Mark Zuckerberg Calls for Universal Basic Income in Harvard Commencement Speech

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.
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That's the main reason why any government is looking into this. The money used to staff people to properly distribute the money is better spent just giving people money. The idea is that you hopefully reduce homelessness and give people opportunities to better themselves.
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.
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Well, any amount of money is better than nothing. The smart thing to do is make currency 100% digital so you can t rack where the money goes. You don't want people using this money to buy illegal drugs.

The problem is those low-end jobs are dead end jobs. People work them cause they have no choice. But those same people can't afford time for school. If you want a better paying job, you need education, but you also need time to study. At the same time those jobs pay shit. You can make a better case to be payed better than minimum wage when you can just give them the finger and live off UBI. If you think that's unfair, just remember that companies often hire unqualified Indian workers to take your job using H1B. If not that, then they move the job out of country all together.
$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.
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You'd be lucky to receive $2k a month. UBI will likely pay you something like $250 to $500 per month. If you live with people then you can survive off that for a while.
One reason this will never pass is that you will have a lot of unemployed government workers. ;)
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Maybe, but at some point it'll have to pass due to automation. It's not the reason why governments are exploring it now, but it'll be required to prevent a total economic collapse once automation takes hold.
 
runudownquick said:
ITT: lots of people taking a crap on the idea but not providing any ideas to help everyone rise up from poverty besides "durrr, work harder."
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Unionize Starbucks and Walmart. Stop sending every 100 IQ midwit to university where they learn nothing but leave with $50,000 in debt. Stop telling 85 IQ thug morons that the reason they are worthless failures is because the white man stole their gibmedats and that they should accept their lowly station that their 85 IQ can provide and be happy they get to do it in such an amazing country.

How about those things?
 
TechLarry said:
I dunno. Sounds like a Minion Appeasement Package to me. Dish out a consistent amount to keep the people happy, while those in control continue to rake it in.
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Pusher of Buttons said:
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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Automation is going to be a problem, in the very near future imho. I know it's been brought up how in the past, automation has existed, and that jobs have continued to exist, but there comes a point when we reach that point where there just aren't any new industries which can exist. And unfortunately, AI helps bring us to singularity. And I do think it's about a few billionaires trying to appease people, because I also believe that if this country becomes a banana republic, there will be an uprising to overthrow (or at least attempt to) the oligarchy. The problem here is that people are selfish and greedy by nature, and they want UBI, provided that everyone but them provides the money for it. The wealthy like Zuckerberg and Musk could easily give away their fortune today, but they don't, at least not a substantial part, nor towards just overall benefitting of humanity, rather than a charity that acts more as an investment for them.
 
The irony on this hurts my head... a billionaire proposing a solution to help society to address problems that are primarily the fault of policies by and for billionaires in the first place...

UBI could be an answer, it's hard to say. The proposal coming from Mark Zuckerberg only harms its image.

runudownquick said:
ITT: lots of people taking a crap on the idea but not providing any ideas to help everyone rise up from poverty besides "durrr, work harder."
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Hey, that's totally not true, their solution is to let people die in the street, because that's obviously the best we can think up:

tunatime said:
Do away with all welfare type stuff for physically able people and let they die or work its up to them. In a few generations we as an society would be much better off.
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That could be halfway sane if everyone able was guaranteed a living wage job. As it stands, making everyone play musical chairs for food and shelter is basically barbarism. I assume of course YOU would have a job and would be cool with laying down and dying if you couldn't find one, despite being qualified.
 
