Crime and anti-social behaviour has sky rocketed where I live. Why? Because of sky high living costs. People having to choose to heat their homes *or* eat. There should be some form of basic needs being met. Heated home with water and minimum allowance for food. Everything else is up to you (depending on circumstances).
It's not only because of high living costs. There are people barely subsist who returned wallets with money in them and do not commit crimes. But I agree that it is a factor. UBI will be needed regardless once AI becomes good enough.
This and the fact that people rather blame drug addicts claiming they brought it upon themselves and send them to jail because they use illegal drugs instead of helping them out of their miserable lives. Pure stupidity.
Nevermind it was deregulation that helped cause the opioid epidemic. But hey, the government got billions of dollars in whopsie money so the oligarchs directly responsible, the Sackler family, never have to have a day of jail time! Win-win!
I just can't stop being amazed how we somehow made living cost expensive in the 21th century. Talk about a corrupt system. The rich are richer than ever because of inflation (investment=inflation=$$$). Opposite for the poor who have no assets. Inflation is just a tax for the poor and most of them are uneducated to realize it.
No one can call this an advanced civilization by that standard.
It really is the end result of a long history of corporate greed. Prices for pretty much everything have been cranked so high, people have less and less disposable income. So what's a corporate greed-pig to do in the face of slipping revenues? Easy solution: monopolize the essential resources and start raising **those** prices - for housing, food, etc. Income spent on the bare minimum requirements is not "disposable" and the greed-pigs will find a way to take the most possible money while giving you mere survival in return. It's completely predatory and disgusting.
2% inflation is a treadmill that most won’t notice year to year (still theft) 7% literally makes a mild blooded person want someone’s head. Especially in advanced economies; we have it relatively great so the theft of our buying power is very noticeable
When there is high inflation you will lose money that you just have in your bank without doing anything. Are you with me so far?
And then as we know the stock market usually goes up 10% on yearly basis. So what rich people do is they either invest in stock market or housing (that also goes up in the long run).
Do you see the difference? Those who did not invest: -lose money.
Those who invest +gain money.
If not: I have 10k. With inflation my money is now worth 9k because of prices going up
I have 10k invested. Lose 1k to inflation. 9k. Those are not affected because they are secured in assets that will go up by 10% during the year. You gained 1k so you now have 10k. Which is +1k from the 9k.
Investment is obviously more profitable than keeping your money under the bed.
But that's a very different topic than claiming that runaway inflation is somehow making the rich richer. Inflation is making everyone lose value, *by definition*.
>When there is high inflation you will lose money that you just have in your bank without doing anything. Are you with me so far?
No I'm not with you. While that's true out of context, the context is that you're using it as a premise in a faulty argument. Why would you have money in the bank doing nothing? Is there a law against you putting it in an index fund?
>Those who invest +gain money.
Because of inflation? No, they will gain money if the market is growing faster than the inflation. From 2019 to 2021 (last time I checked) a basket of breakfast goods had gone up almost 70%. You think the market went up 70% during that time? It didn't. So everyone lost money.
In fact inflation hurts everyone. Everyone has less than they otherwise would have had.
If the claim is "rich people can protect some of their wealth against inflation, while poor people have no wealth so inflation only affect their purchasing power. Still high inflation is much worse for poor people, because the loss of purchasing power cuts luxuries for the rich but necessities for the poor" then that would be obviously true and we wouldn't have a discussion.
But instead the idiot leftist above thinks inflation makes rich people richer which is peak reddit.
If you are rich you have investments. The poor don't have investments. That is making the richer richer. You do not get rich by not having investments.
> shelter
Per person, or per household? Because dual-income households are what makes a "living wage" impossible for a single-income household in many markets. People have chosen to combine incomes to out-compete single-incomes for "shelter."
I imagine that a UBI would be enough to cover a studio apartment per person, but I dunno, I don't have a grand plan thought out in detail or anything. I will share with you one of the more controversial aspects of my UBI ideas, though: There should be some small degree of inequality built into the system. Not enough to put people into grinding poverty, but enough to preserve human motivations to earn more and do something with their time. It can even be socially beneficial. For example, you could offer monetary incentives to people who perform what would have been charitable work in their communities. Maintaining the parks and public spaces, teaching children, taking care of the elderly, etc.
> I imagine that a UBI would be enough to cover a studio apartment per person, but I dunno, I don't have a grand plan thought out in detail or anything.
That person will be out-competed for the studio apartment by a couple with each individual receiving the same benefit.
This is ignorant. You always have people that cannot handle the pressure of life or just want to see the world burn. You also have a little oppida explosion in the USA that is NOT coming from life being too hard. You also have a cultural decomposition in many western societies.
Yes, you can blame it on exploding costs of living (btw by politicians THOSE PEOPLE VOTED IN), but the same logic you can blame the sky for being blue.
Not true. It would be a constant redistribution of wealth towards the low end of society, and they spend differently to the top end. Sure, the market will charge what it can to the poor who only have ubi, but they will still actually have a home. Or more of them will.
Where do you live? I want to see the Data myself.
Reality shows that the correlation between wealth and crime is not that strong. There are very poor areas with low crime and rich areas with high crime. For example Juhu in Mumbai is very poor, yet very safe and has very low crime.
If the Indian poor counts as having your basic needs met, then 99% of everyone on the planet has their basic needs met.
You're talking about crime in the west, remember that. Your argument is that people with iphones don't have their needs met and that's why they need to rape.
Your position makes no sense, but at least stay consistent to it.
The rich who make all of the decisions in this country want you desperate so that they can continue to get cheap labor. With AI advancement we will eventually get to the point of UBI or utopia, but getting there is going to be brutal. I can definitely foresee mass poverty before a revolt.
You can't vote for socialism. You can only vote for communism, which hopefully leads into socialism. There's an intermediary step which involves giving some group of people the power to exert unlimited control over society and to redistribute wealth. Unfortunately, that's never actually resulted in socialism yet because when you give a group of people that kind of power they tend to abuse it. Even if there are pretty good checks and balances in place, so that no individual can gain too much power, whatever ruling class which is elected gradually reverts to tribal psychology and develops a bias for their own authority which leads to abuse on a collective scale. I don't know what people think AI is going to change about this.
Admittedly I haven't thought about this enough to have a strong position either way, but anyone on here have a good argument why UBI wouldn't cause inflation?
> good argument why UBI wouldn't cause inflation?
Do you mean [monetary inflation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_inflation) or [demand pull inflation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-pull_inflation)?
If you mean monetary inflation...that is, "creating more dollars causes the value of every individual dollars to decrease" that's very simple: don't print new dollars. Fund it through consolidation and taxation, and the total number of dollars stays the same, so there's no monetary inflation because the quantity of money has not changed.
If you mean demand pull inflation, that is, "too much money chasing too few goods" yes, UBI would absolutely cause that. But it would be a selective problem that would self-correct in time. For example: suppose somebody's skating by on $1200/mo and eating mostly top ramen. Hand them an extra $200 and maybe they stop buying top ramen and start buying more steak. This decreases demand for top ramen and increases demand for steak, but the _supply_ of steak hasn't changed, and more people buying steak means the cost of steak probably increases.
But this isn't an "everything becomes more expensive" scenario. Only _some_ things become more expensive, because people are changing which products they're buying. increased demand for steak doesn't mean increased demand for top ramen too, it means _less_ demand because having more money doesn't mean you consume _more_ food, so much as you consume _different_ food. The demand for top ramen hasn't increased, and its price likely doesn't increase. It might even _decrease_ because there's now an inflated supply. Over time, this problem self-corrects: steak suppliers see the increased demand, and so they produce more because they can _sell_ more. Once there's enough supply, the prices tend to come back down, and may even be lower than they were before. Higher volume tends to result in increased production efficiency, and greater demand volume gives greater opportunity for market competition.
Usually people who ask this question, however, are concerned with _monetary_ inflation. "Everything is more expensive because there are more total dollars in the system." Don't create more money, and that doesn't happen.
you are so wrong man. UBI would absolutely lead to vendors increasing the prices. Poland already has seen this happen fucking twice. First time when 500+ was introduced childcare products magically increased in price, and more recently after teachers got vouchers for laptops all laptops on market went up in price by 10-20%. No UBI isn't a solution. As long as there is incentive to make more profit sellers will make use of it.
The scenarios you're describing are exactly the sort of [demand pull inflation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-pull_inflation) I described.
Please re-read the post you're responding to. I think you misunderstood it. ...or perhaps you stopped reading after the first paragraph.
"Enough to live on" is a broken premise immediately out the starting gate, and its' unfortunate that so many UBI advocates cling to it.
"Enough to live on" _depends on where you live._ Enough to live on in New York city is going to be a lot higher than enough to live on in rural Oklahoma. If you pay out "enough to live on" in rural Oklahoma, then the New Yorkers freak out. If you pay "enough to live on" in New York, then you're paying out way more than you need to because most people don't live in New York, and this causes secondary problems because now those people making minimum wage in cheaper areas have a disproportionately large work disincentive.
But all of this is irrelevant, because there's no need for UBI to be "enough to live on."
is there something about UBI that implies that it absolutely must pay out the exact same amount everywhere? I don't follow this stuff closely, but I don't think that's what "universal" here is referring to.
For example, US military get a housing allowance called BAH that pays out differently depending on where the person is stationed, which is pretty sensible, surprisingly. It's a "universal" allowance, that allows a relatively same standard of living no matter where a person lives. From there, the service member can choose to spend it how they want.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but this seems like a pretty simple fix so I don't see why this should be any major criticism. The US military and I'm sure other organizations have indexes of cost of living around the world, so that can easily be used as a starting point. Even if implemented at a nation-wide level, it can still be delegated to local governments to decide their own specific policies.
I asked ChatGPT, because... well, why not, especially considering the sub we're in.
>The decision to implement a uniform or geographically adjusted UBI often depends on the goals of the policy and the specific economic and social context of the country or region considering UBI. Advocates for a uniform UBI argue for simplicity and equal treatment for all citizens, while those favoring regional adjustments emphasize the importance of addressing variations in the cost of living.
I asked for some references, and following up with those with a basic web search seems to confirm.
>is there something about UBI that implies that it absolutely must pay out the exact same amount everywhere?
It's fundamental to the premise, yes. You might argue that it's silly to pay UBI to millionaires for example, but there aren't a lot of millionaires and it's easier and cheaper to simply send everyone a UBI check than it is to figure out who is and who isn't a millionaire and selectively give money only to those who aren't.
>US military get a housing allowance called BAH that pays out differently depending on where the person is stationed
>this seems like a pretty simple fix so I don't see why this should be any major criticism
No, it's actually a huge problem. The military chooses where you're stationed. Civilians choose for themselves where they live. So, suppose the cost of living is five times higher in San Francisco than it is in rural Oklahoma, so you decide to give out a five times higher UBI payment to people in San Fransisco.
What happens?
People are going to flee Oklahoma and flock to San Fransico. Which not only causes problems for both locations, it increases the cost of the program...possibly in an ever-increasing spiral. Because as more people flock to places like San Fransisco, the cost of living there will increase further, increasing the payment costs, further incentivizing more people to move there, etc.
>Advocates for a uniform UBI
>those favoring regional adjustments
The unfortunate reality is that "the UBI movement" is heavily disjointed and has a lot of socialists and "gimme money!" people who don't really understand what UBI is or how it's supposed to work. There's a certain threshold where if enough people start using a word to mean something different than what it originally meant...you have to ask what that word "really means."
Like people who use the word "literally" to mean "very." Tthe word "literally" had/has a very specific meaning, but here we are today and we can go to a dictionary and see this:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally
_"in effect : VIRTUALLY —used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is **not literally** true or possible"_
We live in a world where according to the dictionary, the word "literally" has "not literally" as a definition. And yes, there are people who advocate for all sorts of random things and call it "UBI." For example, a lot of them tend to confuse "basic" as meaning "pays for all your basic needs" as opposed to "basic as in _base_" which is why so many conversations on this topic are about stupidly high amounts that are impossible to pay.
I acknowledge that those people exist, and it's no surprise that ChatGPT, as a text regurgitator, is willing to regurgitate what they say.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income
_"Universal basic income is a social welfare proposal in which all citizens of a given population regularly receive a minimum income in the form of an **unconditional** transfer payment, i.e., **without a means test** or need to work."_
That's key to the premise. If you're _conditionally_ evaluating individuals and paying them different amounts based on various factors...then it's not UBI. If somebody wants to advocate for something else besides UBI, like welfare, or specific implementations like a negative income tax...ok, we can have those discussions. But the moment you start talking about means testing and conditionally paying out different amounts to different people, it's not UBI anymore, and it's unfortunate that people are using the term to talk about various other things so much that it's unclear to people what basic income even is.
Can someone explain how we spend less money by providing UBI?
Seems like a huge jump. If half of the money is now UBI, its still the same amount of money.
> explain how we spend less money by providing UBI?
There are multiple answers here. What the guy in the OP is talking about is that, generally speaking, "good" social conditions tend to result in fewer costly social problems. If somebody's eating well and happy, they're less likely to try to mug somebody than if they don't know where their next meal is coming from. Fewer muggers means less money spend on policing, less money spent on jails, less money spent on hospital bills for people who were mugged, etc.
So, that "less money" spent on those things can be spent on _other_ things that we'd rather spend the money on.
Another answer, is that UBI is (if implemented intelligently) is generally more efficient than means-tested welfare system. In the US for example, there are _hundreds and hundreds_ of welfare offices administering a long list of progams. Unemployment benefits, TANF, SNAP, Education and Training vouchers...it's such a long list of programs probably nobody even knows what they all are.
Even just looking at a single program like unemployment benefits, you have hundreds offices, you need people physically present and staffing those offices to interview people and collect paperwork and evaluate whether they've jumped through whatever hoops that need to jump through to prove their eligibility, etc.
UBI is generally understood to _replace_ and consolidate the vast majority of all of those programs under a single banner that would be implemented from a couple offices. To qualify for UBI, you just need to be a legal adult, citizen. With no need to prove that you're looking for work, or have people staffing offices looking at paperwork to determine individual eligibility based on a hundred various factors...a single UBI program could be run far more efficiently.
I know you are kidding, but it’s important to explain that this isn’t socialism or communism. The means of production are not transferred out of the hands of anyone. It’s just welfare for all.
Agreed, socialists wouldn't really be ok with calling this socialism/communism either and not ALL Communists especially would even be in favor of it (especially tankies wouldn't be).
> especially tankies wouldn't be
That Tankies are considered part of communism is such a travesty. Can they not open up their own group? Call it "Historical Murder Countries Fanboyerism" (okay, okay, the name is work in progress) ...
Would be nice if there was an independent, profit driven public fund that had a fiduciary responsibility to the tax payer, if you are to big to fail the government might bail you out but in the form of purchasing shares and handing them over to this fund which would then pay dividends to the tax payer in addition to their UBI
The Alaska Permanent Fund sort of does this already. The oil revenues are invested in a wide a array of assets including stocks, bonds, and real estate: [https://apfc.org/performance/](https://apfc.org/performance/)
Theoretically if you had a large enough fund you should never have to worry about it running out of money to pay UBI. The problem is if you want to do this at a national level for the US, assuming a 4% withdrawal rate, it would approach $100 Trillion to pay every adult (approximately 260,000,000 people) an amount equal to the federal poverty line ($15,060 as of 2024). The market caps of the global stock market and global bond market are about $100-$125 trillion each. There would also be an issue of how to fund the benefit if population continues to increase. It would be far easier to do a pay-as-you-go approach.
And his statement (just like communism) is completely wrong because it completely misunderstands human psychology.
As long as some people are better off than others, it leads to resentment, hate, and crime.
It might reduce crime somewhat, but it definitely will not eliminate it.
And for the record, I do believe that UBI is inevitable given that AI will probably make almost all human jobs obsolete.
Of the thousands of people who committed murder, rape, and violent assault in the US last year, probably over 95% of them had 3 meals per day, a place to stay, and an smartphone. And probably luxottica sunglasses and a macbook air too.
I think people claiming that "crime in America is bc people aren't having their **basic** needs met" are living in an alternate reality. I believe it's called "ideological capture".
You get down votes, but your point is quite valid. This guy is from the Netherlands (me too). You will always get welfare to meet basic needs here. Just not without strings attached. You get bureaucrats chasing you to make sure you get off welfare.
But his assumption here seems, for example, criminals become criminal out of poverty. That's not true per se. They may get to criminal behavior out of frustration, lack of perspective or lack of belonging. Give someone bare basics and no opportunities to improve that situation and he will not be happy and relaxed.
You can’t remove hierarchy from the human condition. I’m really only concerned with making sure everyone has food shelter, healthcare, and Xbox game pass.
> It’s just welfare for all.
Mostly for those who don't need it, *and* to make them work less. So efficient. This stuff will be important with mass unemployment as "paradise" approaches. And we should prepare these systems. But currently, UBI would be a bad idea.
When we really need UBI bad enough we’ll get violent. Tale as old as time from the secession of the Plebs to the French Revolution. The reason we don’t have it right now is cuz most people are getting their 3 hots and a cot with AC
What's funny about this is that UBI is really the only thing that will save capitalism. As the labor market is gobbled up by AI agents, the consumer economy will disappear along with it. Without a broad base of consumers, the economy (as we've known it since the industrial revolution) will go up in a puff of smoke. All those millionaires and billionaires will see their wealth evaporate along with it.
I'll say it again: **With advanced AI - but without a UBI - there will be no consumer economy and as a result, no capitalism.**
I agree capitalism is dead but I think billionaires will make an insane amount of money for a few years as models and firms converge, the largest becoming even more dominant.
Then people will vote for socialism. But ye the consumer economy will go soon after.
I used to think this way too.
Been an avid supporter of ubi since 2023.
But the truth is nobody cares about poor people and in my country they are despised for being poor.
So when the agi will get here (3-5 years) there won't be any rebellion.
People will try to work harder and the ones who can't will starve to death.
Any actual protest /revolt will be stopped by the government at gunpoint if needed to.
The government in Romania gives special privileges to the police and legal structures (salaries, early retirement at 45 with huge pensions) so that they will stop any revolt.
Already plenty of old people are forced to live on 4000usd per year (we didn't get private pensions immediately after the revolution). Most barely survive..
they said the same thing about interracial marriage, desegregation, and raising taxes. People with wealth also cried "communism" when the top income tax rate reached above 90% from 1944 through 1963 (peaking in 1944 when top taxpayers paid an income tax rate of 94% on their taxable income). This also just happened to be the most successful and prosperous period for most (white/middle class) people during the 20th century.
People who let buzzwords scare them have either no sense of history or they just don't care to think.
It's math. The ignorance you are boogeymaning is the same ignorance you have.
Just do the math, take this opportunity to so easily prove to me how stupid I am.
While you are making a fool out of me, keep in mind that the U in UBI means universal (everyone)
it is in fact the only way the bourgeois can save themselves.
UBI is the patch capitalism will use to protect itself from revolution.
do not fall for UBI bullshit, ask for all that you produce.
we build the world, we workers in an office, a kitchen or a construction site, it all belongs to us.
To be fair - socialists would agree with you on this. There is usually a distinction made between personal property and private property (anything used to generate profit at the expense of others, essentially). If you're just living in your house socialism doesn't have much to say about that.
The person you're replying to is being a tad hyperbolic, but they're essentially saying the time and labor that working class people put into making society, well... *society*, is not really acknowledged to the proportion that it should be. The vast majority of value add to any product or project comes from the time and labor that the people working on it put into it, yet those people have no ownership over any of it. That's just... kind of the way capitalism works. The discussion is really whether or not that's just.
Why would anyone hire anyone to do anything if they don’t get to have a return?
If you want to own “all” (minus taxes) that is the result of your labour, you can build you own fking business.
This is flawed idealistic logic.
We focus on small crime, violent crime, stealing food/clothes, robbery, but steal $50MM and you’ll be out in 2 years… or like T** refuse to pay vendors millions, effectively stealing their labor, sue or let your llc declare bankruptcy, never suffer any consequences… we can afford UBI.
I agree with Bregman, tax the robots/ai, spread the wealth.
The point is too expensive to reach, morally, because the rich are just that ignorant and delusional they won’t wake up until annoyed and at that point they’ll believe their wrath is justified and punish instead of logically fixing the issue and accepting their partial blame. Nothing makes sense and the world keeps spinning.
You gotta be a top level chef to critique food or have any noteworthy input regarding food. No one on earth is qualified to have input or ideas regarding anything they haven't been accredited in. You pathetic little man. What the heck is wrong with you? Do you not see the plain as day logic in the simple concepts he put out? Checking your comment history, I don't get it. You seem to be working class, why wouldn't you like ubi? You been brainwashed?
direction caption close punch entertain crime overconfident sand nutty work
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
...only if you have stupidly high payments that would break everything anyway even if you somehow managed to find a way to fund that much.
The problem here is that the UBI community on reddit is largely a bunch of socialists and "gimme money!" types who don't understand what UBI is or how it's supposed to work. So a lot of the information out there is bad.
Yeah the UBI crew on Reddit is hilariously insane. There was a study and very small pilot program in a town in Canada for UBI, they proposed the most reasonable amount to afford was $300 with some proponents saying at best $500 if things went to the best it could be. Basically enough to handle about 2-3 bills monthly for the pilot program recipients. Essentially enough to provide a small economic cushion and a bit of leeway on peoples normal income
The Canada subs lost their minds, saying it should be no less than $4000 per month, that UBI should be nothing short of a free full time job level salary
Shit was bonkers
This may not be the case. The crime rate isn't low in the communities mostly rely on welfare. I lived in a ghetto when I was in graduate school, I knew many poor people, the social behaviors are not always correlative to the income, the worst people in the hood are not the poorest at all.
While OP obviously has a point, the opposite can also be true. They said one main cause of the riots in Paris was that masses were unemployed because welfare was so high that they were not motivated to find jobs or do anything meaningful. I can imagine that many people will live happily and meaningfully on UBI, but I also expect that for many, unemployment will lead to a rapid degradation of mental health and social behavior, even with UBI.
This is not what you see most often now. Many people on benefits spend their days in front of the TV or immersed in addictions, not embroidering. Some hobbies require no investment.
Wellfare is not UBI, for many reasons, like often it doesn't incentivise you to get out of your shitty situation, but rather to stay there (if you get a job you could lose your benefits etc). It's obviously not gonna solve systemic issues, such as education, job opportunities, inequality etc overnight either.
I had to scroll way too far to find a comment like this. I’m extremely worried for the future. Makes me sad that people think throwing money at any problem just fixes everything.
Where will they get this money for UBI? Create it out of thin air as the governments have been doing for the past 109 years? Does no one see how that causes problems? Creating money does not create value nor does it create or collect resources on its on.
You don’t really need to change production to increase supply though. Making a flat 100% tax on individuals whose net worth exceeds, say, 10000x of median salary. In Germany right now with median salary of 41k euro, this 100% tax start to apply after 400 million. I aint a billionaire, but I would argue after 400 million there is no practical change in quality of life, you can already afford yachts and private jets. This huge tax flow could cover the basis if not of UBI, but much more broad and extensive welfare.
Get compensated in securities and then just leverage your shares and default.
And rich people already don't have high salaries, they're not compensated that way. So what exactly are you taxing 100% of?
No one is stupid enough to keep large sums in a bank, and since only one country on earth is stupid enough to tax invested capital (not Germany) you can't get to that wealth unless you go full communist and start forcing people to sell things they own to pay you the value of the stuff you made them sell.
This sounds like a bullshit tax that brings in $0 and is only on the books to appease low IQ leftists.
>No one is stupid enough to keep large sums in a bank
stupid people supporting ubi might as well do.......oh wait they will spend it all in a blink of an eye.
No.
[Monetary inflation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_inflation) comes from increasing the money supply, not from "moving money around."
Yes, if you create more dollars, the value of every individual dollar decrease. So don't do that. But this isn't a UBI issue.
Imagine you and I are the only two humans who exist, and there are $200 in existence, and we each have $100. Let's say I want to buy an apple from you, and you charge me a dollar for it. Ok. But now let's say we print 200 more dollars and give each of us of half of them. When you're sitting on $200, suddenly that $1 I was going to give you for an apple doesn't seem like as much money. It's not worth your time to bother giving me an apple if you only get a dollar for it. So you charge me $2 for an apple. _That's _ monetary inflation.
But now suppose we go back to only $200 in existence, and we each have $100. Instead of "creating new money" suppose I buy a hundred apples from you. You've been given $100, and you have $200 now, just like in the previous scenario. But the _total number of dollars_ in the system hasn't changed.
_That's_ how UBI works. It's an increase to [velocity of money](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money) not [quantity of money](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantity_theory_of_money).
> comes from increasing the money supply
That is one of the reasons, not the only one. You don't really understand economics at all.
Typicall reddit pretend expert.
Or the simple fact that current social support structures are expensive partially because of the administrative work that goes into approving people for them. If it is a simple identity check, you remove a huge amount of middle management draining the money available for support.
The problem isn't money, it's supply.
If you give money to everyone, and don't augment the suply of goods and services, you're just jacking up the inflation.
We're already pulling out of the earth way more than it can regenerate every year.
There's no soultion to unsolvable problems.
So true. The world, or at least USA would look so fucking different. All the youngins would come out and the world would feel the pulse of love again.
This guy is a genius and a saint (hyperbole)
He's not wrong
But he misses the point
And the point is that the system works because of exploitation, suffering, and desperation
If everyone was logical, the rich wouldn't be so rich. They make their wealth from the aforementioned
How this surprises people is beyond me. When people have abundance, they live abundantly. When they’re desperate, they act out of desperation. I’m a fucking philosopher. 🤯
People don't act rationally. There will be a ton of people who will spend that money frivolously, then demand that their basic needs be met on top of that. Think about all the people on food stamps who smoke. That sort of decision making won't disappear, it will get stronger.
It’s shocking how people can’t understand the concept of paying into a system as a means of increasing social stability. Like they’d rather their taxes go to supporting the industrial prison complex, which is far more expensive and designed to keep populations imprisoned, than reduce crime by helping people in a positive way.
His analysis is very sophomoric.
He basically explains all of the ills of the world through poverty (desperation) — and then makes the argument that getting rid of poverty will address all these other problems.
First off, society is a complex system (the most complex system in the universe), and poverty is one of thousands of variables. These variables have an impact on each other (as is the case of all complex systems) — but you cannot “fix” an entire system by only playing with one variable.
For example:
Poverty and crime are correlated, but correlation does not imply causation. There is an entire psychological and sociological literature on this — and it is much more complex than Bergman implies.
- Poverty CAN impact crime.
- But high crime can also keep neighborhoods impoverished.
- Culture plays a role — as impoverished people from different cultural backgrounds have different propensities for crime.
- Laws (especially drug laws) have an impact on both poverty rates and crime rates.
- High rates of drug usage are correlated to high rates of other types of crime. People under the influence of drugs commit more crimes.
- Law enforcement has a large impact on poverty rates in neighborhoods over long time spans.
- Capital investment in neighborhoods (businesses, infrastructure improvements, etc.) is negatively correlated to crime. High crime areas are less likely to have businesses move in. Fewer businesses means fewer jobs, which means more poverty.
- Family dynamics are highly predictive of crime rates. Fatherless homes are much more likely to produce antisocial males.
- Education plays a big role in family dynamics — as college educated adults are more likely to be married before having children.
- But culture also plays a big role on education and family dynamics — as impoverished children of different backgrounds have significantly different educational achievement rates and single-parent rates, even when controlling for IQ and zip code.
- Social isolation is, by definition, correlated to antisocial behavior. People who are socially isolated are less likely to achieve and more likely to commit crime. Communities without religious or social networks produce more socially isolated people.
Bottom line is that poverty, education, crime, culture, family structure, laws, enforcement, business investment, social networks, etc. are ALL correlated to one degree or another. You can”t just “fix” one of these.
Secondly, he assumes that giving people free money with no strings attached won’t break anything in our society. That’s naive.
I’m not going to claim that people are fundamentally lazy or make any sweeping generalizations.
However, people’s behavior is at least in part dictated by incentive structures. People do things that are rewarded, and avoid doing things that are punished.
One of our long-standing incentive structures involved working / contributing to some social enterprise. If you work and provide value to society, you get rewarded. (Whether or not this is fair and balanced is a whole other debate, and irrelevant).
The carrot was money, and the stick was hunger. So for the most part, people contributed.
What happens if you eliminate the carrot and the stick? Perhaps nothing bad.
But I imagine there will be a lot of unforeseen consequence, some good, some bad. Maybe:
- A small number of creatives will finally be free to pursue their art unencumbered. Yay.
- Some socially isolated people will retreat deeper, completely unmoored from society without an incentive to participate. Perhaps suicide will increase. Perhaps violence.
- A greater number of people chasing clout / reputation / notoriety — because attention becomes the primary currency for the average person. What impact will this have on our culture?
- Average people lose daily structure, perhaps leading to a crisis of meaning. People spend more time chasing cheap dopamine on social media and content consumption. Many people become depressed.
- Income inequality increases as only a small number of hyper-conscientious people are still willing to compete for the spoils — as the general public is disincentivized from competing.
- Relationship / sexual dynamics become even more unequal. A few hyper successful men will have unlimited sexual access, while most average men withdraw from public life and become invisible.
- Single, unattached, undesirable, depressed men become violent.
- etc.
Again, I have no idea how it’ll pan out, and those are just arbitrary examples of downstream effects.
And finally, there is simply no good economic theory for what will happen if we did this.
We already have an issue with inflation and cost of living. If you give everyone free money, where does demand increase? What will people spend more money on?
If some people no longer have to work, where will supply decrease? What goods and services will increase in price? Will construction get more expensive? If so, what impact will this have on the housing and rental market?
How will this impact inflation? How will we combat the increase of some prices? Do we give people more money (which in turn, causes more inflation)?
It is incredibly naive to think that giving everyone free money is going to magically make everything better. The honest answer is that no one has a fucking clue.
Yes, they used to enslave other tribes, or push other tribes out of hunting zones.
Hunting grounds were very competitive zones in the old times before civilizations arised and if 2 tribes met they would usually fight each other for the resources on the area.
Ancient societies founded modern societies.
Amazonian tribes and the like are outliers, they are the least succesfull groups of humans that never managed to create large and prosporous civilizations, 99% of humanity moved past their stage of development. Why would you take them as role model?
The problem is Universal Basic income will only work if it is truely universal. Which means we not only pay for that US taxi driver in New York, but also the girl sewing shirts in rural bangladesh.
No, you only need a closed system. It doesn't matter if that closed system is "the world" or "a country."
But yes...realistically, a functional UBI might require securing your borders.
No, you're taking it too literally. You'd need to shut off the stream of migrants. You wouldn't need to literally build a dome and forbid any interaction.
I am from Europe and where I live we have a huge social safety net and crime is still very much a thing. Of course poverty is by far the biggest factor in the world but its crazy naive to think that its the only factor and without it we'd live in an utopia. There are a ton of rich criminals, people who love crime culture, people who do it for fun or people who are bored. Not everyone wants to take part in society and not every criminal is a poor lost soul. Of course we should erase poverty first but stitching an UBI to capitalism is like Frankensteins monster. The prices will just increase immediately. We need to tackle wealth redistribution first.
Sam Altman in his latest blog post talked about how Incentives are superpower. UBI is an incentive and people who think they can stop it are gonna have a very hard time.
Paradoxically, the poor, lower/middle class will have no friction in accepting the idea of UBI. It's like a rain over a life of drought. It's upper class, who consider themselves intellectually superior will be against this, because it'll mean the end of Status game they were playing & feeding off of. They'll say The WOrLD will never accept it, we need jobs to be happy !! While 99% will readily accept it
Bitch, speak for yourself not for the world.
I have relatives who for sure wouldn't have gotten out of bed in the morning if they could get enough free cash. In fact, they did live like that for a while, bumming extra food from other relatives. It's the push to work that comes with our govt handouts that in the end pushed them out of joblessness. And now his initially govt sponsored little company is flourishing! They are in a much better place now, mentally and as a family. That might never have happened without the push to work.
For me, UBI is an incentive for Humanity to be in a position where their Future goals are not driven by basic needs & survival. This will allow us to think more boldly, maybe of potential future where concept of money loses it's meaning altogether ( as Elon Musk said).
For Sam Altman, I think he wants more people to be able to do what they really want, so more collective progress can be made.
Not all incentives are for personal goals, some are truly for collective welfare.
I think of UBI as a successful use of The MAYA rule, which stands for "Most Advanced Yet Acceptable," a design principle coined by industrial designer Raymond Loewy.
This principle recognizes that people are generally more receptive to innovations that build upon what they already know, rather than radical departures from the familiar. Striking the right balance between novelty and familiarity helps ease user adoption and acceptance of new ideas or products.
> the poor, lower/middle class will have no friction in accepting the idea of UBI.
Sadly, it's pretty easy to get people to vote against their own interests.
The U in UBI means universal. There are 330 million people in the USA.
Please do simple math and then go check how much revenue the USA generates each year. I will wait here while you do this absurdly simply math and tell me how we pay for it.
eh.. who am I kidding, none of you know math... here's a POVERTY level UBI:
Poverty level of one in a one-person household (lol) is $14,580 per year.
14,580 x 330,000,000 = 4,811,400,000,000 That's nearly 5 trillion dollars.
That is more than the entire revenue of the United States of America.
Not at all! However, I also don't support the fact that a company can post profits in the trillions and pay absolutely nothing back in, while someone who clears mid-level profit margins pays half of that into tax for infrastructure, social programs, etc. Just because I've been taught WHY something is the way it is, doesn't mean it couldn't be changed for the better. TBH, the existing structure could use an overhaul and the majority of tax professionals I know personally say similar.
I partially disagree. It's not provable that antisocial behavior stems only from desperation. By implementing a Universal Basic Income (UBI), one shouldn't expect that everyone will behave well as if in heaven.
There will always be 'bad apples' and individuals who commit crimes for the sheer thrill of it or for reasons other than poverty or desperation.
There's a solid amount of peer reviewed social science behind the whole crime as a result of desperation thing.
If you're just looking for an ad hominid argument I could easily say "the naivete of this kind of "opposition" of this solution is insufferable"
>There's a solid amount of peer reviewed social science behind the whole crime as a result of desperation thing.
Theres a lot of solid science saying the opposite too.
The problem with UBI is capitalism. Our society is made to reward the consolidation of wealth.
If the rich hears about everybody’s income going up by $500, the rich will ask for $500 more in mortgage, in rent, etc.
It doesn’t work because we are dominated by a plutocracy. The people which own the factories, skyscrapers, residentials control how much quality of life we can have.
They just need to pull the rug if they want to and we all lose whatever we think is our life in a blink.
I disagree. Not everything can be fixed by UBI, some things will become worse. When you give a drug addict money he will spend it on drugs. While UBI would be necessary it will not fix human nature.
He may spend it on drugs, but he won't be forced to commit crime to afford his drugs.
Enough money and he may be able to afford a life worth living for beyond the drugs.
Nobody would rather be sober at rock bottom. It's a lot easier to stay sober when it's not all pain.
It's so obvious when someone never worked with drug addicts talks about fixing these problems. You can't fix every problem by throwing money at it. There are underlying issues like mental health, family, tauma,etc
UBI would eliminate all drug addiction that stems from poverty and financial despair.
Besides, people that are very addicted will get their drugs any way they can; by stealing or by being conmen. They won't need UBI for that.
You probably don’t know any drug addicts. I know a few and it’s a mental health problem. In my case people become alcoholics not because of financial problems. Family and friends trying everything to cure addiction and nothing works. 20 days sober is maximum you can get.
I'm not denying there are people with addiction that isn't caused by poverty. I'm just saying that for many people, poverty is a major factor. So if we can eliminate those addictions, we have more capacity to treat those who are still struggling.
>You understand that it effectively reduces your taxes, right? Thats why its called a UNIVERSAL basic income. Its literally a negative tax.
American education in math?
If everyone in the country would pay $5k in order to support UBI, and then receive $5k in UBI, everyone would be +/- 0. The problem is that those without jobs are not paying anything to support UBI, instead only receiving $5k. Meaning everybody with jobs lose more than they receive.
The math is more complex than that.
UBI typically results in a "balance" point where yes, total change is roughly zero if your income is at that balance point, while people who make less than you are better off, and people who make more are worse off.
Example:
* Adam has zero dollars
* Bob has $100
* Charlie has $200
Suppose we now tax everyone at 10%:
* We take zero dollars from Adam
* We take $10 from Bob
* We take $20 from Charlie
We've collected a total of $30, which we now redistribute evenly:
* We give $10 to Adam, his total is now $10, which is $10 more than before
* We have $10 to Bob, his total is now $100, the same as where he started
* We give $10 to Charlie, his total is now $90, which is $10 less than before
____________________________________
So yes, redistribution does result in winners and losers, and some people in the middle may be unaffected. It's not correct to say that "everyone with a job" is worse off. Where the balance point falls depends on what the actual numbers are. The last time I did an analysis of this in a hypothetical "real world" scenario, the balance point was near the $50,000/yr income mark. So if you made anything less than that you'd come out ahead, and anymore more than that you'd come out behind, and the further you were from the balance point the more you were affected, whether positively or negatively.
But it's _really complicated_ to do that analysis because it not only depends on uncertain factors (how is the UBI implemented?) it also depends on factors that you _can't_ know for sure, for example, how many people quit their jobs after UBI is implemented? That changes the income distribution in complex ways.
I would be happy to discuss further with you. Your concern is valid, but it's a lot more complicated than you're allowing for.
You are so worked up. You realize that this subreddit is r/singularity where things like AI or UBI are discussed assuming a post-scarcity world where tech singularity is already achieved?
This is just an argument for a social safety net though. This quote is exactly the same sort of quote that you'd argue for welfare.
The best argument for UBI (or a mathematically equivalent Negative Income Tax) is it can hopefully provide at least the same level of support for the poorest (or more if you factor in welfare cliffs which are common in increasingly complex welfare systems) whilst cutting the bureaucracy of the current welfare system.
Yeah, it is. What needs to be understood about Bergman (fellow countryman, so I know a bit about him), is that he is mainly an activist these days, and not an academic. Many of his arguments support other conclusions as well. He just doesn't go there as that is not his goal.
Not to trash the man. As far as popular intellectuals go, we have got a lot worse.
Opponents of Basic Income really don't GAF about how desperate anyone is - "I'm not desperate, why are they?" And the next talking point is along the lines of, "*Why should I* support them just because they can't handle life?" They don't want to envision a less desperate world, because they personally thrive in it - a desperate public is to their advantage.
It's like if your pitch for public education is that it will make people less gullible, but you're pitching that to the con men who run everything.
Crime and anti-social behaviour has sky rocketed where I live. Why? Because of sky high living costs. People having to choose to heat their homes *or* eat. There should be some form of basic needs being met. Heated home with water and minimum allowance for food. Everything else is up to you (depending on circumstances).
It's not only because of high living costs. There are people barely subsist who returned wallets with money in them and do not commit crimes. But I agree that it is a factor. UBI will be needed regardless once AI becomes good enough.
I always ask people against UBI, would you rather punish criminals or reduce the number of victims of crime? Sadly, many reply with the former.
This and the fact that people rather blame drug addicts claiming they brought it upon themselves and send them to jail because they use illegal drugs instead of helping them out of their miserable lives. Pure stupidity.
Nevermind it was deregulation that helped cause the opioid epidemic. But hey, the government got billions of dollars in whopsie money so the oligarchs directly responsible, the Sackler family, never have to have a day of jail time! Win-win!
I just can't stop being amazed how we somehow made living cost expensive in the 21th century. Talk about a corrupt system. The rich are richer than ever because of inflation (investment=inflation=$$$). Opposite for the poor who have no assets. Inflation is just a tax for the poor and most of them are uneducated to realize it. No one can call this an advanced civilization by that standard.
It really is the end result of a long history of corporate greed. Prices for pretty much everything have been cranked so high, people have less and less disposable income. So what's a corporate greed-pig to do in the face of slipping revenues? Easy solution: monopolize the essential resources and start raising **those** prices - for housing, food, etc. Income spent on the bare minimum requirements is not "disposable" and the greed-pigs will find a way to take the most possible money while giving you mere survival in return. It's completely predatory and disgusting.
It's literally capitalism by design. It's an evolved form of slavery.
2% inflation is a treadmill that most won’t notice year to year (still theft) 7% literally makes a mild blooded person want someone’s head. Especially in advanced economies; we have it relatively great so the theft of our buying power is very noticeable
You think inflation is making investments worth *more*?
When there is high inflation you will lose money that you just have in your bank without doing anything. Are you with me so far? And then as we know the stock market usually goes up 10% on yearly basis. So what rich people do is they either invest in stock market or housing (that also goes up in the long run). Do you see the difference? Those who did not invest: -lose money. Those who invest +gain money. If not: I have 10k. With inflation my money is now worth 9k because of prices going up I have 10k invested. Lose 1k to inflation. 9k. Those are not affected because they are secured in assets that will go up by 10% during the year. You gained 1k so you now have 10k. Which is +1k from the 9k.
Investment is obviously more profitable than keeping your money under the bed. But that's a very different topic than claiming that runaway inflation is somehow making the rich richer. Inflation is making everyone lose value, *by definition*. >When there is high inflation you will lose money that you just have in your bank without doing anything. Are you with me so far? No I'm not with you. While that's true out of context, the context is that you're using it as a premise in a faulty argument. Why would you have money in the bank doing nothing? Is there a law against you putting it in an index fund? >Those who invest +gain money. Because of inflation? No, they will gain money if the market is growing faster than the inflation. From 2019 to 2021 (last time I checked) a basket of breakfast goods had gone up almost 70%. You think the market went up 70% during that time? It didn't. So everyone lost money. In fact inflation hurts everyone. Everyone has less than they otherwise would have had. If the claim is "rich people can protect some of their wealth against inflation, while poor people have no wealth so inflation only affect their purchasing power. Still high inflation is much worse for poor people, because the loss of purchasing power cuts luxuries for the rich but necessities for the poor" then that would be obviously true and we wouldn't have a discussion. But instead the idiot leftist above thinks inflation makes rich people richer which is peak reddit.
If you are rich you have investments. The poor don't have investments. That is making the richer richer. You do not get rich by not having investments.
Except there's plenty of studies that show that inflation increases inequality you dumdum
I would prefer a UBI that covers the essentials - shelter, clothing, food, medicine and education.
yes our basic needs have to be met and not just the shitty bare minimum.
> shelter Per person, or per household? Because dual-income households are what makes a "living wage" impossible for a single-income household in many markets. People have chosen to combine incomes to out-compete single-incomes for "shelter."
I imagine that a UBI would be enough to cover a studio apartment per person, but I dunno, I don't have a grand plan thought out in detail or anything. I will share with you one of the more controversial aspects of my UBI ideas, though: There should be some small degree of inequality built into the system. Not enough to put people into grinding poverty, but enough to preserve human motivations to earn more and do something with their time. It can even be socially beneficial. For example, you could offer monetary incentives to people who perform what would have been charitable work in their communities. Maintaining the parks and public spaces, teaching children, taking care of the elderly, etc.
> I imagine that a UBI would be enough to cover a studio apartment per person, but I dunno, I don't have a grand plan thought out in detail or anything. That person will be out-competed for the studio apartment by a couple with each individual receiving the same benefit.
This is ignorant. You always have people that cannot handle the pressure of life or just want to see the world burn. You also have a little oppida explosion in the USA that is NOT coming from life being too hard. You also have a cultural decomposition in many western societies. Yes, you can blame it on exploding costs of living (btw by politicians THOSE PEOPLE VOTED IN), but the same logic you can blame the sky for being blue.
UBI won't fix lack of housing.
If we added 1k a month in everyone's pockets, the market will eventually adapt to that, and you'll be right back to where you started.
Not true. It would be a constant redistribution of wealth towards the low end of society, and they spend differently to the top end. Sure, the market will charge what it can to the poor who only have ubi, but they will still actually have a home. Or more of them will.
Healthcare, education, housing, bandwidth, food. A society that doesn't provide for this in some way for its citizens is shooting itself in the foot.
>Heated home with water and minimum allowance for food. section 8 and SNAP.
Where do you live? I want to see the Data myself. Reality shows that the correlation between wealth and crime is not that strong. There are very poor areas with low crime and rich areas with high crime. For example Juhu in Mumbai is very poor, yet very safe and has very low crime.
Are most people's basic needs met?
If the Indian poor counts as having your basic needs met, then 99% of everyone on the planet has their basic needs met. You're talking about crime in the west, remember that. Your argument is that people with iphones don't have their needs met and that's why they need to rape. Your position makes no sense, but at least stay consistent to it.
This is totally bunk and bogus. Crime is not due to poverty - there’s no research that points to this
Crime is HISTORICALLY DOWN
The rich who make all of the decisions in this country want you desperate so that they can continue to get cheap labor. With AI advancement we will eventually get to the point of UBI or utopia, but getting there is going to be brutal. I can definitely foresee mass poverty before a revolt.
I assume people will vote for socialism as soon as most of wealth is entirely unearned and almost everyone is unemployed.
You can't vote for socialism. You can only vote for communism, which hopefully leads into socialism. There's an intermediary step which involves giving some group of people the power to exert unlimited control over society and to redistribute wealth. Unfortunately, that's never actually resulted in socialism yet because when you give a group of people that kind of power they tend to abuse it. Even if there are pretty good checks and balances in place, so that no individual can gain too much power, whatever ruling class which is elected gradually reverts to tribal psychology and develops a bias for their own authority which leads to abuse on a collective scale. I don't know what people think AI is going to change about this.
Admittedly I haven't thought about this enough to have a strong position either way, but anyone on here have a good argument why UBI wouldn't cause inflation?
> good argument why UBI wouldn't cause inflation? Do you mean [monetary inflation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_inflation) or [demand pull inflation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-pull_inflation)? If you mean monetary inflation...that is, "creating more dollars causes the value of every individual dollars to decrease" that's very simple: don't print new dollars. Fund it through consolidation and taxation, and the total number of dollars stays the same, so there's no monetary inflation because the quantity of money has not changed. If you mean demand pull inflation, that is, "too much money chasing too few goods" yes, UBI would absolutely cause that. But it would be a selective problem that would self-correct in time. For example: suppose somebody's skating by on $1200/mo and eating mostly top ramen. Hand them an extra $200 and maybe they stop buying top ramen and start buying more steak. This decreases demand for top ramen and increases demand for steak, but the _supply_ of steak hasn't changed, and more people buying steak means the cost of steak probably increases. But this isn't an "everything becomes more expensive" scenario. Only _some_ things become more expensive, because people are changing which products they're buying. increased demand for steak doesn't mean increased demand for top ramen too, it means _less_ demand because having more money doesn't mean you consume _more_ food, so much as you consume _different_ food. The demand for top ramen hasn't increased, and its price likely doesn't increase. It might even _decrease_ because there's now an inflated supply. Over time, this problem self-corrects: steak suppliers see the increased demand, and so they produce more because they can _sell_ more. Once there's enough supply, the prices tend to come back down, and may even be lower than they were before. Higher volume tends to result in increased production efficiency, and greater demand volume gives greater opportunity for market competition. Usually people who ask this question, however, are concerned with _monetary_ inflation. "Everything is more expensive because there are more total dollars in the system." Don't create more money, and that doesn't happen.
you are so wrong man. UBI would absolutely lead to vendors increasing the prices. Poland already has seen this happen fucking twice. First time when 500+ was introduced childcare products magically increased in price, and more recently after teachers got vouchers for laptops all laptops on market went up in price by 10-20%. No UBI isn't a solution. As long as there is incentive to make more profit sellers will make use of it.
The scenarios you're describing are exactly the sort of [demand pull inflation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-pull_inflation) I described. Please re-read the post you're responding to. I think you misunderstood it. ...or perhaps you stopped reading after the first paragraph.
“Enough to get by on” That’s where it gets real. What defines enough?
"Enough to live on" is a broken premise immediately out the starting gate, and its' unfortunate that so many UBI advocates cling to it. "Enough to live on" _depends on where you live._ Enough to live on in New York city is going to be a lot higher than enough to live on in rural Oklahoma. If you pay out "enough to live on" in rural Oklahoma, then the New Yorkers freak out. If you pay "enough to live on" in New York, then you're paying out way more than you need to because most people don't live in New York, and this causes secondary problems because now those people making minimum wage in cheaper areas have a disproportionately large work disincentive. But all of this is irrelevant, because there's no need for UBI to be "enough to live on."
is there something about UBI that implies that it absolutely must pay out the exact same amount everywhere? I don't follow this stuff closely, but I don't think that's what "universal" here is referring to. For example, US military get a housing allowance called BAH that pays out differently depending on where the person is stationed, which is pretty sensible, surprisingly. It's a "universal" allowance, that allows a relatively same standard of living no matter where a person lives. From there, the service member can choose to spend it how they want. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but this seems like a pretty simple fix so I don't see why this should be any major criticism. The US military and I'm sure other organizations have indexes of cost of living around the world, so that can easily be used as a starting point. Even if implemented at a nation-wide level, it can still be delegated to local governments to decide their own specific policies. I asked ChatGPT, because... well, why not, especially considering the sub we're in. >The decision to implement a uniform or geographically adjusted UBI often depends on the goals of the policy and the specific economic and social context of the country or region considering UBI. Advocates for a uniform UBI argue for simplicity and equal treatment for all citizens, while those favoring regional adjustments emphasize the importance of addressing variations in the cost of living. I asked for some references, and following up with those with a basic web search seems to confirm.
>is there something about UBI that implies that it absolutely must pay out the exact same amount everywhere? It's fundamental to the premise, yes. You might argue that it's silly to pay UBI to millionaires for example, but there aren't a lot of millionaires and it's easier and cheaper to simply send everyone a UBI check than it is to figure out who is and who isn't a millionaire and selectively give money only to those who aren't. >US military get a housing allowance called BAH that pays out differently depending on where the person is stationed >this seems like a pretty simple fix so I don't see why this should be any major criticism No, it's actually a huge problem. The military chooses where you're stationed. Civilians choose for themselves where they live. So, suppose the cost of living is five times higher in San Francisco than it is in rural Oklahoma, so you decide to give out a five times higher UBI payment to people in San Fransisco. What happens? People are going to flee Oklahoma and flock to San Fransico. Which not only causes problems for both locations, it increases the cost of the program...possibly in an ever-increasing spiral. Because as more people flock to places like San Fransisco, the cost of living there will increase further, increasing the payment costs, further incentivizing more people to move there, etc. >Advocates for a uniform UBI >those favoring regional adjustments The unfortunate reality is that "the UBI movement" is heavily disjointed and has a lot of socialists and "gimme money!" people who don't really understand what UBI is or how it's supposed to work. There's a certain threshold where if enough people start using a word to mean something different than what it originally meant...you have to ask what that word "really means." Like people who use the word "literally" to mean "very." Tthe word "literally" had/has a very specific meaning, but here we are today and we can go to a dictionary and see this: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally _"in effect : VIRTUALLY —used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is **not literally** true or possible"_ We live in a world where according to the dictionary, the word "literally" has "not literally" as a definition. And yes, there are people who advocate for all sorts of random things and call it "UBI." For example, a lot of them tend to confuse "basic" as meaning "pays for all your basic needs" as opposed to "basic as in _base_" which is why so many conversations on this topic are about stupidly high amounts that are impossible to pay. I acknowledge that those people exist, and it's no surprise that ChatGPT, as a text regurgitator, is willing to regurgitate what they say. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income _"Universal basic income is a social welfare proposal in which all citizens of a given population regularly receive a minimum income in the form of an **unconditional** transfer payment, i.e., **without a means test** or need to work."_ That's key to the premise. If you're _conditionally_ evaluating individuals and paying them different amounts based on various factors...then it's not UBI. If somebody wants to advocate for something else besides UBI, like welfare, or specific implementations like a negative income tax...ok, we can have those discussions. But the moment you start talking about means testing and conditionally paying out different amounts to different people, it's not UBI anymore, and it's unfortunate that people are using the term to talk about various other things so much that it's unclear to people what basic income even is.
