We may not need a univeral basic income in the future

The industrial revolution has always been about the automation of human labour and that continues today. In its beginnings physical labour was what was replaced and it took actual physical machinery to do it. The advent of the computer created the opportunity to replace human mental labour with computer code, not on the one to one basis of replacing physical labour but on the one to many basis, with one computer program eliminating the need for hundreds or thousands of humans to accomplish a given task.

Advance on both fronts continues at an accelerating pace. The need for labour has been reduced to the point where there is enough technology for just about anyone to bring their idea into reality by themselves with little to no money. This is really the great new thing in the economy, sudden small groups of newly minted millionaires and billionaires popping out of nowhere because their bright idea is worth a fortune.

At some point the only resource that will be scarce is money. There are some who believe we have already passed that point and the only reason people cannot have everything is because everything costs money and, even though there is enough money around for everyone to afford it, the people with more money than they need are being unbelievably selfish.

 

In the beginning it was not replacing human labor but instead incorporating human labor in more efficient means to increase production. Perhaps to build cars an assembly line might incorporate 300 humans while today with computers and robots perhaps it's only 100 humans.

Calling 'most people with money' selfish is grandstanding and not reality. Many of the wealthiest people in the US and on Earth, over the centuries, have provided and continue to provide enormous amounts of funding for charitable giving and other help to society...

 

The industrial revolution was, and continues to be about replacing human labour with more efficient machine labour. The need to incorporate humans into industrial processes was just an unfortunate necessity of the times as it was always the goal to eliminate any need for human labour at all, a goal that is on the verge of being realized across many industries.

Don't you think that people would be better off if they did not need charity?
The wealthy could better deploy their money by making jobs for people instead of giving them charity.

 

Well...I'm thinking most of charitable giving is not about 'people needing charity' but more about where we find needs in society that governments and taxpayers refuse to support. In my little corner of the world, we support public education needs, public health needs, public libraries, public food banks, land preservation, public fire departments, etc. ALL of which should be supported by government!

BTW: the wealthy cannot 'make' jobs! Jobs are created when consumers show an interest in consuming more of something. Innovation and technology helps open these doors but it won't lead consumers to those doors. Companies like Microsoft have billion$ in cash but none of it will be spent until either innovation or consumer demand supports the spending.

There are about 75 million American workers who earn $17/hour or less! There are probably another 10-15 million Americans who are unemployed. IMO there is nothing that will ever provide these 85-90 million Americans much more than they have today. Therefore, for all the whiners, each one needs to take personal steps to achieve more of whatever it is they desire. Government and so-called wealthy people ARE NOT going to solve your problems...

 

I'm 100% guessing here, but 20% of the poorest US citizens, probably have much more than 60-70% of the people on Earth! In the US, IMO, we're a bunch of spoiled whiners who cannot possibly fathom the true difference between having money, needing more money, and having enough versus what the other 60-70% of the people on Earth deal with each day. In the US each person cares only about themselves with little to no concern about community and the whole, while others who have far less have a better understanding of community. Christmas holiday is a great example in which Americans spend billion$ for no rational reason whatsoever! Americans can't pay their bills, can't keep their cars running, can't save money, are deep in debt, yet along comes Christmas and the fools spend more! Meanwhile 60-70% of Earth's people are worrying about life and death, disease, hunger, shelter, survival, etc. and pissy Americans are spending money they don't have for (*)(*)(*)(*) they don't need.

Bottom line; We have natural resources, we have money, we have economies, etc. but in places like the USA, due to our reckless and self-serving behavior, are pissing away the future of our kids and generations to come, spending every penny, consuming resources, etc. with no regard for tomorrow or our neighbors and world citizens...

 

We will definitely need a universal basic income, probably within the next fifteen to twenty years. The sales model has been with us for centuries, and shows little sign of giving way to anything else; there has to be an auxiliary system that compliments the sales model without getting in its way. The best (and proven) system I can think of is the investment model.

How best to fund an investment model? The closest my thinking comes involves credit (one of the few universal concepts the species shares in); start multiple corporations to acquire as much credit as possible, loan it out to community confluences that invest it in the stock market (acting as de facto hedge funds for the masses), and return a percentage of profits as a primary source of income. Confluences can also offer paid health care and pension plans as standard perks of loaning credit to them.

The same system can also be used to bolster existing businesses as secondary employment sources (people keep right on working, as they would rather continue living in a modern society). Every business has internal divisions which a helper corporation can support; those can also be operated by confluences to return more monies to workers.

 

I believe those resources will ALWAYS be concentrated at the top as long as we hold to the old saw that people will not be motivated if their needs are met. Of course, that doesn't seem to apply to those wealthy people who seem to show up for work on time every day, only to poverty-line people. Somehow, to the policy-makers, desperation correlates real will with motivation.

 

Yes, the old "Work Or Die" meme is still very much alive.

Somehow the old capitalist meme that sacrifice is required now because resources are scarce and need to be concentrated in great endeavours that will result in a better life for everyone at some time in the near future has fallen by the wayside, forgotten, abandoned and outright denied just as that future has arrived.

