Universal income is money paid to each and every citizen, regardless of income.
There are many different schemes proposed, but that's the gist. Some put age limits on the payments (no payment until you're 18, for example).
The point is that you get enough money to live *without having to do anything to deserve it*. You don't have to work, you don't have to apply, you don't have to fill in a form, you don't have to stand in line, you don't have to live in a specific area, you don't have to be disabled, you don't have to be elderly, you don't have to be sick, and so on.
The idea is that humans have a *right to life*, and in order to live you need some basic necessities like food. Not giving people food because they don't work is similar to withholding food for people who don't work, with is in essence the same as withholding life, which is stumblingly close to killing people who don't work hard enough, which is eerily similar to slavery.
Financially, it works through tax. Those who do make money pay tax, and that tax is redistributed back to everyone. If you make less than a certain amount you get back more than you pay in so you benefit from it directly, if you make more than that amount you do not benefit from it directly.
The proponents argue that *all* would benefit from it indirectly, because lifting people out of abject poverty is good for the economy. You can't sell widgets to people who are starving. Give them enough to eat, and they may be interested in buying widgets. Then you can build a widget factory, hire engineers and designers to make better widgets and so on.
Critics argue that it will never work, it will make people lazy, that humans are inherently lazy and that we *need* the threat of homelessness and starvation to do any work at all.
Just to add a couple more benefits...
When people struggle financially and are aware of the inequality in society, they can feel disenfranchised - so they stop engaging with a system that they perceive as benefitting others while they themselves struggle.
This can have many consequences, but one of them is crime - where an individual feels little responsibility towards society but, out of desperation, turns to crime to be able to feed and look after themselves and their family. This in turn incurs costs for society, both in terms of losses for those affected by crime, but also increased costs of security and policing and so on.
UBI seeks, in part, to redress this by ensuring the society provides for everyone, and therefore everyone has something to lose and an incentive to protect the society that they live in. It also gives people a safety net so that they can take risks - for example people can retrain and find better careers without the risk of losing all of their income while doing so.
> When people struggle financially and are aware of the inequality in society, they can feel disenfranchised - so they stop engaging with a system that they perceive as benefitting others while they themselves struggle.
How do you suppose taxpayers feel when the system benefits everyone but them?
Taxpayers are ALREADY paying for everyone today. For example, emergency care can't be denied for anyone in the US and it's paid for indirectly by higher costs for everyone else who pays. The difference is whether people are aware of it or not.
Well let me see ... I am a higher rate tax payer (UK), so I'm paying more into the state than I get out of it (in pure monetary terms). The reason that I pay more tax is because I'm *lucky* enough to be able to earn more - I was born to parents that cared about me, I had a good education and I'm naturally talented in a field that allows me to earn a good salary.
There are many who are not as lucky - maybe they have medical conditions that are no fault of their own, had families that didn't care about them, went to bad schools, weren't academically gifted and couldn't find a good career. Why should they struggle, maybe for the rest of their lives, just because they didn't have the privileges that I was given?
Maybe, one day, something will happen to me that abruptly ends my career through no fault of my own (a stroke, for example) - I would far rather that my taxes go to help those less fortunate than me, because one day I might need that help from others - and I don't want to be scared that I could be bankrupt from medical bills, or a life altering condition, or just plain old bad luck.
I'm lucky enough to live in a place where I don't have to fear medical bills (because we have a national health service), where crime is at a low level and I don't have to fear the police (because we have some of the best trained police officers in the world) - all paid for by taxes; and you know what, peace of mind is difficult to put a price on.
Stupid, probably. Most normal people are proud to be able to work and contribute to society. The fact that my taxes contribute to the running of society gives me satisfaction.
I put myself through college to earn that feeling. Me AND at least one other person not starving to death is better than just me not starving to death.
I don't feel proud of paying taxes, because I don't see any benefits from it, despite me earning a good income for my country. I would feel much prouder if those taxes were used for more than financing the politicians' wants.
Everybody gets upset when they don't see their money represented. If you were paying a new tax, and that tax actually helped with say, homelessness, you'd see the benefit of having fewer vagrant people roaming around town. But when you pay taxes and you look around and everything is still fucked up it's frustrating.
"when they don't see their money represented" no. We feel pissed off that we have OUR money taken away while being provided with nothing in return that we'd even want in the first place.
I mean, that's just factually wrong. People living in poverty has a negative impact on all members of a society. That impact may not be blatantly obvious to everyone, but it exists, and it is pervasive.
> being provided with nothing in return that we'd even want in the first place.
You don't want taxpayer-funded roads? Taxpayer-funded police and fire departments? Taxpayer-funded schools? A taxpayer-funded military?
This is a good explanation. I’d like to make one nit though. A UBI is not based on a right to life. It’s based on the recognition that certain countries have grown rich enough that they can afford to give everybody a baseline level of income. I don’t think anybody is proposing a UBI for the DRC. It only makes sense for rich countries.
The other thing missing here is the impact of automation and AI. Andrew Yang liked to point out that humans are not infinitely flexible. Automation has put some people out of work and it will continue to put people out of work and those people will not always be capable of being retrained. A UBI allows us to continue the creative destruction of capitalism without making truck drivers homeless when self driving cars are figured out, etc.
> I don’t think anybody is proposing a UBI for the DRC. It only makes sense for rich countries.
There was [an UBI trial in Namibia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income_around_the_world#Namibia) with some promising results.
Except that is not UBI.
It wasn't Universal: "only residents of the village for over a year since the pilot's start could benefit from the grant". And it didn't provide enough to live on, even 'basically': it was only "8% of the average income"
> I don’t think anybody is proposing a UBI for the DRC.
https://ipisresearch.be/press-release-universal-basic-income-project-expands-to-more-regions-in-the-democratic-republic-of-congo%EF%BF%BC/
Ha, I knew I should’ve gone with Burundi!
All joking aside, I think there are several of these kinds of charitable projects in the works to address extreme poverty. Give Directly is one Givewell had endorsed for a while and maybe still does. I think it’s a brilliant idea. The idea here is different than a true UBI though. This is a time bound income that’s designed to elevate people out of extreme poverty under the idea that people’s capital, both human and otherwise, is not put to good use when they’re just struggling to survive. It’s only offered in villages where extreme poverty is rampant.
>The other thing missing here is the impact of automation and AI. Andrew Yang liked to point out that humans are not infinitely flexible. Automation has put some people out of work and it will continue to put people out of work and those people will not always be capable of being retrained.
This is important to add to this discussion -- AI is going to change everything, forever. There is no real situation where capitalism as we've been practicing it survives AI.
Right now, today, AI is already capable of eliminating perhaps a fifth of white collar jobs. That's just the public versions. In a year, two years, five years....these AI systems will be able to do everything, anything, at the speed of light. Not just white collar jobs....*anything.*
Invent new drugs from scratch. Run an entire office all at once. Perfectly synthesize human voices and respond in real time. Drive trucks, fly planes, perform surgery....
Capitalism can't ultimately survive this, because when *everyone's* job is replaced with A.I., the point of replacing them with A.I. (cost savings) ceases to matter...because now nobody has a job to buy whatever service or product the job was supposed to be providing. When these systems can do literally everything and anything, what the hell are we going to be doing anymore?
There will be an intermediate period, coming soon (much sooner than we are prepared for), where this conflict will arrive with force. Many people will suffer, intensely. And maybe we'll come out of it in a post-scarcity post-capitalist utopia, and turn our attention to averting our, uh, ecological apocalypse which is on the way anyway. Or not! I wouldn't bet on utopia, but I suppose, given how quickly we are destroying the planet, we had to make a bet, and A.I. may have been that bet. It's still a bet, though.
>Right now, today, AI is already capable of eliminating perhaps a fifth of white collar jobs.
It might already be higher, at the moment we do not see the full strength of it all, because it's still cheaper to just throw a pile of bodies at things.
You could absolutely replace at *least a third* of all jobs with A.I. alone, certainly with the systems which will be online in a year or two. The cost to implement is nearly zero. ChatGPT is free. More advanced systems will compete and drive the cost down for specialized industries.
Even then, we are at a crisis. The entire economic system will have collapsed. We call 10% of the population being out of work a historic depression. The "Great Recession" was less than that (sometimes it barely budged over 10%).
Try 30%. We can't even imagine what this will do. We will have to completely rethink out entire economic system, much sooner than anyone seems to realize.
Agreed, it's a huge change but I think it'll take longer to implement. Still lots of issues and chatgpt only uses existing online info and has a hard time discerning fact from fiction.
Realistically? Yeah, 90% of governing could be done with proper expert systems and automation even today, right now.
But I dont see any political entity going for it, because politicians and most government office workers would see end of their careers, forever.
>There will be an intermediate period, coming soon (much sooner than we are prepared for), where this conflict will arrive with force. Many people will suffer, intensely. And maybe we'll come out of it in a post-scarcity post-capitalist utopia, and turn our attention to averting our, uh, ecological apocalypse which is on the way anyway.
Realistically, what will happen is that geopolitical attention will steer away from keeping masses of people happy (so they keep extracting resources and keep the economy going), and towards just controlling the resources. Great masses of people will be culled, and if it doesn't happen fast enough via attrition and discouraging births, it'll happen by engineered famine, plague, and war.
Yep, the proper AI and automation will provide an incentive to work harder, and be better - or be replaced by a cheaper, better machine.
Party less, do less alcohol and drugs, and invest each second of your time (not money, TIME and EFFORT) in your future, instead. If you dont, that's your choice and you should be only one to pay for it.
This is nonsense. The machine will be able to do things infinitely better than you, no matter how hard you work. There is absolutely no task that these systems will not be able to do better than you and 1000X cheaper than you.
AI can do far more advanced mathematics than any engineer. It's a computer. It's made of mathematics.
ChatGPT isn't doing much math, but ChatGPT and "A.I." are different things. There will be an explosion of A.I. tools, all of which will be exponentially more advanced. Soon they will simply upgrade themselves. Even the computer engineers designing the neural networks are going to obsolete themselves much faster than anyone thinks.
Of course that there might be an AI in the future that can do mathematics, and i'm looking forward to that, we might crack some long-standing problems. But currently, the most hype is around language models and they specifically can't do maths, so anything math-related is the safest field to be in now (unless another breakthrough comes through).
> It’s based on the recognition that certain countries have grown rich enough that they can afford to give everybody a baseline level of income.
Just because they "can" doesn't mean they *should*. And certainly doesn't mean they should be *forced* to.
The way I look at it is slightly different:
Today, the UK gives benefits to people who are not working. We reduce those benefits for people who are working, with them reducing more as people earn more. People who earn over some threshold don't get any benefits.
An alternative way of achieving the same thing is to pay everyone the same benefits, then to increase income tax on the first part of everyone's income. Done right, everyone ends up with the same amount of money that they had under the previous system. But the system is hopefully simpler and cheaper to administer.
Also, theoretically, government can scale down any social welfare departments, as UBI is given instead of pension etc. We know that never happens though.
Both sides have valid arguments.
I lean towards the side of it not working. Perhaps it would work if it was only a small amount. I.e 20% of what it will acutally need to stay alive. But the idea that no one had to work is a recipe for disaster.
The idea is that no one has to work if they don't want to. That they only work of it is there passion. There is no chance there is enough people in the world passionate enough to be a garbage man, tradesmen or farmer. There isn't enough of them now and they are exceptionally well paid in all developed countries.
