It's similar to when teenagers live at home and receive an allowance. Aren't ok wearing the clothes your mom bought you? Don't want to drive the old family hauler as your first car? Want the latest console your parents won't/can't afford to buy you? Go get a job, save while still benefiting from your parents, and buy what you want.

I'm talking about social mobility. That's not the same thing as wage.
Do you think someone at the age of 20 in the workforce makes as much as he will when he's 40? No. Because people are constantly moving in and out of economic classes.

And you don't like the cost of living? Well you're gonna love the cost of living when the bc NDP carbon tax kicks in and everything costs even more. No tax cuts to offset it either. It's going straight to green initiatives. But hey, they've got the answer; more corporate taxes! That should draw business in.
Oh, and that's on top of Trudeau's carbon (everything) tax.
Treating the sickness with sickness.

Riiiight. And what happens when someone loses that passion for what they do? Or when too many people wanna do one thing and not the other? Or when someone decides, hey, I just plain ol' don't feel like contributing. Where does the incentive come from then?
I'll tell you where it comes from; the end of a bayonet. Tried that before many times, remember? Millions slaughtered, yada yada..

I realize capitalism has it's flaws. But it is the fairest, freest system available.

Allowance!? Hah! No wonder these damn "kids" are still in the basement at 30! Perfect example thank you.

It really shouldn't come as a surprise tho. The NDP is a socialist Democrat party. They discourage the private sector in favor of a public sector. The only industry they want running is public. Paid for by you and me and controlled by them.

BC has had a carbon tax since 2008 and it's higher than the federally-mandated (Trudeau) carbon tax.

Sorry. Carbon Tax increase

And yes, all that universal income stuff looks great in theory, but the only place it leads to is pure socialism. When you tax the hell out of the private sector to pay for it and the private sector caves in on itself, the only move is all the way left.

You don't create a healthy society by increasing dependency. Human beings are incredibly adaptive when you allow them to be, IMO.

So (all of this will happen and is happening) private sector utilizes more automation, makes even more money even more easily, inevitably people lose all kinds of jobs (not just 'entry level' either)...

And this leads to prosperity for all... how?

Welfare is just worried that when automation takes his job, and his passion for shitposting right-wing tropes on RS peters out he's gonna be sitting on his ass wondering what he's going to do.

welfare is an interesting fellow, for sure.
But he does have a point here.

In the past, if you're physically or mentally deficient, lazy, or obese, you would die. There were no social parachutes to keep your unproductive ass protected. You either survived, or you didn't and your DNA string was wiped off the map.

https://media.giphy.com/media/czMq0X7aqCEVy/giphy.gif

But there are so many protections in place to keep folks in a cycle of poverty. You have the guy who has been on disability for the last ten years, and takes a dozen anti-depressants a day. You have the woman on welfare with 4 kids from 4 different daddies. You have the trust fund kid who chooses to stay on EI, even though he's fully capable of working. These are real problems that take away from those who truly need the help.

Yeah but what happens when a critical mass of able-bodied and sound mind can't work anymore because there's no jobs for them? Or at least jobs that pay a living wage? You're already seeing this with all the Trumpeteer factory workers and coal miners. What happens when all the white collar jobs disappear? We can't all be basket weavers and wood whittlers. I don't claim to have an answer, but the current system of "dog eat dog" "pull yourself up from your bootstraps" won't work.

The thing is, it's not just the incapable (for whatever reason) that will be affected. Practically EVERYTHING will be able to be automated eventually. First with supervision, then with AI. Everyone from ditch diggers to truck drivers to investment bankers will have nothing to do.

Also there's not much point in referencing the past of how "things should be". The world was built based on people with means taking advantage of those without. It's time to move on from that.

