Long before when? It is happening right now, and within 20 (if not 10) years, a large part of jobs will be replaced/reduced.
Universal Basic Income
- Thread starter esmufc07
- Start date
It is. But not to the point where unemployment reaches double digit across the globe (which at the current rate it will).
Time is relative off course, but at this current rate we will still probably live to see the aftermath.
when supply of a certain kind of labour is high, wages go down. The value of something depends on demand/supply and is subjective. At some point one can make the value judgement, that nobody should earn less than XYZ; hard to argue with that except pointing out the consequences.
Putting on a price floor for the cost of labour doesn't push up wages (with few exceptions). We already have de-facto price-floor(s) for the cost of labour. UBI might push the price floor (slightly) higher, because it gets rid of all the push-factors. When we increase the price floor, unemployment is going to rise. Could you explain in a bit more detail how UBI is going to be a game-changer in this regard?
I've read a bit through this and don't really understand it. Is this a proposal to pay every citizen a certain amount each month regardless of whatever salary they're making?
yes
Yes everyone would get UBI. That should be enough to survive without any additional wealthfare benefits. Taxation gets tweaked so anyone earning around average earnings ends up paying the same amount back. The advantages of that system is you wouldn't need a huge departments running wealthware and social services.
That is my take away from the discussion anyway, and it could actually work pretty well.
Well let's flush the details out here.
Keeping the poverty line (as in not earning enough to cover basic necessities) as a base...I see some stats that about 33% of UK population as below poverty line. Let's add in a nice tolerance and assume 40% of the population are in need of support for basic necessities. So why do we need to spend for UBI for rest of 60%? I believe this would consists of traditional middle class plus the rich cnuts. Why do the funds from UBI need to be spent on them?
And does this replace all other types of funding? What about pensions, healthcare etc? Is this on top of all current welfare or a replacement of existing?
Alright, thanks.
Ah, I see. So it's really just an exercise to save money in administration fees. Makes sense if it is.
So if you oppose "free money" then you certainly must oppose high frequency trading yes?
Clearly as someone who oppose free money you must support closing the immoral and scandalous loopholes that allow high freq traders to steal free money off the backs of honest investment funds yes? Certainly you must support changing the rules of all trading exchanges to be like IEX to prevent high frequency trading if you indeed oppose "free money".
Also back away from the juvenile "robin hood wannabe" references because it makes you sound like a Marie Antoinette wannabe (which is a helluva lot worse).
I think you’re making it more complicated than it really is. Firstly healthcare and pensions are nothing to do with it. Although people over pension age could probably still receive UBI.
Everyone would get a UBI payment equal to around the poverty line. I will use rough number here but say the average household income is £30,000 and the poverty line is determined to be 60% of that. So the average household would need £18,000 UBI. The average household is 2.3 people so the individual UBI would be around £8k. A single adult living alone might need more, and children might be a little less.
The taxation system is adjusted so that your UBI is gradually recouped in taxes so that when you start earning around average income all of your UBI has been recouped in taxes.
Benefits of the system are you eliminate means testes benefits and all the overhead needed to support that system. Plus you also remove the stigma of being on wealth fare.
I think you are getting over inspired by Flash Boys and risks are a tad over exaggerated. But yeah, on the baseline, I tend to agree that HFTs are on the edge of murkiness and not really a fair practice and need to go. I'd support a ban on this activity.
I'm sticking with my opinion, grabbing from wealthy and giving freebies to poor is as Robin Hood as it gets.
My question was why? If 60% of the population are well over the poverty line, why give them more money? It fundamentally doesn't make sense.
It's just way more complex than it actually it needs to be. You have benefits/welfare, because some people need support. The whole concept of taxing and then recouping via UBI is unnecessary and redundant. Taking from one pocked and giving to other.
And I'm not clear on what this eliminates? Below is a bit dated graph, but will suffice as a starting point. How many of these benefits will UBI replace?
Potentially pretty much all of them. It doesn't matter if you give someone on high earnings £8k if teh tax system is adjusted to recoup that money once they earn over certain level. There is no extra admin cost collecting tax just because the number is larger.
