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$1000 is not enough to quit their jobs or get a nice apartment. They could move slightly closer to work if they have to commute. It's not enough for a real tui

by ilaksh 2y ago

$1000 is not enough to quit their jobs or get a nice apartment. They could move slightly closer to work if they have to commute. It's not enough for a real tuition or to support them to study instead of work. I don't think we've ever had a universal basic income test. We have always missed the universal and basic part. It's below basic and not at all universal. I suspect that you need to get international cooperation and a more sophisticated form of money and resource tracking for a real UBI to be feasible.

nine_k 2y ago
$1000 is enough to not be very afraid to lose a job, or to fall seriously ill. It would allow to look for a job for a longer time, or to take a lower-paying but nicer job (as in less strain, easier commute, better growth prospects, etc). It may allow to start saving some money. It's more of a safety net than a comfortable sofa: maybe it's not as nice, but it keeps you from hitting the floor nevertheless.
settsu 2y ago
Certainly not "universal" (targeted to the unhoused) but maybe more towards the "basic" issue you pose: https://www.denverbasicincomeproject.org/research https://www.denverbasicincomeproject.org/research
elamje 2y ago
$1,000/mo in a low income area of Dallas is a lot of money. Going from a $700/mo to a $1,700/mo apartment in Dallas is luxury. Not sure you're seeing this one clearly....
Gimpei 2y ago
One of the selling points of unconditional cash transfers is that they wouldn’t be a disincentive to work. That instead they would help quality of life. And indeed, in high poverty contexts, they don’t disincentivize work. But this result suggests that in the US at least, they do cause people to work less. This is only one study in one context, so I wouldn’t consider anything “proven.” But, it is a big study and a very bad sign.
mdgrech23 2y ago
shouldn't even have to buy healthcare. What a joke this country is.
jncfhnb 2y ago
A lot of people have this weird cognitive dissonance that lets them understand a “partial UBI” is a universally guaranteed income that does not meet basic needs, and then that a “full ubi” is one that does; but then fail to understand that if it’s not full UBI it’s not UBI. A universally guaranteed income that does not meet your basic needs is of course a thing. But it’s not a universal BASIC income. It’s a subset. The games people play on semantics is very strange
- ianbicking 2y ago
  How far is it from meeting basic needs? "Basic" should imply very modest living, not even "normal" living standards. For a living situation "basic" implies a shared space (family or otherwise). For food it would imply enough food to be healthy, but nothing about the form of food. I think $1000/month/person probably is "basic" income. You can survive on that indefinitely. (Healthcare is the other big expense, but I don't think UBI can reasonably cover healthcare, it's to complex and variable)
  - jncfhnb 2y ago
    Kind of tangential. The thing that annoys me is people saying payments that they don’t believe cover basic needs still counts as UBI. I think $1k does count as sufficient for basic needs, personally.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    > I think $1000/month/person probably is "basic" income. You can survive on that indefinitely. I think part of the problem is that people are assuming that you can and should pick a number for UBI that is sufficient for basic needs everywhere. $1k/mo is probably not enough in San Francisco. But should our UBI be set up to allow anyone to meet their basic needs anywhere they'd like to live, or should it be set up to allow anyone to meet their basic needs if they're willing to leave the high cost of living areas and go out into the rest of the country where rent and food and transportation is cheaper?
    - ianbicking 2y ago
m3kw9 2y ago
Nice is always relative to what most has, if you compare to 1700s any apartments would have been called nice, this is why UBI may not work as well as people think. When everyone has the same quality of life they take it for granted
- HPsquared 2y ago
  Basically the city has some nice apartments and some not-so-nice. Paying everyone an equal additional amount of paper money won't give everyone the nice apartment, there are still only a few of those available.
kjkjadksj 2y ago
We have plenty of ubi tests taking place as we speak in the form of people with their own trust funds.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  Not universal, in that case.
kiba 2y ago
