Posted on 10/13/2016 11:28:41 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Speaking with Wired editor-in-chief Scott Dadich and MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito in a recent interview, President Barack Obama reaffirmed his belief that universal basic income would be harder to ignore in the coming decades.
UBI is a system of wealth distribution in which the government provides everyone with some money, regardless of income.
The money comes with no strings attached. People can use it however they choose, whether to repair a leaky roof or to go on vacation. Advocates say the system is a smart and straightforward way to lift people out of poverty.
A growing body of evidence suggests such a system might be necessary if artificial intelligence wipes out a huge chunk of jobs performed by humans. That is the future Obama wants to avoid, but he said the possibility warrants a debate on basic income....
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
GREAT,
We can buy more drugs, alcohol and cigs. It don’t matter cause we have free health care to take care of us.
AND maybe enough leftover for that final injection at age 30!
I think we already have the “ultra-violence”
“People can use it however they choose, whether to repair a leaky roof or to go on vacation.”
Creating animosity right there. You think those who need to fix a roof with it will be happy about those who get to blow it on a vacation?
This idea is Marxism, pure and simple.
Correct. I think we SHOULD have this debate as Obama says — and we should then bring out these points that there is no bottomless well...
and there are lots of people who can't think. The question is -- what to do with them?
I see UBI as a way to keep the unwashed masses amused and off our backs, but the more efficient way is what wasteout said -- you don't have a job, then you work for the nation doing some task -- most likely military or infrastructural (remember that the Roman Army spent most of its time building)
Exactly. The pessimistic side of me thinks it will be fruitless, but the other side of me says we have to do it no matter what the result.
If we don’t, it will just happen, and will be another nail in the coffin for the Republic, not that there aren’t a lot in there already.
THe problem with free money is that it is free.
THe “cost” of any item is driven by the value people place on it, and value tends to be based on how hard a person has to work in exchange for an item.
If you don’t have to work at all, then you would pay “anything” for an item.
SO, if you give people $10,000 of free money, the general cost of everything will go up by $10,000 . Same amount of goods, more money chasing those goods, prices rise to balance demand.
The misunderstanding of basic economics is probably the biggest impediment to our future as a nation.
Imagine if we got rid of money, and you actually had to barter or work for goods. How then would you give people a base income? Well, Poor person (PP) wants a new car. The person with the new car wants an addition to their house. The PP can’t do that, they have no skill, which is why they have no money. So instead, we force a half-dozen people off the street to come over and build the addition to the house, and then the car is given to the PP.
That’s what UBI is, only we take people’s “work” by using tax code.
The truth that the Left does not want to admit is that all labor is not equal and some is worth more compensation than others. Trying to make that untrue by raising minimum wage well above what a business is willing to pay an unskilled worker entering into a tight work force for the first time will only make it more likely that large subgroups of people will not find work. Their solution is to keep raising the minimum wage. There is also the whole matter of the costs of goods and services going up in correlation to increases.
The minimum base income is not connected to labor and it would be a set amount. If a person wanted to increase that income he would either have to create his own job or work for somebody else. One big reason I support it is because I think it would really help families. For example it could be used so that a young mother did not have to put her children in daycare. It could be used to help purchase health insurance or pay for private school. It might mean a family could move from a dangerous neighborhood to a safer one. I see this largely as a benefit to the middle class.
My biggest concern Is that the government will demand it go to non-citizens including illegal aliens. That would be a non-starter for me. I would also object if it was regarded as just another welfare program on top of existing programs. It should replace those programs or at least lead to sharp reductions in them.
Yes we do!
So on the one hand he is saying robots will replace low-level unskilled jobs, and yet he keeps encouraging and allowing unskilled people to flood into our country...
What could possibly go wrong?
The problem is we wouldn’t replace 79 welfare programs with one welfare program. We would supplement 79 federal welfare programs with another, larger federal welfare program.
Most Conservatives in favor of the GBI do not favor retaining the current welfare system. Obviously if it was to be just another means tested program it would not work.
I have the same perspective.
I could see starting out with a negative income tax to see how that spurs people to start their own cottage industry. I foresee that there may be a renaissance in skilled artisan crafts for handmade luxury goods.
The street fair / farmers markets are flourishing and the two I attend ban resellers of mass produced goods and the handcrafted items are juried (if the jury committee thinks your stuff is poor quality, unoriginal or uninteresting you don’t get in).
I can also see a UBI at 25-30K combined with a NIT of the same amount leading to a mass exodus of mostly women from the formal job market and having a stay at home parent become the norm again.
The biggest incentive for the government to raise the minimum wage is to add to the coffers for income taxes and most importantly, Social Security/Medicare taxes (there is no refund on those payments, and no Earned Income Credit). Living in a high-cost part of the country (the NYC metro area), we have local and state governments dead-set against reducing the workfare so common here (government jobs); rather that cut costs, they just want to transfer those costs onto employers - and the outcome is predictable: Employers and those workers who can flee to lower-cost areas, especially those without a gaggle of government workers (demanding salaries/benfits far beyond anything offered in the private sector) and unemployable Welfarians seeking sugar daddies to pay for their golden ticket bastards’ housing, schools, etc.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.