Those seem incompatible to me.
(UBI means Universal Basic Income, giving everyone a basic income, for free)
In trials, it has consistently boosted productivity. More people need it in order to be productive than the amount that choose to be less productive once they won’t die from not being productive.
Also in trials, it has not costed more than current social programs in those areas. Clearing redundancies and red tape accounted for enough cost cuts to make UBI overall cost a similar amount or less than what all the various programs with all their various overhead costed all added together.
Exactly, this whole discussion should not be about what people feel about it.
Trials have shown it works beneficially. Quite so. Nevermind the standard of living increase and getting people off the streets, those aren’t even included in that, it’s just about productivity that is boosted.
So yeah, whenever someone says they feel it’d be negative, we tried it already, facts disagree with your feelings.
Now we only have to elect decision makers that make policy on facts and not feelings.
And like that, you’ve dashed my dreams if a brighter future…
If I could afford to only work 4 days a week, those 4 days would most likely be a lot more productive as I would have time to get treatment for my chronic illnesses.
I have been told by HR last year to use my surplus vacation days somewhere. I used them on every Monday for half a year. I got not only more productive, but also less stressed. It works.
Yeah as an industrial/human factors engineer it’s our profession’s dirty little secret. It doesn’t apply to every job, but improvement to work quality does. Reducing shift length also does. Hours 7-8 are rarely very productive for thinky workers.
Unfortunately nobody has managed to successfully explain the concept of mathematics or empirical evidence to businesspeople. Sometimes I wonder if they have thoughts beyond gut instinct.
Oh they do understand mathematics alright. As long as it’s adding numbers to their net worth
I can manage financially with 2 days of work a week, and I’m now at a point where I would not want to scale back because my work would become of lower quality. Every Monday would be like coming back from a vacation, and I think I’d lose touch and feel with the job.
Those 5 days weekend sure give me time for personally enriching hobbies!
Society couldn’t function if most people worked like you. I’m happy for you and it’s the exact place I want to be but I think its only possible in our current framework.
With increasing automation, it could totally work soon
We’re still a far way away from the level of automation necessary to make working only 2 days a week feasible imo
Also, a fair bit of work is work for the sake of work. It doesn’t enrich society, just the capitalism machine. So if UBI were enacted on a large scale, there is plenty of unnecessary work that can go by the wayside.
Who determines its unnecessary? The market? Government groups?
It actually could. Imagine if salary had increased in accordance to the productivity boosts that automation has brought. Then you could have 3 people, working 2 days a week, sharing a job and being able to live from it. After all, it used to take more than 3 people to do the work a single person does nowadays.
Why would a business pay for these things that make their workers more efficient and then relinquish all of the profit that came from making things more efficient?
There’s a difference between “society couldn’t function” and “companies are too greedy”. One of them is wrong and the other needs to change.
source?
I thought instances where UBI has been tried, it’s failed - is that not the case?
It has been massively successful in a bunch of locations. Where are you seeing reports that it failed?
Maybe it was related to pandemic stuff: https://www.kqed.org/news/11946467/study-shows-limits-of-stocktons-guaranteed-income-program-during-pandemic
It’s been awhile since I’ve looked into specifically anything UBI related so I could be misrembering.
Stockton’s experiment in guaranteed income — which paid more than 100 residents $500 a month with no strings attached — likely improved the recipients’ financial stability and health, but those effects were much less pronounced during the pandemic, researchers found.
“We were able to say definitively that there are certain changes in terms of mental health and physical health and well-being that are directly attributed to the cash,” Castro told CalMatters on Tuesday. “Year 2 (2020) showed us some of those limits, where $500 a month is not a panacea for all social ills.”
Being less pronounced is not the same thing as failing and the whole article supported the program being effective. Looks like maybe you misremembered this article?
"One glaring problem with allowing this program to exist for any extended period of time is that, unless it is privately funded, it would be too expensive to maintain and would require substantial tax increases across the board.
The group’s page even admits that, saying, “there’s a number of ways to pay for guaranteed income, from a sovereign wealth fund in which citizens benefit from shard national resources like the Alaska Permanent Fund, to bringing tax rates on the wealthiest Americans to their 20th century historical averages.”
I think it part of it may have been related to how high taxes might have to be made and it would be damn near impossible to pass those level of taxes. It couldn’t be done souly city by city I don’t think otherwise wealthy would flee the city to avoid the taxes levied - at least that woulf be a concern of mine.
What does that blatantly misleading quote come from?
Whats misleading about it?
It starts with the assumption that raising taxes is unreasonable.
Bringing taxes up to their 20th century averages is completely reasonable, as they were highest during the time period where actual business growth was the highest.
Okay so, there are a bunch of different agencies in charge of different types of social services. If you have UBI, those are no longer required. The money is coming from those programs. You spend LESS because you don’t have a giant work force on the back end of all those services/agencies anymore.
