Prepare for Change

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/23/503129818/study-finds-students-have-dismaying-inability-to-tell-fake-news-from-real "Middle school, high school and college students in 12 states were asked to evaluate the information presented in tweets, comments and articles. More than 7,800 student responses were collected. In exercise after exercise, the researchers were 'shocked' — their word, not ours — by how many students failed to effectively evaluate the credibility of that information. The students displayed a 'stunning and dismaying consistency' in their responses, the researchers wrote, getting duped again and again. They weren't looking for high-level analysis of data but just a 'reasonable bar' of, for instance, telling fake accounts from real ones, activist groups from neutral sources and ads from articles." So what happens when the news is no longer dependent on fact?  What happens to our society when we believ...

http://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/11/14/13513066/universal-basic-income-crowdfund "Perhaps the most transformative effect of basic income I’ve personally experienced is the power it gives in any negotiation. For many people, this will be experienced as the power to refuse to work for insufficiently low wages ( potentially nullifying the need for minimum wage laws ), or unacceptable terms of any kind, be it work conditions, hours, benefits, etc. For freelancers like me, it means asking for what I’m worth, and also being able to choose to work for free on anything I consider important enough. When I didn’t have a basic income, I’d accept a writing assignment for $50 even if it took me an entire week to research and write, because $50 is better than $0. If someone wanted to publish something I’d already written, I’d worry about asking for any compensation in case asking meant not only not getting paid but not getting republished. I don’t think I’m alone in these w...

http://fortune.com/2016/11/06/elon-musk-universal-basic-income/ "Musk’s Tesla Motors is leading the way to self-driving cars, while also pushing factories to new levels of automation . And he thinks that workers displaced by those and other forms of automation will need help permanently, and on a broad scale. 'I think that there’s a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation,'  Musk said. 'I’m not sure what else one would do.' The Universal Basic Income concept has gained broad traction in recent years, particularly in the tech community. The idea is that all citizens would receive a small regular stipend—enough to cover basic housing and food needs, but little more." This is gaining traction but is still years away.  We also need to switch to single payer insurance like the rest of the world, and cheaper higher education.  Maybe if we didn't spend as much as the rest of the world on ...