A thousand dollars is enough to pay for theater class, three and a half semester worth. It is almost enough to pay for five months of personal coaching. It would definitely cover a voice acting workshop that I am going to attend. Granted, some form of education are cheaper than other, especially those that can easily be self taught. I spent hundred of dollars on books and materials to learn electronics. Maybe I could spent less to learn the materials. Really, the hard part is actually spending the time and effort actually building circuits and experimenting. If you're skilled and persistent enough, you could learn mathematics and other skills for very low cost. However, tutors and coaches are worth their money even though they are expensive, because they help demolish obstacles and get you unstuck faster so that you can progress faster. A thousand dollars a month? Please, that's enough to pay for a lot of education like you wouldn't believe. It would make the money I spent on my continuous education look like a drop in the bucket. The difference is that I am not pursuing a degree from overpriced schools, but real knowledge and skills.
- xenocratus 2y ago
  > A thousand dollars a month? Please, that's enough to pay for a lot of education like you wouldn't believe. Alas, it would probably not be. People like to compare apples and oranges in discussions like this. UBI is such a game-changer that we probably wouldn't be able to predict how prices would react once such a thing is enacted. Look at the pandemic stimulus worldwide, and the inflation since. If a lot of people had more money on hand, they would: 1) want to spend it; 2) prefer to work less (on average) so they have more time to enjoy spending it. Both of those lead to inflationary pressure, so it's unlikely $1000 in the new system would get you anything near what you currently get with it.
piombisallow 2y ago
"Real UBI has never been tried"
melagonster 2y ago
Yes, maybe offering free education to everyone is easier than real UBI...
- wkrsz 2y ago
  One challenge is that people who must work full-time (or more) can't participate and benefit from free education. At the same time they are forced to fund this free education through taxes.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
$1000 can be a difference between living in a shitty apartment 2 hours drive to work and a nice apartment 10 min walk to work. I was working as a home assistant and learning C++, took me a year before getting a programming job this way. Could have been much shorter if I had $1000.
- sanp 2y ago
  The problem is rent will go up when everyone can afford that extra 1000. Unless you build more housing UBI will just inflate housing costs
  - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
    Sure, but rent will not increase by $1000 - most people don't rent, they will spend it on something else. Of course, need to build more housing, or learn to live more compactly - an average American occupies several times more floor space than most other people in the world.
lolinder 2y ago
> I don't think we've ever had a universal basic income test. We have always missed the universal and basic part. It's below basic and not at all universal. Every single time we see results from a study on something like UBI, someone comes out with this argument—you missed the universal and the basic! Yes. With that stipulated, how would you propose to test UBI before rolling it out on a country-wide scale? Every test I can think of that isn't just "implement UBI" will either fail the universal or the basic part, and "implement UBI" will never get the political will until it can be tested on a small scale first. Tests like this are the best way we know how to do it. If you want UBI then you either are going to need to figure out how to work with incomplete tests or solve the problem of how to test UBI without just implementing it. We're not going to entirely restructure our economy because some folks on the internet think that UBI sounds great in theory.
- snarf21 2y ago
  I think the issue is that we don't really want or need UBI. We need to take a step back and think of the goal. Is that to help people that need it most? We can start with something to try to achieve that. Then continue to roll that forward. We could try an approach like: People who make less than the poverty line pay no state/federal taxes. Each month you get direct deposit (no bureaucracy) to bring you up to poverty line for last month. Each month you get direct deposit (no bureaucracy) of up to $1000 or whatever would bring you to double the poverty line. These programs would be automatic based on payroll tax filings and help the people who need UBI most. Also, we'd slowly be able to evolve these further to handle all benefit assistance programs and save a ton of money.
Draiken 2y ago
I agree that we never had a real test and probably never will. Another aspect that I think completely shifts the conversation and is often overlooked: duration. If I am told I have X amount of money for Y amount of time, I'll plan accordingly. If Y tends to forever, that completely changes my plans. With some money guaranteed, maybe now I can go to college or a trade school. Long term is a possibility. If it's only there for a small amount of time, I'll focus on much more immediate issues. Without this aspect, which is kind of un-testable, all studies are kind of useless IMO. It's the same as asking people what they would do with additional time off. The answers will vastly differ if we're talking about a couple of days, weeks, months, years or a lifetime.
