Finland's Universal Basic Income Called 'Useless' By Trade Union Economist (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Bloomberg: Finland's basic income experiment is unworkable, uneconomical and ultimately useless. Plus, it will only encourage some people to work less. That's not the view of a hard core Thatcherite, but of the country's biggest trade union. The labor group says the results of the two-year pilot program will fail to sway its opposition to a welfare-policy idea that's gaining traction among those looking for an alternative in the post-industrial age. "We think it takes social policy in the wrong direction," said Ilkka Kaukoranta, chief economist of the Central Organization of Finnish Trade Unions, which has nearly one million members.

Since January, a group of unemployed Finns aged between 25 and 58 have been receiving a stipend of 560 euros ($600) per month. The amount isn't means-tested and is paid regardless of whether the recipient finds a job, starts a business or returns to school... Advocates say it eliminates poverty traps and redistributes income while empowering the individual and reducing paperwork... While limited in scope (it's conditional on the beneficiary having received some form of unemployment support in November 2016) and size (it's based on a randomly-selected sample of 2,000 jobless people), the Finnish trial may help answer questions like: "Does it work"? "Is it worth it"? And the most fundamental of all: "Does it incite laboriousness or laziness...?"
The trade union argues this UBI program would cost 5% of Finland's entire gross domestic product, making it "impossibly expensive."

Comments

A more basic question

[hackwrench]

How do we measure the economics of the situation?

Re: A more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't come soon enough, you think people will be glad to see a flood of overweight Americans whose only "asset" is a maxed out credit card? Stay inside the wall, Make Amurrikah Great Again, please.

Re:A more basic question

[cheekyboy]

god another loose sending fake statements about trump, you mofo liar.

Re:A more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

Obvious troll is obvious

Re:A more basic question

[BillPotter]

"Measuring the economics of the situation" is the biggest challenge of this generation. The robots are coming like an army. They have sent scouts ahead. Within a few years 80% of service jobs, including semi-skilled service jobs, will be performed by robots. Without a sufficient welfare program the vast majority of human kind would starve. Many will view their fellow poverty stricken brethren as worthless "Dunsel" who should 'self-deport'. Humanity must fundamentally change the way people are viewed. Everyone can contribute to life in a beautiful new world. This is not a political issue right or left, simply a real obstacle to the future of man. UBI is a small tool to help. But really how do you transition to a James T. Kirk world in which people don't use money?

Re:A more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

I honestly believe people aren't capable of thinking outside that box. They can't picture life without the suffering of the daily grind.

Re:A more basic question

[jellomizer]

Luckally money is a unit of measurement.
1. How much money did you use to tax the population vs how much you will need to tax the population now.
2. Find out if the average percentage of a persons tax per wage has gone up?
3. Factor in any government dept needed to be payed for the service.

Now if we find the side effect of a basic income is laziness then you will find that incomes will stagnant so your tax revenue will too if using a progressive income tax. If you find that people invest into this safety net to further education and take risks over time you should see a rise in income so to pay for the basic income would be less percentage of the taxable income.

Now I applaud counties for trying it out. However if it doesn't work then it doesn't work and we shouldn't get so suck on the idea.

Re:A more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to think all of the promises of a Wall are to keep people out.

Re:A more basic question

[pixelpusher220]

the one thing is though that you get guaranteed tax revenue as well. Since those people are buying necessary goods and services with the money.

It obviously doesn't likely work very well with no one working, but that won't be a realistic society anyway. There will always be those who want to work.

as others have noted, the coming automation wave is going to wreak havoc on over a century of employment concepts. Something needs to change as the vast majority of low income/skill jobs are going to just disappear being replaced by a fractional number of higher skill tech/maintenance workers

Re:A more basic question

[religionofpeas]

the one thing is though that you get guaranteed tax revenue as well. Since those people are buying necessary goods and services with the money.

That doesn't compute. If you give someone $1000, and they use that to buy $1000 of goods, with a 20% tax, you only get $200 back in taxes. The remaining $800 could go straight across the border.

Re:A more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

And you could slip and fall in the bathroom!
Holy fucking shit, we need to know the future! Oh, we can't?
I'm scared! Let's do everything we can to control as much as possible so that we can try to predict the future and eliminate the fear of the unknown!

Re: A more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

In Finland the current system is so twisted that accepting a job actually reduces your monthly income because the social payments are way higher than the compensation from low salary work. This system has been lobbed by the unions to get a political monopoly over unemployed people. It is really messed up.

The universal basic income would allow Finns to work as much or little as they can without reducing their monthly income. This way people would accept work more easily.

Re:A more basic question

[JaredOfEuropa]

the one thing is though that you get guaranteed tax revenue as well.

And that's another important issue of basic income: not the cost per se, but the fact that in many countries the bulk of tax revenue comes from income taxes. That will have to change if people are going to be working less, regardless of whether they do so by choice or they are replaced by robots. Taxing consumption more heavily will reduce consumption and at some point necessitate an increase of the basic income. Taxing production is an obvious solution; during the replacement of human labour with robots we could levy an "income tax" on robots, but that would only work on a level playing field or in an autarky; in our own globalized world, production would simply flee to the country with the lowest tax on production as it does now.

Re: A more basic question

[mikael]

That's the same situation in many countries including the UK. That's not simply the fault of the unemployed - they would do whatever it takes to earn the maximum amount of money. With the farm industry, we've got international workers willing to live full-time on on-site dormitories. They earn £15/hour but pay half that for a bunk bed. A local worker with a family want their own house. That requires at least £25/hour to pay for a car, utiities and heating. Home owners also want to keep the value of their homes up, so don't want massive housing developments that will fill up with neighbors-from-hell. That keeps the cost of housing up, so that a minimum wage job won't cover the cost of home ownership.

Re:A more basic question

[Cederic]

When you're running a country? There's a level of sense to trying to predict the future.

Otherwise you suddenly find yourself short of energy, or food, or the cash to maintain a welfare system. Riots happen, maybe worse.

But that's ok, you're welcome to walk around blind and ignorant. We'll look after you.

Re:A more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

And the people employed to sell you that grand's worth of goods is in your country and not unemployed. Of course, you only get 30-40% of that $800. But the profits go to the corporation. And all that money going round is taxed. Governments make money as long as it moves around. Governments have big problems when it stops moving. And rich people halt money movement. The move a fraction of someone else's money borrowed on the existence of their own money. And reap greater benefit from other people's money than they can themselves, since there are fixed costs and a need for cash availability that the wealthy don't have. So money to poor people helps the economy, wealthy people not so much.

Re:A more basic question

[MrL0G1C]

The real challenge is admitting there's an over-population problem and that our current way of living isn't sustainable and dealing with this without getting peoples backs up.

Re:A more basic question

[kqs]

The remaining $800 could go across the border, but most of it will go to local stores for food, clothing, health care, etc. Who pay their employees (among other things), who then pay taxes on that money and buy more things, round and round.

Some money will go across a border. And some money from across a border will come here (for any definition of "border" and "here"). That's economics, whether or not UBI is involved.

Nobody is saying that UBI "pays for itself"; that's stupid. But it seems like it could be a workable system, which is why folks are running experiments. Some folks (like TFA) have decided on the outcome of the experiments without bothering to run them. Maybe it won't work, but I'm encouraged by the small-scale experimental results in the past.

Re:A more basic question

[religionofpeas]

The more money you give to people for free, the less work they'll do. Which means the trade balance with other countries will worsen, and more of your tax money will escape.

Re:A more basic question

[esonik]

There is no overpopulation problem in developed countries. If there is a problem it's declining population. I would even claim that many economies in developed countries struggle because of declining / aging population (e.g. Japan). Immigration compensates that to a degree which is maybe one reason why Mrs Merkel didn't oppose it.

Why is declining population a problem?
a) Fewer people means demand for everything goes down - bad for businesses. It also means demand is shifting to older demographics - need to adapt your offering
b) Fewer people means less taxes collected => less money to spend on public services
c) You have to scale down public services like schools, public transport etc. This is difficult and most communities do it too late. Moreover there are sunken costs that you can't recover: closing a school won't give back the money invested to building it (and try selling a school)
d) Declining population is a major challenge for retirement schemes. A smaller number of people have to generate the economic surplus that keeps retired people afloat. Major problem in countries like Germany where most people don't own personal retirement funds.
e) Declining population is a major problem for the housing market - not only does demand go down but some (less popular) places shrink much faster than others. Property you own there can become pretty much worthless.

Re:A more basic question

[MrL0G1C]

You're looking at this from a completely different angle and ignoring the problem of resources, pollution and destruction of natural environments.

If we carry on like this we will cause our own extinction along with that of most life.

Re:A more basic question

[kqs]

The more money you give to people for free, the less work they'll do.

Interestingly, previous small-scale experiments have not really shown this; time spent working only decreased a small amount, and was mostly replaced with other useful activities (raising children or education). Do you think the previous experiments did not measure this, or do you think the results will not scale?

Which means the trade balance with other countries will worsen, and more of your tax money will escape.

That's a non-sequitur; trade balance doesn't seem tied to hours worked. It has some relation to economic output, but (with automated jobs) that is also not strongly tied to hours worked. Basically, how is our trade balance affected by how many workers vs robots are in a restaurant or in a factory? It is affected by how much consumers can spend, but UBI means that spending power is also less tied to hours worked.

