Poll of the Day > Nancy Pelosi wants UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME now because of what COVID-19 did!!!

(+) Yeah! (+)

House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi expressed willingness to look into instituting a universal basic income for americans that was the centrepiece of Democrat Andrew Yang's campaign!!

She pointed it out in an interview on MSNBC and suggested a minimum income, a guaranteed income for people after congress passed one bill to combat the economic fallout because of COVID-19 and the millions of americans now unemployed

Yang pitched a UBI with 1000 payments to every american over 18 and would be doled out every month as he called the concept "freedom dividend"

Yang said that companies do it all the time, every day and when companies did it, they offered it as a good job to their employees and as owners of their country they ought to return it to themselves and that is how they would get it back.

Yang applauded Pelosi for making those statements stating "I applaud Speaker Pelosi for publicly endorsing the consideration of a guaranteed income for all americans. This pandemic has unfortunately exposed serious weaknesses in our economy with alarming unemployment rates and crippling impact on every professional industry. We need UBI permanently in order to insure that americans are prepared in an event of the next economic downturn, no matter the scale"

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I disagree with m4a, but love the idea of universal basic income. its so progressive though that its not going to happen.

I mean I guess as a temporary measure yeah stimulus checks should continue until the economy gets going again but I don't think they should be permanant.

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It was unsustainable even before you have fewer people working. Honestly, UBI is only really sustainable when the government owns all means of production because otherwise there's no incentive for anybody to work. And we aren't anywhere close to reaching the level of automation where you could have a post-labor society

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Does she actually? I thought she was a neoliberal.

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I don't agree with a single thing coming from that walking skeleton hag.

There are tons of people working that are willing to quit and live off of $12k a year.

Yang said that companies do it all the time, every day and when companies did it, they offered it as a good job to their employees and as owners of their country they ought to return it to themselves and that is how they would get it back.

This is my favorite run-on sentence

No one wants that Pelosi, she should set her goals on a more feasible and popular issue like UHC.
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Everyone gets money: controversial
Everyone below $X income gets money: yay!

I like...don't get it. Why do people not mind the latter but do the former? The income limits of the stimulus weren't even "rich people" territory, either. $75,000 for a single person is barely even middle class in various high cost of living areas like most of coastal CA, NYC, D.C., etc...
Why not just give out money to everybody? If a(n actual) rich person gets it, it's a drop in the bucket to them anyway, who fucking cares? Presumably it's being paid for by taxes, so the rich people aren't going to be getting back anywhere near what they pay in, so whatever.

inb4 the Trump aplogists who have promoted the stimulus as a good thing b/c he did it and it gave them money now try to do a 180 and rail against UBI

Zeus posted...

It was unsustainable even before you have fewer people working. Honestly, UBI is only really sustainable when the government owns all means of production because otherwise there's no incentive for anybody to work. And we aren't anywhere close to reaching the level of automation where you could have a post-labor society

UBI provides enough income to survive on (food, shelther, clothing, healthcare). The incentive to work is if you'd like to have more than the bare minimum needed to live off of.

Ideally it's paid for by taxing company profits (at point of sale, none of the inversion crap) and only giving tax breaks for having lots of U.S. employees. That way either they're providing lots of jobs, or if they're making money w/o doing that (whether via outsourcing or automation) they get hit w/ a big tax bill that's used to fund UBI to make up for the lack of jobs available.

If only a handful of people are working, where is that money coming from?

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The country's already in the crapper with debt.. welfare v.2 isn't going to help anyone

xjayguyx posted...

I don't agree with a single thing coming from that walking skeleton hag.

Seconded

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I'm for it, but it's not like it doesn't have drawbacks. Ideally they would try to lower the cost of living by making food and housing much cheaper before doing something like this so that the amount needed for each person is considerably less than it is now.

There also undeniably will be people that don't work under UBI that would if it wasn't there but I'm not convinced it'd actually be that many people. Welfare already exists.

On the other hand, people would probably be quicker and more aggressively investing in automation if theres no concern about getting rid of jobs people need to survive.

Just anecdotally I know of a job my friend had that kept more people employed than necessary because they didn't want to fire people that hadn't done anything wrong and needed the job to survive.

So basically, theres plenty of jobs that don't need doing even now that could be gotten rid of safely and that would offset the people who simply choose to live on like $1000 a month that aren't already on welfare so the damage to the economy would actually probably be a bit smaller than some of you might expect. Theres also a lot of middle men out there that could afford to be entirely cut out but who knows if that would actually happen.

