Do we need it or not?
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I've been thinking that we do.
Automation WILL eliminate all jobs that CAN be automated...that means just about every job that most people do.
How will people earn monies to buy stuff if they don't have a job?
Perhaps we're thinking conventionally. Perhaps we should think 'outside the box'. The problem is NOT having jobs (or not) the problem is having an income to buy 'stuff'.
Which gets us back to UBI. (steal from the rich and give to the poor). Right?
Maybe not.
WHY is there such a huge income disparity to begin with? Why are the rich so poor...and other people not?
Perhaps if that factor were to be considered then we'd have a more clear view of the problem.
People who produce will simply stop and jump on the freebie train, pool of wealth will overall be diluted and those at the top of the pile will only solidify their role in all of it.
I share some of your concerns but the research says that people don't just jump on the freebie train and many social outcomes improve when people are helped even a little bit.
See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome
yup...wikipedia is such a fine resource.
you solved the problem then...it works JUST fine..
doesn't it?
The point is that most people's visceral reaction that giving everyone money will cause a massive productivity loss and create dependency is not borne out by what little evidence there it's on the subject.
productivity loss is not the issue.
all production will be automated.
Detroit, Baltimore, FilthyDelphia, New Orleans and a dozen other Dhmikrat hellholes come to mind.
It simply doesn't work.
Hasn't in the past won't in the future, yeah it works fine with ants and bees; they're under phenomenal hypnosis.
Human beings act in their own interests first. It's just the way it is. Allot of people on welfare will never get off.
Honestly I don't trust anyone who says they'll keep working and contributing to a system that takes more than it's fair share out of the working mans efforts and gives it to me because I refuse to play in that game, because if I did it would be me getting short changed.
Communism can't even function at gun point.
Yeah some people do get richarded over it's just the way it is with few exceptions namely people who game and own the system or at least have controling interest in the system; Rothschilds, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Astor, couple other old money families names I can drop. As far as the rest of us go we're not that bad off, we could live in Zimbabwe where they circulate stacks and stacks of 300M $ bank notes that aren't even worth the paper their printed on because the guy in charge didn't even take elementary economics.
Imagine that you gotta take a wheelbarrow full of cash to buy a pint of milk not only because it's all you can afford but it's all that's available and instead you get mugged for the wheelbarrow because it's a tool capable of producing, it's worth more than the milk or the piles of cash.
They got a robot that'll flip burgers now and robo barristas, while I'm sure they'd have come out eventually the straw that broke the camels back was the non skilled labor demanding by force what wasn't due to them.
There's essentially only two ways to pay for things.
This is a thought I had a few days ago.
Work and the products of such, and sex.
Prostitution is illegal most places, yeah disease morality all of that; no, no trickin' is illegal because it cheapens, as well as cheats decent hard work.
Now you can say that that's work too and I'll give a little to that, but anyone willing to debase themselves for cash would probably do so just for popularity or fun.
Now back to the UBI more currency at less work; it's as simple as that. Businesses in places like Seattle are folding under the fight for fifteen, this is even after layoffs and people being expected to do the work of at least two or more people.
Some of these people loosing their jobs were already making $11-12/hour but now their out a job because someone demanded more for less.
If you want more, get more marketable skills, get an actual education, or simply move on to something else; I'm sorry but flipping burgers at McDonalds isn't worth 15
Anyway my keyboard's messing up and this is one quagmire I won't get sucked any further into.
yeah - we definitely need this. There is so much stupid bureaucratic shit that could be eliminated if everybody just had friggin money. It took me 8 weeks to get unemployment - and I had to fight to get it - so stupid. No wonder there is so many people living under bridges.
There are a bunch of UBI web sites springing up lately - we can hope at least.
https://www.mannabase.com/?ref=38c7fefa79
you might read the iron law of bureaucracy then consider what is their actual goal?
Yeah...I'm on Mannabase myself..mostly to observe how it works out.
....this conundrum has been buzzin' around my cranium lately....
Personally, I have a concern with being more reliant on the government than we already are but that's me.
AHA!
an original thought!
Please expand on that.
The way I see it, if you start an UBI, a large degree of power now lies in the bloated government's hands over people's lives. Just think what they can get away with given the threat to withhold those funds. Conditions can be placed on this money and it can be used as a lever for citizen controls.(Consider, for example, laws that require people to take drug tests to collect welfare checks; or any number of paternalist schemes.) A UBI could very well evolve into a mechanism of central control that works in the service of ends that run counter to your values. You would not be able to dissent with government as the risk of being cut off. Also, you would have to hire more bureaucrats to administer this system making the government even more bloated. All of the data that I've seen shows the program running out of money in less than 5 years.
Imagine that..government not being in control.
They'd rather crash the system than allow that to happen.
Robbing from the rich to give to the poor, yeah, let's have more of that. It's worked out so well up to now.