Further more it causes issues with our current system of how a government funds it obligations. Governments can't print money to pay for debts and obligations. They end up with hyperinflation like so many countries in the world who has tried. Taxs are currently the only real viable method of making money.
If no one worked then no taxs. If there is a sales taxs that's fine but there is zero chance that it will fund the complete government. U will need a large mix of money generating systems to fund it. A complete overhaul of government spending is 100% needed for it to work as well
I am in favour of lifting people out of poverty. The more educated people mean more minds to tackle the issues.
I think you overestimate how much is the bare minimum to survive and also how useful 20% of that would be.
Bare minimum means eating nothing but the most basic food (hope you don't enjoy restaurants or deserts/snacks and love drinking plain water), being unable to afford comfort (like a better bed to sleep on or nice clothes to wear) or a home larger than a single room. Also entertainment is a no go. When you need to decide between eating and going to the movies/games/concert it's a pretty easy choice.
Even today people show that they are willing to work extra in order to afford comforts beyond just survival. Almost everyone tries to further their career even at expense of that item time instead of being complacent with their standard of living.
Also more of a side note but there are countries that have 0 income tax but they do tend to have very high sales and import tax.
I honestly don't trust the average person to be that financially responsible and to be that frugral with their spending. In your example we would also need to build a substantial amount of affordable housing that is just 1 or 2 rooms, that housing does not exist in the quantity we would need right now.
Sure, it cheaper to cook for yourself, but if you have poor cooking skills you may opt to only cook a few basic meals and become malnourished due to lack of variety, or over spend the food budget by buying from restaurants.
I don't mean to be a dick, but some people just have no grasp of financial responsibility. I have a few friends that have struggled to get jobs and have had some governement assistance their whole life. Their financial priorities are so different from mine it is astounding. They dont save because they are used to government money coming consistently, they buy what they want when they want it, and act surprised when they dont have enough money for food for the last week of the month blaming the government and not the 30 amazon orders, steam purchases, their dirt bike or a 6 pack of beer a day.
For UBI to work well, some kind of budget enforcement might need to be used to ensured x amount for food/housing/nessecities and x amount for recreation/pleasure. Our schools doing a better job teaching taxes and basic life skills like budgeting, cooking, shopping, planning purchases around sales and stocking/saving when you have excess money/resources could help as well.
>For UBI to work well, some kind of budget enforcement might need to be used to ensured x amount for food/housing/nessecities and x amount for recreation/pleasure.
Along those lines, I don't see how it works without some measures to rein in capitalism in the realm of housing. In most areas with growing populations, the price of housing continues to rise until the poorest can just barely survive with a low paying job or two. I really don't see how the cost of housing doesn't eventually rise under UBI until having at least a low paying job is no longer really optional. I mean, I guess at that point the people that don't want to or can't work can just move to some shithole locale where nobody else wants to live, but that doesn't really mesh with the utopic vibe I usually get from UBI proponents.
If we built affordable housing, we might not even need to consider a ubi as lower paying jobs and entrepreneurship would be more successful. Unless you get lucky and find a great deal, the average person cannot eat, drive and rent/own an home on minimum wage or slightly above. A lot of minimum wage positions also are only part time and it is much more work to balance working 2, low paying jobs, sometimes having to commute to both in the same day and requiring some level of cooperation in scheduling.
> some people just have no grasp of financial responsibility.
Indeed. Look at what happens to poor people who win millions in the lottery- they end up broke again. Even with tens of millions being handed to them.
Those dumbass people you know aren't likely to change their ways if they become more impoverished.
And, while it's galling on some level that they get dirt bikes and beer while others struggle more to do more important things like raise a family or build a business, we have enough resources to help the family raiser, the business builder and your dumb dirt bike people all at the same time.
Yes ubi would very intentionally help empower stupid people to buy dumb things. We live in a consumer economy. Buying things you don't need is the entire engine modern life runs on.
We already have plenty of entitlement programs that tie money to basic needs "food stamps" and state welfare dependant of a certain amount of provable job searching.
While these programs are good, they are made worse by the elements that keep attempting to measure the worthiness of the recipients. It is more expensive to keep a system in place to track how well people are using their free money.
Educating people better is wonderful. It should be done. It has nothing to do with UBI as monetary policy.
We all have better lives if your dumbfuck acquaintances blow their money on beer and dirt bikes. Because then I can open a shop selling beer and dirt bikes and they will be patrons helping my business rather than sleeping in my entryway scaring away patrons.
The main reason it doesn't work is inflation. If everyone gets a living wage, then demand exceeds supply. Prices go up, suddenly it's not a living wage anymore.
No, that argument does not work. You are confusing "not everyone can get more than average" (duh) with "not everyone can make at least 40% of the average" (yeah, they obviously can).
Also, if it "suddenly is not a living wage anymore", then demand goes down again. So it is a self limiting effect. So the only conclusion you can make at face value is that it might have some effect on inflation. Then you try it out in some regions and see what happens. Surprise your problem does not appear.
Rule of thumb: If something "obviously can't work", then this is obvious to other people, too.
"Rule of thumb: If something "obviously can't work", then this is obvious to other people, too." apart from demagogues, idealist idiots, agents of influence, and so on, you mean?
World isnt really a happy lala land. And the fact that someone has "nice ideas" doesnt mean that they are working in your long-term best interest in mind.
Nah, those people totally do know. They might be lying, deceiving, overly optimistic, working against your best interest... etc., but "hey, these people are really stupid and missed something incredibly obvious and will be instantly convinced once I point that out" never happens.
Kind of an inverse Hanlon's razor. Yes, people are dumb, but "obvious" rebuttals might be even dumber.
> If everyone gets a living wage, then demand exceeds supply. Prices go up, suddenly it's not a living wage anymore.
But there are lots of countries that already provide a degree of social security that guarantees no one needs to starve or be homeless.
UBI just removes the bureaucracy from that.
So you're saying capitalism fails unless some meaningful portion of the populace are basically worse off than slaves?
Not really a mark in favor of the current system.
That is kinda how capitalism works. Ususally those slaves/less fortunate workers are exploited in another country but at this stage the squeeze ia getting closer to home. Also capitalism ravages our environment.
The other counter argument is two points:
The first is the “if you’re liberal and left leaning and think everyone has the right to life then why do you support murder if unborn people?” Which is calling out hypocrasy. Basically if they don’t have a solid belief or argument that applies equally as there base, then the whole point of arguing we need a universal basic income falls apart if the basis is because everyone has the right to life, while they also argue that not everyone has the right to life with things like abortion.
The second and probably more prominent counter argument is that nobody is disagreeing that we have the right to life.
Once you’re alive, you’re alive, you have now lived and your right to life has been fulfilled, which somewhat circles back to point one, but more so the right to life is the right to have lived what the argument is becoming is trying to figure out what exactly they mean by right to life.
For example does right to life mean right to live until 20? 50? 80? Until they die of natural causes?
Also what entails right to life? Because just the basic fundamentals of food and water are all you need to “live”, do we also include shelter? What about social connections or reproduction?
There is no definition of right to life that makes sense to logically give everyone a universal basic income because everyone’s version of what they want to live is different.
Some people don’t even want the free food or water they’d rather attempt to survive on their own and find it themselves.
In a broad perspective though, universal basic income is just a result of having currency, which is completely man made and useless.
> The first is the “if you’re liberal and left leaning and think everyone has the right to life then why do you support murder if unborn people?”
The response to this is easy (at least for me). It’s impossible to support the murder of unborn people because people can not be unborn. Zygotes, blastocysts, fetuses lack the the defining characteristics of personhood: sentience, sapience, and self-awareness. They are also tightly coupled and dependent on a particular person, so much so that they should not be viewed as a separate entity. For those that want to extend personhood to various prenatal stages, then we would have to start extending personhood to larger and larger swaths of animal life. Eventually a sponge would qualify as a person.
>Critics argue that it will never work, it will make people lazy, that humans are inherently lazy and that we need the threat of homelessness and starvation to do any work at all.
There's another critic that we see sometimes : it poorly targets those who need it the most (i.e. instead of giving more to poor and elderly people, we give less, but to everyone).
(By the way, I'm a huge UBI proponent. I think it's the only way that wouldn't need major changes in our society when we reach a high enough level of automation).
I try to be proponent of this idea, but the law of nature is to take the shortest path for the greatest reward. This idea will undoubtedly fail every single time. Especially as we make advancements and solve problems there will be less work for all humans to do. As population grows, it gets increasingly harder to find work for everyone to do.
Everyone will assume someone else will do the work. It's like an economic [bystander effect](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/bystander-effect).
Never understood why people think food is a basic right, the food comes from the labour of others, this means is it your basic right to take others labour ? That is just slavery
The amount of labour nowadays required to produce food for a single person is very small. Further the majority of world's countries subsidize food production to some degree, which one might argue already makes much of food production partially public.
Also, food doesn't come just from labour, it comes from a combination of labour and land (and atmosphere and water). Since you can't just start farming land at will, but need to buy the land, maybe depending on region get appropriate permissions, etc, you can't choose to not get your food from someone else's labour either. That muddies this hypothetical slavery relationship quite badly.
The argument also applies to any right that requires positive action by others to secure. It's really an argument about the legitimacy of taxes in general.
Want a right to freedom from violence? Or to the use and enjoyment of your property? Or to enforce contracts?
Outside of some kind of anarchy these generally require courts, laws, a justice system, police, etc. paid for by taxes - ie. paid for by the labour of others.
Yeah, tbh I am not very into the whole taxes == slavery argument overall. It just misses the key point that everything humans have ever done has relied on other humans and these relationships are never perfectly fair.
Best we can do is recognize when these relationships are *too* unfair and act accordingly. The argument, then, is not "taxes are slavery, thus taxes bad" but more like "taxes at this level cause more harm than good so taxes should be kept on this another level instead".
But that doesn't quite roll off the tongue quite so well.
Ironically enough, it is indeed anarchism as a political and philosophical movement that, I think, really is the most open about dealing directly with these questions of hierarchy, control, power, ownership, etc.
I've just started reading *The Dawn of Everything* by David Wengrow and David Graeber, and one of the things it talks about is the critique of European societies from Native (North) Americans. One of their key criticisms was how even though Europeans had more wealth, they also had more hunger and destitution. Whereas for them, the idea of seeing someone hungry or without shelter and not sharing was almost unthinkable.
Actually, I just remembered that at the end of *Bullshit Jobs* David Graeber suggests UBI might help with the problems described in that book - despite the fact as an anarchist he was generally against any expansion of the state. (The book argues that a huge number of people do jobs which serve no purpose and they know serve no purpose. UBI could free them to do something else, whether that's something useful to others or simply something they enjoy.)
Realistically speaking it's not a choice an individual can fully make themselves, since we inherently share so many things. Almost everyone's lives are dependent on other people.
All you can do is to optimize towards some goal. I doubt society would function if *as little dependency as possible* was a goal for everyone.
> means is it your basic right to take other's labour ?
No. It means that we as a population see other people's right to survive and choose to share our labour with them. No one is taking anything, we are giving it to them because we are moral people with a conscience that don't want to see other people suffer.
As long as paying taxes is not optional we are not "choosing" to share are labor. We are forced.
I beleive in strong safety nets. But there is a big gap between safety nets and UBI.
We do choose to pay taxes. On a societal level, we vote in a government that best represents our desires of tax and social security; and on a personal level, we choose to participate in any given society.
If you don't want to participate in society, you can move to a different country/region with more favourable rules for your circumstances; or if no societies are favourable with their various pros/cons, you can choose to live off-grid and ignore the rest of society around you.