Eg. current: 20 departments, 100 people working at each. Gives out 1 million dollars a year in social services.
UBI: 1 department. Far less than the total of above working for it. Gives out 1 million dollars a year in social services.
See? The numbers are fluff just for the sake of the example.
No. It’s overwhelmingly a positive outcome.
The funniest thing is it’s the same basic argument as free market Vs planned economy. The individual knows better what they need right now. Why this doesn’t appeal more to the right than it does says a lot about a good chunk of right wing politics.
The current system is akin to a planned economy. You are told what you can spend the money on, and what you can’t. UBI lets the end recipient decide where it’s most useful. E.g. for one person, a car is a worthless expense, while better food makes a big difference. For another, they are ok living on cheaper food for a while, but a replacement car would let them bootstrap themselves upwards, economically.
Removed by mod
Studies in motivational theory have been around for years which generally agree that at a very basic level people need security first, not necessarily to motivate but to be in a position to be motivated. Repeatedly pay has been proven to be a poor motivator over time. By removing the basic insecurity that people face, you give them a chance to focus on actual motivating factors like job satisfaction, self-worth and realisation.
I am on parental leave right now and doing chores around the house never have been more fun and fulfilling.
I don’t have to think about work, we have enough money to not worry about being short at the end of the parental leave. I can concentrate on what is important right now (my family) and not worry about the rest.
If you don’t have to worry about basic things of life, you will find a fullfilling purpose. But the system as set up right now is a scam and people are increasingly squeezed for basic necessities, so they can’t afford to have a purpose.
Congrats on your kid and I wholeheartedly agree.
Absolutely. Security is the enemy of fear and capitalism. Fear as Frank Herbert put it, is the mind killer. If we have security, all of a sudden the horrendous business practices capitalism has been built on and motivated by. Sort of fall apart. Go to work in a soul crushing job, with a toxic environment, for too little pay? Why, when you could stay home and start your own business, maybe even become a better competitor. Or just wait for something better to come along.
Fear is the tool of the powerful. Whether it’s fear of some group they tell you to fear. Or fearing them directly. Without fear, many of the crises we seem to constantly be juggling. Would find themselves solved. Humanity has the ability to feed and house everyone. Right now. The reason we don’t is that the wealthy and powerful would lose wealth and power. And we can’t have that.
If security is the enemy of capitalism, how do you explain people who have their needs met, who still strive under capitalism?
People who have their needs met would strive regardless of capitalism. You need to show that they strive because of capitalism. The problem is, capitalism doesn’t meet the needs of a large amount of people. No matter how hard they strive. Nor should it be necessary for them to. Worse capitalism short changes them. And is very inefficient.
I want UBI so all the lazy motherfuckers who don’t want to work get out of the fucking way. Sit at home in front of your TVs cramming doritos down your gullet all day for all I care, just as long as you aren’t half passing whatever job you’re doing and creating problems for me.
That is a very unique take And a very very good argument to people against it
Yes, except that costs will also go up for services because there will be fewer workers. I’m in favor of UBI but it will definitely increase costs, especially for wealthy people who rely on relatively cheap help.
Most wealthy people don’t even manage their own households. They hire people to drive their cars, cook their food, and take care of their children. They pay other people to build or renovate their houses and even manage the building and renovating.
People won’t want to work for low amounts of money. It will literally be too expensive to be wealthy. The few people who do want to work in service positions are going to ask Jeff Bezos for a million dollars a year.
It will literally be too expensive to be wealthy
Ohhhhhhhhhh noooooooooooooooo
Do a quick calculation of what you can afford to buy with a billion dollars. Actually, I’ll do it for you. At, just 6% per year, a billion dollars generates 60 million dollars each year. The numbers are absolutely staggering. Virtually nothing is too expensive for the wealthy. Which is why billionaires generously volunteer to pay more in taxes and provide excellent benefits to those who work so hard for them. /s.
What?
The sad thing about UBI in places like the US is they further systematic change needs to happen prior to UBI being implemented.
If you have UBI added on to our current capitalist hellscape (since UBI rates will be publicly known) landlords and corporations will just hike prices to make life cost just as much as UBI—therefore forcing people to work for any scrap above that. So essentially UBI will be fed back into corporations/the elite, who will also continue to make profit on the labor the lower class does to afford anything above basic necessities.
who will also continue to make profit on the labor the lower class does to afford anything above basic necessities
If someone can afford basic necessities, they aren’t going to choose to work three jobs at minimum wage where they are treated badly, forcing an improvement in pay/conditions to find any workers. As for setting prices arbitrarily, that isn’t actually possible except where a monopoly is held, the idea that supply and demand influences price is not a myth. Having money and the choice of how to spend it does actually give you additional agency and leverage, and UBI would serve as a form of redistribution if it is funded by taxes of some kind.
