Ben Shapiro's Problem with Universal Basic Income | Joe Rogan

If you are in that community good fucking luck getting out right good luck The the money that you get other than welfare is from selling pills, you know, everybody's on these pills So you're all whacked out. You don't know what the fuck is going on half the day. You're on opiates. I mean it is a Bananas environment and there's a lot of people like that in this country for sure in in poor Latino communities and poor white communities And poor black communities the idea that these people just gonna pull themselves up by their bootstraps is crazy I just think they don't have a plan and I think if we really want to help them That there's got to be some way where you can give these people the opportunity to step out of that pattern Whatever that community centers outreach programs, whatever it is. I don't know what it is I mean the truth is the truth is that historically speaking it was people actually going to church. Yeah I mean and and there's a good lot of good Church going person right. I absolutely recognize that there's a lot of good involved and having that framework, right? And that that I'm not sure that that's yeah I don't think you can create sort of a fake social fabric with just a government welfare system Like it just it hasn't worked. I mean disability exists. I don't been increasing every year It's it's not this is it's question. I asked Andrew Yang actually So our episode comes out on Sunday and obviously Andrew is a big fan of UBI Universal Basic Income and I'm not averse to the idea of UBI in a future where legitimately 50% of the population can't work because they've All been automated out of existence and all of this But there's one section in his book where Andrew talks about how if we cut people a check for UBI then they will spend their extra time creating art and Engaging in hobbies that they like and I just thought to myself I mean I said it to him like people are on disability. I didn't what they're doing Right. I mean if you're on disability the people you're talking about who are suffering They're not out there writing poetry I mean the the rise of the opioid epidemic and people who are ODing on drugs and all this stuff That's in precisely the same demographic you're talking about you're just talking about a check from one place as opposed to another place I don't really see how that solves the problem. I think we have a crisis of purpose Yes Right now and I don't think that that crisis of purpose is solvable on the one hand by changing our trade rules And I also don't think that that crisis of purpose is solvable by by cutting a government check I just don't think that that's how people are wired I absolutely agree with you that there is a crisis of purpose my concern is about automation and my concern and obviously, I haven't really studied this other than talking to Andrew Yang and talking to Elon Musk and a Few other people that are proponents of universal basic income They think that there's going to be such a massive loss of jobs in such a short period of time From people that are non skilled laborers and it's gonna go away There's millions and millions of jobs and these people are not gonna have anything and that it could be chaos, right? So there's there's two problems that come up there And this is where Andrews book is interesting because problem number one is that the people will be poor They won't have a source of income. Yeah, you bi solves that the other sort of but does it even it gives him a thousand dollars a Month if you opted right? I mean even even if you just had a Swedish redistribution system and the average tax rate went up to 60% or something It might let's say we could solve the money problem for a second Which you know without tanking the economy which is questionable, but let's say we could do that We could add trillions of dollars to the budget every year and we could solve that I'm still not sure that that solves the deeper problem, which is that when people lose jobs, they lose purpose Yeah, right. So I'm not sure that you bi solves that problem As I say we have we have a rich social welfare network in the United States and we're seeing this stuff happen Anyway, you know, I'm a little bit. I'm a little bit less catastrophic by a little bit I mean a fair bit less catastrophic in my thinking about automation then then either Andrew Yang or Elon must think that people will be able to adapt quick enough to avoid the problems they'll realize the jobs aren't there anymore and they'll just Naturally gravitate towards other I think over time that people will do that But they're not always the same people where there's always shift in the economy and the the ideal economic model has a trucker becoming A coder right, but that's that's not read out. That was that whole learn to code fiasco right people kicked off of Twitter All right, it's not apparently. Yeah, apparently if you say to journalists, then that's that's very bad If you say let's go to a trucker Yeah, that's what it was Learn to code to a trucker if you say learn to code to a trucker then that's just you being helpful Right if you say learn to code to a journalist, then that is targeted harassment on Twitter. That's what it says it to me Well, how does that work? I can say whatever But it's but yeah, I mean I think that but if you just say it to a friend hey fuck face learn to code They don't know it's your friend report you to the Board over it's such a dumb thing to take people out for it's one of the best examples of like how Censorship step over steps its boundaries and becomes almost like satire. Yeah, it's it's really it's really really absurd Like this is the biggest aggression ever learned to code learn to code like that's something like this is a Stupid thing that someone said about coal miners. They rarely said that about coal miners that maybe they can learn to code and so I really what the fuck and so learn to code became a joke and became to something that you would mock people Right there is their explanation for it was so crazy It was like no then learn to code got connected with That's the Hitler on a dog Dogs are bad Hitler owned one. Okay white supremacists are bad. They use the phrase learn to code That means if you say learn to code your white supremacist like what they lost the frog that fucking frog that feels good, man frog That's what happened to Pepe. They lost them. They killed the frog. They turned the frickin frog gay. I mean what yeah Yeah, I mean as far as automation You know there's constantly people saying