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why do people against UBI think that people would rather barely have enough to live than work and have money to pay for entertainment, travel, buy "luxury" items, tecnology, etc.?

most people don't want to sit at home and do nothing (especially if they could go out and make money). this quarantine should make that clear.

there will always be people who want to make more money, and UBI isn't going to stop that. and if there are people who don't want to work who are satisfied with their UBI based on their cost of living, making more jobs available to others, that's totally fine by me.

papercup posted...

I mean I guess as a temporary measure yeah stimulus checks should continue until the economy gets going again but I don't think they should be permanant.

This, I think. If we do get it, I would say ok during this time. But not forever...
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how about instead of giving people money we simply take less of their money

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streamofthesky posted...

UBI provides enough income to survive on (food, shelther, clothing, healthcare). The incentive to work is if you'd like to have more than the bare minimum needed to live off of.

Ideally it's paid for by taxing company profits (at point of sale, none of the inversion crap) and only giving tax breaks for having lots of U.S. employees. That way either they're providing lots of jobs, or if they're making money w/o doing that (whether via outsourcing or automation) they get hit w/ a big tax bill that's used to fund UBI to make up for the lack of jobs available.

If nobody is working then the level of productivity won't be enough to sustain that bare minimum, unless the system is fully automated which it obviously isn't anywhere close to being. The idea that it could be generated through taxing companies when nobody is working at those companies is ludicrous.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

There also undeniably will be people that don't work under UBI that would if it wasn't there but I'm not convinced it'd actually be that many people. Welfare already exists.

Welfare is both stigmatized, has at least some controls designed to limit it (even if the enforcement is clearly inadequate), and in many cases only supplements what people already make. UBI would not.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

On the other hand, people would probably be quicker and more aggressively investing in automation if theres no concern about getting rid of jobs people need to survive.

Automation innovations have nothing to do with a concern for workers, they have to do with achieving productivity at a lower price point. The only reason that automation hasn't gone further is that it's currently too expensive to automate many jobs.

Fam_Fam posted...

why do people against UBI think that people would rather barely have enough to live than work and have money to pay for entertainment, travel, buy "luxury" items, tecnology, etc.?

most people don't want to sit at home and do nothing (especially if they could go out and make money). this quarantine should make that clear.

there will always be people who want to make more money, and UBI isn't going to stop that. and if there are people who don't want to work who are satisfied with their UBI based on their cost of living, making more jobs available to others, that's totally fine by me.

Why do people expect that UBI will be either be sustainable at basic needs (if nobody is working) or that it would stop at basic needs? When has a government program ever known limits without hitting a hard wall, collapsing disastrously, or being reined in by an opposing party which sees the flaws?


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Zeus posted...

If nobody is working then the level of productivity won't be enough to sustain that bare minimum, unless the system is fully automated which it obviously isn't anywhere close to being. The idea that it could be generated through taxing companies when nobody is working at those companies is ludicrous.

Umm...for decades now corporate profits have soared while the size of the workforce has decreased due to automation.
That's the whole point. If there's less jobs available due to automation, people at least have UBI to take care of them, paid for by those corporate profits being taxed.
The only corporate tax breaks should be for maintaining above average ratio of full time workers (part time or seasonal counting as a fraction of 1 full time worker) to annual profits, and possibly another break for companies that restrict the top pay/benefits to no more than 10x or 20x the lowest paid employee's income (encourages companies to pay their employees well) or the like.

If she's for it, I know there's gotta be a catch. Nope. Vote out all these evil scumbags and pass it with fresh people who haven't been twisted by the system. Our representatives aren't doing their job. They've gotta go.

streamofthesky posted...

for decades now corporate profits have soared

You probably shouldn't crib your arguments from Obama's hyperbolic speeches which, amusingly, were delivered at times when the market was down.

streamofthesky posted...

while the size of the workforce has decreased due to automation.

Except it really hasn't.

streamofthesky posted...

That's the whole point. If there's less jobs available due to automation, people at least have UBI to take care of them, paid for by those corporate profits being taxed.

Which necessitates actually having a shortage of jobs when literally just a short while ago we had record-low unemployment. You can't pretend that jobs aren't out there if employers are struggling to fill jobs.

And with UBI, corporations wouldn't have the workers period.