Snowdensjacket said:
Unionize Starbucks and Walmart.
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I personally would rather have those people educated and working on better things. There's a lot that needs to be done. More automation, more AI, more medicine. Why waste a human by trying to keep their job at Starbucks and Walmart? Of all places, Star fucking Bucks and Walmart.
Stop sending every 100 IQ midwit to university where they learn nothing but leave with $50,000 in debt.
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That's the fault of our education system. But we should do what NY is doing by giving everyone free college education.
Stop telling 85 IQ thug morons that the reason they are worthless failures is because the white man stole their gibmedats and that they should accept their lowly station that their 85 IQ can provide and be happy they get to do it in such an amazing country.
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I'm personally not a big fan of the IQ system. I believe people can improve themselves with time. Stop labeling people with a flawed system like IQ. Once you get over that people are more than a IQ number, we can then move forward.
How about those things?
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My ideas are better.
 
Sooner or later - and it might be sooner than later depending on how things go, of course - this kind of concept, UBI, is going to have to make its presence in societies around the world because the push for mechanized aka robotization good and services manufacturing and distribution is coming whether we like it or not. Once it becomes truly the way things get done, get made, get distributed, then that's going to leave a metric fuckton of humanity without actual jobs and careers - it doesn't mean they won't have things to do, won't have bills to pay, food they need to eat, homes they need to survive, clothing, etc aka the basic necessities of living in this world, but it will mean that they simply can't get those things by having a job.

Even now in today's world it's simply not a possibility for every capable adult to have a job with a living income - it's impossible: there are ~7.4 billion people today give or take a few million either way, and if we figure about 60% of those are capable adults that could do work of various kinds, there just aren't ~4.4 billion actual jobs available, not even fucking close to that and there never will be. Long ago when the population was much lower across the planet it might have been possible, there were probably times in the industrial age where a very high percentage of the capable adults were working, one such period was during WWII at least here in the US because our industrialized society kicked into a pretty high gear and the mantra was "Everybody plays a part in this..." - even women were "enlisted" in a sort of manner into jobs and industries where they'd never ever have a chance to work: steel, coal, huge factories producing the military hardware that pushed the US and its allies to victory during that terrible period in our history.

So even though I don't give a fuck that it was Zuckerberg that spewed this idea out at this particular point in time it is something that does need to be considered just the same. It'll be interesting to see how things progress but as I'm at the half-century mark in a few days it's not like I expect to be around when that kind of society comes into being. Suffice to say my ideal society was basically something along the lines of the Star Trek model (glad someone posted that little snippet from TNG earlier in the thread). It's not really about taking away from the rich and giving it to the poor, it really isn't but so many people can only see it as such, it's more about just making things better for everyone regardless of their circumstances.

When we have a society where so few have so much, it really is a big huge massive problem when those very same people that do have so much got so much on the backs of the very people that have so little - that's not always the reason, of course, but in the majority of situations it is. Yes that actually does make sense even if it sounds like a convoluted mess of words. :D
 
Nytegard said:
Automation is going to be a problem, in the very near future imho. I know it's been brought up how in the past, automation has existed, and that jobs have continued to exist, but there comes a point when we reach that point where there just aren't any new industries which can exist. And unfortunately, AI helps bring us to singularity. And I do think it's about a few billionaires trying to appease people, because I also believe that if this country becomes a banana republic, there will be an uprising to overthrow (or at least attempt to) the oligarchy. The problem here is that people are selfish and greedy by nature, and they want UBI, provided that everyone but them provides the money for it. The wealthy like Zuckerberg and Musk could easily give away their fortune today, but they don't, at least not a substantial part, nor towards just overall benefitting of humanity, rather than a charity that acts more as an investment for them.
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At some point money will be worthless. This is why the wealthy are for UBI. Money is literally an imaginary thing, and modern monies value is based on a countries productivity output and not gold. When automation does hit we either do away with money or we use UBI. UBI will continue to support the idea of money and will continue to give value to the wealthiest huge amounts of money.

I personally believe we're going to have a new economic system in the future where the government pays everyone. Except for direct sales of items, your pay check comes from the government. You get paid based on what you do, literally everything you do. From a volunteer fire fighter to picking up trash to being the CEO of a huge company. On top of it, there are two currencies. One used by people, and one used for trading with other countries. I call it Gamificationism. This is how I see the future of money. Rick and Morty had the right idea in that money is literally a value we give it. At some point that 1 will be a 0.

