6 ms·

> Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't Already happens, with welfare. > Pred

• 7leafer 6y ago
  Already happens, why not make it even worse, right? Just for the alreadist heck of it.
  • sekai 6y ago
    Purpose of UBI isn't to improve your finance/risk management, that's an issue of education. Let's be real, there won't ever be a system that's perfect and has no minority of population that suffers.
    • elmo2you 6y ago
      I think you are touching upon an important point there. Because from the little I know, it appears that experiments with UBI have been largely more successful in places where people appeared to me smarter. Smarter, as in capable to make less ignorant/unwise decisions. Which indeed is largely proportional to education (although not grade or level), but can also in part come through culture and unwritten social habits and norms. However, this is also why I believe that there is nothing that could still save the USA. For starters, the changes it would need to prevent it from cannibalizing itself (as most crumbling empires), would require dismantling existing power structures and interests that will not hesitate to destroy everything (civil peace, country, world, everything) to "defend" themselves. Those powers are almost nowhere as powerful as the are in the USA, and I am everything but positive about reining those in. As long as those run the show, good luck with anything else.
      • devonkim 6y ago
        UBI experiments in countries like Kenya and India in poor rural areas with little education show few problems. Non-mainstream ideas like UBI and RCV are simply suggestions exasperated that things aren't working to avoid a complete disaster and dissolution of the US. Should we keep trying to yell and scream for the same solutions tried for decades and ultimately lost as the GOP has stomped on the fragmented left in the US? To me, the worst of all solutions is to KEEP doing the same damn things and continuing to lose like what Dems did with Russiagate. We might get gay marriage rights, perhaps some civil rights 2.0, and some semblance of Roe v Wade but to me that won't matter if we're in a full blown Civil War a few years from now. Pulling conservatives / regressives back to the middle and into something resembling good faith dialogue again is possible with UBI discussions at least that I haven't found with almost any other political topic in... decades. Granted, that'll be until Fox News gets their hands on it, but beating mainstream media narratives (both left and right) to the punch has been productive.
        • elmo2you 6y ago
          I do get those points, and I can agree with all of them. Just with the exception that I no longer believe that there is anything that can save the USA from itself (as in: literally nothing). It's not that there aren't initiatives/option that will obviously improve the current situation. It's that all the decision making paths towards any such progress are thoroughly corrupted and rigged, with the effects of such improvements being diametrically opposed to the personal interests of those who (both overtly and covertly) run the USA. These are people with a proven track record of "always winning". Meaning, they will sacrifice anything and everything, before having their own interests harmed. Good luck with that. It could prove far worse than civil war. The current political divide that everyone knows the USA so well for (but is mostly a crafted false dichotomy either way), might "evaporate" surprisingly quickly, once shit really hits the fan. The government might quickly turn to "protect the country at all costs", against any form of "chaos" and disturbance of "order" (and no, it won't matter which party will be in power). On the other hand, even in hopeless situations, people should never give up hope. However, I certainly expect no improvements as long as those who currently consider themselves untouchable, remain convinced that they are indeed that.
  • wesleywt 6y ago
    Some people die in car accidents. Let's not make it worse and give everyone a car.
  • imtringued 6y ago
    Why would it be worse? Slumlords exist because they are the only ones who accept the rent vouchers. If you just receive cold hard cash you can spend it in the conventional housing market. Welfare isn't meant to solve addiction but it could certainly kick start someone's life after they have recovered. People think drug addicts don't deserve welfare but a UBI would prevent that stigma because nobody gets excluded. Really the only valid concern is the first one. The rich have no interest in giving up their wealth but that is only natural.
    • devonkim 6y ago
      What really bothered me was that the cost to the government to drug test welfare recipients in Floridia cost more than to simply give them the money in the first place. Fiscal conservative me says "what was the point of that?" and the only answer I see making sense is that it's competing ideologies where the more important one wins, and in this case it's punishment over fiscal responsibility and abdicating any government responsibilities for solving the causes of widespread addiction. Which makes almost no sense given how strong the DARE program was in the 90s (granted, based upon hilariously bad trials and a sham by politicians as feel good projects)
• bsder 6y ago
  References, please. "Welfare" has a really big downside that it "phases out" (because of a "means" test) which locks people on one side of a "qualification" line. UBI wipes that perverse incentive out.
