What do you think?

I think in the face of AI taking over many tasks, we need to rethink about how we frame the future of society. Reframing Universal Basic Income as Automation Compensation means presenting the policy as a way to make up for jobs and income lost due to automation and AI. Instead of viewing UBI as a general welfare payment, it becomes seen as compensation paid to everyone for the value automation creates, supporting those whose work is replaced by machines and helping everyone share in productivity gains. Especially in the US, the average person doesn’t like the idea of someone getting something that they’re personally not receiving. So framing it as a compensation that everyone receives regardless of employment status I think is the only feasible way forward.

  • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
    16·
    6 days ago

    You might be on the right track. We’ve been selling these ideas to the people who already want them, we need to expand the market!

    • jaykrown@lemmy.worldOP
      4·
      6 days ago

      I feel like there’s enough support around this idea to form a focused community. How would it look in reality? That’s something that needs to be discussed and work needs to be done to find ways to implement it with realistic expectations. Real world examples of automation like in an automobile factory. All those people who would have done that work now may not have a job, and thus no money to afford the automobiles produced at the factory. What is the lost opportunity?

      • HurricaneLiz@lemmy.world
        32·
        6 days ago

        I was just asking Gemini yesterday what research is going on into ways to pay the owners of the websites it scrapes data from for answers and it said it’s in the works. There will be a lot more product recommendations tho, in lieu of the way ads are currently structured.

        If this concept can then be expanded to encompass everyone whose data was stolen for training models, that’d be UBI.

  • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
    7·
    6 days ago

    What I’ve seen as the most talked about part of this is, how are we going to pay for it. Of course, wealth tax has to be a huge part of it. We’ve seen the following work, so it’s not hard to understand. The billionaires don’t want it:

    • Social Security, but the companies only are the ones to foot the bill
    • Alaska dividends, same concept but of course, a lot more money.
    • Medicare, Medicaid and people on disability.
    • Botzo@lemmy.world
      4·
      6 days ago

      Just from the top of my head:

      • Permanent tax on corporations that layoff people until they rehire to the same level.
      • An exise tax on AI use by businesses.

      Both of these would of course get me labeled an antichrist by Peter Thiel. And since AI is propping up the world economy right now, has 0 chance of happening.

      • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
        22·
        6 days ago

        Fine, then no company will ever expand their staff. Can’t risk a downturn a ways down the road.

        You’ve invented a new way to increase unemployment. :)

        • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
          4·
          6 days ago

          Dude, every company that thought AI could take over a job, they tried it. Do you think they’re trying to keep employees?

        • Botzo@lemmy.world
          2·
          6 days ago

          Companies lay people off when the stock doesn’t grow the right way, even when they’re highly profitable.

          The Jack Welch playbook has fucked the concept of business success so hard we can’t even recognize what a huge pile of shit it has become. It needs a reset.

    • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      Not enough available to tax to pull this off. BUT, when you factor in dropping all other social services, now we’re a lot closer.

    • jaykrown@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      6 days ago

      So framing it as a compensation that everyone receives regardless of employment status I think is the only feasible way forward.

  • coolman@lemmy.world
    2·
    5 days ago

    I fully agree with this, but I’m of the belief that in order to fund it, we need to tax the “labor” that companies are saving with AI. If a company names profit normally with humans, they are creating a system in which the government is getting paid twice, once on the income of the company and once on the income of the people. But if AI just takes half of that away, the country is missing out on trillions of tax dollars.

    So what’s the plan? Require all companies to disclose their electric bills and what they used that power for. If it’s AI? Tax them a rate dependent on the size of the company and the size of the AI portion. This has the additional benefit of incentivizing companies to simply hire people again.

    This will never happen but I can dream.