 
I think this would be great. As long as the robot overlords embrace us so humanity dosnt have anything they need to do.
 
The shit storm of lack of regard for your fellow human being is shocking in this thread. I pity those of you who lack the common decency to care about the man or woman that you can't see that is suffering.

I wonder if you will ever find yourself in that situation and realize how hard it is. And for those of you that do... I hope there are people more caring in your life to help lift you up... instead of wondering why you don't just better yourself.
 
jfreund said:
You get what you pay for. If you pay people for nothing, guess what you get?

And where, exactly, is the money for this supposed to come from?
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He explained it clearly. It replaces welfare and the expensive system in place to distribute it and make sure it isn't abused. Its a more efficient system. You only had to read the part of the article [H] quoted to understand this.
 
It is called Communism.
I am surprised these Globalist Marxists aren't chanting this louder. There are a lot of special snow-flakes who are wanting to be taken care of.
50+ years of strongly Leftist governments, has left the so-called "free-world", in a middle class dissolving welfare state.
Those who control the global media, and the global banking system are about to put their foot on the accelerator!
Put a fork in us we are done.
 
Isn't this the same dumb shit that every socialist government has attempted to set up, only for it to fail horribly, resulting in a complete economic collapse that ended up killing millions over the past century? How is this going to not cause massive inflation? Isn't this just going to result in devaluing our currency? Why not, just, you know, fix the problems in our current welfare system instead of replacing it with what amounts to a pathetic thought experiment?
 
funkydmunky said:
It is called Communism.
I am surprised these Globalist Marxists aren't chanting this louder. There are a lot of special snow-flakes who are wanting to be taken care of.
50+ years of strongly Leftist governments, has left the so-called "free-world", in a middle class dissolving welfare state.
Those who control the global media, and the global banking system are about to put their foot on the accelerator!
Put a fork in us we are done.
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No. Communism is a form of government where the state plans the economy. Every country that has tried UBI in some form (Finland, apparently Canada, I think the Swiss are looking at it) has been a capitalistic market economy. Please everyone, get the idea that social assistance = communism/socialism out of your head.
 
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Extra-Titanian said:
Isn't this the same dumb shit that every socialist government has attempted to set up, only for it to fail horribly, resulting in a complete economic collapse that ended up killing millions over the past century?
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No.
How is this going to not cause massive inflation?
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Inflation, among other things, is caused by largescale creation of new money. UBI is paid for with taxes. This likely wouldn't cause inflation.
Isn't this just going to result in devaluing our currency?
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No.
Why not, just, you know, fix the problems in our current welfare system instead of replacing it with what amounts to a pathetic thought experiment?
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Because the idea is that it costs less than existing welfare systems because of administrative overhead and has better results, that's why.
 
DukenukemX said:
So Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are idiots? Okay, I believe you.
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Musk is the hollow, existing-product-repackaging showman that the Internet accused Steve Jobs of being. That said, his work with SpaceX is fantastic.

Zuckerberg had a great idea at the right time and has done nothing of note since. Every time he opens his mouth, he proves that even the oblivious and self-unaware can stumble into success in this country.
 
Rizen said:
No.Inflation, among other things, is caused by largescale creation of new money. UBI is paid for with taxes. This likely wouldn't cause inflation.No.Because the idea is that it costs less than existing welfare systems because of administrative overhead and has better results, that's why.
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Because we use fake "money" called a federal reserve note no. No. The government absolutely does not use taxes to pay for what they dole out. They simply go into more debt, debt that we place onto our children, to get more money to spend.

Yes this creates inflation, a hidden tax, but everyone will simply pretend that this isn't happening. But just look at my life as a thirty six year old man. When I was nineteen a pound of hamburger was $1, a gallon of milk was $1, and a dozen quality donuts? One dollar.