It has become quite apparent that the capital owning class has absolutely no intention of making good on that, and never did. Their intention, as always, is to increase their own wealth regardless of the cost to anyone and everyone else and to say and do whatever is necessary to continue that.

Like all minority politics this is not a sustainable activity because if it continues along its present path at some point in the not so distant future such a large majority of the people will become so disenchanted that they will one day decide to withdraw even their passive support for it, and like what happened to the communists in the Soviet Union the capitalist's political control will dissolve and that will signal the end of capitalism as defined by the concentration of wealth in the hands of individuals.

 

Please explain to me, any five year old American kid, if they attend school, study and graduate, obtain a trade or college education, work a career or own a business, how this kid does not have full opportunity to achieve success?

Before you make excuses, explain also how a high school drop out can create some software, or an app, and end up working for Apple or Facebook or Google, earning $150K to $350K per year?

Bottom line...please explain how the wealth of Bill Gates, or Warren Buffet, or Larry Ellison, or George Lucas, in any way whatsoever prevents the imaginary kid above from achieving their full potential?

 

Not everybody can go to school so easily. If a young man helps support his single mother working by 5 hours a day after high school classes he is probably disadvantaged compared to an "average" kid who never has to worry about money. Or maybe a five year old grows up in an environment that doesn't encourage her to stay in school because that isn't cool. An environment that doesn't encourage hard work or saving for the future.

Also, how do you propose that these high school dropouts make these apps or software? For one they need access to computers. Not just a visit your local library computer or just a smartphone, they need to have a personal computer to themselves that they can spend hours on, figuring out how to code. That's another thing they might not have: time. I doubt you could give a 16 year old kid with no experience a computer and 2 hours a week and expect them to make meaningful software. They don't have access to these resources.

Of course, these are very specific arguments, I know. But the idea can be expanded more generally. To create anything that would pay out millions at least a little money and a lot of time is required.

 

People can create whatever they want to replace labor, but at some point they have to consider that people need to be able to buy what you are making.

Becoming a socialist economy where the government gives everyone something for nothing is just subsidizing market desire for the rich who use automated labor and leaves you with 2 classes of people. Lazy and Greedy.

Slothfulness and hard work both deserve consequences and the government needs to quit trying to play God. We have more poor people than when we started giving money away. People are trying to hide income to get money from the government. All welfare should be programs of individual states. The 10th Amendment says so and the more successful states can be copied and the unsuccessful states will adapt.

 

The pie is only so big (even as the pie is getting slightly larger in the oven and runs over the side of the pie pan). You keep taking bigger Wall Street-sized slices, that leaves only smaller slices for the rest of the pie-eaters. Before too long, all of the potential pie is gone.

 

A lot of five year old children will be unable to avail themselves of the path you describe as they grow up. Nice as it would be if they all could, circumstances of other people's making often intervene to derail their life and destroy their chances to gain the opportunities you think they have.

And a lot of that has to do with government policies promoted by the wealthy to reduce their taxes This includes reducing government spending on education and social welfare along with a massive increase in the criminalization of petty crime, which is how many jurisdictions make up for the lost revenue from tax cuts to the wealthy. In order to satisfy the greed of the wealthy while maintaining their revenues civil authorities have engaged in a war on the poor. Many basically harmless activities that would previously result in a civil citation or small fine are now considered felonies or include such high fees and charges that the poor are unable to pay them.

This would not be such a big deal for a five year old if she or he did not have poor parents but the reality is that over half of the five year olds in the US right now live in poverty and are impacted by this, which means that their ability to maintain the path you outline is likely to be severely compromised more than once in their childhood.

There will be, as always, a few outliers who will persevere and make good but they are just that, outliers, one in a million, or one in ten million in the case of some drop out who gets a job at Google. This leads me to think that your whole perception of life in the US is based on the stupidly ignorant notion that outliers define the norm, that because one brilliant poor kid dragged his ass out of poverty and made good there is no excuse for all those other poor kids to not do the same.

Answer me this, if all the poor kids should be able to get themselves jobs at Google if they just applied themselves, where does that leave all the millions of middle class kids who had every opportunity handed to them on a silver platter who can't get a job at Google either and are still living at home and working menial jobs in their mid 20s?

 

I'm just waiting for the day it's gonna be put into place. i'm excited to see these things put into use.

 

Just about everyone wants a better life and is willing to work for it. The problem these days is that all that work is not making their life better but making it harder and harder for them to remain in place. The economy has shifted because the government, through a combination of tax cuts for the wealthy, trade policy and massive increases in social welfare spending has generated an economic condition in the US that no longer requires a middle class of income earners.

The US is a socialist nation, maximum socialism for the wealthy, minimum socialism for the poor and zero socialism for the middle class.

 

I have no interest in this discussion who can go to school easily, or works part time to help their mother, or the environment in which they live? My point was how do the wealthy in any way whatsoever prevent any kid in the USA from reaching their potential?

My comment about creating an app was only to point out that any kid with the desire, the focus, the effort, can achieve their potential with or without a high school education. Unfortunately, what's sorely missing today is desire, focus and effort.

