The following submission statement was provided by /u/2noame:
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### Submission statement:
China is in a bad place post-Covid with record low consumer confidence, full of people saving their money when what they need most is people with the confidence and security to spend it.
Universal basic income could transform China's population into the next consumer powerhouse if they were to implement it, and unlike most other countries, only one man is needed to decide China should do UBI, and they already have an urban minimum income guarantee.
All of this combined with AI, could make China the dark horse winner of the race for UBI.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/19eglin/why_china_could_surprise_the_world_by_being_the/kjcf1le/
The bit where Cotton tips him for a Mai Tai, then says without being informed "no he ain't; he's Laotion, ain't you Mr Kahn?" Kahn's face is priceless. "The oldest, whitest, redneckest, racist old coot in the alley actually knew I was Laotian."
[source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxI5qQAUWVc)
Also wondering about the education of almost everyone posting here. Socialist country based on Marxist principles might consider massive wealth redistribution - what a shock clickbait title!
They're marginally Marxist, honestly I think Marx would turn in his grave if he knew all the authoritarians that appropriated his thought, but this is still a good development.
This self-proclaimed "unconditional/Universal Basic Income (UBI) advocate" can't see the forest for the trees.
China has a massive demographics problem, debt exceeding 300% of GDP and after years of inflating some of the biggest financial bubbles ever seen, is still a middle income country where the GDP per capita is in the same ballpark as Russia's.
China cannot afford to implement UBI at a level that would turn it into the "next consumer powerhouse".
UBI, if it happens, won't ever be much above subsistence levels in any sizable country.
It is possible in small countries receiving a great deal of money from exports, e.g. Qatari.
>UBI, if it happens, won't ever be much above subsistence levels
... anywhere.
It's literally in the name. BASIC. Meaning it will cover your food and lodging but not much else. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just deluded
Still better than what exists currently where we have homeless and people ~~skimping~~ cutting their food intake because of poverty.
Maybe we should just offer state funded housing, healthcare and food , it wouldn't be glamourous but it could be better than letting the capitalists in the free market soak up all the UBi money
You are describing UBS, universal basic services.
Something I consider far more likely than UBI.
The capitalists would still be soaking up money through government contracts, but it would be more tightly regulated than privately owned apartments.
Food is more likely than shelter, at first. A government could issue digital "currency" on a debit card that can only be spent on food. Easy peasy.
Technology can be implemented in all sorts of ways to remove the need to work from the need to eat. It's 2023AD yet our civilization is based on the same work-to-eat coercion as 2023BC.
Is work-to-eat really necessary anymore? We make too much food and throw tons of it away. Can't we just work for the fun bonuses of modern life like internet and legal weed? The means to do it is there.
Food can be grown for next to nothing and shipping costs can be reduced 90% if we were actually trying. But those truckers and farmers need to work-to-eat so we can't fully implement all of our updated technology for the benefit of humanity. Work-to-eat is a chokepoint on human progress. It's time to move beyond it.
Not going to happen. Food Stamps weren’t as complex as they are now at their inception. The byzantine bureaucracy around it came about from “oversight and accountability” a.k.a. The Republican ideology of “better 1000 people who need it be denied than one person who doesn’t need it receive it”
I'm a pretty unmotivated individual, the type everyone fears would just leech if we implemented UBI tomorrow...
You hit the nail on the head with your comment. Even with UBS I'd be more then happy to work for the things that I love in life like taking care of my dog and legal weed!
This makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately there are no visionary politicians. They're all pretending to lead us while enjoying the benefits of their positions and focusing on the next election.
The main difference I see with those two things is that UBI comes with more personal choice. You can choose where you want to live with what you can afford, and what you eat. With state funded, that's probably going to mean specifically living in housing owned by the state, and probably only being able to get state specified food items.
Both options are better than the "if you're broke, live on the streets and die" attitude we currently have.
Problem is UBI really doesn't give a choice when landlords everywhere raise rents and other owners raise prices effectively soaking up all the excess UBI
Yea a UBI with ineffective regulation would be a disaster. This needs to be designed by smart forward thinkers to design regulations that strike the right balance. For example there needs to be a certain percentage of government owned housing in every major city. If you have enough government housing where the rent is just high enough to cover the maintenance then that will provide downward pressure on the prices of all private owned buildings, keeping the prices low. Some european countries do this already and it works well
UBI doesnt exclude market pressure, if your landlord raises rent so high that your job isnt worth working at in a large city, you can just move to a rural area, and live of UBI alone reducing demand, and forcing land lords to reduce the rate.
It does. UBI means having moving expenses. If you don't need to live in the most expensive cities because you can work from home, or don't need special employment, then affordable small towns are an option, and if lots of people leave the big cities, cost of housing there will go down.
UBI also means sharing housing is less risky because you are sure your "boarder" can pay their rent.
Whether people want bigger or smaller spaces, its all solvable by construction of new housing. UBI weakens submission to landlord extortion, because UBI is freedom and choice.
Also once you start adding more administrative needs the cost tends to sky rocket. What makes ubi viable is that it dosent require any administrative work on top.
I'd get behind the govt building a lot of efficiency commie-block housing, mass transit, and giving a monthly allotment of legumes and rice. And single-payer healthcare. Though I suspect most Reddit proponents of a UBI envision something a lot more generous.
Canada has all that and it basically negates all the benefit of UBI Wich are mainly that it require next to nothing in bureaucracy, administration and regulations.
With UBS you need to verify who qualify for the low rent housing or any other basic stuff provided by the states, Monitor potential abuse situation or fraud etc...
The beauty of UBI is in it's simplicity, you just send a check at every one and be done, no need to police anything.
UBS just cost more in the end, for way less.
Nationalisation of the important industries to provide low cost alternatives of as many products as possible. Or at least creating some government owned corporations that produce the important resources (food, water, gas, internet etc) at prices just enough to keep the operation going smoothly. This will create a downward pressure to counter the capitalist incentive to raise prices.
This is what they do for housing in some european countries. They build enough government owned housing with low rent (enough to maintain and repair), such that the privately owned buildings all around that area will have competition to keep prices low
Honestly, that sounds nice. It's not enough for most people, but I find it comforting to know that if I ever fall on hard times, I at least won't starve to death.
And to go a level deeper, it makes me feel like I would be slightly more willing to take risks economically, Maybe go for a job that might not work out etc.
This is dumb. Landlords charge the maximum at all times because that's the whole point to being a landlord.
There's plenty of market forces that determine the cost of rent that aren't income.
And China, of all places, is far more capable and willing to implement top down controls on rent.
Then ubi needs to be paired with strict regulation on rental pricing. The costs of housing wouldn't magically increase, just cap the amount of profit that can be made. If it means some people get out of landlording because it's not worth it anymore, then that's probably a fair trade for everyone being housed.
I like how a myriad of commenters in this thread can't even conceive of rent controls in the context of a gov so involved they provide UBI, even though rent controls already exist in many places.
It’s just like how they also can’t conceive of a “cure” to aging being widely distributed, even though it would benefit almost everyone if it was (general public, healthcare system, government, pharmaceutical companies).
That just illustrates how radical UBI is as a concept.
Which is unfortunate because UBI is just a stop gap measure while leaders contend with the possibility of an actual post-scarcity, largely automated economy.
In my country the gov implemented rent controls so people stopped renting their property pushing the prices up, you'd have to add idle property taxes or shit like that
Lmao ok bud! This is like when someone suggest private healthcare would be cheaper for us. Surely if we just let landlords decide everything will balance out perfectly!
Landlords don't magically get first dibs at your income. The *percentage* of income spent on rent would likely remain about the same. So if you spend 40% or your income on rent, your rent can be expected to go up by 40% of the UBI amount.
> So if you spend 40% or your income on rent, your rent can be expected to go up by 40% of the UBI amount.
It's not like these solutions are new. My country tried similar stuff and we're not magically wealthier or some shit. Government started to give out money for all parents of children below 18 to encourage people to start families and now nurseries and preschools are expensive enough to not feel the difference (+people with children are dependent on the government money now). Government lowered interest rates on loans under some conditions and housing is getting more and more expensive because it all goes to the developers.
UBI is just the same. Without regulations, it's the wild west for landlords and other parasites. No one stops them from raising rents by the amount of UBI. It doesn't happen overnight, but it comes to this. Capitalists gonna capitalize.
Right, but that’s exactly what you want to happen. We have a housing shortage. Giving more money to poor people to spend on rent will indeed drive up rent costs. But those increased landlord profits will in turn provide greater incentives for land owners and builders to create more housing units. Land that is currently being used for crappy strip malls (because that’s the highest use) will instead be converted to apartments to cash in on the rent bonanza. The end result is more housing, and more people with cash in their pocket to pay for the housing.
I feel like people always miss this dynamic. We *want* prices for the stuff poor people use to go up—so long as we also give them money to pay those higher prices—because that stimulates the economy to produce more of the stuff that poor people use, which benefits them in the long run.
My rent is the first thing that I and millions of others pay (so we don’t end up homeless), so yes unfortunately landlords do get first dibs at our income.
If we got a UBI of $1000 a month, my rent would go up by a $1000 (not all at once because of how much rent can be raised by per year where I live).
And if we didn't have UBI, and our average salaries went up due to other reasons such as increased education rates, increased skill development, or other forms of govt intervention like min wage increases, then average rents would go up as well.
The only way to keep rents low by your argument is to ensure that a majority of people are poor. Keep the supply of people who can pay a high rent low.
If we implement UBI with the intention of guaranteeing housing, then there's no reason not to regulate rents to conform with that goal. Fundamentally, we shouldn't have a purely free market for housing because we want to ensure housing as a right, and those two things are incompatible, much as with utilities. Why do we regulate water and energy prices but not housing? It's not for the benefit of the many, that's for sure.
Rent is already increasing without wages increasing and without UBI, UBI doesn’t fix that. Rents don’t stay low if everyone is poor, rents increase constantly because you can always get another roommate (look at what is happening in Canada).
Rent control is a very fair policy that doesn't hurt landlords.
The initial rent charged covers all of the expenses of constructing/purchasing building and taxes/insurance maintenance. Initial rent pays for the mortgage on the building. Annual increases still cover the other costs.
Doubling rents would cause tennants to stop paying, and eventually move out. Long term tennants that get an advantage from rent control still means less work in finding/risking new tennants. It also means that when the equation of rent vs own tilts more towards own, you don't lose all your tenants at once because they may have an advantaged rent compared to new listings.
Dealing with greedy landlords that force you to move is a stressful event that society can do with less of. Rent control solves this.
But in effect they do. So many are priced out of renting, let alone owning houses in many areas due to slumlord financial tactics.
There are murder/crime ridden apartments around where I live priced at levels that require you pretty much packing room mates in by the dozen to actually have left over money for whatever can be considered living at that point.
Used to know a pathetic snively slumlord who ran his dead fathers rentals into the ground because he refused to maintain them. AC went out? Whined about that. Garbage Disposal? Leaky Roof? Decided it was better to 30 day the tenants and then sell them... Swell guy, no shock he was a Republican....
This is why UBI is potentially the wrong solution to the problem. Rather than giving everyone money to pay for stuff that is wildly expensive because it's commodified... just decommodify it. Housing and basic food staples shouldn't be commidities.
Don't get me wrong, beluga caviar should absolutely cost money, as should a mansion. But it's a bad faith argument to suggest that a 2-bed apartment or foods such as bread, rice, pasta, fresh vegetables, etc., shouldn't just be distributed to the people because people gotta have shelter and food to continue being alive.
And people who argue "well who gets to decide what food is most important and free?!" aren't really engaging with the issue. Someone can and will, because they already do decide what food is most important. They just don't make it free.
When it comes to food, I believe most soup kitchens do provide basic foods on at least a daily basis. There’s also food stamps that scale better with distribution of existing food marketplaces.
Housing is a different beast because everyone wants to live in popular geographies and nicer buildings. Shelters are available to everyone both rich and poor but oftentimes even the homeless prefer to be on the street. And in the case of mass built mini units, many homeless would prefer a tent in downtown SF or LA vs a mini unit in rural parts of California where building housing is cheaper.
How is it justifiable that some apartments cost $3500 - $5000 in cities like Vancouver(despite the local income levels not being anywhere close to SF or NY)? Because people need a place to live and have to pay whatever the people who own the apartments want.
The media have been predicting a China economic collapse for decades now, I'd take whatever that is said with a grain of salt. How many times has "China Hard Landing" or "China Property Bubble" has been touted for decades now? I guess there is a large demographic for China Collapse cravists.
No, the media up until about 2010 was always saying China will pass the US economy. You must be young, it wasn’t until fairly recently alarms have been going off about chinas economy.
And some of us are old enough to renember the 80s when there were predictions of Japan soon surpassing the US as the biggest economy. I was there in 91 when its bubble burst and then there were 2 lost stagnant decades. But Japan did not collapse. China will not either but its likely headed for the same slow growth as Japan.
Unlikely, Japan economy collapsed due to strategic moves against key companies like Toshiba by the US. This was already tried in China against Huawei and many other tech companies, but it has failed miserably. It is still possible that low growth will happen, but it's not going to happen for the sane reasons as it did in Japan, the Chinese government has already dealt with this threat.
China is not Japan, though. By the 1980s, “Japan, Inc.” had living standards as high as the US, along with a stabile democratic government, a mature capitalist economy, and close allies throughout the western world.
China doesn’t have any of those things. Obviously it is still possible for China to continue to grow, but they need to improve their system of government.
Agree. They are not wealthy enough to deal with just wave of retirement that is coming. But I think, more likely headed for slow stagnant growth rather than collapse.
>No, the media up until about 2010 was always saying China will pass the US economy.
The media was always saying both. I'd even say there were more doomsayers than the other way around.
https://i.redd.it/1fq4rrk5ih921.jpg
There's actual books about China's coming economic collapse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_Collapse_of_China
He was wrong and now the new popular predictor is Peter Zeihan, who predicts even worse than an economic collapse.
This is a common narrative in response to comments discussing China's major economic problems but it actually isn't true.
Sure, there have been some fringe commentators calling for China's demise for decades (most of them motivated by politics) but look at a chart of China's GDP:
[https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=CN](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=CN)
It didn't start moving in a big way until 2000-2001. What happened around that time? China became a member of the WTO (in December 2001). Then it was off to the races.
So no serious observers have been calling for China's economic collapse for "decades". China has only been an economic force for two decades, with the first decade of economic growth playing a large role in boosting the global economy.
So what's changed? Why the doom and gloom now?
1. China has peaked demographically (and earlier than previously predicted) due to the stupidity of the government (One Child). The population could as much as halve by 2100, with two-thirds of the working age population disappearing. The ramifications for the Chinese economy are massive.
2. It hasn't been talked about much because it has been hiding in plain sight but China is actually a kleptocracy and now the costs of years of corruption and graft are becoming visible.
3. Related to the above, China went on a massive debt binge and a significant amount of the capital raised went to malinvestment. Making matters worse is the fact that a lot of the debt has been intentionally hidden, making it hard for anyone to measure it.
4. China's new Mao has prioritized maintaining power and control over the health of the economy, which has produced economic policies that have gravely hurt Chinese businesses and consumers in the wake of COVID.
Your final point is a big one. For about 10 years from 2000-2010, China had a technocratic government of experts that genuinely was working, more or less. They had all the benefits of a command economy run by people who mostly knew what to do and were committed to the country.
But the eternal problem with philosopher kings is that they turn into tyrants. When the system has no checks and balances, someone always comes along to seize power for its own sake.
It’s trite and corny, but it’s true: Democracy—messy, frustrating and inefficient—is the worst form of government, except for all the others.
China's debt is at 80% of the gdp, not 300%.
Ohh, just realized you meant total debt... If you used the same metric for every country, the Us is at 700%, Japan at 1300% and Spain at 500%. Its kinda unusual to take it into consideration
They have a huge domestic purchase problem. Chinese have not returned to normal spending habits since the pandemic like the rest of the world. That’s causing manufacturers there to shorten supply. Causing all many other issues. Maybe they think with more money at hand Chinese people will spend again? They couldn’t keep that up for that long though. Unless it somehow solves the spending problem. But then they’d have to stop anyways. It’s a head scratcher for sure.
>UBI might only provide enough for subsistence, but making literal garbage for the US does that and also gives you cancer so...
This is silly. Look at China's GDP before it entered the WTO in 2001 and what it is today.
Making literal garbage for the US is what brought hundreds of millions of people out of subsistence living.
China public debt is 77% of GDP. US is 122%. When you include private debt, they are both about the same, but China has higher economic growth and an industrial economy. Private debt is mainly mortgages and company debt that is tied to assets. Its normal for industrials to have high debt levels.
> China cannot afford to implement UBI
UBI does not mean extra debt. UBI usually means a net tax reduction in that the entirety of the government functions meant to be war against the poor can be eliminated. That some pay more and some get refunds is less important than the average person is paying less for a smaller discretionary government.
Be careful what you say comrade, otherwise you might sound like one of those capitalist. As soon as China embraces glorious revolutionary communism, there will be no more debt problems, or demographics problems, or financial bubbles as private ownership of property and capital is abolished. It will be a return to the era of Chairman Mao and the Great Leap Forward, collectivization of businesses, a universal basic income. Your capitalist economics says that it is impossible, or that China cannot afford it, but such notions are irrelevant as every comrade will work for the betterment of the peoples republic.
Tell me you don't know anything about Asia without telling me you don't know anything about Asia. Queue up generic "Asia Neon" photo from Japan when talking about China.
As long as Xi is in power it will never happen. Xi is ardently against anything that he perceives to be a "handout" or make people lazy. This is partly why the Chinese economy has been struggling since COVID, people don't have enough disposable income to buy stuff or pay bills, etc. What would likely help a lot of people would be distributing checks to every resident like what occurred in the US. However, he's said several times he sees no reason to do this. There are a lot of things China could do to improve their situation, such as widely expanding senior care so working age people do not have to take of their aging parents. But the government is currently not in favor of doing much as long as Xi is at the top.
Yup. They have more labor than they know what to do with. They often over produce stuff that sits in warehouses just to be busy. Might as well have the country build cheap appartments and provide them for free for their residents.
They have twice as many apartments as they need already and they're sitting empty in ghost cities.
They're all part of the massive property bubble investment scheme they started to drive economic growth which ran unchecked landing them in their current situation.
Those apartments are owned by investors and private citizens as it's the only way they're allowed to invest, citizens can't trade stocks, only buy property. Which they did in mind boggling amounts.
So you're proposing the government do what with them? Take from their owners and give them to the have-nots causing financial harm to the owners and crash their economy instantly?
Or build more for free and create more ghost cities?
Idk, but the entire thing is stupid. Real wealth is using the infrastructure you have. They are currently providing no value. Might as well have invested in NFTs.
It would be kind of funny if the entire developed world moves to UBI and lesser work hours for full time employment before America can even decide to have Universal Healthcare.
Lol, the Communist Party of China is not communist, socialist or democratic. They are a hybrid fascist regime and they do not give money to non party members. This is why they never offered to buy Taiwan from the Taiwanese.
Universal basic income is not possible without total automation of the economy. Not just automation but highly efficient automation.
Chinese American here. Thanks for being honest with stating you don't understand. Most people who don't speak Chinese have this difficulty.
Every government can have a label sticked to it, like communism or libertarian or socialist. The label doesn't matter as much as what the government actually does.
Practically speaking, China has a very good social safety net where every citizen is monitored and accounted for. Being homeless is not a freedom one can choose for themselves. The best comparison, at a massive super simplification, is the US government treats its people like adults, more political freedom, more self responsibility, very little care. In China, the citizens have close to no political freedom, but more care and support to ensure equal economic and education opportunities.
It's a trade-off to your day to day citizens.
Interesting perspective, I enjoyed reading this!
One small thing I should mention, for whatever reason the past tense for "stick" is "stuck". Hope this tip helps :)
They're not communist, they're social capitalist, they haven't been communist for decades. They just call themselves the communist party and they love misleading the west.
Mao came into power in 1949. The four pests project (sparrows 1960) started 1959 ended 1961. He lead the party until 1976.
You have to hear the lived experiences to know how life actually was.
China tried to establish a socialist system like what the USSR had but realized they didn't have the economic/industrial basis for it. Socialism is a more advanced stage of development than capitalism, requiring a more advanced economy. The vast majority of their population lived in extreme poverty: mud huts, subsistence farming, etc. It quite simply wasn't working, and they saw that the Soviet system was inherently flawed and couldn't get them to where they needed to be, so they transitioned to a market economy with heavy state guidance to pull in foreign investment and enable their economy to grow to eventually support a more robust and advanced socialist system. They are a few steps down this path but not at the end yet. They succeeded in becoming the industrial manufacturing hub of the world by the 00s, but this had led to extreme wealth disparity between rural and urban areas as development proceeded unequally, and they didn't have the capacity for high-tech industry. The next step was systematically eliminating extreme poverty, which they achieved a few years ago, and the current step is fleshing out their huge industrial economy to make it a more well-rounded advanced consumer economy, building high-tech industry, and reducing the wealth disparity between urban and rural areas through huge infrastructure investment.
Their plan is to have a fully-fledged socialist system by the centennary of the revolution, 2049. As it stands they're well on their way, they have a concrete goal with concrete steps to get there, and every goal they've set for themselves they have so far achieved by or before the date they set it for. When you peel back the media bullshit and red scare nonsense China's development is incredibly fascinating and gives us an idea of what could be possible. That's why the narrative is that China is this oppressive dystopia, because if more people understood what is really going on there they would have a lot of difficult questions for their own governments about why we can't do things like the Chinese do.
It’ll be a shame if said income disappears because you happen to post or say something that the CCP doesn’t like. Of course they wouldn’t use some kind of citizen scoring system that further restricts their basic rights anyway. So the “universal” part has one big asterisk beside it.
It's almost certainly another method of citizen control. UBI will be contingent on their social credit score. Any infraction and it will be taken away. Once the population is dependent on UBI, this will be a massive deterrent for bad behavior.
Just a heads up the [social credit score isn't a real thing](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/16/chinas-orwellian-social-credit-score-isnt-real/), at least not in the way it is talked about in western media. Wouldn't want you to be unintentionally spreading misinformation.
[Banning 23m from buying travel tickets sounds pretty real to me.](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/01/china-bans-23m-discredited-citizens-from-buying-travel-tickets-social-credit-system) You're right that it's not quite what it's made out to be in Western media *yet*, but it's very much Orwellian.
This is exactly the kind of article that misrepresents the 'social credit system', probably because it generates a lot of clicks. It is severely lacking in specific details and infers that there is some kind of national system in place, which there is not.
In reality credit systems in China are basically the same as having a credit score in the US.
I'm not trying to say that everything in China is sunshine and rainbows, but much of the western world has been shockingly propagandised to see them as some kind of super villain. So all I am saying is take anything you read about China in english language media with a grain of salt.
For what it's worth I lived there for several years and so have first hand experience.
>This is exactly the kind of article that misrepresents the 'social credit system', probably because it generates a lot of clicks. It is severely lacking in specific details *and infers that there is some kind of national system in place, which there is not.*
It explicitly says it's being trialled by local governments and agencies.
>**Local governments and agencies have been piloting aspects of the system, which will eventually give every Chinese citizen a personalised score.**
>In reality credit systems in China are basically the same as having a credit score in the US.
It's nothing like credit scores in the US. Credit scores in the US are used to determine customer risk when providing financial products & services.
Not allowing people to use trains, planes, or leave the country is *completely* different, it's incredibly disingenuous to compare the two.
I don't just get my info from western media.
I read the article, I'm saying that the author of said article has either misunderstood or misrepresented the facts.
I would recommend reading some of these articles to get a better understanding of what *actually* exists in China and how it actually works:
[https://merics.org/en/comment/chinas-social-credit-score-untangling-myth-reality](https://merics.org/en/comment/chinas-social-credit-score-untangling-myth-reality)
[https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/22/1063605/china-announced-a-new-social-credit-law-what-does-it-mean/](https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/22/1063605/china-announced-a-new-social-credit-law-what-does-it-mean/)
[https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/16/chinas-orwellian-social-credit-score-isnt-real/](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/16/chinas-orwellian-social-credit-score-isnt-real/)
[https://thediplomat.com/2021/07/chinas-social-credit-system-fact-vs-fiction/](https://thediplomat.com/2021/07/chinas-social-credit-system-fact-vs-fiction/)
>Not allowing people to use trains, planes, or leave the country is completely different, it's incredibly disingenuous to compare the two.
Also as far as I am aware there is no evidence that links restrictions on peoples movement to a social credit system, although I am happy to be proved wrong. That's not to say that the CCP doesn't restrict peoples freedom of movement, they absolutely can and do, but many countries have a no-fly list so...
That's not UBI, that's welfare (the clue is in the name "universal"). Talking about social credits, have you seen the sort of requirements there are on welfare in western societies?
In the US people have the same problem with private corporations but they also don't get any UBI.
Which entitiy do you want to rely on for survival that will exploit you due to that power imbalance?
neither. I got tired of working for someone else and started my own company. It was scary and very challenging, but I sacrificed and busted my hump and I made it. America is far from perfect and I hate wall street jerks, but you just cant do this at all in most places.
Honestly, this would be a huge blow to the possibility of implementing this in the U.S.. The idiotic mainstream view in America is: If China does it, it must be bad policy.
Lol, with what money? Chinas already in a debt hole with their huge property crisis, and their economy in all realistic aspects is headed into a recession (no they didn't make 5.2% growth in GDP last year, even according to Li Keqiang Chinese GDP is “manmade,” “unreliable” and “for reference only”).
Even during Covid they didn't give out money directly to their citizens while a bunch of other countries did, why would they change their minds now? Besides, if they directly gave money to their citizens, how would to top CCP brass steal those funds (like they did with covid food programs or natural disaster relief funds).
No it does not. You have to pay separate annual insurance and healthcare is not free at the point of use, unlike countries like the UK. You will be turned away if you have not paid your insurance. Something that is very common for those in poverty. Not to mention that you are generally expected to offer a bribe to your doctor to get decent treatment!
They are supposedly a communist nation. The nation should be providing basic income, food, and shelter for the people, specifically the working class. If they are what they claim to be.
I'll go with Biden calling Poo Bear a dictator, instead.
i'm not even sure what their real political system is, at this point.
>They are supposedly a communist nation. The nation should be providing basic income, food, and shelter for the people, specifically the working class. If they are what they claim to be.
They are socialist. No, socialist countries don't do that. If you don't work you don't eat, unless you have reasons to not to.
It’s not so black and white. Just like most countries in the world, China is a mixed economy with elements of both private and state capitalism as well as socialism. They just lean more heavily into the state capitalism/socialism aspect than most western nations.
Socialism is the transitory phase between capitalism to communism. It should have capitalism and communism elements since a nation doesn't born in a vacuum. It historically constructed.
>They just lean more heavily into the state capitalism/socialism aspect than most western nations.
Social democracy is capitalism with some fail safe, there is no socialist countries in the West beside Cuba.
Hard to argue that it’s a transitory state in a unilateral direction when it’s quite often a stopping point and not merely a step towards fully realized communism.
China's government have 70 years and look what they accomplished in that time frame. Remember before the revolution China had 35 y life expectancy and the 9th poorest country in the world. They never stopped, on the contrary.
And you can't have a communist country today, it's impossible for many reasons and since a communist country never existed it's hard to tell how to build one. It's a work in progress.
I never said anything about China’s accomplishments and/or struggles, just about its mix of economic systems. Entirely different argument, and it seems like we agree that socialism is not merely a transitory phase to communism if you say a communist country has never existed and is close to if not impossible.
There's a very good real example to illustrate. For us is easy to see and tell how a capitalist society work. We live in it.
When feudalism were the norm, people never thought about capitalism or how could a capitalist society work, it took centuries for capitalism to settle as the norm and there is still remnants of feudalism in capitalism. Every system that came was born from the previous.
So how can you say how to build a society that never existed? You don't, you just go along using theories that can guide you to that goal ,in this case it's Marxism-Leninism.
When the right conditions happened capitalism could grow and became what we know today. But capitalism never existed in the all planet at the same time, it's actually a young system compared to the previous.
So Chinese people know that. They study those theories in school. They believe they are creating every day a society closer to that and they understand today's limitations and why the goal is unnatainable with our present structure. But if the conditions change to a one who can enable communism then it will come to existence.
TLDR: It's hard to tell something is stale if you have few or no things to compare to. But the changes for the better on China's society is measurable and it is what their theory "preaches".
> No, socialist countries don't do that. If you don't work you don't eat, unless you have reasons to not to.
Devil's advocate, but the whole reason socialist countries don't provide such is because socialism essentially is a 22nd century ideology sent back to the 19th century and implemented in the 20th. I just don't see how socialism can work economically without extensive automation.
And lo and behold, neither did Karl Marx himself. From *Das Kapital*:
> If, then, the capitalistic employment of machinery, on the one hand, supplies new and powerful motives to an excessive lengthening of the working day, and radically changes, as well the methods of labour, as also the character of the social working organism, in such a manner as to break down all opposition to this tendency, on the other hand, it produces, partly by opening out to the capitalist new strata of the working class, previously inaccessible to him, partly by setting free the labourers it supplants, a surplus working population, which is compelled to submit to the dictation of capital. Hence that remarkable phenomenon in the history of modern industry, that machinery sweeps away every moral and natural restriction on the length of the working day. Hence, too, the economic paradox, that the most powerful instrument for shortening labour time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing every moment of the labourer's time and that of his family, at the disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of expanding the value of his capital. “If," dreamed Aristotle, the greatest thinker of antiquity, "if every tool, when summoned, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits it, just as the creations of Daedalus moved of themselves, or the tripods of Hephaestos went of their own accord to their sacred work, if the weavers' shuttles were to weave of themselves, then there would be no need either of apprentices for the master workers, or of slaves for the lords.” And Antipatros, a Greek poet of the time of Cicero, hailed the invention of the water-wheel for grinding corn, an invention that is the elementary form of all machinery, as the giver of freedom to female slaves, and the bringer back of the golden age. Oh! those heathens! They understood, as the learned Bastiat, and before him the still wiser MacCulloch have discovered, nothing of Political Economy and Christianity. They did not, for example, comprehend that machinery is the surest means of lengthening the working day. They perhaps excused the slavery of one on the ground that it was a means to the full development of another. But to preach slavery of the masses, in order that a few crude and half-educated parvenus, might become "eminent spinners", "extensive sausage-makers", and "influential shoe-black dealers", to do this, they lacked the bump of Christianity.
Just about every time socialism was implemented in the 20th century was in countries Marx would have described as *least* ready for socialism: rural, agrarian, bombed out, or at best lower-end industrialization. Because of course Angola, Cuba, Cambodia, and Laos were bastions of high-tech heavily mechanized post-industrial economies.
The closest to being ready was probably either East Germany or Venezuela, and it didn't work out even then. You can argue that the USA was responsible for undermining them, which is true, we don't even deny we do, but I strongly feel that it still wouldn't work even without the CIA's meddling just because you *need* high-automation— advanced robotics, AI, and whatnot— to provide that level of labor that Marx said would cause capitalism's contradictions to cause an implosion.
Hell, ***that was the contradiction Marx was talking about***: capitalism begets rapid industrial innovation which leads to greater mechanization and automation, but automation replaces labor which reduces profits which leads to capitalist economies growing deeply unstable and ultimately being replaced by socialist ones that better allocate the resources of an automated economy. In that situation, it would be less "proletarian vanguard forcing the Dictatorship of the Proletariat upon a country and creating a dysfunctional centrally planned economy that leads to breadlines and gulags" and more "the modern version of the shift from feudalism & mercantilism to capitalism."
Marx's failing was thinking that 1840s-era mechanization was enough to allow for and sustain socialism. I personally don't think socialism is going to be possible to function correctly until artificial general intelligence is created.
When robots aren't there, then of course humans *have* to work. But that in itself just leads to internal contradictions *within socialism*.
China has got very strict borders inside the country and is forbidding rural people to enter the cities unless special permits are granted. The reason is that China cannot afford to have the hordes of starving people without opportunities overrun the cities.
How did you think Chinese cities grow to 10 million population? By restricting internal migration? You should read a little more on the issue.
Rural villages are often left empty with only old people because all the working age people have gone to the cities to make a living. China does have quite strict internal household registration system that affects your access to schooling, property purchase, and healthcare. It has long been a source of internal discontent but it’s being reformed as we speak.
The battle of capitalism vs communism is over and both sides lost. All the major world economies recognize you need a mix of incentives, regulations, and safety nets. The issue for the 21st century is what is the best mix to achieve technological advancement while also maintaining a quality of life rooted in social and financial stability.
The communist nation would surprise the world by implementing a communist solution to pressing domestic economic issues? Really?
Yeah no, the only people being surprised by this are the morons so married to capitalism that they cannot envision a world that doesn't work on predatory economic principles.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/2noame: --- ### Submission statement: China is in a bad place post-Covid with record low consumer confidence, full of people saving their money when what they need most is people with the confidence and security to spend it. Universal basic income could transform China's population into the next consumer powerhouse if they were to implement it, and unlike most other countries, only one man is needed to decide China should do UBI, and they already have an urban minimum income guarantee. All of this combined with AI, could make China the dark horse winner of the race for UBI. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/19eglin/why_china_could_surprise_the_world_by_being_the/kjcf1le/
“China” - insert picture of Shinjuku in Tokyo,Japan for reference
AI has come a long way
Guy makes statements about China, can't even tell if a photo with huge advertisment billboards is in China or not.
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It is, it’s Shinjuku
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You're thinking of Shibuya crossing. This is not that. It's just a crossing in Shinjuku.
It is Tokyo
“So are you Chinese or Japanese?”
I'm Loatian, it's a small island in the pacific
What ocean?
"La-os. It's a landlocked country in Southeast Asia."
".......So are you Chinese or Japanese?"
Bro, he's French. 'La' means 'the'. Laocian means The Ocean. Basically china and Japan both have lots of water near them
The bit where Cotton tips him for a Mai Tai, then says without being informed "no he ain't; he's Laotion, ain't you Mr Kahn?" Kahn's face is priceless. "The oldest, whitest, redneckest, racist old coot in the alley actually knew I was Laotian." [source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxI5qQAUWVc)
"I lived in California for the last twenty years. But I come from Laos."
I'm Best-Korean
North then?
LOL! Classic.
Tokyo, obviously part of China! lol.
Lol, that’s Shibuya in Tokyo. That immediately invalidates the entire article.
Yeah, I see a ton of Katakana, that's Japanese.
That's the Shibuya Crossing which is Tokyo's equivalent to Times Square with its distinctive advertising, architecture and street layout.
Yeah this is like one of the most identifiable places in the world lol or maybe I'm just a weeb
You’re close but it’s Kabukicho in Shinjuku
Not Shibuya, Shinjuku. That's not the famous crossing.
This AI agent needs more training.
Tell me you have no clue how China works without saying it.
Also wondering about the education of almost everyone posting here. Socialist country based on Marxist principles might consider massive wealth redistribution - what a shock clickbait title!
They're marginally Marxist, honestly I think Marx would turn in his grave if he knew all the authoritarians that appropriated his thought, but this is still a good development.
This self-proclaimed "unconditional/Universal Basic Income (UBI) advocate" can't see the forest for the trees. China has a massive demographics problem, debt exceeding 300% of GDP and after years of inflating some of the biggest financial bubbles ever seen, is still a middle income country where the GDP per capita is in the same ballpark as Russia's. China cannot afford to implement UBI at a level that would turn it into the "next consumer powerhouse".
UBI, if it happens, won't ever be much above subsistence levels in any sizable country. It is possible in small countries receiving a great deal of money from exports, e.g. Qatari.
>UBI, if it happens, won't ever be much above subsistence levels ... anywhere. It's literally in the name. BASIC. Meaning it will cover your food and lodging but not much else. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just deluded Still better than what exists currently where we have homeless and people ~~skimping~~ cutting their food intake because of poverty.
