Universal Basic Income

[bekkilyn]

Why do you presume people hate them? Why is advocating for those with little seen as an attack on those with a lot?

We've been propagandized to think this way over the past couple decades or so. The wealthiest of the wealthy with many of the politicians in their pockets have done a great job keeping the proles divided so that we don't catch on to what is really going on. Now we're trained to fight their battles for them.

 

[381465]

Why do you presume people hate them? Why is advocating for those with little seen as an attack on those with a lot?

Comments in this thread and others that describe the wealthy as hoarders, selfish, appropriating, not earning their money, etc have given me the impression there is hatred.

 

[bekkilyn]

Comments in this thread and others that describe the wealthy as hoarders, selfish, appropriating, not earning their money, etc have given me the impression there is hatred.

In my case, it's not hatred, but that I have a strong insensitivity for injustice, and nothing is just about this ever-growing wealth gap between the super wealthy and everyone else. They're not creating jobs. The money's not trickling down. The issues continue to worsen and the middle class continues to disappear. Is a plutocracy the government structure we really want for the U.S.? Or a global plutocracy at the rate things are going?

 

[Belk]

Comments in this thread and others that describe the wealthy as hoarders, selfish, appropriating, not earning their money, etc have given me the impression there is hatred.

Why would that give you the impression of hatred? If I describe a quarterback as not worth the money he was being payed it does not mean I hate him. It is simply a critique of what I feel his value is in relation to what he earns.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I don't know how much damage this has ALREADY caused. I spent five years and $60k+ in loans to get a degree. That is ON TOP OF my grants and scholarships and working full time all through school. I chose a major which can justify that. But what about others? I can't imagine if my brother hadn't had my parents' help, as he majored in education. My friend is in that boat, where her teacher salary BARELY covers her expenses and student loan payments.

Is this ethical?

It's not. But that is a problem that really only exists in the US. For us europeans, it is completely unimaginable that we would actually require a loan or a job, to pay our way through school.

Off course we pay some money, but the vast majority is subsidized. You'ld have to be poor to the extreme before you couldn't pay a higher education. And those people then qualify for a scholarship, which over here means that you pay nothing.

In this part of the world, there's no such thing as not being able to afford a decent education.

Does this lead to the best and most productive workforce?

Not at all. In fact, it leads more to a "class" system then anything else, where the rich get to have an education and the poor don't. How many Einsteins, Farradays, Newtons,... has the world missed out on, because their parents couldn't afford to send them through college or university? We'll never know and exactly that is the sad part.

Does this allow for the most talented and productive to advance?

Nope. Exactly right. It only allows for those with money to do so.

We need a system and culture that allows all people to succeed if they put in work. Not just a few.

Exactly... and the way to do it, today, is make education accessible to everyone, regardless of how much money the parents have.

And in the future, the way to do that is to provide a basic universal income for everyone.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

We have a system (in the U.S.) that allows college grads to earn $1Million more than those who don't go on to college. That said anyone can do quite well without a college education, it all depends on what one wants in life. I once met a fellow who had an engineering degree but preferred living the "river rat' life with his family on the Mississippi river. He 'engineered' only enough to earn the money needed for things he couldn't catch, shoot, or trap. And there are more people like this than most realize. The normal American dream of wealth and security just aren't at the top of their list.

What a terrible argument....

So because some people are content by living of the land or by flipping burgers at McDonalds, nothing should be done to make college / university accessible to all citizens?

If that isn't what you were saying, then what WERE you saying?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

There is wealthy and there is super-duper wealthy. And most of them probably do work hard, but they don't necessarily work *proportionately* so much harder than other people to be able to justify having such a growing negative effect on our societies. For example:

• The 1 percent has 35.6 percent of all private wealth, more than the bottom 95 percent combined.
• The 400 wealthiest individuals on the Forbes 400 list have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans.

