SLO 3 - Diverse Perspectives - Social Safety Net Expansion

A Universal Basic Income is a type of social welfare program that gives every citizen a regular check at a set amount regardless of any other factors. This type of social welfare would not address the needs of the people, but depending on how much automation happens in the future could become necessary to ensure the survival of capitalism. On the other side, they state that a jobless future will never happen.

I do believe not every job will be automated as the machines would also need someone to maintain them, and there would be some services that either can’t be automated or we don’t want to automate. I do believe that we will, eventually, get to a point in which most jobs are automated and a sizeable chunk of the population will be jobless, I am unsure if this will be a majority or not. If this does become the case, in which a minority of jobs are automated, we wouldn’t need to create something like UBI, we would just need enough welfare programs to ensure those without jobs have sufficient means to live. Meanwhile, if the majority of jobs are automated, a UBI program would likely be the less costly option. The other option would be mass violence from the state and wealthy elite that leaves the majority of people to die. I think that is not likely as capitalism does require more and more people to buy things.

In my experience, I think that instead of focusing on a universal solution, we should ensure the people who get our means-based social welfare are the entirety of the people who need it. This can scale up as more jobs are automated and it will be easier to create as politicians will be more likely to approve it. Maybe give the agencies the authority to do an annual review and adjust the income levels needed with inflation and how much we give. This should start at the state level as they are the government of the people. My party mostly supports this as they care about the material conditions of the people rather than what the state says they’re doing. A UBI would not encouarge people to stop working as it would not be enough to rely on for surivial, it would help but you would still need some kind of job.