PoliTalker
Diversity Makes Greatness
"How to Hand Out Free Money
When the robots take our jobs, we’ll need another form of income. Alaska can show us the way."
Mother Jones
"For nearly four decades, the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) program, designed to share revenue from the state’s oil wealth, has made flat annual payouts to anyone who has lived there for at least one calendar year, barring those with certain criminal convictions. While the program’s architects didn’t use the term, it’s the closest thing today to a universal basic income program that has durably existed anywhere in the world.
The concept of universal basic income—in which governments pay residents a set sum regularly, no strings attached—has gained momentum in recent years. A growing chorus of Silicon Valley executives has called the policy inevitable, as automation threatens to displace one-third of American workers by 2030, raising the specter of unemployed masses rioting in the streets. Others have revived the idea as an efficient solution to poverty and inequality. Y Combin*ator, the tech startup accelerator, will soon test basic income with 3,000 people in two states, following a smaller study in Oakland, California. The city of Stockton, California, will launch a guaranteed income pilot in 2019, and lawmakers in Hawaii and Chicago are considering following suit. Trials have also launched in Barcelona, Canada, Finland, Kenya, Uganda, and Switzerland. In the United States, the concept is inching its way into the mainstream; Hillary Clinton’s campaign memoir disclosed she seriously considered floating a universal basic income program called “Alaska for America” during her 2016 run."
PoliTalker anti-troll thread thief disclaimer: If this thread is stolen, plagiarized, will the thief have the nerve to use the entire OP, word for word? Including this disclaimer? If you want my take on it, you'll have to post to this original PoliTalker thread. I refuse to be an enabler for online bullies, so I won't post to a stolen thread. I won't even read it. If you don't see me, PoliTalker, posting in this thread check the author. This might be a hijacked thread, not the original.
Eventually, most jobs as we know them will be performed by robots. Artificial Intelligence is changing the way we work. This level of automation will dwarf anything seen in the past. And it will not generate more jobs than it eliminates. We are on the precipice of having a society where there are far more willing workers than jobs.
As if we don't have that already. We can fool ourselves by claiming jobs are abundant and unemployment is low, but it is rarely wise to fool ourselves. Yes, jobs are abundant and unemployment is low, technically, but the unemployment figures count anybody working one hour per week as not unemployed. Nobody can live on one hour's pay unless they are CEO of a major corporation, so for millions of Americans, work and paychecks are not enough to live on. There is not enough work for everybody, and much of the work that is there doesn't pay enough to live on.
And the situation is poised to become far worse.
The need for government assistance is about to be amplified.
Should we continue to pay lots of government workers to be part of a huge bureaucracy to decide who gets benefits and who doesn't?
What if there was another way? That's a lot of money to run government agencies and pay people to enforce elaborate rules to decide who is needy and who isn't. It's a lot of overhead. It costs the taxpayers a lot of money just to try to figure out who gets what.
What if we simply handed out the money instead?
If we had a UBI, much of the government safety net could be dismantled.
Who is going to pay for it all?
The ultra rich. That's who.
The ultra rich are far richer than most. Most people don't even have any idea how rich the super-rich are. But let me tell you. They are rich. Rich enough to cover this.
And they are about to get a lot richer. Extreme wealth inequality is not going to stop. AI is going to launch it into the stratosphere. The only people who will be able to afford the fancy AI machines that will, not only do most jobs but also service and repair the new AI machines as well as design and build improves AI machines, will be the super-wealthy. Workers will not be able to own their own 'worker machine' that goes and does their job for them. No. It will not work that way. The super-wealthy will own those machines and they won't need workers any more. The 'job creator' nonsense will be blown out of the water. The AI race will be a race to eliminate jobs.
Your job could be going away.
And you might not be able to get another one.
The very need for whatever you are trained for will be going away.
And so will your paychecks.
And revenue.
We are going to have to raise taxes on the super-wealthy, and we are going to have to tax them enough to pay for the UBI.
