That’s straight ignorance. You don’t abandon a curated breed of livestock based on some short term innovation. Humanity’s dependence on these types animals is older than recorded history. You would doom us all if the technology fails and we can not go back to traditional methods.
Sorry chief, I’m unable to fathom the logic underlying this comment.
Do you think that the day the first stem cell sausage hits the supermarket shelves pigs will be deleted from this reality?
You’ll still be able to buy sausages made with real flesh in 50 years, just that between now and then alternatives will emerge that are tastier, healthier, and cheaper.
Steam trains still exist but you don’t drive one to work every day because they’re shit.
Animal reservoir? Instead of millions of pigs sent to the slaughter, thousands in free range zones where they can have their stem cells harvested without suffering. And “train” the rest to live on their original place.
Yeah, not a good idea. There are wild hogs, but our farm pigs are not good for the wild. They go feral and become giant and dangerous and do a lot of damage, and they also breed like crazy. It’s actually a really big issue. These animals are meant for the farm and nothing more.
This was definitely one of my concerns when I first went vegan, but thankfully, it’s really not a problem at all, due to basic supply and demand.
Everyone in the world isn’t going to go vegan overnight. The demand for animal products will gradually decline over decades, and farmers won’t waste their time and money by raising more animals than they can sell, so the supply will decline in turn.
Thank you. I read the article, I swear, before posting. (Literally stopped what I was typing after I read my own statement “looking in the comments”) Not sure how I missed that.
The whole “stem cells from a fetus” thing certain groups try to spread is false. Technically stems cells can come from a fetus, but they generally don’t. We even have methods to turn regular cells into stem cells I’m pretty sure. This doesn’t do anything more than taking cell(s) from a pig one time and they can be grown on their own potentially forever. No other pig needs to be involved.
“Young Americans are upset that the economy is tanking and stacked to exploit them for their masters’ benefit as their planet boils in real time for the rest of their lives.”
Wow, yeah, that’s so hard to understand! Who would have guessed that would result in cynicism regarding capitalism? Shocking!
SURELY these cops can be totally trusted to not use this when they see an attractive woman they want to follow around, or a vulnerable minority they want to harass.
That’s a policy problem, not a technology problem. Cops are abusing every tool they’re given because they can get away with it, not because of the tool. If you sent them on patrol unarmed and on foot they’d still be going around beating up people with the current oversight regime.
Not the technology, the lack of oversight. I didn’t see any mention of an oversight board or review panel, repercussions for abuse, etc.
Which with any technology, and the clear history of exactly the issues you’ve noted, is an absolute requirement imo.
Great tech and approach. Guaranteed to be used correctly in some cases, and massively abused in others. Without policy revisions to address those abuses, it’s a potentially very frightening technology in police hands.
Yeah, police are already abusing GPS trackers. The thing is that banning technology isn’t going to fix that, it’s a government that will hold police accountable for their crimes.
Abuse of technology is not the fault of the technology itself. You didn’t blame the gun for misuse of guns by the police do you? IMHO, this tech is better than the government having EVERY car GPS tracked
You don’t blame the tool, you blame either the individual or the policies. Unfortunately, in US police, the individuals tend to be the failed marine dictator wannabees, who the thanks to lacks policies get a near carte blanche to abuse those tools like there is no tomorrow.
Same goes for gun policies in general, they’re so dumb that you have near daily mass shootings there, causing loads of individuals to wonder how this can possibly happen and claim that there is nothing anyone safe god himself can do about the situation.
This seems harder to abuse than the regular GPS trackers they’ve had for a long time. The dart probably makes a loud noise when it hits the car and might damage the paint. If they’re harassing someone wouldn’t they rather quietly stick a tracker to the bottom of a car where it wouldn’t be noticed?
It illegal to track someone like that without a warrant. Instead, they can use the easily accessible legal privately owned ALPR system to see their habits.
Article: Police are doing a better job, here’s how.
