if you give me a million dollar for doing nothing. I would still go to work.
Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work
701–710 of 786 posts
Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work
#702Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of the ones providing single payer healthcare, if you need a more precise target.
Could you be more specific? Single payer healthcare does not make a country socialistic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
You can get as pedantic as you want about the definition of socialism, but the point is, there's no evidence that a program like single-payer healthcare or UBI will drive off everyone who pays into the system.
Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work
#703Earlier quoted context omitted.
People with that mindset usually greatly overestimate the influence their work has on what they have and underestimate external factors, so pushing them to reevaluate may be a good thing.
So, people that worked and earned what they have and are compensated accordingly don’t deserve it?
Nobody earns what they have in a vacuum. There is a society that exists around you and enables what you do.
Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work
#704Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a great example, but you need to use smaller numbers. If UBI is put into place, the only thing somebody making $4K/mo after taxes is going to do is complain about his increased taxes. In a balanced UBI, the UBI is paid for with taxes. So if you make the average income, you get $X from UBI and your taxes go up by $X. If you make more than average, like your example, then you pay out more than you receive in UBI…
There are other taxes than income taxes. My idealistic view of UBI is a way to share the increasing benefit of automation. So if a factory owner fires all his employees and replaces them with robots, his increased profits are rather heavily taxed and go to UBI. I am aware of how logistically difficult it would be to have a fair "automation tax" though. But the point is: income tax is not the only tax, and probably no…
There are no other taxes capable of pulling in trillions of dollars annually. So it'll have to be at least partially on income tax.
(I hate saying trillions of taxes when talking about UBI. Since most of the effect of the increased taxes is just a clawback, on net the tax is only in the hundreds of billions).
Morally, there's also a good case for taxing income for UBI -- it's a fair claw back for those that don't need UBI.
But there's a solid base to your argument -- we definitely should be increasing other taxes and decreasing income taxes in general.
Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work
#705Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In the Nordics, there are no manual car washes, This is simply not true, at least in the more densely populated parts of Norway. They are simply very expensive.
Downvoted because you know OP meant "no _affordable_ manual car washes", so why did you have to make a bad faith interpretation?
I would welcome such a comment, it tempers what was admittedly my own hyperbole with a nuance of reality.
But yes, I doubt an American full-service car wash would recognizable in the Nordics.
Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work
#706Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you be more specific? Single payer healthcare does not make a country socialistic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
You can get as pedantic as you want about the definition of socialism, but the point is, there's no evidence that a program like single-payer healthcare or UBI will drive off everyone who pays into the system.
There is also no evidence of pink unicorns not existing.
Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work
#707Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why I don't feel bad about replacing people doing boring work by robots. They now get the somewhat more interesting work of operating the robots.
Only if they have interest in operating the robots, and the intelligence. If they don’t have either one of those, nope, they just lost a job because of your decision.
Maybe I've gotten lucky with machine operators so far.
The ones I've met are intelligent, though their locus of intelligence is in their thumbs. Someone on a project needs to have it there, so that's just fine by me!
Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work
#708Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think rent control is the policy of a "strict authoritarian government". Regardless, I don't agree with you that rent would rise considerably or that it would negate any benefit.
Why would rent not rise? Landlords know you have X more to spend now. Why would they not raise prices, altruism? You think that's their reason behind renting out property? Same with the telecommunications pseudo-monopolies: you really think they won't try and tap into that resource even if a little? Communications has become almost as vital as housing the last decade. Companies will do everything they can and the pub…
Because people can decide to go live in another place, quit their job and get another one in the new place.
One of the reason some people do not move is due to being comfortable and at travel distance to their job.
Under this light you can see what happened to several European cities with high rent due to University: as soon as Covid made students go home to their parents as classes were online, there was a huge drop in rent prices.
Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work
#709Earlier quoted context omitted.
If an industry cannot survive without forcing workers into degrading conditions and poverty wages, then it does not deserve to survive.
Right, but the people who will suffer first and most from an industry dying out, or costs increasing, would be the poorest people.
The people who will suffer most from continuing the way we're going are also the poorest people.
If the industry is dying out because we introduce universal basic income, then the poorest people will still be at least as well off as they are now, and in many cases much better, because they are guaranteed to continue to be able to pay their bills, no matter what happens with their employment status.
Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work
#710Earlier quoted context omitted.
If an industry cannot survive without forcing workers into degrading conditions and poverty wages, then it does not deserve to survive.
If that industry is farming or construction or heck, even Tv manufacturing and HVAC, then what? Should we go back to living like it's 1789?
Let's be clear about something here:
The only way an industry "can't survive" is if there is no price for their product/service at which both of these are true:
1) People can afford to pay for it
2) The employees can afford a living wage
If an industry is vital to our modern way of life, but it fails to meet those criteria, there's a third option: government subsidies, ensuring that the price can stay affordable while not shortchanging the employees.
However, as critical as I generally am of market-based solutions, in this case I genuinely believe that at least in the vast majority of cases, the second-order effects of the safety net offered by UBI will not require additional government subsidies for any vital industries. Some things may get more expensive, but overall, life will get better.