571–580 of 809 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn’t Alaska have basic income? How do they afford it?
Possibly a simplified answer, but the way I understand it is that the citizens own the oil rights, and get a cut.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean that there isn't enough capital to distribute to everyone in the world, not that it's fixed forever. You can grow it. That's my point. It's better to increase capital than redistribute it. > Investment distributes wealth primarily from the elite to the slightly-less elite. If you've seen how China changed in the last couple decades, you'd see how this obviously isn't true. Basically all electronics are manufac…
> It's better to increase capital than redistribute it. Consider the notion of leverage where both A and B can increase their capital more in absolute value if some part of A's significant capital is redistributed to poorer B. UBI just takes risk out of this equation so A does not have to lend to B in order for this to happen. Though yeah, this makes A poorer in absolute value than they would have been without this s…
For society, the risk is that A is more efficient at investing money than a blind redistribution scheme. That's a multi-trillion dollar gamble.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. With a permanent UBI in place you can throw all these studies out the window.
[citation needed] Is that anything but conjecture? I see a study showing that UBI is a "good thing", and you didn't provide a source for your reasoning. Edit: to all those saying that the parent comment is straightforward, or common sense, or whatever, it's not straightforward or common sense because I disagree that UBI would be a failure. No one knows what would happen under UBI, but these types of studies give some…
However it's not a stretch at all to say people will act different when they're temporarily receiving money than when they'll receive it 'forever'.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"If you consider multi-generational entrenchments of poverty as its own problem, worth serious merit, then the work disincentive could be a disaster." Multi-generational entrenchments of poverty are already a disaster, and not because of fuzzy ideas like "instilling a work ethic", but because many millions of people lack the basic material resources needed to fulfill anything close to their potential. A kid watching…
> doesn't prepare them to do anything Wait, what? I mean, I guess that just watching your parents work doesn’t “prepare” you for work any more than watching TV does, but that’s because it’s completely unrelated. Watching your parents go to high-powered executive jobs doesn’t “prepare” you for work in the 21st century either, education does. My father was a police officer (they don’t make much money) and my mother sta…
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…
And this is a very misleading summary of the results. Here are some actual quote from the study: > Ten respondents moved from unemployment to employment while 32 moved from employment to unemployment. Of the participants who moved from employment to unemployment, 13 (40.6%) enrolled in full-time education during the pilot with the intention of re-entering the labour market later as more qualified workers. Almost half…
I like the concept too, but we have to be careful what we wish for.
If, somehow, UBI becomes real there will be a huge push from the libertarians and far-right to dismantle whatever is left of the social safety net. They actually would love the idea of replacing medicare, social security and other programs with a quick 1000/month that would enable even more shrinking of government.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean that there isn't enough capital to distribute to everyone in the world, not that it's fixed forever. You can grow it. That's my point. It's better to increase capital than redistribute it. > Investment distributes wealth primarily from the elite to the slightly-less elite. If you've seen how China changed in the last couple decades, you'd see how this obviously isn't true. Basically all electronics are manufac…
Yeah, so now instead of barely getting by on subsistence farming, they barely get by working 16 hour shifts in dangerous conditions with no rights. While the workers may be mostly better off than they were before, they still have to spend almost all their time and energy on meeting the basic needs of survival. The people who benefitted by far the most from all that investment were the owners, executives, and sharehol…
This, in turn, is what made it possible for us today to enjoy a high standard of living unimaginable back then.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> millions of people lack the basic material resources needed to fulfill anything close to their potential There is a limited amount of capital in the world. Distributing it now might help those at home, but it does not help the billion people who still lack electricity. There simply is not enough capital in the world to build trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure for free. Investment is a much better vehicle…
UBI doesn’t get stuffed under the mattress, it gets spent, buying electricity, funding investment into electricity networks. Give money to the poor and most of it will end up back at the rich. It doesn’t work as well trickling down.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Many people want humanity to concentrate in urban areas because it is better for the environment. I'm interested in learning more about this. I've never heard of it, are there any sources proving that this is the case? If people spread out more, is that actually more harmful? I can imagine this is an extremely complicated topic
This idea that people only do work because they must is flawed. Most citizens are happy when they are doing a reasonable amount of work.
Basic Income is crucial because not all useful work is fairly paid. From parenting to housekeeping, (early) innovating to art - so many beneficial activities suffer because the stress of financial security grinds them out of existence.