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RE: Universal Basic Income: the UN’s Latest Wealth Redistribution Scheme
Ah, yes, UBI is a socialist idea, as we can tell from the billionaire tech CEOs that endorse it.
Look, the point of UBI is that unlike existing welfare programs it doesn't disincentivise work, and once you have the policy in place, with a large enough allowance for people to actually live on, you can destroy all other social programs and privatise everything without objections. The policy is left-libertarian or neoliberal. Real socialists/communists hate it, for the same reason early 20th-century communists were against minimum wage laws - it'll only strengthen capitalism and weaken worker solidarity.
Hi phyg, thanks for your thoughtful reply.
I like the intent of UBI to help people. I have been there myself and needed help- but only for a short time (months), and I was fortunate to have people who let me work for them to get me through those tough times. Thus, I'm very empathetic towards those who struggle to make ends meet. What really scares me is that the UN pushes both socialism (equally distributing the fruits of human labor) and UBI, which also distributes the fruits of human labor in addition to our normal taxes.
Long-term predictions (by 2050 or so) indicate that the US will have the fastest declining economy in the world, followed by Europe. US residents are predicted to have less wealth at that time than they have today (see "2052" by Jorgen Randers). What's driving this is Sustainable Development, which aims to reduce mankind's impact on the environment by reducing our standards of living. Unemployment will go up as GDP falls, and everyone will need a safety net. UBI appears to be a prototype of that safety net. I'd much rather see prudent deregulation of businesses and policies which enable small business owners to flourish and hopefully decrease unemployment.
I can't imagine anything short of a nuclear war causing US GDP in 2050 to be lower than it is today. Maybe some of the more hysteric predictions of climate scientists would put climate change in that category too, but it looks to me like that 2052 prediction is for declining GDP by that year, not that it'll have plummeted back to present-day levels. Personally I think we'll be very lucky if climate change is the worst thing we have to worry about thirty years from now.
What has people in the tech sector worried about unemployment and advocating for UBI is technological unemployment - as new advances in AI and robotics come along and displace workers, there's a hotly debated question of whether those workers will be reabsorbed into the economy like in previous waves of automation, or whether this time is different. When self-driving trucks replace regular ones and all truckers are now unemployed, for instance, where do all those people go?
If those fears come true, and there's no UBI, the lucky people whose jobs haven't been automated away yet won't feel the pinch, since GDP will be rising faster than ever. But a permanent underclass will be created, and as technology advances more people will be dropped into that underclass every year while the capitalist class gets richer and richer.
With UBI, all the jobs disappearing while GDP just keeps growing is good news, it means people live more and more comfortably while nobody has to work who doesn't want to work.
I agree, I don't think climate will be our biggest issue by then, either. And you are correct, my information did come from a major climate scientist (Jorgan Randers). Let's add alarmist to that, shall we?
I'm also concerned about the tech sector, and again, you're spot on with the concern about AI displacing workers. I think it'll be more widespread and come upon us more quickly than people realize at this point.
Again, I share your concerns about the creation of a permanent underclass, as well as the pulling away of very successful capitalists. While I applaud hard-earned or even wise success, I disdain ill-gotten gains.
Thanks for your input. I looked into this further today, and I'm intrigued by talk that China recognizes that since most people have cell phones, UBI could be efficiently sent to their electronic wallets. That has the potential to be good news for everyone on here in the next few years.