And it's only getting worse. I don't have issues with some people getting richer than other people, but I do have large concerns over the ever-growing gap between the wealthiest of us and everyone else. It's a recipe for huge trouble ahead.

That's an inescapable result of capitalism. Especially as implemented in the US, where there is far less regulation then in the rest of the world.

A lot of US practices, especially concerning regulations in context of the workforce, are quite unthinkable here. Not to say, illegal.

From the top of my head:
- minimum wage in the US is too low
- no regulation concerning paid vacation days
- potentially bankrupting health care regulations
- having to acquire monster loans for education
- ...

Such things destroy equal opportunity for citizens.
Obviously, rich people will always have it easier then poor people, even if only for the sheer fact of having a safety net to fall back on.

But couple that with out-of-the-box easier access to health care and proper education (or in some cases, actually exclusive access to such) and you end up in a system where the rich have all the opportunities, while the poor are doomed in advance to flipping burgers (for the rich).

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Government spending favors the poor because they contribute nothing to it. As a net taxpayer I expect tax funded services. The poor do not have the same expectation. For them it's all benefits with no cost.

[Staff edit].

First, you do get tax funded service. And plenty of it.
Most of your government and everything it does, is funded by it...

Second, a healthy workforce is a productive workforce. A productive workforce generates wealth. An unproductive workforce doesn't.

Social security (in all its forms) benefits the whole of society - including the rich.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

What a terrible argument....

So because some people are content by living of the land or by flipping burgers at McDonalds, nothing should be done to make college / university accessible to all citizens?

If that isn't what you were saying, then what WERE you saying?

What I meant was that college isn't the be-all-end-all that many make it out to be. It's not for everyone and everyone shouldn't be pushed toward it.

There are many opportunities for material success outside of college. Maybe people should be pushed toward those, after all it is the trades that are suffering most for qualified employees, not white collar jobs.

There are also many reasons for material failure besides not having a college degree. For example, if my wife hadn't left me we all would have been much better off financially. It killed my desire to move ahead for many years.

Also, I turned down a great opportunity because the job wouldn't allow me enough free personal time. I have never regretted that decision. That said I'm doing fine.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

[Staff edit].

First, you do get tax funded service. And plenty of it.
Most of your government and everything it does, is funded by it...

Of course. That's what I said. I expect those services, having paid for them.

Second, a healthy workforce is a productive workforce. A productive workforce generates wealth. An unproductive workforce doesn't.

Sure.

Social security (in all its forms) benefits the whole of society - including the rich.

SS isn't a 'tax funded benefit'. It is a self-funded program paid for by working people. It is also a source of funding for the gov't as excess funds are borrowed by them.

 

[dcalling]

I think your idea on what "technology" consists of, is stuck in the 90s.

Todays advances in AI and Robotics - and especially the combination of both - is opening a big can of worms.

Let's take a realistic trip to a near future of an all-connected world (the internet of things)... I'm not saying that this is how it will be. I'm saying that this scenario is perfectly feasable with today's technological trend and it would only take 2 decades at most to acquire all necessary technology.


It's a typical saturday. You need to do your grosseries.

Currently, you would get in your car, drive to the supermarket, fill your chart, wait in line, have everything scanned by the cashier, you pay, load your car, drive home and unload everything.

Step 1: how this will change: you wouldn't drive your car. Instead, you tell your car to drive you.
Step 2: you no longer fill your own shopping chart or wait in line. Or as a cashier, you no longer have that job. Because now, the supermarket is like a giant gumball machine. You send your list, through some app prob, your car drives you to the supermarket machine, you identify yourself and out comes a shopping chart with everything you ordered.
Step 3: your car no longer drives you. You stay at home and you just tell your car to go pick up your grosseries. The supermarket machine now is able to load grosseries into/unto a car through a universal mechanism.
Step 4: you no longer tell you car to pick it up. your "smart home" knows that you need grosseries. It's an AI engine that powers it, so it also knows, perhaps even better then you yourself, what you want and need. It sends the shopping list automatically. At some point, your car simply asks you "is it okay for me to go pick your grosseries now?", to make sure that you don't need the car. Or, off course, a supermarket drone just delivers it to your house.

That supermarket used to employ some 30 people. Now it only requires a maintenance crew of perhaps 3. And if they need to work, it means the machine isn't working.

Now, consider this level of technology in all the industries that need to exist in order for that supermarket machine to be there... It needs products. So you require factories and distribution.

Again, considering the rapid advances in robotics, I'm having trouble finding examples of things that are currently done by humans in the "production" process, that couldn't be done by robots. And likely done better as well.

The technology that makes your car drive on auto-pilot, will also make just about every driver job in distribution obsolete. That goes for all transportation. Boats, cars, trucks, airplanes, trains,...

And you can think about this in the exact same way for just about all industries.
Like a simple bar for instance....

What can a waitress do, that a drone can't do - except perhaps dropping a tray of full glasses?

All in all, I think the estimate of 40% job loss due to this trend, is actually rather optimistic. I think it will be a lot more.




Plumbers and handymen - okay. But please note that those are already existing jobs. In and in the future I painted above, we won't be requiring more of them...

As for security guards... they will become obsolete as well. Or at the VERY least, we will require FAR less of them. Smart security systems are well on their way. In fact, I just watched an incredible demo of such a system in context of "safety at the workplace".

Smart camera's easily detected safety violations and notified those responsible to take action. Through facial recognition, it was also easily able to notify managers if certain workers were using tools that they weren't authorized to use.
In case of actual accidents (fires, explosions, wounded humans, etc), it also automatically notified emergency services.

This system does a FAR better job then an entire team of professional safety guards. Similar systems could easily be deployed for overall security. No more need for plenty of patrolling officers. Or at least: a lot less need for such.



I beg the differ. Already today, it is problematic to feed all humans. Human population is still quickly rising. Global warming won't make it easier to grow even more food. And that's not even counting drinkable water, which will be even more of a problem.

If anything, I predict the price of food and water to rise.



I don't see why.



Currently, the largest cost for businesses, big or small, are the employees.
There's a reason why big factories make use of robots already today. Do you really think they would deploy automated assembly lines today, if it were actually cheaper (ie: more profit) to have humans do those jobs?

Well, in the future all that stuff that are repetitive (drive a car, buy food) will be automated, true.

However think about this. A farm used to be full of people, now only needs a handful. Telephone used to be maned by people, now all machines. Does any one still complaint that they can't be phone operators or famers? Did those job loss affect anyone? Where did they go?

People will AWAYS find ways to make things easier. The moment that is done, they will AYWAYS find better ways to amuse themselves. I remember back when software engineers still uses c/C++, and I told myself debugging crashes needs skills and I will be safe. Then come Java/C#, where a crash produce stacktraces that even a fool can know how to fix, and I was a bit worried that any high school student will take my job. Well, it didn't take long for this to evolve to all different forms and cool ways of programming that it became even more complex and hard to debug even with the super easy tools. Now even a simple website with scripts needs transpilers and packagers and just that is not easy to setup!! Sure eventually we will make them easy again, but we humans will take on the easiness and make more complex and fun things to come, just what God give us, creativity

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

SS isn't a 'tax funded benefit'. It is a self-funded program paid for by working people.

...through taxes.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Well, in the future all that stuff that are repetitive (drive a car, buy food) will be automated, true.
However think about this. A farm used to be full of people, now only needs a handful. Telephone used to be maned by people, now all machines. Does any one still complaint that they can't be phone operators or famers? Did those job loss affect anyone? Where did they go?

This is why I said that your idea of technology is stuck in the 90s.
The combination of "smart" systems, AI and robotics extend the reach of automation far beyond mere "repetitive" tasks.

Take that "smart safety system" for example, of which I posted a clip with a demo. There's nothing "repetitive" about that.

