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This is a thread for discussing the theory, implementation and effects of a Universal Basic Income. What is UBI?quote:SA forum posters think they should be paid money to do nothing but sit around and post all day. Mellow Seas posted:They wouldn't be paid to sit around and post, they would be paid to be law-abiding human citizens who are warm, dry and fed. Posting all day would just be what they did because they like it and it's free. Wow, sounds nice, could it happen in the US? Mellow Seas posted:UBI is absolutely essential, and probably coming within 10-20 years; let's hope it's not one that reduces social support like Andrew Yang's. (A UBI without universal healthcare and some kind of housing guarantee would not work very well.) The cold, unceasing march of technology, combined with the very culturally embedded idea that everybody should be working 40 hours a week to deserve to live, has created some stupid economic situations, where people are paid to do stuff that doesn't actually have to be done at all, because they "need" the "work". Mellow Seas posted:The next step in self-checkouts (already piloted by Amazon) is no checkouts at all. We have sufficient technology to electronically monitor what people are taking out of the store and simply charge them for it. Elon Musk: Free cash handouts ‘will be necessary’ if robots take humans’ jobs Famous dickhead economist Milton Friedman actually supported a form of UBI Your cool British socialist uncle thinks it's time UBI proposals can be insufficient, and even used to reduce the solidity of the social safety net. Andrew Yang's proposal in the 2020 Democratic primary was along these lines. Douglas Rushkoff on how a poorly implemented UBI can increase inequality A list of real-life experiments with UBI can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income#Pilot_programs_and_experiments So, my posting colleagues, what are your thoughts on Universal Basic Income - the first step towards our aspirations of Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism? Will it remain the stuff of science fiction and academia, or will it be making a difference in our lives just over the horizon? What should a UBI be set at, and how would the money for it be generated? Is this even something we want to do at all, or will it just create an unsustainably large idle class? What kind of things shouldn't be monetized, and just given to people for free, like health care? Mellow Seas fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Mar 14, 2022 |
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Mar 14, 2022 14:33
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Some selected posts from USCE to kick us off: Yinlock on how UBI could affect political messaging: Yinlock posted:This is why I tend to roll my eyes when politicians brag about how there's just SO MANY JOBS! Like Jobs(tm) are, on their own, some kind of precious resource. The people working those jobs are naturally unimportant, of course, what matters is the Jobs themselves. Fister Roboto on deleterious trends UBI could fight against, and some interesting history: Fister Roboto posted:The problem isn't automation or streamlining themselves. The problem is that under capitalism, automation results in bigger profits for the capital class at the expense of the working class. Ideally, in a worker controlled economy, increased productivity from automation would mean shorter hours for the same pay, or greater pay for the same hours, or some other benefit to reflect the fact that workers are more productive. Instead it's just "lol you're fired, learn to code lmao". Any time something gets streamlined or a position gets removed, it's more money for the execs and gently caress you to the workers. It's exactly the same for both white and blue collar work, but there's a whole host of reasons for why that divide exists in the first place. ex post facho on some speculative fiction: ex post facho posted:I'm going to take this discussion on automation and UBI to share one of my favorite examinations of the subject in a speculative fiction called "Manna", by Marshall Brain. I believe someone here on the forums once linked it to me and it's stuck with me ever since.
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Mar 14, 2022 15:00
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I think a lot of focus goes into the idea of automation removing jobs, but I think there is this other issue that we don't necessarily deal with which is that we have a pretty large glut of jobs that are not necessary or not necessary to exist on a model where the job must exist 24/7/365. The question of what do you about essential industries like truck drivers who might become redundant is a fair one, but there are also people who are holding white collar jobs and frankly doing busy work for a lot of their days. I think there needs to be a bigger question about the purpose of work and reimagining a virtuous society that no longer has to work all the time. I find Hilary Clinton's UBI plan really, really interesting. Partially because I think if she had just run on it, she might have actually won, but also shows the potential issues that UBI runs into. The essential issue that Clinton ran into was fear that the UBI would have to be subsidized by cutting social programs elsewhere. I think it's a fair concern, and it makes me wonder how we should approach things. I think UBI basically has to come with a whole reimagining of our society in general and is only going to be entirely successful once we do that. But we also live in a democratic society, so part of me also wonders if we need to just lead with "Free Money" to get people on the bus and hopefully bought in the other stuff.
