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Greece's Former Finance Minister Explains Why A Universal Basic Income Could Save Us (fastcoexist.com)
Charlie Sorrel, writing for FastCoExist: Next time you're having a fight with somebody who doesn't like the idea of a universal basic income, you might employ some of these arguments from Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's former finance minister. In an interview with the Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger, he not only refutes the usual arguments against the concept that the government should give everyone a minimum check every month, but he makes them sound quite ridiculous. The interview was published ahead of the Switzerland's vote on a universal basic income (or UBI) in June. If successful, all Swiss adults would get $2,500 per month, and kids around $625 per month, whether or not they have a job. Here are some of Varoufakis's best answers.
First, on the need for a UBI: "For the first time in the history of technology more jobs are destroyed than created. Technical progress means that more and more high-paying jobs will disappear and thus shrink the middle class. This will in turn cause a further concentration of income and wealth in the upper classes. That's why I fight like a basic income for sociopolitical reforms. The robotization [of work] has long been underway, but robots don't buy products. Therefore, a basic income is needed to offset this change and stabilize a society which has an increasing wealth inequality." Then, on why you need a UBI if you already have a good job: "What good is a well-paying job, if you are afraid to lose it? This constant fear paralyzes."Good luck convincing many citizens to do actual work.
First, on the need for a UBI: "For the first time in the history of technology more jobs are destroyed than created. Technical progress means that more and more high-paying jobs will disappear and thus shrink the middle class. This will in turn cause a further concentration of income and wealth in the upper classes. That's why I fight like a basic income for sociopolitical reforms. The robotization [of work] has long been underway, but robots don't buy products. Therefore, a basic income is needed to offset this change and stabilize a society which has an increasing wealth inequality." Then, on why you need a UBI if you already have a good job: "What good is a well-paying job, if you are afraid to lose it? This constant fear paralyzes."Good luck convincing many citizens to do actual work.
Have to pay Greece?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
I don't see robots doing work. I see people making pennies assembling iPhones in China, children working in sweatshops in Vietnam making Nike clothing. This man is a fool. The problem isn't robots. People are cheaper than robots are.
How about we put a big fat asterisk next to the output of a resigned-in-disgrace former finance minister from a broke, crooked, can't-stop-capital-flight, had-a-coup-in-living-memory, too-big-to-make-Europe-fail country? Just a thought.
Greece's former finance minister probably has as much credibility in financial matters as Steve Jobs had on cancer treatment.
more jobs are destroyed than created
Is this true? Is it *really* true. Or did we just ship all the jobs to lower wage countries? If it is not true then the reverse is true.
It sounds right but is there actually any numbers to back it up?
The Swiss vote on the universal basic income will only take place because it's part of the normal political process here. But even the promoters of it agree publicly that there is no chance at all to be adopted now. There only goal is to force discussion about simplification of the various social income administrations as there is many of them in Switzerland. There also openly admit that the proposed modification of the Swiss federal constitution will not give a clue about how to get the money, and this make the whole affaire just a joke from the point of view of many peoples here.
It's funny to see all the comments dismissing the all article without even reading it. Oh wait, I forgot this is Slashdot after all.
Yanis Varoufakis is not the man who got Greece into its current mess, he's the guy who tried to negotiate a way out. The EU and IMF eventually refused to deal with him (he is much better at macroeconomics than they are) and forced the Greek PM to cave in to their demands. Veroufakis resigned as a result but not in disgrace; he was offered another government job but declined.
I have the same sentiment as you, though my financial situation is a little better than that. If they do this I will quit my job. I will spend my time hiking, camping, mountain biking, playing video games, etc. I don't smoke pot but I'm willing to learn. If I start feeling guilty, which isn't impossible, I will just throw a few volunteer hours at some veterans or old folks thing.
Instead of doing any of that, maybe you could use the time afforded to you by a UBI to take some reading classes?
"The interview was published ahead of the Switzerland's vote on a universal basic income (or UBI) in June. If successful, all Swiss adults would get $2,500 per month, and kids around $625 per month, whether or not they have a job."
Switzerland, not Greece.
You'll have a hard time getting it in Greece, since the referendum is being held in Switzerland...
What about housing? Everyone suddenly gets X per month free, rents go up X as demand increases (more people can afford housing) but no additional housing is built. I doubt it will go up exactly X but maybe .5X to .75X.