I haven't noticed that it's worked out all that well.
The rich get RILLY RILLY good at hiding their wealth don't they?
Since by government reckoning, the rich seems to constitute anyone not on welfare, they mostly don't have much wealth to hide.
but..but..but...what about the (drum roll) ROTHCHILDS!
Jihadicrats support universal basic income, but typically not the less wild-eyed dhmikrats as you call them. I support $15 an hour for fast food workers because I know that about $14 an hour is the threshold for justification for return on investment of an automated fast food restaurant. I'm sick of cold food, incorrect orders, and sassy kids who take my order. An automated food prep and dispensing system will get your order correct, hot, and in half the time.
good point and I agree.
AI will eliminate make work.
Thank you for the reply and upvote! I spent my 45 year career developing automated production systems and in all that time never sent one worker into the unemployment line. Even when a system reduced the workforce from say 10 to 5 the five were found other work. No, they didn't like it, but then they still had a job and did not lose income. Many learned new and higher skills. I take that back. I do recall a one person who refused the new job he was given and exercised his right to walk out the door and never come back.
Keep working, stop paying.
Scientists who research this stuff have determined it's mostly luck and opportunity. Here is the conclusion of a Scientific American article titled The Role of Luck in Life Success Is Far Greater Than We Realized
UBI will smooth the distribution of wealth out a little. There will still be lazy people and ambitious people.
sounds like the 'scientists' found a research grant and milked it for all it was worth.
No, please no! Its one step to close to communism.
Nice
I don't know about universal income, but I do think that if we could incentivize technology used to provide for basic needs universally, it would free many people from struggling. This could unleash vast amounts of human potential.
Particularly technology to provide affordable healthy food, clean water, and distribution of these necessities to all. I am not suggesting a free handout, but I do think the current economies stress profit over providing affordable food and water to humanity.
the current economies stress profit over
well yeah. Kinda like you stress breathing. If you don't breathe you die.
If an economy doesn't allow profit it dies too.
You might check out Venezuela to see how well that works out.
Wow, very active post. To clarify my thoughts, I think profit is good. My optimistic, perhaps uninformed, sentiment, was that as a species, we develop fantastic advances through discovery and application of new better ways of achieving work. I was trying to convey that if we as inhabitants of this earth could somehow focus these ideas and advances to solutions where everyone could provide themselves or others with basic necessities, perhaps this would reduce, not replace, much of the need for money and the obvious stress of not having enough to eat or drink. Personal food cultivation or water purification systems provided to everyone with their UBI payment perhaps and you can earn additional income through barter of any food or water you produce by using these fictitious imagined inventions I dream of.
I don't envision this being centralized, I also acknowledge it is a fanciful notion. Greed, central control, and power still reign supreme.
UBI may be a way to distribute wealth and resource availability, but unfortunately, people and the existing social structures appear not to support decentralized transfer and sharing of wealth or resource amongst peers directly. It would be nice if that could be changed, but I am still skeptical that it could be delivered. Good thought experiment and provoking post, thanks again.
There are quite a lot of benefits to giving cash directly. Generally people know what is best for them better than even the best intentioned aid workers.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/welfare-reform-direct-cash-poor/407236/
where you gonna get the money?
There are various answers depending on what style ubi or direct cash benefit is proposed. The simplest answer is just to replace the confusing and wasteful patchwork of different types of benefits with just one that's much simpler to administer but costs the same.
when, short of the dissolution of the country, has a government agency ever dissolved?
I don't know, I dare say that perhaps some state or local agencies have closed their doors. They don't really have to close, they can be merged or reduced is size it scope as happens fairly frequently.
Never happened to my knowledge. There is still a HELIUM agency which provides Helium for Dirgibles used in the war...which war? WWI...the need has gone..the agency remains.
Do you want to talk about Mohair? (used in WWII uniforms?)
Hello, you really say so many truths in this post
I've been asking myself this question too. If predictions are right, many jobs will be lost to the AI. Massive unemployment. How will these people feed themselves? And now I've had this brilliant idea - send them to war some place or another...!
how well has that worked in the past?
problem is...in the past it was an economy of scarcity.
today it's becoming the exact opposite...an economy of abundance.
for example...the US government has been paying farmers NOT to farm for decades...and yet we still produce enough food to feed the world...(hunger is a local political problem...no a lack of food)
the problem is distribution. How we gonna fix that?
Keep working, stop paying.
Short circuits this bankster dystopia on any given Tuesday,...
I'm working on a publication about it, since I've noticed a lot of confusion on the topic.
Most likely, most people will live for free, as happens with subsidies at present, which would cause productive people to have to carry the weight of people who are not productive, those who have not been productive in the past, and that they will not be in the future either.
Basic income also substantially increases the circulating money supply, which will end up devaluing the currency and increasing inflation.