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Mar 14, 2022 15:52
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Timeless Appeal posted:I find Hilary Clinton's UBI plan really, really interesting. Partially because I think if she had just run on it, she might have actually won, but also shows the potential issues that UBI runs into. The essential issue that Clinton ran into was fear that the UBI would have to be subsidized by cutting social programs elsewhere. I think it's a fair concern, and it makes me wonder how we should approach things. Unsurprising that Clinton wussed out, but I thought this bit of the Vox article was worth highlighting: quote:Iran has a [UBI] program. While winding down the country’s extensive oil subsidies for citizens, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad implemented a flat cash dividend, paid out to every man, woman, and child in the country. It's been dialed back a bit since, but it also has shown few negative effects. A study examining the Iranian basic income’s effect on work concluded that “the program did not affect labor supply in any appreciable way.” That’s especially astounding given the size of the benefit: In 2011, when it was introduced, it provided about 29 percent of the median household income on average. In the US, that would mean paying out $16,390 to the average family. That is a pretty significant income floor with no effect on labor supply!
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Mar 14, 2022 16:09
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Sounds inflationary to me, hard pass.
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Mar 14, 2022 16:14
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The best way to fund a UBI, in my opinion, is just with regular income taxes, perhaps topped off with a transaction tax or carbon tax or something. That way you wouldn't be unable to make the math work like Clinton's team was. The US GDP is about $63,000 per capita. Let's say we wanted to make the UBI $1,000 a month per man, woman and child. $12,000 a year. You would need to shave off about 20% of the economy to provide that - not insignificant, but if the labor supply remained roughly constant, very feasible (outside of the obvious political opposition). This could also be paired with features that rich people liked. Such as: less progressive taxation. No more standard deduction. (The untaxed UBI would create a practical equivalent of progressive taxation and a standard deduction.) Maybe reducing or even eliminating the minimum wage, as everybody would be getting the equivalent of full-time work at $6 an hour just for breathing, and it would be much harder to coerce workers into working for a paltry sum when they could already eat and sleep without it. Things that it should absolutely not be paired with, although bad people will try, are eliminating Medicaid and Medicare, or financial assistance for school. It would be impractical to pay for these things on a UBI of any realistic size, so education and healthcare would be less accessible instead of more for a ton of people. Timeless Appeal posted:The question of what do you about essential industries like truck drivers who might become redundant is a fair one, but there are also people who are holding white collar jobs and frankly doing busy work for a lot of their days. I think there needs to be a bigger question about the purpose of work and reimagining a virtuous society that no longer has to work all the time. General Dog posted:Sounds inflationary to me, hard pass. Now, if taking money from rich people and giving it to poor people means groceries cost twice as much and rare art costs 1/10 as much, that's not a great outcome. Is that how it would go? Mellow Seas fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Mar 14, 2022 |
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Mar 14, 2022 16:19
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Remember those free checks we got from covid relief? Were you on unemployment at the time? That's what UBI could look like. It's not the best implementation but it wasn't the worst. We were looking at yet another historically hosed recession that could've lasted another decade, instead we reversed it completely. Poverty levels lifted. There was so much demand it strained our supply chain. All because we just gave people the money.
