Mark Zuckerberg Calls for Universal Basic Income in Harvard Commencement Speech

Terpfen said:
No, it's not. UBI will never be a thing. It's entirely based on false premises, such as "the rates of unemployment, underemployment, and workforce participation under Obama is normal and expected", and "the money that funds UBI will just magically appear despite the fact we are paying people to not participate in the economic activity necessary to generate the revenue in the first place."

The TED talk video linked earlier that talks about "fixing capitalism" is hilarious. Capitalism is not a rigid system of rules, it is simply the allowance of private, self-negotiated transactions with minimal and predictable third party interference. Capitalism is not broken; we need more of it.
Click to expand...

Please tell me how receiving 1k a month is going to suddenly cause me to not need to work. You are not going to take a 12k a year UBI and go "That it I am good! It's 5 O'clock somewhere!" and live this magical beach lifestyle for the rest of your days... You will still have to work...

But if you replace food stamps, WIC, TANF, and much of the Social security and all that underlying bureaucratic infrastructure with UBI I think it would work. I mean honestly, we have 43million on food stamps already as it is.
 
gigatexal said:
This would just be a way for government to pay themselves. The idea that you're taxed on social security income is insane. But addicts will just spend all their cash on drugs. More people will just stay homeless in Portland because now they can shit under the burnside bridge and not have to pay rent but now they show up to some government office to get their dole. And anything else I might recieve will just get taxed probably to oblivion.
Click to expand...

Any experiments done suggest you are quite wrong. Addicts don't spend all their money on drugs. Concomitant with that is the recognition that addiction is a medical issue, not a criminal issue or a matter of moral turpitude.
 
Gavv said:
Many don't seem to understand we have this already. It's called welfare

As in welfare you give people other people's money there is no incentive to get off that money train.

We have welfare... now we want to rebrand it to UBI and give them more? So in the future we just up the ante again when we have many gaming the system?
Click to expand...

No. UBI isn't welfare. Nowhere near the meanness.
 
Gavv said:
Many don't seem to understand we have this already. It's called welfare

As in welfare you give people other people's money there is no incentive to get off that money train.

We have welfare... now we want to rebrand it to UBI and give them more? So in the future we just up the ante again when we have many gaming the system?
Click to expand...
The fundamental problem here, is that there are no longer enough jobs for everyone to have a job. Something needs to change to accommodate for that technological fact.

Technology allowed us to produce more with less. Therefore there is more value created by the same amount of work from people. Things worked well until the premise "everyone needs to work to provide for everyone" was true. But it's no longer true.

There are two options as I see it. Either reduce the hours each person works therefore allowing the employment of more people, or UBI. I think the best solution is a combination of the two down the line as more and more jobs become obsolete. What will you do with the millions of drivers soon to be displaced by automated driving?

As for incentive why do you choose the job with better income and better benefits over the job with shitty pay? The same incentive is there to get out of ubi and work because you can have better living there. And also because you're a decent human being and you want to do something to better humanity. By your argument no rich person would work, because they already have the means to a living. So why don't they just stop and do nothing? Why does Musk does Spacex, or Tesla, or boring, or solar tiles? Of course there are a few haters wishing he would stop doing things, but those idiots are not worth the words I waste on them. And if you can't be bothered to work for a better living or better humanity I don't expect you to do a good job at anything so we're better off if you don't work so you won't mess things up.

You can duck your head in the sand and pretend nothing is wrong everything is peachy and people out of jobs are just lazy, but it won't work. The debate should be about what to do about it, not about if the problem exists or not.
 
KarsusTG said:
Please tell me how receiving 1k a month is going to suddenly cause me to not need to work. You are not going to take a 12k a year UBI and go "That it I am good! It's 5 O'clock somewhere!" and live this magical beach lifestyle for the rest of your days... You will still have to work…
Click to expand...

Then UBI doesn't fix anything, and it is basically the same welfare system we have now. The premise behind UBI is that automation will eliminate lower end jobs, and that the higher levels of underemployment and unemployment we have seen in the last 8 years are normal, expected, and should be considered permanent for planning purposes. If the same people who can't get jobs now are given UBI, they still can't get jobs. They're just on a new welfare program with a new acronym. They aren't getting work. They're getting basically more unemployment checks.
 
Terpfen said:
Then UBI doesn't fix anything, and it is basically the same welfare system we have now. The premise behind UBI is that automation will eliminate lower end jobs, and that the higher levels of underemployment and unemployment we have seen in the last 8 years are normal, expected, and should be considered permanent for planning purposes. If the same people who can't get jobs now are given UBI, they still can't get jobs. They're just on a new welfare program with a new acronym. They aren't getting work. They're getting basically more unemployment checks.
Click to expand...
The question is why do you want them to work if there are no jobs that require them? That sounds awfully like communism to me. In communism everyone was forced to have a job, even if it was meaningless or counter productive even.
But if you have a better solution let's hear it. Because UBI sure as hell beats doing nothing and pretending there is no problem. So if you think the unemployment is not normal, then what is causing it?
 
Terpfen said:
The ignorance required to make this statement is breathtaking. People in the late 1750s said the exact same thing.
Click to expand...
True. That said this is not the 1750s and we really can't say whether or not there will be new industries to pick up the slack. We can't predict the future. Ideally yes new jobs would materialize like in the past. That may not happen.

1K/month isn't going to cut it in many cases to cover the "basics". UBI is also experimental at this point partly because it is a solution for a problem that doesn't yet exist. Unemployment is not out of control and there are still decent jobs to be had and business/market opportunities for those ambitious enough.
 
Looks like silicon valley is also exploring the idea. As we all know, those silicon valley people are dumb as hell with all that technology they have and all. BTW I love that animation they have.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/2017/0...h-leaders-say-you-should-get-paid-do-nothing/

incomeani.gif
 
Terpfen said:
The ignorance required to make this statement is breathtaking. People in the late 1750s said the exact same thing.
Click to expand...
What (I think) he meant was that while of course there will always be new industry, we need enough new industries to displace what we're losing. That's an entirely different can of worms. I mean our economic situation isn't even that great right NOW without adding additional automation into the mix. After all, 94% of new jobs created since the start of the recession have been either temporary, part time, or contract work. Not the greatest sign of a healthy economy...

sir-gold said:
It comes from the 1%, who currently have 99% of the money.
Click to expand...
Oh don't exaggerate, they only have as much as the other 99% combined.
 
DKS said:
Any experiments done suggest you are quite wrong. Addicts don't spend all their money on drugs. Concomitant with that is the recognition that addiction is a medical issue, not a criminal issue or a matter of moral turpitude.
Click to expand...
As far as I can tell the Ycombinator experiment and others have only begun or are being proposed. What studies are you citing?
 
Riptide_NVN said:
True. That said this is not the 1750s and we really can't say whether or not there will be new industries to pick up the slack. We can't predict the future. Ideally yes new jobs would materialize like in the past. That may not happen.

1K/month isn't going to cut it in many cases to cover the "basics". UBI is also experimental at this point partly because it is a solution for a problem that doesn't yet exist. Unemployment is not out of control and there are still decent jobs to be had and business/market opportunities for those ambitious enough.
Click to expand...

It's a solution for a problem that doesn't yet exist, but it's becoming increasingly clear that, if it does happen, it will happen within the next few decades.

The important thing to remember, though, is that creating any solution will take a long time, and there needs to be a solution ready to go before the problem becomes serious, otherwise there will be riots.

UBI definitely needs be researched thoroughly now, on a small scale, so that we understand it more fully. Maybe it won't work, and we need to come up with something else, but that 'something else' will take time too.

We are driving towards a canyon, we can see the edge approaching. We don't know if there is already a bridge across it, or if we need to build our own, but we need to start designing that bridge now, because slowing down (or crashing into the canyon) isn't an option.
 
sir-gold said:
It comes from the 1%, who currently have 99% of the money.
Click to expand...
Well quit giving Trillions upon Trillions to globalist banksters. Quit believing that there isn't enough work for everyone bullshit mantra the Socialists have been preaching for decades. Quit believing the cultural Marxism that the media is shoving down our throats.
 
Last edited:
sir-gold said:
It's a solution for a problem that doesn't yet exist, but it's becoming increasingly clear that, if it does happen, it will happen within the next few decades.

The important thing to remember, though, is that creating any solution will take a long time, and there needs to be a solution ready to go before the problem becomes serious, otherwise there will be riots.

UBI definitely needs be researched thoroughly now, on a small scale, so that we understand it more fully. Maybe it won't work, and we need to come up with something else, but that 'something else' will take time too.

We are driving towards a canyon, we can see the edge approaching. We don't know if there is already a bridge across it, or if we need to build our own, but we need to start designing that bridge now, because slowing down (or crashing into the canyon) isn't an option.
Click to expand...

There is a Cherokee tribe that started UBI with great success.


In the end though, I think it's inevitable simply because we cannot sustain this crazy transfer of jobs to part time service jobs in most peoples cases without some way to support it. It's like a pyramid scheme with the mega wealthy at the top. It's pretty telling when we had to change the definitions of unemployment just to keep lying to ourselves.
 
