131–140 of 746 posts
What is stopping companies that make money (to pay for UBI through tax increases) from leaving the country to elsewhere with lower taxation? Where would this money come from then? If things do get automated it means labor is no longer needed to be sourced locally, making it much easier to uproot and go elsewhere.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if you did it in some moderately isolated place, like Alaska? Alaska already has almost-universal not-quite-basic income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
The annual dividend is around $1000. I wouldn’t call this UBI exactly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you saying that housing, education and health care haven’t seen massive price increases over the last few decades?
He didn't say that at all He alluded to how those systems being over-regulated and broken prevent the usual economic factors from working. E.g. if you don't allow people to build new houses in certain places then that makes it quite easy for housing prices to go up in those areas
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you believe welfare is similar in that regard? If not, why?
No. Healthy public housing, universal healthcare, free public transit don't have the same ability for the benefits to be converted to income for a landlord.
In universal healthcare, insurance knows the government will foot the bill and can tack on a little more.
In my experience this is the case when dealing with large entities. This is slightly the case with government contracts. They are a cash cow of sorts.
Years ago, proponents of UBI claimed that it was a replacement for all other forms of social welfare. Now it appears by most proposals to be yet another means-tested add-on. What happened?
Yep and as a replacement, it was supposed to drastically cut administrative costs.
However - I've always been puzzled by how each person in the US doesn't have a public, singularly identifying number assigned. Doesn't that make even an 'universal' basic income hard to define? How do you guarantee that every person gets one, and only one, BI check every month? How do you find out who is dead and should stop getting one...?
From what I know, SSN are used for stuff like that, but there's all this weird stuff about it (althoug I admit my knowledge of it comes from a half forgotten CGP Grey video, and that the impression that stuck)
I don’t think there is any good way to test UBI at any small scale, I think there needs to be a critical mass of people who can pay their housing and food costs how society and economic activity would be reshaped under such a system.
If there had been the same testing requirements around say Capitalism, Communism, and Socialism we’d never have seen any of them rolled out.
At some point you have to buy in to the ethos and goals and be prepared to adapt along the way.
If interested, this provides a brief historical perspective, with the pros and cons of UBI: https://news.stanford.edu/2020/03/24/moment-universal-basic-...
Years ago, proponents of UBI claimed that it was a replacement for all other forms of social welfare. Now it appears by most proposals to be yet another means-tested add-on. What happened?
If the government starts giving me enough money each month to subsist while drastically raising taxes on my earnings from employment then I'll simply stop working. I would imagine most people would do the same.