YouSaid · the spoken record

Annie Lowrey

lines on the record: 72
first: 2018-07-11
most recent: 2018-07-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, so a lot of the energy for it comes from tech, right? So right now, you know, probably what, 50 miles from here, Stockton is sending out payments. Why Combinator is sending out payments as part of a pilot. And then Canada recently started doing it in the province of Ontario Yeah, I know actually that's a governmental one. But yeah, so a lot of this interest comes from tech. And I think that where it comes from tech, a lot of that concern is about, well, what if robots take all of our jobs and none of us are working? So that's the kind of like probably the third bucket of interest in it comes from this great fear that someday we're all going to be out of a job and that technology is advancing so rapidly that we won't need people to work in factories anymore. We won't need truck drivers.”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whereas in the high income countries here in the US and in some places like in Europe, it's driven by sort of two impulses. So one is let's have the government be smaller, less paternalistic by just giving people cash and not kind of meddling in their lives. So this is sort of the libertarian Charles Murray type argument. And then the second looks at this country and says we have a huge number of kids who grow up in poverty despite all the money that we spend. We have a huge number of non-disabled adults who are in poverty. Maybe a way to do this is actually just to give them cash. Let's like stop and just directly transfer money because again, we really don't do unconditional cash transfer payments in this country outside of Social Security.”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Job training. We think that they are going to be better off if they are just no longer destitute, if their kids are eating enough. It's going to give them that little bit of buffer. They might even work more, right? Because they'll be able to just, you know, they won't be in that kind of time.”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. So, the current movement comes from, so there's a bunch of lower income countries that are like, you know, so India being the biggest one, but a lot of smaller ones that are like, we want to end poverty as simply and cheaply as possible. We are going to do cash payments to as many poor people as possible.”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they were like, what do you mean? I said, You need to get off the streets because the government built those. You need to get off the highways. You need to stop using the highways. Also, fire department, you can't use it anymore. And I was like, I started listing all the things. And I said, how World War II work out for you? Because that was a really good government addition to you. I mean, you'd be goose stepping down Market Street if we didn't kind of do that one kind of thing. And it was really, they were like, well, and I go, you use the government all the time when it suits you and not when it doesn't. Absolutely. You need to stop saying this or you need to just go live in a hut in the middle of the woods, which, by the way, is probably being maintained by the government. The woods are probably, you know what I mean? So we do get payments. But so talking about this UBI itself. So why is it come back in this way? Is it just a rebranding of something? Or is it, and who started it?”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're working. Yeah, exactly. Because they're that they own this kind of thing, which is an interesting thing when you start. I had a, I got a years ago when there's people who hate the government, I forget that group, the libertarian. Whatever. No, there's a whole bunch of them. And I've got on the phone with separatists. They got on the phone with me and we're starting to argue like we don't need government. We don't need government. We don't need government. And I said, and I stay on the phone with these people. And I said, well, you know, how was your commute to work today”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. And that's a really good way of putting it. And so that's one of these ways that culturally we see the direct provision of cash or something else to a low-income family as being sort of”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, Snap is food stamps, supplemental nutrition assistance program, which is about 40 million Americans use it in any given month, I think. But higher income Americans, they're like, no, government doesn't do anything to help me, even if they have a mortgage, they're absolutely receiving home mortgage interest deduction, and probably a lot of other things. The government interacts with high income families, but it tends to do so through the tax code. So you don't really see it, and it doesn't feel like assistance because you're not getting a”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So Right, absolutely. And I think that you point out a good and interesting thing, which is that the government is constantly giving and taking money, even from people who would never say that they're on the best example of this in my mind is there's a really interesting study that was done by a woman named Suzanne Mattler. And she asked people, Do you receive any like, does the government help you? I forget the exact phrase of the question, but do you receive government assistance or like are you on a government program? And poor people, they know. They're like, yeah, I get snap. I get food stamps.”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bootstraps idea. Yeah, it's also a cultural thing, right? Like we really, really think pretty deeply in this country that able-bodied adults should work and should take care of themselves and that that's the best path out of poverty.”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the goal being let's alleviate the worst forms of destitution in low income countries. And one thing that's kind of been quietly happening is that even really low income countries have built safety nets kind of in the model of Europe or the US. So like Ethiopia now has a pretty big system of cash payments to poor people. And that didn't used to be true like 100 years ago because these countries just didn't have any capacity to do it. So here in the US, it's probably the most divisive place for this because of our really complicated racial history. But, you know,”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And what's funny is that it's actually giving money to poor people is way less controversial in poor countries. So a lot of the big middle income countries, India, Brazil, Mexico, it's really not controversial to take poor folks and just be like, here's some cash. You know, like, let's get some more calories into your kids. Let's make sure that you have a roof.”