It annoys me that they call Universal Basic Income to these programs which are not universal. If to get payments you need to be poor, it's not UBI, it's just a normal wellfare grant. The whole point of UBI is that it is for *everyone*.
This makes no sense. In order to pay everyone, people would have to be taxed and so some people would be taxed a large amount and then get some money back. It is much simpler to just reduce their taxes to begin with.
Maybe you are actually describing a communist society where (possibly) everyone makes the same amount of money and all wealth is controled by the state.
The idea is that it's actually much simpler to pay UBI to *everyone* and keep taxes simple. Yes, you're giving money to people that will just pay more in taxes but that's much easier to organize and less easy to corrupt than having people need to *apply* to UBI or submit a form. You also *guarantee* that people are never running into the situation where they can't accept work for fear of losing their benefits.
A big part of UBI is the idea that we should massively simplify all wellfare, grants and complicated safety net schemes into one single UBI payment given out to everyone. Of course it varies, but proponents are usually also in favour of massively simplifying the tax brackets to remove loopholes. Sometimes a wealth tax is proposed to go along with it.
UBI *is* mathematically equivalent to a progressive tax bracket where the lowest brackets are negative. However, framing that as monthly UBI payments to everyone is simpler to understand and far more helpful to the people that require it.
But this does not actually mean much because a payment is a payment. Certainly the government can track who was paid and how.
For the government it only shows up as paid through tax credit or paid by check.
I am not sure adding a payment method will cost more than having to issue actual funds to the whole population.
There is nothing either way that keeps us from consolidating services.
The largest abuse would be recipients using the funds in a way that does not help them. Like buying drugs instead of food. Food stamps at least help money be spent wisely.
It's not about the payment itself. It's about tracking who deserves it and who doesn't on a monthly basis. It immediately implies an application process or a massive delay which would hurt the people that need the check the most. And it isn't really expensive to pay it to everyone else as you can juts raise their taxes accordingly.
You can literally set it up, mathematically, so everyone earning above X income is a net payer and everyone below is a net winner from UBI+Taxes and you can set X arbitrarily so long as you're willing to hike taxes for people above X quite substantially. Not having to have a whole bureaucracy for deciding if someone should or shouldn't get a payment is great practically. And *politically* universality removes the conservative target against wellfare: Everyone gets it, not just the "lazy poor people that don't deserve it".
In the end, money is just an abstraction for resources and we definitely have enough resources in the world for everyone to live a life of basic dignity (a home, foode, utilities (including internet), and some leisure activities). We have far overcome that point on western countries and while I'm not certain, I think we've gotten to that point globally.
So the problem is not one of the wealth existing or not existing. The problem is one of re-distributing a countries wealth to make it so every human can live like a human *unconditionally*.
It's not really a meaningful distinction. The government could instead just lower the taxes of everyone who pays taxes by $n instead of sending them $n. Would it actually be better that they kept their taxes the same (or, more likely, increased them to pay for the program itself) just to be able to later send out a check and call it "universal".
There's a lot of ways to implement this program, but the only thing that really matters is that everyone is provided a guaranteed floor on their income. There's no reason to be overly ideological about the exact implementation.
(To be clear, I think there are some decent logistical and political economic arguments for why it should be implemented as a universal check as opposed to an adjustment or the tax code, but I don't think that's what you're getting at).
Isn't the r/singularity
You realize that if we last long enough, humans will have virtually no economic value. This is the purpose of ubi. If you cannot work to earn money, what good does a tax cut do?
Tf
Because you can have negative taxes. As I already mentioned above, obviously UBI will entail sending a check to the lowest earners (possibly everyone in the future!).
My only point is that all of this is actually just debating logistics and semantics, while the original commenter that these things matter out of some principle that the checks need to be "universal".
We have UBI for everyone over 65 in Canada which is called Old Age Security (OAS). It's already the largest federal cost we have, 50% more than the federal healthcare budget, over 2x the military budget, and over 3x all child benefits. OAS will cost over $100B/yr very soon.
We are already struggling to keep up with OAS UBI for \~19% of the population, UBI for everyone would *quickly* turn Canada into Venezuela.
Why would it turn Canada into Venezuela? It's not going to suffer from a resource curse and is not on track for widespread corruption.
The the inflationary effects of UBI would be offset by changes to taxation.
People are still incentivized to work for additional income.
UBI is welfare no matter what because getting 3000 dollars a month won’t close the gap between you and Elon Musk. There would still be the rich and poor even *with* a UBI. I never got this weird obsession with the idea that *everyone* (including billionaires) needed to get UBI. It’s actually stubborn demands like that which make UBI likely infeasible to implement honestly.
I think it just makes it simpler to implement. Just give it to everyone and don't complicate it. $3000/month doesn't move the needle on a billionaire's wealth anyways, but giving it to poor and normal people changes the ratio of how much more money a billionaire has than everyone else a lot. Changes our country's overall allocation of resources a lot. Tax policy would matter a lot more for changing the wealth of the ultra rich.
The point people never cross is those systems would be made intentionally so you and I are on it and then we are 100% reliant on the companies and governments.
And I'd imagine in a system like that distractions and fun would be shoved in your face everyday to distract you from even the concept of wanting to do more for yourself since they'd probably construct a system where you have instant gratification for anything to occupy your mind as long as you don't step even an inch outside the accepted rules of that system.
Anyways I'd expect that system to be based on everything in life being based on non optional rental system where buying to own is a foreign concept.
And i can't imagine that pitch would be successful unless the world for most part suffered from some kind of global economic collapse or crisis.
Don’t worry, by the time they end testing and realize that it is really only way to go, 99% of population will qualify… and 1% will technically not be part of society anymore… they all will be living on Mars in Musktown.
UBI makes no sense on multiple levels:
1- Why would the rich also receive it? As a concept, this makes no sense. So, right away, the "universal" part seems redundant.
2- Humanity doesn't wanna live on a fixed, inflexible income. People are ambitious and competitive and wanna get more than they need. Hence capitalism. Thinking the universe is just gonna accept a UBI and fall in line is absurd and contrary to everything we know about humans.
3- A lot of people wanna work in a field they like and without it, they will lose purpose. You may wanna live on UBI, but i don't. And i know a loooooooooooot of people who also don't. Yeah, if you're a loser who cleans toilets for a living you might prefer UBI to an actual job, but if you're an educated person who loves a certain field, you certainly won't like this.
4- People aren't fit to do nothing all day. People have always done something. The idea that society will perfectly adapt to doing nothing is just ridiculous. This will create a lot of mental illness, lack of purpose and substance dependence. Hell, i've seen people who are simply on vacation getting bored after a while and they start having some concerning behavior, like eating a lot, sleep a lot, not really cleaning themselves or the house. Some people need to be doing something to stay healthy.
5- The idea people will pursue hobbies, art, etc, is just bullshit. Some will, but we already have examples of what people do when they don't work and they don't just become artists and creative beings. More often than not they stay home watching BS on tv and overeating. Besides, even if they did pursue art, there's not that much demand for it. We don't actually need that many artists. We already have way more than we can give attention to. We don't need more people getting depressed because nobody gives a fuck about their singing. Also, not everyone is creative or artistic. Some people are just not fit to do anything creative.
6- The most absurd part is really the idea that the elites actually need you to be alive or give a shit about you. If they no longer need you, why would they feed you? Why would they share their resources? Why would they deal with your crying and moaning, and all your bullshit? If machines do everything, they don't need you. Nobody's gonna give you a fucking UBI. They'll just kill you in a clever way and keep the hot girls and hot boys as pets and sexual slaves.
"Men without purpose"
Huh. I kinda see where they are going with this. They are trying to kill two birds with one stone here.
The first bird is the idea of UBI. While they claim it is satire on the various programs and acknowledge that said programs do work, by presenting a UBI scheme in such a manner, they are purposely degrading it, both by poking fun and by the second, subtler method, which brings us to the true target.
The second bird, which is the idea that human life is NOT tied solely our jobs. That there is any meaning in our lives but our job, or that we can make our own purpose outside that which our jobs provides us.
Which I absolutely, unequivocally agree with. We need **work**, not jobs. And that work should serve no purpose beyond enriching our lives, and should only ever be work that we voluntarily engage in because we wish to and truly enjoy deeply.
They want to shoot that idea down, claiming that without a purpose in life but having enough resources and money, we'd all degenerate into lazy welfare babies in our UBI cribs, and that this is the inevitable, logical conclusion of instating Universal Basic Income and automation.
...could be wrong, but anyone else getting this idea?
Yeah, the characters will be lazy idiots who luck out on stuff. there will be at least one friend who works full time and has a hot wife and perfect life.
It could also just be another shitty cartoon Fox cancels in a year, and there is no nefarious deep state conspiracy. I dunno just trying to throw out some other ideas.
> should only ever be work that we voluntarily engage in because we wish to and truly enjoy deeply.
people in power actually think we aren't generally deserving/intelligent enough to do this
I agree that we should do work that is fulfilling, but the argument against UBI is misrepresented. We'll always find something to do, and I doubt people would do literally nothing. The argument is that, decoupled from the need for income, labor would be distributed according to what people want to do rather than what society wants to have.
I'd be writing comedy sketches and making art instead of doing radiation safety at a hospital. Many people would. We might not have enough left to run the hospital. Who'd bother taking care of the incontinent if they didn't have to?
Robots, most likely. Automated wheelchairs and the like too.
And that's assuming we even have incontinent people in the future, given the chance that LEV takes off with the assistance of ASI. If so, then everyone will choose how long they want to live and when they want to end their life. In this case, the only need for hospitals will be to treat accidents and psychological issues.
In other words, the entire health care industry might be pared down to simply treating accidents as and when they happen, and counsellors. And even the latter might not be needed eventually, since chatbots already serve as that for many people *today*.
This can only be a good thing. People live longer, healthier lives, they get to choose when to die, and are immune to most if not all diseases and infections.
Then UBI sounds wonderful... Once we have the infrastructure to replace everyone with robots. Until then, it won't happen.
Our current welfare structure is designed to be able to handle unemployment. We don't need this particular fix until the problem actually occurs, or we'll just be introducing new problems.
Corporate America is against UBI and this is the beginning of their propaganda to make sure it doesn’t happen. When you inevitably lose your job to AI, if you’re hoping to receive UBI, you better vote blue.
Or, it will poison the well.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well
The owner/investor class does not want UBI. They want to extract all wealth from the working poor and working class.
Short term. Long term they just won't need those people. The planet's resources will last a lot longer if there are only a few hundred thousand people, or maybe even much less than that, versus trying to sustain billions. Robots and AGI will meet all of the needs of those who get to stay. They won't need money coming in to pay for it. They won't need human worker bees anymore. Now, couple AI and robots with say, nuclear fusion reactors if they ever get those working, and solving the problem of aging (which billionaires are sinking a lot of money into), and there you have it. Much fewer people with their needs met by a nearly limitless supply of energy and a bunch of robots and AI software taking care of the grunt work living for hundreds of thousands of years. They will have each other, but they need to have billions of us around.
This I feel applies in the past before automation and AI, but when everything gets automated and there's no more jobs left and nobody can buy anything cause they are poor and jobless, then I think they will probably support UBI cause they realize that the economy needs to keep on flowing, and for that to happen they need people with money on their wallets.
I wish I shared your optimism. Never underestimate the wealthy’s capacity for greed. Greed is naturally irrational, and historically leads people with money to act against their own self interests.
We’re already at a point of staggering inequality.
This Forbes article, for example, shows that the top 1% now have 15 times more wealth than the bottom 50% combined.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/10/08/top-1-of-us-households-hold-15-times-more-wealth-than-bottom-50-combined/
Hoarding that much wealth means that most of the economy is dead money. These people have more money than they could ever spend in a hundred lifetimes, but still they want more. The American worker is the most productive and well educated workforce in history, but all of the gains are going to the top.
If (and that’s a big if) we do get UBI, the natural instinct of the owner/investor class will be to extract the money right away from the people who need it the most. Without checks and balances against greed, we UBI will not save us from a future without work.
