I was once talking with one of my classmates and he said that in the future, there will be universal basic income implemented by entire world. I was not convinced at that time and thought he is just being stupid but given the layoffs happening and massive amount of unemployment, I am thinking about this possibility. What do you say?
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I read Utopia for Realists earlier this year. A big portion of it is about UBI and is a great read for anybody new to this topic. The thing that surprised me the most is that we were fairly close in the USA in having something similar, this was under Nixon. UBI seems to not really be that left of an idea as i assumed it was. If you are too poor you are effectively costing the country more money than it would cost to just help those to be able to work/spend money themselves.
In my city there was a citizen initiative to have a test run last year, but sadly opposing parties ran a disinformation campaign against it. Saying we already have enough studies that show its not worth it. (Which is a flat out lie, but I guess you can interpret studies as you wish). Most people fell for it. I think for politicians its just too easy to have big enough portion of people uneducated and too busy with their 9-5 jobs so they do not realize how they are being taken advantage off.
EDIT: I do think though that one form of UBI is the future as well, its just a matter of when. But I might also be too much of an optimist. Or maybe we could also just get rid of advertisement that would work as well. Splitting the real work thats then left to do.
If Sam Altman pushes hard enough for it.
or maybe Elon Musk
When UBI starts being seriously considered on a large scale, you’ll likely see a massive influence campaign against it. Something along the lines of “If you give people free money, they’ll never get a job.” It will likely have racial undertones that range from subtle and implicit to wildly explicit, depending on the forum.
If low information working class people, those who would benefit the most from such a program, fall for that campaign, as they often do, you’ll see a backlash against it that could prevent it from becoming law.
I talked with my mother about this years ago. She confidently said, if you give people free money, nobody will do any work. I argued but she wouldn’t budge.
She is now comfortably retired, and makes hats with her time, and sells them. But that’s different.
You know, everyone who I personally know who passionately argues that if you give people free money they won’t do any work has been a stay at home mom.
Stay at home moms get “free” money from the spouse who goes to work and supports them.
I would also argue that stay at home moms work harder than a lot of us who have full time jobs. I get to leave work and mentally check out, they’re “at work” all the time.
Someone should point this out to the people who make this argument.
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What if UBI was locked behind biometrics and voting republican?
Man, the whole of europe left out
I’d vote for ubi but i personally know plenty of moochers. Like never worked a day in their lives at 30 would laugh while their grandma died instead of helping their own family while being offered money for it.
Funny enough every mooch i know is a white man.
You just described the campaigns against welfare in general that have been going on for decades, which is also what I see happening with UBI. It will absolutely be sunk the same way any other social benefit is sunk through misinformation and outright lies.
I don’t feel like UBI is a that great of an idea. Prices of products change toward what people earn. So when there is a standard amount of money for everyone, company’s will increase prices to any amount that’s still payable. That will quickly drive inflation up. I feel like it will just going to siphon money into the pockets of the super rich.
But if you do UBI + NIT it would theoretically be sufficient… Although I still think that a strong price regulation and anti-monopoly/anti-oligopoly law should be done for it to work. So yeah, we’re cooked.
I heard some evangelicals in US saying that it is unbiblical to give UBI, so I can guess that some people really want to demonize this concept.
Do you think it would help if you told them 40% of adults already don’t have jobs and that making that number higher isn’t as big of a leap as they think?
Don’t forget racism. “Look at those people, existing with that color skin. On your dime!?!?”
They called that out specifically
It should but it won’t.
Not without some “encouragement”
I don’t honestly think it will happen in a way that is genuinely good for people. It will happen in a way where the rich and powerful are in control and can use it as a method for maintaining control.
Came here to say this. Nobody in power gives up their power to the masses willingly, it must be taken. And the price is almost always paid in blood and suffering. And every victory is only temporary as they try to regain the power that was taken from them.
I mean you could just make Luigi a national holiday or event. Kill the rich once in a while to keep them in line.
Lol like the purge but only if your net worth is high enough
but surely their power lies in money. if nobody has the money to buy the things billionaires profit from, then they lose their power
UBI is a bandaid to keep capitalism propped up by neo-liberals. It’s contingent on the idea that society is dependent on people spending money, rather than getting essential services and enough free time to maintain mental stability.
