You can debate the merits of some work, you can debate the amount people are compensated for that work. But what is absolutely not debatable is that we actually need people to do work for us to contribute to function as a society. Some of that work that’s absolutely necessary is both dangerous and nigh impossible to automate. Do we need another Starbucks? No, absolutely not. But we will still need places to be built, and infrastructure maintained. There’s really no escaping that.
That’s why it’s a basic income. Enough to keep you housed, clothed and fed. Your clothes might be thrifted, your apartment small, and your diet mostly instant ramen, but your basic needs will be covered. Plenty of people would still work hard to get more than the basics.
Guaranteed housing, guaranteed food, guaranteed clothing. No work required. I agree with you, I think most people will still work with all of that taken care of. Because it’s just basic.
That’s what a universal basic income does. It’s way simpler and more likely to succeed than a hundred different programs for everything people need. Studies show that poor people, when given money, don’t misuse it, like some would have you believe. They use it on things they need, but otherwise couldn’t afford, like housing, healthcare, car repairs, things like that. It’s even good for the economy
I’m sure there are already answers to this question l, but wouldn’t a basic universal income lead to some inflation/price rises?
I live in the most expensive city in my country and rent is insane. It’s not about finding a cheaper apartment or a smaller one because there are none or you won’t get them. They are not taking in a family of three into less than a three room apartment and sometimes even three room apartments are considered too small for a family with one little kid. And to be clear, if you are long term unemployed, the government pays for your housing. Theoretically. You still have to find a suitable apartment and there.are.none.
I would much rather have someone provide me guaranteed housing for free than to fear that my basic universal income will at some point not even be enough to cover my rent, even if it is just “basic”. But to me, “basic” in this sense would equal survival. It would mean housing, food, healthcare. I much rather take these things directly than make use of a small amount of money that will always be too little and end up having to choose between the cheapest cereal or the cheapest bread because I cannot afford both this month. Money and freedom to spend it as you wish is great, but I just cannot imagine how this would work. Apartments won’t magically keep their prices or appear out of thin air.
I’m sorry if this comment is too focused on housing, it is just the most anxiety evoking example I have. (And also we are moving in two weeks so maybe I am a bit preoccupied.)
It would lead to increased demand for goods poor people consume, and decreased demand for goods rich people consume. It’s a continual wealth transfer down the hierarchy.
In the short run the increased demand would probably lead to increased prices. In the longer run it would lead to more market investment, more production, more innovation, and by those two factors, lower prices.
Now if your basic income takes the form of newly printed money, that’s a whole new thing and would suck a lot.
It can be good, and there are parts of the developed world where public housing is not only abundant, but decent. And it has a cooling effect on the housing market, making all housing more affordable for everyone.
If we provide, decent, low cost housing to enough, everyone that needs housing prices to come down benefit.
The reason UBI is better than that is it still allows market forces to operate on those goods, improving them over time due to competition and innovation.
Also if someone wants to use their housing money for extra clothes instead and just couch surf, they should be allowed to do that. Granting money provides freedom of choice with it.
Who says the market can’t operate there? Providing a basic version of anything doesn’t mean an organization can’t compete. They just have to compete with basic. Most people will want something better.
It’ll increase demand, which should in theory increase wages for those jobs. A universal basic income is “basic” in the sense that it’s the minimum to survive in society. There will still be plenty of people who want more and are therefore willing to do those jobs.
Except that people will only pay so much for a cup of coffee. So how much do you need to pay a retail employee to come back to work over what ubi pays and how much will the products rise in cost to off set that
Sounds like you just identified a business that shouldn’t exist. If a company can’t afford to pay people what they need to survive, and still make a profit, the company needs to change, or shut down. That’s supposed to be the essence of the free market
And now think of the ripple effect of all the jobs lost when places like Starbucks go out of business and restaurants go out of business. Then construction sites and so on.
how much do you need to pay a retail employee to come back to work
Probably a lot less than you’d think. With UBI there’s no need for a minimum wage so if you’re offering a great work environment you could pay next to nothing for labor. If the job that needs done is inherently shitty you might have to pay more, but that’s already how it is for quite a few things.
This, and also working part time would become a lot more feasible. I would imagine there would be quite a bit of pressure to improve working conditions as well, which wouldn’t exactly be a bad thing. A lot more hours would be spent on things people consider meaningful, and bullshit jobs would have to be compensated appropriately, which to me feels like a win for society collectively.
One caveat though is that for abolishing minimum wages to be safe the UBI has to be high enough to be actually livable, and would likely be a target of constant politicking. A model I’ve been thinking about would be to set the level of UBI as a percentage of GDP, distributed evenly across the population, which to me would feel fair but may have practical issues I don’t see. It would create a sense of everyone benefiting from collective success, which appeals to me.
I think you will find that people will leave low end jobs in mass. Those willing to stay will ask for salaries that are extremely high and then those on ubi will be able to afford even less than before it existed
Probably someone who sees a causal connection between unpleasant work and pleasant outcomes later.
I mean if work was an end unto itself it doesn’t make much sense to go do things you don’t feel like doing. But once you connect the present moment of facing unpleasantness to the future payoff of the work, it makes more sense.
Most office work for company conglomerate X? Completely useless to society. The whole of Wall Street? Completely useless to society. In fact, most jobs in any field which isn’t STEM R&D are largely superfluous. So, what was your point again?
“Artists” make everything you touch or look at. Unless you define “artist” as someone who drinks all day, and whips paint at blank canvass.
