Universal Basic Income

Headline: "Chicago May Become Largest City to Offer Universal Basic Income"

Another city in the West Coast - where else - was first with the idea. The city of Stockton begun an 18-month study where 100 families were going to receive $500  monthly. The 27 year old mayor, Michael Tubbs is working with Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes, who himself has initiated a program called Economic Security Project (ESP). 

There had been in this country's history a variety of 3-4 letter-acronym-ed programs over decades of government's social tweaking to improve the plight of its less fortunate citizens.  Lately, there is the ACA, Affordable Care Act, which is not so affordable anymore, UBI (Universal Basic Income), which is not really universal because it will cover a limited number of families. I don't know what ESP (Economic Security Program) really means. The Chicago councilman, Ameya Pawar, who is pushing for UBI is worried for the future workers who may be laid off because of automation. 

There are a handful of other programs which lead one to believe that these are likely overlapping each other in one respect or another. However, much of the public and politicians are not likely to see beyond the bureaucratic curtains that hide these duplication of assistance.

SNAP - Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly Food Stamp Program)
AFDC - Aid to Families with Dependent Children
WIC - Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, & Children
GA - General Assistance
TANF - Temporary Assistance for Needy Families

Mr. Pawar said, ”We have to start talking about race and class and geography, but also start talking about the future of work as it relates to automation. All of this stuff is intertwined.” Well, it didn't take long for race and social class to be injected into the mix, let alone, another justification for another government program.

We're all for helping the less fortunate among us. There is no question that many people need help. There is no question the government can and do a lot through designed programs to make it so. In fact, based on the above, quite a number of programs had been created. And they've been and will be there forever.  Below is the famous quote from Pres. Reagan:

"The closest thing to eternal life on earth is a Government Program"

And, so the government, albeit, local in scope (for now, anyway), comes up with another example of bureaucratic expansion, the likes of which could grow with the malignancy of a tumor. That is, because some of these programs are likely to sap resources collected from tax payers, with very little efficacy towards the intended purpose.  

Another Reagan quote:

"No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size".

Some of these programs fail over time because: (a) complacency sets in when bureaucracy  is well entrenched; (b) political stewardship lasts only as long as the next political changeover; (c) the mistaken notion that when government throws money into something, the problem will be solved; it encourages people to remain or elect to be in the program rather than strive to rise towards an income level that would disqualify them. 

These are supposed to be temporary programs for most recipients until they get back on their feet as to be disqualified. Disqualification from these government programs as recipients begin to earn a living income is the only disqualification worth aspiring for.

We should relinquish the liberal mantra of income equality.  There is no such thing. Even the most ardent socialists do not believe in it.

(For another context, please read "Mountains to Molehills", previous blog to this, which I copied/republished from "The Idle Citizen", which I wrote a while back, some of you may have read it before)

Mountains to Molehills

“Men trip not on mountains, they trip on molehills” – Chinese proverb

A dear friend in response to my last musing had requested that I put some thoughts or research a bit more on the idea of redistribution of wealth.  I may not be the right person to talk about it because in the first place I do not have that kind of wealth that people would focus on these days; secondly, it is not what keeps me awake at night since I don’t have that much to redistribute to begin with. Economists have spent copious amounts of time on it already and when ten of them are put in a room we can and will get ten different answers.  However, what I lack in advanced degrees in economics is more than made up for with an idle mind that tries to imagine what it would be like to be wealthy.  I then need to share that in some arbitrary manner.  Imagination, which is probably the only form of entertainment one gets for free these days, is what the idle mind will engage in.

Let’s imagine a landscape where mountains make up two per cent of the area and the rest is all molehills.  Inhabitants of molehills complain that the top of the mountains gets the rain first and seem to be getting a lot more of it; furthermore, it was pointed out that the mountain inhabitants seem to be the only ones to touch the clouds and they’re so much closer to the stars and the moon.  The up-landers as they’re called by the low-landers are enjoying more than a fair share of the resources.

One day the lowlanders decided that the mountains should be torn down despite the fervent entreaties from the up-landers who say that much of the rain that falls on them goes all the way down as runoffs through the mountainsides anyway.  The mountaintops can retain only so much.  Nevertheless, the lowlanders won and the mountains were leveled to the height of molehills.