KarsusTG said:
But if you replace food stamps, WIC, TANF, and much of the Social security and all that underlying bureaucratic infrastructure with UBI I think it would work. I mean honestly, we have 43million on food stamps already as it is.
Click to expand...
Give money to the bottom dwellers of society and they'll waste it, then come asking for more. Whether its because they're trash or just too stupid to handle their money, doesn't really matter. They'll ask for more. And those aren't even the ones to worry about it. It'll be the enterprising ones that use it to fund their other illegal activities even easier. Food stamps at least partially forces them to buy food, though I'm confident I'm not the only one with a "anecdotal" story of a junkie selling food stamps / steaks outside the local grocery store in exchange for cash at half their value. Cash in hand though, lol.

Like it or not, the only way you're going to improve society in the long run is to stop allowing the lowest/worst x% of the population from reproducing. Yes, its called eugenics and yes its taboo, for now. When the world is an overpopulated mess it won't be. Society will either collapse in on itself or it'll embrace the inevitable. Future genetic engineering will make it even more complicated as the richest will be able to pay for the most desirable traits in their offspring. Eventually it (might?) be affordable for anyone. There will be a balancing point and a whole lot of people aren't going to like it. It'll probably be another 200-300 years before this discussion really becomes serious, until then it'll be the overly emotional minded people siding with "human compassion", ignoring long term consequences.

UBI for a population that has only a nominal amount of "deadweight" = huge success.
UBI for a population that doesn't effectively punish the "deadweight" of society for being such = a spiral into failure.

No small scale UBI test will ever tell you that though, as every one of them knows they are extremely special in receiving it and/or are based on extremely tight-knit, homogenous populations. Such as the Cherokee tribe children in the study Karsus linked. "All were recruited" , ie "all were cherrypicked". Allow me to cherrypick from the same tribe and I'll have no problem producing polar opposite results.
 
sir-gold said:
It comes from the 1%, who currently have 99% of the money.
Click to expand...

Polite, serious answer: If you tax someone at a rate beyond their ability to generate new revenue to replace the money paid in tax, you lose the source of tax money.

Answer you deserve: try running numbers instead of randomly spouting them.
 
Riptide_NVN said:
True. That said this is not the 1750s and we really can't say whether or not there will be new industries to pick up the slack. We can't predict the future. Ideally yes new jobs would materialize like in the past. That may not happen.

1K/month isn't going to cut it in many cases to cover the "basics". UBI is also experimental at this point partly because it is a solution for a problem that doesn't yet exist. Unemployment is not out of control and there are still decent jobs to be had and business/market opportunities for those ambitious enough.
Click to expand...

We can't predict the future, true. But what we can do is stop suppressing and interfering with the people who make the future. Look at the geopolitical and economic halo effect of fracking, an activity that the same people who advocate for a UBI spent years attempting to strangle.

The entire point of our economic and political system is to get the hell out of the way of people who do things. Instead, over the last 50 years, it actively tries to smother them in the crib.
 
M76 said:
The question is why do you want them to work if there are no jobs that require them? That sounds awfully like communism to me. In communism everyone was forced to have a job, even if it was meaningless or counter productive even.
But if you have a better solution let's hear it. Because UBI sure as hell beats doing nothing and pretending there is no problem. So if you think the unemployment is not normal, then what is causing it?
Click to expand...

This thread reveals the failure of the education system.
 
Regardless of how you feel, what 'side' you are on. The inexorable march of automation has displaced millions of jobs over the last 40 years and the pace will only continue. Jobs to run the automation are inherently a tiny fraction of the jobs displaced ... that's where part the productivity increase comes from ... it is coming, it won't stop, and it doesn't give a hit what your political beliefs are.

You and/or your neighbors will be put out of a job, so what is the plan?

The GDP, the wealth generated by the Nation's economic activity will continue to grow, with the benefits accruing to an ever smaller fraction of the population, until 0.001% owns everything and the rest of the population can go suck an egg and starve to death.

Before it gets really bad (as if it isn't already) taking action to alter our system to allow all citizens their fare share of the National wealth generation is the smart move.

The Tech billionaires don't actually 'get it', not yet, they are just smart enough to see something is off and it needs addressing.

Citizen Stipend, a yearly salary to every adult is the answer, rather than the wealthy getting 90% of the wealth generated, they'll go back to 20% just like the 'good old days' of the 50's and 60's, the good old days the conservatives always say they 'long for' .... hunt: they were the good old days because most people shared in the wealth being generated, where a single parent could work a job, make enough to have a home, car, vacation, afford kids, college fund, and some retirement savings.

The Filthy Rich have worked very very hard for 50+ years to shift our economic system so that they get the bulk of the wealth and the rest of the population can go fucks themselves. And here we are.

With some graduation for age, and local cost of living, TODAY the Citizen Stipend needs to begin at $45,000/yr. You can get a job and earn more and it will NOT affect this benefit, this is your cut of the Nation's wealth generation.

