... peak oil? [ worry about starving... what about the children ? ] UBI of minor amount buys a residence? [ what ??? ] as to the rest of the sentence, I read 'internet, electricity, loudness, what do we know, ' as in
biggest: electricity
creative: internet
revolution: it is louder after dusk nowadays
human history: we should maybe ask our elders. I know I should, and the non-TV ones may surmise we should proceed with caution, if we [meaning the say-so NOT needing UBI ] proceed to tax [ half of that latter set taxing the other half, robbing peter to pay paul...] proceed at all, given the not-in-the-surplus area of the US at least, budget at the present time by almost every measure and metric. But am open to discussion, or reply, but to this post, as others, at this time I will be out of time to check a reply to this post even, so this is really more of 'my first YN thread where I reply to any I can reply to', maybe as a one-time occurance, as I've procrastinated for health reasons in many other areas. Apologies....
And as a newbie, I can edit my own posts.
Apologies for the third lines above [ above
Apologies ] and all the other similar lines in the other posts I've made in this thread, newbie, de facto first day responding vs daily reading. Sorry!
/end errata/
All of those statements are frames for our astronomical & rising across-the-board material abundance.
a) We have so much food and so little need for the human body to expend energy (cars, infrastructure, oil, etc) that it’s a public health crisis.
b) We’d rather have $0 than see our neighbor get $10 while we get $5. Indicating that we have satisfied all material desires and the only thing left to do is play social status games. It’s seriously incredible that inequality (rather than deprivation) can be anyone’s main concern.
c) The planet is profoundly affected because participation in (a) is getting less unequal, spreading from rich countries to the whole world.
You are describing the tradeoffs of too much improvement, not a general downward trend.
I worry that our quality of living is unsustainable. Maybe 20 to a house is really the only rational way to live in the coming years. Maybe we can only sustain the life we have now, because we do so at the expense of other nations.
That said:
2. Profits are subject to tax, and increased tax
receipts fund more public programs.
So are wages, and... well... everything.
3. Lower costs are at least partially passed to
customers.
I really don't see that happening. Consumers don't look at a company's overall costs and conclude "your profit margin are way too high, give me a better deal."
IMHO GDP, dollars, etc. have nothing to do with this problem. Currently there is a huge overproduction of food, clothes, shoes, etc. for the US citizen. All that huge ads industry is only there to force people to eat more, throw out their perfectly good clothes, shoes, cars, phones, etc. because of fashion. It's no problem really to meat the needs of additional people in case a basic income produces those.
I'd add to your list the increasing disconnect between wealth and quality of life. Economists and politicians will tell us how much richer we've become, how much our GDP has grown, etc, but so much of that "wealth" is that we have ipads and flat screen TV's. The things we actually need for a better life like housing security, social opportunities and stability are getting more and more out of reach. I think this is the main driver of populist politicians, they've tapped into this growing discontent quite literally because being content is getting harder.
on one hand, it would be easy to dismiss the issues noted in the article as first-world problems, but it lays bare the intersection of technology-induced anxiety and economic realism affecting not just kids, but the larger culture in the US.
as an economy, we are prosperous, but to achieve even a meager share in any of that prosperity feels increasingly hopeless. the future depends on making uncomfortable changes, opposed by the rich and powerful, that lead to a little more just and equitable world.
Definitely painful but the contents of how we measure our economy might need to undergo that anyway. There's always a talk about consumption but maybe we're at a point when we really do have enough and there's only marginal innovation left for some of the basic consumer goods - like the introduction of those curved tvs. Especially with a lot of us younger folks already living in a world of debt, stagnant wages, and unaffordable housing in the major metro areas.
Looking forward to reading those links. Thanks for sharing.
As I've been growing up I've realized increasing population, automation, and globalization are going to force some sort of change in how we distribute wealth and resources in nations, and in the world.
The study of the town in Canada is a favorite of mine. The results are staggering and nearly immediate.
Why we haven't moved towards solutions which in the long run may actually save us money through better educated and less stressed citizens sooner is an interesting thing to think about to me.
I've never tried to do the math though, it does get expensive quick.
My initial thoughts were:
Such is the fate of efficient economies (like the US) that have effectively turned farming and logostics into specialized utilities
Quickly followed by:
Try enjoying your arts and entertainment when you are hungry and have to walk to the venues.
I hope you'll forgive me for the bluntness, but I'm trying to be brief.
First a question: how come 'productivity' has gone up by 2% annually for nearly a century (if you know compounding you know how massive this is), yet we all have to 'work hared' and 'longer' for less, while our social security is being eroded?
