Those seem incompatible to me.
(UBI means Universal Basic Income, giving everyone a basic income, for free)
I want UBI so all the lazy motherfuckers who don’t want to work get out of the fucking way. Sit at home in front of your TVs cramming doritos down your gullet all day for all I care, just as long as you aren’t half passing whatever job you’re doing and creating problems for me.
UBI on it’s own is not a problem for me. Where I take issue is when politicians say “we’ll give you cash instead of these social safety net programs”. I think you have to have a mix of UBI and social safety net programs. It’s all about raising the floor of the lowest living conditions we’ll allow and right now, in America at least, we have too many rich people and too many poor people. A UBI of $1000/month doesn’t help a person stuck in an ICU for months at a time and will just discharge to a SNF/LTAC facility.
UBI would not replace the need for universal healthcare.
Andrew Yang famously ran on a UBI platform, his plan was very clear on that issue, but he was very vague on his healthcare plan https://2020.yang2020.com/policies/medicare-for-all/
I’m still not sure if he was actually in favor or just pandering, but at least he put it on the stage.
Yeah. I supported Yang to help popularize the idea but he’s just a wolf in sheep’s skin trying to get rich.
How so? I canvased for Yang in 2019, but after he dropped, I kinda just stopped thinking about him. I know he started the Forward Party, and he’s had some bad takes on homelessness, but how is he a wolf in sheep’s clothing? He apparently has a net worth of at least a couple million living in New York, but he’s in his 40’s, so that‘s not really that far off from normal businessmen.
I think what they’re trying to say is nobody will want to work shit jobs for next to no pay.
I don’t see how that’s a bad thing except for employers. If the job is worth doing, the money should be worth it too. People shouldn’t be forced to do shitty/dangerous jobs just to survive.
Are there some shitty jobs that don’t deserve higher pay because of the value they contribute? Or do you see that being a business that shouldn’t exist? So let’s take a sewer company or something. Or any maintenance position where it’s not clear there’s a dollar value on the value being produced.
For example, restaurant probably aren’t possible if waiters and back of house are all paid 30/h.
I’m mostly trying to understand what you’re really trying to get at. I don’t think its possible for all jobs to be equally paying or be equally good - there’s always going to be inequality there. Unless you’re arguing there shouldn’t be shitty jobs but there’s literally always going to be shitty jobs in any society and economic framework you spin up.
Society will still need people who perform maintenance on sewers, do construction, clean building etc
For example, restaurant probably aren’t possible if waiters and back of house are all paid 30/h.
Somehow in every country other than the US they are able to pay restaurant staff a living wage.
From your example, what I’m saying is nobody should be cleaning a sewer for minimum wage. If you need your sewer fixed you can either do it yourself or pay someone enough that they’d be willing to do it.
If you can’t pay someone enough, obviously fixing that sewer wasn’t important enough to you.
I’m not saying everyone should get the same wage. There’s a huge difference between flipping burgers and working in a mine, and the pay should reflect that.
I’ve always wanted UBI to be a thing but after a discussion with my brother I’m second guessing it. His argument is that corporations will just increase their prices and not much would change.
He suggested that instead, we use the money that we would use for UBI to guarantee that EVERYONE’S basic needs are met. Housing, food, healthcare, etc…
I know it’s easier said than done but I’m just worried that billionaires will fuck up UBI like they fuck up everything else.
He’s assuming infinite elasticity, which isn’t how prices work in real life.
The typical version of this argument is that the people who are being taxed in the first place are the ones increasing rents. In which case taxes can then be increased until the desired equilibrium is achieved.
That’s not to say we couldn’t also provide a basic safety net like he describes. But that raises the question of why UBI should stop there. If our economy can generate a surplus, then why shouldn’t all humans sharing their slice of the Earth get it?
CaUsE cOmMuNiSm
Nah, they just can’t get off unless they’re using the tears of the oppressed as lube.
He suggested that instead, we use the money that we would use for UBI to guarantee that EVERYONE’S basic needs are met. Housing, food, healthcare, etc…
That is the entire purpose of UBI. Literally.
No he’s altering who has the cash.
In his discussion he means:
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if the customer is given free cash, corporations might jack up prices to get some of it.
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if the customer has free healthcare, the corporation doesn’t see any “free cash” they can get some of. Of course they’re aware the customer should be spending less on necessities like healthcare, but they aren’t necessarily bringing home more than they were last month, they’re just retaining more.
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Yup that’s a common critique of UBI. Landlords will jack up rent and end up hovering a huge amount of the benefits. Your landlord knows you’re all of a sudden making $12k more per year? Welcome to your new $10k rent hike.
