SPEAKER_00 0:00

Automation through AI is starting to bite, especially when it comes to entry-level workers.

SPEAKER_03 0:06

But if you are working like a robot, you will be replaced by a robot.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

That's just the way it is. I think politicians are absolutely underestimating the speed. So in the town of Dauphin, Manitoba, everyone in this town, if their income went down low enough, then they would automatically get this because it was a negative income tax. Um so this ended poverty in this town for about five years. Entrepreneurship in the Namibia pilot went up 301%. Hopefully by the 2030s, we're rolling out a lot of these things. By the 2030s, that's kind of an ugly place. I don't want to imagine that place because it's ugly. There's just violence, there's potentially like second French Revolution territory. The guillotines and pitchforks could come out by the 2030s and even by 2029, depending on the advancing of AI and depending on what we've done.

SPEAKER_03 1:09

So hey everyone, welcome to the world in 2029, the podcast where we explore how today's innovations are shaping our future. I'm your host, Lars. I'm on a mission to spread positive insights into how today's pressing issues like climate change, hunger, and disease are being addressed by exponential technologies that most people don't know about. I worked in the AI space for about 10 years and I've helped numerous tech startups. So this is a topic I know well and is extremely close to my heart. Today's guest is one of the most influential voices in the global conversation around universal basic income, UBI. Scott Santons has spent over a decade researching, writing, and advising on UBI, working with policymakers, nonprofits, and tech leaders to explore how we can redesign the relationship between work and income in an age of automation. He's been a leading advocate for what many call the freedom dividend, helping bring the idea from the French into mainstream political and economic debate. His work has influenced the 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang and has been discussed alongside prospectus from Elon Musk and Sam Altman. So if you want to understand not just what UBI is, but what it might become and why it might become inevitable. Scott is one of the clearest thinkers out there. Scott, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here. Thanks for having me, Lars. And I'm actually dressed for the occasion. I'm actually wearing my jobs of robots. Life is for people t-shirt. That's great. I always get a lot of reactions when I wear this t-shirt, but we'll we'll probably get into some of some of all that in due time. So, Scott, let's let's start with the big picture. What's actually happening to work right now?

SPEAKER_00 3:15

We it's it's the answer is kind of like, you know, we don't really know what's happening to work exactly, but it does appear that automation through AI is starting to bite, especially when it comes to entry-level workers. And it seems to be partially responsible to this kind of no-hire, no-fire economy where people are just kind of like job hugging. And when those people, you know, leave their jobs for whatever reason, that employer is thinking, do I need to hire someone? Can I use AI tools to potentially not require to hire a new person? So it seems to be that we're starting to see less employment through mostly these avenues at first, right now. And but people are still debating over whether that's a thing or not, or whether you know, people are just, you know, using AI as an excuse to let go of people that they didn't need and that kind of thing. But uh, I'm on the side of believing that that this is just starting to show up in the numbers just now.

SPEAKER_03 4:20

Yeah. And we see news about this, you know, just about every day now. I think just just before Easter, uh, Oracle laid off 30,000 people. That's pretty massive. I think that's maybe one of the largest layoffs I've seen uh in uh in a long while. I think that's about 17 or 18 percent of the total workforce in Oracle. And at least they claim that this is due to AI, you know. But as you say, we don't know. We don't know. But why why do you think this time is different? I mean, we've had automation before. Why is this so fundamentally different?

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Well, I mean, this is machinery that is automating thinking processes, you know, that we've always just done, you know, muscle automation before. And this is our you know, brain muscle that's being automated. And you know, we use that for quite a lot of things, especially when it comes to, you know, we've kind of divided white-collar and blue-collar kind of jobs. And uh when it comes to AI, we're really looking at the automation of mostly white-collar jobs. And uh, you know, that's kind of new. You usually use kind of blue-collar jobs before uh we went through a whole industrialization mechanization process. You know, you saw people being replaced in auto manufacturing plants, uh, a lot of robots coming in. And this is different in that case, you know, you can have lawyers and call center workers and just like so many, so many different kinds of work can now be automated. And that doesn't necessarily mean too that we won't have any of those people. You know, imagine like a call center. It's not like that call center can go to a hundred to zero workers and still be as effective, but it can go down to say five or ten or something, you know, depending. And uh, you know, just have like the most difficult calls and stuff that the AI can't handle be transferred over. So when we're talking about making people more productive, you know, that's one thing. Like five people can do the work of 10 people, 20 people, 50 people.

SPEAKER_03 6:24

Yeah. But you also hear a lot of politicians, uh, I think it's especially politicians, you know, claiming that what we had the industrial revolution, you know, and uh everyone was afraid of the jobs, but we got new jobs. And you know, I hear that all the time. Politicians love to kind of draw on the the first industrial revolution. So what why why would you say this is different?

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Well, this is this is different in that you know, this technology is also going to be potentially faster and to a degree that we haven't seen. Like it's one thing to develop a new machine for a manufacturing plant and you know put those in versus having like this new technology that just gets better and better, potentially like doubling in capacity and capability every six months, then like we aren't ready for the kind of speed that could happen, this kind of displacement. And it's also not to say like we don't know what's gonna happen in regards to new jobs being created, but let's assume that like all these like everyone who loses a job can find a new job. Okay, great. How long is that gonna take? What is the displacement rate? You still have, you know, if 25% of people lose their jobs and can't find jobs, and they eventually find jobs, what does that look like between the time they lose their jobs and when they find the next one? What does that job pay? What is that job doing? Do they like it more? Do they like it less? Is it more or less meaningful? Is there more security? Is there less security? There's just so much transformation that has the potential to happen, and we're just not ready for any of these like worst-case scenarios, not even close, because of the speed and the breadth that it can have.

SPEAKER_03 8:24

Yeah, exactly. I think that the speed and the breath is exactly the main point. Of course, no one knows. I mean, we we are talking about the future, and of course, no one knows what's gonna happen in the future, but you you you do see some trends and you see some exponential development. And if I remember correctly, I think it was McKinsey, who are sometimes wrong, who kind of estimated that this so-called fourth industrial revolution was you know about 10 times faster uh and 300 times broader. Uh implying that the the the impact uh on the workforce was actually like 3,000 times the let's say the first industrial revolution. And you know, I'm I'm not seeing too many politicians, maybe Andrew Yang aside, but I'm not seeing too many politicians who actually grasp that kind of impact. Do you think we are underestimating the speed at which AI could disrupt employment?