The landscape changed and so did the weather patterns.  Wind streams that carry cold and moist air flow through in the upper atmosphere and with no mountains to impede the flow or trap the moisture or cause the clouds to swirl and get heavy, the rain stopped coming.  The land below turned from lush to barren landscape. Now we know why there are mountains and yet though they make up only a small percentage of the surface of the earth we cannot and should not even be thinking of leveling them down.

Another metaphor is probably more fitting.  It took tremendous geological forces, upheavals of unimaginable energy from underground, and eons of time to create those mountains.  A business is built up the same way by people who chose to sacrifice their own personal lives and often to the detriment of their family well-being by spending the bulk of their energy and time to build up a molehill.  Sometimes they get lucky and  a mountain rises up.  Now you know how a classic cliché is turned upside down to a better light.

Let me stay with the subject of mountains for a while.  Physicists and geologists who have as much ample idle time as I do but with more sophisticated technical clout have calculated and declared that there is only so much height earth mountains can go up.  Their own weight (gravity) alone will limit their growth as the base can only take so much before giving way and there is wind and water erosion and the occasional earthquakes and volcanic activity as the other contributing factors.  Businesses can only increase in size up to a certain point because forces like competition, regulations, taxes and demographics act just like gravity and the erosive powers of wind and water.  In the U.S., antitrust laws prohibit monopolies and in most cases competition and regulations provide the best check and balance to the benefit of consumers.  Still we worry that certain mountains are way too high.

Billionaires do not keep their wealth under mattresses.  Much of their money does run off the sides of the mountains.  If it’s not re-invested it goes to acquiring yachts and Lamborghinis.  Let’s think for a minute about the number of people ship builders and car companies employ.  Let’s go back to the 1400s when Columbus embarked on what seemed like a frivolous ocean cruise financed by Queen Isabella.  The “Maria”, “Pinta” and the other ships whose names escape me were built by several hundred people whose livelihood, if not for the entrepreneurial spirit of the early seafarers, would have been relegated to building dugout canoes as their ancestors have done.  Today ordinary wage earners get to enjoy luxurious vacation trips even if only for a week because investors put money on shipyards to build super cruise ships.  Otherwise, we would still be paddling canoes through rivers and streams.  Not that there's anything wrong with that but we get better food and accommodation when we cruise and see more places in a week than Lewis and Clark saw in half a year.

Where there are mountains, small outfitters sell mountain climbing equipment and apparel.  Tourists come to offer their 'oohs and aahs', take pictures with their fancy digital cameras and boost the local economy at hotels, restaurants and the ubiquitous tourist traps.  Would they have come if there were only molehills around?

Let’s leave the mountains alone and let some molehills grow and aspire to become one.  The garage where Jobs and Wozniak started Apple, or the shack where Hewlett and Packard came up with their first scientific calculators, were molehills that went sky high.  Sam Walton started with a few molehills that went nowhere until Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club took hold.  Let’s not forget however that only a few mountains will rise from molehills, just as there could only be a handful of NBA stars or major league baseball players from thousands of aspirants.  But we do not spread Michael Jordan’s points among his team mates, do we?

This was obviously not Econ 501 in-depth analysis and I may have exceeded the legal amount of metaphors in a single note but I hope the visual images of molehills against the backdrop of “purple mountains majesty” are clear enough. 

...It would be Curling

If Everyone's Life were a Winter Olympic Sport, it would be Curling.

Whether you know what curling is or not, you would be curious about what the above sentence means. At least, you must be if you got this far.  I know little about the sport but what I do know is that there must be something about a couple of folks, men or women, frantically sweeping the ice in front of one heavy object moving in slow motion, having been released by the third player whose role it is to begin the game, followed by a crescendo of screaming and hollering at the last second or so of the action. 

Why curling? Because, believe it or not, there is no other Olympic event, winter sport or not, that is closest to the metaphor of life. Really? Yes, really.

But, how popular is curling in the U.S.A? The quote below says it all:

"America Loves Curling — Until It Forgets About It For Four Years"

It is 100 deg F (37.78 deg C to my European and Asian readers) in the shade outside and what better way to divert one's attention from the oppressive July heat in Texas than to imagine about winter in Canada or Scandinavia.  I have not been to either place in winter, so the more an imaginary arctic blast can be summoned for relief. Just about now, I feel cooler already.

But first, this. Even if you think you know the rules of curling, you need to read the paragraph below, then ignore it, and read the one following for a layperson's explanation.