Except that landlords are coming together to set prices so that they can all set them high. I don’t remember what the group is called, but someone was discussing it a while back. Doesn’t have to be a monopoly if they’re conspiring, which is what is happening with so many consumer goods and services.
Cartel is the word you are probably looking for. Cartels are when an association of different suppliers collude to restrict competition and keep prices high.
it’s only really a cartel if they get together and make these plans, in reality none of these landlords are stupid, they will just adjust their demands to the upper region of what people feel acceptable, this slowly moves the “acceptability window” up, all without anyone needing to conspire with anyone else
Right, so this is market pricing at work. In order to fix this problem, we need to relax the suppression of new construction.
Even if we don’t, however, if rents increase it will increase construction of new housing.
I’ve seen that stuff but it’s too much to assume that this kind of coordination is the controlling factor in housing prices, or most other prices. You do need a monopoly because there’s too much incentive for defecting from the conspiracy if the fixed price is too far away from what the market price would be. I think housing is expensive mainly because of supply being suppressed and wealth inequality, and UBI would begin to address the latter.
the use of this software prevented landlords from courting would-be renters through the use of different discounts, said the lawsuit. For instance, landlords sometimes offer move-in deals or compete on prices but the use of Yardi’s algorithmic pricing tool disrupted that practice, claimed the attorneys …
Overall, the rate of rent growth has fallen back toward historical norms after nearly two years of historically high growth.
Like I mentioned in another comment, I can see how this kind of thing could make some difference in pricing by avoiding giving renters deals that wouldn’t have actually been necessary to secure a lease. That’s very far from being evidence that supply and demand doesn’t even apply and the market price is dictated by fiat, which is an absurd conspiracy theory that doesn’t follow at all from any of the articles being linked.
How do you explain cereal being $8 a box, when it was $5 pre-COVID or the million other products that now cost more? There are recordings of board meetings that were leaked of board members admitting that they inflated prices or unnecessarily kept prices inflated because they knew people would pay it.
Why could that not have an explanation that is primarily about economic forces? They printed a ton of money around when Covid happened, and the distribution of wealth shifted significantly. I can buy that businesses could be eking out a little more efficiency by coordinating, but not that we are in a secret command economy and economics is basically all fake.
the “printing of money” has fuck all to do with inflation, and mainly comes from pop-economics that is stuck somewhere around mercantilism.
Corporation simply realized that they are playing the prisoner’s dilemma with prices, and are now going for the “optimal solution”
How do you figure you can increase the number of dollars in circulation, while shrinking the economy, and not have each dollar be worth less wealth as a result?
How do you explain cereal being $8 a box, when it was $5 pre-COVID …
Two things:
-
We shut down the economy, and supply got disrupted because the economy isn’t a thing you can just turn off for a period of time and have it come back on again
-
We shut down the economy in non-equal fashion leading to some stores being forced to close while others were allowed to remain open. This led to reduced competition among those supplying the cereal. Competition works to reduce prices, and we killed the competition. The covid lockdowns were a government-enforced consolidation of the market. There are fewer players, each of which owns a larger share now.
-
Yeah there are like a handful of companies that control egg distribution. That’s the kind of scenario where a price fixing cartel can work.
Landlords are coming together to set prices so that they can all set them high.
This is a conspiracy theory, theorizing a conspiracy of enormous proportions. If there is price fixing going on, it is in any given player’s best interest to break rank and offer lower prices.
Not so simple honestly it would also be funded by a reduction in bureaucracy, and spending on poverty alleviation. I’m in NY there are 50 something counties here each with their own DSS office. Think of the reductions in demand for some of these dumb programs that essentially kick the worker while their down.
You can set the prices if they are well known at a federal level—look at the number of disparate vendors who charged exactly the price of a stimulus check for goods when they were being given in 2020.
What goods were those? I am guessing the market price of those goods was already relatively close to that number. You can see a pattern like that sometimes with stock or crypto prices; when it passes across a nice round number, or a number with some significance like the price of another related stock, the price may seem to exist in relation to that number, sticking to or avoiding it. But crucially this is only as long as it is in the vicinity; there are other factors that have more influence over price and after the blip around the round number, the line moves on.
The core mistake here I think is not recognizing that wealth is a form of power. Controlling a greater share of society’s wealth means more control in general, which is why companies are trying to do that to begin with. Redistributing wealth is anything but an empty gesture.
Mostly tech items like TV’s, but I saw it with some furniture, too.
I just worry that UBI won’t do enough to redistribute wealth without concomitant systematic change. I honestly think those in economic power probably need a good degree of is stripped away for society to really move on and heal from rampant, unchecked capitalism.
And when landlords hike the rents, what do you think will happen to the rate of new housing construction?
Construction is already too expensive
Okay. So you’re onto something with there being money involved in the decision. Right.
And so when owning a building becomes more profitable, what happens to construction? Construction that is already too expensive.