SPEAKER_00 9:27

I think politicians are absolutely underestimating the speed. I just went to a conference here in DC recently that was all about like bringing politicians to there to even discuss AI and kind of like inform them, get them on board. And those were kind of the more the better informed politicians. And one of them, Senator Mark Warner, was up there and he seemed like a realist in regards to saying that he thought that no one was really bringing forward like real policies that was that would be effective in this. Like there's just he's looking around and like no one has any solutions, you know. He's not proposing any either, but like at least he's up there saying that this is something that we're not ready for. So that that's that's a good thing. Another senator was up there, uh Senator Josh Hawley, he was Republican, and he's talking about how his constituents are very worried about data centers, and you know, they're really showing up in an opposition to these data centers. So his thinking, just playing around the edges, was like, we've got to make sure that the costs of you know water don't go up, the cost of energy don't go up, because that's what like my constituents are really worried about. So that's kind of like the first thing that these politicians are seeing is kind of the impacts of these data centers. That's what we're seeing too within gradual legislation of saying, oh, we should ban these data centers, we should put a moratorium on these data centers or not. And you know, that's talk about like just looking like right in front of your face instead of like looking just down the road to see where the stuff is going. But yeah, that's where we are right now.

SPEAKER_03 11:07

Yeah. And to be fair to the politicians, perhaps, you know, I mean, politics is something that changes quite slowly. And uh and this is a technology that is expanding exponentially, and and people have a hard time understanding exponentials. I actually had this uh Swedish uh mathematics professor on the show to talk about you know the exponential function and everything, and he said the same thing, you know, people just don't understand it. So yeah, it's it's probably a little bit unfair to the politicians, but I guess we are quite a number of people, both of us included, I guess, that have been trying to say this to the politicians for quite a long time.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

Yeah, it's part of the challenge too, is politicians really are they're listening to their constituents. And if their constituents aren't like crying out for something, then they certainly aren't going to put their neck out on the line for something. It's a rare politician who's like trying to get ahead of their constituents.

SPEAKER_03 12:07

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that means it's it's going to be totally reactive. So at the point when enough people are being automated away, then they'll cry out, and then the politicians will start working, and then it will go X amount of time before anything happens. Right. Yeah, that's um that's an interesting perspective. So if we if we go a little bit further, I mean, if people don't need to work, uh will they will they lose purpose? That that's something I get all the time. So before we dive deeply into that one, well why don't we spend a couple of minutes just defining UBI clearly? What it is, what it's not. I mean, especially the U has been you know, it's been uh uh meant to mean different things. Is it unconditional? Is it uh universal? Uh what is it really? How do you define UBI?

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Yeah, so UBI is cash for individuals and it's provided universally, unconditionally, and periodically. So those are it's got five characteristics. And a lot of people think that there's like an amount component, but there's not really an amount component. It's not like you know,$1,000 per month is a UBI and$300 per month isn't. You know, it's just that is it provided to everyone without work requirements or means testing? And is it provided to everyone in a household? And is it cash and not like vouchers or goods or services?

SPEAKER_03 13:42

Yeah, so that's a good point. But in terms of the amount, I mean this this must vary from country to country, you know, depending on on the cost of living, etc. etc. So I guess the basic component is meant to cover your basic needs. So isn't isn't that some kind of level?

SPEAKER_00 14:02

I would say basic is best to be thought of as base, as in it's a floor, it's foundational. It's like the first primary income. And you are gonna spend your first primary income on like the stuff that's most important, which is your basic needs. But it doesn't necessarily have to meet like all of your basic needs because that's like a relative decision between person to person that varies.

SPEAKER_03 14:26

Do you see a lot of discussion around the definition? Do people get this right, or is it a lot of confusion around that?

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Oh, sure. Yeah. There's there's the uh the the main you know basic income organization, uh BN, basic income earth network, that was founded in the 80s. Um they've been kind of like the holder of the definition. And it's it's been modified a couple times along the way. Um, the exact definition, according to BN, is a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis without means, test, or work requirement. And, you know, that is something like each word is very specifically like debated as being should that be in there, should it be this a different word, that kind of thing. So, you know, there's still debate to this day in regards to, you know, should there be some kind of sufficiently sufficiency argument added, you know, to this. And people will debate other side, but so far it's been no, that shouldn't be part of it. But you know, definitions can change. Yeah. But I think it makes sense that it's just really just focusing on this is a foundational amount that all other income adds on top of. It's a base.

SPEAKER_03 15:35

Yeah, yeah. I think it's a I think it's a good thing to have a clear definition. Because then you can have a a better debate. If you're debating something that you you can't even agree on the definition, then it's going to be a hard debate. Which is the point when it comes to artificial general intelligence, for instance. No, no definition, no common definition. Well, that aside, a lot of people say that typical critics. People will stop working if they get, let's say, free cash. What what's what does the data actually say about that?

