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I'm totally with you on fixing affordable housing and healthcare, and that a UBI can only do so much without fixing those problems. I don't buy the idea that U

I'm totally with you on fixing affordable housing and healthcare, and that a UBI can only do so much without fixing those problems. I don't buy the idea that UBI will make it harder to solve those problems. I think UBI will make it easier to fix those problems because it would free up more peoples' time (especially the lower and middle class) to be politically active and fix these fundamental problems. Right now nothing is really improving because the wealthy who've bought out the politicians don't care, and the poor have no time or energy to protest because they're too busy working multiple jobs and worrying about whether or not they'll make rent next month. > You can't still work if all the big wigs with the power to create jobs are not bothering to make work available because you have your UBI. Jobs aren't some kind of charity case that companies offer to appease the financially desperate masses. Jobs are created when there's a need for labor, and they believe the revenue generated by the labor will offset the wages. UBI does not mean that companies go "well looks like the masses don't need our money anymore, we can finally take away these jobs". Businesses are there to maximize profit, and UBI doesn't change that. UBI however would massively increase the bargaining power of laborers by giving them the option to walk away. Wages of jobs that nobody wants to do but are services that we need would rise. We'd probably see more people opting to work less hours. The whole dynamic of interviews would change in favor of the laborer (as opposed to right now where the employer has the upper hand). Overall, it'd be a massive boon to labor.

DoreenMichele 9y ago
Currently, multiple tech giants are pro UBI. Sam Altman is constantly on the front page of HN talking about it. He is putting millions of his own money into UBI experiments. I am not aware of him doing anything about healthcare or affordable housing. Since he became president of YC, he has used it as a platform to promote various social agendas he is interested in. YC fosters the development of businesses. You cannot convince me that the focus of someone like that has no impact on the kind of world we are creating. I do not believe he in any way cares about the little people. I do not believe he has any interest in or willingness to open doors for poor people. His interest in UBI strikes me as a huge fuck you and quit your bitching to the little people. You need to be very leery of the motives of the architects of such a system. Currently, American welfare does an excellent job of trapping people in poverty. I have no idea why you are so strongly convinced that some new welfare scheme with a shiny new name won't continue that pattern. I have seen zero evidence that it will. Since healthcare and affordable housing both need to be fixed anyway, I would much prefer to see time and effort to into those things in the here and now rather than into all this talk of UBI. If both of those things get fixed first and people still think UBI is a good idea, I would be much more willing to support it at that point. But at this point in time, talk of UBI looks to me like a lazy concept if throwing money at the problems of poor people as if their problems are easily solved. This makes me extremely leery of both the idea itself and of the idea that people trying to spearhead the movement are at all qualified to do the heavy lifting involved in solving healthcare and affordable housing.

DoreenMichele 9y ago

Currently, multiple tech giants are pro UBI. Sam Altman is constantly on the front page of HN talking about it. He is putting millions of his own money into UBI experiments. I am not aware of him doing anything about healthcare or affordable housing. Since he became president of YC, he has used it as a platform to promote various social agendas he is interested in. YC fosters the development of businesses. You cannot convince me that the focus of someone like that has no impact on the kind of world we are creating. I do not believe he in any way cares about the little people. I do not believe he has any interest in or willingness to open doors for poor people. His interest in UBI strikes me as a huge fuck you and quit your bitching to the little people. You need to be very leery of the motives of the architects of such a system. Currently, American welfare does an excellent job of trapping people in poverty. I have no idea why you are so strongly convinced that some new welfare scheme with a shiny new name won't continue that pattern. I have seen zero evidence that it will. Since healthcare and affordable housing both need to be fixed anyway, I would much prefer to see time and effort to into those things in the here and now rather than into all this talk of UBI. If both of those things get fixed first and people still think UBI is a good idea, I would be much more willing to support it at that point. But at this point in time, talk of UBI looks to me like a lazy concept if throwing money at the problems of poor people as if their problems are easily solved. This makes me extremely leery of both the idea itself and of the idea that people trying to spearhead the movement are at all qualified to do the heavy lifting involved in solving healthcare and affordable housing.