"Good luck convincing many citizens to do actual work."
It wouldn't be that difficult, given how little "basic income" would pay. Adjusting for the cost of living difference between Switzerland and the US (rent, groceries, etc), their proposal would work out to about US$1500/month, or $18K/year. (This is in the range of what people who are judged too disabled to work get from Social Security.) Yes, there are people who are content to live on that. But not most people. Would you?
Anyone who aspires to a middle-class lifestyle would at least get a part-time job to supplement basic income (maybe regular freelance work, a half-time office job, gig-economy stuff as needed, a creative project that they never had time for, that business they were otherwise afraid to take a risk on, etc) or a full-time job that they might not otherwise be able to afford to take (e.g. teaching, social work, performing arts). And the kinds of people who are used to taking home $1500 or more every week would undoubtedly stick with the jobs they have already, and treat the basic-income grant as "mad money" to spend on something fun.
The idea needs to be tested thoroughly, before being tried on the scale of, say, the US, or even the UK. It may not work as projected based on how it's worked in a few small-population experiments so far. The amount definitely needs to be evaluated. But if you're ridiculing the idea based on the assumption that a just-above-poverty-level income is going to be really attractive to the masses... I'm pretty sure you're mistaken.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Taking advice from Greece on societal economics probably isn't that smartest choice. Seems like this guy wants to double down on the already failed bet.
So are you saying he's wrong?
And if they implement it, they will actually cut all the other programs that a guaranteed income is supposed to replace. I doubt they'll pass it.
Which makes them unique among western democracies. The rest will just add basic income and never cut anything.
It's not an insane idea, but only if you actually follow through and cut the bureaucracy and all other handouts. Which never happens most places.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
So you're saying it's better to have homeless people and empty housing? Because no other starting condition leads to your conclusion.
So? You are saying as if communism is automatically "bad".
In the USSR everybody had a job (it was actually mandatory for adults who are not studying), which means that 1) there was less time for drinking (showing up drunk at work was not OK) and 2) everybody had some money, there was no need to look for food in garbage bins.
Now that we are capitalists and free, a lot of people do not have a job. I guess one solution would be to let them starve to death, however, that tends to increase crime (since a hungry person is more likely to steal or rob) and some people oppose it for humanitarian reasons. So we have welfare - give free money to the poor. Most of that money gets spent on alcohol (well, you are poor and do not have a job, you have nothing better to do).
The side effect of capitalism is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, however, in the long run that is bad for the economy because more and more money is settling down in the bank accounts of the rich, which means there is less and less "active" money. The rich also find ways to avoid taxes and may end up paying less than a poor man who has a job (because he cannot afford to set up offshore companies for tax evasion purposes etc).
Technology increases productivity, which is great, now everybody can make more in the same time. Which means that in the future, everybody will be working for half the time and producing the same or more than we are now (a prediction from the past). Oh wait, currently instead of everybody working for half the time, half of the people are unemployed and those that have a job, work full time.
I personally believe that some communism would be great. That is, individuals should be free to do what they want (within reason) and private property should be respected, but large companies (companies, that have a too high influence on the market) should be kept on a very short leash - larger companies get a shorter leash.
$2500 per month before taxes in Switzerland is the "poverty line". Note that less than 7% of the Swiss population earns less than that.
Do you think that wages will stay the same if everyone gets X per month from the government? I can imagine that every employee who doesn't have a contract with a dollar amount spelled out in it, would immediately get a letter from the CEO explaining why their pay will be cut the week UBI goes into effect. Lower private wages are one of the assumptions that the universal-basic-income model is based on.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
The whole idea that people are inherently lazy and won't work without being forced to always puzzled me. Most of the people I know want to do something productive, but more often than not it's either not something they can get enough income from quickly enough to be able to drop their day job and start doing it full-time or it's not something they can get enough income from to keep the bills paid. Give them a guaranteed basic income and they won't sit around doing nothing, they'll start doing what they want to do (instead of the day job they have to have because it pays the bills).
