I don’t know how relevant this is now, but here’s a link to another post where I expressed my thoughts on what kind of pitfalls you might most likely face – https://lemmy.world/post/36867409
By the way, what is this phenomenon on Lemmy? Let’s say people are reluctant to read and comment on old posts published just a couple of days or a week ago, but with new ones, it’s a completely different story. What kind of psychology is this? Or it seemed to me?
fun fact on definition of productivity: Revenue/labour cost. Inflation can be either profit inflation or wage/cost inflation. In general, if wage inflation is higher than inflation, then workers are better off no matter the inflation rate. Then inflation is costing the owner and consumer classes. Another fun fact: The Federal reserve is a demonic bankster organization that strives to eliminate wage increases, under a pseudo-slavery system. Interest rates are increased to prevent new housing and other business growth to prevent more hiring to drive up wages even more.
If productivity and inflation are critical economic drivers, then we should explicitly support slavery. More whippings will make you work harder. Lower pay will reduce inflation and boost productivity. The near slavery system (you called it capitalism) is as long as there are 100 applicants for every job opening, then the system is working and under control. Adam Smith just advocated for free and fair markets, and there is still a market if there are only 2 applicants per job opening or 5 employers are coveting to hire you away from what you are currently doing.
Sure UBI will tend towards wage inflation. It doesn’t stop profit inflation either. The consumer class is both better off with more disposible income, and having opportunities to compete for idleness. They can compete with higher wage earners or ownership class. As an example, most people think UBI would increase people’s demand for more housing space. Means more profit opportunity from land/ownership, more renovation work to be done, but also empowers people with free time and UBI to qualify for loans to renovate properties themselves from youtube videos. Bottom line is if housing is too expensive from profit and wage inflation, then you will have to do it yourself, but somehow housing demand and work will get balanced, but including profit/ROI for ownership class. Markets do that very well. You will buy a plunger to unclog your toilet if all plumbers charge $1000 to do it, and then become a plumber (or toilet unclogger) to charge others $900.
if wages and profits grow by 10x, then so does tax revenue and basis to increase freedom dividends by 10x. Inflation is a market mechanism. Productivity is unimportant. Humanist economics are abundance and production, but productivity through slavery is not an appropriate path towards it. Fair labour markets are.
It does, but doesn’t have to. Capital needs cooperation in order to extract profits. The bargaining power of time and work increased by UBI means “less control by capitalists”. It can also challenge ownership class by competing with it through more lending power, and the contribution of worker time towards share of future profits instead of “guaranteed high hourly wage”
UBI is a better individual empowerment than unions. There were strikes under Biden due to a good economy even if oligarchs successfully convinced electorate that it was shit. Strikes not happening now because when econony turns to shit, more blowjobs for oligarchs instead of striking against them is path to survival. Note also, import theory of currency devaluation is proven false by Trump’s forbidding of imports. Globalization has always meant that $ are not destroyed, and circulate back to US, unless the US is a shithole and there is no reason to support its sustainability, and fewer $ to give/lend back.
Anyone who rants about inflation or productivity as an argument against UBI is ranting in favour of slavery and cannibalism. You are favouring desperation and extreme competition for survival just among the worker class.
I’m not saying we need to optimize for lowering inflation and increasing productivity, I’m saying inflation without an increase in productivity (stagflation) doesn’t help workers, and inflation with a decrease in productivity hurts workers.
I think you’re underestimating specialization. You’re average person is not going to be able to make an addition on there home that is safe and up to code without a couple years of schooling and apprenticing. If that’s what your using to counteract wage inflation of the carpenter then that carpenter can charge the equivalent of 2 years of your wages in labor costs alone, that doesn’t get into materials.
Staying on the subject of home additions let’s imagine a neighborhood of say 5 people who want a new addition with 2 workers who can do it this year. Before UBI the houses will bid up the price of the addition until the two richest families win and get the addition. After UBI one of the workers quits, everyone now has an extra $1,000 though so they want to get an addition, but everyone else has it too so prices again get bid up until the one richest family gets an addition. That second richest family has lost purchasing power, they used to be able to purchase an addition, and now they can’t. Sure the carpenter is making a shit ton but so is everyone else so when he goes to buy a new car he’s competing for that more limited supply with other people now making $ hundreds of thousands a year.