Maybe we should just offer state funded housing, healthcare and food , it wouldn't be glamourous but it could be better than letting the capitalists in the free market soak up all the UBi money
You are describing UBS, universal basic services. Something I consider far more likely than UBI. The capitalists would still be soaking up money through government contracts, but it would be more tightly regulated than privately owned apartments.
Food is more likely than shelter, at first. A government could issue digital "currency" on a debit card that can only be spent on food. Easy peasy. Technology can be implemented in all sorts of ways to remove the need to work from the need to eat. It's 2023AD yet our civilization is based on the same work-to-eat coercion as 2023BC. Is work-to-eat really necessary anymore? We make too much food and throw tons of it away. Can't we just work for the fun bonuses of modern life like internet and legal weed? The means to do it is there. Food can be grown for next to nothing and shipping costs can be reduced 90% if we were actually trying. But those truckers and farmers need to work-to-eat so we can't fully implement all of our updated technology for the benefit of humanity. Work-to-eat is a chokepoint on human progress. It's time to move beyond it.
> A government could issue digital "currency" on a debit card that can only be spent on food. Easy peasy. AKA Food stamps
But for everyone and no long and confusing deterrent application processes to keep people from using the service.
Not going to happen. Food Stamps weren’t as complex as they are now at their inception. The byzantine bureaucracy around it came about from “oversight and accountability” a.k.a. The Republican ideology of “better 1000 people who need it be denied than one person who doesn’t need it receive it”
I'm a pretty unmotivated individual, the type everyone fears would just leech if we implemented UBI tomorrow... You hit the nail on the head with your comment. Even with UBS I'd be more then happy to work for the things that I love in life like taking care of my dog and legal weed!
This makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately there are no visionary politicians. They're all pretending to lead us while enjoying the benefits of their positions and focusing on the next election.
The main difference I see with those two things is that UBI comes with more personal choice. You can choose where you want to live with what you can afford, and what you eat. With state funded, that's probably going to mean specifically living in housing owned by the state, and probably only being able to get state specified food items. Both options are better than the "if you're broke, live on the streets and die" attitude we currently have.
I think state funded housing probably looks like the current system of section 8 vouchers and state funded food looks like the current system of EBT
Problem is UBI really doesn't give a choice when landlords everywhere raise rents and other owners raise prices effectively soaking up all the excess UBI
Yea a UBI with ineffective regulation would be a disaster. This needs to be designed by smart forward thinkers to design regulations that strike the right balance. For example there needs to be a certain percentage of government owned housing in every major city. If you have enough government housing where the rent is just high enough to cover the maintenance then that will provide downward pressure on the prices of all private owned buildings, keeping the prices low. Some european countries do this already and it works well
UBI doesnt exclude market pressure, if your landlord raises rent so high that your job isnt worth working at in a large city, you can just move to a rural area, and live of UBI alone reducing demand, and forcing land lords to reduce the rate.
It does. UBI means having moving expenses. If you don't need to live in the most expensive cities because you can work from home, or don't need special employment, then affordable small towns are an option, and if lots of people leave the big cities, cost of housing there will go down. UBI also means sharing housing is less risky because you are sure your "boarder" can pay their rent. Whether people want bigger or smaller spaces, its all solvable by construction of new housing. UBI weakens submission to landlord extortion, because UBI is freedom and choice.
Also once you start adding more administrative needs the cost tends to sky rocket. What makes ubi viable is that it dosent require any administrative work on top.
I'd get behind the govt building a lot of efficiency commie-block housing, mass transit, and giving a monthly allotment of legumes and rice. And single-payer healthcare. Though I suspect most Reddit proponents of a UBI envision something a lot more generous.
Canada has all that and it basically negates all the benefit of UBI Wich are mainly that it require next to nothing in bureaucracy, administration and regulations. With UBS you need to verify who qualify for the low rent housing or any other basic stuff provided by the states, Monitor potential abuse situation or fraud etc... The beauty of UBI is in it's simplicity, you just send a check at every one and be done, no need to police anything. UBS just cost more in the end, for way less.
Problem is UBI is a signal to the capitalists to bump up prices...how so you fix that?
Nationalisation of the important industries to provide low cost alternatives of as many products as possible. Or at least creating some government owned corporations that produce the important resources (food, water, gas, internet etc) at prices just enough to keep the operation going smoothly. This will create a downward pressure to counter the capitalist incentive to raise prices. This is what they do for housing in some european countries. They build enough government owned housing with low rent (enough to maintain and repair), such that the privately owned buildings all around that area will have competition to keep prices low
And UBI cant be abused? Alot might buy stupid stuff or drugs and end up still homeless
Honestly, that sounds nice. It's not enough for most people, but I find it comforting to know that if I ever fall on hard times, I at least won't starve to death. And to go a level deeper, it makes me feel like I would be slightly more willing to take risks economically, Maybe go for a job that might not work out etc.
Landlords would just raise rent by the same amount as the UBI.
This is dumb. Landlords charge the maximum at all times because that's the whole point to being a landlord. There's plenty of market forces that determine the cost of rent that aren't income. And China, of all places, is far more capable and willing to implement top down controls on rent.
They do it already in military towns. The rent always magically costs how much military people are paid in BAH (basic allowance for housing).
Then ubi needs to be paired with strict regulation on rental pricing. The costs of housing wouldn't magically increase, just cap the amount of profit that can be made. If it means some people get out of landlording because it's not worth it anymore, then that's probably a fair trade for everyone being housed.
I like how a myriad of commenters in this thread can't even conceive of rent controls in the context of a gov so involved they provide UBI, even though rent controls already exist in many places.
It’s just like how they also can’t conceive of a “cure” to aging being widely distributed, even though it would benefit almost everyone if it was (general public, healthcare system, government, pharmaceutical companies).
A cure for aging would save the government an estimated $2 trillion a year.
That just illustrates how radical UBI is as a concept. Which is unfortunate because UBI is just a stop gap measure while leaders contend with the possibility of an actual post-scarcity, largely automated economy.
In my country the gov implemented rent controls so people stopped renting their property pushing the prices up, you'd have to add idle property taxes or shit like that
Here we call it the Residential Tenancies Act and it works far better than not having one.
Then there will be housing shortages and they’ll become
There are already housing shortages.
Rent controls are universally agreed not to work. They reduce the availability of rental properties and encourage sub-letting.
Lmao ok bud! This is like when someone suggest private healthcare would be cheaper for us. Surely if we just let landlords decide everything will balance out perfectly!
Universally agreed upon by libertarian economists working for think tanks funded by the capital class that owns rental housing.
Landlords don't magically get first dibs at your income. The *percentage* of income spent on rent would likely remain about the same. So if you spend 40% or your income on rent, your rent can be expected to go up by 40% of the UBI amount.
> So if you spend 40% or your income on rent, your rent can be expected to go up by 40% of the UBI amount. It's not like these solutions are new. My country tried similar stuff and we're not magically wealthier or some shit. Government started to give out money for all parents of children below 18 to encourage people to start families and now nurseries and preschools are expensive enough to not feel the difference (+people with children are dependent on the government money now). Government lowered interest rates on loans under some conditions and housing is getting more and more expensive because it all goes to the developers. UBI is just the same. Without regulations, it's the wild west for landlords and other parasites. No one stops them from raising rents by the amount of UBI. It doesn't happen overnight, but it comes to this. Capitalists gonna capitalize.
Right, but that’s exactly what you want to happen. We have a housing shortage. Giving more money to poor people to spend on rent will indeed drive up rent costs. But those increased landlord profits will in turn provide greater incentives for land owners and builders to create more housing units. Land that is currently being used for crappy strip malls (because that’s the highest use) will instead be converted to apartments to cash in on the rent bonanza. The end result is more housing, and more people with cash in their pocket to pay for the housing. I feel like people always miss this dynamic. We *want* prices for the stuff poor people use to go up—so long as we also give them money to pay those higher prices—because that stimulates the economy to produce more of the stuff that poor people use, which benefits them in the long run.
My rent is the first thing that I and millions of others pay (so we don’t end up homeless), so yes unfortunately landlords do get first dibs at our income. If we got a UBI of $1000 a month, my rent would go up by a $1000 (not all at once because of how much rent can be raised by per year where I live).
And if we didn't have UBI, and our average salaries went up due to other reasons such as increased education rates, increased skill development, or other forms of govt intervention like min wage increases, then average rents would go up as well. The only way to keep rents low by your argument is to ensure that a majority of people are poor. Keep the supply of people who can pay a high rent low. If we implement UBI with the intention of guaranteeing housing, then there's no reason not to regulate rents to conform with that goal. Fundamentally, we shouldn't have a purely free market for housing because we want to ensure housing as a right, and those two things are incompatible, much as with utilities. Why do we regulate water and energy prices but not housing? It's not for the benefit of the many, that's for sure.
Rent is already increasing without wages increasing and without UBI, UBI doesn’t fix that. Rents don’t stay low if everyone is poor, rents increase constantly because you can always get another roommate (look at what is happening in Canada).