The advancement and automation that is standing at our door now, is unlike any previous automation wave in that sense.

People will AWAYS find ways to make things easier. The moment that is done, they will AYWAYS find better ways to amuse themselves. I remember back when software engineers still uses c/C++, and I told myself debugging crashes needs skills and I will be safe. Then come Java/C#, where a crash produce stacktraces that even a fool can know how to fix, and I was a bit worried that any high school student will take my job.

That's not a valid comparision at all.
A valid comparision would be if AI bots were to become so advanced that they actually do the programming / application generation on demand by the end user - with no additional human programmers involved.

Sure, you still need people to create those bots, maintain them, improve them, etc.
But you don't need millions of programmers to do that, obviously.

Well, it didn't take long for this to evolve to all different forms and cool ways of programming that it became even more complex and hard to debug even with the super easy tools. Now even a simple website with scripts needs transpilers and packagers and just that is not easy to setup!! Sure eventually we will make them easy again, but we humans will take on the easiness and make more complex and fun things to come, just what God give us, creativity

As said, it doesn't look at all like it will be that way this time around.
Previous automation waves took over jobs with repetitive tasks and in the process, it created lots of other jobs - probably even more then it took in the first place.

That won't be the case this time. The new reality will surely create some jobs, but not even near the same number that it will annihilate.

Precisely because smart systems with AI powered engines engaged in machine learning, are capable of doing MUCH more then mere repetitive tasks or precision processes.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

...through taxes.

At the point of collection yes, but distribution is only to those who have contributed to it (and qualifying family members). Thus it isn't part of general revenue spending. Same with Medicare 'taxes'. It is the excess (SS Trust Fund) that is borrowed and is spent as general revenue.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

Actually, the most likely scenario for financial disaster is deflationary depression:

The Lack Of Liquidity Is A Ticking Time Bomb | Seeking Alpha

With millions of people receiving a government check every month I don't think liquidity will be a problem. The streets will be awash with money, just like Germany in the 30's.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

But couple that with out-of-the-box easier access to health care and proper education (or in some cases, actually exclusive access to such) and you end up in a system where the rich have all the opportunities, while the poor are doomed in advance to flipping burgers (for the rich).

The only reason the poor flip those burgers is that the fast food chains won't hire those overqualified college grads (with degrees in PoliSci) that can't get a job anywhere else.

Minimum wage jobs have great value for entry level experience. High schoolers use the money to buy clothing and iphones, older kids use the money to help with college tuition. It's all good.

If wealth is what you crave skip college and invest the money in real estate. You'll get there much faster than college grads will. You can even start in high school, flipping burgers.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

.

 

[LadyCrosstalk]

With millions of people receiving a government check every month I don't think liquidity will be a problem. The streets will be awash with money, just like Germany in the 30's.

That was just temporary--in a modern industrial state like Germany was at the time (it's even temporary with messed-up, failed states). What was the much bigger problem was the collapse and deflationary depression that was triggered by the Federal Reserve, when they withdrew a huge amount of cash from the system. Even Ben Bernanke said so (he did his Ph.D. thesis on it). The thing that most people don't realize is that the 2008 crisis never really went away. It is still draining the system. The Fed has had to crank up the printing press big time to try to keep things from collapsing.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

That was just temporary--in a modern industrial state like Germany was at the time (it's even temporary with messed-up, failed states). What was the much bigger problem was the collapse and deflationary depression that was triggered by the Federal Reserve, when they withdrew a huge amount of cash from from the system. Even Ben Bernanke said so (he did his Ph.D. thesis on it). The thing that most people don't realize is the the 2008 crisis never really went away. It is still draining the system. The Fed has had to crank up the printing press big time to try to keep things from collapsing.

I agree, but I wish they would print equity instead of more debt.

 

[LadyCrosstalk]

I agree, but I wish they would print equity instead of more debt.

Oh, but those getting richer and richer off of the debt LIKE government debt.