91–100 of 156 posts
How does UBI work with different costs of living? Do city dwellers get more than rural folk?
Right now that's hard to do because all the economic activity is in cities. But when a baseline of economic activity follows people anywhere it'll help revive less successful areas, where that UBI goes a longer way.
I use to think UBI was a good thing, but looking at what's happened in the past year, I was completely and totally wrong. UBI would likely be a complete disaster. It'd be less Star Trek and more The Expanse. This is a horrible idea.
Based on the last year, you can conclude nothing because people, countries, and politicians were just panicking and trying to survive on incidental handouts which don't allow for planning a future. That's not basic income.
Universal basic income would be living in the certainty that no matter what you will always have enough to take care of yourself and your family without obligations to do anything that you don't want to do. This is why libertarians like the idea because they don't agree being told how to live their lives by governments.
UBI leads to different life choices; including maybe not spending your career working double jobs cleaning and flipping burgers in double jobs while still not making enough to cover rent, insurance, or the ability to retire. This kind of poverty exists in some places that are filthy rich (i.e. the US).
But it is kind of an anomaly among other similarly wealthy (and even a lot less wealthy) countries. Elsewhere, it's basically what a lot of us already have except it's still surrounded in rules and morals that dictate that you have to live a "productive" life.
IMHO UBI could just be formalizing that status quo. We're basically taken care of anyway and now we simply take care of everyone unconditionally. It's not that massive of a change once you accept that there's a cost per person in each country for sustaining them that these countries are basically already paying for. But just in a really convoluted way. Making that less convoluted would probably result in some savings and allow some of the poorest people in our society to get a grip on their life or make some different choices. Some people would qualify that as fairness.
It could be as simple as if you don't work you receive X; no questions asked. If you do work, you also receive X and you now urn Y-X, where Y is your total income. If you get unemployed, you get X+benefits from your (optional) unemployment insurance. If you get sick, basic health care is part of your basic income but you can insure for benefits (optional). The hard part is establishing a value for X that is high enough that it matters and low enough that we don't destroy our economies.
It would basically mean labor gets a lot cheaper and simpler for companies. Of course UBI has to come from somewhere. Like for example corporate, income taxes and part of what used to be separate insurances for e.g. unemployment, state pensions, etc. We can still have those insurances except that they would now be about insuring the difference to UBI so the cost would be lower. And we can also make those optional since UBI would be enough, thus making everything extra something you'd opt in for.
For, many countries, this is effectively what they have already except that they tend to have these hugely inefficient bureaucracies to try to get you back to work. Which in the case of e.g. Spain with double digit unemployment numbers tends to be a bit futile. Hence, the discussions on UBI are a bit further there.
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> Does woman get more to cover pads/tampons? Not sure why people repeat this so much when men's extra need for calories to fuel their larger bodies greatly outweighs that.
A tall woman needs as much as a tiny man. Should UBI account for body mass? What should it do with underweight or overweight people then? :)
I've been a proponent of this idea until now that I am in a position to vote for it. Now I'm not sure if I'm convinced that people are ready for it. I've invested significant effort in working and having a job, and, I wouldn't have have done that if I knew I could have still "gotten by" without, I'd definitely not be where I am today without that outside pressure to _not_fail_. I'd be probably dead or at least morbid…
> I'd much rather give people what they _need_ to survive, anything beyond that (tobacco, alcohol, entertainment, fashion clothing, cars, etc..) should be the privilege earned by working. How would not having a car affect their ability to get to the job interview? And how would not having a fashionable formal attire affect their ability to do a good impression on the interviewer? How would not having access to entert…
No money will go to healthy food, all of it to alcohol, drugs and tobacco, and whatever is left, will go to expensive (but not the kind you can show up in a job interview for) pre-worn-out designer clothing and cellphones that are way above what is needed.
You get these "rich-poor" kids who are unsatisfied that they're merely the top 10% instead of the top 1% without having ever lifted a finger for any of it.
I think part of this dissatisfied complacency (yes, I know how this seems opposites, but really what it is: "My life sucks, I've watched all there is to watch on Netflix and HBO so now I'm just browsing youtube and getting drunk and high most of the day, life is so _HARD_") stems from the lack of real consequence if you "fail", it breeds a special type of mentality that is hereditary, see Norway, Denmark, Sweeden and Finland for examples.
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National debt and private debt are two very different creatures. National debt is for the most part a good thing, since it's a measure of the amount of a national currency is in circulation Modern economic theory proposes that nations, with full control over their currency, have infinite spending power (aka can go into infinite debt) without any issues, as long as full-employment hasn't been reached This is of course…
I wonder how "educated" one need to be before they can believe that.
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So you're advocating for stealing these empty apartments from their owners and giving them to the poor, obviously, for free?
Do empty apartments incentivize creativity and innovation? No, there is no reason to accommodate them, anyone who makes money by making life worse for others should expect society to take their stuff sooner or later.
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> However this production has to exist in order to maintain a profit of a few and above all And to keep the jobs of those doing that kind of production. I read an article a few years ago about Spaniards living in small flats more than any other country in Europe. There are a few features of Spain that can explain why: - Spain is mostly empty space and population is concentrated in cities - Spaniards spend a lot of th…
So in a way people go to work for reasons other than simply the salary. This is critical. Most people think passion first, then you'll find the perfect job, and it's not always like that. You may need to work for a while in order to find what you truly are good at, and enjoy. For that to happen, though, there needs to be reduced red tape and taxes, so switching jobs is easy and affordable for both parties. UBI torped…
As a personal anecdote, I have been threatened with legal action by two CEOs when I gave them my notice. The first time it was because I mentioned that I was interviewing for positions at local competitors, the second time it was because I gave them a week's notice instead of two weeks, even though I wasn't required to give them any notice. It is that ridiculous.
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It's just a petition. If it succeeds, the only thing EU has to do is to discuss it, and these things can be discussed. Personally, I would like UBI to be tied to GDP per capita, like say 10% of the GDP would be redistributed to every person. It would help to solve the wealth and income inequality problem that causes huge misallocation of resources (for example, EU has twice as many empty apartments than it has homele…
So you're advocating for stealing these empty apartments from their owners and giving them to the poor, obviously, for free?
I'm sorry for that. I intend to fix them up and rent them eventually. I just can't get my self around to actually doing it recently.
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So you're advocating for stealing these empty apartments from their owners and giving them to the poor, obviously, for free?
Is it "stealing" if its something unused and actually needed for basic life and decency by other people?
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> National debt is for the most part a good thing, since it's a measure of the amount of a national currency is in circulation Why do you say this as a Scandinavian when all Scandinavian are fiscally responsible and don't take on more debt every year? Taking on debt isn't a good thing, you can have currency without having any debt as a nation, they aren't related at all. People arguing for that are just trying to man…
I think you're skipping over "for the most part" in my post Are you talking about private debt or governmental debt? They are, as stated in my first post, two entirely different things
https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/government-debt-to-gdp
For example Sweden where I live has reduced their government debt to GDP ratio pretty consistently the past 25 years, and I haven't noticed any problems with it. People saying that we would have problems if governments balanced their budgets are just big fat liars.