TAMIU Hosts Panel Discussion on Universal Basic Income Friday

A panel discussion on Universal Basic Income (UBI) and the economics of the future will be held at Texas A&M International University (TAMIU) Friday,  November 9, 2018, from 1:30-3:00 p.m., in Pellegrino Hall 101. 

Admission is free of charge and open to the public.

The event is sponsored  by the TAMIU College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of Humanities, and the TAMIU Philosophy Society, a student organization, and features faculty from the History, English, Philosophy, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Honors programs.

UBI  is  a model proposing citizens be given a sum of money, regardless of income, resources, or employment status. Its intent is to prevent or reduce poverty while increasing citizen  equality. Finland recently ended its two-year trial of the model. Other countries have also experimented with UBI.

TAMIU faculty panelists are Dr. Deborah Blackwell, associate professor and director of the University’s Honor Program; Dr. Andrew Hazelton, assistant professor and History Program adviser, and William Nolen, instructor and Philosophy Program adviser.  Dr. Ula Klein, assistant professor and adviser, Women’s and Gender Studies Program, will moderate.

Panelists will offer varying opinions and perspectives ranging from UBI as liberating instrument to UBI as a reductive force in labor’s power and importance, to UBI as portrayed in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, “Player Piano.”  Vonnegut envisioned a world where lives of forcible leisure deprive humans of their sense of purpose.

For additional information, contact the TAMIU Office of Public Relations, Marketing and Information Services at 956.326.2180, email prmis@tamiu.edu, click on tamiu.edu or visit offices in the Sue and Radcliffe Killam Library, room 268.

University information can also be found on its social media channels on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube.