As the author of this article, I suggest reading this one next if your concern is inflation:
https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-...
If you have another question check here:
Why we should all have a basic income
341–350 of 492 posts
Re: Why we should all have a basic income
#342I'm a big fan of Thomas Piketty's idea of a progressive global tax on wealth.
I think that the root cause of a lot of the financial stress that many people are feeling right now is the result of having too many people leeching off of passive income from their investments/wealth (derived from work they did 30 years ago) and not actually contributing anything new to society.
These wealthy people have become parasites.
Right now, if I build an office building and I rent it out to people; assuming that I manage to stay afloat during the first few years, the passive income that I will later generate from that investment will probably keep coming in for the rest of my life... Even worse than that; when I die, my children would be able to keep getting the free passive income; they could just sit there and consume stuff (make others work for them) without working themselves; without contributing anything new to society.
There is a point when you have to stop paying these passive earners. We're already doing it when it comes to patents/copyrights (In many countries, copyrights expire after 70 years or so... Patents generally expire sooner than that) - We need to either extend this notion of 'expiry' to ALL property rights OR at the very least tax that wealth. Why should regular property be treated any differently than intellectual property?
Right now, what we have is crony capitalism. If we wanted to have proper capitalism; companies like Ford, GM, Toyota... would all have to pay royalties to the descendants of the people who invented the wheel and also to all the descendants of the people who discovered iron ore, etc... That would be fair - Actually, doing this would probably have the same effect as passive income since probably every human has at least one person in their ancestry who made a major contribution to mankind (why don't they get royalties for that?).
When you put it into context, the rules of our current flavor of capitalism just seem ridiculously arbitrary.
I think that a progressive global tax on wealth combined with basic income would be a perfect way to average out the unfairness of the system without damaging the capitalist incentive structure.
Re: Why we should all have a basic income
#343Almost everyone here seems to be discussing the economic challenges of UBI, but so far I haven't seen much mention of the political challenges. UBI is a completely unworkable concept in the U.S.A and likely many European countries as well. American citizens will be literally shooting eachother in the streets before they accept such a massive wealth redistribution mechanism, and that resistance will be mostly made up…
Along the same lines I don't see people considering the new power base this would provide the people who controlled it. Do you really think it would stay simple with no requirements or controls and corresponding government agencies to oversee it. That agency will be scary.
Re: Why we should all have a basic income
#344When I was 3 years old, my dad bought a brand new house in a brand new suburb. It was 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, etc. For its era, it was a very solidly middle class or upper middle class house and he had 3/4 of the price of the house in the bank. The house cost $16k. He had $12k in the bank. It was a LOT of money when I was 3 years old. It is not a lot of money today. A $1000/month sounds like a lot now. But the minute…
I think most proponents of UBI agree that the value should be tied to inflation, updated on a regular schedule (I advocate monthly). This would guarantee that UBI doesn't go "out of date".
[deleted]
Re: Why we should all have a basic income
#345During Brexit, people in job-starved areas of UK were reported as resentful for receiving handouts. They wanted gainful employment and their dignity back. You could have corporations foot the bill for basic income and people with certain values would still not want it. The image of being a breadwinner is so deeply instilled in some people that for them not being that, triggers mid-life-crisis: a depression, sense of…
There's a difference between means-tested handouts and basic income. Since everyone gets it, asic income might not have the same stigma.
Re: Why we should all have a basic income
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that's one of the biggest open questions with UBI. What percent of people would use UBI to do productive or self-improving works vs those that solely play video games, watch TV, and feel like life is meaningless? I think psychologically, people need something to do with themselves. However, a counter argument is that many of the people that UBI may benefit the most might have jobs that they loathe. I'd love t…
I believe basic human nature includes curiosity. Living in a society means one will naturally seek the appreciation, acceptance and respect of their peers. I think these alone will eventually lead most people to contribute something useful to our world one way or another. Mentally and/or physically exhausted after a long day of performing a meaningless job, or unable to get one and living off welfare, despised by the…
>I believe basic human nature includes curiosity. Living in a society means one will naturally seek the appreciation, acceptance and respect of their peers. I think these alone will eventually lead most people to contribute something useful to our world one way or another.
