Mark Zuckerberg Calls for Universal Basic Income in Harvard Commencement Speech

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The Facebook CEO gave a commencement speech Thursday at Harvard University and called for universal basic income as a solution for inequality. The rationale behind UBI is that a certain amount of money would give those with too little enough to get by, and it would be more efficient and effective than welfare, which requires a costly administrative structure to work. Phenomena like automation and startup culture is giving the idea significant traction in the tech industry.

"Every generation expands its definition of equality. Now it's time for our generation to define a new social contract," Zuckerberg said during his commencement speech Thursday at Harvard University. "We should have a society that measures progress not by economic metrics like GDP but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful." "We should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things," he said. Zuckerberg told the class of 2017 that he was able to pursue his passion in Facebook because he knew he had a safety net to fall back on. "If I had to support my family growing up instead of having time to code," he said. " I wouldn't be standing here today."
 
And there's going to be a lot of pissed off Republicans.

fmc.gif
 
Thing is, we all know most people do not enjoy their jobs. So, to me it would better if society provides for them and lets them do whatever the fuck they want instead of simulating activity. In the end we're paying for it no matter what.
 
So who's going to work at restaurants, businesses, hospitals etc? This notion of UBI is completely retarded. It's billionaires skirting the fact that they don't pay their fair share in taxes and now they start spouting this UBI nonsense.
 
5150Joker said:
So who's going to work at restaurants, businesses, hospitals etc? This notion of UBI is completely retarded. It's billionaires skirting the fact that they don't pay their fair share in taxes and now they start spouting this UBI nonsense.
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Jobs of that nature can still be staffed. If you are getting a basic income that covers (basics), even an extra $500-$1000 say per month would be money for things you could enjoy, cars clothes etc. This would motivate me enough to go to work. It also makes those jobs have more of a "living wage" that is being asked for. The employer might still end up paying the same because i am sure the government would tax them to cover the difference. With the large amount of jobs that will likely be lost in the next 20 or so years due to automation, if something like this doesn't get created than we will likely spend twice as much on existing welfare structures. And yes to make this work the corporations and people like Zuck will have to pitch in more. IMHO
 
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As someone who has been unemployed for almost a month with no ability to pay bills or buy food (or drive for that matter because I couldn't afford car insurance payments) this sounds great. But I'm in a somewhat unique position as I love absolutely everything about my work and would do it even if I were independently wealthy. The catch is that most people hate their jobs and would probably just watch television all day.
 
5150Joker said:
So these tech billionaires want everyone on the government dole eh? Well let's start by having guys like zuckerberg and musk donate their entire fortunes towards UBI as a first step.
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Yep, I have a theme song for them. Just more billionaire ideas & too much money to know what to do with.

 
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Misery and fear are both strong motivators of the working class... Misery drives us all to better ourselves and improve our opportunities. Primal fear keeps us all sacrificing / competitive so we can all stay sharp, focused, and aware so we won't squander opportunities or get fired.

If you gave everyone in the USA a guaranteed income, it is highly likely everything would increase in price with the new purchasing power of the masses, thus offsetting the benefit... you'd be back at square one.. unless the availability of goods and services increased at the same rate to offset the new purchasing power.. which would be hard to do as now people have less motivation to work since they have a guaranteed income....

This is not what this generation wants to hear... but it is centuries of economic theory / fact that is well understood by us older folks.


Automation in the coming decades is going to be extremely disruptive for the availability of jobs and social fabric.. something has to be done, but the powers that be also fail to acknowledge that the loss in sense of purpose people derive from work is one of the intrinsic rewards that can not be replaced...boredom, too much free time, and lack of challenge will cause many to be depressed, others will riot (for the perceived injustice cause of the day), and others will turn to violence. Yes, some will get along just fine, but others will get drawn into a counter culture / resistance as a means to combat their lack of independence and purpose. This is already happening today, and it will get worse.
 
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Zuckerberg told the class of 2017 that he was able to pursue his passion in Facebook because he knew he had a safety net to fall back on. "If I had to support my family growing up instead of having time to code," he said. " I wouldn't be standing here today."
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This is true actually, but it will look pretty bad when you apply it to the larger population. You'd be surprised how many people wouldn't mind living on just a basic income and not give a hoot about exploring their passion outside of having fun. Also, basic as in not welfare basic, but more like double minimum wage or so.
 
