddit about how it simplifies the tax code because it touches on several things that you just laid out but It says there is no need for Tax brackets having different tax rates when people receive a basic income since the basic income effectively causes the same tax rate structure only requiring two numbers to be chosen The value of the basic income allowance and the flat tax rates With less thresholds and tax rates to play around with, taxation becomes less politicized and less used as a weapon of class warfare. This also simplifies your IRS paperwork and makes the tax structure smoother and thus non-susceptible to income shifting." I mean there it is that's like four benefits wrapped up in just a couple of sentences

29:58 Yeah, exactly. I love the idea of a flat tax with the basic income and I don't think it necessarily should be the only way of paying for it because there are other ways that I would like to see included as well but I do like the idea of essentially switching to a flat-tax system and giving everybody essentially the same income tax so everybody's taxes on what they earn via quote-unquote hard work, but then if you look at like capital gains You know if all were if capital is replacing labor and therefore essentially robots You know our capital then how do you get up that money? I think it makes sense to tax that somehow so I think a tax on capital gains Makes sense as well in order to to essentially create that system And I think that there are taxes like

30:45 I think that we should get away from taxing human labor and I think we should tax other things. And so, I like this switching of a flat tax and part of that again like you mentioned is this great simplification of the tax code because you don't need all these tax credits and deductions in loopholes and all these things that people are paying and lobbying to be put into the code. Like it's – their tax code is way too complex and if we just essentially look at and try to create this universal

31:31 tax credit that would be a basic income then we can get rid of all that which would really remove a bunch of distortions from the market as well. And you know it's kind of a religion with segments up this audience that taxation is theft period no room for negotiation and does not my view because I think that money to be used wisely and the way it wants to be use it needs to circulate and I think a basic income could give it to the people and then the taxes will help it circulate back to government who will then put it back in the hands of people. And really, I look at it as an attempt that trickled up economics instead of trickle down we start the money at the top and it never gets to the bottom but if we started at the bottom where people must spend money

32:18 they don't have these billions in the bank so they can just hoard, they must eat they must pay rent. So the money will circulate with their purchases and it'll eventually get to the hands of the millionaires I'm sure! They'll find a way but let's start at the bottom at least let's try yeah yeah and part is as well is that you know this is another way of paying for basic income that I like as well and this was through citizens in your age so this is the idea that Instead of letting banks create the money as debt, we should actually just create it publicly and create that money. Money should essentially be born in the hands of citizens instead of the hands of bankers. If we did that then let's say

33:01 Right now we've created just trillions of dollars over the past few years through quantitative easing. We have been creating this money and throwing it at banks, hoping that banks would lend it out to people because again thats how we grow the money supply is through banks and a lot of people don't know that but over well over 90% of our money is created that way. And so our money supply is growing in that way, so if we did it with Citizens in Yourage and we just said okay let's stop doing that and lets create money for people instead then you could actually create tax free dollars in the hands of people and they could be lets say $100 of the basic income per month or $200 of the basic income per month I mean it depends on what we want to choose as that but we could actually do this through just

33:50 money creation for citizens. That is a possibility and I like how more people are actually talking about that as well because if we did it that way then we would reduce the taxation need, and there of course there are even some who want to just create the money whole and just say hey let's just give people money don't even bother about taxing at all lets Give people money and then we'll just index the basic income to inflation so that it rises with it. Now, some people would freak out about the idea of inflation with that whereas you've got other people like Bill Gross who are looking at this and he's a billionaire investor like Janus Capital and he likes the idea of initial basic income

34:32 And I think he likes the idea of just creating money and giving it to people instead of taxing it, because he's a billionaire. So if you get to have your choice as to what funding mechanism you want to use to pay for basic income, I think there are those like him and even those who hate the idea of taxes that would like this idea of citizen-seniority instead or is part of the mix as well Right. And you bring up a great point about how money is created if banks are going to just print money out of thin air in a fractional reserve banking system, it might as well get given to the people instead of traded for bonds with the government and then basically the Federal Reserve kind of owns the U.S. government

35:14 Yeah, and I just don't like this idea even of we need money. This is a public good nothing works without money in people's hands to use in the system so this is something that we all need and yet what were doing is giving it to banks and then the only way we can get it is to go into debt and then to pay interest on that debt to the banks. So there's never enough money to cover everything, so you have to have a growing economy. Your aim has to be economic growth because everyone is always having to pay for the interests. That in itself is just an entirely unsustainable model what we should be looking for is to create this system that is essentially a circuit it's a way of circling this money through the system. It's like creating

