$1000 "Living wage" for everyone no work needed

UBI "fixes" the problems of welfare by assuming the basic premise of welfare (wealth redistribution) is a net good for society but it's just the implementation that needs to be worked out. Economically it's like building spike strips in the road because you keep getting flat tires.

>inb4*tipsfedora*
Whether you think wealth redistribution is necessary for one case or another or some people deserve this or that is immaterial. There is no sound economic argument for wealth redistribution, only a moral one. I'm not an amoral person, few people are, and like most moral people I believe that certain classes of people should be given freebies because of their sorry lot in life. The problem with UBI then becomes deciding how much is "appropriate" to give to people. The NEET just wants enough to buy ramen noodles, a roof over his head, and a new vidya every month. Cancer Kid wants enough to cover his cancer treatment. The wage slave who just lost his job wants enough to cover his house, his car payments, and all the nice things his lifestyle has accustomed him to. So what is it?

I'm sure you can formulate some strong opinion about what the magic number should be but the point is that most people will probably disagree (believing it should be higher or lower). The grand thing about various welfare programs is it allows societies to decide piecemeal which downtrodden groups deserve a freebie and which do not. This is why cancer kids get shitloads of money and NEETs get nothing except shame.

If you replace welfare and many of the government subsidies (besides disabilities), I believe it can work.

You're redistributing the wealth. However I don't think it would remove the problem of the ghetto, where crackheads spend money on drugs and alcohol instead of basic needs.

However, I think you allow students to get better educated without the worry of working and take pressure off having a shitty job and wages. Automation would've taken minimum wage jobs anyways

>Since you won't starve if you don't accept shit pay for hard work
depends because what's stopping grocery stores and landlords from increases prices of goods and rent?
>everyone get $1000 a month
>rent just went up $1000 a month
What's stopping this from happening and just being right back at square one?

> Whats stopping it from happening
Basic capitalism? Undercutting would be rampant until marginal cost = revenue.

why not extend welfare and also give people food?

well grocers and other stores would (or should) be subject to basic competition that would drive prices down. If one store tries to gouge basic incomes, people will just shop at the store that doesn't.

I do agree rent/housing in general is harder to stop price increases since supply is more limited. However, with a UBI, people would be far more free with regard to resettling in different places. People would be able to move more easily to locations where rent isn't sky high since they wouldn't necessarily need to have a large savings and a job already lined up.

Well you have food stamps already

You can eliminate the different programs by having UBI and save government money

Takes out EI, CPP, welfare, food stamps and even the funding natives get (don't know if they get any).

I think it would be effective if you give 1k per adult, 500 for anybody under the age of 18.

dude 1000 a month is just minimum wage 12k per year it wouldnt change much just young people wouldnt have to slave

I wonder what the policy response would be when idiots inevitably do use the money on booze and blow. Would it just end up necessitating programs on top of programs (e.g., funding for classes to teach UBI recipients how to responsibly spend UBI money, funding for classes to teach UBI recipients the importance of attending classes to learn how to responsibly spend UBI money)? Of those who would need it currently, what proportion would actually use it judiciously to lift themselves out of abject poverty?

I can't imagine that many individuals capable of delay gratification and complex planning actually being that desperately poor in the first place. If this type of "spend-as-you-see-fit" UBI ever becomes widespread, I think it will be a sobering wake up call to the reality of how correlated heredity and environment are, even when every opportunity is given for people to reasonably improve the latter.

A living wage law would probably be the single greatest thing ever for the world.

Suddenly there are millions more people that are stupid enough to give you their money. If they're not working or are shitty NEETs you could make a lot more money in any investment.

There may be increased taxes on "rich" at the beginning but it would even out after 5-10 years and it would be great after that.

Remember, the richer people are, the fewer kids they have so inflation wouldn't be a big problem after 10-20 years. No more homeless people asking for money, sounds like heaven.

