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Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

timjrobinson.com

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Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#951

Post by christiansakai »

devit wrote: post #832
christiansakai wrote: post #207

I know these are anecdotes but I already heard several cases from my circle of friends and families where they just chose not to work because of unemployment checks. Instead of practicing music or learning programming or doing something productive during their period of unemployment, they decided to watch Netflix and play games all day. Creating is hard work, studying is hard work. Just like having information and on…

What's wrong with watching Netflix and playing games all day?

In my opinion, and I know this is controversial, it is wrong. Of course it depends on your philosophy, but this is just mine.

I believe that we can't expect for humans to just exist without being productive and just being consumer and sustainable, for this Earth and the environment.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#952

Post by dang »

austhrow743 wrote: post #466

Intergenerational wealth transfer is the root of all evil. She absolutely shouldn't be able to do that.

Please don't take HN threads into generic ideological flamewar. It's boring and rarely ends well. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23994951)

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#953

Post by perfunctory »

sdunwoody wrote: post #761

I really don't think enough thought goes into the affordability of a UBI when it comes up in discussions. Just a quick estimate, assuming that we're talking about the UK here The UBI pays out to 53,000,000 people (very roughly the number of people 18 and over). The amount the UBI pays out is £1,000 a month (whether you could really live on this is debateable, but it's certainly not possible in most of London for exam…

I don't mind if my tax goes up by the same amount I receive as UBI. In that case it's neutral for me and for the national budget. How many of those 53M people would fall into the same category?

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#954

Post by triceratops »

gzu wrote: post #383
treyfitty wrote: post #272

There are a lot of people here dissenting on the idea of UBI on the premise that they find meaning in work, and to take the incentive to work away will lead others (themselves included) not to have meaning in life. I’ve taken a year off of work to start a business that failed and spent the past few months hanging out with my kids. At first, my stress levels were high because daycares were shut down and I was panickin…

The lack of real world experience on a HackerNews UBI discussion is infuriating. Western society's white collar elite are completely unaware of truly how many "sucky" jobs there are in the world that all enable our (currently) superior standard of living. Your entire existence relies on a globalist system of slave level labor producing products from all corners of the world. Automation of every industry is impossible…

> Whos going to: - clean your home - cook your food - serve your food

Me? I already do all that without UBI. With UBI everyone who has the inclination will have the time and resources to do it.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#955

Post by timwaagh »

michaelmrose wrote: post #916
timwaagh wrote: post #877

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first thing will be forced by economic factors, not just landlords doing their job. everyone just takes a permanent vacation because work sucks. At the very least a lot of them will work less. This is an intended outcome. Supply hence falls through the floor because full automation doesn't exist. As supply is constrained and demand is just as high (if not higher) this in turn starts triggering higher prices which…

Paying people 1200 a month isn't going to inspire them to take a permanent vacation because while it might be enough to survive on its not enough to live well on and people want to be needed and purposeful. Supply might tighten but it wont fall "through the floor". Furthermore demand right now in the US isn't just as high if not higher its crap and its going to be crap through 2020. Instead of basing it on bad armcha…

If you want serious economical analysis by an actual economist, I'd suggest maybe not going on hacker news, for example you could go here https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/... . Its a different argument, but the first part before it gets overly political is especially a good, by-the-numbers approach to basic income. I would point out though that the original blog is not much of an economical analysis so I don't see why my comment not being a scholarly article can be held against it.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#956

Post by triceratops »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #517
treyfitty wrote: post #272

There are a lot of people here dissenting on the idea of UBI on the premise that they find meaning in work, and to take the incentive to work away will lead others (themselves included) not to have meaning in life. I’ve taken a year off of work to start a business that failed and spent the past few months hanging out with my kids. At first, my stress levels were high because daycares were shut down and I was panickin…

My problem with UBI is that why would giving out "free money" change the world? Say I'm your landlord and you pay me $100/mo for rent. Now you start getting UBI thats $500/mo. Why wouldn't I increase my rent to $200/mo, $300/mo, or even $400/mo? I know that now you can afford the increase. So you'd still have to earn income if you wanted to stay in that place. All I see is prices going up for anything and everything…

Because the price of rent is based on housing supply and housing demand. Neither of those change significantly with UBI. At best people will upgrade their housing.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#957

Post by umvi »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #660
habosa wrote: post #526

I 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…

The question I can't answer is "what stops a nation voting itself more income?" If every unscrupulous politician can promise to raise the base UBI rate to get elected, what stops that? Obviously, inflation will fix it in the relatively short term, but that's not a good result. And there's an unscrupulous politician in power.

Well, according to Benjamin Franklin (ostensibly),

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.”

So basically, any nation that increasingly votes itself more money stops being a nation pretty soon

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#958

Post by umvi »

mojzu wrote: post #790
sdunwoody wrote: post #761

I really don't think enough thought goes into the affordability of a UBI when it comes up in discussions. Just a quick estimate, assuming that we're talking about the UK here The UBI pays out to 53,000,000 people (very roughly the number of people 18 and over). The amount the UBI pays out is £1,000 a month (whether you could really live on this is debateable, but it's certainly not possible in most of London for exam…

I'm not entirely convinced by UBI yet either, however I think there are arguments that could made against your headline cost calculation. It could eliminate/save other huge portions of the budget. It would also probably have to be adjusted based on location, or as you said it wouldn't do much good in expensive cities, which might reduce that cost further. And a huge chunk of that money is going to people who will imm…

> It would also probably have to be adjusted based on location, or as you said it wouldn't do much good in expensive cities, which might reduce that cost further.

Why not just let people move to cheaper places? If they need UBI to survive, NYC is probably not the best place to live.

Otherwise you will have fraud where people have an NYC address so they can collect a large UBI check, but actually live in Oklahoma (or overseas) where their money will go further.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#959

Post by umvi »

devit wrote: post #832
christiansakai wrote: post #207

I know these are anecdotes but I already heard several cases from my circle of friends and families where they just chose not to work because of unemployment checks. Instead of practicing music or learning programming or doing something productive during their period of unemployment, they decided to watch Netflix and play games all day. Creating is hard work, studying is hard work. Just like having information and on…

What's wrong with watching Netflix and playing games all day?

Well there's a reason "sloth" is one of the seven deadly sins.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#960

Post by umvi »

dopylitty wrote: post #49

People don’t need money. People need basics like housing, food, and medical care. No UBI scheme is going to work in an economic system like the one in the U.S. that isn’t capable of providing those things. It’s not like there’s a shortage of food or shelter now and yet we still have homeless people while homes sit empty. We still have hungry people while farmers are destroying their crops. The economic system is the…

A lot of states do. Maryland and California have housing and food programs for the poor (google "Maryland HOC"). Yet it doesn't seem to help much in terms of breaking out of inter-generational poverty - you just have poor people living in middle class houses trashing up the neighborhood and devaluing all the properties around them.
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