Universal Income.

lionking said:
As I said earlier, utopian dreams are fun. Then reality hits.

If my family was in receipt of a UBI in the 1950s and 1960s (what a ridiculous idea) my father (and mother to a lesser extent) would have had more money to piss against the wall on alcohol and gambling.

How do you prevent this in your UBI utopia?
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I think you're both looking at this the wrong way. The point of programs like this is not that every individual lives better, but that it makes things better in general. Individual anecdotes aren't very useful here.

arthwollipot said:
I work in the middle of Civic.
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Hey, I have a Civic, too!
 
lionking said:
As I said earlier, utopian dreams are fun. Then reality hits.

If my family was in receipt of a UBI in the 1950s and 1960s (what a ridiculous idea) my father (and mother to a lesser extent) would have had more money to piss against the wall on alcohol and gambling.

How do you prevent this in your UBI utopia?
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What has such a problem got to do uniquely with UBI? From a quick search it seems Australia had social safety nets back then and they also did not prevent that. You have safety nets now and they don’t prevent that.

Who has claimed UBI would prevent such behaviour?
 
lionking said:
As I said earlier, utopian dreams are fun. Then reality hits.

If my family was in receipt of a UBI in the 1950s and 1960s (what a ridiculous idea) my father (and mother to a lesser extent) would have had more money to piss against the wall on alcohol and gambling.

How do you prevent this in your UBI utopia?
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By doing a better job of treating and preventing addictions. How to do so is not a big mystery.
 
Belz... said:
The one thing that bothers me with UBI is whether employers would use the opportunity to lower wages.
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I think if you look at what happened in the US in the last year when unemployment benefits were raised to an amount people could choose not to work low wage jobs, many employers have had to raise wages to make jobs attractive almost universally, and not just low wage jobs but just open positions in general.

They could lower wages, but I think they'd simply have unfilled openings as a result.
 
dirtywick said:
I think if you look at what happened in the US in the last year when unemployment benefits were raised to an amount people could choose not to work low wage jobs, many employers have had to raise wages to make jobs attractive almost universally, and not just low wage jobs but just open positions in general.

They could lower wages, but I think they'd simply have unfilled openings as a result.
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As a former employer, I agree 100%. (I say former because I have recently retired).

The idea that employers would look at what their employees get from UBI and decide to reduce wages is incorrect, it won't happen.

Its also worth considering that when you offer lower wages, you get a lesser quality of applicants.
 
lionking said:
Why do we need a UBI in Australia?
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Further to Arthwollipot's reply, we need a UBI because Centrelink is a disjointed conglomeration of a labyrinth of outdated software and hardware that even its employees can rarely navigate.
 
Orphia Nay said:
Further to Arthwollipot's reply, we need a UBI because Centrelink is a disjointed conglomeration of a labyrinth of outdated software and hardware that even its employees can rarely navigate.
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If "Centrelink" is your counterpart to our "MSD" (Ministry of Social Development) then ditto.

Overpayments, underpayments, payments going to the wrong people/accounts, benefits being stopped for wrong and/or incorrect and/or no reasons, repeatedly losing documentation (I had to reprint/resend one of my employee's pay information five times in the space of two weeks because they "lost" it the first four times), staff who are either poorly trained or untrained, and a number of repeated privacy breaches where people's personal details, including home addresses and banking information.

The MSD is a complete and utter shambles.
 
smartcooky said:
If "Centrelink" is your counterpart to our "MSD" (Ministry of Social Development) then ditto.

Overpayments, underpayments, payments going to the wrong people/accounts, benefits being stopped for wrong and/or incorrect and/or no reasons, repeatedly losing documentation (I had to reprint/resend one of my employee's pay information five times in the space of two weeks because they "lost" it the first four times), staff who are either poorly trained or untrained, and a number of repeated privacy breaches where people's personal details, including home addresses and banking information.

The MSD is a complete and utter shambles.
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Yes, that sounds exactly like Centrelink.

And I haven't mentioned how woefully low the unemployment benefit, Newstart is.

A person is lucky to have $100 a fortnight to live on after paying rent.
 
Sorry to be annoying, but do you ming explaining what this Centrelink and newstart or whatever is?

I could google, but would probably just get govt fluff and not reality.
 
Orphia Nay said:
Yes, that sounds exactly like Centrelink.

And I haven't mentioned how woefully low the unemployment benefit, Newstart is.

A person is lucky to have $100 a fortnight to live on after paying rent.
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And I have said that Newstart is too low. But the other elements of our safety net are good, particularly superannuation and the Age Pension.

My belief is that a UBI is unnecessary in Australia, and horribly expensive when compared to targeted welfare.
 
cullennz said:
Sorry to be annoying, but do you ming explaining what this Centrelink and newstart or whatever is?

I could google, but would probably just get govt fluff and not reality.
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Newstart is unemployment benefit and Centrelink is the agency that administers it and other welfare payments.

But, Christ, you can’t do a 10 second google? Simply lazy, nothing else.
 
lionking said:
And I have said that Newstart is too low. But the other elements of our safety net are good, particularly superannuation and the Age Pension.

My belief is that a UBI is unnecessary in Australia, and horribly expensive when compared to targeted welfare.
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By a very stupid amount.
 
lionking said:
I got where I am through education, available to everyone, and a work ethic. No inheritances, no patronage, no free rides.
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We get it. You are better than the other poor bastards so they don't deserve a handout.

That doesn't explain why we need a bureaucracy to monitor the "worthiness" of welfare recipients - unless it is that you want "unworthy" people to starve.
 
psionl0 said:
We get it. You are better than the other poor bastards so they don't deserve a handout.

That doesn't explain why we need a bureaucracy to monitor the "worthiness" of welfare recipients - unless it is that you want "unworthy" people to starve.
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Talking about unworthy, this post is unworthy of a response.
 
lionking said:
And I have said that Newstart is too low. But the other elements of our safety net are good, particularly superannuation and the Age Pension.

My belief is that a UBI is unnecessary in Australia, and horribly expensive when compared to targeted welfare.
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Superannuation only for workers is unfair.

Consider the disabled, and the video Arthwollipot posted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
 
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