RE: Does the World Need a Universal Basic Income? Could Steem Power It?
I do believe as population grows or even remains where it is and many jobs go to automation that there could be less jobs for some people. Most of the jobs will tend to be in aspects of the mind we have no clue how to reproduce with computers. We can fake some of it but, these things usually have patterns and once humans become aware of the patterns they lose interest.
So there may be some people that do not adapt and find a niche they can contribute in. A place like steemit could potentially help with something like that if they participate. The key to any endeavor is participation.
A lot of the ideas people come up with arise from the concept of compassion. I believe voluntarily of your own free will assisting someone truly is compassionate. If you were forced to do it by a government or group then it has nothing to do with compassion since there was not a choice.
I am opposed to artificial raising of wages such as minimum wage, and thus it seems making a universal wage would be similar. I think it might work short term and then would become the same vicious cycle as minimum wage. There is no FREE. When you give a wage increase it is paid for in some way. Markets will adjust, and inflation will remain. It is my firm belief that in the short term these things FEEL great and are easy, but in the long term they do far more harm than good.
I was talking to someone the other day... consider this.
You are making $7.50 /hr and I am making $15.01/hr. I am living pretty good and getting by well. You are struggling.
Minimum wage is forced to $15/hr by the fed. You are now making $15/hr and I am still making $15.01/hr. Price and market adjustments will happen but for awhile you are living it up and feeling better than you ever have. In a year maybe two you start to feel that pinch again. Furthermore, I am right there with you. I am feeling the pinch too.
It is my belief that such actions give a temporary feeling of fixing something but that they actually erode from the underside of the middle class and grow the size of the lower class.
I could be wrong, but mathematically, and logically it makes sense to me. I don't really hear people discuss that, and the impact such actions have on the people that were just slightly above that minimum wage.
So why is this relevant.... a Universal Basic Income is essentially a minimum wage. Are you planning on giving the UBI to everyone, even those already making more than the UBI, or are you treating it as basically like a minimum wage that is paid to everyone regardless of whether they have a job or not?
Reverse income tax; payable monthly. Everyone gets it unconditionally.
Hey @dwinblood, thanks for commenting!
I absolutely, whole-heartedly, 100% agree with you here.
I also agree a minimum wage backed by government decree is not the answer and only makes things worse (side note: Jefrey Tucker at PorcFest recently quoted from a very old economics textbook which basically described the minimum wage as a eugenics program. Sickening.)
Have you done some research on the concept to come to that conclusion or is that your initial understanding of it? I've come to understand it as a universal income, meaning everyone gets it regardless of their status, their job, etc. The idea that everyone needs to work in order to survive made sense before we started automating things to the point of exponentially increasing our productivity. From my perspective, much of the value humans create today is extracted by fractional reserve lending banksters and other crony activities designed by criminals in government. Value exists all around us, it's just being stollen.
Take a look at the Steem rich list. If they so desired and if the market cap of STEEM went into the 10's or 100's of billions of dollars, they could Vest STEEM into Steem Power for many, many people. In essence, that's what @dantheman, @ned and the founders of Steem do when they sign up new accounts. If the value was there, the power down nature of Steem could provide weekly payments of value to a lot of people. That, to me, is an amazing thing.
I hadn't come to any conclusions on UBI which is why I asked if everyone got it regardless of whether they had a job or not. Mainly because my $7.50/hr vs $15.01/hr person example... if you had a UBI of $6/hr which people CAN survive on but they can't eat great and such... can probably even do less. I guarantee you welfare/food stamps pays way more than people actually need. Most groceries I've ever been able to buy for my family have been when I qualified for food stamps. We ate like kings in our opinion. :) I haven't qualified for a long time and spend less than half what food stamps gave me. So if the UBI is to make sure people can survive it would need to be realistic. So let's say it was $6/hr as a hypothetical... would that mean the person that was making $6/hr would get the $6/hr UBI + if they had a job their $7.50/hr and the other person would be getting $6/hr + $15.01/hr?
I think it would change the labor market because employers would have to be more competitive when hiring (since not everyone had to work). There are a lot of valid concerns about inflation or even hyperinflation, but from my perspective, we'd already be seeing hyper inflation right now given the $8T+ which has been created out of nothing over the last 8 years or so. The reason we aren't, I think, is because of incredible productivity we have due to technology. We should probably be seeing $8T+ in deflation right now, but the FED just prints away (to the benefit of their bankster cronies who see the money first) which essentially steals from the rest of us.
If you want to know more, I'd recommend following those Facebook groups for a few months. They post a lot of really interesting articles from some very smart people on the topic. Inflation is a possibility, but there are also other offsets which might prevent that from happening.