Universal Basic Income seems to me like a great idea that could be supported by both the left and the right in the future. What do you guys think? The idea is basically that we give every person regardless of their income a certain amount of money every month. Maybe about $1,250 which is $15,000 a year. This would replace many of our social security programs. With UBI, the money people are given from their jobs is added to the income they receive every month. This fixes the issue of people not working because they can make receive almost the same amount of money on welfare not working at all. It also provides a stronger safety net, helps people out of poverty, and can reduce inequality. Another big reason that I think this will be a great idea in the future is automation. Machines are replacing people's jobs and as technology progresses this will only happen more. With a UBI, we can allow businesses to use machines which are cheaper than paying workers which reduces prices and is good for business, while still having a middle and lower class capable of buying goods or paying for services from these businesses which is also obviously good for business. A UBI would allow the lower and middle class to find more desirable jobs and would increase their standard of living, and would allow the upper class to use machines as an increasingly cheap alternative to undesirable labor.
I'm not sure exactly how much it would cost. The money would come from the social security programs that would no longer be needed and from higher income taxes that wouldn't be too harmful because people are given the extra money in addition to the income they get from working. Also keep in mind that if business people are allowed to replace workers with cheaper machines and have a stronger middle and lower class to pay for their goods/services they can afford to pay higher taxes.
I had a very conservative econ prof propose something like that many years ago. If I recall, his was more like a negative income tax.
Why are you so hung up on money? It is just paper and ink. It doesn't cost any more to print a $100 bill then it does a $10 bill. The questions you should be asking is 1) will the Universal Basic Income be easier to administer and police for fraud, and 2) will the UBI result in more people doing productive work. I believe that replacing current social programs (including minimum wage and unemployment insurance) with a Universal Basic Income would accomplish these objectives. If UBI can reduce government paperwork and fraud, while also putting more people to productive work, then how can it not be affordable? In other words, if more wealth is produced then it has to be affordable … unless you think the extra wealth produced is going to magically disappear?
And how will you get this passed your going to be removing a lot of people from the Welfare Industrial Complex at all levels. In addition some will be hurt if I got this what about Medicaid I need the care and replacing it will be impossible I would need under the ACA a Platinum Plan and money for care costs eating over half the income then I have to have SSI replaced and SNAP that's a big hit. I'm too disabled to be employable or to hold a job.
I know it's expensive, but it has so many positive effects that it could be worth it. If we don't do something like this, what do you expect us to do about automation? We have three options. We can do nothing, which will eventually put so many people out of work that buisnesses won't have enough people to pay for their goods/services. We can prevent automation, which will prevent buisnesses from having a cheaper alternative to laborers and will keep people doing hard undesirable work for low wages. The last option is something like this. So if we don't have a UBI in the future, what alternative method of dealing with automation would you suggest? I'm not saying there aren't alternatives. I'm genuinely curious because the idea of UBI is the only good idea I've heard so far.
They already have this for the poor elderly and disabled who don't have enough income. It's called Social Security Supplemental Security Income. And you have to be retirement age or dying gruesomely to get this.
Replacing the current taxes on production and trade with a land value tax would eliminate all tax burdens in our economy, and restore equal rights to land. Just like humans, robots need access to land in order to create wealth. So, if humans had equal rights to land then the humans could rent their equal share of land to the robots; the land rent they receive would purchase what the robots make. Here are two proposals which you might be interested in reading: http://forum.freestateproject.org/index.php?topic=7930.0;wap2 The proposal below is signed by dozens of the western worlds most respected economists, including four Nobel prize winning economists. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Open_letter_to_Mikhail_Gorbachev_%281990%29
If the job you've been doing has become so simple a machine can do it, it is time for you to take on another job. One more challenging, and therefore more rewarding. As long as people have problems that need solving, there are jobs. Folks need to step up to those greater challenges.
Moderators should turn the thread title into "How to destroy the US economy." Unfettered printing of currency and seizing everybody's land are two horrible ideas. When placed together, it is anarchy.
I think you're underestimating technology. There is nothing special about the human brain. It's just a good machine. We are already capable of creating machines that are better at doing what they do than humans are. We for example have computers that can easily beat humans at chess. As technology progresses, new technology will become available that replaces even the most difficult jobs.
We have had machines that are capable of doing some things a human can do better than most humans can do them for a very long time. We have also had problems that machines have not yet solved for us, for even longer. Men have been expected to address those problems. In the past the cotton gin, the windmill, and the steam engine have replaced many jobs of John Henry and other men. Currently machines write contracts, take orders, clean rain gutters, produce newspaper articles, package shipments, build cars and make hamburgers better than people who did those jobs a decade ago. Next year they will write software, create music, and conduct surgery better than many people do today. That said, there will still be problems those machines cannot solve. And I don't see a reason why some of us should be excused from addressing the problems we all share. I don't see how some of us have a right to ask society to solve our problems and satisfy our needs, if we make no contributions to that society. As simple jobs become better understood and then automated, people need to step up to greater challenges. Well... unless you're Amish.