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A UBI would be a good thing but just not very practical considering how many people are in this country. If they did it it would help the economy because of people who would use it to invest into things.
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Zeus posted...

Welfare is both stigmatized, has at least some controls designed to limit it (even if the enforcement is clearly inadequate), and in many cases only supplements what people already make. UBI would not.

Yeah but theres no reason to think not working wouldn't be stigmatized after UBI, at least in the short term.

Zeus posted...

Automation innovations have nothing to do with a concern for workers, they have to do with achieving productivity at a lower price point. The only reason that automation hasn't gone further is that it's currently too expensive to automate many jobs.

You don't think there would be more people looking into automation innovation if suddenly there were less people working? Both these quoted posts can't be right. Either there wouldn't be a shortage of labor, or there would be more interest in automation. Likely it'd be somewhere in the middle with a minor shortage of labor and minor increase in attempts to incorporate more automation..

There are plenty of people who aren't considering trying to automate their jobs because things are working fine and to shake that up would screw over employees. There's also a ton of people who don't give a fuck about employees and would happily automate the whole thing if it saved money. People aren't identical. One extra person looking into automation could make the difference if they come up with a breakthrough and if labor actually dropped where it became hard to find employees and productivity was threatened, you can be sure automation would proceed much faster.

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YoukaiSlayer posted...

You don't think there would be more people looking into automation innovation if suddenly there were less people working?

I think automation is going to be what causes less people to start working. Not the other way around...
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All the people saying no prefer an impoverished nation, where only CEO's have money.

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UBI is either going to happen or alot of people are going to be in serious trouble eventually, the current social security system is not going to work long term.

That being said, UBI should be a base, a safety net, but not enough for everyone to live comfortably, and it also needs to go along with affordable housing/living expenses.

You should be able to afford a studio apartment no matter what your situation is, basic health care and food to eat, anythinn over that requires work.

Doing anything less than that is going to cause serious problems and already is.

But yeah, if you say gave everyone 400$ a week UBI, you would instantly lose a large percentage of people working the menial jobs, you know, those jobs everyone likes to say are only for high school students etc, except that they current account for about 50% of the jobs in this country. Who is going to work at a gas station, or serve food, or be a clerk at a hotel etc, if they can get as much money just staying home?

So until you automate most of those things (and then raise the pay on the others), UBI would be a disaster.

Now temp UBI during this whole stay at home thing I can get behind BUT I thik it needs to be UNIVERSAL so even if you work, you still get the money. It's not fair to give it only to people who are not working.

In the current situation people who are at home not working are making more then most of the people who are actually still working as grocery stores only pay $15 (if that much) etc. So yeah, stay at home and don't work and get $750 a week, or make $15 an hour and get only $600 a week for 40 hours of work. Totally fair.

I still think affordable housing needs to come first, especially since you can't set a base UBI for a nation where rent prices vary so much from one place to another. In the bay area your lucky to get a 1 studio apartmetn for $2000 but ii other places you can get a 3 bedroom for $1000...how do you balance UBI with such extremes?

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wolfy42 posted...

how do you balance UBI with such extremes?

Thats one of the biggest problems with UBI. As it stands now, its impossible to be fair with it.
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wolfy42 posted...

But yeah, if you say gave everyone 400$ a week UBI, you would instantly lose a large percentage of people working the menial jobs, you know, those jobs everyone likes to say are only for high school students etc, except that they current account for about 50% of the jobs in this country. Who is going to work at a gas station, or serve food, or be a clerk at a hotel etc, if they can get as much money just staying home?

So until you automate most of those things (and then raise the pay on the others), UBI would be a disaster.

The point of UBI is that unlike the current safety net, you receive it no matter what. No costly bearuacracy or infrastructure for people to constantly apply for benefits, have people check the claims, and frequently update the rolls as people drop off or join them again.
If you have a job, you get that pay on top of UBI, not in place of it. Having a job will always be more lucrative than not having one, under UBI. Now...will people still think it's worth making another $8/hr to do awful/menial/physically taxing labor when they don't need that money just to afford food/clothing/shelter/healthcare ? Perhaps not! Just means companies will have to pay a bit better to attract a labor pool that's no longer feeling like it's being held hostage.

In the current situation people who are at home not working are making more then most of the people who are actually still working as grocery stores only pay $15 (if that much) etc. So yeah, stay at home and don't work and get $750 a week, or make $15 an hour and get only $600 a week for 40 hours of work. Totally fair.