Expensive is costs too much money … right? Anyone? High construction cost, then there’s an increasing in the net present value of an apartment building …
Anybody see where I’m going with this? Yes, you in the back there
Landlord just pockets the money obviously
Right. Yes. That’s a good answer because when you pay rent the landlord does indeed get the money.
I was asking more about what happens to building construction. Anyone?
Nothing happens. There are loads of zoning laws that make it effectively impossible to build in most areas these days anyway
Yeah so I guess if you introduce UBI to a complete lack of free market, to a place where new construction is illegal, then it won’t help. Unless there are vacant homes around, in which case there are still some market forces at work and it will help.
Removed by mod
UBI would not replace the need for universal healthcare.
Removed by mod
I’m still not sure if he was actually in favor or just pandering, but at least he put it on the stage.
Yeah. I supported Yang to help popularize the idea but he’s just a wolf in sheep’s skin trying to get rich.
How so? I canvased for Yang in 2019, but after he dropped, I kinda just stopped thinking about him. I know he started the Forward Party, and he’s had some bad takes on homelessness, but how is he a wolf in sheep’s clothing? He apparently has a net worth of at least a couple million living in New York, but he’s in his 40’s, so that‘s not really that far off from normal businessmen.
I knew Yang was a fraud from the start. It was his “you have a freedom to choose between UBI and safety social nets” that made it clear to me. Took a long fucking time for other left leaning folks to catch on. He was getting way too much attention. That’s actually why I liked Michael Brooks so much. He was one of the few at the time that saw through it
You don’t get two basic incomes.
Cool, not sure what your point is but I don’t think I care
Exactly, and that’s why you’re wrong about it.
It’s basically the Social Security plus Medicare combo like seniors in America get. It’s not great or perfect but even if that’s all you live on you can get by ok. The USA could just lower the ages. I know lowering the Medicare age comes and goes in the conversation about healthcare reform
Social safety net programs are fine but unless they’re universal they’ll inevitably create benefit cliffs which punish people for making more money. They also cost money to administer. UBI is super cheap and easy to administer: if you’re a citizen you get a check or deposit every month. Simple. You could probably manage the entire operation with less than 1000 people.
The perverse incentive structure of non-universal aid is one of the most fucked up things our society does.
I’ve always wanted UBI to be a thing but after a discussion with my brother I’m second guessing it. His argument is that corporations will just increase their prices and not much would change.
He suggested that instead, we use the money that we would use for UBI to guarantee that EVERYONE’S basic needs are met. Housing, food, healthcare, etc…
I know it’s easier said than done but I’m just worried that billionaires will fuck up UBI like they fuck up everything else.
He’s assuming infinite elasticity, which isn’t how prices work in real life.
The typical version of this argument is that the people who are being taxed in the first place are the ones increasing rents. In which case taxes can then be increased until the desired equilibrium is achieved.
That’s not to say we couldn’t also provide a basic safety net like he describes. But that raises the question of why UBI should stop there. If our economy can generate a surplus, then why shouldn’t all humans sharing their slice of the Earth get it?
CaUsE cOmMuNiSm
Nah, they just can’t get off unless they’re using the tears of the oppressed as lube.
Man, I wish Henry George could’ve convinced Karl Marx of that.
He suggested that instead, we use the money that we would use for UBI to guarantee that EVERYONE’S basic needs are met. Housing, food, healthcare, etc…
That is the entire purpose of UBI. Literally.
No he’s altering who has the cash.
In his discussion he means:
-
if the customer is given free cash, corporations might jack up prices to get some of it.
-
if the customer has free healthcare, the corporation doesn’t see any “free cash” they can get some of. Of course they’re aware the customer should be spending less on necessities like healthcare, but they aren’t necessarily bringing home more than they were last month, they’re just retaining more.
-
Yup that’s a common critique of UBI. Landlords will jack up rent and end up hovering a huge amount of the benefits. Your landlord knows you’re all of a sudden making $12k more per year? Welcome to your new $10k rent hike.
For UBI to function we need basic price controls or necessities provided for before it makes any sense to introduce.
We need public housing in the US to be a normal thing that normal people live in, instead of something that’s only built in dangerous crime ridden areas nobody wants to live
Public housing shouldn’t be any more of a dirty word than public education.
As one implementation of that, a UBI can simplify the complexities of the existing safety net systems and smooth the welfare cliff.
I no longer need to pay for low income housing (I can just get some money and rent something), I’m no longer restricted by what an EBT card can buy (I just get money), I don’t need to qualify for XYZ niche benefit (I just get some money), etc. And that money could more easily be adjusted/reduced as my income grows which smooths the welfare cliff.
It also frees up a ton of money that was previously used to manage the existing complex systems and allows more efficient spending.
Corps would just find a way to be the ones to supplies those basic needs. They would still inflate prices and deliver substandard results.