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Mar 14, 2022 18:23
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Freakazoid_ posted:Remember those free checks we got from covid relief? Were you on unemployment at the time? But that brings up another issue, market manipulation by big corporations. I know at least one company suddenly experienced sudden, severe inflation of the prices of their products right around the time people started to have some spendable money that they had saved up thanks to those checks. For some, that money vanished far quicker than it might have otherwise as a result. There's even evidence that some companies used COVID 19 itself to jack prices up and make a quick buck off of people's suffering despite an actual real lack of issues with their own supply networks like they claimed. You can't really have an effective UBI without also having tight controls on capitalists and businesses in general that want to exploit the situation to maximize their own profit at the expense of everyone else. Otherwise you'll get situations where there is price gouging according to the standards of the UBI. This also would go along with the attendant bigotry that comes with a situation where people are effectively enslaved to a lovely life by debt and/or bound to their location due to their circumstances. As an example of this, just look at how some minority communities have to deal with large companies opening up restaurants and fast food locales in their area with prices jacked up to the nines compared to elsewhere due to the ease of exploiting the community, often with little recourse for the victims. From what I remember, in that situation the pricing is usually gauged to be around what would maximize exploiting/extracting the wealth of the people living in the area. Given that we won't even hold companies to a form of punishment that will actually hurt them when they pull poo poo like this (At best it's usually a fine that nowhere near takes away the funds they stole by careful manipulation of prices.) i'm not sure how we can have an effective UBI in America. Doubly so when you consider how infiltrated politics is by billionaires and other big money types that got where they were by exploiting the system. Any across the board jump in the amount of available money a person, family, or community has would inevitably be preyed upon (if not economically, then institutionally, but more on that in a few) by vulture capitalists that want to extract that wealth into their own pockets for their own gain. At worst, somehow not qualifying for UBI (Which contradictory as it sounds is exactly a thing that could end up happening. Just look at how many decent initiatives get means tested by centrists and right wing Democrats into oblivion. Then factor in racism, bigotry from non-religious types, "religious And then there's the issue of the Republicans as a political entity, along with the sort of people that actively push policies and back them. Factor in that the Republicans would absolutely be on board with this* form of profiteering/exploitive sabotage to gently caress over the Democrats or just to make a quick buck (similar to how Rick Scott basically laundered money into his family members pockets by mandating that people on various social service/welfare oriented programs had to take mandatory drug tests) even without the influence of big money donors and it seems like it could end up poisoning the well at best if done without some massive changes in how our country operates and tolerates the worst of us trying to gently caress with the rest of us.  At the very least there would need to be a lot of ground work done before a proper UBI wouldn't just get dragged down and slaughtered by bad (or in some of the above examples, straight up parasitic) actors to effectively make it impossible for anyone to pitch it or anything like it for the next decade or two. That ground work would have to come long before the issue of UBI was being pushed for by the public at large for it to have a chance at all in practice. *As they currently are literally trying to get votes by spite as policy, are increasingly listening to groups that pursue efforts for anti democracy/minority rule, and in some states like Texas have literally made laws that go after groups like LGBT minorities by stealing/abusing children in a way that has long since been known by the medical community at large to incentivize suicidal ideation either immediately or later on in life as an actual election strategy and matter of general policy itself. I'm not sure how you can work with people like that when it comes to any sort of humanistic endeavor like a UBI. To be frank, i'm not even certain people should. That sort of thinking is straight up beyond being cruel and (in the case of trying to get as many trans kids killed as possible either now or later) is literally going into the realm of attempted genocide by way of institutional proxy. Which is incidentally something the LGBT community familiar with the AIDS epidemic experienced back in the 80's from right wingers and right wing christianity too. So it's not like those views are new or a fad. How do you ensure everyone gets into this system of UBI when you've got an entire political party and attendant propaganda apparatus that actively works for monstrous poo poo like that? And don't get me started with the fear mongering about immigrants or foreigners whenever it's convenient,. Something that for all intents and purposes might as well translate to justifying persecution of people whose skin is a shade darker than milk for whatever excuse is politically convenient at the time. Just look at the way the law was often circumvented during the Trump admin to see how a UBI could get selectively sabotaged under a Republican administration. Really, a whole lot of stuff could be listed here to demonstrate the ways, angles, and methods the Republicans would try to or have the means to sabotage a UBI either before, during the policy making process, or after the fact. Pretty much all of which would need to be fought against to avoid a sort of New Deal situation where some get these benefits and others get nothing or burdens. Unfortunately, doing so would turn this into a dissertation so.