230 bucks a week is far less than minimum wage

It would be a great way of QE, plus no more need for child support/welfare. I think it would be a great boost to the economy

>give people food?
foodstamps dont buy diapers
youtu.be/_Yhyp-_hX2s?t=3m34s

>the richer people are, the fewer kids they have so inflation wouldn't be a big problem

This is very important and would absolutely have to hold if the system were to be sustainable in the long run. Decreased cost of goods due to automation coupled with minimal population growth would make this system work.

Even with some degree of population growth, decrease of cost in goods due to automation could offset the effects of inflation.

it's a well known trend throughout all first world countries and countries that are moving up seem to be following that trend too. China for example has softened their population control laws (one child policy is now the two child policy) in response to burgeoning demographics issues (too few young people to support all the coming retirees and a huge gender imbalance which is expected to cause a sudden population crash next generation).

>I wonder what the policy response would be when idiots inevitably do use the money on booze and blow

Except people already do this with current welfare. People sell foodstamps, and otherwise abuse welfare to continue being degenerates all the time. This is never going to change, and a UBI is just a cheaper, more fair alternative that also doesn't have the perverse "welfare traps" that current safety nets do.

Ideally, I'd like to just see all drugs legalized, yes even heroin, meth etc. That way if you really want to be a piece of shit, you can spend your UBI on the booming drug industry (giving back to the economy) rather than giving it to cartels and dealers.

Eh. In 10 to 25 years when automation replaces great swathes of the lower skilled people, it will become a political necessity to have basic minimum income.

Unless you want hordes of people stealing your shit, but hey I guess the killer robot guards will eventually be a thing...

...until you are replaced by an AI and you wish you had voted for basic minimum income.

It's certainly a balance. Ideally we could develop policy and incentivize a culture that keeps as closely to replacement as possible. In a post-automation economy served by UBI, both the subsaharan African and Chinese model of population growth would present uniquely awful scenarios.

Assuming a robust system of automation, I think the Chinese scenario would be preferable, assuming the largest, oldest segment of the population can be supported by a combination of savings, investments, and UBI. The other would hinge on the ability of costs to decrease at a rate exceeding the increasing rate of inflation. That sounds like more of a gamble.

The more interesting thing debated here, though, is whether those "lower skilled people" could, on average, be trusted to manage monthly lump sums of cash well without imposing further costs to the system. There are clearly benefits to administering these sorts of payments as opposed to earmarked benefits and redeemable credits like Medicare and EBT.

The question is regarding what percentage of the population could be trusted to manage a monthly lump sum of cash adequately enough to meet essential needs, rather than blowing it on stupid shit. What proportion of people will just blow it all on day 1 and demand medical care they can't pay for on day 2?

>10 to 25 years
automation is like 10 to 15 years behind on what we need it to do, let alone replacing anybody. it's a different conversation altogether but the entire migration deal and tragedy of low birthrates is due to how fucking huge the demand is/will be for services and labor that people won't be filling. like literally the only "swathes" of people in danger in our lifetimes are drivers. people adapt.

good in small communities. and it already happens, it's called an allowance from your parents or having your friends help you out. if the govt does it for an entire country and businesses are independent in that country? absolutely no difference in quality of life, just arbitrary complication of your bank account and a place to exploit tax money for a handful of people.

If people knew how to smartly manage their money, then the economy would collapse.

...

But what do you do when these people refuse to allocate funds for housing, food, or medical care? Although this is a preferable economic choice for them (i.e., more drugs), society has a vested interest in making sure that they are housed, fed, and healthy so that they do not transfer those costs to others or exist as an eyesore. No free lunch, right?

How do you force people to pay their own way when it is equally possible to use that same money to buy more drugs? As a society, we will never truly force people to suffer the consequences of their choices because we have moral standards. As a consequence, we reinforce their habits, which are then taught to their children and friends, becoming culture.

Legalizing drugs will do nothing to ensure these people make reasonable choices in the best interest of themselves or society, unless you propose disproportionately taxing drug sales to effectively allocate more money to junkies so they can get high AND have healthcare, housing, and food.

