I was once talking with one of my classmates and he said that in the future, there will be universal basic income implemented by entire world. I was not convinced at that time and thought he is just being stupid but given the layoffs happening and massive amount of unemployment, I am thinking about this possibility. What do you say?
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To be honest I’m not fan of UBI. I’m more fond of redistribution of work.
If there’s less things to do due to automatization let’s just all work less hours with full income.
I think ubi would do that
People have a baseline income and can work less or maybe even not at all if noy necessary. Those that really want more can work and earn more then
I think it will be very important for that to work that we first put wealth caps. Nobody should be able to have a net worth that is an X amount. Anything above that should be taxed 100%. Say, 10 million for example, nice upper limit.
If all the nasocs are covered, free healthcare, free education, UBI, wealth caps, I think we’d live in a near utopia
UBI to me is a leftist pipe dream of how a post-scarcity society could work. When you actually look at the financials and how greedy humanity is, it all falls apart and will either bankrupt entire nations or pay an absolute pittance.
The UK’s voluntary living wage is £13.45 an hour, which translates to £26,227.50 for someone working full time 37.5 hours a week. If we replaced our entire welfare system (state pensions, Universal Credit, child benefit, Personal Independence Payments, Disability Living Allowance, etc) and paid our approx 58.1 million population of working age people and retirees the living wage, it would cost us over £1.5 trillion, or roughly half our annual GDP. Our current welfare expenditure by comparison is at an estimated £333.7 billion.
I am using the Living Wage as a comparison since it’s an agreed metric calculated by a non-profit organisation for how much a worker would need to earn to live on their wage in the UK. To pay a living wage to every adult in the country we would need to spend nearly three times as much as what the USA spends on its military.
The question then becomes “How the fuck will we pay for it?” We can’t even get the rich to pay their fair share of tax as things stand. They are going to flat-out refuse to foot the bill once AI leads to mass unemployment.
What I think is a more likely scenario is societal collapse. People starve, leading to widespread civil unrest and then a brutal and violent crackdown, made easier than ever by armed drones and humanoid robots that have no sense of morals. This is exactly the kind of doomsday scenario that a lot of billionaires are prepping for.
The only way I can see humanity not ripping itself apart is if we somehow purged corporate greed from the system. If we could stop treating housing like a speculative asset and medical care like a piggy bank, we could maybe weather this storm.
You’re forgetting to factor in all the people that won’t receive it because they already earn enough. A majority of people won’t get anything at all. Replacing all of our current welfare systems with a simple UBI would save us money. It’s just that the billionaires are under the impression that it would stop people from working harder for a better life, which is also something they think about our current welfare system, and has never been true.
I’m talking about a scenario where entire industries of workers end up getting displaced by AI and robotics, and I don’t think we’re far off from this becoming a reality. If Tesla’s Optimus 3 robots are anywhere near as advanced as they are rumoured to be, they could easily replace warehouse and logistics workers.
We already have Waymo disrupting the taxi industry further by removing the driver from the equation, and Miso Robotics automating kitchens in restaurant chains like Jersey Mike’s Subs and White Castle.
Also, doesn’t means-testing UBI kinda defeat its intended purpose?
New tools used to replace workers happens throughout the course of human history, I don’t think we will ever see robots replace humans successfully enough to really dent the workforce, they’ll just go to other industries.
Though the one industry whose collapse could spur the entire UBI system, is long-haul truckers. That may happen, but again, I think they’ll just go into other off-shoot industries, and the change in workforce won’t be so dramatic that it’s one day they’re all on the road with jobs, and the next day they’re all out of work. You’ll need truckers with experience to actually park the things for loading/un-loading, and nobody is going to trust an AI or robot with piloting that much freight all by itself. they’ll want a human behind the wheel, ready to take over.
The industry we should be driving people towards is computer chip manufacturing.
Each technological advancement has created new jobs in some capacity. What new jobs has AI created? And don’t tell me “prompt engineer” like every AI bro likes to hype up. That is not an actual position and the fact that I cannot find any jobs advertised where typing out very specific and accurate prompts are one of the skills required is proof of this.
AI isn’t perfect. It hallucinates and sometimes gives bad answers. But I think that we are one incredibly good model away from being able to reliably automate white collar work.
It should be. Also the NIT (Negative Income Tax) so the taxing scheme becomes progressive, rather than regressive. Though I know I’m asking too much because capitalism…
I think we might have that someday, and then even after that a cashless society like star trek
I like the idealistic idea behind UBI too, but I think the wealth gap will persist and grow more, with any form of UBI or other welfare as an excuse that the poors are being provided for, so they should be happy with that. The UBI on Earth in The Expanse is what we may end up with. The reason the population on Mars is better and doesn’t rely on that is because it’s much smaller and has a common purpose for long term focus and employment (terraforming). Interestingly, the canon for Star Trek might be along similar lines, as the Federation and the rest that follows only happens after the devastation of World War III.
When Draper visits Earth she learns that the Martian impression of UBI recipients being lazy isn’t true at all, they’re just trapped in the system with only a few able to claw their way out. By design, can’t have everyone prosper, the rich might have to settle for less.
No, not without sacrificing a welfare program or something else.
Because it’ll be a hard sell to have UBI on top of WIC, SNAP, SSI, Unemployment and other welfare. Something would have to go.
We’re 30% there already, between long term unemployed and people on social security. I support more. Human rights include food, shelter, healthcare, but not everyone has figured that out yet.
Right? I think 4% of American adults of working age are on ssdi. I’d guestimate another 2-4% are existing on some sort of other welfare type schemes. More housing estates, less aircraft carriers please!
do you think internet can come to rights?
