Universal Income.

Hercules56 said:
I know of a few people who would prefer to just collect UBI and not work.

Its shameful.
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As has been said by others - that's true.

There are far many more people for whom UBI would be a boon because they could take on work as and when they want to without risking losing their welfare benefits.
 
ahhell said:
I think folks do have an obligation to contribute to society rather than simply living off society. Its pretty subjective as to what that means though.
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That's what many of the very rich do - simply live off the income generated by investments made by their forebears.

UBI can be viewed in that way - a dividend due to all shareholders in the nation.
 
A UBI will not happen in Australia. Firstly our safety nets are pretty good apart from unemployment benefits which need to increase. We have a national health system (not as good as UK’s NHS, but pretty good) and child care is well funded. We have a comprehensive National Disability Insurance system, free public schooling and decent, means tested pensions.

The large cherry on the top is our compulsory superannuation system, with employers soon to increase their contribution to 10% of staff salary to retirement funds. I have an okay amount of superannuation, but it only came in during the 1980s and I will have to draw on a part pension as well as superannuation. But my kids will not have to rely on pensions.

Apart from unemployment benefits, what is broken that a UBI would fix?

I have no problem with superannuation going only to those who work.
 
The Don said:
That's what many of the very rich do - simply live off the income generated by investments made by their forebears.

UBI can be viewed in that way - a dividend due to all shareholders in the nation.
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But to be fair that isn’t capitalism, if we had a more “pure” capitalism there wouldn’t be inherited wealth.
 
Abooga said:
Well, it would collapse if the UBI were 2000 Euros (or somethind like that, something "significant") instead of 470... It´s at the brink of collapse already, so...
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The word "basic" in "universal basic income" is there because the idea is that it's the minimum that's required to survive. Kind of like unemployment benefits are. In other words, as you yourself said, what Spain is currently doing is closely equivalent to UBI. And yet your prediction that people would quit minimum-wage jobs because they prefer not to do the work, and thereby crash the whole economy, has not come to pass.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Another benefit to UBI is the security it would offer even to people who don't need it at the moment. I know how precarious/nonexistent the "safety net" is in my country so I am compelled to save and invest all my excess income, building up private stores of wealth against the risk of future catastrophe. If I knew for a certainty that if I were to lose my job or my ability to work I wouldn't be left entirely bereft of outside support then I wouldn't need to save so much--I would then instead spend it, and put it back into the economy. I guess investing is putting it back into the economy, but I think buying more shares of an S&P mutual fund is less beneficial to the whole than if I simply dined out three times a week and tipped well.

But as long as I'm in the position where if I get too sick to work I lose my income and my health insurance, have to burn through my savings, then die homeless you can bet I'm going to be hoarding my wealth and not spending it where others benefit. Another hundred shares of something Vanguard, please, and the waitresses can weep themselves to sleep in their cars.
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The absolute *********** that happened with hundreds of thousands of people trying to claim benefits due to covid is precisely what has accelerated the conversation around UBI. Partly because, as I said upthread, it was suddenly middle-class people who were on the sharp end of realising that the safety net wasn't actually all that safe, and that having to wait for 6 weeks or more to find out if you're even going to get any money isn't tenable.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
The word "basic" in "universal basic income" is there because the idea is that it's the minimum that's required to survive. Kind of like unemployment benefits are. In other words, as you yourself said, what Spain is currently doing is closely equivalent to UBI. And yet your prediction that people would quit minimum-wage jobs because they prefer not to do the work, and thereby crash the whole economy, has not come to pass.
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The idea that poor people are content to exist on subsistence wages is pretty strange to me, but seems to be widely believed. Sure, in the US and in other countries there are a lot of people who are just barely scraping by and living pretty squalid lives, but it's not like that's their preference.

Seems pretty obvious to me that if the vast majority of the working poor received UBI, they would still choose to work because the extra money would improve the condition of their lives from mere existence to something approaching modest comfort and dignity.
 
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SuburbanTurkey said:
Seems pretty obvious to me that the vast majority of the working poor received UBI, they would still choose to work because the extra money would improve the condition of their lives from mere existence to something approaching modest comfort and dignity.
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This is absolutely it, and I can only assume that the people who insist that giving money to the poor would stop the poor working have never actually been poor.

There was a study a while back which looked at the idea that "money doesn't buy you happiness". It found that that was true, but only above a certain threshold. If people are comfortable - can afford to own their own house, feed everybody in the family 3 times a day, go out once or twice a week, and travel somewhere nice for a holiday once or twice a year - then increased wealth has no impact on their happiness. But benefits/UBI is a long way below that level.

We're talking "just enough to survive" which, in this day and age, doesn't even always translate to "can feed everybody in the family 3 times a day",* at least not in the US and the UK. The idea that there are masses of people who would be happy to live like that when there are jobs available that would drastically improve their living conditions is just silly.