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Yeah, the the the data says that that is just completely bunk to believe that because people have some access to meeting their basic needs that they don't want more than that. And you can just think of like just look around, you know, if people only needed, say,$1,500 per month, let's say that's the basic income amount that we're going for. If people only needed that, then why is anybody working more than part-time during more than$1,500 per month? Like, shouldn't everybody just be working for$1,500 and then like calling it a day, you know? Like clearly, people want more than that. I mean, we have a 70% consumer-based economy here in the US. That means people are out there, they want to be spending their money on stuff, you know. So the spending side of this is another part of it. You don't just want only to buy your basic like food and rent and not do anything else. Like it's really important for people to earn additional income to do more. So jobs will always exist for people to earn like the additional income. People always want to do that stuff because they want to get that extra money. I remember when um when Elon Musk, the day like he became the richest person in the world and he tweeted, like, uh, well, back to work. Like, you didn't go, oh, well, you know, I'm done. You know, like, why is it that we think that, you know, the rich people who exist on passive income, you know, you've got interest income, you've got dividend income from stocks, like there's all sorts of streams of passive income. In fact, there's entire books about like how to get rich using like how to get passive income streams. Like you're trying to make money work for you. No one is worried that like people are going to stop working with this. But for some reason, we treat things differently when like someone is poor. It's like, I guess they're poor because they are lazy. They like deserve to be poor. And that's like this just world hypothesis or fallacy. And when it comes to the data, yeah, you just don't see that. As the income of the basic income goes up, you will see fewer people employed, but that will be different reasons. Like maybe they go back to school. Um, a lot of young adults end up using that to go back to school and and and learn more before entering the job market. Another one is new parents, like if you're a new mom, you're gonna use basic income mostly as like paid maternity leave. And you also see a lot of people when it comes to work reductions, they're spending, say, nine months looking for the next job, trying to find like the best job for them instead of being desperate and accepting the first job, you know, after like month one or two. Like we want people to actually spend more time finding that next job that's perfect for them, that's a best fit for their skills and everything. Um so like when we look even at like a small decrease in unemployment, in employment, the question is, well, why is that and is that a bad thing? And uh we just don't even see large impacts. The Sam Altman pilot uh had like a 2% reduction in employment. And again, for these other reasons or part of it. But if you only look at like a 2% employment reduction, is that like a huge deal either, even without looking at those other reasons? Because that works out to about eight days per year or 15 minutes per day. Like it's very small. And there is even I looked at a study out of Brazil that there's a program there that provides like very large amounts to uh daughters of military veterans. And that can be like potentially very large. We're talking like$200,000 a year for these people. And there was like a maximum impact of around 10% as far as like people deciding not to work on those margins. So like you can imagine even like a really, really large basic income is still not going to discourage people from working, especially when you compare it to welfare. Because welfare involves high marginal tax rates, it's targeted, it's means tested. Oftentimes, if you have like$1,000 per month of welfare and you accept a job paying$1,000 per month, then you're still at$1,000 per month. Like those aren't additive. But with basic income functioning as a base, you're always better off accepting that job for additional income. And that's why, you know, it entirely lacks the work disincentives that means tested uh welfare imposes on people.

SPEAKER_03 20:40

Yeah. I guess people always want to be uh, let's say, have a purpose, have some meaning in what they do. But that meaning doesn't need to be to be at an office from a specific time to another specific time, at a specific location, doing specific tasks that someone has told you to do because that's something else. So the meaning part is perhaps one of the most I've I find that one of the most relevant, but also one of the most interesting aspects of this. And and people always say that, you know, oh if if if you if you get you know money for nothing, you'll just lie on the couch, you know, looking at Netflix. And yeah, what what's wrong with Netflix? I mean, I saw an article that you that you wrote, um, what you call the uh Tarantino arguments. And I I just love that because you know I'm I'm a huge Tarantino fan and I love good movies. Take us through the Tarantino arguments, that sounds fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Yeah, the Tarantino argument is that I just think it was really just fascinating to me how you know Tarantino's story is that as a young kid, his first job was like working in a video store, and he's just like watching movies all the time. Like that is his passion, is just watching movies. And so if you were to look at Quinton Tarantino back in the day, and like all he's doing is watching movies. Then maybe you're thinking, God, this guy is like so lazy. He's just gonna be a bum and do nothing with his life except watch movies. But you know, at some point he just starts making his own movies and he's entirely inspired by everything he's seen. And he's he's like a he just has like this incredible memory and eye for the things that he's seen. So he's using that, he's remixing, and he's coming up with new original stuff using these these things that he's he's watched and loved over his over the years. And in that argument, I'm saying, well, you never know what someone is going to do in the future. Like you could see a gamer spending all his time playing video games, and you know, that person can be a professional gamer at some point. There's now esports, then that didn't used to be a thing. Back in the day, you had people like playing streetball, and you know, they grew up to be like baseball players and stuff. You don't know who's gonna be a professional at something. We will always enjoy like watching people do stuff really well. And in order to do something well, you have to do it over and over and over and over and over again. So we've got to recognize that that we can't just like judge people for doing these things that they love because there's a good chance that they're gonna want to do, you know, either be so good at it that we want to like pay to like watch them do it, or they're gonna want to be creating their own. You know, someone who has played a lot of video games will want to create like a video game and their playing will inform them in the game design.

SPEAKER_03 23:37

Yeah. So it's a great story, a great analogy. Of course, I mean, if if no one was watching movies, you know, the whole movie industry was would just stop. But we say that, you know, making movies, so that's you know, oh, that's really high profile stuff. But watching them, that's a bad thing. So that's that's really, really strange.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

Yeah, I love the essay in praise of idleness by Bertrand Russell. And he um makes a point, he says something like, you know, why is it that we um you know value um the making of the bread and not the eating of it? You know, that's like valuing um, you know, like the the lock and not the key to the lock. You know, like you have to see both sides of this, and there's what is the point of any of the stuff we're producing if we're not consuming it as well? And also that leads to other questions of like, you know, if we're spending all of our time producing stuff and we don't have any time to consume it, then that's clearly a problem too. And then you look at you know the automation side, if we're creating all the stuff via robots and and AI, what is the point of any of it if humans don't have the capacity to actually use it? They buy it, they don't have any access to it. Like, what is the point?

SPEAKER_03 24:56

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And um, you know, I've um I've been talking about UBI for I think just about the last eight years, so nowhere near as long as you have, but but still quite uh quite a chunk of time. And and during some of my research, I came across this Austrian psychiatrist, uh philosopher, and also Holocaust survivor, actually called uh Viktor Frankel. And uh he talks a lot about meaning. Um and and he found meaning, you know, uh surviving the Holocaust, you know, day by day, just staying strong. And of course, there's there's hard to find you know more solid meaning or purpose than that. Uh but he also said that I mean it also works in everyday life. You can, you know, if if you have some hardship, if you have some struggles, uh you you you find meaning in in that as well. And even in a post, let's say post-AGI world, you know, where you don't perhaps have to do your job anymore because uh a machine is doing it for you. Uh instead, you'll still find meaning because meaning can be to be meaningful towards some other people, maybe you know, like you said, maybe towards your your small uh child instead of sending them to the uh kindergarten or uh to your old mother instead of sending her, you know, to a home for the elderly, or you know, cleaning plastic from the oceans or whatever kind of you know makes your clock tick. So I I think that's uh that's a good way to to look at it because this is this is probably one of the arguments you you hear most often that people will without a job you'll just lose meaning. But actually, you know, the the concept of what we call job today is you know that's like 250 years old. It's from the Industrial Revolution. Before that, we just you know, we were farmers, hunter-gatherers. There wasn't a job. We still had meaning.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

