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> Making up jobs to keep people employed isn't a viable solution to me. Supporting them in some way (re-training, UBI, service work, ...) seems like the only wa
by Uehreka 9mo ago
> Making up jobs to keep people employed isn't a viable solution to me. Supporting them in some way (re-training, UBI, service work, ...) seems like the only way forward.
If this is what you think needs to happen and you live in the US, then you should be freaking out right now, not calmly posting takes like this. UBI is not a thing almost any current American politician is considering, and the overton window is speeding in the opposite direction.
You should not expect people to be reasonable about this. I don’t know what the answer here is, but if you want it to be UBI, you need to fight for it. The alternatives (artificial price controls, the dumb make-work policies you correctly disdained, first-amendment-breaking/privacy-violating AI bans) are out there, and if you don’t fight for the thing you want, you’re gonna get one of those.
- WalterBright 9mo agoThe math doesn't work out for UBI.
- joquarky 9mo agoUBI will become at least as complicated as federal taxes. Perverse incentives will creep in.
- WalterBright 9mo agoPaying people to not work will never work.
- stonogo 9mo agoIt's working in the farm bills for a hundred years.
- WalterBright 9mo agoPaying people to not work accomplishes what?
- stonogo 9mo agoNo idea, you'd have to ask the farmers
- cptroot 9mo agoWould you like to elaborate why the math doesn't work out? An article explaining your position would be nice, but I'd settle for some broad gestures.
- WalterBright 9mo ago342,000,000 people in the US. Multiply by $10,000/yr. Cost of UBI: 3,420,000,000,000 Where is $3.5 trillion going to come from?
- izacus 9mo agoFrom cancelling pointless military projects?
- WalterBright 9mo agoThe entire defense budget is $874b. As I remarked, the UBI math doesn't work.
- jack_h 9mo agoUBI would be pure deficit spending which would basically double it. Our interest is already the #2 federal outlay at $1 trillion (defense is #5 last I heard) and we're already in fiscal dominance. So the end result is UBI would trigger much higher inflation which would make those UBI checks worthless.
- boh144 9mo agoFrom corporate profits, which should be rising from labor cost cutting? Ultimately if the pie is growing and accruing to a few organizations, then either we create new wealth transfer mechanisms (progressive tax codes being one such previous example) or become a feudal society, which will probably stagnate.
- no_wizard 9mo ago> I don’t know what the answer here is Blood. If things don’t reverse course this trajectory historically leads to bloodshed. In many respects it already has. How many people have died just this year already because businesses didn’t do what they were suppose to? Because cutting costs with no consequences is seen as the norm? Of course nobody wants to account for those externalities and when that blood comes back on them they become scared and use government force instead. You’re seeing the trial run with ICE as we write our comments on this forum
- slibhb 9mo ago> UBI is not a thing almost any current American politician is considering, and the overton window is speeding in the opposite direction. That will change real quick if everyone loses their job to AI. But until then, yeah, it's not going to happen, and it shouldn't.
- Uehreka 9mo ago> That will change real quick if everyone loses their job to AI. No, this is exactly my point: they will be angry, unreasonable, and thirsty for revenge. They’ll hand over freedoms like Halloween candy. How about a law where the government gets to survey your hard drive to make sure you’re not harboring an AI model? Sounds crazy, sounds insane, but in the current political climate I’d rate it more likely than UBI.
- apothegm 9mo agoYeah. We’ve seen this movie before, and most of us didn’t like the way it ended.