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Time to shake things up: Universal Basic Income?

ChrisV

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We're living in strange times. AI is on the rise, hundreds of thousands of truckers are going to lose their jobs to self-driving trucks in coming years, we have a presidential candidate who's proposing a Universal Basic Income.

Milton Friedman, a nobel prize wining economists who was considered one of the most influential economists of all time proposed a Universal Basic Income back in 1962. Milton Friedman was far from a socialist or even liberal. He was one of the top advisors for the Reagan Administration and was a major advocate for 'hands off' government. But despite all that, he was still a strong advocate for a UBI.

You can hear some of Friedman's thought-provoking arguments here:



But back to AI, many studies (World Economic Forum, ScienceAlert, Bank of England) predicts of millions or 10's of millions of job losses, and while I think it will be one of the biggest technological boons we've ever seen, I still think we have to be careful of the short term effects.


WhenWhereJobs LostJobs CreatedPredictor
2016worldwide900,000 to 1,500,000Metra Martech
2018US jobs13,852,530*3,078,340*Forrester
2020worldwide1,000,000-2,000,000Metra Martech
2020worldwide1,800,0002,300,000Gartner
2020sampling of 15 countries7,100,0002,000,000World Economic Forum (WEF)
2021worldwide1,900,000-3,500,000The International Federation of Robotics
2021US jobs9,108,900*Forrester
2022worldwide########Thomas Frey
2025US jobs24,186,240*13,604,760*Forrester
2025US jobs3,400,000ScienceAlert
2027US jobs################Forrester
2030worldwide########Thomas Frey
2030worldwide400,000,000-800,000,000555,000,000-890,000,000McKinsey
2030US jobs58,164,320*PWC
2035US jobs########Bank of England
2035UK jobs########Bank of England
No DateUS jobs13,594,320*OECD
No DateUK jobs########IPPR

Again, to be clear, I think AI is going to be the biggest development the world has ever seen. I think in general it will drastically improve our quality of life on an unprecedented level. But I also think we have to make a smart transition for those who are displaced. During the start of the industrial revolution, mass riots broke out by those who were displaced by automation.


Of course the Industrial Revolution worked out great in the long run as we see here:

1565181072225.png

And AI will likely be a similar boon, but I think it's important to pay attention to the unskilled workers who may be hurt by this.

Do you think that a Universal Basic Income might be a good solution? Or do you think it's pure socialism. Open to discussion.
 
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G-Man

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Huge fan of Milton Friedman. Reading Free to Choose as a teenager spawned a lifelong interest. That said, not sure I have the enthusiasm for this idea anymore.

The basic libertarian belief about UBI is that as long as people can vote, they will vote for the government to give them money, so why not replace all existing welfare/social programs with a universal distribution? This would at least get rid of the overhead, market distortion, and downright theft that occurs by recipients and vendors alike in those programs. Biggest benefit is that people wouldn't actually stand to make themselves worse off by getting a job, as is the case with many current programs.

One big problem. If everyone gets a universal basic income, by being universal it effectively becomes the new "0". Politicians still have to have a platform to run on, and giving people free stuff is the low hanging fruit of campaign promises. I think we'd get it, and in 20 years we'd have the UBI with all the old programs just rebuilt like Frankenstein on top of it. All guessing on my part. As for how governments intend to handle the massive amounts of negative human energy that will come from unemployment and aimlessness. No idea on earth what they should do. My guess is what they will do is Socialism + Pharmacology.
 

lowtek

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Will jobs be lost to automation? Certainly.

Will AI replace most jobs? Not within the near term horizon (10-20 years). What we will see is more akin to the personal computing revolution. People will have to learn to interface with AI systems, just as they did the PC, to do their job more effectively and efficiently. This will result in less human resources required to do a whole swath of tasks, and some job losses. If left to their own devices, entrepreneurs and people will figure out how to produce value in the new paradigm, and after a painful period of readjustment we'll see even more prosperity than before.

Should we implement a UBI? I'm skeptical. I suppose if we were to dismantle ALL other forms of assistance and divert the funds to a UBI that the recipient got full autonomy in spending, then it could be worth discussing. We would free up funds from malinvestment (i.e. taking money from productive people and giving it to unproductive people) and allow more free market principles to operate. Of course, this would require a massive downsizing of government....

If there's one thing we know about the nature of government, it is that it is cancerous. Once it takes hold of a sector of the economy, it's virtually impossible to pry it loose. So, I don't see this happening. We will get UBI on top of all the other "safety nets", which will only accelerate the decline of western civilization.

