No. Absolutely no. UBI is Socialism under a different name. Why do people keep bringing up this topic? Why do people want the government to do everything for them? They are spectacularly sucky at everything.
Take from others to give to "poor." We aren't doing anyone service by giving them something for nothing.
I can see it now:
"Whelp, $40k isn't enough now that rent is higher. Now I need $80k"...and on and on.
Nobody is stopping proponents from giving someone else "their" entitled UBI. Use your own money though, not mine.
Better to teach independence & self reliance. Grow a garden, hold a job, work hard, love your family, respect others.
"Nothing has done more to lift humanity out of poverty than the market economy" https://fee.org/articles/capitalism-is-good-for-the-poor/
Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
931–940 of 1001 posts
Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
#932I like the simple argument made here about UBI enabling efficient consumption. I worry about three things with UBI though and they're more social than economic. 1. Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. We can see this a little bit with the coronavirus relief packages. 2. Predator…
I fundamentally don't like UBI because, like other forms of welfare, it makes the poor ever more reliant on the government without incentive to become self-reliant. I'm a strong believer in self-reliance. I think solutions that tackle poverty should have a path to self-reliance in there. Current welfare programs reward continued reliance and punish self-reliance (i.e. government benefits yanked if you try to suppleme…
> Just like today, it doesn't matter how many government subsidies you get, the poor's standard of living will scale to their income until every penny is gone. Someone needs to teach the poorest how to live below means so you can save, invest, avoid expensive addictions and health problems, etc. and an unconditional check in the mail won't automatically bestow that knowledge.
This is misleading. Psychologically speaking, those who are poor are more likely to spend money immediately, because this is the rational thing to do if your life is unstable. Money has a way of disappearing (loan interest, people who come after you because you owe them money, etc.) if you hold on to it, so the rational thing to do is to convert dollars to goods that help you immediately[0].
This obviously prevents any form of long term investment. The solution is to provide stability. Reasonable (non-means-tested) welfare programs do that. The problem isn't that the poor are dumb or uneducated or something, it's that the incentive structures literally push them away from long-term investments, so rational action is to not save for the future. Provide stability and the incentive structures change.
[0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/marshmall...
Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
#933I like the simple argument made here about UBI enabling efficient consumption. I worry about three things with UBI though and they're more social than economic. 1. Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. We can see this a little bit with the coronavirus relief packages. 2. Predator…
I would add the following points:
4. Funding - How are you going to fund UBI today? How are you going to fund UBI through a global recession, war or global pandemic? Given the hard choice of continuing to pay UBI or keeping a key economic contributor from collapsing, which will you pick?
What will you do if people generally take the option to not work? In the UK, I believe we now have some fifth generation families that have never worked a day in their lives, and it's not clear how to motivate them to work with the safety net providing enough money for the small number of luxury items they enjoy.
5. Protection - Social wealth-fare systems need to be protected from outside influences. It's not feasible to import all the poor people from across the globe and pay them all a decent living allowance, the economy simply cannot support it. This will in turn have some knock-on effect for immigration policies.
6. Acceptance - When social systems such as the NHS (socialist healthcare) and a form of basic income (for those not working) were introduced in the UK, people were ashamed to use them. Gradually attitudes towards these systems changed, from shame, to general acceptance to expecting. Where people originally begrudgingly took money from the government to see them through hard times, but now consider it as a viable income to replace working. I would imagine the same to be true of UBI. As social attitudes towards UBI relax, I would expect to see unemployment increase.
7. Tax - You're going to fund this through taxes, which will mean increasing taxes on the rich. This will provide a higher incentive for them to avoid paying taxes. The result of implementing UBI could be to drive your 1% away. Also, as with the current tax-brackets (taxes based on incomes), people are dis-incentivized to work towards a promotion as the work-load increase doesn't increase linearly with income after tax.
I think Europe will have to think very hard about some of these questions, I would consider the coronavirus to have provided an unintentional opportunity to observe how such a situation may unfold.
Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
#934I like how the article pointed out the biggest economic problem I see in post-industrial society - instead of almost everyone being a small business owner, we have huge corporations reaping massive profits, and poor replaceable corporate drones barely making ends meet. That said, I completely disagree with the proposed solution of UBI and here's why. We humans have a rather nasty bug in our firmware: when we do not h…
> I wish we could instead figure out a system for taxing scale or subordination levels. So that having a couple of owner-operated grocery stores in every neighborhood would become a viable alternative to centrally managed Walmart with armies of corporate zombies miserable at their jobs. Of course, it would reduce the overall efficiency, but I would happily pay an extra dollar to live in a society where people are put…
This breaks down on many different fronts:
1) What about IP? Companies that do not work with land, but tech, science and ideas. This scheme would not be a barrier for Apple for example to appear.
