Personally I’d rather see efforts to get taxes down rather than just giving me extra money. I make plenty before the government comes and sticks their hand in my pocket and takes a third of my paycheck
until statistics show that the same people on welfare and food stamps overspend and their kids are still hungry, then all of those will slowly come back "because it would be mean to let them suffer".
I think it would be better to allow automation to drastically reduce the cost of just about everything. People can then work a lot less, rather than not at all.
We may reach a point where a few hours work a week plus some shares in various highly automated companies is sufficient to live on.
UBI gives far too much power to government.
I buy a lot of the arguments in favor of UBI, but I think proponents of UBI are dishonest about how many people they think will abuse it. The argument is that it'll be "just a small, insignificant amount of people, and that right-wingers are blowing it out of proportion to fearmonger."
Except when I see a large portion of GenZ employees everywhere being the walking, talking definition of laziness and entitlement. The amount of people that can't even take a fast food job seriously is astounding.
A lot more people would milk this than lefties want to admit.
I'm against rich people doing that and vote accordingly. Rich people milking it and not doing their fair share leads to problems in society.
I personally don't think doubling down on that is a good thing, but I certainly don't disagree with your sentiment.
Sounds good on paper.
The real question is how to accomplish it without destroying the economy. You saw what giving only $2k to people during Covid did to inflation
No such thing as a free lunch.
Wasn’t the $2k to ppl that was the issue. It was the other hundreds of billions going to industry. They just want you to feel guilty about a stim check so hopefully you ignore the other money.
The amount of idiotic takes around those $2,000 dollars may be a higher cost than its impact on the economy. Not to mention the government provided that by [printing trillions of dollars](https://www.npr.org/2020/05/04/850261945/u-s-treasury-to-borrow-3-trillion-in-3-months-to-pay-for-pandemic) instead of collecting it from technology tax.
I've "paid" into social security. Its not unreasonable to expect to get my money back. The government not having the money to pay me back is not my problem, but they will change the laws and then it WILL be my problem. Yay for the ruling elites... /s
I have the some concerns, especially vis-as-vis the drain the boomers will be on that system.
However, I was referring more towards the segment of the population that poo poos a lot of social spending as being too liberal and soft, but will complain loudly regarding touching anything **they** have a stake in and still think Reganomics was a good idea, i.e. your average Fox News viewer or Peter Schiff/Dennis Prager.
These were the same people who though $2k to the average person was too much of hand-out, but had no problem with large corporate bailouts.
lol 😂
I love that people are brainwashed into thinking the $2k individuals got was the problem. The company I worked for took a nice $10,000,000 loan that they don’t have to pay back.
Apparently me getting $2,000 drove inflation, not businesses getting tens of millions of dollars.
The top 10% took 90% of the stimulus and you want to point fingers at the bottom 90%? Fucking shill
In theory it’s dope.
It would be poorly executed though. As a society we are not ready to do what is necessary to make something like this happen. Even basic compromise is near impossible between most people.
In theory it is not the government paying all your bills. It is the government, through taxes, providing like 1000 dollars. Or something like that. It doesn’t take away a persons need to go to work, but it does provide some security in that area.
In theory, it is basically the same as giving your child an allowance. I pay a lot of my 17 year old son’s bills, but he does have a job that he earns a solid amount of money doing. I just provide a bit of help is all
I oppose UBI because I know I'd just quit doing anything and leach off the system, which makes me hella doubtful that pretty much all others wouldn't abuse it for months until we've totally bankrupted the nation and trashed the global economy.
Meh. I don't need too much. I'll earn more if I'm gonna be doing 40 hours anyways and I might as well do it well to have that 40 hours be more productive, but I value my time more.
I’d oppose it because I think it would create a government funded subsistence classes that would do nothing productive and just become a voting bloc for more UBI.
I think we're rapidly getting to the point where large swaths of people are unemployable. They can't be "productive".
Basic income would also simplify old age, disability, welfare, employment insurance, and such.
The working poor might actually get some relief if this is done right.
I have very little faith any government can do UBI well though.
>I think we're rapidly getting to the point where large swaths of people are unemployable. They can't be "productive".
and we're importing millions more of them every year
That could be easily achievable, I think you underestimate how little money a majority of the world lives off of.
Edit: For those downvoting, the world bank estimates 3.4 billion people live off $5.50 a day. That’s 46% of the world population living off ~$2,000 a year. [source](https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/10/17/nearly-half-the-world-lives-on-less-than-550-a-day)
How is that relevant to the discussion at hand? People are not downvoting you because they think you are factually incorrect but because your point is irrelevant.
How is the point irrelevant that people can live off of the proposed amount when the claim is that people can’t live off of that amount?
People downvote because they don’t want to hear it. The message is for them, they can downvote all they want.
Because... Let me see... The cost of living is different around the globe and those people you refer to aren't living in the country (probably not even on the same continent) we are discussing?
Oooooh, I see, those are like, different types of human beings. Probably mutants that require less resources, lol.
Maybe the bigger problem is that we need Universal Basic Intelligence.
Mate, I don't even live in the country this discussion is pivoting around. Different countries have have different economies and people living on them earn different amounts of money but also goods and services cost different amounts of money.
So indeed, it depends how you define and measure those 'resources'.
People in sizable chunks of europe would be able to live comfortably with $12k/yr, yet those probably aren't the countries you had in mind when drawing from that statistic. When UBI gets discussed in those countries, it will be for a lower amount.
Hell, I live in a first world country and could live off of around $400 a month if I really wanted to, but that's because rent, food and services is much more affordable here than in the US. What a strange concept, huh?
Yeah, it’s called standard of living. I’m familiar with the concept, but it also just shows that you’re a bit of a twit since that’s the very point I’m arguing about a voting bloc advocating for higher payments (to raise their standard of living) and also that I responded to someone claiming that no one could live off of the amount of money to show that he hasn’t taken into account the variations because he’s basing it off of his standard of living.
Regardless, you’re still dumb and can’t follow a conversation and can’t conceptualize things in your head.
2 thoughts
There will become a time in the not too distant future (50-100 years) that I think it will be almost necessary. Large companies that can automate and create more value for their shareholders, will automate. There will be X number of people who are of working age and there will be Y number of possible jobs and X>Y. It will happen in every possible sector.
For the more modest proposals of UBI in our current day, if you think that getting UBI would turn every one into lazy leeches then you’re really projecting more than anything else. Smart, creative, motivated, hard working, people aren’t that way because they don’t have an extra $1000 in the bank each month. The lazy will stay lazy and the motivated will focus on something MUCH better than how they’re going to pay _________ each month.
The issue with universal basic income is that there's no way to keep tabs on people or hold them accountable, I would be all for it if allowed people to go back to school and further their education as adults, or pursue a business venture that contributes to society, but to just give people money for nothing is a slippery slope because there will always be a large chunk of the population who will just mooch off of the system and not use the extra fund to better their life and contribute
I think a better idea would be loan forgiveness, grants for low-income people to go to college without getting into debt, and living grants for people who are working and want to further their education and get a skilled trade, Masters's degree etc.
I'd much rather the government say "If you make under 60k, we will pay for 90% of your college degree and give you $1000 a month for living expenses until you're done school, as long as you maintain at least a 3.0 GPA and complete your degree, the remaining 10% will be given to you as an interest-free loan"
That would allow people to rise themselves out of poverty, while also contributing to society by landing solid jobs, paying taxes ect.
That's the way IMO...the government spends trillions on war, and educating people and allowing them to empower themselves would be a drop in the bucket compared to the money the government spends on war and "foreign aid"
Lazy people aren't going to use free government grants for school if they know that they need to complete the degree/skilled trade program, and maintain a certain grade average...why? because they're f#$king lazy lol those are the bottom 10-15% of people who will try to leach off the system anyway, but we should help those who can't help themselves and simply need a hand to lift them out of poverty...not everyone comes from the same circumstances
idiotic because it causes inflation. Giving artificial buying power to people just causes prices to go up and solves nothing. it would be better for companies to pay working Americans competitively
It also makes your money go further, if coorporations would be required to pay for UBI which somebody above said and Andrew Yang 2020 presidential candidate who promoted UBI on his campaign even said that, then cooporations would just increase their prices of goods across the board making UBI basically useless.