A far better solution: if we quit taxing people, then perhaps we wouldn't have to give them back their own money that we took from them by force. We're literally taxed on top of our taxes (i.e. paying sales tax on top of the embedded taxes in every consumer good) and then taxed on the income we produce (which is also generated by taxed assets). All of this uses currency that is effectively taxed through inflation, before it even hits our wallets.

It's taxception.

The fundamental problem with people not having enough money, and the decline in the purchasing power, is not technology or artificial intelligence. It's the government. Any solution that requires the expansion of government will only exacerbate the problem. This will cause more people to cry out for relief, and more government will be introduced as the solution.
 

Kak

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One big problem. If everyone gets a universal basic income, by being universal it effectively becomes the new "0".

I second this. It will be a highly inflationary policy.

Is inflation bad? Not if you knew it was coming and bought multi-family RE.

Is it good for the country? No. Certainly not.
 

Kak

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Well even if they did, it wouldn't matter. The economy would still grow because AI will be doing more labor than humans are even capable of.

I don't think most people will.. but if they did, so what? Isn't that one of the benefits of having robots do our work for us? To do less work.

The AI controversy is not a tech based argument, it is an economics based argument.

There is ALWAYS going to be a human reason behind all work preformed by AI. AI doesn't work for itself and it never will. AI won't have consumption tendencies. It wont have an opinion on the home it lives in... The car it drives... It doesn't eat food. It won't serve itself because it has no need to.

What you are doing with these new technological advancements can be comparable to getting machinery to work farms with, putting hand pickers out of work. So what. There is a HUMAN market behind the production of those goods and the workers fit in somewhere else.

Over and over throughout history technology has displaced certain workers... Yet we still have a low unemployment rate... Why is that? Because the economy is ever changing and automatically seeks equilibrium.

I look at AI as macro deflationary... Everything we consume will get cheaper relative to the work the average person has to do in order to purchase it. It is important to note this has less to do with currency and more to do with the input required for an output.

It has never taken less work to own a nice car. Live in a nice home. Fly to another continent. Go out to dinner. This trend will continue as it has throughout history.

The whole "growing wealth gap" argument is nonsense when you take out the currency aspect and instead examine it from an input-output viewpoint.

Assuming the government doesn't screw it up... AI will be the next great improvement in human lifestyle prosperity.
 
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Last edited:

MJ DeMarco

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Wow, 20+ comments on a politically charged topic with some thoughtful insights and rational discourse. Ya'll are impressive.

Thread remains open.
 
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Dan_Cardone

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My only thought is this: If UBI becomes a reality and people are given free money every month, What can I do to get that money?

In other words, how can I profit from this? What can I offer people, and in which way can I offer it, to make people want to give me their now extra disposable money? What value can I give them in exchange for it? Thats what I'm working on right now.

A few random thoughts:
  • Not everyone who gets UBI will be jobless, at least, not a first. That means it will be extra disposable money.
  • People love to consume and spend.
  • How can I profit from businesses who replace workers with AI?
The last few months I have been putting a lot of thought into how AI will change the landscape as we know it and how I can profit from it. I believe I have some answers and I am excited.
 

OlivierMo

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There's several different issues at play here.
  1. How close are we to general AI?
  2. If we had a general AI, would we need UBI?
  3. If we're not that close to general AI yet, should we still implement UBI for other reasons?
I'm leaning No, Not Sure, and No for these respectively.

For the first point, we might have driverless cars soon, and that would certainly displace millions of truck drivers, but we're still very from completely general AI like the ones in I, Robot. Like @ChrisV mentioned there have been several times throughout the last century where certain industries were displaced by automation. This definitely caused bumpy transitions for millions of people, not saying it's easy or fair, but as a whole these transitions opened up new sectors as old ones were displaced. Many jobs today are service jobs, people will always find value in being able to talk to a real human.

The second point is tricky. If we had robots like the ones in I, Robot then nobody could get a job and have income, but also everything would be free to produce, so it's like dividing zero by zero. A UBI might make sense in this scenario, but this scenario is so foreign it's hard to tell either way what would happen. Maybe we get enslaved by our robot overlords?

The third point is definitely more political than anything haha, maybe shouldn't argue that here :)
The first thing I'd use AI for would be to replace politicians. Because let's be honest most of them are of average IQ. They have speaking skills but very often they are idiots. So AI replacing politicians. AI won't be corrupt. AI won't need money. Then we can decouple money from politics and the promise of freebies.
 

