Bill Gates knows better than most that there’s enough money in the world to try and tackle both climate change and poverty, and still leave him a billionaire.
I think the wording that really bugs me in his quote is “healthy and productive life”. If all the alarms are true we’re already fucked on climate, so he’s concerned about maintaining a labor force.
UBI is a pipe dream. Capitalists would never agree to pay for it. And it wouldn’t even matter if they did. Under capitalism, companies and landlords would just raise rent and prices if we all had UBI. Exactly what happened with the Covid stimulus programs.
No, unfortunately the only solution is to do away with capitalism entirely and start doing socialism instead.
Everyone wants UBI but no one explains how that shit would work. And you can bet that you would only get enough to barely subsist in such a system as you are just being paid fake money to exist. That’s no world for humans to thrive in.
I think the idea is if you’re guaranteed a subsistence pay, then you are free to devote your time to creating something. Art, a business, a community, whatever that makes your life meaningful, rather than devoting 90% of your time working for someone elses profit, travelling to work, resting to be able to work, and eating to continue to work.
You want to talk about bare subsistence, that is what most people are doing now in terms of time as a resource.
In our system what would prevent basic necessities from costing “UBI + some amount” after it’s implemented? If this is something that you want to happen, you won’t get it by just discussing the benefits while ignoring/downvoting any sort of critical discussion of it.
I think that is a tough one. As long as we accept the value of a thing is what people are willing to pay for it, the prices will always climb.
For essential products and services, the value should be based only on the effort required to provide or produce it.
The main reason we’re dealing with our current inflation has everything to do with the amount of cash flowing upwards from the working class to the boardroom and shareholders.
The prices are going up on essential items because people can’t afford to not buy gas, or not eat, or not rent. They need those to stay employable, and they slowly sacrificed everything else to keep those. So the price goes up, and people keep buying it, telling the heartless corporations that they can raise the prices more.
Now we have significant portions of the population using short term loans or payment plans to buy their next weeks groceries.
I agree with all this but think it’s going to take fundamental changes to our entire economic structure, which are desperately needed but unlikely to ever happen as long as the nation is run by a collection of millionaires and billionaires all playimg different ‘roles’ while serving the same goal.
A cynical view would be that he realizes that we as a species are doomed, and wants everyone to at least be comfortable as the world becomes unlivable for us.
Bill Gates knows better than most that there’s enough money in the world to try and tackle both climate change and poverty, and still leave him a billionaire.
I think the wording that really bugs me in his quote is “healthy and productive life”. If all the alarms are true we’re already fucked on climate, so he’s concerned about maintaining a labor force.
It’s not money. It’s timing. You really want UBI before automation. There’s never been a push for AI and robots like this before.
UBI is a pipe dream. Capitalists would never agree to pay for it. And it wouldn’t even matter if they did. Under capitalism, companies and landlords would just raise rent and prices if we all had UBI. Exactly what happened with the Covid stimulus programs.
No, unfortunately the only solution is to do away with capitalism entirely and start doing socialism instead.
Everyone wants UBI but no one explains how that shit would work. And you can bet that you would only get enough to barely subsist in such a system as you are just being paid fake money to exist. That’s no world for humans to thrive in.
I think the idea is if you’re guaranteed a subsistence pay, then you are free to devote your time to creating something. Art, a business, a community, whatever that makes your life meaningful, rather than devoting 90% of your time working for someone elses profit, travelling to work, resting to be able to work, and eating to continue to work.
You want to talk about bare subsistence, that is what most people are doing now in terms of time as a resource.
In our system what would prevent basic necessities from costing “UBI + some amount” after it’s implemented? If this is something that you want to happen, you won’t get it by just discussing the benefits while ignoring/downvoting any sort of critical discussion of it.
I think that is a tough one. As long as we accept the value of a thing is what people are willing to pay for it, the prices will always climb.
For essential products and services, the value should be based only on the effort required to provide or produce it.
The main reason we’re dealing with our current inflation has everything to do with the amount of cash flowing upwards from the working class to the boardroom and shareholders.
The prices are going up on essential items because people can’t afford to not buy gas, or not eat, or not rent. They need those to stay employable, and they slowly sacrificed everything else to keep those. So the price goes up, and people keep buying it, telling the heartless corporations that they can raise the prices more.
Now we have significant portions of the population using short term loans or payment plans to buy their next weeks groceries.
I agree with all this but think it’s going to take fundamental changes to our entire economic structure, which are desperately needed but unlikely to ever happen as long as the nation is run by a collection of millionaires and billionaires all playimg different ‘roles’ while serving the same goal.
A cynical view would be that he realizes that we as a species are doomed, and wants everyone to at least be comfortable as the world becomes unlivable for us.