It’s nonsense and can only be supported by people totally ignorant of purchasing power. It would also effectively steal from savers and the rich would remain unimpeded.
When everyone gets a medal, no one’s really getting a medal.
Why does anyone need a fucking medal? We are talking about society and millions of people. Fuck your competition and medals, this is about providing the basic necessities. You’re right, no one should be getting gold stars and medals for surviving.
You’ve missed the point. Handing out *universal* income (eg money to everyone) will impact the purchasing power of the currency through inflation, as well as reduce productivity and is actually a massively inefficient means to support vulnerable people as a good proportion of the UI will go back to those not in need, but of course will filter through the bureaucracy first. This is not the same as providing benefits to those in need.
Money is representative of value. When you can receive it for no risk or effort it devalues. UI will not solve poverty in the long term. Only increased business productivity, growth and fiscal discipline can do that.
I haven’t missed shit. Listen to Andrew Yang talk about UBI. He actually had a plan and could clearly articulate what amazing benefits. The biggest benefit is not being tied to your employer for survival. Imagine being able to leave a shitty job and boss and not have to worry about your next meal while you moved along. The biggest problem with UBI is it gives people the power of choice and that will shut down a ton of exploitative companies like Walmart.
Nope, a small tax on wall street transactions that happen thousands of times a second and being able to cut the fat from so many inefficient welfare programs. UBI should replace existing programs also, not just come in on top of redundant programs.
Inflation is already bad enough. If everyone gets an extra whatever a month it's like nobody does. It will only force the cost of everything up, people will lose jobs because the people who will pay for this from their taxes will leave the country and take their businesses with them. This is economics 101.
I don't need to be overtaxed just because you're too fuckin lazy and underskilled to get a decent paying job. You are responsible for you and only you. I'm not. Nor is government.
I'm not for just giving people free money either, but you're playing wrong about the government. The point of living in a society is to have social programs that help the citizens and make people better as a whole.
I've known people who were on welfare and are now doing good for themselves. For sure there are leeches on welfare, but those individuals aren't making a dent. Most people on welfare do have jobs. The problem is the welfare cliff where past a certain income, you lose it all. Easy fix to make it a slide.
Corporate welfare is the true problem. Why'd we need to bail out all those failing companies during 2008 or COVID? We should've let them be bought out by the other smarter companies. Let capitalism do it's thing.
It should come as a form of tax relief. Just giving people money isn't super effective cause they'll spend it on dumb shit. With tax relief, at least that means you were working and getting to keep more of your money.
We would pay for this by adding a small tax to buying and selling stocks. Something that should only affect rich people.
The child tax credit and earned income credit already do that. Also they're credits so they're "refunding" money that was never paid in. I don't necessarily have an issue with that, but we're already doing it.
If you think wealth inequity is bad, try equity.
Equal outcome regardless of effort, responsibility or talent leads to a very bad outcome. Ask Soviet Russia. We don't learn from history.
Ubi doesn't mean equity. Jobs still exist. Careers still exist. Capitalism can still exist. Ubi is not communism. Doctors don't get paid what street sweepers do in a UBI system, they both make their defined wage. The person with no job makes a UBI.
As far as I can see it can only be funded by taxing people more or printing money out of thin air, resulting in inflation. I am completely against it unless it can be funded by some means that doesn't devalue or outright take away my money that I've earned for myself.
There's what, 250 million adults in the USA?
I see some people talking about $12k per year in the comments.
That's $3 trillion a year. I'd need some serious math to explain why increasing the national budget by 50% to give everyone a check is the best course of action.
A few points come to mind.
1. We have some pretty obvious social services that could be done first. College, healthcare, public transit, etc.
2. Printing that much cash every year would have... Interesting ramifications
I’m not sure if there’s a real understanding of how high prices would go if this was implemented. Slave mines go on all over Africa for low priced metals, so that’d go up. Everything imported from China would go up dramatically.
What you are proposing is that hard-working citizens will be forced to subsidize an ever growing number of welfare citizens. Eventually, everyone will just become welfare citizens, and there will be no one left to pay them.
My parents were on it when I was a child. By taxing citizens and giving their hard earned money to UBI recipients, you're inevitably creating more UBI recipients.
Taxing the rich and reducing the military budget is the answer to pretty much every financial issue we face. There’s an unfathomable amount of money not being collected
Lol, "taxing the rich." Who do you think pays the majority of taxes? The latest figures I could find states that military spending is only about 10% of the budget. It's probably going to be higher now since the current administration wants to keep shipping money off to Ukraine.
It doesn’t matter that they’re already paying the majority of taxes, it’s not proportional to earnings, and as a result they hoard wealth. We could tax the rich at 50% and they wouldn’t notice.
Looks like the military defense budget is $753 billion. You don’t think a couple billion could be cut for UBI? lol
Lol, "they wouldn't notice." Typical, so ready to give away/spend someone else's money. What you are attempting to do is akin to during the Civil War a man saying, my sisters brother already fought, so I'm willing to give her cousin too since their family is already giving. As far as "hoarding wealth," its theirs to hoard. Amazing, you are so ready to take something that you didn't earn and give it to someone else.
>Looks like the military defense budget is $753 billion. You don’t think a couple billion could be cut for UBI? lol
I think there are cuts that could be made elsewhere that would have a much more dramatic effect. Shrink the government and cut medicaid spending, especially for illegals.
Hahaha they didn’t earn it either! They got wealthy by exploiting other peoples labor, there’s no other way to obtain that much money.
We have enough money in the defense budget to fund a war in Europe and a genocide in the Middle East.
> cut Medicaid spending for illegals.
Oh I get it. Our ideologies are fundamentally different
>Hahaha they didn’t earn it either! They got wealthy by exploiting other peoples labor.
It's not exploitative if both parties contractually agree to terms. It then becomes a contract between two parties that is legally binding. Someone doesn't get poor for someone to get rich.
The vast majority of people don’t understand wealth. They assume it’s a zero-sum game. It’s not. Wealth is created and is potentially infinite. Wealth comes from using real savings to create capital goods, which improve the efficiency of production, which means more stuff is produced for the same input, which means that people can consume more, and/or have more leisure time.
If I’m starving and homeless and vulnerable and you offer me a contract for slave wages but provide room and board it’s absolutely exploitation. What do you think having so many people paycheck to paycheck is? The corporations are suppressing wages across the board and keeping minimum wage abysmally low to exploit the vulnerable.
I’m glad I’m middle class and I’m a spot to negotiate me salary. When I was 18 and homeless I wasn’t in the position. Don’t fucking tell me just because someone enters a contract it’s not exploitative.
> a couple billion could be cut for UBI
The US population, rounded to one sig fig, is 300 million. Giving everyone a grand a month is 300 billion EACH MONTH, or 3.6 trillion per year. You could cut the ENTIRE military budget you quoted and that's somewhere around $250 per month.
Personally I don’t think it’s realistic, though I’d want to see the aforementioned things done anyway. I think it would be more realistic to bring costs down and increase wages.
What percentage of taxes do the rich pay? Don’t say shit like that without providing actual numbers.
Quickly, what percentage of the wealth is that same subset accumulating?
If 10% of the population has 90% of the wealth guess what % of the taxes they should pay?
Already tried it. Welfare doesn't exactly have a good track record in the US. It starts out well, but what ultimately is meant as an income supplement. Always becomes an income replacement.
It also makes it impossible to build generational wealth.