UI-UX artists design the way programs look and function. Game artists build the worlds we play in. Architecture. Indoor decor. Even the cool looking rug you got at IKEA… designed by an industrial artist.
We are everywhere. Coming up with cool looking phones, apps, OSes, and yes, sculptures and paintings too. So you’re right, there is work to be done. There is so much skill and investment into the life of artist. You’d know if you ever spent a day in their shoes.
That’s exactly how it works. That’s why it’s called “universal” basic income. Let’s say we set the UBI to $10k per year, just to make a number up. I know that’s not a living wage, I just want an easy number. If someone has $0 income for the year (because they had to stay at home and take care of their parents), they get $10k. If someone made $500k as a banker, they also get $10k. Now, the banker is going to be paying about $250k in taxes while the carer would pay $0, but they’d both get the same amount of money.
Alaska and some countries do this out of an oil fund. The idea there is that the oil in the ground belongs to the people, who must be compensated for its extraction. I think the Alaska fund is around $3k or something like that. UBI would be the same but funded via taxes on individuals and companies.
If it’s less than you can live on, you’d still need to work and it would supplement your income or pay for a vacation or something. If it’s enough to live on, you could do what you like (including making more money by taking on a job, or go off and paint, or just go fishing or whatever.
Actually that is how one way of rolling it out works.
EVERYONE gets it, which makes administrating the whole deal very easy. No application process, no means testing, nothing. You give it to everyone and tax higher to cover it.
People will still work. UBI is enough that you’re not on the street, not enough that you’re living the high life.
Some people will go to school instead of working, and that’s good. They’ll get even better jobs than they would have otherwise, and give back way more to society in productivity and taxes.
Some people might be fine living the basic life that UBI affords, and who cares. Let them live their basic life. We can afford it.
You clearly haven’t. People don’t just sit at home and collect UBI. People are clearly addicted to consumerism, and that requires having a job. People also enjoy working.
You don’t have a critical mind and you aren’t discussing this in good faith because you clearly think if UBI was enacted that people would all become lazy and sit and home and do nothing. That you think this way shows everyone that you HAVENT done any research or reading on UBI.
Most wouldnt, but a significant percentage would. I think enough that you cant discount those people from any discussion on UBI.
In Australia we have social security and I know people who are 3rd generation jobless and they dont usually supplement their social security with a casual job, its usually drug dealing or other crime.
Im all for a realistic discussion on UBI but you have to examine how its going to impact all strata of society. Including the ones who will use the lack of any meaningful motivation to do better or be better people.
Have you met people? Get out of your bubble. Fucking hell, thats the daftest thing Ive ever heard, and I got an A in gender studies. (It was an elective, and I wanted to challenge my view that gender studies was bullshit, sue me)
UBI desn’t mean that you stop working, it’s just that everyone receives a share of money, at least enough so that you don’t end up on the street if you end up without a job. Easier to bounce back. The rest is additional income on top of UBI.
Personally I’d get bored shitless if I didn’t work, I need some fulfillment, a purpose. If having UBI gives more people a fair chance at achieving their life goals then I’m all for it.
The people you’re thinking of, in terms of laziness are always going to exist no matter what. You know who else doesn’t work and leeches of society? The oligarchs. The exact same people that are scared of UBI and will lobby as hard as possible to stop that from happening.
Also like, our society already does provide free food and shelter to people. All it asks is some basic niceties like “quiet after 11pm” or “don’t poop in the shower”.
I know. I’ve been homeless, been very well fed and very well protected from the elements, and well-clothed too, entirely for free.
People act like our society just lets people drop and that’s not true. We’ve got free resources out the wazoo for people.
But there are a lot of people for whom availability of resources isn’t the problem.
This is my way of saying that, even with UBI, there will be homeless people.
And conservatives will say “we give that guy $1000 a month and he sits there and shoots heroin in the park all day … I’m not giving him any more” and liberals will say “You know $1000 a month isn’t that much money and we should be offering free counseling”.
Then a decade later there will be that guy who shits on the park bench and rips smelly farts in his counseling sessions and doesn’t do the work.
As a society we’ve basically solved the problems that can be solved with free food and housing because … well because we have that as a feature of our society already,
One thing that makes UBI better than what we have now, is the fact it’s not a perverse incentive structure.
Right now all the free shit we give people is based on them “demonstrating need”. This means if they want to rise out of poverty, they need to go through a weird, unnatural zone on their work-to-benefit curve that’s flat, They do more work, and see no benefit.
Or if the program is really badly designed, it’s not just level it slopes down. Like you get a $200/mo raise, it puts you over a threshold, and you lose your $500/mo EBT benefits.
That kind of thing is toxic and evil. That’s like pushing crack on kids. Except instead of little identifiable crystals it’s at least easy to conceptualize saying “no” to, the dopamine-ruining substance is ethereal and takes the form of tables showing income thresholds in little pamphlets in government offices. Instead of a 10-second timeframe where you either hit that pipe or not, the game a person has to play with our welfare system has rounds lasting months at a time. It’s insidious and evil.
And if you’re in a position to receive this welfare, everyone on your side is encouraging you to take it.
And UBI doesn’t suffer from that mental-health-destroying, prefrontal-cortex-shrinking pattern. It’s giving with a truly open hand. It’s a ladder that doesn’t extract a price in bone density for each rung you climb.
Let’s say you’re a scummy piece of shit landlord. It’s a bit redundant I know but just bear with me.
