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I would LOVE to see more US experiments with UBI. The economics have already been tested. The federal government has these enormous funded installations where t

I would LOVE to see more US experiments with UBI. The economics have already been tested. The federal government has these enormous funded installations where the people living there don't have to worry about the economy at all. These gov-funded individuals then go and spend their largesse in the local economy, in many cases propping them up all by themselves. This happens on a massive scale, right here, right now. They're called military bases. Politicians lobby hard to get the federal government to build them in their states, whether they're needed for military purposes or not. People pooh-poohing UBI just don't seem to understand just how much of the economy already is paying people to do not much that is actually useful. So many of us have bullshit jobs. There would be mass poverty and unemployment otherwise. Formalizing it instead of hiding it behind a veneer of fake usefulness will allow us to study it. Companies will have to entice people to take jobs rather than coerce them. It'll be amazing.

chrisco255 6y ago
Bullshit jobs? Like which ones exactly? Who determines which ones are bullshit and which ones are not? We don't just create jobs for nothing. Companies that hire excess employees tend to go out of business or shed workers during a downturn like we're experiencing now. In the meantime, no, we had a thriving restaurant and travel industry 2 months ago but the fact those people have been laid off or furloughed doesn't mean their jobs were bullshit. It's never been tried at a macro scale for an extended period of time. You are being recklessly ignorant of the very real economic risks. Spending trillions more on top of the trillions in deficits we already have, but making those deficits permanent and ongoing with no ability to pay down will cause rapid inflation that could very easily evolve to hyper inflation like happened in the Weimar Republic in Germany in the 1920s and like has happened more recently in Venezuela and Zimbabwe. We may get there without UBI based on current trajectories, but UBI will just usher it in all the more quickly.
- vinceguidry 6y ago
  > Like which ones exactly? Who determines which ones are bullshit and which ones are not? The market would, once one gets empowered to be created. Right now the market is tipped on the side of those offering money for work. If you truly flipped the tables around, then those offering money have to offer more and more and more. I'm not just talking money here but all those intangibles that make one job better than another.

chrisco255 6y ago

Bullshit jobs? Like which ones exactly? Who determines which ones are bullshit and which ones are not? We don't just create jobs for nothing. Companies that hire excess employees tend to go out of business or shed workers during a downturn like we're experiencing now. In the meantime, no, we had a thriving restaurant and travel industry 2 months ago but the fact those people have been laid off or furloughed doesn't mean their jobs were bullshit. It's never been tried at a macro scale for an extended period of time. You are being recklessly ignorant of the very real economic risks. Spending trillions more on top of the trillions in deficits we already have, but making those deficits permanent and ongoing with no ability to pay down will cause rapid inflation that could very easily evolve to hyper inflation like happened in the Weimar Republic in Germany in the 1920s and like has happened more recently in Venezuela and Zimbabwe. We may get there without UBI based on current trajectories, but UBI will just usher it in all the more quickly.

vinceguidry 6y ago
> Like which ones exactly? Who determines which ones are bullshit and which ones are not? The market would, once one gets empowered to be created. Right now the market is tipped on the side of those offering money for work. If you truly flipped the tables around, then those offering money have to offer more and more and more. I'm not just talking money here but all those intangibles that make one job better than another.