3 ms·

Haven't we spent the last decade bemoaning the lack of moderate inflation? Plus the primary issue with inflation is that it hurts people at the bottom, so UBI o

Haven't we spent the last decade bemoaning the lack of moderate inflation? Plus the primary issue with inflation is that it hurts people at the bottom, so UBI offsets that inherently. As for the money, I am brit so I only know the British numbers. We spend about 300bn a year on benefits (in non covid times). That's £5000 per citizen (including kids) and doesn't count a whole bunch of other subsidies (free houses, local government spending etc). So we wouldn't need to raise much additional spending. Of course, people would be more likely to take service jobs if they could keep their unemployment benefit (as they would a UBI). That's one of the big upsides of a UBI: no benefit trap like we're currently seeing (rightly or not). And all this is without any uptick in any economic area (people accepting lower wages, getting educated/trained, increased consumption, lower crime etc).

mc32 6y ago
I think that yes some people would work if they got to keep their UBI but there’d a considerable amount who would be okay to scrape by and do nothing or work part time instead of full time. If I understood my high school cohort, this is okay but it’s an unproductive part of society. Some people are just not motivated.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  I think we have a weird attitude to work. The western employment rate is about 50%. 50% of people don't do any form of paid employment. The truth is, we've just accepted that a big proportion of the population are allowed to opt out despite not having paid in. Sure, some of them are kids. But most aren't. So we engage in this weird exercise and pretend that for every 10 people, there are 5 workers, 2 deserving unemployed and 3 dirty slackers who lack motivation and should probably be whipped. Excuse my fun hyperbole. A UBI is just a more honest approach. It treats everyone the same. It doesn't bother forcing unemployed people to pretend they're disabled or that someone a month before their 65th birthday is lazy but someone a month after it is "retired"...

mc32 6y ago

I think that yes some people would work if they got to keep their UBI but there’d a considerable amount who would be okay to scrape by and do nothing or work part time instead of full time. If I understood my high school cohort, this is okay but it’s an unproductive part of society. Some people are just not motivated.

LatteLazy 6y ago
I think we have a weird attitude to work. The western employment rate is about 50%. 50% of people don't do any form of paid employment. The truth is, we've just accepted that a big proportion of the population are allowed to opt out despite not having paid in. Sure, some of them are kids. But most aren't. So we engage in this weird exercise and pretend that for every 10 people, there are 5 workers, 2 deserving unemployed and 3 dirty slackers who lack motivation and should probably be whipped. Excuse my fun hyperbole. A UBI is just a more honest approach. It treats everyone the same. It doesn't bother forcing unemployed people to pretend they're disabled or that someone a month before their 65th birthday is lazy but someone a month after it is "retired"...