141–150 of 337 posts
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That's the point of the comment. The UK pays the price of UBI without getting the benefits of UBI.
Well, no. Only a small minority of people are on Universal Credit. I don’t get how this follows, at all.
Interesting how political parties are for or against this pilot project before the results are known. What happened to gathering evidence first and then making up one's mind? There have been other projects in Canada, Finland,Kenya and the Netherlands, all with “positive” results. It is useful to ask what you are trying to achieve with an UBI? * lift people out of poverty? * save money on other social schemes, like pe…
This is interesting and I’m not sure what you mean. Are you picking a random person and giving them a thousand euros per month? Or are you spending a thousand among multiple people?
There are lots of charities with consistent donations from people (eg, effective altruism pledges) so I’m unclear what your experiment is or will show other than other patronages.
My employer has been running an experiment for a few years where every month they give me a few thousand.
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The people who supported segregation mostly abandoned the Democratic Party decades ago because of the civil rights issue. It’s one of the prime reasons the south used to be solidly Democratic and is now solidly Republican. Neither party is the same as it was in the nineteenth century.
> The people who supported segregation mostly abandoned the Democratic Party decades ago because of the civil rights issue. Yup, that's what people like to tell themselves but much of it is wishful thinking. Look at how long people like Robert Byrd stayed around. Look at who actually supports, e.g. extreme NIMBY policies in urban areas to keep undesirable "demographics" out of the neighborhood, and "fights gentrifica…
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> Look at the difficulty the service industry has now hiring people It's easy to hire people, you just have to offer better wages. The issue is that they can't find anybody willing to work for the wage they are offering, which is very different from not being able to find people to hire. > it’s not like they are using this time to pursue productive hobbies Any studies on this?
> It's easy to hire people, you just have to offer better wages. There is nothing easy in just offering better wages, not least in industries where the bulk of the costs are wages and where productivity is often low.
Yet nothing was done about this because that's just the market for you, supply and demand, and you just gotta have two jobs if one doesn't pay enough to live. All while American industry has been booming.
But when the hurt happens on the industry instead? When circumstance means that they would have to pay more? That cannot be tolerated, no industry or business should ever have to be in economical turmoil because of shifting economical circumstances, that's only for the little people to deal with.
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I replied with numbers to a different comment but to summarize a person making $30,000 per year was making the equivalent of $49,000 per year instead during the extra $600 per week. Now it is $300 per week only and someone making $30,000 is now still making about $33,000 per year, again without actually having to work or even look. If they do come back they refuse to work more than about 15 hours per week so they can…
I was looking for estimated numbers of people actually doing this. Your initial comment seemed to imply a very large number of people opting to remain on unemployment. I don't think that's true, given the current unemployment figures are near historical norms.
The governors are not our friends, we are being lied to in order to agree to give up control of our natural born freedoms (to move, breath, control what we put into our bodies). It is the death of individuality, and the growth of the collective. Sad times.
In practice the UK already pays the price for a universal basic income. Most poor people get some sort of tax credit and/or housing benefit. What we don't do is allow people to use it to rise out of poverty. A disabled lady thought saving some of her disability was the responsible thing to do, despite further impoverishing herself, once she built up some savings she was prosecuted for fraudently claiming benefits whi…
Hell... you can "sell" politicians on UBI, have them nod along, and expect them to come back with a proposal for a conditional UBI. They like your idea, it just needed to be optimized it so that only those who need it get it.
That doesn't mean I'm against this. I think it's a positive development, for the reason you outline and others... just mitigating expectations.
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Well, no. Only a small minority of people are on Universal Credit. I don’t get how this follows, at all.
If you take out pensions(~100b gbp), the UK spends (very) approx. 100 billion pounds a year on social assistance. I think OP is suggesting taking that 100 billion and dividing it evenly among the people of the UK vs specifically to the folks who have applied.
But if you do, it's about £3.5k a year each I think. Not a lot of money. Certainly not enough to live on for a basic standard of living in our society.
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if a company is unable to pay people a wage with which they are able to live comfortably the company should not exist
Thank you for deciding for me how much should I work for.
everyone else can have livable wages
Nobody has yet to explain the incentive for minimum paid workers to go to work once UBI payments becomes equal to a minimum paid job.
I don't see anyone one here talking about this. It is already happening with the furlough scheme. Isn't that the experiment already run already? If the furlough scheme meant (some) people don't want to go back to work because they are already earning enough to live comfortably whilst doing nothing, then why would we want UBI? Another problem is the risk of inflation. If everyone in the country has a certain amount of…
The situations are not the same. At all.
With the current setup, the options are 1) don't work and receive $x, or 2) work and receive $x.
With UBI, the options would be 1) don't work and receive $x, or 2) work and receive $2x.
Would some people rather not work and get $x than work and get $2x? Certainly. But not all of them would. Not even close.
I'm not necessarily advocating for UBI, but your presentation of the situation is not accurate.