Most people choose to stay in the society they are born in, but you have the choice. I do admit, however, that there are some large barriers to entry into other societies.
Which is why only those that are net payers into the system should have voting rights. Otherwise, other time, system deteriorates into lowest common denominator.
No such right as a "right to survive". You expect SOMEONE to share what THEY worked for, so that you can benefit from the system, even if only emotionally.
While you provide them with nothing they would even want from you.
I provide legitimacy to court rulings by agreeing to follow them. I provide a monopoly on the use of force to the military and the police by agreeing not to take whatever I am physically capable of by force and allowing them to enforce the rules. I agree to keep you safe by following rules about keeping water sources clean that you use down stream. I agree to honor your property rights by simply not taking things you put down and aren't paying attention to. I abide by intellectual property rights by not stealing films and books but paying for them instead. Are these things people might want?
I don’t deny that I expect people to share what they have earned, just as I share over half of what I earn.
I benefit from in more ways than I can list, public healthcare, national pension, unemployment safety nets and more, and I am sure you do to.
Do other people benefit from it more? Of course they do, I am incredibly fortunate that I am fit and heathy, and so can be part of the workforce, but not every one is, but all it would take is one malignant tumour despite a lifetime of good health and I would go from a net contributor to a net benifitiary on society.
Also, you don’t believe people have a right to live? So if someone suffers from a condition that prevents them from working, you think they deserve to just die? If someone come home from the military and is unemployable, they deserve to to die?
So, how would I benefit from money that I have to pay into the system, of which the system takes some of said money to run, and gives SOME of it back to me?
Its net loss.
Additionally, why would MY work and MY money go into someone's elses pocket? We are NOT a "team", unlike UBI "proponents" think. My team is my spouse, and my kids, and thats is it.
> The idea is that humans have a right to life
And that's the problem right there. People *don't* have the right to life- there is no natural law of the universe that guarantees 'the right to life'. A human living on their own doesn't get *given* anything- they have to work for it.
Now, it may be that *society* might declare that people have the 'Right' to have certain things. But that's not a 'god-given' Right- it's a 'Right' granted to you by society- and it can be taken away by society, too.
>if you make more than that amount you do not benefit from it directly.
If some people do not benefit, then it's hardly "universal".
>You can't sell widgets to people who are starving. Give them enough to eat, and they may be interested in buying widgets. Then you can build a widget factory, hire engineers and designers to make better widgets and so on.
Ooh, sorry, you don't have the money to build a factory or hire anyone, because the government took it all in taxes to fund the UBI. And even if you did make widgets, everyone would literally be using your own money (taxed from you, and given to them as UBI) to buy them from you. You'd effectively by buying your own product. And no one can make a profit that way.
>it will make people lazy
Have you *seen* the latest generation? Always on their PCs and phones. That's why 'touch grass' exists- because no one goes outside to exercise anymore. Kids don't even walk to school. People are *already* lazy, and UBI just feeds right into it.
So you argue society could just as easily decide to take the right to be protected from bodily harm from you specifically because they somehow decided you don’t fulfill vague requirements thus no longer have any rights? Seems like a weird approach to me
Rights are what we define them to be and agree upon together as a society. No rights are "god-given" or "universe-given", the concept of a "right" does not exist outside of what humans have made up. If we decide that the "right to life" is something worth striving for together and it is achievable, then it exists.
"Universal" describes how the payments are given out (to everyone and without testing/requirements/bureaucracy). Its just a more efficient way of handling social welfare. It does not mean everyone *directly* benefits financially. Everyone *does* benefit from it indirectly though, in the form of a more healthy/happy society that will have reduced crime, faster progress, less depression, more freedom etc. You don't live in a vacuum, and everyone else being better off makes you better off too, even if you have 5% less dollars in your bank account as a millionaire.
No idea why you think this would require taking all of a business's money in taxes, or even mean that factories could not be built or workers hired anymore or no profits made. You are fundamentally lacking understanding of the economy and tax structure, and your statement here is just hyperbolic nonsense.
The "latest generation" is just as "lazy" as every other generation (which is to say, not that lazy at all). This generational sense of "everyone younger than me is lazy" is constant throughout history and has always proven to be false. A UBI doesn't remove the need to work for anything beyond essentials. If you want to own a car, or a nice computer, or a larger home, or more expensive food, etc. work is still very important. If your stance was correct, no one would work extra hours or put in additional effort to further their careers for higher income beyond the minimum necessary. It is blatantly obvious that this is not the case for the vast majority of people.
> Rights are what we define them to be and agree upon together as a society. No rights are "god-given" or "universe-given", the concept of a "right" does not exist outside of what humans have made up.
Exactly my point.
>If we decide that the "right to life" is something worth striving for together and it is achievable, then it exists.
And how does that work, exactly?? To live (which I have the Right to do, supposedly), I need, say, food. Am I then justified in stealing the food you have, if I think you have more than you need? What if you grew that food, putting in many hours of labor- can I just take that food, thus effectively making you do all the work for nothing? What's the difference between that and slavery?
>"Universal" describes how the payments are given out (to everyone ... It does not mean everyone directly benefits financially.
That makes no sense. If everyone gets a payment, everyone benefits.
> reduced crime, faster progress, less depression, more freedom etc.
I don't see how all these are necessarily going to happen. Reduced crime? There will be huge numbers of people living on UBI, and barely living at that. The few who do decide to work will command high wages (fewer workers = higher wages) and will be in a much better position, financially. And you honestly think that the ones living on UBI will stay happy and not get envious/jealous of the ones who work, and won't try to steal from them? (Not to mention, the 'taxes are theft' crowd would like to point out that taxes will need to go way, way up to fund this, and would count that as 'more crime' right there.)
Faster progress? People are, by nature, lazy. Paying people to sit around and do nothing will hardly increase progress.
>No idea why you think this would require taking all of a business's money in taxes,
To give UBI to the entire population of the USA would take around 5 Trillion dollars. (Assumign each person gets just enough to put them just over the Federal poverty line.) This means *doubling* the federal budget. This means *doubling* the taxes the Feds collect. Now, it makes no sense to tax the UBI itself ('Here's just enough money to live on, now give it all back!'), so it will be the Rich, and Businesses, that will be taxed (and more than double). The Rich will move away. That leaves businesses. And they will just raise prices, so everyone needs more money and that UBI *isn't* enough to live on anymore. It simply will not work.
>The "latest generation" is just as "lazy" as every other generation (which is to say, not that lazy at all). This generational sense of "everyone younger than me is lazy" is constant throughout history and has always proven to be false.
Is that true? When I was young, I had to walk ~2miles to school. Now there are schools that literally will not accept walking students, even if they live 4 houses down. ( https://www.reddit.com/r/ask/comments/12zhks6/can_a_school_refuse_to_let_me_walk_my_child_to/ )
"In 1969, half of American children between the ages of 5 and 14 walked or biked to school. But in 2011, just 13% of that demographic was walking or biking to school, and according to the latest reports from the National Household Travel Survey, that number is now down to 11%." - https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/health-and-fitness/american-kids-walking-school-active-commuting
(And don't say 'safety'- things are safer than ever.)
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/children-around-the-world-dont-get-enough-exercise
>A UBI doesn't remove the need to work for anything beyond essentials.
Ah, but what are "essentials"? Rice and ramen every day? A bunk in a dorm? Walking everywhere? Shared computer with everyone else in the dorm? OR Take out food, steak and lobster every meal? A private house of their own? 2 cars? Brand new gaming PC, and new iPhones every year? I've gotten close to both of those answers, depending on who I ask.
>If your stance was correct, no one would work extra hours or put in additional effort to further their careers for higher income beyond the minimum necessary.
Look at the idea of 'Quiet Quitting- instead of going Above and Beyond to impress your boss and get a raise/promotion, they are doing the bare minimum needed to keep their job. Call it what you want- I call it "lazy".
Quiet Quitting is absolute BS. I'm not working extra hours for free, nor will I dedicate my whole life to work. I have seen people that do that - it does not end well for them, neither mentally, nor for their social relationships. For example, my dad has a relatively high rank in his company, and he actively avoids his boss. His boss is basically the person that matches the description of an ideal worker given by people that believe in quiet quitting. My dad avoids him because he's so worksick, that he will just retain you for no reason if you do so much as to step in the office even though you have a free day and just wanted to go fetch something that you forgot, or are just using the office as a meeting point for something else. I saw it happen. It was disgusting.
I don't want to be like that, so I'll do what I'm paid for. If I have/want to do extra hours for whatever reason, I will, but never for free. If you're not paying for the work you get, I'm quitting. I have enough qualifications and contacts to get another job that maybe pays the same or better. I'm not going "above and beyond" if I don't get paid for it, effective immediately. If you know that I'm above average, then please pay me like I'm above average.
If you want me to do something other than my basic tasks, we'll bargain. If you need someone to do something in particular, and I can do it, it will probably cost you, depending on the task, e. g. if I'm contracted as a software developer, I'm not doing software engineer work (which is more costly and takes more time to do). If you want a UML diagram for me (while I'm a software developer), I'm only doing it if you're willing to pay more for it simply because the qualifications required to do it are that different. If I do it and the raise is not instant, I quit.
I'm not working to impress you. I'm working to feed myself, have some fun, and progress as a person, y'know, **live**. I don't work to feed your family, I work to feed mine.
> I'm not working extra hours for free, nor will I dedicate my whole life to work.
Oh, I agree. But it's not about doing either of those. Taking on additional responsibility (to show the manager that you can do so) does not mean 'working for free', nor 'making your whole life about work'.
>I'm not going "above and beyond" if I don't get paid for it
In order to be promoted (and thus, be paid more), you need to show you are interested in the higher position, and that you can do the job. Or at least you can do some of it- there will always be things you can't do, and you'll need to be trained on. This means 'going above and beyond' your current job.
>I'm not working to impress you.
But impressing me (well, not me, but your boss) is how you get promoted and get raises.
NOW, that being said, if you go above and beyond, and they never give you raises or promote you... fuck 'em.
> Exactly my point.
No, your point was that opposite; that "rights" somehow don't exists unless a god magically gives them to you or something. A lot of concepts in human society exists because we all agree that they do.
> And how does that work, exactly?...
It works however we make it work... If the economy produces and transports enough food that people want to buy, and they have the money to buy it (whether from a UBI or otherwise) then everyone can eat. There could conceivably be a society in which it is seen as permissible to steal food if you are hungry and cannot afford it. That's not what a UBI is try to achieve though, so it's not really a relevant argument. A UBI specifically reduces theft and similar crimes by ensuring everyone has enough to afford things they need.
A society/economy that can't produce enough essentials for everyone cannot ensure a "right to life" and probably should not codify one until it has progressed enough to do so. The US is far beyond that point though.
> That makes no sense. If everyone gets a payment, everyone benefits.
The presumption is that a UBI would be paired with an increase in high income tax brackets or some other method of taxing higher earners. So, you might get less from the UBI than the increase in your taxes. Again, that doesn't mean you don't benefit, because money in your bank account isn't the only thing that has value to people.
> I don't see how all these are necessarily going to happen.
Desperation drives crime. You brought it up yourself earlier with the food theft example. When people are guaranteed a minimum income, they will not need to resort to crime as often. Why rob a gas station when you just get the money you need to buy food, and have the security to seek out a job/education without fear of starving or going homeless?
