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Universal Economics (UnEc) is a non-money alternative economics system which combines the efficiency of a market economy with a strong philosophy of social responsibility. It was first visualized in 1947 by philosopher Addison Brown, in a rudimentary form, as "Prior Choice Economics." But the technology for implementation did not exist at that time. Now it does.

UBS is a commitment that is expressed, not as a sum, but as a share of gross domestic product

The operative word is “shares”: Even with indexation, the UBI is a fixed commitment. What happens as national income or profits continue to rise in an automated world? Is no share to be passed on to the population? Must we be reduced to annual debates about how to adjust the UBI? One can imagine that such debates would constitute a continuing sequence of nightmares. 

I’m going to propose a simple amendment of the UBI that holds out serious hope of dealing with all these issues and more. I’m going to call it the universal basic share, or UBS. It is a commitment that is expressed, not as a sum, but as a share. Specifically, I propose that we commit a fixed fraction of our GDP to the provision of a universal income for all.

Americans believe in the importance of a good day’s work. And so it’s understandable that the prospect of a universal basic income (UBI), in which the government would issue checks to cover the basic costs of living, rubs some people the wrong way. 

But even if some people did stop working, they might wind up contributing to society in other meaningful ways. People who perform the unpaid labor of taking care of children or elderly family members, for example, are certainly doing important work. UBI would simply provide a means of compensating this type of labor efficiently.

And historically, many of mankind’s most groundbreaking achievements have come from people with the luxury of plentiful leisure time. As economist Forget notes in an interview with Freakonomics: “If you look at the 18th and at the 19th century, some of the great scientific breakthroughs and some of the great cultural breakthroughs were made by people who did not work.”

We survey a long list of economic problems, and identify four basic questions that a course in political economy must address:

1. Why is there poverty, amid progress?

2. Why are there Boom/Bust cycles?

3. Must society trade between efficiency and equity?

4. Must society trade between prosperity and environmental sustainability?

Sorry for the black pic. Apparently YouTube doesn't properly link with this medium.

Anyway, click on the title to get to the video!

A startup led by two former Google engineers on Wednesday unveiled a cloud-based "operating system" for banks meant to bring the infrastructure at the heart of finance into the 21st century. 

London-based Thought Machine has been working on its VaultOS platform behind closed doors for two years, with over 50 engineers dedicated to the project. 

The project is one of the first bottom-up attempts to built a modern computer system for banks, which can be used out of the box by any bank and then tailored as necessary. The platform draws on the latest technology such as cloud infrastructure and blockchain.

A titanic battle is being waged for Europe’s integrity and soul, with the forces of reason and humanism losing out to growing irrationality.

In this "Talks at Google" lecture, Yanis Varoufakis delivers a fresh look at the history of Europe’s crisis and America’s central role in it.

He presents the ultimate case against austerity, proposing concrete policies for Europe necessary to address its crisis and avert contagion to America, China, and the rest of the world. With passionate, informative, and at times humorous prose, he warns that the implosion of an admittedly crisis–ridden and deeply irrational European monetary union should, and can, be avoided at all cost.

The universal basic income is an idea whose time has come. And, slowly but surely, it is converting members of the tech elite. 

It’s a radical idea: everyone should get an unconditional, monthly allowance, whether you’re rich or poor, old or young, overworked or out of work. An allowance that should be enough to live on, and how you spend it is up to you. The only condition, as such, it that you have a pulse. 

The influential startup fund Y Combinator is already rolling out a study on basic income. Netscape founder Marc Andreessen calls it “a very interesting idea.” And Business for Basic Income offers a brand-new web platform where business owners worldwide can express their support for the idea...

New Zealand's Labour Party has openly expressed interest in the concept of universal basic income for the country, and they may be doing away with benefits.

Bank of England (BoE) Chief Cashier and Director for Notes, Victoria Cleland, recently gave a speech highlighting the Bank's work on central bank-issued digital currency (CBDC).

