Ask Lemmy

UBI is the only solution to our corrupt politics. It disempowers the state and empowers individuals. You can stop relying on promises from fake heroes to help the poor, and completely eliminate poverty and crime.

AI and robotics is often cited as a catalyst for UBI. But it is deeply connected to political corruption. Our asshats will tell you that tech oligarchy deserves all our money, and nationalism means our weapons, oil oligarchs need to be given the rest of our money, and what little US manufacturing there is, needs to be protected so that you pay through the nose for stuff. All of this is BS. Let robotics/AI/China deliver us cheap stuff, and UBI afford not only to buy the cheap stuff, but let us have our time freed up in order to design/sell even more productively made stuff/tech that can improve the lives of those who will pay us for it.

UBI does not stop the rich from getting richer. It grows economy significantly, and all money trickles up to the rich. UBI does disempower the rich from stealing your money, through war and war posturing. AI, without UBI, needs to be weaponized as national security that includes the same media disinformation on your tolerance for warmongering empire that makes you/us poorer.

Every disgusting demonic evil inflicted on Americans by politicians is entirely the result of oppression and fearmongering to support unethical evil out of fear of homelessness, and healthcare access. You cannot support a sustainable world if society is on the verge of collapse and there is some war you idiotically are made to tolerate. Misery gives you no time to cure your stupidity. UBI frees us all into doing something useful instead desperately clinging to a job that does not produce anything worthwhile or competitive. 5 recruiter calls per day offering you a better job cures your stupidity.

Yes, with the caveat that it will need to be coupled with a massive pendulum swing in favor of workers rights.

I assume you don't believe in capitalism then. Because you suggestion is that the companies set the prices rather than the market. Anyway im for it because if done properly to should cover just needs. food and housing essentially. and it should replace all forms of cash assitance. welfare, disability, social security, unemployment. since anyone doing well would pay as much additional tax as they get or more then it just becomes something that helps when you need it. Lose your job and you immediately look for work not muck around with applying for unemployment because its always there. Get injured and you immediately have it. Can't work due to age and its there. work part time and its there to help if you can't handle 40 hours for whatever reason. have a kid, go back to school. Go to college and you have the funds to pay for the dorms and just need to worry about actual tuition.

A few days ago, I saw a post about negative income tax which is something that had occurred to me independently. Wasn't surprised to learn that someone with more brains had actually given it some serious thought and that it had an actual name.

That would be the sort of thing I'd be interested in being implemented, so that those who are on little to no income - especially those who can't simply "get a (better) job" for whatever reason - don't fall below the poverty line.

This is not to say that the UK benefits system (where I am) doesn't work at all, but it's often coupled with the expectation of getting the recipient back into work or to getting a better job where you don't need them any more.

It would be nice if that part went away.

Abso-fucking-lutely.

USA needs universal healthcare first

100%

Everyone gets some sort of income, but wouldn't companies just subside the income by raising their prices?

This is always the argument; but any UBI bills worth a shit would have already thought of this and include laws on limiting that from happening.

Yes-ish. While there are some good results from small scale tests, I'd argue that the effect it'd have on a macro level isn't fully understood. I'm all for testing it out large scale so we can get some reliable data there as well. And if it turns out that it doesn't result in inflation or corpos eating up the extra, then I'm all for it.

Everyone gets some sort of income, but wouldn't companies just subside the income by raising their prices?

Not necessarily. Companies need to set prices they can compete with. Customers might just go to the competitor otherwise.

This is provided that there is competition. Monopolies can set the prices how they want, because there’s no competition.

I don't like the idea of of subsidizing demand, but i'll take anything at this point

I am a moderate supporter of UBI. Strongly support "negative income taxing" which is a bit more techy but essentially your income is topped up if it falls below a certain level as opposed to everyone getting a lump sum each month whether they need it or not.

UBI would have some inflationary effects, but if you stuck it through, it would be less than the UBI payment in the first place.

The problem is getting people to stick to it because unfortunately, for Americans, if you give them $2000 a month in UBI but their purchasing power doesn’t go up by what they perceive as what $2000 is worth; they will punish you in the next election.

I think the expanded child tax credit in 2020 could be a good example to follow for what the roll out of UBI would look like. But we let it expire despite it lifting so many kids out of poverty even if just temporarily and freaked out about inflation so hard that I have my doubts that our American society would ever have the fortitude to be able to implement a permanent UBI

That's the same logic opponents of raising the minimum wage use to justify their position

Are you in support of UBI?

I don't think that it's a terribly interesting question as a yes-or-no question for all UBI policies.

The thing about UBI is that the devil is in the details: UBI covers a broad range of policies. You really need to know the specifics of a proposal to know what it entails; UBI policies may be very different.

For example, there are a number of left-wing groups who like the idea of UBI, because they see it as a way to redistribute wealth. Normally, they tend to want something like keeping spending policy more-or-less where it is, adding UBI, and increasing taxes on some groups that they'd like to shift wealth from.