These people are losing purchasing power because the supply is decreasing. Real wage growth (wage inflation - inflation) requires an increase in purchasing power, ie a worker can buy more stuff with there wages. The worker can not buy more stuff with there wages if the amount of stuff in general goes down.
This is why are jobs guarantee is better, the government can use the unused labor to increase the supply. Even if the government is shitty and inefficient at making cars, every car they make is one that wouldn’t have been created anyway so the total supply goes up and now a person who previously couldn’t buy a car can buy a shitty government car, there purchasing power has increased. And it doesn’t even have to be a shitty car, Chinese state owned companies have shown that they are fully capable of making decent quality low price electric vehicles.
Stagflation is recession + inflation. You can technically have less domestic/national work and be perfectly happy. UBI is automatically a huge jump in economic growth. Redistribution trickles back up to useful economic sectors. Having more work opportunities (there is more money to take from consumers) helps workers. The power to say no to perceived unfair work offers helps workers. Lower productivity through longer lunch breaks or higher pay does not harm workers even if it adds to inflation/production costs. Whether more production comes from abroad/immigrants/automation then that is deflation that is good for broader society/consumers while everyone who wants to work gets good work, and everyone is happy.
Very simply, wage growth higher than overall inflation is good for workers no matter how high the inflation is. It is good for attracting more workers to labour force as well. That’s why I am so critical against neoliberal tunnel vision on just inflation and productivity.
It’s a decent example. $1000/month extra income per household member supports $240000 extra debt per household member. If spending $240k on an addition results in greater than $1000/month rental value, then project is worthwhile for owners. If construction costs are outrageously unaffordable, while simultaneously living in a desirable market with access to restaurants, shopping, and job opportunities, then rents grow if everyone can afford more space and no one is doing construction. If spending $240k on a smaller addition results in $2000/month rent, and homeowner income has already grown from their “real work” then paying double for the work, also has the workers getting paid being able to afford double the rent. When other people don’t want to work, anyone who does has tremendous opportunities to become very rich. UBI permits carpenters to become property developers, and run carpentry apprenticeship empires.
That is not how China works. Private enterprise is supported by abundance economy/infrastructure including robotics training/research. Local governments attract auto plants with investments. Job guarantees waste people’s time. A job guarantee also suggests no possible cause for firing.
Cannibalistic hatred and competition among the slave class is certainly a proven oligarchist enrichment social structure promoting scarcity and concentrated wealth. Under UBI, the rich get richer too even with higher taxes. The reason for opposing UBI is that it redistributes power. Path to getting richer is making more product in a free and fair market instead of monopolizing oppressive power to protect from competition and short term slavery amplification through tax policy, pillaging of society through political minions intentionally collapsing society in order for the oligarchy to profit from the ashes.
Stagflation doesn’t have to be a recession, it could just be stagnation. UBI would cause a recession though in the standard economic definition of high unemployment and lower productivity. Per wikipedia stagflation is caused by:
The latter explanation matches what UBI will do very well, industrial output will go down because less people are working and the money supply will increase as people will have more money to spend on things. In general I think you should read that Wikipedia page on stagflation, it shows the pitfalls of only focusing on juicing demand without thinking about supply.
UBI will not be a jump in economic growth, again per wikipedia:
There is no mechanism in UBI to increase production. The numbers may go up but thats just due to inflation, real output will remain the same or drop due to the increase in unemployment
Yes it is, yes China has private enterprises that are subsidized by the state but there are also a lot of state owned enterprises. The second largest EV manufacturer in the world is a state owned enterprise SAIC.
Is cleaning up the environment a waste of time?, is building high speed rail a waste of time? Is building new affordable housing a waste of time? You seem to think everything productive and worth doing is already captured by the market when it’s not, there are tons of things that need to be done that the market ignores. The government can be productive if we allow it to, and productivity is literally the opposite of wasting time.
Yeah it does, you can still get fired for being bad at your job, it’s just the government has to give you a new job.
UBI creates economic growth without growing the money supply. Instead, the velocity of money increases significantly. Also, the less people want to work (I disagree with this premise, and instead the more people are able to hold out until a good pay offer is made to them) the lower the interest rates go, as more imports mean more buying of US debt. GDP still counts the profit from imports, and economic health is about consumption (imports also mean you get something tangible in exchange for $) more than production. There will also be less police and healthcare needed when people are not desperate and overstressed. If the only number that matters is GDP, then we should double the cost of healthcare and insurance.