Clelands keynote presentation was given at the second international workshop for P2P Financial Systems in London on Sept. 8 and 9.

The BoE co-sponsored the event with Bank of Canada, Deutsche Bundesbank, House of Finance, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and UCL Research Centre, bringing together scholars, regulators, and practitioners. 

“We are undertaking more fundamental long-term research on the wide range of questions posed by the potential of a central bank-issued digital currency [...] We need to understand the potential economic impact of extending access to central bank money.”

Eric Ben-Artzi is a brave man. 

The former Deutsche Bank risk officer was one of three whistleblowers who reported improper accounting at the German bank to regulators in 2010 and 2011. 

In 2015, the SEC imposed a $55 million fine against the bank over the issue. 

Ben-Artzi is due 15% of this sum, or $16.5 million. In an opinion piece in The Financial Times on Thursday, he revealed that he had rejected the payout.... 

Read more at http://www.businessinsider.sg/eric-ben-artzi-deutsche-bank-rejects-payouts-from-sec-2016-8/#h3hGcmXfHEbL2l2X.99

It's like he knew what the main problems of work-cultist capitalism and its socially irresponsible job automation were going to be before the whole mess even got started.

This video is a piece selected from watercourseway1's longer version called "Alan Watts - Money and Guilt"

The RICH Economy
by Robert Anton Wilson 
from The Illuminati Papers 

I don't think there is, or ever again can be, a cure for unemployment. I propose that unemployment is not a disease, but the natural, healthy functioning of an advanced technological society. 

The inevitable direction of any technology, and of any rational species such as Homo sap., is toward what Buckminster Fuller calls ephemeralization, or doing-more-with-less.

For instance, a modern computer does more (handles more bits of information) with less hardware than the proto-computers of the late '40's and '50's. One worker with a modern teletype machine does more in an hour than a thousand medieval monks painstakingly copying scrolls for a century. Atomic fission does more with a cubic centimeter of matter than all the engineers of the 19th Century could do with a million tons, and fusion does even more. 

Unemployment is not a disease; so it has no "cure." 

Read more here: 

https://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/rawilson.html

We won’t fix the problem until we address the nature of the corporation.

Imagine what becomes possible when we start to understand that executives and managers are not strictly beholden to shareholders—who hold their shares for an average of four months—and share prices.

When executives and directors are free to consider a range of stakeholders—workers, suppliers, creditors, customers, shareholders, and the community in which they’re based—in managing a company, it inherently changes their time horizon from the next quarter to the next decade or quarter-century and beyond, because most of these stakeholders have deeper investments in the company...

Iceland was certainly up for jailing their bankers, will they now get away with creating their own money? 

Iceland’s government is considering a revolutionary monetary proposal – removing the power of commercial banks to create money and handing it to the central bank. 

The proposal, which would be a turnaround in the history of modern finance, was part of a report written by a lawmaker from the ruling centrist Progress Party, Frosti Sigurjonsson, entitled “A better monetary system for Iceland”. 

The report, commissioned by the premier, is aimed at putting an end to a monetary system in place through a slew of financial crises, including the latest one in 2008. 

“The findings will be an important contribution to the upcoming discussion, here and elsewhere, on money creation and monetary policy,” Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson said. 

The Scottish National Party (SNP), Scotland’s largest party and the UK’s third largest party, agreed to a motion supporting the introduction of a basic income in Scotland at its spring conference, held on 12-13 March 2016. 

The motion, which was submitted for agreement by the Cumbernauld SNP branch, explicitly opposes the UK government’s approach to social security and proposes an alternative formed around the introduction of a basic income.

The motion states that the “conference believes that a basic or universal income can potentially provide a foundation to eradicate poverty, make work pay and ensure all our citizens can live in dignity.”

Ronnie Cowan MP (SNP) argued that a basic income could “be the flagship policy for a socially just independent country.”