This is a slippery slope for obvious reasons. What's to stop me from saying all my UBI should be for anime figurines because I really need them and that somebody else should pay for the boring, essential stuff society has a vested interest in me having?

...

If you want free food and housing without having to work, there is always prison.

I think the French nobility said the same thing in the 1790's.

or be black

Right. There would actually be competition in that sellers of consumer goods would be trying to convince people to spend a greater fraction of their fixed income on their products. Some people will go for this and this will fuel consumer capitalism.

At the same time, if too many people bite the hook and, say, 70% of people still say they still have no money to pay for healthcare, we would have a massive problem when they show up at the ER with a gaping head wound. How would doctors/ hospitals/ medical supply companies get paid?

HOVERBOARDS AND TIME TRAVEL XDD

>What's to stop me from saying all my UBI should be for anime figurines because I really need them and that somebody else should pay for the boring, essential stuff society has a vested interest in me having?

you would then be homeless, or starve. At least for the foreseeable future. However, most UBI proposals don't just mail you a check every year for what you are owed, like a tax rebate. Instead it would likely have to be set up through some kind of direct deposit, probably every week or 2 weeks, like a paycheck. So if you bought a bunch of dumb shit with your weekly UBI, and you don't work, you'd be pretty screwed until the next UBI payment comes in.

For most normal people, this type of regulation (buy the shit you need or be homeless) would be perfectly fine. Plenty of people would still be working under a UBI anyway, so they'd have additional funds to spend on useless shit. For the truly fucked up people that are buying crack or heroin, they'd be homeless/starving regardless of whatever welfare system we have, or would resort to crime to continue their addiction.

I suppose government could also simply take over if a person is a complete fuck up. Like if I'm a homeless junkie, spending all my UBI on heroin, the gov would notice and step in, taking my UBI away until I completed some kind of rehab. Either a gov agency or business would take my allocation of UBI and put me in some kind of "half-way house" until I was stable enough to spend my UBI responsibly

I hate this argument. It's not impossible for capitalism to prosper in a society that fails to bite the most cheaply baited hook, it just has to try harder and invest capital in producing something of real value to a discerning consumer. Casino capitalism and Skymall-tier consumerism are lazy underutilizations of a potentially much more potent, transformative system.

True, Japan is the best example of an educated society. However, they have problems with deflation more than the USA did because everyone saves their money.

Suffice to say we would have the same problems as Japan if we went that route. Of course its small price to pay for waifu pillows.

most decent cities give free food and housing already. homeless people are generally drug abusers and/or hate being told what to do.

It seems sad to me that a system poised to reduce government bureaucracy would likely demand its expansion for some segment of the population.

It's angering to think that some people are so fucked up that, even with a guaranteed check every two weeks, we will never live in a society where I ever again have to see a drunk bum pissing himself in the street. Its the kind of thing that gives statists an annoyingly smug look.

I'd actually pay a 3% tax to not be bothered by vagrants and homeless people and to actually pick up the trash on my streets.

That's because the argument is fallacious. People spending money on useless crap doesn't help "the economy". The purpose of the economy isn't to provide people with jobs or money. It doesn't have a purpose. It's simply a description of people trading goods and services with each other. The economy "grows" when businesses use less capital and resources to create more desirable goods and services, allowing them to charge less for it, and raising the living standards of the consumers who can acquire the good or service for less capital.

when does le narwhal bacon? xD

Imagine having a marketplace with so many truly useful, valuable goods that even conscientious consumers don't have the impulse to save. I don't know what that looks like, but it would be the standard companies would be driven to produce should consumers grow more discerning.

In short, I don't think informed economic actors naturally give rise to saving behavior, especially when the market produces a high volume of competitive, truly innovative products.

To be fair, I'd argue money and economics doesn't directly improve life, but rather technology.

The Vanderbilts still shit in pots in their mansions in the 1860's and died of cholera and had lice and what not.

Today even the lowest paid wage slave has the internet which is magic compared to what the richest person had back then.

