Universal basic income and universal healthcare so I (and everybody else) don’t have to worry about a job, being able to work, retirement, disability, and employers will have to offer meaning, increased quality of life, and actual respect to attract employees.
These social safety nets would be a huge win for worker’s rights too. If you can tell a job to go fuck itself on the spot, they can’t operate without treating people right.
The day I got signed on for 120k was the day all my financial anxieties went away. I’m not rich by any means. My rent is still stupid high. My bills never stop coming in. But I can finally afford furniture. I can finally afford to visit my family when I want to. I don’t worry about min-maxing at the grocery store. I’m not “happy” but it’s the closest I’ve ever been
Being able to walk into a store and drop 50 dollars on something on rare occasion without having to have a panic attack and spend the day before doing in depth financial analysis and math, I cant imagine how much healthier my life would be without that stress.
That sounds like a pretty good number to me too. Currently quite a bit lower.
Congratulations! I’m surviving but without furniture lol.
I’ve got a little bit of disposable income, but just had to go out of network for a surgery because my insurance is weak.
I don’t really have financial worries either though. What’s weird is I make just under $50k now, but the most I ever made was $110k, and at that time I had financial stress. Now is the first time I’ve ever gotten off the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle.
But my financial success currently stops at furniture, so I know exactly what you’re saying. I’ve got a futon, a 5x7 rug, a table, a dining chair, and an armchair. The futon and the rug are the only ones I paid for; the rest was free from craigslist. I carried that damn furniture for miles. Well I had a vehicle for the armchair.
Next thing, after my savings recovers from the surgery, is a 7x9 rug to fill the other half of my main living space, so I can cut down on the creaking boards. Then padding for under the rugs. Then finally another dining chair so I can invite someone over for dinner.
120k what? Bananas per hour?
Dumb questions per fortnight
That is far too many bananas. You wouldn’t even be able to sell them fast enough.
Bananas are for eating my friend
UBI paid for by liquidating billionaires
UBI paid for by
liquidatingliquifying billionairesthe logistics of this are a little iffy. People don’t really melt, they burn
They don’t need to be melted, they can be forced through a fine mesh instead.
We need to utilize the expertise of the hydraulic press channel for this task. Spaghettifying billionaires sounds very therapeutic.
You really can justify just about anything when you’re one of the good guys
Like that one Pink Floyd music video
They will be the luckiest of all.
Heat is not the only means of liquidation. If you apply sufficient pressure, they will indeed melt.
Take 1 trillion dollars from the billionaires in total, now distribute 1K to each person each month? Sounds great but you run out of money in only 3 months. Then what?
Enjoy the fruits of liberated market. /s Honestly though you assume that the only value of liquidating assets from billionaires is getting their dollar amounts moved from on bank to another. There is a reasonable assumption that freeing up that capital to be enthusiastically invested or utilized to meet demands would provide more economic growth than it sitting in large hoards being spent in most risk adverse ways or in near total whimsy.
There is also a reasonable assumption that taking away people’s money would result in a decreased expected value from future money, leading to a decrease in the motivation to produce that we currently enjoy.
Let’s say a person goes from having nothing to having $1M in the bank. How does a person do that? Well, in a free market they do that by providing $1M worth of value to other people.
Should that person, who we know is capable of providing serious value, go on to try to have two million? It would be good for our society if they did, so we’d better hope they do.
But if our history includes a day when all the billionaires had everything taken from them, this means that they now have to ask themselves if there’s any danger of going over the threshold, become “evil” in the eye of society, and stripped of their rights.
Suddenly being rich is quite dangerous. It alters the incentives. Assuming a very straightforward connection between potential reward and motivation, it could be very bad for the economy to liquidate the richest people’s accounts.
It’s a fairly ahistorical assumption that wealth accumulattion is done mostly through wealth creation. Anticompetitive practices, rent seeking, and maximize value extraction are all common practices for incumbent market leaders.
You basically create precedent to give away excessive wealth in order to influence it’s effects on the world instead of reinvesting it purely in mechasms of control of wealth.
Sounds great but you run out of money in only 3 months. Then what?
We won’t because billonairs don’t hold the knowledge to run factories, they just monopolize infrastructure and collect a toll. We won’t run out of money because the production is still there.
Then maybe our source of money should be that production, and not the personal wealth of billionaires?
Like, if you make a car that runs on diesel, and there’s a gallon of diesel in the world, you’ve made a car with 1 gallon of fuel.
