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You don't lose UBI by working. UBI should be intended to be the lowest possible amount of money to live. Life won't be fun/good if you're only relying on UBI. I

You don't lose UBI by working. UBI should be intended to be the lowest possible amount of money to live. Life won't be fun/good if you're only relying on UBI. In that model I imagine plenty would prefer to keep their job in addition to UBI.

hogFeast 5y ago
What is the functional difference then? Your comment elides the point that almost everyone who wants UBI views at this mythical source of extra money from nowhere. The UK already has a welfare state, we have Universal Credit which is basically a consolidated welfare payment to people who need money, and the main complaint (justified if we consider housing costs) is that this isn't enough. I am not exactly sure how paying everyone money helps people who need it more than a system that just gives money to people who need it (particularly as once you introduce UBI, there is zero chance of it ever being removed until it bankrupts the country). It is a nice idea but the actual practical mechanics of the situation (i.e. what people who support this really want, how this compares to what we have) are totally ignored. Public policy always goes through these phases: when you don't have something, it seems like the solution to all your problems. It won't be (again, the main reason why inequality hasn't fallen more in the UK over the past ten years is housing costs...it is the number one issue, nothing else matters).
- lexicality 5y ago
  > I am not exactly sure how paying everyone money helps people who need it more than a system that just gives money to people who need it I mean one obvious benefit is the monumental amount of savings in government services caused by getting rid of all of the bureaucracy involved in making sure only people who "need" the payment get it. You can get rid of all the job centres, all the review boards, all the DWP departments that have to constantly check people's eligibility etc You also free up time for people that are currently on UC who need to constantly go and confirm that yes, they still can't work. Now they just get the money and can go do whatever without having to justify selling knitting on etsy or whatever
  - hogFeast 5y ago
    I agree. The UK has a serious problem with admin costs for these programs: UC rollout cost something like £12bn, which was a double digit fraction of the amount paid. The Tories also had an obsession with "work coaches", these contracts cost an absolute bomb, and had no effect on unemployment going to 3% whatsoever (the issue in the early 2010s was jobs not being there). But my counter-point would be that part of the problem has been that definition of "need" and the quantum of that "need" has changed. The Tories assumed that everyone was on the take (and to be clear, Labour did this too around 2002-2004, they managed to reduce disability spending by 20% by just removing people from the benefit and telling them they weren't disabled anymore...even Duncan-Smith wasn't this thick) which meant they invested very heavily in pointless things. It is actually fairly easy to determine whether someone needs money or not...look at their income, look at their savings...it actually isn't hard. My concern is that the universal benefits brought in by Blair precipitated a situation where we have massive subsidies for the middle class whilst the govt is trying to take money from everyone who actually needs it (how can we spend more, we spend so much on in-work benefits). This is basically what happened in the pandemic. Maybe the solution to bad admin is good admin (the system that the DWP has with disability is patently ludicrous, they ignore GPs, they hire doctors who can't get work anywhere else, they rely on "examinations" by non-doctors, I had a relative with a chronic neuro issue...she had her benefits removed once, under Labour, by a non-doctor and the re-assessment was done by a physio...tbf, the Tories pulled back once they realised what was happening with early assessments, they never went as far as Labour...but it is an insane system).
    - lexicality 5y ago
      I saw somewhere else in the comments a story about a disabled woman being kicked off UC because she put some of her disability payments into savings and crossed some threshhold. This presumably means that some of my taxes went into someone auditing her bank acounts, going "yup that's too much money", then into all the paperwork involved in kicking her out, followed by a few months later all of the paperwork and auditing of her re-applying for UC once her savings ran out. Obviously we would have saved a bunch of money by someone auditing her case, saying "yup still not got any legs" and moving on, but should we be paying for that in the first place? I don't like the idea of the government looking into my personal affairs or deciding how I should be spending my time. Obviously they don't at the moment since I have a very nice job but what if I got hit by a car on my way to work? If some kind of universal income lets us keep the government's nose out of our collective businesses and the cost of that is Amazon has to pay more tax or whatever I don't really see the problem. Maybe a few wasters just live off the money and play games all day but they were probably going to do that anyway. Most people like having something to do in my experience...
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > I am not exactly sure how paying everyone money helps people who need it more than a system that just gives money to people who need it UBI funded with additional high-end tax progressivity avoids the pervese incentives with traditional means-tested welfare where benefits are cut rapidly with additional income (sometimes at a more than 1:1), disincentivizing outside income and tending to trap people in dependency. You can view it as equivalent to means tested welfare where the means test is shifted upward not to the survival level but to the level where the social utility of incentivizing additional income-seeking has gone negative.