'productivity' in a 'Red Queen's Race'[1] economy has 0 value. We're not doing work to ensure 'survival' or 'progress' anymore. 10% of People could carry that. We long ago stopped having a production problem, we have a(n artificially sustained) distribution problem.
At the 'economic ground floor' level we're in a self accelerating 'service economy' which at the systems level is both driven and preyed upon by a 'rent-seeking' economy that in socio-economic power far outplays the former. Transactions are the key, not what actually goes around.
And also much of the 'stuff' is here, or converted to services. 25 yrs ago, approx no one had 55"+ tvs, internet connection was a minority, and media eas collections of CDs/Videotapes. Now 'net connections are near-universal, and it is all streaming. Cell phones were just beginning & expensive, now everyone has a powerful computer in their pocket. We don't have two houses, but the ones we have are worth twice as much. Cars are much better developed than 2 decades ago, snd we'll soon have ubiquitous electric cars...
All of it needs to be more evenly spread. Just look at the charts of portions of funds going to labor vs capital.
One way I like to think about progress: there are things that are (basically) post-scarcity. Things that have become either too cheap to meter or close to it (for an average "western" consumer, at least).
Light. Water. Ice. Calories (if not picky). Entertainment (radio, youtube, etc). Information (google, Wikipedia).
We still have a ways to go, but that's a good damn start.
Could also do something with falling standards of living, social media pushing influencers that flaunt obscene wealth on young people, rising awareness of the coming climate catastrophes etc.
This is multifaceted issue
Hopefully this disproportionately influential community would like to see more of the reform side of things and less of the war side of things?
People are always talking about a “post-scarcity” world, but isn’t that in some sense globally true while locally false today? The US (which I appreciate is not the whole world but a signal example of having just passed the knee in the hockey-stick on Gini) burns something like 30-40% of key agricultural outputs as ethanol representing a net disaster on emissions.
At what point do we acknowledge that we actively choose a governing/managing/ruling class that has no upper bound on conspicuous consumption? Yachts don’t cut it anymore, now you’re not a player until you’ve got a fucking private space program.
I did very well in my career once and might again, and I remember feeling outright guilty when I had a house with “his and hers” sinks in the bathroom, that felt really opulent (because it is).
Bezos has “his and hers” custom private jets that fly more often than many people drive or train (this is public record), a huge airplane carrying one passenger sometimes daily.
I hear a lot of hot air about universal basic income and stuff, but what’s stopping our leaders? Corporate profits shatter record after record, rank and file workers are choosing between basic necessity A or necessity B, you could have lower margins and pay people Universal Basic Income in the form of a living wage. Then it’s not even big government or “welfare” or some other boogeyman.
They’re just dark triad liars, it’s just nonsense, the elite are not trying to change the world for the better: they’re trying to dig deeper moats and build higher walls around consumption that’s gone from conspicuous to fucking genocidal.
counterpoint: nothing has happened to us as a society.
we have always had pressures to monitize things and do things for money, but of course money isnt everything and there have always been happy generous people who are happy to make things for free.
In fact, the proliferation of freely released, happy things in to the world has probably gone up over time.
Makes me wonder if the world will turn out like wall-e in the future or if we will recycle. It also makes me wonder if the central banks outcries that we need to consume more to boost economics is good for the environment?
You don't own stuff your stuff owns you. That's why you need a larger home when you can't fit your stuff anymore. You also worry about your stuff, home burglary somebody taking it's, car some taking it or damaging it, dropping your phone or computer etc.
Hypothesis: Events like this are the modern moral equivalent of the giant, gaudy, gilt-encrusted palaces of the 17th century.
Economic disparity has reached a point where those at the top end literally have more money than they know what to do with and are increasingly spending it on stupider and stupider things out of some perceived need to do something.
Higher consumption seems locked in since everyone wants, and believes they can get, a middle class life.
Efficiency has to go into overdrive or we overheat the planet. But, by conventional measures of output, efficiency can be recessionary. Phones and phone service will continue to decline in cost long after the market is saturated.
We are headed for either a marvelous soft landing enabled by efficiency and population stability, or we are headed for a crunch with a return to mass starvation, an energy crisis, and economic crisis in general. It's really not obvious which will happen.
People are (hopefully) concerned with growing inequality, wealth centralising into small pockets of society, the lawlessness in which multinational corporate entities operate, the damage being caused to the environment by heavily promoted consumerism..
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