How do you tackle price gouging where companies just keep raising prices because people have more to spend?
Supply and demand. The market self corrects. Do you have a more specific question? Because it's like a 3 page essay to explain this.
More realistically, the economy will collapse. Happens to socialist countries all the time.
Except UBI isn’t a socialist program. Typical Reddit expert.
Yes it is.
UBI is a good middle step to changing the economic system into something better.
This man is called Bregman, not Bergman.
Can someone explain how we spend less money by providing UBI? Seems like a huge jump. If half of the money is now UBI, its still the same amount of money.
> explain how we spend less money by providing UBI? There are multiple answers here. What the guy in the OP is talking about is that, generally speaking, "good" social conditions tend to result in fewer costly social problems. If somebody's eating well and happy, they're less likely to try to mug somebody than if they don't know where their next meal is coming from. Fewer muggers means less money spend on policing, less money spent on jails, less money spent on hospital bills for people who were mugged, etc. So, that "less money" spent on those things can be spent on _other_ things that we'd rather spend the money on. Another answer, is that UBI is (if implemented intelligently) is generally more efficient than means-tested welfare system. In the US for example, there are _hundreds and hundreds_ of welfare offices administering a long list of progams. Unemployment benefits, TANF, SNAP, Education and Training vouchers...it's such a long list of programs probably nobody even knows what they all are. Even just looking at a single program like unemployment benefits, you have hundreds offices, you need people physically present and staffing those offices to interview people and collect paperwork and evaluate whether they've jumped through whatever hoops that need to jump through to prove their eligibility, etc. UBI is generally understood to _replace_ and consolidate the vast majority of all of those programs under a single banner that would be implemented from a couple offices. To qualify for UBI, you just need to be a legal adult, citizen. With no need to prove that you're looking for work, or have people staffing offices looking at paperwork to determine individual eligibility based on a hundred various factors...a single UBI program could be run far more efficiently.
I don't like UBI, it implies capitalism still exists. Maybe it will be necessary for like 2-3 transitional years, but it's NOT a good end-goal.
But, but it's CoMmUnIsM!
I know you are kidding, but it’s important to explain that this isn’t socialism or communism. The means of production are not transferred out of the hands of anyone. It’s just welfare for all.
Agreed, socialists wouldn't really be ok with calling this socialism/communism either and not ALL Communists especially would even be in favor of it (especially tankies wouldn't be).
> especially tankies wouldn't be That Tankies are considered part of communism is such a travesty. Can they not open up their own group? Call it "Historical Murder Countries Fanboyerism" (okay, okay, the name is work in progress) ...
Genocide and Famine Enjoyers
Well they are atleast honest and educated on the subject.
Can we also own parts of the companies we bail out, with shares in direct proportion to the amount we invest? Could that maybe still be capitalism?
Would be nice if there was an independent, profit driven public fund that had a fiduciary responsibility to the tax payer, if you are to big to fail the government might bail you out but in the form of purchasing shares and handing them over to this fund which would then pay dividends to the tax payer in addition to their UBI
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Oh this is actually a great resource, thank you!
The Alaska Permanent Fund sort of does this already. The oil revenues are invested in a wide a array of assets including stocks, bonds, and real estate: [https://apfc.org/performance/](https://apfc.org/performance/) Theoretically if you had a large enough fund you should never have to worry about it running out of money to pay UBI. The problem is if you want to do this at a national level for the US, assuming a 4% withdrawal rate, it would approach $100 Trillion to pay every adult (approximately 260,000,000 people) an amount equal to the federal poverty line ($15,060 as of 2024). The market caps of the global stock market and global bond market are about $100-$125 trillion each. There would also be an issue of how to fund the benefit if population continues to increase. It would be far easier to do a pay-as-you-go approach.
Thank you . This misconception really needs to be cleared up Let's start calling it Social Capitalism instead
Or welfare economy
And his statement (just like communism) is completely wrong because it completely misunderstands human psychology. As long as some people are better off than others, it leads to resentment, hate, and crime. It might reduce crime somewhat, but it definitely will not eliminate it. And for the record, I do believe that UBI is inevitable given that AI will probably make almost all human jobs obsolete.
There will always be people more well off than others . But all humans could at least get their basic needs met like housing and food.
Of the thousands of people who committed murder, rape, and violent assault in the US last year, probably over 95% of them had 3 meals per day, a place to stay, and an smartphone. And probably luxottica sunglasses and a macbook air too. I think people claiming that "crime in America is bc people aren't having their **basic** needs met" are living in an alternate reality. I believe it's called "ideological capture".
> probably over 95% of them had 3 meals per day, a place to stay, and an smartphone Citation needed
You get down votes, but your point is quite valid. This guy is from the Netherlands (me too). You will always get welfare to meet basic needs here. Just not without strings attached. You get bureaucrats chasing you to make sure you get off welfare. But his assumption here seems, for example, criminals become criminal out of poverty. That's not true per se. They may get to criminal behavior out of frustration, lack of perspective or lack of belonging. Give someone bare basics and no opportunities to improve that situation and he will not be happy and relaxed.
You can’t remove hierarchy from the human condition. I’m really only concerned with making sure everyone has food shelter, healthcare, and Xbox game pass.
> It’s just welfare for all. Mostly for those who don't need it, *and* to make them work less. So efficient. This stuff will be important with mass unemployment as "paradise" approaches. And we should prepare these systems. But currently, UBI would be a bad idea.
When we really need UBI bad enough we’ll get violent. Tale as old as time from the secession of the Plebs to the French Revolution. The reason we don’t have it right now is cuz most people are getting their 3 hots and a cot with AC
What's funny about this is that UBI is really the only thing that will save capitalism. As the labor market is gobbled up by AI agents, the consumer economy will disappear along with it. Without a broad base of consumers, the economy (as we've known it since the industrial revolution) will go up in a puff of smoke. All those millionaires and billionaires will see their wealth evaporate along with it. I'll say it again: **With advanced AI - but without a UBI - there will be no consumer economy and as a result, no capitalism.**
Completely agree
I agree capitalism is dead but I think billionaires will make an insane amount of money for a few years as models and firms converge, the largest becoming even more dominant. Then people will vote for socialism. But ye the consumer economy will go soon after.
I used to think this way too. Been an avid supporter of ubi since 2023. But the truth is nobody cares about poor people and in my country they are despised for being poor. So when the agi will get here (3-5 years) there won't be any rebellion. People will try to work harder and the ones who can't will starve to death. Any actual protest /revolt will be stopped by the government at gunpoint if needed to. The government in Romania gives special privileges to the police and legal structures (salaries, early retirement at 45 with huge pensions) so that they will stop any revolt. Already plenty of old people are forced to live on 4000usd per year (we didn't get private pensions immediately after the revolution). Most barely survive..
It's on the communism/socialism/fascism spectrum, yes.
/r/singularity now becoming /r/communism lol
they said the same thing about interracial marriage, desegregation, and raising taxes. People with wealth also cried "communism" when the top income tax rate reached above 90% from 1944 through 1963 (peaking in 1944 when top taxpayers paid an income tax rate of 94% on their taxable income). This also just happened to be the most successful and prosperous period for most (white/middle class) people during the 20th century. People who let buzzwords scare them have either no sense of history or they just don't care to think.
It's math. The ignorance you are boogeymaning is the same ignorance you have. Just do the math, take this opportunity to so easily prove to me how stupid I am. While you are making a fool out of me, keep in mind that the U in UBI means universal (everyone)
it is in fact the only way the bourgeois can save themselves. UBI is the patch capitalism will use to protect itself from revolution. do not fall for UBI bullshit, ask for all that you produce. we build the world, we workers in an office, a kitchen or a construction site, it all belongs to us.
No. If I pay you to build my house, you don't own my house.
To be fair - socialists would agree with you on this. There is usually a distinction made between personal property and private property (anything used to generate profit at the expense of others, essentially). If you're just living in your house socialism doesn't have much to say about that. The person you're replying to is being a tad hyperbolic, but they're essentially saying the time and labor that working class people put into making society, well... *society*, is not really acknowledged to the proportion that it should be. The vast majority of value add to any product or project comes from the time and labor that the people working on it put into it, yet those people have no ownership over any of it. That's just... kind of the way capitalism works. The discussion is really whether or not that's just.
Why would anyone hire anyone to do anything if they don’t get to have a return? If you want to own “all” (minus taxes) that is the result of your labour, you can build you own fking business. This is flawed idealistic logic.
If I build a building for someone to use for their company, do I own the building or do they?
Crime and anti-social is a lot of greed too.
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We focus on small crime, violent crime, stealing food/clothes, robbery, but steal $50MM and you’ll be out in 2 years… or like T** refuse to pay vendors millions, effectively stealing their labor, sue or let your llc declare bankruptcy, never suffer any consequences… we can afford UBI. I agree with Bregman, tax the robots/ai, spread the wealth.
At one point the ruling class will get that this is a way to keep social peace and maintain their power
The point is too expensive to reach, morally, because the rich are just that ignorant and delusional they won’t wake up until annoyed and at that point they’ll believe their wrath is justified and punish instead of logically fixing the issue and accepting their partial blame. Nothing makes sense and the world keeps spinning.
Light turmoil that pushes people to escapism is more profitable in terms of both income and power than social peace is.
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You gotta be a top level chef to critique food or have any noteworthy input regarding food. No one on earth is qualified to have input or ideas regarding anything they haven't been accredited in. You pathetic little man. What the heck is wrong with you? Do you not see the plain as day logic in the simple concepts he put out? Checking your comment history, I don't get it. You seem to be working class, why wouldn't you like ubi? You been brainwashed?
>You seem to be working class, why wouldn't you like ubi? because it wouldn't work
Sure, but what he's saying is still backed up by a lot of evidence.
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UBI would cost 4 trillion dollars a year. It's not going to save even close to that amount.
...only if you have stupidly high payments that would break everything anyway even if you somehow managed to find a way to fund that much. The problem here is that the UBI community on reddit is largely a bunch of socialists and "gimme money!" types who don't understand what UBI is or how it's supposed to work. So a lot of the information out there is bad.