Of course there are a small minority who would. There are at the moment. The only difference is that they become proficient at playing the system and ever more time, money, and energy is put in to trying to stop them from doing so. And then you also have the collateral damage of people who don't fit into that category being denied the help they need because they fall afoul of some arbitrary rule or don't meet some arbitrary criterion.

*Although of course it should.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
This is absolutely it, and I can only assume that the people who insist that giving money to the poor would stop the poor working have never actually been poor.

There was a study a while back which looked at the idea that "money doesn't buy you happiness". It found that that was true, but only above a certain threshold. If people are comfortable - can afford to own their own house, feed everybody in the family 3 times a day, go out once or twice a week, and travel somewhere nice for a holiday once or twice a year - then increased wealth has no impact on their happiness. But benefits/UBI is a long way below that level.

We're talking "just enough to survive" which, in this day and age, doesn't even always translate to "can feed everybody in the family 3 times a day",* at least not in the US and the UK. The idea that there are masses of people who would be happy to live like that when there are jobs available that would drastically improve their living conditions is just silly.

Of course there are a small minority who would. There are at the moment. The only difference is that they become proficient at playing the system and ever more time, money, and energy is put in to trying to stop them from doing so. And then you also have the collateral damage of people who don't fit into that category being denied the help they need because they fall afoul of some arbitrary rule or don't meet some arbitrary criterion.

*Although of course it should.
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The one thing that bothers me with UBI is whether employers would use the opportunity to lower wages.
 
Belz... said:
The one thing that bothers me with UBI is whether employers would use the opportunity to lower wages.
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If anything, I'd think it would have the opposite effect. Having a surplus of extremely desperate working people is a huge boon to employers that pay poverty wages, the choice is work or starve. We're seeing that now in the US, with poverty wage employers crying foul that pandemic welfare is making it difficult to employ people for pitiful wages. Companies offering 7.25 minimum wage are crying that they can't find workers because the dole is simply too good, meanwhile similar employers offering slightly better wages, say $15/hr, are getting buried in applications.

UBI means that workers might be able to turn down underpayed work, or forego working at the moment in order to pursue schemes that might lead to a better paying career. The lack of utter desperation among the poorest workers would likely have upward pressure on wages.

https://www.businessinsider.com/restaurant-owners-service-employees-staff-covid-pandemic-unemployment-2021-5

More musings on the natural experiment that was covid:

The Pandemic Gave Retail Employees a Break
And now they don't want to go back
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https://eoinhiggins.substack.com/p/the-pandemic-gave-retail-employees
 
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SuburbanTurkey said:
If anything, I'd think it would have the opposite effect. Having a surplus of extremely desperate working people is a huge boon to employers that pay poverty wages, the choice is work or starve. We're seeing that now in the US, with poverty wage employers crying foul that pandemic welfare is making it difficult to employ people for pitiful wages. Companies offering 7.25 minimum wage are crying that they can't find workers because the dole is simply too good, meanwhile similar employers offering slightly better wages, say $15/hr, are getting buried in applications.

UBI means that workers might be able to turn down underpayed work, or forego working at the moment in order to pursue schemes that might lead to a better paying career. The lack of utter desperation among the poorest workers would likely have upward pressure on wages.

https://www.businessinsider.com/restaurant-owners-service-employees-staff-covid-pandemic-unemployment-2021-5

More musings on the natural experiment that was covid:



https://eoinhiggins.substack.com/p/the-pandemic-gave-retail-employees
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That's a very good point.
 
Darat said:
I would have thought you’d still have a minimum wage with a UBI scheme.
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Yes but I meant that they would avoid going much higher than that because they'd rely on the state to feed their employes. Following Smartcooky's "simple" solution I also opined that they'd avoid giving raises to people if only because they they're stuck with the increase.

But Turkey's point is very good. It might very well give employees better negociating power because they don't actually need to work for this prick to eat.
 
Belz... said:
Yes but I meant that they would avoid going much higher than that because they'd rely on the state to feed their employes. Following Smartcooky's "simple" solution I also opined that they'd avoid giving raises to people if only because they they're stuck with the increase.

But Turkey's point is very good. It might very well give employees better negociating power because they don't actually need to work for this prick to eat.
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In the US this is already happening. Low wage employees from WalMart to my doctor's office are already on food stamps, government food assistance for the working poor.

I find it shameful, my doctor claims he doesn't control the wages of his staff.

I do think it is interesting that a few years ago an employer decided that everyone in his company would make at least enough money to be happy. He based this on the above mentioned research that said anything above about $70,000 doesn't really increase happiness. So, he made the minimum wage at his company $70,000 and took a personal pay cut. Pundits were certain that his socialist experiment would fail and that his employees would lose the most because they would lose their jobs. He says that's not what happened.

Obviously, that is not a UBI, but it does show that giving people raises they don't "deserve" can actually pay off more for the employer than the employee.
 
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