Universal Basic Income

[Phelia]

I think a better approach may be providing basic provisions. A housing allowance paid directly to the provider or bank/mortgage holder. Food and drink on an EBT/SNAP card type basis - usable only for groceries, no alcohol or tobacco. Same with medical and maybe clothing. In bigger urban areas with decent transit systems, a monthly transportation credit.

Maybe a smaller monthly cash/debit allowance to take care of the wants and desires.

I'm not sure a lump sum distribution would be the best. Too many don't know which bills need to be paid first.

The whole point is that these rules are based on YOUR assumptions and value judgment projections, not evidence. Study and study has shown that if you give people money, no strings attached, they will spend it responsibly. As soon as you start to add rules, you are a) increasing cost of administration and overhead and b) undermining your own objectives - these programs work better without them.

Seriously people. READ THE BOOK.

 

[LadyFunkenstein]

Can you cite a single definition that supports this? Cuz I think you just tricked yourself, you psychotic witch.

So you don't want my opinion nor citation for how I came to it, and instead want to engage in a name-calling match for some weird ego reasons I don't understand... I am not going to fall in line on what you want; go argue with someone else who finds your style enjoyable. I find you boring.

 

[Phelia]

The real success in the Dauphin experiment as recounted by Bregman is in the fact that the guaranteed income was truly "basic" and, thus, the people "did not give up their jobs."

Wealth has to be generated by something or somebody. I suppose a fully automated future is theoretically possible wherein the only thing humans have to do is chose their favorite companies in which to invest. I don't think that's a realistic expectation for even the youngest of us alive today.

The whole point is that it would only cover basic needs. There is still an incentive to work and earn more. And people want to work.

The point is to encourage even better work. Poverty affects your mental capacity. People are literally smarter and more capable when their brains aren't overtaxed by constant stress and struggle for survival. Canada's mincome is one of numerous studies Bregman cites in his book. Typically, a smaller percentage will decide to stop working and pursue the arts with their newfound financial freedom, but the majority still chose to work.

In fact, my hope would be that a universal basic income would decrease the kind of "work" you describe (sounds like day trading to me, which I see as just skimming off the top - you have contributed no value to society) and afford us the freedom to focus on work that is actually creating value for society. I think we have way too many jobs for the sake of having jobs. So many middle managers and administrators and consultants.

 

[Phelia]

So you don't want my opinion nor citation for how I came to it, and instead want to engage in a name-calling match for some weird ego reasons I don't understand... I am not going to fall in line on what you want; go argue with someone else who finds your style enjoyable. I find you boring.

If you're really that bored, it would have been faster to type "I don't have a link because I made it up or read it on /r/theredpill." I'll go ahead and file that away with your "evolution" facts, like how women are biologically hypergamous and gay teen suicide is darwinism.

No names necessary - people see exactly what you are.

 

[jaF0]

Study and study has shown that if you give people money, no strings attached, they will spend it responsibly.

You think buying street drugs is spending responsibly?

You think people will not use the cash payout for that?

 

[BotanyBoy]

Hmmm, maybe any of the other institutions mentioned in the BI article that's in question, you sputtering maroon.

Really? I don't think they have the flow beyond the experiment.

Who's going to do it on a national scale other than the government?

Name that mother fucker yourself if you can.

Again, Richard Nixon proposed UBI decades ago.

That doesn't make UBI anything other than hardcore socialism. Most sane people would call it flat out communism.....which in case you didn't know, is leftism.

In no world is he "STAUNCHLY leftist." Read a fuckin book.

He was a huge leftist....even started the war on drugs. The guy was an absolute control freak and wanted the government nanny state micromanaging everyone's lives right down to how they were allowed to fuck.

Do you even know what the difference between left and right is?

Maybe you should take a class because you clearly need some guidance on all that reading you've done if you think Nixon wasn't a leftist.

I never made the assertion that UBI is needed long term.

Then what did you mean by this?

It is easy to imagine that any developed economy will require something like UBI, long term.

 

[Phelia]

You think buying street drugs is spending responsibly?

You think people will not use the cash payout for that?

I fucking know they won't.

In May 2009, a small experiment involving 13 homeless men took off in London. Some of them had slept in the cold for more than 40 years. The presence of these street veterans was far from cheap. Police, legal services, health care: Each cost taxpayers thousands of pounds every year.

