National Post

A New Hampshire family that received a $1,000-a-month “freedom dividend” for a year from the campaign of Democratic presidential contender Andrew Yang spent most of the money on college bills – but also on an improv class for the unemployed dad.

Chuck Fassi had lost his job as a manager for a company servicing chemical dispensing equipment when his family got the first check in January 2019.

He had never heard of Yang before his daughter, Janelle, mentioned the candidate’s universal basic income plan, or UBI, and nominated her family for it.

By George Dutch

George Dutch is a career counselor in Ottawa, Ontario and curator of the online magazine, UnDone, devoted to exploring the intersect between technology and work.

Algorithms are a silent killer of jobs. According to Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Stephen Hawking and other luminaries, these mathematical calculations will continue leaking into the vital organs of our economic system through computers and robots until they cause a massive hemorrhage in the labour market.

Social analysts have called for preventative treatments to avoid a calamity of economic insecurity and social unrest. A social dividend as some form of Basic Income (BI) is now being tested in various jurisdictions around the world (including three Ontario cities) to evaluate its potential for inoculating citizens against mass unemployment, income inequalities and the destruction of the middle class.