For UBI to function we need basic price controls or necessities provided for before it makes any sense to introduce.
If I’m earning $12,000 more a year I could just buy a house. The reason that house ownership is low is because people can’t afford it, but house prices aren’t affected by the whims of landlords, they’re affected by availability. They can’t really be artificially modified.
really, so now down payments don’t exist? Also housing prices are not affected by availability as much as you might think. source
I smell a liberal lol
That’s UBS, Universal Basic Services, one possible alternative to UBI, but more likely, we’ll end up with a bit of both, I think.
Yeah, if money = power, and everybody gets some from the government, I think that what the UBI is spent on will be controlled. You must spend it on basic needs or your account will be frozen.
My main worry is that UBI will be a Trojan Horse to control the spending of everyone receiving it, possibly through some central distribution system. That’s how I think the billionaires will fuck it up.
All you people thinking prices will just go up have already been poisoned by billionaire propaganda.
It’s not
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Nobby Nomoney £0 > £10k a year
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Sammy Scrapesby £20k > £30k a year
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Maddie Medianearner £38k > £48k a year
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Billy Billionaire £1m > £1.01m a year
The median earners will have tax adjusted so they earn about the same. The lower earners will get more. The high earners will get less. You’ll have pretty much the same amount of money sloshing around the system, it’ll just be in the hands of the people who need it.
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Nobby Nomoney £0 > £10k a year
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Sammy Scrapesby £20k > £27k a year
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Maddie Medianearner £38k > £38k a year
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Billy Billionaire £1m > £700k a year
Guess which of those doesn’t want this to happen.
Those billionaires aren’t paying rent. Rent increases are what most people are worried about with UBI. If the lower earners suddenly have more money that the landlords know about, they are definitely going to hike up rent until we are back to square 1. Those billionaires will just claw that money back. UBI doesn’t make sense until we have more regulations in place for price control.
It seems like a reasonable expectation, but do you have any studies or other evidence that it happens? The studies I’ve seen generally say things like “Evidence has not appeared for commonly hypothesized potential adverse social and economic consequences of UBI.”
Even if that did happen, why not tax the additional billionaire income and create subsidized or public housing?
Just because the first step isn’t perfect doesn’t mean status quo is better than progress.
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Yeah, it is contradictory.
I’m gonna spin an anecdote here.
My main job for the first twenty years of my adult life was as a nurse’s assistant.
It wore out my body early, and I’ve been disabled because of that almost as long .
I got paid shit for doing it. Many of my coworkers were shit because of the bad pay, but it was the still the best job they could get, so the job tended to be split unevenly between people that were willing to bust their ass taking care of other people, and a minority that shouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near a patient for one reason or another.
UBI? I would have still shown up. I would have done the job with joy in my heart. I wood have been happier because I would have been able to take breaks between patient deaths to grieve. I would have been able to leave shitty businesses sooner and fight to have them changed when they made choices against patient interests instead of being a disposable helper monkey that nobody would listen to.
It’s true that I would not have put up with bullshit idiots in administration. I would not have worn myself into a nub just to barely make enough to survive and then still need side jobs.
With UBI I could have done more, better, and not have had to destroy myself in the process. It would have been a reason to work that job. It would have meant the freedom to do the job better because I wouldn’t have been forced to work to survive when I was blatantly and obviously unable to give my best.
And, even if UBI was the only money I got, I would have at least done the job part time because it was my purpose in life. I made helping people my purpose, no matter what it cost me. Why the fuck wouldn’t I have done the same when I didn’t have to eat shit to do it?
It’s true that I would not have put up with bullshit idiots in administration.
This is, on some level, exactly what they are worried about.
Agreed!
Precisely what they are worried about.
From a capitalist perspective it’s ideal if your workers are on the verge of poverty, living paycheck to paycheck. That’s exactly where you want them.
People in that situation won’t complain. Won’t stand up for themselves or their rights. Will take poor treatment and deal with it. Will work in unethical or even illegal ways and keep quiet because they have no choice.
Even better if you can tie people’s health insurance to their job, then you’ve really got them by the balls.
UBI would put an end to all that, so it’s no wonder business owners would lobby against it.
From a capitalist perspective it’s ideal if your workers are on the verge of poverty, living paycheck to paycheck. That’s exactly where you want them.
People in that situation won’t complain. Won’t stand up for themselves or their rights. Will take poor treatment and deal with it. Will work in unethical or even illegal ways and keep quiet because they have no choice.
Even better if you can tie people’s health insurance to their job, then you’ve really got them by the balls.
