• eveninghere@beehaw.org
      3·
      7 months ago

      IBM chief executive Ginni Rometty says “there is not one more important [topic] for all of us” than the potential of technology to create inequality by concentrating huge wealth in the hands of a few.

      This is quoted to forecast the world without the UBI. But maybe this explains, in a strange manner, why Musk supports the UBI.

      I mean that, the idea among the rich on the UBI is perhaps to rip people off job opportunities and concentrate money to them. The UBI would be a handy excuse for getting people off work. If that happens, we replace $30k, say, annual salary with $10k UBI.

      I know I’m a paranoid, but we should be careful if the rich welcome something.

    • eveninghere@beehaw.org
      3·
      7 months ago

      Another thing to notice here is that Musk’s world view is consistently “rich gets richer” and, naturally, his premise on the UBI is the same: the rich will take away the jobs thanks to AIs. The ordinary will be on the UBI instead. We’re gonna fuck you, and you don’t fly away.

      If he really cared about the ordinary, he’d not treat joblessness as inevitability in his argument. Because it’s him who has the power to make the ordinary richer, and he doesn’t engage on that at all. No way. No way he actually cares about the ordinary in his UBI argument.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    1·
    7 months ago

    🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

    Click here to see the summary

    Christopher Santiago recalls being skeptical the first time he heard about basic income — giving people cash with no conditions on how to spend it.

    These days, some tech entrepreneurs argue that cash aid will be needed as gig work, automation and AI threaten jobs.

    Philanthropic donations are another major funding source, including from groups that have long organized direct cash payments to combat poverty in developing nations.

    For the poorest families, that lack of cash can make it hard to pay for things like utilities, transportation to a job, enough food for a full month or school supplies for children.

    “Ultimately, if we want this person to become self-sufficient, if we want the outcome of our safety net to not merely be subsistence, work is a key aspect of flourishing long term,” Ford says.

    Castro, West and others are racing to find answers, as more and more places turn to direct cash payments to help struggling Americans.

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