2) This (as well as the parent comment's) idea is similar to tariffs and trade wars. "Yeah, you are smart and efficient, but you work 200km from here? Fuck off."
3) It confines businesses to think small. Big projects would have to be handled by governments and entities that are exempt from locality laws. Sometimes there are good reasons to own large swaths of land in multiple locations, without being a trillion dollar company.
I feel like you are merely trying to make capitalism less efficient and hope that this would make it magically nicer to participate in. What was the main problem again?
Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
#935Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why give free money to everyone? Clearly a rich person doesn’t need a monthly check from government... The answer is that it's much simpler to send everyone a check. The rich person will pay more in taxes than the amount of their check, so it doesn't matter. Indeed, the arguments that we should do otherwise are to the benefit of the rich, because the proposed cutoff invariably comes somewhere in the middle income r…
>> Why give free money to everyone? Clearly a rich person doesn’t need a monthly check from government... > The answer is that it's much simpler to send everyone a check. The rich person will pay more in taxes than the amount of their check, so it doesn't matter. There's a more subtle reason: if everyone gets a check, the program is more politically popular, making it harder for the rich to build a political coalitio…
It also blurs the distinction between "people who support themselves" and "people who need support". Given that one of the arguments against UBI is that it might create/expand/entrench a dependent underclass, giving it to everyone might be an important feature.
Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
#936I like the simple argument made here about UBI enabling efficient consumption. I worry about three things with UBI though and they're more social than economic. 1. Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. We can see this a little bit with the coronavirus relief packages. 2. Predator…
> I like the simple argument made here about UBI enabling efficient consumption.
If you mean this...
"Instead of continually trying to optimize supply, with diminishing returns, we need to optimize demand by giving consumers more money to spend on things they desire."
...then unfortunately it has a critical flaw: redistribution does not create wealth. If the problem is that growth is stagnating, you can't fix it by redistribution. You can only fix it by increasing wealth creation.
That's not to say that there might not be a decent argument in favor of UBI helping to increase wealth creation, by enabling more people to pursue innovations because they don't have to spend as much time and effort on basic subsistence. Such an argument might be worth discussing. But that is not the argument this article is making.
Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
#937Universal Basic Income is never going to work, we all live in a universe where everyone wants to build or create something. The average person isn't going to build or create a damn thing, they aren't going to do anything productive for society they are going to tear the whole country down or sit on their asses watching Netflix all day long. Every time I see someone mentioning universal basic income I start to wonder…
That is my primary fear too, although I'm optimistic. I wish there were more, larger and longer term studies to check this.
What if you get 1000$, but you are allowed to use them only for food, health and shelter? Any kind of luxury would require you to work, or educate yourself to work better. I feel kinda bad for suggesting it, but can't articulate why.
Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
#938I am opposed to UBI. I want smart people to have more money. I want less smart people to have less money, provided they have enough to live on. A smart person might invest in books, study and self improvement. Then those industries that create these will be stimulated. That is what you want. Less smart people might spend their money on lottery tickets, junk food, booze etc. Those industries would be stimulated by UBI…
I want compassionate people to have more money. I want less compassionate people to have less money. A compassionate person will invest their fellow humans. A person lacking compassion will buy themselves trinkets and hoard wealth. I came to this conclusion when reading this borderline hateful comment.
Interesting way to put it
Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
#939Earlier quoted context omitted.
I fundamentally don't like UBI because, like other forms of welfare, it makes the poor ever more reliant on the government without incentive to become self-reliant. I'm a strong believer in self-reliance. I think solutions that tackle poverty should have a path to self-reliance in there. Current welfare programs reward continued reliance and punish self-reliance (i.e. government benefits yanked if you try to suppleme…
What about those unable to work, are disabled, stay at home parents, or otherwise unable to be self reliant?
They should be the rare exceptions for when all else has failed, not the rule.
For everyone else, including the majority of stay at home parents, they should work toward self reliance (again, just my opinion. I think not being reliant on the government for your survival is a great boon to both the individual and society).
Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
#940FTA : "To reverse this trend of stagnating growth, we must put more capital in the hands of lower income consumers, who will then spend it on things they desire and increase GDP." Why on earth should be reversing the trend ? Why not just accept zero-growth and organize the society accordingly ?
For the same reason I don't "just accept" that I'm going to die, or that there is no justice in the universe. I want to live longer than my parents, possibly forever. I want to impose my sense of order and justice in the world, because I don't like chaos.
I want live more comfortably than my parents and my kids more than me (and thus growth). Of course I accept anything, but why should I? Isn't being human making sure you always progress?