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Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

timjrobinson.com

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Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#971

Post by mytherin »

poutrathor wrote: post #969
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why give free money to everyone? Clearly a rich person doesn’t need a monthly check from government... The answer is that it's much simpler to send everyone a check. The rich person will pay more in taxes than the amount of their check, so it doesn't matter. Indeed, the arguments that we should do otherwise are to the benefit of the rich, because the proposed cutoff invariably comes somewhere in the middle income r…

> The answer is that it's much simpler to send everyone a check. I am always shocked by the general lack of awareness people have about world intricacies. Social welfare, fiscality and related issue in modern developped countries is one of the most complex systems I know of. I am 100% serious. It's a huge mess of rules, exceptions, directives, conflicting aspirations, unforceable & not unforceable || not unforced rul…

Isn’t the fact that the current system is so extremely complicated (and because of that, expensive) exactly one of the reasons UBI is so appealing? Cutting out the bureaucracy will save a lot of money that can then be send to the people. If you spend $1000 to figure out that one person “deserves” $800 instead of $1000 you are wasting a lot of money/time for zero gain.

The people in the high rent area can move to a low rent area if they can’t hold a job: they have nothing holding them there under the UBI rules. As for kids, perhaps they should also receive (smaller) UBI that would go to their parents.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#972

Post by habosa »

habosa wrote: post #526

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…

(replying to myself)

Wow ... a comment about UBI I typed out on my phone now has 600+ replies. I sort of regret posting this since I assume others have much more insightful things to say than I do!

Many great points were made in the replies so I want to be clear about something: I do believe that UBI would be better than what we have now. However I don't think that's the appropriate standard of judgement. To move forward with what would be the biggest government program ever (in terms of cost) we can't only look for marginal improvement. We need to be sure it will be a radical improvement.

Free-market capitalism has mostly failed the lower and middle class of America. UBI gives money to everyone and lets this same market system sort out the rest. I don't have faith in that system to do much besides find new ways to crush those who are currently suffering.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#973

Post by mlang23 »

habosa wrote: post #526

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…

There should be no mercy for those that spend their free money on addictions. My father spent almost all the money he received for my disability on alcohol and god know swhat. 100k gone down the drain. That money could have kickstarted my life just perfectly. But hey, why safe the money you get for your children for those children? Nah, better spend it on your own live, because.

If UBI ever becomes a thing, I hope that also means that people are on their own if they overspend it.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#974

Post by kgwxd »

habosa wrote: post #526

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…

If there were some guarantee UBI money couldn't be garnished, could that help the situation?

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#975

Post by tomazino »

Tbh, it seems like the author does not understand the basic principles of economics and history of economics.

The core problem regarding UBI is the fact that throwing such amounts of money to economy will create an enormous inflation, which will basically mean we would only improve our well being by margin, since more money won't let us buy more goods.

Furthermore, the ones that will benefit most from UBI are those, who have reached en equilibrium, meaning they will generate even bigger profits without investing more money. As the author states - we need to have more money, so that we could consume more, but in the end, the ones that end up with more money are the top 0.01%.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#976

Post by christiansakai »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #966
christiansakai wrote: post #207

I 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…

Why do some people have inner desire to succeed and some do not? What is that attributable to? Is it random/luck of the draw?

No idea. I’d like to attribute that with genetic but also with family upbringing as well. I lived in 2 countries so far, one developing and one developed, we have unmotivated people everywhere.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#977

Post by bsenftner »

urban_strike wrote: post #913
bsenftner wrote: post #747

Universal Basic Income does not address ANY of the underlying reasons for wealth inequality - it is license for the economic abusers (exploitative capitalists) to continue business as usual, but with every mark they play now having more disposable income for them to fraudulently take.

Seriously. If a group of vampires have been sucking so much blood that everyone's anemic, the solution isn't to have "universal basic transfusions" to make sure all the victims aren't tapped out and die when the next extraction rolls around.

Your analogy is brilliant - I'm going to use it myself.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#978

Post by qwerty456127 »

habosa wrote: post #526

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 - we should also invest in educating people (so they make less bad investments) and fraudsters busting. These 2 measures together with the UBI itself probably have chances to minimize the number of broke people (nobody actually wants to loose money and be homeless, right? most of them will do their best to use the UBI to avoid that) to the the point when it's very small and only consists of really sick people. Then yes, we help them by putting them in appropriate mental health care institutions until they are ready to take care of themselves.
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