The Housing crisis in so many places also needs solving, but that is something we have correction mechanisms for. Healthcare Insurance is also solvable with Medicare for all, and this needs to cover 100% not 80% like today.

This change to the way we do things will allow elimination of the safety nets, Social security, food stamps, etc. Implementing the citizen stipend will lead to GDP growth that will more than make up for the expense. Unlike Mulvaney and Trump miracle GDP, this is readily provable, as the monies in the hands of people living their lives rather than the Filthy Rich stacking more piles of money in a vault, will feed directly back into economic activity. It is Consumers who drive the economy not dumbass rich fucks buying an occasional bigger yacht.

Don't do it, and eventually ..... there will be blood.
 
travisty said:
UBI is not Communist. The idea's been around since the French Revolution (hundreds of years prior to Communism being created). UBI is actually closer to Libertarianism in that it allows much more choice on the side of the consumer. Where today most consumers will always choose the cheapest item, if everyone had more security they could choose the product that was better because of _____ (conservation/workers rights, etc)
Click to expand...

Proof that free K-12 education can be worthless, even in the age of the internet. You might want to read up on the horrors of the French Revolution (The Jacobins, the Vendee etc.). Oh, and the fact that it started in 1789 and Marx and Engels wrote their Communist manifesto in 1848. But you know, hundreds of years prior. HUNDREDS!

Most consumers choose the cheapest item explains the intel tax, yes sirree bub.
 
KarsusTG said:
Please tell me how receiving 1k a month is going to suddenly cause me to not need to work. You are not going to take a 12k a year UBI and go "That it I am good! It's 5 O'clock somewhere!" and live this magical beach lifestyle for the rest of your days... You will still have to work...

But if you replace food stamps, WIC, TANF, and much of the Social security and all that underlying bureaucratic infrastructure with UBI I think it would work. I mean honestly, we have 43million on food stamps already as it is.
Click to expand...

Firstly, you underestimate the innate laziness of most of humanity.

Secondly to the bolded part, that won't happen and you damn well know it. Those additional entitlements will creep back in eventually, though I think they'd never be eliminated to begin with. Bureaucracy grows and people want as much free shit as possible. It is as inevitable as death itself.
 
Tighten your sphincter holes ladies because this is a long one. So... before we begin let's throw out some palabras:

• The Strange Reality of Fiat Money

• Debt-damned economics: either learn monetary reform, or kiss your assets goodbye

•1 billion living in poverty

•15% live below poverty line in US

• 46.2 million Americans are on food stamps

• There’s no 100% capitalist or socialist country in the world

• Corporate profits are at an all-time high

• Unemployment is at multi-decade low

• Shallowest period of job recovery (jobless recovery)


50% jobs will be completely automated by 2040, and other estimates saying sooner, by 2030: Transportation, retail sales, first line supervisors, cashiers, secretaries, managers, all other, registered nurses, elementary school teachers, janitors/cleaners. Multibillion dollar companies’ are hiring fewer and fewer people. Combine Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon, are worth 1$ trillion, but only have created 150,000 jobs. Uber has acquired $18 billion in a short amount of time, however, only employ a few hundred people. This leads to inequality, and situations like these only exacerbates it. Humanity desperately needs to reassess the future.


Structural inequality, means that it’s ingrained the system the same way money is. The fairy stale we tell ourselves, it’s inevitable and it’s the nature of capitalism. However, countries have already successfully redistributed wealth through policies and innovations like South Korea and Germany. But nobody has an answer to structural inequality. Nobody is having this discussion, but instead it’s a simplistic argument of agreeing or disagreeing with the argument about what they might do or whether it’s morally right. Or you might disagree because it’s atrocious or it’s not going to work, and you just can’t give money for whatever reason. And that is where the inherent challenge lies, so we should be asking the salient question: How much it will cost? How to pay for it? How to finance it? Would people stop working if they just receive an income? And will it solve the problem? Humanity should focus on the goal, not the story or the fairy tale that we tell ourselves, which Joe obviously is very attached to and he defends it quite well through his wit and humor, but it’s still a devil’s advocate fallacy, and I'll address that further down.

So we need to think about the goal, otherwise it’s going to end up like the discussion with capitalism and socialism for perpetuity. We don’t have that time. A good starting point is from Article 25 of the International Declaration of Human Rights from the UN, it states: EVERYONE HAS THE RIGHT TO A STANDARD OF LIVING ADEQUATE FOR THE HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF HIMSELF AND OF HIS FAMILY, INCLUDING FOOD, CLOTHING, HOUSING AND MEDICAL CARE AND NECESSARY SOCIAL SERVICES […]

So does a basic income fulfill this goal or not? Because if it does, it won’t matter the dissenters ideology because it’s actually fulfilling the goal. Now, look at the experiments in 14 countries (out of 200 industrialized countries) 3 were unconditional UBI, and only two had more than a thousand. Let’s be clear here, this still isn’t enough data to argue for or against the issue because we simply don’t know or haven’t done enough experiments. But anyways, let’s start with two big industrialized nations:


CANADA

• 5 years (1974-79)

• ~10,000 People

• $500/Month

─ Hospitalization rates fell by 8.5%

─ Only two groups worked less: Women who took extended maternity leave and (male) youth.

