Insight
Santens: Society should aim for full unemployment via machine automation
“We should be investing in automation, and we should be, we should get out of this I'd say almost like, it's like a trap of full employment, this belief that, that it's best for people to be doing these jobs. I think that we should be aiming for full unemployme…”
Assertion Supported
Santens: One week of Fed liquidity could fund a $2,000 monthly UBI
“We could actually be paying for a 2000 dollar a month fully universal basic income for the amount of money that the, in, in, in the Fed is doing in one week.”
Insight
Santens: High inflation functions essentially like a wealth tax on asset owners
“The more inflation that there is, is essentially can be seen as like a wealth tax or something because it disproportionately impacts the, you know, owners of these assets.”
Assertion Supported
Santens: A $1,000 monthly UBI for US citizens costs $3 trillion gross
“So if you do that, and then if you're going to do a thousand dollars per month per person, and you're going to go to citizens in the United States, then it's a little over three trillion dollars. That's the gross cost.”
Insight
Santens: Citizens should receive shareholder-style returns on government-funded tech
“So I think it's important that we see our economy as essentially, you know, a giant corporation where, as citizens, we are stockholders, and we should get a return
On our investment that we're investing in these technologies.”
Insight
Santens: Private foundational R&D like Bell Labs no longer exists
“It used to be the case, like back in the day, like say Bell Labs was a bit, was a company that did a lot of its own R&D, and that just doesn't exist anymore. If it's not profitable, people aren't going to do it. So all these, this exploration in, into new tech…”
Assertion Contradicted
Santens: European companies absorb about half of VAT increases on average
“We also see in Europe, too, that around, on average, about half of that is passed on, and about half is absorbed”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Santens: Consumer economies collapse under automation without decoupled income
“If you eliminate someone's job, then as long as income is coupled to jobs, then you actually are reducing their ability to spend on the stuff that the machines are making. So as you automate more and more, then the entire consumer based system breaks down beca…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Santens: $2,000 monthly stimulus checks will prevent business failures during COVID-19
“So if you do have that money, if you do, if we make sure that everyone gets 2000 dollars a month for the rest of this crisis, Then first of all, you prevent a lot of those businesses from failing that would otherwise have failed. You grow and stimulate these b…”
What-if
Santens: Bailing out homeowners in 2008 would have prevented mortgage securities from failing
“Like, we already know that buying up all these assets was something that vastly increased inequality and vastly Disproportionately, positively impacted, you know, asset holders. And we could have just bailed out the people, made sure that people could afford t…”
Assertion Supported
Santens: 1970s Gary guaranteed income experiment boosted homeownership by 26%
“In Gary, Indiana, and that experiment, we saw that there was a large increase in homeownership. So people use that money and they use that to buy homes. It actually increased homeownership by 26%.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Santens: Nationwide UBI will reduce rental price pressure in major cities
“If you enable people to actually move from cities to rural areas, And it would even make sense to do that because your, you know, thousand dollars or 2000 dollars or whatever it is, is going to go further in those lower cost of living areas. Then again, you're…”
Opinion
Santens: Basic income should create an economic floor indexed to productivity
“I believe that, that it makes sense to have an unconditional basic income floor. So we have, you know, a floor that operates underneath this entire economy. Everyone is earning income on top of that floor, and the floor is rising so that it's indexed to produc…”
Assertion Supported
Santens: Every dollar in Canada's Child Benefit increases GDP by two dollars
“Every dollar distributed actually increases GDP by two dollars.”
Opinion
Santens: Replacing entire welfare state with $1,500 UBI is not politically saleable
“I don't think that that would pass. I think that that's appeals to a very specific segment, and I don't think that that would be politically saleable.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Santens: Pandemic job losses will not return due to machine automation
“Are all those people going to go back to their jobs? No, they are absolutely not going to go back to their jobs. You're going to have a lot more machines doing a lot of these jobs for one thing.”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Santens: Post-pandemic job recovery will be worse than the 2008 recession
“So we're gonna, I expect us to see something even worse than we saw the last time this happened when, you know, it took 10 years to create all these jobs that we just lost in a matter of time.”
Insight
Santens: Crisis cash transfers must be fully universal, not means-tested
“I think it's really important that we have a fully universal amount, especially right now. Because of this not knowing The situations that people are in.”
Disclosure
Santens: I would work as Trump's advisor to implement basic income
“I'm personally not planning on voting for Trump, but I would absolutely Work with him myself. I would help him design a plan. I would, like, speak to him and be his advisor, and, you know, I would be a part of making this happen if it was if I had the potentia…”
Assertion Supported
Santens: US economic productivity has doubled since the 1970s
“That our economy has actually grown twice as productive as we were back in the seventies.”
Insight
Santens: Automation drives underemployment, not just unemployment
“So a lot of the story of automation is actually not only about unemployment, but about underemployment.”
What-if
Santens: A $1,000 UBI from 1971 indexed to GDP per capita would be $2,300 today
“If we had introduced a thousand dollar a month basic income, no under Nixon in the 71, then right now that would be close to, you know, I think it would be like 2300 dollars a month, somewhere around there right now. That was index GDP per capita.”
Assertion Supported
Santens: A 10% US VAT generates around $800B in revenue
“If you have a 10% value-added tax, then that generates around eight hundred billion dollars worth of revenue.”
Assertion Supported
Santens: 1970s Manitoba basic income study reduced hospitalizations by 8.5%
“So one of the impacts in the Delphine Manitoba study in Canada in the 19 seventies was a reduced hospitalization rate of 8.5%.”
