Comment on Anon can't wait
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 day agoI have a very different take on why UBI is worth considering.
the way it goes currently means sooner or later there will be more people without jobs than with jobs
I don’t think this is necessarily true. This type of FUD has come up with pretty much every major technological shift. This article goes over that, and here are some examples:
- Industrial Age - Luddites vs Looms - worried weaving machines would kill jobs
- Printing Press - ended scribes
- Ford’s assembly lines - kill craftsmanship
In each case, the fears were largely unfounded, but they seemed very prescient at the time.
I don’t recommend UBI because I’m worried AI or some other technological advance will kill jobs, I recommend UBI because I think it empowers workers, encourages entrepreneurship, and simplifies social safety nets (less work to get the benefits you need).
if we don’t want the guillotines to come up (we are well on the way to that, since it becomes more and more mainstream to openly talk about stuff like that)
Is it though? I mostly see it on forums like this one that heavily tilt to young people on one end of the political spectrum. I think it has more to do with influencers and echo chambers than an actual shift in public perception. By all metrics, the average person is doing better today than at any other time in history (real (inflation adjusted) median personal income is at an all time high). The problem, IMO, is perception. People think they’re worse off because of social media (people only post the highlights), influencers (survivorship bias), and comparing themselves to their parents (further along in their career).
The one area that’s troubling is average age of first-time home-owners, which has become about 40 (source):
I think the critical factor here isn’t necessarily home prices, but personal savings rates declining. People just aren’t saving as much any more, meaning they’re spending a greater share of their income, so it’ll take longer to make a down payment on a home. And with inflation-adjusted household incomes steadily increasing over time, I think the simple answer is that people are spending more of their money on short-term wants.
I don’t think guillotines will fix this issue, people need a better relationship w/ social media (which for many people, will be no relationship at all) and a greater focus on planning for the future. It all starts with building good habits while young, as in, when your income is so small that your savings doesn’t really matter in the long term.
I get it, life is hard and people want easy solutions. But most of the time, there are no easy solutions, and any solution proposed as easy is an outright lie. Instead of focusing on society-level “solutions,” instead focus on how to improve your own life as it is. That’s largely what therapists offer, they don’t wave a magic wand and make your problems disappear, they reframe your problems into things you can manage, and that is empowering.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 1 day ago
Do you have a source to back that up? My impression is that wealth and income are becoming more and more unequal, I find it hard to believe that the issue is actually that people are “buying too much avocado toast”.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 15 hours ago
Both are true, people are making more and the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. So everyone is getting richer, with the rich are getting richer faster.
Ithink it’s keeping up with the Joneses. The sources I have listed above show the following:
Assuming inflation statistics are accurate, that means people are spending on different things than they did in the past.
Here’s an interesting source, and a table from that page:
Image
Basically, people are reducing savings instead of switching to cheaper products, reducing consumption, or delaying purchases. It’s not a huge change, but it’s a steady trend.
So I’m guessing people are seeing less value in savings than they did previously.
The studies I’ve looked at aren’t super granular, and the changes in housing and medical care don’t seem to tell the whole story.
That’s true if you just look at dollar amounts, but if you include the opportunity cost of the down payment, if that money is invested in stocks, the rent vs buy math works out to be more of a wash. This obviously varies by area with some being very renter friendly and others being very homeowner friendly, but on average it’s pretty close.