Most of Lemmy: Nuh uh they’re gonna use it to abolish the thirteenth amendment and stalk cute girls.
I’m begging you to shut the fuck up. Every whisper of cop news has some dipshit with a comment like this. We get it, you don’t like police, go harass Facebook boomers about it.
Yes, because even when police find and take opportunities to do their dangerous job safer than before, we should still have prepubescent dickheads find ways to remind us police bad. Who could ever grow tried of hearing “ACAB” at every mention of police?
I bet the cop who got in a squirtgun fight with some local kids put lemon juice in his gun. Typical.
It’s not bad to be skeptical considering their record. It’s responsible. Yes. It’s good that they are doing something to make things more safe. But yes it’s also good to continue to call attention to the ways this new tech can (and almost certainly will) be abused.
They dug their own hole of skepticism, not us.
I don’t really care if someone’s “tired of hearing ACAB” if people are still losing their lives unjustly to bad cops. Continuing to raise awareness in any little way is better then not being annoying.
Man oh man it’s almost like I refuse to acknowledge someone’s opinion especially when they admit to having an inclination that inhibits impartial judgment stemming from prejudice.
It’s not impartial judgement if the entire system for policing is built upon immunity: which it is. There are only extremely rare cases where police are held accountable, and usually only after massive backlash.
Also there are biases in literally all opinions. No one is a perfectly logical human being. But whatever you have to say to make yourself feel superior.
Uhhh it does sound a bit far fetched to think they’ll start shooting these darts at random people? I don’t think it’s a very discreet process. Something that could happen but I don’t foresee this becoming a common thing
No we won’t and this nonsense article tries to set a very bad precedent. I was dealing with this just yesterday, new job offer comes my way last month with 2 salary choices. Come in the office for 20% more pay, work from home for less. I’m already making the higher amount with my current job, working from home. So I pass, They counter and offer other perks, I pass. This goes on for 9 days now. Yesterday, I just told them to stop, I have zero interest in working with a company that tries every way to hire me except for what I ask for.
I might add that the financials of the company were north of a billion. Get paid for what you’re worth, not where you work.
Can I ask what it is you do? I had a back injury earlier this year and it’s starting to look like I’m going to have to give up my really good paying job at UPS and I might be in need of something far less physical.
Sorta kinda. I was the sudo IT guy for the church my in laws went to as well as their sound tech for front of house. I’ll have to look out for something like that.
Yeah this is just the bullshit of asserting that you’re less valuable if you work from home. Work from home needs to be seen more like a corner office but in a building where everyone can have one. It’s wonderful and if you can’t offer as much money it may cover the gap, but it’s more likely to cost you someone for not offering than save you money.
See, my job has me on camera a few hours every day. And then beyond that I’m productive by producing code, or diagrams. So while my work might be “hidden”, there’s a way to track it without me warming a chair in a big office.
This should be standard, people don't become less productive when working from home. Vast majority of wfh folks I know spend more time and are more productive at home. If my company tried to pull this nonsense (it wouldn't because its actually a great place to work) I'd immediately start looking for a different job. On Linkedin and other platforms I literally don't even consider or look at non wfh positions.
Also I don't know what jobs are thinking. Its stupid to think someone will change jobs for less pay and move into a non-wfh position from a wfh one. Those jobs should always be avoided, because they clearly think you're too stupid to do basic math.
I’d consider taking an in-office position if the trade off was I start my commute at 9, and leave so I get home roughly for 5, so the tradeoff is that my drive is on company time.
If part of my job is to look at the inside of my car for 90 minutes and then remote connect to my home computer from the other side of the city for some reason, and you’re willing to pay me more than my currently employer to do so: have at it.
this would still require a bump for me. I get to see my wife and dog casually all day. I am able to eat a nicer and cheaper meal at home as well as walk my dog at lunch. Then there is the additional environmental damage that comes out of my commute. That scenario would significantly reduced the bump I would expect from in office though.