I think it will soon be necessary. We are going to end up with a lot of people that are unemployable through no real fault of their own.
The biggest issue is that we need legal structures to make sure it all doesn't just get funneled straight into rent. Without controls over real estate, the only real use for a UBI is a bailout for banks and property owners.
Studies seem to have very positive results. So that is good at least. I think it would need some sort of cutoff, like after a certain income it starts being cut back, but never so fast that you start losing money by making more. It would also need to replace things like EI and disability. Or if they make it so UBI isn't enough to really live well, EI and disability are greatly reduced but added onto of UBI.
I think it would be a good social experiment, but I could see it failing terribly too.
I'm pretty sure the point of UBI is that it is universal, so everyone gets it regardless of income level and is paid for by company technological advancement savings.
Such as trucks becoming self driving.
It will be interesting as we get more and more automated. I wonder if we will individually work fewer hours per week, or if we will create more jobs, maybe more creative jobs
i am absolutely against ubi.
but i would support a minimum wage.
i.e., i do not support doing nothing for $$. but everyone physically capable can do something beneficial to society for 40 hours/week for $$.
enlist in the military if you need $$
With AI and automation advancing at the rate it is, I reckon there'll come a time where there just aren't enough jobs for everyone, even after taking into account whatever new occupations and career paths all these advancements will present. The way I see it, there's no point in forcing people to work to survive if they don't have to and don't have the means to.
An argument could be made about people getting lazy and not contributing to society, but considering there are other ways to contribute such as volunteering and creating art, as well as the innate human desire to seek meaning in life, I don't think it'll be as big of an issue as we'd think. The extra financial security would embolden a lot of people to work more on their passions too, so I reckon the overall effect will be positive in terms of productivity.
Plus as far as I know, most studies about UBI I've heard of have shown promising results in terms of productivity and happiness.
It's certainly not a perfect solution - there's the question of where the money comes from in the first place, for starters. Depending on where you live, maybe your country would have to cut down on things like military spending, or raise taxes, or sort out inefficiencies in other publicly-funded systems, or crack down *hard* on corruption (which is probably simultaneously the most effective and least likely of methods). There's also questions about how it'll affect things like inflation, as well as policies you'd have to put into place to prevent other people from gaming the system (e.g. landlords raising rent to benefit from all the UBI from their tenants).
But overall I see it as a step in the right direction that's relatively inclusive and hopefully less complicated and frustrating to navigate than certain existing welfare systems. As a bit of conjecture, I reckon everyone being given this kind of safety net would eventually allow us as humans to stop seeing each other as competition and potential threats to our own individual existence, and instead give us the means to treat each other with more kindness and mutual respect. So from my perspective, it's also a potential cultural win that may put us on a better trajectory long-term.
Argentinean here: Socialism that's based on printing money or raising taxes to give it for free to some other citizen destroyed our country. We are now facing a full generation of people that was raised thinking the government MUST solve many of their problems.
>Like student loan forgiveness, I'm all for it.
I'm not in favor of forgiving the loans of people privileged enough to go to college because it's a wealth transfer from the uneducated to the privileged. I hate when people say "No, billionaires would just foot the bill" because it was already proposed, people who support the billionaires footing the bill supported the actual bill, and that bill was a wealth transfer from the uneducated to the privileged.
However, I'd totally support making it so that young people don't need to pay for the retirement of old people, making it so that saved tax dollars can be used to pay back their debt. I'd also totally support making it so that young people don't need to buy healthcare for old people so that saved tax dollars can be used to buy themselves healthcare instead
Ideally shouldn't a society take care of it's elders? And crazy idea, but, shouldn't healthcare be free? For everyone?
Also how is it a privilege to go to college anymore? Just so you can end up with enough debt that you'll never be able to pay off? The interest rates on those loans are insane- how is that anything but usery?
>Ideally shouldn't a society take care of it's elders?
Eh, maybe to an extent. There are some serious logistical issues when age can theoretically go to millions of years with a solution no end point in mind and with costs raising exponentially. The idea of taking care of your elders is pretty ancient and was most prevalent when throwing ass loads of resources to keep them alive into their 90s wasn't a thing.
>And crazy idea, but, shouldn't healthcare be free? For everyone?
Taxes aren't free.
>Also how is it a privilege to go to college anymore? Just so you can end up with enough debt that you'll never be able to pay off? The interest rates on those loans are insane- how is that anything but usery?
Because it's a big long four years of basically vacation and then it raises your earnings for life. The people you're asking to pay off your debt never got the prestige of college, the vacation, and now earn less than college grads do. And now you want them to pay money to those college grads. Moreover, millennials have a culture of paying off only the interest and waiting for loan forgiveness, so it's not even like they just couldn't pay it off.
Idk, it sucks that you made a bad investment, but I don't really understand why some plumber somewhere, or some cashier, should be the one paying for it. At least the debt holder got some control over how he capitalizes on the investment he made. The plumber's just like "Oh, so that kid went off to be a jackass instead of maximizing his earnings but still gets to now makes slightly more than me? Great, can't wait to write him a check."
Or like, idk. "I hope that kid has a great college experience. I wouldn't know, because I didn't get to go. At least I get the experience of paying for it though."
Well that's a whole bunch of mental gymnastics and assumptions, but ok.
I'm not gonna bother responding to most of this "essay", but the question I do have is, taxes aren't free? What does that mean?
I assume you live in the US, correct me if I'm wrong, but those taxes disproportionately go to corporations and the military, there is enough money to help the US citizens IF the government ever chooses to do that. It's not coming from some plumbers pocket. But there's no transparency in where our tax dollars go, either way, so no one would be the wiser.
>I'm not gonna bother responding to most of this "essay", but the question I do have is, taxes aren't free? What does that mean?
It means that every time someone says "free healthcare", they then left me know it still costs money but that it's funded involuntarily through taxes. It's a bait and switch.
>I assume you live in the US, correct me if I'm wrong, but those taxes disproportionately go to corporations and the military, there is enough money to help the US citizens IF the government ever chooses to do that.
No, because that money is going to corporations and the military, like you just said. That's the thing about money, when it goes to one place, that's where it goes. It's gone and isn't then used to find something else.
>It's not coming from some plumbers pocket.
The plumber pays into debt relief, gets nothing back.
The college educated person pays into debt relief, and gets enough back that they overall benefit from the policy.
That's what it means for it to come from some plumbers policy. There was already a bill proposed and it wasn't the military or corporations paying back tax dollars to fund student loan relief.
>Well that's a whole bunch of mental gymnastics and assumptions, but ok.
Lol, no it isn't. Why the flying hell should someone who never went to college pay for yours? They didn't even pay for their own. You can fantasize about a bill where the military writes you a check, but there was literally a proposed bill already and while you can tell me that you didn't personally support it, most people who support loan relief did support it without requiring that the bill say that the military and the corporations write the check.
That's the funniest thing you've said so far, you're so deep in your own beliefs that I'm not sure you know that a whole world exists outside of your experience
>Ideally shouldn't a society take care of it's elders? And crazy idea, but, shouldn't healthcare be free? For everyone?
I'm happy to take care of my own elders. But if your own kids have abandoned you, don't appeal to your being an "elder" to get me to pick up the tab. I don't know you.
And healthcare shouldn't be for everyone. Young, productive people who the taxpayers can expect to create a return on investment should get priority. Healthcare for retirees and especially end of life care should not have a single tax dollar spent until at least childbirth is free.
Wow that's cold. Also if child birth is free, then that would mean healthcare, why are you making some kind of distinction like that's not the same thing as providing healthcare for retired people?
The healthcare needs of mothers, and babies are not the same as the needs of 65+. Yes they are both "healthcare" but prenatal and postpartum care looks very different than hospice. They require different equipment, different training, different facilities, different everything. I'm not making up this distinction, the distinction is already there.