Also thinks that the few people who work will lose part of their interest if they are rewarded in the same way as people who don't, that is communism 101 and one of its main faults; the motivation.
I think there are two ways of imagining the future, and we have always been able to choose between these two options, stagnate or move forward. If we stagnate we will create welfare states, and subsidies of all kinds, as well as UBI, but this will bring the collapse of civilization as what happened after the Pax Romana. On the other hand we can move forward, if the current jobs are automated then we will create more jobs, we will look for more, the space is a good place for that, we must always continue growing.
consider public domain.
and once again...why do we need jobs?
Because it is the only way to grow, jobs mean production, creation, and also novelty. The most probable thing is that the works completely reform as when the industrial revolution, but they will always need people who think, express themselves, innovate, etc. Art as well as writing are jobs that are not replaced by machines or AI, many mental and expressive works will probably see their peak.
Put the example of Rome because it happened 1,500 years ago, and at that time, in its economic boom, the Roman citizens, who did not envy anyone, had stagnated, believing that they had everything and there was no need for anything else, but then they collapsed, because there is a permanent need in the civilizations and human societies, as well as in the human being itself, to expand and grow, to create something new and better, that is why we dominate the other species and that is why the dominant countries and civilizations always begin with a quest for expansion, those that stagnated; Egypt, Greece, Rome, Spain, including the British Empire, collapsed, very easily we can fall down this road.
well I disagree with your fundamental premise.
the societies of old died because they got to big.
governments, all of them, are insane...when they get too big they die.
That's what I said. When I speak of expansion I don't speak of the State but of all the indicators, I speak of intelligence, knowledge, territorial expansion, technology, etc. It was exactly when they stopped expanding in these areas, because they were comfortable, and began to expand their State, through forms of subsidies and Welfare State, with the "bread and circuses" in Rome, which began to fall.
Rome gave subsidies to wheat and organized expensive entertainment events to benefit the population, however, this growth of the State brought with it the collapse of civilization, interregional trade was diminished because farmers could not compete with subsidized wheat, and many poor people emigrated to the Roman center to live with these facilities. The Roman economy suffered an atrocious interventionism and the population became accustomed to luxuries, which is why they could not stand with the same barbarians they had subjugated for centuries.
I think something similar can happen with the implementation of a universal basic income.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexander-berkman-what-is-communist-anarchism
If money is abundant, friend, then it devalues and subsequently inflation goes up, basic economy, not improving the chances of a person giving him a wad of bills. Go to Venezuela and give 500,000 bolivares to the people to see if you create opportunities, excuse me, the government went ahead and does the same for months, see inflation and tell me the results.
If you tell me that there are no productive people, because all jobs are automated, then you are talking about a society that is stagnat, because it does not have the capacity to grow and create new areas for these workers. The industrial revolution automated many jobs, but in the long run I create new ones, the digital age is a sample of that.
If money is scarce, then it is not money, because its goal is to serve as a means of exchange for all products. Money is not scarce in any country in the world.
The only way to increase the circulating money supply without devalue money, is also increasing the demand for it, and it would need a very exceptional case for people to start demanding more money if the State, or a Private, is giving it away to everyone.
Well, maybe you're right, maybe I don't know what is happening in the country where I live and born, maybe you can explain better what is happening here.
I think we are deviating a lot from the subject, which is only if a UBI is desirable, and answering the final part of what you say. It is unfortunate that the world-class zoologists, scientists, microbiologists, etc., are only an exception, in fact, a great exception in the world, but the reality is that the main motivator in the world in which we live is money.
Look at Steemit, how many are here for more than money, are really an exception. If on this platform a universal vote were given to people to publish, the Steem would descend so quickly that people would leave the page alone before we could notice it.
The digital era has created many, countless jobs, in fact, you just have to keep an eye on the main companies of today, also monopolizing the first 5 positions (Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook), are precisely those of the technological area that burst at the end of the last century.
Finally, and although it does not go to the issue, it must be made clear, the war is not beneficial or economically profitable in itself, it only generates money because a few rulers take money illegally from there, and only for them it is profitable, however, always it generates losses to the population and to the nations in all aspects, including the economic one, because it destroys everything, absolutely everything. The United States does not generate money or profits when they go to war, rather it generates debts which is counterproductive, the few that take money out of there are some rulers that propitiate these situations.
The answer to funding UBI must be considered in a discussion of taxation, funding government programs, and the irrelevance of being fair. I doubt this discussion happens in my lifetime. If it does occur, I won’t be given a seat at the table. Consider a flat tax/UBI combination... must tax be greater than income? Or must income be greater than tax?
I am all for UBI for the next 25 years as a social experiment.
you're right...IF you think inside the box.
why limit yourself?
In my own opinion, te rich will never allow a universal basic income. Most of them feels they will loose control over the masses if it happens.
Why isnt an option that precludes banksters being offered?
Keep working, stop paying.