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Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available
601–610 of 669 posts
Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available
#602Earlier quoted context omitted.
UBI creates inflation. I think anyone trying to deny that amounts to denying it because they really want UBI, and so they need it to not have that bad effect, but it does. You can't pour money into an economy without a productivity offset without inflating it. The theory is that productivity increases will in fact offset it. One way to prevent an increase in money causing inflation is to correspondingly increase the…
I'll be honest. You had me in the first half, but then: "... the hypothetical paradise it produces full of wonderful artists and musicians and programmers creating text editors rather than CRUD apps ..." Who willingly endeavors to write text editors in 2024 when acme(4) exists? I jest. More seriously though, if the measure of one's value to society is in their ability to crank out CRUD apps, I'm appalled. I want more…
The UBI problem, and the problem in your post, is you're engineering starting from what you want, and then assuming that there must be a solution to get there.
You have to start with what you have and build from there.
This is a subtle point and it may take some meditation and thought, possibly ever over some months or years, to understand what I mean. But if you are an engineer, life will hand you opportunities to see what I mean. You can't write down a list of requirements, then assume that exact solution exists, and then burn for it full speed. You must always start with what you actually have and the options you actually have.
The thing that makes perfect sense to me, but you would consider ironic, is that while you may accuse me of this and that, lack of imagination, lack of dreaming, lack of belief, whatever, my way builds better worlds and your way builds failures. I don't follow this path because I don't also see the temptation to build dreamscapes and live in them, I follow this path because it's the one that works.
Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available
#603Earlier quoted context omitted.
It isn't a very good critique, as it assumes that the only reason people work is to avoid starvation. People will work very hard to increase their income levels above that required solely for basic needs (i.e. UBI levels), see pretty much every non-minimum wage employee.
I think why people work at the jobs they do is a lot more complicated than that. Many people do work to avoid starvation PLUS maintain whatever level of standards they've become comfortable with. But the reason IMO people work non basic jobs is because if they are already forced to work their entire lives to avoid starvation, they might as well optimize. If I have to commute, and maintain a car, and be there for 40+…
Agreed. Such variable motivations for work and money apply to those on low incomes as much as they apply to those on high incomes.
There's no a-priori reason why one would expect those who receive UBI to be work-shy.
Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available
#604Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Also Bürgergeld is $500 a month for an adult, which is very far from "You can easily live from the Bürgergeld". Survive maybe but definitely not "easily live". You're leaving out a ton of information there. The 500 Euros is after everything else has been paid for. There's also lots of benefits like Kindergeld, money for each child you have.
That's just not true. Bürgergeld does not cover real rent costs for example. There is ceiling that is unreachably low. Heating is also not included,so in no way is everything else covered. To others: This thread is full of propaganda from the neoliberal and extreme right like this. Don't believe a single bit, they do not describe the state of the country nor how the policies work. It is a common wave of propaganda th…
> That's just not true. Bürgergeld does not cover real rent costs for example.
Yep. That's where "Wohngeld" comes in.
> This thread is full of propaganda from the neoliberal and extreme right like this
This is not true. I live in Germany. I have family members in the system on both sides. I read news from all isles.
Fact is, our social welfare state is unmatched compared to any other country. Nowhere else will you get welfare benefits this high. Our welfare benefits are so high, the sudden drop in benefits reduces benefits from earning more money by insane margins. There is a good calculation example here [1]
Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available
#605Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Also Bürgergeld is $500 a month for an adult, which is very far from "You can easily live from the Bürgergeld". Survive maybe but definitely not "easily live". You're leaving out a ton of information there. The 500 Euros is after everything else has been paid for. There's also lots of benefits like Kindergeld, money for each child you have.
Money which itself barely covers the cost that having kids puts on you… People living out of it are living in absolute misery, well under the poverty line.
False. They are not living in "absolute misery". The highest germany court has established this in the past. German welfare is among the highest in the world. I also know this personally, I have lived on the past (even more strict) alternative to "Bürgergeld" for the first 18 years of my life.
German welfare guarantees you food, an apartment for you and your children, public schooling, funding for school projects and even includes money for social gatherings.
To portray this as "absolute misery" is false to the point of being dishonest and you're being unfair to billions of people living in pitiful states of poverty.
Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available
#606Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is free money for everyone. Everyone obviously excluding the people who work full-time and who are paying taxes so that "everyone" can live of Bürgergeld. Oh wow, the exact thing people have been saying would happen has happened. Turn's out Quasi-UBI is a drain on tax paying citizens after all. Amazing.