You’re a scummy piece of shit landlord (SPOSL) and you know for a fact that every single one of your tenants suddenly can afford 2000 extra dollars per month. You’re probably not going to get away with taking all of that, but you’re a SPOSL, you’re definitely going to try to get some.
You also know that housing is being treated as a commodity so your tenants don’t have anywhere else to go, and that because all landlords are SPOSLs, you know they’ll all be doing the same thing.
Suddenly rent goes up across the board. They only people safe are the people in fixed rate mortgages.
But they’re only safe from that one particular kind of price gouging.
Unless you’re on a very fixed contact, everything you pay monthly for suddenly got more expensive over night. Your Internet will be going up, your phone bill will be going up, maybe not immediately, but when you renew.
Any common household item built down to a price, basically anything that can shrinkflate, when everyone has more money, will inflate instead. Because they know that consumers have more to spend, and won’t look at the price as closely as they used to.
Basically everyone, simultaneously, moves up on the doesn’t spendability side. And so prices move to adjust accordingly.
UBI works in small scale experiments because small scale experiments don’t have this effect. No one knows who’s getting more money and the market can’t adjust. But the market will adjust where it can.
I know it sounds nice, but it’s not the golden ticket it’s being made out to be.
Address healthcare, address housing, do it all independently of UBI so that hopefully it never becomes required.
To be clear I have absolutely no problem with guaranteeing basic needs are met, I think that’s a great idea. UBI does not do that.
Another issue is that housing is perceived as an investment. There would have to be some policies to be put in place to avoid abuse for sure.
For example, have a public registry that lists the rental price history of each apartment.
Have a tenant board managed by the government, that handles disputes between the landlords and tenants.
Maximum raise allowed per year, indexed to the inflation, with some exemption if there is a major renovation that was done (with proper documentation)
If the landlord isn’t fixing a major issue within reasonable time, the rent can be deposited into a bank account controlled by the tenant board and held until the repairs are considered as acceptable by the board.
Have the government provide monetary incentives to build more low-income apartments, and mandate that xx% of new construction is dedicated to those per year l, depending on the availability.
How about this as an alternative. Housing is guaranteed. Full stop. The only way to really do that is to build an assload government housing, and anyone who wants to live there, can. No questions asked. In fact it’s assumed everyone will want the free apartment. One per family. Might be a lot of excess apartments going unused but I don’t see that as a problem.
Food, also guaranteed. And not just cheese but meals full of good nutrients. You want it, just show up and collect it. Is it good, no maybe not. But it’s available and no one is going hungry.
Healthcare, universally covered. No one is going in to debt to get their basic healthcare needs met. Cosmetics aren’t but basic healthcare needs are.
No need for cash, because it’s all taken care of. It’s not going to be enough for most, no. But it’s not like work won’t still be available to anyone that wants it. Hell, wages probably go up as people who don’t want to work no longer have to.
Everyone doesn’t have more spending power under UBI; some people would be paying more in taxes than they’re getting back from the pool.
But yeah, if you give everyone in a certain group more money to spend, that’s more demand and hence higher prices assuming fixed supply.
So really, to avoid that issue with housing, you’d need to reduce friction to increasing supply. Maybe that means letting people build higher density housing without having to wait for the government to re-zone from low to high density. Or removing the minimum size on apartments, whatever.
Point is your market will adapt to the newly-super-profitable endeavor of landlording, by providing more housing.
Because as long as there’s any vacant housing, landlords are not free to price fix however they see fit. I mean they could if they were all in cahoots, but they’re not. They’re in competition.
Not really. Basic income is - just that. Basic. It’ll cover your necessities and put a roof over your head, but not much else
Id much rather continue working so that I can afford luxury items (my hobbies are as expensive as they are time consuming). I’d imagine most would feel the same.
Opponents of UBI all seem to have this bizarre notion that most people would be willing to take a big step down lifestyle wise to not have to work, but that doesn’t mesh with how most people treat money.
How many people deliberately underemploy themselves just to have more free time, even if they could easily be making more money? Very few. And I’d wager that most in that category have lucrative enough careers that their “underemployed” is still making most people’s normal income
That really just furthers the point that we need UBI in my mind.
The people who are making today more or less the same as what the UBI would be would have their income doubled overnight. And yeah, some will say fuck it and quit their jobs to just lounge around (though I imagine many will go back, ask anyone whose been out of work for a long time, it gets boring quicker than you might think), but I’d wager most will take that double income and run with it. Twice your takehome would be life changing for just about everybody. Hell, those who continue to work will probably wind up with more than double, because demand for those jobs will go up.
Jobs that are unpleasant or difficult will basically start actually getting paid what they’re worth, because no one will be stuck in a “I have to do this or starve” situation.
And yes, the overall GDP probably will take a hit, because we won’t be working our population to death, but productivity has skyrocketed over the last century, it’s about time we start putting that fact to work for the actual people, instead of using it to extract record profits for the top 1%.
TL;DR - People will still work because working will still mean more money. Some won’t, but that’s fine. If jobs are having a hard time being filled, then employers will simply have to pay more to get them done, or explore ways to automate the parts people don’t want to do
Do we really need them more than doctors, plumbers, teachers, etc. though? While I’m for a UBI, I’m against it being enough to fully live off of for exactly this reason. The world doesn’t need a bunch more popsicle stick art.
UBI is a separate concern from copyright being a dumb way of rewarding intellectual property.
