This time is fundamentally different because AI automates the human mind. Human input may always be needed, but fewer and fewer jobs are required to support the needs of the population. New quality jobs are not being created at a sufficient enough pace to be offset the loses.

We have a ridiculous number of homeless in the US. Meanwhile, rich tech giants talk of giving UBI to everyone as their solution to so many jobs going away. The jobs that are going away pay about $20k-$50k. UBI is expected to be $10k or maybe $18k. Articles that talk about this then write warm little vignettes about how lovely it will be to have that supplemental income on top of your low paid job, utterly ignoring the actual scenario posited that this money is in place of a job in a climate where there is little or no hope of getting another job.

If you think the Industrial Revolution was bloody, you don't want to see what happens with millions of people getting just enough money to sleep in a tent and keep eating while the cops harass them and the system gives them no hope of getting back to a middle class lifestyle. They won't be actually starving. But they will be mad as hell and have nothing but time on their hands to plot a revolution and train for it.

- You can move away from expensive locale to a cheapest one.

- You can find supplemental income: do something with your hands, provide services, etc. You have all day to do that. It shouldn't be that your time is worthless and nobody is willing to pay anything for it.

- You can pool with other people to form a community, save on bulk.

Three actually.

People are positing that we need UBI because jobs are outright going away and there will be no paid work to be found. If it is possible to create earning opportunities in the post robo-job-pocalypse, then why can't we focus on restructuring work to begin with?

I wish people would pick one. Either it will be possible to keep earning money somehow, in which case we don't need UBI to replace jobs and we can, instead, focus on restructuring work to improve quality of life generally. Or it won't be possible to find earning opportunities, in which case UBI is all the money you will have.

However, it's something that can be used to earn supplemental income in cheap locale.

Teach spoken English using Skype, for example. There's 2B potential customers. Or maybe 4B. All you have to be is native speaker.

On the other hand, a lot of low cost areas, like rural parts of the US, don't have the high speed internet necessary to do something like that. It doesn't work unless you have both low cost of living and amenities like high speed internet. Right now, amenities like high speed internet and jobs are mostly concentrated in big cities. So just giving people a check (UBI) and telling them to work the rest out themselves while the world is actively against the idea of restructuring work simply doesn't work.

Either we can make a world that supports living someplace cheap and earning money online or we can't. Basic Income has no bearing on the logistics of making that work.

I work remotely. I moved someplace cheap within the US. I am still struggling for various reasons, but I currently live like you describe.

So if it can be done without UBI, why do we need UBI?

Either we need UBI because you can't get paid work and you need to live off UBI, or you can get paid work, in which case we don't need UBI. Please pick one

I find it strange that someone who was once homeless is opposed to a policy like UBI that would end or at least severely curtail homelessness.

So if not UBI, what's your solution?

I have already laid out my solution: accessible healthcare, affordable housing and restructuring work.

And the reason I hold the position I hold is because I was homeless. So I know what bs it is to say "You can just move someplace cheaper and supplement your income." I was both willing and able to do both of those things. It isn't the easy answer folks imagine.

I owe a bunch of money from making the move. People who, themselves, make money online mostly shat all over me and wouldn't help me figure out how to make money online while saying things to me like I was panhandling the internet for trying to figure out how to earn money online etc.

UBI will not give anyone the knowledge, skills and connections necessary to turn free time into income. What it will do is allow classist or sexist or racist assholes to be more comfortable with shutting out Those People from the paths to an earned income because, hey, you don't need me to give you an opportunity. You have your UBI.

If we don't fix the affordable housing mess, UBI fixes nothing. There are lots of places where $10k is basically just rent for the year, with no money leftover for anything else. And if you think people can just move to the cheap seats, it is hard to find a place for under $500/mo. That leaves less than $500/mo to cover all other living expenses.

I have lived on that kind of a budget. I have looked for housing on that kind of a budget. I know firsthand how hard it is to make that work. So when folks who likely have more income than me post imaginary stories about what a piece of cake life will be when there are no jobs but everyone has UBI, that really sticks in my craw.

You telling me that UBI is supplemental income tells me you don't get it. UBI is not supposed to be supplemental. It is supposed to make sure most people don't starve when there simply is no paid work to be found.

These kinds of comments are crazy making. If it is supplemental, we don't need it. If it isn't supplemental, it doesn't work without also fixing healthcare and housing.