As someone living in a small third world welfare state, I can't help but laugh at the naiveté that can lead someone to believe something like that.
In here, and I don't believe the rest of the world can be that much different, the overwhelming majority of people with their basic needs covered by the state dedicate themselves to a routine of TV, social media and other social rituals of all kinds, all devoid of intellectual pursuit. The few who do look into self-improvement are the same ones that have done it regardless of the economic condition of the lower class of their time; most of this very small minority managing to make it into the middle or upper class with or without welfare checks.
Re: Why we should all have a basic income
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are voters any less able to vote to give themselves more money now?
Yes, far less able. Most voters aren't on welfare, and they aren't interested in increasing welfare payments. If every voter got money from the government, things would be very different.
I really hate to get into a debate about semantics, but that is not what "able" means. =)
I think I understand your position better now, though. It's not so much about whether voters can vote themselves more money - it's about whether they have the incentive to. I don't agree, because I think shared interest in the stability of the system would be a strong opposing force, but I can see where you're coming from.
Re: Why we should all have a basic income
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Suddenly a million sick people are making insurance claims who previously had no insurance, what did you think was going to happen to premiums? This is what I mean. From a business point of view, suddenly everyone has an extra $1000. They were buying stuff from you until now, there's no reason not to try to drive the price up to see how much more you can charge now. If enough businesses will do that, it will reach…
So I get where you're going with this, but the businesses are still competing with one another in a free market. So yes, you're right that if all the avocado farmers in California decided to engage in price fixing because they know that more money exists and that they can get it, they probably can. But it presupposes highly monopolistic behavior that doesn't seem very likely to work for most markets. Especially if it…
> But it presupposes highly monopolistic behavior that doesn't seem very likely to work for most markets.
Higher education costs expanded to absorb the extra money from the student loans thrown at them, healthcare costs increased as more consumers started competing for a fixed supply of appointment slots, hospital beds and medical services.
Re: Why we should all have a basic income
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
Creating jobs is one thing, but creating meaningful jobs is something completely different. In communistic days in eastern europe, everyone was employed, but most people had a lousy job, that involved very little effort. The first time i came to the US, i got the same feeling, lots of meaningless jobs (lift boy, parking lot attendant, grocery store bag filler) that i didn't see in the Netherlands. Are these meaningle…
>Creating jobs is one thing, but creating meaningful jobs is something completely different. * Hoover Dam * Lincoln Tunnel * LAX * LaGuardia Airport Just a few examples of things created by jobs created primarily to give people work. >Are these meaningless jobs really better than universal basic income? Would you rather pay somebody to build the next Lincoln Tunnel or pay for them to write some poetry and start an em…
Those things weren't created primarily to give people work, they were created to fulfill demand for electricity and transportation, respectively.
If no one needs to commute to work in Manhattan, then there is no need for a Lincoln Tunnel. If no one has business meetings or disposable income for leisure travel, then LAX and LaGuardia would be idiotic.
We do see this kind of stuff - huge infrastructure projects with no users - in China.
Re: Why we should all have a basic income
#350If I had basic income, I would go back to study, get a PhD in Computer Science Majoring in AI/Machine learning and then I would try to do something meaningful with it. I am tired of doing pseudo-intellectual software 'engineering' tasks - I would like to use my intellect to tackle difficult problems instead of trivial problems like building UI components and managing databases. Unfortunately, I can't afford to go to…
How many people in your position would make a similar decision? Do you expect the tuition rates and housing rents in the college town of your choice to go up or down? What happens once the education system and landlors absorb and accommodate the influx of revenue?
Or maybe more people would leave their jobs and go to teach? Maybe the local community college would have higher qualified ex industry teachers and it would spread the students around other towns?