It's super easy for someone to say everyone deserves a universal income when you have 63 billion dollars. We are already sitting at something like 45% of all americans pay zero federal income tax, where is all the magical make believe money supposed to come from? I take it as pretty damn offensive that wuss billionaire Zuckerburg has the balls to suggest I pay taxes just so someone else can exist and do nothing on purpose.

I get that there are people out there who are truly lazy with zero drive or desire for anything past subsisting at a basic level but why would we as a country cater to the lazy or the stupid? I don't know about you guys but if I take a week's vacation, I get bored by the end of 7 days off. I've worked over the years for everything I have, it wasn't always fun... but if you want to consume, you have to produce. It's the only long term model that works when you are talking about the scale they are with this UBI nonsense.

Anyone who's ever lived in a dense city would agree too... when you have a bunch of people sitting around doing nothing all day long for weeks on end, that's when the trouble starts.

How about instead of spending money to let people sit on their ass, you spend money paying those people to tackle the massive infrastructure problems we have in this country? you know... that thing called a job.
 
Terpfen said:
Not really. We want these idiots to keep saying these stupid things.
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So Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are idiots? Okay, I believe you.

DejaWiz said:
Will do just the opposite...creating a dependency simply leads to morose, institutionalized people with zero drive in life because there's no incentive to attain anything better in life.
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It's funny cause people with free time who make musical floppy drives or Rube Goldberg machine is a person with too much free time, but a guy working at Starbucks serving overpriced coffee is a hard worker.
 
5150Joker said:
So who's going to work at restaurants, businesses, hospitals etc? This notion of UBI is completely retarded. It's billionaires skirting the fact that they don't pay their fair share in taxes and now they start spouting this UBI nonsense.
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lots of people but they wont have to work as much and will have more power to take jobs THEY WANT rather then need
again 800 to 1000 a month wont go very far
 
DukenukemX said:
It's funny cause people with free time who make musical floppy drives or Rube Goldberg machine is a person that has a nice hobby...and that person could very well be a guy working at Starbucks serving overpriced coffee, but is at least working in order to afford the things he needs and wants, like doing those cool hobby projects.
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Ftfy
 
Canada tried it in the 70s as part of a pilot program and it was effective. People still worked, money was saved on the consolidation.

Sadly, nothing came of the program.
 
Another thread helping me find members to ignore. Keep 'em coming and before long reading the news forum will be painless for me!
 
Most UBI proposals involve replacing most govt. assistance payments with the UBI payment. Might work fine if the COL was similar across the nation. But it isn't. You can qualify for rent assistance in some US cities with incomes around $100,000. In other parts, $100,000 is considered rich. Someone loses unless the UBI isn't so universal.
 
If everyone had more money demand for products would go up sharply. A sharp increase in demand results in a low supply.

Low supply + high demand = higher prices

AKA, give everyone in america $1000/mo and in 3 months your cost if living goes up $1000
 
Elios said:
ok hope you like living in a group home then then

UBI only covers the basic needs your not going to go far on 800 to 1000 USD a month
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lol it was a joke, but fishing all day does sound kind of fun since i have worked 30 years and never have taken a real vacation
 
There's some reality that eventually we'll hit peak labor and due largely to automation and gains in efficiency for white collar jobs that can be turned over to AI systems in the next few decades. We aren't there yet, but it's a problem on the horizon. There will simply be a point where there are more people than required to provide labor.

My current job once fully "going electronic" over the last decade cut their workforce by 50%. That's just jobs -gone- that will never come back.

So it's a legitimate problem/question. At the current rate we're going to end up like Elysium.....95% of the population scraping by scavenging and garbage labor and a 5% who don't work at all and just exist as wealthy financiers and shot callers.


*Side note:

People won't let themselves or their family starve or suffer. They'll rob/steal/kill to stay alive. So keeping people destitute just means you'll wind up paying the $30,000 a year or more it costs to house them in prison.
 
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So first, let me begin by saying, I don't know everything, and I am willing to accept I can't account for every scenario whatsoever. So keep in mind I am human.

Second...

The point of a UBI, or basic income program, is not to motivate people to be lazy. In fact, if you actually pay attention to how the significant majority of the population _actually_ behaves, people aren't interested in being lazy leeches. Yes, there ARE people like that, but they are the exception, not the norm. Every system, no matter what, will have people that try to game the system, and they're already doing it now, so that point is moot because the UBI in and of itself is no change in that regard.

Next...

