Well you are like most people, myself included as I am a hypocrite. I use Amazon, shop at Sainsburys etc. The will of the people isn't really there for such a thing but I do think it would benefit everyone in the long run. Most people are too comfortable to really want any of the changes talked about in this thread.
Universal Basic Income
- Thread starter esmufc07
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Well you are like most people, myself included as I am a hypocrite. I use Amazon, shop at Sainsburys etc. The will of the people isn't really there for such a thing but I do think it would benefit everyone in the long run. Most people are too comfortable to really want any of the changes talked about in this thread.
There is a logic to that view, but the problem is we are terrible at identifying who needs it, and millions, and I mean millions, miss out. They go from part time job to part time job, they work zero hour contracts, hardly any hours one week and do better the next, until they or their employment fails completely for a while, and then they've not earned enough from a single employer to register for national insurance so they don't show up in the unemployment statistics. Why? Because the people with problems will always find it the hardest to get and hold down the jobs that are left, health difficulties in all their forms, addiction, a criminal past, or maybe they're just less mentally or physically capable than others, there are many who have tried their hearts out but just can't get on. Right wingers and selfish people will always say they are all workshy scroungers of course, never quite explaining why their number doubles or trebles or more if the economy nosedives for any reason.
As for the 'one person asking a second person to give to a third' thing, does that apply to everything? Does that mean those that don't want the armed forces shouldn't pay for them? those that don't have children shouldn't pay for schools? Obviously not, in a democracy people decide how money is raised and how it is spent, and that's the best system we have come up with up to now.
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This is why UBI would have to be implemented as a negative tax rate in my view. £x fixed payment to everyone along with a % single bracket tax rate thereafter.
Something like:
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This sounds like a very good method to me. It's better than adding a standard, taxable amount to everyone's income, as that would have to be recouped through end-of-year taxation, which would likely be a combination of messy, incomplete, and unpleasant; and it's better than topping up income through tax returns at end-of-year, as that's too late for poor people.This is why UBI would have to be implemented as a negative tax rate in my view. £x fixed payment to everyone along with a % single bracket tax rate thereafter.
Something like:
How would it work in practice though? I suppose the government would add money to every paycheck. Would that be, based on information received from the employer about expected total annual earnings? Or would this be done on a paycheck-to-paycheck basis, where they compensate for anything you are below the minimum acceptable pay they have set for the relevant time period? That's a little messy for people that often changes jobs or do seasonal work though. But I suppose it could be made to work - as long as the money is added to each pay, not at the end of the year through a tax return. (A single, massive payment each year would not help poor people in the right way.)
Possibly tax it the following year and write off any tax owed on death (assuming no assets in the estate)? So year 1 everyone is paid say £850 per month. Then year two if you've earned enough that you wouldn't be entitled to any then you'd receive nothing the following year (year 2 UBI pays off year 1 owed) and so forth.
If you'd earned such that year 1 should have been £425 a month, then year two would be £425 per month instead.
Half the people in need aren't known to the tax system. They don't pay national insurance. They don't get unemployment benefit. They don't exist, except for working a few hours here and there where they can, and probably living with and being supported by parents or relatives. It is solvable by registering and paying UBI, call it tax something by all means, but it wouldn't be just a case of using existing systems.
This is probably one of those ideas you don't want to pioneer. Let some other bugger try it and if it works copy it. If it turns out to be a disaster we ducked one.
Inflation is a monetary phenomenon, unless the UBI is financed by money printing this just simply will not happen.
Well nobody can really give an answer for where it comes from. From what others have suggested it only comes from the very wealthiest or money that’s ‘being kept out of the system’. If that’s the case it may as well have been printed.
The money would come from taxes, just like any other government service.
Oh I didn’t think of that
Yes, you did. A universal basic income is pretty much identical to a negative income tax, but it looks different because with a NIT you'd stop receiving money at the treshold and pay taxes above. With a UBI you'd never stop receiving the benefit but your taxes would be higher. So if you wanted a £10k UBI while keeping the tax burden on people with £100k income the same as today then they'd pay 10k more in taxes to offset the 10k extra income from UBI.
You can believe whatever you want (like pigs that fly to the moon) but there isn't evidence supporting your belief so I would classify it as either completely irrational or you have been convinced by conservative propaganda just like the anti-minmum wage claims that it will "negate" any increase despite evidence suggesting that doesn't happen at realistic levels (obviously if you just gave every a million dollars it would be different). But the realistic numbers (like $1000 a month) will not increase inflation to negate it based on the evidence we have.