OlivierMo

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Politicians will always promise more. Now some want minimum wage to be at 20. It never ends in the pitching of ANY ideas to get votes. France has some kind of basic income called RSA (used to be RMI.) Granted it's not very much but the French economy hasn't been that great. Add illegal immigration on top of that and the people who are really trying to make things work and productive will be the suckers.
If that replaces all welfare why not. But I know how things will happen: people on UBI only will get into trouble, overspend and whine and politicians will come to the rescue. I'm tired of being a sucker personally.
 

OlivierMo

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Saying UBI will generate growth is like saying having many gov employees will generate growth.
Will jobs be lost to automation? Certainly.

Will AI replace most jobs? Not within the near term horizon (10-20 years). What we will see is more akin to the personal computing revolution. People will have to learn to interface with AI systems, just as they did the PC, to do their job more effectively and efficiently. This will result in less human resources required to do a whole swath of tasks, and some job losses. If left to their own devices, entrepreneurs and people will figure out how to produce value in the new paradigm, and after a painful period of readjustment we'll see even more prosperity than before.

Should we implement a UBI? I'm skeptical. I suppose if we were to dismantle ALL other forms of assistance and divert the funds to a UBI that the recipient got full autonomy in spending, then it could be worth discussing. We would free up funds from malinvestment (i.e. taking money from productive people and giving it to unproductive people) and allow more free market principles to operate. Of course, this would require a massive downsizing of government....

If there's one thing we know about the nature of government, it is that it is cancerous. Once it takes hold of a sector of the economy, it's virtually impossible to pry it loose. So, I don't see this happening. We will get UBI on top of all the other "safety nets", which will only accelerate the decline of western civilization.

A far better solution: if we quit taxing people, then perhaps we wouldn't have to give them back their own money that we took from them by force. We're literally taxed on top of our taxes (i.e. paying sales tax on top of the embedded taxes in every consumer good) and then taxed on the income we produce (which is also generated by taxed assets). All of this uses currency that is effectively taxed through inflation, before it even hits our wallets.

It's taxception.

The fundamental problem with people not having enough money, and the decline in the purchasing power, is not technology or artificial intelligence. It's the government. Any solution that requires the expansion of government will only exacerbate the problem. This will cause more people to cry out for relief, and more government will be introduced as the solution.
Amen. Taxing LABOR is a major problem. If labor becomes rare why keep taxing it? Why tax companies on the cost of their labor too. In France they used to tax you based on the number of employees. Total insanity. Most governments are thieves and war mongers. You want peace in the world too, reduce the power of government. Making government your mommy using UBI or else makes government strong.
 

Bekit

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One has to be logical: if healthcare must be free, college must be free, and UBI needs to happen, why aren't food and lodging free? Aren't they the most basic necessity of life. Food and shelter. Then why not redo the Soviet Union? Safety for all. (Sarcasm.)
For lodging to be free, that implies that individual ownership of property goes away and the government owns it all. Not a scenario that I like. Want to move to a cabin in the woods? Not so fast. Apartment life for all, if the government says so.

For food to be free, who is doing the work to grow that food? an individual farmer who is free to be rewarded if he works harder, innovates more, and becomes more efficient? Nope, he just lost all his land and got relocated to the city. So it would have to be a government slave who doesn't care a speck about what he's doing. Who do you think will do a better job of growing better, safer food? And where would human rights go? Down the toilet.

Regarding Universal Basic Income, I get it that there's an allure. Who wouldn't want free money? But what I don't get is, where do people think all that money is going to come from?

Let's say the UBI is $1200 a month, doled out automatically to 330 million people in America.

That's $396,000,000,000 PER MONTH that the government has to come up with from somewhere. That equals $4.75 trillion per year.

Social Security and Medicare are broke. Where do we think this money is going to come from?

The entire GDP of the United States was $20.50 trillion in 2018.

Universal Basic Income would cost 23 percent of the GDP, just for people to have a little extra cash in their pocket that they didn't work for.

If they didn't work for it, who did?

There's only one place it can come from.

Business.

OK, business owners of FLF -

I'm just curious.

Would you be willing to give up 23 cents of every dollar to the UBI fund?

What would that do to your profit margins?

What would that do to your ability to hire people?

Psychologically, would you be tempted to just check out and say, "Screw it. I'm not paying all these people who aren't even working for me," and close the business?

My conclusion, which to me seems like plain old common sense, is that a Universal Basic Income would wreck the country.
 