And on the flip side, what does Donald Trump do exactly? I know he's rich and considered successful, but what work does he actually do? Or Kim Kardashian? It always seemed to me that the more successful you were, the more well-off you were, the less actual work you appeared to do each day. I know there's research involved in say running a major investment fund like Warren Buffet does, but he doesn't do the majority of it. 95% is delegated out to subordinates who do the legwork and write up the analyst reports, Buffet himself just goes over those reports and makes the final decisions. It's something only he can do, but he's not spending 40 hours a week nailed down to a desk poring over corporate reports and newspaper articles and stock trade data, running spreadsheet calculations to figure out what's behind the stock movements and what's likely to happen in the future.
To quote a mill supervisor, "I don't want the industrious guy who'll clean up the mess with a smile. I want the lazy bastard who'll figure out how to stop the mess from happening so he doesn't have to clean it up all the time.".
I've seen a few people say that they would start their own businesses IF they had a basic income to fall back on. It's understandable, because starting a business is a huge risk if you don't have family money to back you if it fails. This doesn't sound like promoting mediocrity to me at all, this sounds like allowing people to find their potential instead of withering away behind a desk.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
> In the USSR everybody had a job (it was actually mandatory for adults who are not studying),
Mandatory via the government, you say? Meaning the police would show up and drag you to work if you didn't show up on time? Sounds awesome!
> which means that 1) there was less time for drinking (showing up drunk at work was not OK)
Yeah NOBODY drinks in Russia. They don't have a HUGE problem with alcoholism.
> and 2) everybody had some money
1/9th as much as their peers in the USA, to be exact. (About $400/month)
http://www.tradingeconomics.co...
http://www.tradingeconomics.co...
You're seriously suggesting that cutting average income by over 85% is a good idea? You REALLY want to live on $400 per month? You can do that already, if that's what you really want.
The Swiss are not seriously considering the idea. Activists got enough numbers on a petition to force a referendum, but polling indicates it will fail because the payments will require massive increases in taxation to fund them.
The small scale single unmeans and asset tested welfare payment trials in Utrecht and Finland look like happening though. But they are not a UBI. It will only be for a small number of current welfare recipients. By using a match control of other welfare recipients they will be able to measure the effect on the incentive to work of welfare recipients.
When UBIs where trialed in Canada it did reduce working hours. Mostly for mothers with children who could now afford not to work (there was no subsided childcare back then) and kids staying in high school instead of leaving to work. But that was in a rural area decades ago when un and under-employment were low and the work-ethic was strong. What would happen in a modern service based urban economy where there is a surplus of labour already is unknown. And we won't know until a country tries a UBI and it either works or their economy implodes.
The Constitution has been modified as follows:
Art. 110a (new) Unconditional basic income
The Confederation shall ensure the introduction of an unconditional basic income.
The basic income shall enable the whole population to live in human dignity and participate in public life.
The law shall particularly regulate the way in which the basic income is to be financed and the level at which it is set.
The 2500$ comes from the actual *poverty line* in Switzerland: believe me if you have such a low income in Switzerland you are not going to be happy, even if you do nothing to get it.
Actually I don't think a massive taxation increase would be required. The reason is that in Switzerland there is already welfare support for people under the poverty line, which is exactly those 2500$ per month. The idea is basically to get rid of the "usual" welfare, including all the bureaucracy and costs involved and replace it with this "no question asked" basic income. This would basically affect only those under the poverty line, which is a very small percentage of the population, and it would in most cases just replace money they already get, only with a different label.
It's not communism -- communism is an industrial philosophy, and the key point about all industrial philosophies is who owns the means of production. Communism places ownership at the community level, socialism at the level of "society" (in oractical terms almost always defaulting to "state socialism"), cooperativism is about the workers, and capitalism states that ownership starts with money (so how do you get into the system in the first place?)
The idea of a basic income is not directly related to the ownership of the means of production, so cannot be labelled with any of these terms. The reason I feel BI is fair and equitable is that the existence of "society" and the notion of "property" rely on relinquishing certain natural rights. Without society, I would be allowed to hunt, fish or gather wherever I wanted to. Because of society, though, there are rivers that I'm not allowed to fish and deer that I'm not allowed to stalk. Society has removed my right to feed myself for free, and forced me instead to buy food, and therefore has created the need for money. This process has made humanity more efficient and productive (a farmer with a combine harvester can feed hundreds, a hunter with a spear can feed a dozen or so) which improves the average standard of life immeasurably. But if one man can't eat because of that, where is the justice? What have we given him in return for the removal of his natural right to feed himself?