Eliminate all of the above, extend it to other 60% (additional 70 million adults?) who currently do not benefit from welfare and you claim it will still cheaper than current? I'm sceptical.
I'd suggest you stop with these types of assumptions. We could make an awful lot of insulting assumptions about yourself but out of respect I am trying to debate in good faith. I ask that you do the same.
Now, if you acknowledge that high frequency trading is shady, unfair and shouldn't be legal then certainly you must concede there have been plenty of other shady practices that technically were legal (mostly due to the fact its the rich and powerful determining exactly what is legal and what isn't). How you can attack giving "freebies" to the poor which amount to crumbs off the table of what the rich have stolen (sometimes legally, sometimes semi-legally and sometimes illegally but never get caught) without also attacking all the ill gotten, shady "freebies" the richest gave themselves is beyond me.
Its like you legitimize all the theft by the rich from the poor but suddenly you get your moral panties in a bunch when anyone talks about semi-fair redistribution to balance out getting ripped off for generations? Who paid for all of Trump's failures? The taxpayers of New York. Who got all the benefits from the backs of taxpayer sweat? Unearned Trump did.
Progressive taxation even radical wealth redistribution is really just attempting to balance out all the "freebies" that the rich have been granting themselves for generations like landed aristocrats.
I don't see the wealthy paying back the billions they stole through the savings and loan cons of 80s, energy deregulation of 90s, radical deregulation of financial services of 00s etc. No, the richest have already stolen billions from the middle class by setting the laws to benefit themselves and then stiffing us middle class blokes with the bill. Privatize the profits and socialize all the risks. Did John Paulson give back the money he made gambling on people going destitute? Did Paris Hilton give back the billions she didn't earn but won in a genetic lottery? No? Angelo Mozilo didn't even go to jail for his primary role in fecking over the economy for personal profit. yet the taxpayers yet again had to fork over billions to bail out the richest who got "fired" with their golden parachutes of multi millions.
Feck that. They owe that money back to the poor and middle class as far as I am concerned. They stole, now they must return it. The US government is far too controlled by the economic elites as the research above from Princeton proves.
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Well most people would pay more tax and it would balance out. I am not saying with authority it would work but I can definitely conceptualise it and see the benefits.
I'm not really convinced by UBI tbh.
I dont really buy that all administration would disappear - the difference in needs between a single person living down the country and someone with dependents living in a big city are just too wide to get a one size fits all payment that'll cover both. You'll need some means of just checking if people haven't died or moved country or whatever.
If ai and automation have put everyone out of work then i dont see why they cant administer the current social welfare system anyway.
I haven't seen any particularly convincing arguments why a wealthy person would need or what the advantage to giving them any extra payment would be.
Yes we can tax them ... but you'd need a pretty crazy tax system to be that granular imo.
The other arguments for it ...
It'll give people freedom to do what they want - some of the few jobs that will be available going forward aren't ... nice jobs.
They wont be desirable or have any real status involved, they'll remain low paid because cafes, bars, shops etc just dont make that much money.
Some artists and musicians and etc will benefit (as they currently do from social welfare in many cases)
but wage slavery or whatever the term is is a non starter and not something i'd be inclined to encourage.
I just dont really see the benefit tbh
I dont really buy that all administration would disappear - the difference in needs between a single person living down the country and someone with dependents living in a big city are just too wide to get a one size fits all payment that'll cover both. You'll need some means of just checking if people haven't died or moved country or whatever.
If ai and automation have put everyone out of work then i dont see why they cant administer the current social welfare system anyway.
I haven't seen any particularly convincing arguments why a wealthy person would need or what the advantage to giving them any extra payment would be.
Yes we can tax them ... but you'd need a pretty crazy tax system to be that granular imo.
The other arguments for it ...
It'll give people freedom to do what they want - some of the few jobs that will be available going forward aren't ... nice jobs.
They wont be desirable or have any real status involved, they'll remain low paid because cafes, bars, shops etc just dont make that much money.