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Way of saying that there's always been this tension. It takes on, like you said, a demonization versus in Europe where people are used to that. That's part of the social contract. Is that we're going to pay poor people to not be as poor as they are? Right, and not require them to work and not require them to do anything else. And in this country, it is, it's demonized. You're taking money, like welfare queens, that whole concept.”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. I have no ability to make money. And that the simplest way, and perhaps the best way to get them out of poverty is just to give them cash. So here in the US, you have this very like bootstraps culture from the very beginning. And so wealth. And then, because of the country's racial history, welfare 20 years ago becomes and 50 years ago maybe, becomes seen as being politically unpalatable because it's a way to support black single moms. And it gets really demonized. And so we don't do cash payments in this country in the way that European and other social democracies or the European social democracies do. So this is all a very long way of saying, but there's always been this tension.”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The British crown decides that they're going to have to do something about this, so they credit the system of this is in the late Tudor period, poor laws. And those create workhouses for poor people to work in. They also create adole cash payments. And so then for the next 500 years, you have this really kind of complicated, interesting history of how governments decide to give money to poor people and support poor people. And we could sit here talking about this for like 10 years. It's a very detailed history. But since 500 years ago, there's been this threat of thought that like instead of giving people work, you should just keep them, give them cash. And that the kind of fundamental insight there is that the problem with poor folks is that they don't have enough money. Right. It's nothing else, right? Or not or that no.”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly to like this mercantilist capitalist economy. And this transition as these big transitions often are is kind of ugly. You end up with all of these serfs who instead of being able to till kind of land that is owned by a lord and live off of it instead are working for the Lord for wages. This is like a gross oversimplification, but this causes all sorts of poverty, especially, and there's a lot of wars going on at the time. And it causes a lot of poverty and specifically urban poverty. So people kind of get booted off of their feudal land and they come to these cities and they become beggars. And so”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the truth is that the government does this in all sorts of different ways, either through the direct public provision of services, right? So things like the medical system for the military or by financing things, right? Like the home mortgage interest deduction. But the history of the idea is really long and interesting. So it's like 500 years ago. Oh.”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Kind of. Yeah, except the government is constantly Handing the money. Absolutely. So Absolutely. And so I think the clearest and most immediate way to say it for people to understand it is Social Security, right? Everybody who's working, you're going to pay taxes with the understanding that you're going to quote unquote get that money back. It's not quite as simple as you getting the money back, but the idea is, you know, you're going to pay a payroll tax and then that money is going to come back to you when you retire.”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We know a lot about what makes a change in people's lives, but we also, there are a lot of things that don't work very well. Right. Like giving $100 million to New York school system didn't seem to work very well. But this does. And so, and then, you know, it had just been that there were a ton of experiments and it became sort of a part of party platforms on the left in Europe. And so then decided to write a book about it, not so much sort of stumping for the idea, which Chris used and Andy Stern and a lot of other really great podcasts.”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. How the government is shaping the economy and shaping individual financial decisions. So I'd written about UBI a couple times because there had been a referendum in Switzerland that got like a surprising amount of support but didn't come pass. And then I wrote about a charity that is based in New York but is funded with a lot of money from Facebook and Instagram founders and a lot of tech money called Give Directly. And so what they do is they take money and they give it directly to poor people in Kenya, Uganda, and now one other country trying to remember anyway, but they give it in the Great Lakes region of Africa. And so they sort of go and they target villages that are very low income. They give people cell phones and then people get mobile money transfers. And this has been shown to work really well to alleviate poverty. Right. Where it's actually, it's pretty hard.”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, my first job out of college, the economy was falling apart. This was 2007, and I was an assistant at the New Yorker for a while in Washington, D.C. So basically, you know, like getting coffee and transcribing interviews and stuff. Then I made this jump and became a writer and ended up as the money box columnist for Slate. So did that for a while, which was an amazing and a great job. That's in DC. Then I covered treasury for the New York Times and wrote about economic policy for the New York Times for some time. Then kind of went and decided to do magazine writing. So I wrote for the New York Times magazine, New York magazine, and now I write for the Atlantic. So that was the general trajectory. But I mean, it's always been that I like writing about how the government impacts individual humans' lives, basically, or how individual human lives impact the government backwards. And that has, you know, it has a lot of salience out here in Silicon.”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hi, I'm Kara Swisher, editor at large at Recode. You may know me as someone who thinks universal basic income is too much. Let's just focus on Earth. But in my spare time, I talk tech and you're listening to Recode Decode from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today in the red chair is Annie Lowry, who writes about economic policy for the Atlantic. Her new book is called Give People Money, How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World. Annie, well, that's a lot of stuff, Annie. I know. It's a very...”
2018-07-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Why do some in the tech community support universal basic income? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT