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We're officially launching UBI
- dawnbreez 9y agoI suspect that UBI, or something similar, will be necessary when automation/AI/whatever-you-like is good enough to replace "front-end", customer-facing jobs. At that point, it'll be hard to break into the job market without having a degree in something, and there'll be a sharp spike of unemployment in the lower class.
- gremlinsinc 9y agoReplace that 'degree in something' with 'degree in an IT field'. There will come a day, where programming and creative arts are the only things not fully automated. Doctors, Surgeons, Lawyers, even Architects will probably be automated by 2040. Hopefully, that brings hospital care costs down, but I'm betting their still greedy and just make 10x as much on 10x less staff. I'm anxious for the ai revolution to just get on with already. UBI will be needed eventually, I want us to hurry and get to the breaking point where unemployment is 40% or greater across the globe because of automation so policymakers start to see that without some safety net for people there will be an uprising. I'm optimistic we can come together as a human race and solve poverty someday. But I'm not naive, it could become a dystopian world where the rich live in lavish cities with closed walls, and everyone else lives outside those walls.
- greggman 9y agoVox recent uploaded a video about that topic arguing that might not happen https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TUmyygCMMGA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TUmyygCMMGA
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- eksu 9y agoCan someone explain to me why UBI is preferable to a negative income tax? I don’t get why we’ve come up with a worse version of a 40 year old idea. Are these two ships passing in the night or were there some perceived problems with Negative Income Tax that UBI is supposed to solve.
- mbesto 9y agoWait, aren't they essentially the same thing?
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- wavefunction 9y agoPresumably the difference is that at some income threshold you start paying taxes, whereas right below it you don't. So to me it sounds like a terrible implementation of a basic income scheme, since someone making X pays no taxes but x+n pays some fraction of n in taxes and presumably has little real incentive to work for n additional dollars when n is sufficiently small enough that x is close to x+(n - tax). And then you've got all the bureaucracy of figuring out who earned less than x and applying whatever specific payment y to bring them up to x.
- eksu 9y agoYou don’t have a hard and fast threashold but have it taper off on a progressive curve.
- wavefunction 9y agoSure, but my main point about it being a terrible implementation is that it's still means-tested requiring a bureaucracy that our current non UBI system features, which would be unnecessary and a cost-savings under a UBI scheme where every citizen receives $x each year.
- bryanlarsen 9y agoIt's quite possible that the NIT would use less bureaucracy than the UBI because UBI would have it's own separate bureaucracy and doesn't eliminate the need for the department of revenue, whereas the NIT would just use the department of revenue for both. Either way, both require little extra bureaucracy.
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- vinceguidry 9y agoUBI desperately needs to be tried out on a semi-large scale as a social experiment. We can't even form a useful moral argument about it until we know its effects. Will it start shaping local and regional policy or is it just going to quietly get discarded as a idea before its time?
- ttoinou 9y agoWe can't even form a useful moral argument about it until we know its effects Of course we can. It's ok for people to donate their money and time for this kind of experiment. It's not ok for governments to tax citizens for a new social giveaway unless others social benefits are reduced accordingly (which will never happen).
- pc86 9y agoThe most popular UBI proposals that I've seen all contain some level of social safety net reduction (some more than others). None of the proposals I've seen suggest that social services remain at their current level and we give everyone $N on top of that.
- ttoinou 9y agoBut, will it happen ? Are laws implemented according to the proposals ? Of course the most urgent thing will be to implement UBI. And then to raise it. No one will think about deleting previous welfare benefits
- Gargoyle 9y agoI'd rather see someone work on the Universal part first. Get distributions, however small, into the hands of every individual. Scaling up the distributions isn't a difficult problem to solve, the universal part is.
- pc86 9y agoA dollar a day to every US citizen is $114 billion a year. At that expense I would think scaling it at all once it reaches universality is nearly impossible. Even if we're theoretically giving every $10k/yr, upping that to $10,365/yr still costs well over $100 billion.
- grondilu 9y agoMake it a dollar a year, then. Or a cent a year. The point was to install and test the required infrastructure (identity check, payment method and so on...) and then increase the amount.
- Turing_Machine 9y ago> Even if we're theoretically giving every $10k/yr, upping that to $10,365/yr still costs well over $100 billion. Not if most of it is coming back in income taxes, it doesn't.
