161–170 of 337 posts
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What don't you get? They pay the price of it but don't get it, may as well pay the price of it and get the benefits it provides.
All things being equal, wouldn't that greatly reduce the benefit amount per person?
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…
Do you think it’s honestly that sophisticated and malicious? Public policy is hard. Adjusting benefits appropriately as people climb out of poverty is a known challenge. It’s called a “welfare trap” and has its own Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_trap
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> 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…
Senators from West Virginia do not represent the mainstream Democrat views, so let's not cherry pick an example that ended over a decade ago. Instead, let's have a substantive conversation about policy. What specific policies are you referring to as NIMBY?
Right, that's what this thread is for. Is there anyone in the "mainstream Democrat" area who actually supports UBI? Who took the step to actually mail COVID relief checks to people with few if any strings attached, Republicans or Democrats?
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.
You don't lose UBI by working. UBI should be intended to be the lowest possible amount of money to live. Life won't be fun/good if you're only relying on UBI. In that model I imagine plenty would prefer to keep their job in addition to UBI.
Your comment elides the point that almost everyone who wants UBI views at this mythical source of extra money from nowhere.
The UK already has a welfare state, we have Universal Credit which is basically a consolidated welfare payment to people who need money, and the main complaint (justified if we consider housing costs) is that this isn't enough.
I am not exactly sure how paying everyone money helps people who need it more than a system that just gives money to people who need it (particularly as once you introduce UBI, there is zero chance of it ever being removed until it bankrupts the country).
It is a nice idea but the actual practical mechanics of the situation (i.e. what people who support this really want, how this compares to what we have) are totally ignored. Public policy always goes through these phases: when you don't have something, it seems like the solution to all your problems. It won't be (again, the main reason why inequality hasn't fallen more in the UK over the past ten years is housing costs...it is the number one issue, nothing else matters).
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If I get enough money with ubi I won't waste my life working on something I don't care about. The amount of people who would continue their job if it wasn't for the money it's slim I definitely wouldn't waste my time building someone else product and creating value for society. I'd likely build something fun I want to build which is unlikely to be useful for society or make money. A large part of the populatin on wou…
You'll still get paid for your normal job. It's not like that money would be thrown away, you're not working for free. You go to your job and work because you want more money . I think UBI is largely untested and its proponents should proceed with caution. But I also think people are overconfident in assuming that people wouldn't work; the reality is that we don't have a ton of data in either direction. If the 20th-2…
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Except there is not enough redistributable capital around to let it happen. Even if all U.S. capital stock ($70T) was distributed to everyone evenly, it won't let people out of poverty (sustainable income derived from this will equal to about the minimum wage per adult). So even the most terribly unfair capital redistribution imaginable will ok, maybe pay for food stamps for everyone, but hardly much more.
Just some back of the envelope work - with 70 million million divided amoung 300 million people, that's 233,333 per person. Assume 4 people per household that's about a million per household. Avg s&p dividend is 2.3% - That's minimum wage per 2 working adult household. The math does seem to stack up. The problem is distribution, not total wealth it seems Edit: Ok this is skewed as US stock markets are really a global…
And you can't divide all of it, because it means destroying capitalism, taking the bottom out of society. Only a small fraction of capital stock can possibly be distributed this way.
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The laws are like that, because someone feels that it's not in their interest that people actually get out of poverty. The logic behind that interest is simple. You can't make people dependent on you if you simultaneously give them the tools to achieve independence. And these guys love dependent people, because it gives them power. However this attitude is ruining most Western societies.
The drive from this comes out of the right, who believe that work is the only valid route out of poverty. Regardless of actual capacity to work.
well, what other routes are there?
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The laws are like that, because someone feels that it's not in their interest that people actually get out of poverty. The logic behind that interest is simple. You can't make people dependent on you if you simultaneously give them the tools to achieve independence. And these guys love dependent people, because it gives them power. However this attitude is ruining most Western societies.
There's a weird chicken-and-egg quality to these arguments where the pro-state party wants to expand benefits, the anti-state party wants to limit them, and we end up at this equilibrium where benefits are good enough for some people to cobble together lives based on them, but not good enough for most of those people to build better lives and get off them. I think it's overly simplistic to put all of the blame on one…
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All things being equal, wouldn't that greatly reduce the benefit amount per person?
I don't know about the UK, but in the US a substantial portion of the budget is spent on bureaucrats ("caseworkers" and the like) who would be unnecessary with UBI.
I'm going to assume it won't be "for life", but will instead be for some fixed period, such as 1 or 2 years. Scotland has been proposing doing a similar experiment too. But I'm not sure what these very small scale experiments are meant to tell us, especially since several such experiments have already been done. I can't help but be cynical and think this is governments offering platitudes to those in favour of UBI, r…
It might help to look at the Welsh political landscape. Labour is in power but is permanently at risk of being replaced by the national-populist Plaid Cymru (like it happened in Scotland, where the Scottish National Party literally wiped the board). PC (like the SNP) supports UBI, so Lab has to coopt the policy. This also helps them attract LibDem voters (another pro-UBI party), whose votes are otherwise wasted (LDs…
[0] - https://nation.cymru/opinion/this-was-a-bad-election-for-pla...
[1] - https://www.thenational.wales/news/19303406.plaid-cymru-noth...
[3] - https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/mark-drakeford-d...