There are also a number of small-government right-wing groups who like the idea of UBI, because they see it as a way to reduce the role of government in setting purchasing decisions. Normally, they tend to want something more like a revenue-neutral form of UBI; there, one does something like cutting spending policy (on various forms of subsidy, say, like for food or housing) by $N and then shifting that $N to UBI so people can choose how to spend it. Here's a right-libertarian take on UBI:

https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/libertarian-case-basic-income

Of course, as with any policy proposal, the details matter a lot. And the Swiss proposal is problematic in a number of ways. For starters, 2,800 USD a month means that a married couple could get $67,200 per year for doing nothing. And while it’s true that Switzerland is one of the richest countries in the world in terms of per capita income, that’s still an awful lot of money. Furthermore, the Swiss proposal seems to involve implementing a basic income in addition to their currently existing welfare system. Few libertarians would be willing to sign up for that deal. But as a replacement for traditional welfare programs, there is a lot for libertarians to like about a basic income.

So, okay, both our wealth-redistribution guys on the left and our small-government guys on the right are talking about UBI policies...but they are talking about policies with very different implications due to the specifics of the policy. The left-wing guy probably isn't especially excited about the form of UBI that the right-wing guy wants, and the right-wing guy probably doesn't like the form of UBI that the left-wing guy wants. So I'd really need to know the specifics of a given UBI policy before I could say whether I think it's a good idea; I wouldn't just be across-the-board in favor of or against any UBI implementation, but would need to see a specific UBI proposal and consider it individually.

Yes

Yes.

Yes

It's an interesting idea but I'd like to see it tried somewhere else on a large scale first.

You could cut down or outright remove various government assistance programs so there would not necessarily be more money for the poor, just not a bureaucracy to figure out if you qualify for this and that assistance.

Yes, it could coexist. Not sure why you'd think it would not. I still want more than a cubicle apartment and cheapest food.

I tend to support it because who says no to free money, but I'm not informed enough to form a strong opinion one way or another.

I'm going to wait and see - there are always unintended consequences and sometime those are bad enough to kill and otherwise good idea. Other times they mean you need to tweak with the simple program to make it work. And as always politicians will have their hand in the whole thing and might completely mess up the implementation until it looks nothing like the name.

The trajectory we're headed we're going to need it or something like it.

With improvements to AI and physical automation there will be a metric fuckton of people out of employment completely and there are only so many jobs for the rebuttal of "the people will still need to maintain the robots and check the AI"

Unfortunately with our concept of ownership there will be massive resistance to it as "I own the machines that make the products/increase productivity, why should you get anything from my profit?" They're going to have to relearn the lesson Ford learned about "well paid employees are your customers" the hard way.

As it stands, at least in America, "The Century Of The Self" has lead to a complete atomization of society, every business is entirely independent from society, every individual is separate from society, so each individual owner won't see the need for a well paid workforce/population at the owners "expense" actually being beneficial to their own existence. They'll think "someone else" should deal with that issue, or worse "pull yourself up from your bootstraps" :/

Yes, full support from me. Multiple localized tests of UBI have been shown to drastically improved people's lives. I think there are multiple other measures that would need to be put in place too in order to help minimize corporations just obliterating it's usefulness by raising prices.

I'm not as informed as I'd like to be, but my understanding is that things like VAT taxes can help get around online retailers like Amazon dodging taxes, as well as CEO to base worker pay ratio caps to ensure the people in a company that are actually producing the profits get rewarded for doing so. The CEOs could keep giving themselves raises, but it would come with the requirement of actually giving everyone in the company a raise too, which, quite frankly, is what should happen when your employees do a good enough job to bring in record profits.

My understanding is that Alaska already has something similar in nature to a UBI where every citizen gets a dividend from the state each year based on taxes collected from certain businesses. This is a dim recollection from me and I am probably completely mistating how it works/where the money comes from.

Yes, I am in support of UBI.

Everyone gets some sort of income, but wouldn’t companies just subside the income by raising their prices? Also, do you believe capatilism can co-exist with UBI?

Kinda defeat the purpose, because a UBI is supposed to support a decent, respectable livelihood. So the higher their prices are, the more taxes they'll have to pay, to support a higher UBI. You cant have UBI without capitalism, because capitalism creates the conditions where a UBI is necessary.

and yes, I do. Companies are moving towards full automation, all the more possible with the advent of AI.. and they are doing that explicitly to fire human employees to save costs. There will soon be a time where there wont be enough jobs for people, Which will be a fork in the road of incredible civil unrest, violence, and possible war... or a UBI so people can live with dignity, freed from the labors of capitalism by automation.

only if that income is required for basic necessities and everyone will need in their lives. for a generalization, there are three things I can think of the top of my head that everyone needs. It is to have housing, healthcare, and food. There are many more basic needs people should have fulfilled but I digress.

Currently in many first world and third world countries/classes are reliant on funding to fulfill most if not all basic needs. That is when it should be mandatory for UBI. How is something like that funded? like everything else. we all pay for it. Call it taxes, call it charity, call it whatever you want.

Yet, Why would someone need UBI for basic needs? well mostly because the general public is more divided and distrustful of centralized sources/authorities. Yet the only way UBI would be able to occur is with that kind of system.

So in all I don't think UBI would be supported by me. I like federated services and decentralization. I don't like the current state of all basic needs being behind paywalls. It is disappointing. I don't know what would help us the most, but moving into this direction is just not what I can see would be kind to people who are low on economic scales or helpful for most who are barely scraping by. Even if I live more or less comfortably right now, I see many basic needs in my life that I would still want to improve substantially or become available for me to act on.

Only as a replacement for any and all existing government welfare programs. Welfare and charity and investment are all best done decentralized and local as possible but what we have is so inefficient that this would be a huge improvement.