751–760 of 1001 posts
Where does that money come from? The US population has 199M adults[1]. Let's say a decent basic income is $40k. That's 8 Trillion that the government has to find every year. The US federal tax revenue was of 3.86 Trillion last year[2]. Half of which comes from individual income, and another third from payroll taxes. This is before the effects that UBI will have on the economy. Maybe my 10 minute research is wrong? It…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 3. Charity - let's say we actually give every person enough money for food, housing, and utilities. Some people will mess up. They could spend it all on an addiction or just make a bad investment. Even with UBI they could still end up hungry or homeless. Will we help them? Or will we say "you had your UBI, the rest is on you". This changes the morals of how we treat people in the worst times. I think it should be p…
The parent comment said "spend it all on an addiction or just make a bad investment". What do we do with the person that gets e.g. their 1000€, spends it on a night with champagne and then has nothing to eat or pay their rent? Too outlandish for you? How about if they spend it on a new TV instead of rent, a new smartphone or a couch? There's a reason why some people get into debt because of consumption: they don't pl…
Again, I'm not sure about the situation in the US, but here we have public services that can help people go through debt restructuring or private insolvency in the worst cases, as well as offering classes for money management and centres for addictive behavior. This isn't done purely out of humanitarian concerns either, addiction and lack of education are problems that keep people from being productive citizens - and this is expensive for society at large.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Something no one ever talks about with UBI is how the effects will be eliminated in a few years. The very things poorer people would buy from it would get more expensive by the UBI proportion, it will just be inflated away. When everyone has an extra $1000 do you really think landlords won’t increase rent? The price of food and clothing won’t increase? When literally an entire country is richer by this amount? UBI do…
If everyone has 1000 Euro more, for some people that’s 200% more than before, for others it’s 1% more. This means that the amount of money overall does not increase as much as the amount of money poor people have. Therefore, even if there will be a bit of inflation, it won’t cancel the effect of UBI. Those who earn a lot will have less than before (Because of inflation), but those who earn little or nothing will have…
Just because average inflation is the same, doesn't mean every product's inflation is the same.
You will see much larger inflation in goods everyone needs, especially low income housing, and maybe some deflation in luxury goods.
On average theres maybe no inflation, but you haven't actually helped the poor. Well done.
I like the simple argument made here about UBI enabling efficient consumption. I worry about three things with UBI though and they're more social than economic. 1. Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. We can see this a little bit with the coronavirus relief packages. 2. Predator…
The question I can't answer is "what stops a nation voting itself more income?" If every unscrupulous politician can promise to raise the base UBI rate to get elected, what stops that? Obviously, inflation will fix it in the relatively short term, but that's not a good result. And there's an unscrupulous politician in power.
If every unscrupulous politician can promise to lower taxes to get elected, what stops that?
1) Does not solve the issue of 'meaning' and 'purpose'. That is, now that UBI (and automation) has gotten rid of the need to work for a living, what is left? Said another way, why not fall into alcoholism, drub-abuse, and crime? We don't have any good examples of large populations living off the government dole and thriving.
2) UBI isn't actually that much of an improvement over a well-funded welfare state, which leads to #3 ...
3) Does nothing to help developing world. First-world countries don't actually need UBI. They already have deeply funded welfare states. How does UBI help a laborer from a developing world compete when his labor is no longer required? How does UBI help a government of a developing nation build prosperity?
3) UBI is ill-defined. There is tepid acceptance of it on the left, but only with the implicit assumption that it doesn't replace most (or any) current welfare programs. UBI's support on the right almost always comes with the assumption that it will replace much of the welfare state.
I like the simple argument made here about UBI enabling efficient consumption. I worry about three things with UBI though and they're more social than economic. 1. Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. We can see this a little bit with the coronavirus relief packages. 2. Predator…
> 3. Charity - let's say we actually give every person enough money for food, housing, and utilities. Some people will mess up. They could spend it all on an addiction or just make a bad investment. Even with UBI they could still end up hungry or homeless. Will we help them? Or will we say "you had your UBI, the rest is on you". This changes the morals of how we treat people in the worst times. I think it should be p…
That's true in Canada and United States. The problem is that there are major legal barriers pushed through by activists to prevent forced institutionalization. Apparently it is a fundamental human right to live in a tent city off the freeway without basic sanitation.
I like the simple argument made here about UBI enabling efficient consumption. I worry about three things with UBI though and they're more social than economic. 1. Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. We can see this a little bit with the coronavirus relief packages. 2. Predator…
All of those seem like valid criticisms against UBI, but is it an argument not to do it? Are those issues non-existant without UBI? Take your third point - what do we do with people who spend all their UBI on drugs and gambling? Even though the “you’ve had your UBI the rest is on you” approach seems morally wrong the current situation is that they get even less or zero help anyway so UBI would only be an improvement…
Maybe add more restrictions to gambling (and reclassify things like trading/investing as partially gambling), and keep policing drugs as usual.
Also, mandatory warning attention-abusive mediums, such as casinos and mobile apps; and stricter regulation against misleading advertisement. And greater scrutiny of lobbying..