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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 t

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.
    - Scandiravian 6y ago
      I have never understood, why everyone brings up inflation as an argument against this, as if that isn't something that already exists Inflation is only an issue if you spend money beyond what is required to achieve full employment in the workforce, since new money in the system is balanced with new wealth being generated through work Inflation can then be controlled through taxation. Raising taxes pulls money out of circulation, thereby reducing inflation Private banks already have the ability to create money out of thin air, but for some weird reason, that's apparently not really an issue for most people I can't think of any small European countries that I can imagine defaulting without the euro. Could you specify which ones you think would have defaulted?
- rhn_mk1 6y ago
  This is not like a universal basic income though: it was not universal. Handing of the money in an emergency situation has also the fundamental difference that it isn't meant to be sustainable: it's one off, and the preparation does not include reworking the financial structure of the state to make it permanent, like all UBI proposals I've seen so far.
  - emteycz 6y ago
    I absolutely don't get your point. The financial structure of the state was reworked for these not-universal payouts (this is not the USA, the annual budget is made from scratch each year), and if the payouts were universal and more than one the country would be in literal ruins right now. There is no possibility of making it sustainable in the not-universal form, so how exactly could it be made sustainable if it was universal?
    - rhn_mk1 6y ago
      The difference is: was it reworked to make it sustainable and recurrent, or to make it work this one time? That it failed in the current political landscape doesn't mean that it will fail in every case, and you haven't presented any evidence ruling it out. Thus "There is no possibility of making it sustainable in the not-universal form" is an unfounded claim.
      - emteycz 6y ago
        How exactly can it be made sustainable in recurrent and universal form, if a low one time not-universal payment nearly crushed the country? Believe me, we really tried to make it work more than one time and for more people. I say we because it required massive amounts of charity on top of the governmental aid.
        rhn_mk1 6y ago
        I don't claim to have all the answers. But not having a confirmation is not the same as having a refutation. One thing for sure, a big change will require a long ramp up, or a big shock.
- imtringued 6y ago
  Does your country suffer from unusually high employment in full time positions or why are you worried about debt? Debt is a way to make people work today for a future reward. If people don't work they lose their productive output irrevocably and can lead to a cycle of poverty. The damage caused by unemployment is far worse than any damage caused by debt because debt can be reversed easily once you have mild inflation around 2-3%. Just the effects of inflation alone will reduce the debt burden, let alone the potential tax increases through higher employment or the economic growth that will happen once the economy is no longer broken.
  - emteycz 6y ago
    Yes, the unemployment rate was around 1.5%-2%.
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.

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.
  - Scandiravian 6y ago
    I have never understood, why everyone brings up inflation as an argument against this, as if that isn't something that already exists Inflation is only an issue if you spend money beyond what is required to achieve full employment in the workforce, since new money in the system is balanced with new wealth being generated through work Inflation can then be controlled through taxation. Raising taxes pulls money out of circulation, thereby reducing inflation Private banks already have the ability to create money out of thin air, but for some weird reason, that's apparently not really an issue for most people I can't think of any small European countries that I can imagine defaulting without the euro. Could you specify which ones you think would have defaulted?
rhn_mk1 6y ago
This is not like a universal basic income though: it was not universal. Handing of the money in an emergency situation has also the fundamental difference that it isn't meant to be sustainable: it's one off, and the preparation does not include reworking the financial structure of the state to make it permanent, like all UBI proposals I've seen so far.
- emteycz 6y ago
  I absolutely don't get your point. The financial structure of the state was reworked for these not-universal payouts (this is not the USA, the annual budget is made from scratch each year), and if the payouts were universal and more than one the country would be in literal ruins right now. There is no possibility of making it sustainable in the not-universal form, so how exactly could it be made sustainable if it was universal?
  - rhn_mk1 6y ago
    The difference is: was it reworked to make it sustainable and recurrent, or to make it work this one time? That it failed in the current political landscape doesn't mean that it will fail in every case, and you haven't presented any evidence ruling it out. Thus "There is no possibility of making it sustainable in the not-universal form" is an unfounded claim.
    - emteycz 6y ago
      How exactly can it be made sustainable in recurrent and universal form, if a low one time not-universal payment nearly crushed the country? Believe me, we really tried to make it work more than one time and for more people. I say we because it required massive amounts of charity on top of the governmental aid.
      - rhn_mk1 6y ago
        I don't claim to have all the answers. But not having a confirmation is not the same as having a refutation. One thing for sure, a big change will require a long ramp up, or a big shock.
imtringued 6y ago
Does your country suffer from unusually high employment in full time positions or why are you worried about debt? Debt is a way to make people work today for a future reward. If people don't work they lose their productive output irrevocably and can lead to a cycle of poverty. The damage caused by unemployment is far worse than any damage caused by debt because debt can be reversed easily once you have mild inflation around 2-3%. Just the effects of inflation alone will reduce the debt burden, let alone the potential tax increases through higher employment or the economic growth that will happen once the economy is no longer broken.
- emteycz 6y ago
  Yes, the unemployment rate was around 1.5%-2%.

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.