I agree, it's disgusting and stupid and unfair. It's also not a problem with UBI, as I already explained. You work or you don't, you still get the same UBI.

I still think affordable housing needs to come first, especially since you can't set a base UBI for a nation where rent prices vary so much from one place to another. In the bay area your lucky to get a 1 studio apartmetn for $2000 but ii other places you can get a 3 bedroom for $1000...how do you balance UBI with such extremes?

I agree housing is ludicrously expensive in some areas and it's not sustainable. Not sure if that can be fixed w/o direct government intervention/restrictions that would make the Right lose their fucking minds, though.
I would say...price UBI based on the national median cost of living. States that have super expensive areas to live are free to supplement the national UBI with their own kick-in to target expensive localities if they want, but leave it to more local government to figure out that problem. They let it get like this, and those local governments love those massive property tax windfalls. Let them fucking deal with it or let those housing bubbles collapse like they deserve to.

Zeus posted...

You can't pretend that jobs aren't out there if employers are struggling to fill jobs.

I'd struggle to get someone to eat my poop full time on minimum wage too.
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streamofthesky posted...

I agree housing is ludicrously expensive in some areas and it's not sustainable. Not sure if that can be fixed w/o direct government intervention/restrictions that would make the Right lose their fucking minds, though.

If a building firm knows everybody has UBI, they'll make giant concrete shacks to house you at 70% rate of UBI, but they can't do that with people who can't afford $10 rent. The market will force availability as there's enough fat to supply cheap housing if its demand is high and reliable.

streamofthesky posted...

I would say...price UBI based on the national median cost of living.

Then all houses below median jump price to meet it and the median goes up, which will happen indefinitely.
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LinkPizza posted...

I think automation is going to be what causes less people to start working. Not the other way around...

It could happen either way and arguably the way thats better for most people is automation as a result of UBI, not the other way around. If UBI comes second, it means a lot of people suffer a loss of income with no safety net to catch them. You get a larger divide between people with jobs and without them. It's not like only menial labor can be automated either.

If UBI comes first, production drops, the economy suffers a bit, but UBI is basically a hard enforced floor for wealth so naturally it'll come at the expense of people not at the floor. To me, that is very preferable. Those people still have homes and food and health, just maybe not as many luxuries as they would prefer. That's a harsh difference compared to being homeless or starving.

You want the system in place to handle a transition to post labor BEFORE you start making the transition, not during.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

Then all houses below median jump price to meet it and the median goes up, which will happen indefinitely.

This is probably the biggest risk. Without anything in place, theres nothing stopping the cost of living from inflating possibly out of control and UBI could end up always trying to play catch up before eventually the economy collapses entirely. You'd need something in place to keep the cost of at least housing and food from rising. Preferably, make it go the other way around and actually get cheaper.

Housing can probably be handled through taxing changes to incentivize the price to stay low for cheap housing.

Food might not actually change that much. Even now, theres some food like rice thats practically free. As long as a healthy diet can be maintained for really cheap, it'll probably be fine.

Of course, literally 1 company in those areas that actually cared about helping people more than making money could single handedly prevent that from being an issue. Could even be the government although good luck trying to get that to happen.

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Government housing SUCKED hard when I was a kid, the projects etc where horrible places to live, most of the residents had kids for the extra cash they brought in (and didn't spend it on the kids etc), but that is because it was horribly done. I strongly believe it's the only real solution to the current housing crisis, and it is a crisis.

IF the government buys (or uses immenant domain to obtain) significant plots of land within most areas and then builds small 1 room flats (studio apartments) with a kitchen and a bathroom, and rents them flat out for $400 a month, in all area, it would make a GIANT step forward in solving the current crisis, even without UBI etc.

That in my opinion is the first solution that needs to be done, and of course the biggest problem is the states themselves that get taxes based on property values would fight it tooth and nail. The home owners (who vote the most) would fight it as well, as you know it'll drop home values. So basically the rich and wealthy in the country, or the top 20% or so, would prevent it from ever happening even though it's needed by the majority of people.

If studios were $400 and 1 bedrooms were $500 base, with 2 and 3 bedrooms not being too much more, that would force the current renters to drop their prices as well. Who is going to rent a 1 bedroom for $1200 a month, if they can get a decent 1 bedroom for $500?