slothtrop 2y ago
Having them quit jobs was not the desired outcome, but 2% did. Noahpinion talks about it briefly here https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/at-least-five-interesting-things-010 https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/at-least-five-interesting-thin...
tomr75 2y ago
At those levels you just get inflation
- edoceo 2y ago
  But even w/o these levels we get inflation? How could we compare it to the recent inflation which has been labelled as "greed-flation" and "shrink-flation" ?
  - lifeisgood99 2y ago
    Inflation is not an on/off switch.
    - transcriptase 2y ago
      It is, but governments have welded it to the on position for fear of what off would do.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
beejiu 2y ago
People have different definitions of UBI, but in my mind 'basic' doesn't translate to quitting your job and not working. People in a functioning society still have to work.
- dataflow 2y ago
  > People have different definitions of UBI, but in my mind 'basic' doesn't translate to quitting your job and not working. There's nuance worth teasing apart here. The only definition I've ever heard is that UBI allows you to lose your job and still be able to pay for the basic necessities (food, water, shelter, transportation, etc.). Anything less misses the whole point. However, just the basic necessities would make for a pretty dull and repetitive life, which most people hate. And so the idea (as I understood it) is that it's not supposed to go beyond that, so your incentive would still be to keep your job if you at all can, not quit it.
  - astromaniak 2y ago
    > The only definition I've ever heard is that UBI allows you to lose your job and still be able to pay for the basic necessities (food, water, shelter, transportation, etc.). Anything less misses the whole point. Excellent. Now open the border and hang out citizenship, or other form of voting rights. Does your definition require having a job once in a life time at least? > However, just the basic necessities would make for a pretty dull and repetitive life, which most people hate Oh no, many people would love it. Hundreds of millions for sure, if not billions. I think it's called dystopia, and cannot last long.
- BobaFloutist 2y ago
  I read it as all the human essentials are covered without work (sufficiently nutritious food, safe, clean, shelter with sufficient heating and water for basic needs, basic healthcare, basic internet, and a small extra for discretionary spending) with the assumption that most people will happily do some work to upgrade their circumstances and get more fun and interesting food/entertainment/shelter. If quitting your job doesn't put your life or your ability to get another job (because you're not capable of maintaining basic grooming, for example) at risk, then the "free market" model of employment can actually work, and people can opt out of jobs that treat them poorly or underpay them. At that point all the most essential/difficult/unpleasant jobs would actually have to pay the most, and cushier jobs with more reasonable hours could pay less, and people could do the amount of work it takes to get the amount of money they want. Think of how hard people work just to make a bit more money even when they're financially stable, just because they want a house or a cool car or a nice vacation. Why would that change if you didn't have to bleed yourself dry just to eat and sleep under a roof?
mey 2y ago
Imagine if we gave everyone $20/mo. No strings, tax free, not qualifed by income. That obviously isn't enough to live on, let alone buy food. But imagine the infrastructure that would be universally in place to allow us to scale it up as a society. We could find the balance. Maybe it's $1000, maybe it's $5000. Maybe another global pandemic happens and we need to dump an infusion into people's lives for a time. Just having the system would be powerful.
- MohawkChiri 2y ago
  let's make it 200 credits/mo, sounds cooler also the credits expire each month for extra fun
- randomdata 2y ago
  > But imagine the infrastructure that would be universally in place to allow us to scale it up as a society. What kind of special infrastructure is needed? Doesn't your government already have a system in place for sending tax refunds to its people? That's ultimately all your $20/month is.
- beejiu 2y ago
  Interestingly, the UK is pretty advanced in terms of digital benefits infrastructure with its Universal Credit system, which works pretty much like a Negative Income Tax.
- ghufran_syed 2y ago