─ High school completion rates increases

INDIA

• 3 years (2011-13)

• 6,000 Peoples

• $4/month (40% subsistence)

─ Improved food sufficiency

─ Improved nutrition

─ Increase in livestock

─ No increase in alcohol consumption

─ Reduced incidence of illness

─ Improved school attendance

─ People were 3 times more likely to start their own business

These results are definitely promising, but still inconclusive because there have been so few experiments. There are other open ended questions that need to be addressed, and that is rent. Suppose each one of us receives $1,000 dollars every month, what happens to rent? If you’re not a homeowner and you have a landlord instead, what’s stopping them (other than policy or mechanisms)* to raise the rent exactly $1,000 dollars? But that inherently increases inequality because you’re moving more capital to those who already have capital, based on Thomas Piketty’s research. So actually, UBI would actually increase inequality and increase poverty, and destroy the middle class even faster. And then if you get rid of social programs and arbitrarily tell everyone to do whatever they want with their income so we don’t need this bureaucracy, because you don’t need so much social programs and government involvement. Well, everyone here should be abundantly aware by now (I fucking hope) what happens when you privatize healthcare. Quality goes down, prices go up, and everything goes to hell. So we have to remember that it’s not going to be a panacea, because complex things such as UBI need to be contextualized, and if implemented, they must be a comprehensive package of larger reforms, and the larger implications of what you’re doing. And it must be different in other countries because of different social contexts, social adaptation, and social norms, and not everybody is at the same social level. So it’s never going to be one size fits all. And of course, it always goes back to we don’t have enough experiments to come to anything conclusive. Which is why we need politicians and the people who are in position of mandating legislation to warrant more research and study, just like other controversial *(but beneficial)* reforms as the legalization of marijuana and MDMA therapy.

Politicians who want to get on board and help should:

• Conduct their own experiment with at least 10,000 people

• Control Group

• Truly Unconditional

• More than two years

• True basic income

The key points is it has to be unconditional and long term because if they know it’s going to last 2 years, they can plan for the future, because if you only conduct the experiment for 6 months, you’re not going to see the social dynamics that actually unfold in a complex society. And it must be a true basic income, not a fraction of a percent, of like 10-40% of the poverty line, it must be, many economists suggest about half the median income, or somewhere close to that number. And we need detailed feasibility studies, because nobody has done a thorough research looking at all the implications in the economic activity in the largest sense of the broader research. The technology is available to make things easier especially for entrepreneurs to run a basic income experiment, thanks to block chains and crypto-currencies. And in developing countries mobile payments are very successful, like in Kenya.

Now let's unpack all of this silly data and play some devil's advocate: Many Americans argue that people should have the freedom to make $100 billion dollars but also use that money to invest it into other companies. However, in reality that is exactly what they are not doing. Between Citizens United and the Panama Papers, it should be abundantly clear by now (even to the skeptics) that instead of re-injecting that wealth back into the economy, they've been hoarding it for decades. Conversely, there's $2-10 trillion in taxable income that is just sitting in banks which could be used to pay for UBI alone. Staying in the devil's argument they're asking what to do with $3 billion dollars if the ceiling was $500 million, when again they'reunder the false assumption that an individual making such an ungodly amount somehow has an innate altruism built into their soul. The fact is, the wealthiest individuals are akin to being more narcissistic and sociopathic than those beneath them; for every Bill Gates and Richard Branson there's a hundred more Trumps and Koch's running around. It's quite sad honestly, you quite literally have to sacrifice your own core values and morals in order to gain financial wealth at that level.

It's sounds simplistic, but, give it to the people right off the bat. Instead of bailing out the banks, it should have gone straight to the millions of people who had to foreclose on their homes. Instead of loaning that money to companies to tear down neighborhoods and decimating cultures such as New Orleans, it should have gone to the ones who suffered in the first place. Instead of putting tax payers money into an over inflated defense budget, how about paying for the thousands of vets suffering from PTSD who return back home fucked up and forced to deal with a VA system that not only neglects them but puts them on SSRI's and other meds which inadvertently have the wonderful side effect of suicide ideation. It's no wonder these same vets are committing suicide at the average rate of 22 per day, nor is it surprising that suicide from vets back home have eclipsed the deaths while serving under duty]

