Elon Musk is Totally Wrong About Universal Basic Income (UBI).

Why UBI is such a dangerous gamble with society’s future & the 11 controversial consequences.

Elon Musk is totally wrong about the UBI (Universal Basic Income). UBI won’t improve people’s happiness or improve a nation's economy.

I will even say that if implemented, the UBI will cause society to collapse.

I don’t understand why Elon Musk can’t see this.

I admire Musk for his innovations and hard work, but he got this one really wrong.

Here’s why:

UBI aims to provide everyone with a subsistence-level income. At the surface level, it sounds all good and dandy. However…it can be a total disaster.

Increasing a country’s money supply is the same as printing more tickets than the capacity of a football stadium, which will not increase the number of seats in the stadium. Doing so would lead to overcrowding and devaluing each ticket’s worth.

To increase the number of seats in a stadium, you have to hire engineers, get construction workers, and buy construction materials, and only after making these investments will your stadium have more seats.

It's the same with a country.

Printing money for UBI without increasing production will cause inflation, eroding purchasing power and making it even harder to afford goods.

The UBI can only be implemented by printing more dollars, which will be the downfall of any country that attempts it.

There are many examples from Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Argentina, Germany in the 20s, China in the 30s, the Roman Empire, etc. Many nations and civilizations collapsed because of printing too much money, and Canada is the next to fall.

Let me tell you:

The only thing UBI prints is votes for politicians who don’t care about your future. They only care about getting more votes for the next elections.

Not only that, did you know the UBI will only make the rich even richer? Read on.

The 11 controversial consequences of UBI

1) UBI is a door open to tyranny and still makes people extremely dependent on the government

• First, implementing the UBI system will put a heavy tax burden on the middle class, making it difficult for them to support themselves through work, leading to more people becoming dependent on UBI.
• Second, providing a substance-level income to those who don’t make enough money through work will simply remove the will to work harder and be independent.

UBI is a race to the bottom that keeps the poor people poor and dependent.

2) The UBI will kill economic growth

For a good percentage of the population, receiving $2000 per month will be the payment they need to stay at home all day every day, smoke weed, play computer games with their homies and watch porn.

How is this supposed to help people?

The best incentive to get people out of poverty is education, improving their skills, and opening up job market opportunities by incentivizing entrepreneurs to create new businesses and enterprises to hire.

Paying a UBI is precisely the opposite and hurts economic growth.

UBI will discourage saving and lead to declining productivity due to less investment in productive assets.

A total disaster.

Additionally, the UBI is unfair to people who put in the work, especially for people in other countries.

In certain countries, people work very hard to get $200 per month, and the average salary in Africa in 2023 was $769.

How entitled must people be to demand a $2000 handout from the government?!

Why is Canada’s cconomy so sluggish?

In this chart, we can see the weight of social welfare and taxes on the economy.

The chart shows the 10-year GDP growth of Canada (in red), compared with the U.S. (blue) and Ireland (in green). Canada has the most progressive social welfare policies, while Ireland has embraced free markets and low taxes.

Can you see the correlation?

3) UBI will generate a consumerism trap

My dad worked in the Army his entire life. That means he never had a single day of unemployment and always received an above-average salary.

Despite that, he always struggled with money and lived in borderline poverty his entire life.

The explanation for this phenomenon is that money that comes easily, goes away easily.

The UBI will not solve people’s money problems. Responsibility and financial education do.

Money earned through hard work is valued more than money received easily from the government.

We live in a society of consumerism because everybody knows, explicitly or implicitly, that money loses value. Everybody prefers to spend money now rather than tomorrow.

So, saving money is penalized by inflation, and due to it, most people are better off just spending now.

Let’s look at how much prices in Canada have increased:

The Canadian dollar has lost 96% of its value since 1915. In other words, the cumulative inflation was 2,500%!

Let that sink in. Over a little over 100 years, the prices in Canada multiplied more than 25 times!

Consumerism and inflation will only accelerate with that sweet UBI free money.

4) UBI’s environmental impact

The same people preaching UBI also promote environmental protection, less carbon emissions, lower pollution, and ESG practices.

They fail to realise that UBI (and any form of money printing) promotes consumerism, which is the biggest driver of carbon emissions, pollution, and garbage.

People prioritize present consumption over future consequences, leading to increased pollution.

5) UBI’s food, health, and family downfall

A $2,000 UBI will force people to lower their nutritional standards in order to go by.

Ultra-processed food, fast food, GMO, pesticides, hormones, MSG, and cheap ingredients will continue to grow in the food industry to capture people’s UBI, as the UBI will not be enough to buy grass-fed ribeye steak and organic asparagus.

This will increase intensive agriculture, destroy the soils, and harm the environment and people’s health.

Then we have the family collapse.

Family values will decline as reliance on UBI will reduce the impetus for family members to support one another financially, weakening the bonds that are often strengthened through mutual care and shared responsibility.

The traditional role of the family unit as a fundamental economic support system will be undermined, leading to a lack of individual accountability.

The government will replace family support with very bad consequences.

6) UBI: mental health down the toilet and more anti-depressants

Purpose in life is crucial for mental health. We find it in our jobs, projects, investments, and building wealth.

