If we’re just talking about the USA, then the ~200 million working people would get $150 each.
Comment on 95% of Companies See ‘Zero Return’ on $30 Billion Generative AI Spend, MIT Report Finds
roofuskit@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Imagine what the economy would look like if they spent 30 billion on wages.
GooseFinger@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
brem@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Does the 30 billion also account for allocated resources (such as the incredibly demanding amount of electricity required to run a decent AI for millions if not billions of future doctors and engineers to use to pass exams)?
Does it account for the future losses of creativity & individuality in this cesspool of laziness & greed?
millie@slrpnk.net 2 days ago
How do you figure?
The 5 richest billionaires have a combined $1.154 trillion, which divided by $340 million gives us $3,394 per American citizen. That’s literally just the top 5. According to Forbes there were 813 billionaires in 2024. Sounds pretty damned substantial to me. We’re talking life-altering amounts of money for every American without even glancing in the direction of mere hundred-millionaires.
Yaztromo@lemmy.world 2 days ago
This is where the problem of the supply/demand curve comes in. One of the truths of the 1980s Soviet Union’s infamous breadlines wasn’t that people were poor and had no money, or that basic goods (like bread) were too expensive — in a Communist system most people had plenty of money, and the price of goods was fixed by the government to be affordable — the real problem was one of production. There simply weren’t enough goods to go around.
The entire basic premise of inflation is that we as a society produce X amount of goods, but people need X+Y amount of goods. Ideally production increases to meet demand — but when it doesn’t (or can’t fast enough) the other lever is that prices rise so that demand decreases, such that production once again closely approximates demand.
This is why just giving everyone struggling right now more money isn’t really a solution. We could take the assets of the 100 richest people in the world and redistribute it evenly amongst people who are struggling — and all that would happen is that there wouldn’t be enough production to meet the new spending ability, so so prices would go up. Those who control the production would simply get all their money back again, and we’d be back to where we started.
Of course, it’s only profitable to increase production if the cost of basic inputs can be decreased — if you know there is a big untapped market for bread out there and you can undercut the competition, cheaper flour and automation helps quite a bit. But if flour is so expensive that you can’t undercut the established guys, then fighting them for a small slice of the market just doesn’t make sense.
Personally, I’m all for something like UBI — but it’s only really going to work if we as a society also increase production on basic needs (housing, food, clothing, telecommunications, transit, etc.) so they can be and remain at affordable prices. Otherwise just having more money in circulation won’t help anything — if anything it will just be purely inflationary.
vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
There are more empty homes than homeless in the US. I’ve seen literal tons of food and clothing go right to the dump to protect profit margins.
Do you have any sources to back up the claim that we need to make more shit?
ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
This is not true. We have enough priduction. Wtf are people throwing away half their plates at restaurants? Why does 1 rich guy live in a mansion. The super rich consume more than people realize. You are wrong on so many levels that I do not know where to start. You sound like a bot billionaire shill.
Yaztromo@lemmy.world 2 days ago
We have enough production in some areas — but not in others. Some goods are currently overly expensive because the inputs are expensive — mostly because we’re not producing enough. In many cases that’s due to insufficient competition. And there are some significant entrenched interests trying to keep things that way (lower production == lower competition == higher prices).
And FWIW, the US’s current “tariff everything and everybody” approach is going to make this much, much, much worse.
I am certainly not the friend of billionaires. I’m perfectly fine with a wealth tax to fund public works and services. All I’m against is overly simplistic solutions which just exacerbate existing problems.
banause@feddit.org 2 days ago
You sound like a dad after reading the morning press.
Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Then we should do that over and over again.
banause@feddit.org 2 days ago
You are repeating indoctrinated capitalist think patterns. In reality the market most often does not react like that.
The example as given by you is how you basically teach the concept of market balance to middle schoolers. However, it’s a hypotetical lab analogy. It’s over simplified for lay people. Comparable to the famous “ignore air resistance” in physics.