{"id":145479,"date":"2016-08-08T09:30:36","date_gmt":"2016-08-08T13:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/?p=145479"},"modified":"2016-08-08T09:30:36","modified_gmt":"2016-08-08T13:30:36","slug":"a-universal-basic-income","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/news\/a-universal-basic-income\/","title":{"rendered":"A Universal Basic Income"},"content":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/user-653135353\/08-08-16-a-universal-basic-income-mp3-for-audio-podcasting<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWell this concept\u2019s been discussed for a while in Europe. There are some economists who\u2019ve talked about it here in the U.S., and it\u2019s actually very simple. Every person in the country, man, woman and child, would get an annual check from the government regardless of their income, and presumably the annual check would be enough to allow that person to live some adequate standard of living if they had no other money. So we\u2019re talking about, some have said five thousand dollars a year, others have said ten thousand dollars a year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter if you\u2019re already poor or rich. You get the money. Now you might say, \u2018Well why would we give rich people this money?\u2019 Well the notion is this would reduce a lot of red tape, a lot of bureaucracy. Right now our poverty programs, and there are many of them, there\u2019s a substantial amount of money spent on people making sure that the folks who are getting the money are eligible. Making sure that there is no fraud. And this system could be run very simply. It could be run by the IRS.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNow it would be expensive depending on how much money each person receives. We\u2019re talking in the trillions of dollars, maybe one trillion up to three trillion. I\u2019ve seen some estimates. But supporters say, \u2018Not only would it be simple, not only would it reduce a lot of bureaucracy, but you could therefore eliminate all the other anti-poverty programs we have. From food stamps to Medicaid to housing vouchers et cetera. So, this is an idea that folks may start to hear more about as we enter the Presidential election campaign. I will say the country of Switzerland actually put this notion to a vote recently, and the Swiss voted it down.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false,"raw":"[embed]https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/user-653135353\/08-08-16-a-universal-basic-income-mp3-for-audio-podcasting[\/embed]\n\n\u201cWell this concept\u2019s been discussed for a while in Europe. There are some economists who\u2019ve talked about it here in the U.S., and it\u2019s actually very simple. Every person in the country, man, woman and child, would get an annual check from the government regardless of their income, and presumably the annual check would be enough to allow that person to live some adequate standard of living if they had no other money. So we\u2019re talking about, some have said five thousand dollars a year, others have said ten thousand dollars a year.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter if you\u2019re already poor or rich. You get the money. Now you might say, \u2018Well why would we give rich people this money?\u2019 Well the notion is this would reduce a lot of red tape, a lot of bureaucracy. Right now our poverty programs, and there are many of them, there\u2019s a substantial amount of money spent on people making sure that the folks who are getting the money are eligible. Making sure that there is no fraud. And this system could be run very simply. It could be run by the IRS.\u201d<\/span>\n\n\u201cNow it would be expensive depending on how much money each person receives. We\u2019re talking in the trillions of dollars, maybe one trillion up to three trillion. I\u2019ve seen some estimates. But supporters say, \u2018Not only would it be simple, not only would it reduce a lot of bureaucracy, but you could therefore eliminate all the other anti-poverty programs we have. From food stamps to Medicaid to housing vouchers et cetera. So, this is an idea that folks may start to hear more about as we enter the Presidential election campaign. I will say the country of Switzerland actually put this notion to a vote recently, and the Swiss voted it down.\u201d<\/span>"},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NC State University economist Mike Walden discusses the prospects of a universal basic income touching on all inherent advantages and disadvantages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":145215,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"","ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[141],"_ncst_magazine_issue":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-145479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economic-perspective","tag-mike-walden"],"displayCategory":null,"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145479"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145479"},{"taxonomy":"_ncst_magazine_issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_ncst_magazine_issue?post=145479"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=145479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}