  As a society, do we need to worry about where this money will come from? Or will there always be an inexhaustible supply that also scales up? Or could taking that money away from other parts of the economy possibly cause harm, to the point where the ubi would become unsustainable?
  - ericjmorey 2y ago
    Do we as a society know where money comes from now? Could the current distribution of money be denying ourselves greater value? Is the current system sustainable?
robotnikman 2y ago
I've always wondered why we don't just nationalize our resources and use that income to provide a kind of UBI to residents, similar to what Saudi Arabia or even Alaska does (for residents who plan to stay long term)
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  Because the resource income is trivial in comparison with national spending. Most of the resources you might be thinking of are already nationalized and rented to industry through a competitive bidding process.
rco8786 2y ago
I'm reading this as: anything short of providing everyone globally with enough money to quit their jobs and rent a nice apartment is not UBI. Which, of course, is never going to happen, nor should it. The term "basic" definitely does not automatically entail quitting jobs or getting an apartment.
- downboots 2y ago
  how much hair is enough to distinguish between a man that is bald and one that isn't ?
abeppu 2y ago
> It's not enough for a real tuition or to support them to study instead of work. ... should it be? Or should you have to save some of your basic income for a period to go to school? If every year you got enough to live off and to be an enrolled student, I think the temptation to just be a perpetual student might be really attractive to some individuals, and not really valuable to society. Even from the yardstick of "how much do you learn", I think it's important to follow formal education with meaningful periods of trying to usefully apply what you've learned to real needs.
bko 2y ago
Why is the goal to get people to quit their jobs and get a nice apartment? Isn't it supposed to be a minimum base level of support? Why do we keep moving the goal posts? And if everyone quits their job and lives in a nice apartment, where is this money going to come from? The problem with welfare today is that its a disincentive to work. Start working, you lose your transfer payments. A lot of people are stuck in this trap and don't want to start working, forsaking valuable on the job training and socialization that will hurt them in the long run. That's where universal part comes in
- DemocracyFTW2 2y ago
  > The problem with welfare today is that its a disincentive to work No. The reason you say that is because you're young and you believe what you've heard. You will soon cease to be the former and then presumably, likely, stop to do the latter. People want to work, they want to be useful. And yes, if I support you but threaten to stop supporting you as soon as you get to work for money—suddenly working for money looks less attractive. Sure, natural. There's nothing wrong with that. But if I support you no matter whether you add money to that yourself, then that is not detrimental to your willingness to work, it just gives you that much more leeway to choose a suitable occupation.
  - ahahahahah 2y ago
    That's a rather smarmy response for someone who clearly lacks reading comprehension. I'd recommend: (1) look up the definition of "disincentive". The parent didn't say anything about people not wanting to work or not wanting to be useful. And even then, you actually agreed about it being the disincentive ("if I support you but threaten to stop supporting you as soon as you get to work for money—suddenly working for money looks less attractive"). (2) understand the meaning of the phrase "The problem with X today is Y". It's very clearly not saying that Y is a problem with X, in fact, it's implying that there are other approaches to X that don't have problem Y.
    - DemocracyFTW2 2y ago
      ?so?
bryanlarsen 2y ago
But significantly more than $1000 is not financially feasible for a balanced UBI program. The average US taxpayer has $40,000 of income and pays $6000 in taxes. A balanced UBI program would increase the average taxpayers taxes by an amount equal to the UBI. So the $40,000 of income would increase to $52,000 and taxes would increase from $6000 to $18000. It works out to about 15% increase in tax levels. Yes, we'd try and reduce that income tax increase by getting money elsewhere, most significantly because UBI should allow us to decrease welfare payments significantly. But that would still contribute well under half of the $12K. The numbers work at $1k a month, but they don't work for levels significantly higher than that. And if UBI isn't balanced, then it will affect inflation, making it much less impactful. I believe that $1k/month is a good figure for UBI. It's not quite enough to live on, but it can be in a shared-housing situation, and it can go a long ways to cover expenses if you have to quit your job due to an abusive boss or something.

