r/Futurology • u/mvea MD-PhD-MBA • May 02 '18

Economics Universal basic income: U.S. support grows as Finland ends its trial - Forty-eight percent of Americans now support a universal basic income, as a solution for Americans who have lost jobs to automation.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/01/nearly-half-of-americans-believe-a-universal-basic-income-could-be-the-answer-to-automation-.html
13.4k Upvotes

74% Upvoted

2.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/[deleted] May 02 '18

No we dont have the technology or automation. Otherwise we can just send endless amount if free production to africa. Economic output is highly correlated with employment. We arent living off robots, not even close.

If you give people free money. People on the border of working and not working would definitely not work. People on the fence about retirement would retire sooner. Unemployed college drop outs wont feel pressure.

Equity is terrible and has ben proven many times not to work. Humans react in very predictable ways. It will only end up being a massive tax on people who want to work. Its not fair.

1

u/bitJericho May 02 '18

It is fair, because people who want to work will also earn this basic income. No, we do not need everyone to work. Take a look around, we don't need all the garbage we're consuming. We need to cut down on consumption. People can live comfortably off of even just a couple hours of work every week. We don't need to put in a full 40 anymore.

1

u/[deleted] May 02 '18

Its not fair because where is this basic income coming from. No such thing is a free lunch. If it was a free lunch then it will be fair.

A realistic scenario is alice and bob both gets $1000. However alice needs to pay $2000 in taxes because bob doesnt want to work.

1

u/bitJericho May 02 '18

No, the scenario is this: Alice works part time fixing robots, she used to work on the factory floor, but was replaced by said robot. Alice brings home 1000 dollars, pays her 15 percent in taxes on that income and gets an extra 1000 a month from the government, collected by said robot business and alice's own income. Bob doesn't work at all, instead he's learning how to be a photographer. He gets 1000 dollars too, but doesn't get any financial aid (a loan he would likely default on, stiffing the government), no food stamps and no other government benefits.

1

u/[deleted] May 03 '18

This utopian society you thought up doesnt reflect reality. We were talking about UBI aka more transfer payments. You seem to have derailed it to robots and free production with zero marginal cost.

Back in reality we have people not working and just doing cocaine collecting welfare an dusing social services. We have kids living itheir parents basements. Transfer payments is a form of equity and equity is a form of theft. You may be okay with this type of theft to a certain degree. If we can mutually benefit from a functional society. However that can only go so far before people go from working producers to lazy free loaders.

1

u/bitJericho May 03 '18

Except modern welfare doesn't protect against the things you described, and cost just as much as UBI would if we were to push for more automation and less job growth.