Yeah, yeah, and wage labor transformed our connection to what we were doing too. So, you know, imagine back in the day someone was making a shoe, you know, from scratch. They make the entire shoe, and then you know, the industrialization process comes along, and now someone is just like working on an assembly line, and maybe they just like put like one nail or something in or glue something, and you know, just one thing after the other. Where's the meaning difference there? You know, the person who was making the whole shoe found it very meaningful. They actually got to see the whole thing put together, you know, and they see it on someone's foot and they're like, I made that, like I take great pride in that. And then if you're just on an assembly line, that's different. You just you you look at it and you're like, well, you know, I'm glad they've got a shoe, but like like it wasn't exactly, you know, fun or whatever meaningful for me. And so we can return to that. Like there's nothing preventing you from making a shoe, even though robots are making shoes too. Like they're gonna make cheaper shoes, but there's nothing stopping someone from still making a shoe, selling it for more, and actually saying, hey, this is a human-made shoe. You're gonna find a buyer for that shoe, someone who has enough money to spend more on it, to spend it at a premium. Like there's nothing stopping from doing that. So we're gonna see a lot of jobs like that as well, where they'll still exist, you know, even though it's automated. It's just it'll cost more and it'll be that premium, which is also why it's important to have that basic income, make sure people have money to spend on this stuff, because that in itself creates jobs for humans through this demand being expressed through the spending on human-made goods and services.

SPEAKER_03 28:36

Yeah. That is a totally the wallet point. And of course, this assembly line, you know, it's it's pretty dehumanizing. I mean, you are working like a machine. Yeah, yeah. I I used to say in my in my keynotes, if you are working like a machine, you'll probably be automated. Because but if you work like a human being, you have you have so much to give to the world by being a human being with your human uh capacities and capabilities. But if you are working like a robot, you will be replaced by a robot. That's just the way it is.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

Yeah. I also want to mention, too, just this uh you know, this notion of of unpaid work and the and the value of that. Like it's it's weird how you know you measure GDP and you've got like one parent leaving their kid for the day and going to watch another parent's kid, and you can say like that parent is going to the other person to watch their kid, they're both, you know, spending uh, you know,$60,000 a year or something crazy on like childcare. And that is recorded in GDP. That's two jobs, and you know, it's it's important work being done. And yet, if those same parents stay home and watch and raise their own kids, GDP doesn't record it. And we can look at those parents as being jobless and not necessarily contributing to society when that's all backwards, because clearly they're the same work is being done, but I would argue the work is being done better too, because in the instance where they're staying with their own kids, then that's like also backed by love and true caring for those kids versus being you know extrinsically motivated via money to do it.

SPEAKER_03 30:22

Yeah. I mean, I think that's true meaning, you know, taking care of your own kids and uh their upbringing, you know. It's really hard to find, you know, deeper meaning than that, I think. Yeah, that's uh that's really good. I also came across this other quote, you know, what would you do if your income was taken care of, you know, from the um from the Swiss referendum? I also use that in my keynotes, you know, because people have, you know, they're not used to thinking like that. They're not used to questions like that. And I say, you know, just take it back with you, you know, talk with your spouse or your partner or or whatever during dinner tonight. Maybe you have an interesting dinner for once. What would people actually do given that kind of uh that kind of freedom? I mean, probably you know a whole plethora of different things, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 31:10

Yeah, I mean it that kind of question too just makes me think of Star Trek, where you know I was raised up loving Star Trek, and I just kind of assumed that in this future we would have eliminated scarcity, you know, you'd have something that could mean I want you just you know, walk up to this device and you get food, you get what you need, whatever. And uh, you know, it's not like Picard and the crew of the enterprise is out there for the money. They're they're not doing what they're doing in order to earn their paycheck. You know, they're doing it because they love what they're doing and they're passionate about it, they're really interested in exploring and learning new cultures and science and just the act of discovery. Like, that is what drives them. So, like I want people to consider like, you know, there's a big difference between extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. If you're only driven by money, that's a different kind of society, a society that we have. You've got, you know, imagine someone um, you know, in a job, let's say they're a cook of some kind, and uh, would you prefer the meal created by a cook with a gun to their head, knowing that, hey, if they don't do this, then they'll die? Or would you prefer the meal cooked by someone who like has just loves cooking? And they've been like working at this for decades, and they're like trying to master like the perfect meal. Who do you want to get that meal from? And I'm always gonna choose the person who's doing it out of absolute love and joy than this person doing it out of fear. So, you know, I call that the monsters inc argument for basic income. How that in that movie, you know, you've got an entire society of monsters who are like harvesting fear and screams from kids in order to drive their society, and then they discover at some point that like actually laughter and joy is far more powerful. So they start using that instead. And I think that's what we'll find we'll be powering our society by once we have a basic income and to meet people's basic needs.

SPEAKER_03 33:15

Yeah. Yeah. But of course there are there are some uh hurdles to be uh to be overcome as well. I think you know what one the big elephants in the room perhaps is how do you really fund UBI, you know, at scale? Again, that's that's something I hear a lot. You know, that that sounds sounds nice, sounds simple, but the economics feels impossible. So there's there's probably there's probably many solutions. Could you describe some of them and perhaps which ones you see as most likely or most promising?