36:01 a circulatory system for the entire economy, whereas right now there is no circulatory system. Like you said before it's just going up to the top and some of it is just staying there and not going back down so base income is like the creation of a pump or addition of a heart into this systems that actually creates this circulation so that you don't any longer need this unsustainable growth that we're doing right now. And let's talk about the numbers a bit more, the feasibility of it all how do we know that the country can afford it? How does it all work out I'm sure you've looked at it Oh sure so it is...it's a lot cheaper than people think it is because

36:44 I call this napkin math because what you'll do is you'll figure out like anybody can just take the number of the basic income and then multiply it by the number of people, and then they come up with this number and go well that's impossible. That's $4 trillion or $5 trillion dollars or whatever. That's ridiculous so you can't look at this system through base income without the taxation system itself because again What this is, is the creation or diversification of income streams so that everybody is given an income stream from the government but also there's the taxation system still there. So let's say as far as when we're talking about a net cost of basic income. Imagine if I gave you $20 and asked for $10 back what is the net cost of that transaction for me? Was it $20 or was

37:35 and of course the net was $10. So with a basic income, you're giving money to everybody. There's lot of people who'll be getting let's say 12 thousand dollars but then those same people might be giving 12 thousand dollars back through income taxes And so for that, that's a net cost of zero in that case. Whereas if somebody who is earning a lot more money let's say their tax burden goes up $24000 and they're getting a $12000 basic income so then their net tax increase is $12000. So if you look at just net What is the net cost that we actually have to do? It's actually not even the $3 trillion napkin math number, which would be for a $12,000 basic income in addition to a $4,000 basic income for kids. That's about 2.98 trillion dollars total but if you do a net cost

38:30 then that drops down to around $900 billion. That's the total amount of money that we essentially need to transfer from the top 20% of the population with most of the money, who are gaining most everything from technology down to the bottom three quintiles with $12,000 per person in the bottom 20% and around $8,000 in the bottom at the next 20%, and then $4,000 for the next 20%. So as people earn more money it will be reduced through however this taxation system that we set up works. It's a lot cheaper than what people think it is just at the net cost. However even after that

39:15 Then you need to look at, okay so what are the programs that we already have that we no longer need anymore? Or even another way a simpler way of looking at this is how many programs do people no longer qualify for if everyone's already now earning $12000 dollars a year. So if you can imagine right now it could be very difficult to qualify for food stamps maybe you have to be earning 2000 dollars a year or something where you are. If your earnings 12 thousand dollars and don't So there's so many programs that no longer exist. There is too much money that we're not spending on these other programs anymore, but we're spending on basic income instead. The cost needs to be subtracted from that as well and the cost after all these elimination of programs, bureaucracy and elimination even of all this tax credits and deductions subsidies loopholes that we don't need any more

40:07 then it's actually a matter of a few hundred billion dollars really depending on whatever mechanisms that we choose to fund it and how many programs you want to eliminate, and how far we want to simplify the tax code. So there are a lot of choices involved in this that changes the cost number but it really is just a lot cheaper than people think it is. And then on top of this –and I think this is one of the biggest arguments for as well Is that it pays for itself? We will actually save money on all these other expenditures that we no longer need, that we don't see as expenditures. So when I say that, if you're paying $800 a month for your healthcare premium

40:50 and base income leads to a healthier population, which we have seen because even in the Canada test in Delphi Manitoba where they tested this base income guarantee for five years hospitalization rates went down almost 10%. And we know that there's such a connection between health and income with higher rates of cancer and heart disease and diabetes and all these things that cost a lot of money. So essentially If we can reduce those premiums down from $800 a month to say, $400 a month or whatever then that's that much money that we've saved. That people are no longer spending elsewhere you know the cost of crime in the US has been calculated over a trillion dollars per year so if this reduces crime which again we've seen in Namibia the universal basic income experiment there reduced crime by 42%

41:43 So if we reduce crime here in the US where we're spending, you know 30 thousand 40 thousand 50 thousand 60 thousand dollars a year to house people in prison and they would not be in prison If they just been given twelve thousand dollars of basic income instead Then we're talking about spending a lot less money than we already have. This is actually a cost saver It's not a net expense it's a net surplus And that is an interesting point about criminals, because this is a question I've seen come up. How will this work with criminals? Number one, most crimes are out of economic necessity and not feeling part of your community which if your community gives you a check every month then you're inclined to feel more apart from it and have something to lose

42:29 How would this work with criminals? Because one suggestion I've heard is that if someone gets incarcerated, their basic income should go to pay for their food and housing in the jail system. And I don't think there's much of a problem with that but what are your thoughts on criminals and a basic income? Yeah, I think this is one of those details that needs to be looked into and people will debate this. And I actually do think it makes sense for the money to actually be used for their housing and food expenses. Why should we have to raise taxes to pay for food and housing when everyone's already guaranteed food and housing?