What it will do is put more money into people's pockets so they can spread it around at current levels. For instance, I could go out to dinner once a week at current prices. But if the restaurant just jacked up prices, then I would not go out to dinner once a week.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-poli...0/mexico-cash-transfer-inflation-basic-incomeactual study on UBI and inflation said:
The other rubbish argument I hear from conservatives is that it serves as a "disincentive to work". That myth really pisses me off. In most cases, it will not serve as any such thing because the majority of the 50-60% of people that struggle in America need that 12,000 a year to survive and not stay in debt. Pay down debt, have some more money to spend on basic goods (like healthy food > processed food) and you create a virtuous circle. Healthier people, more choices in spending, more money in the disposable economy is a good thing overall.
And in the cases where it might actually give a tiny percentage a disincentive towork, that would also be a good thing. For instance, the only people I know that would voluntarily live off 12,000/year and not work are already doing that: the starving artists. People that want to pursue art(or some craft) in some way and not be weighted down by spending 20-40 hours a week slogging away at a crap min. wage job. People willing to be poor artists while they try to make it would be a good thing! It frees up jobs for people that need it, it improves service and overall it will improve the functionality of the economy by making it more efficient.
The money to pay for these things is already there, we just have to close loopholes for unearned income - the arseholes who sit on hundreds of thousands + in assets, don't work or contribute in any way and somehow have zero or negative income when the tax man comes around but then miraculously, when it comes to getting credit they have a hundred thousand in income (in an old job I worked I encountered many of these types of people).
Disingenuous (or naive) comment. To effect the positive changes there has to be structural changes like Bernie has talked about. You can't just 'donate more money to the government" without these structural changes because your money wouldn't go to the intended purpose.
You can read more:
https://basicincometoday.com/how-and-why-a-fed-financed-ubi-would-not-lead-to-inflation/
Picking up on this, from what I have seen, there is a correlation between stronger welfare systems and stronger entrepreneurship - with the causation presumed to be that having a stronger safety net in place invites people to be more daring in their economic endeavours. (From what I say, you have to be in Denmark for the American Dream, and in Sweden for the American business spirit. That was some years ago though.) That's not directly relevant to UBI, but it's part of debunking the myth that strong welfare system lead to lazy people. In actual practice, that attitude is so rare that it should never factor into policy decisions.
Also, the health point is important. Poorer people have significantly worse health and life expectancy. Given that health care is usually funded by the state and is enormously expensive, this is a big burden on state finances. Helping people be healthier by being able to afford better food and having less stress (i.e., better mental health) will provide a double benefit, by removing them from the health care system and making them more active participants in the economy.
Yes. Not sure why so many struggle with this concept.
The unspoken part of this is that in most countries use benefits to punish poor people and keep them in poverty. Thatcherites used it to keep inflation down and to incentivise people to get work (despite it being fairly irrelevant when full employment doesn't exist). Sadly the last bit still seems to be believed by many and not just the far right.
Another issue is that it would be a very bold social policy and we seem keener on rolling back what we have than making new advances.
If UBI came in we would save a huge amount that we spend on means testing and trying to minimise the cost at all costs. The economy would also get a huge boost as has been shown with Australia's welfare driven covid recovery. However, the trick will be raising tax by an acceptable amount. Fine if everyone paying tax pays the same amount of extra tax as they receive in UBI but if taxes have to be raised further at least until the economic benefits flow through or we have to borrow heavily while money is cheap it will be a hard sell and the Murdoch propaganda machine will be mobilised to protect the top end of town and keep regressive cockwombles like BoJo and #scottyfrommarketing in power.
On the face of it they were just comparing a money+psych program with just money. So this found that the psych program made no difference. I'm not sure if it means anything much for a UBI unless there is something else in the paper not summarised in the tweeted abstract.
https://haushofer.ne.su.se/publications/Haushofer_Mudida_Shapiro_Cash_Therapy_2020-11-23.pdf
Looks like they had four arms. Money, Psych, Money + Psych, No intervention.
All the arms featuring money out-performed all the arms without money. The Psych alone arm failed to out-perform the no intervention arm.
Basically they proved that money can buy happiness!
I did some work on this documentary that my mate made exploring the possibility of UBI in Britain, called The Cost of Living, if anyone's interested.
https://gadflyproductions.vhx.tv/
We interviewed George Monbiot, Guy Standing and others.
On their youtube channel they've done some follow-up conversations recently (as the doc was filmed pre-covid) with people like John McDonnell, Green Party - Covid has really shifted the conversation in Westminster.
https://gadflyproductions.vhx.tv/
We interviewed George Monbiot, Guy Standing and others.