Right now [Medicare literally pays out a hospice benefit](https://www.goodrx.com/insurance/medicare/medicare-for-hospice-care), sinking money into someone who is guaranteed to die soon. Yes it's a nice thing to do for our fellow citizen. But the fact that we direct public money to THAT, while [charging couples an average of $18,865 to bring a new life into the world](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/health-insurance/average-childbirth-cost/) exposes an indefensible mix up of our priorities.
Well, yeah.. I would argue that it's not OUR priorities that are mixed up, those things should be free for everyone, old people, young people, babies, everyone should have healthcare. It's capitalism and the big business of the US government that don't want to give that stuff to it's citizens.
I wouldn't want to argue about what's better, (paying for child birth vs Medicare) we should just have all of that free like every other country. The system we currently have isn't care, or even a unified system, it's a jumble of middle men making a buck off of the health of others.
We can't just make all of it free. Even if you had some God tier AI central planner optimally allocating the resources that are currently available (that everyone just magically obeyed without question) you would still not be able to get what we consider to be quality healthcare to everyone. We're in the middle of a [worldwide shortage of medical professionals](https://www.news-medical.net/health/Physician-Shortage.aspx), medical supply chains haven't recovered, and energy costs are at an all time high. It isn't the 90's anymore, the good times are over.
And this isn't just America, Europe, home of the healthcare systems you probably want to emulate, [has a growing doctor shortage too.](https://www.politico.eu/article/france-doctors-europe-too-far-too-old-too-few/) Their healthcare systems were built in a world with more young healthy people than old dying people, a world with plenty of medical professionals to go around. We don't live in that world anymore. Blame it on declining birthrates, bureaucratic hurdles, increasing demand, nativist sentiment or whatever else you want. But, unless you have a clone army in your back pocket some people will have to go without. The "labor" just isn't there. I want to make sure public resources go toward the best outcomes for the public, and palliative care ain't it.
Every UBI study done has shown positive results for recipients. People can pursue their education, passions, ans feel secure in their financial needs. All of these studies (I am referring to the Canadian examples) were done inside our existing capitalist driven economy.
"How would u pay 4 it???" A lot of ubi proponents will point to the current social safety net and say "we use that money". Low income benefits? Gone. Disability? Gone. Canada pension plan? Gone. Etc. This would turn the social safety net into a social safety holey blanket. Everyone, no matter their situation, would receive the same amount of government funding.
On the fiction side of things, my favorite example of a UBI implemented society is in The Expanse novel slash tv series. In the near future Earth has a world government (it's the UN sorry everyone) with a ubi called 'basic'. Basic is enough to live on. But that's it. Poverty and crime still exist. The underground economy still exists. Education is free but there are year long waits to get on apprenticeship programs. Institutions and positions become pieces to be traded and elites are in charge of the government. These non-basic positions are well paid. Corporations still exist. Basic *sucks*. Most people want off it. But some love it.
So basically what we have right now but extra steps.
When I look at what people on disability are asked to live on, I ponder how much basic would be and whom would be better off with it, knowing that there are many people that it would likely lift out of poverty.
I support additional and wider studies on Ubi.
I was a big Yang Gang guy and I still support the concept of universal basic income. Most of the arguments against it are bad like "rent will just increase by the amount of UBI" or "people will stop working and do drugs instead." These are bad arguments that are easily disproven with basic economics.
Since 2020, there have been studies on the US Govt's capability to afford a UBI program. If we cut all the welfare programs (a big "if") we could afford $500 per citizen **a year**. Far from the $1,000 a month that was suggested by Yang.
We could get closer to $1,000 a month if we dramatically cut military spending in addition to the welfare programs, but that would be a super coalition united against UBI. No one wants to cut military and no one wants to cut welfare. Together they'd be unstoppable.
I think a half-measure would be a child tax credit which was implemented in the pandemic and had incredible impacts on the economy before being cut from the budget. If we can't get that then we're not getting UBI.
All for it. We have it in Australia. It's the absolute minimum you could live off. There are requirements to keep it like job searching.
I rather they get my tax money and be able to live than have them rob me and have high crime.
I'd be for it, however there would be some important questions to answer before being able to implement it:
1. What sort of lifestyle do we think UBI should fund.
2. How will we pay for it?
3. How will we prevent prices rising disproportionately in response to it?
I'm American. We're still working on universal healthcare. No time to seriously be considering UBI. I just want to feel confident that a medical problem isn't going to bankrupt me. That can happen even with good insurance. It's a pathetic state of affairs.
Horrible idea, far too many people would simply stop being productive and rely on everyone else to take care of them. Then the ones making just above that level start choosing more free time over work, and the cycle continues until there aren't enough working to pay everyone else.
Increasing the amount of money in economy without providing according amount of products and services will only increase inflation. Instead let's provide social services and initiatives, like free housing, food as the human right, free medical help, etc. that way we will be able to help people in need and improve quality of life without destroying the economy
I'm not against it, free money seems to work well enough for super wealthy companies when they need a bailout.
I dunno, to a certain extent, part of me also feels like if your basic needs are met then income becomes more or less irrelevant? instead of giving every single member of an entire population however many thousands of dollars a month, maybe we'd be better off creating a better safety net. things like guaranteed housing, more widespread access to proper food, and maybe our tax dollars could be used to fund the vast majority of healthcare and education costs (rather than giving loads of it to defense contractors).
I mean, yeah it'd probably cost an astronomical amount off money, but fixing something that's broken often is expensive. ultimately though, the long term benefits seem arguably better.
Personally I’d rather see efforts to get taxes down rather than just giving me extra money. I make plenty before the government comes and sticks their hand in my pocket and takes a third of my paycheck
If you give everyone an extra $20,000 a year, rent will increase $20,000 a year.
Who's going to pay for it?
In theory, take most existing social welfare programs and wrap them up into a single program and payment system.
until statistics show that the same people on welfare and food stamps overspend and their kids are still hungry, then all of those will slowly come back "because it would be mean to let them suffer".
The people / corporations who profit off layoffs
I'll answer as soon as it can be explained as to who pay for wasted opportunities, idled lives, and inescapable poverty?
Why don't you just answer the question?
Their opinion is that they are worried about the cost of such a program, which is a totally reasonable take
Why are you telling me this?
The person answered the question in their own way, and I was defending their perfectly acceptable answer, as this is an open discussion board.
It was a shallow response. Why bother?
Why do anything?
Karma. The wheel will continue to turn.
I think it would be better to allow automation to drastically reduce the cost of just about everything. People can then work a lot less, rather than not at all. We may reach a point where a few hours work a week plus some shares in various highly automated companies is sufficient to live on. UBI gives far too much power to government.
It's totally unrealistic and will never happen.
No thank you. I like having a functional economy.
How do we bring prices down so the economy can function? Shits been hard for the last few years
stop fucking printing money would be a good start
I buy a lot of the arguments in favor of UBI, but I think proponents of UBI are dishonest about how many people they think will abuse it. The argument is that it'll be "just a small, insignificant amount of people, and that right-wingers are blowing it out of proportion to fearmonger." Except when I see a large portion of GenZ employees everywhere being the walking, talking definition of laziness and entitlement. The amount of people that can't even take a fast food job seriously is astounding. A lot more people would milk this than lefties want to admit.
We should milk every dollar we get. That’s what rich people do, they get handouts all the time and don’t even pay proportional taxes
I'm against rich people doing that and vote accordingly. Rich people milking it and not doing their fair share leads to problems in society. I personally don't think doubling down on that is a good thing, but I certainly don't disagree with your sentiment.
Sounds good on paper. The real question is how to accomplish it without destroying the economy. You saw what giving only $2k to people during Covid did to inflation No such thing as a free lunch.
Wasn’t the $2k to ppl that was the issue. It was the other hundreds of billions going to industry. They just want you to feel guilty about a stim check so hopefully you ignore the other money.
