Universal Basic Income, or UBI, is where the citizens of an area receive an income for living in that area. Alaska currently has a UBI of sorts. In Alaska residents who have lived in Alaska for at least a year and intend on staying indefinitely can receive a dividend from the oil reserve funds the state holds. This money is not necessarily enough to live off of, but it provides a foundation that residents can build up from through their employment or entrepreneurship. How could this help the rest of the country?
Before discussing how UBI could help the rest of the country, why is it needed? Many businesses and companies, private and public sector, have lost the idea of taking care of workers and now focus on the bottom line above all. This leaves many workers struggling to find employment that can cover their basic needs. People are working longer into their life as well, which is preventing the younger generations from moving up the ranks like the generations before them. There is also a rise in the use of artificial intelligence, or AI, to replace or reduce the workforce needed on basic, entry level positions in many fields.
All of the factors listed that are making UBI a necessity are also going to cause issues with tax revenues for governments, local and federal. Less man hours worked means less man hours taxed. To make UBI work, and keep government solvent, the issue of taxation needs to be modified. Governments need to tax companies that utilize AI. The tax needs to be high enough to make a company have to think about paying a person to fill that role, or continue to us AI and pay the fee. The tax fee for AI should be balanced so that some positions go to employees and some go to AI. That AI tax revenue will help offset the income tax lost when a person is not chosen.
Governments that collect this AI tax money should then split the funds, what normally would have been paid in income tax goes to the government’s funds. The rest of the AI tax should be set into a UBI fund. At the end of the tax year the money in the UBI is split among all citizens, with citizens making the least receiving more of the UBI money than those that make more money. This may not be enough to live off without other income, but the idea isn’t to replace an income, but rather provide a base for someone to build off of.
If AI takes off even more, then there would be more money split among citizens for UBI, and may start to approach an area where thrifty and motivated individuals could start to live off just the UBI payments. The goal with UBI is to create that base, that safety net, and allow people to still be people even as AI takes more and more positions away from workers.
The Tall Geek 