An Analysis Of Thomas Friedman's 'Thank You For Being Late'
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Thomas Friedman, the author of “Thank You for Being Late”, wrote that every two years since 1965 the speed and power of microchips has doubled. This theory has kept true for fifty years. In 2007 the doubling stopped and a software boom began. Since then, there have been major developments in technology including robotics and artificial intelligence. The developments in technology have created a fear that robots are taking over too many jobs, which in turn creates the fear of losing income. From the fear of losing income an idea was created that could fix the problem. Universal Basic Income or UBI was the propositioned idea.
UBI is a cash payment given monthly by the government to all citizens, regardless of employment status or salary. While it sounds like a good idea, it won’t be in the long run for three main reasons. Reason one, UBI lead to a higher inequality. The second reason is that it will undermine social cohesion, and the final reason is that UBI is financially irresponsible.
Many people believe that UBI will lower the poverty count, but that is not the case. I think that UBI would take away from existing…show more content… has too much debt to correctly execute this plan without either putting the U.S. in more debt or heightening taxes. What would be the point of using UBI if the money that people would be receiving would be going into taxes instead of food, healthcare, and housing? Martin Ford author of "Rise of the Robots", suggests that we could raise certain taxes in order to raise the revenue to put UBI into action. The taxes that he suggests to raise are the carbon-tax, value-added tax, corporate tax, national land tax, higher capital gains tax, and financial transaction tax. Ford then goes on to tell us that UBI will cost approximately 2 trillion dollars, other than raising taxes, there isn’t much the government can do other than create more debt by getting loans from other