No Strings Attached Cash Aid (UBI)

A few weeks ago my Northern California Liberal Sister-in-law and her husband came to vacation at our home for a few weeks. During one of our conversations they were excited to tell me about a new car service new car service that just roled out in San Francisco. SImilar to Uber and Lift except their fleet was exclusively made up of driverless cars. During the conversation I argued that this was a terrible advancement since internet powered car service is one of the few vocations were low skilled workers could make a decent living directed by their own ambitions to be productive. My in laws dismissed my arguments saying "those people" only have themselves to blame for their low skilled status and that they will just need to find another job elsewhere. The problem with their heartless argument is that car service isn't the only job suseptible to job loss due to automation; most low and even mid level jobs can, in time, be replaced by automation.


Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI just completed the largest study in chash aid, no strings attached payments to people by the government; sometimes referred to as Universal Basic Income (UBI) and Welfare decades ago.

A three year study was conducted wherein 1,000 lower-income people selected in Illinois and Texas received $1,000 a month and their spending habits and quality of life was tracked.

As new tech threatens jobs, Silicon Valley promotes no-strings cash aid

The rise of artificial intelligence has stoked fears that such technological advances will wipe out millions of jobs. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have thought about that too, and they've long pushed an idea to soften the blow: cash aid from the government, no strings attached.

Now, the first results are out from the latest and largest study on the impacts of free money — research spearheaded by the man behind ChatGPT.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, offered to fund an experiment on what's termed basic income back in 2016.

For three years, 1,000 lower-income people selected in Illinois and Texas received $1,000 a month. (A control group of 2,000 others received $50 a month.)

NPR

The point of the study was to determine how impactful the no strings attached payments would be on the lives of the people who received them.

"Do people sit around and play video games, or do they create new things?" Altman wrote. "Do people, without the fear of not being able to eat, accomplish far more and benefit society far more?"

Tech-driven job losses weren't his only motivation. Altman mentioned progress toward eliminating poverty, writing, "I also think that it's impossible to truly have equality of opportunity without some version of guaranteed income."

The results of the study were mixed.

"We see an increase in people actually paying for housing," she says. "So a lot of people were actually doubling up with other people, and they were able to move out on their own."

Many also put money in the bank. The largest increase in spending was actually on helping family and friends.

the study found that the extra cash allowed one woman to take a pay cut for a job with room to advance, and she now makes close to six figures. But that jump in job quality was rare.

Overall, people who got the cash payments worked a bit less — 1.3 hours less a week on average.

Meanwhile, many people reported major declines in stress and food insecurity early on, but that faded after the first year. Researchers aren't sure why.

in certain cases, the extra cash actually led to more unexpected expenses. For example, some recipients were able to buy vehicles, which then broke down and needed repairs.

Supporters say basic income alone is not a magic solution

The mixed results underly a potential undesired secondary effect that could harm society as much as AI induced poverty. Critics of assistance programs fear, though, is that instead of investing in the future, people eventually give up on working completely and become ever more reliant on support. OpenResearch found “the total amount of work withdrawn from the market” was “fairly substantial” in its experiment.

Further for every $1 received from OpenResearch, participants’ earnings excluding the free money dropped by at least 12 cents and total household income fell by at least 21 cents.

The free money increased the recipients dependency on the provider (the government long term) and resulted in a 21% decrease in earnings.

The results back up the old adage "nothing in life is free" including UBI, it will cost the recipients their independence and if they are not careful with their earnings they could see them decrease over time.

a reply to: Dandandat3

There is no such thing as a 'free ride'. People who support UBI have no idea what the ultimate cost will be.
I have no doubt it will one day happen, along with CBDC and total gov, control of information/disinformation via the internet and all forms of media.

It's already becoming more difficult to speak out without being cancelled, and now they're working on mind reading tech so even your thoughts can be detrimental to your future.

We are inching closer to becoming the Borg.

a reply to: Dandandat3

From what I have seen, liberals have this attitude of pretending to care about the little guy but they actually don't care about the little guy.

Not caring about drivers being replaced by driverless cars is the same as advocating for open borders because they do not care that people who currently work lower skill lower wage jobs can now easily with the influx of working age people from 3rd world countries replace their entire workforces who will take less pay [think 8.50-12.00 an hour vs Americans who will want 12-15 or more per hour for those same jobs] and treat the workers worse because they'll probably take more mistreatment since they really want to live and work in America than their home countries.

Which is bad for all workers in general. Push down wages and let corporations run rampant.

They are good at crafting this bs image of caring about the poors but they don't actually

a reply to: Shoshanna


Over in the UK Shoshanna the construction trades were decimated in the early 2000s with all the foreign labour that was arriving , Most thought they were in heaven at first and were living 20 or more to a property and were used to about $ 1 a hour in their home countries and them getting $ 10 - 15 a hour was rock star wages until they figured out the cost of living .

But the prices we were getting for Jobs dropped 50 % over night , it is hard to compete with guys who sleep in the back of a van and work for a few bucks a hour and spend zero in the local shops etc .

I worked with one foreign guy who told me his wife worked in a local supermarket and got less than £ 25 $ 33 a week his pay was £ 40 $52 in their home country .

She came over with their 2 kids and 3 of his brothers children for a HOLIDAY signed on at the job centre and got a doctor to sign her off with depression for 6 months and got child benefits at the time for 5 kids , He was laughing at me how easy it was to game the system in the UK compared to Poland .