OlivierMo

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Plus people really think that'd have no impact on tax levels, inflation, cost of labor, etc... The proponents of UBI think it works in a vacuum.
One has to be logical: if healthcare must be free, college must be free, and UBI needs to happen, why aren't food and lodging free? Aren't they the most basic necessity of life. Food and shelter. Then why not redo the Soviet Union? Safety for all. (Sarcasm.)
 

scottmsul

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There's several different issues at play here.
  1. How close are we to general AI?
  2. If we had a general AI, would we need UBI?
  3. If we're not that close to general AI yet, should we still implement UBI for other reasons?
I'm leaning No, Not Sure, and No for these respectively.

For the first point, we might have driverless cars soon, and that would certainly displace millions of truck drivers, but we're still very from completely general AI like the ones in I, Robot. Like @ChrisV mentioned there have been several times throughout the last century where certain industries were displaced by automation. This definitely caused bumpy transitions for millions of people, not saying it's easy or fair, but as a whole these transitions opened up new sectors as old ones were displaced. Many jobs today are service jobs, people will always find value in being able to talk to a real human.

The second point is tricky. If we had robots like the ones in I, Robot then nobody could get a job and have income, but also everything would be free to produce, so it's like dividing zero by zero. A UBI might make sense in this scenario, but this scenario is so foreign it's hard to tell either way what would happen. Maybe we get enslaved by our robot overlords?

The third point is definitely more political than anything haha, maybe shouldn't argue that here :)
 
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G-Man

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I second this. It will be a highly inflationary policy. Get ready for $20 McDonald's.
I meant it more in the sense of the electoral process. Politicians get credit for what they give their voters at the expense of others. If everyone gets something, said politician gets no credit. Me getting something everyone else gets is the same as me getting nothing. The question the voter has is "Yeah I know everyone gets free money. That's old news. What have you done for ME, or my subgroup?"

That said, most likely increasing inflation too. Not because it would have to be, but because increasing the money supply is again the low hanging fruit way to pay for things.
 
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OlivierMo

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I second this. It will be a highly inflationary policy.

Is inflation bad? Not if you knew it was coming and bought multi-family RE.

Is it good for the country? No. Certainly not.
Right and then the UBI amount is never enough and it never ends. In the meantime the Chinese don't give a damn about that stuff. We'll get lazy and stupid while the Communist government over there is building an army of robots.
 

StrikingViper69

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A question that is good to start with is, where does money come from?

Money is a promise on the future production of others.

Money is a tool for mediating the value when trading goods. If there are no goods to trade, money has no value.

If you give everyone free "money", without changing the quantity / quality of goods being produced, the value of the money collapses.

There is also the ethical question of who is to supply that money.

Do you print it? In the process destroying the wealth of the virtuous who produced and saved.
Or take it in the form of taxation, threatening to lock those who do not comply with your "good will" in a concrete box?

Every dollar you hold shows that you produced value to someone, and is a promise (or a prayer?) that someone in the future will create something that you value, so you can trade with them.

----

As for AI, technology advances. I'm pretty sure every major technological advance in history has been heralded by cries of "but so many people will lose their jobs!"... and sure maybe some people lose their job, but they then find one.

Someone is always going to be willing to trade to have something done for them. If you can do it, they will trade with you.
 
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Dan_Cardone

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Will jobs be lost to automation? Certainly.

Will AI replace most jobs? Not within the near term horizon (10-20 years). What we will see is more akin to the personal computing revolution. People will have to learn to interface with AI systems, just as they did the PC, to do their job more effectively and efficiently. This will result in less human resources required to do a whole swath of tasks, and some job losses. If left to their own devices, entrepreneurs and people will figure out how to produce value in the new paradigm, and after a painful period of readjustment we'll see even more prosperity than before.

Should we implement a UBI? I'm skeptical. I suppose if we were to dismantle ALL other forms of assistance and divert the funds to a UBI that the recipient got full autonomy in spending, then it could be worth discussing. We would free up funds from malinvestment (i.e. taking money from productive people and giving it to unproductive people) and allow more free market principles to operate. Of course, this would require a massive downsizing of government....

If there's one thing we know about the nature of government, it is that it is cancerous. Once it takes hold of a sector of the economy, it's virtually impossible to pry it loose. So, I don't see this happening. We will get UBI on top of all the other "safety nets", which will only accelerate the decline of western civilization.

A far better solution: if we quit taxing people, then perhaps we wouldn't have to give them back their own money that we took from them by force. We're literally taxed on top of our taxes (i.e. paying sales tax on top of the embedded taxes in every consumer good) and then taxed on the income we produce (which is also generated by taxed assets). All of this uses currency that is effectively taxed through inflation, before it even hits our wallets.

