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Universal Basic Income Will Likely Increase Social Cohesion

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Re: Universal Basic Income Will Likely Increase Social Cohesion

#121

Post by ConceptJunkie »

No it won't. Full stop.

It will drive a further wedge between the producers and consumers in society, which plays right into the class warfare rhetoric that the politicians who would support UBI are always fomenting.

Who's going to pay for UBI? Everyone! I see the amount of $10,000 thrown about. There are 235 million adults in the U.S. That's $2.35 trillion per annum, more than 13% of the GDP. You don't think the taxation required to generate that kind of money won't reach far down into the middle class? Dream on.

And we are going sacrifice $2.35 trillion for what? It won't increase productivity. If anything it will reduce it somewhat. Yes, I'm ignoring the benefit it will be to the truly needy, and that's important, but for the majority of the country, the UBI will be way more offset by the much higher amount they have to pay in additional taxes.

Social cohesion, my ass.

Re: Universal Basic Income Will Likely Increase Social Cohesion

#122

Post by JoeAltmaier »

ConceptJunkie wrote: post #121

No it won't. Full stop. It will drive a further wedge between the producers and consumers in society, which plays right into the class warfare rhetoric that the politicians who would support UBI are always fomenting. Who's going to pay for UBI? Everyone! I see the amount of $10,000 thrown about. There are 235 million adults in the U.S. That's $2.35 trillion per annum, more than 13% of the GDP. You don't think the tax…

Straw man. Using 'taxation' as a boogeyman is where everybody goes, when first thinking about this topic.

Read more about it. Printing money is another way - I know, it has other effects, but that could be very useful in the current financial situation. There are other solutions as well.

'Money' is an imaginary concept managed by arbitrary rules, and if a BI is created then rules will have to be changed.

Re: Universal Basic Income Will Likely Increase Social Cohesion

#123

Post by Turing_Machine »

Rumford wrote: post #64
Turing_Machine wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must not be a libertarian, so stop projecting it as a libertarian ideal, because it isn't. One of the best-known advocates of UBI/negative income tax was Milton Friedman, and he most definitely was a libertarian. There's a difference between idealistic versions of political philosophies that don't match human behavior, and practical versions of those philosophies that do. Let's say we wind up with 50 million peop…

Oh not this again. First of all, Friedman advocated a negative income tax as a replacement to the ad-hoc mess of redistributive taxes, grants and welfare programs that exist now. Add a UBI to food stamps, unemployment benefits, farm subsidies, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the problems only get worse. Second, this doomsday scenario of 50 million people waking up one day to discover there isn't a single thi…

Oh not this again. First of all, Friedman advocated a negative income tax as a replacement to the ad-hoc mess of redistributive taxes, grants and welfare programs that exist now.

Yeah, and? He thought it was the best solution to the problem. See above about the difference between political theory and political reality.

Second, this doomsday scenario of 50 million people waking up one day to discover..

Don't give yourself a hernia setting up those straw men. No one said anything about people "waking up one day" to find themselves unemployable. The discussion is quite clearly about a problem that develops in the long term.

Re: Universal Basic Income Will Likely Increase Social Cohesion

#124

Post by Turing_Machine »

smegger001 wrote: post #56
Turing_Machine wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably starvation, unrest and war as automation puts the lower ends of the economy out of jobs and destabilizes the society. Yes. We're definitely headed toward a world where significant percentage of the population have no skill or talent that anyone will willingly pay them money to perform. There are ways of papering this over, but most of them are pretty unappealing. For instance, bringing back a servant, or eve…

Why would being a servant be considered ugly or unappatizing? Is it different really than any other service industry job? So instead of being a fry cook at burger king for minimum wage they prepare dinner for someone that is more affluent and that is somehow lacking dignity as more than the former, how?

Why would being a servant be considered ugly or unappatizing?

Would you do it by choice?

Re: Universal Basic Income Will Likely Increase Social Cohesion

#125

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #124
smegger001 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would being a servant be considered ugly or unappatizing? Is it different really than any other service industry job? So instead of being a fry cook at burger king for minimum wage they prepare dinner for someone that is more affluent and that is somehow lacking dignity as more than the former, how?

Why would being a servant be considered ugly or unappatizing? Would you do it by choice?

Every day, at my desk job. What are you getting at?

