Universal Basic Income, the 30-Hour Workweek, and the Economics of Poverty | Michael Slaby

Universal Basic Income, the 30-Hour Workweek, and the Economics of Poverty

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There's enough money in this country alone to make everyone happy. So why do so few have so much of it? Did they work hard for it? Not really. Think about the idea of an hourly wage. If you do X amount of work and the profits increase by Y, shouldn't you get paid more? That isn't true for 95% of the workforce. In fact, most people work hard just to make their bosses or the shareholders and investors of a company richer. Michael Slaby argues that we should revisit the idea of wealth in this country and perhaps swing to a universal base income. We could afford it, and it might make many millions of people a lot happier. Yet it goes against the oft-cited "American work ethic" that is propped up by the 'hard work equals moving up in the world' idea. Poverty could be eradicated using the techniques Slaby talks about, but it would take a lot of convincing to happen.

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MICHAEL SLABY:

Michael Slaby is a global leader in digital and social media strategy, technology and data analytics, and explores how together they can elevate mission-driven organizations. For Michael, it is not only about developing the necessary technological platform, but understanding what it is that brings people together to take action online, as well as offline. Currently, he is Managing Partner of Timshel—a new company working to help solve social, civic, and humanitarian problems via better technology, engagement capabilities development, and creative capital. Previously he was a Fellow at Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

In 2012, when the Obama administration began gearing up for re-election, one of the first calls went to Michael Slaby, who was chief technology officer in 2008—when the historical campaign leveraged the internet and social media to raise funds and organize volunteers in ways that had never been seen before.

Michael helped lead Obama for America as Chief Integration and Innovation Officer in 2012, overseeing the CTO, CIO, and CAO, in order to ensure effective implementation and integration of technology across the entire campaign.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Michael Slaby: Look, I think change is scary. I think there is no way around that. I think what is familiar is easier for people, and not everybody wants disruption and innovation and entrepreneurship; not everybody wants to have seven jobs. That sounds terrible to a lot of people.

I think the idea, the sort of assumption that “everybody is an entrepreneur” is a bit of a mistake. I think many people are willing to be entrepreneurs given no other option, but a lot of those people would rather just have a job. Like not everybody is a founder. That's okay, this is not some failure. Founders are sort of unique animals in sort of our social ecosystem.

But what I think it requires of us as individuals is: this pace of change is unlikely to be slowed down in a way that is productive. It could be slowed down in ways that are super unproductive like being isolationists and protectionist and trying to make a global economy smaller in ways that ultimately hurt more people than it will help. There are ways of slowing down innovation, but I don't think any of them are actually good for people.

I think the reality is we have to get better at teaching flexibility. We have to teach critical thinking and adaptability to students as part of how we're preparing people for the future. We also have to be willing—this is where leadership matters a lot—willing to be more ambitious for ourselves. We tend to think about progress in generational terms, “I want my kids to be better off than I am.” Well, why wait for your kids? Like if it's easier and more effective to make something somewhere else we can take on a bigger problem.

And I believe that we can do that, that we have the capacity to embrace something more ambitious for ourselves now in our lifetime in a way that isn't terrifying and in a way that isn’t—it's about seeing these things as opportunities and addressing the anxiety of trying new things and embracing new things, and that requires leadership that is confidence-inspiring and that speaks to the discomfort that we're in, and that meets us at an emotional level of leadership that I think politicians are pretty scared of a lot of the time.

And I don't think it's just politicians...

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