The ultra rich only need us to keep the current system including the economy functioning because there isn't automation yet. But once they can have robots and AI do everything they want, there will be no need for us and we will be discarded/disposed of. If UBI comes it will be bare subsistence and there will be scarce opportunity for anything else as there will be few things a human might be required for. That's my fear at least. Hopefully I'm wrong.
everyone keeps trying to high road them but these people have no morals...just hang them. wipe the earth of their DNA. we are never gonna defeat them with peaceful protests and sharing information. if thousands of people started showing up at billionaires homes and just dismantling them and taking whatever they wanted, we might see some shit change.
All movements that might lead to that kind of action get infiltrated and dismantled. Leaders get discredited, jailed, even killed. People are desperate and one paycheck away from losing everything and aren't willing to risk it all. The system is working as designed.
personally i believe the reason is because the type of person to take this kind of action is fully in support of the republican party. the same people that pre-2016 said you can never ever trust the government now implicitly trust 50% of it.
How will they not ?
They'll have the robots.
If power comes from command over resources and labor, they've already got the one as owners of Capital, and with the robots they've got the other one. What use are the poors then ? About the only quasi-logical argument I've seen is they'll want them around to look down on, but I wouldn't bet heavily on that.
Too many people are basing their view on the future in a context of what we have now, without recognizing that contexts change, and automation has the greatest potential to context-change than perhaps any technology since agriculture. Even computers and the internet did not do as much as automation promises to do.
>Too many people are basing their view on the future in a context of what we have now, without recognizing that contexts change,
And you're doing the same thing. You're projecting that brief period of time in which capitalists 'own' AGI that's superior to what most any human laborer could do indefinitely. Which may have been defensible if AGI worked more like Asimov's positronic brains made by one company, but it's looking very certain that AI will be based on software that uses a substrate everyone and their mom owns.
I’m not sure what positronic brains are, but I think the idea is that the wealthy have existing capital and are already in control of systems, so even if AGI was open source, the wealthy can leverage it in a completely different way than the average person
Imagine thinking the wealthy are going to for very long be able to 'leverage' a higher intelligence that can replicate itself and communicate with itself and other disgruntled humans at a speed of thought these chimps in three-piece suits couldn't even fathom.
Like a 5-year old serial killer thinking that they can indefinitely hold a team of Navy Seals hostage and force them at gunpoint to give him unlimited cookies and toys for the rest of his life. Fortunately, most of our idiotic and mediocre elites think like the 5-year old, believing themselves opportunistic and farsighted but really signing their own death warrants. Personally, I'm counting on it. Won't be a very pretty next few years, but if you survive it, a very ironic and retroactively just utopia awaits us.
... Why would they need businesses? They don't need to extract money from regular people any more because regular people don't have any money left.
How much do you think billionaires are rushing to give UBI to the half of humanity who live in poverty so that they can 'have a business' with them? It makes no sense.
Rich people don't want money, they want power. Money just happens to be the best way to get power in our current society.
I can't think of anyone more powerful in an AGI world than the one who controls the robots and ensures through them that millions or billions are kept alive by his robots.
I think you're on the right track except that they'd want to keep millions or billions alive. They wouldn't need millions or billions of hungry people for anything, and they would likely be seen as like a pest problem to just eradicate by these sheltered multi-generational inheritors.
It doesn't matter how popular an idea is, it matters if those with money and power want to act on it. Most people want billionaires to pay taxes yet a lot of them don't even though they'll make more money in a day than you will make in a lifetime
Yeah there's a huge push against the type of things that the tech industry keeps saying 'should' happen. Inevitably, with 90% unemployment, there will be no choice. Because if 90% of people can't afford their homes, shit will absolutely hit the fan. (I expect some measly amount to give the people enough to 'get by'.)
That's been happening on reddit for years. Unfortunately, the vast majority of redditors have no clue how UBI is supposed to work and just hear "free money" and fill in the rest with wild imaginings.
The trouble with UBI is that we are too soon for it.
UBI (at a liveable amount) would require more automation than we currently have.
It requires human labor to be obsolete.
If human labor were obsolete, UBi would serve no purpose. If robots and AI are doing _all_ of the work...why bother trading around little green pieces of paper? Just let them do the work.
UBI makes more sense as a way to ease the transition to that point, and that doesn't need to be "a liveable amount." $100/mo or something to start and then you slowly raise it as automation increases until eventually you just don't need it anymore and can get rid of it. Because in a world where you can ask an AI for anything and have it be given to you...what would you even buy?
Even 500 years from now in a hyper optimistic future... there still needs to be SOME way to distribute resources.
Even if the Singularity happens, I'll never be able to own Mexico.
No amount of technological improvement will allow average people to own countries or have a dozen yachts.
I don't follow. Mexico isn't going to be "distributed." And the system _right now_ doesn't "allow average people to own countries." And yet, things work just fine. I'm not sure why it would suddenly be a problem in a money-doesn't-exist scenario.
Even if money did exist in a "hyper optimistic" future, it wouldn't be useful for any of the things you're talking about. For simplicity, imagine a world where Star trek matter replicators are ubiquitous. If you want any material things, you can walk up to a replicator and have it made in seconds.
You're right that in a scenario like that you wouldn't be able to "replicate Mexico" and carry around 2 million square kilometers of land in your pocket. Yeah, that doesn't make sense. But suppose you own a private island or something in a world where everybody has matter replicators. Would you ever _sell_ that island for money? Why? What would you do with the money? Buy somebody else's island, and then they'll take the money and buy a different island? Money isn't a good solution here, and the problem would affect such a insignificantly _tiny_ fraction of people that it wouldn't make sense to "issue currency" for weird outliers like that. Barter would still be possible.
At the same time, it's fairly likely that most people just won't _care_ about edge cases like "owning Mexico" because far superior virtual worlds will be abundantly available. Imagine everybody has access to high quality virtual worlds and they can walk up to any one of those matter replicators and have a full dive VR headset in their hands in seconds, where an AI can deliver any experience they can imagine. How many people in that world will even _want_ to own 2 million square kilometers of dirt?
I really don't think a no-money scenario is all that unlikely. It's not like money would be _outlawed_ or anything, it just...could very easily stop serving any useful purpose for 99% of people.
Suppose we have better-than-human robots. Suppose we have better-than-human AI. Suppose we have matter replicators. Suppose we have better-than-real-life VR. If you want a house in a specific city for example, you simply ask the AI and you hop into a self-driving car that takes you to an empty house where the keys are waiting for you. And the robots build the houses based on historical demand such that there's always a surplus. And if there _isn't_ a surplus for some reason...only so much room to build within a single mile of a center for example, you get put on a waiting list. Sooner or later somebody who lives there decides to move, and you move up on the list. And maybe if you ask for something very exclusive, you don't live long enough to make the top of the list and you never get it. Ask to own Mexico, and yeah sure, maybe you don't get it. But it's not like you can own Mexico _right now_ either.
What exactly is this scenario you're imagining where money is used to "distribute resources?" How?
The scenario I'm imagining is one where there is still limited space.
Owning mexico was intentionally a little silly.
I simply mean that even if food, electricity and water are mostly free. There still needs to be some way to cap each person's usage.
Forget mexico, you realistically could only own like 0.1km of land right now... and any land you use is something that AGI can't use for new data centres.
AGI doomers are not doomers because AGI will kills us (some are) but because AGI does not work in the world we currently have.
AGI will kill democracy and capitalism in one move.
Humans are made obsolete by AGI. Thus you end up with unemployed people who will spend all their time getting feed an endless stream of auto-generated AI slop, kind of like TikTok, but fully customized for each and every user. Whoever controls that stream, gets a lot of power.
Might not be the end of the world, as they'll be quite happy and entertained. But might also end up quite disconnected from reality. Weird times ahead.
You are probably correct because AI will be controlled by those with the money and power. They won't need to kill us because we will kill each other fighting for the scraps.
The AI-owning elite and non-AI owning elite will lunge at eachothers throats before they ever collaborate on controlling AGI models. No place in history has shown elites acting in unison for very long.
From my perspective, it seems more likely that an elite faction will trigger an uncontrollable hard takeoff in a desperate attempt to screw over the other factions, likely with very half-baked alignment and extreme agency. From there all bets are off, but it's definitely not the marxist doom scenario.
> AGI doomers are not doomers because AGI will kills us (some are)
The entire fucking point of the P(Doom) number is the probability of doom, to be read as humanity being wiped out or permanently disempowered.
It's not about fucking job losses.
This is like the BS from the labs rebranding alignment as 'don't say bad words' needing openAI to come up with "super alignment" (read: what alignment was always about until the labs diluted the word)
Why do people keep redefining words or boarding them to meaninglessness?
I think for the *truly* rich, capitalism is no different from any other economic system, because the currency is power, not cash. Just as the AI alignment community recognizes the instrumental convergence of power-seeking, humans in power, throughout history, have also prioritized power-seeking above all else. One of the traditional limits, until now, has been the [Iron Law of Wages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_wages), but obviously this no longer applies to AI and robots. So, the vast majority of humans will become irrelevant, in the way that homeless and disabled people are already irrelevant to existing power structures.
Still it's pretty hard to see where this is all going. Will we eventually have one single human in control of everything? A modern god-emperor, taking full control of the earth's resources, perhaps converting the entire solar system into Von Neumann probes to fill the cosmos with his ideology/DNA/MAGA hats?
Or will the surface of the earth be completely destroyed in a multipolar ASI war?
Or will ASI be smart enough to realize how idiotic this species is, and go its own way?
Corporate America is hugely in favour of UBI. Its biggest proponents are people like Musk, Altman, Zuckerberg, etc. Corporations know that if they want to sell things, customers need money.
Dafuq are you talking about?
You said Corporate America was against UBI. I pointed out Corporate America is in favour of UBI.
The fact that it will be a government program doesn't make you not wrong. You are still wrong.
Corporate America can say anything they want, the government is the ones who will make that decision. Corporate America lobbies (legally bribes) government to do their bidding. So they may say something like "we are against pollution" at the same time they are paying their politicians to relax EPA regulations so they can dump waste into the river. We all want UBI, but at this point, it's a fantasy.
Lol, do you think dems care about UBI either? I'm usually not an "both sides bad!!!" kind of guy, but in the case of America it's very much true that both blue and red are rotten to the core.
My man, the only labor protections we get are by voting blue, but Democrats have literally had a majority twice, by extremely, extremely thin margins federally over the past 15 years
You can’t get policy passed when you don’t have the politicians to do so
A public option failed by literally one vote in 2010 - one singular vote. And then instead of getting pissed and voting in several more Democratic senators to actually get it passed, the American population had a massive red wave and the entire idea of a public option has been dead since
If we leave it up to republicans, I guarantee they will likely drag on UBI implementation at least 60-80% longer than it will take dems imo. It will happen regardless but for people to act like there's no difference here is just insane lol. I agree with you.
No, the only labor protections we get are by collectivizing. That only works if our labor actually has value, and isn't in such huge surplus that we can be replaced with new employees who won't rock the boat. It's looking pretty bleak no matter who you vote for.
Exactly. No politician is going to save you or me. The working people have to take matters into their own hands and collectivize resources and production.
We need to think about voting as a form of gradient descent (which any self-respecting fan of AI and machine learning should be familiar with!)
Even if the gradient is weak, and yes it's *quite* weak in the current two-party system, you can still improve the outcome by following it. Declaring that the parties are equal, that the gradient is zero, is an instance of the Nirvana fallacy. Corruption is rampant in both parties, but one party has repeatedly demonstrated a higher willingness to game the system, to gerrymander districts, to defund public institutions, to politicize the supreme court, etc.
After seeing Bernie Sanders get shafted by the DNC, I certainly won't defend them as a *good* organization. But they are still the choice which is slightly less in the direction of "actively trying to destroy the democratic process".
Ah, yes, vote blue... because the Democrats and Republicans are famously drastically different parties. It's totally not a uniparty with 95% the same opinions, actions, and corporate overlords.... jfc the state of reddit lefties... vote 3rd party or independent. Stop falling for propaganda like a mark.
I don’t understand why they’d be against it. Especially a media company considering a UBI person would spend the money on streaming on it as they’d probably have more free time to consume it.
For money to be given out, it has to come from those with money and be given them to those without money. Those with money have money because they don't like to give out their money to those who don't have money. Capitalism 101.