It's taxception.

The fundamental problem with people not having enough money, and the decline in the purchasing power, is not technology or artificial intelligence. It's the government. Any solution that requires the expansion of government will only exacerbate the problem. This will cause more people to cry out for relief, and more government will be introduced as the solution.
My only regret is that I have but one like to give you, sir!
 

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Also a Friedman fan ("Capitalism and Freedom" roped me).
I'm self employed for over 13 years, my observation is strictly anecdotal, but there is no "trickle-down", it's trickle-up.
Milton was a proponent of the N.I.T., negative income tax, and it's already in existence, it's the foundation for the earned income tax credit.
While I hate the idea of lazy people getting free stuff, there's no denying that $1000 in the hands of a low income individual gets spent, while the same $1000 to a millionaire either goes to investment in corporations with cheap labor off shores, or towards tax exempt campaign contributions that assure even more legislation to help them hoard more wealth.

As for Friedman, contemporary interpretations of excess wealth concentrations have been distorted to only government, he believed ANY concentration of power was a threat.

"... the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. " - Milton Friedman

A billionaire would call that "Socialism", I call it removal of the greatest threat to Democracy.
 

ChrisV

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I just had a misc thought about AI. And this is in the inevitable future when AI is just smarter and better than us on every measure.

I've been working with one company that made me realize there IS something that AI needs. It's something AI finds very valuable, and (if set up correctly) would pay us for .

Data.

AI needs data to survive. AI is nothing without it. It starves to death without data. It can't even complete basic tasks without it.

If we could set up a system where people get paid for their data, we could have a system where people don't have to work (unless they wanted to) and would still get paid. No redistribution necessary.
 

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We're living in strange times. AI is on the rise, hundreds of thousands of truckers are going to lose their jobs to self-driving trucks in coming years, we have a presidential candidate who's proposing a Universal Basic Income.

Milton Friedman, a nobel prize wining economists who was considered one of the most influential economists of all time proposed a Universal Basic Income back in 1962. Milton Friedman was far from a socialist or even liberal. He was one of the top advisors for the Reagan Administration and was a major advocate for 'hands off' government. But despite all that, he was still a strong advocate for a UBI.

You can hear some of Friedman's thought-provoking arguments here:



But back to AI, many studies (World Economic Forum, ScienceAlert, Bank of England) predicts of millions or 10's of millions of job losses, and while I think it will be one of the biggest technological boons we've ever seen, I still think we have to be careful of the short term effects.


WhenWhereJobs LostJobs CreatedPredictor
2016worldwide900,000 to 1,500,000Metra Martech
2018US jobs13,852,530*3,078,340*Forrester
2020worldwide1,000,000-2,000,000Metra Martech
2020worldwide1,800,0002,300,000Gartner
2020sampling of 15 countries7,100,0002,000,000World Economic Forum (WEF)
2021worldwide1,900,000-3,500,000The International Federation of Robotics
2021US jobs9,108,900*Forrester
2022worldwide########Thomas Frey
2025US jobs24,186,240*13,604,760*Forrester
2025US jobs3,400,000ScienceAlert
2027US jobs################Forrester
2030worldwide########Thomas Frey
2030worldwide400,000,000-800,000,000555,000,000-890,000,000McKinsey
2030US jobs58,164,320*PWC
2035US jobs########Bank of England
2035UK jobs########Bank of England
No DateUS jobs13,594,320*OECD
No DateUK jobs########IPPR

Again, to be clear, I think AI is going to be the biggest development the world has ever seen. I think in general it will drastically improve our quality of life on an unprecedented level. But I also think we have to make a smart transition for those who are displaced. During the start of the industrial revolution, mass riots broke out by those who were displaced by automation.


Of course the Industrial Revolution worked out great in the long run as we see here:

View attachment 26450

And AI will likely be a similar boon, but I think it's important to pay attention to the unskilled workers who may be hurt by this.

Do you think that a Universal Basic Income might be a good solution? Or do you think it's pure socialism. Open to discussion.
UBI is velvet handcuffs. By making people dependent on the government, you make them into a needy child who can't find their way to do better. Our experiment into "The Great Society", AKA welfare and it's sister SDI, has been a social disaster for tens of thousands of people. It's pushed the men in those families out of their roles and their homes. And it's held down the women and children into a system that holds them as tightly as quicksand.

