201–210 of 809 posts
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It's because if you're in a relationship, you're considered a more valuable member of the society. Because it signals that someone has selected you to be around for a prolonged amount of time. Being single is more expensive in a big city.
It is punishing couples, not rewarding them. The amount given to two single people is $34,000. The amount given to two people in a relationship is $24,000.
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Problem is the lack of colloquial objective definition of "poor". The US "poverty line" is at 80th percentile of world incomes. The US's vast welfare/entitlement system ensures few indeed net less than that line, shoring up their shortfall with trillions of $. What constitutes "poor" keeps shifting. There will always be a bottom 10%. There is ongoing increase to the standard of living, instilling a sense of "nobody s…
Why would we not want the baseline to improve over time? I genuinely do not understand the attitude that we should establish some extremely low bar like “is not currently at risk of starvation” and then never move the bar, but merely congratulating ourselves when more people pass that bar.
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You can already have a 30 hour work week if you want to do contract or part-time work, but for a full-time position you’d be competing with companies who still work 40-50 hour weeks so I don’t think there’s much practical opportunity here.
You're assuming the additional 10-20 hours is a meaningful competitive advantage. That's not a given.
Still, I've seen many folks in esports do crazy workloads and get nowhere fast. So there's more to the formula than just pouring in more effort.
So most people 'kept working' but 25% quit, I think that kind of validates that a lot of people will quit, which is the concern. 25% is a lot. It'd be interesting to see numbers from those who were not employed, i.e. how many gained employment. The bits about 'having to drop future plans' isn't fair. Of course, people will have to adjust after losing a major source of income.
to be fair, a lot of people are stuck in jobs that don't give them the benefits they want, don't pay them enough, or just don't suit them very well but they can't quit and get a new job because they aren't paid enough for that. UBI gives people a chance to quit and not immediately be on the streets. This also creates more competition for employers to win over employees instead of creating wage-slaves. I doubt that's…
80-90% of the population would fit into this category.
You are not entitled to social services because 'you don't like your job'.
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It's been about 40 years for the Alaska permanent fund dividends and it's popular AFAIK.
It's popular because everybody gets a check each fall that's been around $1500. One year the dividend was higher, just over $2k. There was also an "energy rebate" of $1200 that year, so every qualifying person in the state got $3200 that year. In a family of four, that's over $12k. Large families, for example 8 people, got $24k that year! Some people use it well, putting some in the bank for their kids, paying off lo…
I have a friend who moved to Alaska last year for work last year and will probably be there for a few more years. We had discussions about the fund recently because this is the first year he qualifies for it. He will very much be in that camp of using the check in the fall to splurge and will do so until he is able to move in a few years.
As an outsider, it seems frustrating to me that the funds aren't used to improve the state (schools, utilities, infrastructure). I've expressed this to my friend and kind of derided him a bit for being what I see as part of the problem. In reality I guess I can't really blame him for taking the money and (eventually) running, but it just feels wrong to me.
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> Lower unemployment would be associated with a greater availability of goods and services, so that would get it out of the trap. That's assuming the goods and services are locally consumed, which in a global economy they're commonly not. A jet engine factory that moves in and hires a bunch of people reduces local unemployment, but that doesn't mean any of the local workers are in the market for jet engines. > Higher…
> That's assuming the goods and services are locally consumed, which in a global economy they're commonly not. But in a global economy that's irrelevant: the greater availability of jet engines where they are used will cascade eventually into a greater availability of bowling balls in the town where they make jet engines.
This is still a "constraining the housing supply is bad" problem, not a "higher wages are bad" problem.
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Problem is the lack of colloquial objective definition of "poor". The US "poverty line" is at 80th percentile of world incomes. The US's vast welfare/entitlement system ensures few indeed net less than that line, shoring up their shortfall with trillions of $. What constitutes "poor" keeps shifting. There will always be a bottom 10%. There is ongoing increase to the standard of living, instilling a sense of "nobody s…
The simpler solution is to just impose a tax of a given rate and pay out all the money it generates as a UBI. As economic productivity increases over time, more revenue is generated and we can pay out a bigger UBI, which satisfies the intuition that minimum standard of living should increase as overall productivity improves. If that amount is below some standard of living we wouldn't wish on our worst enemies then we…
Someone who couldn't afford broadband before UBI wouldn't be able to afford broadband after (beyond a brief blip where the market sorts pricing out) because rent & broadband just increased price according to everyone now having UBI. If anything, more won't afford essentials and near-essentials precisely because overall prices will rise.
It's the same reason why minimum wage really doesn't work: prices increased to match a baseline income for low productivity, coupled with an increased population unable to earn at all because they simply don't produce $minwage value (and are now marked "poor" and routed to get their needs provided by a bureaucracy).
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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…
More "tax dollars" going to rural roads because more people live there is incomparable with a policy maker deciding that more budget should go there.
This is very misleading reporting. First: All studies so far show a pretty consistent ~10% work disincentive. This is what all the detractors say when they say it disincentivizes work. So how about this one? From actually reading the study's conclusion: > Slightly less than one-fifth were employed before but unemployed during the pilot (17%) So even worse than what we've seen so far. 17% dropping out of the labor mar…
I want UBI and a 30-32 hour work week, so I guess I’m proposing a 20% “disincentivization”. Would fewer people in the workforce really be so bad? What’s the carbon and water footprint of all of these goods we really don’t need but we bust our humps for anyway? At this point, more robots don’t mean more of the stuff we need. they mean more stuff we don't need.
> Would fewer people in the workforce really be so bad? Yes. Someone needs to work to produce the goods and services they use, as well as fund their UBI. The more people who opt out of working, the harder everyone else must work to compensate. > What’s the carbon and water footprint of all of these goods we really don’t need but we bust our humps for anyway? People dropping out of the workforce doesn't reduce the dem…
What I am skeptical about is work that is real hard, not some silly office stuff. Care and nursing for example. There might be few people who would do that under current working conditions with UBI in sight. Not that I think the current situation is in any way sustainable. It is already completely broken before the large demographic bombs hit some countries.
On the other hand, maybe family members had more time to offer care themselves.