Comment on 4 more months and I can quit one of my part time jobs.
gedaliyah@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Retirement is for privileged boomers.
We will work until we die unless we figure out how to get taxes from billionaires and generational wealth holders to establish a universal basic income.
Draupnir@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Taxing billionaires will not solve the problem of the lower class impoverishment of the system it goes to remains bloated and wasteful. How much of an average workers’ dollar gets taxed? It’s really quite astounding
gedaliyah@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The point is not the taxes, it’s the UBI. The wealth taxes are just how you pay for it.
You also need to ensure certain consumer protections, especially in real estate markets, in order to make UBI work well, but let’s start there.
Draupnir@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Now that idea is something I would probably still consider. On one hand I think UBI would be pretty damn cool, and probably a useful advancement for society. On the other hand, the reason for the desire for UBI in this instance is still incorrect and that it is essentially asking for the labor of another to feed you or to feed others simply because they were successful. It seems like a good move initially, but if you think about how it could play out, that could actually be an incredibly damaging thing for society. People that would normally be driven to innovate are then stifled and subdued with this because they’re just waiting for someone else to reach that level of success so that they can be fed more.
gedaliyah@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That is a common belief, although it doesn’t stand up to academic rigor. There are many studies that show UBI does not negatively impact productivity or innovation, and may even stimulate more.
It seems counterintuitive, but when people have basic needs met, they tend to spend more time improving their skills, experimenting, starying new businesses, and finding better employment matches.
Governments already spend o lot of money on providing services to individuals, such as social security, pensions, healthcare, childcare, education, policing and corrections, food security, housing subsidies, etc. As it turns out, often the most efficient way to provide services to people is to give them money to provide for themselves.
On the other hand, I’m not aware of any studies that show wealth aggregation increases productivity after businesses leaders are paid more than ~50 times their average employee. The typical CEO today earns 351x more than the average employee, which is more than a 1000% increase from the late 1970s.