Some artists and musicians and etc will benefit (as they currently do from social welfare in many cases)
but wage slavery or whatever the term is is a non starter and not something i'd be inclined to encourage.
I just dont really see the benefit tbh
The society needs a set of rules governing it. It currently the legal system. What you are trying to impose is to have a seperate arbitrary moral code over and above the laws, which is very vague, ambiguous and not practical at all. If what you are proposing is the amend the laws to eliminate shady practices, I would support it. Working in financial services industry, I can see it happening first hand...but it's just a slow and gradual change. What happened at Salomon and Lehmann doesn't happen anymore. The industry is far more rigorously monitored than ever before and it's only getting stricter. Imo it's a question of time before HFTs are done away with.
There are ways and means to bring change.What I term as Robin Hood was the 'end justifies the means' approach you seem to prescribe. Your argument seems to be "Rich get freebies, so poor should also get some" Two wrongs do not make a right. I'd oppose UBI as much as I'd oppose HFTs. Nobody gets to skirt fair practices and/or earn freebies.
Secondly as I posted above, the "universal" in UBI is just a ridiculous idea. You want to help the poor, help them. You want to give support to those who need them, do it. This needs to be a focused approach to helping a targeted segment of population.
I agree. But, there are claim in this thread that UBI would be far cheaper than current welfare despite adding 70m+ beneficiaries which frankly doesn't make sense to me.
As to other point, I'd rather pay 1% more taxes which goes to helping those below poverty line, rather than 3% more and getting some back via UBI. The later is unnecessary and I don't see a point why anyone above poverty line needs benefits offset or not.
Where are the extra 70m beneficiaries coming from in a country with only 65m people of whom 20.3m are already on some form of benefit?
I've also done plenty of work in financial services including first hand knowledge of the shady mortgage lending going on in the early 2000s as well as doing research for an article for The Atlantic I was contemplating writing so you can't pull any appeal on authority on me here Pillow.
Fact is, the richest have set the rules to manipulate the economy and benefit themselves for decades now and the middle class has been footing the bill. Its how billions was stolen from the economy during the MBS derivative crisis (it was NOT a housing crisis economically). It was the shady traders that pushed the FSMA and CFMA that set the rules that allowed the economy to be fecked over to profit a few shady scum balls like Paulson and Mozilo.
You can't play this innocent card "oh the economy eventually fixes itself" when the economy has been directly manipulated to profit a very select few. And they never return all that ill gotten shady money.
Yes, I agree HFT will eventually get banned. But between the recession and 2008 and whenever in the future HFT gets banned, the HF traders will have already stolen hundreds of millions of value out of the economy while contributing literally feck all. they are a negative drag on the economy, they add zero value, and by the time it finally gets banned, they will have already given themselves freebies in the degree of billions.
Are you intentionally creating a strawman Ed or do you honestly not see the actual argument I am making. Here is the argument I am actually making:
The rich have already stolen billion out of the economy and fecked it up for the middle class. So progressive taxation and even wealth redistribution is simply returning the money the poor and middle are already owed! Its paying back the stolen money! Its not "giving anyone freebies" that is just not a valid argument let alone a sound argument.
Its returning value that should never have been stolen from the poor and middle class! The poor and middle class didn't cause the savings and loan crisis, the energy deregulation theft, the financial services recession failure. But the poor and middle class bailed out the economy while the thieves got to run home with their profits and only a few low level sacrificial lambs paid the price.
So progressive taxation and wealth redistribution is not giving anyone "freebies". Its paying back what they owed to the citizens who bailed out the rich too many times over generations. Its Lannister style. They have to pay their debts.
Make it extra 40m and my point still stands. By current rising rate, I expect population would be closer to 70m by next decade...time by which UBI may come into play.
Not trying to pull any kin of authority, but since this is my day job for past decade, I know how this works. I frankly don't see the relevance of this to UBI. You seem to make a argument about how flawed our law making system it, which I don't disagree with. Having an UBI ain't going to fix it. If your intention is to make it fairer to all UBI is wrong vehicle to go about it.
