American Venture Fund decided to independently test the idea of ​​unconditional income

The well-known venture fund Y Combinator decided in private to test the performance of the idea of ​​unconditional income. Investors are interested in what people who will no longer need to work in order to survive will do. The exact amount that the fund will distribute is not disclosed - it is only mentioned that it will be “sufficient for life”. The experiment is designed for 5 years.

In a blog post, Sam Altman [Sam Altman], president of the foundation, expresses his confidence that this scheme is the future, especially against the backdrop of the gradual disappearance of traditional jobs through technological change.
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He notes that in 50 years the very idea of ​​motivating people to work under the threat of lack of food will seem wild. Altman is sure that it is impossible to create truly equal conditions and equal opportunities without implementing any of the options for unconditional income.

Authors of the idea are interested to know what the lucky ones who earn money for living will do. Will they play video games all day or be creative? Will they be happier? Will they achieve more and bring more benefits to society, losing the fear of lack of funds for food? Will they create more values ​​than they receive?

Unconditional income - a fixed amount of money allocated monthly to citizens without any conditions. It replaces existing benefits and benefits, and in theory, should improve both the quality of life and the economic situation. Similar experiments were carried out in many countries on a limited scale, and were generally recognized as successful. Recently, the Government of Finland began to develop plans for the introduction of universal unconditional income, scheduled for 2017. Already announced the first results of a private experiment with an unconditional income in Germany.

Unfortunately, there are several reasonable objections to the idea of ​​unconditional income. First, all the experiments, no matter how successful they seemed, were carried out on a limited circle of people. But such studies often turn out to be non-scalable - it is not known what will happen if we expand them to the whole state.

Secondly, the introduction of unconditional income in a single country can lead to the opposite of the expected results. People who receive good benefits can go downstairs using an analogue of the famous “grandmother’s apartment in Moscow” scheme and simply go somewhere to a poorer country where you can live with this money. As a result, instead of an economic recovery, the outflow of finances from the country will begin.

Unconditional income is one of the options for reviving a stagnant economy in the context of a global recession. Now money tends to accumulate "above", settling in the accounts of the rich and no longer feeding the economy - just as blood circulation disorders cease to feed living tissues. Money, constantly descending "down", should theoretically revive the entire system.

Another, much less pleasant option to revive sluggish economies is the increasingly popular policy of negative interest rates, coupled with a tendency to ban cash.

The first OPS were introduced in Sweden , Japan followed their infectious example, and now the Fed is also thinking about this measure. At the same time, the largest bank in Norway , the Bank of England , Citigroup , and a leading German economist are calling for a ban on cash.

In Europe , the movement to ban 500 euro bills is gaining momentum under the pretext of their use in drug trafficking and terrorism. Harvard experts, under the same pretext, propose banning $ 100 bills. And experts from Morgan Stanley in their presentation directly state that it is necessary to ban cash as soon as possible, so that you can enter an OPS below -1%.