"At the start of each end, two rocks start in play — one in the back 4 foot with the front of the rock at the very center of the house, and a rock of the opposite color guarding on the center line, halfway between the front of the house and the hog line. Five rocks are played per team, with scoring performed as normal. One thrower must throw the first and last stones of each end, while the other thrower must throw the three in between".

The playing surface is a sheet of ice (that is why it is a winter sport) 5 meters wide and 45 meters long. The object of the game is to get a 20 kilogram granite, called a curling stone, to slide over from one end of ice to reach   and stop at a target, called a house, at the other end. The house is made up of three concentric circles, colored red, white and blue, and the center of it, the bull's eye, is called a button. The score of one point is awarded to the team whose curling stone is closest to the target, two points if two stones are closest, etc. It has innings like in baseball, and they are called ends, because, well, each starts from one end to the other and vice versa. A complete game will take between 2 to 2-1/2 hours. 

There's more nomenclature, nuances and technicalities in the game but we don't need to know them all; except, for the curious part about the sweepers! There is a point to all this for the allusion to work, as it relates to the metaphor of curling and life.

There's the broom, differently colored curling stones and the "house", made of concentric circles of red, white and blue bands, where the center, or button, is the desired target or bull's eye.

An opponent's stone (blue) is occupying the red target already as the red stone is approaching while two sweepers are frantically sweeping, influencing the direction and speed of the stone - the idea being to hit and dislodge the blue stone from its location, which happens to be the desired target. The key is to hit the blue (in this case) stone with just enough energy to push it out but for the red stone to stop and rest at the target

There was an article in the Smithsonian, explaining the physics behind the sweeping. Let's journey through time in the 1500's when folks in Scotland, with not much to do in the winter time, invented the sport. It was before the era of gymnasiums and refrigeration, so it was played outdoors, where the ice surface had irregularities on them. There were bumps, called pebbles, along the playing area causing the stone to "curl" as it slides toward the target, and there you have the origin for the name of the sport.

Today, "Ice technicians sprinkle two layers of water droplets on top of the ice that freeze to form two heights of bumps"... "Pebbling was designed to mimic the natural snow and pebbles that were on the ice when curling was played outside".

So, as the stone is released, the sweepers ahead of it, sweeps the ice and the friction causes the ice to melt temporarily but long enough to allow for a film of water on which the stone can travel more freely . There is a strategy to sweeping. Depending on where the sweeps are done ahead of the stone, the direction and speed of the stone can be "controlled". One team member of the usual four, called the "skip" may direct the sweepers what to do. That's curling.

_________________________

Imagine, we are the stones traveling along the path of life. Whatever our stations in life, privileged by birth, or plagued by misfortunes of destitution and abject poverty, we are all equally driven by desire to get somewhere - a target position of more wealth and prestige or merely a place a little more comfortable or a little less wanting of the basic necessities of life, and perhaps a yearning for a just a little bit more than what we have now. Whatever the place we dream about, the path may not always be smooth. It could be a little rough for some, more pebbly or discouragingly rocky for others. Just as in the sport, there are "ice technicians" sprinkling layers of obstacles in our path. The ice technicians could be other people not wanting us to succeed or circumstances we find ourselves in, that we need to to overcome. But we were not to be deterred from reaching the place.

If we're fortunate to reach that place, we look back and realize that as we sled through much of the journey, someone or many others had swept the ice in front of us.  Parents were the first sweepers in front of their children's path for years before sons and daughters realize the amount of energy, worry and anguish it took to get those brooms working. What little they know how frantic at times their parents had to sweep in front, sometimes hollering and screaming, because they didn't want them to go astray of that "5-meter-wide-lane". There are two sweepers in curling, one to each side of the stone. A single sweeper faces the daunting task of single parenting. Doing the sweeping from either side of the stone is twice as hard and the rare but laudable successes of single parents deserve twice the acclaim. 

Later we found friends, teachers, colleagues, bosses who did their share of sweeping in front of our path as well. And so have we for others. We think back of all the many events, the words of encouragement, the inspirations, a recommendation here and there, a pat on the back, the seeming coincidences that pop out of nowhere, improbable opportunities from unlikely places, not all of them deserved, perhaps, but it got us to the place - the "three concentric circles" of our ambitions and dreams. If we did not reach the "button" exactly, close enough is good enough.

