16 ms·

I use to think UBI was a good thing, but looking at what's happened in the past year, I was completely and totally wrong. UBI would likely be a complete disaste

I use to think UBI was a good thing, but looking at what's happened in the past year, I was completely and totally wrong. UBI would likely be a complete disaster. It'd be less Star Trek and more The Expanse. This is a horrible idea.

neuromanser 6y ago
Can you expand on this? It seems you say you have less faith in humans. Correct?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
rubycon22 6y ago
What happened? Some people got a one-time $1200 check. What could they have done with $1200 that made you lose faith in UBI? Or are you referring to the $600 that supplemented the unemployment insurance? But those went to people who were just recently working and had their livelihoods wrecked by government action and/or inaction. I'm pretty sure you would agree they deserve that money and it's okay for them to do what they damn please with it. Even if that means them not going back to work for some time because they have the freedom to. Imagine how less fucked we would be if we just paid the majority of non-essential workers to stay the hell home. Less competition for the essential jobs, so people who do really want to work can work and the essential jobs will be filled.
- emteycz 6y ago
  It's not about what the people done and faith in them or their claims from moral or other points of views. These $1200 nearly destroyed the European economies. My country is forever indebted now, and they handed out much less and not even to everyone but a small portion of people.
  - rubycon22 6y ago
    What is the alternative in a situation where the government has forced many people out of work? You were going to have to pay one way or the other. It was just about a matter of when and what form of payment. Most of the world has decided that going into debt was better than paying with the lives of their people. You can renegotiate debt later on. It's just numbers in a excel sheet or some shit. Can't renegotiate the lives of dead people.
  - mtgx 6y ago
    Is it the checks that indebted the governments or the economy lockdown? I'd have to imagine the economy lockdown/slowdown has an orders of magnitude larger impact.
  - Scandiravian 6y ago
    National debt and private debt are two very different creatures. National debt is for the most part a good thing, since it's a measure of the amount of a national currency is in circulation Modern economic theory proposes that nations, with full control over their currency, have infinite spending power (aka can go into infinite debt) without any issues, as long as full-employment hasn't been reached This is of course not entirely possible for many EU countries, since being a member of the eurozone means the country does not have full control over its currency - which was a large contributor to, for instance, the Greek financial crisis
    - oblio 6y ago
      I don't know what kind of economic books you've read, but mine had terms such as "hyperinflation" in them :-) If anything, stuff like global currencies ($, €) bail out their respective owners because they're world reserve currencies. Some of the smaller Eurozone countries would have definitely defaulted, had hyperinflation, etc, without the Euro. Now they're in recession instead, which sucks a lot but still less than the alternative.
      - js8 6y ago
        MMT doesn't say you can't have hyperinflation due to economic mismanagement, it just says you can bootstrap yourself out of unemployment (a crisis) by printing money. Just because a government is printing money it doesn't yet mean they practice a sane economic policy, which would be to increase the demand to meet the supply of labor.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  It illustrates, if needed be, that handing meaningful amounts of money to all or most of the population in a recurring way is not sustainable. The responses to the covid lockdowns, which are incredibly expensive, were only considered because they were one-offs and time-limited. If payments are restricted to a minority, the poorest, then it boils down to what already exists in most European countries and the question is then "what's new?" In general UBI proposals are ideological solutions to ideologically-constructed problems. They are not realistic nor practical and thus thin on practical considerations and hard numbers.
  - chous 6y ago
    Most people are getting poorer. Their only way out is fighting for a job, but jobs are scarce, and the situation will get worse exponentially due to technological unemployment. That's not an ideologically-constructed problem. It's pure logic. What is ideologically-driven, in my opinion, is claiming that "other jobs will be created, so no need to worry". Which implies, on the other hand, that the poor deserve being poor, due to their own negligence, lack of education, or laziness. We don't need to care about them. We provide a capitalist system which rewards the brave and the competent, and it's meritocratic. That is pure ideology, not based on reality.