Everyone should get UBI to reduce poverty and houselessness.
And separately, artists should get paid for their work, when it’s valuable, regardless of whether or not UBI is in place.
And sometimes that value is immediately recognized at the time by the masses and can be measured in clicks and streams.
Sometimes it’s only recognized by professional contemporaries and critics in how it influences the industry.
Sometimes it’s not recognized until long after them and their contemporaries are dead.
Given computers and the internet, there is no technical reason that every single individual on the planet couldn’t have access to all digital art at all times.
All of these things can be true, and their sum total makes copyright look like an asinine system for rewarding artists. It’s literally spending billions of dollars and countless countless useless hours in business deals, legal arguments, and software drm and walled gardens, all just to create a system of artificial scarcity, when all of those billions could instead be paying people to do literally anything else, including producing art.
Hell, paying all those lawyers 80k a year to produce shitty art and live a comfortable life would be a better use of societal resources then paying them 280k a year to deprive people of access to it.
The biggest issue with UBI is that it will never work, the math just doesn’t add up.
Where does the money come from? The government only really has one source of money and that is taxes, so to pay UBI it would either need to raise taxes or massive cut on other expanses.
Should a solution be found for 1) and everyone (universal means that everyone will automatically qualify for it, no questions asked) will be paid UBI then the prices for housing, food and all the other basic things will skyrocket because a) of the higher demand and b) because of the higher amount of money in circulation creating inflation.
The higher prices will mean that the amount of UBI money must be raised, which means we are back at 1)
Where does the money come from? The government only really has one source of money and that is taxes, so to pay UBI it would either need to raise taxes or massive cut on other expanses.
Debt is not a reliable money source, in the long run it is a huge money sink with payments and interests.
So yes, the only money source for governments are taxes.
I like the idea of a “Citizen’s Dividend” funded from taxes on pollution, carbon Emmissions, etc. We can throw a wealth tax for billionaires in there too.
Taxes on pollution, carbon emissions etc. would raise the costs of living and would therefore mean that the UBI would need to be higher to accommodate for the higher costs.
Which means that a huge part of these taxes would be payed in proxy by the government.
Rendering it useless as a method to fund the UBI.
The costs for a UBI are just so enormous, and all on the shoulders of the working class, because those are the majority of tax payers.
If you have a million people, old, young, in between, and a working rate of 60% (because the other 40% are too old or too young or can’t/doesn’ t want to work) and pay everyone 1000$ as UBI.
That would mean that a billion dollars has to be payed by 600.000 people, so every working citizen has to pay 1667$ to receive 1000$ in return.
This means that working people don’t get a UBI because they have to pay more then they get.
And those 1667$ taxes would only be for the UBI, meaning that the taxes would be much higher to pay for all the other costs that the state has.
This is a vast oversimplification. A UBI could replace a vast amount of existing welfare programs in a much more efficient way which would have a fraction of the overhead. There are tons of other proposals to fund a UBI such as a negative interest rate. Likely there would be many sources of funding, including money which now goes to existing wasteful welfare spending.
Ok, negativ interest rate sounds interesting and maybe doable.
It is something I have to read more about, I see a few issues but have not enough information yet.
Tax doesn’t finance spending. That national debt is owed to no one. Money is created out of thin air, my friend, and always has been since fiat money was introduced. When the government spends, they just adjust the number on their account; they’ve come right out and admitted this.
“We can’t afford that” is a lie. They can afford absolutely anything, because they own the money, and they own the debt in that money - it’s a constructed fiction.
Printing large amounts of money out of thin air is a great way to turn a valuable currency into worthless Monopoly® money via inflation.
That is basic economics.
There are lots of examples for that in history.
Yes, but I did in the text that you answered too.
By the law of inference your answer was about printing money too, because my whole text was about that printing money out of thin air will create inflation.
Give artists a basic universal income, and I guarantee every single person on earth will suddenly discover their “inner Picasso” to qualify.
You say that like that would be bad.
Who fights for having people in braindead jobs, working unsafe conditions, Christ almighty. Check please.
You can debate the merits of some work, you can debate the amount people are compensated for that work. But what is absolutely not debatable is that we actually need people to do work for us to contribute to function as a society. Some of that work that’s absolutely necessary is both dangerous and nigh impossible to automate. Do we need another Starbucks? No, absolutely not. But we will still need places to be built, and infrastructure maintained. There’s really no escaping that.
That’s why it’s a basic income. Enough to keep you housed, clothed and fed. Your clothes might be thrifted, your apartment small, and your diet mostly instant ramen, but your basic needs will be covered. Plenty of people would still work hard to get more than the basics.
Why not just guarantee those things for everyone?
Guaranteed housing, guaranteed food, guaranteed clothing. No work required. I agree with you, I think most people will still work with all of that taken care of. Because it’s just basic.
That’s what a universal basic income does. It’s way simpler and more likely to succeed than a hundred different programs for everything people need. Studies show that poor people, when given money, don’t misuse it, like some would have you believe. They use it on things they need, but otherwise couldn’t afford, like housing, healthcare, car repairs, things like that. It’s even good for the economy
I’m sure there are already answers to this question l, but wouldn’t a basic universal income lead to some inflation/price rises?
I live in the most expensive city in my country and rent is insane. It’s not about finding a cheaper apartment or a smaller one because there are none or you won’t get them. They are not taking in a family of three into less than a three room apartment and sometimes even three room apartments are considered too small for a family with one little kid. And to be clear, if you are long term unemployed, the government pays for your housing. Theoretically. You still have to find a suitable apartment and there.are.none.