That spring, a local charity decided to make the street veterans — sometimes called rough sleepers — the beneficiaries of an innovative social experiment. No more food stamps, food-kitchen dinners or sporadic shelter stays. The 13 would get a drastic bailout, financed by taxpayers. Each would receive 3,000 pounds (about $4,500), in cash, with no strings attached. The men were free to decide what to spend it on.

The only question they had to answer: What do you think is good for you?

“I didn’t have enormous expectations,” an aid worker recalled a year later. Yet the homeless men’s desires turned out to be quite modest. A phone, a passport, a dictionary — each participant had ideas about what would be best for him. None of the men wasted his money on alcohol, drugs or gambling. A year later, 11 of the 13 had roofs over their heads. (Some went to hostels; others to shelters.) They enrolled in classes, learned how to cook, got treatment for drug abuse and made plans for the future. After decades of authorities’ fruitless pushing, pulling, fines and persecution, 11 vagrants moved off the streets.

Read. The. Book. Or. Stop. Talking.

 

[Freudian_Slit]

Then what did you mean by this?

Putting aside the fact you edited my quote to change the context,

I was referring to the means by which members of a highly automated society might satisfy their needs. I suppose the more general problem is, how does a society decide to distribute its resources when any service can be automated more efficiently.

 

[jaF0]

I fucking know they won't.



Read. The. Book. Or. Stop. Talking.

I don't need a book about a study of 13 people. Go to any downtown area in the US and count the thousands of junkies. All they know is junk. It's all many of them have ever known because their parents (if they knew them) were junkies and maybe their grandparents too.

And then there is the new-ish breed of meth heads. Their brains are fried. They can't think any more. They don't even know what month it is, let alone what day. Their ONLY decision making ability is to find meth. You give them a $10 bill, they see it as their next fix, not a hamburger and fries.

 

[Hard_Rom]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

Automation has been happening for hundreds of years. It has not yet caused declining levels of employment but it has displaced workers who spend their lives building up skills just to see them outmoded and find themselves forced into the unskilled labor market. Technological unemployment is a future fear, but automation-based employment instability has been around since before the Luddite movement gave it a name in the early 1800s.

Paul Vallée, a Canadian tech-entrepreneur and CEO of Pythian argues that automation is at least as likely to increase poverty and reduce social mobility than it is to create ever-increasing levels of unemployment. At the 2016 North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress in Winnipeg, Vallée examined slavery as a historical example of a period in which capital (African slaves) could do the same things that human labor (poor whites) could do. He found that slavery did not cause massive unemployment among poor whites, but instead increased economic inequality and lowered social mobility.

A commission of the German parliament discussed basic income in 2013 and concluded that it is "unrealizable" because:

it would cause a significant decrease in the motivation to work among citizens, with unpredictable consequences for the national economy
it would require a complete restructuring of the taxation, social insurance and pension systems, which will cost a significant amount of money
the current system of social help in Germany is regarded more effective because it's more personalized: the amount of help provided is not fixed and depends on the financial situation of the person; for some socially vulnerable groups the basic income could be insufficient
it would cause a vast increase in immigration
it would cause a rise in the shadow economy
the corresponding rise of taxes would cause more inequality: higher taxes would translate into higher prices of everyday products, harming the finances of poor people
no viable way to finance basic income in Germany was found

*There is a difference with Guaranteed Minimum Income*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income

 

[jaF0]

it would cause a significant decrease in the motivation to work among citizens,

They key here is that there won't BE any jobs, or at least not enough for the future populations which is constantly increasing.

More people over all. Less jobs overall. People with all kinds of desire won't be able to even apply for jobs that won't exist.

 

[Rightguide]

Basic income is having quite the moment.

Essentially a salary paid to people just for being alive, the idea has taken hold as a straightforward, non-partisan means to reduce wealth inequality, lift people from poverty, and increase life satisfaction.

Basic income experiments are underway in a number of countries, including Finland, the US, and Kenya. Many more experiments are expected to begin in 2017.

The idea of getting something for nothing has always had great appeal to those who hate to work, hate to do all of the things required to "earn" a proper and comfortable lifestyle. We have a whole non-productive government class concentrating on how this can be achieved and controlled by themselves with the full political support of a fully enfranchised indolent underclass as cannon fodder.

Breathless theoretics and social experimentation to jumpstart the lifeless form of Utopia are from time to time incubated in bureaucracies and in the rarified atmospheres of the laboratories of academe. The graveyards of Europe, the Russian Steppes, and Asia are where they buried the failures.

