What is Universal Basic Income?
Universal Basic Income is a Plan to ensure that the millions of us whose jobs are permanently lost to “new technology” have sufficient income to “reduce conditions of scarcity, poverty, and financial insecurity”* while the Planners wait for you to die off.
That is all.
You’re welcome.
“using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew.”
Not being knowledgeable enough to know that when I am cutting off parts of your body and feeding them to my dog, you’re going to be willing to sell me your mother, father and any other living being you know, in order to make the pain stop
Honestly this wouldn’t have been an issue if white Evangelists hadn’t felt a need to expand Western medicine and tech to the third world. Thanks a lot for spreading the word of God, pal.
Is everyone required to believe in at least one doomsday scenario? Christian Judgement Day, environmental cataclysm, nuclear armageddon, catastrophic climate change, AI apocalyps…and those are just the ones from my/our era. History is riddled with End of Days fears. None of which occurred. Apparently, being rich does not make you immune to the cataclysmic reflexive impulse.
Will there be challenges? Of course. Will there be solutions? Yes. Will it be UBI? I fuc*ing hope not.
We’ve seen what happens to men, families and communities where productive work has been replaced by government welfare. Look at aboriginal reservations, downtown ghettos, Appalachia – massive social and family dysfunction, domestic violence, substance abuse, elevated crime, high rates of suicide. How is this a good idea? And that dysfunction won’t stay isolated, it will spread like the plague into surrounding areas.
The only solution is to replace those jobs with other jobs. People seem to have a psychological need for productive work and have a sense of meaning and value to their lives. Best case scenario and the one I think is most likely is that new jobs appear naturally in response to this technological revolution, as they have in the past. Worst case scenario, government work projects like during the Great Depression but community based instead of remote work camps.
People also have the ability to adapt. We went from an agricultural work schedule to a 9-5, 5 day per week within a relatively short period of time. People who retire or choose to be stay at home parents also adapt to a radically changed work style. The new reality might see a resurgence of seasonal work, variable schedules, work sharing, etc. The key is meaningful work, choice, opportunity for advancement and being able to support a family (either by affordable costs or sufficient wages). Deliberately, or unintentionally through misguided government policies, making living costs higher while wages decrease will be a recipe for disaster. What’s happening to those lower on the socioeconomic scale is the canary in the coal mine.
But, but, but … the WPA built the Awahnee Hotel, and paid Marxists to paint murals depicting the horrors of Capitalism … how can you demean Depression era government work projects. NPR and PBS constantly remind me how GREAT! They all were. /sarc.
It would make more sense to pay people to play video games at home.
That’s what it is
Slavery
You will be a powerless serf, wholly dependent on the government for your survival. Vote the wrong way,
say the wrong thing, do something unpopular – you will be punished. Every aspect of your life will be tracked
and subject to “review” by the inevitable Commission of Social Worth.
Good luck with that.
“Universal basic income” (i.e., “Vote for me! I’ll give you money. I’ll give you ALL money!”
– Andrew Yang
“Peace. Land. Bread.”
– Lenin’s Bolsheviks
The Russian people, by the way, didn’t get peace or land or bread.
Exactly. As my relatives said, the government pretended to pay us and we pretended to work.
It is China that needs to fear AI because their Labor advantage becomes mute…. The USA will create 10K new Manufacturing companies with fewer humans, but each with greater special skills…It becomes economical to produce simple devices with precision… Bring it on!
China will have teams of Slaves copying all that American technology and deploy 1,000-fold the number of manufacturing robots than America can produce. Trump has the only SANE remedy … isolate China from all of Western Society.
I think the word you want is moot, not mute.
Nobody is going to get a national dividend paid out of the accumulated cultural heritage of the western world. Our masters were quite clear that they had no intention of listening to Major Douglas in 1935. They’re not about to now.
No indeed. They want that heritage for themselves—and to see off any other pretenders. (Zuckerberg even wants to take over the world’s money supply. I digress.)
When the jobs for which horses were more useful than machines as beasts of burden disappeared from the developed world, so did the horses. Today the few that remain are rich women’s pets.
Don’t think you and yours will be spared a trip to the glue factory any longer than can be avoided—or that there aren’t worse fates. Nobody can think of what’s in store for the poor children bred by the Heirs and Successors of today’s elite to serve as their “pets” without a shudder.
The author (and LC Bennett above) are right. This is a Satanic mockery of the Revelation to John—stripped of all of that God nonsense by people with no god but technology—where the elect get to live happily in heaven forever, while everyone who ever “triggered” them is consigned to the second death. When the meek inherit the earth, it won’t be fit for use as anything but a mass grave if our masters get their way.
As soon as “they” have to pay to keep you alive, its Death Race 2000.
There’s a large percentage of minorities in this country that have had “basic income” for decades…
health care, education, food stamps, housing….all kinds of welfare designed just for them
…if they needed extra money for say a new Cadillac….pick up an odd part time job…..like dealing drugs
reparations….
So Indian reserves and payouts for everybody.
I wonder how well that will work out.
‘up the Ying Yang’
well now I know were the Yang part is.
According to Rushkoff, the ultra rich aren’t really that bright and they fear their fate like the rest of us mortals. He’s the oracle who’ll provide the answers they crave.
Communist countries use slave labor? Rushkoff believes that capitalism is the problem. And “mining of rare earth metals … destroys human habitats” yet he omits to mention that that is due largely to the renewables industry to make wind turbines and electric car motors.
I am suspicious of writers like Rushkoff who have such contempt for the very people who pay them and look to them for guidance. Throwing in phrases like “the coming climate crisis” and “impoverishing and exploiting the many in the name of the few” makes him sound intelligent while exploiting the guilt of his clients.