Now let's get to the core of the naysayers argument, because this is important, this belief that if you just throw money at the poor and disenfranchised, they'll continue to be lazy and do nothing. If you stay focused and work hard, success will grace you just like it did for Donald Trump, but for me personally, it's hard to side with somebody when they haven't had to worry about money since their youth, the socio-economics were completely different in that era, not to mention where you grow up, and the environment you live in all play a factor in how you grow and develop. Anyways, this notion that there's no incentive to work if you're simply given $30,000 it's going to be a welfare world. But if you look at Canada's and India's little experiment I listed above, that is not what is happening. In fact, the opposite is occurring. The big difference between welfare checks and UBI is the fact the INCENTIVE has been completely removed from the equation. The freedom that UBI gives for people is that they don't have to worry about being sick, look for a meaningless job, or have some arbitrary policy that will remove it through draconian policies which they have to constantly worry about. That money is given to them UNCONDITIONALLY it is for them to do with whatever they want: To pay off their student loans, mortgage, healthcare bills, and fix their homes. It has a huge psychologically impact which the data implies they actually better themselves because it provides a buffer net and breathing room to address all of those immediate stresses effecting them on a daily basis. But under welfare, if those same individuals are somehow fortunate enough to find a job, chances are it's barely more than what they were currently receiving under welfare, so their only motivation at that point is to not look for a job at all. What these UBI studies indicate is that they're able to decouple the capitalistic philosophy that we have to earn a living to exist.

As it stands right now 51% of the country doesn't even make $30,000, and after taxes, bills, and basic necessities, you're basically living under poverty levels at this point. Yet corporations and their puppets in Washington have convinced half this nation that you need to pick yourselves up by your bootstraps, and all of your failures are your own fault. Even scarier, they've convinced us to blame each other, and they've executed that strategy brilliantly.

I'm going to go off on a tangent here but the point I want to make is the American dream as we now see it, no longer exists. The game is rigged and if you're one of the poor and disenfranchised of America, your chances of ever succeeding are nearly impossible. To get ahead in life you literally have to swallow your morals and willing to profit over your fellow man, and that's exactly what they do in Wall Street everyday: Take 8 minutes to watch this interview with Chris Hedges as he goes into detail explaining the willingness corporations will go to profiteer off of Americans.

Source

• A work force economy with inmates getting payed 3rd world wages through forced labor

• Any debt they incur inside can send them back to prison even after serving their time.

Chevron, Victoria Secret, Target, Hewlett Packard, Starbucks, AT&T, Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, and Wendy's are examples of corporations exploiting prisoners through exorbitant phone fees, commissaries, and surcharges. Basic amenities are no longer provided such as shoes, which cost up to $45.00, so good luck paying that off with a $.20 an hour wage working eight hours a day, and because this is prison they don't qualify for social security for those hours. Same with medications and legal fees. If a loved one is dying, then they're limited to maybe 15 minutes of a deathbed viewing, and it's not uncommon for guards to make money off family members in situations like these.

It should be no secret to many of you the money generated through private prisons are in the tens of billions, a dramatic increase of 72 percent since 1997, and their lobbyists are some of the most well funded and resourceful in Washington. Which by the way are the same individuals responsible for writing these sick draconian laws. And instead of outsourcing slave labor, prison administrators are lobbying to corporations to return back home because prisoners have no union or benefits, and controlling them would be easier because they'll simply be put into isolation.

So think about your average prisoner who is just being released and in thousands of dollars in debt: Their job prospects are tenuous at best, and with criminal record on their resume I doubt many of them will get an interview. And to top it all off, between the economy being what it is today and a market saturated with millions of others also looking for work, these recently released prisoners are simply unemployable. So what choice does that leave them? Sell drugs? Rob a bank? That's their only options. The system is designed for them to fail, and it makes me sick that corporations see people only as a commodity rather than a human being. This is a text book example of why we need a Basic Income. Sadly, if and when this comes to pass it will already be too late for millions of Americans.