Already "owed"? Stolen money? Really? So everyone rich are thieves and everyone poor are holier than thou? Is that your generalization?
Well, I think we both have dragged this for enough time now. Neither will change other's mind on this. I propose we call it quits.
Would you agree its necessary and desirable to make it fairer for all?
I think what is perceived as game-changer is the influence on supply. Supply in low-skilled work especially is driven by the coercion to work, even a fecked up job with a fecked up salary will have people applying, because they have to pay them bills. The hope with UBI is that this fecked up job won't 'get away' with paying a fecked up salary because people don't necessarily have to work anymore therefore driving up the salary until they find someone. I think this school of thinking is looking at jobs not by how much skill is necessary/how much value is created but how much fun it is/how much it sucks. I hope this makes sense and you can understand where this idea is coming from. I haven't made up my mind about it though.
Giving a set amount to everyone would have limited administrative costs. Once adjusted the tax system would slowly recoup the UBI as they earned more. There would be no extra admin costs on the collection side.
Benefits would be no means testing, no need for a lot of the wealthfare state, no stigma being on SS, seamless when someone loses a job.
Not saying 100% it would work but I see no major season why it wouldn't.
I totally understand where you are coming from.
"shitty low-paid jobs" become a problem when people are permanently trapped in them as full-time work. There are many demographics, that are perfectly fine with working in those sectors for a while. Young people; people who just start working (at this job); part-time worker; secondary household earners; low-skilled workers who also increase their qualification; people who have different priorities. Its not a solution to just increase the price of jobs, that aren't super productive.
In reality things aren't anywhere near as bad as they are painted here on the caf when it comes to the economic situation of most people in developed countries. There are not gigantic amounts of people stuck in these circumstances. Currently, in some countries the situation is quite problematic (e.g. Greece or southern Italy would be obvious examples; yet most countries have some regions, that suffer to some extend), but these are the consequence of decades of bad policies. Non of these major policy failures could be possibly solved by a UBI.
I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other. I think that a UBI with negative income tax would be a net-positive, yet my ideas about it would be hardly revolutionary.
You brought it up by asking the moral question of whether the poor "deserved" a UBI.
Since you brought up whether they deserved it , the answer is yes of course they "deserve" it because they have been subsidizing the rich for decades. The current system is privatize the profits and socialize the risk. As long as that unfair system exists the poor and middle class certainly "deserve" UBI.
The S+L scams costs US taxpayers over 120 billion.
California energy deregulation cost 40-50 billion.
The financial services scams from FSMA and CFMA cost over a trillion in lost value.
Bailout Nation (Lockeed, Chrysler, Long Term Capital Management, etc) all paid by the taxpayers mostly poor and middle class to cover billions in shady money for a select few elites.
Then look at the wage theft I linked. Tens of billions every year stolen from employees by employers.
And I am not even getting into all the grey areas from people like Manafort who only got caught becaue he flew too close to sun otherwise he never would have got caught, or Halliburton who steal millions through false claims and get away with it through scandalous manipulation of the legal system (you would probably be shocked if you knew how Halliburton manipulates the double jeopardy principle).
So yes it's quite clear just based on these facts that the middle class and poor deserve some of their hard earned money back that went to subsidize these shady cash grabs
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If that was true, then salaries wouldn't even increase and nothing happened since there is no reason for these people to suddenly not be perfectly fine with it. The price increases in case these people you describe don't exist in the numbers necessary.
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We have fundamental differences in how we see this society functioning. Poor subsidizing the rich. I'm tempted to call baloney on that. Society favours the rich, I'd tend to agree...but then in any society there will be a bunch of people more influential than others...and these tend to be ones rich.
And as to the rest, you are talking about illegal activities and yes, those who indulge in it must be fined. I don't see how a violation of law is an excuse to change to law. It's just plain enforcement.
I already gave you actual historical examples so you aren't arguing with my view, you are literally just denying the actual facts of history.
Who do you think ended up paying the for hundred billion of the savings and loan scam?