SPEAKER_00 33:58

So I mean this discussion is there's so much time that could be spent on this because it also like to really give a good answer also requires even like getting into what is money and what is taxes, and we can touch on that a bit, but uh, I just want to start off by saying, you know, first of all, when people ask, like, this seems really costly, how much does it cost? There doesn't seem to be that same question applied to not doing it. It's, you know, when we lack of a basic income means poverty. It means chronic mass insecurity, so chronic stress. Like these things have outcomes that are expensive. We spend a lot of money on the downstream impacts of crime. We spend a lot of money on the downstream impacts of poor health through our healthcare systems. Basic income is something that's preventative for these things. Like you actually will see less crime. You'll see better health and therefore a less need for this expensive treatments in in hospitals, especially emergency rooms. Um there's in the US, there was a study done on what are what are the full costs of child poverty. So it's like very expensive. It's over$1.5 trillion per year, is what we spend on child poverty in the form of mainly in the form of increased crime, um, worse health, and uh reduced productivity. So it was really frustrating to me in 2021 when we were arguing over uh the child tax credit, which we had expanded and decreased child poverty by 40% at a cost of$100 billion per year. So we decided not to spend an additional$100 billion per year to save, you know, like over$700 billion per year. Because we got into this question of like, oh, well, you know, I don't want to tax more. Like that's really expensive. But like we weren't looking at the return on investment. So we need to see basic income as this investment in people. And when we have that investment, we're gonna see very large returns. And that actually answers this question pretty strongly of, you know, how much does it cost? Because I would argue that in the end, a basic income will cost less than the return on investment, you know, that we get. So that's one thing. Another thing is people misunderstand the cost of basic income. They they think that the cost calculation is amount of money times multiplied by the number of people equals the total cost. But that's not the total cost because you're gonna pair a basic income with tax reforms of some kind. So if someone's taxes go up$15,000 and they receive$15,000, then there is no cost for that person. That is a net zero. They aren't paying additional taxes, the government isn't paying anything additional. They're essentially paying for their own basic income. And then everyone with higher incomes and wealth and stuff, then they're all net donors. Their incomes go down despite the basic income. So you have to like determine the difference between what someone gets in basic income and the additional tax. And then you basically that's a summation of those amounts per the population who are net recipients. That is the cost of basic income. So there was a calculation done by Carl Weiderquist recently and uh a couple of things. Like it did a$16,000 per uh adult and$8,000 per kid UBI. So this would have been, you know, fully ended poverty according to how we define it in the US. And the cost of that is around$700 billion per year in the US. That's the net cost. So people would multiply, you know, just the$16,000, you know, by number of people and think, oh my gosh, that's like$8 trillion or whatever it works out to. But that's not the cost because that's not the net cost. It's not the meaningful cost. And that cost has actually gone down as a percentage of GDP for decades. So to have that same equivalent of a UBI back in the 70s would have been close to like 9% of GDP. Now it's a little bit over 2% of GDP. So as time goes on, it gets cheaper and cheaper and cheaper to end poverty, but we continue to refuse to do so. Part of the reason is we are just like miscalculating the cost of a basic income because we're not figuring out its net cost, especially when it comes to like savings from what I just talked about with like healthcare and crime. So those are like two really important understandings when it comes to the cost of a basic income.

SPEAKER_03 38:43

And then a lot of people talk about robot taxes or automation taxes, AI taxes, something like that. Yeah. So yeah. So what what do you think about that?

SPEAKER_00 38:54

Okay. So now when it comes to taxes, it's important to understand that that taxes aren't like requirements. They're not they're not funding this stuff. They are utilized, they're important in order to help manage inflation. They pull money out of the money supply. So if you're aiming for like a 2% inflation rate and you're spending money into the economy, the universal basic income, or anything else the government does, you need to pull money out of the money supply. So, but those things don't have to be one per one. Where by thinking that you have to raise$100 billion in order to spend$100 billion, then that prevents you from doing all kinds of things because you're thinking we have to get the money first via taxes. But as I was just saying, like during COVID with the child tax credit, we just spent that into existence. And I would argue we don't even need to do taxes for like a child for a child allowance because the ROA was so huge. You know, if you're seeing a 15 to one ROI on something, then just spend that money. We wouldn't even we didn't even see inflation as well to the child tax credit either. So there are things you can do without taxing, and that is not to say that you don't need to tax, but also when we're talking about automation, then to a degree, to a greater degree than usual, taxes aren't as important because automation is deflationary and we want to counter deflation with some amount of inflation because we don't want a deflationary spiral. We want to kind of balance that. So I would argue that let's say we're doing like a$15,000 per year basic income. Uh, some amount of that, like that works out to uh, you know, maybe like$5,000 of that or something could be uh just printed into existence, you know, like that could be something that is not taxed. And then we still need to figure out like$10,000 worth, you know, of that amount per that person in taxes, but it's not one-to-one. So then the question is, all right, what are the best ways of taxing? And that's what we should be thinking about. We want we want to acknowledge that taxes have incentive structures. So when it comes to you know taxing income, then that can discourage work to some degree. We can always kind of like a rule of thumb is tax what you want less of. So do we want less work? You know, that's something else. If we if you tax automation, you know, that's that's less automation. Maybe that's something that you want. You maybe you want to slow it down because again, they're talking about something that's happen could happen really fast. So maybe that does make sense to to some degree slow that down a bit. But also, what other things are there? Um, I argue that, you know, a land value tax, it makes a ton of sense when it comes to one of the best ways, one of the best things to tax because of the incentive structure of that. You know, imagine like a skyscraper next to a parking lot that both take up the same land. And with a land value tax, because it's on the unimproved value of land, the owner of that land has to pay the exact same tax. So for the skyscraper, the owner of that, they're fine. Like that's a very productive use of land. They're covering that that um that rent, no problem. But then when it comes to the parking lot, you can't sit on that parking lot. You have to essentially sell it to someone who will develop into a skyscraper because it's just too expensive to hold on to. And so a land value tax really helps with the housing situation. It's creating pressure to actually increase the housing supply, make better use of land. You know, it doesn't make as much sense to have a single family house versus a multifamily house. And so, you know, you want to have those regulations that no longer prevent people from building a multifamily house. But after lifting those regulations, you want to encourage people to build up and out instead of uh discouraging them. And one of the reasons why we do that too is asset prices. We treat housing as an asset. So by doing that, you know, people are wanting to keep their asset high in value. And if you have a land value tax, it kind of changes that equation. It's housing becomes less of an asset. And thankfully, you know, that helps also the basic income helps with that as well, because otherwise you've got people worried about, you know, that's their form of wealth growth, you know, in the current paradigm. But if you have like a dividend from overall productivity, if everyone's sharing in that wealth creation that we're doing, then it makes less sense to treat housing as an asset. You can actually create more housing and bring the cost of housing down and therefore take up less of a percentage of people's basic incomes, too. So there's just various ways of taxing. And I think the question should be what are the incentive structures that we're creating here instead of how much revenue do these things raise?