If you make UBI that runs on the contents of billionaires’ bank accounts, and there’s three months’ worth of money in those bank accounts, you’ve made UBI that works for three months.
I earn enough, I’d rather just halve my hours.
And, did that work out for you?
the amount you need to make in order to afford the ever-fleeting american dream is about $140k right now. so I want 280k
I’m sorry but this can’t be correct. I live within 30 minutes of two minor cities with plenty to do and me and my wife combined make around 100k. We live comfortably and have 50k in the bank in addition to retirement. We also have one kid. This is highly dependent on where you live. I am not saying the cost of housing,etc is not a problem but some of these numbers need to be put in context.
When did you purchase your housing (rough year range) if you don’t mind?
That sounds awesome, but I live in low CoL area make more and feel like I’m just eaking by sometimes.
$140k won’t buy you a house in almost any even remotely popular city or its suburbs.
$140k per year is enough to afford a mortgage on a $500k house. You’d have to make crazy money to buy a house outright on a year’s salary, so nobody evaluates it that way.
$500k houses don’t exist in popular cities.
That’s why I live way the hell out in the suburbs
Is 500k a house to raise a family in or just a place to stay in?
In Boston, where I live? $500k is an unheated garage.
San Diego checking in. $500k is a shack in someone’s backyard. Fuck I love it here but damn sometimes I really don’t.
ok ok I exaggerate a little. But everything is crazy expensive here. Nice weather and beaches though. Get to surf every week. Can’t complain.
Genuinely curious, where does that number come from?
I remember a time when someone making “six figures” was extremely wealthy. Now six figures just seems to be the baseline for even having a chance at tackling home ownership in suburban areas. 120k is probably ideal. I don’t likely need more than that and it should be enough to pay for a comfortable lifestyle.
Getting there is the tricky part.
I make $115k per year, my wife makes another $20k or so, we have one kid, a tiny house in a slightly sketch part of our Midwestern city that I bought a decade ago when it was almost cheap, and both our cars are paid off… and we’re treading water financially. I don’t know how anybody my age is affording big houses and new cars, unless it’s just by snowballing debt at an alarming pace. I’m already underfunding my 401k just to maintain some liquidity.
120k what? Bananas per hour?
No, you’re confused. K is the currency, they only need 120 of them.
You are not as funny as you think you are.
I’m not trying to be funny. As a non-American am I supposed to assume that everyone is talking about US dollars? Why don’t people just specify units?
It’s the world reserve currency, it’s a safe bet to assume it’s USD when people are talking money unless specified otherwise
Salary? No. Stipend, yes. Give me enough to comfortably live on and pursue interests and hobbies with no requirement for work. That’s the closest money would get to making me happy.
UBI
DING DING DING DING
I am fine with my current salary. None of the problems I have are due to having too little money. It is more that I have hardly any time to spend that money and live a fairly lonely life. None of that would be fixed by a higher salary, which is why I have little motivation to try to get promoted.
I would suggest volunteering at animal shelters on your days off might help with the fairly lonely life. The one by me let’s you check out dogs to go to the beach with and return.
Might be worth a job change to get better hours and similar or slightly lower income.
Money buys time friend
Not if it’s a salary
What?
Enough to cover my living expenses, working expenses, retirement fund, savings, etc. at about 8-12 hours of work/week.
For varying levels of retirement and savings, this is what non-agricultural humans have done for most of the history of our species.
Time travel has truly revolutionized our understanding of pre-civilized human culture.
If only there was some way to leave traces and/or study left traces. Would definitely cut down on all the time travel pollution
Bills plus car fuel and maintenance plus the cost of good quality food plus full coverage of medical insurance plus deductible (yay America) plus mortgage payments plus 10-20% on top of that.
Basically, cover the cost of very comfortable living and take the financial worry out of being alive.
Edit: echoing other comments, this would not make me happy directly. It would open up more possibilities to pursue the things in life that bring/grow happiness.
Enough that I didn’t have to worry about not being able to pay rent and bills.
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ah no stress, no costs… perfect to increase the population and put more strain on the system.
I’ll wait for you to solve the overpopulation crisis while giving us all a first-class work free experience.
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That won’t stop population growth. Remember… the stress of work is gone. Now we all can have big happy families if we want without ANY pressure to ever juggle all those stressful conflicting priorities that take up familial resources. Voluntary contraception would not keep population stable or provide a sustainable ecosystem. I personally would have at least six kids. My wife would want more than that. You are free to be childless if you so choose of course, but statistically proven biological imperative drives us to procreate as-is, it’s literally human nature.
