Musk suggests a robot tax ? Basic Universal Income

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Originally Posted By: Falken
Originally Posted By: pandus13
Again:
Originally Posted By: javacontour
What people don't see is that money ultimately comes from you and me.


^ Keep in mind EVERYONE gets the same base amount.

There are certain concepts in the future that won't have any sound backing in reality, but still "works" in society.

If not, what would happen to the U.S. economy being Trillions in debt?

Are we, as a society, supposed to roll up our sleeves, grab a shovel, and start digging holes to "pay off" this debt?

Even the concept of "real estate" is completely fiction, but it "works".

Nobody ultimately owns land, but we agree on a system that works for it's "value" and the purchase and sale of it.

A faith based economy underpins everything.

Faith alone ultimately runs the entire world. Can you believe that.

When people "lose faith" look what happens to the stock market.

How real our World is and who works is very relative.


I think this has been tried before.

When the implements of production are owned by the state and not people, production seems to go down, unless propped up with the threat of a Kalashnikov.
 
I like Elan Musk, but he believes in the Simulation hypothesis"Simulation Theory" *****...
laugh.gif
 
I don't know about a single person, but I have numbers from a couple with 1 child that I know personally :
$10,000- This is my health insurance cost, Medicaid has better coverage
$ 7,200- Rent "assistance"(section 8)
$ 5,000- SNAP(food stamp) benefits
$ 3,800- supplemental cash assistance
___________
$26,000 annually. Add to that HEAP (heating assistance),and if the recipient works at a job for just 1 week, they get a W2, file a tax return, and collect a substantial tax "refund" with child tax credit, head of household, etc.

Not nearly enough to comfortably raise a family on, but a substantial chunk of money nonetheless.
 
He's just trolling for media attentions.

Basic income -> inflation -> real estate prices. Not really going to work. The reality is the work that robots do will become cheap labor and money will end up somewhere else: someone's profit, reduced price, and unemployment.
 
Originally Posted By: Falken


^ Keep in mind EVERYONE gets the same base amount.

There are certain concepts in the future that won't have any sound backing in reality, but still "works" in society.

If not, what would happen to the U.S. economy being Trillions in debt?

Are we, as a society, supposed to roll up our sleeves, grab a shovel, and start digging holes to "pay off" this debt?

Even the concept of "real estate" is completely fiction, but it "works".

Nobody ultimately owns land, but we agree on a system that works for it's "value" and the purchase and sale of it.

A faith based economy underpins everything.

Faith alone ultimately runs the entire world. Can you believe that.

When people "lose faith" look what happens to the stock market.

How real our World is and who works is very relative.


I'm sorry but I fail to even see why anyone would think it would work.

People certainly do own land. At least the principle of owning private property should be respected.

If not private property who is going to own their land and house? If your diving into the realms of public ownership then it opens a whole can of worms.

As someone who can't own own their own land can't own their own business. Which will destroy the market the economy. There's so many economists from every school of thought that has published multiple proofs of why that is completely dangerous and inevitable collapse. From Friedman to Hayek to Mises (see Ludwig Von Mises calculation problem for proofs).

Not to mention it completely goes against human nature.
Aristotle explains it nicely:
Quote:
How immeasurably greater is the pleasure, when a man feels a thing to be his own,” Aristotle writes, “for the love of self is a feeling implanted by nature and not given in vain…


Regarding a universal income:
This would require a steady amount of money which already pointed out would be ridiculously high inflation. That money is not going to be worth anything. The cost of labor and production will increase to produce goods and then that universal income is no longer enough.

Having faith in a debt based economy is far less crazy than this notion that you can somehow create a whole new economic system that somehow everyone can have money and that money doesnt cause inflation and loses value. With ever increasing population size would directly mean an ever increasing amount of money supply. That is utterly dangerous.
 
JeepWJ19, let me put it this way then:

We can have robots till the land for food while we all just become Real Estate Agents then.

We just sit around while robots serve us coffee, and we sell eachother parcels of land back and fourth.

If things in society get so efficient, we are fooling ourselves if we don't think this will eventually happen.

It almost seems to me we went from bank machines to self driving cars fairly quick, that really snuck up on me.
 
Originally Posted By: Falken
JeepWJ19, let me put it this way then:

We can have robots till the land for food while we all just become Real Estate Agents then.

We just sit around while robots serve us coffee, and we sell eachother parcels of land back and fourth.

If things in society get so efficient, we are fooling ourselves if we don't think this will eventually happen.

It almost seems to me we went from bank machines to self driving cars fairly quick, that really snuck up on me.


If that makes you feel better about your fantasy then go right ahead. It completely ignores the science of economics and the science of human nature.

If those that are in power are stupid enough to replace ALL human work with automation then that's on them as then no one will have money to buy their product. After all they still have to buy the resources to make X product.
 