“But money talks, so I took the gig”, just like a prostitute. For the right price he’ll play the game and tell you any lie you want. And it’s your fault. Pay up, sinner!
He’s a college professor … a professional prostitute, not just an occasional twat for hire.
Prostitutes are, by definition, professional 🙂 And the best are VERY expensive.
“while the Planners wait for you to die off.
And abort your kids……
Vote for ME … and I’ll give you FREE STUFF !!
Nothing particularly revolutionary, technological, or innovative about that.
Can I get my share in addition to what I already have?
Why not? It’s consistent with their beliefs. After all, the logical end of progressivism is everybody is on welfare as state serfs.
Sure, just implement a 10% VAT and fund UBI. Right; because income taxes were temporary and sales taxes never increased?
Here’s some meat on the bone.
“One: the UBI will not make statists go away because it will not, and cannot, address the underlying causes of poverty and inequality — which is that poor people have low skills and no capital.”
Two: With the UBI, the state is potentially handing out a large sum of money each month to people who may spend it to ruin their own health, or destroy their lives. ”
Three: Even if the UBI will allow us to replace all sorts of systems and reduce the size of government, that will not be the end of the story. UBI will inevitably grow arms and legs.”
Four: And perhaps the scariest aspect of it all is that in most cases when the government creates handouts, there is always a group that stands to benefit and another that stands to lose. With the Universal Basic Income it seems on the face of it that there is no “out” group. Everyone is in on the action.”
But that’s not really the case. The state, policymakers, and government employees will benefit relative to everyone else. After all, the UBI legitimizes government and brings everyone into a system which they could otherwise often ignore. The state is provider, and each of us becomes its ward.”
https://mises.org/wire/4-reasons-oppose-universal-basic-income
IOW, all the problems of corrupt, nanny welfare states with the ultimate socialist goal achieved – reference only to that state.
Notwithstanding the obvious issues with inflation, destroyed productivity and poverty trapping transactions of decline.
That’s assuming all goes well with UBI implementation, which of course it won’t if history teaches us anything.
UBI is a scheme to enslave us all, especially the poor.
They’ll spend it on bneer and popcorn.
From the same people who can not get their own payroll system to work?
Nags and scolds never go away,unless beaten.
Parasites will feed at your expense,unchecked unless you do it.
No tick has ever let go before it was too full to hang on.
Power.
Control the peons, for their own good of course, but control them “we” must.
The nature of the fearful and ugly is to project their own fears onto the faces of strangers,so that they may control the masses.
There is no point of too much control just as there is no point of too much taxation when you confront a Statist.
We tolerate a lot of stupid.Up to that point where it threatens our existence.
We are reaching or past the point of tolerance.
French Haircuts alround?
Speaking of which I see the yellowjackets are still protesting in Paris,not that you would learn that from our media party.
Quillette: What do the oligarchs have in mind for us?
https://quillette.com/2019/06/19/what-do-the-oligarchs-have-in-mind-for-us/
There’s a flaw in the logic. If everyone is poor then no one will be buying the tech oligarch’s products. Their economy would grind to halt because people would only be buying the essentials. The oligarchy would collapse.
Middle class families move out of unaffordable, dystopian urban cities and find jobs elsewhere. Most politicians and tech oligarchs have no interest in the areas outside of major urban centers. The vast spaces in the middle of nowhere have always had more personal freedom. Not a single traffic camera, facial recognition cameras or license plate reader in my little town – and I’d be surprised if there ever will be that degree of monitoring. Urban journalists and opinion writers tend to be myopic, not able to see beyond their small corner of the world.
watch them try to plant big brother’s eyes in the nooks and crannies.
and watch an assortment of balaclava toting locals use them for sling shot practi WHAP.
THAT is where the fight back really gets going.
then a pimply 15 yr old figures out a way to scramble the means of tracking where camera ‘x’ actually is and why is a camera on a highway to Vegas showing ocean property?
there is NEVER a shortage of those wetting their pants to adapt technology to enslave, under the usual scripted talking point ‘fo da guuud ov da childwen’ and naturally EVERY cop in the land is in favour.
The state will see the value of keeping the drones occupied with social media and make it part of their internet free stuff.
The oligarchs can balance the shared misery with the poor wages and benefits they covet from open borders.
Of course it won’t work. Remember, in Nazi Germany, in Bolshevik Russia, everything was free.
It wasn’t provided because that’s what you get in the real world for free – nothing.
Productivity andvalue are forced under the table.
Add to that the destruction of wealth and work ethic. Except the bold, well fed and protected progressive apparatchiks.
Behind the Iron Curtain the state pretended to pay workers who pretended they worked. Decadence became decay.
That’s where we’re headed, no matter the intentions of the ruling class, many who are in love with idea of ruling us.
But, while people elsewhere facing death threats for voting turn out at 90%, we have it too easy to coast through.
Then we wonder why our friggin onion is peeled with us left with only the stinky part left; except for our tears.
When hasn’t that happened elsewhere when the collectivists took over? (and no, China’s not that stupid).
We have the administrative state taxing air and expecting us to change OUR behaviour. When will this insanity end?
A very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels? Not!
I believe a civilizational collapse is inevitable, but not from those causes, rather it will be due to the people who promote those fears. I would have thought that anyone smart enough to become super-wealthy would know that.
As for UBI, that’s just buying votes. And it isn’t for those who have lost jobs due to technology, that’s just the justification. Most beneficiaries of UBI will be the lazy young who have been raised and educated with an entitlement mentality.