I culture cells for a living. Not that these are the only ways, but the most common and effective ways to grow cells in the lab is to add either FBS (fetal bovine serum) or BSA (bovine serum albumin) to the culture media. Currently we don’t mass produce BSA in an animal free manner and FBS is by nature an animal product. Granted, that the products of one animal may in fact allow manufacturers produce more than enough ‘animal-free meat’ to overcome this but I haven’t seen any numbers. I’m interested in hearing more about these techniques going forward and in determining if animal-free products can really be produced animal free.
Unfortunately, I don’t really understand your response.
You talked about one hundred times the suffering. What does that mean? To me, the way animals are held in mass production is completely unethical and there is no way to make it worse… So how do you make the animals suffer even more?
Do you use Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS) to make your meat?
No, for a simple reason: we’re committed to making meat without causing any harm at all to animals. So we’ve developed a production process that doesn’t require FBS.
It hasn’t officially been ruled upon by either kosher or halal certification boards yet (although many Jewish and Islamic leaders have expressed differing opinions on the matter), but most lab meat growers very much hope it will be ruled as what is known as “parvere” — or not meat. That is to say, since it didn’t actually come from an animal, it’s not technically meat, it has no blood, wasn’t slaughtered, etc., and, as such is considered more in line with a vegetable or other foodstuff that isn’t milk or meat.
If lab meat is considered in this way, it could clear the way for Kosher and Halal certification as well as for Hindus who do not eat beef, and many others with objections to eating meat for various reasons.
my god how many stars had to align to make that joke. wish i could think of puns in my own response but even if i could they wouldn't match this. fucking bravo.
i'm probably going to come back to this in a few days and marvel at it again. JFC nicely done.
Any time I hear claims that involve hitherto unknown laws of Physics I’m 99.99% sure I’m dealing with BS - but then again, some day someone will probably genuinely pull off such a discovery.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that NASA has physicists that understand how and why this thing works, and the article title is just bullshit.
they do, and tested it extensively… and determined it doesn’t provide any thrust and the earlier tests that showed a tiny bit were just sensors malfunctioning from the microwaves…
i’m going go ahead and call this article:
probably bullshit
Are you sure? What you say is true of the EM drive, but this looks like it’s a completely different technology. As far as the article is written, it doesn’t sound like microwaves are used at all.
What has me skeptical is that they say the device produces enough thrust to counteract its own mass, which would be revolutionary. Why are we not reading about this all over the news?
It’s very likely, but it’s almost certainly going to involve an extreme thing we can barely measure. The whole reason physics is stuck where it is is that all the things we have access to are described perfectly by the system we have, even if it’s not fully self-consistent.
Sausage seems like the perfect entry point for this technology. People don’t really care what goes in them as long as it tastes good. It’s also a lot more forgiving from a texture perspective. It would even be feasible to expand to more exotic sausages like pheasant or alligator.
You have to compete with plant based sausages though which, unless some big breakthrough happens, will be much cheaper. They’ll also probably taste pretty similar cause this is only generating cells, they’ll have to add in a bunch of other artificial stuff like heme to make it taste like a sausage at which point I’m not sure if people could taste the difference between animal cells and plant cells as the base.
As someone who really enjoys meat but tries to eat vegetarian (and does so 99% of the time), I can't say that I've ever been impressed by the taste of a non-meat sausage. Every single one I've had has left me wishing I'd just had falafel instead. Fortunately falafel is delicious and cheap
Notably, though, vegetarian haggis - which is essentially just a large sausage - is usually pretty damn good. I have no idea why it seems to end up differently. Maybe because haggis depends less on the meat flavour in the first place?
I had a vegetarian sausage that had a close-ish flavor recently. It might have been Beyond? The texture was surprisingly awful though. Far from inedible, but I’d expect all parts of the texture to be closer, especially the casing.