The point of a UBI is to offset how society has been evolving, and in-turn impacting the people who are the most vulnerable. The people who's jobs have been made obsolete, and do not have the means to retrain or there are no jobs for them, or they can't move to an area that has jobs they can do. It sounds like a lot of you really aren't aware of how many people are actually in this situation. I mean have you guys heard of.... Detroit?

There's other people that will be positively impacted by UBI too. There are also many people that are holding down two or three jobs, just to make ends meet. They don't have the time to be able to retrain for another job where they could be earning more money. Systems like UBI can enable people like this to progress in their life, instead of stagnate. There are so many businesses out there that capitalise on people that are effectively slave labour like this. Look at Walmart alone, who's majority of staff is part time, so they don't get benefits. Should UBI, or something similar, be implemented, people in situations like this can retrain for jobs that actually can help them get out of this rut and live a life worth living. Progress into a job with a wage that affords them the ability to NOT work 90-120 hours a week. How would you feel if you had to hold down three jobs, just to keep yourself off the street?

Then there's also the angle of having a UBI replace existing systems, because it could be more administratively efficient. There are people who currently qualify for programs like food stamps, welfare, and other programs. UBI could possibly replace these programs, and either provide an equal or better service. But if UBI were to just take effect by default, this would drastically cut down on administrative overhead providing a massive cost savings to the tax payer, as people wouldn't necessarily need to have someone processing your enrolment or meeting face to face, etc.

And then there's the real poor people. Those who live on the street. Yes, there are people out there that choose this life, but they are the exception, not the norm. These people would benefit the absolute most from such a situation. These people lack the means to contribute to society, yet through no fault of their own, they cost tax dollars through additional police services, medical services, and other government plans. With a UBI program they would immediately have a mechanism to actually afford (assumed) shelter, food, and a potential avenue to retrain and get back to becoming tax payers, contributing back to society.

There are many people in the USA that cost tax dollars in many different ways, because they're in bad situations and don't have the means to actually change that. Literally millions of people live like this. The net long term change that a program like UBI (if properly implemented) would have, would be net positive, as it would enable so many people to be able to progress in life, and contribute more to society through taxation and other things. But in addition to that, it would reduce their reliance on programs as a means to get by in the long term, in-turn reducing their usage of government programs. So they pay more taxes and spend less of it because they were enabled to grow as individuals.


It sounds like a lot of you seriously are disconnected with the poor and needy of the USA. I know that there's plenty I don't know too. But one thing I do know is there's a lot of people that need the help of their fellow citizen.


In regards to the "argument" that a UBI motivates people to be lazy and unproductive, this is false. How many of you would go out of your mind with absolutely nothing to do? Humans by default crave objectives in their lives. Just because there are shitty jobs like restaurant waitresses doesn't mean those individuals don't want to contribute to society. The majority of those people have those jobs because they have no choice. If you gave them the choice, they could go in all kinds of directions. They could move to a location with better jobs. They could start their own business. They could retrain for a job they've always wanted, but never had the means to achieve.

Modern day slavery exists in the USA, in the form of wage slavery, and a program like the UBI can contribute to abolishing this.

Here's some videos you might find worth watching on this topic:


 
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How about limiting how much these billionaires can earn?
Maybe take everything the earn over 200% of average income and redistribute it to the poor?
I doubt they would be for that.
Instead they want to take money from everyone who's working and give it to people who don't, or don't care enough to better them selves.

Maybe some day, when automation as progressed to the point where almost everything is produced in completely automated factories, and delivered by self driving truck, but that's a long way away.
 
Rizen said:
ITT: people who have no idea how UBI works or why it's proposed.
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The main question with UBI is if it will save money by eliminating the numerous government welfare programs, and replace them with single payment sent out to everyone each month.
In other world, if you don't need all the government workers qualifying people, checking incomes, filling out paper work, etc., you will save a lot of money.
It's pretty cheap to just give everyone an EBT card they can use to pay for stuff.

The problem is how much is UBI. If you make it too low, you still have the same problems. If you make it to high, almost nobody will be willing to work the low-end jobs.

$2k/month might be a decent living in some areas of the country, but in others it wouldn't be enough to rent a closet.

One reason this will never pass is that you will have a lot of unemployed government workers. ;)
 
5150Joker said:
So who's going to work at restaurants, businesses, hospitals etc? This notion of UBI is completely retarded. It's billionaires skirting the fact that they don't pay their fair share in taxes and now they start spouting this UBI nonsense.
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Robots.