Re: Universal Basic Income Will Likely Increase Social Cohesion

#126

Post by Sammi »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #116
Falkon1313 wrote: post #93

Consider agriculture. It used to employ over 80% of the workforce, now less than 2%. But now, with over 98% unemployment, we're not starving. Instead, we're wasting 40% of our food, exporting food, and reading articles about obesity epidemics and how the grocery store is reducing its 57 varieties of ketchup so that we won't have so much difficulty choosing. Manufacturing is going that way. We're well into the disposa…

i think a major problem is that basic income will breed some very undesirable attitudes with those people who will depend on long term basic income. Dependency on handouts breeds passivity and indifference, you will also see a very violent and angry younger generation - these people might be very angry at anybody who sticks out of the gray norm of basic income. i think basic income will not breed critical thinkers, i…

I don't think the soviet union is comparable to a UBI state. For one a UBI state will still have a free market. Though the examples from the article aren't touching on the subject of productivity, the free market will clearly still be hiring those with valuable skill for good wages - way above UBI. This will be motivating for those that have anything to contribute.

Re: Universal Basic Income Will Likely Increase Social Cohesion

#127

Post by Sammi »

rebootthesystem wrote: post #108
Falkon1313 wrote: post #93

Consider agriculture. It used to employ over 80% of the workforce, now less than 2%. But now, with over 98% unemployment, we're not starving. Instead, we're wasting 40% of our food, exporting food, and reading articles about obesity epidemics and how the grocery store is reducing its 57 varieties of ketchup so that we won't have so much difficulty choosing. Manufacturing is going that way. We're well into the disposa…

> but what? People making candles couldn't imagine another set of people would be employed for years making light bulbs. Newspaper owners, investors, writers and workers could not foresee the Internet. Nobody could imagine making money with software that played back fart sounds or allowed you to launch an angry bird into a structure. The point is: Not being able to answer the question is of no consequence. Progress a…

But all the progress is only going in the direction of automation. The long term macro trend is clear. Why do we have so many pointless jobs today?

Re: Universal Basic Income Will Likely Increase Social Cohesion

#128

Post by Turing_Machine »

nightski wrote: post #66
Turing_Machine wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must not be a libertarian, so stop projecting it as a libertarian ideal, because it isn't. One of the best-known advocates of UBI/negative income tax was Milton Friedman, and he most definitely was a libertarian. There's a difference between idealistic versions of political philosophies that don't match human behavior, and practical versions of those philosophies that do. Let's say we wind up with 50 million peop…

Why do we have 50 million people with no marketable skills? Clearly the other 80% of the population was able to gain a skill that is marketable. I'd probably start there.

The thing is that there are a lot of people who, in the past, might have been able to make a living doing simple farm work, or tightening bolts on a car assembly line, or what have you. Those jobs have largely been automated away. Increasingly the only jobs available to that segment of the population are things like fast food. You can afford to pay a decent wage to someone who's turning out $50,000 cars. You can't afford to pay a decent wage to someone who's turning out $2.00 burgers.

Education/training can't solve the fundamental problem, which is that a large number of these folks just aren't capable of becoming programmers, or surgeons, or lawyers, or anything else that of that nature.

What should we do with them? The problem isn't going to go away.

Re: Universal Basic Income Will Likely Increase Social Cohesion

#129

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #128
nightski wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we have 50 million people with no marketable skills? Clearly the other 80% of the population was able to gain a skill that is marketable. I'd probably start there.

The thing is that there are a lot of people who, in the past, might have been able to make a living doing simple farm work, or tightening bolts on a car assembly line, or what have you. Those jobs have largely been automated away. Increasingly the only jobs available to that segment of the population are things like fast food. You can afford to pay a decent wage to someone who's turning out $50,000 cars. You can't af…

Its not clear that education/training can't solve it. There is resistance, as people have been burned by pointless 'education' that takes years. So they drop out/don't go to a college. But we could try to fix that. Its a route that hasn't been tried, in any case.

Re: Universal Basic Income Will Likely Increase Social Cohesion

#130

Post by Turing_Machine »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #125
Turing_Machine wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would being a servant be considered ugly or unappatizing? Would you do it by choice?

Every day, at my desk job. What are you getting at?

Shuffling papers or writing code is a different thing entirely from scrubbing someone else's toilet.
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