by ilaksh 2y ago

nine_k 2y ago

$1000 is enough to not be very afraid to lose a job, or to fall seriously ill. It would allow to look for a job for a longer time, or to take a lower-paying but nicer job (as in less strain, easier commute, better growth prospects, etc). It may allow to start saving some money. It's more of a safety net than a comfortable sofa: maybe it's not as nice, but it keeps you from hitting the floor nevertheless.

settsu 2y ago

Certainly not "universal" (targeted to the unhoused) but maybe more towards the "basic" issue you pose: https://www.denverbasicincomeproject.org/research https://www.denverbasicincomeproject.org/research

elamje 2y ago

$1,000/mo in a low income area of Dallas is a lot of money. Going from a $700/mo to a $1,700/mo apartment in Dallas is luxury. Not sure you're seeing this one clearly....

Gimpei 2y ago

One of the selling points of unconditional cash transfers is that they wouldn’t be a disincentive to work. That instead they would help quality of life. And indeed, in high poverty contexts, they don’t disincentivize work. But this result suggests that in the US at least, they do cause people to work less. This is only one study in one context, so I wouldn’t consider anything “proven.” But, it is a big study and a very bad sign.

mdgrech23 2y ago

shouldn't even have to buy healthcare. What a joke this country is.

jncfhnb 2y ago

A lot of people have this weird cognitive dissonance that lets them understand a “partial UBI” is a universally guaranteed income that does not meet basic needs, and then that a “full ubi” is one that does; but then fail to understand that if it’s not full UBI it’s not UBI. A universally guaranteed income that does not meet your basic needs is of course a thing. But it’s not a universal BASIC income. It’s a subset. The games people play on semantics is very strange

ianbicking 2y ago
How far is it from meeting basic needs? "Basic" should imply very modest living, not even "normal" living standards. For a living situation "basic" implies a shared space (family or otherwise). For food it would imply enough food to be healthy, but nothing about the form of food. I think $1000/month/person probably is "basic" income. You can survive on that indefinitely. (Healthcare is the other big expense, but I don't think UBI can reasonably cover healthcare, it's to complex and variable)
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  Kind of tangential. The thing that annoys me is people saying payments that they don’t believe cover basic needs still counts as UBI. I think $1k does count as sufficient for basic needs, personally.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > I think $1000/month/person probably is "basic" income. You can survive on that indefinitely. I think part of the problem is that people are assuming that you can and should pick a number for UBI that is sufficient for basic needs everywhere. $1k/mo is probably not enough in San Francisco. But should our UBI be set up to allow anyone to meet their basic needs anywhere they'd like to live, or should it be set up to allow anyone to meet their basic needs if they're willing to leave the high cost of living areas and go out into the rest of the country where rent and food and transportation is cheaper?
  - ianbicking 2y ago

m3kw9 2y ago

Nice is always relative to what most has, if you compare to 1700s any apartments would have been called nice, this is why UBI may not work as well as people think. When everyone has the same quality of life they take it for granted

HPsquared 2y ago
Basically the city has some nice apartments and some not-so-nice. Paying everyone an equal additional amount of paper money won't give everyone the nice apartment, there are still only a few of those available.

kjkjadksj 2y ago

We have plenty of ubi tests taking place as we speak in the form of people with their own trust funds.

