politics

The 10,000th study to show the same result. Probably need to do a hundred thousand more.

Basic income pilots nationwide have seen noteworthy success, despite conservative opposition.

I've learned that conservatives especially, certainly not exclusively, prefer if it people constantly had to worry about their livelihoods. Thus ensuring a steady supply of cheap labor to be exploited.

And the side benefit for those who sell God as a dog-eat-dog free market Capitalist is more people going to their houses of worship where they get reminded to endure because the afterlife will be great. Total win-win for money and the moneyed class who all the while eat really well.

It's amazing how they've convinced people to vote conservative, to vote against themselves.

Yeah, I'm not surprised. I'm currently not working (living with parents), and personally, if I had a guaranteed $500 a month in my bank account I'd be much more willing to go out and get a job, regardless of how good or bad it is.

That $500 a month is a form of financial security; so I know that even if I get fired, I'll still have something to fall back on. It would ease the anxiety of having to deal with shitty managers, being potentially overworked, underpaid, etc, because it'd mean that if one job sucks, I can go find a different one without worrying that the rug was being completely pulled out from under my feet.

It also means that, if I am getting underpaid, I still potentially have some spending money that'll allow me some luxuries despite the low wage/salary being given to me by company I'm working for. That increases my flexibility for bullshit and allows me to be more tolerant of shitty managers.

The fact that you have to roll the dice and hope the company you're going to work for won't have shitty managers, low wages, overwork, etc is a real disincentive when you have family you can live with. That $500 a month makes the dice roll more tolerable.

My biggest concern is that if Universal Basic Income becomes, well, universal, then the cost of everything will likely spike in proportion to whatever UBI is. It's greedy, but logical that if all your tenants are getting $500 a month from the government, then that means you can raise their rent. Companies would also look at it and one department would say, "we can lower wages because of UBI" while another department says, "we can raise prices because people have more money via UBI". As such, the government would need to implement protections against such actions.

How do you do that though?

Do you peg the cost of rent to a formula based on land value, income, etc?

Do you peg the price of a product to the product's cost + X%?

Do you try and mandate wages based on performance, seniority, and job type?

At what point do you look at the tangle of laws and formulas and say, "this is insane; maybe instead of giving cash, we should give housing, food, water, electricity and other modern necessities."

Ultimately, I'm not sure any of the protections required for UBI to be successfull will be implemented. I'm not against the idea of UBI, but I don't trust the government (well, the US government anyway) to have the foresight to successfully pull it off.

Edit: At the end of the day, I don't want to live with my parents. I don't want to be unemployed, I don't want to feel like a drain on society, and I don't want to feel like I have nothing to offer to the world. I like to believe everyone has the potential to change the world for the better, either in a small way, or a big way. Right now I feel like I'm not doing anything, and I don't like it. However, I've had some very bad experiences with """unskilled""" jobs and the industry I've spent time training for (video games) is a fucking mess and is getting worse.

Brace for all of the explanations why we can't just do this...

Basic income pilots nationwide have seen noteworthy success, despite conservative opposition.

Well, conservatives have bad ideas on just about everything so that's not surprising. If all the conservatives just went away we could have a much nicer world like overnight.

Look we designed the entire system so that peoples lives could rapidly spiral out of control if they lost their job and this undermines so much of the hard work of billions in corporate lobbying.

The right only pretend to care about economics, whilst refusing to listen to its actual statements and outcomes. This is why Modern Monetary Theory is generally ignored.

Terrible article, but I'd like to see a paper or summary of the results. In my area, homeless folks just want a safe place to clean up to get jobs, and it's not available.

Don't you just love how a post-scarcety society is held up as the ultimate unreachable utopia but when it gets down to it, the vast majority of scarcity is either completely artificial or exacerbated to maximize profits? Profits that in turn only mean that much due to artificial scarcity.

Robber baron capitalism truly is as stupid as it's cruel.

The psychology of being supported by the society you work for is completely missed as a reason for why this is the case. It's this simple, people are more willing to work in a society they feel like cares for them. Why the fuck should I work if I feel like a higher quality of life is being arbitrarily gatekept by the previous generation? Fuck Republicans, they want to sell America to Putin. Being an American should be valuable.

UBI doesn't lend itself to "pilot" programs:

A Seattle-area guaranteed basic income pilot gave low-income residents $500 a month

102 participants

Employment in the group nearly doubled

So in a city with over 75,000 unemployed people, you saw at most 51 people get new jobs (didn't see how many were unemployed) and not a lot of data about a control group and how they randomly fared over the same interval. Also, to the extent the 102 participants enjoyed advantaged situation, did that come at the opportunity cost for some others outside the group?

To really try UBI, you need it pervasive and long term, like the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend, but that's a relatively low amount.

I mean, this is probably because having extra money to take care of yourself makes it easier to have the confidence to find work. But 500 a month is like giving someone a dollar in 2024 and saying "pay your rent, bills, utilities, also buy food, and gas for your car, and also pay your car insurance" and thinking you did something

UBI saves capitalism from itself. Do we really want to save this shit system that empowers the worst of us?

Do you honestly believe capitalists will allow a liveable UBI to remain untouched? Look at the minimum wage if you'd like to see the future of UBI. $7.25 an hour fucking shameful.

UBI is the future ⛷️