Current Events > I never thought I'd do a 180 on this, but I actually support UBI now.

(+) Yeah! (+)

With certain restrictions, albeit.

I always thought it was kind of a stupid idea made just for the sake of feel-good legislation, but in light of most people getting their TrumpBucks checks and spending it on whatever the fuck, I now understand the real usefulness of it, that it helps stabilize the economy and promotes glorious capitalism!
Giving people regular doses of small stimulus funding gives them money that they can spend on certain types of non-essential businesses that they'd normally ignore.

Obviously, as I said, it would need to be done right so that it doesn't just get abused by lazy fucks, but I'm actually really behind the idea now and more interested in Yang as a candidate, though admittedly too late lol. And yeah I get it, the big flaw is that it would require a tremendous amount of funding to actually make it work without simply raising taxes, but let's be real, there's plenty of sectors that could afford to have their funding cut.

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As automation increases, it may become a necessity. Like it or not.

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People will learn that they can either support UBI or deal with the inevitable fallout of millions of jobs disappearing.

As far as saying it needs restrictions, I think for starters, it definitely needs to operate on a per household level. Like, 25 year old kids living at home in their bedroom, with their parents, shouldnt be receiving it. Couples should obviously receive double, it close to whatever the figure is.

For that matter, I don't think that the figure needs to be as generous as the TrumpBucks checks were. $500 seems like a better place to start, BUT I'm not an expert, so I'd be willing to listen if that's wrong or not. Either way, personally I feel like it shouldn't be a number that people can completely live off of, easily, since that's where it opens up for abuse.

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LostForest posted...

Like, 25 year old kids living at home in their bedroom, with their parents, shouldnt be receiving it.

Why not? If they have a job and helping out with the utilities then why not? Lol

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LostForest posted...

As far as saying it needs restrictions, I think for starters, it definitely needs to operate on a per household level. Like, 25 year old kids living at home in their bedroom, with their parents, shouldnt be receiving it. Couples should obviously receive double, it close to whatever the figure is.

For that matter, I don't think that the figure needs to be as generous as the TrumpBucks checks were. $500 seems like a better place to start, BUT I'm not an expert, so I'd be willing to listen if that's wrong or not. Either way, personally I feel like it shouldn't be a number that people can completely live off of, easily, since that's where it opens up for abuse.

I dont think you have to worry about abuse in the US. lol
The current system doesn't even support people who are disabled and unable to get a job or survive on their own without others stepping up to pay for their survival. If anything, the problem with a UBI system in the US would be that it would exclude too many people. You'd have 10 million people losing their job to automation and having nowhere to go and the UBI would only be distributed to 5 million of them, etc.

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The fundamental flaw of UBI is quite easy to illustrate, with an absurd example.
Two people deciding they get a UBI of $1000 means they have to collectively come up with $2000 each month.

Why do we assume it's suddenly going to work when scaled up to 320 million people?

Questionmarktarius posted...

The fundamental flaw of UBI is quite easy to illustrate, with an absurd example.
Two people deciding they get a UBI of $1000 means they have to collectively come up with $2000 each month.

Why do we assume it's suddenly going to work when scaled up to 320 million people?

That flaw only applies if your population is homogeneous and has no access to automation. Bad example.
If automation generates most of the wealth in a society (which it will someday, if it continues at the pace we're heading in now), then the two individuals don't have to "come up with" anything.
In fact, they can't because they are no longer competitive with the robots and AI.
So there are two choices:
1. Provide them with some of the wealth that the tech generates, so that there is still a such thing as a consumer and a reason to even have the robots.
2. Don't provide them with access. This means they either die or figure out how to survive independent from society. The system of tech then either falls into the hands of the lucky few (those who happen to own rights to some of the tech) or the whole system collapses and we revert back to a pre-technological society.

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Tryin2GetDaPipe posted...

Why not? If they have a job and helping out with the utilities then why not? Lol

Because people like that are the most likely to abuse a UBI and not actually make use of it, IMO. Most people living at home are in a position of saving money. If you're looking at UBI from an economically stimulating standpoint (which this topic is), people hoarding the money defeats the point of it.


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Anticyclonic posted...

That flaw only applies if your population is homogeneous and has no access to automation. Bad example.
If automation generates most of the wealth in a society (which it will someday, if it continues at the pace we're heading in now), then the two individuals don't have to "come up with" anything.
In fact, they can't because they are no longer competitive with the robots and AI.
So there are two choices:
1. Provide them with some of the wealth that the tech generates, so that there is still a such thing as a consumer and a reason to even have the robots.
2. Don't provide them with access. This means they either die or figure out how to survive independent from society. The system of tech then either falls into the hands of the lucky few (those who happen to own rights to some of the tech) or the whole system collapses and we revert back to a pre-technological society.

That would imply post-scarcity, where income is irrelevant anyway.