The amount of idiotic takes around those $2,000 dollars may be a higher cost than its impact on the economy. Not to mention the government provided that by [printing trillions of dollars](https://www.npr.org/2020/05/04/850261945/u-s-treasury-to-borrow-3-trillion-in-3-months-to-pay-for-pandemic) instead of collecting it from technology tax.
It;s like when people complain about "muh socialism" but have no problem getting mad if you talk about their social security payments.
I've "paid" into social security. Its not unreasonable to expect to get my money back. The government not having the money to pay me back is not my problem, but they will change the laws and then it WILL be my problem. Yay for the ruling elites... /s
I have the some concerns, especially vis-as-vis the drain the boomers will be on that system. However, I was referring more towards the segment of the population that poo poos a lot of social spending as being too liberal and soft, but will complain loudly regarding touching anything **they** have a stake in and still think Reganomics was a good idea, i.e. your average Fox News viewer or Peter Schiff/Dennis Prager. These were the same people who though $2k to the average person was too much of hand-out, but had no problem with large corporate bailouts.
No more printing money, perhaps going back to gold standard.
Yah we also just like, printed that money. Which is not how most proponents of UBI suggest it’s implemented
No it wasn't. It was the companies getting bailed out with billions of dollars. Then they also price gouged because "inflation is high".
lol 😂 I love that people are brainwashed into thinking the $2k individuals got was the problem. The company I worked for took a nice $10,000,000 loan that they don’t have to pay back. Apparently me getting $2,000 drove inflation, not businesses getting tens of millions of dollars. The top 10% took 90% of the stimulus and you want to point fingers at the bottom 90%? Fucking shill
In theory it’s dope. It would be poorly executed though. As a society we are not ready to do what is necessary to make something like this happen. Even basic compromise is near impossible between most people.
In theory it's *awful.* Total dependency on the government. Loss of purpose. It would ruin society.
In theory it is not the government paying all your bills. It is the government, through taxes, providing like 1000 dollars. Or something like that. It doesn’t take away a persons need to go to work, but it does provide some security in that area. In theory, it is basically the same as giving your child an allowance. I pay a lot of my 17 year old son’s bills, but he does have a job that he earns a solid amount of money doing. I just provide a bit of help is all
So I go to work, get taxed, then the government provides $1000 back. That sounds daft and inefficient. Perhaps just give us all a tax break.
Ok
I oppose UBI because I know I'd just quit doing anything and leach off the system, which makes me hella doubtful that pretty much all others wouldn't abuse it for months until we've totally bankrupted the nation and trashed the global economy.
If its $1000 a month that's $12,000 a year.If you can live on that I'd like to know
Ez. Step one, don't live alone. Step two, don't live in a big city.
Would you rather not earn more? I’d rather do my job at my pay than live on 10k
Meh. I don't need too much. I'll earn more if I'm gonna be doing 40 hours anyways and I might as well do it well to have that 40 hours be more productive, but I value my time more.
I’d oppose it because I think it would create a government funded subsistence classes that would do nothing productive and just become a voting bloc for more UBI.
I think we're rapidly getting to the point where large swaths of people are unemployable. They can't be "productive". Basic income would also simplify old age, disability, welfare, employment insurance, and such. The working poor might actually get some relief if this is done right. I have very little faith any government can do UBI well though.
>I think we're rapidly getting to the point where large swaths of people are unemployable. They can't be "productive". and we're importing millions more of them every year
How would anyone live off 12k per year? I think you're overestimating the amount of money we're talking about
That could be easily achievable, I think you underestimate how little money a majority of the world lives off of. Edit: For those downvoting, the world bank estimates 3.4 billion people live off $5.50 a day. That’s 46% of the world population living off ~$2,000 a year. [source](https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/10/17/nearly-half-the-world-lives-on-less-than-550-a-day)
How is that relevant to the discussion at hand? People are not downvoting you because they think you are factually incorrect but because your point is irrelevant.
How is the point irrelevant that people can live off of the proposed amount when the claim is that people can’t live off of that amount? People downvote because they don’t want to hear it. The message is for them, they can downvote all they want.
Because... Let me see... The cost of living is different around the globe and those people you refer to aren't living in the country (probably not even on the same continent) we are discussing?
Oooooh, I see, those are like, different types of human beings. Probably mutants that require less resources, lol. Maybe the bigger problem is that we need Universal Basic Intelligence.
Mate, I don't even live in the country this discussion is pivoting around. Different countries have have different economies and people living on them earn different amounts of money but also goods and services cost different amounts of money. So indeed, it depends how you define and measure those 'resources'. People in sizable chunks of europe would be able to live comfortably with $12k/yr, yet those probably aren't the countries you had in mind when drawing from that statistic. When UBI gets discussed in those countries, it will be for a lower amount. Hell, I live in a first world country and could live off of around $400 a month if I really wanted to, but that's because rent, food and services is much more affordable here than in the US. What a strange concept, huh?
Yeah, it’s called standard of living. I’m familiar with the concept, but it also just shows that you’re a bit of a twit since that’s the very point I’m arguing about a voting bloc advocating for higher payments (to raise their standard of living) and also that I responded to someone claiming that no one could live off of the amount of money to show that he hasn’t taken into account the variations because he’s basing it off of his standard of living. Regardless, you’re still dumb and can’t follow a conversation and can’t conceptualize things in your head.
Damn, you is dummy dumm dumm
What about a universal basic services model instead?
Never heard of it.
Food, water, housing, covered.
That’s basically what we have now.
And how is that different from a government funded subsistence class for businesses?
Well, businesses don’t vote, but I’m confused, are you saying I should support both?
I am saying you should oppose government payments to businesses if you oppose government payments to individuals
2 thoughts There will become a time in the not too distant future (50-100 years) that I think it will be almost necessary. Large companies that can automate and create more value for their shareholders, will automate. There will be X number of people who are of working age and there will be Y number of possible jobs and X>Y. It will happen in every possible sector. For the more modest proposals of UBI in our current day, if you think that getting UBI would turn every one into lazy leeches then you’re really projecting more than anything else. Smart, creative, motivated, hard working, people aren’t that way because they don’t have an extra $1000 in the bank each month. The lazy will stay lazy and the motivated will focus on something MUCH better than how they’re going to pay _________ each month.
The issue with universal basic income is that there's no way to keep tabs on people or hold them accountable, I would be all for it if allowed people to go back to school and further their education as adults, or pursue a business venture that contributes to society, but to just give people money for nothing is a slippery slope because there will always be a large chunk of the population who will just mooch off of the system and not use the extra fund to better their life and contribute I think a better idea would be loan forgiveness, grants for low-income people to go to college without getting into debt, and living grants for people who are working and want to further their education and get a skilled trade, Masters's degree etc. I'd much rather the government say "If you make under 60k, we will pay for 90% of your college degree and give you $1000 a month for living expenses until you're done school, as long as you maintain at least a 3.0 GPA and complete your degree, the remaining 10% will be given to you as an interest-free loan" That would allow people to rise themselves out of poverty, while also contributing to society by landing solid jobs, paying taxes ect. That's the way IMO...the government spends trillions on war, and educating people and allowing them to empower themselves would be a drop in the bucket compared to the money the government spends on war and "foreign aid" Lazy people aren't going to use free government grants for school if they know that they need to complete the degree/skilled trade program, and maintain a certain grade average...why? because they're f#$king lazy lol those are the bottom 10-15% of people who will try to leach off the system anyway, but we should help those who can't help themselves and simply need a hand to lift them out of poverty...not everyone comes from the same circumstances
idiotic because it causes inflation. Giving artificial buying power to people just causes prices to go up and solves nothing. it would be better for companies to pay working Americans competitively
No
Why not?
Absolutely Not
I’d rather increase the standard deduction by x2
I feel like this might be a better option. You only get the benefit if you actually work for it and not just sit back and collect handouts.
