yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Can Universal Basic Income / Social Democracy Fix America’s Inequality? | Jeffrey Sachs | Big Think


3m read
·Nov 3, 2024

Processing might take a few minutes. Refresh later.

There’s a proposal around that’s got a lot of interest called universal basic income where everybody is guaranteed at least a certain level of income in the society. Some free market economists like Milton Friedman talked about a negative income tax which in effect had the same features of guaranteeing a certain level of income for everybody as a base.

I think from a human rights and decency standard there’s a lot of sense to the idea that everybody in a society should be able to meet their basic needs. There’s on the other hand this sense if you give someone a check whether they’re trying, not trying, working, not working. If there’s no effort, no conditionality involved at all maybe we’re going to get a lot of people that are absolutely doing nothing on the backs of those who are really working.

So the incentive issues are real even if the sensitivity and decency issues are also real. I think that one way to handle this is a little bit more rounded rather than seeing a universal basic income as a check and kind of an unconditional check that’s just handed out as income. I like the idea of social democracy as it’s applied in real countries in Europe, the Netherlands and Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany.

The idea is everybody has access to publicly financed healthcare. Everybody has access to quality publicly financed education including college tuitions. Not a trillion dollars of crushing student debt, but tuitions paid for. Everybody has access to not only guaranteed vacation, but paid vacation. Everybody has access to quality childcare so that moms can go to work knowing that their kids are in a healthy, nurturing environment.

Everybody has access to maternity leave so that moms and also paternity leave, dads can stay home with their kids for several months. It’s kind of decent where you say we have all this wonderful technology, this wealth. Why don’t we live decently, not miserably? If people want a market income beyond that they’ve got to go work for it.

If, of course, they’re disabled or for some reason can’t then there’s added social support but it’s not cash in people’s pockets. It’s decency. It’s public service. It’s basic needs met. I see it as basically living decent lives in decent societies. They have a very different spirit to them. There aren’t a lot of super rich Wall Street hedge fund misanthropes – and I’ll use the term advisably because I find a lot of people on Wall Street don’t give a damn about anybody else except they care about their money.

And I find that really weird. But you don’t find that kind of idea in northern Europe because it’s really looked down upon. And people don’t like it when people are money grubbing. They’re kind of shunned. So the social ethos is different.

I remember once I was running to the airport in Oslo and I fly business class and I’m constantly moving around on trips relentlessly around the world. And I ran up and said, “Where’s the business class line to board?” And the guy looked at me like I was crazy and he said, “Excuse me, we’re boarding the Scandinavian way. Get back in line.”

And I just thought okay, that’s pretty cool actually, you know. Everybody’s in line and let’s all get on the plane. It’s a social spirit. It’s the idea that we like – well by the way this is not people tearing their clothes and living in hair shirts and not enjoying themselves. They like their vacations. They like their boats in the Stockholm archipelago. They like six weeks on their island.

So they live beautifully. But they don’t want gazillions. They don’t want to do it at the expense of others. They want to do it as a society. God, if America could just get a little of that back rather than a president who believes in killers and losers. Sick, but that’s what we got and that is what’s degrading American society.

Not just the technical issues. Not just the rising inequality but this spirit that you’re a winner or you’re a loser. And if you’re a loser get out of the way. That’s Ayn Rand talki...

More Articles

View All
Infinity
So imagine you’re Usain Bolt. You’re like six and a half feet tall. You have a couple Olympic medals—no biggie. You show up to your final Olympic race, and your only opponent is a tortoise. For some reason, he has gold medals around his neck. He can talk …
Warren Buffett: 90 Years of Wisdom Summed up in 16 Minutes
And yeah, Ben Franklin did this and my old boss Ben Graham did this at early ages in their young teens. They just—Ben Graham looked around and he said, “Who do I admire?” You know, and he wanted to be admired himself. He said, “You know, why do I admire t…
Ancient City of Nan Madol | Lost Cities With Albert Lin
[dramatic music playing] MALE SPEAKER: This is it, Albert. Welcome to the jungle. We are on sacred grounds right now. You’re just beginning to see part of the structures. ALBERT LIN: I’ve never seen anything like this. MALE SPEAKER: Welcome to Nan Mado…
Finding the end time for a movie in 24 hour time | Math | Khan Academy
We are told that Andre goes to a movie that starts at 19 hours 45 minutes, or 1945, and is 90 minutes long. What time is the movie finished? So pause this video and see if you can answer that before we work through it together. All right, so what I like …
Course Mastery Sal (intro only)
Hi teachers, this is Sal Khan here from Khan Academy, and welcome to Course Mastery. So, back in 1984, famous education researcher Benjamin Bloom published the famous Two Sigma study, where he showed that a student who works in a mastery learning framewo…
NERD WARS: Altair & Ezio Vs. Daredevil
It was Jeff Ryman. This is Anna McLaughlin. We’re coming at you with another Nerd Wars. This one: Altair versus Daredevil. Oh my god, I am going to win so easy, as always! I will be taking the superhero Daredevil, and I’m gonna get gas. And I’m gonna be t…