I would much rather have someone provide me guaranteed housing for free than to fear that my basic universal income will at some point not even be enough to cover my rent, even if it is just “basic”. But to me, “basic” in this sense would equal survival. It would mean housing, food, healthcare. I much rather take these things directly than make use of a small amount of money that will always be too little and end up having to choose between the cheapest cereal or the cheapest bread because I cannot afford both this month. Money and freedom to spend it as you wish is great, but I just cannot imagine how this would work. Apartments won’t magically keep their prices or appear out of thin air.
I’m sorry if this comment is too focused on housing, it is just the most anxiety evoking example I have. (And also we are moving in two weeks so maybe I am a bit preoccupied.)
It would lead to increased demand for goods poor people consume, and decreased demand for goods rich people consume. It’s a continual wealth transfer down the hierarchy.
In the short run the increased demand would probably lead to increased prices. In the longer run it would lead to more market investment, more production, more innovation, and by those two factors, lower prices.
Now if your basic income takes the form of newly printed money, that’s a whole new thing and would suck a lot.
I am sure there is an official answer, but I am going to wing it.
Inflation is from too much money chasing too few goods.
UBI will free you from having to live in a specific place. Or if not you, some of your neighbors.
Guaranteed housing tends to be shitty. Think of the worst people running the program and them hitting the lowest standards most times.
With money, you can decide the housing trade-offs. Save money on rent and spend more elsewhere, or the reverse. With money, you have flexibility.
Except there’s no reason it needs to be.
It can be good, and there are parts of the developed world where public housing is not only abundant, but decent. And it has a cooling effect on the housing market, making all housing more affordable for everyone.
If we provide, decent, low cost housing to enough, everyone that needs housing prices to come down benefit.
I wonder how they operationalized the proper or misuse of money in those studies.
The reason UBI is better than that is it still allows market forces to operate on those goods, improving them over time due to competition and innovation.
Also if someone wants to use their housing money for extra clothes instead and just couch surf, they should be allowed to do that. Granting money provides freedom of choice with it.
Who says the market can’t operate there? Providing a basic version of anything doesn’t mean an organization can’t compete. They just have to compete with basic. Most people will want something better.
It will still get done.
Who would work at Starbucks if you get a living wage making shitty art ?
Is there even a quota needed in this? Can I make one piece of art a week that takes ten minutes and I get my living wage ?
Why would I work 40 hours dealing with any customer. Why would I work in a field picking crops or at a construction site ?
I’ll join hunter Biden making blow art and getting g paid
It’ll increase demand, which should in theory increase wages for those jobs. A universal basic income is “basic” in the sense that it’s the minimum to survive in society. There will still be plenty of people who want more and are therefore willing to do those jobs.
Except that people will only pay so much for a cup of coffee. So how much do you need to pay a retail employee to come back to work over what ubi pays and how much will the products rise in cost to off set that
Sounds like you just identified a business that shouldn’t exist. If a company can’t afford to pay people what they need to survive, and still make a profit, the company needs to change, or shut down. That’s supposed to be the essence of the free market
But it’s not a free market if the government is giving money to non workers.
FYI this will effect all business across the board.
If people will only pay so much for a cup of coffee, that’s capitalist for “coffee ain’t that big a deal”.
And now think of the ripple effect of all the jobs lost when places like Starbucks go out of business and restaurants go out of business. Then construction sites and so on.
Probably a lot less than you’d think. With UBI there’s no need for a minimum wage so if you’re offering a great work environment you could pay next to nothing for labor. If the job that needs done is inherently shitty you might have to pay more, but that’s already how it is for quite a few things.
This, and also working part time would become a lot more feasible. I would imagine there would be quite a bit of pressure to improve working conditions as well, which wouldn’t exactly be a bad thing. A lot more hours would be spent on things people consider meaningful, and bullshit jobs would have to be compensated appropriately, which to me feels like a win for society collectively.
One caveat though is that for abolishing minimum wages to be safe the UBI has to be high enough to be actually livable, and would likely be a target of constant politicking. A model I’ve been thinking about would be to set the level of UBI as a percentage of GDP, distributed evenly across the population, which to me would feel fair but may have practical issues I don’t see. It would create a sense of everyone benefiting from collective success, which appeals to me.
I think you will find that people will leave low end jobs in mass. Those willing to stay will ask for salaries that are extremely high and then those on ubi will be able to afford even less than before it existed
Thanks for announcing your single digit IQ on this topic so everyone is aware. Excellent work.
Wow what an insult. Good job
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I dont see any burns. Should I go ask your mom to llay doctor and make sure ?
Citation needed.
As if that’s a worthy goal.
Says the guy who literally advocate the enslavement of the majority of the human race. Where even if your line, my guy?
2 edgy 4 me m8
So your ok if your garbage does not get taken out or if that many less people want to be doctors and nurses?
Probably someone who sees a causal connection between unpleasant work and pleasant outcomes later.
I mean if work was an end unto itself it doesn’t make much sense to go do things you don’t feel like doing. But once you connect the present moment of facing unpleasantness to the future payoff of the work, it makes more sense.
Most office work for company conglomerate X? Completely useless to society. The whole of Wall Street? Completely useless to society. In fact, most jobs in any field which isn’t STEM R&D are largely superfluous. So, what was your point again?
There’s work to be done. Everyone can’t be an artist. It’s exactly why they’re not paid well to do it. It’s a high-supply, low-demand job.