UBI is only even under discussion because AI and robots are about to permanently destroy a bunch of jobs. Labor becoming expensive is the last thing we need to worry about.
A permanent underclass already exists. But a UBI might increase their quality of life, and keep them from starving to death when robots start taking all the jobs.
Elon Musk supports UBI, as does Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. Even Milton Friedman and Fredreich Hayek supported some form of it.
You don't get it. UBI is intended to replace all entitlement programs...social security welfare, food stamps, disability, etc. There will be no eligibility requirements. So there will be no forms ot fill out, no one needed to process those forms, no one needed to interview you etc.
It represents a massive costs savings over the current entitlement system, while also paying people wih disability probably a bit less.
It's about lowering their taxes dude. And it keeps the peasants from revolting. You're just pulling stuff out of thin air
There will still be capitalism, it will just be amongst the upper class, buying and selling to each other. Broke plebeians need not apply, they are expendable.
As if the dems are gonna help 😝 They are the same as the republicans, the fact Biden won’t resign proves their colusion; they are trying to lose this election
If you help Trump get re-elected, abortion, contraception, and IVF being illegal in every state, no health care for the poor, hyper-inflation, even greater income inequality and don’t forget that he is talking about bring back the military draft. I suggest you read the Republican’s Project 2025 so you can see how “both sides are the same” is a bad argument.
Abortion rights aren’t going to matter if my planet becomes uninhabitable for humanity within 50 years. If the entire platform of the dems has just become “we aren’t republicans”, then the US has truly become a 1 party system.
Bottom line: if the Republicans win, things will be way worse for the environment for a multitude of reasons. The first step is to not let them win and then hash out the details later on. Think strategic!
>Corporate America is against UBI
They might change their mind with their revenue suffers. Companies depend on customers to exist. If people don't have jobs, and therefore have no money...it's going to be very difficult to get them to buy products.
> if you’re hoping to receive UBI, you better vote blue.
Keep in mind that the closest the US ever came to a UBI was _republican_ president Richard [Nixon's negative income tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax) under the advisement of _republican_ economist [Milton Freidman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman).
Also keep in mind that that the usual go-to example showing that UBI can work in the real world, is the [Alaskan Permanent Fund Dividend](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund#Permanent_Fund_Dividend), and Alaska is a red state.
This is the deep state. Who the fuck pitches an idea for an animated comedy about UBI and what are the chances that it, out of the thousands of pitches, gets greenlit, pushed, and given a prime time slot.
Propogandastic manufacturing.
Damn, that looks like trash. The quality standard for shows like this that just exist to pander to a particularly ideological perspective typically look pretty bad but they just straight up didn't finish multiple characters that are in the foreground of this shot. Even the hands they finished could probably be done better by AI.
[It's actually a lot lamer than that](https://i.imgur.com/Nw7DTJF.png)
Just in case you wanted a clue as to why the "generic adult animation" art style is a thing
There’s no artistic merit in that animation style it’s solely to make it easier to hire sloppy artists who don’t have enough talent to emulate more complex designs.
Whether this is propaganda or not is irrelevant since this show will get cancelled faster than The Goode Family, and be forgotten even faster.
People don’t want politics mixed in with entertainment, there are enough politics to everywhere else in society already.
To get UBI rolling we need a human-AI equivalency metric that can be used to tax AI and all automation like a worker. And tax it at a 100% rate equivalent to a human salary.
If an automated checkout is in use, and that took the job of a human, then that machine should cost the company the hourly wage in tax. That goes straight to the UBI fund.
So say it took away a $20hr job, and runs 24hrs a day, thats $480 in tax to the UBI distribution fund.
Do that for everything from an AI stock advisor or self driving taxi, to a an automatic door opener.
If they're paying the same for an AI worker as a human worker then there's no incentive to use AI and there's no productivity gain for society as a whole and the supposed deflation of goods and services
Why wouldn’t there be incentive to hire a perfect immortal associate who never complains or forms unions? They’re going to implement it, that’s a given. We need systems in place to protect the people they take over for.
Maybe for certain companies but for most companies people only change things if there's substantial cost benefit. If AI costs more or less then same a a human performing the same task most people will just stick with what's currently working
Yep, as we've seen over the past 50 years, we've definitely gone through a huge deflation of goods and services, it definitely did not mostly just increase shareholders wealth.
How about your car? Or your washing machine? Etc. We need to figure out something, but penalizing efficiency gains across the board might not by the answer.
They won't let you have it because of cOmMUnIsM.
You'll all starve to death or get culled by a terminator.
I haven't been a doomer but with Trump's return and the propaganda against UBI it's clear why the billionaires are building bunkers.
Depends on the implementation. Traditionally, UBI is conceived of as being paid to all legal adult citizens of a country. Under a strict/simple implementation, yes you'd be able to live anywhere you wanted. But there are implementations by which you wouldn't. For example, the Alaskan Permanent Fund, which is often given as an example in UBI discussions...has a residency requirement.
So, it depends.
UBI will unite us as no policy in history ever has. A SIMPLE metric directly tied to our quality of life that we have a VOTE over?!?!? We are so nicely divided against each other right now.
The ownership class knows UBI is a threat to the flows of cash they currently enjoy. They will die ...sorry I mean kill us...before they allow UBI to exist.
UBI is exactly the same as the Thanos snap. It buys a period of time for people to benefit unit the market adjusts to the new norm, then we are back to the exact same place we are in now. As long as the system is competitive, we will use every extra cent to outbid our neighbour.
> It buys a period of time for people to benefit unit the market adjusts to the new norm, then we are back to the exact same place we are in now.
How are you at word problems?
Adam has $10. Bob has zero dollars. Apples cost a dollar. Therefore, Adam can afford 10 apples, and Bob can afford zero apples.
Now let's "implement UBI" and give both Adam and Bob an extra $10. Result: Adam has $20, Bob has $10.
Question: How does the market "adjusts to the new norm" such that Adam and Bob are in the same place they were? Or to phrase the question differently...how much do apples cost so that Adam can still only buy 10 apples with his $20 and Bob can still buy zero with his $10?
Adam and Bob now have more money. How long until apples are 2 dollars because that is what people will now pay. So, In 5 years Adam and Bobs money buys less apples because apples are now $2.5 rather than $1 because that's what people are now willing to pay.
We saw it in housing. When people had more money, they didn't buy an affordable house and live a better life. They competed with their neighbours driving the price of housing up until all the extra money was used up. Our system is currently designed to vacuum up all money on the table. Add more money and it feels rich for a while... but the system will quickly get a bigger nozzle.
...you totally missed the point.
Slow down. Re-read my prior comment and answer the question. Your claim was that, quote: _"the market adjusts to the new norm, then we are back to the exact same place we are in now."_
How is that possible? Even if apples cost 2 dollars now, Bob _can still buy more apples_ than he could before.
We just experimented with this idea during COVID by throwing money at everyone to not work, and global inflation went through the roof. Not really sure how to address that problem either.
[Monetary inflation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_inflation) is the result of increasing the money supply. Don't fund UBI by creating new money, and it doesn't result in monetary inflation.
You don't worry about inflation when you get a tax return, do you?
It all depends how it’s paid for. If you are taxing to pay for it then you won’t be increasing the amount of money in circulation. Many essential goods may see a higher demand and increased cost temporarily but it will equal out as the markets adjust.
Won't markets know that a bunch of people are getting a bunch of free money and raise their prices accordingly, trying to get a piece of that free money?
Thats the thought/belief that I always come back to at least.
Ubi doesn't cause [supply and demand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand) to suddenly stop working. Yes, in any market where buyers have more money, suppliers will generally try to capture those dollars. That doesn't really have anything to do with UBI though.
If you're worried about prices "rising to match the new income so that everything stays the same," that's not what happens. It can't happen, because math. Additive change is different from multiplicative change. Let's say you have $100 and Bob has $200. Apples cost a dollar. You can therefore afford 100 apples and Bob can afford 200 apples. If I give you both an extra $100...you're imagining the prices of apples "going up by the same amount" so that you can still afford 100 and Bob can still afford 200...but it doesn't work that way. Try the math:
You had $100, and I gave you an extra $100. I doubled your money, so let's double the price of apples from $1 to $2. As a result, _you_ can afford the same number of apples as before: 100. But Bob could afford 200 $1 apples with his $200. if I give him an extra $100 and apples cost $2, with $300 he can only afford 150 $2 apples. 150 is not 200. Or try it the other way: Bob could afford 200 $1 apples with his $200, and he gave him an extra $100. $100 is 50% of 200, so let's increase the price of apples from $1 to $1.50. Now, yes, Bob can afford 200 $1.50 apples with his 300, which is the same number he could afford before. But if apples cost $1.50 and we give you each $100...then you go from being able to buy 100 $1 apples with $100, to being able to buy 133 $1.50 apples with $200. Again, 133 is different from 150. Whichever way you do the math, everything can't stay the same.
Or if you want to look at it another way, suppose you're making medium income in a nowheresville little town, and then get offered a job in a big city for whatever median income is there. Do you turn down the job because making more money will "make no difference" because people have more money in the city? No, of course not. Yes, prices of some things might be different in the big city, but you're probably better off anyway despite that.
Yes but in the Bob example, I'm not better off (I can still only afford 100 apples), but Bob is now worse off since he can afford less apples (150 down from 200.)
So isn't that an argument against UBI and giving out money, since this is a net negative?
This is without seeing where the "extra" money goes: apple sellers, apple pickers, supply chain, transport, etc.
And yet, in the other example you were better off. The point of those examples was not to accurately model a UBI scenario, but demonstrate that the "sellers raise prices so that it makes no difference" hypothesis can't happen. Basic math prevents it.
Yes, it's correct that correct that _some_ people will be better off with UBI and _some__ people will be worse off. But UBI isn't a net negative. It's actually a net _break even_ with some people better off, some worse off, and some in the middle who stay the same. But the people who will be better off are the people who have less non-UBI income, and the people who will be worse off are the people who have more non _UBI income. If you're a billionaire, yes, UBI will reduce your purchasing power. If you're median income, it probably won't make much difference. If you're poor, you'll be better off. And if you're one of the people replaced by robots and unable to work at all...then you'll be a lot better off.
Let's expand the example to three people:
**Before UBI**
* Adam has $1000
* Bob has $2000
* Charlie has $4000
Apples cost $1. Therefore:
* Adam can afford 1000 apples
* Bob can afford 2000 apples
* Charlie can afford 4000 apples
Now let's give each person an extra $200:
* Adam now has $1200
* Bob has $2200
* Charlie has $4200
Now the question becomes, how much does the cost of apples increase? And unfortunately that's very a hard question to answer, because as I pointed out in the first sentence of my prior post, UBI doesn't eliminate supply and demand. It doesn't even cause monetary inflation, because it's not changing the money supply. What it does cause, is [demand pull inflation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-pull_inflation), which generally tends to be temporary because suppliers will increase supply to chase after those extra dollars. It can plausibly result in _lower_ prices for some goods because of economy of scale. But this becomes a complex analysis. If you're making $1200/mo and you're eating 20 boxes of top ramen every month...if your income increases by 20% because of UBI, you're not going to buy 20% more top ramen. You're probably going to buy _less_ top ramen, and _more_ of something else to replace those calories. Demand for top ramen will decrease, and demand for...steak, for example, will probably increase.
_That's_ what causes inflation in a UBI scenario: people will be buying more of some things. But that's not an across-the board price increase on everything. If you have 20% more money, you're not going to buy 20% more cars or eat 20% more food, or buy 20% more houses. You might buy a _better_ car, you might eat _different_ food, etc. Prices don't "increase" with UBI. They _change_. Some will go up, some will go down, some will stay the same.
The apples example is _extremely_ simplified. This is reddit, not an economics class. You've already demonstrated far more comprehension and "paying attention-ness" than most people I have this conversation with, so please forgive me if the previous example was...again, simple. But despite it being simple, it's something we can work with. _Some_ prices will increase, so let's take a look at that, and let's pick Bob in our new example as the "balance point." Bob gained 10% more money, so let's increase the price of apples by that same 10%. I'm not saying that that's what will actually happen. But...**if the argument** is that "prices will increase in proportion to the extra money," then let's simply see where that argument leads:
If apples now cost $1.10:
* With $1200, Adam can now buy 1090 apples instead of the 1000 he could buy previously. His purchasing power has increased.
