Universal Basic Income: eBay Founder Gives $500,000 To Project In Kenya

The American workforce is going to change dramatically as robots and automation continue to take the place of humans. To combat that, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar has pledged nearly half a million dollars to test a universal basic income program.

The cash will come from the Omidyar Network, the tech mogul’s philanthropic investment firm and be doled out to people living in Kenya through a program called GiveDirectly. The money will be used to run a 12-year pilot program to test the feasibility of universal basic income.

Through the program, a group of 6,000 Kenyan citizens will be granted regular stipends for the duration of the experiment. About 20,000 more people will also receive some form of cash to supplement their income.

The concept of universal basic income has been gaining steam, especially among Silicon Valley types who see the technological breakthroughs they are participating in as potential threats to today’s workforce.

While much ado has been made about the outsourcing of jobs overseas, a 2015 study from Ball State University's Center for Business and Economic Research found that 88 percent of factory jobs were lost to automation and other factors that reduce the need for human labor.

Those percentages are only likely to increase, especially as automated vehicles begin to populate the road. This won’t just cut back on the amount of driving people do during commutes, but also threatening to eliminate jobs for truck drivers, taxi drivers and many more positions that place people behind the wheel. Those types of jobs happen to be some of the most popular professions in the United States.

As Silicon Valley stares down that future, a universal basic income appears as a potential option to counteract that loss of jobs. The practice would require the government to provide a sum of baseline money to every person. The guaranteed annual payment would provide some cushion for its citizens to cover the basic expenses incurred just by living.

Thus far, the experiments with universal basic income are few and far between. There have been some small tests done with the program, including one launched in Oakland, Cailf. by tech incubator Y Combinator. However, there have been next to no attempts to run the program long-term to see its effects over time.

One of the lone exceptions is a five-year experiment run in Manitoba, Canada in the 1970s. The test was shut down before it was finished, and a report on the results was never filed.