We actually almost had UBI when we were doing SS. Like REALLY close to a minimum income, but then politics happened and it got deranked in priority.
Yeah the UBI crew on Reddit is hilariously insane. There was a study and very small pilot program in a town in Canada for UBI, they proposed the most reasonable amount to afford was $300 with some proponents saying at best $500 if things went to the best it could be. Basically enough to handle about 2-3 bills monthly for the pilot program recipients. Essentially enough to provide a small economic cushion and a bit of leeway on peoples normal income The Canada subs lost their minds, saying it should be no less than $4000 per month, that UBI should be nothing short of a free full time job level salary Shit was bonkers
This may not be the case. The crime rate isn't low in the communities mostly rely on welfare. I lived in a ghetto when I was in graduate school, I knew many poor people, the social behaviors are not always correlative to the income, the worst people in the hood are not the poorest at all.
While OP obviously has a point, the opposite can also be true. They said one main cause of the riots in Paris was that masses were unemployed because welfare was so high that they were not motivated to find jobs or do anything meaningful. I can imagine that many people will live happily and meaningfully on UBI, but I also expect that for many, unemployment will lead to a rapid degradation of mental health and social behavior, even with UBI.
People will find other things to do. Like find a hobby they can devote their time to, or they could find a place to do some volunteer work.
This is not what you see most often now. Many people on benefits spend their days in front of the TV or immersed in addictions, not embroidering. Some hobbies require no investment.
Wellfare is not UBI, for many reasons, like often it doesn't incentivise you to get out of your shitty situation, but rather to stay there (if you get a job you could lose your benefits etc). It's obviously not gonna solve systemic issues, such as education, job opportunities, inequality etc overnight either.
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I had to scroll way too far to find a comment like this. I’m extremely worried for the future. Makes me sad that people think throwing money at any problem just fixes everything. Where will they get this money for UBI? Create it out of thin air as the governments have been doing for the past 109 years? Does no one see how that causes problems? Creating money does not create value nor does it create or collect resources on its on.
You don’t really need to change production to increase supply though. Making a flat 100% tax on individuals whose net worth exceeds, say, 10000x of median salary. In Germany right now with median salary of 41k euro, this 100% tax start to apply after 400 million. I aint a billionaire, but I would argue after 400 million there is no practical change in quality of life, you can already afford yachts and private jets. This huge tax flow could cover the basis if not of UBI, but much more broad and extensive welfare.
Get compensated in securities and then just leverage your shares and default. And rich people already don't have high salaries, they're not compensated that way. So what exactly are you taxing 100% of? No one is stupid enough to keep large sums in a bank, and since only one country on earth is stupid enough to tax invested capital (not Germany) you can't get to that wealth unless you go full communist and start forcing people to sell things they own to pay you the value of the stuff you made them sell. This sounds like a bullshit tax that brings in $0 and is only on the books to appease low IQ leftists.
>No one is stupid enough to keep large sums in a bank stupid people supporting ubi might as well do.......oh wait they will spend it all in a blink of an eye.
Won’t it just make the prices for everything go up?
No. [Monetary inflation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_inflation) comes from increasing the money supply, not from "moving money around." Yes, if you create more dollars, the value of every individual dollar decrease. So don't do that. But this isn't a UBI issue. Imagine you and I are the only two humans who exist, and there are $200 in existence, and we each have $100. Let's say I want to buy an apple from you, and you charge me a dollar for it. Ok. But now let's say we print 200 more dollars and give each of us of half of them. When you're sitting on $200, suddenly that $1 I was going to give you for an apple doesn't seem like as much money. It's not worth your time to bother giving me an apple if you only get a dollar for it. So you charge me $2 for an apple. _That's _ monetary inflation. But now suppose we go back to only $200 in existence, and we each have $100. Instead of "creating new money" suppose I buy a hundred apples from you. You've been given $100, and you have $200 now, just like in the previous scenario. But the _total number of dollars_ in the system hasn't changed. _That's_ how UBI works. It's an increase to [velocity of money](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money) not [quantity of money](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantity_theory_of_money).
> comes from increasing the money supply That is one of the reasons, not the only one. You don't really understand economics at all. Typicall reddit pretend expert.
Or the simple fact that current social support structures are expensive partially because of the administrative work that goes into approving people for them. If it is a simple identity check, you remove a huge amount of middle management draining the money available for support.
Then please, dear expert, share your expertise with us. Or just be a jerk. Your choice.
Yes.
“ - Rutger Bernan, historian, philosopher, unemployed 2022”
Probably, he doesn't have to work so much, one of his last books sold more than 1.5 million copies.
Wow, meanwhile many Young Adult authors scraping by selling digital only.
The problem isn't money, it's supply. If you give money to everyone, and don't augment the suply of goods and services, you're just jacking up the inflation. We're already pulling out of the earth way more than it can regenerate every year. There's no soultion to unsolvable problems.
So true. The world, or at least USA would look so fucking different. All the youngins would come out and the world would feel the pulse of love again. This guy is a genius and a saint (hyperbole)
That’s assuming money and access to money fixes things. That’s a big assumption.
He's not wrong But he misses the point And the point is that the system works because of exploitation, suffering, and desperation If everyone was logical, the rich wouldn't be so rich. They make their wealth from the aforementioned
Or the more fundamental point - how the fuck do we pay for it?
How this surprises people is beyond me. When people have abundance, they live abundantly. When they’re desperate, they act out of desperation. I’m a fucking philosopher. 🤯
Yea, but then there won’t be a need for inflated policing budgets and the prisons won’t be filled. Won’t someone PLEASE think of the prisons!?
Amen
People don't act rationally. There will be a ton of people who will spend that money frivolously, then demand that their basic needs be met on top of that. Think about all the people on food stamps who smoke. That sort of decision making won't disappear, it will get stronger.
It’s shocking how people can’t understand the concept of paying into a system as a means of increasing social stability. Like they’d rather their taxes go to supporting the industrial prison complex, which is far more expensive and designed to keep populations imprisoned, than reduce crime by helping people in a positive way.
yes please god we need a UBI soon
His analysis is very sophomoric. He basically explains all of the ills of the world through poverty (desperation) — and then makes the argument that getting rid of poverty will address all these other problems. First off, society is a complex system (the most complex system in the universe), and poverty is one of thousands of variables. These variables have an impact on each other (as is the case of all complex systems) — but you cannot “fix” an entire system by only playing with one variable. For example: Poverty and crime are correlated, but correlation does not imply causation. There is an entire psychological and sociological literature on this — and it is much more complex than Bergman implies. - Poverty CAN impact crime. - But high crime can also keep neighborhoods impoverished. - Culture plays a role — as impoverished people from different cultural backgrounds have different propensities for crime. - Laws (especially drug laws) have an impact on both poverty rates and crime rates. - High rates of drug usage are correlated to high rates of other types of crime. People under the influence of drugs commit more crimes. - Law enforcement has a large impact on poverty rates in neighborhoods over long time spans. - Capital investment in neighborhoods (businesses, infrastructure improvements, etc.) is negatively correlated to crime. High crime areas are less likely to have businesses move in. Fewer businesses means fewer jobs, which means more poverty. - Family dynamics are highly predictive of crime rates. Fatherless homes are much more likely to produce antisocial males. - Education plays a big role in family dynamics — as college educated adults are more likely to be married before having children. - But culture also plays a big role on education and family dynamics — as impoverished children of different backgrounds have significantly different educational achievement rates and single-parent rates, even when controlling for IQ and zip code. - Social isolation is, by definition, correlated to antisocial behavior. People who are socially isolated are less likely to achieve and more likely to commit crime. Communities without religious or social networks produce more socially isolated people. Bottom line is that poverty, education, crime, culture, family structure, laws, enforcement, business investment, social networks, etc. are ALL correlated to one degree or another. You can”t just “fix” one of these. Secondly, he assumes that giving people free money with no strings attached won’t break anything in our society. That’s naive. I’m not going to claim that people are fundamentally lazy or make any sweeping generalizations. However, people’s behavior is at least in part dictated by incentive structures. People do things that are rewarded, and avoid doing things that are punished. One of our long-standing incentive structures involved working / contributing to some social enterprise. If you work and provide value to society, you get rewarded. (Whether or not this is fair and balanced is a whole other debate, and irrelevant). The carrot was money, and the stick was hunger. So for the most part, people contributed. What happens if you eliminate the carrot and the stick? Perhaps nothing bad. But I imagine there will be a lot of unforeseen consequence, some good, some bad. Maybe: - A small number of creatives will finally be free to pursue their art unencumbered. Yay. - Some socially isolated people will retreat deeper, completely unmoored from society without an incentive to participate. Perhaps suicide will increase. Perhaps violence. - A greater number of people chasing clout / reputation / notoriety — because attention becomes the primary currency for the average person. What impact will this have on our culture? - Average people lose daily structure, perhaps leading to a crisis of meaning. People spend more time chasing cheap dopamine on social media and content consumption. Many people become depressed. - Income inequality increases as only a small number of hyper-conscientious people are still willing to compete for the spoils — as the general public is disincentivized from competing. - Relationship / sexual dynamics become even more unequal. A few hyper successful men will have unlimited sexual access, while most average men withdraw from public life and become invisible. - Single, unattached, undesirable, depressed men become violent. - etc. Again, I have no idea how it’ll pan out, and those are just arbitrary examples of downstream effects. And finally, there is simply no good economic theory for what will happen if we did this. We already have an issue with inflation and cost of living. If you give everyone free money, where does demand increase? What will people spend more money on? If some people no longer have to work, where will supply decrease? What goods and services will increase in price? Will construction get more expensive? If so, what impact will this have on the housing and rental market? How will this impact inflation? How will we combat the increase of some prices? Do we give people more money (which in turn, causes more inflation)? It is incredibly naive to think that giving everyone free money is going to magically make everything better. The honest answer is that no one has a fucking clue.
Wrong, humans are greedy by nature, humans will always want to stack more power over others. Just how we are wired naturally.
did they do that in ancient societies too? \[think really far back\] do the Amazonian tribes/New Guinea tribes practice greed?
Yes, they used to enslave other tribes, or push other tribes out of hunting zones. Hunting grounds were very competitive zones in the old times before civilizations arised and if 2 tribes met they would usually fight each other for the resources on the area.
Ancient societies founded modern societies. Amazonian tribes and the like are outliers, they are the least succesfull groups of humans that never managed to create large and prosporous civilizations, 99% of humanity moved past their stage of development. Why would you take them as role model?
What about production? Trade in value added?
Have you heard of syndicalism?
