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[Paltheos]

Sure, I agree, but you can be active with ubi. Universal basic income doesn't automatically make people lazy.
You could pursue other activities because you like them and now with ubi, you actually have a clear shot at it and don't need to worry about money.

I agree... for me, but this isn't true of allot of people I think. How many old people do you hear of whose minds just wander off because they have nothing to do? If they got a hobby or more friends, they'd probably be better off (and based off what I've learned, old people who get pets for instance tend to live longer!) but people don't always do what's best for them.

I also think there are valuable skills I gained because of work that contribute to my life and who I am now - mostly for better but also for worse - although whether or not those skills would be applicable to a supposed 'post-work' society is questionable (Now I'm thinking of a TNG episode! but... like... one of the early, bad ones Gene forced down our gullets)

I kinda agree with sentiments that thinking too hard about this is useless right now because a world dominated by automation would probably be too different for us to meaningfully consider. Maybe I'm just not smart enough though. The Kino's Journey episode in any event is nothing if a neat thought exercise.

 

[Blade2.0]

I think wealth inequality is a fair concern. My only problem with using UBI to fix that is we would be taxing our current growth (just shaving a liiiiittle bit off the top) to pay for current citizens with the expectation that everything WILL continue growing in the future and that future margins WILL be able to provide UBI for future demographics. Considering the USA's financial crisis a decade ago, we should ALL be cynical of any ideas reliant on steady future growth to remain solvent, whether we sit on the Left or the Right, politically speaking.

A country chained to a UBI program would be incredibly brittle -- deathly so -- against sharp downturns and recessions, though.

The biggest reason why we have wealth inequality is because the wealthy are hanging on to their money instead of investing/distributing as much. That's all about to change because the boomers are about to retire. The relative value of capital will skyrocket while the relative value of labor (even lowly customer-service labor) also skyrockets (those old farts with money will want people waiting on them hand and food). The desire for luxury/convenience goods and services naturally goes up since the boomers aren't investing, they're spending their hard-saved money on fun stuff. Nations that bring manufacturing home will ensure this money gets dumped right back into the economy to distribute to the younger generation. Nations that buy from elsewhere and send profits abroad will be setting up their next generation for more financial misery. Nations that manufacture enough surplus to supply other nations will be rolling in cash. We are entering a new era of consumption right before the demographics collapse (in some nations) and cause a recession.

Individuals and companies that can service this new surge in demand will make bank. Imagine if Granny buys some kitschy figurine from a dude with a 3D printer in his basement, she shares it on Facebook 2.0, then suddenly this guy has 100,000 bored boomers with more money to spend than sense ordering his figuringe. This phenomenon already takes place now and it will become more common in the future when boomers retire. Those with side-hustles and home businesses will reap the greatest profits.


I can name at least one without having to look too far:

National Socialist People's Welfare - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Russians in the USSR also had a social safety net of "guaranteed" food and "guaranteed" jobs. Would you consider the USSR's system a failure or no?

They were the 2nd most powerful country in the world for quite a while.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

They were the 2nd most powerful country in the world for quite a while.

But that's a deflection on to an unrelated thing. Perhaps they were "most powerful", but did their social nets fail? The answer is yes. Nazi Germany's social safety nets contributed to getting their country into war, but that's another conversation. The point is that social safety nets have failed, and we have many examples of them failing. They are not a new idea. We can dig much further.

The idea of a social net is a good idea. Please don't misconstrue my intentions. I believe social nets are good, we just have to be honest about the advantages and disavantages of the kinds we choose to implement in human society. Perfectly rational viewpoint, wouldn't you agree?

During the transition away from serfdom, pre-USSR Russia gov't dealt out tracts of lands to former serfs. For the first time in generations (or perhaps ever), true-blooded Russians owned their land and could build it up and directly profit from the improvements. They could leave an inheritance to their kids. This was a new social safety net that allowed them to build up generational wealth. But within a generation, communism started to take over. The chance for any peasant to own land was handed out for one generation and snatched away in the next, because these kulaks were one of the first groups to get killed and shipped away to gulags when the Bolsheviks arose. I would say the kulaks first benefitted and then suffered from a failed social safety net.

The modern decline of Christian charity and the accumulation of wealth in megachurches / liturgical churches has been a fair criticism of the religion for many decades (if not centuries, depending on how far you're willing to take the argument). These organizations have provided billions of dollars and hundreds of years of investment into poor populations, into schools, into universities, into hospitals, into orphanages, into science. All of these statements are historically verifiable and true, yet the church has failed to provide for all of society's woes. This is another social net that suffered from failures and we can learn from it.

Hammurabi's code is a sort of social safety net, in a primitive sense. It afforded citizens safety from a lot of things like bad workmanship or thefts/assaults against your property. Was it crude and cruel? Yes, and it failed. Most social safety nets fail because they are imperfect.

It's okay to admit that maybe free college is a "bad" social safety net in a given country or in a given circumstance. College is becoming less relevant anyway because of the internet. Why invest in a dying industry? A lot of people insist it's foolish to keep coal mining "alive" since it is naturally declining, but how is that any different than artificially trying to keep college degrees relevant when they're not as good of an investment as they once were? The same goes for UBI.

 

[EverydayBeast]

I don't think the poor are bitter to me its all situational, each person obviously going through different stages of income.

 

[trikster40]

Here’s something interesting that I just found out recently:

Did you know that Indian casinos divi their profits among every member of the tribe? I did not know that until I worked a case with one recently. Every member of their tribe gets like $250k a year for doing absolutely nothing. My first question was : are their any single ladies?

Granted, not every tribe is like that but
That’s the dream, folks.

 

[Blade2.0]

Here’s something interesting that I just found out recently:

Did you know that Indian casinos divi their profits among every member of the tribe? I did not know that until I worked a case with one recently. Every member of their tribe gets like $250k a year for doing absolutely nothing. My first question was : are their any single ladies?

Granted, not every tribe is like that but
That’s the dream, folks.

Sounds lovely

 

[ferralcow]

Fuck yea I could load my self up with drogs and alks

 

[zeorhymer]

Here’s something interesting that I just found out recently:

Did you know that Indian casinos divi their profits among every member of the tribe? I did not know that until I worked a case with one recently. Every member of their tribe gets like $250k a year for doing absolutely nothing. My first question was : are their any single ladies?

Granted, not every tribe is like that but
That’s the dream, folks.

Money has to come from somewhere. They're taking it from the visitors and giving it to themselves.

 

[Elektro Demon]

Money has to come from somewhere. They're taking it from the visitors and giving it to themselves.

Indians came up with UBI with their little casino scheme before white people?
I'm getting some dna tests done. Hopefully, I have some Indian blood. Preferably blood/genes from the ones that own a casino.