Archonex fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Mar 14, 2022 |
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Mar 14, 2022 18:28
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We've already gone through this before when 99% of people worked on farms and had their jobs made obsolete by new farming technology. People worked more than 40 hours to earn less so overall this was a good thing. If you want an easier life with less work you have to oppose inflation, and inflationary policies like UBI
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Mar 14, 2022 22:06
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Why fight for a UBI over more socialist or communist policies for organizing our labor? You hit the nail on the head with how much unnecessary labor there is but we could direct that into other endeavors. I'm not against setting a standard of living but why a UBI over other options? UBI honestly feels like life support for capitalism, especially if the fourth revolution is coming (I'm skeptical) and we're moving to robots and automation taking over the majority of work. If we have the ability to eliminate most work why is that staying in the hands of capitalists? In short, if we have the ability to eliminate unnecessary labor, the tools to automate large scale menial tasks, and could provide the resources to provide an equitable standard of living to everyone why would we be doing it with a UBI instead of the more radical changes those would allow? Gumball Gumption fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Mar 15, 2022 |
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Mar 15, 2022 00:05
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Gumball Gumption posted:Why fight for a UBI over more socialist or communist policies for organizing our labor? You hit the nail on the head with how much unnecessary labor there is but we could direct that into other endeavors. I'm not against setting a standard of living but why a UBI over other options? UBI honestly feels like life support for capitalism, especially if the fourth revolution is coming (I'm skeptical) and we're moving to robots and automation taking over the majority of work. If we have the ability to eliminate most work why is that staying in the hands of capitalists? quote:In short, if we have the ability to eliminate unnecessary labor, the tools to automate large scale menial tasks, and could provide the resources to provide an equitable standard of living to everyone why would we be doing it with a UBI instead of the more radical changes those would allow? A big part of the appeal of UBI is that it's easier to envision a political path for it than, say, full socialism. It is minimally disruptive to society, because you're just basically grafting it on the society you already have, instead of tearing down your industries and institutions and starting from scratch. (I think you know I am a big fan of political feasibility.  ) And it would change the power dynamics of society to have the threat of destitution taken off the table.And it's not a classically Marxist idea that labor should be optional. I think it is a key feature of UBI that people should be allowed to not work if they don't feel up to it. We have a conception of "disability" in this country but it is difficult to access and extremely unevenly applied (not to mention inadequate). Maybe people should be able to decide themselves what they're "able" to do. Do you think people should be able to opt out of the workforce? In other words, should we "legalize" being a bum artist or a NEET basement dweller without having the financial means (through a trust fund or mom's good graces) to support that lifestyle? ("No" is a legitimate answer! It's what most people think.) Now, you could achieve that without a UBI, if say, you had disability- or unemployment-like payments that could be claimed indefinitely with no means testing besides not working. But that just seems more politically infeasible to me, because people are more amenable to benefits they receive themselves. (Yes, the increased taxation would mean it was actually reducing the income of well-off people, but they would still be glad to have "received the benefit".)
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Mar 15, 2022 01:00
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Honestly I agree with a lot of that in that yes, if the goal is get people money for a standard of living this is the easiest way to do it. I'm just not sure it's a good goal. Ok, two other questions to try to understand this. Is this just for America? And if so is all the labor we currently rely on from poorer nations something that's no longer needed? Will it be automated and those countries dealing with their own UBI? Or is UBI being achieved on their labor? Also what's the dollar amount per person that you imagine? Is that going to be more efficient than social services that ensure food, housing, and healthcare?
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Mar 15, 2022 02:29
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'goons just wanna have funds' was right there and you hosed it up, voted 1
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Mar 15, 2022 03:40
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Is there a good explainer anywhere of how a potential national UBI would be paid for? Personally I am a big believer in MMT but that doesn't win any arguments
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Mar 15, 2022 16:37
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RedSpecStu posted:We've already gone through this before when 99% of people worked on farms and had their jobs made obsolete by new farming technology. People worked more than 40 hours to earn less so overall this was a good thing. If you want an easier life with less work you have to oppose inflation, and inflationary policies like UBI Farms were not made obsolete by technology! Technology broke down highly skilled jobs, creating demand for a middle class workforce that farms could not compete with. It was farms that had to adopt technology to deal with the lack of willing workers, and the vast majority of family farms ended up selling to agribusiness anyway. Since the 1990's, technology has been breaking down middle class jobs. Most people have nowhere to go but to lower class jobs, with only some finding their way out through college, which itself has lower odds of landing a good paying job than it did 20 years ago. At some point technology will break down lower class jobs and we're seeing threats to this in various upcoming technologies. I'm not convinced inflation is something to worry about anymore. The covid relief money had no impact on inflation. The current inflationary pressure comes from the weakened supply chain, which should sort itself out by the end of the year. There's also, according to modern monetary theory, a lot more room to just spend since the US is the issuer of currency, but that theory is a bit over my head. Just keep in mind these things: The US approves billions in military funding every year without question, and the insane demand for US bonds is an indicator as to how investors really feel about the value of the dollar even with inflation.