HPsquared 2y ago
Not universal, in that case.

kiba 2y ago

A thousand dollars is enough to pay for theater class, three and a half semester worth. It is almost enough to pay for five months of personal coaching. It would definitely cover a voice acting workshop that I am going to attend. Granted, some form of education are cheaper than other, especially those that can easily be self taught. I spent hundred of dollars on books and materials to learn electronics. Maybe I could spent less to learn the materials. Really, the hard part is actually spending the time and effort actually building circuits and experimenting. If you're skilled and persistent enough, you could learn mathematics and other skills for very low cost. However, tutors and coaches are worth their money even though they are expensive, because they help demolish obstacles and get you unstuck faster so that you can progress faster. A thousand dollars a month? Please, that's enough to pay for a lot of education like you wouldn't believe. It would make the money I spent on my continuous education look like a drop in the bucket. The difference is that I am not pursuing a degree from overpriced schools, but real knowledge and skills.

xenocratus 2y ago
> A thousand dollars a month? Please, that's enough to pay for a lot of education like you wouldn't believe. Alas, it would probably not be. People like to compare apples and oranges in discussions like this. UBI is such a game-changer that we probably wouldn't be able to predict how prices would react once such a thing is enacted. Look at the pandemic stimulus worldwide, and the inflation since. If a lot of people had more money on hand, they would: 1) want to spend it; 2) prefer to work less (on average) so they have more time to enjoy spending it. Both of those lead to inflationary pressure, so it's unlikely $1000 in the new system would get you anything near what you currently get with it.

piombisallow 2y ago

"Real UBI has never been tried"

melagonster 2y ago

Yes, maybe offering free education to everyone is easier than real UBI...

wkrsz 2y ago
One challenge is that people who must work full-time (or more) can't participate and benefit from free education. At the same time they are forced to fund this free education through taxes.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago

$1000 can be a difference between living in a shitty apartment 2 hours drive to work and a nice apartment 10 min walk to work. I was working as a home assistant and learning C++, took me a year before getting a programming job this way. Could have been much shorter if I had $1000.

sanp 2y ago
The problem is rent will go up when everyone can afford that extra 1000. Unless you build more housing UBI will just inflate housing costs
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
  Sure, but rent will not increase by $1000 - most people don't rent, they will spend it on something else. Of course, need to build more housing, or learn to live more compactly - an average American occupies several times more floor space than most other people in the world.

lolinder 2y ago

> I don't think we've ever had a universal basic income test. We have always missed the universal and basic part. It's below basic and not at all universal. Every single time we see results from a study on something like UBI, someone comes out with this argument—you missed the universal and the basic! Yes. With that stipulated, how would you propose to test UBI before rolling it out on a country-wide scale? Every test I can think of that isn't just "implement UBI" will either fail the universal or the basic part, and "implement UBI" will never get the political will until it can be tested on a small scale first. Tests like this are the best way we know how to do it. If you want UBI then you either are going to need to figure out how to work with incomplete tests or solve the problem of how to test UBI without just implementing it. We're not going to entirely restructure our economy because some folks on the internet think that UBI sounds great in theory.

snarf21 2y ago
I think the issue is that we don't really want or need UBI. We need to take a step back and think of the goal. Is that to help people that need it most? We can start with something to try to achieve that. Then continue to roll that forward. We could try an approach like: People who make less than the poverty line pay no state/federal taxes. Each month you get direct deposit (no bureaucracy) to bring you up to poverty line for last month. Each month you get direct deposit (no bureaucracy) of up to $1000 or whatever would bring you to double the poverty line. These programs would be automatic based on payroll tax filings and help the people who need UBI most. Also, we'd slowly be able to evolve these further to handle all benefit assistance programs and save a ton of money.