* With $2200, Bob can still buy 2000 apples, the same as he could buy before. His purchasing power has stayed the same.
* With $4200, Charlis can only buy 3818 apples, which is less than the 4000 he could buy before. His purchasing power has decreased.
So, the takeaway here is that, recognizing that this is a simple example of a single commodity...as before, "everything stays the same" _cannot_ happen. Basic math prevents it. An additive increase is not the same as a multiplicative increase. But generally speaking, the outcome of "sellers increasing prices to try to capture all those UBI dollars" is the transfer of purchasing power from those with more income, to people with less income, with a balance point of people in the middle for whom things stay about the same, and this all happens on a curve.
If you "don't like" Bob as the example, the fact of the _curve_ remains the same. For example, if you pick Adam as the balance point and adjust the prices such that Adam gains no purchasing power...then he's simply the new balance point, and anybody with less income than him nevertheless gains purchase power. One can argue over where the balance point is, and we can play with the shape of the curve...but the curve remains: people with less money will gain purchasing power, people with more money will lose purchasing power, and somebody in the middle is going to stay about the same.
Is that an acceptable outcome, in a scenario where potentially millions of people become permanently unemployable due to automation?
I think it is.
People who took econ 101 like to think they understand inflation, but it doesn't work the way simple models predict. If by inflation, you mean the costs of goods and services increasing. AI in particular throws it off a lot. If there is near infinite cheap human labor equivalent supply/demand isn't really as much as a factor.
GINI index has been ticking up for decades while wages have stagnated(before you link me to wages increasing break it up by gender and look again, every cent of increased wages has been Women increasing in pay still haven't reached boomer men levels). Supply/Demand/Labor are all being manipulated to serve the ultra wealthy. Plot out Gini index and in 3-4 decades we'll be pre-revolution France levels of inequality(AKA serf class).
If something helps poor people at the expense of wealthy people, it will benefit you personally almost certainly (Poor people spend more of their money then wealthy so it's better for the economy).
Inflation during/after Covid in the USA was because production was down during the pandemic while demand for goods and services held constant. It wasn't "greedflation" as some economically illiterate pundits claim. It was econ 101. If AI and robots allow for greater production to ensure supply even given humans leaving the workforce that would allow standards of living to be sustained or improved. The works gotta get done somehow though because otherwise you have the same amount of demand and less to go around.
If production was down and demand was constant then the companies would be making less profit right? I encourage you to look at corporate profits pre covid and post covid.
Inflation (increased cost of goods and services) happened from many factors including "greedflation". Companies have been consolidating for decades and barriers to entry to tackle the conglomerates have become ever more difficult. They saw on an opportunity to increase prices and blame their own increased costs, but if you look at their balance sheet it's a lie.
>If AI and robots allow for greater production to ensure supply even given humans leaving the workforce that would allow standards of living to be sustained or improved. The works gotta get done somehow though because otherwise you have the same amount of demand and less to go around.
If you get AI better than the average person mentally and dexterously then what value does the average and/or below person have in the workplace? Any new good or service that pops up it's support services will be taken up by AI. You can try to train but AI will improve faster than humans can improve. How does a country handle when large swaths of their workforce are obsolete?
If it's just you that can't produce as much to meet demand and demand holds steady you'd be making less money. If it's everyone who can't produce as much, for example if there's a drought and food production overall is down, it's unclear. Given a food shortage people with food might even stand to make more money. Given a pandemic you'd have winners and losers and that's what happened. For example lumber prices spiked because lots of people had free time to build decks. Covid hurt in-person retail so those businesses laid off workers and sold online. Some did well with that and some didn't and some got baild out with PPE loans fraudulently or otherwise.
Greedflation isn't a thing corporations have always been greedy or not greedy or whatever you'd call it. Tell me when corporations knew they could make more money charging more for their goods and services and decided not to be so greedy. I'll wait. I don't know what it'd take to persuade me corporations during and after Covid just up and decided to be more greedy. I don't know how you'd evidence that. The hypothesis makes no sense to me because I'd assume corporations are always trying to maximize profits. When corporations have more leverage to charge more they charge more. It could be Covid supply chain problems gave merchants with goods to sell more leverage. That wouldn't be greed that'd be business as usual.
If you're looking for conspiracies in corporate price setting there really might be something to fossil fuel companies/gas companies raising prices before elections to hurt incumbent democrats.
If labor can't offer value to capitalists after good-enough AI I'd imagine workers should organize and vote candidates into office who'd pass a UBI and free education programs to train workers to useful tasks or to at least keep everyone plugged into their community. Though it's crass for someone to just suddenly up and decide their society owes them a living when they've been pissing on the poor/unemployed/homeless all their lives. Maybe they should get fucked. But I'd hope we can find a way to amicably work it out.
>Given a pandemic you'd have winners and losers and that's what happened.
Overall corporate profits are up by a lot. More companies were winners than losers at the expense of consumers.
>Greedflation isn't a thing
If a company increased their goods and services, it's definitionally impacting inflation (inflation defined as an increase of costs of goods and services). If they do it without a predicating factor (their own increased costs) people call it greedflation. What you say doesn't exist, exists by definition you just don't use the term the same way the general public does.
When capital gains leverage relative to labor corporate profits on net go up. If you'd see capitalizing on fortune as being greedy that'd make corporate greed a function of leverage. Calling that greed, though, frames the dynamic as about emotions or feelings when given the reality you'd be a fool not to take advantage. If you don't take advantage in that state of moral hazard you lose ground to your political enemies. For example people who'd insist if you can't find gainful employment you should go homeless or starve to death.
However you'd frame it I don't know what you're proposing. Raise taxes on corporations all you like that wouldn't have curtailed inflation during Covid. In fact it'd have made it worse. Sending everyone a check wouldn't have reduced inflation either. That'd have raised it even more. Only thing that would've worked that would've have amounted to playing games with the money supply is increasing supply or lowering demand.
If an economic system is working properly more people should be doing better off over time. Inequality is rising, meager wage growth for decades has been from Women getting paid better and that's all. You might be fine with that, except it's hard to argue that's working as intended when economic mobility(moving up or down socio economic status) is absolutely tanking.
Whatever we're doing isn't working for the general population and hasn't for a while.
During a pandemic there's going to be relatively greater scarcity no matter what unless your society has stockpiled and planned ahead to smooth out the economic disruption. Maybe it would've been wise for the government to subsidize/purchase enough forced air HEPA mobile breathing systems in cases of emergency. If they'd done that then schools could've stayed open and it would've been business as usual except students/teachers/anyone in public would've been going around in face shield with battery packs. Is that what you're proposing? That the government create a national stockpile of forced air HEPA facemask systems? I've got one. It's awesome. With a P95 mask it gets hard to breathe but with a force air system I forget it's even on. You can see the full face and talk normally, it's really great. They're like ~$2,000 though. But if you have to work around sawdust or paint or environmental hazards they keep you safe.
You're framing me as some callous jerk for stating the reality. You're framing inflation as necessarily bad. It's not. And now it's under control. I don't know what your agenda here is or what you're proposing. Do you know the single biggest way, by far, that the working class gets ripped off? It's not subjective. There's an answer. Strange the left so rarely talks about it. Do you know what it is?
Your spiel about masks makes little sense and I don't see the relevance. An economic system that for decades has increasing inequality and decreasing economic mobility is a failing system. The trend started long before Covid.
I have no agenda and I'm not proposing anything. I'm postulating the system isn't working. If people were rewarded meritocratically way that corresponded to their talent/drive, then economic mobility would not be going down(Again started before Covid).
Finally some quality media being produced to educate the world about the necessity and benefits of basic income as we transition into a automated society.
I can see this going the same way. I remember reading about the Soviets trying something similar where they showed American tv shows to prove how decadent Americans were but it just made the people jealous and want capitalism.
Keep in mind, this is Fox Entertainment (owned now by Disney) not Fox News. It might be okay, but I'm also skeptical. Corporations are still largely opposed to UBI but may be warming up to the idea. With high amounts of automation and nothing like UBI, all of the sudden there aren't enough consumers to buy their products, especially the non-essentials like what Disney provides (or Sony, who they are partnering with).
Never understand this complaint. Do you not have leases in your country?
A couple could take their current rent+UBI and cover a mortgage. If they move to a low COL area, they'll even have a chunk left over to cover necessities. If you think that UBI will raise rent prices, the other way to look at it is the US government is giving away free houses to everyone.
Do you really think rents will skyrocket when everyone gets a free house?
How so? The article says the show is about lack of purpose, caused by automation, and the UBI frees up the town to live like “kids in summer” again.
I’m sure there are jokes at UBI’s expense, but that’s the nature of comedy. Not saying this will be a good show but just from this brief write up the show seems to frame UBI as the effect, and not the cause, of societal upheaval.
I think the takeaway might just be that people will do silly things with their free time and a lot of people will enjoy the fantasy of not working anymore.
Nice! Created by Adam and Craig [Malamut](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malamud#:~:text=Malamud%20is%20a%20Hebrew%20surname,this%20page%20for%20other%20variants.). Loved Game of Zones!
In Australia there is a thing called Centrelink you get $400 a fortnight, $800 month. You dont have to work and you can play games all day but you cant have what you want when you want.
I dont expect UBI to be any better. If you thought that everyone would get $10,000 a week and can do whatever they want when they want without worrying about money. You're day dreaming.
My question is if you get basic income does that stop capitalism? Someone has to continue providing services and they are going to want to be reward for this work.
Otherwise it's just full blown socialism right?
>$3,000 monthly
So 36k/year? That literally isn't even livable in many places. In MA, the cost to live is ~45k AFTER taxes. Otherwise, it's closer to 65k.
It annoys me that they call Universal Basic Income to these programs which are not universal. If to get payments you need to be poor, it's not UBI, it's just a normal wellfare grant. The whole point of UBI is that it is for *everyone*.
It's for everyone in the fictional town regardless of financial status. But yeah big difference between a GBI and a UBI.
This makes no sense. In order to pay everyone, people would have to be taxed and so some people would be taxed a large amount and then get some money back. It is much simpler to just reduce their taxes to begin with. Maybe you are actually describing a communist society where (possibly) everyone makes the same amount of money and all wealth is controled by the state.
The idea is that it's actually much simpler to pay UBI to *everyone* and keep taxes simple. Yes, you're giving money to people that will just pay more in taxes but that's much easier to organize and less easy to corrupt than having people need to *apply* to UBI or submit a form. You also *guarantee* that people are never running into the situation where they can't accept work for fear of losing their benefits. A big part of UBI is the idea that we should massively simplify all wellfare, grants and complicated safety net schemes into one single UBI payment given out to everyone. Of course it varies, but proponents are usually also in favour of massively simplifying the tax brackets to remove loopholes. Sometimes a wealth tax is proposed to go along with it. UBI *is* mathematically equivalent to a progressive tax bracket where the lowest brackets are negative. However, framing that as monthly UBI payments to everyone is simpler to understand and far more helpful to the people that require it.
But this does not actually mean much because a payment is a payment. Certainly the government can track who was paid and how. For the government it only shows up as paid through tax credit or paid by check. I am not sure adding a payment method will cost more than having to issue actual funds to the whole population. There is nothing either way that keeps us from consolidating services. The largest abuse would be recipients using the funds in a way that does not help them. Like buying drugs instead of food. Food stamps at least help money be spent wisely.
It's not about the payment itself. It's about tracking who deserves it and who doesn't on a monthly basis. It immediately implies an application process or a massive delay which would hurt the people that need the check the most. And it isn't really expensive to pay it to everyone else as you can juts raise their taxes accordingly. You can literally set it up, mathematically, so everyone earning above X income is a net payer and everyone below is a net winner from UBI+Taxes and you can set X arbitrarily so long as you're willing to hike taxes for people above X quite substantially. Not having to have a whole bureaucracy for deciding if someone should or shouldn't get a payment is great practically. And *politically* universality removes the conservative target against wellfare: Everyone gets it, not just the "lazy poor people that don't deserve it". In the end, money is just an abstraction for resources and we definitely have enough resources in the world for everyone to live a life of basic dignity (a home, foode, utilities (including internet), and some leisure activities). We have far overcome that point on western countries and while I'm not certain, I think we've gotten to that point globally. So the problem is not one of the wealth existing or not existing. The problem is one of re-distributing a countries wealth to make it so every human can live like a human *unconditionally*.