  • thu2111 6y ago
    That's a downside if you're on it. For everyone else who is working to pay for it, that's a rather big and fundamental upside. UBI proponents have an unfortunate habit of engaging in a form of sophistry: by saying everyone gets UBI, they try to pretend the policy has no losers. They forget about the feelings and needs of the huge numbers of people who would be paying for UBI instead of receiving it, regardless of how the government chose to manipulatively print the numbers on your final paperwork. Almost all people, almost all of the time, will just be paying more in tax in order to make the UBI work, so it'll all cancel out for them. Money will come in via UBI and immediately go out again in the form of higher taxes. It must be so because the resources to pay for UBI don't come from nowhere. They come from people. The reason welfare is means tested is because it's corrosive to society for workers to feel like they're being punished for working. People must work. That is fundamental. UBI makes the fraudulent claim that in theory nobody has to work, because everyone will receive UBI no matter what. This is obviously untrue and would be obviously untrue even to small children. What happens if everyone decides UBI is enough for them and just check out? Who works in the fields? Who builds the buildings? UBI has no answer for this. The dishonesty it would require from government and society would corrode away the pillars on which it sits.
    • leoedin 6y ago
      I think there's 2 fundamental questions here: 1. Does the current system encourage work? When you require means testing for benefits and have sharp discontinuities, the incentive to work isn't very strong. If a full time job pays $x/month and your benefits are $0.8x/month, then taking that full time job and losing the benefits only puts $0.2x in your pocket. That seems like a pretty poor deal for 40+ hours a week away from home. A UBI system which always paid the same amount would mean that any income from work would immediately go in your pocket. That's a very strong incentive to work - working would double or triple your income. 2. The type of work that people _must_ do for society to function is actually quite small. People must grow crops, run the water treatment systems, maintain roads, generate electricity, sure. But there's also a huge class of pointless jobs - pointless admin due to wasteful bureaucracy, entire divisions of defence contractors working on things which will never be used, a huge number of startups spending VC money on things which they have no hope of succeeding at, wasteful processes and systems at state telecom companies the world over. The only thing we can say about work in our economy is that it is done because someone wants to pay for it to be done. Not that it's necessary. Things become profitable because incentives exist to do them, but often these incentives are artificial or completely crazy. If UBI significantly alters the economic incentives, maybe that's not a bad thing. Does it really make a difference to society if someone spends their days pushing paper in a state telecom company, or creating art? There will of course be scroungers and lazy people. There's a lot of people who work right now who do the bare minimum as it is. They might drop out completely. There will also be people who are given a stable safety net from which to pursue a new career, return to education, care for their parents, build a house in the woods, build a business. I don't think we can say for sure which group will be larger. We don't have UBI right now, but we do have people who inherit money. And in my experience with people I've known who've inherited enough money to live for a few years, they've almost entirely continued working. The inheritance has given them a safety net from which to pursue a risky career or retrain. It's been a huge positive for them. In inheritance we already have an entrenched intergenerational BI for a group of society - UBI in many ways is recreating that for everyone.
• millstone 6y ago
  I wonder if this post was transported from 1996? The 2020 USA welfare state is bonkers stingy and punitive: prove you have these dependents and have been looking for work for this long and have not received benefits for this period... UBI would be an absolute sea change. It is not some mild extension of "welfare" which isn't really a thing. Go in clear-eyed!
  • JacKTrocinskI 6y ago
    Where would the money for UBI come from though?
    • DrAwdeOccarim 6y ago
      At first I scoffed at your question as typical nay-saying, but the rough math puts the price tag at $6T ($30k/y * 210mm adults). Where would we come up with the money to do this? Well, just getting rid of all government services both Federally and State would only generate $4T (can't get rid of defence, so this is a non-starter) How about getting rid of all taxes and just taxing transactions--like VAT, but more, so anytime money changes hands? 2019 was $21T, if you put a transaction tax of 30% in place, you would cover the cost of UBI. I am normally against flat taxes because they hurt poor people, but if you're giving them UBI would this the negative impact of a non-progressive tax? You'd simplify so much but getting rid of most accountants and the IRS, drop in the bucket but nice to see. They would certainly kick and scream. You'd also collapse real estate prices because cities would lose their need, but would kickstart rural economies like woah. This would help alleviate the rural/urban friction we're currently seeing. I'm just arm chairing, I have zero background in economics.
      • JacKTrocinskI 6y ago
        The more I think about it the more the UBI system starts to makes sense. Essentially I think taxing the ultra rich could redistribute wealth to the rest of society which would give them more buying power to stimulate the economy. Those that don't want to work can live on a minimum UBI monthly check but they wouldn't be living great which gives them incentive to look for a job so that they can raise their living standards. Even a McDonald's job could taken by someone looking to earn extra cash for whatever goal they have, probably wages would have to rise a bit so encourage people to go work there instead of just living on UBI but that's in general a good thing.