    - mytailorisrich 6y ago
      This not pure logic. This is a logical fallacy and a strawman argument. You do not put forward any argument to my previous comment, and in fact illustrates my point. At the moment there is an economic crisis due to the covid pandemic. This is a specific, time-limited issue and welfare has stepped up to help people, at an extreme cost. This is not sustainable and only considered because it is an emergency in nature. If jobs dry up due to automation then there will indeed be scope to discuss UBI based on taxing 'robots' (so a clear and plausible way of financing it) . This is not what UBI as proposed now is about. No-one has claimed that the poor deserve to be poor and/or do not deserve help. There are plenty of welfare schemes in Europe and quite a few of them result in effective UBI, but only for the poorer who actually need it.
asciident 6y ago
If you're talking about the stimulus checks, well they weren't universal, nor basic (but rather a long unpredictable negotiation), nor recurring income.
vladimirralev 6y ago
In the advertised forms, absolutely horrible idea, why would anyone introduce so much uncertainty in the monetary system is beyond me. There are smart ways to do it though, such as doing it in a second-tier currency that buys only essentials or directly in terms of food, shelter and education. Just a free STEM/business education will go a long way if we can find some way to keep students engaged and committed to put the effort to actually learn.
jillesvangurp 6y ago
Dismissing complex ideas in terms of cliches from popular fiction is not a great way to make policy. Based on the last year, you can conclude nothing because people, countries, and politicians were just panicking and trying to survive on incidental handouts which don't allow for planning a future. That's not basic income. Universal basic income would be living in the certainty that no matter what you will always have enough to take care of yourself and your family without obligations to do anything that you don't want to do. This is why libertarians like the idea because they don't agree being told how to live their lives by governments. UBI leads to different life choices; including maybe not spending your career working double jobs cleaning and flipping burgers in double jobs while still not making enough to cover rent, insurance, or the ability to retire. This kind of poverty exists in some places that are filthy rich (i.e. the US). But it is kind of an anomaly among other similarly wealthy (and even a lot less wealthy) countries. Elsewhere, it's basically what a lot of us already have except it's still surrounded in rules and morals that dictate that you have to live a "productive" life. IMHO UBI could just be formalizing that status quo. We're basically taken care of anyway and now we simply take care of everyone unconditionally. It's not that massive of a change once you accept that there's a cost per person in each country for sustaining them that these countries are basically already paying for. But just in a really convoluted way. Making that less convoluted would probably result in some savings and allow some of the poorest people in our society to get a grip on their life or make some different choices. Some people would qualify that as fairness. It could be as simple as if you don't work you receive X; no questions asked. If you do work, you also receive X and you now urn Y-X, where Y is your total income. If you get unemployed, you get X+benefits from your (optional) unemployment insurance. If you get sick, basic health care is part of your basic income but you can insure for benefits (optional). The hard part is establishing a value for X that is high enough that it matters and low enough that we don't destroy our economies. It would basically mean labor gets a lot cheaper and simpler for companies. Of course UBI has to come from somewhere. Like for example corporate, income taxes and part of what used to be separate insurances for e.g. unemployment, state pensions, etc. We can still have those insurances except that they would now be about insuring the difference to UBI so the cost would be lower. And we can also make those optional since UBI would be enough, thus making everything extra something you'd opt in for. For, many countries, this is effectively what they have already except that they tend to have these hugely inefficient bureaucracies to try to get you back to work. Which in the case of e.g. Spain with double digit unemployment numbers tends to be a bit futile. Hence, the discussions on UBI are a bit further there.