- gbear605 9y agoThe questions that GiveDirectly are looking at are not about the technical implementation, but whether it actually produces good results.
- logfromblammo 9y agoStep 1: Distribute 2 L of clean, potable drinking water to every person, every day, at no additional cost to them. Step 2: Distribute 2200 kcal of nutritionally adequate food to every person, every day, at no additional cost to them. Step 3: Allocate 20 m^3 of private, secure shelter to every person, with right-of-occupation intervals lasting no less than 4 years, at no additional cost to them. Step 4: Allocate ~350 L/day for treated water and sewer lines--sufficient for cooking, cleaning, hygiene, and sanitation--to every person, at no additional cost to them. Step 5: Distribute 800 W of electrical power to every person, at no additional cost to them. Step 6: Allocate 50 Mb/s data network bandwidth to every person, at no additional cost to them. Step 7: Build sufficient additional public infrastructure for transportation, healthcare, business, and recreation, such that a reasonable amount of use of those commons is available to every person at no additional cost. Step 8: Distribute a quantity of spendable currency to every person, with no requirements for eligibility or restrictions on its use. Starting at step 8 is, in my opinion, a recipe for inflation and rent-seeking. UBI is, in essence, an attempt to create a mixed economic system that is communist at the bottom end and capitalist at the top end. If you do not establish the minimum quality-of-life boundary by producing or taxing-in-kind the required goods and services as an inherently governmental (+ non-profit NGO) function, the rent-seekers in the upper class can and will capture some of the benefit intended for the lower class, and possibly enough of it that the lower class can no longer solely subsist upon it. If the subsistence-level of existence is guaranteed, there is no longer any leverage provided to a person with more resources by virtue of the poorer person needing to accept a bad deal in order to live, while the richer person can walk away from the table without meaningful consequence. Workers cannot be as easily exploited if everyone can afford to quit their jobs. Renters can always fall back to their sleeping cubicle.
- mbil 9y agoHere's more info about the program https://www.givedirectly.org/basic-income https://www.givedirectly.org/basic-income We will assess the impact of a basic income against a broad set of metrics, including: - economic status (income, assets, standard of living) - time use (work, education, leisure, community involvement) - risk-taking (migrating, starting businesses) - gender relations (especially female empowerment) - aspirations and outlook on life
- rory096 9y agoAnd here's what they're paying out: Long-term basic income: 40 villages with recipients receiving roughly $0.75 (nominal) per adult per day, delivered monthly for 12 years Short-term basic income: 80 villages with recipients receiving the same monthly amount, but only for 2 years Lump sum payments: 80 villages with recipients receiving a lump sum payment equivalent to the total value of payments of the short-term stream Control group: 100 villages not receiving cash transfers
- chatmasta 9y agoHow can you meaningfully experiment with UBI if the “BI” is not even universal? My understanding is that many of the criticisms of UBI are based on externalities that would only become manifest in a meaningfully large population. For example, price increases and inflation might arise from everyone having extra money. If you’re only testing UBI on a small population, then 1) it’s not even universal, and 2) there will not be enough “beta testers” to (in)validate these criticisms. So while this may be a “success” (how do you even measure that?) it’s not a meaningful experiment at all.
- ganzuul 9y agoOne interpretation of "universal" is that it is income independent of other income, so if you get a job you still get UBI too. This could be a huge help people who can't find stable employment, but still want e.g. a loan to buy a home.
- moduspol 9y agoI agree that it's tough to measure "success," but at least it would be presumably easy to measure failure. If we see exactly what opponents claim will happen, it would suggest a more strict implementation might be worse. My concern is that with this we're likely looking at an even worse version of the problems seen with sending shoes to Africa [1]. Over the duration of this experiment, it's quite possible you'll create a society that abandons skills / equipment / expertise necessary to sustain an economy. That won't be a problem until the experiment ends, and then you've left people in a place far less than where you found them. [1] http://www.djiboutijones.com/2014/02/dont-send-your-used-shoes-to-africa-or-maybe-do-send-them/ http://www.djiboutijones.com/2014/02/dont-send-your-used-sho...
- skybrian 9y agoIf you're sending money then people will spend it (such as on shoes) and increased spending and investment will tend to help local businesses much more than sending goods that compete with them. So I'm not seeing why you think skills will atrophy? It seems like there's more danger of that when people are poorer? (For one thing, education becomes less affordable.)
- matt_wulfeck 9y agoLike others have said, pilot programs are a poor trial for UBI. You're creating wealth for select individuals (even a village), so you aren't dealing with economic issues such as inflation. For example, read about Mansa Musa, who gave away so much gold in his pilgrimage to Mecca in the 1300s that he caused devaluation of money (hyperinflation) for nearly 10 years [1]. The huge influx of "free" money caused lasting damage to the functioning of the economy. I don't doubt doubt the effectiveness of UBI. I just also believe in the efficiency of markets to absorb influxes of money while keeping the relative cost of tangible assets the same. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musa_I_of_Mali#Islam_and_pilgrimage_to_Meccasinglehandedly-caused-economic-crises https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musa_I_of_Mali#Islam_and_pilgr...
- skybrian 9y agoBetter to model this as a change in spending patterns, not an increase in the money supply. It results in more broad-based spending on low-end goods and less on luxury goods. (In the US this would be good for Walmart and their suppliers.) Also, inflation happens when supply can't keep up with demand. It doesn't happen when businesses can adjust by making more stuff. An example of supply-limited inflation would be housing in some areas, but this would be countered by making it more affordable to live in lower cost areas since UBI makes people less dependent on jobs. (Consider how social security affects Florida.)
- munk-a 9y agoI haven't seen any proposals for UBI that rely on printing money to fund the benefits so I imagine that the Fed will still be able to control money production rates and keep the total currency within fixed limits. Would this run away inflation be possible in a system where we're drawing money out of the top of the economy?
- shkkmo 9y agoI'm not sure that an effect on inflation would even really be a problem. The Fed has been struggling to maintain inflation at it's target rates for many years and has had to come up with new and creative tools beyond just adjusting base interest rates. In my opinion, the only way to introduce UBI at scale is slowly. If UBI does have an impact on inflation, we can scale up UBI during times of economic downturns and hold UBI steady when the economy is growing and control inflation with standard interest rate manipulations.
- whb07 9y agoI wonder what the differences are between UBI and the day to day life’s of people who get straight cash payments for being citizens like: UAE, Saudi Arabia, Native American tribesmen with successful casinos etc. To my knowledge, it ain’t all sunshine and rainbows (technical term) for them either. They suffer stagnation, heavy dependency into oil money(for those in the Middle East), and it’s dsfinitely a time bomb which those in power know it’s coming. If anyone could present some points so we could further advance this point, id be grateful
- s0rce 9y agoSimilar situation in Alaska, I'm not sure there are huge implications (although the relative magnitude of the payments might be vastly different).
- danielvf 9y agoAlaskan fund usually pays out about 1K per person per year. As long as you can live on three dollars a day, you are good. (And that’s not unheard of if you’ve built your own cabin in the wilderness, grow some of your own food, and hunt.)
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- clay_to_n 9y agoThere's a recent article from wired exploring how it's affected the Cherokee Nation: https://www.wired.com/story/free-money-the-surprising-effects-of-a-basic-income-supplied-by-government/ https://www.wired.com/story/free-money-the-surprising-effect...
- lucozade 9y agoI'm only really familiar with Abu Dhabi but there, idleness is a concern. It's directly evident in schemes such as paying school children to exercise. However, it is masked somewhat in the adult population as foreign companies are required to employ natives in senior positions. Anecdotally, the incumbents aren't famous for their work ethic. But it's hard to argue that it's not overall positive for the local population. Healthcare, education, services etc are all excellent. That being said, I don't think these are useful comparators. The elephant in the room is who is paying? In the case of Abu Dhabi, it's the buyers of their oil. As such, you don't have an internal tension between the net tax consumers and net tax generators. Nor do you have a significant allocation of resource issue when there is a surfeit of resource. And I think it's the latter issue that is a critical one for UBI. Although not equivalent, I think the example of UK child benefit is instructive. It was a universal benefit in the sense that it applied to all children regardless of parental income (it differed by birth order but that's not material to the point). While the economy was doing well, the money flowed. Post crash, the economy tightened and it was an immediate target and became means tested. It's not clear to me that, even if you managed to get UBI implemented, it would be stable. I would expect that it would need to show tangible, widespread benefit in about one economic cycle. Otherwise, as soon as things started to slow, you'd be seeing stories about the wasters and layabouts. It wouldn't matter if there were many cf the refugee "deluge" or similar triggers. In other words, I can see UBI lasting only if a number of other, very significant economic (cycles) and societal (selfishness) issues are resolved. Tricky.