Welfare systems and/or basic income schemes are how we compensate for the loss of those natural rights. Food that buys your hunting rights; housing that buys out your right to pitch a cowhide tent wherever you please.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
"Swiss adults would get $2,500 per month, and kids around $625 per month"
That is more than many (most?) small farmers get now. This would mean a basic income of $52K per year for a family with three kids. I've had many years where I made $14K and supported our family fine. $52K would be luxury and that would be above the $14K - damn nice.
There are many reasons to like the universal income idea. I don't think it will actually make people stop working. People want more stuff. What it will do is give them the chance to do more interesting things. Some won't but many will.
Of course, the article glosses over implementation details like that.
Sure, I wouldn't mind an extra $2,500 every month. But is it truly an extra $2,500? If the taxes on my normal income will also go up by that $2,500, it's a wash. If inflation makes it so I don't have any real additional purchasing power, it's also a wash. So why add the additional level of complexity in those cases? And won't there be bureaucratic and administrative costs?
Show me the numbers. Show me where the money will come from such that I really will have an extra $30K take-home every year... that I actually benefit from and that won't be vacuumed away in taxes, bureaucracy, and inflation. Show me real, solid, numbers, and sure, I'll support the idea. But in my experience, things that sound too good to be true, usually are.
Imagine all the people...
Whereas Capitalism fails only when human beings are no longer required to produce goods and services. i.e. real soon now.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I suspect that after a year or so to adjust, we'd see higher employment rates than ever, at least if you count the sort of informal employment that becomes possible once basic needs are a given. Idleness actually gets old pretty fast.
As Carlin pointed out, pot leads to carpentry. So even with that, it might make an interesting new cottage industry.
Simply its this: the world doesn't owe you a living, get over yourself and suck it up. Live or die on your own efforts, not mine.
Fine. If robots take my job and I don't get to have part in the production gain I'll just grab myself a Kalashnikov and take what I want.
Glad we could clear this up so quickly.
' be seeing you soon.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Lowering wages is hard to do. Say ubi is 20k a year. Cutting all salaries by 20k is not feasible. Those currently making 20-30k will just stop working. So there is some minimum you have to pay to make it worthwhile to go to work each day. Beyond that the people with more experience obviviously want more money for their more difficult jobs. So no real way to take X amount out of salaries with UBI. Could you decease by a percentage - maybe. But that would require all employers to do that together. Or the ones that do not decrease will get the more talented people and those that did decrease will struggle to find people. However one thing that could bring down the salaries is severe unemployment. If robots/AI take a significant portion of jobs high unemployment could push down salaries.
I don't really care about anybodys arguments for this UBI concept, I know one thing for sure: Somehow, it'll get corrupted, so that I get screwed out of it, have to work, my taxes jacked up, and I'll be paying for some jackoffs to smoke weed, drink beer, and play video games all day long, while I get my pay cut, and as mentioned above, my taxes increased to pay for losers to play all day. I just KNOW it will happen that way.
You want the government to give us free shit? How about we do away with the requirement for healthcare (or paying Danegeld to the IRS if you don't) and give us basic healthcare for FREE instead!? That would make WAY MORE sense than this UBI crap. I'm dead serious about this: If the U.S. Government can't manage to give every U.S. citizen free basic healthcare, then it sure as fuck can't afford to give everyone enough cash to live on every month. Call it a test case. I challenge the Government and everyone who supports this UBI nonsense to make free healthcare for everyone work, first; if that works for, say, a decade, THEN we can talk about your UBI. Deal?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Caution. Most Americans have a Pavlovian response to anything resembling "communism", making them violent and hostile.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Unemployment goes up when jobs go away. In this case there would be more people volunteering to leave the workforce. They would not be counted in any unemployment number I am aware of unless you look strictly at the number of people who do not have jobs regardless of if they want One. This actually would decrease normal unemployment measures assuming the number of jobs stays constant.
Speaking from the USA here, how much money have we pissed away in the mideast? Where did the money come from to bail out the banks? If we can afford to do that shit then we can damn well afford this.
Printing money? That is exactly what we do, because we can. The US is sovereign an its own currency, and it is the global reserve. It is backed up by the full faith and force of the US gov't. Not that I entirely agree with things, but that is how it is. The gov't doesn't really need your tax money, they simply use taxes to shape social policy.