I would argue it already has. We already agreed to fund public libraries through tax dollars. Libraries are inherently information services and include Internet access today.
It might follow that municipal Internet services be made available via taxes so that everyone has equal access to the Internet.
In Kirkland, WA there exists a kind of municipal Wi-Fi offered in its business district. Similarly, most businesses provide free Wi-Fi to anyone within range. These aren’t perfect systems, but provide examples and a path to expand services to a whole community.
With the advancements of AI, I believe UBI will eventually be needed just to keep the economy rolling. More and more tasks will get automated whether we like it or not. That’s the general direction everything is heading.
UBI has to have a lot of folks wanting it and theres contingents that would rather starve then see those people get a thin dime, with “those people” having various meanings. Then there’s the temporarily embarassed millionaires, and of course the Fox news crew who think socio-commu-trans folk are going to dye their kids hair blue and make them worship Satan.
I want to believe that progress is inevitable. The living conditions for the working class are better now than they were 100 years ago. Hopefully, by the time another 100 years have passed they will have drastically improved some more.
Unfortunately, the reasons they have improved in the last 100 years are due to constant fighting against the lazy non-working class. Not some evolved sense of society.
It depends on society not turning itself inside out.
If we could just pluck along where we were in the early 10’s, everywhere that has socialized healthcare will eventally slowly install UBI and all the like things that come with it.
But, looking at the trends in society, wars, weather, oligarchs, and population decline, we might only have a few generations left.
like welfare states in EU? I think EU will probably give UBI.
If we replaced all of our current welfare systems with a simple UBI, it would save us money. In terms of running the system, and simplifying taxes. Don’t need to take 5 different taxes out of your paycheck, just one. Earn over a certain amount? You don’t get it. The majority of people won’t, because they’ll be earning enough to pay in but not collect. This would have to be done alongside universal healthcare, as tying healthcare to employment wouldn’t work much anymore, which would also save us a massive amount of money.
The result of which, is an absolute explosion of creative genius and new businesses. People no longer hindered by the threat of starving in the street, or losing their healthcare, would finally be able to start that business they always wanted to. They’d be able to create their long-overdue masterpiece. Literature, art, new inventions. There’s a guy out there right now that, if given the space and a bit of assistance, could create the first prototype of a warp drive. There’s someone else who has a pretty good idea about how to cure dementia, and halt the aging process.
Just imagine the possibilities of actually investing in our people, and in our society, instead of handing all of our money to billionaires, and letting those evil mentally handicapped fuckwits steer the course of humanity straight into a climate change-driven mass-extinction event.
Just Imagine.
Mostly they will just mindlessly consume vices until forced into work.
It will never happen.
Not because it is a bad idea; it is an AWESOME idea. Work used to be something you do for the collectivity; you do something for the group, in exchange of something from the group. Today, a work is a mean to earn money, regardless of the collectivity. We do meaningless jobs, which often gives nothing to the collectivity, just because we have a rent to pay, we want vacations and a new car. A universal basic income would completely break this; I would work to bring something to the group, not to reach a stupid objective for the company.
However, there is a fringe of people which will not gain anything from this, even lose leverage and power over the masses: the 1%, the millionaires and billionaires. They will do whatever they can to kill it, saying only freeloaders and foreigners will benefits from it. And the masses will vote against it, and it will be a big victory for capitalism. Until global warming accelerate, we will have nothing to eat anymore and earth will be inhospitable for humans. The end.
No. Total war is our future. Then maybe, but we won’t be alive by then
In a few places, maybe, but there’s a lot of the world where governments barely function in the first place. Roads aren’t even a solved problem globally. UBI for even middle income countries wouldn’t happen before climate change caused such damage as to undo any progress that might maybe make UBI possible.
I think that it will start as an universal basic income but that it will evolve into universal basic products and services. Basic stuff you don’t have to pay for, like for example food and public transport and in time expand to shelter, all levels of education, etc. To the point of covering all the basic needs.
I came looking for a comment like this to agree that we need to discuss UBI more in the context of Universal Services.
Personally, I think there’s a strong chance that universal services will emerge before or alongside a UBI. Both are more likely to grow gradually rather than suddenly.
One great thing about universal services is that they don’t require as much top-down oversight to deploy, imo. You can join groups now that collect and distribute free fruit. Anyone with a skill can begin giving it away; if you’re a lawyer, you can give free legal services to immigrants; if you’re a technician, you can join or set up fixit clinics. Every time folks begin giving away labor value, they’re chipping away at the transactional structure that holds people hostage to capitalist labor markets. And as critical mass builds, more and more people are freed to spend less and less time hustling for their daily bread, and can direct more and more time to this Solidarity Economy. And unlike a UBI, you don’t need the government or the rich to buy-in: you can start practicing these things yourself and with neighbors now.
If you want to build this but want something a little less anarchist, public school systems are an existing prototype of this: that’s why a lot of school systems also engage in food distribution and more recently experiments in social housing. You can join advisory committees and help deploy more services using your school district to pilot universal basic services!
this comment hit me deeply. it has given me SO MUCH to think about. thank you for sharing your thoughts!
first time listening an interesting perspective like this
Unfortunately I think you’re right, but it will be provided by the people you work for, and people will say “isn’t it great”.
I think UBI is generally seen as something to do instead of that, a way to put off actually providing for people so that they can continue to funnel capital from the regularly well-off to the obscenely well-off while blaming it on the poor and the increasingly shrinking “middle-class”.
