Universal Basic Income on “Me Too”

Young people desperately want to live in a more ethical world with more equality. It’s a burning issue of our times, especially as capitalism tethers on wealth-inequality corruption like we haven’t seen before in the modern era. If Me Too is a global movement that has gotten stronger in recent years, so too has the economic 1%, those with the most power and wealth (typically men).

Universal Basic Income has some good fundamentals, that everyone should receive a basic stipend to promote wealth equality and reduce poverty as humanity approaches decades of increasing automation, AI, robotics and new kinds of work, jobs and a future of work.

However the rightful marriage of UBI and Me Too,

isn’t perhaps something you have thought of. It’s a concept I’ve been thinking about for years and is the opposite of the current patriarchal model. It’s actually that those women who are mothers and do the majority of “unpaid work” should be first in line for a basic stipend. This is really important to understand, as women are the foundation of society in ways we haven’t even really acknowledged in thousands of years.

Extreme poverty is usually defined as living on less than $1.90 per day. In most places in the world it’s girls and women who do the majority of unpaid caring work without direct economic help for doing so. That capitalism should pay mothers for doing what they love to do to some might sound counter-intuitive, but in a world of upside down population pyramids incentivizing fertility rates will become a bigger issue. Consumerism is all about profiting from nuclear families, but what if this model no longer works?

There’s a second poverty line for lower-middle class countries. It’s the World Bank that created it, a second poverty threshold of $3.20 per day. Again women in such countries should have more direct access to a global UBI when it manifests. Women in places like Africa, Indonesia, India, Brazil, Pakistan and China. If you take humanity as a whole, a basic stipend for women in these emerging countries and regions makes the most sense along the lines of Me Too. Me Too shouldn’t just be some tag-line for Hollywood, famous celebrities and the drama of sexual misconduct of powerful men in America, it should be about something meaningful, tangible and real for generations to come.

Unpaid care work around the world is still disproportionately done by women and girls. — Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

The “Me Too” I care about is for women in the future. It’s for a basic income that supports our most vulnerable population and yet those who will be the “mothers of the future”. I’d argue, UBI should not be for the male manufacturer who has lost his job in America and who is not able to up-skill, it should be prioritized for the truly vulnerable citizens of the world first, they should come first.

Rarely is the idea of unpaid work and UBI thought of together, but I believe in the future it will increasingly be connected. Unpaid care work — which includes gathering water, cooking, and taking care of children — shows the consequences of gender inequality, according to the report. Instead of building underground apocalypse shelters maybe the 1% should think more about global equality, unless they want massive civil unrest and riots on their hands.

Even in Western countries, in most households women do the majority of the chores. In poorer countries it’s even more exaggerated. “This work, some of which is drudgery and some of which is deeply rewarding, is disproportionately shouldered by women and girls,” the report said. “The burden of unpaid care work is one reason why women are poorer than men, especially during the years when they devote the most time to child rearing.”

With aging populations and declining fertility countries like South Korea of experimented with paying people to have children. This is where a UBI for mothers truly comes in affords a feasible way for families to have a future together in a rapidly changing world for young people. On Earth we’re likely to hit 10 billion people by 2060, many of whom will be living in places like Nigeria, India, Indonesia and so forth and with rising wealth inequality their quality of life while improving in some ways, will still need a Me Toofor the real women of the world, to ensure that humanity is safe and that the mothers of the next generation are supported.

Let’s not think of UBI as welfare, but as a human right, where women who do the majority of “unpaid work” and who are mothers (especially single Mothers) should get priority to being recipients of an unconditional basic stipend. It’s women after all, who are the universal care givers of society. It’s time to give back.