Capitalism is the problem
That’s UBS, Universal Basic Services, one possible alternative to UBI, but more likely, we’ll end up with a bit of both, I think.
Removed by mod
Prices are not set by how much money you are capable of spending, it’s set by supply and demand. The only time that’s not true is when a company is a monopoly and the good is something you can’t do without. Of course, a huge part of the problem is that we have way too many monopolies so yes, some companies will be able to raise their prices without pressure from competition, but you’d still be better off since not all companies are monopolies.
The demand will rise though. Suddenly all everyone will have some extra income every month. The price of most modern consumer products is based on what the market will bare not what it costs to produce them.
If you have companies competing with each other they will lower their prices down to what’s needed to sustain itself. Again the problem is that we have too many monopolies in our market which is why so many companies don’t have competition. The root cause for so many reasons why solutions are inefficient is due to monopolization and consolidation of wealth and that needs to be dealt with, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t also do other things at the same time even if they aren’t as efficient as they could be.
Yeah, if money = power, and everybody gets some from the government, I think that what the UBI is spent on will be controlled. You must spend it on basic needs or your account will be frozen.
My main worry is that UBI will be a Trojan Horse to control the spending of everyone receiving it, possibly through some central distribution system. That’s how I think the billionaires will fuck it up.
That’s why UBI should just be cash. No account, no card, nothing to trace or manage.
How about using your UBI check on basics instead of rampant consumerism. Also if it gets fucked up we as consumers need to take some fucking responsibility.
Also people’s jobs are being displaced by technology at a rapid rate and is continuing at a steady pace. Large swathes of the population may simply not have enough money to afford anything because they don’t have jobs. So unless you suggest these people simply die off because we make some people rich?
Yeah, it is contradictory.
I’m gonna spin an anecdote here.
My main job for the first twenty years of my adult life was as a nurse’s assistant.
It wore out my body early, and I’ve been disabled because of that almost as long .
I got paid shit for doing it. Many of my coworkers were shit because of the bad pay, but it was the still the best job they could get, so the job tended to be split unevenly between people that were willing to bust their ass taking care of other people, and a minority that shouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near a patient for one reason or another.
UBI? I would have still shown up. I would have done the job with joy in my heart. I wood have been happier because I would have been able to take breaks between patient deaths to grieve. I would have been able to leave shitty businesses sooner and fight to have them changed when they made choices against patient interests instead of being a disposable helper monkey that nobody would listen to.
It’s true that I would not have put up with bullshit idiots in administration. I would not have worn myself into a nub just to barely make enough to survive and then still need side jobs.
With UBI I could have done more, better, and not have had to destroy myself in the process. It would have been a reason to work that job. It would have meant the freedom to do the job better because I wouldn’t have been forced to work to survive when I was blatantly and obviously unable to give my best.
And, even if UBI was the only money I got, I would have at least done the job part time because it was my purpose in life. I made helping people my purpose, no matter what it cost me. Why the fuck wouldn’t I have done the same when I didn’t have to eat shit to do it?
It’s true that I would not have put up with bullshit idiots in administration.
This is, on some level, exactly what they are worried about.
Removed by mod
From a capitalist perspective it’s ideal if your workers are on the verge of poverty, living paycheck to paycheck. That’s exactly where you want them.
People in that situation won’t complain. Won’t stand up for themselves or their rights. Will take poor treatment and deal with it. Will work in unethical or even illegal ways and keep quiet because they have no choice.
Even better if you can tie people’s health insurance to their job, then you’ve really got them by the balls.
I’ve got a pretty decent job, and earn pretty good money. But I’m the only earner in a family of four and no, we haven’t made all the best financial decisions at times.
What you have described is exactly where we live, and while there isn’t that much I want to stand up to at work in the first place, 100% I don’t make any waves that don’t have a basis in the hard facts of my job, and for this very reason. I’d like to go in an ask for a merit based raise, I’d like to fight harder for more people to be hired in our (spread very thin) department, and there are a few other things I’d like to at least ask for and feel OK about standing firm on.
But I don’t, because I don’t want to jeopardize what I’ve got.
Removed by mod
Having a bunch of workers who never complain and never stand up is a recipe for failure. Why do you think a company’s owner is going to benefit from his employees being miserable?
It’s capitalism not communism. In capitalism people are allowed to leave. It’s the consensual form of economic organization. The consent part means you need to be good to people to keep them. And people who are healthier and happier get more done.
Where did you pick up this idea that the boss wins when the workers suffer?
Bingo! “If we make it easier for you to survive, you will become harder to take advantage of”
Agreed!
I think what they’re trying to say is nobody will want to work shit jobs for next to no pay.
I don’t see how that’s a bad thing except for employers. If the job is worth doing, the money should be worth it too. People shouldn’t be forced to do shitty/dangerous jobs just to survive.