 

[Hard_Rom]

There will always be jobs. Unless you are talking about human like autonomous robots that can lay bricks and shingle roofs. Or that can fix robots in the field. Automation does not lead to mass unemployment. We have had increasing automation for 200 years with a quickly increasing population and unemployment has not risen significantly due to automation. Wealth inequality and poor paying jobs with little satisfaction or stability have though.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

The whole point is that it would only cover basic needs. There is still an incentive to work and earn more. And people want to work.

The point is to encourage even better work. Poverty affects your mental capacity. People are literally smarter and more capable when their brains aren't overtaxed by constant stress and struggle for survival. Canada's mincome is one of numerous studies Bregman cites in his book. Typically, a smaller percentage will decide to stop working and pursue the arts with their newfound financial freedom, but the majority still chose to work.

In fact, my hope would be that a universal basic income would decrease the kind of "work" you describe (sounds like day trading to me, which I see as just skimming off the top - you have contributed no value to society) and afford us the freedom to focus on work that is actually creating value for society. I think we have way too many jobs for the sake of having jobs. So many middle managers and administrators and consultants.

With regard to "day trading/skimming off the top" and the kind of work "actually creating value for society" I would simply say this: true innovation is what fundamentally creates value in society, and that isn't easy, either to envision or execute. Being innovative is an intellectual leap well beyond average. Not everybody has it no matter how much you might give them, but it is true that providing that "seed money" might well produce fruit in places where it is least expected.

But with regard to day trading, I think the democratization of equity investing to middle income investors has been a wonderful development that didn't really begin to takeoff until the expansive growth of mutual funds in the 50s and 60s. Where we were once a nation where most "smart people" had little more than savings accounts, there are few today who are not savvy to a vast range of investment vehicles from stocks, bonds, various IRAs, and associated terms like "asset allocation," "risk tolerance," and "investment horizon." It is not surprising nor disparaging that some of these would gravitate to "day trading."

Not that I particularly recommend it.

 

[jaF0]

There will always be jobs. Unless you are talking about human like autonomous robots that can lay bricks and shingle roofs. Or that can fix robots in the field.

As the skilled trades die out because the gamers won't come out of their Mom's basements, you'll find more things like prefabricated wall sections that can be set in place by crews of 3 or 4 instead of 20 or 30. And they'll do it by remote control from air conditioned vehicles on the street -- or in another city.

Malfunctioning robots will be collected by automated vehicles or drones and returned to another continent for repair and refitting.

 

[Phelia]

I don't need a book about a study of 13 people. Go to any downtown area in the US and count the thousands of junkies. All they know is junk. It's all many of them have ever known because their parents (if they knew them) were junkies and maybe their grandparents too.

And then there is the new-ish breed of meth heads. Their brains are fried. They can't think any more. They don't even know what month it is, let alone what day. Their ONLY decision making ability is to find meth. You give them a $10 bill, they see it as their next fix, not a hamburger and fries.

Again, that is one study of many presented in the book, and it is certainly more rigorous than your casual observations and assumptions.

I cannot believe how many people are comfortable making the same tired proclamations with no curiosity to seek evidence or think critically about these positions.

If having money really reduced people's desire to work, wouldn't you expect to see a world with no working billionaires and people dropping out of the workforce as soon as they'd accumulated sufficient wealth?

 

[Hard_Rom]

The idea of getting something for nothing has always had great appeal to those who hate to work, hate to do all of the things required to "earn" a proper and comfortable lifestyle. We have a whole non-productive government class concentrating on how this can be achieved and controlled by themselves with the full political support of a fully enfranchised indolent underclass as cannon fodder.

Breathless theoretics and social experimentation to jumpstart the lifeless form of Utopia are from time to time incubated in bureaucracies and in the rarified atmospheres of the laboratories of academe. The graveyards of Europe, the Russian Steppes, and Asia are where they buried the failures.

Support for basic income has been expressed by several people associated with right-wing political views. While adherents of such views generally favor minimization or abolition of the public provision of welfare services, some have cited basic income as a viable strategy to reduce the amount of bureaucratic administration that is prevalent in many contemporary welfare systems.

Support for basic income has been expressed by several people associated with right-wing political views. While adherents of such views generally favor minimization or abolition of the public provision of welfare services, some have cited basic income as a viable strategy to reduce the amount of bureaucratic administration that is prevalent in many contemporary welfare systems.