I have to say, at least in Washington, a LARGE part of the rental problems have been due to the property values being increased so quickly. The state makes a freakton off that, and home owners do as well (since they can then sell the home for a massive profit), but it has caused the average rental price in most of Wa to almost double since I moved here like 5 years ago. It's crazy. My friends run an apartment complex where a 1 bedroom was $650 and a 2 bedroom $725 4 years ago. Now the 1 bedroom is $1175 and the 2 bedroom is $1350. While not quite double, that is an insane jump in such a small amount of time.

Alot of people like to blame the home owners or property owners because they are raising prices etc, but when their property value goes up, so does the taxes they pay.

The gov gets more money the more they increase property values, and they have control over the increase, that seems like a REALLY broken system to me, which has led to this current situation, where you start to get to the point when 50% of the people can't afford a 1 bedroom apartment based off their salary.

Believe it's something like 47% of citizens make $15 an hour or less, which is only $600 a week, or about $2400 a month before taxes. With taxes being about 15-20%, that means about $2000 take home, and a median cost of $1200 a montt for a 1 bedroom. With health insurance/car insurance/cell phones/internet etc, that leaves less then $400 a month for food working a 40 hour week, for half the people working in this state.

Rent should flat out NEVER be more then 50% of the base income in a state (which is $13.50 here) for a 40 an hour a week job. And that should be for a decent 1 bedroom apartment. We are way past that, and getting worse constantly.

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One thing about UBI is, if its universal and we had already had it, we wouldn't need hastily cobbled together, highly bloated stimulus bills. We would already have that covered without needing to give a nebulous 25 million to the arts or other sectors that have little to do with the bill itself.

Yeah, that's why (well, one of several reasons why) I don't think national UBI should even try to price match the insane property markets in some areas.

The states let this happen. The state love raking in those big property tax hauls, which the federal government doesn't get a penny of. Let them deal with the mess of their own creation.

As far as policies, I'd suggest less obtrusive ones that might actually attract bipartisan support. For one thing, foreign ownership of property should be MASSIVELY taxed...Chinese buy up a lot of property along the coasts b/c they don't trust their own currency and their own property is shit that won't last, so they treat U.S., UK, etc... real estate as their form of "banking their money".
Another should be that housing isn't subject to property tax up to a certain limit, then it is subjected heavily. And that only applies to someone's primary residence. If they buy up multiple homes, they're hit with the hefty tax burden on the full amount. It's fucking bs that even as the boomers retire and downsize out of their homes, the prices never go down b/c a bunch of people who use real estate purely for making money and not...to get a place to live....buy up the property.

Thats why I was saying tax benefits could keep the pricing in check to some degree. Imagine straight up not having to pay property tax on apartments priced under $500 a month.

The ideal solution probably depends a lot on how fast automation actually happens. In a situation where automation replaces like 90% of jobs, theres really no reason to have money as we do now. If we got there in like 40 years theres no need to make long term solutions to some of these money related issues. If it takes a lot longer than that to get there, then we might need to create more long term systems in the mean time.

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Zeus posted...

Honestly, UBI is only really sustainable when the government owns all means of production because otherwise there's no incentive for anybody to work.

Pretty much every UBI/minimum income experiment conducted hasn't run into that problem. There's no incentive for anybody to work in garbage jobs that don't pay enough to attract people to them but can currently get away with it because the immediate alternative is starvation, sure, but people generally like to do something with their lives. People also generally like better lives than mere subsistence, and that takes work on top of whatever minimum they're getting. Exceptions will always exist that are content to live off of that bare minimum and do nothing while mooching off of the system, but that's going to happen with any sort of social support, and those small pockets of abuse shouldn't result in the supports being taken away from the people that use them properly.

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adjl posted...

Pretty much every UBI/minimum income experiment conducted hasn't run into that problem. There's no incentive for anybody to work in garbage jobs that don't pay enough to attract people to them but can currently get away with it because the immediate alternative is starvation, sure, but people generally like to do something with their lives. People also generally like better lives than mere subsistence, and that takes work on top of whatever minimum they're getting. Exceptions will always exist that are content to live off of that bare minimum and do nothing while mooching off of the system, but that's going to happen with any sort of social support, and those small pockets of abuse shouldn't result in the supports being taken away from the people that use them properly.

zeus, can't fathom the fact the issue exists is due to major businesses realizing they can pay bare minimum wage, as the alternative for most is starvation, ok?

hes utterly incapable of viewing the world through the perspective of anyone but himself, let alone show a semblance of honest compassion for a fellow human being, ok?

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YoukaiSlayer posted...