There's no other way to do it.
Unless you have a better idea.
When the robots take our jobs, we’ll need another form of income. Alaska can show us the way."
Mother Jones
"For nearly four decades, the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) program, designed to share revenue from the state’s oil wealth, has made flat annual payouts to anyone who has lived there for at least one calendar year, barring those with certain criminal convictions. While the program’s architects didn’t use the term, it’s the closest thing today to a universal basic income program that has durably existed anywhere in the world.
The concept of universal basic income—in which governments pay residents a set sum regularly, no strings attached—has gained momentum in recent years. A growing chorus of Silicon Valley executives has called the policy inevitable, as automation threatens to displace one-third of American workers by 2030, raising the specter of unemployed masses rioting in the streets. Others have revived the idea as an efficient solution to poverty and inequality. Y Combin*ator, the tech startup accelerator, will soon test basic income with 3,000 people in two states, following a smaller study in Oakland, California. The city of Stockton, California, will launch a guaranteed income pilot in 2019, and lawmakers in Hawaii and Chicago are considering following suit. Trials have also launched in Barcelona, Canada, Finland, Kenya, Uganda, and Switzerland. In the United States, the concept is inching its way into the mainstream; Hillary Clinton’s campaign memoir disclosed she seriously considered floating a universal basic income program called “Alaska for America” during her 2016 run."
PoliTalker anti-troll thread thief disclaimer: If this thread is stolen, plagiarized, will the thief have the nerve to use the entire OP, word for word? Including this disclaimer? If you want my take on it, you'll have to post to this original PoliTalker thread. I refuse to be an enabler for online bullies, so I won't post to a stolen thread. I won't even read it. If you don't see me, PoliTalker, posting in this thread check the author. This might be a hijacked thread, not the original.
Eventually, most jobs as we know them will be performed by robots. Artificial Intelligence is changing the way we work. This level of automation will dwarf anything seen in the past. And it will not generate more jobs than it eliminates. We are on the precipice of having a society where there are far more willing workers than jobs.
As if we don't have that already. We can fool ourselves by claiming jobs are abundant and unemployment is low, but it is rarely wise to fool ourselves. Yes, jobs are abundant and unemployment is low, technically, but the unemployment figures count anybody working one hour per week as not unemployed. Nobody can live on one hour's pay unless they are CEO of a major corporation, so for millions of Americans, work and paychecks are not enough to live on. There is not enough work for everybody, and much of the work that is there doesn't pay enough to live on.
And the situation is poised to become far worse.
The need for government assistance is about to be amplified.
Should we continue to pay lots of government workers to be part of a huge bureaucracy to decide who gets benefits and who doesn't?
What if there was another way? That's a lot of money to run government agencies and pay people to enforce elaborate rules to decide who is needy and who isn't. It's a lot of overhead. It costs the taxpayers a lot of money just to try to figure out who gets what.
What if we simply handed out the money instead?
If we had a UBI, much of the government safety net could be dismantled.
Who is going to pay for it all?
The ultra rich. That's who.
The ultra rich are far richer than most. Most people don't even have any idea how rich the super-rich are. But let me tell you. They are rich. Rich enough to cover this.
And they are about to get a lot richer. Extreme wealth inequality is not going to stop. AI is going to launch it into the stratosphere. The only people who will be able to afford the fancy AI machines that will, not only do most jobs but also service and repair the new AI machines as well as design and build improves AI machines, will be the super-wealthy. Workers will not be able to own their own 'worker machine' that goes and does their job for them. No. It will not work that way. The super-wealthy will own those machines and they won't need workers any more. The 'job creator' nonsense will be blown out of the water. The AI race will be a race to eliminate jobs.
Your job could be going away.
And you might not be able to get another one.
The very need for whatever you are trained for will be going away.
And so will your paychecks.
And revenue.
We are going to have to raise taxes on the super-wealthy, and we are going to have to tax them enough to pay for the UBI.
There's no other way to do it.
Unless you have a better idea.