this is the the Nicholas Nassim Talib view of reality Which that the black Swan incident can happen any any second so watch out for it Versus the sort of Steven Pinker view of reality which is the black Swan incident is called a black Swan incident because it's a black Swan incident meaning that it happens incredibly rarely Mm-hmm, you know the the idea that we are on the verge of a catastrophic drop in job numbers because of the automation of trucking For example, I'm not sure that I buy it The reason I don't buy it is because you still are gonna need someone sitting behind the wheel of that truck There are human drivers on the road It's gonna there will be a gradual transition away from some of these jobs With the Andrew Yang talks about radiologists and how radiologists are gonna be priced out of the market by computers They can do a better job of diagnosing tumors. First of all awesome, right? I mean that's that's good for as well that brings down cost and you won't get cancer as advanced That'd be a good thing. But second of all what what a Lot of technology studies have tended to show is that technology just gets integrated in a different way in particular careers So there will be jobs that are eliminated for sure There will be jobs we haven't heard of that will be created also and mostly technology will will become more of a productivity aid to people so This is true in factories jobs have been lost in factories It's the best example of where jobs are lost, but it's mostly true in offices, right? How many office jobs have been created because you have computers? What's more office jobs exist because I write by hand Do you think that this is akin to like a government bailout? Like the idea of the government bailout was like the banks are too big to fail and some people thought you know what you got To let them fail so you figure out why they failed and will never have it happen again If there is this thing and the government steps in and says wait a minute I know you lost all your jobs are gonna give you a thousand dollars You don't have to figure it out a thousand dollars a month and some people go. Okay. I'm not gonna figure it out now whereas those people might have gone on a Fear-filled journey to try to figure out their purpose in life because now they're stuck where their job doesn't exist anymore So they're putting their I mean have to act there is there is innovation that comes from from a welfare check I mean there are people who become dependent on government and there used to be dependent on government that stuff is true It does happen and listen Milton Friedman made an argument for universal basic income as a replacement for the welfare system There is another problem with universal basic income that I asked Andrew about also and that was you know One of the one of the big issues is that poor people very often people who are permanently impoverished not people who are temporarily poor But they tend not to spend money where we think they ought to spend money They're not taking that money and they're not putting it into education or into they might just be buying ho-hos and cigarettes I mean the the average the average person who is making less than I think it was $16,000 a year spending $400 a year on lottery tickets. I mean it's legitimately just flushing your money down the toilet So it's so how do you? Aren't you just gonna end up back in the same place? You know in six months where people took that money and used it in ways that actually didn't benefit them And at a certain point the question is are your do you own your decisions or do not own your decisions? And at what level of incompetence or? Inability do we say you no longer own your decisions, and so we're just gonna take care of you on a permanent basis That's that's really the the the question here. I think we're looking at when you're talking about welfare We're looking at worst-case scenario right where someone does get dependent upon the welfare state and does use that money frivolously and does Make poor decisions, but then there's got to be other people that are single moms that you know maybe Had a kid with some fucking asshole It doesn't want to pay and it is a piece of shit, and they have to hide from them And they're just trying to feed their kids yeah for sure those people exist to have a community to To help them out, and maybe they're not a part of a church Then maybe they don't have a good group of neighbors Maybe they had to move somewhere for work, and they got stuck in some place where they don't know anybody But I think part of this is to recognize that incentives matter on both ends So the idea is that you give some people more money, and they'll they'll do well It's also true that if you create a welfare system that benefits single motherhood you will get more single motherhood I mean the the single motherhood rate in the black community before welfare was 20% now It's 70% in the white community was like 5% now It's 40% you've said that like out of wedlock children and having a kid when you're young is like It's a terrible idea for your life, but what do you? Recommend to have kids avoid that are you one of those people that think don't there without that thing on it No condoms as we're saying right like don't don't have on don't don't have unprotected sex I mean like this this is not it's not part of my my fake cursing. It's not effing rocket science. I mean like Not I'm polishing for not cursing yeah, it's it's not rocket science It's one of all the other kids make mistakes and I mean that's what happens well Okay, well, but and then if the government pays for those mistakes it becomes less so what should what should happen should the kids suffer? So no I mean Should it be I mean actually be worked out I mean it depends on the situation Yeah, you know if there are parents available to the kid presumably the parents the grandparents Mmm, we take a pretty active role in the in the raising if they can get also make they're there well How about this how about we assume that if you are old enough to get pregnant then you're old enough to? Let's let's talk about 17 year old or 18 year old used to be shotgun marriages were a thing And and really like that's a good idea I think the idea of parents staying together for the sake of a kid that they accidentally bore is absolutely a good idea yes, I think that I think that it's a better idea than the man walking away and the kid being without a Man in the house so you think they're gonna figure a way to work it out. Yes, and if they were both reasonable They could do that