Schemes for giving everyone a guaranteed income are gaining momentum in Silicon Valley and throughout Western Europe. It’s a great idea, until you look closely.
From my article in the June 2016 issue of MIT Technology Review
Matt Krisiloff is in a small, glass-walled conference room off the lobby of Y Combinator’s office in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, shouting distance from some of the country’s wealthiest startups, many of which Y Combinator has nurtured and helped fund. Krisiloff, who manages the operations of the tech incubator’s program for very early-stage companies, is explaining why it is committed to investing an amount said to be in the tens of millions of dollars in a venture that is guaranteed never to make a penny.
It’s the simplest business model conceivable: hand thousands of dollars over to individuals in return for nothing, no strings attached. Krisiloff insists he and his Y Combinator colleagues can’t wait to get started giving away the money. “This could be really transformative,” he says. “It may help change how humans, society, and technology all operate together in the future.”
Proponents say a “basic income” is a way to liberate those who have struggled to find acceptable work: currently 7.4 million people are unemployed in the United States, another six million want full-time work but can only find part-time jobs, millions more have given up looking, and perhaps tens of millions have settled for jobs with low wages, skimpy benefits, or poor working conditions. But it can also be argued that the idea is a way of buying these people off, making it easier to avoid developing the education and training programs that would actually help alleviate income inequality and reverse wage stagnation. Could it just be a way to give up on providing the wide access to decent jobs that has long been considered an essential element of a healthy society? Or, to put it more bluntly: at a time when the tech economy is generating huge amounts of wealth, is Silicon Valley just attempting to appease those left behind? Read more
David H. Freedman 