If we were to fund a basic income of $1,000 a month with a wealth tax, a carbon tax, some program consolidation and deficit spending, how much would your bank account increase or decrease after your income and current government assistance are factored in? A new project, the UBI Calculator (ubicalculator.com), seeks to answer this question down to the dollar for many of the UBI plans being proposed today. The project’s creator, Conrad Shaw, joined the podcast to discuss the UBI Calculator and why he built it.
Basic Income Q&A: Paying for it, Inflation, and the Path Forward
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Recently we reached out to our audience asking for questions on basic income. This episode takes on three big ones: will rent and other costs increase, eating up the benefits of the UBI? How could a basic income fit into a national budget with other competing priorities such as single-payer healthcare and free community college? How might we forge a path to a national basic income?
As a reminder, you can support our work at the Basic Income Podcast by visiting glow.fm/basicincome.
Robert Stayton: Could Solar Dividends Provide a Basic Income?
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Robert Stayton proposes an outside-the-box idea for how to provide both ample clean energy and a basic income on the local, state or national level: solar dividends. This proposal would leverage the abundance of available solar energy with the regulatory ability to increase the price at which solar energy is purchased into the grid. To read more about Stayton’s proposal and the book that details it further, go to solardividends.org.
In this discussion episode, Jim lays out his ideas on how we should think about basic income in relation to other benefit programs like unemployment insurance and the Earned Income Tax Credit. We get into topics like whether basic income should count as taxable income, and the difference between the social safety net and the social contract.
Also, we now have a new way you can support the podcast! To donate to support our operational costs, and, if we reach a certain level, to promote the podcast, go to https://glow.fm/basicincome.
Max Ghenis: Evaluating Today's Basic Income Policies
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As basic income gains more recognition and interest, new proposals and ideas for what a basic income should look like are starting to emerge. While these proposals are occasionally studied on a one-off basis, the basic income conversation didn’t necessarily have a single hub where one could evaluate policies side by side. The UBI Center, founded by Max Ghenis, seeks to change that by providing economic breakdowns of leading basic income proposals. Max joined the podcast to discuss his work, what motivates it, and his evaluation of Andrew Yang’s Freedom Dividend.