SPEAKER_03 43:53

Yeah. So we definitely don't want to slow down automation, I guess. So taxing at least uh high. direct taxes would be uh not something that we would uh encourage but having a dividend you know on on um let's say wealth creation because the automation is I mean like we talked about Oracle laying off thirty thousand people I think it uh I think the cost was eight billion dollars in wages for those people annually and of course so that's that's you know that's um that's a profit increased profit all else you know kept equal and I guess a dividend uh could could go I mean you you could have a dividend from all all companies a certain you know percentage of like I don't know the exact number if it's three percent or if it's ten percent of all companies could go uh actually into a kind of uh sovereign dividend fund that's and you could uh distribute a dividend to everyone which kind of makes sense I mean if you if you look at like like Facebook I mean how how how did Facebook become so uh extremely profitable and Mark Zuckerberg well it's it's our data that we give them for free and what what do we get in return you know we we get cat videos so it's it's a really really bad deal um and we we should get something back from that not just cat videos we should get you know some some dividend on that yeah I think and this this goes back decades too yeah so there's a there's a chart that that I that I really like stressing which is where you know productivity decoupled from wages here in the US in the 70s usually to see this chart go up and up and up when it comes to productivity but when it comes to wages that was not like flat flat but it certainly didn't rise at the same rate as productivity but it used to before the 1970s.

SPEAKER_00 45:56

So wages actually used to used to distribute productivity growth really well. And then after that it stopped so we haven't gotten our share of productivity growth for decades to the point of over$80 trillion in total wealth that went up to the 1% here in the US that would have otherwise been distributed. And that's at about four trillion dollars per year right now that's the rate so we should see ourselves deserving of that productivity growth right now and that's also from automation it's you know mostly from more industrial automation manufacturing automation but what made that possible again it goes to public dollars went into research and development um and you know now when it comes to AI that is still true but also yeah we are the ones who train the AI all of our all of our books and and texts and tweets and articles and music and videos and like all of these stuff trained these models.

SPEAKER_03 47:01

Yeah. So maybe going out on a tangent here but do you think this is you think this is a bigger problem in the US than a lot of other uh countries because you know I'm I'm based there in Osloven Norway and of course the the Nordic countries have you know uh over um quite a long long time developed uh kind of social democracy uh you know higher taxes but also giving a lot more back to all the inhabitants in the in the country but this is this has not been you know the case in the US and I mean going back you had the American dream you know but I think that's to a large extent broken and we are going this is going the wrong way because like you say all the profits go to let's say the the owners of these companies and not nearly as much to to all the workers.

SPEAKER_00 47:55

So is this something that you let's say would would agree on yeah I've done multiple talks in in Nordic nations and it seems that like I think that it could be argued that the Nordic nations might be among the last to do universal basic income just because they have really strong safety nets. And so it feels more like playing around the edges. Like you know it's still more efficient to do UBI because you drop the means testing, you drop the conditionality you make sure that that you're putting trust in people which is also why that was one of the results from the Finland based income pilot was increased trust actually but like you and you put your trust in people and by doing that you don't have to have this bureaucratic administration this burden of that you're not imposing these high marginal tax rates potentially on recipients it makes more sense but it is kind of playing around the edges in regards to that in the US uh I think it could be argued that yeah because we haven't been we have such a weak safety net then we can actually move like a lot we can do a lot with the UBI um in one swift move and you know Alaska's got a UBI we've had it since 1982 in the US in that state so you know that hasn't been true like anywhere else in the world hasn't really had a UBI except for Alaska as a state and they're treating it you know that's that's a dividend model. It's saying you know who what does the oil belong to? 25% of oil revenue since 1982 has gone into this permanent fund and that permanent fund pays universal dividends once a year. And you know we should look at that and go, well, okay uh you know Thomas Paine's argument as well hundreds of years ago was you know who does this land like belong to? It seemed to be like we created poverty um as we know it because like if you look at the natural state of people when they have access to the land and um you know foraging and everything then they could potentially be better off than in a society where that's all locked off and owned and there's like a real creation of poverty in that. So it makes sense to look at natural resources and say who owns this well we should all see ourselves as mutual inheritors of this land and that's all the natural resources as part of this too. So you know we can do a royalty model of natural resources and see it differently as we're not saying that we're taxing work, in which case some people are working for others. Instead we're looking at just the earth and like you know what God created if you believe in God, then you know we're taxing essentially taxing that or doing a royalty model, whatever. But we're sharing in that that that ownership of this natural resource. And I think that you know we can look at AI as like another not a natural resource but like a mutually created resource along with you know land value too.

SPEAKER_03 51:06

Yeah yeah I fully agree definitely yeah we could talk a lot about oil and sort investments and stuff but let's not do that. So did you notice that um I think it was two days ago or something Sam Altman of OpenAI released his policy document.

SPEAKER_00 51:24

Yeah read it yep so for the listeners it's it's called industrial policy for the intelligence age ideas to keep people first which sounds nice and he talks about you know um a public fund that gives everyone ownership in value creation like the dividend we talked about he also talks a little bit about the robot tax on automated labor and also four-day work week so what do you think should we should we trust him I I uh support people saying the right thing even if someone doesn't mean something that they're saying as long as they're saying the right thing I think that's better than not saying it so I like a lot of these this list I I wish that it would have said like the words universal basic income but also like multiple sections described basic income even without using those words like it even covered unpaid care and making sure that unpaid care was actually remunerated. And so yeah you've got like the the dividend kind of component and that could go to everyone but like yeah there were multiple sections where I was reading this and and highlighting going well that's basic income that's basic income that's basic income. But it didn't say it.

SPEAKER_03 52:35

Yeah but I I thought it was quite good you know it's um I mean he he of course does have some ulterior motives of course I mean he's he is developing some of the technology that probably will automate people's exactly the same way that Elon Musk is doing that and Elon Musk is talking about universal high income which sounds even more tempting of course who wants basic when you can have high right but of course yeah he has to say that and and Sam Altman in OpenAI also had this this uh pilot project on UBI I know there's been a lot of lots of different pilot projects I don't know how many I think I think I saw the number 40 somewhere that might in the US it's over 150.

SPEAKER_00 53:20

Right 150 just in the US yeah wow so how how many projects uh do you know of in in total globally um I would say uh like over a little over 200 I think in total globally and you know there's some uh you can debate like what counts and what doesn't um because like some let's say um like there's uh let's say there's an experiment that provides a a one time lump sum in the form of cash to people and you know there's stuff that we can learn from that but also does that count as a basic income experiment I wouldn't say that it does but it is it is informing. So you know there's a whole lot of like unconditional cash transfer programs out there where you know maybe it's one time maybe it's frequent for a bit maybe it's like household targeted instead of individually targeted the stuff isn't necessarily basic income but it's exploring these kind of behavioral impacts and so therefore we can learn from these things.

SPEAKER_03 54:27

Yeah. So what are the results from all these pilot projects has it been positive? Has it been negative?

