Universal basic income presents the problem of society potentially losing workers and therefore GDP, productivity, overall wealth, etc. on the premise that people won’t want to work if they get a sizable stipend from the government. However, $20,000 or so per year (maybe just for the lower tax brackets) would offset the costs of living but the majority of people would be motivated to keep working so that they could have a comfortable income, which would suddenly become achievable. Meanwhile, retired and disabled people would have a chance to live independently by adding the U.B.I. payment to their other benefits.
Universal basic income presents the problem of society potentially losing workers and therefore GDP, productivity...
Elijah Harris
David Howard
Queue the Wang faggots…
Christian Martinez
Elderly already have UBI, we call it social security (they also get government healthcare in the form of medicare). We’ve basically moved to universal basic income with how much they’re giving for unemployment at the moment. Notice how there is a “worker shortage”? That’s people no longer looking for work because they’re making the same amount staying at home. Next time you bitch about a store closing early or not having enough waiters in a restaurant, it would be even worse with official UBI.
Jason Richardson
To add, the state of Medicare and Medicaid should deter you from pushing for universal healthcare.
Communism only works in theory
Samuel Jenkins
Americans are this stupid. Equating free at point of use healthcare with communism.
Dylan Smith
The cost of everything would simply go up. Unless they are going to start actually heavily taxing the richest people in the world (they won't) where is the money going to come from? Congrats everyone makes an extra 20k a year...but now the cost of a loaf of bread is $7 YAY
Josiah Torres
I accept your concession :^)
Luke James
Your arguing with people who said that Bezos could give everyone in the world $10,000
Nolan Reyes
The only people that are really shilling against UBI are the big corporations because they will have to pay slightly more taxes, the poor babbies! Guize, think of our downtrodden billionaires!!
Logan Martin
>potentially losing workers and therefore GDP, productivity, overall wealth, etc.
Let me ask you this - why is this a problem? who is this a problem for?
Workers today are generating massive wealth, but not for themselves. The majority of wealth is going to 1% or less of society.
If productivity did decrease because less people are working, would that actually impact day to day life of the average citizen? No. Jo Shmo can either spend the majority of his waking hours working in a warehouse for Bezos and earn $20k/yr. Or he can get $20k guaranteed from UBI and do whatever else he wants to earn extra money. - but he's not forced to take any job he can just to keep a roof over his head and food on the table. The only one who loses is Bezos. The 1%.
The challenge is that along with controlling the world's wealth, the elites like Bezos also control the government through lobbying, influence, etc. And one thing we know that drives all of history is that those in power want to keep their power and prevent others from gaining power. While those without power want to gain power. Therefore the 1% will fight with all they have to keep the 99% powerless. Since they have such an advantage, we will probably never see UBI implemented at a wide scale in a meaningful way. Because that would undermine their entire structure of power under capitalism.
TL;DR: UBI sounds good but capitalism will never allow it.
John Ross
Bingo.
Adam Barnes
It's not a problem when Joe schmoe is the only one who does it.
But if everyone and their brother does it, then economy grinds to a halt.
If you don't have to work, why would you?
My god, I'm college educated but if someone offered me twenty thousand a year and a shitty pod for a house and meagre rations, I would take it.
I would spend most of my time sleeping.
I work because I have to. Simple as.
Andrew Bailey
Less workers in the system means less taxes being paid overall. Even if you compensated by "taxing the 1%" they would also have less wealth as it all comes from stock, which would lower overall as the companies became less productive.
Less workers in the system does two things -
Firstly, governments have less revenue. Secondly, the actual value of currency goes down, as the government struggles to produce revenue and pay off its debts.
And know what one of those debts would be? Paying the population a universal basic income. There's a reason why countries that have introduced it are both incredibly wealthy AND have a massive tax on just about everything, increasing the cost of living. So you answer your question, it would be a problem for governments, the entity that actually pays for this.
Gavin Barnes
I'm sure many people would have this mindset at first. It would be such a relief, right? Because we are currently forced to live the grind. The hustle. We have been indoctrinated to believe that you area good person only if you are "a productive member of society".
But coming from someone who was a NEET for many years - doing nothing gets old and boring after a while. You will soon realize that when you aren't forced to work doing something you don't care about, people will still work, but they will do a job that they want to do instead. And they probably will work less overall and that's ok.
There are a lot of jobs out there already that people do because they want to. Every single youtuber, twitch streamer, indie game dev, sports players, crafters on etsy, artists, actors, writers, and to some extent farmers, bakers, and other artisans. Even teachers and doctors.
There are many people who work because they want to create something to share with others, to entertain others, to help others, or to create fun or delicious things.
The economy would not go away. It would change dramatically but not everyone would share the mindset of "I will now become a vegetable until I die".
Hudson Sanchez
That is really sad. Personally I love to work, and with UBI I would still work, just differently.
While I was in Uni I used all of my free time to do open source development, so I already was working full time even without any payment.
If UBI was a thing, I would only work half time on my current job and start again working as open source developer the rest of the time. I would not want to stop working, but I would soly work under my own premise and conditions.