Yeah but theres no reason to think not working wouldn't be stigmatized after UBI, at least in the short term.

If everybody is given something, it normalizes it.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

It could happen either way and arguably the way thats better for most people is automation as a result of UBI, not the other way around. If UBI comes second, it means a lot of people suffer a loss of income with no safety net to catch them. You get a larger divide between people with jobs and without them. It's not like only menial labor can be automated either.

If UBI comes first, production drops, the economy suffers a bit, but UBI is basically a hard enforced floor for wealth so naturally it'll come at the expense of people not at the floor. To me, that is very preferable. Those people still have homes and food and health, just maybe not as many luxuries as they would prefer. That's a harsh difference compared to being homeless or starving.

You want the system in place to handle a transition to post labor BEFORE you start making the transition, not during.

That's magical thinking. Cutting the labor force won't spur automation, it'll just encourage importing immigrants to fill those jobs... at which point the immigrants will also get UBI and not need the jobs. More importantly, trying to massively adjust for automation decades before the technology even exists is going to be far more damaging than having UBI come in later when the technology is actually established to have an impact.... especially because there might be NO transition to a post-labor society because a post-labor society may never fucking happen. The jobs "lost" during previous industrial revolutions were ultimately replaced by jobs nobody even thought about -- or could even think about -- at the time. Proponents of UBI have absolutely idiotic, myopic worldviews that have all the "forethought" seen in Thanos's logic.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

This is probably the biggest risk. Without anything in place, theres nothing stopping the cost of living from inflating possibly out of control and UBI could end up always trying to play catch up before eventually the economy collapses entirely. You'd need something in place to keep the cost of at least housing and food from rising. Preferably, make it go the other way around and actually get cheaper.

Housing can probably be handled through taxing changes to incentivize the price to stay low for cheap housing.

Food might not actually change that much. Even now, theres some food like rice thats practically free. As long as a healthy diet can be maintained for really cheap, it'll probably be fine.

Of course, literally 1 company in those areas that actually cared about helping people more than making money could single handedly prevent that from being an issue. Could even be the government although good luck trying to get that to happen.

The reality is that the only way for UBI to truly work would be for the government to seize everything. It would need to control all production, all housing, land ownership, etc, which it would then distribute as self-serving bureaucrats would see fit.

argonautweakend posted...

One thing about UBI is, if its universal and we had already had it, we wouldn't need hastily cobbled together, highly bloated stimulus bills. We would already have that covered without needing to give a nebulous 25 million to the arts or other sectors that have little to do with the bill itself.

If you're arguing that UBI is a supplement to earned income, you'd still need stimulus bills in that scenario. Of course, if UBI was a thing, instead of bloated stimulus bills you'd simply have a system that falls completely apart because nobody would fucking do those jobs in the first place. There some healthcare jobs that people would likely volunteer for to help their common man, but you're not going to find people to work low-end, low-gratification jobs that we can't automate and need to be done.

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Zeus posted...

If everybody is given something, it normalizes it.

People are already stigmatized for having low paying jobs. I can only disagree with you here. Being the poorest person is never going to be something most people feel good about or respect.

Zeus posted...

Cutting the labor force won't spur automation,

Necessity begets progress. Look how much medical research is getting done now. Look how fast science progresses when in a real war. Science right now is moving at a crawl compared to what it could be doing.
Zeus posted...

it'll just encourage importing immigrants to fill those jobs... at which point the immigrants will also get UBI and not need the jobs

You literally disprove your own point in the same sentence you introduce it. It wouldn't encourage importing immigrants because they would just get UBI same as the people that already live here. That wouldn't solve their labor shortage.

Zeus posted...

't spur automation, it'll just encourage importing immigrants to fill those jobs... at which point the immigrants will also get UBI and not need the jobs. More importantly, trying to massively adjust for automation decades before the technology even exists is going to be far more damaging than having UBI come in later when the technology is actually established to have an impact.... especially because there might be NO transition to a post-labor society because a post-labor society may never fucking happen. The jobs "lost" during previous industrial revolutions were ultimately replaced by jobs nobody even thought about -- or could even think about -- at the time. Proponents of UBI have absolutely idiotic, myopic worldviews that have all the "forethought" seen in Thanos's logic.

The only way post labor wouldn't be inevitable is if science stops progressing either by strictly enforced ban by some sort of government with complete control or human extinction. It's always been a matter of when, not if. How could it be any other way?