I know i’m in a significant minority, but I care a great deal what goes in processed pork products (or rather, my gut cares). I’ve yet to pin down which “preservative” commonly used in pork/pork-like products I’m allergic to, but I have a serious problem with even Kosher Hot dogs.
Basically, if its not fresh homemade bratwurst or sausage, I just can’t eat it.
I’m sure that, if these methods continue to become more viable than their livestock counterparts, then the need to use at least some preservatives will decrease… hopefully.
Its not awesome, but for theost part, that specific reaction is limited to just that. I’m pretty adventurous when it comes to food, so i’m sure that whatever chemical causes it is limited in use outside of that market.
Yes. I’m not sure how much of the non-meat chemicals are for the preservation / shelf life as opposed to the ones necessary to the creation(?) process.
I suspect that at first the meat will still require the more aggressive preservation methods because the distance in both time and geography from the lab will be similar to that of the slaughter locations.
But without needing to work around breeding seasons and just general herd growth variations throughout the year, the creation of the meat could be much closer to the demand. Storage costs for temperature sensitive products that are also time sensitive has got to be a huge industry cost, so there is more economic reasons than just “use less chemicals” for it to start to trend that way. (Also, I’m sure the chemicals used are absurdly cheap and hardly a factor)
Nitrates and nitrites: in pretty much every commercial sausage. May be listed in the ingredients as curing salt or Prague powder.
Onion or garlic powder
Breadcrumbs
Emulsifiers: in any kind of hotdog or Weiner where it’s all blended and looks smooth, as opposed to a sausage where you can actually see little pieces of fat and meat. Listed in the ingredients as some kind of gum or some kind of glyceride.
Those first three I don’t think are exclusive to pork products, and I’m sure its not Onion/Garlic powders or breadcrumbs. I use them frequently when cooking without getting sick.
But emulsifiers… would sausage/bratwurst of a lesser quality also have them? And are they exlclusive to tubular pork? Because they sound they may be the same thing that’s in most sugar-free gums, and glyceride by itself is everywhere, unless it’s a specific kind.
I appreciate the help, but like I said I have narrowed it down to something that’s pretty exclusively used to preserve pork for really any duration of shelf life of a grocery store. I don’t get sick when I eat fresh pork of any kind, well I guess so long as it’s cooked, and I don’t get sick when I eat other animal products with preservatives in it, or at least not consistently at all.
I’m good with just leading this pseudo-jewish life for the time being. Honestly unless it’s like quality fresh brought worse at Oktoberfest, then I don’t really feel like I’m missing out anyways.
I have narrowed it down to something that’s pretty exclusively used to preserve pork
I don’t know of any preservatives that are exclusively used for pork. I’m a butcher so I have pretty good knowledge of that stuff. I didn’t really expect it would help you but I thought I’d take a shot in the dark.
It’s also a lot more forgiving from a texture perspective.
This is also why I see milk and eggs being easier to develop. Non-animal dairy actually already exists (see: Perfect Day Foods), though I’ve only seen it in a few products.
It is now, but not when they started taking over back in the 1980’s. They started off by being cars that were cheaper. Their prices rose as they started to get a positive name for themselves.
I remember Kia coming into the US market with a somewhat similar playback, but they entered back when many other makers weren’t having poor quality/lifespan vehicles. Mid 90’s kias were cheap as snot so they got some sales. But it didn’t bode well for them as people started to notice they weren’t built to last very long, and then they started to go bankrupt (Korean financial crisis) and Hyundai bought them/bailed them out. Then they still stayed cheap as snot in the US, but gradually improved in quality. As they started getting a slightly better name for themselves they’d keep upping the price and keep upping the quality. Nowadays they aren’t much cheaper at all than a lot of manufacturers, but they also aren’t much behind in quality, either. Had they been able to enter the US market a decade sooner, they could have really had a leg up.
