Worldwide Universal Basic Income - UBI in Global Hash Village

As I already described Global Hash Village is based on three pillars: Liquid Democracy (LQDM), Universal Basic Income (UBI) and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). They were combined together to show how some of the world’s greatest problems could be tackled or solved. This note shows which global problems could be solved by UBI and how to provide its funding on the global level. To learn more about UBI please follow http://basicincome.org page and/or @scottsantens on steem.

Recently there is much talk about Universal Basic Income as a solution for XXI century. UBI would mean giving everybody some “basic” amount of money regularly and without means testing. Idea is supported by both left and right political forces and activists. Ongoing discussions mostly agree on benefits and importance of UBI but are often facing the question of the funding. This note proposes how Global Hash Village could offer financing for worldwide UBI and how some of the global problems could be solved by it.

There are just few ways how any state could finance the UBI or any other publicly funded system. Most countries income is generated from taxes. If we understand necessity and benefits of UBI and educate those who are still unconvinced then we could slightly increase the taxes. The exact amount can be estimated, debated and agreed upon. There is a research that shows 3% of GDP is enough to fund UBI and end the poverty in USA - https://www.georgetown.edu/news/universal-basic-income-to-end-poverty-research. We could safely assume that increasing UBI level would reduce the necessity for other social programs giving back some of the funds previously assigned to them. Probably some small portions of social programs, for example for disabled, might still be necessary. But for the global problems we need to create global UBI. One of the self-imposed taxations schemes might be for example 3% of VAT going towards the global UBI account. This is not big tax for any individual but it should provide enough to get some people out of poverty. Weekly, specific amount of currency from the participating countries of the Global Hash Village system is transferred to the single UBI account and distributed to all verified adult users of the system. That could happen completely automatically via DLT’s smartcontract or built-in rule of the monetary system within Global Hash Village.

Such definition of UBI provides that the global wealth is continually transferred to the poorer countries supporting their citizens. On State and State Union levels there might be additional taxation to create budgets for their respective UBIs. All this separate levels equalize incomes supporting the citizens with lowest income in each group. More about taxation system in Global Hash Village will be discussed in another note.

Please note that the global budgets for wars take over 13% of the global GDP
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/06/the-world-continues-to-spend-enormous-amounts-on-violence-and-little-on-building-peace/
Enough for all people to get ~5USD per day! So there is no shortage of money. It is just distributed wrong way.

As the proposed system is targeting global population so the UBI presented here is also truly universal - worldwide -accessible for all verified personal accounts. The verification of receivers is a separate topic but should at least ensure that each willing person can have only one account in the system (preventing one person to hoard multiple accounts and collect more than one share of UBI). The UN is working on global electronic ID system and hopefully will deliver some solution soon.

Now let’s look on the few global problems and how they can be potentially solved by UBI. They were taken from comprehensive list of greatest issues described by Laszlo Szombatfalvy here: https://api.globalchallenges.org/static/files/the-greatest-challenges-of-our-time.pdf

Global overpopulation

Research shows that people in developed countries with healthcare and other safety systems tend to have less children than in those which are still developing. Proper (affordable) healthcare and guaranteed “pensions” (from UBI) would reduce necessity of having multiple children as a protection for the old age. The birth control methods should be globally available and accessible - could be additionally funded by world-level organization exactly the same way as we decide to fund the global UBI. Additional rules for UBI or any above-basic additional income transfers could provide stimuli for overpopulated families and countries. For example UBI transfers only to adults could additionally incentivise having less children.

Migrations

Proper incentives by means of worldwide equal UBI could hold people in their poorer home countries and prevent bigger migrations. In case they skills would not allow them to get a job after migrating, the amount of global UBI share would be more interesting thus making for them more economic sense to stay in their homes than ask for welfare abroad (and possibly loose all the UBI - that would depend on the hosting country).

Poverty

Truly universal, globally distributed UBI should cover the basic needs of the poorest individuals. Return of e.g. 10USD tax per person per week might not be noticeable for US citizens but may be life changing for poor family in remote corners of the world. Worth noting is fact that the wealth is distributed directly to the people so the local governments (democratic or not), nor private parties (e.g. corporations) cannot take any share from it.
Malnutrition and access to Health services and shelter
These kinds of problems might be solved partially by UBI by general reduction of poverty but more directly they should be identified and tackled by specific agencies - most probably using best practices of already existing ones. Just one example - if health related problem is lack of vaccination then provide the funds (gather from taxes globally) to produce and distribute sufficient number of vaccines, prepare educational materials, promote vaccination and possibly create incentives (lower UBI (or reduce anything over the Basic) for unvaccinated etc).