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Article says: > They can’t organize labor strikes if they have no labor. The idea of UBI isn’t to make it so that the masses never work again. The idea is so
by unoti 7y ago
Article says:
> They can’t organize labor strikes if they have no labor.
The idea of UBI isn’t to make it so that the masses never work again. The idea is so they don’t starve and die when between jobs. It’s to give people a real chance to live their lives while training or retooling. Money gives people choices and options. Today’s lack of choices for people at the lowest levels of income amounts to slavery.
Low income people can and will still work under a UBI system. So I’m not sure the article’s central thesis makes sense.
- leshow 7y agoYeah, it's not like 12k a year is enough to live on. People on UBI will still need jobs.
- maxerickson 7y agoA lot of time people talking about 'basic income' intend the 'basic' to indicate it would be sufficient to cover needs. 12k in the US is not so bad for costs other than healthcare (lots of families of 3 are living on $35,000).
- leshow 7y ago> 12k in the US is not so bad for costs other than healthcare (lots of families of 3 are living on $35,000). Lots may be doing it, but you'd be living in poverty your whole life. There's no way a family of 3 could get by on 35k a year without accumulating debt. 12k hardly covers just your rent in many places in the US
- dragonwriter 7y ago> 12k in the US is not so bad for costs other than healthcare (lots of families of 3 are living on $35,000). Expenses do not scale down linearly with household size.
- maxerickson 7y agoYes, people depending solely on a $12k basic income might have to, uh, do something like live with other people. Turns out that has a real impact on expenses even when they aren't family.
- dragonwriter 7y agoYes, living with other low-income, unable-to-afford-to-survive-independently can drive up your expenses considerably.
- walterstucco 7y agoI come from Europe, so I might be biased, but we have unemployment benefits and training is often covered by contracts, most of the time it is mandatory, for example at my current job I had to take mandatory courses (mandatory means you can get penalties for not completing them) on GDPR and privacy policies and two full courses on Coursera chosen by me, but paid and approved by the company, in order to get access to the yearly bonus.
- avac 7y agoIf anything, it seems like UBI would empower union workers with their strikes because they have something to fall back on while negotiating for better terms.
- ben_w 7y agoThere’s more than one model for UBI. I’m hoping for automation and UBI payouts to increase hand-in-hand: ultimately I’m expecting automation to make all human labour[1] uneconomical, and if that happens UBI will need to be enough to live on — but starting UBI at such a high level might prevent the economic development that is necessary to reach that level of automation. [1] with the sole exception of “celebrity”, a role that can’t scale