Eventually you will have so much automation that you will have a permanently unemployed class.

UBI actually makes sense from a fiscally conservative standpoint. Get rid of all of the existing welfare programs and all of their costly bureaucracy (the rules, regulations, and the employed bureaucrats that are there to make sure people qualify) and just give everyone a check.

https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/libertarian-case-basic-income
 
The thing about UBI is it could enable those former-governmental workers to be able to retrain for another job, or relocate to another area where they could get other jobs they didn't have access to. But there will be scenarios where some of those workers would be re-assigned too, not all would experience job loss.

Another thing to consider is while maybe thousands of jobs could be lost, consider that there would be MILLIONS of people positively impacted as a result. From a scale regard, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

The net is positive, it's unproductive to fixate only on the negatives.


nutzo said:
The main question with UBI is if it will save money by eliminating the numerous government welfare programs, and replace them with single payment sent out to everyone each month.
In other world, if you don't need all the government workers qualifying people, checking incomes, filling out paper work, etc., you will save a lot of money.
It's pretty cheap to just give everyone an EBT card they can use to pay for stuff.

The problem is how much is UBI. If you make it too low, you still have the same problems. If you make it to high, almost nobody will be willing to work the low-end jobs.

$2k/month might be a decent living in some areas of the country, but in others it wouldn't be enough to rent a closet.

One reason this will never pass is that you will have a lot of unemployed government workers. ;)
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collegeboy69us said:
It's super easy for someone to say everyone deserves a universal income when you have 63 billion dollars. We are already sitting at something like 45% of all americans pay zero federal income tax, where is all the magical make believe money supposed to come from? I take it as pretty damn offensive that wuss billionaire Zuckerburg has the balls to suggest I pay taxes just so someone else can exist and do nothing on purpose.

I get that there are people out there who are truly lazy with zero drive or desire for anything past subsisting at a basic level but why would we as a country cater to the lazy or the stupid? I don't know about you guys but if I take a week's vacation, I get bored by the end of 7 days off. I've worked over the years for everything I have, it wasn't always fun... but if you want to consume, you have to produce. It's the only long term model that works when you are talking about the scale they are with this UBI nonsense.

Anyone who's ever lived in a dense city would agree too... when you have a bunch of people sitting around doing nothing all day long for weeks on end, that's when the trouble starts.

How about instead of spending money to let people sit on their ass, you spend money paying those people to tackle the massive infrastructure problems we have in this country? you know... that thing called a job.
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Amen.
 
Megalith said:
"Every generation expands its definition of equality. Now it's time for our generation to define a new social contract," Zuckerberg said during his commencement speech Thursday at Harvard University. "We should have a society that measures progress not by economic metrics like GDP but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful." "We should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things," he said. Zuckerberg told the class of 2017 that he was able to pursue his passion in Facebook because he knew he had a safety net to fall back on. "If I had to support my family growing up instead of having time to code," he said. " I wouldn't be standing here today."
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Great, Mr. Zuckerberg, now take your billions of dollars and redistribute & expand it among the population equally. Save a few million or so for yourself as a "Cushion" to fall back on, while you're at it try some new things. Explore the idea, let us know what comes of it.
 
The way I see it is that wages have been stagnant and falling if you take actual inflation into account for the working and middle class, while wages for the upper class have skyrocketed. But people still need to buy things to keep the economy going. The elites solution to this wasn't to raise wages for everyone else, because then they might be able to challenge the elites. It was rather to find any and every possible way to give the lower classes money through debt. Student loan debt, housing debt, refinancing, what like eight trillion ($8,000,000,000,000) in government debt just under Obama? Can't let the plebians actually own anything but they do need to buy shit or the economy collapses.

Well people can no longer carry anymore debt. There's no more carrying potential. But the elites still don't want to actually raise wages, cause then the plebs could like start to own shit and might possibly be able to challenge them. So they have come up with this UBI instead. This way people will still be able to buy products but the elites will get to retain control and they won't have to actually raise wages.

All this talk of robotic automation and shit is dumb. Labor saving devices have been coming online forever. They should only help the economy. They aren't the problem. Debt slavery instead of rising wages to create demand is the problem. Unfortunately politically no party can talk about this and gain any power, though Sanders did try to tap into the sentiment a bit. As we saw our elite had no intention of ever letting him gain any power.
 
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