Thus, the metaphor of life we find in curling is true for everyone. We need to recognize and thank all the sweepers in our path. We take pride of the sweeping we've done for others, and remember that the world could use a lot more sweepers out there.

The Rise and Fall of Empires

(This is from the perspective of an imaginary observer from an imaginary origin outside of our solar system, making observations as an ultimate outsider). 


Our extraterrestrial observer, Seguey, talked about the theory of Zero-Sum-Game and its role in our history. If we leave it to Seguey, the principle explains the emergence of empires and why they occurred only one at a time. There was some overlapping, for sure, but a receding empire had always been followed by an incoming one. History seems to attest to that.

Let's have Seguey explain it.

Report 4, Seguey, Sector 3rd Planet from Medium Stellar Mass

The chart below is one of the better ones I've come across. It breaks down the emergence and duration of the major empires on this planet strung together in overlapping chronology. I highlighted the "duration in years" because each of the empires lasted about 2-1/2 centuries. Make sure to read the footnote below the chart for a better context of each of the empire's duration that most historians agree with.

Sir John Glubb wrote a paper on the "Fate of Empires" in 1976. The chart was in that thesis.

The nation             Dates of rise and fall                   Duration in years

Assyria                  859-612 B.C.                                      247
Persia                    538-330 B.C.                                      208
(Cyrus and his descendants)
Greece                   331-100 B.C.                                     231
(Alexander and his successors)
Roman Republic    260-27 B.C.                                       233
Roman Empire       27 B.C.-A.D. 180                              207
Arab Empire          A.D. 634-880                                     246
Mameluke Empire 1250-1517                                         267
Ottoman Empire    1320-1570                                         250
Spain                      1500-1750                                        250
Romanov Russia    1682-1916                                        234
Britain                    1700-1950                                         250

"The dates given
are largely arbitrary. Empires do not usually
begin or end on a certain date. There is
normally a gradual period of expansion and
then a period of decline. "




I've witnessed earthling's history in the last five centuries and researched the rest from all available records. In the creation of empires, where one would emerge as another recedes, zero sum is manifested as in nature filling a vacuum, which occurs when the preceding empire collapses. After about ten generations, an empire goes through a dramatic decline that it is not able to recover from -  ever. In other words, no past empires ever came back to re-emerge and reclaim its old status. I do not have an explanation for it.There were many smaller empires, regional in scope, that also went through the same sequences, examples of which were the various Chinese dynasties and medium to large kingdoms in western and eastern Europe.

Now, for an intriguing question. Is the country where I now reside considered an empire? Applying the same criteria as was employed to assess the previous ones, the USA is not. It has not colonized nations as a matter of policy or as a path to grow its domain through military means. It used it instead, as in the last two world wars, to help nations in Europe and Asia against unprovoked aggression. Having been a colony itself before becoming  a nation, it constitutionally made it a point to not make permanent occupations of countries it fought and defeated. Helping the two countries that were its primary enemies after the last Great War - Japan and Germany - by making them recover quickly with unprecedented success in less than a generation following, was not an imperialist behavior. 

The U.S. would be an empire if one were to consider that it is today the preeminent military and economic power. It would also be an empire by population. Almost 330 million people who call themselves Americans make up a large number. On the other hand, The Roman Empire was estimated to have been an aggregate of just 65 million people. However, during its time, it was then about 20 % of the total world population. Today, the U.S. makes up a mere 4.5%. Now, the two most populated countries - China and India - are each about 18% of the total world population, with over a billion people each. Those two countries together have more than a third of all humans. China, which is second to the U.S. in gross domestic product (GDP), is striving to become an empire, which was something that eluded all the previous Chinese dynasties. India, as no.6 in GDP, a distant place below China might someday be expected to vie for position of dominance.

The U.S. would be an empire if we go by how it is able to influence world culture through its economy, language, the proliferation of its arts, and as a technology driver. The Roman and Greek Empires had the same influences. Today's dominant business languages have traces of Greek and Latin root words. Both had dominance in the sciences, the arts and, aside from being world powers, they also provided the early basis for how most of today's governments work.

The U.S. would be an empire if its position of dominance is constantly being challenged, even threatened. It is. And that is why I can conclude that zero sum is what drives the emergence of empires. 