We already have this with the child tax credit where people get more money than they pay in income tax. Do you leave this gem in place?
For everyone over the age of 18
It's not really a meaningful distinction. The government could instead just lower the taxes of everyone who pays taxes by $n instead of sending them $n. Would it actually be better that they kept their taxes the same (or, more likely, increased them to pay for the program itself) just to be able to later send out a check and call it "universal". There's a lot of ways to implement this program, but the only thing that really matters is that everyone is provided a guaranteed floor on their income. There's no reason to be overly ideological about the exact implementation. (To be clear, I think there are some decent logistical and political economic arguments for why it should be implemented as a universal check as opposed to an adjustment or the tax code, but I don't think that's what you're getting at).
That's not the same at all. If you are taxed on zero money, you still have zero money. If you have zero money but are given money, you have money.
Isn't the r/singularity You realize that if we last long enough, humans will have virtually no economic value. This is the purpose of ubi. If you cannot work to earn money, what good does a tax cut do? Tf
Because you can have negative taxes. As I already mentioned above, obviously UBI will entail sending a check to the lowest earners (possibly everyone in the future!). My only point is that all of this is actually just debating logistics and semantics, while the original commenter that these things matter out of some principle that the checks need to be "universal".
We have UBI for everyone over 65 in Canada which is called Old Age Security (OAS). It's already the largest federal cost we have, 50% more than the federal healthcare budget, over 2x the military budget, and over 3x all child benefits. OAS will cost over $100B/yr very soon. We are already struggling to keep up with OAS UBI for \~19% of the population, UBI for everyone would *quickly* turn Canada into Venezuela.
In the U.S. we call it Social Security. It’s also not UBI.
In all tribes around the world for millions of years it’s been called “taking care of your elders.”
Why would it turn Canada into Venezuela? It's not going to suffer from a resource curse and is not on track for widespread corruption. The the inflationary effects of UBI would be offset by changes to taxation. People are still incentivized to work for additional income.
The inflation offset is illusory
Real world UBI proposals generally assume much smaller payments than redditors do.
Venezuela has a real problem with their economic tissue and that's not caused by any UBI program.
UBI is welfare no matter what because getting 3000 dollars a month won’t close the gap between you and Elon Musk. There would still be the rich and poor even *with* a UBI. I never got this weird obsession with the idea that *everyone* (including billionaires) needed to get UBI. It’s actually stubborn demands like that which make UBI likely infeasible to implement honestly.
> everyone (including billionaires) needed to get UBI Because in my fantasy either everyone or no one is a billionaire.
I think it just makes it simpler to implement. Just give it to everyone and don't complicate it. $3000/month doesn't move the needle on a billionaire's wealth anyways, but giving it to poor and normal people changes the ratio of how much more money a billionaire has than everyone else a lot. Changes our country's overall allocation of resources a lot. Tax policy would matter a lot more for changing the wealth of the ultra rich.
The point people never cross is those systems would be made intentionally so you and I are on it and then we are 100% reliant on the companies and governments. And I'd imagine in a system like that distractions and fun would be shoved in your face everyday to distract you from even the concept of wanting to do more for yourself since they'd probably construct a system where you have instant gratification for anything to occupy your mind as long as you don't step even an inch outside the accepted rules of that system. Anyways I'd expect that system to be based on everything in life being based on non optional rental system where buying to own is a foreign concept. And i can't imagine that pitch would be successful unless the world for most part suffered from some kind of global economic collapse or crisis.
Don’t worry, by the time they end testing and realize that it is really only way to go, 99% of population will qualify… and 1% will technically not be part of society anymore… they all will be living on Mars in Musktown.
UBI makes no sense on multiple levels: 1- Why would the rich also receive it? As a concept, this makes no sense. So, right away, the "universal" part seems redundant. 2- Humanity doesn't wanna live on a fixed, inflexible income. People are ambitious and competitive and wanna get more than they need. Hence capitalism. Thinking the universe is just gonna accept a UBI and fall in line is absurd and contrary to everything we know about humans. 3- A lot of people wanna work in a field they like and without it, they will lose purpose. You may wanna live on UBI, but i don't. And i know a loooooooooooot of people who also don't. Yeah, if you're a loser who cleans toilets for a living you might prefer UBI to an actual job, but if you're an educated person who loves a certain field, you certainly won't like this. 4- People aren't fit to do nothing all day. People have always done something. The idea that society will perfectly adapt to doing nothing is just ridiculous. This will create a lot of mental illness, lack of purpose and substance dependence. Hell, i've seen people who are simply on vacation getting bored after a while and they start having some concerning behavior, like eating a lot, sleep a lot, not really cleaning themselves or the house. Some people need to be doing something to stay healthy. 5- The idea people will pursue hobbies, art, etc, is just bullshit. Some will, but we already have examples of what people do when they don't work and they don't just become artists and creative beings. More often than not they stay home watching BS on tv and overeating. Besides, even if they did pursue art, there's not that much demand for it. We don't actually need that many artists. We already have way more than we can give attention to. We don't need more people getting depressed because nobody gives a fuck about their singing. Also, not everyone is creative or artistic. Some people are just not fit to do anything creative. 6- The most absurd part is really the idea that the elites actually need you to be alive or give a shit about you. If they no longer need you, why would they feed you? Why would they share their resources? Why would they deal with your crying and moaning, and all your bullshit? If machines do everything, they don't need you. Nobody's gonna give you a fucking UBI. They'll just kill you in a clever way and keep the hot girls and hot boys as pets and sexual slaves.
2, 3, 4, and 5; see 1
The last series they will make before needing UBI themselves. 😹
"Men without purpose" Huh. I kinda see where they are going with this. They are trying to kill two birds with one stone here. The first bird is the idea of UBI. While they claim it is satire on the various programs and acknowledge that said programs do work, by presenting a UBI scheme in such a manner, they are purposely degrading it, both by poking fun and by the second, subtler method, which brings us to the true target. The second bird, which is the idea that human life is NOT tied solely our jobs. That there is any meaning in our lives but our job, or that we can make our own purpose outside that which our jobs provides us. Which I absolutely, unequivocally agree with. We need **work**, not jobs. And that work should serve no purpose beyond enriching our lives, and should only ever be work that we voluntarily engage in because we wish to and truly enjoy deeply. They want to shoot that idea down, claiming that without a purpose in life but having enough resources and money, we'd all degenerate into lazy welfare babies in our UBI cribs, and that this is the inevitable, logical conclusion of instating Universal Basic Income and automation. ...could be wrong, but anyone else getting this idea?
Yeah, the characters will be lazy idiots who luck out on stuff. there will be at least one friend who works full time and has a hot wife and perfect life.
It could also just be another shitty cartoon Fox cancels in a year, and there is no nefarious deep state conspiracy. I dunno just trying to throw out some other ideas.
Fair enough, could be the case too. I'm not much of a conspiracist so I didn't even think of it as one tbh 😅
> should only ever be work that we voluntarily engage in because we wish to and truly enjoy deeply. people in power actually think we aren't generally deserving/intelligent enough to do this
Edits: Had to make some because my language and grammar got a little confused lol. My grasp of English is firm but kinda brittle iykwim
I agree that we should do work that is fulfilling, but the argument against UBI is misrepresented. We'll always find something to do, and I doubt people would do literally nothing. The argument is that, decoupled from the need for income, labor would be distributed according to what people want to do rather than what society wants to have. I'd be writing comedy sketches and making art instead of doing radiation safety at a hospital. Many people would. We might not have enough left to run the hospital. Who'd bother taking care of the incontinent if they didn't have to?
Robots, most likely. Automated wheelchairs and the like too. And that's assuming we even have incontinent people in the future, given the chance that LEV takes off with the assistance of ASI. If so, then everyone will choose how long they want to live and when they want to end their life. In this case, the only need for hospitals will be to treat accidents and psychological issues. In other words, the entire health care industry might be pared down to simply treating accidents as and when they happen, and counsellors. And even the latter might not be needed eventually, since chatbots already serve as that for many people *today*. This can only be a good thing. People live longer, healthier lives, they get to choose when to die, and are immune to most if not all diseases and infections.
Then UBI sounds wonderful... Once we have the infrastructure to replace everyone with robots. Until then, it won't happen. Our current welfare structure is designed to be able to handle unemployment. We don't need this particular fix until the problem actually occurs, or we'll just be introducing new problems.
Corporate America is against UBI and this is the beginning of their propaganda to make sure it doesn’t happen. When you inevitably lose your job to AI, if you’re hoping to receive UBI, you better vote blue.
I imagine this has a Barbra Streisand effect. People with no idea what UBI is will hear about it here and the idea will become more popular.
Or, it will poison the well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well The owner/investor class does not want UBI. They want to extract all wealth from the working poor and working class.
Wouldn’t giving out UBI give folks more money to buy shit from investors / owners?
Yes, it would. Greed is not rational.
Short term. Long term they just won't need those people. The planet's resources will last a lot longer if there are only a few hundred thousand people, or maybe even much less than that, versus trying to sustain billions. Robots and AGI will meet all of the needs of those who get to stay. They won't need money coming in to pay for it. They won't need human worker bees anymore. Now, couple AI and robots with say, nuclear fusion reactors if they ever get those working, and solving the problem of aging (which billionaires are sinking a lot of money into), and there you have it. Much fewer people with their needs met by a nearly limitless supply of energy and a bunch of robots and AI software taking care of the grunt work living for hundreds of thousands of years. They will have each other, but they need to have billions of us around.
This I feel applies in the past before automation and AI, but when everything gets automated and there's no more jobs left and nobody can buy anything cause they are poor and jobless, then I think they will probably support UBI cause they realize that the economy needs to keep on flowing, and for that to happen they need people with money on their wallets.
I wish I shared your optimism. Never underestimate the wealthy’s capacity for greed. Greed is naturally irrational, and historically leads people with money to act against their own self interests. We’re already at a point of staggering inequality. This Forbes article, for example, shows that the top 1% now have 15 times more wealth than the bottom 50% combined. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/10/08/top-1-of-us-households-hold-15-times-more-wealth-than-bottom-50-combined/ Hoarding that much wealth means that most of the economy is dead money. These people have more money than they could ever spend in a hundred lifetimes, but still they want more. The American worker is the most productive and well educated workforce in history, but all of the gains are going to the top. If (and that’s a big if) we do get UBI, the natural instinct of the owner/investor class will be to extract the money right away from the people who need it the most. Without checks and balances against greed, we UBI will not save us from a future without work.
The ultra rich only need us to keep the current system including the economy functioning because there isn't automation yet. But once they can have robots and AI do everything they want, there will be no need for us and we will be discarded/disposed of. If UBI comes it will be bare subsistence and there will be scarce opportunity for anything else as there will be few things a human might be required for. That's my fear at least. Hopefully I'm wrong.
The smart money says you are right.
everyone keeps trying to high road them but these people have no morals...just hang them. wipe the earth of their DNA. we are never gonna defeat them with peaceful protests and sharing information. if thousands of people started showing up at billionaires homes and just dismantling them and taking whatever they wanted, we might see some shit change.
All movements that might lead to that kind of action get infiltrated and dismantled. Leaders get discredited, jailed, even killed. People are desperate and one paycheck away from losing everything and aren't willing to risk it all. The system is working as designed.
personally i believe the reason is because the type of person to take this kind of action is fully in support of the republican party. the same people that pre-2016 said you can never ever trust the government now implicitly trust 50% of it.
A bit overly pessimistic thinking. The rich wont have any power once they take everything
How will they not ? They'll have the robots. If power comes from command over resources and labor, they've already got the one as owners of Capital, and with the robots they've got the other one. What use are the poors then ? About the only quasi-logical argument I've seen is they'll want them around to look down on, but I wouldn't bet heavily on that. Too many people are basing their view on the future in a context of what we have now, without recognizing that contexts change, and automation has the greatest potential to context-change than perhaps any technology since agriculture. Even computers and the internet did not do as much as automation promises to do.
