The mechanics of implementing UBI is relatively straightforward. Have the Fed buy up securities, ban stock buybacks to force dividends, issue FedAccounts to everyone entitled to a government backed deposit account, payments land in the account either monthly or bi weekly as an option. Tada. UBI. Just like social security payments, but funded by the profits of all concerns required to issue stock to enable some portion of their gains to be redistributed to the citizen population. It’s simply a corporate tax, just a different implementation.

Will it ever get done? I wouldn’t hold my breath. “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”

As another comment in this thread says, just push wages up. That’s a short term fix that would pay off immediately for workers broadly.

Tripling US union membership would shift $1.2T to workers annually - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/15/union-member... - July 15th, 2026

The case for tripling union membership - https://www.epi.org/publication/the-case-for-tripling-union-... - July 15th, 2026

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gedy a day ago | parent | next [-]

...and goods produced overseas would need to be heavily tariffed. But that was roundly criticized so where does that leave us?

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khriss a day ago | parent | next [-]

I don't know if the criticism was of the notion of tariffs. Instead it was of the bone headed implementation by the Trump administration, where tariffs were not well thought out(we tariffed islands of penguins, but specifically exempted Russia and Belarus), and were not coupled with industrial and fiscal policy to encourage domestic manufacturing to catch up.

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toomuchtodo a day ago | parent | prev [-]

There are items which the US cannot produce domestically where imports are unavoidable. Think coffee, for example. Someone smarter than I needs to figure out how to manage such trade deficits and surplus in this context. But the US can easily produce clean energy and mobility domestically at scale [1] (solar, wind, batteries, electric vehicles etc), it simply chooses not to. China builds lights out, automated robotic manufacturing, the US should too, considering population decline (leading to persistent labor shortages) [2] long into the future.

Manufacturing in the US has increased due to tariffs, but not manufacturing jobs [3] [4] [5]. Unionize all jobs, that's the point and how to get to living wages and better working conditions, because while some jobs can be outsourced, most on US soil cannot be.

[1] Ember Energy: China Cleantech Exports Data Explorer - https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e... (updated monthly)

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47680794 (citations)

[3] US manufacturing jobs fall at fastest rate since the pandemic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48647324 - June 2026 (2 comments)

[4] The manufacturing sector is growing, but isn't adding jobs - https://www.marketplace.org/story/2026/06/01/the-manufacturi... - June 1st, 2026

> “(They’re saying) we’re not being allowed to backfill people that are leaving, and it’s getting really, really hard for those remaining,” she said.

> The uptick in manufacturing is at least good for workers’ paychecks, but not so great for those looking to get hired, said labor economist Alí Bustamante at the University of New Orleans.

> “We’re seeing a jobless manufacturing rebound,” Bustamante said. “A lot of firms, they’re investing more in machines, more in overtime, expanding shifts. And we are probably going to see that in higher productivity per worker.”

> Remember, Trump’s tariffs were supposed to give domestic producers a competitive edge — leading to reshoring and more manufacturing jobs. Bustamante said that hasn’t happened.

> “The first year and a half of these tariffs during the second Trump administration, we can say pretty unequivocally there hasn’t been an employment rebound in manufacturing,” he said.

[5] A check-in on manufacturing jobs, one year since Trump's tariffs - https://www.marketplace.org/story/2026/04/01/how-trumps-tari... - April 1st, 2026

(if you are beholden to the benevolence of companies to improve worker wages or conditions, you are going to be very sad; they will maximize for profits and productivity, whenever possible)

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eli_gottlieb a day ago | parent [-]

"More jobs" and "more productivity" are more-or-less opposite goals under capitalism.

	▲	toomuchtodo a day ago \| parent [-]
		Strongly agree. The TLDR is labor needs more power as soon as possible (think in QALYs), and capitalism has to be nerfed (which can take time, election cycles, and broad electorate turnover), if we want workers to have better lives and to fix wealth inequality in some capacity. Capitalism itself need not be eliminated, but the measure has become the target, with predictable suboptimal outcomes. So, workers must unionize, where they can, as soon as possible while we work the kinks out of a socioeconomic system operating suboptimally. Otherwise, with all due respect, they’re fucked against paperclip maximizers whose focus is some combination of line go up, profits, and control over workers that enable said profits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law (I’m hopeful with rapid gains Democratic Socialists have been making recently, but there are decades of work ahead imho; think in systems)

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eli_gottlieb a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> Will it ever get done? I wouldn’t hold my breath. “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”

Well except that Mark Cuban is out here proposing the first steps towards the end of capitalism, namely collective worker ownership of the means of production, so I think that rather than quote Mark Fisher all over again, we have to understand why today's capitalist class are suddenly proving rhetorically amenable to certain steps towards socialism.