The reason why this Universal income will never fly in the USA is because the powers that be won't let it -- and the reason why they won't let it fly is because if everyone's basic needs are met then there is no way they can threaten people with firing, layoffs, H1-B's etc. If you have money coming in besides your job, it is that much less power that the corps have over you. And it is the corps that own the congressmen.
Does that make sense? Just my observations/IMHO anyway.
C|N>K
Wrong. A UBI would put every worker, especially the ones on the lower end of the payscale, in a MUCH better negotiating position. If any fast-food CEO tried this he could expect to see every single bottom-level fast food worker quit instantly. This would be much more of a nightmare than even them all unionizing.
Overspending did. Cutting spending was a proposed solution to them spending too much. Others believe that when you dig yourself into a hole, you get out by digging further down.
Ok, since the majority of people here very obviously have ZERO clue about the situation in Greece and what role Varoufakis plays in the whole mess, allow me to clue you in.
The whole shit started WAY before Varoufakis was more or less pushed into that position. And he was one of the few intelligent people to grace that position with his presence (seriously, his predecessors were duds), but he had very little chance to actually do anything sensible. The IMF was calling the shots. And if you didn't notice by now, allow me to inform you: The very last thing you can use in your country is the IMF telling you what to do. It's almost granted that they will make matters worse, since they have no interest at all to "help" you. Their job is to ensure that whoever you owe money gets it. No matter how. As far as they're concerned, sell the organs of your people.
To give you an idea what Varoufakis' situation was and how sensible blaming him for the mess is: It's a bit like blaming whoever will be the next president of the USA for the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with the mess with that Cuban prison.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm an economist; I recently finished my PhD and am now working in the tech industry.
I am hugely in favor of UBI. I think of it in 3 ways:
Is it doable?
Yes, of course. Existing social programs are very costly, and this will replace many of them. Furthermore, there are a lot of profits that have been created by technology in the last 50 years. And yet work weeks have increased, and many people have a lower quality of life than before. You might ask why this is. I'll give you a hint: the answer isn't population growth.
What is the cost?
Social disruption in the short term. Probably a cost to some or many very wealthy individuals. New regulations are required, but these may be less in total than existing regulations.
What is the benefit?
Many. Increased social stability. A simpler social safety net for one. A promise that each individual will be better off as technology improves and jobs may be destroyed.
That last piece I believe to be very important. The looming driverless car revolution has highlighted the risk of technology: jobs lost there have no promise of replacements.
Nope he is right. WHen I made that it was $2500 after taxes and Obamacare taxes. .72 x 45,000 is in that ballpark
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> I suggest cutting rent by 85%. Landlords do not need to be making that much money.
Average rent is about 110% of the cost to own the property- mortgage, property taxes, maintenance, etc. So a property that rents for $11,000/year costs the landlord about $10,000/ rentable year, including vacancy month.
You propose cutting the rent to about $900/year. The cost to the landlord being about $10,000, buying a house and renting it out would mean you'd lose $9,100/year. Obviously virtually nobody is stupid enough to do that; nobody would rent out a house. That's how you end up with shanty towns like you see in Mexico city.
Three years ago, I went back to school. I highly recommend it. Having a clue is nice.
It would reduce involuntary unemployment and so would relieve general economic stress.
It would also allow for informal employment and contract work for people who otherwise couldn't afford to work. Both through removing the penalty for having an income that people on public assistance now face as well as through employers becoming more willing to meet potential workers half way. It would also be a boon for people on disability who can work a little bit on their own terms but couldn't afford the risk of a bureaucrat deciding that them managing 3 hours a week for 2 weeks in a row means they can do 40/week and so don't need disability.
If the people who complain that minimum wage kills jobs are right, there should be more jobs available once people who just want a little extra can afford to take such a job for a little while.
Definitely decades to be so ubiquitous and AI'd that labor is so dead even robodigging is cheap.
If the goalposts are "market disruption" we're already there though. Why hire proles that need paychecks and benefits? All that matters is your bottom line, so the only number you need to know is how much upfront a robopicker costs.
Turns out the answer is "not cheap yet". Big Corporate does it, sure (even though they're quite good at using bottom tier humans like tissues) but because they know how to play long game; They don't skimp on parts.
