Comment by pixel_popping
9 days ago
Many countries have a form of UBI, although it's not guaranteed as the meaning of UBI would in a sense, but look at France with their RSA as an example, if you have no incomes/low incomes, you are entitled to it.
9 days ago
Many countries have a form of UBI, although it's not guaranteed as the meaning of UBI would in a sense, but look at France with their RSA as an example, if you have no incomes/low incomes, you are entitled to it.
RSA is not UBI, UBI literally means Universal Basic Income, it's not for no income/low income people, it's universal.
You are conflating the concept of UBI with social welfare, they are different things and it's a bit annoying to see the erosion of the UBI concept into social welfare, I've noticed an uptick of this the past year or so, no idea where it's originating from...
Agreed I butchered it, but what is the concrete difference right now for someone that has no job (so where UBI is relevant) with social welfare and "UBI" if in the end, that person gets a monthly income that is somehow guaranteed?
they don't have to spend that life jumping through hoops, visiting particular offices at particular times to talk to people who don't want to be there, documenting medical histories, job searches, going through embarassing questioning, repeated monthly or more, all to potentially be denied the money they need for rent and what meagre food they can afford though some unexpected bureaucracy failure, imagined or real.
UBI being given to everyone (and therefore requiring little more than a confirmed identity) IS the feature.
As for whether its feasible and what it would do to society in terms of people's job motivation, I don't know. But the idea is to reduce the degrading experience of welfare as it currently exists, as well as reducing the surprisingly high expense of the government offices dedicated to checking and enforcing the byzantine laws surrounding the current system.
The concrete difference is simple: you don't have to spend most of your life convincing the government that you deserve to continue getting money. If you've ever interacted with a welfare system, you'll know. They work much better on paper than in real life.
The concrete difference is that the society around the person living in a UBI-society will be very different than one where there's only social welfare.
Where will this ubi money come from when there is no one to tax and profits are going to tech firms based in America.
I don't have enough expertise in this field but I don't think we should be thinking only with a doomsday scenario, humans are quite resilient and innovative, society will completely change and I genuinely believe we will find ways, there will be a lot of suffering in between (and maybe after as well, as there is now) but we might eventually reach a point in automation where a lot of prices drop to the point where it's virtually free, food could be included, if we do have 24/7 machines that can build, expand, deliver and so-on with free energy somehow, it's not crazy to think that a KG of chicken could worth 10 times less than it is now, so many things could be reconsidered.
UBI could mean also that people could be living in places further away from main cities, and eventually housing will be automatically built as well so costs could drop sharply.
> but we might eventually reach a point in automation where a lot of prices drop to the point where it's virtually free, food could be included,
It took two world wars till we had an aberrational period where the middle class actually had lives which were good.
UBI can’t happen because governments globally don't have the money to pay for it. Its good to hope, but the details aren’t in favor.
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Of course humans will adapt, the core issue is how we can avoid as much suffering as possible while these changes happen, that's always the point. No one wants to live a life during a transitional period in history where suffering is increased, as a species we should be working to alleviate that.
What's the point of progress if we keep repeating the same mistakes of leaving miserable people behind? Is that progress or just a repetition of the cycle with new shiny things?