Now pretend that prisoner is black and living in [insert your favorite racist state] here. Welcome to a plutocracy.
​
We can’t continue with this notion that this is the way things are and we can’t do anything about it, it’s just going to be like the climate change debate because the facts are out the window and it’s just ideology. Robots/automation without a restructuring of the socio-economic system lead to robber Barons, the disappearance of the middle class, increased wealth inequality, and a nonsensical race to the bottom for most human beings, while plutocracies run amok. Think of the movie Elysium if you want a plausible dystopian scenario. The greatest challenge for humanity in the next decade or so will be to decouple income and work. Work is now essentially wage slavery, with over 80% of the people hating their job, and having most jobs either irrelevant, redundant, socially, psychologically, or environmentally destructive. Work should not be viewed as a requisite for survival. But if we don't resolve these issues the rich will trade with the rich, the poor will be let to die except few, that will be used for inhuman fucked up debauchery rituals. What many don't understand is in this disgusting future of capitalism and AI they [corporations and banks] don't need poor people to buy their goods and services, they will just trade between the rich and live in that sweet utopia. I just think that the argument about rich elite needing poor people to buy their goods and services is wrong. As we progess deeper into the 21st century there will be no need for the labor, there will be no need for the money. Unfortunately that requires a global fundamental shift in how we perceive the world because if we allow things to continue as they are, it will be machinery and the A.I.s, owned by the companies who have no responsibility to support the unemployed. They already have consolidated so much wealth So, that all of that extra revenue is being spent on lobbying, ensuring it stays right where it is intended: in the pockets of their stockholders. These profits are not passed onto the workers. They are not paid in taxes. What makes anyone think that giving them even more money will make this less true? And before anyone says: Well then, who will they sell to? To other people with money, of course. Automation and ubiquitous AI are not the foundation of a utopia, they are the final evolution of mankind's greed.
And it will be the end of anyone who isn't already wealthy.

The phrase "earning a living" should disappear from our vernacular. We have enough for people to just be, without having to justifying their existence through often tedious, meaningless, or degrading work. Even in this schizophrenic society, as much as 50% of the people find the time to volunteer for social causes (helping the elderly, the disabled, cleaning up the environment, doing community work, etc.). Imagine if nobody had to work for living, how many would do useful things for others, how many would create something amazing. Won't that be something...



 
Last edited:
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Riptide_NVN said:
Not to mention the fact the increased taxation to support such a system doesn't happen in a vacuum. The costs will get passed on. It is a redistribution scheme. While competition will cut down on this effect somewhat it will still be there.

There are no free lunches.
Click to expand...

griff30 said:
I am already paying 30% in taxes and my insurance premiums have doubled so I am not sure I can afford "free money".
Click to expand...

Killahurtz said:
that attitude shouldn't piss off just republicans...this ass hat is worth billions , he can just give all those Harvard pea brains enough to pay off their student loans and stay out of my pocket...
Click to expand...

Terpfen said:
The Universal Basic Income is such an awful idea that it falls apart completely when you ask one simple question: where does the money come from?
Click to expand...

The money for an UBI program firstly comes from replacing all existing assistance services, and the costly bureaucracy that they require. There are also significant savings due to lifestyle improvements of the populace. Done intelligently, UBI can actually be cheaper than the cost of the myriad of current existing services and programs and their bureaucracy, and then taxpayers would save money with UBI.

A lot of estimates for UBI simply use the population of a country to calculate its cost, but that's not a smart way of doing UBI, and of course that makes the UBI cost appear at its largest potential. I think you can expect UBI to not be given to children, which, if UBI starts with age 14, could reduce overall cost estimates by around 18%, and also expect UBI to not be given to people already earning wages that are significantly above the poverty level, which would reduce UBI costs dramatically.

UBI is then universal in the sense that everybody in a country is guaranteed to have a livable income.

Gavv said:
Many don't seem to understand we have this already. It's called welfare

As in welfare you give people other people's money there is no incentive to get off that money train.
Click to expand...

With welfare, there is incentive to not work, because as soon as a person does work, the money that they earn is subtracted from their income assistance - which means that if a person is unable to get a job that pays reasonably more than their welfare, that it is better for them to not work at all. UBI doesn't create that situation, and gives a person the incentive to work, without worrying about losing their income assistance.
 
Last edited:
DigitalGriffin said:
Click to expand...

Reagan was a traitorous scumbag who should've been impeached for Iran-Contra + Reaganomics/Laffer Curve BS that he and his flunkies espoused is a total failure from a economics standpoint.

And really the govt. has been big enough to "take everything away from you" since the post WWII period with the addition of a large and well trained/equipped standing army that has access to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Adding a UBI won't do anything to really change how the govt. could take things away from you or others if it wanted.
 
Terpfen said:
Polite, serious answer: If you tax someone at a rate beyond their ability to generate new revenue to replace the money paid in tax, you lose the source of tax money.
Click to expand...
Where are the numbers showing a UBI of any sort would be impossible due to overtaxation? You saying or assuming so isn't convincing. The rich and super rich have so much wealth now that would've been considered excessive taxation decades ago is almost becoming necessary.

And in a future where Great Depression levels of unemployment, or higher, become permanent its monstrous to talk about NOT taxing the rich to set up some sort of strong social safety nets like a UBI. The alternative is just letting all those people fall into deeper truly desperate poverty, the sort of which is usually only associated with 3rd world countries and failed economies, while the rich get richer.
 
mesyn191 said:
Reagan was a traitorous scumbag who should've been impeached for Iran-Contra + Reaganomics/Laffer Curve BS that he and his flunkies espoused is a total failure from a economics standpoint.