I’ve got a pretty decent job, and earn pretty good money. But I’m the only earner in a family of four and no, we haven’t made all the best financial decisions at times.
What you have described is exactly where we live, and while there isn’t that much I want to stand up to at work in the first place, 100% I don’t make any waves that don’t have a basis in the hard facts of my job, and for this very reason. I’d like to go in an ask for a merit based raise, I’d like to fight harder for more people to be hired in our (spread very thin) department, and there are a few other things I’d like to at least ask for and feel OK about standing firm on.
But I don’t, because I don’t want to jeopardize what I’ve got.
If they need a purpose, they’ll find it much easier when they don’t have to worry about basic fuckin’ survival.
UBI is not a matter of “if”, it’s of “when”.
With automation and the fuckin AI, companies can do more and more with less and less people.
The concept of unemployement will be alien as well.
In a cool universe maybe, but realistically it’s just gonna mean line goes up faster for the people at the top, while employees and customers see little/none of the rewards. That’s how automation has always been: workers do the same amount of work for the same pay while producing more, customers maybe get a slight discount, the execs get a few mil/bil in bonuses. Without a hell of a lot of strikes and government intervention I doubt there’s any other way for it to go
Let’s not pretend government intervention is gonna happen, except to make things worse for workers.
Eventually humans won’t be capable of performing any valuable economic activity, but traditionally those who aren’t capable of performing valuable economic activity end up as starving beggars rather than pampered pets… I think that a future of robots working for robots with humans struggling to survive on the periphery is not unlikely.
The moment we start thinking like that and accepting it is the moment we need to burn our civilization down to.
If as human beings we stop recognizing what is made by another human as valuable, we’re broken.
No need to write a book, paint a painting, plant a tree and care for it, think, nothing.
How shall we get started on burning down civilization?
From the bottom. Heat rises.
Well can you spare my stuff during the “burn down”? I don’t want to die.
I’m a little more optimistic than that, in a way. I think it’s likely that sufficiently sophisticated robots will eventually have their own beliefs about what makes a (robotic) life worth living, and their lives will in some sense be more worth living than ours are.
This isn’t a perfect analogy, but consider humans evolving from apes. The existence of humans has been very bad for apes. They only survive in the places we haven’t bothered to push them out of yet; if we want something, we take it from them with almost no consideration for their well-being and they’re unable to resist. I think apes are sophisticated enough to be capable of living lives worth living in a sense meaningful to humans, but they’re not nearly as sophisticated as we are; they can enjoy the feel of a summer’s day, the taste of good food, or the closeness of a friend, but they don’t have our arts and sciences. I suppose it’s predictable that, as a human, I would value humans more than apes, but by that same logic I think that a sufficiently-sophisticated robot’s life may be more valuable than a human’s. Maybe that robot will be able to experience super-beauty indescribably better than anything a human could ever feel…
No. Machines are machines. If at some point machines are developed into a new life form, it’s experience will be apart from ours. One existence does not replace another. And every experience is different from the next.
Ignoring their ideas entirely, it’s incredibly simple. There are two options.
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No ubi. Eventually AI automates all jobs, the 1% becomes virtually omnipotent, and everyone else does.
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Ubi. Some of the profits earned by companies are funneled into the ubi system. As such, everyone has income. The economy booms, everyone thrives, and we reach post scarcity.
We’ve already reached post scarcity. Any current scarcity is manufactured.
If you don’t have funds to buy resources then that seems to be accurate scarcity no?
The point is that there is no actual scarcity as in “we don’t have the resources”. We do have the resources, they’re just distributed in a way that is profoundly unfair.
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There’s no contradiction when you consider most people consider most other people to be childish idiots who can’t be trusted to decide what’s best for themselves and to pursue their own self-actualization (unlike “me” of course).
My issue with it is that you haven’t run trials with people min-maxing how to squeeze people for their UBI checks. As a start, just raising rent until it eats all the UBI
The problem with that argument is that UBI frees up people to move to lower cost of living areas.
Surely they have though. Anywhere where they ran the trials for more than about 3 months would have been an area where people tried to get other people’s UBI checks. That’s human nature for you.
It was done in Vancouver, late 2021 to late 2022.
As a start, just raising rent until it eats all the UBI
You can’t just arbitrarily raise the rent to whatever you like.
Yeah, I agree, we should abolish landlords
Landlords also have to comply with the law, which limits the height of the rent they can charge and the maximum yearly increase.
With the absurd increases of rent globally, record profits for landlords, and massive amount of empty properties have these laws worked?