Thats the thing about UBI, most people actually want to work, but with UBI it forces the companies to provide favourable conditions for the workers. Why do I have to work 40 hours a week? every day I am exhausted after work, so I cannot work on my other private projects, and while I still have the weekends, often you meetup friends or family so you don't have that much time then either.
I have an ever growing excel sheet of projects I want to start and features to implement for existing projects, but I simply do not have any time.
I also like my current job, but it drains every single bit of motivation from me having to do it full time
Juan Williams
>Firstly, governments have less revenue. Secondly, the actual value of currency goes down, as the government struggles to produce revenue and pay off its debts.
No. We are living in the opposite situation right now - our stock market has been booming and GDP has been at record growth for years even despite a fucking pandemic. Yet the value of currency is still going down and prices are going up (inflation). It's not because our government can't pay its debts. It's not because there are less workers in the system. This is not a valid argument.
Josiah Allen
Stop being reasonable. This is not the place.
Levi Diaz
Are you a fucking MORON???
We tried UBI, it was called the pandemic stimulus payments.
What happened? HOLY FUCK LEVELS OF INFLATION, never before seen since the last time the US fucked around with the money supply and realized DAT BAD and ushered in Ronald Reagan and the 1980s.
The entire field of economics that advocates UBI "mincome" -Modern Monetary Theory- has been utterly demolished in the last nine months. You've obviously had your head too far up your own ass to notice.
Brody Robinson
If less people were working there would be less revenue in the system.
And inflation can have multiple causes. If we rewind time a little to a more normal economy pre-covid, UBI would definitely cause a slow but steady inflation. This would be because the government would have less ability to pay its global and national debts due to lack of tax revenue. The missed payments would cause the value of the currency to go down.
I don't disagree that currently we have an inflation problem, but its been caused by shocks to the global supply via lockdowns/changes in demand and worker shortfalls as people make career shifts. Its an entirely different reason and set of circumstances and has nothing to do with being pro or against UBI.
Hudson Jones
>HOLY FUCK LEVELS OF INFLATION
Then tell me, how comes you see the same levels of inflation in countries that did not provide a stimulus?
Pretty much all EU countries did not provide a stimulus like the US did, still the euro has the same skyrocketing inflation as the USD has.
So evidently the inflation is not driven by the stimulus.
So maybe, leave economy to the economists, because you clearly have no idea what you are talking about
Adrian Cooper
>We tried UBI, it was called the pandemic stimulus payments.
>What happened? HOLY FUCK LEVELS OF INFLATION
Hey moron - inflation happens when price of goods rises faster than wages.
The stimulus checks were part of it, no doubt. But the largest part driving inflation is global supply chain issues. Even if the US didn't issue any stimulus, policies in China and factory shutdowns in other areas of the world like Taiwan that produce the majority of American goods would have driven prices up faster than wage growth in the USA.
Now the rise in fuel prices is also going to bump up the cost of goods as well. Did the stimulus checks cause that too? No it was Russia deciding to go to war for no reason.
I'm begging you to watch a 15 minute youtube video on basic economic concepts before you post again in this thread.
Jackson Cruz
>The missed payments would cause the value of the currency to go down.
Lol, national debt is not like personal debt where you have to pay up your rates in monthly payments you can miss.
Government debt is ceiled by the growth of the economy of that country, so a government can take up as much debt as it wants as long as the economy grows accordingly.
So if UBI results in a higher spending power, because more people have more money to spend, this grows the economy and will counter the required debt the government takes.
Note that due to the increased spending the government will also make more money through VAT
Also inflation is the price of goods, there is actually an argument to be made that UBI drives inflation, but that has nothing to do with government debt, it is simply that when more people have more money, prices will go up because the people are able to spend more. This is especially true for the most important goods like food or water, which are the contributor to the basket of goods used to compute the CPI and thereby inflation.
So yes UBI will probably increase inflation, at least in the short term, when everyone gets a cash infusion, but not because of government debt
Ryan Price
Yeah, that's self evident, moron, that's like saying the cargo is carrying the airplane. "Inflation is not driven by the stimulus" -- because the stimulus was driven by the inflation.
Inflation can be USED for an infinite number of things, but it's still inflation, and will cause inflationary problems. EU countries inflate their currency to do whatever the fuck they're doing with it, the US inflated its currency and did what it did, and we're watching what Structural Inflation does for the first time in a generation. Pay attention.
The stimulus REQUIRED inflation to enact, which is what was advocated by Modern Monetary Theory by the way, and the resultant devaluation of the currency was a Surprise Pikachu moment for every economist under fifty.
Keep up, junior.
Adrian Gomez
> Pretty much all EU countries did not provide a stimulus like the US did
You should probably do a modicum of research before making statements that will display your ignorance…
Luke Cox
>Hey moron - inflation happens when price of goods rises faster than wages.
Hey moron - inflation is literally, by definition, the increase of the price of goods, independent of the raise of wages
>I'm begging you to watch a 15 minute youtube video on basic economic concepts before you post again in this thread.
Probably you shouldn't get your economics education from youtube if you don't even get the definition of inflation right