This small planet is seeing so many things happening all at once. Unlike during the previous 500 years, especially in the earlier era, when the flow of information took decades to spread, instantaneity today is the norm. But the breakneck speed of technology can have some unforeseen repercussions. Back in those times, when much of history was unfolding unnoticed or unanticipated, empires declined and new ones emerged with regularity, yet only later were they analyzed or understood by historians too far removed from the actual period, least of all to have experienced how people felt, then. A quote I often heard:

‘The only thing we learn from history,’ it
has been said, ‘is that men never learn from
history.’

My observation supports the above quote. What drove the growth of empires? And what drove them to decline? Take away the catch words and phrases of nationalism, patriotism, pride, common ideology, cultural evolution, common good, faith, etc. and what I found are two basic natural motivators of all - food and territory. It took a lot of time for today's civilized society to develop from hunting/gathering tribes, from enclaves to kingdoms to present day nations, but as someone who can step out of it looking in, I can clearly see what few earthlings will admit. I went through all life cycles from the time I spent as a microorganism, then advancing from simple to complex, from solitary to tribal to kingdoms to present day national identities. Food and territory reigned supreme. No one today in advanced countries or societies will ever admit that. 

In 1943, Abraham Maslow wrote a paper on "Theory of Human Motivation" and in it he came up with the "human hierarchy of needs".



Note that physiological needs are at the base of the pyramid. I would stratify each of the hierarchies further, particularly the physiological - to include individual's physical health and well being, the needs to satisfy hunger and thirst, the instinct of self preservation and procreation. Next on the chart are concerns for shelter, the home, the community, and the security of a large number of people and their physical and national boundaries. In a nutshell, the whole pyramid is supported at the bottom and held afloat by food and territory.

Advanced human societies will disagree, specially those in very well developed countries, because their hierarchy of needs are already up there in the rarefied cloud of fancy cars, fine dining, high tech gadgets, the feel-good politically correct behavior, quest for the higher meaning of life, and better health care, etc., oblivious to the struggles of third world countries where much of the population are still  quite literally preoccupied with food and shelter. How quickly they forget how easily these lofty places can be torn and disrupted both by natural-caused disasters and by political errors or shifts in ideology. 

Currently, human mismanagement is responsible for what is happening in Venezuela, parts of Africa, Central and South America, Syria and parts of the Middle East, parts of Asia, etc.

This planet is a virtual islet orbiting a medium sun that has finite resources and limited land that is a mere 29% of the total surface area. The planet has to support an ever increasing population. With the exception of the north and south poles, rain forests, mountain ranges, every square mile of land area and the high seas had been fought over for many centuries in the past. Territories changed hands at the cost of millions upon millions of lives. Over millennia the same major theaters of war hosted battle after battle that Gen. George Patton believed he had fought in, during his previous life, and other prior lives. He believed in reincarnation. Casualties during battles for territory were only matched by casualties from famine in one region or another and the epidemic that followed. Food and territory.

Let me discuss China because it is today fast becoming a dominant economic and military power. And it has to support over a billion people. From its history, famine ravaged Northern China in 1876-79. Drought may have combined with leadership missteps, scattered rebellion and military spending to quell civil disturbances that caused the "Incredible Famine". But that was not the last famine.

After Mao Zedong's "Great Leap Forward" in the mid 50's, famine hit China again between 1959 and 1961. It was called "The Great Chinese Famine". 15 million died from it, while the 1876-79 one  was estimated to have had between 9.5 to 13 million casualties. There had been other famines in Chinese history.  The Taiping Rebellion and famine killed 60 million people. Chinese historians admit that "The Great Chinese Famine". was 30% due to natural causes and 70% by mismanagement.

I will not make any conclusions in this report. All I can say is that there is enough history here on this planet to support a prediction that food and territory combined will play a role in the next big conflict if there is one in the future. An explosive population growth over the same land mass is a bubble under pressure. Zero sum is exponentially more pronounced today in a world populated by 7.2 billion people than it was when the Roman Empire emerged when there were only an estimated 300 million people on earth. Food and territory will loom even more.



Well, Seguey sent its report. It has yet to explain to us the reason it and many of its clones were dispatched eons of years ago from its home planet. Was it because its planet was also facing food and territorial issues? We need its opinion on exactly how long the  U.S. ascendancy can hold on to its preeminence in economic and military power.  If we begin to chart the U.S. ascendancy starting in the early 1900's, must we begin the countdown 230-250 years from that period as the basis for the expiration date of its dominance? Or, should we expect a quickening pace from internal dysfunctions, coupled with the external pressures from up and coming future empires?