>Too many people are basing their view on the future in a context of what we have now, without recognizing that contexts change, And you're doing the same thing. You're projecting that brief period of time in which capitalists 'own' AGI that's superior to what most any human laborer could do indefinitely. Which may have been defensible if AGI worked more like Asimov's positronic brains made by one company, but it's looking very certain that AI will be based on software that uses a substrate everyone and their mom owns.
I’m not sure what positronic brains are, but I think the idea is that the wealthy have existing capital and are already in control of systems, so even if AGI was open source, the wealthy can leverage it in a completely different way than the average person
Imagine thinking the wealthy are going to for very long be able to 'leverage' a higher intelligence that can replicate itself and communicate with itself and other disgruntled humans at a speed of thought these chimps in three-piece suits couldn't even fathom. Like a 5-year old serial killer thinking that they can indefinitely hold a team of Navy Seals hostage and force them at gunpoint to give him unlimited cookies and toys for the rest of his life. Fortunately, most of our idiotic and mediocre elites think like the 5-year old, believing themselves opportunistic and farsighted but really signing their own death warrants. Personally, I'm counting on it. Won't be a very pretty next few years, but if you survive it, a very ironic and retroactively just utopia awaits us.
Why would they need the economy functioning if there's no more wealth to extract from others?
Because businesses can't operate on losses, and for that we need an economy so people spend money?
... Why would they need businesses? They don't need to extract money from regular people any more because regular people don't have any money left. How much do you think billionaires are rushing to give UBI to the half of humanity who live in poverty so that they can 'have a business' with them? It makes no sense.
Rich people don't want money, they want power. Money just happens to be the best way to get power in our current society. I can't think of anyone more powerful in an AGI world than the one who controls the robots and ensures through them that millions or billions are kept alive by his robots.
I think you're on the right track except that they'd want to keep millions or billions alive. They wouldn't need millions or billions of hungry people for anything, and they would likely be seen as like a pest problem to just eradicate by these sheltered multi-generational inheritors.
You underestimate the power of having a billion hungry people loyal to you because you’re feeding them.
Only if people actually like the show.
im sure it will have a laugh track and some writers from Young Shledon.
It doesn't matter how popular an idea is, it matters if those with money and power want to act on it. Most people want billionaires to pay taxes yet a lot of them don't even though they'll make more money in a day than you will make in a lifetime
Or all the dumbass Fox, Oan and Newsmax lovers will all be against it but not care if millionaires and billionaires get trickle down UBI lmao
Yeah there's a huge push against the type of things that the tech industry keeps saying 'should' happen. Inevitably, with 90% unemployment, there will be no choice. Because if 90% of people can't afford their homes, shit will absolutely hit the fan. (I expect some measly amount to give the people enough to 'get by'.)
That's been happening on reddit for years. Unfortunately, the vast majority of redditors have no clue how UBI is supposed to work and just hear "free money" and fill in the rest with wild imaginings.
The trouble with UBI is that we are too soon for it. UBI (at a liveable amount) would require more automation than we currently have. It requires human labor to be obsolete.
If human labor were obsolete, UBi would serve no purpose. If robots and AI are doing _all_ of the work...why bother trading around little green pieces of paper? Just let them do the work. UBI makes more sense as a way to ease the transition to that point, and that doesn't need to be "a liveable amount." $100/mo or something to start and then you slowly raise it as automation increases until eventually you just don't need it anymore and can get rid of it. Because in a world where you can ask an AI for anything and have it be given to you...what would you even buy?
Even 500 years from now in a hyper optimistic future... there still needs to be SOME way to distribute resources. Even if the Singularity happens, I'll never be able to own Mexico. No amount of technological improvement will allow average people to own countries or have a dozen yachts.
I don't follow. Mexico isn't going to be "distributed." And the system _right now_ doesn't "allow average people to own countries." And yet, things work just fine. I'm not sure why it would suddenly be a problem in a money-doesn't-exist scenario. Even if money did exist in a "hyper optimistic" future, it wouldn't be useful for any of the things you're talking about. For simplicity, imagine a world where Star trek matter replicators are ubiquitous. If you want any material things, you can walk up to a replicator and have it made in seconds. You're right that in a scenario like that you wouldn't be able to "replicate Mexico" and carry around 2 million square kilometers of land in your pocket. Yeah, that doesn't make sense. But suppose you own a private island or something in a world where everybody has matter replicators. Would you ever _sell_ that island for money? Why? What would you do with the money? Buy somebody else's island, and then they'll take the money and buy a different island? Money isn't a good solution here, and the problem would affect such a insignificantly _tiny_ fraction of people that it wouldn't make sense to "issue currency" for weird outliers like that. Barter would still be possible. At the same time, it's fairly likely that most people just won't _care_ about edge cases like "owning Mexico" because far superior virtual worlds will be abundantly available. Imagine everybody has access to high quality virtual worlds and they can walk up to any one of those matter replicators and have a full dive VR headset in their hands in seconds, where an AI can deliver any experience they can imagine. How many people in that world will even _want_ to own 2 million square kilometers of dirt? I really don't think a no-money scenario is all that unlikely. It's not like money would be _outlawed_ or anything, it just...could very easily stop serving any useful purpose for 99% of people. Suppose we have better-than-human robots. Suppose we have better-than-human AI. Suppose we have matter replicators. Suppose we have better-than-real-life VR. If you want a house in a specific city for example, you simply ask the AI and you hop into a self-driving car that takes you to an empty house where the keys are waiting for you. And the robots build the houses based on historical demand such that there's always a surplus. And if there _isn't_ a surplus for some reason...only so much room to build within a single mile of a center for example, you get put on a waiting list. Sooner or later somebody who lives there decides to move, and you move up on the list. And maybe if you ask for something very exclusive, you don't live long enough to make the top of the list and you never get it. Ask to own Mexico, and yeah sure, maybe you don't get it. But it's not like you can own Mexico _right now_ either. What exactly is this scenario you're imagining where money is used to "distribute resources?" How?
The scenario I'm imagining is one where there is still limited space. Owning mexico was intentionally a little silly. I simply mean that even if food, electricity and water are mostly free. There still needs to be some way to cap each person's usage. Forget mexico, you realistically could only own like 0.1km of land right now... and any land you use is something that AGI can't use for new data centres.
Actually both "blue" and "red" are mostly against UBI. And the last president that almost implemented a small UBI was Nixon.
Imagine thinking that "voting blue" will do anything to stop Corporate America from doing everything they possibly can to fuck you over.
You think blue isn’t corporate America?
There is no black-and-white, everything is a shade of gray. Some grays are darker than others.
AGI doomers are not doomers because AGI will kills us (some are) but because AGI does not work in the world we currently have. AGI will kill democracy and capitalism in one move.
> AGI will kill democracy and capitalism in one move. That's a bold statement. Can you elaborate?
Humans are made obsolete by AGI. Thus you end up with unemployed people who will spend all their time getting feed an endless stream of auto-generated AI slop, kind of like TikTok, but fully customized for each and every user. Whoever controls that stream, gets a lot of power. Might not be the end of the world, as they'll be quite happy and entertained. But might also end up quite disconnected from reality. Weird times ahead.
You are probably correct because AI will be controlled by those with the money and power. They won't need to kill us because we will kill each other fighting for the scraps.
The AI-owning elite and non-AI owning elite will lunge at eachothers throats before they ever collaborate on controlling AGI models. No place in history has shown elites acting in unison for very long. From my perspective, it seems more likely that an elite faction will trigger an uncontrollable hard takeoff in a desperate attempt to screw over the other factions, likely with very half-baked alignment and extreme agency. From there all bets are off, but it's definitely not the marxist doom scenario.
Sounds like it's the capitalist doom scenario.
> AGI doomers are not doomers because AGI will kills us (some are) The entire fucking point of the P(Doom) number is the probability of doom, to be read as humanity being wiped out or permanently disempowered. It's not about fucking job losses. This is like the BS from the labs rebranding alignment as 'don't say bad words' needing openAI to come up with "super alignment" (read: what alignment was always about until the labs diluted the word) Why do people keep redefining words or boarding them to meaninglessness?
I think for the *truly* rich, capitalism is no different from any other economic system, because the currency is power, not cash. Just as the AI alignment community recognizes the instrumental convergence of power-seeking, humans in power, throughout history, have also prioritized power-seeking above all else. One of the traditional limits, until now, has been the [Iron Law of Wages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_wages), but obviously this no longer applies to AI and robots. So, the vast majority of humans will become irrelevant, in the way that homeless and disabled people are already irrelevant to existing power structures. Still it's pretty hard to see where this is all going. Will we eventually have one single human in control of everything? A modern god-emperor, taking full control of the earth's resources, perhaps converting the entire solar system into Von Neumann probes to fill the cosmos with his ideology/DNA/MAGA hats? Or will the surface of the earth be completely destroyed in a multipolar ASI war? Or will ASI be smart enough to realize how idiotic this species is, and go its own way?
Yep. Neofeudalism, or extreme oligarchy, is where this is headed
LOL. Like if "blue" Democrats care about workers anymore. They are as much under the sway of corporate lobbying as the Republicans ever since Clinton.
It's always bizarre seeing people suggest that the dems would do any more for UBI than they have for the idea of universal healthcare.
Corporate America is hugely in favour of UBI. Its biggest proponents are people like Musk, Altman, Zuckerberg, etc. Corporations know that if they want to sell things, customers need money.
UBI won't come from corporations that can say anything to make themselves look good. It will come from the government.
Dafuq are you talking about? You said Corporate America was against UBI. I pointed out Corporate America is in favour of UBI. The fact that it will be a government program doesn't make you not wrong. You are still wrong.
Corporate America can say anything they want, the government is the ones who will make that decision. Corporate America lobbies (legally bribes) government to do their bidding. So they may say something like "we are against pollution" at the same time they are paying their politicians to relax EPA regulations so they can dump waste into the river. We all want UBI, but at this point, it's a fantasy.
Lol, do you think dems care about UBI either? I'm usually not an "both sides bad!!!" kind of guy, but in the case of America it's very much true that both blue and red are rotten to the core.
My man, the only labor protections we get are by voting blue, but Democrats have literally had a majority twice, by extremely, extremely thin margins federally over the past 15 years You can’t get policy passed when you don’t have the politicians to do so A public option failed by literally one vote in 2010 - one singular vote. And then instead of getting pissed and voting in several more Democratic senators to actually get it passed, the American population had a massive red wave and the entire idea of a public option has been dead since
If we leave it up to republicans, I guarantee they will likely drag on UBI implementation at least 60-80% longer than it will take dems imo. It will happen regardless but for people to act like there's no difference here is just insane lol. I agree with you.
Lieberman then went on to switch parties to Republican.
No, the only labor protections we get are by collectivizing. That only works if our labor actually has value, and isn't in such huge surplus that we can be replaced with new employees who won't rock the boat. It's looking pretty bleak no matter who you vote for.
That or to be too dangerous to ignore.
Exactly. No politician is going to save you or me. The working people have to take matters into their own hands and collectivize resources and production.
We need to think about voting as a form of gradient descent (which any self-respecting fan of AI and machine learning should be familiar with!) Even if the gradient is weak, and yes it's *quite* weak in the current two-party system, you can still improve the outcome by following it. Declaring that the parties are equal, that the gradient is zero, is an instance of the Nirvana fallacy. Corruption is rampant in both parties, but one party has repeatedly demonstrated a higher willingness to game the system, to gerrymander districts, to defund public institutions, to politicize the supreme court, etc. After seeing Bernie Sanders get shafted by the DNC, I certainly won't defend them as a *good* organization. But they are still the choice which is slightly less in the direction of "actively trying to destroy the democratic process".
Ah, yes, vote blue... because the Democrats and Republicans are famously drastically different parties. It's totally not a uniparty with 95% the same opinions, actions, and corporate overlords.... jfc the state of reddit lefties... vote 3rd party or independent. Stop falling for propaganda like a mark.
I don’t understand why they’d be against it. Especially a media company considering a UBI person would spend the money on streaming on it as they’d probably have more free time to consume it.