Draiken 2y ago

I agree that we never had a real test and probably never will. Another aspect that I think completely shifts the conversation and is often overlooked: duration. If I am told I have X amount of money for Y amount of time, I'll plan accordingly. If Y tends to forever, that completely changes my plans. With some money guaranteed, maybe now I can go to college or a trade school. Long term is a possibility. If it's only there for a small amount of time, I'll focus on much more immediate issues. Without this aspect, which is kind of un-testable, all studies are kind of useless IMO. It's the same as asking people what they would do with additional time off. The answers will vastly differ if we're talking about a couple of days, weeks, months, years or a lifetime.

slothtrop 2y ago

Having them quit jobs was not the desired outcome, but 2% did. Noahpinion talks about it briefly here https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/at-least-five-interesting-things-010 https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/at-least-five-interesting-thin...

tomr75 2y ago

At those levels you just get inflation

edoceo 2y ago
But even w/o these levels we get inflation? How could we compare it to the recent inflation which has been labelled as "greed-flation" and "shrink-flation" ?
- lifeisgood99 2y ago
  Inflation is not an on/off switch.
  - transcriptase 2y ago
    It is, but governments have welded it to the on position for fear of what off would do.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

beejiu 2y ago

People have different definitions of UBI, but in my mind 'basic' doesn't translate to quitting your job and not working. People in a functioning society still have to work.

dataflow 2y ago
> People have different definitions of UBI, but in my mind 'basic' doesn't translate to quitting your job and not working. There's nuance worth teasing apart here. The only definition I've ever heard is that UBI allows you to lose your job and still be able to pay for the basic necessities (food, water, shelter, transportation, etc.). Anything less misses the whole point. However, just the basic necessities would make for a pretty dull and repetitive life, which most people hate. And so the idea (as I understood it) is that it's not supposed to go beyond that, so your incentive would still be to keep your job if you at all can, not quit it.
- astromaniak 2y ago
  > The only definition I've ever heard is that UBI allows you to lose your job and still be able to pay for the basic necessities (food, water, shelter, transportation, etc.). Anything less misses the whole point. Excellent. Now open the border and hang out citizenship, or other form of voting rights. Does your definition require having a job once in a life time at least? > However, just the basic necessities would make for a pretty dull and repetitive life, which most people hate Oh no, many people would love it. Hundreds of millions for sure, if not billions. I think it's called dystopia, and cannot last long.
BobaFloutist 2y ago
I read it as all the human essentials are covered without work (sufficiently nutritious food, safe, clean, shelter with sufficient heating and water for basic needs, basic healthcare, basic internet, and a small extra for discretionary spending) with the assumption that most people will happily do some work to upgrade their circumstances and get more fun and interesting food/entertainment/shelter. If quitting your job doesn't put your life or your ability to get another job (because you're not capable of maintaining basic grooming, for example) at risk, then the "free market" model of employment can actually work, and people can opt out of jobs that treat them poorly or underpay them. At that point all the most essential/difficult/unpleasant jobs would actually have to pay the most, and cushier jobs with more reasonable hours could pay less, and people could do the amount of work it takes to get the amount of money they want. Think of how hard people work just to make a bit more money even when they're financially stable, just because they want a house or a cool car or a nice vacation. Why would that change if you didn't have to bleed yourself dry just to eat and sleep under a roof?

mey 2y ago

Imagine if we gave everyone $20/mo. No strings, tax free, not qualifed by income. That obviously isn't enough to live on, let alone buy food. But imagine the infrastructure that would be universally in place to allow us to scale it up as a society. We could find the balance. Maybe it's $1000, maybe it's $5000. Maybe another global pandemic happens and we need to dump an infusion into people's lives for a time. Just having the system would be powerful.

MohawkChiri 2y ago
let's make it 200 credits/mo, sounds cooler also the credits expire each month for extra fun
randomdata 2y ago
> But imagine the infrastructure that would be universally in place to allow us to scale it up as a society. What kind of special infrastructure is needed? Doesn't your government already have a system in place for sending tax refunds to its people? That's ultimately all your $20/month is.
beejiu 2y ago
Interestingly, the UK is pretty advanced in terms of digital benefits infrastructure with its Universal Credit system, which works pretty much like a Negative Income Tax.
ghufran_syed 2y ago
As a society, do we need to worry about where this money will come from? Or will there always be an inexhaustible supply that also scales up? Or could taking that money away from other parts of the economy possibly cause harm, to the point where the ubi would become unsustainable?
- ericjmorey 2y ago
  Do we as a society know where money comes from now? Could the current distribution of money be denying ourselves greater value? Is the current system sustainable?

