this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2026
170 points (95.7% liked)

Ask Lemmy

41101 readers
2621 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !uspolitics@lemmy.world


7) No Hit-and-Run questions.
Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.


8) No Bots.
Posts or comments from bots, LLM's, AIs, Neural Networks, Transformers, or Marvin the Paranoid Android are not welcome in AskLemmy. Real humans only please.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I was once talking with one of my classmates and he said that in the future, there will be universal basic income implemented by entire world. I was not convinced at that time and thought he is just being stupid but given the layoffs happening and massive amount of unemployment, I am thinking about this possibility. What do you say?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] forbiddencherry@lemmy.today 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

USian perspective:

Things are currently going in the opposite direction where safety nets are being removed.

In 2027, a huge chunk of low income people will lose Medicaid. It will be hard to see who can stay on it, because in most states with a higher minimum wage, working 80 hours would put them very close to or over the income limit. And people not working also lose it. There are problems people have that aren't considered "real" disabilities, yet prevent having jobs. Obamacare does provide a low income discount, but there are still multi-thousand dollar deductibles. My prediction is that this is going to put a massive strain on hospitals because people simply won't be able to pay. We'll probably start to see some smaller ones go under (already are, actually, but it's going to get worse, IMO).

I think the Medicaid purge is relevant because working people got jealous that unemployed and poor people had better insurance than they did in some ways, and stripping that made them feel better about their own situation. That goes completely against the spirit of UBI, which is paid to both rich and poor and people in any situation.

UBI would likely result in price hikes where the UBI money wouldn't provide a real leg up as everything just became more expensive. We just saw that happen with the COVID stimulus checks. Or for another example, McDonald's using the app provides a "discount", but not even close compared to the prices they used to have pre-COVID.

[–] dharmacurious@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

As a leftist, UBI is a concept that both excites and scares me. It is a last ditch effort to save a consumer economy, and further removes people from labor organizing. With price hikes and unethical corporations and governments, a UBI could simply become a way to increase the price of every object and service, while also preventing the one method through which average people have ever genuinely impacted change: the union and strike. How do we unionize around ourself when we are removed from work? It's a scary concept.

I love the idea of removing the means of survival from meaningless work, and I truly believe that is the direction we need to go if we wish to continue basing our economy off of consumerism and money (which, frankly, I don't think we need to do), but in order for it work and be anything other than an actual nightmarescape, UBI has to be coupled (in some concrete, irreversible way) with things like price controls, rent controls, and some way for people to functionally unionize as citizens outside of their respective employment.

But all that said, we can't even get single payer healthcare in the US, so this is more of a "what they should do in Europe" situation, as here in the US the answer to "will we get a UBI" is "go fucking die in a hole, you disgusting poor. But not that hole. That's my hole."

[–] Naive@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

what is this removing means of survival?

[–] dharmacurious@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 day ago

It's not removing the means of survival. I said "removing the means of survive from meaningless work." In other words, to decouple the two concepts so that one may survive without having to rely on meaningless work.

load more comments (3 replies)