Raising the Floor

How a Universal Basic Income Can Renew Our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream

By: Andy Stern, Lee Kravitz

Narrated by: Chris Sorensen

Andy Stern, the former president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), spent four years traveling the country and asking economists, futurists, labor leaders, CEOs, investment bankers, entrepreneurs, and political leaders to help envision the US economy 25 to 30 years from now. He vividly reports on people who are analyzing and creating this new economy - such as investment banker Steve Berkenfeld; David Cote, the CEO of Honeywell International; and Andy Grove of Intel.

Through these stories, we come to a stark and deeper understanding of the toll technological progress will continue to take on jobs and income and its inevitable effect on tens of millions of people. But there is hope for our economy and future. The foundation of economic prosperity for all Americans, Stern believes, is a universal basic income. The idea of a universal basic income for all Americans is controversial, but American attitudes are shifting. Stern has been a game changer throughout his career, and his next goal is to create a movement that will force the political establishment to take action against something that many on both the right and the left believe is inevitable.

©2016 Andy Stern (P)2017 Tantor

Critic reviews

"[Stern] does a solid job of making his case without waxing too wild-eyed...This is a book eminently worth talking about." ( Kirkus)

interesting views

Not sure how a UBI would ultimately effect us as a country money wise but I do find the idea intriguing.

a deep dive into the future of work

I loved this book. there is a sense of urgency for this country moving toward UBI

Book is hyperbolic. Narrator is not an asset.

If I review this book in a quip, it is that I went in an avid supporter of the concept of a universal basic income, and I had to do my very best to still support the idea that both Stern and I support after listening to his book, because I found it in many places hyperbolic and exhausting. He lays out really only the far left justification for UBI. This is not a book that is likely to convince moderates, let alone libertarians, which is unfortunate, because many moderates and conservatives also support UBI. He speaks to a number of entrepreneurs, but his conversations with them are often antagonistic, and then his post-hoc consideration of them is often combative. It is also almost purely an emotional argument. What I had been looking for was a book that rigorously analyzed the viability of UBI and the factors that would make it succeed - this is really only a book on the motivational aspects. There is almost no critical analysis. There is discussion of pilots and trials elsewhere in the world, but almost none of it is critical and it is very surface. For instance, this book really takes no critical look at the challenges that have emerged in European implementations.

As another example of the surface nature of the book, he attacks Piketty, but he does this after admitting that he only read the first 60 pages of his book, and he clearly does not understand the full argument or the data Piketty provided.

The far leftishness of this book is also interesting in that Andy Stern is a really interesting character - he left SEIU to do this work, and he makes the argument, interestingly, that unions may not be the right vehicle for 21st century equity, something I did not expect to hear in this book (although it's a good argument). Outside of these unexpected departures, however, the tenor of the book is predictable from the outset.

In the end, this book is really only a strong recommend to individuals on the far left who have not considered UBI - in that case, he makes a strong argument that UBI might be a better use of US government funds than the myriad of current programs we offer as a social safety net. For everyone else, I guess the message is just that if we want to get this done, we're going to have to figure out how to get along, hold our noses, and just get this done.

The narrator is another issue... he has an exaggerated speaking style, that when meshed with some of Stern's more unreasonable positions, sounds comedic and absurdist. The narrator in this case, probably more than any Audible book I've listened to, is a serious disservice to the book.

Interesting content terrible reading

The content is so interesting that it’s a shame the reading makes it almost unlistenable

Andy Stern is the man,!

loved it and his book is so relevant in today's time. universal basic income is going to happen soon.