When talking to people who dislike UBI about UBI, they'll often say both that 'people need a purpose in life' and that 'nobody will work if they get free money'.

JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee to Showerthoughts@lemmy.world – 316 points –

Those seem incompatible to me.

(UBI means Universal Basic Income, giving everyone a basic income, for free)

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It actually could. Imagine if salary had increased in accordance to the productivity boosts that automation has brought. Then you could have 3 people, working 2 days a week, sharing a job and being able to live from it. After all, it used to take more than 3 people to do the work a single person does nowadays.

Why would a business pay for these things that make their workers more efficient and then relinquish all of the profit that came from making things more efficient?

There’s a difference between “society couldn’t function” and “companies are too greedy”. One of them is wrong and the other needs to change.