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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I in my heart of hearts see UBI as unworkable and inflationary, as universal basic income doesn’t set universal basic buying power which is very hard to do without a socialist system guaranteeing housing, food, etc. I also don’t believe people are ok with a disconnection between work and financial value. Money is one of the few ways to quantify the value of work and humans in general have a need to feel what they do is valued, particularly if it takes up so much of human identity and what they do on a day to day.
as universal basic income doesn’t set universal basic buying power
i disagree. food prices would not go up. prices are set by supply and demand. demand would not change. imagine a society with 1 million people. all of them need to eat, whether they earn their money through wages or get it through UBI. the demand for food does not change. i don’t see a reason why supply would change either. so prices stay the same.
do you have any rational argument against this?
Sure - I have 10 customers, their income is fixed. They all need food, and at current prices, all of them can afford rice and beans, but 5 of them can afford rice and beans and meat. UBI increases everyone’s income by $100/mo. They still all need food, but now all of them can afford meat, but the quantity of meat hasn’t changed and they can’t all get meat. Therefore, I as a producer, may increase the price of meat as demand has increased - there’s more money available to buy my goods, therefore there’s more profit extraction available to me. Now, it gets more complicated and with a free market, you’d expect more players to enter the market, but we don’t have a free market, we have limited suppliers. Take housing as an example. There is a shortage of housing causing prices to way outpace inflation. What happens when you give more money to everyone? They now add more players into an already supply constrained market, causing prices to go up even higher. You’d assume with the massive demand there’d be incentives to build, but in practice, we don’t see this. That’s my issue with things like UBI - it tackles a symptom of wealth inequality and while it works somewhat, its still inflationary. you’d have a better shot at taxation for the very wealthy to redistribute wealth in public goods and focusing spending on the poorest of society(i.e. welfare), not an equal distribution across the entirety of the population.
yeah ok that would make meat more expensive (which some people would argue is actually a good thing) but not plant-based food. (since plant-based food is less limited). which is an interesting observation …
yeah the housing crisis is something else. however i suspect that there are bigger factors at play here than just a limited supply … theoretically, the housing supply could be arbitrarily big. the land area is not the bottleneck here (around 1% of the settleable land area of the world are used for housing, 97% is used for farming) and neither are the materials available … it’s more about market expectation (declining birthrate) making new housing construction seem short-sighted and not worth it in the long run. but this is a bit of a different issue and does not directly have to do with the buying power of the people, i think.
no lol.
have you ever met a rich person? like a real rich person? they’re arrogant and snobby and think the rest of us have no right to exist. there’s a reason there’s this massive push to implement AI. part of it is to save money but the other part of it is that they legit think that we’re all lesser and AI replacing call centers and fast food jobs will hasten our departure.
we’ll all end up being thrown in a volcano before they implement UBI.
i’d say asia has more of a chance in the long run just because social responsibility is part of culture and that can often act as an antidote to the worst parts of capitalism. south korea can be gross but at least they throw their corrupt leaders in jail…
no chance of this happening in the states.
have you ever met a rich person? like a real rich person?
Yes. The one I got to know best is fine, you wouldn’t even know.
OP said rich, not the guy who’s only got like $2 million that you know
More like 30 million. Not sure about the other two I know less well, but one has private jets, and the other has a Grammy.
They tend to believe things that are convenient for rich people to believe, just like my own stratum does for our own sake, and stratums below that do as well. But, on a personality level, they’re the same damn humans as everyone else.
Sounds like a prick to me, and you’ve just got a high tolerance for bullshit
If you’re just basing that on the wealth figure I gave, that’s circular logic. They’re a dick because they’re wealthy, so the wealthy are dicks.
If it’s the second paragraph, the Lemmy “upper middle class” worldview grates way more, because it’s actively hypocritical. You said 2 million. People here are not poor or uneducated, and I’m guessing some have or have that coming to them. Most of the rest have more than 0, which is about the actual median.
Guess what! Kind-of-rich people collectively own most of the capital, and yet everyone thinks they’re the proletarian vanguard.
Sounds like you’re a bootlicker to me tbh
Yeah, I bet that would be convenient for you.
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.
Every single study of UBI has proved you wrong.
You’re just repeating the racist lies that conservatives brought against “welfare queens” when we introduced welfare and SNAP.