German here, our country is broken beyond recognition due to 40 years of terrible political decisions independent of party or political side . I cannot even name one thing that is not broken beyond belief. The conservative government has added the debt ceiling to our Constitution requiring a 2/3 vote to change it, thereby making investments like the Inflation Reduction Act in the US utterly impossible. However, they…
Also German.
> I cannot even name one thing that is not broken beyond belief. The conservative government has added the debt ceiling to our Constitution requiring a 2/3 vote to change it
Good. You'd see a government without this restriction spend more money on pension benefits faster than you'd think possible.
> thereby making investments like the Inflation Reduction Act in the US utterly impossible
This is not true. Germany has a spending problem, not a tax income problem. Never before have we had as much taxes in the Governments pockets as we do now.
Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available
#607[flagged]
Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available
#608Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's just not true. Bürgergeld does not cover real rent costs for example. There is ceiling that is unreachably low. Heating is also not included,so in no way is everything else covered. To others: This thread is full of propaganda from the neoliberal and extreme right like this. Don't believe a single bit, they do not describe the state of the country nor how the policies work. It is a common wave of propaganda th…
> That's just not true. Bürgergeld does not cover real rent costs for example. Yep. That's where "Wohngeld" comes in. > This thread is full of propaganda from the neoliberal and extreme right like this This is not true. I live in Germany. I have family members in the system on both sides. I read news from all isles. Fact is, our social welfare state is unmatched compared to any other country. Nowhere else will you ge…
For a more full picture have a look at https://www.ifo.de/publikationen/2024/aufsatz-zeitschrift/lo... (though the ifo is not always trustworthy). There exist specific scenarios where there is not enough money remaining when you pick up work with a better salary. Even I know scenarios like that, for example when getting unemployment benefits, all money earned at the side is lost, which is just stupid if you wanted people to slide into work (through being self-employed for example). That should be a percentage, so that you have more at the end when completing a freelance project for example, instead of having worked for nothing.
What makes it rightwing propaganda is taking these cases and claiming that it would explain why people don't want to work anymore - which is not true, neither the connection nor that people don't want to work. And to combine it with the statement that the welfare benefits are high, when they are not - the problem, if there is one, is that earned money reduces the benefits 100%, instead of on a sliding scale. It's not the amount, as in 99% of scenarios being on state welfare completely sucks in Germany, it's the scenario of not having enough money for food at the end of the month, being scared to heat in the winter and each unforeseen bill a mayor crisis.
Also, it is also not okay to not mention that bürgergeld is still combined with sanctions. If not taking up (usual shitty ) work it can be lost, or missing a summoning, etc. Being in that system is thus highly stressful. Those sanctions were supposed to go away, instead they were made harder. Thanks SPD.
Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available
#609Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you are describing might intuitively sound like what a negative income tax should mean, had you never heard of a negative income tax before, but that is not what a negative income tax is. A negative income tax, which is a name for a type of benefit system, does not mean that people are literally negatively taxed, regardless of their income.
eitc is a prototypical negative income tax and gives you more money for each dollar of added income up to a point. so… exactly what i’m describing?
This is exactly the misconception the other person I replied to had.
Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available
#610Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll be honest. You had me in the first half, but then: "... the hypothetical paradise it produces full of wonderful artists and musicians and programmers creating text editors rather than CRUD apps ..." Who willingly endeavors to write text editors in 2024 when acme(4) exists? I jest. More seriously though, if the measure of one's value to society is in their ability to crank out CRUD apps, I'm appalled. I want more…
The UBI problem, and the problem in your post, is you're engineering starting from what you want, and then assuming that there must be a solution to get there. You have to start with what you have and build from there. This is a subtle point and it may take some meditation and thought, possibly ever over some months or years, to understand what I mean. But if you are an engineer, life will hand you opportunities to s…
I am, in fact, not an engineer; I trained to be an actuary. (Though, I guess if one squints enough, the operations research electives look like industrial and systems engineering.)
I consider UBI less an engineering exercise with requirements that feed into the engineering method and more one of ratemaking and claim severity against an entire trade system. My only goal is to put a dollar amount on a loss event (and get some quantification of how many loss events occur over time while we're not looking). What anyone does with that is up to them.
Use of the second person was certainly a choice.