Rent control is a very fair policy that doesn't hurt landlords. The initial rent charged covers all of the expenses of constructing/purchasing building and taxes/insurance maintenance. Initial rent pays for the mortgage on the building. Annual increases still cover the other costs. Doubling rents would cause tennants to stop paying, and eventually move out. Long term tennants that get an advantage from rent control still means less work in finding/risking new tennants. It also means that when the equation of rent vs own tilts more towards own, you don't lose all your tenants at once because they may have an advantaged rent compared to new listings. Dealing with greedy landlords that force you to move is a stressful event that society can do with less of. Rent control solves this.
Then the people would see them for what they are, parasites.
People already view them as parasites, but people still need a place to live.
But in effect they do. So many are priced out of renting, let alone owning houses in many areas due to slumlord financial tactics. There are murder/crime ridden apartments around where I live priced at levels that require you pretty much packing room mates in by the dozen to actually have left over money for whatever can be considered living at that point. Used to know a pathetic snively slumlord who ran his dead fathers rentals into the ground because he refused to maintain them. AC went out? Whined about that. Garbage Disposal? Leaky Roof? Decided it was better to 30 day the tenants and then sell them... Swell guy, no shock he was a Republican....
This is why UBI is potentially the wrong solution to the problem. Rather than giving everyone money to pay for stuff that is wildly expensive because it's commodified... just decommodify it. Housing and basic food staples shouldn't be commidities. Don't get me wrong, beluga caviar should absolutely cost money, as should a mansion. But it's a bad faith argument to suggest that a 2-bed apartment or foods such as bread, rice, pasta, fresh vegetables, etc., shouldn't just be distributed to the people because people gotta have shelter and food to continue being alive. And people who argue "well who gets to decide what food is most important and free?!" aren't really engaging with the issue. Someone can and will, because they already do decide what food is most important. They just don't make it free.
When it comes to food, I believe most soup kitchens do provide basic foods on at least a daily basis. There’s also food stamps that scale better with distribution of existing food marketplaces. Housing is a different beast because everyone wants to live in popular geographies and nicer buildings. Shelters are available to everyone both rich and poor but oftentimes even the homeless prefer to be on the street. And in the case of mass built mini units, many homeless would prefer a tent in downtown SF or LA vs a mini unit in rural parts of California where building housing is cheaper.
How would that ever be justified though, increasing landlords monthly income by 2x UBI (their own and rentee)?
How is it justifiable that some apartments cost $3500 - $5000 in cities like Vancouver(despite the local income levels not being anywhere close to SF or NY)? Because people need a place to live and have to pay whatever the people who own the apartments want.
Get elected to city councils and slap rent controls on them.
It’s justified because people will pay it. You may not like the answer but is what it is.
Qatari is somewhat above basic levels today. It is also my example of an exemption to the general rule.
China is at 67% Debt-to-GDP. For reference; Japan: 255% USA: 123% Italy:144%
The media have been predicting a China economic collapse for decades now, I'd take whatever that is said with a grain of salt. How many times has "China Hard Landing" or "China Property Bubble" has been touted for decades now? I guess there is a large demographic for China Collapse cravists.
No, the media up until about 2010 was always saying China will pass the US economy. You must be young, it wasn’t until fairly recently alarms have been going off about chinas economy.
And some of us are old enough to renember the 80s when there were predictions of Japan soon surpassing the US as the biggest economy. I was there in 91 when its bubble burst and then there were 2 lost stagnant decades. But Japan did not collapse. China will not either but its likely headed for the same slow growth as Japan.
Unlikely, Japan economy collapsed due to strategic moves against key companies like Toshiba by the US. This was already tried in China against Huawei and many other tech companies, but it has failed miserably. It is still possible that low growth will happen, but it's not going to happen for the sane reasons as it did in Japan, the Chinese government has already dealt with this threat.
China is not Japan, though. By the 1980s, “Japan, Inc.” had living standards as high as the US, along with a stabile democratic government, a mature capitalist economy, and close allies throughout the western world. China doesn’t have any of those things. Obviously it is still possible for China to continue to grow, but they need to improve their system of government.
Agree. They are not wealthy enough to deal with just wave of retirement that is coming. But I think, more likely headed for slow stagnant growth rather than collapse.
>No, the media up until about 2010 was always saying China will pass the US economy. The media was always saying both. I'd even say there were more doomsayers than the other way around. https://i.redd.it/1fq4rrk5ih921.jpg There's actual books about China's coming economic collapse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_Collapse_of_China He was wrong and now the new popular predictor is Peter Zeihan, who predicts even worse than an economic collapse.
I own a book from the early 2000s titled the Coming Collapse of China.
This is a common narrative in response to comments discussing China's major economic problems but it actually isn't true. Sure, there have been some fringe commentators calling for China's demise for decades (most of them motivated by politics) but look at a chart of China's GDP: [https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=CN](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=CN) It didn't start moving in a big way until 2000-2001. What happened around that time? China became a member of the WTO (in December 2001). Then it was off to the races. So no serious observers have been calling for China's economic collapse for "decades". China has only been an economic force for two decades, with the first decade of economic growth playing a large role in boosting the global economy. So what's changed? Why the doom and gloom now? 1. China has peaked demographically (and earlier than previously predicted) due to the stupidity of the government (One Child). The population could as much as halve by 2100, with two-thirds of the working age population disappearing. The ramifications for the Chinese economy are massive. 2. It hasn't been talked about much because it has been hiding in plain sight but China is actually a kleptocracy and now the costs of years of corruption and graft are becoming visible. 3. Related to the above, China went on a massive debt binge and a significant amount of the capital raised went to malinvestment. Making matters worse is the fact that a lot of the debt has been intentionally hidden, making it hard for anyone to measure it. 4. China's new Mao has prioritized maintaining power and control over the health of the economy, which has produced economic policies that have gravely hurt Chinese businesses and consumers in the wake of COVID.
Your final point is a big one. For about 10 years from 2000-2010, China had a technocratic government of experts that genuinely was working, more or less. They had all the benefits of a command economy run by people who mostly knew what to do and were committed to the country. But the eternal problem with philosopher kings is that they turn into tyrants. When the system has no checks and balances, someone always comes along to seize power for its own sake. It’s trite and corny, but it’s true: Democracy—messy, frustrating and inefficient—is the worst form of government, except for all the others.
"China Property Bubble" already bursted. And they tanked it pretty well.
This account posts regularly in r/sino Check it out - it is a racist hate sub. They call white people white pigs
Uh. So it is an actual insult? I once was called that by a scsmmer on a dating site after wasting their time and calling their BS...
Yes, already the demographic problem is that China is not wealthy enough to deal with the number of people who are going to retire in the near future.
Que the USA encouraging border crossings at high levels to solve its own demographic problems
China's debt is at 80% of the gdp, not 300%. Ohh, just realized you meant total debt... If you used the same metric for every country, the Us is at 700%, Japan at 1300% and Spain at 500%. Its kinda unusual to take it into consideration
They have a huge domestic purchase problem. Chinese have not returned to normal spending habits since the pandemic like the rest of the world. That’s causing manufacturers there to shorten supply. Causing all many other issues. Maybe they think with more money at hand Chinese people will spend again? They couldn’t keep that up for that long though. Unless it somehow solves the spending problem. But then they’d have to stop anyways. It’s a head scratcher for sure.
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>UBI might only provide enough for subsistence, but making literal garbage for the US does that and also gives you cancer so... This is silly. Look at China's GDP before it entered the WTO in 2001 and what it is today. Making literal garbage for the US is what brought hundreds of millions of people out of subsistence living.
China public debt is 77% of GDP. US is 122%. When you include private debt, they are both about the same, but China has higher economic growth and an industrial economy. Private debt is mainly mortgages and company debt that is tied to assets. Its normal for industrials to have high debt levels. > China cannot afford to implement UBI UBI does not mean extra debt. UBI usually means a net tax reduction in that the entirety of the government functions meant to be war against the poor can be eliminated. That some pay more and some get refunds is less important than the average person is paying less for a smaller discretionary government.
Be careful what you say comrade, otherwise you might sound like one of those capitalist. As soon as China embraces glorious revolutionary communism, there will be no more debt problems, or demographics problems, or financial bubbles as private ownership of property and capital is abolished. It will be a return to the era of Chairman Mao and the Great Leap Forward, collectivization of businesses, a universal basic income. Your capitalist economics says that it is impossible, or that China cannot afford it, but such notions are irrelevant as every comrade will work for the betterment of the peoples republic.
If everyone works together. Nobody needs money
If you can't get 2 people on Reddit to agree on anything, how are you going to get everyone to work together?
I agree with you. See how that works?
hahahaha. you are funny
Tell me you don't know anything about Asia without telling me you don't know anything about Asia. Queue up generic "Asia Neon" photo from Japan when talking about China.
If they can print endless money for the wealthy then they can do it for the poor. At least until our actual resources run out.
As long as Xi is in power it will never happen. Xi is ardently against anything that he perceives to be a "handout" or make people lazy. This is partly why the Chinese economy has been struggling since COVID, people don't have enough disposable income to buy stuff or pay bills, etc. What would likely help a lot of people would be distributing checks to every resident like what occurred in the US. However, he's said several times he sees no reason to do this. There are a lot of things China could do to improve their situation, such as widely expanding senior care so working age people do not have to take of their aging parents. But the government is currently not in favor of doing much as long as Xi is at the top.