SPEAKER_00 54:34

What kind of effects have the given the the most interesting ones are saturation site experiments. A saturation site means that you really getting a glimpse by testing universality. So everyone in a region needs to receive the basic income or they need to qualify for it in regards to like um you can do a negative income tax in uh like Canada tested this in the 70s. So in the town of Dauphin, Manitoba, everyone in this town if their income went down low enough then they would automatically get this because it was a negative income tax structure with a 50% phase out rate. So this was this it ended poverty in this town for about five years. And that's the kind of stuff that's really interesting because it's different. Like if you do 100 people in a town of 5,000 you're not going to be testing any macroeconomic impacts like let's say one of those people is an entrepreneur they start up a business thanks to you know their basic income great but what if they don't have any customers because you know the people are just barely getting by that all everyone around them. But if you do a town of 5,000 people and they all get basic income that same entrepreneur starts up a business that could be a flourishing business because they're surrounded by customers. The most interesting stuff has happened in these saturation pilots um one of my favorites is the Namibia pilot that was around 2010 it was a full village of a thousand people for two years. They got monthly income you know both kids and adults in a household everyone and crime reduced by 42% overall crime rates um a very particular kind of crime that was clearly an example of like real true desperation crime which was uh poaching so like the hunting the illegal hunting of animals especially like endangered animals that went down by 95% so you can that's a great example of like you know there's certain crimes out there that people really don't want to do but they feel that you know they may have to so that their families can survive you know and entrepreneurship rates usually tend to go up again through this like it's not only an example I give, but we see that in the data entrepreneurship in the Namibia pilot went up 301%. So that was a quadrupling of entrepreneurship there in that pilot. And people would say oh well you know that's like um African countries so we're not going to see that impact you know in the developed nations um but you know in the Dauphin Manitoba pilot you still saw this this same kind of thing. Uh overall crime there went down by 15%. So yeah it wasn't as much as as 42% but 15% is still highly significant. And uh yeah you just see you see like less abuse of spouses that's a common thing. You see kids going back to school you see like in increased education you see less domestic abuse less child abuse less reports to uh child protective services and uh you see savings go up people tend to save more money debts go down people tend to pay off their debts and take out like fewer loans because they don't need them anymore. Just so many strong positive impacts of this and employment can even go up too and you know that's the difference again in these saturation pilots like in they looked at the Alaska dividend there's some really good studies that have come out of that that's only on average about$1500 per year for you know decades. It can be larger it could be smaller but that's kind of the average and they looked at the employment impacts and they found that overall employment went up there was a there was a decrease in full-time employment but it was countered by the spending of the money creating jobs which enabled more people to take those jobs. So there was basically a net neutral impact of full-time employment but there was a 17% increase in part-time employment. So again this created jobs that people could take and people wanted those jobs to earn extra money. And you know you can look at something like that and say well that's a really small UBI and yeah you know like as long as the UBI is like you're talking about basic needs, then I would argue in any kind of universal systems, you're gonna see the stimulative impact of jobs outweigh any increase from an income effect of people feeling that they need less money in addition to that. So yeah really I highly advise people to look at you know all the stuff that was saturation pilot. So Namibia, India, Dauphin here in the US we did like one new kind of saturation pilot arguably and that was in Chelsea uh Massachusetts and it was interesting about this one too is it it like wasn't done as like a basic income experiment. It was just like during COVID and they were you know focused on getting food to people through a food bank system. And they thought well you know this isn't going to work with all these people lining up for food uh with this pandemic so let's just like get them cash. So they distributed cash onto these um debit cards and it was$100 per adult and um an additional like$100 for kids. So it scaled by household and a very significant percentage of that area got this. And one of the impacts of that was actually significantly reduced hospitalization rates which was something that we saw elsewhere too in Dolphin when hospitalization rates went down by 8.5%. So you see this stuff you see less crime you see better health and these are actually observed in these pilots so all these data seems to be quite positive.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:34

I mean if it's from 200 od uh projects you have enough data to say that this is actually this works this is actually positive so why why is adoption still so slow do you think are we are we back to pol uh politicians I think it's power it's it's a question of power.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:55

Basic income is money money is power basic income is redistribution of power. And this is why like in the 70s um Nixon tried to pass a guaranteed income for families and uh this would have like gotten rid of child poverty you know because it would have gone to every virtually gotten rid of it it would have gone to every child and um you know the parents of those children everyone in that household would have gotten this and it stopped it got through the House twice and failed to get through the Senate to move on to be signed into law by Nixon. The person who stopped it the chair of the Senate Finance Committee Russell Long was actually the son of Huey Long interestingly Huey Long ran on a UBI um you know back in the day well before he was assassinated. Very interesting story of Huey Long in Louisiana but so this was Russell Long who was a senator in Louisiana and summarize like really quick summation of like why he didn't like it was he said like well who will iron my shirts like this is there is this pressing need to like you want people to be desperate enough to do what you want them to do and to do it at the rate that you want to pay. So you know when people say like I can't find anyone to do this job well pay them more. The end of that sentence is I can't find anyone to do this job with the pay I want to pay them you can always turn a no to a yes with enough money. And that's what people don't want to do. They want people to be coerced into positions where they accept low pay and do jobs that these other people in power don't want to do. They don't want to lose that power. So that's why I would argue that we haven't seen it is it's it really just comes down to this power, this lack of power among most people and those with the power not wanting to lose that.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:49

Yeah are there any other arguments uh that you hear you probably hear a lot of arguments you know we're talking about this all the time what what are some of the main arguments against UBI you hear uh you know apart from apart from the power part the three main arguments are are easily it costs too much and what about inflation and won't people stop working?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:15

Like those are the three primary arguments and even just reflexes where you just hear about basic income and someone may immediately think one of those three things.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:26

And also it's funny when it comes to the work one because it's never about like or it's rarely about themselves. They will say well of course I will continue to work with the basic income you know I don't want only$1500 a month you know I want to do my I enjoy my job I want to earn more money than that. But those people you know like other people they're the ones who are going to be lazy and not work and that's the problem. Like we need to make sure that they work we need to we need to make sure and and essentially force them to work by making sure they don't get a basic income. Like that is it's just funny to me that you know it's it's never really reflective of people. I've tested this too like even in in audiences when I'm giving a talk and stuff where you know you just ask like how many people themselves would continue working with a basic income and like you know everyone in the room raises their hand. Yeah and you know you ask them about other people everyone raises their hand yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:22

