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this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
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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.
You deal with the inflation issue with strict antitrust enforcement. Actual competition in the market should keep prices under control but we've let a handful of companies corner the market on way too many things and well, just look around.
If capitalism must persist, then this is the most reasonable suggestion. And it will persist so long as everyone is distracted or run down enough to lack the hope for change.
IDK, the housing market seems to follow different rules than TVs, for example. Rent prices highly depend on the income of individuals in the area. Rent, land, and houses are very cheap where there are no jobs, and very expensive where there are many highly paid jobs. I suppose it's because you can't manufacture more land at a lower cost in places where people want to live, ridiculous zoning practices, and real estate being used as an investment vehicle (not only by large corporations, but also by many fairly well-off people who buy a new home and rent out their previous one, for example).
UBI and remote work have the potential to even things out dramatically. Towns that lack employment opportunities could attract people other than retirees and services that would have otherwise been unavailable could be sustained.
I suppose it could cause pricing problems in some areas, but that could probably be mitigated by high property taxes coupled with tax breaks for primary residences to curb real estate hoarding and rent seeking.
Well you can identify shortages in required goods like food, housing, and internet; and have the government enter the market with a basic level of service "at cost". Put an anchor right in that market.
Everyone needs food, housing, water, electricity, healthcare, education, and Internet access. Those things would need to be capped pretty tightly.
I can almost hear the conservatives howling now. I mean, they howl about it now, and we've not even done anything about it!
I think ultimately UBI would have to be one of many aspects of moving towards post-scarcity. We will also need to be incrementally introducing free basic needs, free education, internet access, public transit, etc alongside it, while also passing rent control laws and, if antitrust laws aren't up to the task, perhaps seizing oversized corps, and turning them into employee owned, maybe balkanized versions of themselves wherever that makes sense from an antitrust perspective.
You don't get radical changes without radical solutions. None of this will happen without a fight of course.
It’s real simple, but functionally impossible under our system. A small landlord raises rent to extract the extra value, put them in prison. A corporate landlord does it? Sentence them to death.