ftc1234 t1_j8q0oz8 wrote on February 16, 2023 at 2:59 AM

Reply to comment by _gr4m_ in What will the singularity mean? Why are we persuing it? by wastedtime32

Mankind has made its life really comfortable in the last 50 years. If you told anyone in the early 1900s that most people will work from home in 2020, they’d find it unbelievable. All this comfort has come from using machines to make the humans work easier. Now we are going into a state where many people aren’t even needed in the production cycle unless they bring a ton of technical skills. This is why we have so much more homelessness and hopelessness now than before. I believe that this gap of people who are productive in the new world and who aren’t is going to keep increasing. What’s the solution? UBI is one of the solutions.

ComplicitSnake34 t1_j8qx9uh wrote on February 16, 2023 at 8:43 AM

The issue with giving people money is that they can only spend. Money as it stands doesn't have a use outside of satisfying peoples' needs. Sure, they can invest in capital, but in every welfare system devised they make it a point of function to ensure they don't have enough to develop capital (a rather cruel system).

The only real "welfare" programs that have worked in the past is just to employ people in government. They're still living off taxpayer money (scary I know) but are contributing back with their labor and their ideas of how systems should be ran. The military, firefighters/police, and municipal jobs have lifted millions out of poverty and into the middle class. However, as it stands, most government jobs require a college education (when it's usually unnecessary) and has barred the impoverished from getting those opportunities. Instead, people who have the means to afford higher-ed (the middle class+) battle it out for those positions which frankly aren't worth the time investment of attending a 4-year.