I just looked over the interview. it was fucking WEIRD man. He’s kind advocating for a UBI? Basically he’s saying that AI is going to give us the whole Star Trek “post scarcity” future thing and like money is simultaneously going to be useless, but that how that could happen is the Treasury could just give people checks and inflation wouldn’t be an issue because the AI would be creating so much abundance. It’s genuinely hard to parse
Comment on Modern Monetary Theory: Musk Edition
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
We all hate Musk but isn’t Musk suggesting Universal Basic Income?
Macchi_the_Slime@piefed.blahaj.zone 12 hours ago
ChanchoManco@lemmy.zip 10 hours ago
It’s part of the grief, hyping AI and his robots while promising that he’s gonna give money after they replace the workforce. Guess what happens next?
petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 hours ago
Yeah, I remember what this fuck did to California’s high speed rail.
Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
Yeah, billionaires like UBI because they can pretend they care about the plebs, but in reality they know it will just cause inflation, which there stocks won’t be effected by, and push even more money into the stock market to protect against inflation, inflating there portfolio.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 52 minutes ago
Musk isn’t suggesting a UBI in the form that has already been tested successfully without inflation. Like any government expense, the funds are typically raised through taxes.
NottaLottaOcelot@lemmy.ca 9 hours ago
How is a guy who says too much was spent on food stamps and foreign aid going to like the budget to produce a livable UBI? It’s basically selling people a pipe dream to justify cutting current social services, and then we can colour us all shocked when UBI either never rolls out or is like $5 per person
ZeroGravitas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 hours ago
No. That would be achievable through reallocation of funds, e.g. from tax revenue. If the quote is correct, that’s just increasing monetary mass, aka printing money. Which is Inflationary AF.
That being said, I find it hard to believe that a CEO in this day and age wouldn’t have at least this basic understanding of how the economy works. This being Musk, there’s no need to invent extra character flaws. The man has plenty to go around.
Bustedknuckles@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
A cynical view is that he does understand and is just shitposting and muddying the water around UBI
Junkers_Klunker@feddit.dk 10 hours ago
I find that quite plausible.
cavitationfetishist2@quokk.au 11 hours ago
Being a CEO is an actual disease that causes measurable cognitive decline.
gibmiser@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Its a cover. Saying populist ideas without any intention to support them or help them come about is just a way to hide his real actions under a veneer.
Bonsoir@lemmy.ca 12 hours ago
Well, the text says “you could actually get deflation because there will be so much abundance produced”. There is some reality where this is true, as increasing the monetary mass would do nothing if the economy (the amount of goods and services produces) also increases. But I wouldn’t bet on an universal basic income increasing the global production.
unmagical@lemmy.ml 11 hours ago
The printing money wouldn’t be enough. You’d also have to legislate what people are mor allowed to do after the money printing begins (like rent hikes equal to the average household size * the ubi check).
Bonsoir@lemmy.ca 9 hours ago
Which you already have to do, because there already is inflation. I don’t see how a UBI would change anything if the inflation stays the same.
EvilBit@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
The only way this makes sense, and I guarantee he’s not advocating for this, would be to print and distribute so much money to the lower and middle classes that the upper class wealth is diluted and inequality is reduced. But the havoc that would wreak outside of the US is something I can’t even speculate on.
PyroNeurosis@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 hours ago
But even that wouldn’t do a thing to them - their value isn’t stored in money, so any inflation would only hurt the people who’s value is.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
How do you get UBI without issuing checks from the Treasury. There isn’t enough tax money that can be taken from Billionaires to sustain UBI.
Not just tax, but take every penny of every Billionaire in the US. Net worth of all US billionaires is 8.4 Trillion.
270 million US adults.
= 31k per person. Once.
That’s 31k one time. Then there is no money for next year.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
The productive capacity of the accumulated capital owned by US billionaires exceeds $31k/person/year.
The “Net Worth” figure is deceiving, because it’s the exchange value and not the use value. Sitting on tens of millions of vacant real estate units, many of which are underwater on their purchase price, shows up as far less on an individual balance sheet than the material benefit of not being homeless accrues to a homeowner.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
If that was true then taking all their capital and distributing it would be more than $31k/person/year for each individual receiving their share of the 8.4 Trillion.
Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 hours ago
Nobody said it had to be over $2500/month?
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Minimum wage in many US cities is $15/hr which is $30k/year.
Even at federal minimum wage of $7.50, that means not just taxing Billionaires at 100% but taking everything will give you 2 years of UBI before there is no money.