How can I say that? My best friend from high school is dying. She made herself sick to get on a disability income every month so she wouldn't have to go to work. Her hoax has become her worst nightmare. And that's the personal part of what I know.

Also, years ago I helped start a shelter for women and children in the Los Angeles ghetto. I was Chairman of the Board for 5 years.

I've seen it all over the years. I still deal with these issues through my many tenants every day. Yes, I feel very strongly about this issue. Everyone, who is physically able, should work at something that brings value to our world!
 

LittleWolfie

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Should we remove death sentence?


I prefers to watch TV and drink beer while getting benefits, rather than work on getting new skills to become employable again.

In my opinion, yes we should remove the death sentence it is much easier to release people and expunge records when new evidence comes to light than to reverse their death.

Was it a us founding father who said "better a 100 guilty men go free than a single inmocent man be condemned "?

Based on the studies I also suspect the prefer to watch tv and drink beer segment is smaller than most think. Bearing in mind the current system encourages thst behaviour.

It looks at revenue not cashflow, so if you make a sale 3k on net 30, benefits are gone. No money,no rent for next 13 weeks.

Do it as a top up, e.g. cashflow too low, you get a top up and you give lots of people a leg up.

Perception is an issue too, way bettet to use emoloyer expense type cards(accepted just about every shop) because then expenditure can be watched and permissions automated so you can buy bread but not fireworks or caviar

However then people think it is a credit card and object to being saved money on welfare(perhaps the gov should have refunded the surplus to local taxpayers)

Or see how homeless charites point out that mobile phones(so cheap they are given away by carriers with airtime) are a major lifeline as they let them find and contact homeless people about resources available (about 80% of their job being finding the homeless in need) and gives them a number to be contacted for work

Yet people object to the homeless being given phones especially smart phones which can allow them to make job applictions or do gig work. That old smart phone is a modern day fishing rod for them,because now they can be finding the gig work, which they can use to buy a meal.

The objections make it harder for the charity to find donors or mobile carriers who will donate due to PR concerns.

While hampering the homeless attempts to get help(oh,they must be doing all right they have a smart phone)
 

StrikingViper69

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We are forced to so many things that helping others is the least of the problems. I don't know in the US, but in at least a few European countries, not helping people (e.g. when there's an accident and you walk away) could get you in front of a judge. So I'm still unsure why other ways of helping some people look so bad (money, I guess).

I'm against most types of benefits, as it makes people lazy, but I think a minimum of health coverage is needed. You can do your best to live healthy, but you can still get a death sentence at the doctor's, and some treatments/operations are extremely expensive. I personally don't understand what's the problem with covering that, given we spend taxes in a lot of things, including the ones who decide what is taxed and where the money goes (nice irony). Some taxes are going to be there, I prefer them to go to saving lives than other things.

Apart from money, we are forced to many other things. Because, as a society, we have to be forced to follow rules (anarchy doesn't work). Helping others (either via taxes or law) looks like one of the least annoying ones to me. Example: I was forced to print, fill and scan some paperwork. I had to buy a scanner/printer for that (there will be more occasions). 40 quid gone (apart from another gadget filling up space) on something that could have been done by plain email text. I'd rather had spent that money on taxes if that went into the public health system to save the life of someone who can't spend a few hundred grand on treating a bad disease.

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I meant from a purely moral, not legal, perspective:

Why should one person be forced to help another?

"We are already forced to do stuff anyway", which is what I think your argument boils down to, doesn't seem like a convincing argument to me.

For me, this argument has two parts:
1. If your moral code involves forcing people to do something they don't want to do, that code of morality needs reconsidering. "I'm going to beat people into being better human beings" is the mantra of every champagne socialist and dictator through history. I've found that most people who think this way have some sort of hatred for their species.

2. How much of your life can be mortgaged to another mans needs? In your above example, if another man needs a heart operation to save his life, how much of your life should he be allowed to impact? Can he sell your house to cover it? After all, he needs a heart more than you need a house...
What about your childrens food? Surely they can skip a few meals so that he can have a new heart... ?

Bad things happen... that are not necessarily anyones fault. But that is a fact of reality... and 'bad luck' is not an open check to pillage the lives of others.

---

Having said that, I think most people would voluntarily help people out if they can. But again, it should be their choice... not yours.
 
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ChrisV

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Unfortunately I doubt this show will change their minds ... oh well, they can always vote for Bernie or Yang.
On a slight political derail, I was surprised to find Andrew Yang has had some decent entrepreneurial background, part of a team running a test prep company. Felt quite different from the others.