The jobs lost to stuff like factory automation do eventually pop up somewhere else, but not before the people that had those jobs are unemployed and potentially financially ruined. People died from that. I want to avoid that happening on a much larger scale. The work force might bounce back, but those people that ended up homeless and starving aren't coming back to life when it happens.
Zeus posted...

The reality is that the only way for UBI to truly work would be for the government to seize everything. It would need to control all production, all housing, land ownership, etc, which it would then distribute as self-serving bureaucrats would see fit.

What leads you to think this? Why wouldn't things like tax benefits handle the housing issue? What happened to the idea of competition between businesses keeping prices competitive?

It could easily be made in such a way that renting to people only living off UBI is somewhat profitable and extremely stable. Theres far less risk of them not being able to pay because the government gives them enough money for it constantly. I'd think a lot of people would want to rent cheap housing in those conditions.

Food is already priced competitvely. Otherwise things like bags of rice would cost 10x as much. Why would UBI change that? If anything, food is probably the hardest industry to try and control because it's so easy to enter into.

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YoukaiSlayer posted...

It could happen either way and arguably the way thats better for most people is automation as a result of UBI, not the other way around. If UBI comes second, it means a lot of people suffer a loss of income with no safety net to catch them. You get a larger divide between people with jobs and without them. It's not like only menial labor can be automated either.

If UBI comes first, production drops, the economy suffers a bit, but UBI is basically a hard enforced floor for wealth so naturally it'll come at the expense of people not at the floor. To me, that is very preferable. Those people still have homes and food and health, just maybe not as many luxuries as they would prefer. That's a harsh difference compared to being homeless or starving.

You want the system in place to handle a transition to post labor BEFORE you start making the transition, not during.

Sure. Thats what people want. But that might not be what they get. But I do see a lot of people leaving jobs as soon as they get UBI. Especially if its enough for them to live on.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

This is probably the biggest risk. Without anything in place, theres nothing stopping the cost of living from inflating possibly out of control and UBI could end up always trying to play catch up before eventually the economy collapses entirely. You'd need something in place to keep the cost of at least housing and food from rising. Preferably, make it go the other way around and actually get cheaper.

This is something Im really worried about. Ive be one the process of trying to get a house. And the prospect of getting UBI before getting a house is worrying me because of this. So, Ive been trying to get it a little faster.
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Cool. I will absolutely quit my job, do side jobs for cash a few weeks a year off the books, get free health care, and wait for the dems to make my children's college free. Can't wait!

Less Govt is a good thing, not more. If you see this giant CRAP SHOW that is how the govt and congress has handled this coronavirus crap from federal and state levels now imagine them running the healthcare system for EVERYONE! Yeah NIGHTMARE! Why anyone would think that is a good thing I'll never understand. The VA is already govt ran healthcare and it's crap. So no we don't need more handouts from the govt from money they just print up fresh off the presses daily to pay for it all. We have a debt problem as it is we don't need more. Not to mention if everyone knows everyone has more to start out with, then everything increases in price. But that increase will far outweigh the slight gain leaving everyone but the rich off worse than before it started.

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Decoy77 posted...

The VA is already govt ran healthcare and it's crap. So no we don't need more handouts from the govt from money they just print up fresh off the presses daily to pay for it all.

you think our veterans healthcare is a handout that should be removed... you sir, disgust me, ok?

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Decoy77 posted...

The VA is already govt ran healthcare and it's crap.

My grandfather was in a private managed care institution for a few years, and it was horrible. Complete mismanagement, overdosing of pills, people who seemed fine one day dead the next... And it was costing $120K per year to stay there. Then we found out as a WW2 vet, he could go to the state's veteran's home. He'd have to pay 80% of his social security income (ie, not much money) but otherwise it was free and his life savings would no longer be getting torched. Much cleaner and better facility, the people there were nicer, too. He loved it there.

One of my co-workers is a reservist, and he loves his VA care and how cheap everything is. Never has had a problem with it.

I've known several other people who've used VA services, and all of them loved it, too. Just b/c there's some bad examples across the entire nation doesn't mean VA is bad, and there's tons of horror stories with private care to match any from the VA.

streamofthesky posted...

Just b/c there's some bad examples across the entire nation doesn't mean VA is bad, and there's tons of horror stories with private care to match any from the VA.

This. While I've heard of some really bad stories dealing with the VA, I've heard many more about the good stuff. It really depends on the people working there...
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