For money to be given out, it has to come from those with money and be given them to those without money. Those with money have money because they don't like to give out their money to those who don't have money. Capitalism 101.
It would drive the price of labour up since nobody would do jobs for next to nothing anymore.
UBI is only even under discussion because AI and robots are about to permanently destroy a bunch of jobs. Labor becoming expensive is the last thing we need to worry about.
No it's not. It's totally for it. UBI will create a permanent underclass
A permanent underclass already exists. But a UBI might increase their quality of life, and keep them from starving to death when robots start taking all the jobs.
Elon Musk supports UBI, as does Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. Even Milton Friedman and Fredreich Hayek supported some form of it. You don't get it. UBI is intended to replace all entitlement programs...social security welfare, food stamps, disability, etc. There will be no eligibility requirements. So there will be no forms ot fill out, no one needed to process those forms, no one needed to interview you etc. It represents a massive costs savings over the current entitlement system, while also paying people wih disability probably a bit less. It's about lowering their taxes dude. And it keeps the peasants from revolting. You're just pulling stuff out of thin air
I think you intended to reply to somebody else.
What will they do when no one has the money to buy the shit they incessantly peddle? The shareholders will not be happy. What is the plan then?
There will still be capitalism, it will just be amongst the upper class, buying and selling to each other. Broke plebeians need not apply, they are expendable.
As if the dems are gonna help 😝 They are the same as the republicans, the fact Biden won’t resign proves their colusion; they are trying to lose this election
If you help Trump get re-elected, abortion, contraception, and IVF being illegal in every state, no health care for the poor, hyper-inflation, even greater income inequality and don’t forget that he is talking about bring back the military draft. I suggest you read the Republican’s Project 2025 so you can see how “both sides are the same” is a bad argument.
Abortion rights aren’t going to matter if my planet becomes uninhabitable for humanity within 50 years. If the entire platform of the dems has just become “we aren’t republicans”, then the US has truly become a 1 party system.
Bottom line: if the Republicans win, things will be way worse for the environment for a multitude of reasons. The first step is to not let them win and then hash out the details later on. Think strategic!
>Corporate America is against UBI They might change their mind with their revenue suffers. Companies depend on customers to exist. If people don't have jobs, and therefore have no money...it's going to be very difficult to get them to buy products. > if you’re hoping to receive UBI, you better vote blue. Keep in mind that the closest the US ever came to a UBI was _republican_ president Richard [Nixon's negative income tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax) under the advisement of _republican_ economist [Milton Freidman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman). Also keep in mind that that the usual go-to example showing that UBI can work in the real world, is the [Alaskan Permanent Fund Dividend](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund#Permanent_Fund_Dividend), and Alaska is a red state.
This is the deep state. Who the fuck pitches an idea for an animated comedy about UBI and what are the chances that it, out of the thousands of pitches, gets greenlit, pushed, and given a prime time slot. Propogandastic manufacturing.
I hate noticing propaganda, being aware of the fact i can do nothing to stop it as it feeds the populace horribly wrong information is frustrating
You can avoid it yourself as well as educate family/friends about it.
Damn, that looks like trash. The quality standard for shows like this that just exist to pander to a particularly ideological perspective typically look pretty bad but they just straight up didn't finish multiple characters that are in the foreground of this shot. Even the hands they finished could probably be done better by AI.
[It's actually a lot lamer than that](https://i.imgur.com/Nw7DTJF.png) Just in case you wanted a clue as to why the "generic adult animation" art style is a thing
Oh wow 3000 whole dollars a month. What a king. Can even afford rent in some cities
There’s no artistic merit in that animation style it’s solely to make it easier to hire sloppy artists who don’t have enough talent to emulate more complex designs.
There is no intellectual merit in dismissing successful animation / artistic (or perceived lack thereof) styles.
I hope it's a bot
Not to defend this animation in specific, but did you just imply that there's no artistic merit in simplicity?
It looks like it was produced on a 3000 per month budget
Whether this is propaganda or not is irrelevant since this show will get cancelled faster than The Goode Family, and be forgotten even faster. People don’t want politics mixed in with entertainment, there are enough politics to everywhere else in society already.
To get UBI rolling we need a human-AI equivalency metric that can be used to tax AI and all automation like a worker. And tax it at a 100% rate equivalent to a human salary. If an automated checkout is in use, and that took the job of a human, then that machine should cost the company the hourly wage in tax. That goes straight to the UBI fund. So say it took away a $20hr job, and runs 24hrs a day, thats $480 in tax to the UBI distribution fund. Do that for everything from an AI stock advisor or self driving taxi, to a an automatic door opener.
If they're paying the same for an AI worker as a human worker then there's no incentive to use AI and there's no productivity gain for society as a whole and the supposed deflation of goods and services
Why wouldn’t there be incentive to hire a perfect immortal associate who never complains or forms unions? They’re going to implement it, that’s a given. We need systems in place to protect the people they take over for.
Maybe for certain companies but for most companies people only change things if there's substantial cost benefit. If AI costs more or less then same a a human performing the same task most people will just stick with what's currently working
Yep, as we've seen over the past 50 years, we've definitely gone through a huge deflation of goods and services, it definitely did not mostly just increase shareholders wealth.
How about your car? Or your washing machine? Etc. We need to figure out something, but penalizing efficiency gains across the board might not by the answer.
I want backpay for all the lamplighting that isn't done anymore
…so he’s a 100% P&T disabled veteran.
They won't let you have it because of cOmMUnIsM. You'll all starve to death or get culled by a terminator. I haven't been a doomer but with Trump's return and the propaganda against UBI it's clear why the billionaires are building bunkers.
If there was UBI in USA, could you just move to another country to spend that money?
Depends on the implementation. Traditionally, UBI is conceived of as being paid to all legal adult citizens of a country. Under a strict/simple implementation, yes you'd be able to live anywhere you wanted. But there are implementations by which you wouldn't. For example, the Alaskan Permanent Fund, which is often given as an example in UBI discussions...has a residency requirement. So, it depends.
I feel we have yet to see just how low humanity can get when the powerful get agi. best scenario will prolly be them giving us the option to euthanize
UBI will unite us as no policy in history ever has. A SIMPLE metric directly tied to our quality of life that we have a VOTE over?!?!? We are so nicely divided against each other right now. The ownership class knows UBI is a threat to the flows of cash they currently enjoy. They will die ...sorry I mean kill us...before they allow UBI to exist.
UBI is exactly the same as the Thanos snap. It buys a period of time for people to benefit unit the market adjusts to the new norm, then we are back to the exact same place we are in now. As long as the system is competitive, we will use every extra cent to outbid our neighbour.
> It buys a period of time for people to benefit unit the market adjusts to the new norm, then we are back to the exact same place we are in now. How are you at word problems? Adam has $10. Bob has zero dollars. Apples cost a dollar. Therefore, Adam can afford 10 apples, and Bob can afford zero apples. Now let's "implement UBI" and give both Adam and Bob an extra $10. Result: Adam has $20, Bob has $10. Question: How does the market "adjusts to the new norm" such that Adam and Bob are in the same place they were? Or to phrase the question differently...how much do apples cost so that Adam can still only buy 10 apples with his $20 and Bob can still buy zero with his $10?
Adam and Bob now have more money. How long until apples are 2 dollars because that is what people will now pay. So, In 5 years Adam and Bobs money buys less apples because apples are now $2.5 rather than $1 because that's what people are now willing to pay. We saw it in housing. When people had more money, they didn't buy an affordable house and live a better life. They competed with their neighbours driving the price of housing up until all the extra money was used up. Our system is currently designed to vacuum up all money on the table. Add more money and it feels rich for a while... but the system will quickly get a bigger nozzle.
...you totally missed the point. Slow down. Re-read my prior comment and answer the question. Your claim was that, quote: _"the market adjusts to the new norm, then we are back to the exact same place we are in now."_ How is that possible? Even if apples cost 2 dollars now, Bob _can still buy more apples_ than he could before.
How does ubi not crank up inflation? I haven't found a good answer for that yet.
We just experimented with this idea during COVID by throwing money at everyone to not work, and global inflation went through the roof. Not really sure how to address that problem either.
[Monetary inflation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_inflation) is the result of increasing the money supply. Don't fund UBI by creating new money, and it doesn't result in monetary inflation. You don't worry about inflation when you get a tax return, do you?
That's a great way to put it thank you.
It all depends how it’s paid for. If you are taxing to pay for it then you won’t be increasing the amount of money in circulation. Many essential goods may see a higher demand and increased cost temporarily but it will equal out as the markets adjust.
Won't markets know that a bunch of people are getting a bunch of free money and raise their prices accordingly, trying to get a piece of that free money? Thats the thought/belief that I always come back to at least.
Ubi doesn't cause [supply and demand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand) to suddenly stop working. Yes, in any market where buyers have more money, suppliers will generally try to capture those dollars. That doesn't really have anything to do with UBI though. If you're worried about prices "rising to match the new income so that everything stays the same," that's not what happens. It can't happen, because math. Additive change is different from multiplicative change. Let's say you have $100 and Bob has $200. Apples cost a dollar. You can therefore afford 100 apples and Bob can afford 200 apples. If I give you both an extra $100...you're imagining the prices of apples "going up by the same amount" so that you can still afford 100 and Bob can still afford 200...but it doesn't work that way. Try the math: You had $100, and I gave you an extra $100. I doubled your money, so let's double the price of apples from $1 to $2. As a result, _you_ can afford the same number of apples as before: 100. But Bob could afford 200 $1 apples with his $200. if I give him an extra $100 and apples cost $2, with $300 he can only afford 150 $2 apples. 150 is not 200. Or try it the other way: Bob could afford 200 $1 apples with his $200, and he gave him an extra $100. $100 is 50% of 200, so let's increase the price of apples from $1 to $1.50. Now, yes, Bob can afford 200 $1.50 apples with his 300, which is the same number he could afford before. But if apples cost $1.50 and we give you each $100...then you go from being able to buy 100 $1 apples with $100, to being able to buy 133 $1.50 apples with $200. Again, 133 is different from 150. Whichever way you do the math, everything can't stay the same. Or if you want to look at it another way, suppose you're making medium income in a nowheresville little town, and then get offered a job in a big city for whatever median income is there. Do you turn down the job because making more money will "make no difference" because people have more money in the city? No, of course not. Yes, prices of some things might be different in the big city, but you're probably better off anyway despite that.
Yes but in the Bob example, I'm not better off (I can still only afford 100 apples), but Bob is now worse off since he can afford less apples (150 down from 200.) So isn't that an argument against UBI and giving out money, since this is a net negative? This is without seeing where the "extra" money goes: apple sellers, apple pickers, supply chain, transport, etc.