Again, absurd reduction illustrates the flaw.
If I have a robot that makes a thing, and I sell that thing to you for a price that covers the cost of materials plus an arbitrary profit, why should I then give some of that price back to you?
If I become obligated to give back more than even the cost of materials, why would I turn that robot on ever again?

LostForest posted...

Because people like that are the most likely to abuse a UBI and not actually make use of it, IMO. Most people living at home are in a position of saving money. If you're looking at UBI from an economically stimulating standpoint (which this topic is), people hoarding the money defeats the point of it.

Why would they hoard the money? It seems more likely to me, looking at the common 25 year old, they'd spend it on some type of experience or buy a luxury of some sort. Sure, some will save it but the savy ones will invest it, which puts money into the economy, or save it for a big purchase, like a house, which will stimulate the economy in the future.

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TC, I recommend reading Yang's book, and also Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber if you are interested in even just the concept of how 'work' in general has been changing over the past 30 years or so.

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Bullshit Jobs is really convincing with just how unnecessary and inefficient a lot of careers are and how such practices obscure just how much work is already replaced or no longer needed but is still considered to be jobs for employment statistics.

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Master_Bass posted...

Why would they hoard the money? It seems more likely to me, looking at the common 25 year old, they'd spend it on some type of experience or buy a luxury of some sort. Sure, some will save it but the savy ones will invest it, which puts money into the economy, or save it for a big purchase, like a house, which will stimulate the economy in the future.

I know this is anecdotal, but I live in a very expensive part of the country, and typically it's pretty normal for people to live with their parents well into their 20s, even into their late 20s because it's so expensive to move out. So they spend most of their time saving up money in hopes to move out to an apartment that costs $1,700 a month lol.

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Something I will never understand: the idiotic self-harm billionaires inflict upon themselves. As the general population becomes poorer, less innovation occurs. Fewer small businesses open, and fewer inventors are able to put cool products on the market.

If I was a billionaire, I would be pushing so hard for redistribution of wealth even out of purely selfish desire for more interesting stuff to buy.

Hell, if all the billionaires banded together and dedicated half their collective fortunes to some pie-in-the-sky project (for instance, extreme life extension, or the elimination/mitigation of aging) then they could all benefit from the rewards and not see their lifestyles change one iota for the worse.

It's pure, distilled greed. They want money for the sake of having money. They don't even seem to realize that they could selfishly benefit from a wealthier society.

It's so absolutely mind-boggling. They're trying to be selfish, but because they're so absurdly short-sighted about it, they're missing out on so much potential benefit.

Just to illustrate this point: would you rather be one of the richest people on the planet in the 18th century, or would you rather live a comfortable middle-class life today? I 100% choose the latter. I have access to modern medicine, the internet, video games, all kinds of sights and sounds that the wealthiest people on the planet could never have dreamed of 300 years ago. And the only reason it's all been possible is because we have millions upon millions of people with enough money and education to innovate. Imagine the kind of world we could live in if every single person currently living in poverty was instead afforded a middle-class lifestyle.

We could have eliminated age-related health problems and established a Mars base by now if the billionaires of the world could just be satisfied with a few hundred million dollars instead. No matter how selfish you are, the argument for wealth redistribution still benefits you.

hmmmm...very interesting

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Rexdragon125 posted...

Something I will never understand: the idiotic self-harm billionaires inflict upon themselves. As the general population becomes poorer, less innovation occurs. Fewer small businesses open, and fewer inventors are able to put cool products on the market.

If I was a billionaire, I would be pushing so hard for redistribution of wealth even out of purely selfish desire for more interesting stuff to buy.

Hell, if all the billionaires banded together and dedicated half their collective fortunes to some pie-in-the-sky project (for instance, extreme life extension, or the elimination/mitigation of aging) then they could all benefit from the rewards and not see their lifestyles change one iota for the worse.

It's pure, distilled greed. They want money for the sake of having money. They don't even seem to realize that they could selfishly benefit from a wealthier society.

It's so absolutely mind-boggling. They're trying to be selfish, but because they're so absurdly short-sighted about it, they're missing out on so much potential benefit.

Just to illustrate this point: would you rather be one of the richest people on the planet in the 18th century, or would you rather live a comfortable middle-class life today? I 100% choose the latter. I have access to modern medicine, the internet, video games, all kinds of sights and sounds that the wealthiest people on the planet could never have dreamed of 300 years ago. And the only reason it's all been possible is because we have millions upon millions of people with enough money and education to innovate. Imagine the kind of world we could live in if every single person currently living in poverty was instead afforded a middle-class lifestyle.

We could have eliminated age-related health problems and established a Mars base by now if the billionaires of the world could just be satisfied with a few hundred million dollars instead. No matter how selfish you are, the argument for wealth redistribution still benefits you.

Well of course. The wealthy in this country have always been short-sighted and narrow-minded. It's an unsustainable system we've got going on here, but many wealthy billionaires won't even live to see the effects of it so they don't care.

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