181–190 of 746 posts
So literally a solution in search of a problem. A living income guarantee has my blessing, but UBI doesn't. It's either too low, and there's still need for welfare, unemployment benefit, etc., or so high that the (unpredictable) consequences can completely overwhelm the advantages.
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.
Also, look around groups of wealthy people. The ones who don't have to work anymore. Sure, some of them live a life of leisure, but many of them still work, because they get bored otherwise.
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.
> taxes on my earnings Yangs proposal was a VAT, which wouldn't be a tax on your earnings. Am I off here?
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.
The idea is that everyone receives a basic income, equivalent to a (hopefully) updated minimum wage. Then if people want extra money for luxuries, then you work a job which will pay you on top of your standard basic income. I imagine most people would continue working.
And, by definition, everybody who earns higher than the median wage will also receive a tax increase higher than the basic income they're being given "back".
UBI (in the U.S.) would be like printing more shares of a publicly-traded stock and giving all of the new stock to the employees of the company. USD is the reserve currency, so foreign interests (or large corps) w/ stockpiles of USD will be the losers due to inflation. Foreign interests can change which reserve currency they use at-will, so wouldn't this be like a direct-fee/dividend U.S. citizens (or any UBI-country…
Along with anybody with stocks or bonds (including everybody with a retirement fund).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'll simply stop working For a few months maybe. Soon, you will realise that to keep your previous lifestyle (or to simply fill your time with something other than browsing text-heavy sites) you need to work. So you will go back to work. And so will everyone else.
What happens if a large number of people can not afford a meaningfully better lifestyle than what is possible on a UBI because of the tax increases? (Genuine question, no gotchas here)
UBI (in the U.S.) would be like printing more shares of a publicly-traded stock and giving all of the new stock to the employees of the company. USD is the reserve currency, so foreign interests (or large corps) w/ stockpiles of USD will be the losers due to inflation. Foreign interests can change which reserve currency they use at-will, so wouldn't this be like a direct-fee/dividend U.S. citizens (or any UBI-country…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the government provided food, shelter, and video games, I expect quite a few people would see no purpose in working. Also the surfers and backpackers.
Good for them. The point of work is to not have to anymore so you can follow your passions. We've invented machines that can do basically everything it takes to support human life. Seems like there should be a lot more people following passions now.
It's not about "support human life" as in "3000kcal a day". Nobody wants that. They want a comfy human life. We can do that as well, only we need other humans to work to make that happen. Still, good for them if enough people are found to voluntarily work more so they can work on self-actualization and enjoy hedonism.
UBI only makes sense in the science fiction world that Andrew Yang and other non-technical journalists think is somehow imminent. We still need people to make things. There are still guys hanging off the side of garbage trucks every day and people still pick fruits by hand. If no one does these things, you will starve and die. We cannot survive forever on financial engineering by bureaucrats and importing all our nec…
This is anecdotal but I haven’t seen guys hanging off garbage trucks in a long time. Around here it’s just one guy with a hydraulic arm on the truck that picks up the cans and dumps out garbage, and he does it very very efficiently. Pretty soon it should be possible to even replace the driver with a self driving truck that goes around pre determined paths in the neighborhood.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'll simply stop working For a few months maybe. Soon, you will realise that to keep your previous lifestyle (or to simply fill your time with something other than browsing text-heavy sites) you need to work. So you will go back to work. And so will everyone else.
What happens if a large number of people can not afford a meaningfully better lifestyle than what is possible on a UBI because of the tax increases? (Genuine question, no gotchas here)
You seem to forget that while you might be an affluent middle/upper class person, a lot of people out there are struggling really hard to fulfill their primary needs. You realize how many people in the states are poor (lacking primary needs resources) or borderline poor? Yes, some people (plenty of HN users I am sure) might struggle to maintain highly consumerist lifestyles (not sure if that's necessarily bad) but for the majority of people, this will improve their lives for as long as UBI is a thing. All the money spent on fighting social phenomena that is the result of people being unable to or/and having being raised without enough primary need resources to ensure their physical, emotional and cognitive capabilities are not hampered by their poverty will be able to be allocated to better uses?