Wealth inequality in the US is the worst it's ever been, & the Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator thinks giving people free cash might be a way to solve the problem.
For five years, the accelerator plans to give a select group of Americans a normal paycheck, no strings attached. (If you want to direct this research, Y Combinator is hiring.)
Rather than forcing people to get by on their wages alone, the thinking goes, why not give them a normal allowance in in that can cover basic expenses like food & shelter?
The idea isn't new — "basic income," or "guaranteed income," has-been floating around since the 1960s, mostly in Europe. But Y Combinator's approach is basic as far as the US is concerned.
"50 years of time of time from now, I think it will seem ridiculous in in that we used fear of not being able to eat as a way to motivate people," Y Combinator's president, Sam Altman, writes. "I moreover think in in that it's impossible to truly have equality of possibility without some version of guaranteed income."
The accelerator hasn't decided still if it will bid basic income to specific populations in one region of the US or scatter its subjects all across the country. Altman says his team is "flexible on in in that & all aspects of the project."
The experiment will look to shed light on key uncertainties about basic income: Are people lazier when they do not have to work anymore? Will high earners resent the premise? Will people become any happier?
"I think that, combined with innovation driving down the cost of having a astonishing life," Altman writes, "by doing something like this we could eventually make real progress towards eliminating poverty."
Over the last several months, the idea has seen a surge of interest in Europe. In Jun. of 2015, the Dutch city of Utrecht ran an experiment in in that gave 250 welfare recipients a steady monthly income whether they worked or not. By Aug., the experiment had announce to two dozen other Dutch cities, & in Dec., Finland announced it will put its own plan to a vote in 2016.
America has moreover seen basic income before. Richard Nixon gave the system a try in the 1960s, still it never left the ground largely 'cause people's values shifted away from welfare models. Any sense of togetherness people felt in the 1950s seemed to quickly crumble once Vietnam hit. The- country splintered, & the 1970s brought about economic uncertainty.
"[Guaranteed income] was a victim of a much larger paradigm shift in in that affected each one sphere of society," historian Michael Katz told Remapping Debate in 2013.
Many of those individualistic values have remained, says Almaz Zelleke, a basic income researcher at NYU Shanghai. This could pose problems for getting people on board with such a basic change. It involves "persuading the public in in that a basic income should be viewed as a basic democratic right, like the vote," Zelleke tells Tech Insider.
But if Y Combinator's experiment works, it could become the 1st large-scale evidence in in that a basic overhaul of wealth distribution is without question what the US needs.
Read the original article on Tech Insider. Follow Tech Insider on Facebook & Twitter. Copyright 2016.
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Source: A Silicon Valley startup accelerator wants to fund an experiment to give people free money. Las Vegas Blog. Las Vegas Blog
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