UBI really stands for Universal Basic Inflation
Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
831–840 of 1001 posts
Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
#832I know these are anecdotes but I already heard several cases from my circle of friends and families where they just chose not to work because of unemployment checks. Instead of practicing music or learning programming or doing something productive during their period of unemployment, they decided to watch Netflix and play games all day. Creating is hard work, studying is hard work. Just like having information and on…
What's wrong with watching Netflix and playing games all day?
Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
#833I 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…
We really need to stop calling it Universal. There is literally no way it could ever be so. I'm all in favor of a less bureaucratic welfare system. However, the main savings comes from all the people who make up that bureaucracy. So the savings come from firing a whole lot of people.
Even taxing the richest households and extra 5% would only give the poorest households an approximate extra $1000 per year. This isn't life changing and isn't even much of a supplement. This is a very non trivial problem to solve. We need a much larger source of money.
Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
#834I 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…
We really need to stop calling it Universal. There is literally no way it could ever be so. I'm all in favor of a less bureaucratic welfare system. However, the main savings comes from all the people who make up that bureaucracy. So the savings come from firing a whole lot of people. Even taxing the richest households and extra 5% would only give the poorest households an approximate extra $1000 per year . This isn't…
money is fake^Wfiat. it's just points in the game of capitalism. we have designed money so we can most importantly pay taxes with it, but also buy food and shelter and receive it for something or indeed anything, but we can also design a slightly different system where we receive it for no reason at all.
Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
#835I really don't think enough thought goes into the affordability of a UBI when it comes up in discussions. Just a quick estimate, assuming that we're talking about the UK here The UBI pays out to 53,000,000 people (very roughly the number of people 18 and over). The amount the UBI pays out is £1,000 a month (whether you could really live on this is debateable, but it's certainly not possible in most of London for exam…
And if people choose to live off of the UBI rather than working that will decrease tax revenue which will exacerbate the affordability of the program.
Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
#836I know these are anecdotes but I already heard several cases from my circle of friends and families where they just chose not to work because of unemployment checks. Instead of practicing music or learning programming or doing something productive during their period of unemployment, they decided to watch Netflix and play games all day. Creating is hard work, studying is hard work. Just like having information and on…
If I had to choose between:
- Today, where despite massive productivity improvements over the decades, we all are kept busy with commensurate bullshit work
- UBI horror couch potato land, where there's a tiny working aristocracy and everyone else is a TB drone
I would surely choose the latter. At least in the latter I have the guaranteed option of doing something meaningful with my own time and being recognized for it.
Also please recognize that behavior/culture doesn't happen in a vacuum. If people have heard welfare be demonized their entire lives, never had a change to work/hobby something productive and meaningful, and are generally scared/depressed about the pandemic, I doubt they are emotionally prepared to become some basement dweller programmer savant.
Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
#837The elephants in the room are the extremely cheap labor that already undermines the legit goods and services: - extremely cheap prison labor - undocumented laborers who have (almost) no legal rights and who take difficult jobs - ex-cons who have to pay a portion of their wages to employers who are willing to hire them - jobs where wages must be subsidized by government programs (eg. WalMart encourages their lowest pa…
Yes the "U" is crucial. We must raise the price of labor, and the only way to do that without creating a market is to sidestep "labor" altogether and set a consumption floor for everyone.
Thank you for pointing out that elephant, but that's just the sort of thing UBI in fact aims to address.
Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
#838I 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…
My biggest UBI fear is this. UBI becomes the single biggest election issue. Politicians promising increases to get elected, and all the bad policy that stems from such motivations. This is then followed by an inevitable pullback at some point in the future, causing immense harm to everyone relying on every cent of their UBI (most people).
Yup. This kind of gets at why us socialists are generally against UBI. It doesn't actually put any power in the hands of ordinary people, and the ruling class can just as easily take it away again as they gave it. Much better to have basic services (food, housing, healthcare) provided directly, with the workers in control, as that both makes it harder to take away (when healthcare workers go on strike, even the rich notice), and harder for landlords to just absorb the difference.
Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
#839There are a lot of people here dissenting on the idea of UBI on the premise that they find meaning in work, and to take the incentive to work away will lead others (themselves included) not to have meaning in life. I’ve taken a year off of work to start a business that failed and spent the past few months hanging out with my kids. At first, my stress levels were high because daycares were shut down and I was panickin…
My problem with UBI is that why would giving out "free money" change the world? Say I'm your landlord and you pay me $100/mo for rent. Now you start getting UBI thats $500/mo. Why wouldn't I increase my rent to $200/mo, $300/mo, or even $400/mo? I know that now you can afford the increase. So you'd still have to earn income if you wanted to stay in that place. All I see is prices going up for anything and everything…
My landlord knows my salary as I needed to provide it on the application. My takehome pay is more than what I pay in rent.
Why didn't my landlord say to me "You know instead of paying $X, I see you can afford to pay more so I'm going to ask you to pay $Y"?
Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
#840Where do you get the UBI from? Taxing reach people and companies? Which ones? Can they avoid it, even with a complex sequences of numerous administrative steps, clever legal interpretations and social engineering? ...
Now suppose you have UBI, it means some (formerly) poor people receive some money, in exchange of no work from their part, to spend on things they "desire" ("need" would be better here): so you end up having fake prices on those things, precisely what you wanted to avoid. And who can benefit from UBI? Could some not really poor people apply to it, even with a complex sequences of numerous...?
The only way is to have complete globalisation of finance while keeping localism for (most of) production and political decisions. Transitioning to that model won't be fun.