Universal basic income can help us really find purpose in life where we're living with passion and a greater amount of enthusiasm as opposed to just drudging through life stuck at a job or it feels like we obligated to be at a job simply to earn money to make a living. Now we all have choices that we can make, we don't have to be at a particular job but many times it is hard to leave what we're currently doing for something else that even though it might be more exciting there is a higher level of risk, so it makes us re-evaluate and just stick to what we currently are doing right now.
This is where universal basic income can play a vital role in helping us make a greater impact on ourselves and others. Just think when we're lacking energy for the jobs that we're doing there's a tendency for our effort low and how can we excel at something where we're given less than our best. It’s estimated that 85% of global workers are dissatisfied with their jobs and more than 50% of US workers are unhappy with their jobs.
This alone does not mean that people that fall in this category are going to perform poorly and in fact they might even do their jobs extremely well but just think about how much better or more efficient they can be if they were satisfied with their jobs. This could lead to them making more effort that can produce better results overall and a more fulfilled experience in what they choose to do.
Everybody's chosen line of work comes from different reasons. Ideally what many of us long for or are pursuing is something that we enjoy that fulfills us and allows us to earn enough money to buy our essentials and have money left over to enjoy what we want to do with it. This is different for many people with so many different possibilities that people want.
But the common thing that most of us share about why we choose the job that we're at or career is money, which dictates a lot of the choices that we make. We might be doing something simply out of necessity. This is what I'm competent at, this is what I'm good at and I can leverage my skill set to get paid for it.
Affords us time to figure out what to do
What can really help many of us out in truly excelling and living fulfilled lives is having some sort of basic universal income where we’re able to afford the necessities based on a set allowance that can buy us time to develop and work ourselves into what we want to do. We've all heard that passions aren't going to pay the bills and obviously that's understandable, to a point.
The term starving artists are poked fun at and that just leads to valuing ourselves based on the income that we're generating or that we have. In hearing enough of this can reinforce that maybe I need to find something that I can tolerate that is going to allow me to live for today and tomorrow.
But we should look for something that allows us to move past just existing, and instead having that drive of getting out of bed looking forward to what we are going to do. This sounds great and for those that get to this point it is a hard long journey to get to.
Many people who've experienced this type of success where they went off on their own and pursued those passions had to go through a lot of disappointment and for many of us that can be very scary and off putting where we're just fine with taking the path of least resistance. This leads to making one compromise after another.
Some sort of universal basic income helps take that pressure off of not having to take a job that we're not satisfied with and instead find something that really drives us to give our best. At first some of the initial thoughts could be who's going to work and who's going to produce all the goods and services that we all need.
With the rise of regenerative artificial intelligence and a lot more automation that is becoming available at more affordable cost it's going to allow many businesses to operate with less people involved. There may even come a day when people don't have to work for a living as most jobs will be taken care of but people will have a need to belong and contribute and working fills that need.
This is just an idea that should be further explored and it's something that has been tried throughout different periods in history, but it hasn't quite stuck. But a universal basic income that maybe not covers all our needs but a significant portion that allows us to maybe only to work part time so that we can work on developing ourselves into what we want to do.
This could be working part time at a grocery store while still being able to farm on the side and sell produce to the local farmer’s market. Or it could be enough time to write the books that you've always wanted to or come up with a screenplay for a movie.
Wrapping our minds around the concept
Having this type of opportunity might seem like this pie in the sky dream that seems totally unrealistic, but it seems like it is a very real possibility if we can just take more time to figure out some of the logistical things involved. They're still going to be many challenging hurdles to overcome, pain points and even when a viable solution is worked out there's still going to be issues with it.
Just look at the common everyday things that we use that are functionable but still have issues things like cars and appliances and even the foods that we eat, they all have issues. A car is going to break down from time to time, an appliance is not going to work when you need it to, food poisoning still happens yet we still make it work.
What we should be focusing on is just progressive work and with any new technology or any new system. In this case basic universal income is not a new system but the more that we become acclimated and work on it, we can refine it more to make it better and better, each time improving the versions of it.