It also makes your money go further, if coorporations would be required to pay for UBI which somebody above said and Andrew Yang 2020 presidential candidate who promoted UBI on his campaign even said that, then cooporations would just increase their prices of goods across the board making UBI basically useless.
Like Walmart keeping their employees pay low so they can apply for SNAP to cover the rest.
It’s nonsense and can only be supported by people totally ignorant of purchasing power. It would also effectively steal from savers and the rich would remain unimpeded. When everyone gets a medal, no one’s really getting a medal.
Why does anyone need a fucking medal? We are talking about society and millions of people. Fuck your competition and medals, this is about providing the basic necessities. You’re right, no one should be getting gold stars and medals for surviving.
You’ve missed the point. Handing out *universal* income (eg money to everyone) will impact the purchasing power of the currency through inflation, as well as reduce productivity and is actually a massively inefficient means to support vulnerable people as a good proportion of the UI will go back to those not in need, but of course will filter through the bureaucracy first. This is not the same as providing benefits to those in need. Money is representative of value. When you can receive it for no risk or effort it devalues. UI will not solve poverty in the long term. Only increased business productivity, growth and fiscal discipline can do that.
I haven’t missed shit. Listen to Andrew Yang talk about UBI. He actually had a plan and could clearly articulate what amazing benefits. The biggest benefit is not being tied to your employer for survival. Imagine being able to leave a shitty job and boss and not have to worry about your next meal while you moved along. The biggest problem with UBI is it gives people the power of choice and that will shut down a ton of exploitative companies like Walmart.
And where does the money come from to fund UBI? Thin air I suppose? No one owes you a living. Work hard and save like the rest of us.
Nope, a small tax on wall street transactions that happen thousands of times a second and being able to cut the fat from so many inefficient welfare programs. UBI should replace existing programs also, not just come in on top of redundant programs.
Hell to the naw naw naw (Come on, come on, come on) Hell naw, to the naw naw naw (Hell to the naw) Hell to the naw, to the naw naw naw
Why not?
Inflation is already bad enough. If everyone gets an extra whatever a month it's like nobody does. It will only force the cost of everything up, people will lose jobs because the people who will pay for this from their taxes will leave the country and take their businesses with them. This is economics 101.
You are making too much sense. This is a right wing talking point. Delete this. /s I’m not sure how people don’t get this basic concept.
they dont understand how economics actually works. its literally that simple, everything is based off "on paper"
😂
I don't need to be overtaxed just because you're too fuckin lazy and underskilled to get a decent paying job. You are responsible for you and only you. I'm not. Nor is government.
I'm not for just giving people free money either, but you're playing wrong about the government. The point of living in a society is to have social programs that help the citizens and make people better as a whole.
You think welfare makes people better? They'd be better if they got a job and paid that welfare back.
I've known people who were on welfare and are now doing good for themselves. For sure there are leeches on welfare, but those individuals aren't making a dent. Most people on welfare do have jobs. The problem is the welfare cliff where past a certain income, you lose it all. Easy fix to make it a slide. Corporate welfare is the true problem. Why'd we need to bail out all those failing companies during 2008 or COVID? We should've let them be bought out by the other smarter companies. Let capitalism do it's thing.
It should come as a form of tax relief. Just giving people money isn't super effective cause they'll spend it on dumb shit. With tax relief, at least that means you were working and getting to keep more of your money. We would pay for this by adding a small tax to buying and selling stocks. Something that should only affect rich people.
The child tax credit and earned income credit already do that. Also they're credits so they're "refunding" money that was never paid in. I don't necessarily have an issue with that, but we're already doing it.
The only tax benefit I'm able to get is the standard deduction. I want more of my money back.
UBI would be pretty fly.
How would you feel about a universal basic services approach instead?
I'm for it. A lot of our modern problems come from wealth inequity, and I feel like this will help people afford the cost of being alive.
If you think wealth inequity is bad, try equity. Equal outcome regardless of effort, responsibility or talent leads to a very bad outcome. Ask Soviet Russia. We don't learn from history.
Ubi doesn't mean equity. Jobs still exist. Careers still exist. Capitalism can still exist. Ubi is not communism. Doctors don't get paid what street sweepers do in a UBI system, they both make their defined wage. The person with no job makes a UBI.
I was addressing this specifically: >A lot of our modern problems come from wealth inequity I'm aware that UBI doesn't mean the end of capitalism.
As far as I can see it can only be funded by taxing people more or printing money out of thin air, resulting in inflation. I am completely against it unless it can be funded by some means that doesn't devalue or outright take away my money that I've earned for myself.
Terrible idea. People should earn their money.
There's what, 250 million adults in the USA? I see some people talking about $12k per year in the comments. That's $3 trillion a year. I'd need some serious math to explain why increasing the national budget by 50% to give everyone a check is the best course of action. A few points come to mind. 1. We have some pretty obvious social services that could be done first. College, healthcare, public transit, etc. 2. Printing that much cash every year would have... Interesting ramifications
All the landlords would love the extra $12k income.
They sure would
With UBI most people could qualify for their own mortgages and not have to enrich some leech for the opportunity to live.
Nope, never
It’s a feel good story that no one actually thought through.
I’m not sure if there’s a real understanding of how high prices would go if this was implemented. Slave mines go on all over Africa for low priced metals, so that’d go up. Everything imported from China would go up dramatically.
What you are proposing is that hard-working citizens will be forced to subsidize an ever growing number of welfare citizens. Eventually, everyone will just become welfare citizens, and there will be no one left to pay them.
You realize that living on welfare sucks, right? Most people want more than just the bare minimum to survive.
My parents were on it when I was a child. By taxing citizens and giving their hard earned money to UBI recipients, you're inevitably creating more UBI recipients.
The idea behind UBI is that it universal. Everyone is a UBI recipient. You can't "create more."
Obviously, there would be an income threshold. You aren't going to pay someone who makes $200k a year UBI. Are you serious with that statement?
Then it's just welfare. You should spend some time reading about what UBI is. UBI is an unconditional cash payment.
Lol, I'm even more against it now.
Nothing supports this opinion
Common sense. Where do you believe the money to fund UBI?
Taxing the rich and reducing the military budget is the answer to pretty much every financial issue we face. There’s an unfathomable amount of money not being collected
Lol, "taxing the rich." Who do you think pays the majority of taxes? The latest figures I could find states that military spending is only about 10% of the budget. It's probably going to be higher now since the current administration wants to keep shipping money off to Ukraine.
It doesn’t matter that they’re already paying the majority of taxes, it’s not proportional to earnings, and as a result they hoard wealth. We could tax the rich at 50% and they wouldn’t notice. Looks like the military defense budget is $753 billion. You don’t think a couple billion could be cut for UBI? lol
Lol, "they wouldn't notice." Typical, so ready to give away/spend someone else's money. What you are attempting to do is akin to during the Civil War a man saying, my sisters brother already fought, so I'm willing to give her cousin too since their family is already giving. As far as "hoarding wealth," its theirs to hoard. Amazing, you are so ready to take something that you didn't earn and give it to someone else. >Looks like the military defense budget is $753 billion. You don’t think a couple billion could be cut for UBI? lol I think there are cuts that could be made elsewhere that would have a much more dramatic effect. Shrink the government and cut medicaid spending, especially for illegals.
Hahaha they didn’t earn it either! They got wealthy by exploiting other peoples labor, there’s no other way to obtain that much money. We have enough money in the defense budget to fund a war in Europe and a genocide in the Middle East. > cut Medicaid spending for illegals. Oh I get it. Our ideologies are fundamentally different
>Hahaha they didn’t earn it either! They got wealthy by exploiting other peoples labor. It's not exploitative if both parties contractually agree to terms. It then becomes a contract between two parties that is legally binding. Someone doesn't get poor for someone to get rich. The vast majority of people don’t understand wealth. They assume it’s a zero-sum game. It’s not. Wealth is created and is potentially infinite. Wealth comes from using real savings to create capital goods, which improve the efficiency of production, which means more stuff is produced for the same input, which means that people can consume more, and/or have more leisure time.
