Former Goldman CFO Calls For Universal Basic Income “To Stave Off Revolution”
In an interview with The Business of Business, host Gregory Ugwi asked Chavez if he agrees with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who says “there should be no billionaires in the US as long as there are poor families,” adding that venture capitalist Paul Graham says that income inequality is a “natural part of capitalism, and a sign that the process is working.”
Chavez, a Democrat donor (most recently Pete Buttigieg’s presidential bid), agreed that the income gap is a consequence of capitalism, but said “at the same time, it isn’t an inevitable feature of capitalism that the inequality be as extreme as it’s getting. There have been long periods in American history where there was always inequality – but it wasn’t this kind of inequality.”
He also isn’t a fan of AOC, saying “I am not in AOC’s camp – at all. I didn’t vote for her, I wouldn’t vote for her. I hear her, and she’s just not saying anything that makes any sense to me.”
“At the same time, I’m a big proponent of a universal basic income.
My personal view is that if you’re just being pragmatic and looking at inequality – and not thinking about some abstract concept of justice – you don’t want the inequality to be so extreme that it leads to revolution. So you ought to be prepared to pay to decrease that probability.
This is what I say to, you know, friends who you might call ‘oligarchs,’ right? Why it would make sense for everybody to have some baseline income and why we should all pay for it.”
WATCH video: https://youtu.be/4-dHLboZlmk