nacl01 and Zimbler0:
Re: “But your previous post referenced the impoverished as benefiting at this time. I think any type of UBI would end up having income limits and look a lot like welfare.”
My other post also said that Chicago is not implementing UNIVERSAL Basic Income. They are going to implement a study that's only going to cost them about $12 million per year. Other studies are being done as well - in Stockton California, and in Finland. In both of these other cases, the studies were restricted to poverty cases. I'm sure that's how Chicago will implement its study too. It is liberals who want the studies done, after all, and they'd like nothing more than to sell all the poor people on the idea that liberals are going to implement more free money programs.
The Chicago study will be for the impoverished, bank on it. Universal Basic Income, though, will be for everyone. It will certainly come to pass if and when robots start taking everyone's jobs away.
BTW, addressing Zimbler's point that new jobs will just come along to replace those that robots start doing... no, I don't think that's going to happen to any great extent. Sure, at first. As McDonalds starts replacing its cashiers with kiosks, it will hire a few kiosk repair people. Maybe one per 50 stores.
But the nature of technology is that it keeps getting more sophisticated. Before long, robots WILL repair themselves. And before too much longer, robots will design themselves, perhaps with general guidance by whoever owns them.
I'm telling you, nearly all the jobs are going to go away. We've already got song-writing programs that write lousy songs and artist programs that draw lousy pictures. It isn't hard to imagine a single teacher being able to instruct MILLIONS of students, and then smart videos taking the place of the teacher.
This stuff is in its infancy, but it's going to keep getting better and better. Artists of various sorts will probably last the longest, but before long nobody is going to be able to find work that pays.
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