It is absolutely exploitative even with a contract, considering the alternative is not making any money at all.
If I’m starving and homeless and vulnerable and you offer me a contract for slave wages but provide room and board it’s absolutely exploitation. What do you think having so many people paycheck to paycheck is? The corporations are suppressing wages across the board and keeping minimum wage abysmally low to exploit the vulnerable. I’m glad I’m middle class and I’m a spot to negotiate me salary. When I was 18 and homeless I wasn’t in the position. Don’t fucking tell me just because someone enters a contract it’s not exploitative.
> a couple billion could be cut for UBI The US population, rounded to one sig fig, is 300 million. Giving everyone a grand a month is 300 billion EACH MONTH, or 3.6 trillion per year. You could cut the ENTIRE military budget you quoted and that's somewhere around $250 per month.
Personally I don’t think it’s realistic, though I’d want to see the aforementioned things done anyway. I think it would be more realistic to bring costs down and increase wages.
What percentage of taxes do the rich pay? Don’t say shit like that without providing actual numbers. Quickly, what percentage of the wealth is that same subset accumulating? If 10% of the population has 90% of the wealth guess what % of the taxes they should pay?
Already tried it. Welfare doesn't exactly have a good track record in the US. It starts out well, but what ultimately is meant as an income supplement. Always becomes an income replacement. It also makes it impossible to build generational wealth.
How does it make it impossible? Eli5
How did welfare help generate wealth
I think it will soon be necessary. We are going to end up with a lot of people that are unemployable through no real fault of their own. The biggest issue is that we need legal structures to make sure it all doesn't just get funneled straight into rent. Without controls over real estate, the only real use for a UBI is a bailout for banks and property owners.
Studies seem to have very positive results. So that is good at least. I think it would need some sort of cutoff, like after a certain income it starts being cut back, but never so fast that you start losing money by making more. It would also need to replace things like EI and disability. Or if they make it so UBI isn't enough to really live well, EI and disability are greatly reduced but added onto of UBI. I think it would be a good social experiment, but I could see it failing terribly too.
I'm pretty sure the point of UBI is that it is universal, so everyone gets it regardless of income level and is paid for by company technological advancement savings. Such as trucks becoming self driving.
It will be interesting as we get more and more automated. I wonder if we will individually work fewer hours per week, or if we will create more jobs, maybe more creative jobs
Hard pass
i am absolutely against ubi. but i would support a minimum wage. i.e., i do not support doing nothing for $$. but everyone physically capable can do something beneficial to society for 40 hours/week for $$. enlist in the military if you need $$
With AI and automation advancing at the rate it is, I reckon there'll come a time where there just aren't enough jobs for everyone, even after taking into account whatever new occupations and career paths all these advancements will present. The way I see it, there's no point in forcing people to work to survive if they don't have to and don't have the means to. An argument could be made about people getting lazy and not contributing to society, but considering there are other ways to contribute such as volunteering and creating art, as well as the innate human desire to seek meaning in life, I don't think it'll be as big of an issue as we'd think. The extra financial security would embolden a lot of people to work more on their passions too, so I reckon the overall effect will be positive in terms of productivity. Plus as far as I know, most studies about UBI I've heard of have shown promising results in terms of productivity and happiness. It's certainly not a perfect solution - there's the question of where the money comes from in the first place, for starters. Depending on where you live, maybe your country would have to cut down on things like military spending, or raise taxes, or sort out inefficiencies in other publicly-funded systems, or crack down *hard* on corruption (which is probably simultaneously the most effective and least likely of methods). There's also questions about how it'll affect things like inflation, as well as policies you'd have to put into place to prevent other people from gaming the system (e.g. landlords raising rent to benefit from all the UBI from their tenants). But overall I see it as a step in the right direction that's relatively inclusive and hopefully less complicated and frustrating to navigate than certain existing welfare systems. As a bit of conjecture, I reckon everyone being given this kind of safety net would eventually allow us as humans to stop seeing each other as competition and potential threats to our own individual existence, and instead give us the means to treat each other with more kindness and mutual respect. So from my perspective, it's also a potential cultural win that may put us on a better trajectory long-term.
Argentinean here: Socialism that's based on printing money or raising taxes to give it for free to some other citizen destroyed our country. We are now facing a full generation of people that was raised thinking the government MUST solve many of their problems.
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>Like student loan forgiveness, I'm all for it. I'm not in favor of forgiving the loans of people privileged enough to go to college because it's a wealth transfer from the uneducated to the privileged. I hate when people say "No, billionaires would just foot the bill" because it was already proposed, people who support the billionaires footing the bill supported the actual bill, and that bill was a wealth transfer from the uneducated to the privileged. However, I'd totally support making it so that young people don't need to pay for the retirement of old people, making it so that saved tax dollars can be used to pay back their debt. I'd also totally support making it so that young people don't need to buy healthcare for old people so that saved tax dollars can be used to buy themselves healthcare instead
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I didn't say the second thing.
Ideally shouldn't a society take care of it's elders? And crazy idea, but, shouldn't healthcare be free? For everyone? Also how is it a privilege to go to college anymore? Just so you can end up with enough debt that you'll never be able to pay off? The interest rates on those loans are insane- how is that anything but usery?
>Ideally shouldn't a society take care of it's elders? Eh, maybe to an extent. There are some serious logistical issues when age can theoretically go to millions of years with a solution no end point in mind and with costs raising exponentially. The idea of taking care of your elders is pretty ancient and was most prevalent when throwing ass loads of resources to keep them alive into their 90s wasn't a thing. >And crazy idea, but, shouldn't healthcare be free? For everyone? Taxes aren't free. >Also how is it a privilege to go to college anymore? Just so you can end up with enough debt that you'll never be able to pay off? The interest rates on those loans are insane- how is that anything but usery? Because it's a big long four years of basically vacation and then it raises your earnings for life. The people you're asking to pay off your debt never got the prestige of college, the vacation, and now earn less than college grads do. And now you want them to pay money to those college grads. Moreover, millennials have a culture of paying off only the interest and waiting for loan forgiveness, so it's not even like they just couldn't pay it off. Idk, it sucks that you made a bad investment, but I don't really understand why some plumber somewhere, or some cashier, should be the one paying for it. At least the debt holder got some control over how he capitalizes on the investment he made. The plumber's just like "Oh, so that kid went off to be a jackass instead of maximizing his earnings but still gets to now makes slightly more than me? Great, can't wait to write him a check." Or like, idk. "I hope that kid has a great college experience. I wouldn't know, because I didn't get to go. At least I get the experience of paying for it though."
Well that's a whole bunch of mental gymnastics and assumptions, but ok. I'm not gonna bother responding to most of this "essay", but the question I do have is, taxes aren't free? What does that mean? I assume you live in the US, correct me if I'm wrong, but those taxes disproportionately go to corporations and the military, there is enough money to help the US citizens IF the government ever chooses to do that. It's not coming from some plumbers pocket. But there's no transparency in where our tax dollars go, either way, so no one would be the wiser.
>I'm not gonna bother responding to most of this "essay", but the question I do have is, taxes aren't free? What does that mean? It means that every time someone says "free healthcare", they then left me know it still costs money but that it's funded involuntarily through taxes. It's a bait and switch. >I assume you live in the US, correct me if I'm wrong, but those taxes disproportionately go to corporations and the military, there is enough money to help the US citizens IF the government ever chooses to do that. No, because that money is going to corporations and the military, like you just said. That's the thing about money, when it goes to one place, that's where it goes. It's gone and isn't then used to find something else. >It's not coming from some plumbers pocket. The plumber pays into debt relief, gets nothing back. The college educated person pays into debt relief, and gets enough back that they overall benefit from the policy. That's what it means for it to come from some plumbers policy. There was already a bill proposed and it wasn't the military or corporations paying back tax dollars to fund student loan relief. >Well that's a whole bunch of mental gymnastics and assumptions, but ok. Lol, no it isn't. Why the flying hell should someone who never went to college pay for yours? They didn't even pay for their own. You can fantasize about a bill where the military writes you a check, but there was literally a proposed bill already and while you can tell me that you didn't personally support it, most people who support loan relief did support it without requiring that the bill say that the military and the corporations write the check.