So $3 for those. Go to the grocery store today and tell me how much you just paid for those three things.

One small anecdote among many.
 
This was at Harvard, a school for rich kids who already have income for life in the form of trust funds.

Is there a phrase that means the exact opposite of "preaching to the choir"? Because that's what he was doing.
 
I think the real question is..

Once UBI goes into effect as described here..
It's a essentially a stupid amount of money in one singular project.
How are they going to prevent people in authority from lining their pockets?

I've yet to see a solution to this. You'd think this would be easy, but not so much.
 
Snowdensjacket said:
Because we use fake "money" called a federal reserve note no. No. The government absolutely does not use taxes to pay for what they dole out. They simply go into more debt, debt that we place onto our children, to get more money to spend.

Yes this creates inflation, a hidden tax, but everyone will simply pretend that this isn't happening. But just look at my life as a thirty six year old man. When I was nineteen a pound of hamburger was $1, a gallon of milk was $1, and a dozen quality donuts? One dollar.

So $3 for those. Go to the grocery store today and tell me how much you just paid for those three things.

One small anecdote among many.
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I'm 32. The reason food is more expensive is because of corn being used for ethanol driving up the price of grains and feed for cattle. Sure there has been some inflation, but overall it's not nearly as dramatic as that.
 
Snowdensjacket said:
Because we use fake "money" called a federal reserve note no. No. The government absolutely does not use taxes to pay for what they dole out. They simply go into more debt, debt that we place onto our children, to get more money to spend.

Yes this creates inflation, a hidden tax, but everyone will simply pretend that this isn't happening. But just look at my life as a thirty six year old man. When I was nineteen a pound of hamburger was $1, a gallon of milk was $1, and a dozen quality donuts? One dollar.

So $3 for those. Go to the grocery store today and tell me how much you just paid for those three things.

One small anecdote among many.
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Dude you don't shop much....I paid 89 cents for my last gallon of milk and 49 cents for a dozen eggs. Gas is actually pretty cheap right now compared to the $4 mess. Commodities prices has way more to do with supply and demand. In this case industries like dairies that used to require a lot of labor are highly automated and the price has bottomed out, but at the cost of tons of labor jobs.
 
Rizen said:
No. Communism is a form of government where the state plans the economy. Every country that has tried UBI in some form (Finland, apparently Canada, I think the Swiss are looking at it) has been a capitalistic market economy. Please everyone, get the idea that social assistance = communism/socialism out of your head.
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The state does plan. Was it not planning when it gave tax dollars to the auto industry? That isn't capitalism. How about when it gave trillions to the Banks? That isn't capitalism.
You live in a socialist country whether you want to open your eyes or not. And universal pay will once and for all destroy the middle class. The upper class will stay right where they are, running the show. As always.
 
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DukenukemX said:
You'd be lucky to receive $2k a month. UBI will likely pay you something like $250 to $500 per month. If you live with people then you can survive off that for a while.
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If they are truly going to replace all welfare programs with UBI, it's going to have to be a lot more.
Some welfare takers are earning the equivalent of $50,000 a year in Hawaii (when you include housing, food stamps, general assistance, fake disability, etc.) I doubt they would stand for the pay cut.

Most the homeless will stay homeless (except they might spring for a week in hotel until the run out of money)
With many of them, you can clean them up, provide an apartment and a job, and in a month they will be back on the street again.

As for not spending the UBI on drugs, good luck. The takers have many ways to launder assistance so they can turn it into cash to buy drugs.
 
Pusher of Buttons said:
Dude you don't shop much....I paid 89 cents for my last gallon of milk and 49 cents for a dozen eggs. Gas is actually pretty cheap right now compared to the $4 mess. Commodities prices has way more to do with supply and demand. In this case industries like dairies that used to require a lot of labor are highly automated and the price has bottomed out, but at the cost of tons of labor jobs.
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You must not live in Commifornia.
Lowest price for gas in my city is $2.95/gal, and by the end of the year they will be adding another 20 cents in taxes.
Milk? cheapest sale price the past month was $2.49/gallon
I did find eggs on sale for 99 cent/dozen a couple week ago, so I stocked up since they are normally well over $2.
 
