Anonymous wrote:A friend who works closely with tech leaders to discuss AI said they all believe this is the future. Basically large groups of unemployed people being "managed" while a very small portion becomes super wealthy. The vision she described was horrifying and it has haunted me ever since.

So big government and rich gov insiders/politicians.
And everyone else.
Sounds like most countries in the world today.
Sounds like socialism.

A friend who works closely with tech leaders to discuss AI said they all believe this is the future. Basically large groups of unemployed people being "managed" while a very small portion becomes super wealthy. The vision she described was horrifying and it has haunted me ever since.

Anonymous wrote:Bad for the soul - humans are meant to work, have a purpose, and be productive. Communities with large numbers of nonworking people tend to have problems with crime and addiction.

This. How many people would actually use their time well and volunteer or launch a business? A minority would thrive but the rest would lay around watching TikTok developing health problems and addictions.

Trump really seems to like China so I say we make anyone applying for UBI do 5 years of public service as a social media propagandist or internet police. That way we won't have the idle young male problem and no one will know anything is wrong.

I feel that it's inevitable, but I also worry about the inflationary aspect. I think it could be a good thing ONLY if it came with government price controls, which we know is a nonstarter in our economically-illiterate society. I don't know of any other way to keep the robber baron class from further enriching themselves to societal detriment.

Something's gotta give, though. More and more Americans are failing, by every metric. And when you're talking about population level changes, it's nonsensical to look at individuals and say "get a job".

Costs of every part of life have ballooned out of proportion to wages. Executive pay and stock prices have also ballooned vis a vis wages. I think we really need to get a handle on the extractive class-- the C suite, hedge funds, PE, vulture capital-- first. They add no value and should not be tolerated.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Won’t UBI just lead to massive inflation like the pandemic payments did?

Inflation is a result of money supply. If the median HHI right now is $80k and the median UBI HHI is $50k...it will be deflationary. Maybe people will be able to earn more than $30k on side hustles, but probably not.

Of course, much of the theory on why UBI would be $50k comes from the idea that AI and robots drastically reduces the costs of things...a car will now cost 50% less if few people are needed to produce it and/or people stop owning cars outright and just subscribe to a driverless car service...food production won't need labor as robots do all the farming or meat packing or whatever...etc.

The problem is that everyone is very fuzzy on how UBI will work. Would seem that companies will need to be taxed at like 80%+ to support UBI payments.

NP. I still don’t see how UBI would be disinflationary. That makes no sense.

Well, if median HHI drops from $80k to $50k, that will pull money out of the economy and be deflationary.

What else do you need to know if you accept that premise?

Holy moley, maybe learn some economics. No, a lower median HHI does not mean deflation, or that money is being pulled out. It usually just means money is concentrated in the upper tail that median measures don't reflect.

Also, inflation is not evenly distributed. Lower income households tend to experience higher inflation than others, in part because necessities are more inflation-sensitive and in part because those households are unable to take advantage of cost-stabilizing measures (classically, buying a home, buying food in bulk, etc).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Won’t UBI just lead to massive inflation like the pandemic payments did?

Inflation is a result of money supply. If the median HHI right now is $80k and the median UBI HHI is $50k...it will be deflationary. Maybe people will be able to earn more than $30k on side hustles, but probably not.

Of course, much of the theory on why UBI would be $50k comes from the idea that AI and robots drastically reduces the costs of things...a car will now cost 50% less if few people are needed to produce it and/or people stop owning cars outright and just subscribe to a driverless car service...food production won't need labor as robots do all the farming or meat packing or whatever...etc.

The problem is that everyone is very fuzzy on how UBI will work. Would seem that companies will need to be taxed at like 80%+ to support UBI payments.

NP. I still don’t see how UBI would be disinflationary. That makes no sense.

Well, if median HHI drops from $80k to $50k, that will pull money out of the economy and be deflationary.

What else do you need to know if you accept that premise?

There might be some logic behind putting RFK Jr. in charge of the health of America and cutting off SNAP and healthcare for many. Modern economy does not need us peasants. 30+% of our economy is driven by the spending of the top 10 %. Jeff will replace us with robots and then we will not even be needed to deliver their DoorDash. So yeah, future is limitless.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Won’t UBI just lead to massive inflation like the pandemic payments did?

Inflation is a result of money supply. If the median HHI right now is $80k and the median UBI HHI is $50k...it will be deflationary. Maybe people will be able to earn more than $30k on side hustles, but probably not.