Who paid for the bailouts of Lockheed, Chrysler, Long Term Cap Management?
Who paid for the bailouts of the California de-regulation and the human cost in death in some cases?
Who paid for the cost of the FSMA and CFMA market manipulation?
Who paid for Donald Trump's bankruptcies?
Who do you think really paid for the damage done by the elites manipulation?
Are you ignoring the tens of billions in wage theft I posted?
The manipulators walked away with millions, hundreds of millions and in some cases billions. They didn't pay for the damage. The tax payers did. And the poor and middle class bear the burden of taxes with no benefits.
Are you are denying that the poor and middle class have footed the bill for all these scams by economic elite? If so you offer no proof or evidence, you are just denying historical examples.
Do you really need dozens of references from econ professors on how the current system literally privatizes the profits for the elite and socializes their risk for the poor?
You seem willfully ignorant of how the economic elite and powerful write, control and manipulate the laws. HFT is a great example here of something completely unfair and bad for the general public is still technically legal.
Do you know anything about false claims suits and how the elite corps like Halliburton manipulate them? If your company has access to LexisNexis you should look up the facts on Carter v. Halliburton
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If you go back to this thread, it was about people who lose jobs due to automation etc with focus on those who cannot afford basic necessities (food and shelter). Middle class by defintion falls outside of that. Middle class needs no help from UBI, which I thought was obvious. I have no idea why you keep drumming up middle class in this thread.
Yes, the middle class may have footed the bill, but giving them an UBI is not going to stop these kind of events from happening again.
Because
1) Its called Universal Basic Income for a reason (The thread is not "needs based basic income")
2) The middle class have already paid for decades of economic manipulation by elites. So they deserve to get some of their money back they paid in.
Just as a side note, its already unfair that middle class professionals pay double the tax rate as billionaire investors (Earned Income Tax rate vs. Unearned Income tax rate) so a little more taxes on the super rich to give the middle class a UBI is definitely fair.
Also its pretty clear the world needs to close down the tax havens exposed in the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers. The fact the richest and most powerful can so easily avoid even paying their fair share of taxes while reaping the lion's share of benefits is rather offensive to normal people.
how do you control prices/inflation and scarcity of goods?
I'm not disagreeing on the plights of middle class. UBI is not going to fix any of the above from happening again. The way you are proposing UBI is like paying off a crime. They committed a crime, so I deserve a cut in it. Wrong way to go about things. What middle class needs is fairer laws and lesser income tax.
What is really urgently needed is for those who are below poverty line to have shelter and food and we need to focus on that.
Same way we do now?
My reasons for (potentially) supporting a Universal Basic Income is multiple not singular.
1) Pragmatic - current levels of income inequality curves are unsustainable. Many laws are dangerously close to sheer plutarchy. So something needs to be done before the scale tips too far to adjust
2) Efficiency - this depends on more research but from the posts here and what I am reading its certainly possible that the UBI could be a more efficient and streamlined solution to most social welfare (not including Universal Healthcare which I believe is a right and should be included).
3) Empirical - Most research shows that economic inequality at extreme levels is bad for society as a whole. Certainly whats happening in the Anglo-American sphere with elite influence (as proven by the Princeton study) is ripping apart cross-cutting cleavages which is always bad for a society.
4) Philosophical - I believe in a fair and just society. A UBI IMO is more fair and just than the current system we have now.
Also your analogy of a crime is wrong. Its more like if a big bank steals money from its customers for an unconstitutional policy, there is a class action lawsuit and then the bank has to pay reparations for what it stole. It shouldn't get to keep the profits just because of a legal technicality.
By not having UBI?
By not having UBI?
No through market mechanisms.
Must have missed it but where is the money coming from in your version of events?
I never claimed to be the expect on this and I said more research is necessary but it would likely come from a combination of streamlining the other forms of welfare thus saving money on administrative costs, closing the loopholes allowing tax free money like in the Panama and Paradise papers and if necessary increasing progressive taxation on the wealthiest individuals and corporations.