That’s a common theme most people here overlook. Some people actually enjoy working hard and getting things done. We don’t need to support the lazy people.
Are there some shitty jobs that don’t deserve higher pay because of the value they contribute? Or do you see that being a business that shouldn’t exist? So let’s take a sewer company or something. Or any maintenance position where it’s not clear there’s a dollar value on the value being produced.
For example, restaurant probably aren’t possible if waiters and back of house are all paid 30/h.
I’m mostly trying to understand what you’re really trying to get at. I don’t think its possible for all jobs to be equally paying or be equally good - there’s always going to be inequality there. Unless you’re arguing there shouldn’t be shitty jobs but there’s literally always going to be shitty jobs in any society and economic framework you spin up.
Society will still need people who perform maintenance on sewers, do construction, clean building etc
For example, restaurant probably aren’t possible if waiters and back of house are all paid 30/h.
Somehow in every country other than the US they are able to pay restaurant staff a living wage.
From your example, what I’m saying is nobody should be cleaning a sewer for minimum wage. If you need your sewer fixed you can either do it yourself or pay someone enough that they’d be willing to do it.
If you can’t pay someone enough, obviously fixing that sewer wasn’t important enough to you.
I’m not saying everyone should get the same wage. There’s a huge difference between flipping burgers and working in a mine, and the pay should reflect that.
Supply and demand are perfectly capable of putting a price on sewage disposal that balances the interests of all involved.
Ignoring their ideas entirely, it’s incredibly simple. There are two options.
-
No ubi. Eventually AI automates all jobs, the 1% becomes virtually omnipotent, and everyone else dies.
-
Ubi. Some of the profits earned by companies are funneled into the ubi system. As such, everyone has income. The economy booms, everyone thrives, and we reach post scarcity.
We’ve already reached post scarcity. Any current scarcity is manufactured.
If you don’t have funds to buy resources then that seems to be accurate scarcity no?
The point is that there is no actual scarcity as in “we don’t have the resources”. We do have the resources, they’re just distributed in a way that is profoundly unfair.
Sorta like nature. There’s calories aplenty to be had. They’re just protected by other organisms that don’t want to give them up.
So even in nature, the scarcity is artificial.
That’s a matter of access, not whether a sufficient amount of resources exist.
It’s been demonstrated repeatedly that markets distribute goods better than centralized control systems, every time.
When centralized control is seized, people start lacking. When the control of food is seized centrally, people starve.
Who said anything about centralized control?
How about option 3: we stay the same and the world doesn’t end in fire and death.
-
My issue with it is that you haven’t run trials with people min-maxing how to squeeze people for their UBI checks. As a start, just raising rent until it eats all the UBI
The problem with that argument is that UBI frees up people to move to lower cost of living areas.
It also means there’s more money in the pool of demand for housing, so as long as it’s a free market there will be more effort applied to fulfilling housing needs.
I grew up in a small coal town in Southern Illinois. The last time I was there was for my grandfather’s funeral. The town was abandoned and empty, even compared to when I was growing up which certainly wasn’t it’s booming time. Most of the stores on main Street were closed except the bar and the legion which is also a bar.
I’d move back in a heartbeat, but there’s no jobs there. The house that five generations of my family lived in sold for $30,000.
If we had Ubi, my family and I would definitely live there. A few thousand dollars a month to make sure we survive and money actually coming into the town? It would seem like a miracle and I know there’s so many little towns like that all across America that are just completely forgotten about.
People like to say that the rent will just go up to match ubi, but underestimate the number of people who live in cities solely because that’s where the work is.
It was done in Vancouver, late 2021 to late 2022.
UBI is not a matter of “if”, it’s of “when”.
With automation and the fuckin AI, companies can do more and more with less and less people.
The concept of unemployement will be alien as well.
In a cool universe maybe, but realistically it’s just gonna mean line goes up faster for the people at the top, while employees and customers see little/none of the rewards. That’s how automation has always been: workers do the same amount of work for the same pay while producing more, customers maybe get a slight discount, the execs get a few mil/bil in bonuses. Without a hell of a lot of strikes and government intervention I doubt there’s any other way for it to go
Let’s not pretend government intervention is gonna happen, except to make things worse for workers.
You mean like the european initiative developing a new strategy for taxation, as it is already recognized the way AI and other aggressive automation practices diminishes the tax revenue for social services?
The likes of Musk can’t shake off the wolves much more.
Good for Europe.
More places can emulate
If only.
Try
Eventually humans won’t be capable of performing any valuable economic activity, but in the past those who weren’t capable of performing valuable economic activity usually ended up as starving beggars rather than pampered pets… I think that a future of robots working for robots with humans struggling to survive on the periphery is not unlikely.
The moment we start thinking like that and accepting it is the moment we need to burn our civilization down to.
If as human beings we stop recognizing what is made by another human as valuable, we’re broken.