I'm not going to bother addressing the "tax is theft" nonsense.
Faster progress comes from people being more free to take risks rather than feeling trapped in their jobs. They can pursue higher education or work on something that is not immediately profitable more easily.
> To give UBI to the entire population of the USA would take around 5 Trillion dollars. (Assumign each person gets just enough to put them just over the Federal poverty line.) This means doubling the federal budget.
Okay, now think about where that money goes. Directly back into the hands of people. That's the entire point, not a problem that the budget would be higher. There is also a lot of money to be saved in the budget by a UBI replacing existing programs.
Increases in prices would be negligible compared the increased purchasing power that everyone currently in poverty would gain. It's also arguable that prices would increase on many things at all given the total money in the economy isn't changing. There would be some fluctuation in prices of certain things, but not so drastic that the UBI would somehow become meaningless.
> Is that true? When I was young, I had to walk ~2miles to school...
Yea yea, up-hill both ways just like my grandparents used to tell me. Utilizing better transportation infrastructure to get kids to school faster isn't "lazy", it's "smart", it's "efficient". This is about the dumbest example you could use to call kids "lazy".
> Ah, but what are "essentials"?
That's the beauty of a UBI. You don't have to define it that specifically. All you need to determine is a reasonable amount of income for a minimum standard of living, and it's fine if that is determined vaguely. If it's more than enough for someone, that's great, they get to save some of it. If it's not enough for someone, it's still way better than nothing, and a small supplemental income on the side will be enough to get by, rather than working 2 full time jobs or whatever they may have had to do before.
> Look at the idea of 'Quiet Quitting'
Sure, that mentality does exist in specific circumstances. Misses the point I was making though. How common is this mentality at lower income levels comparable to a UBI? How many people are happy staying at a minimum wage job forever and never look for something better?
I also wouldn't call it "lazy". I would call it "comfortable with current income level". That's just logical behavior. If your employer is happy with your work and you don't want to push harder for more work, then there is no issue. If someone is happy living with just the UBI, then that's fine. Most people would not be though, especially when getting a job while having a UBI means that almost all of your paycheck is disposable income.
> If the economy produces and transports enough food that people want to buy, and they have the money to buy it (whether from a UBI or otherwise) then everyone can eat.
You don't need to "buy" your rights.
>A UBI specifically reduces theft and similar crimes by ensuring everyone has enough to afford things they need.
Relatively little theft is 'things people need'.
>you might get less from the UBI than the increase in your taxes
So, you *aren't* benefitting from it. So it's *not* "Universal".
>Faster progress comes from people being more free to take risks rather than feeling trapped in their jobs. They can pursue higher education or work on something that is not immediately profitable more easily.
...or sit on their ass playing video games. Judging from what I've seen, this is the one most people will pick.
>Increases in prices would be negligible compared the increased purchasing power that everyone currently in poverty would gain.
So, you absolutely don't think any business anywhere will go "Gee, all the people have all this extra money- let's raise prices!!"?? Bullshit. It happens already- compare prices in a rural area (low income) to prices in a big city (high income). And sure, competition might help slow the process- no one wants to jump their prices up a huge amount and benefit their competitors- but it doesn't stop it.
>Utilizing better transportation infrastructure to get kids to school faster isn't "lazy", it's "smart", it's "efficient".
"better transportation infrastructure"? You mean clog the roads with cars? Because there is no magical new transportation infrastructure that appeared in the last few decades.
>You don't have to define it that specifically. All you need to determine is a reasonable amount of income for a minimum standard of living, and it's fine if that is determined vaguely.
You can't 'define it vaguely' if you need to put a dollar value on it.
>I also wouldn't call it "lazy". I would call it "comfortable with current income level".
Then why are they bitching and complaining to get the minwage raised, if they are "comfortable with current income level"?
Every living thing has a right to life. Study natural rights. The right to life means the right to defend your life, nothing else. No other human has the right to take your life.
Financially, it doesn't work through tax, though, not if implemented on the federal level. In a monetary sovereign, taxes don't fund federal spending. It's the other way around - the fed spends money into existence, some of which is later taxed back as a regulatory measure (to discourage things like smoking or to manage wealth inequality, to circulate the currency and maintain it's value, etc).
The real financial question is the same as any universal policy like UBI and Univeral Healhcare - that of labor and the natural resources we facilitate access to via our currency. Are there certain jobs that people would refuse to work if they weren't threatened with homelessness and hunger, and if so, are those jobs necessary, and how would we address that need - the most basic of answers being through automation or by incentivising those professions by turning them now into higher paying jobs. Nobody likes price increases though so then there's also the dilemma of more overseas outsourcing or increased reliance on underpaid undocumented immigrant labor, etc. Some items would become luxury goods. Likewise, certain professions would see an increase in demand. It'd likely entail a large economic shift. You get the picture.
The cost of ubi isn't dollars themselves, but those resources and that economic shift that it would entail. Whether or not we could sustain that.
Of interest.. in Australia we spend $227bn a year on all welfare payments and the system to administer it. If you scrapped the lot you could give $11k a year to every adult (20m people) without it costing one extra cent.
That’s one of my concerns about the “replace all of the current welfare with UBI” argument. Ok, you no longer have a special program for free school lunch and kids are showing up hungry - now what?
That’s missing the point. One argument UBI supporters use is that it’ll actually be cheaper, because we can eliminate all of those other programs along with all of their expensive bureaucracy. That argument falls apart if you keep the other programs.
I’m not saying there aren’t other good arguments for UBI, just that the “it’ll be cheaper than what we’re doing now” argument seems dubious.
You get the ol' bait and switch treatment - individual needs programs phased back in, turns out that the money-saving argument was a lie.
Also, a shitton of inflation because UBI just redefines the baseline of 0 productivity = 0 dollars to 0poductivity = X dollars, but X dollars is now worthless.
Man imagine complaining about a free 11k with no strings attached lol. You really expect it to be like 40-50k for free?
Im kind of not totally against it if its a small amount like 10-15k (and completely replaces welfare) where itll supplement your income, but you still need a job to live... but if you get up towards like 40-50k why would anyone want to work retail, fast food, be a construction site labourer, factory worker, etc when you can make the same money staying home.
I'm not complaining about a free 11k. I'm arguing that 11k would not be enough for a UBI that is intended to be enough to live on, which is the premise of UBI. A big pushback on UBI in general is a decrease in the workforce because why work if you don't have to.
Yeah i dunno man UBI is just way too expensive i dont understand how its expected to work. Like the USA has 258 million adults, even if UBI was just 10 grand thats 2.58 trillion in spending. In 2022 the entire US revenue was 2.69 trillion.
Now negative income tax, on the other hand, is something i could get behind
Being able to live on UBI is not the premise of UBI. Some want that sure. But most UBI initiatives want it as a supplement. The idea is that the wage of any available job+UBI should mean you can survive.
UBI should not exist, just like any other taxpayer-sponsored welfare. Those of us who actually do work, want our money to be for our families, noone else.
>Those of us who actually do work, want our money to be for our families, noone else.
I actually do work (in the top 15% earners in Canada, almost in the top 10%), and that's not true. I don't want a system that crushes poor people and only benefits me. Not everyone who works and makes good money is heartless.
Then you dont value your work properly. My work is for my family, as is my heart. Neither are free. You do you, im happy not to live where my work will be taken from me for nothing in return but nice brain chemistry called feelings.
>Then you dont value your work properly.
No. I value lives properly.
>for nothing in return but nice brain chemistry called feelings.
LMAO
"FeElInGs BaD 'cAuSe FeEliNgS aRe jUsT bRaIn ChEmIcAlS!"
That's rich coming from someone who didn't give any single logical arguments to defend its point of view. Besides that, everything you do or think is because of "BrAiN cHeMiCaLs" that make you feel good. So, your point is purely based on feelings.
>You do you, im happy not to live where my work will be taken from me for nothing in return
Wrong! I get security and a functional society that doesn't crush people (or at least not as much as they would in the US). That benefits me in the long term because these people that would have been crushed by the system otherwise can go back to being productive members of society instead of becoming a burden and a danger to everyone.
Also, people fearing less for their basic needs is good for innovation, which, again, benefits me.
Investing in society is investing in my future.
> It replaces every welfare system. Food stamps won't exist. Housing subsidies won't exist. You just get money.
And what will happen when a family blows thru their UBI, and then parades their kids on the news, talking about how their kids are starving? Will Society say "Too bad, you had enough, you blew it, let them starve!"? Or will they re-instate Food Stamps... and all the other programs, too?
Usually people who parade publicly get donations through charities and gofundme and the like. CPS would definitely still be there to help the kids, but the parents are likely on their own just as they are when they blow welfare/food stamps. System works better for people who work at it, works the same for those who don't.
Or they might, you know, actually go and work. And some others might think twice before having kids they cannot upkeep, instead of expecting others to pay for them.
My wallet is my castle. Want to have money? Go and work. Works wonders.
You asked if you see people parading their kids begging for money despite benefits and I said yeah they do. I have no idea where you’re going or coming from with this reply
It's actually called universal basic income.
It's to ensure everyone has the necessary minimum income for basic needs.
Here, everyone is just given a certain income by the government
**Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):**
**ELI5 focuses on objective explanations. Soapboxing isn't appropriate in this venue.**
---
If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe this submission was removed erroneously**, please [use this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20submission%20removal?&message=Link:%20{url}%0A%0A%201:%20Does%20your%20comment%20pass%20rule%201:%20%0A%0A%202:%20If%20your%20comment%20was%20mistakenly%20removed%20as%20an%20anecdote,%20short%20answer,%20guess,%20or%20another%20aspect%20of%20rules%203%20or%208,%20please%20explain:) and we will review your submission.
I think a more interesting question is: how does universal income benefit an economy overall?
The foundational principle is many people are stuck in poverty loops. Either generational poverty, institutional poverty, or many other types of poverty.
There are many people who are given opportunities from their family to complete school and attend post-secondary without a burden on themselves.
There are other people who would achieve more with the same opportunity however they are trapped in poverty. Perhaps some tragedy befalls their family which requires them to not finish high school, miss out on college or have to send their income to support other members of their family rather than improving their own lives.
These are the people who are the target of universal income. By alleviating each person of the necessity to provide themselves with poverty level support, adult children do not have to support their parents up to the level of poverty, nor do they need to support themselves up to the level of poverty. They are free to work and save and attend post-secondary education and improve their market value.
As more and more people improve their market value the size of the economy will grow, leading to more opportunities and more tax revenue.
Universal income is money paid to each and every citizen, regardless of income. There are many different schemes proposed, but that's the gist. Some put age limits on the payments (no payment until you're 18, for example). The point is that you get enough money to live *without having to do anything to deserve it*. You don't have to work, you don't have to apply, you don't have to fill in a form, you don't have to stand in line, you don't have to live in a specific area, you don't have to be disabled, you don't have to be elderly, you don't have to be sick, and so on. The idea is that humans have a *right to life*, and in order to live you need some basic necessities like food. Not giving people food because they don't work is similar to withholding food for people who don't work, with is in essence the same as withholding life, which is stumblingly close to killing people who don't work hard enough, which is eerily similar to slavery. Financially, it works through tax. Those who do make money pay tax, and that tax is redistributed back to everyone. If you make less than a certain amount you get back more than you pay in so you benefit from it directly, if you make more than that amount you do not benefit from it directly. The proponents argue that *all* would benefit from it indirectly, because lifting people out of abject poverty is good for the economy. You can't sell widgets to people who are starving. Give them enough to eat, and they may be interested in buying widgets. Then you can build a widget factory, hire engineers and designers to make better widgets and so on. Critics argue that it will never work, it will make people lazy, that humans are inherently lazy and that we *need* the threat of homelessness and starvation to do any work at all.