On their youtube channel they've done some follow-up conversations recently (as the doc was filmed pre-covid) with people like John McDonnell, Green Party - Covid has really shifted the conversation in Westminster.
A report from Canada's Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) came out this week. They were asked by parliament to 'prepare a distributional analysis of Guaranteed Basic Income using parameters set out in Ontario’s basic income pilot project, examine the impact across income quintiles, family types and gender, and identify the net federal revenue increase required to offset the net cost of the new program.' You can find the full report at this link, but the PDF is not working for me today. There is also a news article here (among many that came out in Canada), plus the PBO has provided the following infographic that display's the report's main conclusions:
I've just seen this tweet. Presumably more news will be coming soon.
I know they've been doing this in Stockton, CA too for a while. It's been quite successful, evidently.
https://laist.com/2021/04/19/1000-a...al, dubbed "BIG,one year, no strings attached.
Great stuff.
I'm just wondering about the size of the pilot. There already have been a few UBI pilots that only cover a limited region or a specific population group. As interesting as they are, their implications are ultimately limited because social circumstances are highly interconnected across a jurisdiction's entire population. I guess the word 'pilot' indicates that it will be a limited-scale experiment again, but let's see. (Plus, if I read this correctly, this would also need approval and support from Westminster, so nothing is certain yet.)What's the pilots hypotheses in these states? How do they judge success or failure? Are participants being requested to declare exactly where and what they spend the money on?
Wont this just cause inflation? Not by much granted. But still things should increase in price.
Isn't inflation caused by central banks printing money?
I'm not an economist but I understood inflation to be something along the lines of, if there is £100 in circulation and I have a product that's valued at £4, if the central bank prints another £20 and puts that into circulation then my product is no longer valued at £4, its valued at 4% of the circulating currency which is £120, therefore its valued at £4.80. Is that over simplifying it?
I am not an economist by any stretch, but my understanding is that if there is more money per individual, then things increase in price. Not ridiculously increased.
Look at how the increase in revenue of football clubs in the last 15 years drove up prices. Now 40 million is considered cheap.
I edited my response. Don't think it's the amount individual's have per se, more what's in circulation. I don't think inflation is related to the distribution of wealth.
Oh ok.
My inkling would be if you had a poor neighbourhood and you give each of the people in that neighbourhood 500 dollars extra a month, a car mechanic that usually charged 100 dollars for a service, would increase his price a bit. I could be wrong of course. Perhaps its not inflation in a traditonal sense.
But if you take those 500 dollars extra from another neighbourhood via taxes, it will compensate the other. In a very simplistic way. what is clear is that it can revitalize the economy.
there is a lot to learn still from UBI and if it will work. On paper is a yes. That politicians are taking the approach without pressuring them much, it makes me suspicious
No I don't think thats inflation, that's just a business increasing their prices because they're greedy feckers.
Like you I'm not an economist but I'd take a bet there's a lot more involved than just money in circulation. Supply and demand, commodities markets, debt, etc., all have a part to play I'm sure.
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I'm not a specialist in any of this either, but I thought I'd share a couple of thoughts I've had on this
I think inflation is primarily a question of supply and demand. For example, central banks in OECD countries are currently worried that inflation will go up, because (1) supply chain issues and agricultural issues (unpredictable weather due to climate chain) mean that the supply isn't there; and (2) a lot of people have cash to spare since a lot of things they usually spend money on have been unavailable during most of the pandemic. That sort of dynamic isn't affected all that much by UBI providing people scattered across the country with more buying power - especially because these are not people that can already make ends meet and will now have money to buy additional goods. UBI rather is intended to affect people that have trouble buying even the basics, and won't turn them into significantly larger spenders overnight.
Another point is that an important purpose of UBI is to lift people out of crippling poverty. One way or another, that's generally what governments and people want to see happen anyway. So if ensuring people have a minimum income required for living increases inflation for the entire country - then the choice we have is (a) leave all these people poor because we don't want inflation; or (b) deploy anti-poverty programs (UBI or anything else) and accept that they come with inflation. I don't think anyone would choose for option (a).