I see loads of strange faces over here doing door to door deliveries for online apps for food not one of them is a local UK person but even they will soon be replaced with drones doing it as my area of the UK always is the first to get tried out for anything new coming out .

We have what is called universal credit here and they are entitled to it without any checks , I am the old school type where I would have them out cleaning the roads and building new homes etc for their benefits as most of the illegal immigrants are out doing cashers for food delivery, car wash , kitchen work etc etc .

Locals cannot compete or get decent payed jobs , doctors appointment's or housing etc because the amount of people flowing in and contributing nothing in return to the economy.

Like America housing has got stupidly expensive and people are getting evicted because it is more profitable housing illegal immigrants than a hard working local person former holiday spots are now full of these people and now no go areas .

A friend of mine took his wife away for a long weekend and had to leave the hotel the next morning because of the amount of illegal immigrants there and they treatment they were getting and it is not a cheap hotel chain to stay at .

what I want to know is when are these migrants going to migrate somewhere else

originally posted by: Shoshanna
a reply to: Dandandat3

From what I have seen, liberals have this attitude of pretending to care about the little guy but they actually don't care about the little guy.

Not caring about drivers being replaced by driverless cars is the same as advocating for open borders because they do not care that people who currently work lower skill lower wage jobs can now easily with the influx of working age people from 3rd world countries replace their entire workforces who will take less pay [think 8.50-12.00 an hour vs Americans who will want 12-15 or more per hour for those same jobs] and treat the workers worse because they'll probably take more mistreatment since they really want to live and work in America than their home countries.

Which is bad for all workers in general. Push down wages and let corporations run rampant.

They are good at crafting this bs image of caring about the poors but they don't actually

but they do care, all those things you blame them for are all the doing of conservatives, because you guys won't regulate anything and keep removing every law or regulation that benefits and/or protects everyone, always coming to the aid of corporations whenever they call, always screwing over regular citizens when the corporations pay you to, you on the right talk of a swamp but you are the biggest faction in the swamp.
your leaders on the right are a bunch of hypocritical narcissists and sociopaths leeching off the people and spewing word soup to make you think liberals are causing all the problems they themselves created, by eliminating or severely weakening progressive laws that were the very reason things were more affordable, why conditions were better, why the wealth gap was small, why wage to cost ratio were higher, why inflation isn't like 30% or something ridiculous, why you don't work 100 hours or more, why poverty isn't 40% or higher, why your wages keep up with costs, why you can even get loans when you aren't rich, why debt isn't a crime, why your children don't have to have a full time job, why health care used to be affordable, etc, i could go on really.

don't blame the left for the problems the right created due to corruption and opportunism. the right only ever destroys then blames everyone else for it.

automation has been pursued with the goal of making it so humans don't have to toil away with labor all the time, to make life easier and give them more time for family, friends, intellectual pursuits, politics, art, rest, etc, ubi was also created with that same intention yet you twist it to sound like its some conspiracy to enslave people to corporations even though it would free people of the burden of labor, how is more free time and greater choice of labor going to make you a slave to a corporation?

a reply to: Shoshanna

As the comedian George Carlin once said.

"The upper class: keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class: pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there...just to scare the # out of the middle class."

The "politics" of the classes is almost irrelevant. My in laws are closer to the upper class then they are to the poor.

a reply to: namehere

automation has been pursued with the goal of making it so humans don't have to toil away with labor all the time, to make life easier and give them more time for family, friends, intellectual pursuits, politics, art, rest, etc, ubi was also created with that same intention yet you twist it to sound like its some conspiracy to enslave people to corporations even though it would free people of the burden of labor, how is more free time and greater choice of labor going to make you a slave to a corporation?

I am not going to comment on your other points because I have only been alive during the downfall of America which has been caused by both parties failure to compromise. If one party or the other actually cared about anyone they would actually put action behind the words which they haven't done since what FDR? I dont count Johnson because he set minorities back hundreds of years with his great society thing.

What I will say is that if you think anyone wants to give people free money and free everything food whatever to sit around and make art, that is not what I think is going to happen. In the far future once automation is complete the population will be much much smaller worldwide, genetic engineering will make it so that those who are left will be human/robot hybrids who only serve the elites.

This idea of 8 billion people sitting around making art doing whatever is just never going to happen in my opinion. I mean, I dont know for sure but just a hunch that the opinions those in power elites have of us peons has not changed much since Kissinger called us "useless eaters"

Automation has been a boogie-man for a long time.
Retailers who jumped to self-serve checkouts are now removing them due to massive theft. While there are jobs that can be done via algorithms there are vastly more that cannot. To many companies the necessary upgrades to automate are stunningly expensive currently.

The self serving soundbytes ringing in our ears from those concerned with lifting up the disadvantaged is just so much hot air. Used to be that was just the normal run-up to throwing cash at programs which spent more on administrative salaries lining pockets as the trickle down just didn't. But it all looked good on paper was also particularly lucrative.

For those who weren't chosen for the trial $1000 the other hope has been NESARA.
Basically people don't want to work if they can find a way not too. Sadly it isn't just those we call "useless eaters" or people stuck in low wage jobs. Plenty of decent income folks used Covid as their ticket to a early retirement.