Thread by @scottsantens

31% of American workers would be unable to cover basic living expenses after missing a single paycheck. Missing two would lead to over half the country being unable to meet their basic needs without relying on savings or debt.

marketwatch.com/story/half-of-… #BasicIncome #YangGang

Economists and politicians love to ignore stuff like this and instead focus on the employment rate. Half the friggin country is economically insecure despite being employed. Most Americans are spending most of their time just trying to survive another month.

We're bailing water.

Not only does this level of insecurity lead to stress and the physiological consequences of stress, it also makes us mostly unable to really think much about anything else. Climate change? Ha, yeah right. What matters is eating tomorrow, not the long-term survival of our species.

There's also the fact we're a consumer-based economy. 70% of our economy is based on our collective ability to purchase stuff from each other. If all we're doing is eating & paying our bills, we're not buying the stuff that drives our economy.

Our production is wasted on the 1%.

All of this is just dumb. If we simply all started each month with something instead of nothing, insecurity would fall and our ability to purchase stuff other than the basics would rise. And universal basic income would not only grow our economy, it would enable purchase of time.

Why is the purchasing of time important? Because we're all working too much! We need time to think, and play, and socialize. Instead of focusing only on growth, we need to create a circular economy that constantly increases our productivity and decreases our resource consumption.

A society built upon the backs of an increasingly insecure population with decreasing ability to do anything else but survive is a bad idea. We need to reorganize our society so that over time people become more & more free to truly live.

It's about thriving, not just surviving.