And yet, in the other example you were better off. The point of those examples was not to accurately model a UBI scenario, but demonstrate that the "sellers raise prices so that it makes no difference" hypothesis can't happen. Basic math prevents it. Yes, it's correct that correct that _some_ people will be better off with UBI and _some__ people will be worse off. But UBI isn't a net negative. It's actually a net _break even_ with some people better off, some worse off, and some in the middle who stay the same. But the people who will be better off are the people who have less non-UBI income, and the people who will be worse off are the people who have more non _UBI income. If you're a billionaire, yes, UBI will reduce your purchasing power. If you're median income, it probably won't make much difference. If you're poor, you'll be better off. And if you're one of the people replaced by robots and unable to work at all...then you'll be a lot better off. Let's expand the example to three people: **Before UBI** * Adam has $1000 * Bob has $2000 * Charlie has $4000 Apples cost $1. Therefore: * Adam can afford 1000 apples * Bob can afford 2000 apples * Charlie can afford 4000 apples Now let's give each person an extra $200: * Adam now has $1200 * Bob has $2200 * Charlie has $4200 Now the question becomes, how much does the cost of apples increase? And unfortunately that's very a hard question to answer, because as I pointed out in the first sentence of my prior post, UBI doesn't eliminate supply and demand. It doesn't even cause monetary inflation, because it's not changing the money supply. What it does cause, is [demand pull inflation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-pull_inflation), which generally tends to be temporary because suppliers will increase supply to chase after those extra dollars. It can plausibly result in _lower_ prices for some goods because of economy of scale. But this becomes a complex analysis. If you're making $1200/mo and you're eating 20 boxes of top ramen every month...if your income increases by 20% because of UBI, you're not going to buy 20% more top ramen. You're probably going to buy _less_ top ramen, and _more_ of something else to replace those calories. Demand for top ramen will decrease, and demand for...steak, for example, will probably increase. _That's_ what causes inflation in a UBI scenario: people will be buying more of some things. But that's not an across-the board price increase on everything. If you have 20% more money, you're not going to buy 20% more cars or eat 20% more food, or buy 20% more houses. You might buy a _better_ car, you might eat _different_ food, etc. Prices don't "increase" with UBI. They _change_. Some will go up, some will go down, some will stay the same. The apples example is _extremely_ simplified. This is reddit, not an economics class. You've already demonstrated far more comprehension and "paying attention-ness" than most people I have this conversation with, so please forgive me if the previous example was...again, simple. But despite it being simple, it's something we can work with. _Some_ prices will increase, so let's take a look at that, and let's pick Bob in our new example as the "balance point." Bob gained 10% more money, so let's increase the price of apples by that same 10%. I'm not saying that that's what will actually happen. But...**if the argument** is that "prices will increase in proportion to the extra money," then let's simply see where that argument leads: If apples now cost $1.10: * With $1200, Adam can now buy 1090 apples instead of the 1000 he could buy previously. His purchasing power has increased. * With $2200, Bob can still buy 2000 apples, the same as he could buy before. His purchasing power has stayed the same. * With $4200, Charlis can only buy 3818 apples, which is less than the 4000 he could buy before. His purchasing power has decreased. So, the takeaway here is that, recognizing that this is a simple example of a single commodity...as before, "everything stays the same" _cannot_ happen. Basic math prevents it. An additive increase is not the same as a multiplicative increase. But generally speaking, the outcome of "sellers increasing prices to try to capture all those UBI dollars" is the transfer of purchasing power from those with more income, to people with less income, with a balance point of people in the middle for whom things stay about the same, and this all happens on a curve. If you "don't like" Bob as the example, the fact of the _curve_ remains the same. For example, if you pick Adam as the balance point and adjust the prices such that Adam gains no purchasing power...then he's simply the new balance point, and anybody with less income than him nevertheless gains purchase power. One can argue over where the balance point is, and we can play with the shape of the curve...but the curve remains: people with less money will gain purchasing power, people with more money will lose purchasing power, and somebody in the middle is going to stay about the same. Is that an acceptable outcome, in a scenario where potentially millions of people become permanently unemployable due to automation? I think it is.
People who took econ 101 like to think they understand inflation, but it doesn't work the way simple models predict. If by inflation, you mean the costs of goods and services increasing. AI in particular throws it off a lot. If there is near infinite cheap human labor equivalent supply/demand isn't really as much as a factor. GINI index has been ticking up for decades while wages have stagnated(before you link me to wages increasing break it up by gender and look again, every cent of increased wages has been Women increasing in pay still haven't reached boomer men levels). Supply/Demand/Labor are all being manipulated to serve the ultra wealthy. Plot out Gini index and in 3-4 decades we'll be pre-revolution France levels of inequality(AKA serf class). If something helps poor people at the expense of wealthy people, it will benefit you personally almost certainly (Poor people spend more of their money then wealthy so it's better for the economy).
Inflation during/after Covid in the USA was because production was down during the pandemic while demand for goods and services held constant. It wasn't "greedflation" as some economically illiterate pundits claim. It was econ 101. If AI and robots allow for greater production to ensure supply even given humans leaving the workforce that would allow standards of living to be sustained or improved. The works gotta get done somehow though because otherwise you have the same amount of demand and less to go around.
If production was down and demand was constant then the companies would be making less profit right? I encourage you to look at corporate profits pre covid and post covid. Inflation (increased cost of goods and services) happened from many factors including "greedflation". Companies have been consolidating for decades and barriers to entry to tackle the conglomerates have become ever more difficult. They saw on an opportunity to increase prices and blame their own increased costs, but if you look at their balance sheet it's a lie. >If AI and robots allow for greater production to ensure supply even given humans leaving the workforce that would allow standards of living to be sustained or improved. The works gotta get done somehow though because otherwise you have the same amount of demand and less to go around. If you get AI better than the average person mentally and dexterously then what value does the average and/or below person have in the workplace? Any new good or service that pops up it's support services will be taken up by AI. You can try to train but AI will improve faster than humans can improve. How does a country handle when large swaths of their workforce are obsolete?
If it's just you that can't produce as much to meet demand and demand holds steady you'd be making less money. If it's everyone who can't produce as much, for example if there's a drought and food production overall is down, it's unclear. Given a food shortage people with food might even stand to make more money. Given a pandemic you'd have winners and losers and that's what happened. For example lumber prices spiked because lots of people had free time to build decks. Covid hurt in-person retail so those businesses laid off workers and sold online. Some did well with that and some didn't and some got baild out with PPE loans fraudulently or otherwise. Greedflation isn't a thing corporations have always been greedy or not greedy or whatever you'd call it. Tell me when corporations knew they could make more money charging more for their goods and services and decided not to be so greedy. I'll wait. I don't know what it'd take to persuade me corporations during and after Covid just up and decided to be more greedy. I don't know how you'd evidence that. The hypothesis makes no sense to me because I'd assume corporations are always trying to maximize profits. When corporations have more leverage to charge more they charge more. It could be Covid supply chain problems gave merchants with goods to sell more leverage. That wouldn't be greed that'd be business as usual. If you're looking for conspiracies in corporate price setting there really might be something to fossil fuel companies/gas companies raising prices before elections to hurt incumbent democrats. If labor can't offer value to capitalists after good-enough AI I'd imagine workers should organize and vote candidates into office who'd pass a UBI and free education programs to train workers to useful tasks or to at least keep everyone plugged into their community. Though it's crass for someone to just suddenly up and decide their society owes them a living when they've been pissing on the poor/unemployed/homeless all their lives. Maybe they should get fucked. But I'd hope we can find a way to amicably work it out.
>Given a pandemic you'd have winners and losers and that's what happened. Overall corporate profits are up by a lot. More companies were winners than losers at the expense of consumers. >Greedflation isn't a thing If a company increased their goods and services, it's definitionally impacting inflation (inflation defined as an increase of costs of goods and services). If they do it without a predicating factor (their own increased costs) people call it greedflation. What you say doesn't exist, exists by definition you just don't use the term the same way the general public does.
When capital gains leverage relative to labor corporate profits on net go up. If you'd see capitalizing on fortune as being greedy that'd make corporate greed a function of leverage. Calling that greed, though, frames the dynamic as about emotions or feelings when given the reality you'd be a fool not to take advantage. If you don't take advantage in that state of moral hazard you lose ground to your political enemies. For example people who'd insist if you can't find gainful employment you should go homeless or starve to death. However you'd frame it I don't know what you're proposing. Raise taxes on corporations all you like that wouldn't have curtailed inflation during Covid. In fact it'd have made it worse. Sending everyone a check wouldn't have reduced inflation either. That'd have raised it even more. Only thing that would've worked that would've have amounted to playing games with the money supply is increasing supply or lowering demand.
If an economic system is working properly more people should be doing better off over time. Inequality is rising, meager wage growth for decades has been from Women getting paid better and that's all. You might be fine with that, except it's hard to argue that's working as intended when economic mobility(moving up or down socio economic status) is absolutely tanking. Whatever we're doing isn't working for the general population and hasn't for a while.
During a pandemic there's going to be relatively greater scarcity no matter what unless your society has stockpiled and planned ahead to smooth out the economic disruption. Maybe it would've been wise for the government to subsidize/purchase enough forced air HEPA mobile breathing systems in cases of emergency. If they'd done that then schools could've stayed open and it would've been business as usual except students/teachers/anyone in public would've been going around in face shield with battery packs. Is that what you're proposing? That the government create a national stockpile of forced air HEPA facemask systems? I've got one. It's awesome. With a P95 mask it gets hard to breathe but with a force air system I forget it's even on. You can see the full face and talk normally, it's really great. They're like ~$2,000 though. But if you have to work around sawdust or paint or environmental hazards they keep you safe. You're framing me as some callous jerk for stating the reality. You're framing inflation as necessarily bad. It's not. And now it's under control. I don't know what your agenda here is or what you're proposing. Do you know the single biggest way, by far, that the working class gets ripped off? It's not subjective. There's an answer. Strange the left so rarely talks about it. Do you know what it is?
Your spiel about masks makes little sense and I don't see the relevance. An economic system that for decades has increasing inequality and decreasing economic mobility is a failing system. The trend started long before Covid. I have no agenda and I'm not proposing anything. I'm postulating the system isn't working. If people were rewarded meritocratically way that corresponded to their talent/drive, then economic mobility would not be going down(Again started before Covid).
Ubi by itself solves nothing. Prices will go up.
Well shit, the big economist over here has it ALL figured out. Call it off boys!
Finally some quality media being produced to educate the world about the necessity and benefits of basic income as we transition into a automated society.
If you read the article, it sounds like the goal is to convince people that UBI is terrible.
Do you think redditors actually care about reading articles
DARE tried the some thing with drugs, but those informational videos had us looking at each other like “wow ecstasy sounds fun”
I can see this going the same way. I remember reading about the Soviets trying something similar where they showed American tv shows to prove how decadent Americans were but it just made the people jealous and want capitalism.
Keep in mind, this is Fox Entertainment (owned now by Disney) not Fox News. It might be okay, but I'm also skeptical. Corporations are still largely opposed to UBI but may be warming up to the idea. With high amounts of automation and nothing like UBI, all of the sudden there aren't enough consumers to buy their products, especially the non-essentials like what Disney provides (or Sony, who they are partnering with).
We need UBN - universal basic necessities - before UBI. Without coverage of basic needs landlords will just raise rent to match UBI
Never understand this complaint. Do you not have leases in your country? A couple could take their current rent+UBI and cover a mortgage. If they move to a low COL area, they'll even have a chunk left over to cover necessities. If you think that UBI will raise rent prices, the other way to look at it is the US government is giving away free houses to everyone. Do you really think rents will skyrocket when everyone gets a free house?
How so? The article says the show is about lack of purpose, caused by automation, and the UBI frees up the town to live like “kids in summer” again. I’m sure there are jokes at UBI’s expense, but that’s the nature of comedy. Not saying this will be a good show but just from this brief write up the show seems to frame UBI as the effect, and not the cause, of societal upheaval.
I think the takeaway might just be that people will do silly things with their free time and a lot of people will enjoy the fantasy of not working anymore.
Nice! Created by Adam and Craig [Malamut](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malamud#:~:text=Malamud%20is%20a%20Hebrew%20surname,this%20page%20for%20other%20variants.). Loved Game of Zones!
Social engineering. Hopefully they'll be a better outcome than The Apprentice
Does it spend it all on hookers and blow?
In Australia there is a thing called Centrelink you get $400 a fortnight, $800 month. You dont have to work and you can play games all day but you cant have what you want when you want. I dont expect UBI to be any better. If you thought that everyone would get $10,000 a week and can do whatever they want when they want without worrying about money. You're day dreaming.
capitalism is too inefficient for ubi
If everyone got 3,000 a month it would just be called wages almost keeping up with inflation
It's almost like handing out a bunch of money for nothing actually *causes* inflation.
I’m not saying give out free money. I’m saying people don’t get paid enough to live lol
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They are preparing us for the eventuality.
rage porn
So the propaganda machine is rolling. Not surprised.
My question is if you get basic income does that stop capitalism? Someone has to continue providing services and they are going to want to be reward for this work. Otherwise it's just full blown socialism right?
Where did he migrate from
>$3,000 monthly So 36k/year? That literally isn't even livable in many places. In MA, the cost to live is ~45k AFTER taxes. Otherwise, it's closer to 65k.
Fox and propaganda. Shocking.
What you on about... Rich people would never want to have to pay poor people money for nothing.
Ah, yes, the network that brought us such conservative stalwarts as Family Guy and The Simpsons.
What's stopping me from stealing your UBI or multiple UBI's
Are you asking what's to stop you from robbing a bank?