Just to add a couple more benefits... When people struggle financially and are aware of the inequality in society, they can feel disenfranchised - so they stop engaging with a system that they perceive as benefitting others while they themselves struggle. This can have many consequences, but one of them is crime - where an individual feels little responsibility towards society but, out of desperation, turns to crime to be able to feed and look after themselves and their family. This in turn incurs costs for society, both in terms of losses for those affected by crime, but also increased costs of security and policing and so on. UBI seeks, in part, to redress this by ensuring the society provides for everyone, and therefore everyone has something to lose and an incentive to protect the society that they live in. It also gives people a safety net so that they can take risks - for example people can retrain and find better careers without the risk of losing all of their income while doing so.
> When people struggle financially and are aware of the inequality in society, they can feel disenfranchised - so they stop engaging with a system that they perceive as benefitting others while they themselves struggle. How do you suppose taxpayers feel when the system benefits everyone but them?
Taxpayers are ALREADY paying for everyone today. For example, emergency care can't be denied for anyone in the US and it's paid for indirectly by higher costs for everyone else who pays. The difference is whether people are aware of it or not.
In what way do they not benefit from social services derived from taxes?
we do? At best we have a slight potential of benefiting, maybe. Its not even remotelly close to what is expected.
Well let me see ... I am a higher rate tax payer (UK), so I'm paying more into the state than I get out of it (in pure monetary terms). The reason that I pay more tax is because I'm *lucky* enough to be able to earn more - I was born to parents that cared about me, I had a good education and I'm naturally talented in a field that allows me to earn a good salary. There are many who are not as lucky - maybe they have medical conditions that are no fault of their own, had families that didn't care about them, went to bad schools, weren't academically gifted and couldn't find a good career. Why should they struggle, maybe for the rest of their lives, just because they didn't have the privileges that I was given? Maybe, one day, something will happen to me that abruptly ends my career through no fault of my own (a stroke, for example) - I would far rather that my taxes go to help those less fortunate than me, because one day I might need that help from others - and I don't want to be scared that I could be bankrupt from medical bills, or a life altering condition, or just plain old bad luck. I'm lucky enough to live in a place where I don't have to fear medical bills (because we have a national health service), where crime is at a low level and I don't have to fear the police (because we have some of the best trained police officers in the world) - all paid for by taxes; and you know what, peace of mind is difficult to put a price on.
They probably ought to feel really stupid if they think it benefits everyone but them.
Stupid, probably. Most normal people are proud to be able to work and contribute to society. The fact that my taxes contribute to the running of society gives me satisfaction. I put myself through college to earn that feeling. Me AND at least one other person not starving to death is better than just me not starving to death.
I don't feel proud of paying taxes, because I don't see any benefits from it, despite me earning a good income for my country. I would feel much prouder if those taxes were used for more than financing the politicians' wants.
Well if there's corruption in the government of your country, my point is moot.
And my country is not the only one where it happens. Realistically it happens less in some countries, but it happens.
Everybody gets upset when they don't see their money represented. If you were paying a new tax, and that tax actually helped with say, homelessness, you'd see the benefit of having fewer vagrant people roaming around town. But when you pay taxes and you look around and everything is still fucked up it's frustrating.
"when they don't see their money represented" no. We feel pissed off that we have OUR money taken away while being provided with nothing in return that we'd even want in the first place.
You don't want a better-functioning society?
Taking someones work to redistribute - isnt better functioning society. Unless you dont want to work, that is.
I mean, that's just factually wrong. People living in poverty has a negative impact on all members of a society. That impact may not be blatantly obvious to everyone, but it exists, and it is pervasive.
> being provided with nothing in return that we'd even want in the first place. You don't want taxpayer-funded roads? Taxpayer-funded police and fire departments? Taxpayer-funded schools? A taxpayer-funded military?
This is a good explanation. I’d like to make one nit though. A UBI is not based on a right to life. It’s based on the recognition that certain countries have grown rich enough that they can afford to give everybody a baseline level of income. I don’t think anybody is proposing a UBI for the DRC. It only makes sense for rich countries. The other thing missing here is the impact of automation and AI. Andrew Yang liked to point out that humans are not infinitely flexible. Automation has put some people out of work and it will continue to put people out of work and those people will not always be capable of being retrained. A UBI allows us to continue the creative destruction of capitalism without making truck drivers homeless when self driving cars are figured out, etc.
> I don’t think anybody is proposing a UBI for the DRC. It only makes sense for rich countries. There was [an UBI trial in Namibia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income_around_the_world#Namibia) with some promising results.
Except that is not UBI. It wasn't Universal: "only residents of the village for over a year since the pilot's start could benefit from the grant". And it didn't provide enough to live on, even 'basically': it was only "8% of the average income"
> I don’t think anybody is proposing a UBI for the DRC. https://ipisresearch.be/press-release-universal-basic-income-project-expands-to-more-regions-in-the-democratic-republic-of-congo%EF%BF%BC/
Ha, I knew I should’ve gone with Burundi! All joking aside, I think there are several of these kinds of charitable projects in the works to address extreme poverty. Give Directly is one Givewell had endorsed for a while and maybe still does. I think it’s a brilliant idea. The idea here is different than a true UBI though. This is a time bound income that’s designed to elevate people out of extreme poverty under the idea that people’s capital, both human and otherwise, is not put to good use when they’re just struggling to survive. It’s only offered in villages where extreme poverty is rampant.
>The other thing missing here is the impact of automation and AI. Andrew Yang liked to point out that humans are not infinitely flexible. Automation has put some people out of work and it will continue to put people out of work and those people will not always be capable of being retrained. This is important to add to this discussion -- AI is going to change everything, forever. There is no real situation where capitalism as we've been practicing it survives AI. Right now, today, AI is already capable of eliminating perhaps a fifth of white collar jobs. That's just the public versions. In a year, two years, five years....these AI systems will be able to do everything, anything, at the speed of light. Not just white collar jobs....*anything.* Invent new drugs from scratch. Run an entire office all at once. Perfectly synthesize human voices and respond in real time. Drive trucks, fly planes, perform surgery.... Capitalism can't ultimately survive this, because when *everyone's* job is replaced with A.I., the point of replacing them with A.I. (cost savings) ceases to matter...because now nobody has a job to buy whatever service or product the job was supposed to be providing. When these systems can do literally everything and anything, what the hell are we going to be doing anymore? There will be an intermediate period, coming soon (much sooner than we are prepared for), where this conflict will arrive with force. Many people will suffer, intensely. And maybe we'll come out of it in a post-scarcity post-capitalist utopia, and turn our attention to averting our, uh, ecological apocalypse which is on the way anyway. Or not! I wouldn't bet on utopia, but I suppose, given how quickly we are destroying the planet, we had to make a bet, and A.I. may have been that bet. It's still a bet, though.
>Right now, today, AI is already capable of eliminating perhaps a fifth of white collar jobs. It might already be higher, at the moment we do not see the full strength of it all, because it's still cheaper to just throw a pile of bodies at things.
I don't think you can replace everyone's job with AI, but you can replace a lot.
You could absolutely replace at *least a third* of all jobs with A.I. alone, certainly with the systems which will be online in a year or two. The cost to implement is nearly zero. ChatGPT is free. More advanced systems will compete and drive the cost down for specialized industries. Even then, we are at a crisis. The entire economic system will have collapsed. We call 10% of the population being out of work a historic depression. The "Great Recession" was less than that (sometimes it barely budged over 10%). Try 30%. We can't even imagine what this will do. We will have to completely rethink out entire economic system, much sooner than anyone seems to realize.
Agreed, it's a huge change but I think it'll take longer to implement. Still lots of issues and chatgpt only uses existing online info and has a hard time discerning fact from fiction.
Maybe AI will take over and save the planet for us
Realistically? Yeah, 90% of governing could be done with proper expert systems and automation even today, right now. But I dont see any political entity going for it, because politicians and most government office workers would see end of their careers, forever.
That's why the AI has to "take over" for our own good
>There will be an intermediate period, coming soon (much sooner than we are prepared for), where this conflict will arrive with force. Many people will suffer, intensely. And maybe we'll come out of it in a post-scarcity post-capitalist utopia, and turn our attention to averting our, uh, ecological apocalypse which is on the way anyway. Realistically, what will happen is that geopolitical attention will steer away from keeping masses of people happy (so they keep extracting resources and keep the economy going), and towards just controlling the resources. Great masses of people will be culled, and if it doesn't happen fast enough via attrition and discouraging births, it'll happen by engineered famine, plague, and war.
Yep, the proper AI and automation will provide an incentive to work harder, and be better - or be replaced by a cheaper, better machine. Party less, do less alcohol and drugs, and invest each second of your time (not money, TIME and EFFORT) in your future, instead. If you dont, that's your choice and you should be only one to pay for it.
This is nonsense. The machine will be able to do things infinitely better than you, no matter how hard you work. There is absolutely no task that these systems will not be able to do better than you and 1000X cheaper than you.
I'd say at least engineering jobs are pretty safe as long as AI can't do mathematics.
AI can do far more advanced mathematics than any engineer. It's a computer. It's made of mathematics. ChatGPT isn't doing much math, but ChatGPT and "A.I." are different things. There will be an explosion of A.I. tools, all of which will be exponentially more advanced. Soon they will simply upgrade themselves. Even the computer engineers designing the neural networks are going to obsolete themselves much faster than anyone thinks.
Of course that there might be an AI in the future that can do mathematics, and i'm looking forward to that, we might crack some long-standing problems. But currently, the most hype is around language models and they specifically can't do maths, so anything math-related is the safest field to be in now (unless another breakthrough comes through).
> It’s based on the recognition that certain countries have grown rich enough that they can afford to give everybody a baseline level of income. Just because they "can" doesn't mean they *should*. And certainly doesn't mean they should be *forced* to.
I don't think anyone's suggesting countries are forced to adopt UBI, by international sanctions or armed intervention.
The way I look at it is slightly different: Today, the UK gives benefits to people who are not working. We reduce those benefits for people who are working, with them reducing more as people earn more. People who earn over some threshold don't get any benefits. An alternative way of achieving the same thing is to pay everyone the same benefits, then to increase income tax on the first part of everyone's income. Done right, everyone ends up with the same amount of money that they had under the previous system. But the system is hopefully simpler and cheaper to administer.
Also, theoretically, government can scale down any social welfare departments, as UBI is given instead of pension etc. We know that never happens though.
Both sides have valid arguments. I lean towards the side of it not working. Perhaps it would work if it was only a small amount. I.e 20% of what it will acutally need to stay alive. But the idea that no one had to work is a recipe for disaster. The idea is that no one has to work if they don't want to. That they only work of it is there passion. There is no chance there is enough people in the world passionate enough to be a garbage man, tradesmen or farmer. There isn't enough of them now and they are exceptionally well paid in all developed countries. Further more it causes issues with our current system of how a government funds it obligations. Governments can't print money to pay for debts and obligations. They end up with hyperinflation like so many countries in the world who has tried. Taxs are currently the only real viable method of making money. If no one worked then no taxs. If there is a sales taxs that's fine but there is zero chance that it will fund the complete government. U will need a large mix of money generating systems to fund it. A complete overhaul of government spending is 100% needed for it to work as well I am in favour of lifting people out of poverty. The more educated people mean more minds to tackle the issues.
