S3 E52 P2 Right to A Minimum Standard of Living

Episode discussion topics

• This represents part 2 of the Five-Point Plan introduced in episode 50.
• The right to a minimum standard of living can provide for the general welfare as our Constitution clearly states. Regardless, without a solid foundation and fair rules, our people will not flourish.
• Everyone should have equal rights to the following:
  • Justice under the law. Perhaps courts should become blinded to their biases, not just figuratively, but literally. Cut out extraneous sensory data from decisions that carry the weight of life or death. Judges making bail decisions are not as good at their job as AI. Talking With Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell reports this and explains how biases and other behaviors that are known to psychologists come to play in making us bad at judging others.
  • Compassionate healthcare for all regardless of affordability. People should not go bankrupt for healthcare and we need to start with access to healthful foods and end with the liberty to die with dignity. Credit bureaus even recognize the moral quandary around debt from healthcare and have decided to stop carrying this information in our credit files.
  • Equal pay for equal work and a livable minimum wage. Nothing is more priceless than one's limited time on Earth. It's pretty clear. What else do we need to say?
  • An environment left conducive to life. Borrowed from comments on biomimicry, the study of nature to leverage its designs for our problems. Nature's designs tend to yield products that leave the world ready for more life to grow. Our products should do the same wherever possible. We discuss more on this in S2 E25 New Economics a la Doughnut.
  • Our right to liberty requires us to demilitarize the homeland, both our citizens and law enforcement in kind. Also, we need to keep the likes of automated warfare limited, like the nuclear and biological kinds are. Beware the tale of Skynet - it will be privately owned.
  • Additionally, we need to reserve prisons for only the most violent offenders among us and offer a fair shot at a second chance for full liberty. This needs to be available to all who serve their time and change their ways in support of the common good.
• Calls to Action:
  • A minimum standard of living with liberty and dignity can be achieved for us all using a universal basic income. This will have the added effect of releasing many new inventors, thinkers, and creators to emerge from under the oppression of low wages and high expenses. Being beholden to jobs is not the pursuit of happiness. Rather we should be learning, growing, and contributing to the common good. That is what counts.
    • We call it "The National Floor." It's a floor for people and their main streets, wall street, and our government.
    • It provides a basic income, where no income exists, for all of those living under the jurisdiction of our laws, taxation, and economy.
    • The add-on effect of these direct payments will generate a trickle upward feeding a basic self-sustaining level of economic revenues for all businesses and governments, as well as savings for those employed well enough to be exiting the program.
    • People are the ones most motivated to solve the problems in their lives if only one has enough to eat and a roof over one's head to think. Government programs cannot be a sustainable solution as they are one-size-fits-all and take agency away from people to figure it out themselves.
  • This will require us to fundamentally re-examine ourselves and perhaps our longest-held beliefs. Only our lack of openness to imaginative solutions can hold us back. We should have the liberty to choose how and when we participate in the economy because ou