Of course back to my point... In 25 years we will have self driving cars (if not sooner). Then what will happen to all the 6 million truck drivers?

Can they even afford to go back to college to become robot engineers?

Exactly. Consumers making informed choices produces a more competitive environment in which businesses must innovate to remain viable. Nothing retards true innovation in business more than consumer complacency.

>Can they even afford to go back to college to become robot engineers

I've met quite a few truck drivers through work. The number that would even have the aptitude to do so is probably 1 in 10,000. Assuming there are about 3.5 million truck drivers in the US, that means maybe 350 of them would be retrainable. That leaves 3.499 million that can't be. That's a problem.

what are you even talking about?
there's no need to do anything, we give people money, they produce less kids, we have more money to give them, and repeat.
in the first place "over-population" scare is a big ol myth, because
A) with each technological increase comes a huge raise on the ceiling of our ability to house and feed people (the world human population hasnt even reached our current ceiling, the only reason theres still famines is because we're really petty/shitty with distribution) and the burgeoning and coming technological increases are going to make the ceiling unreachable with the population growth slowing how it is
B) theres no evidence famines have ever occurred because of population growth, it is always some sort of natural disaster mixed with inadequate planning followed by a poor response by people capable of preventing the ensuing deaths not stepping up or actively fighting against doing anything.
C) what actually happens when a population nears it's ceiling (we have to go pre-industrial revolution to find these cases) is that the raw economics of the scenario hits many individual people in such a way that they independently in waves decide to voluntary have less children than they would have normally because the ceiling means having another kid wont result in another useful farmhand because theres already more farmers than farmable land.

the only thing you need for UBI to prevent it crashing in on itself is to follow the same economic principle of farmable land, simply not to promise more than what is possible. most UBI-like implementations already do this by basing the income on the national product, like how Saudi Arabia pays out to citizens on oil dividends.

> In 25 years we will have self driving cars
>what will happen to all the 6 million truck drivers?
the self-driving trucks are already being tested and no doubt will be fully rolled out within the decade because of course they would come as soon as possible... think of the savings! that 6 million people to make redundant!
nytimes.com/2016/05/17/technology/want-to-buy-a-self-driving-car-trucks-may-come-first.html

Actually it's been shown that giving people money directly is far superior to building programs.

Though that may be more to do with all the waste and graft in creating and running said programs.

I can't see truck drivers being automated, There are way too many variable involved that can happen on a daily drive.

oh look it's a comic that's as long as a short story because the people reading are fucking idiots

back to r/Veeky Forums with you

i would put certain rules to who gets this 1K each month, drug addicts and similars shouldnt get it

Libtards/Bernouts, please leave.

>put certain rules to who gets this 1K each month

The problem is that this defeats one of the best arguments for a UBI in the first place, that it's far cheaper to administer a program that just sends everyone a check rather than have a bunch of bureaucrats in an agency determine through arbitrary rules who gets it. Besides that, would you really want the government actually drug testing the entire population?

People just need to stop caring if people want to do nothing but drugs. If they really want to spend their money on heroin, let them be homeless junkies. They will most likely either OD and die or be sent to prison anyway, so what does it matter? These people will ALWAYS exist no matter what safety net programs are in place.

There is roughly 245 million people over the age of 18 in the US. $1000/month equals $12,000/year. $12,000 x 245,000,000=$2,940,000,000,000
So it would only cost $2.9 trillion per year.
Sounds feasible.

youtube.com/watch?v=XSW-eN13BRc

>$1000 living wage
>$1000
>Living wage
>Living

probably around $10-40 billion/year, not sure the amount but helicopter money is definitely coming.

For that the trucks will be remotely controlled. No need for so many drivers.

There are too many people in the US for that to be feasible. Even if you had the money to do that everything would automatically become slightly more expensive because people could afford more. Inflation would increase continuously over time as a result and big corporations would just end up with the money anyway. If you had less people the a living wage could work to increase the size of the middle class while decreasing the size of the lower class only if more money is given to those who are poorer and less is given to those living well and none is given to those with excess.