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I don't pay as much attention to politics as I maybe should, and it's actually pretty hard for most politicians to even get much of my attention, because I'm somewhat cynical, and also so preoccupied with the usual things I'm preoccupied with - my own projects (mostly programming), reading library ebooks, and trying to maintain my health, and not relapse back into being fatigued, headachy, and poorly nourished.

However, American presidential candidate Andrew Yang has succeeded in getting my attention, because he's actually strongly promoting the ideas of universal basic income and human-centered capitalism!

Andrew Yang is doing a giveaway of ten Freedom Dividends - $1,000 of basic income per month for 12 months, which you can enter to win at:

Quoted from the rules page:

The Promotion begins on September 12, 2019 at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time and ends on September 19, 2019 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time (the "Promotional Period"). All entries must be received within the Promotional Period to be eligible to win the prize. Sponsor reserves the right to reopen submissions at any time and set a new deadline for additional submissions.

I'm actually reluctant to enter, because if I win, I'm not sure I'd really want that much public attention.

I don't think $1,000 per month for 12 months is enough for me to be particularly happy to appear in the media in connection with anything political. Actually, probably no amount of money would make me really happy to do that.

Especially since the media, and many in the media's audience, are sometimes quite unkind to people who have failed to lem.

But, even though I'm reluctant to enter the giveaway, I just thought I'd blog about this, since a Freedom Dividend could be of great financial help to probably many people reading this, and I'm very happy that a plausible presidential candidate is actually promoting the ideas of universal basic income and human-centered capitalism.

I still haven't learned very much about Andrew Yang yet - but, promoting universal basic income and human-centered capitalism seems very wise and prescient, given that a future outcome of increased technological automation will likely be increased unemployment.

I was intrigued to learn that, according to this interview of Andrew Yang by Stephen Colbert after around 2 minutes, 23 seconds - Martin Luther King and Thomas Paine also were in favor of universal basic income.

I think it would be wonderful for everyone to be able to be free of having to pursue money, which would give everyone more time, peace of mind, and opportunity to engage in the pursuit of happiness, and give everyone a break from being pursued (and/or slowly digested) by the life-destroying monster that is poverty.

It would make life so much better for anyone with sleep issues (such as circadian sleep issues, or other sleep issues) who is being literally tortured by work schedules which clash with their body's circadian rhythms.

Anyone trapped in a career they loathe would finally have a much easier time quitting and doing something else instead.

Many homeless people might finally be able to afford their own apartment or other home, at least in parts of the USA where apartments, rental houses, or even mortgages still cost less than $1000 per month.

However, housing and apartments can be so extremely expensive that I think some amount of universal basic income more than $1,000 per month would be a much more comfortable amount. I think my family's mortgage here in northeast Ohio went up from something like $860 to $960 per month in recent years.

But, even with "only" $1,000 of universal basic income per month - no longer having to live in fear that we might not be able to afford to pay our mortgage would be wonderful!

I still adore Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders and @SenSanders on Twitter), even though I don't agree with him on everything (such as taxation, or a jobs guarantee). I think universal basic income would give people a lot more freedom than only a jobs guarantee:

A tweet by Andrew Yang quoted in that article:

Bernie ignores the facts that money in our hands would 1) create hundreds of thousands of local jobs and 2) recognize and reward the nurturing work being done in our homes and communities every day. He also assumes that everyone wants to work for the government which isn't true.

- Andrew Yang (@AndrewYang) 11:30 AM - Aug 27, 2019

I particularly like "2) recognize and reward the nurturing work being done in our homes and communities every day".

I think for people who want to be stay-at-home parents or caregivers, a sufficiently large amount of universal basic income would probably be much more helpful than any very time-consuming guaranteed job outside of their own homes. Or even inside their own homes.

But, I definitely think it would be nice to be able to have both universal basic income, and also the option of getting a guaranteed job.

Especially if that guaranteed job was also guaranteed to be as flexible as I would need, due to my sleep issues (possibly Non-24-hour Sleep-Wake Disorder) often making it torturously difficult for me to deal with any fixed schedule.

I just wish there were a way other than taxation to fund universal basic income. Perhaps there is?

Here's a blog post I wrote which (among other things) explains why I am against all taxation:

In that, I also mentioned some possible alternatives to taxation: lotteries, or crowdfunding via something like Kickstarter.

I think raffles would be another good idea. One of the credit unions (non-profit bank alternatives) I use - DCU (Digital Federal Credit Union) - raises a lot of money every month for the DCU for Kids charity by holding raffles, in which they sell 3,000 raffle tickets for $20 apiece, for a total of $60,000 per raffle!

$20,000 goes to the winner of the raffle, while the rest goes to DCU for Kids.

The tickets often sell out so fast, I've sometimes missed my chance to buy a ticket! But even though I've never won any of those raffles so far, I'm very happy that at least my money is going to some good causes. (And also pleased that a 1 in 3000 chance of winning $20,000 is much better than the odds of winning a huge lottery.)

The DCU for Kids raffle is real-world proof that raffles really can work brilliantly and reliably for raising large amounts of money for good causes.

So, perhaps universal basic income could actually be funded completely voluntarily via similar raffles?

Andrew Yang wrote 2 books! I haven't read them yet, but I definitely want to.

Hopefully, these books will be available on your local library's OverDrive website, which has legally free ebooks you can borrow and read on your computer or phone.

I'm going to read them before I decide whether or not I'm going to vote for Andrew Yang in 2020.

But so far, I'm definitely very impressed with Andrew Yang.

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