So I wanted to comment on this, but didn't want to derail the BBQ thread..

I actually like Yang. If you actually watch his Rogan interview he's really pro-entrepreneurship. Hands down the most pro-entrepreneur candidate in the lineup. He's a successful serial entrepreneur himself. Bernie is just a rich-people-hater.

Andrew Yang (born January 13, 1975) is an American 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, entrepreneur, lawyer, and philanthropist. He is the founder of Venture for America (VFA), a nonprofit that focuses on creating jobs in struggling American cities. Yang worked in various startups and early stage growth companies as a founder or executive from 2000 to 2009. After he founded VFA in 2011, the Obama administration selected him in 2012 as a "Champion of Change" and in 2015 as a "Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship". Yang is the author of the 2014 book Smart People Should Build Things and the 2018 book The War on Normal People.
Anyway, not to get political... but I think Yang and Sanders are totally different candidates. Yang is rabidly pro-entrepreneurship.
 

ChrisV

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No, that was in response to the assertion that AI will displace a lot of workers, which I agree with. UBI would probably increase employment in the short term, as people don't stand to make themselves worse off by losing benefits if they work.
Yea, I think that's another problem. I think people (especially men) derive much of their self esteem from being useful to society. This is a whole 'other topic, and I think we need to handle that, but I think that taking the financial edge off unemployment might be a good first measure.
 
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MHP368

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More than you'd think. Look at the Rust Belt, the area of the country where many jobs were lost due to automation and outsourcing. A lot of manufacturing jobs were lost in key swing states, which was a large reason Trump took the 2016 election. I think we're seeing the effects of this more than we think.

Thats been 30 years in the making, thats why i'm like "why is this a thing in the last 5 or 6 years?" , milton freidman? MLK was talking about a universal basic income!

I'm not seeing it though and i'm not convinced , they finally finished gutting the rust belt manufacturing sector and coal is being outcompeted? , thats not going to convince the average american nor even someone in the rust belt, they wan't agency 9they want jobs not handouts), you aren't going to convince average joe american (with a 6th grade reading comprehension) that this isn't the ever spooky "socialism"

but again, the gutting of american manufacturing has been a slow bleed for decades, just because its wrapping up doesn't mean squat to the rest of us. If / when they get automated cars down pat , that'll be a shit storm, 5.4 million truckers and taxi drivers jobless seemingly overnight. Then people will listen.
 

Kevin88660

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The minimum income idea concept was an old one. Friedman came up with it in addition to negative income tax. Basically you pay people to work. It is welfarism without distorting price mechanism-unlike unemployment benefit that encourages people not working.

The current context of it is totally different. It is bought up by silicon valley billionaires who envision a world of total dominance bu their AI machines that will make most wage laborer redundant.

There will be two things that is bound to happen based on their vision.
1) There will be unprecedented wealth
2)There will be unprecedented concentration of wealth in the hands of the Tech elites

But the Tech elites are doing is to find a political solution for their utopian/dystopian (depends on how you see it). They are smart enough to see that without a good political solution the angry majority are not going to let them off.

Minimum income is a good way because the average joe will be happily pursuing their passion. You can be selling painting that very few will buy but the monthly cheque will appear in your mailbox on time regardless of your sales. It is a way for the elites to co-exist peacefully with the redundant others in their vision of the future.
 

Kevin88660

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In the future utopian dystopian world where the robots and AI can create goods cheaply in large quantity, inflation is not a problem because the minimum income is just coupons for the average joe to buy these goods.
 
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luniac

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I thought about this proposal and have decided not to support it, at least not on a permanent basis.

I propose Universal Basic Housing.
Give everyone free shelter.
I argue that all U.S citizens are ENTITLED to a piece of property to live on.

Even the founding fathers were concerned about the issue of private property. At the time one could travel west and claim virgin land.
But they foresaw that one day all the land will be claimed and more and more individuals will not have their own land.
They foresaw that one would have to work a wage job to pay endless rent, and that it's little better than slavery, that it's not true freedom that America was built on.

Rent is the single greatest expense of the average joe.
If rent was not an issue, even 15 dollars minimum wage would be relatively comfortable living, not extravagant, but its not supposed to be anyway.

Unlike Universal Basic Income, basic housing only requires maintenance, not a set in stone constant cash expense that gets spent on who knows what...

You can't spend your housing on meth(maybe cook in it but it is what it is lol)
Universal Basic Income can be spent on drugs cause its just CASH, food stamps already get converted to cash all the time.
People take advantage of welfare and food stamps to get extra money while they got a side hustle making even more money in secret. Like the Jews in NYC, they're all on food stamps cause they game the system.

