Name: What if we just gave everybody money? Universal Basic Income | Riley J. Dennis
Uploaded: 2019-01-22T16:32:54.000Z
Duration: 7 min 25 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Modal verbs - A2

So I have this radical leftist idea that nobody
should die just because they can't get a job.

Adverbs of frequency

I know, it's really out there, wild stuff
that could just never be accepted in the mainstream,

The imperative

What if we just guaranteed everyone a base
standard of living?

Food, water, shelter -- that sort of thing.

That way, people wouldn't have to be homeless
and wouldn't have to starve.

Because whatever we're doing right now,
it's not working.

So many people are homeless or face food insecurity.

And maybe our best way of ensuring that everybody
has a base level standard of living is just

to give them a monthly income, no strings
attached.

This is called the Universal Basic Income,
or UBI, and it's been gaining traction for

Small trials have been put into place in various
cities, and more and more people are seeing

it as a viable way to ensure that everyone
has a base standard of living.

The basic idea behind UBI is simple: every
person deserves to survive, and in our current

system, that means they need money for food
and shelter and basic necessities.

It's a simplified version of the welfare
system where every month, the government just

writes a check to every resident -- regardless
of their income or job status or anything

What this does is it guarantees everyone has
their basic needs met.

As it stands in our current system, if you
don't have money for rent, you get evicted

If you don't have money for food, you starve.

And obviously, we have some measures in place
to counteract this.

The US runs a bunch of various welfare programs,
private organizations and nonprofits often

work to help homeless people in various cities,
and we have things like food banks to help

And while all these programs can help some
people, they can't help everyone, and that

means that many people still live in poverty,
still can't find a stable place to live,

or still can't reliably put food on the
table.

And that's a problem, because as a society,
we should want everyone to be doing okay.

We should want everyone, at the very least,
to be able to survive.

If you don't want that, ehhhh I think you
have bigger issues to work through than I

But, assuming you want everyone to be doing
okay, UBI could be one really good method

Because for one, our current systems have
too many strings attached.

To be accepted into one of the US government's
many welfare programs, you need to go through

a lot of bureaucracy and meet a lot of specific
requirements.

And the government will be watching you closely
to make sure you don't ever slip up, because

if you do, they're taking those benefits
right back.

This is bad because not everyone can meet
those requirements, and sometimes people are

going to make mistakes or do things that would
disqualify them from those programs.

That shouldn't mean their entire livelihood
is revoked.

If you give everyone a basic income, it can't
be revoked for any reason.

If you exist in the country, you get a basic
income.

No matter how bad you are at dealing with
bureaucracy.

You get a basic income so you can survive.

Now one of the things that people often worry
about when it comes to UBI is the incentive

A lot of people have this idea that work is
something people only do because it allows

them to survive, and they believe that if
you take away that incentive, people will

Working isn't always just about earning
money to survive.

Many people work because it's something
to do, because it gives them a sense of accomplishment,

because of the status it brings them, because
it allows them to socialize with coworkers,

because it's a creative outlet, or it's
just something they enjoy.

There are a lot of reasons that people work
beyond money, and I think there's no way

that if you gave everyone a basic income that
they would all just stop working.

I mean, you can see an example of this in
the world today that lots of rich people who

have enough money to sit on for the rest of
their lives, they continue working.

And clearly, at that point it isn't about
the money.

Some folks who have retired still continue
to work in some form.

Sure, some people might stop working, but
that's not the end of the world.

They would definitely be a small minority
of people, and we always have a small percentage

of folks who aren't working, that's what
the unemployment rate is.

But actually this brings me to a related point
which is that: not everyone needs to work.

I might do a whole video on this eventually,
but I'll give you the short version.

We seem to have this idea that an ideal society
is one where 100% of the population is working,

For society to function, we don't need 100%
of the population to be working.

This isn't the olden days where everyone
had to raise their own crops.

Today, wealth is concentrated in the hands
of a relatively small percentage of the population.

So all we have to do is redistribute that
wealth to everyone else, and we have enough

You don't need to make people do pointless
jobs just because you think everyone needs

a job -- because the truth is, they don't.

And if they want a job, which I'm betting
a lot of people will, they can find something

that they enjoy doing, like something creative,
or something that helps other people -- instead

of some repetitive boring task created just
for the sake of there being an official “job”

And the need for us to recognize that jobs
aren't essential is growing fast, because

Robots are taking over a lot of the more dangerous
and tedious jobs, and that's really good

for keeping people safe and freeing up people's
time, but that also means that if nothing

changes, those newly-unemployed folks are
gonna be in a lot of trouble.

Automation is already taking people's jobs,
but instead of fighting that and keeping people

in boring repetitive jobs -- a solution that
wouldn't work for very long -- we could

instead embrace automation and give everyone
a basic income.

We could get people out of those dangerous
meaningless jobs and free up their time to

Right now, lots of people have a hard time
being creative or entrepreneurial because