Ask Lemmy

I have two strong opinions about basic income.

I'll be retired and collecting a government cheque lot before we get it in Canada.

I am 100% behind a basic income.

It’s shit.

A bandage on top of the festering open wound that is capitalism does not help anyone long term.

UBI is great, but First there's gotta be separate publicly-funded social nets for essentials like food, housing, water, electricity, heating...

Giving everyone $5000/mo to buy everything you want and need is far too volatile, and with poor budgeting people will end up trapped in debt spirals, needing microfinance loans to survive. I'd rather the government give $1000/mo to buy everything you want, then having public services to provide food, rent, and other necessities.

I fear that giving free-range UBI on its own will spawn a bunch of extreme examples that get disseminated en-masse by reactionary outlets to breed resentment of UBI and "handouts" in the eyes of the people. You'll have folks who are physically and/or mentally ill, who spend the whole allowance on drugs or gambling or porn or other controversial expenditures; then have to turn to charity to survive until their next UBI check. I'd need to know people would have that stable base before I'd feel comfortable with them being thrown that rope.

This is coming from seeing decades of USA arguments against welfare, then watching the "For The Children" fearmongering against the open internet. I just don't want a few extreme examples to have us all strung up.

it's definitely better than nothing, but it's more like a mitigation than a solution. it will need to continually chase some sort of cost of living index

It's a good concept in terms of having a social safety net and meeting basic needs. But if we keep everything else the same and just start giving everyone $5000 checks, then the rent and essentials will just magically go up in price to where it's basically the same as it was before.

Free healthcare for all before we even think about UBI.

I like negative income tax better. Basically you declare an amount that is the basic amount someone can live on, I.e. £20k and if you earn less than that your income is topped up by other tax payers. This has the advantage of high tax payers not being given a payment every month that they don't need.

The downside of it is that means testing still requires some amount of beaurocracy. That means you'd be unable to completely axe the department of work and pensions (DWP) for example here in the UK. My understanding is that you could do universal basic income and pay everyone in the UK £1000 per month and those costs would be totally offset by no longer having to finance the DWP so it's a budget neutral policy in terms of government spending.

I have made the argument to the "think of the economy" Republicans I have known for years, and come at it from a relatively heartless angle:

With automation (and now AI), it takes less and less humans to do the work. Not everybody can "start their own business," obviously, and when self-driving vehicles that don't require a human driver become effective and accepted, about 70 million jobs will disappear in a blink. And those won't be shifted to another industry, because it doesn't take 70 million people to code and maintain self-driving vehicles. And that is just the people who drive for a living. So either a significant chunk of the population is unemployed and can't buy things or live anymore without significant help from the government anyway, or everybody works less hours (and still paid a living wage) to spread out the available work hours.

If there is a UBI that effectively covers shelter and food, then people would need to work less to pay for other necessities and what luxuries they can afford. If everybody gets it, it is completely fair.

And you do this by taxing the shit out any automation (enough that the business still gets a benefit, but so does the society they are taking jobs from), and taxing billionaires.

This isn't about taking care of the sick or poor, or providing handouts, it's about maintaining society with the rise of automation, and it not being possible without it.

Those I spoke to were remarkably receptive to that argument.

Thanks for asking, I do not.

I think that currently a job guarantee is much more practical and doable, and would have much the same benefits. Why would a company get away with treating you like shit or paying like garbage when you can easily get a government job?

Yes. I think it's a mediocre hack, and a better system would be Universal Basic Economic Seasons. Every season (year), everyone loses all of their liquid cash and debts and gains $100,000 of new cash for that year. Throughout the economic season you have to buy licenses and crap from the government to do business; which is the replacement for income tax and is how the government must engage with the system (since they're effectively the 'dealer' they can't engage with the system as a normal player) Then at the end of the year, we put all the richest people up on a leaderboard.

Prevents runaway rng from allowing corrupt business to take off, capital gained in dirty ways has a definite time limit because come next cycle people will have equal capital and can avoid your gimmicks. A good businessperson wouldn't be build on one off lucky streaks, but rather true ability and skill that can be consistent repeated.

But UBI is close enough, and it's easier to explain, and it requires significantly less market infrastructure to change.

I wouldn't say it's a strong opinion, but I've never seen a convincing argument that "inflation" (read "greedy bastards") wouldn't immediately wipe out the extra income - which would be very bad if the UBI were to replace other forms of welfare.

I have a moderately strong opinion. I used to be very pro full minimum wage UBI until I calculated how much it actually costs and realised that it's more than the entire budget of my country.

I feel like there's a lot of benefit in a BUI system though, a $500 a month UBI is a substantial difference for people, prevents starvation and so on. It should be done in increments.

Currently the everyone in Iceland gets a tax break of around $400 on the first income they make, this amount should be directly deposited to everyone instead as a start and have it renamed as "Basic assistance" or something.

Then since you already have a payout scheme you add in all other benefits that essentially modify the amount such as disabilities, unemployment, maternity, child support payments, retirement and so on.

Having a unified payment scheme and just checking if people are eligible for benefits is less beaurocracy than having each institution handle payments each month.

Regardless of my opinions for it, it'll be a societal requirement with the advancement of technology unless we wish to move away from a monetary based system.

I personally am fully for it, I am concerned about the productivity drop if it is implemented too early, however such a system needs to exist for continued societal functionality.

I'm fine with it but feel it needs to slowly decrease as income goes up. To be clear this cannot have cut off cliffs and should err on the side of recipient. Bit there is no reason to give it to anyone with high income.

If you give it to us, we'll invest it which will fuck with the market or spend it on luxury goods. This all cause inflation that would negate the benefits.

Anyone who really needs it and is spending it all within some reasonable time doesn't have this inflation effect.

Same way people on food stamps don't cause the price of food to go up because they're not using it for excessive spending.

I understand part of the goal is no bureaucracy so I suggest it be part of the tax system. Everyone get it's but it's taxed away for high income earners in a way that is not tax avoidable.

I could also see it being added to the us tax system by simply expanding the child tax credit to include adults. That already has limits built in but that's a lump sum on a tax return so not an ideal distribution.