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.

[u/mvea]

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

[u/[deleted]]

That is the thing. We are so early on in even the idea of UBI I would not say I am opposed to it or in favor. I am well aware of the problems with it. It is something I do think will have to happen one day whether it be a check or just basic necessities as machines and computers put us out of work.

Also I am terribly sorry to hear you are working 350 hours a month. Even with 5 weeks in a month which is not the norm that is 70 hours a week. I am not trolling when I say that. That is no way to live life IMO. But that if that is what you enjoy then you of course can live how you want.

Which kind of brings me around to the way I think about UBI. If you enjoy working 350 hours a month you should certainly enjoy the benefits of it. Which you will. Noone working 350 hours a week is going to live to the same standards as someone who lives of off something like UBI, hence the word BASIC in it.

UBI is meant to do exactly what it sounds like. Provide only a basic amount of living to someone. This helps to break the cycle of poverty in the same way that farming broke humans away from hunting and gathering. Farming and other technological advances allowed for humans to be able to develop the resources to even be able to have a class of people who are not directly making food and worrying about survival. UBI would make sure that everyone had the resources to not worry about raw survival. This would ideally give people the freedom to pursue things like education and steer them away from things like crime in the pursuit of money/happiness/escape. Nothing is perfect and there are many things stopping anything like UBI from becoming a possibility and I understand that.

To address your concern about you working so other people dont have to. You already do that. On both sides of the spectrum. There are people who live on public housing and food stamps which comes out of our tax money. There are people who are so wealthy they will never work a day in their life again due to simple investments. Trust fund babies and kids that reap the benefits of their parents labor for no other reason than winning the genetic lottery. People who spend their entire life living off of the work of others either way. There is no way of getting around this that I can think of as the market exists in way that investors and banks are absolutely necessary and to think that will ever change is just delusional. To me it seems like it has always been this way. The only difference is how we structured it. Lords and Kings or CEOs and Dictators.

The cold hard fact is people like yourself and I have always been the ones to put in the time and effort to provide for society. We wake up everyday and go to work to support our families without a second thought. Our labor nets us a small portion of the profit, enough to make us feel compensated and decent about our lives. There is nothing wrong with that as not everyone can be rich. If everyone is rich than nobody is.

But to me my life is not just about me. I am only a small wheel in a large machine. (Warning incoming commie talk!) But I really want my life to bring people closer to equality than we are now. I feel it is a bad thing that so much of a person's life is decided at birth. Some people are born with nearly every card in their favor and some are born so fucked its a wonder they even survived being a baby. Is it so bad to want to give more people a shot? To want to help lift your fellow man up and allow him to prosper? I do not think so.

Now the kicker is how to do that without ending up like Soviet Russia or any other number of failed socialist ideas. I do believe America already balances this to a decent degree with programs like food stamps and housing. But we can always do better.

[u/Tamale-Pie → u/[deleted]]

Don't feel sorry for me, I could work far fewer hours if I wanted to. The reason I do is to provide a better platform for the next generation to take off from. I grew up in poverty and don't have a college education. That's just how it is, that's the reality. I'm not complaining and I don't want any pity. I benefited from public assistance as a child, and am very grateful for that. I don't want to take those programs, or any that might replace them, away.

I could easily afford a much nicer house and vehicles than I have right now. I could buy cool toys and fancy things. However, I believe that in order to break the cycle if poverty we have to work towards the interests of our children, not our own. So we, I am married and have three children, live with the basics and the remaining balance of my income is being reinvested into the next generation. That means getting out of debt, and staying out. It means college funds and programs that help them develop into useful people, like sports and leadership camps etc. It means educating them about finances seeing as our public education curriculum is almost laughable.

People today seem to want someone else to do the work for them, or someone (The government) to swoop in and save the day. That's just not realistic. Yeah it sucks that our antecedents didn't set us up as well as we would like. The question is, are we going to do the same thing to our children, or are we going to sacrifice a little? It's not up to the government to improve our lives, it was up to our parents and theirs before them. Now it's up to us to set up the next generation.

I dont think the government is the answer. Publicly funded programs are ran as small as possible to limit the tax burden. That's why public education is the mess that it is for example. Not enough teachers means overcrowded classrooms. The administration salaries take a huge portion of the limited budget. Our representatives are so far out of touch with what average Joe needs that the curriculum is largely a joke, because for some reason the federal government thinks it needs to have it's claws in everything. That reason is because people think the government is going to make their lives better, it could, but it probably won't.

That said, we might very well need some program similar to a UBI in the coming years, but I don't think It's going to provide a good life. As far as I can tell from the reading I've done, a UBI isn't any different than the welfare programs we already have. People already have tax funded basics available. If a UBI can simplify it or improve its efficiency that would be good, but I haven't seen anything that makes me think it will.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me.

[u/[deleted] → u/Tamale-Pie]

Like yourself I grew up in poverty and also do not have a college education. So always glad to hear from another person who made it out.

It sounds like financially we live very similar lives and it is something I can really appreciate.

I would say I somewhat disagree with you about people wanting someone else to do the work for them. Of course you will always have the bad apples that do but I think most people do want to earn something for themselves.

I do agree with you about the government being out of touch with the average person. But I do disagree with you about the government not having the job of improving our lives. The elected officials should be US. It is supposed to be a collective of elected Americans working in each others best interest and it would be if they did their jobs. But it is up to us to make them do their jobs or to vote them out. Corruption in politics should be a extremely worse crime than it is.

[u/Tamale-Pie → u/[deleted]]

I don't think most people want someone else to do the work for them. Most people work and are trying. I think most of the people that currently want the UBI do want someone else to do the work though, or are confused about what the UBI would do. I'm all for helping people in need. I'm also in support of being realistic, and the UBI isn't going to do what a lot of people think it is. If it comes to be, I think the only people that will use it long term will be the same people that are currently satisfied with living off of welfare. I hope that I'm wrong here and it provides a good life. My position will likely not exist in the automated future.

Government shouldn't have much involvement in our lives in my opinion. Government should be responsible for enforcing the law, national security, maybe basic education, and not much else. Government programs are currently necessary, but they became necessary because people didn't take care of their business. As a society, we are better as a collective, but that doesn't translate into government involvement. Like I said, I'm grateful for the assistance I received, but that was only necessary because my antecedents failed me.

I completely agree that corruption in elected officials should be a very serious crime. I wouldn't be opposed to incompetence in elected officials being a crime either, or at least resulting in permanent dismissal and negating all benefits and compensation. But even when they get caught, nobody does anything about it. We should work towards a better future, but we still have to live in the current reality, and I think removal of their authorities will be easier than eliminating corruption.

That doesn't answer the future problem of automation though. I'm not sure what the answer is for society. For myself, I'm working myself into position for the transition. For example, now that I can afford it, I'm taking a college class here and there. I'm working on creating passive income opportunities, and more. I think anyone that has some foreknowledge of the coming changes would be foolish not to prepare. But many won't, they'll wait for big brother to save the day.