Saturday, August 1, 2020

The Essential UBI Unplanned Benefit




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Author’s photo used by permission of store manager
 Artists, artisans, chefs, crafters, composers, entrepreneurs, journalists, musicians, novelists, photographers, song writers, students, and other creative people will no longer need a trust fund or a flexible job to develop their skills to a marketable level.

 People driven to create typically have “Starving” attached to their professional designation and frequently to their underpaid day jobs in a Starving Artists Store. Others choose to live in cooperatives in extremely low rent and frequently dangerous neighborhoods to reduce expenses to what they can live on in marginal part-time jobs, or welfare. With UBI even at a subsistence level those cooperatives can at least be in a safe area, and the marginal part-time jobs will provide for better tools and supplies as well as a more comfortable subsistence. Even creatives more comfortably situated, living with parents or a solvent other, can at least feel like they are paying part of their share until they can create a marketable product.

 Another benefit of UBI for creatives is that many of their neighbors will have disposable income to spend on early creations with only front porch or word-of-mouth advertising. Most people would much prefer to buy art or decorative objects from their neighbors than get mass produced imported crap from the internet or a box store. Most of the art on my walls I have bought or has been gifted by people I know E.g. https://www.instagram.com/siriusly.inked/
Drawings pasted on the refrigerator door are another example. With UBI if they are good you no longer have to admonish the kid to get a MBA to find a “Real Job.” You of course will encourage education for its own sake but the art will be given equal encouragement. It is also a fact that artists do better in school than their peers. The discipline demanded by art carries over into school. Well-known studies show that to improve a kids grades hire a piano teacher. https://www.medicaldaily.com/music-education-improves-students-academic-performance-active-participation-required-314508 The extra income from UBI makes the tradeoff between art and education unnecessary.

 There are many benefits of successful creators for the economy. Some of these creative people will make it past crowdfunding and create substantial companies that will be the backbone of the bottom up economy which will create real assets for the GDP to grow on. They will also generate real taxable income to pay the UBI forward. Successful artists, and entrepreneurs, etc. need accountants, media reps, and many other jobs that will be filled from the neighborhood at least in the early stages. At the very least even a few dollars earned by a sale will be recycled in the community several times.

 Creativity is not a racial or ethnic characteristic, although Eurocentric colonialism has made it appear that way by systematically ignoring the art of the natives and slaves, and keeping that population so poor that creativity was suppressed to survive. Frequently art was simply stolen for colonial “culture studies” and museum pieces. Another colonial exploitation tool was cultural appropriation. The colonialists took native and slave art and adapted it using colonial imitators for the amusement of the colonials as costumes, decorations, shows, and even mascots for sport teams. Most of the art was simply ignored as ethnic trash to keep the natives amused and docile. A music group I am in is looking for Black composers in response to BLM and the search list is so long that it had to be divided among several board members to find suitable compositions.

 Minority creators will be able to cater to the esthetics of their neighbors and will build businesses within the community and for the community. Since the community will have disposable income, the best ethnic food carts and trucks, for example, will go back to the neighborhood and sell quality ethnic food rather than trying to eke out a living selling cheap food to mainstream consumers. Ethnic clothing and jewelry creators will find ready markets in the neighborhood as UBI will augment other outside income earned by neighbors working in the mainstream economy.

 In poor and minority communities most of the UBI will recirculate in the neighborhood, as those with disposable income including the artists and entrepreneurs will buy locally whenever possible. The only money which escapes is local vendors buying inventory and supplies unavailable within the neighborhood.

 The community will have disposable income generated from within the community supported by the UBI which for most minority communities will be more than enough to support the lifestyle they are accustomed to. As an example most Native Americans live well below the subsistence standard for mainstream poor. I would expect an explosion of native jewelry, leatherwork, and beadwork that will support native businesses selling to mainstream Americans. When the profits go back to the community cultural appropriation will become a desired result. With the internet as a marketing tool, even relatively small cap businesses can create real value. This is the only way to increase the percentage of minority entrepreneurs. Trying to force them into mainstream businesses has never been beneficial to the minority nor to the businesses that hire them.

 As these communities become self-supporting they will interact less with the mainstream thereby reducing opportunities for bigotry and micro aggressions that currently cause so much social disruption. Given economic parity, which UBI will quickly provide at the community scale, like tends to associate with like, which tends to reduce social friction. The relatively similar communities will grow as they are able with the UBI providing the “outside income” to drive that growth. At first growth will be within the communities. Eventually as communities create resources to trade, growth will expand to the larger community.

 Creative people have always driven economic growth but an economic cushion to try and fail and thereby learn has limited creative opportunities to the economically secure classes. A UBI sufficient to cushion failure to mere poverty will allow all the creatives in our society to reach for the brass ring again and again. Some will catch it and lift all to a more pleasant and rewarding standard of living.

From Medium

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Silicon Valley, CA. Prounouns: Hesh, Herm. Honorific: Myr. Interests: Marketing theory, Advertizing, Economics, APOD, and rocket science.

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