Yeah but but the people going to conferences you know those are perhaps the people who love their job who have some kind of intrinsic motivation whereas I think about 70% of you know the global workforce hates the job just to some extent. They're just having their job doing their job to earn a living and paying more. Yeah I mean you you could pay more of course the the motivation probably doesn't more doesn't price more freedom to decide freedom to choose to do it but maybe you could do something else that's you know closer to your heart which is which is the thing that you really want to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:03

Yeah yeah yeah again like we want people choosing the jobs that they're in yeah like for pay reasons for meaning reasons whatever people should be actually choosing that because that's their voluntary choice. Yeah. If you put them into a position where they're desperate and they're just choosing something because they have no other choice, then yeah you get a lot of disconnection from work you have unhappiness and you know it's less productive too. Like again you're gonna put in your bare minimum to not get fired uh in a job that you are only taking because you have to.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:36

Yeah exactly no it's it goes back to your uh you know food example you know if you love making food you make better food than if you're threatened to do it you know it's yeah it's a basic psychology. So uh Scott, you know this uh this show is called uh the world in twenty twenty nine um I'm writing the book The World in twenty twenty nine I think it's actually soon going Be finished, you know. Um, I had had some time off during Easter. Uh there's just two chapters left now. Looking forward to that. But you know, it's it's been you know, I'm probably not gonna earn a single dollar from this book. Uh you know, it's it's just intrinsic motivation. If I had UBI, I would write more books. Absolutely. As I know that you're doing. But you know, the world in 2029, how do you think that world is going to look like? Do we have UBI by then? Do we have something else? Do we have nothing at all uh in the US, in the rest of the world? What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:41

I would uh hope that by 2029, some other countries besides the Marsha Islands have implemented a universal basic income of some kind. And that isn't even necessarily because of AI. Like maybe if we just decided, you know, hey, the evidence says that it works, then let's do this. Let's reform our safety net. And then we're also ready just in case AI like really makes things like kind of looking like the pandemic. In the US, again, I would hope that we've done something to prepare or at least respond. Because then we don't know what's going to happen by 2029. It could be that AI has advanced enough that there's a much larger impact, in which case, yes, either we already have it to some degree, or there's definitely a lot of pushing and momentum for it. And it even seems potentially inevitable at that point where it's like clearly we need to do this. I worry that maybe the first thing we'll do is kind of like the pandemic and do, you know, like a monthly stimulus checks kind of thing. You know, just it's getting money to people, but it's still not like making it a permanent structure. It's not making it a base, it's not removing the means testing. There are optimal ways of doing it, and that's not optimal, especially if it's just purely deficit financed instead of like also focusing on reducing inequality and making sure to tax what should be taxed. Um it's it, I would hope I want to be positive. I want to be optimistic. And so I I I choose to believe that that that we're closer or we've done something to some small degree. Um, but yeah, if not, I think that it that we're on the precipice of uh by 2029 of doing of doing UBI and other changes that we need to do. Like we really do need to decouple survival itself from employment, in which case, you know, universal health care here in the US is also something that we need, other than just universal basic income. And we should be focusing on, you know, like the four-day weeks. Again, that's a good idea. We need more time. We need like a time dividend and not just a uh dividend in form of cash. So I like how that was recommended by OpenAI. And, you know, that time component means we have more time to actually read these books that people are doing, you know, with their with their basic income and more time. It is good for us to have more time to enjoy, again, like if you're baking, you gotta eat the bread too. So I hope that we've made these other changes. And I don't necessarily need all of them made at once. And I think that UBI is the most important. But as long as we're adopting these necessary changes, great. And hopefully, you know, by the 2030s that we've really we're rolling out a lot of these things. We already have them, and the world was a better place. Because if we don't, if we haven't done that, then by the 2030s, it's a that's a that's a kind of an ugly place. I don't want to imagine that place because it's ugly. There is there's there's mass, you know, there's just violence, there's, you know, potentially like second revolution, second French Revolution territory. You know, like the guillotines and Pittsworks could come out by the 2030s and even by 2029, depending on the advancing of AI and depending on what we've done.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:17

Yeah. I think you're right. And perhaps I'm a little bit more optimistic when it comes to let's say the rate of automation. You know, I see this as a positive thing, provided that we get UBI. Um I think we're going to see massive layoffs. I would not be surprised if you see unemployment in the 20-30% range. And we're not prepared for that at all. Uh and I think you know, UBI could be uh implemented for a variety of reasons and motivations, but I think this is perhaps one of the most pressing ones. Uh I think it's going to happen. Um I'm perhaps not too optimistic about the political system in the US. But but there's an election uh in 2028. That's hopefully going to be good. And and the positive thing is that you know, all the uh at least most of these tech oligarchs, they seem to be very optimistic about this. I I think that's also why, also because they see the same thing that you see, that if you push the people too far, you know, if you if you make the divide between you know the the owners and let's say the workers too too big, you are going to have some social unrest. And uh I think I think Bill Gates, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, uh Sam Altman, they're smart enough to understand this. And I'm not sure if that's the motivation behind their uh support of UBI, but at least it could be part of it. I think that's you know it's it's likely to see that come into play in more and more regions. So um fingers crossed, I think we I think we will have a UBI in more nations than just the Marshall Islands. But you know, I mean, congrats to the Marshall Islands. I mean, I'm I'm I'm not quite sure how they actually became the first nation to have a full UBI, but very impressive. And we should all you know follow their example. So so maybe this is the first time in history where you know we as humans actually can choose what to do. Not because we have to, but because we want to. That's you know, that would be fantastic. And it's been fantastic to have you on the show, Scott. You know, thank you so much for for sharing your knowledge and your thoughts with us. It's uh yeah, I really, really appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:39

Yeah, thanks, Lars. Happy to be here. And yeah, I when it comes to the futures, again, I grew up loving Star Trek and I much prefer that to the Hunger Games. So let's go with Star Trek instead of Hunger Games. And to do that, we need UBI.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:52

Yeah, yeah, that's a good closing word. Let's go with Star Trek. You know, I think this is you know, these are novel thoughts for many, and and um they will probably need time to sink in. But you know, to the audience, do think about this. So if you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, share it with someone who should be thinking about the future of work. And you know, the real question is not whether works or whether jobs will change, it's whether we're ready for what comes after. And remember, as always, the future is better than you think. Thank you.