It makes working voluntary but still incentivized, whereas without something like that, someone needs to force people to do the jobs that provide those essential services. People will volunteer doing fun things for their local community, but generally no further.
Yeah, I mean it’s not like a lot of those services are already populated by people who are underpaid and overworked because they love what they do and love helping people…
You mean people who got the jobs they could get and would prefer not working those jobs if they could get away with it. Trust me, a lot of people working physically demanding jobs don’t do it because of their enjoyment of wrecking their own bodies.
nah. there’s people out there whose favourite thing is to do the niche “yucky” or tedious things, but they can’t, because they had to get a job in marketing, or work in retail because they needed ANY job just so they could survive.
nah. there’s people out there whose favourite thing is to do the niche “yucky” or tedious things, but they can’t, because they had to get a job in marketing, or work in retail because they needed ANY job just so they could survive.
This is one of those ideas that only makes sense at the surface level and fails at the slightest bit of scrutiny. Yes, it is technically correct that any job out there will have some nonzero number of people who would do it just because they want to. But that’s no way to run a civilization.
That system only works if there just by random coincidence happens to be a perfect match between the jobs people want to do and the jobs that need doing. Are there are a few weirdos that would wade waist-deep in literal shit to clean out sewers for free, just because they enjoy it? It’s a big world and people are weird, so there probably are a few people out there like that. Are there enough of those rare weirdos to keep all our sewers operating? Highly unlikely.
I know your system would fail because we have clear evidence from our own economy that there is a major mismatch between the jobs people want and the jobs that need doing. Look at every job out there that attracts people who want to do the job for its own sake. Look at university teaching, for instance. Universities can get away with having classes taught by poorly paid adjuncts because lots of people would like to teach university courses. There are far more potential university lecturers out there than the number of lecturers universities can actually support. Universities can pay their adjuncts a pittance, and they still have people sign up to teach classes. The low adjunct pay problem would disappear tomorrow if people simply stopped taking adjunct teaching jobs.
Look around to nearly any field that people go into primarily out of passion. They nearly all pay a pittance. “Let people choose whatever job they want” simply isn’t a viable way of running an economy. Everyone wants to teach kids or care for puppies. No one wants to clean out sewers.
You always have to have some way of getting people to work jobs that they wouldn’t choose voluntarily. There are simply things that need to be done for society to function that not many people want to do. In a capitalist system, this is done by offering higher wages for positions few people want. In socialist systems, this looks like offering more perks like better housing to unwanted jobs (pay by another name.) But you’re trying to hand waive away an unavoidable problem by dismissing it as, “no worries, people will just do what they want and things will work out!”
Universities can get away with having classes taught by poorly paid adjuncts because lots of people would like to teach university courses
that’s because those jobs come with pensions and job security. if a UBI was in place, then jobs like that would have no choice, but to offer more money. same with the undesirable jobs like cleaning sewers. can’t fill it? offer more money. this is why farmers have to rely on migrant workers, because they simply can’t pay enough
You think adjunct teaching comes with job security and pensions?
You are completely and utterly unqualified to participate in any discussion whatsoever involving labor issues of any kind. You lack the prerequisite background knowledge.
oof. interesting assumption about me!
Yes, I’m sure plenty of people actually wanted to become plumbers, farmers or construction workers, but had to settle for a job in marketing or such because that was all they could find.
i think you get my point, though. during the pandemic, the garden centres emptied out, because people wanted to grow their own food.
Growing your own food isn’t the same as growing food for 10,000 people at all. My family’s been growing a portion of our own food all my life, don’t think any of us wants to work 12+ hour days in the fields in the summer.
plenty of people find satisfaction from doing that sort of thing. i know i do. problem is - i just can’t afford the risk of devoting all of time to that right now, because there’s no guarantee for my financial security.
i also make my own maple syrup, and keep bees. would raise chickens, if my local bylaws weren’t so outdated.
and i never claimed that I would be doing it for 10K people. where’d ya get that number from?
rather than getting essential services
UBI says income, not money. resources and services provided to you would still be income.