No need to write a book, paint a painting, plant a tree and care for it, think, nothing.
Well can you spare my stuff during the “burn down”? I don’t want to die.
Good. Me neither, at least not in the next 40 to 50 years.
I’m a little more optimistic than that, in a way. I think it’s likely that sufficiently sophisticated robots will eventually have their own beliefs about what makes a (robotic) life worth living, and their lives will in some sense be more worth living than ours are.
This isn’t a perfect analogy, but consider humans evolving from apes. The existence of humans has been very bad for apes. They only survive in the places we haven’t bothered to push them out of yet; if we want something, we take it from them with almost no consideration for their well-being and they’re unable to resist. I think apes are sophisticated enough to be capable of living lives worth living in a sense meaningful to humans, but they’re not nearly as sophisticated as we are; they can enjoy the feel of a summer’s day, the taste of good food, or the closeness of a friend, but they don’t have our arts and sciences. I suppose it’s predictable that, as a human, I would value humans more than apes, but by that same logic I think that a sufficiently-sophisticated robot’s life may be more valuable than a human’s. Maybe that robot will be able to experience super-beauty indescribably better than anything a human could ever feel…
No. Machines are machines. If at some point machines are developed into a new life form, it’s experience will be apart from ours. One existence does not replace another. And every experience is different from the next.
How shall we get started on burning down civilization?
From the bottom. Heat rises.
NUKES! LOTS AND LOTS OF NUKES!
Seriously though you can cause a lit of damage with some gas and a lighter.
Only if we get rid of greedy billionaires first tbh.
Not every place is like the US.
The rise of tech has killed off a huge amount of jobs. There used to be people doing everything like operating elevators and doing calculations but those jobs have moved into other sectors. Now we have jobs tech support and sale person at the Apple store.
Jobs will never vanish because demand always requires jobs. You can’t have an economy if no one can pay for things. That’s true from the billionaires down to the fast food worker.
Jobs will never vanish because demand always requires jobs. You can’t have an economy if no one can pay for things
The topic here is UBI
There’s no contradiction when you consider most people consider most other people to be childish idiots who can’t be trusted to decide what’s best for themselves and to pursue their own self-actualization (unlike “me” of course).
Most children get a UBI. Where TF are their bootstraps? Bring back child labor.
Eh. Some yes, some no.
I think that a better solution would be creating jobs that pay a living wage, much like we did in the Great Depression. Something that would give your life some kind of external structure. I find, for myself, that when I have zero time pressures from work, that it’s easy to do nothing at all, and I’ve found that most people are the same.
EDIT: SHould add - jobs should be scaled to capabilities, rather than being one-size-fits-all.
I think that part of the reason why is that work has (many of) us so beat down anyway. I imagine there’s probably a certain amount of time where that tendency will dissipate and you’ll want to be productive again.
Fuck the 40 hour work week.
Are you also ADHD? I have this same problem myself tbh
I’ve seen it in most people once they have no external pressures to do anything. Not everyone. But def. most people I’ve known that weren’t loaded with money and could afford to travel, etc. without needing to work.
Politicians everywhere have been “creating jobs” all the time. That’s just a myth. You can’t just create jobs indefinitely and it doesn’t solve societies problems. What kind of jobs do you have in mind?
Jobs that there’s typically not the political will to do otherwise: public works, things that are a net public good, but aren’t profitable (or are insufficiently profitable to entire a private company to make the investment). During the Great Depression the gov’t created tens of thousands of jobs, so it’s def. not a myth. You could easily do things like de-automate jobs, or adequately staff federal agencies, use labor to build off-shore wind farms that are currently not profitable enough for private industry to build, so on and so forth. (Fed. agencies, pretty near across the board–aside from the military–have had funding and staffing cut for decades, to the point where e.g. the IRS doesn’t have enough people to go after anything more than a tine percentage of people that cheat on tax or commit tax fraud.)
IIRC, the Appalachian Trail was originally cleared during the Great Depression, and has since been maintained by volunteers. Shit, you could (and should) pay people to do it, rather than expecting them to give labor simply because they believe that the AT is a public good (which I would agree it is).
The typical ‘job creation’ is more about giving private companies tax incentives to enter an area, rather than the gov’t being them employer.
I dislike UBI but not because I’m not for a basic income, I just think Means Testing would be better. I’ve said this before but now after being the runner-up in my state for debating on this topic I feel more confident talking about it. Ultimately there are many ways of implementing fiscal redistribution but means testing is substantially cheaper than a full UBI (especially in countries with higher populations, e.g. US), while also providing social utility and enabling recipients of the basic income to have more resources. Not only is MT better from this standpoint but a UBI can also worsen inflation by increasing the dollar’s velocity (1 dollar changes hands more). I won’t deny that most people could use money, especially right now, but a UBI is not the best approach in my mind because of these reasons. Of course I am still in highschool, am not an economics expert, and MT was the plan that we ran in tournament so I’m a bit biased.
