Tech giants Elon Musk, Sam Altman push universal basic income concept
santacruzsentinel.com
santacruzsentinel.com
The fact that someone else might be in need does not give him any right to my money, or time. Forced social welfare programs ignore this. UBI does not reduce the negative imapct of these programs, but actually enforces and concretizes them and the mentality of "social debt" and "inherent social debt" (both do not exist) by declaring every citizen equally guilty.
UBI sounds nice on paper because everyone wants a cut on their taxes (and that's not bad) but it quietly pushes the agenda that you are entitled to something from everyone else just because you are alive. This will only lead to worse problems in the long run, because then very few individuals would understand that people can actually live without UBI.
The increase in taxes for the majority of the earning population would cancel out the benefits for them anyway, and might even be a negative for them.
UBI gives people something for nothing, which means that people would opt to not get a job but just stay on UBI for as long as they can. And if the government does enforce a criteria, well then, it just increases the surveillance surveillance and mandates it. And to say nothing of the illegal immigration that will increase if UBI is introduced, because UBI unconditionally sacrifices the money and time of people who produce for those who can't, and/or won't.
I just see this as a move for guys like Elon to snuggle up deeper with the government. This kind of short-range thinking is what has led to the massive debt right now and will only increase it. Who knows where this self-sacrifice will stop? People in america cry at the 1%, but being born in America already puts the majority of its citizens in the 1% of the world's population. What will happen when those people say it's unfair for so few to have so much? The people clamoring for UBI do not have a reason for it, and their reason for it is that there needs to be none. The other countries can and will do the same, and that's when people will understand their importance of not basing decisions on feelings.
We might also decide that our society is better when people have a "right" to food, shelter, and health care. Those rights would be contrivances like the ones you already take for granted. But that's not an argument for or against them.
So there have to be arguments and he's giving one, that this proposal is hardly going to be afforded by those in the position to do so. Which part of the actual argument do you disagree with? It seem you are saying the workers would have to want to afford it (because its a positive right), but you don't actually show it.
And no, you can't just arbitrarily give people rights to shit. You can only guarantee things which do not require a human to be constantly working for it as a right. When you declare healthcare, or food as a right, you are enslaving farmers and doctors, not to mention stealing from people on a greater scale for nothing at all, for something the market could have easily done.
And no, the barter system is not a lie and neither is daddy marx true. And no, I'm not going to write paragraphs for your two-liner.
Let's say that the US somehow did implement UBI. You would almost certainly have to be a citizen (or at least be someone who pays taxes with a valid SSN) to get the benefits. Just being in the US doesn't mean you'll get money every month. Beyond this, how does getting UBI benefits give you a cut on your taxes? You would most likely get taxed more with UBI, given you have a job.
There haven't been many studies on it, and sure some people would likely opt to not have a job if they get UBI, but don't discount the amount of people that would be brought up out of poverty and could possibly do something more than they could now simply because they have better circumstances.
Even though I think that UBI will certainly probably never be implemented in the US, given the current system of politics, I would argue that it's inherently a good thing for society even if you are maybe, potentially marginally worse off. A UBI would likely be implemented in such a way that you will have money for the essentials like food, but if you wanted that brand new phone, you would need to have a job to make money to afford it. UBI doesn't mean everything is free, it just means that you don't have to worry about feeding yourself.
And what's stopping people with UBI from sharing half of it with a non-citizen? nothing.
picture of stirner
try harder
What are you doing, replying to comments days after?
Facebook 2016 net income was $1.56 billion. Their tax bill would have been $1.404 billion.
Until corporations and the super wealthy are willing to give up their own fortunes to fund a universal basic income they should have zero say in such a policy decision. It MZ wants everyone to have a UBI then why doesn't he personally put up the money to do so?
If you do that, you kill 99%+ of the value of those companies. Those profits pay first and foremost for the pension of mostly ordinary Americans. Worse: those people who's pensions your proposal would take away worked for those pensions for decades. Because of excessive government debt issuance, these pensions are already somewhere between in trouble and bankrupt, with a massive pension bankruptcy wave coming in 2018 unless radical changes are implemented. This action would make them fail tomorrow.
So what will you do about that ? Answer: nobody will risk touching that, and they're right.
The issue is that money represents economic incentive. What it boils down to, massively simplified, is this. In order to have a minimal basic income (say $200 per month), you need to create 60 billion in economic value, and that means first and foremost more work by ordinary people. Given average hours pay ($23/hour) that comes to 13 million extra days that need to be worked, by normal people, or about 20% more than we're currently working.
So something so trivial as $200/month, extremely inaccurately calculated, would mean no more saturdays. Getting out of bed at 9am and working till 5pm like mondays to fridays. That's, simplified, what a trivial and completely insufficient basic income would take.
Oh and before you say "let's eliminate other programs", please keep in mind that that, of course, represents a massive wealth transfer from the poor to the rich.
The machines were mostly moved to China because of climate policy (and lower wages, and despite QE credit being easier in China) (TLDR: we moved all factories to be coal powered regions (~20x more polluting than oil, ~2e12 times more polluting than nuclear), because our nuclear and oil powered power plants were too polluting).
So this argument might have worked 10 years ago, but today too much of the economy has nothing to do with machines (other than laptops running excel spreadsheets).
Try again ?
That doesn't mean you have to be a sucker and do it unilaterally when nobody has to do it. It's a collective action problem.
It also does not make the poor stop being poor.
My alimony is a little over $10,000 annually. I recently wrote about how this stuff is a total fantasy. This is some ridiculous fantasy that you can easily solve this problem by throwing money at it instead of doing any hard work like resolving the affordable housing crisis in this country.
http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-world-ha...
Edit: They are talking about giving people $10k a year because they expect robots to take our jobs and there to be widespread unemployment. So forget the feel good anecdotes about how this will supplement your income and imagine living on ONLY $10k per year. That's enough to assuage their guilt. It does not buy you a middle class lifestyle. But if it becomes your right as a citizen, you can expect even more people to desperately want to immigrate to the US.
Currently that's not working out though. The retirement age is going up, not down. It's too expensive to give money directly and let people figure it out. The UBI end game is something like the terrafoam housing from Manna.
http://marshallbrain.com/manna4.htm
Put all the UBIs in a nice neat little box where we can forget about them, like we do with prisoners. Maybe even add sedatives and birth control to the water, because we certainly don't want resistance or more of them. We'll probably even call them that. UBIs. Universal basic inmates.
I can barely afford two required medications that I copay out of pocket (Walgreens), and the price of the expensive one just jumped from $22.50 to $38. Can't afford auto repairs, can't anything entertaining that involves money, replacing anything should something break or saving for emergencies much less retirement. I would like to convert my vehicle to EV (a-la Electric Samba) and add solar, but that's currently well beyond my reach. (My and others MPCs are higher because of inelastic demands to survive, not "avocado toast.")
Thankfully, propane is cheap ($9 every 3-4 years).
UBI will likely never happen because it reduces economic violence on those unable to earn more than minimum wage. Poor conditions, union-busting, minimal benefits and maximum productivity benefit the ruling class to extract more profit from people, keep people busy and keep them "in line."