Of course, much of the theory on why UBI would be $50k comes from the idea that AI and robots drastically reduces the costs of things...a car will now cost 50% less if few people are needed to produce it and/or people stop owning cars outright and just subscribe to a driverless car service...food production won't need labor as robots do all the farming or meat packing or whatever...etc.

The problem is that everyone is very fuzzy on how UBI will work. Would seem that companies will need to be taxed at like 80%+ to support UBI payments.

NP. I still don’t see how UBI would be disinflationary. That makes no sense.

+1, it makes no economic sense for it to be deflationary.

Worse, if it did play out as described, then you are talking about a serf culture in which the majority of people have subsistence income and limited job opportunities - which leads to crime, always - while a tiny fraction collect the proceeds and use it to pay the serf class to become private military, sex workers, etc. You end up with either dystopia or revolution (or both) and forward progress halts while we relearn the lessons of the last ~500 years. Why anybody is interested in this baffles me.

Luckily, in reality AI won't replace that many jobs. It will reduce the need for certain kinds of work, sure. But AI's wildly overhyped, and human workers are inventive, and the main risk to jobs in the near-term is the credulousness of CEOs who think AI can actually replace people.
There will also be (already is) a movement to prefer human-made work, human-services, etc. It will become a point of principle and/or class status to not use AI.

Used to be against, but we are at a point where UBI is better than the alternative - mass starvation and all out civil war over bread. Elon Musk is supposedly going to make $1T, which is pure insanity. No human on Earth is worth one trillion dollars. Tax them all. F them.

NP. I still don’t see how UBI would be disinflationary. That makes no sense.

Even if it did make sense, we don't want it. Deflation is bad because no one buys anything. Why would anyone buy something today when it will be cheaper tomorrow.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Won’t UBI just lead to massive inflation like the pandemic payments did?

Inflation is a result of money supply. If the median HHI right now is $80k and the median UBI HHI is $50k...it will be deflationary. Maybe people will be able to earn more than $30k on side hustles, but probably not.

Of course, much of the theory on why UBI would be $50k comes from the idea that AI and robots drastically reduces the costs of things...a car will now cost 50% less if few people are needed to produce it and/or people stop owning cars outright and just subscribe to a driverless car service...food production won't need labor as robots do all the farming or meat packing or whatever...etc.

The problem is that everyone is very fuzzy on how UBI will work. Would seem that companies will need to be taxed at like 80%+ to support UBI payments.

NP. I still don’t see how UBI would be disinflationary. That makes no sense.

Anonymous wrote:Bad for the soul - humans are meant to work, have a purpose, and be productive. Communities with large numbers of nonworking people tend to have problems with crime and addiction.

This. The American Indians have basically run a half-century experiment for us on what UBI and no real need for work does to a society. It’s not great. You rob people of purpose when you give a whole population perpetual checks from casino revenue.

Anonymous wrote:There will come a time when AI evolves to a point where it has the ability to replace almost every job done by a human. At that point the only viable path for humans to survive would be UBI and universal healthcare.

How many years away is the U.S. from UBI?

People have been making this very argument for 150 years. It intensifies around times of more-rapid developments in productivity. But it’s never been correct. People think it is when they can imagine only an economy that wants just the goods and services currently provided, but nothing more. They assume that humans will not demand increasing comforts and wider ranges of products.

If, in 1910, you looked around America and said there’s no way that today’s farm workers will be able to live, because given the amount of wheat and salted pork America needs, the tractors will replace all of them.

Our appetites for variety expanded. This happens in all sectors.

There were no occupational therapists in 1910.

Anonymous wrote:Won’t UBI just lead to massive inflation like the pandemic payments did?

Inflation is a result of money supply. If the median HHI right now is $80k and the median UBI HHI is $50k...it will be deflationary. Maybe people will be able to earn more than $30k on side hustles, but probably not.

Of course, much of the theory on why UBI would be $50k comes from the idea that AI and robots drastically reduces the costs of things...a car will now cost 50% less if few people are needed to produce it and/or people stop owning cars outright and just subscribe to a driverless car service...food production won't need labor as robots do all the farming or meat packing or whatever...etc.

The problem is that everyone is very fuzzy on how UBI will work. Would seem that companies will need to be taxed at like 80%+ to support UBI payments.