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Mar 15, 2022 18:25
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Manager Hoyden posted:Is there a good explainer anywhere of how a potential national UBI would be paid for? Personally I am a big believer in MMT but that doesn't win any arguments Take some money out of the massively overfunded and wasteful military and police for starters.
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Mar 16, 2022 01:33
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Take some money out of the massively overfunded and wasteful military and police for starters. If you could divert half those funds (politically infeasible right now, but I mean, this is a UBI thread, so...) that's $1500 of your UBI. Add in a financial transaction tax and carbon taxes, like Clinton's plan - that would probably raise about $400b, so there's another $1,200 or so. Anything vaguely popular that reduces the size of other tax hike helps the effort. (You need to about double tax revenue to fund a $12k/year UBI.) I think a wealth tax is a particular must-have. Warren's proposal (which was incredibly modest - 2 cents for every dollar above 50 million) would add enough for another thousand bucks annually, and you could scale that up real quick by reducing the exemption. DEEP STATE PLOT posted:'goons just wanna have funds' was right there and you hosed it up, voted 1
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Mar 16, 2022 02:23
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Man I just had a real fuckin' crack-ping thinking about those wealth tax numbers in this context. For 2% of the money above the equivalent of 750 years of median US household income, you can give everybody in the loving country a thousand dollars. Jesus Christ.
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Mar 16, 2022 02:26
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Another municipal guaranteed income pilot program is happening in California, in San Diego, on the heels of similar programs in Stockton and West Hollywood. The program is limited, of course - this trial will provide payments to 150 households. It's not explicitly means tested by income, but children are required and only residents of four low-wealth zip codes are eligible. Guaranteed income program will provide $500 monthly to San Diego families in need \/\/\/\/ Yeah, their value is mostly as case studies (and none of them have ever had unfavorable results, to my knowledge.) In a big state like CA with a lot of captured industries, or a small, niche state like VT, you might be able to sustain a state program, but outside of possibly LA and NYC I don't see any municipality having any luck with it. Mellow Seas fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Mar 16, 2022 |
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Mar 16, 2022 21:03
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the freedom of capital to move around means those localized initiatives are all doomed to failure in the long run imo
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Mar 16, 2022 21:09
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UBI sounds great but good luck getting the rich to pay for it this century
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Mar 17, 2022 10:46
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There is zero chance of UBI ever taking off in the US. If it ever takes off, it will un take off without without even the meddling of the powers that be. No matter how successful a pilot study is, perhaps because a pilot study does so well. Work is so primal to how Americans view themselves that it can't be excised, ever. "What do I do with my time" fuels an American's Death Anxiety, and that is the sister motivation to work-as-a-lifestyle. There is no such thing as being existentially content in America, and that's what UBI fulfills on a psychological level (running unconsciously parallel to fulfilling physical needs). America would need to dissolve as a country and empire and be known as something completely different, then any "American" who lived before the new thing would have to pass of old age, and then it would be a generation or two before it could be accepted. The addiction to work is encoded into every American's epigenome, and that knot takes some time to massage out.
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Mar 17, 2022 13:51
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thehandtruck posted:There is zero chance of UBI ever taking off in the US. If it ever takes off, it will un take off without without even the meddling of the powers that be. No matter how successful a pilot study is, perhaps because a pilot study does so well. Work is so primal to how Americans view themselves that it can't be excised, ever. "What do I do with my time" fuels an American's Death Anxiety, and that is the sister motivation to work-as-a-lifestyle. There is no such thing as being existentially content in America, and that's what UBI fulfills on a psychological level (running unconsciously parallel to fulfilling physical needs). Well I don’t want to work and I’m an American so…
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Mar 17, 2022 14:22
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regardless surely you can still work unless musk's robots take your job, then surely you can still work as a volunteer just so you don't kill yourself from the american existential dreads while collecting your UBI the problem is you will not be able to get the system to make this happen until people start starving and the rich realise it's more economically viable to keep you at home jerking off rather than destroying their poo poo.