Originally Posted By: JeepWJ19
Originally Posted By: Falken
JeepWJ19, let me put it this way then:

We can have robots till the land for food while we all just become Real Estate Agents then.

We just sit around while robots serve us coffee, and we sell eachother parcels of land back and fourth.

If things in society get so efficient, we are fooling ourselves if we don't think this will eventually happen.

It almost seems to me we went from bank machines to self driving cars fairly quick, that really snuck up on me.


If that makes you feel better about your fantasy then go right ahead. It completely ignores the science of economics and the science of human nature.

If those that are in power are stupid enough to replace ALL human work with automation then that's on them as then no one will have money to buy their product. After all they still have to buy the resources to make X product.


^Well, by that logic, everyone would quit their job, burn through their savings, and sit on Welfare now, under today's system, no need to wait.

But the status quo wants to do better, and Basic Income allows that.
 
Universal income sounds good, idealistic certainly; but is this one of those zero sum games? Where the cost of living just goes up by that much anyhow? Or some other unintended consequence. Look at what happened when credit was made easy. It was easy to get mortgages, so everyone got one. Houses doubled in price overnight due to increased demand, and now won't go back down.
 
Originally Posted By: JeepWJ19
If those that are in power are stupid enough to replace ALL human work with automation then that's on them as then no one will have money to buy their product. After all they still have to buy the resources to make X product.


+1... There was this guy (let's call him "Karl") who 150+ years ago predicted that meaningful work that imbued an individual with a proper, necessary place in his community would soon be supplanted with menial labour, which would eventually be rendered obsolete by the machine; all in order to create more value for the owners - not producers - of the productions of that process. His opinion on the flaw of that game and the inevitability of that decline were pretty unsettling and his suggestions to mitigate those inevitabilities, while sounding pretty, don't tend to sit well with most. A balance between "unsettling inevitability" and "cooperative utopia" seems our only real option; but striving for balance can be tough sleddin'.
 
There will come a day when there will be 5 foot tall carbon fiber and Aluminum robots, with a sophisticated battery, will be in your home doing everything for you.

Need dinner made? A haircut? A security guard? Pants mended? Laundry done?

If you could only see the final product, you would know even a dog walker is under threat.

When computer processing and AI gets a bit better in the next 10 years, prepare to freak out.

It will start with the wealthy owning these things, but they have the money to buy them, so they will be made.

Imagine walking down the street with a robot that is only there to serve you?

Literally, you drop your wallet and it will pick it up for you as you thank it, to which it will respond, "No worries."

A 5 foot tall robot, 200-300lbs, will only improve generation after generation.

And this doesn't account for all the embedded robotics in everything.

Flipping burgers for 15$ an hour? Worker safety? Training? Strikes?

This will all be a thing of the past for many in the next 30 years.

They are testing Basic Income in Ontario very soon in three communities, the idea is just being floated now to see how the public reacts.

Ontario is a great place to start. There are many there now working in Government jobs as Human seat warmers, living the Utopia of which we speak right now. These are people that are eating $100,000+ of taxpayers money that do, literally, no work other than chat and sip coffee.
 
Originally Posted By: Falken
Originally Posted By: JeepWJ19
Originally Posted By: Falken
JeepWJ19, let me put it this way then:

We can have robots till the land for food while we all just become Real Estate Agents then.

We just sit around while robots serve us coffee, and we sell eachother parcels of land back and fourth.

If things in society get so efficient, we are fooling ourselves if we don't think this will eventually happen.

It almost seems to me we went from bank machines to self driving cars fairly quick, that really snuck up on me.


If that makes you feel better about your fantasy then go right ahead. It completely ignores the science of economics and the science of human nature.

If those that are in power are stupid enough to replace ALL human work with automation then that's on them as then no one will have money to buy their product. After all they still have to buy the resources to make X product.


^Well, by that logic, everyone would quit their job, burn through their savings, and sit on Welfare now, under today's system, no need to wait.

But the status quo wants to do better, and Basic Income allows that.


How can you possibly derive that from what I said?

Yes, the ever increasing burden on the tax payer correlates to more incentive to be on welfare in the current system for folks that the burden is too high. That doesn't mean that everyone is going to, but I'll humor you. If EVERYONE went on welfare the economic system would collapse and it is completely similar to your fantasy world. How can you not bridge the two concepts? You cannot pay people for doing no amount of labor and you shouldn't be overpaying for minimal labor. This would then go back to the problem I already stated about money supply. You can't just print money at will, it needs to be borrowed. If you want to see something similar to what would happen please read a history book. The hyperinflation in the Weimar republic is a great place to start.

When the quantity of money increases, the result is that the purchasing power of the monetary unit begins to drop, and so prices rise.

So it would thus be what I have said and others have said. You will be caught in a circular trap.
 