The ability to fly under the radar, to survive without contributing, would seem to be ingrained in our DNA. Yet this behaviour isn't prevalent among the majority of the population. Automation will eventually effect the majority of the population. There are examples of segments of society who are provided a safety net and who are not content with it and that is why I brought up teenagers. Unlike those young boys in your 300 example, thrust out into the world, they have the safety net of parental guardianship (basic food, shelter, clothing), and they still insist on earning their own money to buy the things they want or follow they path they choose for themselves. Incentive is not lost for the majority of them and neither will it be for the majority of us.

I always had to work for my allowance. If I didn't feel like working, I didn't get paid.

Let’s say your parents gave you 20 bucks a week, but if you did your chores you’d get 80. Would you do nothing and take the 20?

I probably would have taken the 20 and blown it all on pop rocks. Then wait for the next 20 so I can buy more pop rocks... lol

prosperity for all. that's the difference. i don't believe prosperity for all is a natural occurence of life.
if we all had equal prosperity, we would have no reason to excel. we wouldn't even know what exceling is without anything to compare it to. theory of relativity.
i'm sorry but life is not about equal outcomes. cold as it sounds. you can look at all species on the planet. that's not how evolution works.

how profitable do you think it would become if everything became automated, and there were no more jobs for people to make money to buy these products? does that sound like it would be an intelligent thing to do, as a producer of goods?

yea but would we be engaging in "interesting" conversation without my shitposting?

you're welcome, dear

It's not dependency; it's the fact that society is not giving people an even and level playing field to begin with. If everyone that was born had the same opportunities/natural ability as everyone else, then this system would work. But it doesn't. Someone that comes from generational wealth will be better off than those that aren't from generational wealth. And thus the suffering of the poor continues.

And my question is, what is fundamentally wrong with that? Isn't that what retirement basically is? What the majority of the population "looks forward to" when they hit their 60's or 70's if they are lucky?

Some of us are consumers. Some of us are producers. Let the consumers consume, and let the producers produce. Why is it dictated that we need to "work" to find meaning in our lives? If you wanna blow the 20 on pop rocks, then blow the 20 on pop rocks. What you decide to do with the remainder of your time is up to you. The point is to allow you to find your own meaning in your life; as long as it doesn't hurt or affect others.

I think you are misunderstanding UBI. It's not about prosperity for all. It's about creating a baseline for everybody so that at the very least, people do not have to worry about basic needs. Right now we have certain safety nets in Canada to help alleviate these problems; but applying for them, getting them takes a lot of time effort and energy. Time and energy that could be spent on more productive things. You have to "meet certain criteria" in order to apply for these safety nets.

Like many people have already pointed out, this is an issue that's staring us in the face right now and it's barreling down towards us. Almost all jobs will soon be able to be automated at some level. That means job loss across basically all sectors of industry. There simply won't be enough jobs for the population, at least not at the rate that automation will take over. I'm sure over the longer term, we will come up with new jobs; just like we have after the industrial revolution took over. We switched over from labor based workforce to a retail and service based work force (look at most western society). That transition was extremely painful for people, but we got through it. AI is going to be a completely different beast though. And if you don't start planning now, you are going to have a big portion of the population that can't afford to get through this transition smoothly, and will suffer greatly. You will have pissed off, poor people that can't afford to eat or pay rent anymore. It doesn't matter if they are incentivised. Companies simply wouldn't need them because robots and computers will do their job better and 24/7 without needing to rest or take vacation days.

Yes, but even people from the gutter can rise up and utilize their intelligence and environment to gain wealth. If they so choose. All of the tools are readily available for the willing. That's the beauty of the free market. No one is systematically oppressing anyone here.
This may come off as harsh, but the truth is the vast majority of those in poverty were not forced into their position. They made choices. Just like every other human does everyday. Some make sound choices, some irresponsible. But at the end of the day, it was a choice.
And Taking away that accountability does a great disservice to the individual, IMO.



Actually, everyone is a consumer. That's kind of the point. We consume, and so we must produce. If one person is doing one but not the other, does that sound fair?


