My Thoughts on Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard Commencement Speech And Universal Basic Income || Some Calculations
Good morning everyone! :D
I've been seeing this video going around and figure'd I'd give my thoughts on it.
Here's the video
He's being given an honorary degree: Doctor of Laws
I had no clue what that was, so I looked it up:
In the United States, Legum Doctor (LL.D.) is granted only as an honorary degree. Two other degrees in law are referred to as "Doctor of Law". Juris Doctor or (Doctor of Jurisprudence) (J.D.) is the professional degree for lawyers and replaced the name Bachelor of Laws in the 20th century aafter law schools began to require a Bachelor of Arts degree before beginning the study of law. While some lawyers claim it is equivalent to research doctorates such as the Ph.D., academics in other fields dispute this on the grounds that no dissertation is required and that most law schools did not make significant curricular changes before changing the name of the degree. Doctor of Juridical Science (S.J.D.) is the research doctorate in law, and as such it is generally accepted as comparable to the more commonly awarded research doctorate, the Ph.D.
Hot dang.
That's not bad for a drop-out!!
Universal Basic Income
So, Zuckerberg wants people to be unafraid to fail, and that's a commendable principal which I endorse -- in fact, I would like it if people were so unafraid to fail that they were eager to fail.
People who can roll failure off their shoulder and move on to the next thing are so robust that they cannot help but eventually succeed. And a population full of such people would be a powerful one indeed.
However, Mark is talking about erasing the fear of failure by having a Basic Income.
If you're not familiar with Basic Income, its "a form of social security in which all citizens or residents of a country regularly receive an unconditional sum of money, either from a government or some other public institution, in addition to any income received from elsewhere." link
In other words, a multi-billionaire wants tax payers to subsidize the lives of everyone in the country. lol
I did some basic math
If Zuckerberg wanted to voluntarily subsidize the lives of Americans, and we used the estimated value of Facebook as the source of funds, here's how much everyone would get.
- Worth of Facebook: $234 Billion By 2015 Business Insider
divided by - US Population: 326,243,275 (it updates every second -- worldometers.info)
equals - $717.25 per person
That's not very much. $717.25 per person, one time, at the cost of completely liquidating and distributing Facbook.
Doesn't seem like a good deal for Facebook.
So, what would it cost?
If we wanted to give each person in the US a basic income of $2,500 per month, which would be an annual income of $30k per year, this is what it would look like.
population x wage = cost
326,243,275 x 2,500 = 815,608,187,500
- That's $815.6 billion
If we want the yearly cost, just multiply by 12
- $9,787,298,250,000
According to usgovernmentrevenue.com
| Fiscal Year | Federal Revenue | State Revenue | Local Revenue | Total Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $3.25 trillion | $1.60 trillion | $1.27 trillion | $6.12 trillion |
| 2016 | $3.27 trillion | $1.71 trillion | $1.32 trillion | $6.30 trillion |
| 2017 | $3.46 trillion | $1.74 trillion | $1.36 trillion | $6.56 trillion |
| 2018 | $3.64 trillion | $1.80 trillion | $1.40 trillion | $6.85 trillion |
So if we were to take the total projected tax revenue of US 2018 and subtracted that from the cost of a basic income program, we would have
- 9,787,298,250,000 - 6,850,000,000,000 = 2,937,298,250,000
meaning...
- We come up $2.937 trillion short
Maybe Harvard should take back that honorary doctorate...
What do you think?
Do you have some thoughts on Basic Income or even Mark Zuckerberg that I didn't cover here?
Tell me about it in the comments.
Follow me @shayne
Easily exchange your SBD (Steem Backed Dollars) for Bitcoin with Changelly
Keep your Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies safe with KeepKey
Hmmm... I don't know how financially feasible it would be to provide a basic income, but as a taxpayer, I fully support spending money on effective social supports because I think if we put more money into those programs -- and not just the bare minimum -- we would save money in other areas like healthcare and the justice system. But I say that as both a Canadian and an idealist. 🙂
On the other hand, considering that a handful of individuals hold nearly half the wealth in the country (US or Canada), I'm always skeptical when one of them suggests solutions for the rest of us to implement. If Zuckerberg wants to make a difference to people living in poverty, he is already in an excellent position to do so.
Awesome
This is an important topic for sure, I love that you did the math on this!
Although I think the idea of it is ridiculous.
Prices would skyrocket, And people would get so lazy and We'd have more mental illness.
I firmly believe that having a job and working brings people a sense of accomplishment.
So this income would harm the people who choose to do extra, Less and less people would contribute.
This is generally my position as well.
Hey Marc , I always wanna to play drums... Can u give me a lil of your fortune so I can pursue my dreams... By the way I'll quit my job... 😂😂😂.... Freaking idiot
Sounds like an investment to me!
Perhaps
Good information & perspective. Thanks for doing the math!
Hey, you're welcome.