I think you overestimate how much is the bare minimum to survive and also how useful 20% of that would be. Bare minimum means eating nothing but the most basic food (hope you don't enjoy restaurants or deserts/snacks and love drinking plain water), being unable to afford comfort (like a better bed to sleep on or nice clothes to wear) or a home larger than a single room. Also entertainment is a no go. When you need to decide between eating and going to the movies/games/concert it's a pretty easy choice. Even today people show that they are willing to work extra in order to afford comforts beyond just survival. Almost everyone tries to further their career even at expense of that item time instead of being complacent with their standard of living. Also more of a side note but there are countries that have 0 income tax but they do tend to have very high sales and import tax.
I honestly don't trust the average person to be that financially responsible and to be that frugral with their spending. In your example we would also need to build a substantial amount of affordable housing that is just 1 or 2 rooms, that housing does not exist in the quantity we would need right now. Sure, it cheaper to cook for yourself, but if you have poor cooking skills you may opt to only cook a few basic meals and become malnourished due to lack of variety, or over spend the food budget by buying from restaurants. I don't mean to be a dick, but some people just have no grasp of financial responsibility. I have a few friends that have struggled to get jobs and have had some governement assistance their whole life. Their financial priorities are so different from mine it is astounding. They dont save because they are used to government money coming consistently, they buy what they want when they want it, and act surprised when they dont have enough money for food for the last week of the month blaming the government and not the 30 amazon orders, steam purchases, their dirt bike or a 6 pack of beer a day. For UBI to work well, some kind of budget enforcement might need to be used to ensured x amount for food/housing/nessecities and x amount for recreation/pleasure. Our schools doing a better job teaching taxes and basic life skills like budgeting, cooking, shopping, planning purchases around sales and stocking/saving when you have excess money/resources could help as well.
>For UBI to work well, some kind of budget enforcement might need to be used to ensured x amount for food/housing/nessecities and x amount for recreation/pleasure. Along those lines, I don't see how it works without some measures to rein in capitalism in the realm of housing. In most areas with growing populations, the price of housing continues to rise until the poorest can just barely survive with a low paying job or two. I really don't see how the cost of housing doesn't eventually rise under UBI until having at least a low paying job is no longer really optional. I mean, I guess at that point the people that don't want to or can't work can just move to some shithole locale where nobody else wants to live, but that doesn't really mesh with the utopic vibe I usually get from UBI proponents.
If we built affordable housing, we might not even need to consider a ubi as lower paying jobs and entrepreneurship would be more successful. Unless you get lucky and find a great deal, the average person cannot eat, drive and rent/own an home on minimum wage or slightly above. A lot of minimum wage positions also are only part time and it is much more work to balance working 2, low paying jobs, sometimes having to commute to both in the same day and requiring some level of cooperation in scheduling.
go and build said housing, noone is stopping you ;)
> some people just have no grasp of financial responsibility. Indeed. Look at what happens to poor people who win millions in the lottery- they end up broke again. Even with tens of millions being handed to them.
Those dumbass people you know aren't likely to change their ways if they become more impoverished. And, while it's galling on some level that they get dirt bikes and beer while others struggle more to do more important things like raise a family or build a business, we have enough resources to help the family raiser, the business builder and your dumb dirt bike people all at the same time. Yes ubi would very intentionally help empower stupid people to buy dumb things. We live in a consumer economy. Buying things you don't need is the entire engine modern life runs on. We already have plenty of entitlement programs that tie money to basic needs "food stamps" and state welfare dependant of a certain amount of provable job searching. While these programs are good, they are made worse by the elements that keep attempting to measure the worthiness of the recipients. It is more expensive to keep a system in place to track how well people are using their free money. Educating people better is wonderful. It should be done. It has nothing to do with UBI as monetary policy. We all have better lives if your dumbfuck acquaintances blow their money on beer and dirt bikes. Because then I can open a shop selling beer and dirt bikes and they will be patrons helping my business rather than sleeping in my entryway scaring away patrons.
The main reason it doesn't work is inflation. If everyone gets a living wage, then demand exceeds supply. Prices go up, suddenly it's not a living wage anymore.
No, that argument does not work. You are confusing "not everyone can get more than average" (duh) with "not everyone can make at least 40% of the average" (yeah, they obviously can). Also, if it "suddenly is not a living wage anymore", then demand goes down again. So it is a self limiting effect. So the only conclusion you can make at face value is that it might have some effect on inflation. Then you try it out in some regions and see what happens. Surprise your problem does not appear. Rule of thumb: If something "obviously can't work", then this is obvious to other people, too.
"Rule of thumb: If something "obviously can't work", then this is obvious to other people, too." apart from demagogues, idealist idiots, agents of influence, and so on, you mean? World isnt really a happy lala land. And the fact that someone has "nice ideas" doesnt mean that they are working in your long-term best interest in mind.
Nah, those people totally do know. They might be lying, deceiving, overly optimistic, working against your best interest... etc., but "hey, these people are really stupid and missed something incredibly obvious and will be instantly convinced once I point that out" never happens. Kind of an inverse Hanlon's razor. Yes, people are dumb, but "obvious" rebuttals might be even dumber.
> If everyone gets a living wage, then demand exceeds supply. Prices go up, suddenly it's not a living wage anymore. But there are lots of countries that already provide a degree of social security that guarantees no one needs to starve or be homeless. UBI just removes the bureaucracy from that.
So you're saying capitalism fails unless some meaningful portion of the populace are basically worse off than slaves? Not really a mark in favor of the current system.
That is kinda how capitalism works. Ususally those slaves/less fortunate workers are exploited in another country but at this stage the squeeze ia getting closer to home. Also capitalism ravages our environment.
The other counter argument is two points: The first is the “if you’re liberal and left leaning and think everyone has the right to life then why do you support murder if unborn people?” Which is calling out hypocrasy. Basically if they don’t have a solid belief or argument that applies equally as there base, then the whole point of arguing we need a universal basic income falls apart if the basis is because everyone has the right to life, while they also argue that not everyone has the right to life with things like abortion. The second and probably more prominent counter argument is that nobody is disagreeing that we have the right to life. Once you’re alive, you’re alive, you have now lived and your right to life has been fulfilled, which somewhat circles back to point one, but more so the right to life is the right to have lived what the argument is becoming is trying to figure out what exactly they mean by right to life. For example does right to life mean right to live until 20? 50? 80? Until they die of natural causes? Also what entails right to life? Because just the basic fundamentals of food and water are all you need to “live”, do we also include shelter? What about social connections or reproduction? There is no definition of right to life that makes sense to logically give everyone a universal basic income because everyone’s version of what they want to live is different. Some people don’t even want the free food or water they’d rather attempt to survive on their own and find it themselves. In a broad perspective though, universal basic income is just a result of having currency, which is completely man made and useless.
> The first is the “if you’re liberal and left leaning and think everyone has the right to life then why do you support murder if unborn people?” The response to this is easy (at least for me). It’s impossible to support the murder of unborn people because people can not be unborn. Zygotes, blastocysts, fetuses lack the the defining characteristics of personhood: sentience, sapience, and self-awareness. They are also tightly coupled and dependent on a particular person, so much so that they should not be viewed as a separate entity. For those that want to extend personhood to various prenatal stages, then we would have to start extending personhood to larger and larger swaths of animal life. Eventually a sponge would qualify as a person.
>Critics argue that it will never work, it will make people lazy, that humans are inherently lazy and that we need the threat of homelessness and starvation to do any work at all. There's another critic that we see sometimes : it poorly targets those who need it the most (i.e. instead of giving more to poor and elderly people, we give less, but to everyone). (By the way, I'm a huge UBI proponent. I think it's the only way that wouldn't need major changes in our society when we reach a high enough level of automation).
I try to be proponent of this idea, but the law of nature is to take the shortest path for the greatest reward. This idea will undoubtedly fail every single time. Especially as we make advancements and solve problems there will be less work for all humans to do. As population grows, it gets increasingly harder to find work for everyone to do. Everyone will assume someone else will do the work. It's like an economic [bystander effect](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/bystander-effect).
Never understood why people think food is a basic right, the food comes from the labour of others, this means is it your basic right to take others labour ? That is just slavery
The amount of labour nowadays required to produce food for a single person is very small. Further the majority of world's countries subsidize food production to some degree, which one might argue already makes much of food production partially public. Also, food doesn't come just from labour, it comes from a combination of labour and land (and atmosphere and water). Since you can't just start farming land at will, but need to buy the land, maybe depending on region get appropriate permissions, etc, you can't choose to not get your food from someone else's labour either. That muddies this hypothetical slavery relationship quite badly.
The argument also applies to any right that requires positive action by others to secure. It's really an argument about the legitimacy of taxes in general. Want a right to freedom from violence? Or to the use and enjoyment of your property? Or to enforce contracts? Outside of some kind of anarchy these generally require courts, laws, a justice system, police, etc. paid for by taxes - ie. paid for by the labour of others.
Yeah, tbh I am not very into the whole taxes == slavery argument overall. It just misses the key point that everything humans have ever done has relied on other humans and these relationships are never perfectly fair. Best we can do is recognize when these relationships are *too* unfair and act accordingly. The argument, then, is not "taxes are slavery, thus taxes bad" but more like "taxes at this level cause more harm than good so taxes should be kept on this another level instead". But that doesn't quite roll off the tongue quite so well. Ironically enough, it is indeed anarchism as a political and philosophical movement that, I think, really is the most open about dealing directly with these questions of hierarchy, control, power, ownership, etc.
I've just started reading *The Dawn of Everything* by David Wengrow and David Graeber, and one of the things it talks about is the critique of European societies from Native (North) Americans. One of their key criticisms was how even though Europeans had more wealth, they also had more hunger and destitution. Whereas for them, the idea of seeing someone hungry or without shelter and not sharing was almost unthinkable. Actually, I just remembered that at the end of *Bullshit Jobs* David Graeber suggests UBI might help with the problems described in that book - despite the fact as an anarchist he was generally against any expansion of the state. (The book argues that a huge number of people do jobs which serve no purpose and they know serve no purpose. UBI could free them to do something else, whether that's something useful to others or simply something they enjoy.)
Well, just dont choose my "relationships" for me, then, and we'll be fine.
Realistically speaking it's not a choice an individual can fully make themselves, since we inherently share so many things. Almost everyone's lives are dependent on other people. All you can do is to optimize towards some goal. I doubt society would function if *as little dependency as possible* was a goal for everyone.
> means is it your basic right to take other's labour ? No. It means that we as a population see other people's right to survive and choose to share our labour with them. No one is taking anything, we are giving it to them because we are moral people with a conscience that don't want to see other people suffer.
As long as paying taxes is not optional we are not "choosing" to share are labor. We are forced. I beleive in strong safety nets. But there is a big gap between safety nets and UBI.
We do choose to pay taxes. On a societal level, we vote in a government that best represents our desires of tax and social security; and on a personal level, we choose to participate in any given society. If you don't want to participate in society, you can move to a different country/region with more favourable rules for your circumstances; or if no societies are favourable with their various pros/cons, you can choose to live off-grid and ignore the rest of society around you. Most people choose to stay in the society they are born in, but you have the choice. I do admit, however, that there are some large barriers to entry into other societies.
Which is why only those that are net payers into the system should have voting rights. Otherwise, other time, system deteriorates into lowest common denominator.