Toyota and Lexus is still one of the most reliable cars out there today. I’ve got multiple Toyota cars and trucks and all have over 200k miles now. Two of my supras have over 250k and the tundra and LC both have almost 300k miles on them.
I had the same experience with a 1992 Toyota pickup truck. The thing was a tank, and had over 300,000 miles on it, and it was still running perfectly fine when I sold it for cheap.
Top Gear even had an episode where they tried pretty hard to destroy a mid 80s Toyota Hilux pickup truck. So, I think that they were pretty reliable in the 80s and 90s, too. At the very least the trucks were.
I still see a lot of old corollas, 4runners, and Toyota pickup trucks on the road in my area, too.
Oh sure, I agree they are the most reliable. I’ve bought only Toyota or Lexus for almost 20 years now. The first car I personally bought was a Celica in 1985. (Replaced it with a Mustang after the Celica died at 8 years.) Toyota got back on track in the late 90’s and now they last 15 years.
I was only pointing out that the legendary Hilux was even more reliable in the 1970’s than the 80’s.
“But I go to work and barely scrape by! UBI isn’t fair!”
-Americans who’ve been propagandized by the wealth class to resent the even more powerless and victimized people below them than even considering getting angry at the little club above them keeping them scraping by.
I don’t know how we’ll get past that mindset. So many bloodthirsty Americans rooting against eachother economically.
Comic was about immigrants, but applies easily to homeless, minimum wage workers vs. Slightly less exploited workers, on and on. That’s what they do. It fucking works on many if not most who refuse to understand common cause, rugged individuals that we are.
Working people would also get UBI. Most likely taxes would go up, making their paycheck smaller. But then they're getting UBI. Ideally this would result in the majority of stable, permanent workers getting the same pay from 2 different sources. With richer people getting less and poorer people getting more.
Lots of workers would stop working, and that's OK. That will mean certain industries will have to pay more. UBI will result in people working just to not starve or die of exposure a thing of the past. And let me tell you, capitalists and business with FIGHT this to hell and back. It removes a huge cudgel from workers.
But more realistically, UBI will probably start with a below-basic income level subsidy for homeless and jobless to help house and keep people in houses. Kind of like unemployment, but it actually works long-term.
I’m fully aware friend. I’m not arguing the merits, multiple successful studies, or the desperate need.
My point is how do we convince the poor, deluded, beaten dog people to vote for leaders promising to enact this policy? Can’t you already hear the ignorant screams of “TROJAN HORSE COMMUNISM!!!” Yes, fully aware its not.
How do we sell this on a bumper sticker? A paragraph won’t help with most Americans.
Ah, sorry. I wasn't replying against your comment but trying to add my ideas/explanation to it and the idea of UBI.
My only ideas on how to convince Americans aren't great: that UBI will prevent homelessness both of them and probably prevent people sleeping on the streets. It'll prevent hunger which means no real risk of not being able to feed your kids. Overall it'll prevent some desperation so it'll prevent a lot of the causes of crime.
Buuuut that won't convince the majority of Americans who think it could never happen to them. Honestly we'll probably get universal healthcare before UBI and I'm not holding out hope to see that in my lifetime. :(
Well when Republicans didn’t want to forgive even $10k worth of student loans cuz it’s “not fair to the people who paid it off” I’m not too optimistic we could convince them of UBI
It wouldn’t be paid for by the wealthy. The wealthy only take, i.e. take all of the value created by the working. Have you seen how much goes in subsidies to private businesses to enhance their private business. That weath could pay for it, it’s where the wealthy get all their money.
And great point about education being public and freely available. It’s beneficial on so many levels.
Buuuut that won’t convince the majority of Americans who think it could never happen to them.
Even worse, I got conservatives in my family I know will say “but those people deserve to be there. They made bad decisions and should suffer for them.” Even though the “bad decision” premise is bullshit before we get into the cruelty of “deserving” suffering.
