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Even assuming that the vast majority of people would keep working to maintain their standard of living, there are major issues with UBI: 1) The incentive to en

Even assuming that the vast majority of people would keep working to maintain their standard of living, there are major issues with UBI: 1) The incentive to enter the workforce is greatly reduced. Every high-school graduate would have the means to shack up with a few of their buddies and live the college lifestyle indefinitely. I'm currently a productive adult, but only because there was no alternative. UBI is an alternative. 2) The nest-egg required to retire is greatly reduced. If a married couple is saving up for retirement with a retirement income of 60K, they're currently need $2,000,000 to retire (pre social security). If that same married couple is receiving 12K each in UBI, the required nest-egg is almost halved to $1,200,000. That means couple can retire a decade earlier than they previously could. This will see millions of people retiring during what would have been their most productive (i.e. tax-payingest) years. 3) Much like a shorter work week, UBI will be a tremendous competitive disadvantage for US goods and services. When the labor market inevitably shrinks, wages will necessarily rise. This will a competitive drag on exports of US goods and services. I'm not saying that these things are bad. They sound great for the individuals in question. But they will eventually hollow out the workforce.

zhoujianfu 6y ago
Agreed... but the U.S. is about the pursuit of happiness, not the pursuit of a large workforce.
JakeTheAndroid 6y ago
Idk that I agree with these points really at all. If you are only making the COL, most people are simply not going to sustain the college lifestyle indefinitely. People have wants and needs and drives outside of financial hardship. Yes, it might mean kids 18-23 are relaxing a bit more on getting into the workforce, but thats ideally the age in which they are learning and getting prepared to get a real job. Ideally we want to remove those barriers of entry for them, and allow them room to develop. If financial hardship was a main factor of drive and high impact, productive work, we'd only see people under the poverty line entering into the high impact fields. That isn't the current reality. Also, people that are willing to group up and live a college lifestyle for 30 years are people who were unlikely to EVER get involved in high impact work. At worst it's a net neutral here. As for the retirement age, is that really terrible? Since we have established drive isn't inherent to financial hardship, it stands to reason people would continue to work through their prime working years. If people are now able to call it at 55, thats just a better quality of life for everyone, and ensure a constantly revolving job market. 3 is possible. But if we expect insane inflation due to UBI, then it invalidates all the other points you made, as now the UBI isn't meeting COL for a normal QOL. I don't think we have enough information in either direction to assume the impact to the workforce. When in history has this ever been achieved in a society that also has high social mobility? People have interests and drives and I believe they will always pursue these things. And instead of squandering peoples potential on useless jobs that they enter into only to make ends meet, we can allow them to achieve a much higher potential by contributing to something that better aligns with their skills.
fastball 6y ago
1) Everyone that wants to live a college lifestyle past 25 is already doing it, it's not hard where how things are currently (shack up with people, have minimum wage job, drink lots of beer). The vast majority of people want more out of life though. 2) One goal of UBI is to unlock human potential by allowing people to actual pursue things they care about. Smaller scale UBI experiments indicate that this most often means starting some form of small business. If you're doing something you actually enjoy, I think you are more likely to retire later, not earlier. 3) See above about unlocking potential. One of the greatest strengths of the US has always been the inventiveness of its populace. This would potentially be multiplied many times over by a UBI that allowed people to actually pursue things they want.

zhoujianfu 6y ago

Agreed... but the U.S. is about the pursuit of happiness, not the pursuit of a large workforce.

JakeTheAndroid 6y ago

Idk that I agree with these points really at all. If you are only making the COL, most people are simply not going to sustain the college lifestyle indefinitely. People have wants and needs and drives outside of financial hardship. Yes, it might mean kids 18-23 are relaxing a bit more on getting into the workforce, but thats ideally the age in which they are learning and getting prepared to get a real job. Ideally we want to remove those barriers of entry for them, and allow them room to develop. If financial hardship was a main factor of drive and high impact, productive work, we'd only see people under the poverty line entering into the high impact fields. That isn't the current reality. Also, people that are willing to group up and live a college lifestyle for 30 years are people who were unlikely to EVER get involved in high impact work. At worst it's a net neutral here. As for the retirement age, is that really terrible? Since we have established drive isn't inherent to financial hardship, it stands to reason people would continue to work through their prime working years. If people are now able to call it at 55, thats just a better quality of life for everyone, and ensure a constantly revolving job market. 3 is possible. But if we expect insane inflation due to UBI, then it invalidates all the other points you made, as now the UBI isn't meeting COL for a normal QOL. I don't think we have enough information in either direction to assume the impact to the workforce. When in history has this ever been achieved in a society that also has high social mobility? People have interests and drives and I believe they will always pursue these things. And instead of squandering peoples potential on useless jobs that they enter into only to make ends meet, we can allow them to achieve a much higher potential by contributing to something that better aligns with their skills.

fastball 6y ago

1) Everyone that wants to live a college lifestyle past 25 is already doing it, it's not hard where how things are currently (shack up with people, have minimum wage job, drink lots of beer). The vast majority of people want more out of life though. 2) One goal of UBI is to unlock human potential by allowing people to actual pursue things they care about. Smaller scale UBI experiments indicate that this most often means starting some form of small business. If you're doing something you actually enjoy, I think you are more likely to retire later, not earlier. 3) See above about unlocking potential. One of the greatest strengths of the US has always been the inventiveness of its populace. This would potentially be multiplied many times over by a UBI that allowed people to actually pursue things they want.