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Mar 17, 2022 14:51
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DrSunshine posted:Well I don’t want to work and I’m an American so… Of course, me neither. But we are outliers. That's why we're posting on these dead gay forums. But the collective consciousness of America has a single identity: pain and death. The way that this singular mind tries to push away pain and death is to consume. working and consuming go hand in hand bc they're two sides of the same coin. Often times the ultra rich still work out of boredom, its the only thing that keeps them sane-ish. That documentary by the heir of J and J shows a lot of this.
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Mar 17, 2022 16:42
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The ultra rich being broken as gently caress doesn't actually trickle down into the psyche of all the wage slaves
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Mar 17, 2022 17:14
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thehandtruck posted:Of course, me neither. But we are outliers. That's why we're posting on these dead gay forums. But the collective consciousness of America has a single identity: pain and death. The way that this singular mind tries to push away pain and death is to consume. working and consuming go hand in hand bc they're two sides of the same coin. Often times the ultra rich still work out of boredom, its the only thing that keeps them sane-ish. That documentary by the heir of J and J shows a lot of this. I dunno man, I bet if you go to the local dollar store, big box retail, gas station, or outlet grocery where most Americans work and ask them, hey, do you like to work? Does your job give you meaning in life? Do you want to do this job until you die? They would probably reply "hell no, this job sucks, but I'm only doing it because I have rent and bills to pay and kids to feed".
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Mar 17, 2022 17:45
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Harold Fjord posted:The ultra rich being broken as gently caress doesn't actually trickle down into the psyche of all the wage slaves it doesnt need to trickle down. Its everywhere. Ask the average person in the post below yours what they think of UBI. Hell ask them who they voted for. Picture all the chuds on govt assistance, ask them their thoughts on govt handouts. Im surprised theres pushback on this idea lol, americans hate each other
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Mar 17, 2022 18:09
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DrSunshine posted:I dunno man, I bet if you go to the local dollar store, big box retail, gas station, or outlet grocery where most Americans work and ask them, hey, do you like to work? Does your job give you meaning in life? Do you want to do this job until you die? They would probably reply "hell no, this job sucks, but I'm only doing it because I have rent and bills to pay and kids to feed". but the cheerios insta page says we have a hustle culture??
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Mar 17, 2022 18:09
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thehandtruck posted:it doesnt need to trickle down. Its everywhere. Ask the average person in the post below yours what they think of UBI. Hell ask them who they voted for. Picture all the chuds on govt assistance, ask them their thoughts on govt handouts. Im surprised theres pushback on this idea lol, americans hate each other Americans are feral animals incapable of good things is always my favorite take.
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Mar 17, 2022 18:14
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Given that covid relief was passed under a republican president and senate, I think it's possible that UBI will happen under unexpected circumstances.
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Mar 17, 2022 18:34
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Freakazoid_ posted:Given that covid relief was passed under a republican president and senate, I think it's possible that UBI will happen under unexpected circumstances. It always turns into "How do we pay for it?" and then slandering the recipients as welfare queens/kings.
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Mar 17, 2022 18:39
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CommieGIR posted:It always turns into "How do we pay for it?" and then slandering the recipients as welfare queens/kings. Ya exactly and it happens from the bottom up too, not just from the top down. Many people in the lower two classes seethed hatred at Bernie when he ran. There's thousands of accounts where people who receive any kind of welfare hate other people who get it. Same ideology that was spoken about in the "Not My Abortion" piece from a while back. Gumball Gumption posted:Americans are feral animals incapable of good things is always my favorite take. I dont know if ur being facetious but that is 100% my take. And just because there are pockets of goodness and good people doesnt mean that as a collective we are diseased. edit: Anyway, sorry if these posts are too negative. I think UBI can and will work in other countries. And when the American Empire falls in a hundred years UBI will very likely be implemented and work well then. thehandtruck fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Mar 17, 2022 |
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Mar 17, 2022 19:09
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thehandtruck posted:Ya exactly and it happens from the bottom up too, not just from the top down. Many people in the lower two classes seethed hatred at Bernie when he ran. There's thousands of accounts where people who receive any kind of welfare hate other people who get it. Same ideology that was spoken about in the "Not My Abortion" piece from a while back. It's American exceptionalism except in reverse, Americans are so horrible and vile that they can't have good things. It's extra funny with why UBI won't happen since UBI is already the awful capitalist half measure that makes sure people are on the edge and need capitalists instead of funding social services that provide for people. It's literally throwing money at the problem until it goes away but the problem is poor people dying in the streets.