However, the UBI plans to kill all these life purposes.

The assumption behind UBI is that it will provide a safety net, reducing stress and anxiety associated with financial insecurity.

However, UBI will also contribute to a lack of motivation for self-improvement and personal growth.

This leads to an existential void for some people, where the absence of challenges removes a key driver for achievement and purpose.

The shift from a system that rewards productivity to one that ensures income regardless of contribution changes how individuals perceive their role in society.

This leads to decreased self-esteem and self-worth as people derive a significant part of their identity from their work and achievements.

A sense of purposelessness and lack of direction will become prevalent and increase the rates of depression and other mental health issues.

UBI will decrease social cohesion and community engagement as the social structures built around workplaces and professional communities may disappear.

Social isolation will become more common, exacerbating mental health issues like anxiety and depression.

UBI is not a liberation but a paralysis of the mind.

The drive to innovate, improve, and strive for personal success is often fueled by the desire to achieve financial independence and security.

I thought Elon Musk was pro-meritocracy and hard work, no?!

UBI, as an easy alternative, can kill the entrepreneurial spirit and willingness to take risks that are critical for personal development and societal progress.

Comfort kills ambition, and UBI will lead people to a shallow life. UBI is a dehumanizing bliss pill.

Ask yourself: does UBI create higher types of humans that push the human species forward? Or does it create a herd of lazy sheep?

7) UBI: political corruption with doors wide open

The UBI is nothing more than political propaganda that takes advantage of people’s lack of knowledge of what money is.

Sure, some politicians will gather votes for promoting the UBI, but soon, the UBI will be revealed to be unsustainable. The $2,000 UBI proposed by the Canadian government will lead to more inflation, and soon, $2,000 will barely be enough to buy a loaf of bread.

The government is breaking your legs to sell you a crutch, and in exchange, they want votes. Wicked.

8) Why is the diamond capital of Africa so poor?

I lived in Angola to work on my own company for a year, from 2014–2015. Dundo is the mining capital of Angola (and one of the biggest in Africa). The soil contains tons of resources. Despite that, people in the Dundo province are the poorest I’ve seen in Angola.

There’s one very intriguing reason why this African province is poor, and it has to do with diamonds and UBI.

This article is getting too long to tell the story here, so to read more about it, make sure you subscribe, and it will be on your way!

9) UBI's previous experiments ALWAYS failed

I could give you 1000 examples of countries that tried some sort of government handout. However, I must inform you that 99% of them have failed.

Here are two examples that I’m the most familiar with (Portugal and Hong Kong):

In Portugal, if you get unemployed, you get 12 to 18 months of unemployment benefits corresponding to approximately 80% of your salary.

So, at 25, I quit my job and received 80% of my salary for over 1 year while at home. Many people in Portugal tend to just chill until their unemployment benefits run out, leading to a historically high unemployment rate.

I mean… why would I get a job if I could just stay home and receive $2000?

On the other hand, places like Hong Kong don’t have unemployment benefits at all. If you get unemployed, you are on your own.

Results?

Portugal's 10-year unemployment rate: - Highest: 16.1% - Lowest: 6% - Current: 6.1%

Hong Kong’s 10-year unemployment rate: - Highest: 7% - Lowest: 2.6% - Current: 2.9%

Government unemployment benefits (a form of UBI) might be the reason why, over the last 40 years, the unemployment rates in Portugal and Spain have been so much higher than in Hong Kong.

10) Even more wealth inequality: yes, UBI will make the rich richer!

The UBI will impoverish society and make politicians, bankers, and big corporations richer.

Why did the 10 richest people in the world almost double their fortunes during the COVID pandemic? Bernard Arnault, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Warren Buffett almost all doubled their fortunes during that period.

Why?

It’s simple! Stimulus cheques fueled consumerism and government printing of money helped big corporations, making the rich even richer.

If you’ve been following my Medium blog, you know that I’m 100% pro-making money, and you should invest like the richest people so that you also benefit from the way the matrix works.

But remember, the UBI cheques will always end up in the pockets of the big corporations and the ones that invest.

11) Canada’s UBI is like the professor who failed the entire class:

An economics professor failed an entire class after they claimed socialism would create equality.

To prove a point, she averaged out all grades, meaning everyone received the same mark. Initially, hard-working students were frustrated, and less diligent students were pleased.

However, everyone’s grades dropped over time due to a lack of motivation. Why would anyone work hard if everyone would receive the same grade?

In the end, everyone failed, and the professor explained that without incentives, there is no drive to succeed, likening it to the downfall of socialism (and UBI).

People think that the UBI will liberate them, but in fact, it will enslave them. Be careful with what you wish.

See if you can relate to this:

The solution? The solution is personal responsibility.

Get the movement out of the way, and let humans be humans. To flourish, produce, help each other, and grow as a community, we need the incentive of human ingenuity. Governments always go against this.

Let’s revisit this article 10 years from now and compare the Canadian GDP growth with the Argentinian GDP growth (now under Javier Milei’s rule).

Can someone please put this article on Elon’s desk?

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