- maxxxxx 9y agoWhen I look at the US and see how difficult it is to get universal health care I don't think that UBI has a chance. The people in power would rather see people starve on the streets.
- grasshopperpurp 9y agoNo idea why this is being downvoted. It's plain as day.
- H99189 9y agoNot sure but maybe because it's not that politicians of all stripes want people to starve but that there is disagreement on how to bring that about. It's a painfully true reality that there are people who when given every opportunity, trust funds, etc, they are still immense drags on their community and economy as a whole with the destruction they leave behind in their wake. How will UBI deal with it's empowerment of such people or such tendencies in people? Until you do, you don't have workable system but an absolutely disaster in the making that will amplify suffering rather than decrease it.
- shkkmo 9y agoNobody disputes that there are lazy people who wouldn't work if given UBI. The dispute is whether that is actually a problem for UBI. The questions we need answered to know this are: 1) How many (what proportion) of these lazy people are there? 2) How much economic output is wasted by employers trying to filter these lazy people out of their workforce. 3) How much economic output is wasted by the systems employers have to create to force the lazy people whom they do hire to be productive. 4) How much economic output can we gain by giving non-lazy people a safety net that allows them to find ideal vocations for their talents and preferences. Proponents of UBI generally maintain 1) is low enough to be out-weighted by 2-4) while skeptics claim it is high enough to out-weight 2-4) Really, these questions can only be answered by data. While 2) and 3) will be very hard to measure with small/medium studies, we can start getting a pretty good idea of how big 1) and 4) are respectively. So far there have been promising indications that 1) may well be out-weighted 4), but we need more, better and larger studies to be sure. UBI's biggest challenge will likely not be finding ways to minimize 1) vs. 4) sufficiently, but will be finding ways to overcome people's cultural and political fear of 1)
- AckSyn 9y agoMore money down the drain on failed social "safety nets".
- Romanulus 9y agoThis is a poor implementation of Welfare 2.0 and it will fail just like the first iteration.
- monkseal 9y agoAt its heart, UBI sounds like a good thing but it ignore basic human nature and particularly in-group and out-group conflicts. UBI in America would calcify a class system where one group of people works and another lives off their work. The working group will come to resent the non-working group and it will further divide the society. People are living a bubble if they don’t think this would be a major source of political and social friction. Also, I don’t think the proponents of UBI can account for how many people would simply not work if they had the option. I love programming but there are some days where I don’t like my boss and my co-workers. I endure some discomfort but at the end of the day, I’m compensated for that. If you told me I would get 50k per year and free housing, I would probably spend most of my time snowboarding and playing video games rather sit in 1 hour planning meeting. I would probably be much more likely to do this if all my friends were snowboarding and playing video games ….
- LesZedCB 9y ago> UBI in America would calcify a class system where one group of people works and another lives off their work Turns out this already exists, it's just that most people, presumably you as well by the tone of your post, thinks that the people who are parasites on the working class is the poor and needy instead of the rich and powerful. need proof? read the paradise papers or panama papers. the rich are making off like bandits without paying their fair share orders of magnitude beyond what the impoverished are consuming.
- shkkmo 9y agoNobody is talking about giving you 50k and free housing. You would likely receive much closer to 15k (federal poverty level) and free housing (if any) would likely not be in a ski town. Good luck affording food and rent in a ski town, plus enough video games to keep you busy all year on 15k. You might quit your full time job, but you would probably find some part-time programming work you enjoyed to allow you to afford good snowboards, new video games, and trips to other ski towns. Disclaimer: I am currently doing part-time freelance work and living in a ski town. Plus, if you truly love programming, you would still want to work on side projects and assist with open source development that you find interesting or valuable. Nobody disputes that there are lazy people who wouldn't work if given UBI. The questions are: 1) How many of these lazy people are there? 2) How much economic output is wasted by employers trying to filter these lazy people out of their workforce. 3) How much economic output is wasted by the systems employers have to create to force the lazy people they do hire to be productive. 4) How much economic output can we gain by giving non-lazy people a safety net that allows them to find ideal vocations for their talents and preferences.