But we're at a point where so many jobs will be replaced by machines that we will not all have to contribute to society in a major way. A UBI doesn't give people a reason not to work anyway. It gives people money in addition to the money they make from work. Right now, you have to not be working to recieve a good amount of government assistance. That provides an incentive for people to not work. A UBI solves that problem. To address what somebody else said, the money that is given to people isn't new money created to be given out. The government would collect the money to redistribute.
Most of the jobs that exist today didn't exist a hundred years ago. And won't exist in another hundred years. As people ask more from society, society will adapt by developing new and more efficient processes to accomplish more with it's people. That will mean some jobs will go away, and other needs will appear. Just because the job you really liked doing last week goes away, doesn't mean society has no need for you to contribute this week. There will always be problems facing society. As long as there are problems that need solving, there is work that needs to be done. We will always be at a point where some challenges will go away and new jobs will need to be taken on. Redistributing money to Joe, is giving him a reason to not work. It's giving Joe credit for making a contribution, without asking for an associated contribution. I don't see a reason to arbitrarily excuse Joe from contributing just because, in his judgement, the rest of society can give Joe what Joe wants without Joe making a 'major' contribution.
Not true I get SSI, but you need to be either seriously disabled with a significant condition (blindness) or other disability conditions (multiple conditions which combined make you unable to be employed productively) or dying. And many get it at the judge level far more than get it from earlier reviews and appeals if you do get it at the initial application level or firt appeal your truly screwed up. I get the lower tier benefit since family helps me I get $555.50 a month but $400 goes to my family for rent and utilities (Social Security rules) and I get the rest plus SNAP for a monthly allowance I'm not rolling in it. And for me Medicaid is far more vital I lose that I'm going to be back to being in severe pain, not managing my underlying medical issues and very likely will end up back in the hospital instead of cheaper preventative care. I'm grateful for all the help I get from everyone but I'm not on easy street.
I think most of our jobs today have existed for quite a long time. It's possible that within 20 years 50% of our current jobs will be replaced by machines. Transportation for example is one of the biggest sources of jobs in the world. We already have cars that can drive themselves that have the potential to replace the vehicles we have now in the not too distant future. While there is good reason to believe that half of our jobs can disappear in the near future there is no reason to believe that anywhere near the same amount of new jobs will be created in the same amount of time. If as technology progresses, robots become capable of doing everything humans can do, better than they do, more cheaply than they do it for, how should we expect that every person contributes to society in a major way. It seems inevitable that in the future, robots will do all of our undesirable work, while the role of humans will become to educate themselves, and find something that they enjoy doing.
Why don't we test this in another country first and see how it goes. For myself, I'm extremely skeptical of your theory that the only costs associated with the program are with the actual printing of currency.
Unlike Taxpayer, I think automation creates real challenges. The creation of fewer highly technical jobs in exchange for the destruction of many more semi-skilled or unskilled jobs is a great corporate trade off, but a dangerous societal one. The fact is, human intelligence isn't increasing along with Moore's Law so people on the left hand side of the Bell Curve are going to find themselves increasingly unemployable. This is a real issue, but your answer is basically to just put everyone on welfare. You seem to have just breezed over the money issue, but in an era when fewer and fewer people are going to be paying taxes, I suspect our fiscal issues are going to get worse, not better, making any sort of UBI impossible. The everybody-on-welfare concept is one we've actually experimented with, and with no job to go to or responsibilities, people go down hill rather quickly. You've recognized a problem, but your solution isn't workable, both because we couldn't afford it and it would be a human tragedy if we could.
I don't think money would be printed to fund a UBI. It would be nice if some other country wants to be an experiment for us. It could happen in Switzerland.
A job is someone with a need or want, and willing to offer you something in return for solving it. People's needs and wants are endless. If you want a job, pick one and get to work solving it. You might find a potential partner already working on it. If you truly believe you are incapable of offering anything of value, to any other person in society... well, we've always made room for a limited number of special folks. Go sit on the corner between drooling Bill and grandpa Joe, we'll likely take up a collection for those incapable of taking care of themselves. The rest of us will continue to address the endless needs and wants of our society. We will probably get less of them done, than if you chose to help.
I understand that people have needs and wants, but in the future we will be able to fulfill those needs and wants more easily with machines than with people. It's not that we are incapable of contributing to society, but when machines can be built that do what they were built to do better than humans can at a cheaper price, why pay a human that doesn't enjoy doing it to do it. The computer or mobile device you have now for example is useful. If it still worked 20 years from now it would still be useful, but if you have a new device that is better, and requires less energy to use, why would you not use that instead?
A UBI gives money in addition to the money made from your job, unlike our current system which requires you to not work to benefit from it. This should solve that problem and make people more productive. In the more distant future, where virtually all undesirable jobs are done by machines, I would imagine that we would expand education. People would be able to find a job they enjoy or find something they enjoy doing. I'm also not sure automation necessarily has to be an economic issue. While it's true that less people having jobs would mean less people paying taxes, it's also true that the rich would pay more taxes as a result of the extra money they have from not paying as many people to work.