And really the govt. has been big enough to "take everything away from you" since the post WWII period with the addition of a large and well trained/equipped standing army that has access to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Adding a UBI won't do anything to really change how the govt. could take things away from you or others if it wanted.
Click to expand...
Seriously, Reagan? People realize he made Reaganomics? He's the last person to listen to for economic advice. Also grades and money aren't the same. One is proof of education and the other is a fancy form of IOU. I know people hate socialism but come up with something better.
 
Ski said:
A good starting point is from Article 25 of the International Declaration of Human Rights from the UN, it states: EVERYONE HAS THE RIGHT TO A STANDARD OF LIVING ADEQUATE FOR THE HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF HIMSELF AND OF HIS FAMILY, INCLUDING FOOD, CLOTHING, HOUSING AND MEDICAL CARE AND NECESSARY SOCIAL SERVICES […]
Click to expand...
I think you can save a lot of time by cutting to this part right here. From what I've seen, everyone arguing against UBI, or a safety net, or some other plan to more fairly balance the system does NOT agree with that statement and subscribe more to a Social Darwinism view than anything. America has shifted pretty far to the right since those words were written...
 
tetris42 said:
I think you can save a lot of time by cutting to this part right here. From what I've seen, everyone arguing against UBI, or a safety net, or some other plan to more fairly balance the system does NOT agree with that statement and subscribe more to a Social Darwinism view than anything. America has shifted pretty far to the right since those words were written...
Click to expand...
That's what you get when socialism is programmed into peoples minds to be equivalent to communism. But considering that Bernie was a socialist and he was near to beating Hillary, and would have beat Trump had the democrats not work against him, America would have a socialist president right about now.

The more Trump fucks up, the more likely the next president is going to be socialist. Look at the choices the right had to represent them. Ted Cruz is a laughing joke on the internet, and Paul Ryan is... well look. Hillary lost cause she's really a Republican in disguise among other things.

pck-cafe-poor-f-ck-poor-peo-wow-the-gop-healthcare-16205847.png
 
Really it is a pretty bleak situation if the dire predictions come to pass. If you lose 50% of the jobs in the country then you have a lot of people who can't afford to buy anything. On top of that, with a massive tax and redistribution scheme like UBI in place the business sector and the "rich" are taxed heavily to support it. Then those taxes get passed on to the consumer in the form of price increases or worse job cuts. Which just makes the low consumer spending situation even worse.

I don't see how there will be anything left of the middle class.
 
mullet said:
Trump was worth it just to see the liberals lose their minds. LOL
Click to expand...

tru that...these young dumbasses don't know what socialism or communism is...they think they can make them work better than Lenin , Stalin , Mao , Pol Pot...they are gonna have to kill about 100 million to do it better than them...but then who cares I am pretty old , I intend to soak their asses for every nickel I can get in the near future , they will be working their asses off to pay for my existence and it will be a beautiful thing...hahaha

oh...and Bernie Sanders is a dementia ridden slobber rag
 
Last edited:
Satyrist said:
We won't see it in our lifetimes, simply because so many people in this country have the attitude of "GOT MINE, FUCK YOU!" which is as baked into their DNA as the right to bear arms.
Click to expand...
Similarly many have the attitude of "FUCK YOU, I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH SO I'LL TAKE YOURS" into theirs.

If you listen to the leftists talk about conservatives they would have you believe they think any existence of government at all is socialism and since they hate it so much they are really anarchists in disguise. It is flat ridiculous but this is the level of dialogue we have now. Some on the right are just as bad. I fear for our future though I think it a waste of time to dwell on it much. Most of these things are beyond our control on an individual level to any meaningful degree.
 
Delicieuxz

"The money for an UBI program firstly comes from replacing all existing assistance services, and the costly bureaucracy that they require"

hahahahha...ain't gonna happen!...the leeches are sucked tight to their "benefits" , they have never , nor will they ever , give up their current benefits because they currently receive one hell of a lot more money now than any lousy , idiotic 12,000 dollars..you really think those that are gaming the "safety net" systems are that stupid?...who's the pea brain , them or you?...hard to figure people ain't it

example...enrolment in the SNAP program is at an all time high...but..but...but...but..Obama fixed the economy and unemployment (always fudged numbers) is down from 10 to 5 present (because of Obama's economic wizardry I guess) so how come the eligibility requirements haven't been turned backed to the pre-recession level?...because once you give the hand out , the hand stays out...

...by the way , the "Great Recession" was NOT the great recession...that is reserved for the Carter lead recession which gave us 1) double digit unemployment and 2) double digit inflation , AND 3) double digit mortgage interest rates

If you put up a sign that says "Free Hamburgers"...it isn't just the hungry that show up...
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top