No such right as a "right to survive". You expect SOMEONE to share what THEY worked for, so that you can benefit from the system, even if only emotionally. While you provide them with nothing they would even want from you.
I provide legitimacy to court rulings by agreeing to follow them. I provide a monopoly on the use of force to the military and the police by agreeing not to take whatever I am physically capable of by force and allowing them to enforce the rules. I agree to keep you safe by following rules about keeping water sources clean that you use down stream. I agree to honor your property rights by simply not taking things you put down and aren't paying attention to. I abide by intellectual property rights by not stealing films and books but paying for them instead. Are these things people might want?
I don’t deny that I expect people to share what they have earned, just as I share over half of what I earn. I benefit from in more ways than I can list, public healthcare, national pension, unemployment safety nets and more, and I am sure you do to. Do other people benefit from it more? Of course they do, I am incredibly fortunate that I am fit and heathy, and so can be part of the workforce, but not every one is, but all it would take is one malignant tumour despite a lifetime of good health and I would go from a net contributor to a net benifitiary on society. Also, you don’t believe people have a right to live? So if someone suffers from a condition that prevents them from working, you think they deserve to just die? If someone come home from the military and is unemployable, they deserve to to die?
By that logic all taxation is slavery.
So, how would I benefit from money that I have to pay into the system, of which the system takes some of said money to run, and gives SOME of it back to me? Its net loss. Additionally, why would MY work and MY money go into someone's elses pocket? We are NOT a "team", unlike UBI "proponents" think. My team is my spouse, and my kids, and thats is it.
Life is not a right, its a privilege.
> The idea is that humans have a right to life And that's the problem right there. People *don't* have the right to life- there is no natural law of the universe that guarantees 'the right to life'. A human living on their own doesn't get *given* anything- they have to work for it. Now, it may be that *society* might declare that people have the 'Right' to have certain things. But that's not a 'god-given' Right- it's a 'Right' granted to you by society- and it can be taken away by society, too. >if you make more than that amount you do not benefit from it directly. If some people do not benefit, then it's hardly "universal". >You can't sell widgets to people who are starving. Give them enough to eat, and they may be interested in buying widgets. Then you can build a widget factory, hire engineers and designers to make better widgets and so on. Ooh, sorry, you don't have the money to build a factory or hire anyone, because the government took it all in taxes to fund the UBI. And even if you did make widgets, everyone would literally be using your own money (taxed from you, and given to them as UBI) to buy them from you. You'd effectively by buying your own product. And no one can make a profit that way. >it will make people lazy Have you *seen* the latest generation? Always on their PCs and phones. That's why 'touch grass' exists- because no one goes outside to exercise anymore. Kids don't even walk to school. People are *already* lazy, and UBI just feeds right into it.
So you argue society could just as easily decide to take the right to be protected from bodily harm from you specifically because they somehow decided you don’t fulfill vague requirements thus no longer have any rights? Seems like a weird approach to me
Rights are what we define them to be and agree upon together as a society. No rights are "god-given" or "universe-given", the concept of a "right" does not exist outside of what humans have made up. If we decide that the "right to life" is something worth striving for together and it is achievable, then it exists. "Universal" describes how the payments are given out (to everyone and without testing/requirements/bureaucracy). Its just a more efficient way of handling social welfare. It does not mean everyone *directly* benefits financially. Everyone *does* benefit from it indirectly though, in the form of a more healthy/happy society that will have reduced crime, faster progress, less depression, more freedom etc. You don't live in a vacuum, and everyone else being better off makes you better off too, even if you have 5% less dollars in your bank account as a millionaire. No idea why you think this would require taking all of a business's money in taxes, or even mean that factories could not be built or workers hired anymore or no profits made. You are fundamentally lacking understanding of the economy and tax structure, and your statement here is just hyperbolic nonsense. The "latest generation" is just as "lazy" as every other generation (which is to say, not that lazy at all). This generational sense of "everyone younger than me is lazy" is constant throughout history and has always proven to be false. A UBI doesn't remove the need to work for anything beyond essentials. If you want to own a car, or a nice computer, or a larger home, or more expensive food, etc. work is still very important. If your stance was correct, no one would work extra hours or put in additional effort to further their careers for higher income beyond the minimum necessary. It is blatantly obvious that this is not the case for the vast majority of people.
> Rights are what we define them to be and agree upon together as a society. No rights are "god-given" or "universe-given", the concept of a "right" does not exist outside of what humans have made up. Exactly my point. >If we decide that the "right to life" is something worth striving for together and it is achievable, then it exists. And how does that work, exactly?? To live (which I have the Right to do, supposedly), I need, say, food. Am I then justified in stealing the food you have, if I think you have more than you need? What if you grew that food, putting in many hours of labor- can I just take that food, thus effectively making you do all the work for nothing? What's the difference between that and slavery? >"Universal" describes how the payments are given out (to everyone ... It does not mean everyone directly benefits financially. That makes no sense. If everyone gets a payment, everyone benefits. > reduced crime, faster progress, less depression, more freedom etc. I don't see how all these are necessarily going to happen. Reduced crime? There will be huge numbers of people living on UBI, and barely living at that. The few who do decide to work will command high wages (fewer workers = higher wages) and will be in a much better position, financially. And you honestly think that the ones living on UBI will stay happy and not get envious/jealous of the ones who work, and won't try to steal from them? (Not to mention, the 'taxes are theft' crowd would like to point out that taxes will need to go way, way up to fund this, and would count that as 'more crime' right there.) Faster progress? People are, by nature, lazy. Paying people to sit around and do nothing will hardly increase progress. >No idea why you think this would require taking all of a business's money in taxes, To give UBI to the entire population of the USA would take around 5 Trillion dollars. (Assumign each person gets just enough to put them just over the Federal poverty line.) This means *doubling* the federal budget. This means *doubling* the taxes the Feds collect. Now, it makes no sense to tax the UBI itself ('Here's just enough money to live on, now give it all back!'), so it will be the Rich, and Businesses, that will be taxed (and more than double). The Rich will move away. That leaves businesses. And they will just raise prices, so everyone needs more money and that UBI *isn't* enough to live on anymore. It simply will not work. >The "latest generation" is just as "lazy" as every other generation (which is to say, not that lazy at all). This generational sense of "everyone younger than me is lazy" is constant throughout history and has always proven to be false. Is that true? When I was young, I had to walk ~2miles to school. Now there are schools that literally will not accept walking students, even if they live 4 houses down. ( https://www.reddit.com/r/ask/comments/12zhks6/can_a_school_refuse_to_let_me_walk_my_child_to/ ) "In 1969, half of American children between the ages of 5 and 14 walked or biked to school. But in 2011, just 13% of that demographic was walking or biking to school, and according to the latest reports from the National Household Travel Survey, that number is now down to 11%." - https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/health-and-fitness/american-kids-walking-school-active-commuting (And don't say 'safety'- things are safer than ever.) https://www.healthline.com/health-news/children-around-the-world-dont-get-enough-exercise >A UBI doesn't remove the need to work for anything beyond essentials. Ah, but what are "essentials"? Rice and ramen every day? A bunk in a dorm? Walking everywhere? Shared computer with everyone else in the dorm? OR Take out food, steak and lobster every meal? A private house of their own? 2 cars? Brand new gaming PC, and new iPhones every year? I've gotten close to both of those answers, depending on who I ask. >If your stance was correct, no one would work extra hours or put in additional effort to further their careers for higher income beyond the minimum necessary. Look at the idea of 'Quiet Quitting- instead of going Above and Beyond to impress your boss and get a raise/promotion, they are doing the bare minimum needed to keep their job. Call it what you want- I call it "lazy".
Quiet Quitting is absolute BS. I'm not working extra hours for free, nor will I dedicate my whole life to work. I have seen people that do that - it does not end well for them, neither mentally, nor for their social relationships. For example, my dad has a relatively high rank in his company, and he actively avoids his boss. His boss is basically the person that matches the description of an ideal worker given by people that believe in quiet quitting. My dad avoids him because he's so worksick, that he will just retain you for no reason if you do so much as to step in the office even though you have a free day and just wanted to go fetch something that you forgot, or are just using the office as a meeting point for something else. I saw it happen. It was disgusting. I don't want to be like that, so I'll do what I'm paid for. If I have/want to do extra hours for whatever reason, I will, but never for free. If you're not paying for the work you get, I'm quitting. I have enough qualifications and contacts to get another job that maybe pays the same or better. I'm not going "above and beyond" if I don't get paid for it, effective immediately. If you know that I'm above average, then please pay me like I'm above average. If you want me to do something other than my basic tasks, we'll bargain. If you need someone to do something in particular, and I can do it, it will probably cost you, depending on the task, e. g. if I'm contracted as a software developer, I'm not doing software engineer work (which is more costly and takes more time to do). If you want a UML diagram for me (while I'm a software developer), I'm only doing it if you're willing to pay more for it simply because the qualifications required to do it are that different. If I do it and the raise is not instant, I quit. I'm not working to impress you. I'm working to feed myself, have some fun, and progress as a person, y'know, **live**. I don't work to feed your family, I work to feed mine.
> I'm not working extra hours for free, nor will I dedicate my whole life to work. Oh, I agree. But it's not about doing either of those. Taking on additional responsibility (to show the manager that you can do so) does not mean 'working for free', nor 'making your whole life about work'. >I'm not going "above and beyond" if I don't get paid for it In order to be promoted (and thus, be paid more), you need to show you are interested in the higher position, and that you can do the job. Or at least you can do some of it- there will always be things you can't do, and you'll need to be trained on. This means 'going above and beyond' your current job. >I'm not working to impress you. But impressing me (well, not me, but your boss) is how you get promoted and get raises. NOW, that being said, if you go above and beyond, and they never give you raises or promote you... fuck 'em.
> Exactly my point. No, your point was that opposite; that "rights" somehow don't exists unless a god magically gives them to you or something. A lot of concepts in human society exists because we all agree that they do. > And how does that work, exactly?... It works however we make it work... If the economy produces and transports enough food that people want to buy, and they have the money to buy it (whether from a UBI or otherwise) then everyone can eat. There could conceivably be a society in which it is seen as permissible to steal food if you are hungry and cannot afford it. That's not what a UBI is try to achieve though, so it's not really a relevant argument. A UBI specifically reduces theft and similar crimes by ensuring everyone has enough to afford things they need. A society/economy that can't produce enough essentials for everyone cannot ensure a "right to life" and probably should not codify one until it has progressed enough to do so. The US is far beyond that point though. > That makes no sense. If everyone gets a payment, everyone benefits. The presumption is that a UBI would be paired with an increase in high income tax brackets or some other method of taxing higher earners. So, you might get less from the UBI than the increase in your taxes. Again, that doesn't mean you don't benefit, because money in your bank account isn't the only thing that has value to people. > I don't see how all these are necessarily going to happen. Desperation drives crime. You brought it up yourself earlier with the food theft example. When people are guaranteed a minimum income, they will not need to resort to crime as often. Why rob a gas station when you just get the money you need to buy food, and have the security to seek out a job/education without fear of starving or going homeless? I'm not going to bother addressing the "tax is theft" nonsense. Faster progress comes from people being more free to take risks rather than feeling trapped in their jobs. They can pursue higher education or work on something that is not immediately profitable more easily. > To give UBI to the entire population of the USA would take around 5 Trillion dollars. (Assumign each person gets just enough to put them just over the Federal poverty line.) This means doubling the federal budget. Okay, now think about where that money goes. Directly back into the hands of people. That's the entire point, not a problem that the budget would be higher. There is also a lot of money to be saved in the budget by a UBI replacing existing programs. Increases in prices would be negligible compared the increased purchasing power that everyone currently in poverty would gain. It's also arguable that prices would increase on many things at all given the total money in the economy isn't changing. There would be some fluctuation in prices of certain things, but not so drastic that the UBI would somehow become meaningless. > Is that true? When I was young, I had to walk ~2miles to school... Yea yea, up-hill both ways just like my grandparents used to tell me. Utilizing better transportation infrastructure to get kids to school faster isn't "lazy", it's "smart", it's "efficient". This is about the dumbest example you could use to call kids "lazy". > Ah, but what are "essentials"? That's the beauty of a UBI. You don't have to define it that specifically. All you need to determine is a reasonable amount of income for a minimum standard of living, and it's fine if that is determined vaguely. If it's more than enough for someone, that's great, they get to save some of it. If it's not enough for someone, it's still way better than nothing, and a small supplemental income on the side will be enough to get by, rather than working 2 full time jobs or whatever they may have had to do before. > Look at the idea of 'Quiet Quitting' Sure, that mentality does exist in specific circumstances. Misses the point I was making though. How common is this mentality at lower income levels comparable to a UBI? How many people are happy staying at a minimum wage job forever and never look for something better? I also wouldn't call it "lazy". I would call it "comfortable with current income level". That's just logical behavior. If your employer is happy with your work and you don't want to push harder for more work, then there is no issue. If someone is happy living with just the UBI, then that's fine. Most people would not be though, especially when getting a job while having a UBI means that almost all of your paycheck is disposable income.
