Comment by vjvjvjvjghv
1 day ago
That would require a total rethinking of our economic system. I doubt this will happen without any catalyst like war or revolution.
1 day ago
That would require a total rethinking of our economic system. I doubt this will happen without any catalyst like war or revolution.
Not necessarily. The US government already spends >2000$ per adult per month. It would require a total rethinking of the role of government.
Spends on what? It's not like you can disband the military, not build roads and bridges and eliminate medicaid just because you send out a $1000/mo UBI payment.
If you want to consider just social assistance then the US government spends about $950B annually, and that works out to $2800 per year per citizen. To make it a livable amount you'd have to at minimum 5x that expenditure (and a lot more than that in urban areas).
If someone is saving money to make a downpayment on a house, they don't stop spending money on food. They will likely eat out less, buy less expensive foods, watch for sales, cut down on food waste, or find other means to reallocate some of their budget for food to savings for that downpayment. Yet they will not stop eating.
I'm not the type of person who blindly supports UBI. I think that it would be disasterous to implement it without rethinking how the economy should work and how UBI is going to address social woes. That said, I do think that it will be necessary in the long run. Money, may it be earned or granted, is a tool for people to make decisions. Traditional social programs pretty much does the opposite. It removes autonomy. It removes accountability. It doesn't much matter whether it is social housing (something physical) or conditional grants of money (which is a major focus of this article).
The comment I was replying to proposed a UBI of $13,000/year or roughly what many people on disability currently live on. That would cost around $3.4 trillion annually, leaving over $3 trillion for everything else, including roads and the military. Of course, you'd still need to make cuts somewhere - likely from existing entitlement programs.
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> and a lot more than that in urban areas
Or, if the UBI is insufficient, you could work or move someplace less expensive.
Most anything else would feel unfair (as a result of being so) and tend to drive a cycle of inflation in the expensive urban areas rather than working against it.
Not just a total rethinking, but rather a total redevelopment to find an economic system that is just as stable as capitalism in a free market (without fiat).
Socialism fails 100% of the time given sufficient time, UBI is tied to socialism.
If your food production yield is dependent on maintaining your supply chain which fails under socialism, you basically run into a hysteresis trap under socialism where this fails, and everyone starves to death.
Its like the ending of Daybreakers, where blood becomes increasingly scarce, and the dynamics of it all force some unwilling sacrifices which start a chain reaction.
Just an FYI, Money-printing/non-reserve debt issuance is a catalyst for war/ revolution.
I agree. Some libertarian economists noticed that endless growth demands slavery-like conditions and the economic collapse one way or another. They are trying to back away without using the s-word and invent half-baked solutions like UBI.
UBI by itself will not solve the problems. It will only drive exorbitant inflation. Implementing UBI requires socializing many institutions and nationalizing big companies. People who control the biggest portions of the economy will not give their power up without a war.
> Some libertarian economists noticed that endless growth demands slavery-like conditions and the economic collapse one way or another.
Which economists? That doesn't sound libertarian at all. Libertarians who support UBI typically do so because they see it as a pragmatic alternative to inefficient welfare systems. They certainly wouldn't support abandoning market based economics.