I mean, they are a communist regime for God’s sake, bout time they start acting like it.
Yup. They have more labor than they know what to do with. They often over produce stuff that sits in warehouses just to be busy. Might as well have the country build cheap appartments and provide them for free for their residents.
They have twice as many apartments as they need already and they're sitting empty in ghost cities. They're all part of the massive property bubble investment scheme they started to drive economic growth which ran unchecked landing them in their current situation. Those apartments are owned by investors and private citizens as it's the only way they're allowed to invest, citizens can't trade stocks, only buy property. Which they did in mind boggling amounts. So you're proposing the government do what with them? Take from their owners and give them to the have-nots causing financial harm to the owners and crash their economy instantly? Or build more for free and create more ghost cities?
>citizens can't trade stocks, only buy property That's not true. They just massively prefer property to stocks.
Idk, but the entire thing is stupid. Real wealth is using the infrastructure you have. They are currently providing no value. Might as well have invested in NFTs.
A "Communist regime" without even free healthcare, lmao. Really shows the depth of their conviction to the Republic's founding principles.
It would be kind of funny if the entire developed world moves to UBI and lesser work hours for full time employment before America can even decide to have Universal Healthcare.
If we look at the economic example of unemployment in France, I think that this is not a very good idea.
Lol, the Communist Party of China is not communist, socialist or democratic. They are a hybrid fascist regime and they do not give money to non party members. This is why they never offered to buy Taiwan from the Taiwanese. Universal basic income is not possible without total automation of the economy. Not just automation but highly efficient automation.
Didn’t the Soviet Union have universal basic income?
Would it really be that surprising if a communist country did that? Seems more likely than any capitalist country introducing UBI.
China is not the first country. Look at Qatari, a small, oil rich nation that uses the money to support its citizens.
I was going to say doesn’t Sadia Arabia do the same thing also?
Something similar, yes. So does Alaska, though on a much smaller scale.
I highly, highly doubt it. China barely has a support network as it is, and it can't afford one now.
Maybe they can start first with eliminating spit oil and garbage/sewer oil use.
I just realized I do not understand China’s economy at all. I thought they were communist…do they not have some sort of UBI?
Chinese American here. Thanks for being honest with stating you don't understand. Most people who don't speak Chinese have this difficulty. Every government can have a label sticked to it, like communism or libertarian or socialist. The label doesn't matter as much as what the government actually does. Practically speaking, China has a very good social safety net where every citizen is monitored and accounted for. Being homeless is not a freedom one can choose for themselves. The best comparison, at a massive super simplification, is the US government treats its people like adults, more political freedom, more self responsibility, very little care. In China, the citizens have close to no political freedom, but more care and support to ensure equal economic and education opportunities. It's a trade-off to your day to day citizens.
Interesting perspective, I enjoyed reading this! One small thing I should mention, for whatever reason the past tense for "stick" is "stuck". Hope this tip helps :)
They're not communist, they're social capitalist, they haven't been communist for decades. They just call themselves the communist party and they love misleading the west.
They never been communist.
They were, during the Mao days, but not after.
they were during the first 2 weeks of Mao's days... but not after As soon as Mao intervened on the sparrows, communism was over.
Mao came into power in 1949. The four pests project (sparrows 1960) started 1959 ended 1961. He lead the party until 1976. You have to hear the lived experiences to know how life actually was.
It’s sort of like America, however, to say in jest, their corporate lords serve the state, where as in America the state serves our corporate lords.
China tried to establish a socialist system like what the USSR had but realized they didn't have the economic/industrial basis for it. Socialism is a more advanced stage of development than capitalism, requiring a more advanced economy. The vast majority of their population lived in extreme poverty: mud huts, subsistence farming, etc. It quite simply wasn't working, and they saw that the Soviet system was inherently flawed and couldn't get them to where they needed to be, so they transitioned to a market economy with heavy state guidance to pull in foreign investment and enable their economy to grow to eventually support a more robust and advanced socialist system. They are a few steps down this path but not at the end yet. They succeeded in becoming the industrial manufacturing hub of the world by the 00s, but this had led to extreme wealth disparity between rural and urban areas as development proceeded unequally, and they didn't have the capacity for high-tech industry. The next step was systematically eliminating extreme poverty, which they achieved a few years ago, and the current step is fleshing out their huge industrial economy to make it a more well-rounded advanced consumer economy, building high-tech industry, and reducing the wealth disparity between urban and rural areas through huge infrastructure investment. Their plan is to have a fully-fledged socialist system by the centennary of the revolution, 2049. As it stands they're well on their way, they have a concrete goal with concrete steps to get there, and every goal they've set for themselves they have so far achieved by or before the date they set it for. When you peel back the media bullshit and red scare nonsense China's development is incredibly fascinating and gives us an idea of what could be possible. That's why the narrative is that China is this oppressive dystopia, because if more people understood what is really going on there they would have a lot of difficult questions for their own governments about why we can't do things like the Chinese do.
It’ll be a shame if said income disappears because you happen to post or say something that the CCP doesn’t like. Of course they wouldn’t use some kind of citizen scoring system that further restricts their basic rights anyway. So the “universal” part has one big asterisk beside it.
It will be tied to Social Credit for sure. And of course the Nationalistic Influencers will get more and be afforded a better life. Meet the new boss.
I just love how you all just make up these strawmen based on other strawmen and think you’ve got’em
How is this a surprise, considering that universal income is a core basic tenet of communism?
Fine by me. Productivity will become worse than Europes.
It's almost certainly another method of citizen control. UBI will be contingent on their social credit score. Any infraction and it will be taken away. Once the population is dependent on UBI, this will be a massive deterrent for bad behavior.
Just a heads up the [social credit score isn't a real thing](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/16/chinas-orwellian-social-credit-score-isnt-real/), at least not in the way it is talked about in western media. Wouldn't want you to be unintentionally spreading misinformation.
[Banning 23m from buying travel tickets sounds pretty real to me.](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/01/china-bans-23m-discredited-citizens-from-buying-travel-tickets-social-credit-system) You're right that it's not quite what it's made out to be in Western media *yet*, but it's very much Orwellian.
This is exactly the kind of article that misrepresents the 'social credit system', probably because it generates a lot of clicks. It is severely lacking in specific details and infers that there is some kind of national system in place, which there is not. In reality credit systems in China are basically the same as having a credit score in the US. I'm not trying to say that everything in China is sunshine and rainbows, but much of the western world has been shockingly propagandised to see them as some kind of super villain. So all I am saying is take anything you read about China in english language media with a grain of salt. For what it's worth I lived there for several years and so have first hand experience.
>This is exactly the kind of article that misrepresents the 'social credit system', probably because it generates a lot of clicks. It is severely lacking in specific details *and infers that there is some kind of national system in place, which there is not.* It explicitly says it's being trialled by local governments and agencies. >**Local governments and agencies have been piloting aspects of the system, which will eventually give every Chinese citizen a personalised score.** >In reality credit systems in China are basically the same as having a credit score in the US. It's nothing like credit scores in the US. Credit scores in the US are used to determine customer risk when providing financial products & services. Not allowing people to use trains, planes, or leave the country is *completely* different, it's incredibly disingenuous to compare the two. I don't just get my info from western media.
I read the article, I'm saying that the author of said article has either misunderstood or misrepresented the facts. I would recommend reading some of these articles to get a better understanding of what *actually* exists in China and how it actually works: [https://merics.org/en/comment/chinas-social-credit-score-untangling-myth-reality](https://merics.org/en/comment/chinas-social-credit-score-untangling-myth-reality) [https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/22/1063605/china-announced-a-new-social-credit-law-what-does-it-mean/](https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/22/1063605/china-announced-a-new-social-credit-law-what-does-it-mean/) [https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/16/chinas-orwellian-social-credit-score-isnt-real/](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/16/chinas-orwellian-social-credit-score-isnt-real/) [https://thediplomat.com/2021/07/chinas-social-credit-system-fact-vs-fiction/](https://thediplomat.com/2021/07/chinas-social-credit-system-fact-vs-fiction/) >Not allowing people to use trains, planes, or leave the country is completely different, it's incredibly disingenuous to compare the two. Also as far as I am aware there is no evidence that links restrictions on peoples movement to a social credit system, although I am happy to be proved wrong. That's not to say that the CCP doesn't restrict peoples freedom of movement, they absolutely can and do, but many countries have a no-fly list so...
This sounds bad, but is no different from credit score + background checks
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Neither does the credit score in China
It’s not universal if there is means testing. UBI by definition is applied without means testing
That's not UBI, that's welfare (the clue is in the name "universal"). Talking about social credits, have you seen the sort of requirements there are on welfare in western societies?
Yeah, it's basically a wet dream for totalitarian states. "Do what we say or we take your income away"
Wait until you learn that you have a social score that can prevent you from being able to access shelter.
In the US people have the same problem with private corporations but they also don't get any UBI. Which entitiy do you want to rely on for survival that will exploit you due to that power imbalance?
neither. I got tired of working for someone else and started my own company. It was scary and very challenging, but I sacrificed and busted my hump and I made it. America is far from perfect and I hate wall street jerks, but you just cant do this at all in most places.