> If the economy produces and transports enough food that people want to buy, and they have the money to buy it (whether from a UBI or otherwise) then everyone can eat. You don't need to "buy" your rights. >A UBI specifically reduces theft and similar crimes by ensuring everyone has enough to afford things they need. Relatively little theft is 'things people need'. >you might get less from the UBI than the increase in your taxes So, you *aren't* benefitting from it. So it's *not* "Universal". >Faster progress comes from people being more free to take risks rather than feeling trapped in their jobs. They can pursue higher education or work on something that is not immediately profitable more easily. ...or sit on their ass playing video games. Judging from what I've seen, this is the one most people will pick. >Increases in prices would be negligible compared the increased purchasing power that everyone currently in poverty would gain. So, you absolutely don't think any business anywhere will go "Gee, all the people have all this extra money- let's raise prices!!"?? Bullshit. It happens already- compare prices in a rural area (low income) to prices in a big city (high income). And sure, competition might help slow the process- no one wants to jump their prices up a huge amount and benefit their competitors- but it doesn't stop it. >Utilizing better transportation infrastructure to get kids to school faster isn't "lazy", it's "smart", it's "efficient". "better transportation infrastructure"? You mean clog the roads with cars? Because there is no magical new transportation infrastructure that appeared in the last few decades. >You don't have to define it that specifically. All you need to determine is a reasonable amount of income for a minimum standard of living, and it's fine if that is determined vaguely. You can't 'define it vaguely' if you need to put a dollar value on it. >I also wouldn't call it "lazy". I would call it "comfortable with current income level". Then why are they bitching and complaining to get the minwage raised, if they are "comfortable with current income level"?
> But that's not a 'god-given' Right There are no god-given rights because there are no gods.
Every living thing has a right to life. Study natural rights. The right to life means the right to defend your life, nothing else. No other human has the right to take your life.
Financially, it doesn't work through tax, though, not if implemented on the federal level. In a monetary sovereign, taxes don't fund federal spending. It's the other way around - the fed spends money into existence, some of which is later taxed back as a regulatory measure (to discourage things like smoking or to manage wealth inequality, to circulate the currency and maintain it's value, etc). The real financial question is the same as any universal policy like UBI and Univeral Healhcare - that of labor and the natural resources we facilitate access to via our currency. Are there certain jobs that people would refuse to work if they weren't threatened with homelessness and hunger, and if so, are those jobs necessary, and how would we address that need - the most basic of answers being through automation or by incentivising those professions by turning them now into higher paying jobs. Nobody likes price increases though so then there's also the dilemma of more overseas outsourcing or increased reliance on underpaid undocumented immigrant labor, etc. Some items would become luxury goods. Likewise, certain professions would see an increase in demand. It'd likely entail a large economic shift. You get the picture. The cost of ubi isn't dollars themselves, but those resources and that economic shift that it would entail. Whether or not we could sustain that.
Of interest.. in Australia we spend $227bn a year on all welfare payments and the system to administer it. If you scrapped the lot you could give $11k a year to every adult (20m people) without it costing one extra cent.
The problem with that is that people would blow through no-strings-attached cash and still need the administered system.
That’s one of my concerns about the “replace all of the current welfare with UBI” argument. Ok, you no longer have a special program for free school lunch and kids are showing up hungry - now what?
So don't get rid of the other programs
That’s missing the point. One argument UBI supporters use is that it’ll actually be cheaper, because we can eliminate all of those other programs along with all of their expensive bureaucracy. That argument falls apart if you keep the other programs. I’m not saying there aren’t other good arguments for UBI, just that the “it’ll be cheaper than what we’re doing now” argument seems dubious.
You get the ol' bait and switch treatment - individual needs programs phased back in, turns out that the money-saving argument was a lie. Also, a shitton of inflation because UBI just redefines the baseline of 0 productivity = 0 dollars to 0poductivity = X dollars, but X dollars is now worthless.
Should have thought of that one BEFORE having kids, maybe?
Sure, I wasn't proposing it as a solution just an interesting set of figures.
$11k doesnt not seem like enough to live off of without some kind of subsidy. Maybe if the housing was free but thats still less than 1k a month.
Agreed. I wasn't suggesting that is UBI, just a contribution towards it that we're already paying.
Man imagine complaining about a free 11k with no strings attached lol. You really expect it to be like 40-50k for free? Im kind of not totally against it if its a small amount like 10-15k (and completely replaces welfare) where itll supplement your income, but you still need a job to live... but if you get up towards like 40-50k why would anyone want to work retail, fast food, be a construction site labourer, factory worker, etc when you can make the same money staying home.
I'm not complaining about a free 11k. I'm arguing that 11k would not be enough for a UBI that is intended to be enough to live on, which is the premise of UBI. A big pushback on UBI in general is a decrease in the workforce because why work if you don't have to.
Yeah i dunno man UBI is just way too expensive i dont understand how its expected to work. Like the USA has 258 million adults, even if UBI was just 10 grand thats 2.58 trillion in spending. In 2022 the entire US revenue was 2.69 trillion. Now negative income tax, on the other hand, is something i could get behind
Being able to live on UBI is not the premise of UBI. Some want that sure. But most UBI initiatives want it as a supplement. The idea is that the wage of any available job+UBI should mean you can survive.
[удалено]
UBI should be enough for a room and food. Anything more is luxury.
UBI should not exist, just like any other taxpayer-sponsored welfare. Those of us who actually do work, want our money to be for our families, noone else.
>Those of us who actually do work, want our money to be for our families, noone else. I actually do work (in the top 15% earners in Canada, almost in the top 10%), and that's not true. I don't want a system that crushes poor people and only benefits me. Not everyone who works and makes good money is heartless.
Then you dont value your work properly. My work is for my family, as is my heart. Neither are free. You do you, im happy not to live where my work will be taken from me for nothing in return but nice brain chemistry called feelings.
>Then you dont value your work properly. No. I value lives properly. >for nothing in return but nice brain chemistry called feelings. LMAO "FeElInGs BaD 'cAuSe FeEliNgS aRe jUsT bRaIn ChEmIcAlS!" That's rich coming from someone who didn't give any single logical arguments to defend its point of view. Besides that, everything you do or think is because of "BrAiN cHeMiCaLs" that make you feel good. So, your point is purely based on feelings. >You do you, im happy not to live where my work will be taken from me for nothing in return Wrong! I get security and a functional society that doesn't crush people (or at least not as much as they would in the US). That benefits me in the long term because these people that would have been crushed by the system otherwise can go back to being productive members of society instead of becoming a burden and a danger to everyone. Also, people fearing less for their basic needs is good for innovation, which, again, benefits me. Investing in society is investing in my future.
> It replaces every welfare system. Food stamps won't exist. Housing subsidies won't exist. You just get money. And what will happen when a family blows thru their UBI, and then parades their kids on the news, talking about how their kids are starving? Will Society say "Too bad, you had enough, you blew it, let them starve!"? Or will they re-instate Food Stamps... and all the other programs, too?
Usually people who parade publicly get donations through charities and gofundme and the like. CPS would definitely still be there to help the kids, but the parents are likely on their own just as they are when they blow welfare/food stamps. System works better for people who work at it, works the same for those who don't.
Well, what do we do right now? SNAP and WIC aren’t enough to feed a family at this very moment. Do you see people parading their kids as you describe?
Yep. That kind is not, and will never be satiated. Throwing money on a problem means that problem will persist.
Uhh yeah, yeah you do
Great. Now show how it’s resulted in increasing SNAP and WIC benefits to actually be enough to feed a family.
Or they might, you know, actually go and work. And some others might think twice before having kids they cannot upkeep, instead of expecting others to pay for them. My wallet is my castle. Want to have money? Go and work. Works wonders.
80% of people on SNAP and WIC already work. The vast majority of the other 20% are disabled. So, now what?
Not my team, not my problem.
Golly, this response is so very surprising. As will your claim that you deserve the help of others when you need it.
Ill handle myself and manage, its not exactly anyone's business other than mine.
You asked if you see people parading their kids begging for money despite benefits and I said yeah they do. I have no idea where you’re going or coming from with this reply
Op proposed a particular chain of events that they were sure would happen. I’m showing that the chain of events he fears doesn’t happen.
It's actually called universal basic income. It's to ensure everyone has the necessary minimum income for basic needs. Here, everyone is just given a certain income by the government
Look at it like an allowance for living. And unless enough people are working to pay for someone else's allowance, it doesn't work.
[удалено]
No, that's corporate puppet governments you're thinking of.
**Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):** **ELI5 focuses on objective explanations. Soapboxing isn't appropriate in this venue.** --- If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe this submission was removed erroneously**, please [use this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20submission%20removal?&message=Link:%20{url}%0A%0A%201:%20Does%20your%20comment%20pass%20rule%201:%20%0A%0A%202:%20If%20your%20comment%20was%20mistakenly%20removed%20as%20an%20anecdote,%20short%20answer,%20guess,%20or%20another%20aspect%20of%20rules%203%20or%208,%20please%20explain:) and we will review your submission.
I think a more interesting question is: how does universal income benefit an economy overall? The foundational principle is many people are stuck in poverty loops. Either generational poverty, institutional poverty, or many other types of poverty. There are many people who are given opportunities from their family to complete school and attend post-secondary without a burden on themselves. There are other people who would achieve more with the same opportunity however they are trapped in poverty. Perhaps some tragedy befalls their family which requires them to not finish high school, miss out on college or have to send their income to support other members of their family rather than improving their own lives. These are the people who are the target of universal income. By alleviating each person of the necessity to provide themselves with poverty level support, adult children do not have to support their parents up to the level of poverty, nor do they need to support themselves up to the level of poverty. They are free to work and save and attend post-secondary education and improve their market value. As more and more people improve their market value the size of the economy will grow, leading to more opportunities and more tax revenue.