If you offer them some shitty free apartment, the freeloaders will spit and yell cause its not straight up cash, but the honest people will cry in joy that they get a guaranteed roof over their heads every night.

One major rule though: A Universal Basic House/Apartment is not for resale.
Either you live in it or you don't, you don't pay rent and you can't sell it.

If you wanna live in a mansion, if you want a Lamborghini, feel free to start a business and earn that mansion.

So in a nutshell, i believe every U.S. citizen should have the option to live in basic rent free housing as a perk of citizenship, as a reward for being a loyal tax paying citizen.

I think this would solve a lot of the complaints about minimum wage.

Hell, i live in affordable housing, a 2 bedroom with a backyard in brooklyn for about 1200 a month with my mother and brother. That's insanely cheap for current NYC prices. We could never afford a 2 bedroom comfortably any other way and we all have income.

I say eventually take it to the next step and make the housing completely free, maybe not the 2 bedroom where we live, but some kind of cookie cutter premade units similar to projects.
But don't make the same ridiculously strict income requirements of Section 8 Welfare Housing, where if you barely make any money you no longer qualify, which means you're F*cked cause u lose the section 8 but you can't afford a regular apartment.
People just say fuk it and stay poor with their welfare, that's not the way.
Take away the fear of losing your current shelter as you make steps to improve your life and earn more money. if you start earning more you will naturally want to move to a better spot when you are ready.





EDIT:
OTHERWISE YOU GET FRAUD LIKE THIS.
10,000 per month per apartment for homeless shelter!?
How much more corrupt can it get?


or this:

NYC has a law to provide shelter to anyone needing it, so since the homeless shelters are full to the brim, they rent out hotel rooms.
Imagine the costs....

And of course even the homeless shelters have rules that screw people over who try to improve their lives.
Strict times to reserve a bed or enter the shelter means you might have to choose between accepting a job with a conflicting schedule or getting some sleep in the "safety" of the shelter.
 
Last edited:

windchaser

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Are you saying that having a UBI might discourage employment?

I don't know that's what you meant, but I'll reply to the idea anyway.

I don't think so. And I'll explain why. No matter how much money people make, they generally want more. If you make 100K, you want 200K. If you make 600K, you want 1M. If you make 600M, you want 1.2B. I think the people that are only living on the UBI will just want more than that.

I don't think a UBI would increase unemployment because people are designed to constantly be moving forward. I don't think for most people that by them say a $1200/mo UBI, they'll just lazily sit on their butts. Keep in mind for much of human history humans only lived on about $3/day in constant 1991 dollars. And the ones that are lazy are likely already doing that, even if they work. There are plenty of people who work a job, collect a paycheck, and lazily don't contribute to their company (and therefore the economy.)

I think that most people have a drive to contribute just for contributions sake.


More than you'd think. Look at the Rust Belt, the area of the country where many jobs were lost due to automation and outsourcing. A lot of manufacturing jobs were lost in key swing states, which was a large reason Trump took the 2016 election. I think we're seeing the effects of this more than we think.


And I somewhat agree. This may not be a huge problem right now, but do we want to wait for riots like at the start of the Industrial Revolution? Or do we want to plan ahead
Interesting thougths, I agree in part, I also believe that lost people wouldnlike to seek more, but there would be many that settle with that. I have seen it, I live in a country where there is no UBI but there is universal healtycare and many subsidies, it is possible to live from government support and indeed many people do. I have seen cases in which people prefer not to work because they will make slightly more than with unemploynent help (although is true that part of this decision is "losing" the other subsidy, that would not be an issue with UBI). But still, there are a lot of people living out of the government in my country and they have no interest of working, studying or creating anything. I cannot imagine what would happen with a higher UBI!
In any case, ny guess would be that "lower quality" jobs that are necessary will need to offer a consoderable pay rise to be attractive, and that would generate inflation, probably to a point where UBI is not enough for anything and loses the purpose. Another option is that inflation still takes over UBI as it is used as the new base (same effect as printing money) and also loses the purpose.
I cannot think of any scenario that does not end up in inflation and UBI being inneffective to tell you the truth.

On the positive side, if it would somehow manage to be effective, my guess would be we will find more people spending lore tome on what they like (which creates higher demand for certain goods), probably we will see more researchers and more entrepreneurs (without having to worry about having the basics covered). But I believe this is utopic, in practice it will likely end in high inflation eroding all effects.
 
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