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Mar 17, 2022 19:16
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thehandtruck posted:it doesnt need to trickle down. Its everywhere. Ask the average person in the post below yours what they think of UBI. Hell ask them who they voted for. Picture all the chuds on govt assistance, ask them their thoughts on govt handouts. Im surprised theres pushback on this idea lol, americans hate each other It's because the rich have spent a...forever turning the working class against itself. I actually hold the opposite opinion that people are generally good, but this makes it easy for the few assholes to take power and turn them against each-other because normal people have trouble conceiving of the level of hosed-up it takes to willingly maintain the status quo, or how unfair the system actually is. Your life's worth being defined by your job is driven into peoples' minds from birth from every facet of capitalist culture, shaking that mindset is extremely difficult even when you run straight into the sheer cruelty of it. e: On UBI itself, i'm pretty sure the ruling class would burn the entire country to the ground before letting anything like it actually happen. It's an interesting discussion though. Yinlock fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Mar 17, 2022 |
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Mar 17, 2022 19:22
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Gumball Gumption posted:It's American exceptionalism except in reverse, Americans are so horrible and vile that they can't have good things. Correct. Americans hate themselves and each other. They torpedo opportunities to be happier because it may make their neighbor happy. That is UBI. Countless opportunities happen on large and small scales and are destroyed without the help of the Koch brothers or Hillary Clinton (but that is a huge factor too of course). It's a collective unconscious drive and it can't be healed at this point. Im actually trying to find a study for you guys. I met a researcher who studied spite by using capsaicin. Apparently she went to different countries for participants. After codification, guess which country had the least hesitancy to upping the capsaicin amount for the other participants in their group? thehandtruck fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Mar 17, 2022 |
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Mar 17, 2022 19:52
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thehandtruck posted:Correct. Americans hate themselves and each other. They torpedo opportunities to be happier because it may make their neighbor happy. That is UBI. Countless opportunities happen on large and small scales and are destroyed without the help of the Koch brothers or Hillary Clinton (but that is a huge factor too of course). It's a collective unconscious drive and it can't be healed at this point. Right but those are all reasons why we should try to improve things and teach people to not be so poo poo, not something that's hard coded into American biology.
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Mar 17, 2022 20:17
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so this first page is almost done and there is literally no mention of "without rent controls UBI will just funnel even more money into the hands of the wealthy" except for the indirect reference to Manna or whatever the book is with the dystopia I'm really sorry that I don't have exact figures, but I would imagine everyone who has lived in america (and isn't a trustfund kid/otherwise lucky enough to never think about money) knows that everyone in this country (except for rubes) will try to extract as much rent as possible for as little effort as possible, such as oh I don't know the literal current housing market which, as a reminder, was pricegouging people still reeling from an international pandemic or how we are literally seeing this sort of unnecessary price-gouging right now with regard to gas prices in the US despite oil being cheap and people struggling, because hey, the people who have the oil want more money and will get it even when it doesn't benefit them but degrades a nation's ability to function so if you just gave everyone more money from UBI, yeah that may work for the few days it takes before everyone else who has less reliance on money price gouges on rent/food because now they know hey, these people, I can charge them more and take that UBI! (assuming we're talking about UBI because the theoretical goal of the convo is "how to improve the lives of many people currently struggling due to capitalism's creation of widespread poverty in the citizens of its nations" unless it's more just "we like UBI and could not give a gently caress about what happens to the people but goddamn I personally would like to not have to work as hard") talking about UBI in a vacuum is very fruitless/disingenuous for this reason, because at the end of the day if your society isn't structured around keeping people fed, housed, healthy, and educated enough to realize they need to fight for these things because otherwise capitalists/greedy shitlords will literally enslave people to fight anyone trying to make things better, then UBI is just "giving money to rich people but with more steps" if you aren't going to necessarily enforce rent control and price control on things like food and medicine so my post is essentially asking, I love UBI, but UBI requires a lot of infrastructure to work, which I also want, so: why are we talking about UBI without the necessary price controls and enforcement of the very necessities you are purportedly trying to get into the hands of people who would benefit from UBI? what political party/parties, at least within the US, do you think have the capacity and will to enact and enforce the necessary price controls to not make UBI immediately become a funnel of money to the rich through increased rents? what are some mechanisms you think would help enact UBI with the necessary pricing controls to actually give people a materially better life, e.g. using that UBI income to remain housed instead of homeless, fed instead of starving, healthy instead of sick? tl;dr: is the goal of this discussion to identify potential ways to give people more money, or ways to give them a materially better life? because those are two different things and UBI in a vacuum only does the former, not the latter. Tempora Mutantur fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Mar 17, 2022 |
