Universal Basic Income General
Personally, I take issue with how the current experiments are performed. They take a group of people and put them on a 1-2 year UBI and report that during this time people still worked and educated themselves.
Well, DUH, of course they did - they were preparing for the inevitable end of the experiment. Once the real UBI hits the streets the result could be way different.
GIBSMEDAT
Tell you what. Pay me 20-30k a year, and see how much work I do.
I think you'll find I'd spend 99% of the time doing whatever the fuck I want, and not producing anything for the economy.
No UBI plan is 20-30k in real living costs tho. Finland is 9600 Euros, the Swiss iniative died, Ontario is 18k, but Ontario is quite expensive to live in etc.
I would personally work my ass off trying to turn that into a million a year but I do agree that most people would just waste it. UBI is a terrible idea.
Totally agree with OP. These experiments are always meaningless, not just because they have a termination date but because they are never universal (include all people) and are never basic (enough to support a basic lifestyle).
They violate all tenants of UBI and then claim they have a valid result.
Agree. There needs to be some civic duty attached or UBI will end society
I agree with you.
The problem is that the minute you require something of the recipient it becomes a labour-wage exchange and that's not universal basic income. That's just a job.
these experiments are fundamentally flawed, so let's quickly move the discourse elsewhere...
Fundamental problems with basic income:
you cannot invent buying power/value. attempting to insure against peoples' lack of value is a brave wager and questionable at best
will there be other means-testing services--alternatively--will you allow people to starve in the streets if they piss away this money? because this approach relies on cutting away other social services to be practical
is it not dystopian to allow such an intrusive and quantifying structure into our lives to dictate our value and our worthiness of charity? Has anyone considered the risk of scarcity in this model?
It might for extremely low wage workers, but no one else is going to care.
I dont have any solutions but may I offer another problem?
Children.
Obviously children can't be given UBI themselves because they can't make purchasing decisions. So what do you do?
If you increase the amount of UBI that the parents receive in line with the number of dependent children then you risk financially incentivizing having children. Which has a number of terrible consequences both for society and the children themselves. A very similar problem and it's awful consequences can already be observed in the foster system.
If you don't increase the amount of UBI the parents receive in line with the number of dependent children then you are victimizing families and almost certainly creating child poverty.
Does this count as an inherent obstacle?
Great idea for a post-scarcity ethnically homogeneous high-trust global society.
We are currently none of those things. It MAY work for Switzerland if they keep their economy strong and immigration in check but I am not holding my breath.
that's not the worst of it.
many people would probably gladly exit the workforce if wages stay the same i would say 80% of them. however we as a civilization can't afford that yet. so low wages must rise to this challenge. and after low added value menial job wages are raised this will propagate up through the income curve.
which means the middle class will earn a hell of a lot more than before and they are the main consumers along with the poor.
bamm you have inflation bad inflation so the universal income must be adjusted right? hahahahahaha.
UBI proponents argue that there will be no inflation since you are just redistributing, not printing new dollars - thus its value remains the same.
However I think inflation will be a problem in places where scarcity is real - mainly rent prices in high-value cities where real estate lobby is blocking new developments.
Why not just distribute the goods that UBI would most likely be spent on for free, instead?
>government in charge of distributing goods
Please, don't.
>implying UBI is any less communist
I'm not really a fan, either way, but it's fun to try and work out potential problems.
Because that's literally worse in every way
>higher bureaucratic overhead
>higher potential for state enforced monopolies
>lowers personal freedom to spend for no reason
>not at all sensitive to the changing needs of consumers due to new and useful products, as well as rising and lowering costs and utilities
why
because lazy sack of shits wouldn't get their >muh free munny.
I'm suggesting something like government run depots with things like food and gas that you could get a certain value of each month. It's not the best, but it's not really supposed to be, it just covers some basics. It probably would drive some people out of business, but as I understand it, the point of UBI is to account for automation driving people out of business anyway, assuming that will ever happen.
>I'm suggesting something like government run depots with things like food and gas that you could get a certain value of each month.
And have the government determine the value of these things, who to buy them from and how to distribute it. Why is this better than just giving people money?
It solves for the inflation that seems inevitable if everyone has extra fiat
I think you're missing the point buddy. The point of UBI aside of helping poor people is to reduce the bureaucratic and financial overhead to absolute minimum. Running a government controlled Wallmart would be way more expensive than current welfare system.
>worrying about inflation
>2XXX
No but really, UBI will just be a wealth redistribution program, consumption will no doubt rise a bit, but I don't see any reason why for the government to start large scale producing and rationing essential goods.
The market adjusts to what it can afford to charge. It always does. More money without more value just means companies will raise their prices a fraction.
But the money just came from taxes, it was just being spent on other things.
There is no "more money", only increased purchasing power of people.
One could argue that current welfare system is a partial form of UBI yet it has no impact on inflation.
All of which are price inflated by those government dollars
Communists actually hate UBI because they see it as a desperate attempt by the bourgeoisie to prop up a failing capitalist system and maintain their disenfranchisement of the proletariat.
An essential first goal of communism is that the proletariat must seize the means of production, UBI makes this less likely.
Remember that a communist state is a theoretical utopia where class has been abolished, government has been dismantled and abolished, and money has been abolished.
UBI makes two out of three of those conditions impossible.
But essentials like food and gas are bretty flexible. If demand suddenly increased for them the market would quickly push prices back down.
Mostly, I think it would affect rent prices, which I think someone in the thread already mentioned. The minimum would suddenly be whatever UBI was.
Only in high-value cities that block new development though. Other areas have many unoccupied homes.
But a UBI would mean people wouldn't have to live near their workplaces. There would be more of a buyer's/renter's market when people have the freedom to live where they wanted.
That's the theory anyway. I'd be surprised if it worked out so smoothly. I suppose this is all speculation until it's put into practice.
>people wouldn't have to live near their workplaces
So you admit people would stop working and contributing to the economy?
By 2029 there will be robots advanced enough to take enough jobs that it becomes a problem for most people.
By 2039, most people include you and your children.
So if you didn't vote for UBI, hope you enjoy those unemployment camps guarded by robots.
This shits such a retarded discussion not even lefties condone it.
Ironically, some admitted it would be a lower average budget than some leftist social programs.
Money isn't communist, it isn't socialist either, workers owning the businesses is, educate yourselves on what you're criticizing before you make yourself look the fool
This
You hit the nail on the head there. I haven't heard anything about what proponents of UBI have to say about that.
Maybe it starts at 16 and is held in trust until 18 or something.
How about an increase in UBI but only up to X children, where X is a number required for reasonable civilization survival?