Various forms of libertarianism advocate a basic income. Modern discussion of a basic income is a North American thing with Canada's and the US's market based capitalist economic systems.

Ontario is experimenting yet again with a basic income test program.

I'm more interested in a living wage scenario. If you can find work but can't afford to work, you might as well go on welfare. Minimum wage needs to reflect the cost to live. If a family can't get by on less than 15 an hour than the minimum wage should be 15 an hour. What sort of family that looks like anything approaching a 'traditional' family has both parents working two jobs just to make ends meet and no hope of getting out of such a situation. This smacks of the day of the early industrial revolution. Days which preceded the modern welfare state.

Notice how Europe or North America haven't had a popular peasant uprising since the implementation of the modern welfare state.

 

[Phelia]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

Automation has been happening for hundreds of years. It has not yet caused declining levels of employment but it has displaced workers who spend their lives building up skills just to see them outmoded and find themselves forced into the unskilled labor market. Technological unemployment is a future fear, but automation-based employment instability has been around since before the Luddite movement gave it a name in the early 1800s.

Paul Vallée, a Canadian tech-entrepreneur and CEO of Pythian argues that automation is at least as likely to increase poverty and reduce social mobility than it is to create ever-increasing levels of unemployment. At the 2016 North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress in Winnipeg, Vallée examined slavery as a historical example of a period in which capital (African slaves) could do the same things that human labor (poor whites) could do. He found that slavery did not cause massive unemployment among poor whites, but instead increased economic inequality and lowered social mobility.

A commission of the German parliament discussed basic income in 2013 and concluded that it is "unrealizable" because:

it would cause a significant decrease in the motivation to work among citizens, with unpredictable consequences for the national economy
it would require a complete restructuring of the taxation, social insurance and pension systems, which will cost a significant amount of money
the current system of social help in Germany is regarded more effective because it's more personalized: the amount of help provided is not fixed and depends on the financial situation of the person; for some socially vulnerable groups the basic income could be insufficient
it would cause a vast increase in immigration
it would cause a rise in the shadow economy
the corresponding rise of taxes would cause more inequality: higher taxes would translate into higher prices of everyday products, harming the finances of poor people
no viable way to finance basic income in Germany was found

*There is a difference with Guaranteed Minimum Income*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income

We can read a wikipedia article dude. Why is that thinly sourced commission the only thing you excerpted? Really misleading. UBI is the foundation for an entire political party in Germany.

 

[LadyFunkenstein]

If you're really that bored, it would have been faster to type "I don't have a link because I made it up or read it on /r/theredpill." I'll go ahead and file that away with your "evolution" facts, like how women are biologically hypergamous and gay teen suicide is darwinism.

No names necessary - people see exactly what you are.

I don't post links regarding what I have to say because I speak for myself. If I wanted to find a link that backs me up I could easily do so. And one can easily find a link that states the exact opposite. That's why links are usually a waste of time, unless it is only about dry statistics and the like.

People can see whatever they like or hate about me. I have real world friends as I am not an obese shut in who desperately needs Lit for human interaction. I stopped caring about the views of The Clique when I turned 17. Your need to incite against me is sad, but really is of no consequence to me.

I dont read /r/ anything because redditt makes my eyes bleed. Furthermore, I did not give my opinion on UBI itself. As of now I lean towards being in favor of it out of necessity (though I think we will get fucked in a way I don't yet understand). I don't know what the "/r/redpill" general consensus is, but I would guess they are against it.

I am sorry you are still blind with rage over my hurting you with my fat chick comments 5 years ago. But you really look silly making things up from your place of pain. That said, it is probably healthier for you to bash me than to reach for another pint of Ben & Jerry's. So bash away.

Just don't assume where I fall on an issue because i don't jump up to kiss your ass. We actually agree on UBI.

 

[BabblingBrooke]

Richard Nixon proposed a Universal Basic Income bill - that's how obvious and non-partisan the idea was just a few decades ago. An honest investigation of the data from numerous experiments shows virtually none of the negatives (it will make people lazy, it will increase divorce, people will spend money irresponsibly, etc.), and that giving people money directly is both more effective and economical than a bloated welfare system with arbitrary rules meant to appease the "personal responsibility" morons. It is honestly a no-brainer that this is the next step for human progress.