100% increase in economic health over 5 years is a natural result of UBI. 100% increase in consumer spending. It is unlikely that personal income (above UBI) will go down. This is the other way to measure GDP. Stock market definitely wouldn’t go down, and wealth increases while not an official GDP measure, is a real/tangible economic health measure.
There is. It’s very simple. You increase production because people are begging you to take their money. You are representing the false slavery based (supply side) economic model where if you give banksters and oligarchs all of the money, they will increase production just because they love you and have the money. It’s an absurd lie to promote slavery. Production gets increased when sales are expected to increase. Never for any other reason. Money is always available because the banks always have all of it in some form.
More imports means currency devaluation/ inflation on the international market. This pushes interest rates up as people demand higher interest rates to counteract expected inflation. If I buy a bond at $500 and expect that $500 to be worth the equivalent of $400 in 5 years when it matures, I’ll demand a higher interest rate to counteract that loss in real value. If you want to see an economy that reliant on imports look at Venezuela during its first oil booms and tell me that’s a healthy economy.
That doesn’t increase production. If I’m a farmer in Weimar Germany and some guy is begging me to take his wheelbarrow full of cash for a potato that’s not going to make me produce more potatoes. That’ll just make me doubt the worth of that wheelbarrow worth of cash and think about how hard it will be for me to try and get someone to take that wheelbarrow full of cash so I can get a new plow. Im not going to put in the extra effort to make more potatoes so i can fill my shed with this money that i have to beg people to take and is probably worthless. Money is only as good as what you can buy with it and if it’s hard to buy stuff with it eg. Your begging people to take it, then it’s not worth anything.
If you completely reject supply side economics, what would have been the solution to stagflation? Harold Wilson’s government proved you couldn’t just add more money and increase wages to get out of it. It only made it worse.
Interest rates are more complicated than that. For any amount of US $ in the world, if no one ever wants to invest in US because no one wants to do any work anymore, then all of the $ will chase US bonds and chase down interest rates. US is on verge of collapse now, and interest rates are falling. US was on verge in 2009, and absurd QE program brought rates down. Europe had negative rates not long ago.
Manipulating rates is fairly easy, and in general, people/$ take whatever rates they are told to.
UBI can be funded with just tax credits. No money printing. Even if wheelbarrows become the new trusted currency, UBI of 10 wheelbarrows per month will make you rich in wheelbarrows if you are the only one willing to grow potatoes. There is still 0 rationale for UBI to result in wheelbarrow economy.
Whether production costs are lowered through imports, immigration, or automation, local production doesn’t matter. Local purchasing power matters. UBI increases purchasing power, and no political divisiveness over losing useless jobs. Apple being able to sell 3x the number of iphones is going to encourage them to open more apple stores, and pay what it takes to staff them.
You’ve decided to call a massive increase in wealth and freedom to be a technical stagflation problem.
Why would you buy US bonds if you don’t want to invest in the US? People don’t buy treasury bonds because they have excess USD and don’t have anything else to do with it, they can always exchange it for local currency, which pushes down the value of USD. People buy US bonds because it’s a reliable asset as they can usually count on inflation being low, the US government being stable and able to tax a highly productive economy to be able to pay the bond back. If any of those three things becomes relatively less true, ie. The euro now has more stable inflation and productivity, then the people will just exchange their excess USD for euro and buy euro bonds instead, or demand a higher interest rate relative to the EU bond to account for the increased risk.
Again why would I want to be rich in wheelbarrows of cash? Even if the government is smart and just starts minting million dollar bills to fix the space issue, it won’t matter if I have to beg the guy making the plow to take it. I might as well not sell the potato and keep it, it’ll keep it’s value better and I’ll have a better time convincing the plow maker that this potato, which they can eat, has value as opposed to this million dollar bill. Now that person with a million dollar bill can’t even buy a potato, again they have lost purchasing power, even though they have millions of dollars.
Again money is only as good as what you can buy with it, being rich with money you can’t buy anything with is about as useful as being rich in monopoly money.
US $ are never destroyed including when they are sent abroad. Holders of US $ must do something with them. US bonds is better than under mattress for financial institutions (which hold all US $ not in a briefcase or mattress) anyway. Exchanging for local currency gives counterparty the US$.
If you want meat or milk for your potatoes, that supplier may have enough potatoes, but can use wheelbarrows to get fruit. There is no reason to believe UBI leads to wheelbarrow economy.