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Is a Universal Basic Income System Even Possible?

The titans of AI say they're coming for your job, but UBI will solve everything. Do they have a point?

To offset the economic “disruption” that would occur as a result of new forms of automation (that is, to make up for the fact that AI could potentially destroy millions of jobs), Altman felt that America needed to roll out a bold new system that could financially support the huge new sections of the population that would join the ranks of the unemployed. Even if common wisdom currently suggests that basic income is politically unlikely, Kline says that it’s just a matter of waiting for the right “window” of opportunity “to open.” He points to the covid-19 pandemic as an example of one of those paradigm-shifting events that forced governments to rethink their relationship to direct economic intervention. “These are systemic problems that need to be addressed by people getting together and building shared control over local economic development, wage bargaining, and decisions about national investment in industry and infrastructure, not by governments giving individuals small amounts of money.”

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