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No, what will stop people from working is that the people currently in charge of creating jobs will not bother to create jobs for everyone because "you have you

by Mz 9y ago

No, what will stop people from working is that the people currently in charge of creating jobs will not bother to create jobs for everyone because "you have your UBI." That's the problem. http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/05/ubi-is-pc-way-for-tech-giants-to-tell.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/05/ubi-is-pc-wa...

zem 9y ago
the idea that a job is something someone has to "bother to" create and hand to you already buys into the same sort of stratified inequality that you are complaining about with charity. if either way you have to depend on the people with capital and ownership to get money, how is being made to do something for it any better than being given it via the government taxing them and paying you a basic income? also i'm afraid i had to stop reading that blog post at "poor women cranking out babies", because i seriously cannot engage with that sort of thinking right now. however, i will address your earlier point about ubhc being better than ubi - why are you framing it as an either/or thing? ubhc is absolutely the end goal of a civilised society, but it doesn't obviate the need for a basic income, nor does a basic income presuppose the rest of the existing setup continues unchanged.
- Mz 9y ago
  I am a homeless woman right now. My alimony is roughly the amount of money being batted about as a figure for UBI. I have spent literally years on HN trying to network and figure out how one makes money in earnest on the internet because the only thing I need to make my life work adequately at this point is sufficient online income for supporting a middle class lifestyle. I face enormous obstacles in trying to get taken seriously and trying to get traction for my writing and trying to find out how in the hell you make money online while surrounded by endless men who know how to do exactly that. So I feel pretty strongly that the people currently being left out will just be left out all the more if they have a UBI. Maybe both of those problems can be solved. Maybe it doesn't have to be an either/or thing. But replies like yours in no way inspire me to believe that we can intentionally create a permanent underclass and still give them access to the means to create wealth. I have six years of college and I am finding it a huge uphill battle, in part because I am a woman. And poor women would start cranking out babies if you posit that we give everyone in the nation a check from birth, a thing I have written about before: http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/09/it-was-obsolete-before-we-opened.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/09/it-was-obsol...
  - zem 9y ago
    what about all the people who work long, hard hours (often doing two or three jobs), who still don't attain a middle class lifestyle? do you think, given the option of a ubi and those jobs, they would still continue to do them? the lack of basic income adds a huge distortion to the equation of "the work you do is worth X to me, but i will pay you Y for it, and X can be way greater than Y because your side of the balance sheet is Y + not starving". also, where do you get "permanent underclass" from? if you posit that there is some way to acquire skills that are so valuable people will pay you a middle-class salary for them, surely acquiring those skills is easier if you don't have to also do a laborious and crappy job at the same time. contrariwise, if you think that someone on pure ubi is doomed never to be able to transition from there to a job, what in that equation changes if you give that person a minimum-wage job instead of ubi?
    - Mz 9y ago
      You know, I am homeless right now and I don't know how I will eat for the rest of this month. I am finding your remarks insulting, depressing, frustrating and obnoxious. Are you doing anything to help lift me up while trying to prove your point that I am wrong and you are right? In my eyes, you continuing to argue this while doing nothing to help me grow my online income just supports my point of view that UBI will be yet another source of class divide. I have $10k a year unearned income and I have been on HN for several years. I am the top ranked woman here. I still can't make the business connections I need to figure out how the hell to make good money online. I don't know a stronger argument for what I am saying than my life and you can't be arsed to even finish reading things I have written. I don't plan to continue to engage you. I don't feel your argument is remotely in good faith. I think if you were right and I was wrong, then I would have long ago established sufficient income to get my sorry ass off the fucking street. Having $10k in unearned income in no way gives you the business connections you need and if other people for any reason don't want to make those connections with you, then trying to figure it out your damn self tends to involve painfully slow progress that has little hope of ever leading to a middle class income.
      - zem 9y ago

by Mz 9y ago

zem 9y ago

the idea that a job is something someone has to "bother to" create and hand to you already buys into the same sort of stratified inequality that you are complaining about with charity. if either way you have to depend on the people with capital and ownership to get money, how is being made to do something for it any better than being given it via the government taxing them and paying you a basic income? also i'm afraid i had to stop reading that blog post at "poor women cranking out babies", because i seriously cannot engage with that sort of thinking right now. however, i will address your earlier point about ubhc being better than ubi - why are you framing it as an either/or thing? ubhc is absolutely the end goal of a civilised society, but it doesn't obviate the need for a basic income, nor does a basic income presuppose the rest of the existing setup continues unchanged.

Mz 9y ago
I am a homeless woman right now. My alimony is roughly the amount of money being batted about as a figure for UBI. I have spent literally years on HN trying to network and figure out how one makes money in earnest on the internet because the only thing I need to make my life work adequately at this point is sufficient online income for supporting a middle class lifestyle. I face enormous obstacles in trying to get taken seriously and trying to get traction for my writing and trying to find out how in the hell you make money online while surrounded by endless men who know how to do exactly that. So I feel pretty strongly that the people currently being left out will just be left out all the more if they have a UBI. Maybe both of those problems can be solved. Maybe it doesn't have to be an either/or thing. But replies like yours in no way inspire me to believe that we can intentionally create a permanent underclass and still give them access to the means to create wealth. I have six years of college and I am finding it a huge uphill battle, in part because I am a woman. And poor women would start cranking out babies if you posit that we give everyone in the nation a check from birth, a thing I have written about before: http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/09/it-was-obsolete-before-we-opened.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/09/it-was-obsol...
- zem 9y ago
  what about all the people who work long, hard hours (often doing two or three jobs), who still don't attain a middle class lifestyle? do you think, given the option of a ubi and those jobs, they would still continue to do them? the lack of basic income adds a huge distortion to the equation of "the work you do is worth X to me, but i will pay you Y for it, and X can be way greater than Y because your side of the balance sheet is Y + not starving". also, where do you get "permanent underclass" from? if you posit that there is some way to acquire skills that are so valuable people will pay you a middle-class salary for them, surely acquiring those skills is easier if you don't have to also do a laborious and crappy job at the same time. contrariwise, if you think that someone on pure ubi is doomed never to be able to transition from there to a job, what in that equation changes if you give that person a minimum-wage job instead of ubi?
  - Mz 9y ago
    You know, I am homeless right now and I don't know how I will eat for the rest of this month. I am finding your remarks insulting, depressing, frustrating and obnoxious. Are you doing anything to help lift me up while trying to prove your point that I am wrong and you are right? In my eyes, you continuing to argue this while doing nothing to help me grow my online income just supports my point of view that UBI will be yet another source of class divide. I have $10k a year unearned income and I have been on HN for several years. I am the top ranked woman here. I still can't make the business connections I need to figure out how the hell to make good money online. I don't know a stronger argument for what I am saying than my life and you can't be arsed to even finish reading things I have written. I don't plan to continue to engage you. I don't feel your argument is remotely in good faith. I think if you were right and I was wrong, then I would have long ago established sufficient income to get my sorry ass off the fucking street. Having $10k in unearned income in no way gives you the business connections you need and if other people for any reason don't want to make those connections with you, then trying to figure it out your damn self tends to involve painfully slow progress that has little hope of ever leading to a middle class income.
    - zem 9y ago