MinmiTheDino“If you give ppl UBI, everyone’s just going to be making pots or painting or something!”
Good!! Good! Can’t express how much more I want to fill my home with pots and paintings than with a stovetop that inexplicably connects to the internet.
Quasit@minmi
If you give people UBI but don't get rid of the oligarchs and capitalism, the price of everything will just go up sufficiently to erase that UBI—and probably more.
So if they give everybody $2,000 a month, the price of everything will probably go up $3,000 a month. If they increase the UBI to 3000, prices will go up to $4,000. Or 5,000. What you have to understand is that as far as the billionaires are concerned, any money we receive is rightfully theirs. And they will use ALL of their power to take it away from us. The working class must always be on the ragged edge of starvation at all times, in the eyes of the oligarchs.
So the UBI by itself is simply meaningless UNLESS we end capitalism. The necessities of life should be free to all, regardless of the specific costs. Everyone deserves housing, everyone deserves food, everyone deserves clean water, everyone deserves power and information.
Once the necessities are free, people can work and contribute to the general good. We can live the lives that WE choose to live, and help each other to make the best of their own abilities and talents. We're going to need every human being to be able to do their best to help save the planet, and to be as fulfilled and content as possible while doing it.
Nothing against UBI as such. Just a warning that in itself it is absolutely not a cure for capitalism.
AKingsbury
GhostOnTheHalfShellRE: https://masto.ai/@GhostOnTheHalfShell/116382527232157424
UBI without non-market alternatives to capitalists.
UBI already exist in the United States. It’s lavished on the super wealthy.
The brief summary here is the federal government creates money when it spends money, our taxes delete money. The super rich control gov and they control the magic money machine. They decide spending . They also decide taxes.
They get all the money and aren’t taxed and we get pennies which are taxed. They keep. ours is destroyed.
@minmi Also, where does the money for the UBI •come• from? Presumably the taxpayers, right? In other words, US! Not the billionaires; they RECEIVE money from the government, they don't pay it.
Us. So they will take our money, steal a large chunk of it as they always do, and then give the rest back to us as UBI. And the billionaires, if we don't end them completely, will just keep raising prices again and again.
Billionaires are cancer. As long as they exist, they will continue to kill us all off. I don't understand how anyone can fail to realize that.
CyIt would do good, though not in the way people think. The power of the wealthy is not how much money they have, but how much more money they have. A UBI would cut out the most extreme poverty, which the wealthy rely on to stay wealthy. It's their bargaining chip. Do what we say or this will happen to you. So prices would go up, and poor people wouldn't especially benefit in the long run, but it would curtail the power of the rich. Enough that they're going all out trying to shut down any conversation on it.
UBI falsly validates them in some troubling ways, much the same as charity, welfare, and unions do. But it would still do more good than nothing at all.
CC: @[email protected]
UBI falsly validates them in some troubling ways, much the same as charity, welfare, and unions do. But it would still do more good than nothing at all.
CC: @[email protected]
@minmi
Oh, and of course UBI will ALWAYS be the first thing to be slashed or eliminated when any excuse comes up.
Programs that enrich the rich (like military expenditures) are •sacred and untouchable•. Programs for the poor and working class are an •abomination• in the eyes of the overlords.