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UBI is the future if we are allowed peace.
WW3 in an apocalyptic scale is much more likely. Don’t need to feed the obsolete peasants if they’re all dead.
Yes, but not in the way we envision it.
Wealth inequality will increase. Drastically. There will be a small group of people owning basically everything. But they still need cheap labor and subjects, plus someone needs to consume their products. Because jobs will be limited UBI will be implemented: as a baseline to keep us alive, not as a tool for general prosperity.
Watch “Elysium” how this bleak world may look. It’s not a great movie, but has that “everyone but a few people is super fucked”-theme locked down.
Is that movie in English?
Yes. Look for Elysium (2016). It’s by Neill Blomkamp, starring Matt Damon.
The rich have done everything they can to increase wealth inequality and brainwash the public into acceptance. That will not be reversed. If they allow UBI it will be below poverty levels and highly conditional.
The wealthy want slaves. Its a mental illness with them. Black people. Underage sex trafficking. Working poor. Robots. Last thing they want is a utopia where everyone is healthy, happy and financially independent.
One of the wealthiest countries in the world doesn’t even have proper healthcare system in 2026. No way are those dumb fucks getting a UBI. Its a lie.
The billionaires would have to fund it, and I don’t believe for a second they wouldn’t leave us all to starve.
they will just fund politicians to vote against it, gop is totally on board, theyonly need to fund people like schumer and hakeem.
they are the disgrace on humanity.
No. Once the people have the time and leisure to think and mingle they might find out who the real source of the problem is. So it’s better to keep your slaves busy and struggling to keep the roof over their head and their belly not empty.
that’s not really how people are, though. if people are happy, they generally see little reason to change something about their situation. everything else is delusional
One must imagine Sisyphus happy
Yes, but only because your question implies there is a future for humanity, and I believe UBI is realistically one of the few ways humanity even gets a future
Yeah, I even feel skeptical of humanity having future. Global warming and how we are fucking our environment can cause our end to fall upon us too quickly.
I think that it will start as an universal basic income but that it will evolve into universal basic products and services. Basic stuff you don’t have to pay for, like for example food and public transport and in time expand to shelter, all levels of education, etc. To the point of covering all the basic needs.
I came looking for a comment like this to agree that we need to discuss UBI more in the context of Universal Services.
Personally, I think there’s a strong chance that universal services will emerge before or alongside a UBI. Both are more likely to grow gradually rather than suddenly.
One great thing about universal services is that they don’t require as much top-down oversight to deploy, imo. You can join groups now that collect and distribute free fruit. Anyone with a skill can begin giving it away; if you’re a lawyer, you can give free legal services to immigrants; if you’re a technician, you can join or set up fixit clinics. Every time folks begin giving away labor value, they’re chipping away at the transactional structure that holds people hostage to capitalist labor markets. And as critical mass builds, more and more people are freed to spend less and less time hustling for their daily bread, and can direct more and more time to this Solidarity Economy. And unlike a UBI, you don’t need the government or the rich to buy-in: you can start practicing these things yourself and with neighbors now.
If you want to build this but want something a little less anarchist, public school systems are an existing prototype of this: that’s why a lot of school systems also engage in food distribution and more recently experiments in social housing. You can join advisory committees and help deploy more services using your school district to pilot universal basic services!
first time listening an interesting perspective like this
this comment hit me deeply. it has given me SO MUCH to think about. thank you for sharing your thoughts!
I think UBI is generally seen as something to do instead of that, a way to put off actually providing for people so that they can continue to funnel capital from the regularly well-off to the obscenely well-off while blaming it on the poor and the increasingly shrinking “middle-class”.
Unfortunately I think you’re right, but it will be provided by the people you work for, and people will say “isn’t it great”.
We need to tax the wealthy fucks first. The hyperclass has too much wealth that is just sitting around doing nothing but influencing the world negatively. With the existing wealth inequality, UBI won’t even be financed.
#TaxWealth #TaxWealthNotWork
No. Total war is our future. Then maybe, but we won’t be alive by then