Originally Posted By: JeepWJ19
Originally Posted By: Falken
JeepWJ19, let me put it this way then:

We can have robots till the land for food while we all just become Real Estate Agents then.

We just sit around while robots serve us coffee, and we sell eachother parcels of land back and fourth.

If things in society get so efficient, we are fooling ourselves if we don't think this will eventually happen.

It almost seems to me we went from bank machines to self driving cars fairly quick, that really snuck up on me.


If that makes you feel better about your fantasy then go right ahead. It completely ignores the science of economics and the science of human nature.

If those that are in power are stupid enough to replace ALL human work with automation then that's on them as then no one will have money to buy their product. After all they still have to buy the resources to make X product.


Having most people living in public housing and not own their own land can work: we call it 30 years mortgage.

Oh, you mean the other kind of public housing? Well, it works for Singapore. The majority of their citizen lives in government leased housing and government use that to keep the prices of the rest of the city state's in check, only affecting the investors instead of the basic standard of living of most people.

In the US, where everything from health care to prison are privatized, and a bipolar distribution of believes, this is not going to work.
 
Originally Posted By: PeterPolyol
We're all experts on tax revenues and government accounting, aren't we?
laugh.gif



Nope, only the ones that live in Cayman Island, Bermuda, Switzerland, etc.
 
Originally Posted By: Falken


They are testing Basic Income in Ontario very soon in three communities, the idea is just being floated now to see how the public reacts.

Ontario is a great place to start. There are many there now working in Government jobs as Human seat warmers, living the Utopia of which we speak right now. These are people that are eating $100,000+ of taxpayers money that do, literally, no work other than chat and sip coffee.


Like everything else the Wynne government touches, this is going to be a disaster of epic proportions. She's got the faecal touch, everything that meets her hands turns to giant steaming piles of excrement.
 
Originally Posted By: PandaBear
Originally Posted By: JeepWJ19
Originally Posted By: Falken
JeepWJ19, let me put it this way then:

We can have robots till the land for food while we all just become Real Estate Agents then.

We just sit around while robots serve us coffee, and we sell eachother parcels of land back and fourth.

If things in society get so efficient, we are fooling ourselves if we don't think this will eventually happen.

It almost seems to me we went from bank machines to self driving cars fairly quick, that really snuck up on me.


If that makes you feel better about your fantasy then go right ahead. It completely ignores the science of economics and the science of human nature.

If those that are in power are stupid enough to replace ALL human work with automation then that's on them as then no one will have money to buy their product. After all they still have to buy the resources to make X product.


Having most people living in public housing and not own their own land can work: we call it 30 years mortgage.

Oh, you mean the other kind of public housing? Well, it works for Singapore. The majority of their citizen lives in government leased housing and government use that to keep the prices of the rest of the city state's in check, only affecting the investors instead of the basic standard of living of most people.

In the US, where everything from health care to prison are privatized, and a bipolar distribution of believes, this is not going to work.


Really you use Singapore as an example? Man, we should all model ourselves around Singapore. The same Singapore that engages in indefinite detention without trial, censorship of news outlets, and punishes people for made-up non-crimes like "scandalising the court" in which one can be sanctioned for criticizing government employees.

We all know monopolies are bad so why is a state-run monopoly supposedly any better? Especially in a place like Singapore where you can't even have free speech?

It does not compete for a man's services or for his savings; it levies a tax and allows no alternative. The government is not guided by the market method of price determination; it sets prices or exchange rates quite arbitrarily. The government is not subject to the profit-and-loss method of measuring success or failure; if it operates at a deficit, the taxpayer is held responsible and must pay for the government's failure.

Out of the marketplace the government draws the materials and services that go into the construction of such things as public-housing projects. But unlike the private builder of homes, the government does not put back into the market enough to entice anyone to make the trade voluntarily. Anyone who really believes that it might be profitable or useful or desirable to replace the "slums" with new dwellings need not be forced by the government to undertake the task. Nor should the risk of failure be saddled upon those who honestly doubt the wisdom of such an undertaking. To do so is compulsory socialization at the expense of every individual's right to his own life and to his own private property.
 
Originally Posted By: KrisZ
Let's look at or ask all the people currently on the perpetual welfare how many humanitarian activities they are involved in or what they are doing to better themselves or the world around them, since they don't have to go to work every day.
Any guesses what the answer might be?


How are the homeless people supposed to look for a job when they spend every waking minute looking for aluminum cans ? I see those people everyday pushing their carts down the street piled high with cans; those people work very hard. If they had a safety net to fall back on, they'd have more time to find employment.
 
Originally Posted By: JeepWJ19
People certainly do own land. At least the principle of owning private property should be respected.


Nobody in this country owns their own land; we rent the land from the government in the form of property taxes. Guess what happens to the land when the taxes aren't paid ?
 
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