111–120 of 809 posts
That seems to address many of the concerns that people are raising in this thread. Namely, it doesn’t require you to work, but ensures that you never have a disincentive to work either.
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Because moving to places with lower cost of living, to speak extremely broadly of course, means less income compared to cost of living, meaning a lower standard of living. But with a guaranteed income, a lower cost of living would always mean a benefit to standard of living.
This is true in theory but not in practice in my experience. I presently live in one of the bottom 5 states in terms of population density and there are multiple manufacturing plants that require no experience, are paying 60k+ for new hires, and are in extremely low COL areas. By the way, they can't find enough people to apply and are having to aggressively advertise to fill entry-level spots. I think the issue is mo…
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Why doesn’t that happen today?
Because there isn't much work if you live there. If you had UBI though, that wouldn't matter, so you could just live in a rural area for cheap.
> almost three-quarters of the respondents who were employed six months before receiving basic income were still working while receiving basic income. Nearly 80 percent of the respondents who were previously unemployed remained without work during the pilot. About 20 percent found employment.
So the majority of unemployed people stayed unemployed. Of the people employed prior to the pilot, about 23% became unemployed although in some cases it may have been to pursue more education.
> The unemployed group were three times more likely to report their general health had declined during the pilot as compared to the employed group.
The majority of the unemployed group reported improved general health but a significant portion of the unemployed group became worse off during the pilot.
The majority of participants did report improved well-being through a survey. The survey asked questions about general health, mental health, and financial well-being among others.
If the cost was $150,000,000 for 4,000 people for 3 years, the cost per year should be approx $50,000,000.
The articles states there are 2,000,000 people in poverty in the Ontario province so this program, if scaled up to all those in poverty, would be expected to cost $25,000,000,000 per year from simply scaling up the cost 500x.
I really, really like the idea of UBI. However, some napkin math: In the US, with ~250 million people being eligible, a $1000 UBI would cost ~$3 trillion. That's almost the entire budget of the US. How is this even remotely realistic right now? Even if you can cut other spending in half due to it, you'd need an additional $1.5 trillion in "income" essentially. Is that something that would even be possible? How many r…
Doesn’t Alaska have basic income? How do they afford it?
The issue I see with basic income is that most money is spent on housing and health care. These two things are supply constrained so it's more of an auction for who can afford them. With basic income, we may just raise the cost of those things. This problem wouldn't appear in a study that distributed to only some individuals. We need to solve the regulatory or otherwise organizational problems of these things to prov…
> With basic income, we may just raise the cost of those things. The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. It's true of anything that causes the poor to have more money . Lower unemployment, higher wages, anything. Heck, it's true of lower healthcare costs, because people would have more money for housing, or vice versa. Housing costs and healthcare costs are problems, but they're independent problem…
"The conclusion of this argument is deeply inconvenient, therefore the argument is wrong."
It's actually true that rising wages result in higher rents. It's plainly obvious that this is the case - otherwise why would anyone care about rent explosion wherever Amazon decides to put HQ2?
The issue I see with basic income is that most money is spent on housing and health care. These two things are supply constrained so it's more of an auction for who can afford them. With basic income, we may just raise the cost of those things. This problem wouldn't appear in a study that distributed to only some individuals. We need to solve the regulatory or otherwise organizational problems of these things to prov…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> With basic income, we may just raise the cost of those things. The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. It's true of anything that causes the poor to have more money . Lower unemployment, higher wages, anything. Heck, it's true of lower healthcare costs, because people would have more money for housing, or vice versa. Housing costs and healthcare costs are problems, but they're independent problem…
> The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. It's true of anything that causes the poor to have more money. Lower unemployment would be associated with a greater availability of goods and services, so that would get it out of the trap. Higher wages would also be associated with a supply increase if they came with increased productivity, but if you raised the minimum wage then prices of low-end product…
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This might be a bug rather than a feature for a lot of people. Many people want humanity to concentrate in urban areas because it is better for the environment. Others complain about urbanites' tax dollars paying for rural roads (which is effectively the scenario you're describing, even if those tax dollars are labeled "UBI" and routed through rural citizens' bank accounts first). Still others see rural Americans as…
So provide a basic income, but also shift some (or all) of the costs of those externalities onto the individual. Your basic income stretches farther if you choose a lifestyle that makes more efficient use of it.