I think we don't need it. We just need to fix healthcare and housing and restructure work. We need to do all that with or without UBI. I think without UBI, we will do a better job of fixing those things. With UBI, too many people think those problems don't really matter that much. Poor people can just move elsewhere or something.

I don't buy the idea that UBI will make it harder to solve those problems. I think UBI will make it easier to fix those problems because it would free up more peoples' time (especially the lower and middle class) to be politically active and fix these fundamental problems. Right now nothing is really improving because the wealthy who've bought out the politicians don't care, and the poor have no time or energy to protest because they're too busy working multiple jobs and worrying about whether or not they'll make rent next month.

> You can't still work if all the big wigs with the power to create jobs are not bothering to make work available because you have your UBI.

Jobs aren't some kind of charity case that companies offer to appease the financially desperate masses. Jobs are created when there's a need for labor, and they believe the revenue generated by the labor will offset the wages. UBI does not mean that companies go "well looks like the masses don't need our money anymore, we can finally take away these jobs". Businesses are there to maximize profit, and UBI doesn't change that.

UBI however would massively increase the bargaining power of laborers by giving them the option to walk away. Wages of jobs that nobody wants to do but are services that we need would rise. We'd probably see more people opting to work less hours. The whole dynamic of interviews would change in favor of the laborer (as opposed to right now where the employer has the upper hand). Overall, it'd be a massive boon to labor.

I am not aware of him doing anything about healthcare or affordable housing. Since he became president of YC, he has used it as a platform to promote various social agendas he is interested in. YC fosters the development of businesses.

You cannot convince me that the focus of someone like that has no impact on the kind of world we are creating. I do not believe he in any way cares about the little people. I do not believe he has any interest in or willingness to open doors for poor people. His interest in UBI strikes me as a huge fuck you and quit your bitching to the little people.

You need to be very leery of the motives of the architects of such a system. Currently, American welfare does an excellent job of trapping people in poverty. I have no idea why you are so strongly convinced that some new welfare scheme with a shiny new name won't continue that pattern. I have seen zero evidence that it will.

Since healthcare and affordable housing both need to be fixed anyway, I would much prefer to see time and effort to into those things in the here and now rather than into all this talk of UBI. If both of those things get fixed first and people still think UBI is a good idea, I would be much more willing to support it at that point. But at this point in time, talk of UBI looks to me like a lazy concept if throwing money at the problems of poor people as if their problems are easily solved. This makes me extremely leery of both the idea itself and of the idea that people trying to spearhead the movement are at all qualified to do the heavy lifting involved in solving healthcare and affordable housing.

i suspect the wheels are already in motion.

Move somewhere cheap or go in with some friends, you will be surprised what 10k a year can do.

There are places in the US where you can rent for $500/mo or less, but they are pretty hard to find. If it is just you, you may be able to make it, especially if you are willing and able to get a roommate.

If you have dependents, high health costs or any complications whatsoever, it rapidly falls apart. If we don't give UBI from birth, poor families with children won't be lifted out of poverty like we imagine. If we do, you can guarantee that some women will crank out babies as a means to raise their income and be lousy, abusive mothers who don't actually care about the kids.

For the vast majority of people, cutting their income 50 to 80 percent in exchange for going jobless will be a hardship. Most lottery winners are bankrupt within 5 years. I suspect part of the reason for this is that most people divide their time between working to make money and consuming in their off hours. When you remove the job from the equation, they suddenly have about 50 hours more a week that they need to entertain themselves. If you are used to spending money in your leisure time, it can be incredibly hard to shift gears and find cheap or free means to do so.

It can be done. I have lived on damn little for a long time and I do a lot for free because my income supports three people, not one. So the budget is quite tight. But a lot of people fail at it.

Currently, people failing to make ends meet can turn to food stamps, section 8 housing, etc. Many people feel that the way to finance UBI is to eliminate all that stuff. So if you get UBI and fail to make it work, it is possible there won't be a safety net to catch you when you fall. It may be one huge fuck you.

I have also wondered if that wouldn't be the case. As machines take over, we may see new jobs created that never existed before, just (as you rightly pointed out) happened in the industrial revolution. I really hope this is the case actually.

My certainty diminishes somewhat when listening to people like Ray Kurzweil talk about his Law of Accelerating returns (exponential growth)[1]. I wonder if things might be different this time around (change is too fast, too extreme/disruptive) due to things like the exponential growth curve. Of course we humans always like to think "this time is different" so who knows.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/ray-kurzweil-law-of-accelerat...