Uhh... You realized that you just proved what I said? It only took me to write the "cursed" keyword and you react aggressively without thinking about what I meant. A automatic response, you noticed that?
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
The idea of a basic income is not directly related to the ownership of the means of production, so cannot be labelled with any of these terms. The reason I feel BI is fair and equitable is that the existence of "society" and the notion of "property" rely on relinquishing certain natural rights. Without society, I would be allowed to hunt, fish or gather wherever I wanted to.
If by natural rights you mean as found in nature, you'd find most animals are far more possessive of their territory and companions and far more likely to resort to acts of aggression and violence including lethal force than humans. It's all might make right and if you can take it and keep it then it's yours. It works both ways, sure you can't take other people's property but they can't take yours. And it's the little guy who needs protection, the rich and powerful protected themselves just fine long before society got involved.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
And I contend that your scenario won't come about in the first place since far less than half of the people are willing to settle for the bare minimum when they have the opportunity to do better. Your premise is faulty. That does not bode well for your conclusion.
You find it unsettling that it's well known that fast food jobs pay poorly and are generally unpleasant? Why? Were you not aware of this?
Right from the summary:
Here, here, here!
I actually did start my own company, and it wasn't such a big success that it would pay the bills, so now I'm doing freelance work which pays nicely (I'm an information security consultant) but is more stressful than a regular job.
I have a long list of things that I would like to do, both in my field and outside. I just don't have time for it, if it doesn't in some way end up as profitable, at least a little bit. With a basic income, knowing myself the first month or two I would do some shit that I've just wanted to do for a long time, but then all the articles I wanted to write, the speeches I wanted to give, the software I wanted to create would appear.
Giving people a survival is the #1 humanity thing that a western society should feel itself morally obligated to do. If we can afford private jets and million dollar wedding parties for the super-rich, how can you possibly make any ethically justifiable argument that the same society has people looking for food in trash cans?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
No, actually we have not. People are not more stupid or lazy than before. But many people find that the skills that can acquire given their talents are not in demand anymore. That is quite a different problem.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The universal income has been tried before in Soviet Socialism.
It has been above and beyond universal income. In a socialist system most of the people had a place to live, a job, education was free, healthcare was free, one or two years maternity and the pay was more or less the same for all professions. Socialism failed miserably and It will keep failing every single time.
It is called rationing. If healthcare is free, that means a random client/patient will be rationed. Education, even if it is free, is not available to everyone in their selected field. A job that paid something: people on average were non-productive and looking for opportunities to steal. Well, if housing is free everyone wants would want to live in most beautiful place. However there is not enough desirable places for everyone.
It was tried before. Did not work then will not work now. Imagine in US they make it a basic income, of, say, $2000 per month. Once rumors are confirmed by less fortunate 50% of the world population, you can guarantee that population of US will double in 10 years. Even Trump's wall will not help, for underground high through capacity tunnels will be developed to meet demand.
Once somebody becomes entitled for $2000 a month, and becomes a voter, it is impossible to change that habit.
If everyone had an extra $1000 a month to spend, I could see prices simply increasing in proportion. For example, housing, which in the US is mostly bought and sold in a competitive market. If you and I have an extra $10,000 to bid on a house, guess what? The price of the house simply goes up, absorbing the UBI and negating its utility everywhere else. So housing becomes more expensive for a person with no other income, reducing the benefit of the UBI for food and other necessities.
billions of human leaches that provide nothing.
Please kill yourself. We don't need people with a view of humanity like that on this planet.
You are completely oblivious to anything going on in the world. Fear is a terrible motivator, we know enough psychology today to understand that it inhibits higher brain functions, preventing any kind of invention or progress. For slavery, that is actually a useful feature, but you don't even understand slavery and that it wasn't avoidance of being killed that made the system work.
So please, jump off a bridge somewhere, or in front of a train or whatever you prefer, because it isn't people being lazy that are the scourge of humanity, it is people like you who don't see the greatness in our species, the potential, the fact that if you would only listen and give them a chance, every single human would have one small thing to contribute. Most just live and die without ever getting the chance to do it, and it's because of fuckers like you who don't believe they should have the opportunity, they should do hard work instead, because of that small Stalin in your head telling you that the unwashed masses are up to no good and need to be kept busy, against their will, with hard work so they don't start to do some thinking.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org