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A comment on Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs. Parent comment

Re:Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs by wjmao88 on Monday May 13, 2019 @10:53AM (#19899833)
Having one third of the value created by everyone pooled together to distribute to everyone sounds completely fine to me. I'd say the society as a whole plays a role that is on average greater than 1/3 on your success.
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Re:Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs by gridlockd on Monday May 13, 2019 @02:14PM (#19902076)
First of all, GDP is a bad measure for "value created". It's more of a measure for "money spent" and that generally includes a lot of long-term and debt, especially in the US.

Secondly, you can't actually redistribute GDP. You could (in theory) take 100% of the profits of all businesses, that would add up to about 12% of GDP:

https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2018/8/30/saupload_B...

Notice the drop around 2008? That's what happens when a lot of debt can't be serviced anymore.

Lastly, "society as a whole" doesn't contribute to anyone's success. Just because you are a member of society doesn't automatically imply you have done anything for anyone. If I was offered a UBI on an Amazon's worker's salary, I would just retire, or at least drastically reduce my workload. A lot of my money goes towards my retirement anyway, so why bother?

This is entirely different from a "subsistence UBI", which I do support in principle.

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Re:Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs by sokoloff on Monday May 13, 2019 @11:34AM (#19900309)
Would that be on top of the over 1/3rd that I already pay to the US Treasury?
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Re:Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs by wjmao88 on Monday May 13, 2019 @11:45AM (#19900437)
It would overlap with a lot of what you are already paying. It completely overlaps with social security and partially overlaps with the taxes that goes to social welfare.

For the rest of your tax money, there are concrete places that those are going to and if you don't like them, we can altogether as a society do something about it. And guess what, with UBI people will have a lot more time and freedom to spend on actually participating in politics.

Sure, in the end it might bumps it up from 1/3 to 1/2 maybe, but you are getting a lot of that back anyway as UBI to yourself. Even at 1/2 I don't think its unfair.

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