To those conservatives: Since the far and away best indicator of a person's wealth is how wealthy their parents were, I guess that means that poor people deserve to be born from poor parents, huh?
I can’t think of better jobs to automate than middle management. They cost inordinate amounts of money compared to rank and file workers, and they usually don’t produce jack shit. They’re glorified taskmasters sans whip.
After testing AI for a bit, it mostly seems to be peak bullshitting, where everything’s sourced by Trust-me-bro even if said otherwise. Rank and file workers would never get away with that.
Tbh, my boss does work, even more than i do and i do overtime everyday (its paid in money or free days so its cool) and his boss is the company owner that is pretty much working 24/7 or at least at disposal every day every hour.
I don’t think AI can replace such people, especially because we work with sensitive data.
Well, that just means your boss and his boss aren’t just glorified zoo keepers and actually contribute something to the bottom line.
Many of them don’t, however. My very own superior definitely falls in the same category as yours. He’s someone who leads by example and isn’t afraid to get “down in the trenches”, so to speak, so he has my utmost respect.
A good middle manager is worth their weight in gold. There’s nothing like working on a job where everyone’s roles mesh together perfectly. Where pertinent information flows down efficiently, and where minor problems are crushed ruthlessly before they can grow into major ones.
Unfortunately, most middle management are not that good. Others are stymied by not being given enough autonomy to actually do their jobs well.
A poor manager is as welcome as a muck spreader at a garden wedding. The best thing you can do is try and keep them away from anything important, and contain the stink.
The Chinese automaker BYD reminds me of the famous phrase attributed to the sci-fi writer William Gibson - “The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.”
Future EV cars will be cheap to own and run. Self-driving tech will lower insurance costs. You can charge them with your home solar setup if you want. They’ll last far longer with lower maintenance costs thanks to simple electric engines with few moving parts. As their construction gets more roboticized it will lower their costs further. The batteries that make up a huge chunk of their current costs are falling in price too. CATL, the world’s largest EV battery maker, is set to cut costs in half by mid 2024.
Some people still think gasoline and ICE cars have a long life ahead of them, and don’t realize the industries behind both are dead men walking.
And did it by boldly having no understanding of computers at the time which is why all the tech is so different from a lot of other scifi. I recently got through my decade long Asimov kick and am slowly working through Gibson now
Chinese EVs are cheaper because they are prepaid by Chinese tax payers. That also includes taxes levied from our internet purchases for products made in China.
No, the way this usually goes is that a Western firm will order parts from a company in China, which then subcontracts to a firm that uses slave labor. This obfuscation isn't always easy to find out about, especially if you don't have knowledgeable people on the ground.
They aren't price gouging, they have to pay actual living wages, have higher energy costs (China uses almost entirely cheap coal) and can't as easily use slave labor as Chinese automakers.
I’m an ev fan but I don’t agree that they have more longevity than ICE cars. The current battery chemistries simply don’t allow for it.
Either battery chemistries with 20 years of guaranteed performance would have to be developed, or battery replacement and refurbishment costs will need to come down to say the cost of replacing a head gasket.
This will eventually happen, but current generation of EVs are essentially a recyclable consumable compared to their ICE counterparts.
Which is in line with most other UBI experiments. How many more experiments do we need until politicians just acknowledge that this is good policy and we need to start implementing it?
Part of it comes from removing existing social support schemes that UBI supplants. Not only can you reallocate those funds, the simplified ruleset should also reduce bureaucratic overhead, which can also go towards funding UBI.
Will that cover all of the additional expenses? Probably not. But it’s a start, at least.
They just print it. There’s nothing tying the value of the currency to what it’s worth in terms of purchase power except how much is circulated.
My issue with UBI, at large-scale, is that it will cause inflation that will 100% go to the wealthiest people on the planet. For example, it’s not that the cost of a burger would need to go from $10->$15 because companies now need to compete in wages in an environment where their employees have an extra $12k, it’s that the cost of a burger will go from $10->$15 because the rich want the extra $5, leaving people receiving UBI with the same (or less) purchasing power.