43:08 I think that makes sense. What I don't like is, I don't like the idea within a privatized prison system. There just seems to be a possibility with profit being the gain for this that it could be kind of like a kids-for-cash kind of system that's already messed up so...I don't like the privatized system as it is, but I think that there's definitely a way to help reform the system through this. And I also like the idea of again leveraging technology so if you're looking at non-violent offenders and everybody has money for their basic needs

43:43 then it becomes possible for people to be imprisoned at home with the ankle bracelets and whatnot that track them. And we've actually seen a lot of good outcomes from that as far as nonviolent offenders go, you don't need to put them into prisons if you're just looking about trying to limit their freedoms in society for awhile then why not just have them in their homes, not bothering anybody and knowing that they're there. And it's so much cheaper to do that and then again you're not having to worry about prison expenses at all or the private prison industry at all. You're just saying hey let's use technology to temporarily imprison people at home and I think that makes a lot more sense

44:27 Absolutely, man. That's a great idea I don't think I've ever really heard proposed before it addresses a lot of issues for sure Non-violent offenders now are oftentimes faced with sexual and violent trauma that really shouldn't be a part of their sentence And some don't ever really come back from it and people also say that when the only people you're locked in with our criminals Scams and schemes for later start getting cooked up that wouldn't happen. Yeah, I mean I really like that idea, man. If you have to check that box to get a job, it says if you have ever committed a felony or been in prison for anything then you're definitely not going to get that job pretty much. So people are coming out of prison and we say doing your time and then you should be okay but people are doing their time they're coming out and they're unable to earn incomes

45:30 and then they end up having to earn incomes illegally or whatever just try to get by, and then they get back into prison. It's just so wasteful the way that we do things right now Hell yeah, and I did want to step back to the Manitoba pilot experiment in Canada that you mentioned it had an 8.5 reduction in hospitalization In the community I took down a note on that where the study says they found this Reduction to be a direct result of the minimum income And it goes on to say this was attributed to the reduction in workplace injuries and family violence resulting from the rise in incomes And that's sort of a dark way to look at something like spousal abuse and hitting your kids, but it's stress. I mean how do you put a price on the overall stress reduction? And like you brought up earlier sometimes when our relationship does get abusive the flip side is that they can't even leave because of the economic reasons so it's a little odd to talk about giving people money to not hit their wives but

46:29 Stress reduction is a beautiful thing overall and giving people this basic income has measurable results. Yeah, yeah! And that's one of these things that I've seen across studies and findings so it's not just in Canada where this kind of result was seen there have been studies of income assistance programs and violence family violence rates and again you see that decrease One of my favorite experiments too, aside from the Manitoba experiment was kind of a natural experiment that was just very serendipitous. And this came out of the Great Smoky Mountains Study in North Carolina and so this was meant to be a longitudinal study which means a long-term 10 years long study of kids in poverty

47:19 And a few years into this study, where they were just looking at kids and wanted to observe them for a long time. A large group of those kids whose family were Cherokee started getting a dividend from the local casino and that dividend grew over time so essentially for the next decade on average around $4000 per person per adult who was receiving this and it's even continuing to grow but But they found that this increase in incomes, that was not based on anything. It was unconditional and you received it and it wasn't like welfare where you're able to build money on top of it actually. This was a income floor for these houses. It's one of the closest things I've seen to basic income experiment really. And they found that again it did decrease stress in households because really one of the things families most argue about any couple most argue about is money so by

48:14 reducing that stress about money by people knowing that they could pay for their basic needs, the parents actually fought less. They were able to spend more time with their kids. The kids grew up in these better environments where there was actually even a reduced alcohol consumption as well And the kids actually had striking personality differences when they looked at this over 10 years later, where these kids raised in these households in these better environments. They're more willing to work with other people. They're less worried about things there. They have these like stronger what's called big five personality factors and psychology phrasing. So they have healthier personalities and another thing about this is that