- pfarnsworth 9y agoCongrats, and good luck. I'm personally against the idea of UBI because I don't believe it works at a large scale because all it will do is create inflation, but I'm genuinely curious to see me proven wrong. That's the whole point of experimentation, so I fully support this.
- ttoinou 9y agoEasy. Delete cash and crypto currencies and let men of the state set prices. Poof, no inflation.
- shkkmo 9y ago> I don't believe it works at a large scale because all it will do is create inflation. Inflation is not necessarily a bad thing, high inflation and low inflation (or deflation) are both bad. (Specifically, it is expectations of high or low inflation are bad as they tend to compound into further increases or decreases in inflation.) This is why the Fed in the US targets a base inflation rate of 2%, the expectation of a stable rate of inflation help keep that inflation rate stable and support economic activity. While limiting inflation used to be the primary concern of monetary policy, we have seen more and more effort being put into limiting deflation and maintaining a healthy level of inflation. Any increase in inflation due to UBI would be caused by UBI causing demand growth to outstrip supply growth. Yet boosting demand is exactly the tool we need to deal with economic downturns. I think the path to introducing UBI is to legally couple UBI increases with slightly lesser minimum wage, unemployment and welfare decreases. We then give the Fed the power to trigger this as needed to stimulate the economy when needed and avoid deflation. I think it is a positive sign that the anti-UBI skeptics seem to be shifting away from the "but people will be lazy" argument to the "but it will cause inflation" argument.
- pfarnsworth 9y agoInflation would cause the recipients of UBI who need it most to suffer the most. Unless we increase UBI, which would cause more inflation, and this then becomes positive feedback loop. As a homeowner with a substantial but fixed-rate mortgage and a well-paying job, I would LOVE to see high inflation.
- ttoinou 9y agoNow it’s time for us to do our jobs, and wait to learn. They will never learn anything from this experiment as long as they keep hiding where does the money come from. Let's not fool ourselves : if UBI is implemented, money will come from taxpayers citizens, and will increase the power of governments over our lives. For good arguments against UBI, cf Hazlitt : https://fee.org/articles/income-without-work/ https://fee.org/articles/income-without-work/ . - UBI is not a right because it would mean some have a duty to work and transfer wealth to others. - Costs are always badly estimated. Proponents of UBI obviously never look at the big picture - There's no such a thing as "living in dignity", more is always welcomed - Old social welfare benefits will never die - Money can't flow from rich people for a long period of time. They either stop having money or emigrate in others countries
- SilasX 9y agoThere may be an issue with government control, but I think the "how is it funded" is a bigger problem: an experiment were the money comes from a different society is not going to model the effects of the taxes needed to fund it. You're not seeing a major downside of the policy, which is the deadweight loss induced by having all those work/investment acts taxed more. (I know, "people still work", "people still invest". That's not the problem. The problem is the marginal unit of labor/investment, and quantifying how that compares to the benefit of the UBI.) There's also, of course, the issue of how much gets eaten away by higher rents, which everyone just assumes away.
- ttoinou 9y agoI agree. Maybe all this experiment can prove is that giving money directly to people in "poor" countries is more effective than international aid programmes that started after WWII. Big news.
- Bromskloss 9y agoMaybe the post should state what "UBI" means.
- colemannugent 9y ago>Send money directly to the extreme poor Ahh, so GiveDirectly is a charity? It certainly isn't universal, so calling it UBI seems misleading at best.
- rafiki6 9y agoThere seems to be lots of confusion about what constitutes UBI here. This isn't talking about America or developed nations. And government led UBI experiments in developed nations were always doing UBI in place of other social welfare benefits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_pilots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_pilots The argument isn't about if UBI is good or bad. It's if UBI is better than the current social welfare structure. The question is, "is it cheaper and more efficient to just give people money and get rid of the several programs we have?". And I'm quite sure any UBI done on a large scale will end up taking money away from those who don't need it in the form of higher taxes so it effectively balances out. Yes it is income redistribution. That's not necessarily bad. We already do it in several forms. It helps society more than it hurts it. Most people are ambitious and don't want to live at or below the poverty line for the rest of their lives. Some do, that's unfortunate.