Thanks for sharing
Upvoted for the great content
Have a nice weekend
Thanks! I hope you had a good one, too.
I already suspect he's gonna run for prez 2020 or 2024
eew....
Did you notice how he declared himself "religious" , after being openly atheist for almost a decade. He says he was "raised Jewish" and is a Buddhist or whatever right now. Clear signs here he's looking at politics.
https://www.google.co.in/amp/www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/01/03/mark-zuckerberg-reveals-no-longer-atheist/amp/
Thank you for this piece. I’d like to add some commentary to it as it’s something I’ve been following for a while, especially since Finland’s announcement to experiment with Universal Basic Income (UBI) http://bit.ly/2lAq1bU.
Some good work in this area has been done by Nathan Keeble (http://bit.ly/2rGQQ1j) and Charles Hugh Smith (http://bit.ly/2qWAjFh).
Keeble argues UBI is similar to any welfare program in that it is simply a redistribution scheme. Wealth is taken from those who have it and given to those who don’t. This means that at some point on the income ladder, people must go from being net receivers of benefits to being net payers of benefits.
The progressive taxation that is necessary to finance a UBI means that the more a person earns, the higher percentage of their wealth will be taken from them. Furthermore, UBI does not do anything to reduce disincentives to work, in fact the opposite may occur.
Charles Hugh Smith highlights UBI’s flaws, including:
• Paying all 322 million Americans $10,000 a year would cost $3.22 trillion.
• A Universal Basic Income will add roughly $2.2 trillion to government spending, while profits and payrolls – the sources of tax revenues – will both decline.
• The only way to pay for another $2+ trillion in spending is to raise taxes or borrow it from our grandchildren – a proposal that is morally and fiscally bankrupt.
• Raising $2 trillion more in addition to the current federal tax revenues of $3.3 trillion and state/local taxes of $3+ trillion is a tall order. If the economy enters a profit and payroll recession, tax revenues will crater.
• Who will pay all this additional tax? If we say the remaining employed, that leads to this question: if much of your wage is being levied to support people who don't work, what's the motivation for working at all? Why not join the work-free crowd? And what happens when the most productive members of the workforce quit or decline to be productive?
• In sum, the psychology of punishing the productive and rewarding non-contributors is destructive to everyone.
Hugh Smith also raises the important point that being paid to do nothing does not provide meaningful work or positive social roles, which are the sources of positive identity, pride, purpose, community and meaning. The reality is communities that are given free housing, food and healthcare are breading grounds for self-destructive pathologies, depression, ill-health and unhappiness. He argues that work isn’t just a financial arrangement – it is a social arrangement and a source of individual pride and purpose.
Both authors make valid cases for dismissing UBI as wishful thinking. I personally believe that proponents of UBI are trying to solve 21st century problems with 20th century thinking. This ties in nicely with an article I wrote earlier this week http://bit.ly/2rGXrc4.
I made the argument that the advancement and deployment of technologies including robotics, artificial intelligence and blockchains will open up new opportunities allowing people to participate in meaningful work. This is not something that is properly addressed by UBI schemes and 20th century thinking. Blockchain technologies – such as Steemit – are part of a new economy, which is creating new money as a reward for creativity. In this new economy, everyone has the chance to be financially compensated for undertaking stimulating work rather than being paid for doing nothing.
Woah! That's a lot to digest... ok...
Here's another excellent analysis piece I just read: http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/the-real-reason-zuckerberg-supports-a-universal-basic-income/
you're spot on, @shayne. unsurprisingly, the numbers don't add up to support a wet dream like this, and -- on top -- what would it do to humanity's built-in eagerness to strive for good solutions, good projects, a resulting good world?! Also, the sheer cynicism of one billionaire to let people earn like a couple hundred bucks a month as well as that entire "effort" on the part of Suckerberg (oops -- typo, don't know where that came from) is unbearable.
It seems like just another way of trying to manage nature, which is unmanageable.
Not every individual person would require this basic income. Infants, children, or those under care of others, etc. And I don't think Zuckerberg is advocating guys like him are paid a UBI. In the speech he mentions "people like me" should pay for some of these things he's discussing. So you're math is probably off - not that this wouldn't be extremely costly, don't get me wrong, but you're probably looking at maybe 200 million working age people. If you also take him at face value that "people like him" should pay for these things, I also imagine anybody who is gainfully employed and making it on their own wouldn't qualify. So that number likely drops significantly.
At that point it's not universal. It's just welfare, no?
But you're right in making the point that the entire population (children) would not be eligible.
Yeah, I agree it is more like welfare and not universal if I'm understanding what he was saying. Seemed odd, but makes more sense than Zuckerberg taking a basic income. Plus, they'd have a heck of a time funding it as you point out. Taxation seems to be the only real way in a capitalist society so ultimately, those who didn't need it and were in a position to pay taxes would essentially be paying for it for those who did need it. (Zuckerberg might get his UBI but his taxes would need to go up in this odd, self defeating sorta way.)