Elite class runs america. This is so true. I have worked damn hard for way of life to earn what I do today. But everytime we talk about giving big business break and all that shit it just goes in opposite direction. Costs go up, fuckin gas prices go up. Pays don't go up. CEO earn shit load. Charter CEO paid 98.5 million to stay on job until 2021. I mean you mean to tell me that these damn share holders can't fuckin pay some of that to employees that work hard to keep jobs. It is just so dumb. I work for AT&T this year they have cut about 10000+ jobs and they are cutting more but guess what 100 billion to time warner. I mean Randall has lost his damn mind but guess what he will get top dollars for driving the company in debt. All hires within company are relationship hires no one is hired on qualifications. At least not what I have seen, yea I will probably get promoted for being cool but i make sure my hard work backs that up. I have no issue with corporations making decent profit and people on top being well paid but really the money they get paid is absurd. I mean employee pay has been hurting while CEO pay has sky rocketed.

Take some of that money and hook everyone up, lol!
 
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goatmonster said:
Finland is currently conducting a 2 year experiment on UBI

http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/02/news/economy/finland-universal-basic-income/
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They, like all E.U. countries, are also experimenting with mass immigration of non alike cultures. Odds are both will fail miserably.
Not a coincidence that both are happening at the same time. If there is a free ride for one, then it needs to be for both or you have trouble.
But I suspect "trouble" is the point.
Global Marxism (Socialism/Communism) is a bitch!
 
DukenukemX said:
But we should do what NY is doing by giving everyone free college education.
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Because giving everyone "free" k-12 education has done wonders for so many? Free in this case makes it worthless except to those who make the best of it (due to culture and IQ) and they are often hampered by those who think they should be there but shouldn't.
 
Ranulfo said:
Because giving everyone "free" k-12 education has done wonders for so many? Free in this case makes it worthless except to those who make the best of it (due to culture and IQ) and they are often hampered by those who think they should be there but shouldn't.
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Oh yea? so you assume everyone is dumb if you don't belong to certain culture? Tell you a little story. 2 of my friends who were not great in math and everyone thought couldn't graduate.

One graduated with Bacheors in Mechanical engineering and one graduated with masters in bio medical engineering. It's not about culture or iq. These two were bad at math and I helped them and they devoted themselves and tried their best and got better and better. I myself at first thought they would not graduate but I am glad to be wrong. Failure is everyone's right as much as success. Everyone who wants to go to college should. To say some shouldn't be there is just stupid.
 
Extra-Titanian said:
Isn't this the same dumb shit that every socialist government has attempted to set up, only for it to fail horribly
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No, you ignorant Titanian. The system you're thinking about gave everyone JOBS, not money. Huge difference. I won't even address the other non sense.

I know the type that is against anything good for society. The type that enjoy seeing others fail. The miserably, hateful type that is unhappy with their own lives.
 
All those lazy Alaskans living off the dole...

EDIT: Ok, it's not exactly a UBI but in the end, it's the same.
 
funkydmunky said:
They, like all E.U. countries, are also experimenting with mass immigration of non alike cultures. Odds are both will fail miserably.
Not a coincidence that both are happening at the same time. If there is a free ride for one, then it needs to be for both or you have trouble.
But I suspect "trouble" is the point.
Global Marxism (Socialism/Communism) is a bitch!
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Maybe read the article and see that the money isn't going to immigrants. So no, no free ride for immigrants
 
DukenukemX said:
And there's going to be a lot of pissed off Republicans.

fmc.gif
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Guaranteed basic income actually has a lot of support from conservatives, because done right, it reduces government overhead and costs less than all the assistance services that currently exist.


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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People who want more than basic income.
 
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