The biggest problem will quite literally be real estate. Unless you can picture a fully urbanized earth where everyone lives in tiny little cubby holes and not much else as being some kind of utopia. Even then the land on earth is finite.
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Eh? Why does birth rate drop in countries with top economies versus those that don’t?
Developed countries tend to have a lower fertility rate due to lifestyle choices associated with economic affluence where mortality rates are low, birth control is easily accessible and children often can become an economic drain caused by housing, education cost and other cost involved in bringing up children. Higher education and professional careers often mean that women have children late in life. This can result in a demographic economic paradox. sauce
In order to maintain that high quality of life you have to work a shitload and to get those high paying jobs you have to spend years of your life upskilling and competing for better jobs.
Remove the economic factor and give everyone that astounding QOL and boom… we can breed without worries of providing and we don’t even have to stress about maintaining our QOL. We can all be stay at home parents who just raise our kids if we choose to.
I can’t afford a 4-6+++ bedroom house in the Greater Boston area where my friends and family are without having soul-crushing long commute times. I need a commute because I need to work to put food on the table and pay for rent. Remove the barriers and keep at least even QOL and I will not work, i’ll instead devote my time to doing literally anything else.
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We’re talking about a potential utopia where education is available to everyone, not restricted to first world countries. If you bring everyone UP to western world QOL and they are educated, you have to consider it in that aspect.
The immigrant fertility rate thing is because they come from a place with low expected QOL so they don’t think they need the american dream with air conditioning, going out to eat or having nice things and instead go with more kids because they were raised that way. The second generation gets used to say american QOL and wants to have those same nice things the neighbors have- after all they grow up in the american school system meeting other kids right?.. so you need to work to get those high QOL things and suddenly you’re in the situation I have described: needing more professional attainment to keep up the expected QOL and delaying children.
Does that make sense?
Do you have any kind of evidence showing that free of all financial constraints people will not have children in a mid-high COL area?
People with the lowest income have the highest birth rate.
Seems to me like lots of wealth is the solution to the population crisis.
Also with Star Trek technology we can let people live in the holodeck.
I mean not really no. Even without any artificial limits, as people gain education and move out of poverty, birth rates naturally go down.
In fact birth rates in some places are decreasing as we speak.
Allowing everyone access to education and a UBI would cut birth rates. Going below 1.5 or so would actually be undesirable.
No amount will make me happy.
Once your basic needs are met, the equation becomes: Salary = Expenses + Savings. So, the questions becomes, how much savings makes you happy?
If you are happy to work in your job until “retirement age”, a small savings rate will do, in theory; that is if the salary is adjusted for cost-of-living and tax.
Are you happy working this job for the rest of your life? Full time (whatever that means in your work culture)?
Hey you guys, how for away do you think that mirage is?
Yep. One’s lifestyle (almost) always expands to fit their means.
As soon as you make what feels “comfortable,” you’ll want another 10-20k.
Yep. It’s much better to focus on your quality of life right now, while keeping an eye on the back of your head for the future but I saw so many people just sacrificing everything to get that extra 20% salary, without realising inflation catches up to it faster than you get raises.
I want the salary that allows me to be independent, take care of my family and have time to spend with them, and that doesn’t involve crushing my soul. Living life as happy as possible right now is more important than whatever magical number you think will solve all your problems. Personally I’m trying to achieve that by being a freelance in a passion field.
It depends where you live but it was figured out to be about 110k a decade ago on average in the US. Where I live that sounds pretty close maybe 140. However, I am biased since I truly don’t want to own a house. Would rather rent.
I really hated renting, I would rather pay someone to manage my own house than put up with landlords again
For me, other factors are much more important than the salary.
A tedious job with unpleasant colleagues would never make me happy, no matter how high the salary. On the other hand, if I had a job that was fun and had nice colleagues, I would be happy with a salary that only covered the essentials.
Also, I would rather have a salary that only covers the essentials for 30 hours a week than a salary twice as high for 60 hours a week. What good is money if I can never spend it?
There are more factors that are more important to me than the salary. How much physical labor is involved in the job? Do I have to work at night? Do I work shifts or do I have flexible working hours? Does the employer offer a pension plan? Are there any other benefits? Where would I have to work, close to friends and family or far away? …
Yeah, there really isn’t just one threshold value that would make me happy. More is better of course, but there are too many other factors.
Though it’s probably worth mentioning that I don’t have any children and don’t plan on having any.
