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Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

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Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#191

Post by psunavy03 »

FireBeyond wrote: post #143
psunavy03 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny that you blame landlords off the bat as opposed to the fact that everyone who employs folks at minimum wage is forced to raise prices in order not to go out of business.

Every business who is raising prices to support paying their workers minimum wage are at fault. Minimum wage laws are a trailing benefit. Always behind the times. Every raise to the minimum wage is a (partial) catch up to where it really should be in terms of the concept of a living wage (for anyone - not the Republican talking point, entirely invented out of thin air, that it's meant to be for teenagers with part ti…

I don't think you understand how businesses even work. If a company has to charge X amount to stay above water, and you raise wages, X has to increase. This isn't about some "constitutional right to a profitable business." It's that if the business isn't profitable, it goes under, and then no one has a job because there's no money to pay them with. Is that what you want?

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#192

Post by psunavy03 »

jstummbillig wrote: post #76
psunavy03 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google "hyperinflation." Printing money out of thin air causes the existing money to be worth about as much as toilet paper.

We are actually, right now, "printing money" out of thin air. The process is called "fractional reserve banking" and is a cornerstone of modern economics systems. You can of course read up on it, but, suffice to say, if we did not do it, financial systems would be extremely unergonomic. Hyperinflation is one of the things that could happen, when you do it badly, I suppose, but there is a lot of ways to get hyperinfla…

Thank you for insulting my intelligence by assuming I don't understand fractional reserve banking. My point remains. A government does not have carte blanche to inject money into an economy without hyperinflation beyond a certain point.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#193

Post by giantg2 »

DonaldFisk wrote: post #190
giantg2 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other programs that in combination do cover basic needs for those that qualify by need. You're not going to be able to replacement CHIP and Medicaid with UBI. At least not without extensive bureaucracy on the tax side.

If your country has a national health service, paid for by taxes, medical treatment isn't paid for when you need it and so wouldn't affect the rate of UBI.

The context of this thread appears to be US based, so a national health system is not applicable in this scenario.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#194

Post by criddell »

dilyevsky wrote: post #122
criddell wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The USA did this during the COVID era. Japan has being doing this for decades now and, AFAIK, there hasn't been any terrible consequences. What are they doing differently? imf.org says Japan's dept to GDP ratio is 214% and the US' is 110%.

Perhaps not the best example to pick - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades

Japan's ranking on the Human Development Index is ahead of the US. Do you think if they had charted a different economic course Japanese citizens would have a wildly better quality of life compared to US citizens rather than just being slightly better?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#195

Post by 7e »

CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #45

Yes, of course giving people money makes their lives better. It especially works when a very small subset of the population receives such treatment, such that their relative income is higher than those outside the experiment. The issue with UBI is that enacting it at scale has two huge problems: 1. Financing it. These programs are monumentally expensive. You need to get the money from somewhere. The easiest place to…

Not only to you get inflation with UBI, you also get labor shortages, as we've seen.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#196

Post by schwartzworld »

CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #45

Yes, of course giving people money makes their lives better. It especially works when a very small subset of the population receives such treatment, such that their relative income is higher than those outside the experiment. The issue with UBI is that enacting it at scale has two huge problems: 1. Financing it. These programs are monumentally expensive. You need to get the money from somewhere. The easiest place to…

> If you do it by taxing the rich, you wind up hobbling and punishing your most productive citizens.

Won't someone think of the poor billionaires.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/09/23/...

The richest families in the world pay 8% income tax. To pick a random rich guy, Bill gates makes $98M/year. You could literally tax him 90% and he'd still be making more per year than most Americans make in their lives.

> Instead, we should foster competition, incentivize innovation, and let markets do their thing

Tell me Atlas Shrugged is your favorite book without telling me Atlas Shrugged is your favorite book.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#197

Post by FireBeyond »

psunavy03 wrote: post #191
FireBeyond wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every business who is raising prices to support paying their workers minimum wage are at fault. Minimum wage laws are a trailing benefit. Always behind the times. Every raise to the minimum wage is a (partial) catch up to where it really should be in terms of the concept of a living wage (for anyone - not the Republican talking point, entirely invented out of thin air, that it's meant to be for teenagers with part ti…

I don't think you understand how businesses even work. If a company has to charge X amount to stay above water, and you raise wages, X has to increase. This isn't about some "constitutional right to a profitable business." It's that if the business isn't profitable, it goes under, and then no one has a job because there's no money to pay them with. Is that what you want?

