Hello, I’m not that informed about UBI, but here is my arguement:
Everyone gets some sort of income, but wouldn’t companies just subside the income by raising their prices? Also, do you believe capatilism can co-exist with UBI?
do you believe capatilism can co-exist with UBI?
UBI might be the only thing that can save capitalism.
Here’s what I say about UBI. We may not need it today, but we better figure it out because we’ll need it someday. As an example, take a look at America in 1800. 95%+ of people worked in agriculture. With tractors, the cotton gin, etc. all those careers will be eliminated. The cotton gin of tomorrow is autonomous vehicles, robots and/or drones. Jobs like delivery driver, cashier, etc are all on borrowed time. If we don’t figure out some new economic framework before that time, our society is toast. All the “unskilled” jobs that served as on-ramps to more advanced employment will literally be wiped off the face of the Earth.
Of course, America being America, we’ll treat this like climate change. Deny deny deny, even when it starts actively harming you. By the time someone tries to solve it, we’ll all be screwed.
I don’t think UBI can exist at all. There’s way too many problems that aren’t even close to being addressed by arguments in favor of it. It doesn’t work at all from a financial perspective. There’s not a level of automation that exists that could handle the loss of workers. There’s little evidence that new innovation or invention would happen as there’s little benefit for the creator. The only way it works is in a post scarcity society, which isn’t even close to existing.
I’m a fan of UB I+S. Universal basic income AND universal basic services. Plus
highthigh taxes for the rich. And workplace democracy. And a massive shift of the economy to the nonprofit sector: if what your company is providing is a utility, you can’t have making a profit be your fiduciary responsibility.Basically, fuck capitalism, I want socialism.
plus hight taxes for the rich
Nobody should be rich and tall! \s
Lol, fixed
Exactly this. Beware of the Silicon Valley tech bros selling their version of UBI. It’s a Trojan horse they want to use to cut all social services.
As long as UBI covers basic living expenses, then yes I would support it. Capitalism, as it exists in the west, is not sustainable and if it continues as is, there is probably going to be massive employment issues within a generation as common working people without specialized degrees and can’t afford to get them will be unemployable due to automation, AI and robots completing most common labor jobs cheaper and more efficiently.
I know the pushback against UBI is that if you take away the need for people to work to live, most people won’t work… and honestly I’m okay with that. I doubt there would a be serious decline in people seeking work because if you can still earn extra income for luxuries and nicer things over what UBI would cover… why wouldn’t you? And those who are content to sit at home or not work, is fine by me. Because I’ve worked with a lot of people over the years who only have a job because someone told them they needed a job. They were miserable fucking people to be around and we were more productive the days they called in sick or skipped. Some people should be paid to stay the fuck at home, and society would be a better place for it.
And those who are content to sit at home or not work, is fine by me. Because I’ve worked with a lot of people over the years who only have a job because someone told them they needed a job. They were miserable fucking people to be around and we were more productive the days they called in sick or skipped. Some people should be paid to stay the fuck at home, and society would be a better place for it.
This needs repeating - so here I am repeating it. I’ve worked with those same people, hell I’ve been that person when I was working the only job I could find, absolutely didn’t want to be there, but needed the money so couldn’t afford to be taking the time to find where I did want to be.
Iirc the places that tested ubi found that people kept working for the exact reason you said. I forget if more people got jobs or not.
I read about a pilot program in Canada back in the '70s or '80s that found that fewer people on UBI had jobs, but those people who left the workforce were overwhelmingly new mothers and older teens who were still in school.
I feel like it’s less about whether the process will go up or if capitalism can survive with it. I in feel that it’s going to be necessary for humans to function. With population increasing, and jobs actually decreasing from technology for the first time in human history, from businesses automating stuff or self check out counters, we’re just not going to have a job for every single person out there.
Kurt Vonnegut had a fun take on this exact scenario in his first book, Player Piano.
not a 100% ubi fan, BUT, the times, they are a changing - and I firmly believe every robot deployed should have to offset ubi. every AI cycle should drive ubi funding.
Trained on the involuntary corpus of millions if not billions of people, it must benefit society overall otherwise we’re going to destroy everything.
One method of structuring it is that if UBI is $20k/year, then you have $20k/year taken out as taxes as long as you have a job. The income is neutral, so there’s no basis for companies to raise prices.
That’s not a UBI.
Sounds like you might be interested in a negative income tax, though.
I don’t like that plan. Its basically a free $20k for those who don’t work while working people get nothing.
You either give everyone 20k or you don’t.
I think the only way for UBI effectively to work is if you can fix prices/profits. No more charging $10 for something that’s cost .5¢ to make.
Its basically a free $20k for those who don’t work while working people get nothing.
Yes, that’s the point.
Not really. The point is that everyone has a base income. Why would working take away from the base income? Working should add to it.
What is ubi? Univeral bread initiative ?
Universal basic income
Your theory about companies raising prices to offset UBI is actually undercut by historical and present evidence.