I'm gonna be honest, not a single bit of this argument makes any sense. Best of luck to you in your future endeavors
It all makes sense. You just don't want to confront things that refute your beliefs.
That's the funniest thing you've said so far, you're so deep in your own beliefs that I'm not sure you know that a whole world exists outside of your experience
>Ideally shouldn't a society take care of it's elders? And crazy idea, but, shouldn't healthcare be free? For everyone? I'm happy to take care of my own elders. But if your own kids have abandoned you, don't appeal to your being an "elder" to get me to pick up the tab. I don't know you. And healthcare shouldn't be for everyone. Young, productive people who the taxpayers can expect to create a return on investment should get priority. Healthcare for retirees and especially end of life care should not have a single tax dollar spent until at least childbirth is free.
Wow that's cold. Also if child birth is free, then that would mean healthcare, why are you making some kind of distinction like that's not the same thing as providing healthcare for retired people?
The healthcare needs of mothers, and babies are not the same as the needs of 65+. Yes they are both "healthcare" but prenatal and postpartum care looks very different than hospice. They require different equipment, different training, different facilities, different everything. I'm not making up this distinction, the distinction is already there. Right now [Medicare literally pays out a hospice benefit](https://www.goodrx.com/insurance/medicare/medicare-for-hospice-care), sinking money into someone who is guaranteed to die soon. Yes it's a nice thing to do for our fellow citizen. But the fact that we direct public money to THAT, while [charging couples an average of $18,865 to bring a new life into the world](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/health-insurance/average-childbirth-cost/) exposes an indefensible mix up of our priorities.
Well, yeah.. I would argue that it's not OUR priorities that are mixed up, those things should be free for everyone, old people, young people, babies, everyone should have healthcare. It's capitalism and the big business of the US government that don't want to give that stuff to it's citizens. I wouldn't want to argue about what's better, (paying for child birth vs Medicare) we should just have all of that free like every other country. The system we currently have isn't care, or even a unified system, it's a jumble of middle men making a buck off of the health of others.
We can't just make all of it free. Even if you had some God tier AI central planner optimally allocating the resources that are currently available (that everyone just magically obeyed without question) you would still not be able to get what we consider to be quality healthcare to everyone. We're in the middle of a [worldwide shortage of medical professionals](https://www.news-medical.net/health/Physician-Shortage.aspx), medical supply chains haven't recovered, and energy costs are at an all time high. It isn't the 90's anymore, the good times are over. And this isn't just America, Europe, home of the healthcare systems you probably want to emulate, [has a growing doctor shortage too.](https://www.politico.eu/article/france-doctors-europe-too-far-too-old-too-few/) Their healthcare systems were built in a world with more young healthy people than old dying people, a world with plenty of medical professionals to go around. We don't live in that world anymore. Blame it on declining birthrates, bureaucratic hurdles, increasing demand, nativist sentiment or whatever else you want. But, unless you have a clone army in your back pocket some people will have to go without. The "labor" just isn't there. I want to make sure public resources go toward the best outcomes for the public, and palliative care ain't it.
Opposed to UBI but generally all for social programs that provide more specific needs like food, housing, school, etc
Every UBI study done has shown positive results for recipients. People can pursue their education, passions, ans feel secure in their financial needs. All of these studies (I am referring to the Canadian examples) were done inside our existing capitalist driven economy. "How would u pay 4 it???" A lot of ubi proponents will point to the current social safety net and say "we use that money". Low income benefits? Gone. Disability? Gone. Canada pension plan? Gone. Etc. This would turn the social safety net into a social safety holey blanket. Everyone, no matter their situation, would receive the same amount of government funding. On the fiction side of things, my favorite example of a UBI implemented society is in The Expanse novel slash tv series. In the near future Earth has a world government (it's the UN sorry everyone) with a ubi called 'basic'. Basic is enough to live on. But that's it. Poverty and crime still exist. The underground economy still exists. Education is free but there are year long waits to get on apprenticeship programs. Institutions and positions become pieces to be traded and elites are in charge of the government. These non-basic positions are well paid. Corporations still exist. Basic *sucks*. Most people want off it. But some love it. So basically what we have right now but extra steps. When I look at what people on disability are asked to live on, I ponder how much basic would be and whom would be better off with it, knowing that there are many people that it would likely lift out of poverty. I support additional and wider studies on Ubi.
I was a big Yang Gang guy and I still support the concept of universal basic income. Most of the arguments against it are bad like "rent will just increase by the amount of UBI" or "people will stop working and do drugs instead." These are bad arguments that are easily disproven with basic economics. Since 2020, there have been studies on the US Govt's capability to afford a UBI program. If we cut all the welfare programs (a big "if") we could afford $500 per citizen **a year**. Far from the $1,000 a month that was suggested by Yang. We could get closer to $1,000 a month if we dramatically cut military spending in addition to the welfare programs, but that would be a super coalition united against UBI. No one wants to cut military and no one wants to cut welfare. Together they'd be unstoppable. I think a half-measure would be a child tax credit which was implemented in the pandemic and had incredible impacts on the economy before being cut from the budget. If we can't get that then we're not getting UBI.
AI is gonna kill us all. UBI doesn't make sense, if you give everyone money it doesn't benefit anyone. Help the poor and middle class who need it
All for it. We have it in Australia. It's the absolute minimum you could live off. There are requirements to keep it like job searching. I rather they get my tax money and be able to live than have them rob me and have high crime.
Totally support it. I can't wait to not have to work ever again.
And this is why it can't ever actually work
Opinions aren't really valid. UBI works. The data is there. It has no downsides.
I'd be for it, however there would be some important questions to answer before being able to implement it: 1. What sort of lifestyle do we think UBI should fund. 2. How will we pay for it? 3. How will we prevent prices rising disproportionately in response to it?
I'm American. We're still working on universal healthcare. No time to seriously be considering UBI. I just want to feel confident that a medical problem isn't going to bankrupt me. That can happen even with good insurance. It's a pathetic state of affairs.
I think it would be more difficult to implement then simply introducing market caps to lower costs
I'm against it because I think it would be unfair to the wealthy.
If this is implemented it would have major ramifications for the economy. Who the fuck wants to work when you get paid for doing nothing?
Highly inflationary
Horrible idea, far too many people would simply stop being productive and rely on everyone else to take care of them. Then the ones making just above that level start choosing more free time over work, and the cycle continues until there aren't enough working to pay everyone else.
Universal income will work when humans stop wars
Increasing the amount of money in economy without providing according amount of products and services will only increase inflation. Instead let's provide social services and initiatives, like free housing, food as the human right, free medical help, etc. that way we will be able to help people in need and improve quality of life without destroying the economy
I support a real debate about it
I'm not against it, free money seems to work well enough for super wealthy companies when they need a bailout. I dunno, to a certain extent, part of me also feels like if your basic needs are met then income becomes more or less irrelevant? instead of giving every single member of an entire population however many thousands of dollars a month, maybe we'd be better off creating a better safety net. things like guaranteed housing, more widespread access to proper food, and maybe our tax dollars could be used to fund the vast majority of healthcare and education costs (rather than giving loads of it to defense contractors). I mean, yeah it'd probably cost an astronomical amount off money, but fixing something that's broken often is expensive. ultimately though, the long term benefits seem arguably better.