49:05 The general consensus is that kids' personalities are kind of more flexible, and then as you get older it hardens. And then stops really shifting all that much So if we're able to create a whole generation of kids with healthier personalities and those all lock in as adults because of the basic income. You just imagine how much of a difference that itself would make and then, of course, that is something that builds so all those kids grow up as adults and then they have their own kids and then their kids are raised in with basic-income households with this reduction of stress in this increase insecurity you're looking at some major psychological differences that create for a better society

49:52 Mm hmm. Wow, yeah that is great information and you know we are a show of largely conspiracy folks and the narrative is that government wants everyone dependent on it so it cements its power I know this sort of sounds like in this paradigm where were giving the government a lot of control and a lot of power as provider can you say anything to ease those concerns? Yeah, so first of all I always like looking at evidence and I look at programs like Social Security and the Alaska Dividend. And it seems that those populations have so much more civic power

50:32 Those in Alaska actually vote in higher numbers. They are empowered as citizens, they want to make sure that because they don't want to lose that dividend that they actually vote in greater numbers. They have more control essentially over their government And with Social Security, you can see the same thing. We know that senior citizens are a strong voting contingent of society where they've got more time on their hands and they vote in larger numbers and because of that the government caters to them. Medicare D was kind of the bigger program that came out recently and that happened because

51:10 senior citizens, they're the ones that the government cares most about. You got to keep them happy but let's make sure that we keep them happy because they vote more and it's really what it comes down to is that basic income actually creates a stronger population of citizens. And citizens are what really comprise the government for thinking about government is like an us versus them thing, then you can see that you get this idea that it's us versus them and its power versus the weak but if you look at government as actually what it is which is we are system up the people by the people for the people than

51:50 You want a nation of citizens who vote and who have the ability to be engaged, to be politically engaged. To go out and get signatures for something and go out and get people to vote for their idea that feels important or their representative that feels important If we can create a country of people who are more engaged as citizens, then that's again is a much better country than it is now where we've got this system that has kind of ignoring the needs of most everybody and just focused on the needs of the wealthiest and the most powerful.

52:29 Right. I mean, those are great points and when someone is not so economically stressed they can actually take a second to look up and see how their community's being run they can actually take the time to care about politics because they're not So just go, go, go in this dog-eat-dog system that we have right now. And it's still a choice and this new paradigm it would still be a choice to be dependent on the state or not I mean It is right now people who have these concerns you could choose to do nothing and be dependent on the state Or you can work and that isn't a problem The basic income system You could still do the same if you felt like oh I'm just worried about the fact that I'm dependent on this basic income well then work so much that the basic income is extra

53:12 And then those concerns for you personally would go away. And is it any better than being dependent on the shitty company that we work for now? Exactly that there is a dependence right now on these companies where how secure are you when you're dependent on a company? I talk about this as far as rights go. How secure is your job if you can be fired by one person for something that you say like maybe you say something on Facebook, and maybe you say something on Twitter's and You know Maybe you decide that you want to become a part of this March You know on the weekend or whatever and someone sees that and that Prevents you from getting a job in the future or you lose your job now There's a lot of job insecurity involved and it's also paired with this lack of real freedom of speech if you're if you feel unable to Express your ideas that are most important to you out of fear losing your job And that's something that's out of dependence on your

54:09 Job on this I'm having to have a job in order to live as soon as you cut that connection and allow people to live without A job then you can actually Be more vocal about what's important to you and you're able to You know, you have that freedom of speech. You have these rights that are essentially infringed without it And the other part about this too is that we are interdependent We try to avoid this...we love thinking of us as just purely independent But but we're not I mean if anybody just looks around I mean nobody built everything around them They purchased it through The work of other people

54:47 No one how many people can actually build their computer from scratch and how many people alive kid could build things? It wasn't for the people in in the past who are long dead who actually came up with the ideas and built it In the first place. I mean we are an interdependent Society, and so all this is doing is just really recognizing that it's saying that yeah We are interdependent. It's not that were dependent or codependent or independent just as saying hey We all need each other and this is lifting us all up and enabling us to do more. Oh yeah, I am right there with you and you make a great point about asking how free are we really now. Another example i can remember is back in the occupied days when I thought marching did something, I had friends who would say man actually really care about these issues and I would love to go down there but I can't risk getting arrested. I got to be at work in the morning And that fear keeps everybody in place really it's to be honest because