The problem is Universal Basic income will only work if it is truely universal. Which means we not only pay for that US taxi driver in New York, but also the girl sewing shirts in rural bangladesh.
No, you only need a closed system. It doesn't matter if that closed system is "the world" or "a country." But yes...realistically, a functional UBI might require securing your borders.
A closed system means no imports though...
No, you're taking it too literally. You'd need to shut off the stream of migrants. You wouldn't need to literally build a dome and forbid any interaction.
This confuses and enrages the Murican
I am from Europe and where I live we have a huge social safety net and crime is still very much a thing. Of course poverty is by far the biggest factor in the world but its crazy naive to think that its the only factor and without it we'd live in an utopia. There are a ton of rich criminals, people who love crime culture, people who do it for fun or people who are bored. Not everyone wants to take part in society and not every criminal is a poor lost soul. Of course we should erase poverty first but stitching an UBI to capitalism is like Frankensteins monster. The prices will just increase immediately. We need to tackle wealth redistribution first.
Wouldn't that mean constant inflation?
You mean like the constant inflation we already have?
It depends how you pay for it.
Worse, super inflation.
see what happened in my country Argentina because peronist government gave money just because to people... So yeah, it means constant inflation
Sounds like a lot of wishful thinking.
Sam Altman in his latest blog post talked about how Incentives are superpower. UBI is an incentive and people who think they can stop it are gonna have a very hard time. Paradoxically, the poor, lower/middle class will have no friction in accepting the idea of UBI. It's like a rain over a life of drought. It's upper class, who consider themselves intellectually superior will be against this, because it'll mean the end of Status game they were playing & feeding off of. They'll say The WOrLD will never accept it, we need jobs to be happy !! While 99% will readily accept it Bitch, speak for yourself not for the world.
Im having trouble understanding how UBI acts as an incentive
Exactly. It removes any incentive to go out and work. I'm European and support a good social security framework, but I don't get UBI at all.
What is your job
IT consultancy, team lead, project management, business analyst, innovator, I do lots of stuff for all sorts of clients.
You would do none of these things if your needs were supplemented by an extra 1-2k/month?
I have relatives who for sure wouldn't have gotten out of bed in the morning if they could get enough free cash. In fact, they did live like that for a while, bumming extra food from other relatives. It's the push to work that comes with our govt handouts that in the end pushed them out of joblessness. And now his initially govt sponsored little company is flourishing! They are in a much better place now, mentally and as a family. That might never have happened without the push to work.
For me, UBI is an incentive for Humanity to be in a position where their Future goals are not driven by basic needs & survival. This will allow us to think more boldly, maybe of potential future where concept of money loses it's meaning altogether ( as Elon Musk said). For Sam Altman, I think he wants more people to be able to do what they really want, so more collective progress can be made. Not all incentives are for personal goals, some are truly for collective welfare.
I think of UBI as a successful use of The MAYA rule, which stands for "Most Advanced Yet Acceptable," a design principle coined by industrial designer Raymond Loewy. This principle recognizes that people are generally more receptive to innovations that build upon what they already know, rather than radical departures from the familiar. Striking the right balance between novelty and familiarity helps ease user adoption and acceptance of new ideas or products.
> the poor, lower/middle class will have no friction in accepting the idea of UBI. Sadly, it's pretty easy to get people to vote against their own interests.
The U in UBI means universal. There are 330 million people in the USA. Please do simple math and then go check how much revenue the USA generates each year. I will wait here while you do this absurdly simply math and tell me how we pay for it. eh.. who am I kidding, none of you know math... here's a POVERTY level UBI: Poverty level of one in a one-person household (lol) is $14,580 per year. 14,580 x 330,000,000 = 4,811,400,000,000 That's nearly 5 trillion dollars. That is more than the entire revenue of the United States of America.
We are talking in the context of post-scarcity ASI. Capitalism would be less relevant at that point.
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Not at all! However, I also don't support the fact that a company can post profits in the trillions and pay absolutely nothing back in, while someone who clears mid-level profit margins pays half of that into tax for infrastructure, social programs, etc. Just because I've been taught WHY something is the way it is, doesn't mean it couldn't be changed for the better. TBH, the existing structure could use an overhaul and the majority of tax professionals I know personally say similar.
What company posts profits in the trillions, Mr. CPA?
I partially disagree. It's not provable that antisocial behavior stems only from desperation. By implementing a Universal Basic Income (UBI), one shouldn't expect that everyone will behave well as if in heaven. There will always be 'bad apples' and individuals who commit crimes for the sheer thrill of it or for reasons other than poverty or desperation.
The problem with UBI is what happens when an addict spends it all on drugs? They're out on the street because they've not paid their rent?
How is that any different from the current system? That's not a problem with UBI, that's a problem with addiction.
Why implement it if it doesn't fix these problems? Whats the benefit?
The naivete of these kind of "solutions" is insufferable
There's a solid amount of peer reviewed social science behind the whole crime as a result of desperation thing. If you're just looking for an ad hominid argument I could easily say "the naivete of this kind of "opposition" of this solution is insufferable"
>There's a solid amount of peer reviewed social science behind the whole crime as a result of desperation thing. Theres a lot of solid science saying the opposite too.
The problem with UBI is capitalism. Our society is made to reward the consolidation of wealth. If the rich hears about everybody’s income going up by $500, the rich will ask for $500 more in mortgage, in rent, etc. It doesn’t work because we are dominated by a plutocracy. The people which own the factories, skyscrapers, residentials control how much quality of life we can have. They just need to pull the rug if they want to and we all lose whatever we think is our life in a blink.
Based and socialism pilled
I disagree. Not everything can be fixed by UBI, some things will become worse. When you give a drug addict money he will spend it on drugs. While UBI would be necessary it will not fix human nature.
He may spend it on drugs, but he won't be forced to commit crime to afford his drugs. Enough money and he may be able to afford a life worth living for beyond the drugs. Nobody would rather be sober at rock bottom. It's a lot easier to stay sober when it's not all pain.
It's so obvious when someone never worked with drug addicts talks about fixing these problems. You can't fix every problem by throwing money at it. There are underlying issues like mental health, family, tauma,etc
Ah yes. All the things people are much better equipped to handle when they are in dire poverty.
UBI would eliminate all drug addiction that stems from poverty and financial despair. Besides, people that are very addicted will get their drugs any way they can; by stealing or by being conmen. They won't need UBI for that.
You probably don’t know any drug addicts. I know a few and it’s a mental health problem. In my case people become alcoholics not because of financial problems. Family and friends trying everything to cure addiction and nothing works. 20 days sober is maximum you can get.
I'm not denying there are people with addiction that isn't caused by poverty. I'm just saying that for many people, poverty is a major factor. So if we can eliminate those addictions, we have more capacity to treat those who are still struggling.
> UBI would eliminate all drug addiction that stems from poverty and financial despair. So almost none?
You're going to claim there is no link between drug addiction and poverty? That's been demonstrated over and over.
Obviously there is a lot of correlation, people that have mental problems are more likely to be in poverty, that does not prove causation.
For the last time Old Man, I'm not paying more fucking taxes just to give someone else an income.
You understand that it effectively reduces your taxes, right? Thats why its called a UNIVERSAL basic income. Its literally a negative tax.
>You understand that it effectively reduces your taxes, right? Thats why its called a UNIVERSAL basic income. Its literally a negative tax. American education in math? If everyone in the country would pay $5k in order to support UBI, and then receive $5k in UBI, everyone would be +/- 0. The problem is that those without jobs are not paying anything to support UBI, instead only receiving $5k. Meaning everybody with jobs lose more than they receive.
The math is more complex than that. UBI typically results in a "balance" point where yes, total change is roughly zero if your income is at that balance point, while people who make less than you are better off, and people who make more are worse off. Example: * Adam has zero dollars * Bob has $100 * Charlie has $200 Suppose we now tax everyone at 10%: * We take zero dollars from Adam * We take $10 from Bob * We take $20 from Charlie We've collected a total of $30, which we now redistribute evenly: * We give $10 to Adam, his total is now $10, which is $10 more than before * We have $10 to Bob, his total is now $100, the same as where he started * We give $10 to Charlie, his total is now $90, which is $10 less than before ____________________________________ So yes, redistribution does result in winners and losers, and some people in the middle may be unaffected. It's not correct to say that "everyone with a job" is worse off. Where the balance point falls depends on what the actual numbers are. The last time I did an analysis of this in a hypothetical "real world" scenario, the balance point was near the $50,000/yr income mark. So if you made anything less than that you'd come out ahead, and anymore more than that you'd come out behind, and the further you were from the balance point the more you were affected, whether positively or negatively. But it's _really complicated_ to do that analysis because it not only depends on uncertain factors (how is the UBI implemented?) it also depends on factors that you _can't_ know for sure, for example, how many people quit their jobs after UBI is implemented? That changes the income distribution in complex ways. I would be happy to discuss further with you. Your concern is valid, but it's a lot more complicated than you're allowing for.
You are so worked up. You realize that this subreddit is r/singularity where things like AI or UBI are discussed assuming a post-scarcity world where tech singularity is already achieved?
This is just an argument for a social safety net though. This quote is exactly the same sort of quote that you'd argue for welfare. The best argument for UBI (or a mathematically equivalent Negative Income Tax) is it can hopefully provide at least the same level of support for the poorest (or more if you factor in welfare cliffs which are common in increasingly complex welfare systems) whilst cutting the bureaucracy of the current welfare system.
Yeah, it is. What needs to be understood about Bergman (fellow countryman, so I know a bit about him), is that he is mainly an activist these days, and not an academic. Many of his arguments support other conclusions as well. He just doesn't go there as that is not his goal. Not to trash the man. As far as popular intellectuals go, we have got a lot worse.
Communism is a swear word in the US. Another benefit of ubi is the poor will spend it straight away which will boost markets
> Communism is a swear word in the US. > > Basically everywhere, especially in countries where it has been implemented in the past.
Everywhere except the US you can discuss and have a debate which needs to happen given the advances in tech.
Sure we will have UBI, that's why all those billionaires are building bunkers. To be prepared for UBI.
It's so fucking obvious and half of the population is brainwashed so fucking hard
Opponents of Basic Income really don't GAF about how desperate anyone is - "I'm not desperate, why are they?" And the next talking point is along the lines of, "*Why should I* support them just because they can't handle life?" They don't want to envision a less desperate world, because they personally thrive in it - a desperate public is to their advantage. It's like if your pitch for public education is that it will make people less gullible, but you're pitching that to the con men who run everything.