I understand perfectly well.

I am saying businesses KNOW that the minimum wage is behind where it should be, so when it rises to where it should be, that is not an attack on them. They should have foresight. The minimum wage rising is making those employees whole, not giving them an advantage.

Yes, costs increase. Failure to plan for that is poor planning. Maybe you should have smaller expenses, instead of expecting society to allow you to underpay employees. Maybe the owner doesn't need a new Mercedes or a second international vacation for their family that year.

If paying workers a liveable wage makes your business not profitable, then why is it on the workers to sacrifice to keep you in the black? Small business owners are often all about bootstraps and such, but believe themselves to be an inviolate part of America.

To be very clear, small business is very important. However, it is not more important than people being able to afford food and shelter. The poverty line, which is used to help determine the minimum wage, is set at "3 times the cost of minimum dietary requirements in 1963". It doesn't cover shelter at all.

Looking at inflation alone, minimum wage should be hitting or exceeding $20/hr. Small businesses who have coasted - or struggled - paying employees $7.25/hr for DECADES (fun fact, the gap between minimum wage increases gets longer and longer every cycle) shouldn't be expecting a free ride just because "small business!"

There are ways to have a profitable business that pays an appropriate wage. Sometimes that comes at the cost of owner dividends. So be it.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#198

Post by Izkata »

dfxm12 wrote: post #172
Izkata wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference between "not combating" and "encouraging". UBI would be much closer to "encouraging".

Alaska has had UBI for a while. It has been studied up and down. Studies show since implementing it, poverty has been reduced, crime is down. I haven't seen anything suggesting it encourages greedflation. You are making this claim about UBI, but the difference is you aren't qualifying it beyond with what appears to be your personal thoughts on the matter.

If you mean the Alaska Permanent Fund, according to wikipedia:

> The amount of each payment is based upon a five-year average of the Permanent Fund's performance and varies widely depending on the stock market and many other factors.

> The lowest individual dividend payout was $331.29 in 1984 and the highest was $3,284 in 2022.

That's not what people are generally talking about with "basic income" - it's not anywhere near enough to meet basic needs, and it's not reliable due to the fluctuations.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#199

Post by caekislove »

whitewingjek wrote: post #111

UBI may sound like a worthwhile endeavor to a great many people, but I can't help but think of what we give up with such a system. If I politicaly dissent from the majority (whomsoever that is or whatever they believe) what stops them—the government as often described—from stopping UBI from those that are deemed "unfit."

I'm old enough to remember influential TV people advocating for the revocation of the "rights" of certain people to healthcare, employment or even being allowed to leave their own homes if they refused to be injected with the special science juice. That was just a hypothetical scenario! The sad reality in America is that anything real like UBI would be politically weaponized from practically day one.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#200

Post by Izkata »

dfxm12 wrote: post #98
tuututututu wrote: post #14

I'd like to make food stamps automatic for everyone. It makes pretty good sense to me. Everyone who has a driver's license or is enrolled in school or is registered to vote gets food stamps. The most hateful southern baptists in my family who are still screaming about Obama's death panels can still agree that donating to food banks is a good idea. I can understand people who say "I don't want to pay higher taxes to s…

Why is food different from roads? Schools? Police? Fire departments? Have these people ever made an insurance claim? Set foot in a state/national park? Cashed a stimulus check? etc. My point is, someone saying "I don't want to pay higher taxes to support other people" has already lost the plot. They are already receiving benefits paid for by someone else. If they weren't already convinced that this is a good thing, t…

I have seen people complain about paying taxes for schools when they don't have kids, and all your other examples go back to the taxpayer in some way. Food stamps are like the school one, they don't go back to the taxpayer - they're paying without getting anything back, hence complaining.

GP's idea might be a decent way to sidestep that - at the very least it's tighter in scope so the negative effects would be limited.

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