Would you support Universal Basic Income?

[Blurry_Buildings]

In a rapidly evolving world where AI and increasing automation in general lead to large gains in productivity at the expense of white collar jobs, would you support a Universal Basic Income? Would your support change if this came at the partial expense of other social programs, like social security and the military?

 

[DarkRange55]

My best friend who works in the tech industry doesn't like it in principle but he sees it as an eventual inevitability — if the majority of the population no longer needs to work due to advances in technology they can either have UBI or alternatively faux-jobs to keep themselves happy with a sense of purpose and accomplishment, not matter how artificial or trite.

I did a paper in college that I've mentioned here before and I said something along the lines of, by 2100, a form of basic income has been instituted in most first-world countries as a measure to protect the economy from collapse, thus ensuring most citizens have some money to spend to keep it going. A form of basic income has been instituted in most first-world countries as a measure to protect the economy from collapse, thus ensuring most citizens have some money to spend to keep it going.
Or maybe we can get the communist space utopia economy from Star Trek lore that I love haha


Not really a direct answer to your question but that at least helps move the conversation along haha

What say you, @noname223
If you still pay for chat got try out the o3 model. It's pretty insane. It has advanced reasoning. Not good for general questions but great for things that require extensive research or analysis. Just questions with some complexity that benefit from extensive web searches etc. It's cool. Just try it out.

 

[Dejected 55]

I mean, I plan to be dead, so it won't affect me... but I've always been in favor of this. The more jobs that get phased out to automation and AI, the more the economy is going to have a problem anyway. Doesn't matter how cheaply you can make your widgets if there are no people who can afford them because you phased them out of the workplace.

If people had their basic needs met at minimum... food, shelter, education, health care... then it frees up so much stress on your brain and allows you to be creative. There are always lazy people no matter the state of things. There are lazy people with jobs doing the bare minimum at those jobs and skating by! But long before there was an organized economy and way to profit, people were inventing and discovering things because that is the nature of people... but the stress of having to run in place as hard as you can just to not go backward keeps most people from being creative and inventive and who they really could be.

Taking that stress away would be a good start. And, we already throw away more food than is needed to feed everyone... so we're paying for enough food to feed everyone anyway, we're just wasting the food. And there are so many empty houses that no one can afford... and health care doesn't need to cost as much as it does... and so on...

We could lift everyone to a good standard of living by only sacrificing a little at the top and it would pay for itself with innovation and creativity down the line.

 

[Forever Sleep]

On the one hand, sure, I'd love someone to give me money to live and buy stuff. On the other, I don't know. Would the novelty wear off? Would I bother to work at all if I didn't have to? Would my employers bother to turn up to give me work?

My job is creative. Let's say everyone now gets the chance to be creative. It might have the opposite effect of swamping the market with stuff to the extent that there's far less demand. So, my 'industry' could in fact become more competitive rather than less. Plus, will be bother if machines can do it better?

Plus, I'm cynical of human nature. I don't think those with wealth and power particularly want equality. They need people to have enough money to consume the shit they produce but I doubt they want to invite them into their golf clubs or exclusive lifestyles. I just feel certain they will continue to find a way to make everything unequal ultimately.

 

[Dejected 55]

Capitalism in its current form is simply unsustainable. People at the top having most of the wealth and still penny-pinching to maximize their profits means increasingly people in the middle and at the bottom are going to have less and less. There comes a point where the whole market collapses because you don't pay people enough to afford any of the things you are trying to maximize your profit on... and it's only getting worse with computers and automation on the rise.

The people at the top are going to eventually find themselves in a situation where having all the money in the world means they have nothing because they can't spend it when no one is working to make them things they want to buy... and when most people have little to no money, the money doesn't mean as much to them anymore either. Eventually the house of cards will collapse and the handful of rich people at the top will find themselves being the outliers and everyone else will start a new economy that cuts those people out.

OR we could all be nicer to each other and more compassionate and agree to a minimal standard of living that means everyone has a home and food and medicine and such... and people who want more, who want luxury, those people can work to earn more for those things... and lots of people will be able to create and invent and that market will become competitive because of so many more people with the "free" time to do such things.

How much more might we advance IF all the stressed out people right now suddenly had free time to relax and think and be creative? A lot of creative people are bogged down in the minutia of surviving. We could free those minds up for whatever.

If we could be just a little bit kinder and lift each other up... everyone's lives could be a lot simpler and easier and even happier. Humans, we make so many things so much harder than they have to be.