neuromanser 6y ago

Can you expand on this? It seems you say you have less faith in humans. Correct?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

rubycon22 6y ago

What happened? Some people got a one-time $1200 check. What could they have done with $1200 that made you lose faith in UBI? Or are you referring to the $600 that supplemented the unemployment insurance? But those went to people who were just recently working and had their livelihoods wrecked by government action and/or inaction. I'm pretty sure you would agree they deserve that money and it's okay for them to do what they damn please with it. Even if that means them not going back to work for some time because they have the freedom to. Imagine how less fucked we would be if we just paid the majority of non-essential workers to stay the hell home. Less competition for the essential jobs, so people who do really want to work can work and the essential jobs will be filled.

emteycz 6y ago
It's not about what the people done and faith in them or their claims from moral or other points of views. These $1200 nearly destroyed the European economies. My country is forever indebted now, and they handed out much less and not even to everyone but a small portion of people.
- rubycon22 6y ago
  What is the alternative in a situation where the government has forced many people out of work? You were going to have to pay one way or the other. It was just about a matter of when and what form of payment. Most of the world has decided that going into debt was better than paying with the lives of their people. You can renegotiate debt later on. It's just numbers in a excel sheet or some shit. Can't renegotiate the lives of dead people.
- mtgx 6y ago
  Is it the checks that indebted the governments or the economy lockdown? I'd have to imagine the economy lockdown/slowdown has an orders of magnitude larger impact.
- Scandiravian 6y ago
  National debt and private debt are two very different creatures. National debt is for the most part a good thing, since it's a measure of the amount of a national currency is in circulation Modern economic theory proposes that nations, with full control over their currency, have infinite spending power (aka can go into infinite debt) without any issues, as long as full-employment hasn't been reached This is of course not entirely possible for many EU countries, since being a member of the eurozone means the country does not have full control over its currency - which was a large contributor to, for instance, the Greek financial crisis
  - oblio 6y ago
    I don't know what kind of economic books you've read, but mine had terms such as "hyperinflation" in them :-) If anything, stuff like global currencies ($, €) bail out their respective owners because they're world reserve currencies. Some of the smaller Eurozone countries would have definitely defaulted, had hyperinflation, etc, without the Euro. Now they're in recession instead, which sucks a lot but still less than the alternative.
    - js8 6y ago
      MMT doesn't say you can't have hyperinflation due to economic mismanagement, it just says you can bootstrap yourself out of unemployment (a crisis) by printing money. Just because a government is printing money it doesn't yet mean they practice a sane economic policy, which would be to increase the demand to meet the supply of labor.
mytailorisrich 6y ago
It illustrates, if needed be, that handing meaningful amounts of money to all or most of the population in a recurring way is not sustainable. The responses to the covid lockdowns, which are incredibly expensive, were only considered because they were one-offs and time-limited. If payments are restricted to a minority, the poorest, then it boils down to what already exists in most European countries and the question is then "what's new?" In general UBI proposals are ideological solutions to ideologically-constructed problems. They are not realistic nor practical and thus thin on practical considerations and hard numbers.
- chous 6y ago
  Most people are getting poorer. Their only way out is fighting for a job, but jobs are scarce, and the situation will get worse exponentially due to technological unemployment. That's not an ideologically-constructed problem. It's pure logic. What is ideologically-driven, in my opinion, is claiming that "other jobs will be created, so no need to worry". Which implies, on the other hand, that the poor deserve being poor, due to their own negligence, lack of education, or laziness. We don't need to care about them. We provide a capitalist system which rewards the brave and the competent, and it's meritocratic. That is pure ideology, not based on reality.
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    This not pure logic. This is a logical fallacy and a strawman argument. You do not put forward any argument to my previous comment, and in fact illustrates my point. At the moment there is an economic crisis due to the covid pandemic. This is a specific, time-limited issue and welfare has stepped up to help people, at an extreme cost. This is not sustainable and only considered because it is an emergency in nature. If jobs dry up due to automation then there will indeed be scope to discuss UBI based on taxing 'robots' (so a clear and plausible way of financing it) . This is not what UBI as proposed now is about. No-one has claimed that the poor deserve to be poor and/or do not deserve help. There are plenty of welfare schemes in Europe and quite a few of them result in effective UBI, but only for the poorer who actually need it.

asciident 6y ago

If you're talking about the stimulus checks, well they weren't universal, nor basic (but rather a long unpredictable negotiation), nor recurring income.

vladimirralev 6y ago

In the advertised forms, absolutely horrible idea, why would anyone introduce so much uncertainty in the monetary system is beyond me. There are smart ways to do it though, such as doing it in a second-tier currency that buys only essentials or directly in terms of food, shelter and education. Just a free STEM/business education will go a long way if we can find some way to keep students engaged and committed to put the effort to actually learn.

jillesvangurp 6y ago

Dismissing complex ideas in terms of cliches from popular fiction is not a great way to make policy. Based on the last year, you can conclude nothing because people, countries, and politicians were just panicking and trying to survive on incidental handouts which don't allow for planning a future. That's not basic income. Universal basic income would be living in the certainty that no matter what you will always have enough to take care of yourself and your family without obligations to do anything that you don't want to do. This is why libertarians like the idea because they don't agree being told how to live their lives by governments. UBI leads to different life choices; including maybe not spending your career working double jobs cleaning and flipping burgers in double jobs while still not making enough to cover rent, insurance, or the ability to retire. This kind of poverty exists in some places that are filthy rich (i.e. the US). But it is kind of an anomaly among other similarly wealthy (and even a lot less wealthy) countries. Elsewhere, it's basically what a lot of us already have except it's still surrounded in rules and morals that dictate that you have to live a "productive" life. IMHO UBI could just be formalizing that status quo. We're basically taken care of anyway and now we simply take care of everyone unconditionally. It's not that massive of a change once you accept that there's a cost per person in each country for sustaining them that these countries are basically already paying for. But just in a really convoluted way. Making that less convoluted would probably result in some savings and allow some of the poorest people in our society to get a grip on their life or make some different choices. Some people would qualify that as fairness. It could be as simple as if you don't work you receive X; no questions asked. If you do work, you also receive X and you now urn Y-X, where Y is your total income. If you get unemployed, you get X+benefits from your (optional) unemployment insurance. If you get sick, basic health care is part of your basic income but you can insure for benefits (optional). The hard part is establishing a value for X that is high enough that it matters and low enough that we don't destroy our economies. It would basically mean labor gets a lot cheaper and simpler for companies. Of course UBI has to come from somewhere. Like for example corporate, income taxes and part of what used to be separate insurances for e.g. unemployment, state pensions, etc. We can still have those insurances except that they would now be about insuring the difference to UBI so the cost would be lower. And we can also make those optional since UBI would be enough, thus making everything extra something you'd opt in for. For, many countries, this is effectively what they have already except that they tend to have these hugely inefficient bureaucracies to try to get you back to work. Which in the case of e.g. Spain with double digit unemployment numbers tends to be a bit futile. Hence, the discussions on UBI are a bit further there.