Surprised by this - I would have thought "poor" countries like India would not be able to fund this. Hell I have doubts about 1st world funding it.
India floats the idea of a universal basic income
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Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not the same. This isn't trying to break the rules of physics. It's just a very large welfare program that would benefit from not having a bureaucracy behind it. And it would rely on the theory that enough people will still want work, so that they can afford luxuries, live where they want to, and get other trappings of social status.
Sounds like living in a libertarian paradise. Except if you get stabbed and your doctor doesn't take your particular private healthcare plan. Then you bleed out while singing the praises of deregulation.
??? You're getting downvotes because your comment was apropos of nothing. I was just correcting analyticbastard's conception of UBI, I wasn't stating support for anything.
Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income
#33In other developed countries, I think universal basic income makes sense, but not in the case of India. India has several systemic problems and a significant portion of the population has little to no education. Any income that can sustain a household without any pressure to grow as people will probably hinder their progress more so than help them. For a country with no lack of problems to solve, they are much better…
> Any income that can sustain a household without any pressure to grow as people will probably hinder their progress more so than help them
Are you basing this off of any familiarity with poor Indian culture?
Why do you expect "free money" to translate into "lesser progress" rather than "progress of their choice"?
Here's a different question: Have you learned more through self-directed learning, or other-directed learning? How have you chosen what to learn, and would you still have that drive-to-learn if you had free money?
Remember that UBI is in addition to salaries / wages, not instead of.
Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income
#34Surprised by this - I would have thought "poor" countries like India would not be able to fund this. Hell I have doubts about 1st world funding it.
Because of the way the math works, you can always fund it at some level, because everyone receives it. It doesn't actually "cost" $1 for you to pay $1 in tax and then get back $1 in UBI. If everyone in the country has the same income then the UBI is a no-op (but in theory you could still have it). All it ever does is cause money from wealthier people to go to poorer people, the same as any other redistributive program, but more efficiently and with less central planning of what people are allowed to do with their money.
And the cost of living in poorer countries is much lower, so the necessary UBI is that much lower.
Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income
#35Surprised by this - I would have thought "poor" countries like India would not be able to fund this. Hell I have doubts about 1st world funding it.
I would imagine that "poor" countries are going to the most affected by automation, though
Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income
#36Surprised by this - I would have thought "poor" countries like India would not be able to fund this. Hell I have doubts about 1st world funding it.
Because of the way the math works, you can always fund it at some level, because everyone receives it. It doesn't actually "cost" $1 for you to pay $1 in tax and then get back $1 in UBI. If everyone in the country has the same income then the UBI is a no-op (but in theory you could still have it). All it ever does is cause money from wealthier people to go to poorer people, the same as any other redistributive progra…
Thanks for this. Hadn't realised this before but makes sense.
Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income
#37Surprised by this - I would have thought "poor" countries like India would not be able to fund this. Hell I have doubts about 1st world funding it.
I would imagine that "poor" countries are going to the most affected by automation, though
Yeah that's going to be ugly. Human labour too expensive to be competitive & country to poor to massive automate.
Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income
#38I used to think a universal basic income would make sense, especially in developed countries, only for the near future scenario of machines taking ever more jobs. We know that this has always happened in history, and new jobs were always created, but that doesn't mean that the rate of job creation vs destruction will remain the same, forever. What made me change my mind about UBI was to realize that a) human desires are infinite, and there'll always be more work to be done and b) the more work is done by machines, the richer the population as a whole will be, as products and services automated tend to be cheaper. I do expect the work dynamic to change a lot, and that in the future we'll see a lot more gigs and maybe freelancing for a few hours each week will be enough to sustain a reasonable lifestyle (for whatever that means). That said, I believe our political efforts are best invested in removing all the artificial constraints that make it hard for new jobs to be created, like excessive regulations for example.
Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I agree that wrapping it in social stigma would help w/the numbers, it'd set a very bad precedent for the idea of basic income in general.
Why? It seems like a great way to discourage people from consuming it unnecessarily while making sure no one actually suffers in dire poverty unnecessarily. In fact, this might be a good idea in general - sumptuary laws based on net payments to the government. Contributors to society would gain visible social status while those who are a net drain lose status but do not materially suffer. Of course, I doubt you could…
> Why? It seems like a great way to discourage people from consuming it unnecessarily while making sure no one actually suffers in dire poverty unnecessarily.
The problem is the entire principle only works because it's universal. Having lower or middle income people opt out of it would defeat the entire purpose of having it, and having upper income people opt out of it wouldn't save you very much money because they're not a large enough percentage of the population to make any real difference.
Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income
#40In other developed countries, I think universal basic income makes sense, but not in the case of India. India has several systemic problems and a significant portion of the population has little to no education. Any income that can sustain a household without any pressure to grow as people will probably hinder their progress more so than help them. For a country with no lack of problems to solve, they are much better…
This is basically the same argument in general against basic income, prepended with "in the case of India, it won't work because... "
I don't know if basic income works, but that's why experiments in the field are required. None of the reasons you have pointed out seem to be apply only to India.