The industrial revolution. People adapted. The market grew stronger for it. It's what we do.
AI is helping with jobs. Not taking over entire sectors. This speculation honestly sounds like propaganda. And propaganda is a very dangerous tool.

And who do you suppose is going to pay for this? The estimated cost for Canada would be 30b$ annually I believe. That's not pocket change.

UBI may work in Finland. Possibly. Depending on what your definition of success is for the program. With a population of 5.5m. but they could have easily just adjusted their social income program to incentivise employment rather than penalize it instead.

That simply isn't true. Get born in a shitty neighborhood. Infested in gang violence. Shitty education system. Shitty social programs. None-existent parenting. Work two jobs but still poor as fuck. Student loans, debt. Have you really not heard of this story over and over again? I don't know about you but I've seen this shit first hand and it's not for lack of trying that people aren't able to able to move vertically to the next social class. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying the cards are stacked against them, and it's only been getting harder and harder. Luck plays a way bigger role than you're trying to make it out to be.



Consolidation of corp/megacorps is the way moving forward. Competing with these companies in free market conditions is becoming harder and harder. Try competing in an industry with companies like Google/Amazon/Facebook etc. The dream is to get bought out, not to actually compete. Is that really capitalism then?

Not everyone is a consumer. There are producers for the sake of producing, and to produce purely for the advancement of passion. That's the should be the way moving forward, not advancement for the purpose of maximizing profit. Because when you advance for the purpose of maximizing profit, you'll see the people on the bottom fucked as much as possible for the profit of the top.





The market grew stronger for it, sure. But who really benefited from that? Income redistribution is key.

I've seen it myself as well, and I can tell you that there are many many choices the disadvantaged that I grew up with had made and continue to make to keep themselves there.
Of course it's an uphill battle. But that battle is important for strength and human capital. Which is the ability to self sustain.

It's not about being wealthy. That can be lost within a generation easily. It's about sustaining it.
If tomorrow income classes were reversed, and the bottom twenty percent of earners were switched with the top twenty percent, I have no doubt that by the next generation, the bottom would have moved toward the centre or top, and the top would have moved toward the bottom.
The reason is choices. Management and mismanagement. It is the way it is because of choices
You don't teach sustainability by giving it away. It teaches the opposite. It's hard to appreciate something you didn't earn. This is a generation of instant gratification. And I find it very unhealthy.



You haven't answered my question of who is going to pay

So you think if a bank comes up with an AI that can trade stocks that make 10% more profit on top of the salaries they would save by cutting redundant staff, they wouldn't do so because it would means these people wouldn't be able to be their customers?

No wonder you like capitalism so much, you have no idea how it works.

These corporations will do ANYTHING to make more money than they did last year. The amount of people who make this money will get smaller and smaller, leaving everyone else behind.

The 1% will become the 0.5% and then the 0.1% and so on

What you are stating here is a form of selection bias. I'm sure we all know of the rags-to-riches story about a guy who rose out of the ghetto to become CEO of his own clothing line. But that's the outlier. For every 1 of those stories there's probably a 10000 that you never hear of where generational poverty is the reality for them.

We already do pay, through EI, CPP, etc. Except it's paid out extremely inefficiently through the various welfare programs in place now. The cost savings from implementing an across the board UBI would make up some of the difference. I'm not an expert on this but I assume we will also need to top it up somehow probably in the form of more taxes. However, in the long run society will be better off for this as it will free up human capital to do more productive actions rather than just fight for survival. I mean the gov't already does this by providing basic infrastructure, sanitation, water, etc. How would your life be if you had to blaze your own foot path every time you went out and draw water from a well every morning? Is that not dependency? Unless you live in the woods as a survivalist, you're talking out of your ass

i'm not an economics guru. but it doesn't take one to understand the simple concept of the free market.
technology makes jobs obsolete. this is nothing new. jobs are made obsolete and others are created. the market doesn't just evaporate. it's a cycle. the market adjusts.

i couldn't find AI technlogy capable of successfully trading stocks. can you share?