hogFeast 5y ago

What is the functional difference then? Your comment elides the point that almost everyone who wants UBI views at this mythical source of extra money from nowhere. The UK already has a welfare state, we have Universal Credit which is basically a consolidated welfare payment to people who need money, and the main complaint (justified if we consider housing costs) is that this isn't enough. I am not exactly sure how paying everyone money helps people who need it more than a system that just gives money to people who need it (particularly as once you introduce UBI, there is zero chance of it ever being removed until it bankrupts the country). It is a nice idea but the actual practical mechanics of the situation (i.e. what people who support this really want, how this compares to what we have) are totally ignored. Public policy always goes through these phases: when you don't have something, it seems like the solution to all your problems. It won't be (again, the main reason why inequality hasn't fallen more in the UK over the past ten years is housing costs...it is the number one issue, nothing else matters).

lexicality 5y ago
> I am not exactly sure how paying everyone money helps people who need it more than a system that just gives money to people who need it I mean one obvious benefit is the monumental amount of savings in government services caused by getting rid of all of the bureaucracy involved in making sure only people who "need" the payment get it. You can get rid of all the job centres, all the review boards, all the DWP departments that have to constantly check people's eligibility etc You also free up time for people that are currently on UC who need to constantly go and confirm that yes, they still can't work. Now they just get the money and can go do whatever without having to justify selling knitting on etsy or whatever
- hogFeast 5y ago
  I agree. The UK has a serious problem with admin costs for these programs: UC rollout cost something like £12bn, which was a double digit fraction of the amount paid. The Tories also had an obsession with "work coaches", these contracts cost an absolute bomb, and had no effect on unemployment going to 3% whatsoever (the issue in the early 2010s was jobs not being there). But my counter-point would be that part of the problem has been that definition of "need" and the quantum of that "need" has changed. The Tories assumed that everyone was on the take (and to be clear, Labour did this too around 2002-2004, they managed to reduce disability spending by 20% by just removing people from the benefit and telling them they weren't disabled anymore...even Duncan-Smith wasn't this thick) which meant they invested very heavily in pointless things. It is actually fairly easy to determine whether someone needs money or not...look at their income, look at their savings...it actually isn't hard. My concern is that the universal benefits brought in by Blair precipitated a situation where we have massive subsidies for the middle class whilst the govt is trying to take money from everyone who actually needs it (how can we spend more, we spend so much on in-work benefits). This is basically what happened in the pandemic. Maybe the solution to bad admin is good admin (the system that the DWP has with disability is patently ludicrous, they ignore GPs, they hire doctors who can't get work anywhere else, they rely on "examinations" by non-doctors, I had a relative with a chronic neuro issue...she had her benefits removed once, under Labour, by a non-doctor and the re-assessment was done by a physio...tbf, the Tories pulled back once they realised what was happening with early assessments, they never went as far as Labour...but it is an insane system).
  - lexicality 5y ago
    I saw somewhere else in the comments a story about a disabled woman being kicked off UC because she put some of her disability payments into savings and crossed some threshhold. This presumably means that some of my taxes went into someone auditing her bank acounts, going "yup that's too much money", then into all the paperwork involved in kicking her out, followed by a few months later all of the paperwork and auditing of her re-applying for UC once her savings ran out. Obviously we would have saved a bunch of money by someone auditing her case, saying "yup still not got any legs" and moving on, but should we be paying for that in the first place? I don't like the idea of the government looking into my personal affairs or deciding how I should be spending my time. Obviously they don't at the moment since I have a very nice job but what if I got hit by a car on my way to work? If some kind of universal income lets us keep the government's nose out of our collective businesses and the cost of that is Amazon has to pay more tax or whatever I don't really see the problem. Maybe a few wasters just live off the money and play games all day but they were probably going to do that anyway. Most people like having something to do in my experience...
dragonwriter 5y ago
> I am not exactly sure how paying everyone money helps people who need it more than a system that just gives money to people who need it UBI funded with additional high-end tax progressivity avoids the pervese incentives with traditional means-tested welfare where benefits are cut rapidly with additional income (sometimes at a more than 1:1), disincentivizing outside income and tending to trap people in dependency. You can view it as equivalent to means tested welfare where the means test is shifted upward not to the survival level but to the level where the social utility of incentivizing additional income-seeking has gone negative.