You people are living in a fantasy land.
We got fat on the third world and people think we can just say “fuck you, got mine” to the rest of the planet.
“Artists” make everything you touch or look at. Unless you define “artist” as someone who drinks all day, and whips paint at blank canvass.
UI-UX artists design the way programs look and function. Game artists build the worlds we play in. Architecture. Indoor decor. Even the cool looking rug you got at IKEA… designed by an industrial artist.
We are everywhere. Coming up with cool looking phones, apps, OSes, and yes, sculptures and paintings too. So you’re right, there is work to be done. There is so much skill and investment into the life of artist. You’d know if you ever spent a day in their shoes.
Your know exactly what I mean by “artists”. Don’t be daft
I do not. Why don’t you tell us what an artist is in your opinion.
The reason it’s called universal is because everyone gets it.
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That’s called unemployment benefits. Universal Basic Income is universal, like the name says. If it’s not universal, then it’s not universal basic income.
That’s exactly how it works. That’s why it’s called “universal” basic income. Let’s say we set the UBI to $10k per year, just to make a number up. I know that’s not a living wage, I just want an easy number. If someone has $0 income for the year (because they had to stay at home and take care of their parents), they get $10k. If someone made $500k as a banker, they also get $10k. Now, the banker is going to be paying about $250k in taxes while the carer would pay $0, but they’d both get the same amount of money.
Alaska and some countries do this out of an oil fund. The idea there is that the oil in the ground belongs to the people, who must be compensated for its extraction. I think the Alaska fund is around $3k or something like that. UBI would be the same but funded via taxes on individuals and companies.
If it’s less than you can live on, you’d still need to work and it would supplement your income or pay for a vacation or something. If it’s enough to live on, you could do what you like (including making more money by taking on a job, or go off and paint, or just go fishing or whatever.
Actually that is how one way of rolling it out works.
EVERYONE gets it, which makes administrating the whole deal very easy. No application process, no means testing, nothing. You give it to everyone and tax higher to cover it.
Oh nooooo, people won’t be as strongly bound to corporations anymore! Whatever will we do?
Starve?
That’s what the UBI is for. Keep up.
Ok, who will grow food? Who will truck it to grocery stores? Who will work at the store?
People will still work. UBI is enough that you’re not on the street, not enough that you’re living the high life.
Some people will go to school instead of working, and that’s good. They’ll get even better jobs than they would have otherwise, and give back way more to society in productivity and taxes.
Some people might be fine living the basic life that UBI affords, and who cares. Let them live their basic life. We can afford it.
Man Im glad you’re not making decisions.
You criticize but offer nothing of value except “no, you’re stupid”
Man I’m glad you’re not making decisions.
Imagine supporting ideas and policies that help others which in turn helps you. Would be so crazy .
I don’t know man, I like having food. Keeps me from dying. Water too now that I mention it.
Oh my goodness you’re one of those people. Go read about UBI and then come back and talk.
I have, with a critical mind. If no one works, people starve.
You clearly haven’t. People don’t just sit at home and collect UBI. People are clearly addicted to consumerism, and that requires having a job. People also enjoy working.
You don’t have a critical mind and you aren’t discussing this in good faith because you clearly think if UBI was enacted that people would all become lazy and sit and home and do nothing. That you think this way shows everyone that you HAVENT done any research or reading on UBI.
Most wouldnt, but a significant percentage would. I think enough that you cant discount those people from any discussion on UBI.
In Australia we have social security and I know people who are 3rd generation jobless and they dont usually supplement their social security with a casual job, its usually drug dealing or other crime.
Im all for a realistic discussion on UBI but you have to examine how its going to impact all strata of society. Including the ones who will use the lack of any meaningful motivation to do better or be better people.
Have you met people? Get out of your bubble. Fucking hell, thats the daftest thing Ive ever heard, and I got an A in gender studies. (It was an elective, and I wanted to challenge my view that gender studies was bullshit, sue me)
You’re right. If no one works, people starve.
There’s no reason to assume nobody would work under UBI though.
A critical lack of mind
UBI desn’t mean that you stop working, it’s just that everyone receives a share of money, at least enough so that you don’t end up on the street if you end up without a job. Easier to bounce back. The rest is additional income on top of UBI.
Personally I’d get bored shitless if I didn’t work, I need some fulfillment, a purpose. If having UBI gives more people a fair chance at achieving their life goals then I’m all for it.
The people you’re thinking of, in terms of laziness are always going to exist no matter what. You know who else doesn’t work and leeches of society? The oligarchs. The exact same people that are scared of UBI and will lobby as hard as possible to stop that from happening.
Also like, our society already does provide free food and shelter to people. All it asks is some basic niceties like “quiet after 11pm” or “don’t poop in the shower”.
I know. I’ve been homeless, been very well fed and very well protected from the elements, and well-clothed too, entirely for free.
People act like our society just lets people drop and that’s not true. We’ve got free resources out the wazoo for people.
But there are a lot of people for whom availability of resources isn’t the problem.
This is my way of saying that, even with UBI, there will be homeless people.
And conservatives will say “we give that guy $1000 a month and he sits there and shoots heroin in the park all day … I’m not giving him any more” and liberals will say “You know $1000 a month isn’t that much money and we should be offering free counseling”.
Then a decade later there will be that guy who shits on the park bench and rips smelly farts in his counseling sessions and doesn’t do the work.