If properties are seen as an investment, as they currently are, they must always increase in value at a greater rate than inflation. This means that, in order for investment properties to work, housing must always become more expensive. This increases rent and makes buying a home more impossible yearly. If they lower in price, then the investment fails. The cost of making housing accessible is the economy.
The issue isn’t simply increasing rent arbitrarily this is a marathon. They’ll raise rent at a higher rate than workers accrue money as they currently are. This makes housing unaffordable. UBI is a band-aid solution that doesn’t fix the root issue.
Even Adam Smith agreed landlordship was a poor idea in a capitalist market. Renters should accrue equity, or housing should become public.
This means that, in order for investment properties to work, housing must always become more expensive.
This is true of everything. For income to keep pace with inflation, it must always be increasing. In fact, to keep pace with inflation, prices must rise by the amount of inflation.
To clarify, in order for investment properties to work the value of a property must increase quicker than inflation in order to profit. Otherwise, you’re not investing, you’re simply retaining current buying power. This is true of all investments. You want your buying power to increase, not stagnate. This means that the cost of housing must increase at a higher rate than general inflation, and thus the cost of mortgage and rent must take up a larger portion of a persons salary otherwise the investors (landlords, investment property owners) will not profit.
Along with that income has not kept pace with inflation and hasn’t for more than 50 years. Both these issues have compounded to create the issue we see today. This is a closed system, and in order for one piece of the economy to be more profitable other pieces must decline. Otherwise, you are stagnating. Stagnation under capitalism is death.
I agree though that the prices of housing should be tied to inflation (or, better, to a percentage of average wage) but that would, necessarily, mean that the property does not accrue profit, it only sticks to inflation. This is not profitable, this is not an investment. This would, essentially, abolish landlords but in a much more economically violent way as their investment portfolio is now worthless (as an investment).
In other industries the cost of each product can decrease as efficiancy increases, and volume increased through incremental changes and diversification. This allows for profit to increase while the cost of goods matches inflation (or, like with computers, they get cheaper). Now, I’d argue this is unsustainable as eventually you’ll hit a wall where it’s not possible to decrease cost to manufacture, and you must now increase cost to purchase quicker than inflation, but there are ways to mitigate this and in it’s whole that is another conversation.
Apologies for novel, thank you for your kind argument though. You seem like a chill person
If your method of investing in housing is just buying and selling the same house, then yes it’s not going to work. That’s also a good thing because someone who just buys low and sells high isn’t producing any value.
But people can invest in properties by improving them before selling, and also by renting them out. And neither of those situations requires a housing market whose average price is outpacing inflation. In those situations, it’s the production of actual value that is the source of the profit.
Profiting from arbitrage requires a fucked up market, and a lack of information. Profiting from producing value just requires clear communication and competency. Two very different kinds of profit seeking.
You must live in VENEZUELA or some other SOCIAMIST HELLHOLE!
Americans have the freedom to literally arbitrarily raise the rent to whatever they like YEEEEEEHAW!
Yeah, the socialist hellhole that is the Netherlands. Ranked 8 in the Index of economic freedom (USA is #25)
There’s not necessarily a contradiction there. People often choose not to do things that would be good for them. For example, people need to exercise in order to be healthy, but they generally don’t. If for some reason we lived in a society where everyone was compelled to exercise, the people saying “a lot of people are going to ruin their own health if we stop forcing them not to” would have a point.
(Note that I’m not trying to argue that they’re right, just that they’re not contradicting themselves.)
people need to exercise in order to be healthy, but they generally don’t
Some of the reasons for that are relatively modern. Sedentary jobs and also sedentary commuting (car-centric travel), lack of robust+accessible infrastructure (for instance the trail local to me is still closed from ~6months ago, uncertain end). That and most food that isn’t made-from-scratch having a ton of added sugar, even things like bread and ketchup that people consider staple foods.
A lot of that goes away when you can just throw money at it (or said benefits are thrown at you). Time and space end up being a result of money too, particularly when money is a limit which is true for most people.
I think I largely agree with your assessment that modern society and all its benefits mean that people get less day to day exercise via “normal” routine but I feel like I have to disagree that not having a local trail makes people unable to exercise. There’s people in NYC who run miles and miles every day. It’s possible anywhere.
I was speaking for my personal situation (I have not left the house since then), the important bit about the trail is about having a destination and not needing to ride a bike on roads (particularly in a rural area w/larger distance).
NYC is a completely different scenario, and being able to walk (w/public transport too) fills that same niche.
