Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

GPT-5entient t1_j2aw9oh wrote

I thought about UBI a lot lately and honestly it just seems like too of a blunt tool to combat technological unemployment. Maybe once true AGI is here and it takes away virtually ALL the jobs, but before that I would like to see a combination of these policies (roll out as necessary per economy needs):

  1. 4 day work week. We had orders if magnitude in productivity gains over the past 100 years but the work week stayed the same. This is a no brainer in my opinion and indeed some European countries are already implementing it or at least seriously thinking about it. Let's get some of the productivity gains back to workers instead of the 1%.
  2. Government created jobs. Use the funds that would be used for UBI to actually create jobs that would be useful for the economy - building infrastructure, education, etc. Whatever is needed.
  3. Pay people to go to school. Until true AGI there should still be jobs growing in certain sectors. Let's pay people to get education in selected fields as per economy needs.
  4. Pay stay at home moms. In the US many moms have to go back to work pretty much right after birth. This is just insane and extremely detrimental to the wellbeing of the child. Let's pay moms to stay home with their kids. This is common in many EU countries until the age 3 (on the upper end). Let's extend it right up to school age and remove these moms from the workforce to do the most important job there is.

As I said, some versions of these are already commonplace in Europe. The US has the "advantage" of having close no to welfare currently (compared to other developed countries) so there is room to grow just implementing the basic EU policies to combat the upcoming wave of technological unemployment.

1