55:46 It is a legitimate concern. Cops arrest protesters, even if it's just for a night that could be enough to get someone fired and then thus destroy them financially so yeah we have a lot of problems but people can't even put energy into the things they want to change because of this So if you're conspiracy minded and want to get the ball rolling on balance of power in real change This is a good way to get started Yeah, exactly. If you really want to look at this as a possible conspiracy of the ruling elites or whatever is that with this question of why aren't there people out on the streets? Why aren't there people on the streets just because we've created a system where

56:27 that is very difficult to do. People are afraid to go out on the streets because they don't want to lose their job, people are unable to do these things because they don't have money to do them, they don't want to lose their housing and they don't want to be unable to eat And so we aren't doing what we should be doing to actually Be more in control of our lives and that's exactly what the elite want us to be is to feel disempowered Like if you look at just an income in voting it's crazy to me how if you're earning over six figures on average 80% Of the people will vote. If you're earning $15,000 or less 30 percent of the people who are vote I

57:04 Why is that? What is the reasoning behind that and what are the effects of that. I think there's so much disempowerment, for those who are familiar with this idea of learned helplessness in psychology, you can learn to be helpless even when you're not. And it's funny too, there's actually been experiments that show that just telling someone that they have no power to change something can actually teach them helplessness. So this idea that we are unable to do things, that itself is damaging and people need to know that they can actually make a difference and with basic income too enabling that then we can start changing things to really take back control

57:45 It is inspiring to hear that things are kind of picking up for it. How close are we in the States, realistically do you think to getting this on the table? Well I think that we won't be seeing it on a national level until at least after 2020 and maybe at the earliest 2024 unless that we really push for it together if people just expect they can watch it unfold and eventually start receiving a basic income. I think that potential just means that maybe you'll get it in 2028 or something instead of what you could have gotten in 2022 if we really started to mobilize, and I think that self-driving technology is really

58:31 driving this conversation a lot faster because it too is growing fast. And artificial intelligence, new things like deep learning forms of machine learning. This is really getting people to think about this on a national level and we just had discussed in Congress for the first time recently just looking at automation and the potential for basic income Just recently, the most recent news was that Commodore AI announced that they'd have a $999 upgrade package for a lot of cars with the necessary equipment at the moment to be upgraded to self-driving. To the point of basically being like Teslas with the autopilot feature and so just announcements like that just make it seem that much more real not much faster to happen

59:25 Uber driving is gonna be in pittsburgh now you forgot you can do rides with a self-driving car like that's not real. Real thing and people see this and they'll see cars driving themselves then they'll say yeah lawyers that are actually software, And it gets people thinking like, oh my gosh this is the future and it's going to be increasingly difficult to earn incomes. So let's talk about this and lets get this done somehow on a national stage so that's gonna happen now what's the best way to go about that? What's like the best first step

1:00:04 I really like the idea of a carbon fee and dividend. Let's add a cost to carbon, and let's refund that cost to everybody as a dividend because that would actually reduce global warming rates of CO2 pollution at the same time it is increasing incomes and also getting people used to all universally receiving income without conditions and seen as right or something that is owed to them. That's one foot in the door that is immediate step I think it's possible on both a national level and state level. Oregon and Washington will be voting on this, Washington DC is looking at this so that's an ability there. And also think we do have states like Washington and Colorado who voted to legalize marijuana they can also look at basic income as saying okay

1:00:57 What can we do? Like could it be a carbon tax and dividend or could it be something like a land value tax and dividend, like what are the options that we have on on the state levels and even the city levels or county levels to introduce the idea of dividends to everybody without strings. And those are also I think strategies that are great ideas and I hope to see those starting to come up. I think we will start to see various states and cities look into this as well. Yeah, man these are amazing interesting times! Ten years ago we were still using flip phones now we have the iPhone so i can only imagine what kind of implementation will happen in the next 10 years these are exciting times for

1:01:46 Before we go, are there resources you'd recommend that people check out if they want to dig into this deeper? Where would you have them go? Oh yeah. So definitely if you're...if you want to dive in, go to reddit dot com slash r slash basic income That's the Basic Income subreddit and that had Dozens of links added to it on a daily basis for years now. It's organized also by, you can look at articles, blogs, anti-UBI articles, studies, papers