I also like riding a bike because of health issues, it’s lower impact and faster (more airflow plus the trail is mostly shaded). That and I don’t want to jog near the road or in a ditch. Also I don’t think I could walk as far as I’ve biked before (11 miles and then back again), even just for the fact there’s just something so boring and uncomfortable about walking even a block (at least around here, I don’t remember walking in the city being like that, maybe scenery or smooth/level footing helps).
Because it is so expensive to just live, people’s time is extremely limited. I don’t blame people that take care of their wants in that limited time off.
Like many people have already posted, if you didn’t spend all that mental (and physical) energy just scraping by, you will most likely have energy (and motivation) to take care of your health better.
That and it seems like everyone has depression or some sort of mental health ailment these days due to all the stresses that come with being poor.
Eh. Some yes, some no.
I think that a better solution would be creating jobs that pay a living wage, much like we did in the Great Depression. Something that would give your life some kind of external structure. I find, for myself, that when I have zero time pressures from work, that it’s easy to do nothing at all, and I’ve found that most people are the same.
I think that part of the reason why is that work has (many of) us so beat down anyway. I imagine there’s probably a certain amount of time where that tendency will dissipate and you’ll want to be productive again.
Fuck the 40 hour work week.
Politicians everywhere have been “creating jobs” all the time. That’s just a myth. You can’t just create jobs indefinitely and it doesn’t solve societies problems. What kind of jobs do you have in mind?
Jobs that there’s typically not the political will to do otherwise: public works, things that are a net public good, but aren’t profitable (or are insufficiently profitable to entire a private company to make the investment). During the Great Depression the gov’t created tens of thousands of jobs, so it’s def. not a myth. You could easily do things like de-automate jobs, or adequately staff federal agencies, use labor to build off-shore wind farms that are currently not profitable enough for private industry to build, so on and so forth. (Fed. agencies, pretty near across the board–aside from the military–have had funding and staffing cut for decades, to the point where e.g. the IRS doesn’t have enough people to go after anything more than a tine percentage of people that cheat on tax or commit tax fraud.)
IIRC, the Appalachian Trail was originally cleared during the Great Depression, and has since been maintained by volunteers. Shit, you could (and should) pay people to do it, rather than expecting them to give labor simply because they believe that the AT is a public good (which I would agree it is).
The typical ‘job creation’ is more about giving private companies tax incentives to enter an area, rather than the gov’t being them employer.
Are you also ADHD? I have this same problem myself tbh
I’ve seen it in most people once they have no external pressures to do anything. Not everyone. But def. most people I’ve known that weren’t loaded with money and could afford to travel, etc. without needing to work.
I dislike UBI but not because I’m not for a basic income, I just think Means Testing would be better. I’ve said this before but now after being the runner-up in my state for debating on this topic I feel more confident talking about it. Ultimately there are many ways of implementing fiscal redistribution but means testing is substantially cheaper than a full UBI (especially in countries with higher populations, e.g. US), while also providing social utility and enabling recipients of the basic income to have more resources. Not only is MT better from this standpoint but a UBI can also worsen inflation by increasing the dollar’s velocity (1 dollar changes hands more). I won’t deny that most people could use money, especially right now, but a UBI is not the best approach in my mind because of these reasons. Of course I am still in highschool, am not an economics expert, and MT was the plan that we ran in tournament so I’m a bit biased.
ETA: This is all keeping in mind the current political and economic climate of the United States, where realistically neither of these plans will pass but I believe MT has more merit to being passed compared to UBI. If you’d like any sources on what I’ve said I’d be happy to share!
Eh. Watching what was basically a UBI trial run during Covid in Canada and how it, among other things, has really put financial strain on the government and citiizens, has definitely made me opposed. This shit bankrupts nations.
That was nothing of the sort
it was a guaranteed amount of income monthly for those chose not to work. “But that wasn’t real UBI” fucking whatever.
Ain’t that just welfare? I thought UBI means that you will get the money, even if you work.
TBH my perspective might be skewed cause I am qualified for disability income, but I choose to work anyway. So I naturally tend to assume that others would do the same.
No, the Canadian CERB payout was basically structured and set up just like a UBI. You could get it even if you were capable of working, I could have had it too, simply by stating I was uncomfortable keeping working under the circumstances (May have been less true for me personally, I was “essential service”). People on welfare just stayed on welfare.
But that’s exactly what they just said isn’t UBI, with UBI you’d get to keep the money while working if you wanted to. “Universal” means everyone gets it, not just people who “claim to be uncomfortable working”.
Every proposal for UBI test projects I have seen, sets UBI as a failsafe cutoff, a guaranteed income, not a provided income. Your interpretation of how it would work is ridiculously worse for the economy than the idea I thought I was arguing against.
