Boston Basic Income

To what extent is it possible to implement basic income independently from the government?  What challenges and constraints might face such a system?  Conrad Shaw joins us to discuss these questions as well as a new app he's working on called Comingle that hopes to achieve a privately-implemented basic income.

What is money?  What is *modern* money?  In what ways is state-issued fiat money different from a commodity-based money?  What is the relationship between money and the state?  To what extent can a state have "sovereign" control over its currency?  What is the relationship between money and taxes?  We will explore these and other questions as they relate to the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) framework.

Central banks conventionally use various tools to try to stabilize the average prices of consumer goods.  The Fed, in particular, attempts to keep price inflation at about 2% per year.  Reliably low and stable inflation allows markets to set prices in dollar terms without having to worry about changes in the general purchasing power of the dollar.

How does basic income interact with the various programs that make up the welfare system?  To what extent does basic income solve some of the same problems that the welfare programs are designed to solve?  What does an effective welfare system and/or social safety net look like in a world with basic income?  When does it make sense to adapt existing income support programs to more closely resemble basic income?

In 2018, Oren Cass wrote a book called "The Once and Future Worker" in which he argues for creating labor market conditions that give everyone the opportunity to contribute to society as productive workers.  This position is based on an assumption that he calls "The Working Hypothesis":

To kick off 2021, we discuss basic income's effect on the agency of individual people to live their lives how they choose.  We've previously talked about how basic income gives people the power to say no.  Consenting power is the power to say yes.

We often discuss the extent to which the economy needs labor to produce its output.  But to what extent do people need to work jobs in order to live meaningful and fulfilling lives?  Is it a coincidence that people happen to have a "need" to do the very thing that society expects of them?  To what extent do cultural and economic incentives shape human psychology?

Fiscal policy is what we call government spending and taxation.  Monetary policy is what we call it when the central bank participates in financial markets to influence private-sector lending and borrowing.

Basic income adds new money to the economy for consumers to spend.  And that money has to have somewhere to go.  The first place it goes is toward the purchase of goods and services, but where will it end up?  Two of the most common answers are savings and taxes.

Henry Ford famously insisted on paying his workers enough money to be able to buy the very cars they were producing.  But to what extent does that make sense?  When is it useful to think of workers and consumers as the same people?  Does basic income create a disconnect between these two roles?  Is that a problem?