Just think of space travel maybe a few years ago, for sure even a decade ago it just seemed very out of reach and now it's becoming a lot more common where people who are not astronauts to travel to space. They're not going to the moon or Mars yet but they're taking steps that eventually lays the foundational work that allows access to those places a lot more frequently. So it's really pushing the envelope where we're wrapping our minds around the concept and eventually it becomes more concrete and less unthinkable.
The exact amount of how much each person would get requires many well thought out discussions between government officials and citizens as the state of the economy needs to be ironed out. It seems like for this to work we got to be able to not overindulge or over ask what we're going to get.
Getting $10,000 monthly per person seems totally unrealistic but maybe $800, $900 or even $1000 monthly per adult is reasonable. It provides a good enough balance where certain costs are covered such as food and water along with maybe a little bit of housing costs and then the remaining is left up to each individual person to figure out how they're going to come up with the amount to satisfy they're living essentials.
This can lead to an array of opportunities for many people to just want to better themselves theoretically. We're still going to have that want to just get by and lounge around but experiencing enough of that leads to boredom and unfulfillment that can trigger people to find something to do. Yes, there's going to be some consequences like people getting into trouble simply because they're bored but eventually with enough people having time to themselves, they’ll figure out potential solutions to curb the want to cause trouble.
Addressing the concerns
The counter argument for a basic universal income is that it's just going to make people lazy, dumb, and dependent on being fed. It’s going to disincentivize them to want to work. But really, it's going to give them the opportunity to find out what they really want to do with their lives because there's only so much fun that we can really enjoy in a certain period before it starts to get old and just dull. After so much fun there's going to come a point in time where we ask ourselves what’s next, is this all there is just have a good time.
Certain interests are going to take over where people are going to start to investigate a bit more and more. Think about how many people today are doing something they had no intention of doing and are just not satisfied with their career choice. Maybe a person who became an investment banker had no intention of doing that but did so because of financial security it could provide. Maybe they wanted to be a cowboy and then saw that they made very little money.
It's amazing what people can do when they don't feel an obligation that they have to do it. Can you imagine going to work in a case like this? It wouldn't be so much work in the traditional sense of clocking in and out just for a paycheck but instead wanting to work and not having to work. It's a totally different outlook that can really uplift a person's outlook.
Think of some of the common things that are said such as I have to get to work or I'm going to be late for work. But with the help of universal income, it can really change the mindset where we're thinking more of, I want get to work because I want to get all these things done. Like a hobby, you look forward to it. Some people have hobbies of fixing cars, building houses, welding, farming, cooking, so many things that naturally fall in line with the work that needs to get done.
This is probably going to make us more efficient in the work that we do as well because instead of just staying at a workplace for the traditional 40 hours or in some cases certain industries work a lot longer it's going to be how can I use my time more efficiently. How can I get this work done effectively and move on to the next thing.
Currently in the workforce we're conditioned to move on to the next thing without really much incentive, the hourly rate stays the same so whether we do four jobs in a day or one job in a day it doesn't make a difference. But for the business owners or the managers running the company there is an incentive to get everybody to get as much work done as possible because it makes them, and their business look good. This naturally causes tension between those giving out commands and those that carry them out were the workers feel like they're serving the higher up chain in command.
This can make a person feel dictated, having some of their freedom restricted. It kind of takes away some sense of empowerment that the bosses run their lives. What’s commonly said when people quit a job it's not so much the job that they quit but it's their managers or their bosses that they quit. People can make or break things. No matter what business, people are the ones the determine how well it does.
Final thoughts
Potentially a universal basic income can really help each individual person thrive in their life to not be so concerned about the short-term results as long as we are afforded the opportunity to figure out what do we want to do in life. The younger we are the more time is needed to develop ourselves to grow to figure out what works well for us. Some of us are late bloomers and there seems to be a negative connotation with that because it's all about keeping up with the herd comparing well to others.
While there's drawbacks to a universal basic income and there's always going to be some sort of issue with whatever we do. What system or what practice do we have that is flawless? There's nothing that we use that is free of problems, there's always some sort of irregularities, challenges, frustrations, and setbacks that we're always going to experience. Let’s get away from I worked hard so everybody else has to work just as hard. You can still work hard and be rewarded for it and for others that don’t they’ll get the minimum and there is nothing wrong with that.
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