EDIT: To be clear, I’m excited about the possibilities that these studies show, and I’m not against UBI. I just am getting older and coming to the conclusion that the non-wealthy get fucked every time anything that is meant to help us is implemented.
yeah i’ve never understood why they can’t just print the money. how does that actually force the dude at costco to print new price tags. ohh oh no this amount seems like less now, it’s not as though we have abundance beyond our wildest dreams, better increase prices because of the graphs!!
Yeah the effects on inflation need to be looked at pretty closely. Extra cash to people who need it is great for them. Extra cash for everyone, especially if it is just printed, surely will cause problems. Just the increase in money supply will result in inflation but yeah greedy assholes will find ways to suck up the free money from everyone else.
The problem with the wealthy fucking over us peons is what’s truly Universal when we have so much corruption.
If I didn’t fear it falling into squalor, along with NIMBY problems, some kind of public free housing would effectively be like a portion of UBI but harder for greedy pricks to suck up the money legally. And at least that way the people who would otherwise be able to work (e.g. those who became homeless due to medical emergencies) wouldn’t be at a disadvantage from being unhomed.
Of course the real answer there is universal healthcare and elimination of for profit healthcare and elimination of health insurance. So that medical emergencies are just covered.
is that it will cause inflation that will 100% go to the wealthiest people on the planet
It will only cause inflation if you print the money. If the supply of money goes up then value of money goes down.
I just am getting older and coming to the conclusion that the non-wealthy get fucked every time anything that is meant to help us is implemented.
I hear you there. We have a corrupt political class to blame for that. Which is why I advocate for the Forward party, which aims to break up the duopoly of the political system. It’s main policy goals are Nonpartisan primaries and Ranked Choice Voting.
Yes, regardless of if the money gets printed or just ends up in people’s bank accounts, as the amount of money in circulation increases, inflation will follow. The only other way to get money in people’s accounts is to take it from other accounts, like taxing the crap out of the wealthiest people, purchases over a certain threshold, etc. Then it wouldn’t lead to inflation, just redistribution of wealth. I’m not an expert on economies, and I’m sure the semantics of what I’m saying isn’t quite right, but I think you know what I mean.
If you don’t print money to fund a UBI, money in circulation stays the same so there is no inflation.
In fact in the few widescale UBI experiments that have taken place, inflation decreased. Alaska has had a form of a basic income, funded by oil revenues on from state land, since 1982. Ever since, Alaska has had LOWER inflation than the entire U.S. Their term it is the Permanent Fund dividend and it managed by a state owned corporation.
As an aside Economics is a social science, and is imperfect because it cant be replicated. The term for this is Replication crisis. Interesting wikipedia article on that.
I’m not understanding the need for printed money to increase inflation. Wouldn’t direct deposit to people’s checking accounts have the same effect as printed currency?
No, direct deposit is just the method of moving around currency from the government to people. Inflation is based upon the economic theory of supply and demand. The price of a good is determined by the intersection of supply and demand. If both supply and demand go up equally the price stays the same. If supply goes up without demand changing the price goes down. If demand goes down without supply changing the price goes up.
Supply in this case is how much money is in circulation. When money is moved around from a group of people to another, then the amount of money is still the same. Demand in this case is how much it costs to borrow money. Demand is otherwise known as the interest rate when applied to money.
If both the amount of money in circulation and the interest rate stay steady, than no change will occur in the value of money. This is the case of a UBI funded by cutting spending or increasing taxes.
However if only supply increases and demand stays the same, then the value of money will decrease. Likewise if only demand increases and supply stays the same, then the value of money will decrease.
Inflation is the devaluing of currency caused by either of the above listed changes to the supply-demand equation.
