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Maybe it doesn't add up in the monetary sense, but economically it kinda does. If you look around, the actual resources are there. I was born in socialist coun

by js8 9y ago

Maybe it doesn't add up in the monetary sense, but economically it kinda does. If you look around, the actual resources are there. I was born in socialist country (Czechoslovakia) in the late 70s. It was inefficient system (the productivity of the most advanced economies today is about 3-4x times higher), and yet it was able to provide housing, food, health care, education and even decent culture for more than 90% of the population. And all this for about 30 hours of real work week. So think about it, why is that? I think the social inequality is much larger than people are willing to admit, and much larger portion of it are mostly nonsensical expenses (rents, unneeded business travel, status displays..) due to requirements to maintain the social inequality.

dahdum 9y ago
Czechoslovakia was a communist country, and while it did pretty well relative to others, I'm not sure it's a great model for UBI under capitalism.
- js8 9y ago
  My point wasn't for people to copy the model, it would be a terrible idea. My point was, any typical Western country can provide all basic necessities (actually lot more, 70s lifestyle in CS wasn't just basic) for its population (an excellent basic income) with maybe 30% GDP (because of the higher productivity) and 80% employment tops (more likely somewhat less). Surely, you can do better than Czechoslovakia in the 70s! So how come we can't find the money, if the resources (energy, labor, materials) are all there? And if 30% GDP is spent on basic income, the remaining 70% can be subject to the capitalist competition. (That's my understanding of the UBI - we basically put aside a portion of GDP that we are not going to compete about in capitalism. It keeps the profit motive going but the poor people aren't starving or forced to work for non-livable wages.) Economists just sometimes focus too much on money and lose sight of the real thing.

by js8 9y ago

dahdum 9y ago

Czechoslovakia was a communist country, and while it did pretty well relative to others, I'm not sure it's a great model for UBI under capitalism.

js8 9y ago
My point wasn't for people to copy the model, it would be a terrible idea. My point was, any typical Western country can provide all basic necessities (actually lot more, 70s lifestyle in CS wasn't just basic) for its population (an excellent basic income) with maybe 30% GDP (because of the higher productivity) and 80% employment tops (more likely somewhat less). Surely, you can do better than Czechoslovakia in the 70s! So how come we can't find the money, if the resources (energy, labor, materials) are all there? And if 30% GDP is spent on basic income, the remaining 70% can be subject to the capitalist competition. (That's my understanding of the UBI - we basically put aside a portion of GDP that we are not going to compete about in capitalism. It keeps the profit motive going but the poor people aren't starving or forced to work for non-livable wages.) Economists just sometimes focus too much on money and lose sight of the real thing.