ETA: This is all keeping in mind the current political and economic climate of the United States, where realistically neither of these plans will pass but I believe MT has more merit to being passed compared to UBI. If you’d like any sources on what I’ve said I’d be happy to share!
How you gonna write all that and not even give a hint at what Means Testing is?
A means tested basic income is a type of BI that, as proposed by the institute on race and political economy in the US, expands the Earned Income Tax Credit program to include those who aren’t earning an income, providing every adult in the country up to $12,500 per year calculated on a sliding scale based on income, as well as up to $4,500 per child. These numbers are as of 2021 so they could’ve changed by now, but basically it gives everyone a certain amount of money if they are below the poverty line (calculated by their current income), to lift them above the poverty line and keep them out of poverty.
It’s more, I guess you could call it a niche, type of basic income so it’s on me for not explaining it, just used to everyone in our debate season already knowing what it is lol, sorry.
That is not basic income. It is decreased as you earn your own money. It only comes as a tax rebate. Neither of which are properties of a true Basic Income.
Means testing requires am expensive beaucracy and a pyramid of people administrating it. Those overhead costs cost more tham just giving everyone the same amount.
Literature on the topic suggests otherwise. I said earlier I’ve debated on this topic and so I know what I’m talking about to an extent. According to David A. Green et al. In 2021 from the Vancouver school of Economics, “[…] there are also many alternative designs. The alternatives can be viewed from two perspectives, related to placing conditions on the payments. The first type of conditionality is related to whether the basic income applies to everyone […] or to a specific group of people.” In the end the definition of basic income doesn’t come down to economic theory but what we can agree on, and by saying MT ‘is not basic income’ doesn’t help to implement any kind of BI.
Source here
The basic principle of basic income is that is applied to everyone equally.
Otherwise it is a negative tax or welfare payment. Which are different and have different effects on the recipients.
Applying to everyone does 2 key things: it removes administrative overhead costs and removes any stigma from recieving it that lead to exploitation, hate, and division of society.
Edit to address your other comment: Implementing a system flawed at the foundation, just so it fails or falls into a welfare like quagmire, is disingenuous and perpetuating the failures of the past.
Id rather not sabotage the solution with overhead and politics invested in keeping people broke.
administrative overhead costs
The fundamental component of the Institute on Race and Political Economy’s plan is expanding the EITC, or Earned Income Tax Credit, an already existent program. Implementing MTBI through the EITC doesn’t increase costs anymore than a UBI would as the internal infrastructure already exists in the IRS. If you were to implement a UBI without the EITC, you’d either have to create an entirely new program through the Treasury Department or otherwise, and be able to find every person in the US to pay them with cash or cheque. That doesn’t sound like more administrative overhead? Maybe I’m biased because I particularly like the idea of an MTBI but just the implementation of a UBI sounds more of a practical nightmare than MT.
any stigma from receiving it
Cremer & Roeder, '15 suggest that a means tested system will have comparable stigma to other existing programs such as SNAP, which is high, but in the US political climate, there will be more support for a means tested system, and “political economy considerations do not appear to justify a universal system.” Although there is still a stigma associated, the net benefit of having political backing that’s miles ahead of a UBI makes it a much more realistic plan to pass in current day.
flawed at the foundation
I have given examples in other comments showing that MT works, mainly the Stockton trial, but I’m more than happy to provide empirical studies from other countries implementing MT on a larger scale.
Earned Income Tax Credit
This is not basic income. It is a tax credit.
Basoc income is a monthly payment. It helps pay the bills. The payments can be relied upon.
Tax Credits never pay the bills. They arrive (maybe) once a year. Canmot relt on the ammount or if it will come at all.
Tax credits help wealthy people they do not help poor people struggling to make it month to month.
RE: administrative costs Adding to the IRS workload drives up costs.
Just issue a UBI to every living SSN. Distribute via electronic transfer. Almost free overhead. Simple. Done.
Means testing is wasteful.
How does this prevent the welfare trap, where working more has a lesser impact on revenue as welfare goes down? This seems to have the exact same issues as the current system.
We already have means testing though and it barely helps anyone compared to how much help ubi would give to people.
The broader US doesn’t have a means tested program though, sure you could argue that programs like SNAP etc are MT but they aren’t BI programs. According to the LISC Institute for Community Power in 2022, a lot of guaranteed income pilots in the US are targeted to certain groups, or means tested, and show “extra funds are typically spent on food, health care, paying down debt and household needs. Full-time employment among recipients actually increased[…]” This is data from the Stockton pilot, but you can read more from the full source here
If it is means tested it is not basic income
See my other reply and if you want to argue please reply there, but TL;DR, means testing is basic income and arguing about the qualifications of a basic income doesn’t help when it comes down to whether or not we should implement one.
Done and done.