As a society we’ve basically solved the problems that can be solved with free food and housing because … well because we have that as a feature of our society already,
One thing that makes UBI better than what we have now, is the fact it’s not a perverse incentive structure.
Right now all the free shit we give people is based on them “demonstrating need”. This means if they want to rise out of poverty, they need to go through a weird, unnatural zone on their work-to-benefit curve that’s flat, They do more work, and see no benefit.
Or if the program is really badly designed, it’s not just level it slopes down. Like you get a $200/mo raise, it puts you over a threshold, and you lose your $500/mo EBT benefits.
That kind of thing is toxic and evil. That’s like pushing crack on kids. Except instead of little identifiable crystals it’s at least easy to conceptualize saying “no” to, the dopamine-ruining substance is ethereal and takes the form of tables showing income thresholds in little pamphlets in government offices. Instead of a 10-second timeframe where you either hit that pipe or not, the game a person has to play with our welfare system has rounds lasting months at a time. It’s insidious and evil.
And if you’re in a position to receive this welfare, everyone on your side is encouraging you to take it.
And UBI doesn’t suffer from that mental-health-destroying, prefrontal-cortex-shrinking pattern. It’s giving with a truly open hand. It’s a ladder that doesn’t extract a price in bone density for each rung you climb.
wow, thanks for sharing your insight
Let’s say you’re a scummy piece of shit landlord. It’s a bit redundant I know but just bear with me.
You’re a scummy piece of shit landlord (SPOSL) and you know for a fact that every single one of your tenants suddenly can afford 2000 extra dollars per month. You’re probably not going to get away with taking all of that, but you’re a SPOSL, you’re definitely going to try to get some.
You also know that housing is being treated as a commodity so your tenants don’t have anywhere else to go, and that because all landlords are SPOSLs, you know they’ll all be doing the same thing.
Suddenly rent goes up across the board. They only people safe are the people in fixed rate mortgages.
But they’re only safe from that one particular kind of price gouging.
Unless you’re on a very fixed contact, everything you pay monthly for suddenly got more expensive over night. Your Internet will be going up, your phone bill will be going up, maybe not immediately, but when you renew.
Any common household item built down to a price, basically anything that can shrinkflate, when everyone has more money, will inflate instead. Because they know that consumers have more to spend, and won’t look at the price as closely as they used to.
Basically everyone, simultaneously, moves up on the doesn’t spendability side. And so prices move to adjust accordingly.
UBI works in small scale experiments because small scale experiments don’t have this effect. No one knows who’s getting more money and the market can’t adjust. But the market will adjust where it can.
I know it sounds nice, but it’s not the golden ticket it’s being made out to be.
Address healthcare, address housing, do it all independently of UBI so that hopefully it never becomes required.
To be clear I have absolutely no problem with guaranteeing basic needs are met, I think that’s a great idea. UBI does not do that.
Another issue is that housing is perceived as an investment. There would have to be some policies to be put in place to avoid abuse for sure.
How about this as an alternative. Housing is guaranteed. Full stop. The only way to really do that is to build an assload government housing, and anyone who wants to live there, can. No questions asked. In fact it’s assumed everyone will want the free apartment. One per family. Might be a lot of excess apartments going unused but I don’t see that as a problem.
Food, also guaranteed. And not just cheese but meals full of good nutrients. You want it, just show up and collect it. Is it good, no maybe not. But it’s available and no one is going hungry.
Healthcare, universally covered. No one is going in to debt to get their basic healthcare needs met. Cosmetics aren’t but basic healthcare needs are.
No need for cash, because it’s all taken care of. It’s not going to be enough for most, no. But it’s not like work won’t still be available to anyone that wants it. Hell, wages probably go up as people who don’t want to work no longer have to.
Everyone doesn’t have more spending power under UBI; some people would be paying more in taxes than they’re getting back from the pool.
But yeah, if you give everyone in a certain group more money to spend, that’s more demand and hence higher prices assuming fixed supply.
So really, to avoid that issue with housing, you’d need to reduce friction to increasing supply. Maybe that means letting people build higher density housing without having to wait for the government to re-zone from low to high density. Or removing the minimum size on apartments, whatever.
Point is your market will adapt to the newly-super-profitable endeavor of landlording, by providing more housing.
Because as long as there’s any vacant housing, landlords are not free to price fix however they see fit. I mean they could if they were all in cahoots, but they’re not. They’re in competition.
Probably people wanting to make some money.
We only need like a dozen farmers to feed the everyone
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You’re off a bit, but only by a factor of about 3 million.
One US farmer feeds about 150 people. 300 in absolutely ideal conditions that do not exist.
I was exaggerating.
Less than 1% of the population is pretty good tho
The fuck are you on about? A dozen farmers? Yeah, if there were a dozen people. Wtf are you on?
Not really. Basic income is - just that. Basic. It’ll cover your necessities and put a roof over your head, but not much else
Id much rather continue working so that I can afford luxury items (my hobbies are as expensive as they are time consuming). I’d imagine most would feel the same.
Opponents of UBI all seem to have this bizarre notion that most people would be willing to take a big step down lifestyle wise to not have to work, but that doesn’t mesh with how most people treat money.
How many people deliberately underemploy themselves just to have more free time, even if they could easily be making more money? Very few. And I’d wager that most in that category have lucrative enough careers that their “underemployed” is still making most people’s normal income
Are you unaware that many people don’t get much for their work beyond a roof over their head?
That really just furthers the point that we need UBI in my mind.