If society has created millions of kids which live in an adverse environment, who must work part time during high school to support their family, who are too lazy to focus and put forth an appropriate effort, who have excuses to not attend public school, excuses to not study and learn, etc. etc. then our problem is not with our schools or wealthy people but with the kids, their parents and society...

 

There is no such thing as 'nothing' and 'free'. A socialist government must be funded just as any other government. A government cannot give away stuff that it cannot afford to give away! As fewer and fewer taxpayers move closer to paying 90-100% of the personal income taxes, I suspect we will see diminishing tax returns. As this happens will the masses allow government to greatly increase national debt? What happens when the annual interest payment on debt is $1 trillion?

I'm watching Bernie Sanders scoop up voters because he simply promises everything for free. Who is going to fund all this stuff? But the masses are too stupid and self-serving to care about funding or debt so they'll vote for Sanders and can dance and sing in the street 'happy days are here again'. As corporations and the wealthy and Wall Street and middle class refuse to pay higher and higher taxes, Sander's will become the most worthless president in the past 50 years.

Maybe this is the natural evolution of society for the USA...

 

Then you don't live or think in reality! None of these wealthy people prevent any kid in the USA from reaching their potential! There will always be underachievers so there is always room for achievers...each kid gets to make this choice...

 

No matter how incompetent anyone feels about the current public education system, any kid that does not have a learning disability, if they attend school and study, can learn enough to make better decisions in life...including seeking careers, education, starting a family, etc.

You whine about government tax policy for the wealthy but ignore the fact that the wealthy are paying the lion's share of personal income taxes! That 50-100 million Americans pay little to no income taxes!

A war on the poor by the wealthy??...give me a break.

All a kid needs to do is go to school, study, learn, and do this through graduation...this can be achieved whether a person is poor or rich. Your evil wealthy do not prevent kids from going to school, studying and learning!

What is the 'excuse' for poorer kids not going to school, studying and learning?

There is no better place in the world to live, to be educated, to establish a career, raise a family, etc...none! Public education is in place and it's 100% up to the kids, their parents, their guardians, to obtain an appropriate education. It took me 6 years to finish college because I had to work during the entire six years...so what! You want to blame government, and the wealthy, and others but the fact is many kids and parents today don't get it! They think they can do nothing and others will take care of them. If this is the case, then just give all kids an IQ test, and if they are below a certain number, no school no nothing just a path to government support. Let's focus on those kids and parents who put forth the focus and effort...

 

The public school system in the US is underfunded by $100Billions making it structurally incapable of giving every child in the US a decent education. You just ignore that and the reasons behind it and instead put all the blame on the children. They are children for crying out loud.

Blaming children for the poor results of the US public education system is one of the most cynical victim blaming ploys I have ever seen on these forums, and that is saying a lot.

 

Please provide proof of an area of the US which does not provide all kids an opportunity to attend a public school?

If the kids and the parents, plus their families and immediate society, cannot understand the reasons for demanding that their kids obtain a public education then do you wish to blame this on government? Maybe you would like government to fine and jail those parents and kids who refuse to obtain an education?

Maybe you didn't go to school? If you did, as I did, you can be honest in assessing how you did, if you studied, if you applied yourself, if you strived for the highest grades, if your parents demanded results from you, if you attended school every day, if you avoided drugs and other distractions, if you had a goal of attending college...or did you screw off most of the time and your parents did not care? Whether you are willing to accept it or not...how you did in school was 100% the responsibility of you, your parents, your family, and your society...

 

.... your society... You said it.

Just because your society provides you the opportunity to attend a public school does not mean that it also provides you the means to avail yourself of that opportunity to the best of your ability.

And that is the thing you seem incapable of understanding. Or perhaps you do but have some sincerely ignorant belief that all children are capable of overcoming the extremity of their circumstances regardless. That all children are outliers, capable of rising above their circumstances if only they and their parents and family and society would take on some greater responsibility.

If that is so, you might be right. If society would take its responsibility to educate these children seriously then it would do more than just have some poorly funded public school available for them and call it job done. Society would also take care to ensure that the circumstances these children live in enable them to take full advantage of their educational opportunities. But it does not, so the children fail.

 

Kids from all situations in the USA find success in public education...kids find success in the identical schools others find failure!

You make it sound like a pity-party in which kids in certain conditions are incapable of doing better? This same issue existed decades ago and continues today, racial and economic and cultural differences, yet millions of kids over the decades have completed public education and even college studies. What is different in today's kids in which they can't succeed?

I'm an advocate of government removing our ghettoes and gangs and drugs and guns from 1000's of areas of the USA. But just because they exist, is not an excuse for kids failing public education, because these conditions have existed for decades. Whether or not a kid succeeds in public education, is 100% the kid's, and their parent's or guardian's responsibility. Government can only provide the tools/programs but each citizen is required to take advantage of those tools...

 

Kids from poorer families or neighbourhoods and some minorities have been doing worse in school for centuries, too. It's not a new problem - it's always been endemic. And it's not as if children can help it if their schools are badly funded and staffed, their neighbourhoods have problems or if their parents are poor or weren't educated so well and therefore have a parenting style which isn't conducive to academic success.