Before going into Baruch College, the most fascinating college major for me is an international business. Although this major requires powerful public speaking skills and masters domestic and foreign policies, I would take this as a challenge for me. Since I am living in the U.S., my intended market is the enormous Chinese market, where many business people are heading to start their businesses. To narrow down this range, I will focus on the pet market where it has a large production of pet toys and pet food. Honestly, I would like to maintain a friendly relationship with China as well, so I can fly back and forth to satisfy my will. Not limited to China, I can discover other markets around the world that can help me the most. My ultimate goal is to open a pet store or join an organization that I can take care of pets, especially cats and dogs. Even though I do not have pets at home, I enjoy their fun activities with their hosts together. And, they can listen and accompany you when you feel lonely. To aim my business, I must at least learn some professional knowledge about pets. Most importantly, I must also obtain a public powerful speaking skill to cooperate with sellers and customers to reduce some difficulties. Confident and bold personalities indeed impress people a lot, especially if you are in the business world. Powerful leadership is also another major element to cultivate me. This charm will attract others to respect you. Besides personalities, domestic and foreign policies are super essential in international business. When the products are exporting or importing, people must be responsible and thus pay attention to the trade policies for each country. If not, lawsuits will come in and it will damage reputation. Especially during the period of coronavirus, the rules for supervising the imports and exports are much stricter than before.  As majoring in international business, I will try to change myself to be more publicly open to everyone and practice my speaking skills. And, I will obtain the skills in doing international business. 

My Experience with UBI

UBI is an acronym for universal basic income. I chose whether the government should provide UBI to its citizens as my topic because I want to see what the benefits are if each qualified individual receives it and the impact on international business. Recently, there was an outbreak of coronavirus happening in the U.S., even around the world. Businesses are encountering many problems due to this current coronavirus. Especially international business, people are afraid that the transport of products would spread all around the world. It definitely reduced the share price of most companies because consumers gradually stopped consuming products due to a lack of money. It was a hardship for some small and young business companies to survive. To prevent companies from shutting down, UBI is a subsidy right now. Although the government may have a budget deficit, giving out UBI to citizens is a way to support people’s lives from losing jobs. At least, some companies can receive some support from the government to go through this obstacle. When my family received the UBI from the government, they used part of the money to go buy food. It both supported our lives and it allowed the international business to operate as well. Such as the supermarket would import more products from other countries to sustain domestic needs. Now, let’s analyze some advantages of giving out UBI to individuals.  

Universal Basic Income is urgent for now

Andrew Yang is concerned about the long and prevailing automation in American business causing people to lose jobs to robotics, and artificial intelligence. But, to prevent robots from someday coming to your job, it is better to consider creating universal basic income. Universal basic income must be implemented to address the short-term problem of job losses due to the coronavirus economic fallout.  Then, it must be extended indefinitely to address automation, help most families out of poverty, and stimulate economic growth, as well as improve social personal lives.

UBI can subsidize people during coronavirus 

In the report “America is in crisis. We need the universal basic income now” by Widerquist(2019) to discuss the effects of coronavirus on people’s desire for UBI. The paper claims that Americans now need injections of cash from the government because the stock market is significantly causing the economy to encounter a recession. The consequence of a recession is that there is a “multiplier effect” as people lose jobs and business contracts. And, it follows a series of consequences. People spend less and then other people would lose jobs and contract their businesses. As the “multiplier effect” continues, the economy shrinks, and income declines. Moreover, it urges people to stop working and stay home to avoid cross infections. 

To me, the most urgent problem the U.S faces now is the coronavirus. It causes people to lose jobs and even no income to sustain their lives until this disease is over. To comfort Americans’ anxiety, universal basic income must apply and enforce. When money goes into the hands of people, then their income would not fall to 0. It helps people to maintain their spending and prevent people from losing jobs as well. If the government does not enact as soon as possible, then this chain of reactions would continue depressing the economy, and eventually, poor people get poorer and even increase the starvations. Besides that, the coronavirus force people to stay at home and thus, there are fewer human activities harming the environment.

UBI can prevent the long-termed problem-automation

Goodman(2018) highlights the significance of the UBI is to spread capitalism and prevent workers from losing jobs to automation in his paper “Finland Has Second Thoughts About Giving Free Money to Jobless People”. Robotics and artificial intelligence have a high potential to take over people’s jobs because they generate higher efficiency within a period of time than the labor force. Although people have solid and long working experience in a particular job, it would still be outcompeted by robotics and artificial intelligence. Thus, American businesses would prefer employing these robots and AI, and that is how most of the people are expected to become unemployed.

UBI would stimulate economic growth

Gale (2020) introduces his version of VAT with UBI together to provide benefits to low and moderate households and maintain economic growth in the paper “How a VAT could tax the rich and pay for universal basic income”. He encourages American VAT to mimic those successful VAT systems around the world to further efficiently cover much of the costs of UBI. He suggests that the VAT should only place on goods and services produced in the U.S and small businesses have their choices to join the VAT system.

The collaboration of both UBI and VAT would stimulate economic growth in the U.S and shorten the gap between the rich and the poor. Universal basic income is more successful when there is a VAT. When we only look at UBI, it might bring budget deficits to the country. But if we apply VAT, the government would collect taxes from the public and thus it would slow government spending and increase economic growth.

UBI can improve people’s lives

Painter and Thoung (2015) detailedly describe a Basic Income practice in the UK as requiring teenagers who received stipends to publicize how this free money helps them from earning, working, caring, volunteering or establishing a business, and other kinds of social activities in the paper “Creative citizen, creative state: the principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income”. Since this money is free, teens can use this money whatever they want. And, it gives them plenty of time to discover their hobbies and careers in the future. Although they are lost in the journey of finding jobs and get unemployed, they still could address their basic needs with this free money. And, they would have less emotional distress thinking about money is not enough every day.

UBI can improve people’s behaviors

In the paper “Andrew Yang Ends Candidacy, but Universal Basic Income Is Still Worth Considering”, Zetlin(2020) highlights poor people have an optimistic attitude toward failures in obstacles. Similarly, there is a UBI practice in North Carolina. Members of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee tribe started to receive free money from the government. They started with a small amount and raised up to $12,000 annually as Andrew Yang’s proposal. The good news is children from poor families that received the free money starting to do better behaviorally and their likelihood of committing a petty crime dropped significantly. Zetlin informs readers about the behaviors for children when their families received the payments. 

Maybe because of their experiences and backgrounds as being poor people, they could endure a lot and they cherish this free money to create opportunities for them to move on. Since free money is valuable and they dream of a good prospect, they would not waste their time thinking about how to make trouble in society. The cause behind their good behaviors might be the payments to increase their living standards. They can access more opportunities in learning and have a better education. Maybe it is that education indirectly improves children’s behaviors.

Conclusion

Universal Basic Income is essential. It prevents people from going to an extreme living condition no matter people are affected by the current coronavirus or automation. In contrast, it indeed stimulates economic growth and improves people’s behaviors. Especially, when people are suffering from the coronavirus outbreak, people deserve to receive this money to support their lives. Although there is a budget deficit, the U.S should take care of its citizens and overcome this obstacle altogether. Once people got some money on their hands, international business will keep operating. There still have collaborations between companies. Even when you stay at home, business people have excellent network abilities to host meetings and analyze the current market trend.