A couple weeks ago, FiveThirtyEight did an in-depth look on universal basic income and I talked about it briefly here. This is a great group to look at it because they are so wonkily numbers-driven.
They’re back with a quick video recap, but the whole thing makes me feel I should be writing more about it here on the blog. As we humans face more and more automation, it seems like we need to find an elegant and effective solution for a populace that may not be able to be employed at the same levels it is even now. It’s weird: when I read Frederik Pohl’s classic short story, “The Midas Plague,” its vision of required consumption seemed so fanciful, but now it seems less so.