Finally, UBI in the long run shouldn't put a lot more money in circulation. First, UBI is part of the redistribution part of taxes. Taxes serve two purposes: pay for government spending (e.g., infrastructure, military, etc.), and redistribute money to protect the poor against the excesses of capitalism (through welfare programs). UBI is a welfare program, and should ideally be paid for by raising taxes on the rich(er). In the long run, however, UBI might largely pay for itself. Poor people on average to cost the state a lot more in terms of healthcare and related than less poor people. So lifting people out of poverty should lead to a significant reduction in government healthcare costs. Also, welfare programs tend to be complex and cost a lot of money to administer. UBI would be a blanket program that eliminates the need for almost all other welfare programs, which should cut significantly in government bureaucracy costs. Further, early studies suggest that people on UBI take time to retool and get in a position for better jobs - i.e., better paid jobs, meaning that they get above the UBI threshold and start paying more in tax than they receive in welfare. And finally, UBI might contribute to an overall rise in bottom-level salaries, as people would no longer be forced to take the shittiest and most poorly paid jobs around just to make ends meet - forcing employers of those jobs to improve pay and conditions to be able to hire people. This will again help to lift people out of poverty, reduce their healthcare costs, and reduce their dependency on welfare.
I could also add that, in general, more equitable societies tend to have less crime overall, better health overall, etc. - which also makes the government's work easier and less expensive. But we're getting pretty far downstream here now. Still, it adds to what I think is my general point: there is a lot that UBI might affect, and most of that appears to be positive, in quite a few different ways. Given the complexity of society and general social dynamics, though, it is hard to predict how exactly that would all play outand so these pilot studies are invaluable. The only issue is that they tend to be designed on a scale that's too small and scattershot to be able to really predict the effects of a full roll-out of UBI - but I guess we have to be happy with whatever we're getting.
I think inflation is primarily a question of supply and demand. For example, central banks in OECD countries are currently worried that inflation will go up, because (1) supply chain issues and agricultural issues (unpredictable weather due to climate chain) mean that the supply isn't there; and (2) a lot of people have cash to spare since a lot of things they usually spend money on have been unavailable during most of the pandemic. That sort of dynamic isn't affected all that much by UBI providing people scattered across the country with more buying power - especially because these are not people that can already make ends meet and will now have money to buy additional goods. UBI rather is intended to affect people that have trouble buying even the basics, and won't turn them into significantly larger spenders overnight.
Another point is that an important purpose of UBI is to lift people out of crippling poverty. One way or another, that's generally what governments and people want to see happen anyway. So if ensuring people have a minimum income required for living increases inflation for the entire country - then the choice we have is (a) leave all these people poor because we don't want inflation; or (b) deploy anti-poverty programs (UBI or anything else) and accept that they come with inflation. I don't think anyone would choose for option (a).
Finally, UBI in the long run shouldn't put a lot more money in circulation. First, UBI is part of the redistribution part of taxes. Taxes serve two purposes: pay for government spending (e.g., infrastructure, military, etc.), and redistribute money to protect the poor against the excesses of capitalism (through welfare programs). UBI is a welfare program, and should ideally be paid for by raising taxes on the rich(er). In the long run, however, UBI might largely pay for itself. Poor people on average to cost the state a lot more in terms of healthcare and related than less poor people. So lifting people out of poverty should lead to a significant reduction in government healthcare costs. Also, welfare programs tend to be complex and cost a lot of money to administer. UBI would be a blanket program that eliminates the need for almost all other welfare programs, which should cut significantly in government bureaucracy costs. Further, early studies suggest that people on UBI take time to retool and get in a position for better jobs - i.e., better paid jobs, meaning that they get above the UBI threshold and start paying more in tax than they receive in welfare. And finally, UBI might contribute to an overall rise in bottom-level salaries, as people would no longer be forced to take the shittiest and most poorly paid jobs around just to make ends meet - forcing employers of those jobs to improve pay and conditions to be able to hire people. This will again help to lift people out of poverty, reduce their healthcare costs, and reduce their dependency on welfare.
I could also add that, in general, more equitable societies tend to have less crime overall, better health overall, etc. - which also makes the government's work easier and less expensive. But we're getting pretty far downstream here now. Still, it adds to what I think is my general point: there is a lot that UBI might affect, and most of that appears to be positive, in quite a few different ways. Given the complexity of society and general social dynamics, though, it is hard to predict how exactly that would all play outand so these pilot studies are invaluable. The only issue is that they tend to be designed on a scale that's too small and scattershot to be able to really predict the effects of a full roll-out of UBI - but I guess we have to be happy with whatever we're getting.
Giving an 18 year old straight out of care £400 a week with no conditions, what could go wrong. They’ll all be wearing balenciaga on Instagram…
Yeah imagine giving people money to live and sustain themselves.
That happens already.
So 18 year olds just out of care currently aren't entitled to social support?
Not quite the balenciaga comment but I would hope that there would be an aftercare/guidance team behind the income.