Rutger Bregman makes the case beautifully, optimistically, and with boatloads of supporting data. I cannot recommend his book, Utopia for Realists, enough. Watch his TED talk.

Thanks for this. I'm going to check out that book.

 

[Rightguide]

Notice how Europe or North America haven't had a popular peasant uprising since the implementation of the modern welfare state.

Because they haven't run out of other people's money yet and they can run their printing presses around the clock. Try studying the Weimar Republic. There's a basic lesson there.

 

[Hard_Rom]

We can read a wikipedia article dude. Why is that thinly sourced commission the only thing you excerpted? Really misleading. UBI is the foundation for an entire political party in Germany.

If basic income was the answer it would have been implemented back in the 60s starting in North America. I'm all for a guaranteed minimum income or a living wage but not a basic income. I believe it would lead to an indulgent work force, if anyone wanted to work in the first place. The OP linked basic income with automation. Automation is not taking away jobs. It is reducing job quality though.

I use Wiki because you must back up any arguments with hard cold facts. Look at the RWCJ who spout blogger opinions and knee jerk reactionary arguments.

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

That Business Insider article conflates universal basic income - controlled by and doled out by The State - with receiving
free money from private charities/ citizens. That makes it intentionally dishonest. The question is, WHY are they being dishonest in their attempt to sell us on the idea?

It's one thing to watch a white man kneel down and swallow his rich master's gravy, but a black woman? Have you no shame? Private charities are and always were hilariously inadequate for such a task.

 

[Phelia]

With regard to "day trading/skimming off the top" and the kind of work "actually creating value for society" I would simply say this: true innovation is what fundamentally creates value in society, and that isn't easy, either to envision or execute. Being innovative is an intellectual leap well beyond average. Not everybody has it no matter how much you might give them, but it is true that providing that "seed money" might well produce fruit in places where it is least expected.

But with regard to day trading, I think the democratization of equity investing to middle income investors has been a wonderful development that didn't really begin to takeoff until the expansive growth of mutual funds in the 50s and 60s. Where we were once a nation where most "smart people" had little more than savings accounts, there are few today who are not savvy to a vast range of investment vehicles from stocks, bonds, various IRAs, and associated terms like "asset allocation," "risk tolerance," and "investment horizon." It is not surprising nor disparaging that some of these would gravitate to "day trading."

Not that I particularly recommend it.

Ah, apologies, I meant high-frequency trading, and it probably wasn't as much a parallel to what you said as it was an example of work that does not produce value.

I agree that people cannot be expected to contribute equally - the majority benefits greatly from the innovations of a few. And yes, I do think it's important to grow that latter group and clear the path for as many people as possible. It's actually something I'm surprised I don't hear more in healthcare debates. Theoretically, decoupling basic healthcare from employers makes it easier for would-be entrepreneurs to dedicate themselves to building new businesses and creating jobs.

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

https://www.inc.com/kimberly-weisul...ion-between-welfare-and-entrepreneurship.html

How Food Stamps Fuel Entrepreneurship

New research shows that people who become eligible for government benefits are much more likely to become entrepreneurs than those who do not.

Olds studied two government programs in particular: the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, better known as food stamps; and the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP. The latter is designed to provide health insurance for children in families that don't qualify for Medicaid but can't afford private insurance. Income thresholds to qualify for SCHIP vary from $23,850 for a family of four living in Tennessee to $83,475 for that same family in New Jersey.

Both programs were expanded in the early 2000s, providing a natural experiment for Olds to study. He found that those who became newly-eligible for food stamps were 20 percent more likely to own a small business. The effect for SCHIP was even greater: Those who were newly-eligible for the benefit showed a 23 percent increase in self-employment.

Even more impressive, says Olds, is that the effects were even stronger when he looked only at participants that owned a company that was incorporated. About 12 percent of U.S. families own any type of business, but only about four percent own an incorporated firm, says Olds. So researchers often look at incorporated firms as representing a measure of seriousness and progress in business-building that isn't necessarily present in unincorporated firms. Yet eligibility for SCHIP led to a 31 percent increase in incorporated businesses, and eligibility for food stamps led to a 16 percent increase in those same businesses. "Not only were there more ventures, but there were more higher-quality ventures," says Olds.

Takeaway: populations with welfare access will take risks and start businesses more often because they know that if they fail they won't starve.

Literally J. K. Rowling was an example of this. Without welfare in England she wouldn't have had the time or resources to write Harry Potter. She has testified specifically to this.