- smacktoward 9y agoBut the "U" in "UBI" stands for universal. In other words, UBI means everyone gets a basic income, not just the subset of everyone who currently receives welfare benefits. You get it whether you need it or not. This distinction actually has political significance. One of the explanations that has been offered for why Social Security in the U.S. has proven so impervious to cutbacks or other political meddling is that it is universal in this sense as well; there's no maximum income at which you no longer receive Social Security benefits. This universality has helped Social Security escape the "for poor/minority/lazy people only" stigmas that peoples' prejudices attach to more selective welfare programs. None of which is to say that you can't have a basic income project that isn't universal, of course; just that such a project is not a UBI.
- munk-a 9y agoI would be extremely interested to see the social/psychological effects of UBI on how people treat the homeless. This is a bit divergent but if UBI was introduced without any increase in mental care I am curious if the portion of the population remaining homeless would be exploited for their earnings or supported into stable life settings. I do believe it's a good idea to try UBI but this particular point has always interested me.
- ythn 9y agoThis may be slightly on a tangent, but how would UBI be distributed to the homeless - esp. people who have no address or documents or identification of any kind? Is step one everyone needs a national ID in order to receive UBI?
- jpindar 9y agoI assume it would be the same as any kind of government benefit. Many homeless and unbanked people now get various forms of benefits via a card that functions like a prepaid debit card.
- PeterisP 9y agoA national ID makes it much simpler and more practical, so probably yes, but it's not that big of a deal as only a handful of countries don't have a usable form of national ID (some have usable ID cards, some have passports for everyone, etc). In this issue, as with many others, USA is an exception that has problems that almost noone else in the world has.
- matt4077 9y agoFrom the linked article about previous results with one-time cash grants: As it turns out, that assumption was wrong. Across many contexts and continents, experimental tests show that the poor don’t stop trying when they are given money, and they don’t get drunk. Instead, they make productive use of the funds, feeding their families, sending their children to school, and investing in businesses and their own futures. Even a short-term infusion of capital has been shown to significantly improve long-term living standards, improve psychological well-being, and even add one year of life.
- fareesh 9y agoThe results from this experiment will likely be used to influence government policy at some point or another. Whoever is funding this effort is probably going to do that in phase 2, once the results are sufficiently in their favor. Isn't this a convoluted implementation of the Wal-Mart model? Keep minimum wages low and influence policy to be as such, so that people use food stamps, which are mostly spent at Wal-Mart. I remember Bernie Sanders talking about this during the 2016 campaign. I can't help but think that some corporate research department has already done a study on Universal Basic Income in terms of how it will affect the bottom line of the donors, and this is part of a plan to influence government policy in various parts of the world, with the ultimate end goal of lining their own pockets. I find this to be far more believable than the idea that people are genuinely altruistic and charitable in 2017, perhaps the most vain, narcissistic, virtue signalling self-obsessed period in history, which is a period that directly follows the most egregious example of corporate greed and fraud that led to the housing crisis and wall street collapse. I would be very skeptical of any and all data that is generated from such experiments until we know who the donors are. I think it's only fair to ask.
- zacharycohn 9y agoIt's very much the opposite of "Walmart wants to keep people on food stamps so they spend their food stamps at Walmart" because they're getting cash they can spend anywhere.
- fareesh 9y agoIn theory yes, but if you had research saying that if people received universal basic income, your specific industry, maybe food, maybe alcohol, maybe cigarettes, would have a 10% increase in purchases, disproportionate to all the others, you'd think it was a good idea.
- programminggeek 9y agoThe math on UBI doesn't work. It simply resets $0 to some higher amount set by UBI. It's a means of inflation and hilariously, it will make the rich even richer, because it will remove some incentives to do what it takes to get rich - learn skills and information that make you wealthy. The story that comes after UBI and other forms of socialism is that humans are greedy and terrible to each other and institutionalized theft only makes greed and corruption worse. Oh, and the funniest part is it will look initially like a good idea because it will probably improve the lives of those who are given money in small and rare cases, and the positive effect will dwindle the more universal it becomes. A wiser move would be to teach others how to compete more effectively, but that doesn't sell as well as free money. The people doing these programs aren't stupid and I think it is our generation's "Let them eat cake!" moment. It's certainly good marketing to do so, and I think they believe it will truly make a difference. One last thought on my silly little rant, "Do you think Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates or Warren Buffet should get UBI paid out to him?"
- Turing_Machine 9y ago> One last thought on my silly little rant, "Do you think Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates or Warren Buffet should get UBI paid out to him?" Of course they would. That's how it works, dude.