, Columnist
Silicon Valley Pushes the Wrong Kind of Basic Income
UBI should be the result of active sharing rather than a tax on resources.
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With figures ranging from 33-year old Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg to 90-year-old Nobel Prize-winning economist Vernon Smith endorsing a universal basic income, the idea may soon enter the U.S. political mainstream. But Americans are being sold on a dangerous version of the UBI, designed as a resource rent rather than a product of social consensus.
Smith recently penned an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, calling on President Donald Trump to privatize the interstate highway system in order to set up a fund that would pay every American a basic income, the way the Alaska Permanent Fund pays every Alaskan a share of the state's oil revenues.