The people who are making today more or less the same as what the UBI would be would have their income doubled overnight. And yeah, some will say fuck it and quit their jobs to just lounge around (though I imagine many will go back, ask anyone whose been out of work for a long time, it gets boring quicker than you might think), but I’d wager most will take that double income and run with it. Twice your takehome would be life changing for just about everybody. Hell, those who continue to work will probably wind up with more than double, because demand for those jobs will go up.
Jobs that are unpleasant or difficult will basically start actually getting paid what they’re worth, because no one will be stuck in a “I have to do this or starve” situation.
And yes, the overall GDP probably will take a hit, because we won’t be working our population to death, but productivity has skyrocketed over the last century, it’s about time we start putting that fact to work for the actual people, instead of using it to extract record profits for the top 1%.
TL;DR - People will still work because working will still mean more money. Some won’t, but that’s fine. If jobs are having a hard time being filled, then employers will simply have to pay more to get them done, or explore ways to automate the parts people don’t want to do
Point being?
You say that like it’s a bad thing. We could use more people who can afford to make art in the world, even if a lot of it would be shitty art.
Do we really need them more than doctors, plumbers, teachers, etc. though? While I’m for a UBI, I’m against it being enough to fully live off of for exactly this reason. The world doesn’t need a bunch more popsicle stick art.
Speak for yourself. I think the world would be a much better place with more popsicle stick art.
Eeh deviant art had that perspective and then got flooded with mspaint fetish porn and became unusable.
Art station on the other hand always blows me away every time I visit the front page. So there’s a limit.
UBI is a separate concern from copyright being a dumb way of rewarding intellectual property.
Everyone should get UBI to reduce poverty and houselessness.
And separately, artists should get paid for their work, when it’s valuable, regardless of whether or not UBI is in place.
And sometimes that value is immediately recognized at the time by the masses and can be measured in clicks and streams.
Sometimes it’s only recognized by professional contemporaries and critics in how it influences the industry.
Sometimes it’s not recognized until long after them and their contemporaries are dead.
Given computers and the internet, there is no technical reason that every single individual on the planet couldn’t have access to all digital art at all times.
All of these things can be true, and their sum total makes copyright look like an asinine system for rewarding artists. It’s literally spending billions of dollars and countless countless useless hours in business deals, legal arguments, and software drm and walled gardens, all just to create a system of artificial scarcity, when all of those billions could instead be paying people to do literally anything else, including producing art.
Hell, paying all those lawyers 80k a year to produce shitty art and live a comfortable life would be a better use of societal resources then paying them 280k a year to deprive people of access to it.
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You do realise U in UBI means Universal, they arent suggesting only artists get it
So you just have to give everyone universal income
It’s not really universal unless you do.
Then the shower thought is dumb suggesting giving it to only artists
The biggest issue with UBI is that it will never work, the math just doesn’t add up.
How’s that National Debt looking?
Debt is not a reliable money source, in the long run it is a huge money sink with payments and interests. So yes, the only money source for governments are taxes.
I like the idea of a “Citizen’s Dividend” funded from taxes on pollution, carbon Emmissions, etc. We can throw a wealth tax for billionaires in there too.
Taxes on pollution, carbon emissions etc. would raise the costs of living and would therefore mean that the UBI would need to be higher to accommodate for the higher costs. Which means that a huge part of these taxes would be payed in proxy by the government. Rendering it useless as a method to fund the UBI.
The costs for a UBI are just so enormous, and all on the shoulders of the working class, because those are the majority of tax payers.
If you have a million people, old, young, in between, and a working rate of 60% (because the other 40% are too old or too young or can’t/doesn’ t want to work) and pay everyone 1000$ as UBI. That would mean that a billion dollars has to be payed by 600.000 people, so every working citizen has to pay 1667$ to receive 1000$ in return. This means that working people don’t get a UBI because they have to pay more then they get.
And those 1667$ taxes would only be for the UBI, meaning that the taxes would be much higher to pay for all the other costs that the state has.
This is a vast oversimplification. A UBI could replace a vast amount of existing welfare programs in a much more efficient way which would have a fraction of the overhead. There are tons of other proposals to fund a UBI such as a negative interest rate. Likely there would be many sources of funding, including money which now goes to existing wasteful welfare spending.
Ok, negativ interest rate sounds interesting and maybe doable. It is something I have to read more about, I see a few issues but have not enough information yet.
Tax doesn’t finance spending. That national debt is owed to no one. Money is created out of thin air, my friend, and always has been since fiat money was introduced. When the government spends, they just adjust the number on their account; they’ve come right out and admitted this.
“We can’t afford that” is a lie. They can afford absolutely anything, because they own the money, and they own the debt in that money - it’s a constructed fiction.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Tax doesn’t finance spending
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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Printing large amounts of money out of thin air is a great way to turn a valuable currency into worthless Monopoly® money via inflation. That is basic economics. There are lots of examples for that in history.
Inflation is not a guarantee, that depends on the actual economy. Japan is massively in deficit and yet is seeing deflation.
Beeing deficit doesn’t have to mean that they print money, they can be deficit by taking higher and higher loans. Which comes with it’s own problems.
I didn’t say printing money.
Yes, but I did in the text that you answered too. By the law of inference your answer was about printing money too, because my whole text was about that printing money out of thin air will create inflation.
“I mentioned printing money so now you’re talking about it too”
No
It doesn’t need to be printed. They just add the number to the digital bank account.