robotnikman 2y ago

I've always wondered why we don't just nationalize our resources and use that income to provide a kind of UBI to residents, similar to what Saudi Arabia or even Alaska does (for residents who plan to stay long term)

s1artibartfast 2y ago
Because the resource income is trivial in comparison with national spending. Most of the resources you might be thinking of are already nationalized and rented to industry through a competitive bidding process.

rco8786 2y ago

I'm reading this as: anything short of providing everyone globally with enough money to quit their jobs and rent a nice apartment is not UBI. Which, of course, is never going to happen, nor should it. The term "basic" definitely does not automatically entail quitting jobs or getting an apartment.

downboots 2y ago
how much hair is enough to distinguish between a man that is bald and one that isn't ?

abeppu 2y ago

> It's not enough for a real tuition or to support them to study instead of work. ... should it be? Or should you have to save some of your basic income for a period to go to school? If every year you got enough to live off and to be an enrolled student, I think the temptation to just be a perpetual student might be really attractive to some individuals, and not really valuable to society. Even from the yardstick of "how much do you learn", I think it's important to follow formal education with meaningful periods of trying to usefully apply what you've learned to real needs.

bko 2y ago

Why is the goal to get people to quit their jobs and get a nice apartment? Isn't it supposed to be a minimum base level of support? Why do we keep moving the goal posts? And if everyone quits their job and lives in a nice apartment, where is this money going to come from? The problem with welfare today is that its a disincentive to work. Start working, you lose your transfer payments. A lot of people are stuck in this trap and don't want to start working, forsaking valuable on the job training and socialization that will hurt them in the long run. That's where universal part comes in

DemocracyFTW2 2y ago
> The problem with welfare today is that its a disincentive to work No. The reason you say that is because you're young and you believe what you've heard. You will soon cease to be the former and then presumably, likely, stop to do the latter. People want to work, they want to be useful. And yes, if I support you but threaten to stop supporting you as soon as you get to work for money—suddenly working for money looks less attractive. Sure, natural. There's nothing wrong with that. But if I support you no matter whether you add money to that yourself, then that is not detrimental to your willingness to work, it just gives you that much more leeway to choose a suitable occupation.
- ahahahahah 2y ago
  That's a rather smarmy response for someone who clearly lacks reading comprehension. I'd recommend: (1) look up the definition of "disincentive". The parent didn't say anything about people not wanting to work or not wanting to be useful. And even then, you actually agreed about it being the disincentive ("if I support you but threaten to stop supporting you as soon as you get to work for money—suddenly working for money looks less attractive"). (2) understand the meaning of the phrase "The problem with X today is Y". It's very clearly not saying that Y is a problem with X, in fact, it's implying that there are other approaches to X that don't have problem Y.
  - DemocracyFTW2 2y ago
    ?so?

bryanlarsen 2y ago

But significantly more than $1000 is not financially feasible for a balanced UBI program. The average US taxpayer has $40,000 of income and pays $6000 in taxes. A balanced UBI program would increase the average taxpayers taxes by an amount equal to the UBI. So the $40,000 of income would increase to $52,000 and taxes would increase from $6000 to $18000. It works out to about 15% increase in tax levels. Yes, we'd try and reduce that income tax increase by getting money elsewhere, most significantly because UBI should allow us to decrease welfare payments significantly. But that would still contribute well under half of the $12K. The numbers work at $1k a month, but they don't work for levels significantly higher than that. And if UBI isn't balanced, then it will affect inflation, making it much less impactful. I believe that $1k/month is a good figure for UBI. It's not quite enough to live on, but it can be in a shared-housing situation, and it can go a long ways to cover expenses if you have to quit your job due to an abusive boss or something.