There was a time when the United States had welfare. The United States still has food stamps. But nobody is seriously pretending that these things did or do drive up grocery prices.
Similarly, over time various states have raised minimum wage, and if your argument were accurate, then the prices in those states would have immediately risen to match minimum wage, but they didn’t.
In other words, you’re repeating a conservative talking point that has been repeatedly debunked by reality. I think you could try to improve your argument by arguing that inflation happens across the board, to everything, and therefore it would also happen to UBI. But what we’ve actually seen is that’s not true.
The only counter to this argument I’ve seen play out in real time (at least to the best of my knowledge, it could be propaganda) is the fact that when the government offered tax credits for EVs, Ford raised the prices of their EVs to essentially absorb the tax credit and profit off of what was supposed to benefit the people making the switch.
I’ll see if I can find the article I’m remembering.
I think that’s a difference between subsidizing specific things vs subsidizing all the things.
So you’re saying just by sheer volume they would be less likely to do it?
Thank you for this argument. I had found that mentally I was getting trapped in this line of thinking about UBI.
My way around in my mental way if thinking it was Universal Basic Medicine, Universal Basic Food, Universal Basic Housing, and so on. That way, if some jackass landlord decided to raise rent too high, you’re not homeless. Also, in my ideal world, the health insurance industry should be “taken out”.
I heard an idea once about making minimum wage 0$ and giving everyone a liveabke UBI. That would mean that nobody is required to participate in the workforce, meaning that employers who can’t afford to pay their workers a good wage would be priced out of the market rather than being able to prey upon peoples need for, y’know, money (which can be exchanged for goods and services). A very appealing idea for a 16 year old boy, and the only issue I see with it now is extreme specialisation in the workforce leading to less competition between different workplaces for similar jobs.
Everyone gets some sort of income, but wouldn’t companies just subside the income by raising their prices?
As someone planning on starting a B2B company, I don’t see a problem with that. If companies make a ton of money, tax companies more and redistribute again. The curve can be made to fit.
But there’s a bigger reason for doing UBI: It’s cheaper and more effective than existing welfare. And more people will like it.
No, I don’t support UBI, but I support UBS - Universal basic services. Food, housing, water, education, etc should be free at a basic level. Basic level for housing for example will be ‘Housing First’ concept in Finland.
I’d be in favor of both. Universal services and some income.
A little bit of basic income would allow some flexibility just in case there’s something that UBS doesn’t cover on an individual level.
UBI that’s big enough to cover housing, food, clothing, education, etc would almost certainly get abused and exploited in every way possible to not be used on housing, food, clothing, and education…
Those basic services all have a cost associated with them… that’s why people support UBI to cover those basic services…
When I say it should be free, it means that there is no cost to be paid by individual
Why are you under the impression that UBS will not pay for those services?
The US Post service is the biggest UBS that most Americans pay with taxes. Those who can’t afford or can’t make money to pay taxes or otherwise still benefit from it as “free”
You seem to think it doesn’t exist or will not work. Yet it does. Libraries exist, public transportation exists. People needs can be met.
I agree, and I think the best service we have but is being overshadowed by Amazon is the US Post service. It really needs a push to modernize.
I also think instead of UBI, anything that is a basic need will be taxed based on a progressive schedule instead of a flat percentage. That way if they try to make it more expensive then it will be taxed too much to be viable. We need to combat this inflation and make it so that a lower priced item is more profitable!
Trying to distort the market so that lower priced items are more profitable is quite challenging to do without unintended consequences. A progressive consumption tax would definitely be a worthy experiment
Only concept/idea that offers this benefit rn is just having a healthy competitive market that sees companies not form into a monolopy or structured in a way that allows for each one to set prices to higher amounts because everyone else is doing it. looking at how Intel is struggling rn to stay relevant and they are entering the GPU market with some very competitive mid range options that outperform Nvidia and AMD on common consumer tasks, while still offering their own blend of AI cores for new tasks that we will likely start having in the coming future. All this and Intel is offering these mid-range cards at 60% of the cost to the closest competition. While I enjoy seeing this, I am annoyed this is the only way we can see prices lower. We really need to come together as a community and push prices to more reasonable levels.
Inflation is insane right now and it is mainly what is annoying me the most about people thinking UBI would even help prevent it from being irrelevant once companies realize they can just charge more for the same identical/marginally improved product. I see the floor for prices steadily increase and UBI will just cause it to rise up to the point that the UBI benefit is worthless as the purchasing power is decreased to the point of a single dollar being worth less than what a penny used to be.
Well I’m on Lenny so sure I’ll pick a fight.
No.
My autism doesn’t know how to vote on your comment.
My stance on this is that if a machine can do the work of a hundred men, then ninety-nine men should be able to retire early with pay. Anything else is theft.
So, yes, I support UBI, and no, I don’t think it would break capitalism. It’s the same amount of money being put into circulation, just for less work.
I think, this was what future was imagined at the beginning of the previous century. It definitely is what I would rather like to see instead of what we got, where automation is not for easing the work, but for removing the people.