Re:A more basic question

[dywolf]

there is no overpopulation problem.
there is a logistics problem, the moving of basic needs, goods, and services from person to person.
there is a difference between the two.

there is plenty of food even at current production levels. the problem is getting what we have where its needed; since we rely primarily on a free market system, and the world poverty stricken arent much of a viable market...they get to suffer the consequences of a market failure. meanwhile much of our own excess goes to waste.

there is plenty of space for people to live with room left over.
https://persquaremile.com/wp-c...

the rest is quality of life: electricity, medicine, education. each of which is solvable.

Re:A more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with "minimum basic income" schemes is that is just moves the bar.

Let's say, you start with zero and have no job. You can not afford to eat or rent an apartment
If you get a minimum wage job that gives you just enough to eat and pay rent, then you're fine and contributing to society and paying taxes.
But if you get a minimum basic income on top, then the apartment owners will simply set their rent's at that minimum basic income rate plus what they were recieving before, so now you end up back in the poverty trap, and should the government decide to call it a fail and unwind it, now your minimum wage has to be raised by that minimum basic income amount to prevent all these people from being screwed.

A better scheme is for the government to build basic non-shitty housing and a food budget. If you want more, get a job. If you don't need more then you're free to be something of a mooch, but the government will not upgrade your 400' studio to a 2bedroom unless you are married and have a child.

And we all know how awful government housing is, because like other government managed property, it's maintenance will be deferred and eventually privatized so the government gets the liabilities off it's books. Thus we wind up back at square one.

So what is ultimately the right solution? Well Co-ops for one.

Housing co-ops ensure that everyone actually commits to keeping up the building. If you want to stay there (for free, courtesty of the government) You have to take care of the building.

Re:A more basic question

[LDAPMAN]

Ok, lets assume your premise is true and there is an over-population problem. How exactly does UBI act to solve that problem? It would be treating the symptoms and not the disease. In fact, it would be more likely to exacerbate the problem.

Re:A more basic question

[MrL0G1C]

You can only say this if you are ignorant of the way we are decimating the ocean floor, polluting everything, ignorance of global warming and the domino effects waiting in store.

This isn't about simply being able to grow enough food, I never said it was.

" rest is quality of life: electricity, medicine, education. each of which is solvable."

These things are not the issue, looking after the planet we live on so that it can continue to support us, that is the issue.

Sustainable, look it up, research it.

Re:A more basic question

[MrL0G1C]

As with any problem you start with accepting that there is a problem.

Re:A more basic question

[pixelpusher220]

That is what it would seem like but it's not true. Tax revenue isn't only collected once. When I spend money at a store, that's income to the store and that itself is taxed. That store spends the money to buy the goods they are selling, so that purchase is taxed. And on down the line.

This is the power of the free market. A very imperfect comparison would be to compound interest. There isn't just 1 transaction, you get more money in after each transaction on down the line. It's why food stamps actually return MORE money than is put in. For every dollar given out as food stamps, the tax revenue is over $1.50. linky

Now, food stamps for everybody doesn't scale to the entire population but for low income people who need it it's really no brainer economically.

The larger scale of this is economic stimulus. Putting government money into infrastructure. It is things that have to be done, and it keeps the wheels of the economy turning say, during a recession. By spending money to build a road, you pay the construction company. they pay their workers. The workers buy stuff. The stores buy more stuff to reflect the demand. That's how an economy works.

So by the gov putting money into an economy it keeps it moving when there is less private or consumer demand due to a recession.

The real kicker to stimulus is you also do it when the interest rates are low. And they are at historic lows right now. It's never been cheaper to deficit spend. Better if you don' t deficit spend, but that's not the world we have right now. We need to fix our infrastructure and grow the economy.

Re:A more basic question

[pixelpusher220]

the effect of consumption/usage taxes are already baked into the equation. Increasing them 1% does not have a 1% decrease in demand. It's simply a matter of balancing the costs associated with the benefits gained. And it can be adjusted as needed.

Re:A more basic question

[pixelpusher220]

It's not giving people money for free that does that. It's giving them zero hope and actively punishing them for being poor. Like regressive taxes and fees.

But if you have evidence of this, please provide it.

And of course what are you going to do when more than half the low wage/skill jobs disappear to automation? what happens then?

Re:A more basic question

[esonik]

There isn't any shortage of resources that I'm aware of. Maybe locally, people are short of certain resources - that's a distribution problem. Globally, we have enough of everything.
Pollution and destruction of environment is a choice that we make (in some countries).
For example, as long as we decide to use combustion engine cars for transport, that's a choice that will result in higher pollution levels compared to electric cars. We don't have to stick to that choice.

Maybe you know a resource that's in short supply globally and cannot be replaced?

Re: A more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you drank too much climate Kool-Aid.

