61–70 of 736 posts
Dublin's Grafton Street with it's buskers is and was so unique to this American. I wondered if anywhere else in the world matches the musicianship heard on that street and in Dublin's bars? Music is engrained in it's culture in a way I have not experienced before(tho the weird looks I received wearing my baseball cap in Dublin was off putting as I had not experienced that in Berlin, Paris, Reykjavik, Amsterdamn, etc)…
>pledging to pay 2,000 creative workers 325 euros ($387) per week >The randomly selected applicants will receive the payments for three years, after which they would not be eligible for the next three-year cycle. Is it really correct to call this UBI? It is hardly universal if it applies to only 2000 selected artists. Seems more like a 3-year grant, similar to the art grants awarded by the national endowment for the…
Proper basic income has never really been tried. It would have to be universal (for the entire population) and be enough to live on.
Most countries have non universal basic income in the form of benefits, state pensions, food stamps, and various social security insurance programs. One way or another people that can't or won't work still get enough to survive. Mostly, countries don't let their citizens starve. They mostly don't put them out on the streets. And if people get sick, generally hospitals/doctors will help. You won't necessarily get a very nice version of all that in most countries.
If you think of basic income like that, UBI is actually not that much of a departure from that status quo. It just establishes that as a bare minimum that everybody gets one way or another. The reason that the idea gets a lot of push back is that people have a lot of morals about having to earn stuff which then results in complex rules to qualify for things only if you are unable to earn a living. Which then turns into a lot of complex schemes to establish non universal income that comes into a variety of forms and shapes. But it adds up to the same result: everybody is taken care off.
A proper UBI would have to award it to anyone. That's what universal means. It would be a simplification of what we have now. If you are employed, you would get a chunk of income from UBI and the rest from your employer. Basically, you work to add income on top of your UBI and it's between you and your employer to sort out how much you work and how much you earn. If you get unemployed, you fall back to UBI. UBI would be untaxed. But if you work or earn income you pay taxes. Company earnings are taxed as well. And you pay VAT when you buy stuff. Those revenue streams are what already fund things today.
People think of UBI as extra cost but it could actually be a cost saving if done properly. There's a lot of bureaucracy that's no longer needed. You could still layer insurances and benefits on top of course. But that would be more optional. And you could incentivize people to work that are currently actively incentivized to not work (e.g. to not lose benefits or get penalized on their pensions).
People forget that the status quo is not free either and that it requires an enormous, convoluted bureaucracy that also costs money. UBI could end up being simpler and cheaper.
The hard part with UBI is balancing fairness and financial viability and implementing it in a way that isn't massively disruptive and complicated. You'd need to incentivize most people to still want to work while making the system generous enough that people can opt not to. That's not a solved problem and the key show stopper. Many people that work object against anyone getting anything for free. But if you consider the status quo, we already have a lot of people not working anyway. And we all pay for that already. That is actually a rather large percentage of people that are allowed to vote in many countries.
Mostly the moral arguments against UBI are what perpetuates the very inefficient and costly status quo. We just keep on making that harsher, more complicated, and more expensive. Effectively if you work, you are paying extra for all that inefficiency. Worse, you can work your ass off your whole life and still have to worry about having enough to retire, the affordability of housing, or being able to afford essential health care.
Personally I would have thought this money would have been better spent getting people on the margins the stability to retrain into in-demand skilled careers (e.g. single, unskilled parents training as electricians or plumbers). That feels like it would be a more durable, multi-generational benefit.
But again, this is just a grant programme.
If they think this is good/important then fine but what they've created is a grant programme, not a UBI. Personally I would have thought this money would have been better spent getting people on the margins the stability to retrain into in-demand skilled careers (e.g. single, unskilled parents training as electricians or plumbers). That feels like it would be a more durable, multi-generational benefit. But again, thi…
Who said it is a UBI that this "rebuttal" even makes sense to appear here? The Irish government isn't calling it a UBI. The article doesn't call it a UBI. Even the FAQ for the program says it is not UBI:
>> Why this is not a Universal Basic Income
>> It is important to note that that the Basic Income for the Arts Pilot is not a Universal Basic Income. This is a sectoral intervention to support practicing artists and creative arts workers to focus on their creative practice. This policy is separate to the Universal Basic income as outlined in the Programme for Government.
https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-a... - C-f for "universal"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All these places use the word UNCONDITIONAL instead of UNIVERSAL because they are scared of printing money and paying all their citizens, while jacking up pigovian taxes on the other side. Here is how to do it properly without waiting for the federal government and currency: https://community.intercoin.app/t/rolling-out-voluntary-basi...
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Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and why are artists being subsidized instead of essential workers? There are far more than 2,000 real, paying jobs for schoolteachers. And for grocery clerks. And for nurses. And for fire fighters. And for drivers of rubbish lorries. And for ... Not so much for the folks who hope to be the next James Joyce or Louis le Brocquy.
Many people who work as schoolteachers, grocery clerks, etc. at one point might have had ambition to be the next James Joyce.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The term universal isn't used in the article.
All these places use the word UNCONDITIONAL instead of UNIVERSAL because they are scared of printing money and paying all their citizens, while jacking up pigovian taxes on the other side. Here is how to do it properly without waiting for the federal government and currency: https://community.intercoin.app/t/rolling-out-voluntary-basi...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> What is it about robbing one group of people to pay another that you would expect to "work"? Well, let's say we get one or two more breakthroughs in AI, and it succeeds in automating literally every job that can be done at a computer. And then it starts investing heavily in robotics. This would render human labor as uncompetitive as horse labor is today. At this point, you have two basic scenarios: something like U…
Well, there is a third basic scenario; where the billionaires who control the AI use it to help get rid of all the poors once they're no longer necessary.
If that were true though, we'd probably see them all frantically scrambling to control AI, buying private islands and blackmail networks, getting heavily involved in pandemic preparedness programs, genetic engineering, virus research, instigating massive wars, buying up all the media and politicians, creating massive surveillance programs and building deep underground bunkers. Stuff like that.
So, nothing to worry about.
>pledging to pay 2,000 creative workers 325 euros ($387) per week >The randomly selected applicants will receive the payments for three years, after which they would not be eligible for the next three-year cycle. Is it really correct to call this UBI? It is hardly universal if it applies to only 2000 selected artists. Seems more like a 3-year grant, similar to the art grants awarded by the national endowment for the…
It's not universal if only selected individuals get it. And you can't live on 325 euros in a place like Ireland. So it's not even basic income. But it's a nice temporary subsidy. Proper basic income has never really been tried. It would have to be universal (for the entire population) and be enough to live on. Most countries have non universal basic income in the form of benefits, state pensions, food stamps, and var…