291–300 of 413 posts
Anything except universal basic income. You want cigarettes / alcohol? do some work on the internet. Amazon mechanical turk.
I feel like we're creating a new government program to counter the failures of an existing one: education. If people had marketable skills, it would be a lot easier to find work. Perhaps tax revenue should go to education and training, instead. I think we're a long way off from total automation of most industries.
What's to stop UBI from "cancelling itself out" due to inflationary effects? Prior to UBI, the lowest possible income is zero. After UBI, the lowest income is X. The poorest people in the nation will have an income of X, so X becomes the new relative zero, the new baseline. Prices of everything (food, housing, whatever) will reset relative to X. So uni will become worthless shortly after it's introduced.... but only…
Say you have $0 income. A new policy comes into force that gives you $500 a month basic income. Even if prices increased 10x you would still be better off than before. Prices would have to increase an infinite amount for you to be able to afford the same amount of goods as before (zero). Even if you had $500/month before, you'd still be better off as long as prices don't increase more than 2x. I don't know enough to…
What's to stop UBI from "cancelling itself out" due to inflationary effects? Prior to UBI, the lowest possible income is zero. After UBI, the lowest income is X. The poorest people in the nation will have an income of X, so X becomes the new relative zero, the new baseline. Prices of everything (food, housing, whatever) will reset relative to X. So uni will become worthless shortly after it's introduced.... but only…
Say you have $0 income. A new policy comes into force that gives you $500 a month basic income. Even if prices increased 10x you would still be better off than before. Prices would have to increase an infinite amount for you to be able to afford the same amount of goods as before (zero). Even if you had $500/month before, you'd still be better off as long as prices don't increase more than 2x. I don't know enough to…
It is assumed that someone without a job will still get some money in the form of unemployment benefits, so their buying power won't be $0. Therefore, your premise is wrong.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This only true if there is no competition and demand for the good is completely inelastic. What stops grocery stores from doubling the price of food? The other stores will make a killing by undercutting them. I think food is pretty safe here. I am concerned about housing though. In some places, the supply is extremely inelastic, limiting competition, and the demand is also inelastic due to the difficulty of moving. A…
Won't the cost of hiring staff increase if no one is willing to work for low wages, thereby increasing the cost of any good or service that relies on those UBI adjusted wages?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure you can imagine such a scenario, but how likely is it in reality that someone earning $32/hr is only working 30 hours a week? And moreover, how likely is it that they can increase their hours, but be paid exactly the same hourly wage? I believe such people are extremely rare and as such this hypothetical disincentive isn't particularly relevant.
A couple years ago I worked with someone who, if he worked too many overtime hours (which came around from time to time), would get into the next tax bracket and it wouldn't be worth it. Not sure how much he got paid or how many overtime hours were required for that to happen, though.
By "not worth it", I suppose you mean that he valued the marginal increase in income less than the marginal decrease in free time – which is entirely subjective and different from person to person? I don't see your point.
What's to stop UBI from "cancelling itself out" due to inflationary effects? Prior to UBI, the lowest possible income is zero. After UBI, the lowest income is X. The poorest people in the nation will have an income of X, so X becomes the new relative zero, the new baseline. Prices of everything (food, housing, whatever) will reset relative to X. So uni will become worthless shortly after it's introduced.... but only…
Poor people get 1000% more money rich people get 1% more.
Or a poor persons income goes from 1% of a rich persons to 2%
Large companies are getting larger. There are only a couple of choices in any category, and single companies own many different markets. When you combine that with UBI, you have the government handing you a check, and then you have a choice of a couple of companies to spend that money. The difference between this world and communism is almost nothing.
I have never heard of any group of people who were happy on government welfare. Whatever the supposed problem this is supposed to address, it is not a solution. People who are not working at all are not happy.
If I were to guess, I would say the real problems that need to be addressed are:
too many extremely large companies, often supported by laws they lobbied to create.
corrupt government that has no interest in its own country
population increases.
I mean, many of these people proposing UBI are living in countries where they are actively increasing the population. If you have an unemployment problem, why are you increasing the population?
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/10/25/240590433/what-...