1:02:22 videos, it's all just categorized. You can go through there and really jump in and also just even the FAQ there itself is pretty informative and its got like a large compilated compiled list of evidence sources so basically what I talked about with various locations that have what I would call evidence pointing towards basic income as you know all their huge lists to look at So, yeah definitely check that out. And you can look at... You can find my writings at scottsantons.com I'm on Twitter at Scott Santens and um.. I've actually got a big Frequently Asked Questions compilation of essentially

1:03:10 Just dozens of blogs and articles I've written about various aspects of basic income as well that, I think is a good starting point to research the idea further. Right on, man. All great stuff I really do appreciate your time can't thank you enough you are a true champion of progress my man and it did start to sound a little robotic there towards the end but that's just a sign at the times i think keep fighting the good fight man take care alright thanks a lot for having me you got it take care peace man Alright people, how was that? I hope it got you thinking. Maybe this is one we can actually share with people without making too many eyes roll It could be a real practical solution and some people are gonna be worried about the role of big government But let's be honest it's not getting significantly smaller anytime soon regardless of how much we scream and yell on Facebook We might as well have it giving some power to the people first right

1:04:09 I see no reason not to try it. I see no reason why we shouldn't force every politician to talk about it when we get a chance, I don't think of it as a handout, I think of it as a base standard that everyone can build off of something closer to the original point of a society in the first place? Think about how seriously crime would drop! The tent cities and your downtown areas gone when everyone has something everyone has something to lose And we can definitely afford it. It should be the first thing on our list, provide basic needs for the citizens and a little military security and constantly improving infrastructure...and that's basically it! That is all I want from my government- we can keep it small but it needs to do the basics.

1:04:55 I'm not one of these, I want zero government people. I just can't be. I don't find it realistic but our system could be tweaked so that government power isn't such an attractive thing for sociopaths by making it government service like it was supposed to be Obviously there's a lot that needs to be done, and everyone has a different plan to do it. And that's part of the problem really But if we could get enough people to rally around this one concrete idea I don't see a downside Especially a downside that doesn't already exist now! If you see some fatal flaw that we didn't discuss let's hash it out on The Plus Forums

1:07:02 I don't know. But in this Plus Show, of course we did just talk more about the basic income and areas where it comes into play, immigration is a big one, ideas on how it could work with criminals and people covering their own prison costs...I think that was on the Plus Show? Either way, I just love it! I love taking the power back from our collective bosses and giving the people an actual bargaining chip when negotiating for a job We wouldn't be all so damn desperate like they got us now. And the effects on small business too, because you have a basic income you can now start a little business and it doesn't need to be a putting all your eggs in one scary basket type situation like it is now and other people will have a little extra to spend in those small businesses So they require less income to stay open and end up getting a little more because everyone has it to spend It's a beautiful thing

1:07:55 We all know that the shadowy elite use poverty as a weapon, so let's try to disarm them there a little bit. And our optionality will open up so much we can probably avoid a lot of the other stuff too So either way I hope you guys learned something maybe feel motivated about a new option that seems slightly more realistic than others You know, I've had these guys on about free energy technologies or alternative fuels or eco-housing and Venus Project type resource based economy models. And there just never seems to be any real progress year after year it's just talk is just planning but I think this could be different and I'd like to see the idea grow in fact a basic income could be the fuel that these resource based economy communities would need to get off the ground

1:08:43 We can tweak the numbers, we can move the levers around until it's completely optimized. We can debate what details are best but let's get politicians talking about this and watch them squirm when they try to explain why money shouldn't start with improving the lives of people as they see fit before it does anything else Like my man Scott said, let's at least give everybody boots to pull themselves up from in the first place. And with that I'll see you next time! I've done what i can your move greedy politicians locust like lobbyists and abusive bosses your fucking move Happy holidays and Merry Christmas We're going to talk about angels and miracles with Rosemary for a few hours tonight.

1:09:30 Day after Christmas All the angels in his heart It's getting old, it isn't pleasing I turn the station and I am done Maybe it's not my department Maybe I should shut my mouth Mr. Jones

1:10:11 Is quite the harlot With all the ads he's reading now But it's fine Now that I have THC, I'm feeling more at home Than I ever have before Pimple Wars are just drowning slowly Coast to coast isn't going nowhere These shows are just drowning slowly I'm sure you must feel kinda dirty After each commercial spot Tuning in at certain hours

1:11:15 On demand is what I want, THC It's the show that I adore Now I'm feeling more at home than I ever have before InfoWars are just drowning slowly Coast to coast, isn't going nowhere All these shows are just drowning slowly InfoWars are just drowning slowly Coast to coast, isn't going nowhere