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Mar 17, 2022 21:40
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Tempora Mutantur posted:so this first page is almost done and there is literally no mention of "without rent controls UBI will just funnel even more money into the hands of the wealthy" except for the indirect reference to Manna or whatever the book is with the dystopia Hey, I think this is an important issue and I'm glad you brought it up. (I haven't read Manna, but I did recognize the "high/low inequality post-scarcity" theme in the excerpt.) Don't get me wrong - my priority is making sure that everybody can eat, sleep indoors, receive education and get medical care. (Phones/internet are also essential but so cheap to provide that it's barely worth talking about.) UBI is just a method for doing it, and like I said in OP, it doesn't address all of those needs (ie not education or healthcare.) You might be over-applying cynicism, here. Would prices go up? Well, sure. But there are limits to that. "Markets" aren't the magic Chicago economists and neoliberals pretend they are, but they do work. If somebody can rent their space for less, they'll rent it out more easily. Gas prices went up with the oil price spike and are coming down exceptionally slowly, but they will come down because the gas station that sells for $3.90 will sell way more than gas than the one that sells for $4.10.* There is still an advantage to selling something at a lower price, and that will apply even if you increase incomes. And keep in mind that this isn't like the stimulus checks, where the money supply goes up with no counterbalance: immediately following the implementation of a UBI, poor people would have more money, but upper middle class people (and above) would have somewhat less. Also, bear in mind that under the worst case scenario of what you have described, people who currently have no food or place to sleep will at least have one or the other, right? Tempora Mutantur posted:so my post is essentially asking, I love UBI, but UBI requires a lot of infrastructure to work, which I also want, so: why are we talking about UBI without the necessary price controls and enforcement of the very necessities you are purportedly trying to get into the hands of people who would benefit from UBI? You're right that some price controls would be very helpful - like a nationwide limit on rent increases to 5% a year, or something. In a reality where we have recognized that a UBI can be beneficial, I think something like that would be pretty possible. The "problem" with poor people isn't complicated: they don't have enough money. That is the only way they are different from any other American. And as somebody who has lived in this country with no money, and seen what a terrible, terrible loving place it is in that condition, I can also say that if you have money, America is actually... pretty good? Like, on the spectrum from "subsistence farming" to "Star Trek replicator" we're way closer to the latter than the former right now, provided you have the money to access our bounty. And a lot of the things that are lovely about America, even if you do have money - the stress, the ultra-competitiveness, the racism, the hyper-individuality - would probably improve if they weren't propped up by fear of starvation, which is a deep human lizard-brain fear that is shared by even Jeff Bezos on some level. Every breath everybody takes would become a little easier. *Historically, increases in gas prices are steady and across-the-board, while decreases happen in chunks, station-by-station, at a slower rate. Since oil prices have gone down gasoline prices will go down. It happened in 2008, it happened in 2013, it'll happen next time. Mellow Seas fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Mar 18, 2022 |
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Mar 18, 2022 14:10
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thehandtruck posted:Correct. Americans hate themselves and each other. They torpedo opportunities to be happier because it may make their neighbor happy. That is UBI. Countless opportunities happen on large and small scales and are destroyed without the help of the Koch brothers or Hillary Clinton (but that is a huge factor too of course). It's a collective unconscious drive and it can't be healed at this point. "Americans hate themselves and each other" is a great point, and a major obstacle. You can also use it to argue for UBIs, if you're clever. "Your boss might fire you tomorrow, you shouldn't trust him. Wouldn't you want to be taken care of?" "Some people just work for a paycheck and don't care about their work. Wouldn't you like to stop working with those kinds of people?" "Women need a UBI so that they and their children are not stuck in abusive marriages."
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Mar 18, 2022 17:37
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