Posted on 01/03/2018 10:29:16 AM PST by SeekAndFind
QUESTION: What is your opinion of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg idea of universal income?
ANSWER: The idea of free money being touted by Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg only demonstrates that they know nothing about humanity or economics. They see universal free money as a cushion for workers whose jobs might be replaced by automation or robots. They argue that free money could provide workers with the flexibility to retrain for a new career, pursue creative interests, or start their own business.
If we are talking about a temporary benefit during a retraining period, then that is an entirely different idea from a universal basic income guarantee. You can drive down the streets in New Jersey and you see hand-made signs posted that they pay cash for diabetes medical material handed out free by the government. They also sell food stamps. You cannot change humanity. Some people will obey the rules and others will circumvent them.
The last thing you want to do in society is provide to the population some sort of guaranteed income where people can stay home and do nothing. This will foster the same hatred of anyone who works and has more than they do and it will promote hatred and class warfare.
When the automobile was invented, that displaced people who were carpenters making wagons. When the Dust Bow hit during the Great Depression, it added to the displacement of farmers. The tractors replaced people tilling the soil just as the cotton gin replaced slave labor in the South. Technology will always replace workers and the greater the tax burden, the greater the incentive to replace workers.
Neither Elon Musk nor Mark Zuckerberg has any clue about economic history for if they did, they would understand that technology always advances and displaces segments of the workforce. This is also one reason governments like war to thin the herd when unemployment rises.
Providing free money is actually an experiment in Finland. It began one year ago taking 2,000 unemployed Finns who were randomly selected from across the country for a trial testing universal basic income. Each month for two years they would receive 560 euros from the government, tax-free. They can spend the money however they decide. The plus of this program is the reduction in bureaucracy. As I said, the US government hands out food stamps but people sell them. From an economic standpoint, this system is less costly than the current one in play with bureaucrats determining what they will allow people to have or not. The full report on the Finland experiment will not be issued until the 2-year program is complete after January 1st, 2019.
Slavery. State owns what it pays for.
I'm certain you'll find quite a few dissenters from your opinion in segments of our agriculture sector. Many a wealthy landowner sits/sat on their a**es and collected hefty checks for not working their fields..........
Slavery.
“Yes, but what about counterfeit coins?”
ROTFLOL!
You can’t pay employees more than they can produce and expect your company to succeed for long.
Let’s do an experiment... Choose your favorite national park, and change all the signs from “Don’t feed the animals” to “Feed the animals.” After a year, shut down the park, and check out how the animals are doing the following year.
Mark
It’s called welfare, and it’s already been tried.
It does not work.
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm
Insanity is correct. This is a Communist wet dream. Any well educated person who understands human nature all all knows this wont work. Unfortunately, we dont seem to be turning out enough of those.
/all all/at all/
My faith in the Lord is unwavering. My faith in America’s youth is not.
Its not insanity to ask in a grander context.
We have to come to grips with a reality that is coming, and that is, automation and technology is going to replace most jobs, and will there legitimately be enough work for everyone once that happens?
We aren’t there yet, obviously, and no not all jobs will ever be completely automated, but a LOT are going to be, in the not too distant future. (assuming of course we don’t figure out a way to blow ourselves back to the dark ages and have to start all over again).
Technology advancement is growing exponentially, we truly are not far off from a future where more than mundane and repetitive tasks, that easily fit within certain finite parameters, are going to be automated.
What happens after the tipping point? When there truly are more people in the work place (and a LOT more people in the workplace) than there is work to be done?
That’s not an insane question to ask at all, because we are certainly within a world where that possibility is on the horizon... when will it happen exactly? Who knows, but, it certainly a very possible reality and thinking ahead about that, and what and how to handle that, is not insane at all.
Right now, we aren’t there, no doubt, but its coming.
What is given for free has no value... You would never be able to give enough to make a living wage for the poor... They will always be poor.....
I have never understood why starving college students who are self financing their way thru school are not eligible for any public assistance but have to go into debt and/or work themselves to death.
I remember my first trip to Honduras with my family back in 1984. What stood out the most was the vast number of campesinos, from young children to old adults, outside the city with their machetes in hand heading out to work the fields........They either worked or they starved.
I also remember the efforts of the hollywood elitists to shut down the garment "sweat factories" that took advantage of women and children in Honduras. Never once realizing that those were actually premium jobs for the truly poor who would be out in the hot cane fields if not for those factory jobs.
Dan Price of Gravity Payments in Seattle.
God is the God of the impossible. As he impossibly brought victory out of the jaws of defeat against the greatest military power on earth in 1776, so now he can do the impossible to help us defeat the Multi-Headed Beast of the Delusional Lying Left and Restore our Free Constitutional Republic.
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