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Why we should all have a basic income

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Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#91

Post by lotharbot »

tomp wrote: post #50
jganetsk wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you read neither my post nor the article itself. The article was proposing redistribution of income, so it's definitely NOT equivalent to the government printing money. And in my post, I listed several cases of stuff people will buy less of and other stuff people will not buy more of in a basic income society.

I'm not sure if you're purposefully ignoring the main issues with UBI, but in case you're not: the most important stuff (things like food, rent, clothing, energy, medicine, basic services) will have more demand (from all the people who can't afford these right now), and less supply (because a lot of these are done with low-paid labour - definitely clothing, food and basic services, along with things like garbage coll…

> "people who can't afford these right now"

... but are still getting those things through means-tested programs, for the most part. The UBI doesn't mean more people get fed; it means fewer strings attached to where they choose to live and what food they choose to eat and whether they can get a side job to supplement (google "welfare cliff".)

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#93

Post by jakeogh »

Merely a way to control people. It's dishonest to pretend that it's for everyone, the first thing that will happen if you wrong the power structure is it will withdraw funding.

Not that I am particularly worried, this will never happen in the United States. China on the other hand, I bet they would love to tie this to their human scoring system.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#94

Post by funkyy »

Automation will not reduce overall jobs same way industrialization did not do that. Automation will create more jobs in services instead. Basic income is crazy socialist dream that was tested in communism already and it failed.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#95

Post by jakeogh »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #64
prodmerc wrote: post #15

If everyone gets $1000 every month guaranteed for "basic needs", the prices for those basic needs will increase accordingly. And independently. So you'll end up spending that $1k on either housing, bills or food. So you will still need a job if you want all three of those things, not sit around and contemplate what you should do with your life. It's sort of like how the ACA raised the overall price of insurance. Givi…

Why would the prices change? The demand hasn't changed? The supply hasn't changed? People are still buying the same basic things they did before. The money is simply shifted around from the rich to the poor?

"shifted around" is nice euphemism for theft.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#96

Post by pikzen »

funkyy wrote: post #94

Automation will not reduce overall jobs same way industrialization did not do that. Automation will create more jobs in services instead. Basic income is crazy socialist dream that was tested in communism already and it failed.

Aaah, yes, automating the job of 2000 workers on a car construction line will certainly be replaced by 2000 service jobs. And those jobs will not be requiring higher education that these workers don't have, right.

Also, basic income is a concept coming straight from liberalism. The comparison to communism isn't even remotely accurate.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#97

Post by tvelichkov »

tomp wrote: post #56
bryanlarsen wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Americans currently consume (not necessarily eat) 3800 kcals/day of food without basic income. Are you saying that basic income will make that number go up? 2) The American housing market is very messed up and far from a free market, so any prediction up or down is very difficult. I predict that Basic Income will cause a bunch of people to move from high cost cities like NYC & SF into low cost areas so that they c…

> inflation is always a monetary phenomenon I don't understand this reasoning. Look, only one of the following can be true: (1) everyone can buy basic necessities of life, in which case nobody is poor and we don't need UBI, or (2) not everyone can buy the basic necessities of life. If (2) is true and we introduce UBI, then there will be more demand for the basic necessities of life (coming from all the people who wer…

>> If you combine that with the decreased motivation of people to work (resulting in lower supply)

You won't get lower supply because of the automation, because that's the reason you are giving basic income in the first place.

John no longer needs to drive it's truck, the truck is gonna drive itself.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#98

Post by spork12 »

It would work for a certain period of time until inflation catches up.

You could keep raising the basic income to keep pace, but it would require raising it more every time and sooner than the last time (exponential). Inflation can be quite damaging because not everything inflates at the same rate. For example salaries are pretty slow to inflate compared to the prices for things like gas or food. This is why a mason could afford to buy a car outright on their salary in the 1950s but almost everyone needs an auto loan to buy a car today.

You could try to stop inflation using price controls but this almost always leads to supply shortages. For an example look at rent ceilings in NYC, or the way grocery stores functioned in eastern bloc socialist countries. They had plenty of cash and prices were very cheap but there was nothing on the shelves to buy.

tl;dr Basic income would just create a new $0 mark.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#99

Post by _nalply »

jarym wrote: post #54

Funny how all the proponents of a Universal 'Basic' Income aren't proposing instead to make every 'Basic' item 'Free'. After all, if you believe their rhetoric, giving someone $500/mo should be the same as giving them free bread, eggs, milk, some clothes and some movie tickets. I wonder why... Maybe, the reality is that over time our 'Basic' needs increase. In certain parts of the world shoes are still considered a l…

I watched a documentary about the ICRC. They asked sellers to come to a village somewhere in Congo and gave the villagers coupons so that they could buy what they needed the most and exchanged the coupons for money. They created something like a temporary UBI for a village and a market for different needs. A family bought mattresses, another family corrugated sheets, another clothes, and so on.

If you give people basic items for free this will go bad. You know the horror stories in development aid how people sell away the stuff they got for free.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#100

Post by funkyy »

pikzen wrote: post #96
funkyy wrote: post #94

Automation will not reduce overall jobs same way industrialization did not do that. Automation will create more jobs in services instead. Basic income is crazy socialist dream that was tested in communism already and it failed.

Aaah, yes, automating the job of 2000 workers on a car construction line will certainly be replaced by 2000 service jobs. And those jobs will not be requiring higher education that these workers don't have, right. Also, basic income is a concept coming straight from liberalism. The comparison to communism isn't even remotely accurate.

It was same with industrialisation. All the crying that factories will destroy economies and cause massive unemployment which didn't do. It did a lot of good instead.

Well, there was basic income in some communist countries and it failed on a social level.

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