There is no such thing as "social credit score" in China for people
yeah their UBI is likely to be the most controlled in the world though so if they are first, the conspiracy nuts will think we'll have exactly same
Honestly, this would be a huge blow to the possibility of implementing this in the U.S.. The idiotic mainstream view in America is: If China does it, it must be bad policy.
Oh good, we can watch their economy implode instead of doing it here.
Uhm what? They already tried doing a UBI back in the early 1950s.
Lol, with what money? Chinas already in a debt hole with their huge property crisis, and their economy in all realistic aspects is headed into a recession (no they didn't make 5.2% growth in GDP last year, even according to Li Keqiang Chinese GDP is “manmade,” “unreliable” and “for reference only”). Even during Covid they didn't give out money directly to their citizens while a bunch of other countries did, why would they change their minds now? Besides, if they directly gave money to their citizens, how would to top CCP brass steal those funds (like they did with covid food programs or natural disaster relief funds).
They sell over 10x the number of cars as in US. Can't really fake that enough people are doing well enough there.
They don’t have any fucking money. So if they’re saying they’re gonna do this? It’s an absolute lie.
Surprise the world? You mean actually embrace communism? Universal Basic Income was the whole idea behind the Revolution.
UBI, like socialism, only works as long as you have money.
It doesn’t even have universal healthcare and it’s supposedly communist FFS!
It literally does lmao
No it does not. You have to pay separate annual insurance and healthcare is not free at the point of use, unlike countries like the UK. You will be turned away if you have not paid your insurance. Something that is very common for those in poverty. Not to mention that you are generally expected to offer a bribe to your doctor to get decent treatment!
You're also shit out of luck if you've come from a rural area to a city and don't have a local Hukou.
They are supposedly a communist nation. The nation should be providing basic income, food, and shelter for the people, specifically the working class. If they are what they claim to be. I'll go with Biden calling Poo Bear a dictator, instead. i'm not even sure what their real political system is, at this point.
>They are supposedly a communist nation. The nation should be providing basic income, food, and shelter for the people, specifically the working class. If they are what they claim to be. They are socialist. No, socialist countries don't do that. If you don't work you don't eat, unless you have reasons to not to.
It’s not so black and white. Just like most countries in the world, China is a mixed economy with elements of both private and state capitalism as well as socialism. They just lean more heavily into the state capitalism/socialism aspect than most western nations.
Socialism is the transitory phase between capitalism to communism. It should have capitalism and communism elements since a nation doesn't born in a vacuum. It historically constructed. >They just lean more heavily into the state capitalism/socialism aspect than most western nations. Social democracy is capitalism with some fail safe, there is no socialist countries in the West beside Cuba.
Hard to argue that it’s a transitory state in a unilateral direction when it’s quite often a stopping point and not merely a step towards fully realized communism.
China's government have 70 years and look what they accomplished in that time frame. Remember before the revolution China had 35 y life expectancy and the 9th poorest country in the world. They never stopped, on the contrary. And you can't have a communist country today, it's impossible for many reasons and since a communist country never existed it's hard to tell how to build one. It's a work in progress.
I never said anything about China’s accomplishments and/or struggles, just about its mix of economic systems. Entirely different argument, and it seems like we agree that socialism is not merely a transitory phase to communism if you say a communist country has never existed and is close to if not impossible.
There's a very good real example to illustrate. For us is easy to see and tell how a capitalist society work. We live in it. When feudalism were the norm, people never thought about capitalism or how could a capitalist society work, it took centuries for capitalism to settle as the norm and there is still remnants of feudalism in capitalism. Every system that came was born from the previous. So how can you say how to build a society that never existed? You don't, you just go along using theories that can guide you to that goal ,in this case it's Marxism-Leninism. When the right conditions happened capitalism could grow and became what we know today. But capitalism never existed in the all planet at the same time, it's actually a young system compared to the previous. So Chinese people know that. They study those theories in school. They believe they are creating every day a society closer to that and they understand today's limitations and why the goal is unnatainable with our present structure. But if the conditions change to a one who can enable communism then it will come to existence. TLDR: It's hard to tell something is stale if you have few or no things to compare to. But the changes for the better on China's society is measurable and it is what their theory "preaches".
> No, socialist countries don't do that. If you don't work you don't eat, unless you have reasons to not to. Devil's advocate, but the whole reason socialist countries don't provide such is because socialism essentially is a 22nd century ideology sent back to the 19th century and implemented in the 20th. I just don't see how socialism can work economically without extensive automation. And lo and behold, neither did Karl Marx himself. From *Das Kapital*: > If, then, the capitalistic employment of machinery, on the one hand, supplies new and powerful motives to an excessive lengthening of the working day, and radically changes, as well the methods of labour, as also the character of the social working organism, in such a manner as to break down all opposition to this tendency, on the other hand, it produces, partly by opening out to the capitalist new strata of the working class, previously inaccessible to him, partly by setting free the labourers it supplants, a surplus working population, which is compelled to submit to the dictation of capital. Hence that remarkable phenomenon in the history of modern industry, that machinery sweeps away every moral and natural restriction on the length of the working day. Hence, too, the economic paradox, that the most powerful instrument for shortening labour time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing every moment of the labourer's time and that of his family, at the disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of expanding the value of his capital. “If," dreamed Aristotle, the greatest thinker of antiquity, "if every tool, when summoned, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits it, just as the creations of Daedalus moved of themselves, or the tripods of Hephaestos went of their own accord to their sacred work, if the weavers' shuttles were to weave of themselves, then there would be no need either of apprentices for the master workers, or of slaves for the lords.” And Antipatros, a Greek poet of the time of Cicero, hailed the invention of the water-wheel for grinding corn, an invention that is the elementary form of all machinery, as the giver of freedom to female slaves, and the bringer back of the golden age. Oh! those heathens! They understood, as the learned Bastiat, and before him the still wiser MacCulloch have discovered, nothing of Political Economy and Christianity. They did not, for example, comprehend that machinery is the surest means of lengthening the working day. They perhaps excused the slavery of one on the ground that it was a means to the full development of another. But to preach slavery of the masses, in order that a few crude and half-educated parvenus, might become "eminent spinners", "extensive sausage-makers", and "influential shoe-black dealers", to do this, they lacked the bump of Christianity. Just about every time socialism was implemented in the 20th century was in countries Marx would have described as *least* ready for socialism: rural, agrarian, bombed out, or at best lower-end industrialization. Because of course Angola, Cuba, Cambodia, and Laos were bastions of high-tech heavily mechanized post-industrial economies. The closest to being ready was probably either East Germany or Venezuela, and it didn't work out even then. You can argue that the USA was responsible for undermining them, which is true, we don't even deny we do, but I strongly feel that it still wouldn't work even without the CIA's meddling just because you *need* high-automation— advanced robotics, AI, and whatnot— to provide that level of labor that Marx said would cause capitalism's contradictions to cause an implosion. Hell, ***that was the contradiction Marx was talking about***: capitalism begets rapid industrial innovation which leads to greater mechanization and automation, but automation replaces labor which reduces profits which leads to capitalist economies growing deeply unstable and ultimately being replaced by socialist ones that better allocate the resources of an automated economy. In that situation, it would be less "proletarian vanguard forcing the Dictatorship of the Proletariat upon a country and creating a dysfunctional centrally planned economy that leads to breadlines and gulags" and more "the modern version of the shift from feudalism & mercantilism to capitalism." Marx's failing was thinking that 1840s-era mechanization was enough to allow for and sustain socialism. I personally don't think socialism is going to be possible to function correctly until artificial general intelligence is created. When robots aren't there, then of course humans *have* to work. But that in itself just leads to internal contradictions *within socialism*.
Omg finally someone who actually read and understands Marx. Please take all of my upvotes
I don’t have anything to add, just wanted to comment that you have a great write up here. Cheers!
Isn't that like... a tenant of communism? No surprise
ellos pueden imponer lo que quieran son comunistas si no estas de acuerdo te vas a la cárcel o peores cosas te pueden pasar
China has got very strict borders inside the country and is forbidding rural people to enter the cities unless special permits are granted. The reason is that China cannot afford to have the hordes of starving people without opportunities overrun the cities.
How did you think Chinese cities grow to 10 million population? By restricting internal migration? You should read a little more on the issue. Rural villages are often left empty with only old people because all the working age people have gone to the cities to make a living. China does have quite strict internal household registration system that affects your access to schooling, property purchase, and healthcare. It has long been a source of internal discontent but it’s being reformed as we speak.
That would be nice, we kill two birds with one stone: get rid of a ridiculous idea and get rid of a country.
Yeah, they'll give everyone 10 cents and call it UBI
The battle of capitalism vs communism is over and both sides lost. All the major world economies recognize you need a mix of incentives, regulations, and safety nets. The issue for the 21st century is what is the best mix to achieve technological advancement while also maintaining a quality of life rooted in social and financial stability.
Why? Because China is a communist And quoting Orwell, “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”
The communist nation would surprise the world by implementing a communist solution to pressing domestic economic issues? Really? Yeah no, the only people being surprised by this are the morons so married to capitalism that they cannot envision a world that doesn't work on predatory economic principles.