Think about the amount of printed currency like housing supply in LA. The price for housing is ever increasing because the demand for housing is increasing while the supply is barely inching upwards. That is an example of the value of houses in LA inflating. The same concept applies to government backed money. The only difference is the government decides the supply and demand of the currency market.
A UBI is universal in the sense that it applies without a means test or a need to work. Traditional social welfare programs have many overly restrictive policies that limit who is eligible. This results in only about ~25% of those who are eligible actually using those programs.
If you are arguing that the linked article is not an example of a UBI, you would be correct as it is a targeted basic income.
Well not a tiny bit. Increase taxes in the 0.1% a whole fuckload. I’d increase taxes on billionaires to 90% and start freezing assets of anyone who tries to go overseas to avoid them. levy the world’s strongest ever economic and geopolitical sanctions against countries that harbor billionaire american tax evasion expats or something.
Ok what do you do when foreign investment dries up and no foreign entity wants their money in your bank since you have a habit of seizing it? How strong is the economy then?
You do realize that marginal tax rates were about 90% in America before, right? The single biggest reason they aren’t anymore is much like how Walmart keeps their prices low - part of a race to the bottom. You’re right, they will go elsewhere. They didn’t before because there were no good or practical options. And as long as countries do what Ireland did not too long ago, it will continue to be a problem.
Yes I am aware that the top bracket was at one point 90%. Immalso aware that by changing that with the 1983 tax reforms we dropped tax rates while getting MORE tax revenue. That means that 90% is probably too high.
Regardless even with those brackets we don’t have enough money to cover UBI in any meaningful way. We cannot tax the population enough to cone up with the trillions needed. Anyone suggesting we do have that money is likely uneducated in economics and has no idea how things work.
It could come from rich people or it could come from cutting back on the services that go hand in hand with homelessness. Shelters, policing, less crime, etc
Rolling back trump’s $2 Trillion tax cuts for the rich and corporations would be a great start. From there, increase taxes on both groups substantially. They will still be rich and still be making record profits, but we will gain social safety nets such as UBI in the process.
Alternatively, we could generate funding for this the same way we did to fund over 20 years of military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. It could come from the same place we get the funds for subsidizing fossil fuel companies. It could even come from the very same money printers we used to give free PPP loans to “businesses” during the height of the pandemic.
The point being, if it’s good policy, a healthy functioning government does it, and doesn’t waste time asking questions about how we pay for things. Taxes. The answer is always taxes, it’s literally called the Internal Revenue Service.
Some of these programs end up saving the governments money, due to reducing other costs like policing, shelters, and maybe also increased tax revenue due to these people improving their employment situations, thus paying taxes.
It may be the case that a less targeted program, ie an actual broad-based UBI, would have an actual cost associated with it. There are a lot of benefits to reducing poverty that reduce the drag on other government support systems, though.
Ideally you use it to reduce/depreciate services that are more expensive counter parts to what UBI provides. Ideally a reduction in homeless shelters, food banks, police services, emergency hospital ect
What the fuck is radical rest? Is this from the same corpo double speak school as quiet quitting? Imagine just doing your job and chilling on your free time. Absolutely radical.
The whole thing is boomer and genx double speak for "genz knows we fucked them over and they're not doing what we need them to do for our cushy retirements to work out."
“OH NO THE LABOR CHATTEL ARE–” [checks clipboard] "RESERVING LESS THAN HALF OF THEIR WAKING HOURS FOR THEMSELVES INSTEAD OF INFLATING OUR BANK ACCOUNTS!! PANIK!!!1!11"
I did a quick Google since this article is click bait: it’s resting before you burnout to avoid it.
I imagine the article would also call out someone for avoiding excessive sugar before they are diabetic, based on the title, then the article explains that it makes sense actually, which is what they did.
Growing lifestyle practices like radical rest promote the importance of disconnection with traditional ideals of success and reconnecting with your own well-being by way of self-care and repose.
As opposed to “Hussle culture” or busting your butt thinking it is actually going to get you anything worth having.
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