Re:A more basic question

[esonik]

decimating the ocean floor

I believe you are referring to trawling fishery. That's a choice we make that we want to eat that much fish and use that technology to catch fish. Doesn't have to be that way.

Global warming - that's presumably related to increased CO2 levels. We can chose to reduce CO2 levels by reducing fossil fuel consumption and switching to other (sustainable) sources / fuels of energy.

Reducing population won't help the cause of pollution reduction because it will trigger economic problems that will make us turn away from sustainable technologies which presently require investment. If anything we have to at least maintain population level to create a stable economic basis.

The true challenge is to bring prosperity to the poor countries which currently have locally unsustainable population growth. This often a political problem though. Increasing prosperity usually leads to slowing down population growth.

Re:A more basic question

[sumdumass]

Hogwash.. Utter made up thinking.

I hear this and laugh because of the unimaginative thinking required to believe it. We are a long way away from any scenario in which we have a resource problem or the destruction of natural environments and pollution become a problem. Technology increases at an alarming rate, today we are feeding far more people from a lot less land, we have pollution and environmental controls in place and are actively restoring parts of the environment damaged from ages past.

In short, your problem or concerns simply do not exist. We take steps when crap happens and reduce pollution, protect the environment, and maximize the use of resources including recycling them. It's been the natural order of society since the industrial revolution and any economically developed society practices it to some degree.

Re: A more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

We did, and left 1,200 unemployed, we made merka great again.

Re:A more basic question

[MrL0G1C]

"The true challenge is to bring prosperity to the poor countries which currently have locally unsustainable population growth."

'prosperity' You the whole western world has been brain-washed, this prosperity thing, it has another name - mindless consumerism and it's this mindless consumerism, the idea that we must have ever more junk, ever bigger houses, cars etc, it's this falsehood that's getting us to where we are now which is at the edge of a precipice and that precipice is our impending extinction. It's good and well to say we can deal with these things, I know we have most of the solutions to do so, but we have to implement those solutions. And we need to stop investing into getting every last drop of oil and gas out of the ground, and we need to stop subsidising these same things.

If mankind doesn't face up to the fact that the very survival instincts that got us to where we are now will kill us all if we don't rise above them and use our brains instead of our balls.

Prosperity is the wrong goal, the correct goal is making sure everybody has clean air to breath, healthy food to eat, clean water to drink, but 1st and foremost we need to look after the planet we are on. And we should be trying a lot harder to preserve other species because our own survival may very well depend on it.

Re:A more basic question

[MrL0G1C]

Murder is a choice some people make, doesn't mean it's right.

Re:A more basic question

[sit1963nz]

I said that when Trump first mentioned the wall. Walls not only keep Mexicans out, they keep Americans in, Canada may want to look at this.

Re:A more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

How do we measure the economics of the situation?

The amount of time before Finland becomes a failed state would be the most simple metric.

Re:A more basic question

[Darinbob]

5% of the GDP is relatively small. Compare to the US GDP spent on the military, which is the largest jobs program in the world.

Re:A more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on whether or not fishing is better there, including whether the lakes and rivers are overcrowded.

Re:A more basic question

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

When the logistics of the planet do not support the high quantity of people, then you have an overpopulation problem AND a whole bunch of logistics problems. The latter could be largely solved by having fewer people.

Re:A more basic question

[Areyoukiddingme]

Prosperity is the wrong goal, the correct goal is making sure everybody has clean air to breath, healthy food to eat, clean water to drink

That's pretty much the fundamental definition of prosperity... plus a roof to keep the rain off.

Why is your ridiculous alarmism being modded up, not once but twice? Especially when it's completely self-contradictory. Reality on the ground is, the more prosperous a country is, the lower its population growth. The most prosperous countries are experiencing a population decline, not growth. Nobody is certain why this is (but the education of women and the availability of prophylactics seems to be the leading guesses), but regardless, it's true.

So for people who believe that humans are the scariest things in the ecosystem, prosperity should be the goal. It's the one and only thing, in all of recorded history, that has caused birth rates to drop below the replacement rate. Not even world wars could do that. If you truly believe there are too many people, the only thing that can fix that is prosperity. (Or a glacial period in an Ice Age. Those work too.)

Re:A more basic question

[Maritz]

You wait until the two-year scheme is in its second month of operation, then you declare it a failure. Well, that's what you do if you're the Central Organization of Finnish Trade Unions.

Re:A more basic question

[dcw3]

"many countries the bulk of tax revenue comes from income taxes."

OECD averages from 2012...
https://files.taxfoundation.or...

Re: A more basic question

[phantomfive]

Yeah, reducing housing costs would do more than basic income would in helping people.

Re:A more basic question

[dddux]

You should stop thinking that nobody will work because robots will do the work for us, at a majority of jobs. So somebody IS working after all, and why not give those fruits of [free] work to people who can't, can't find work, or just don't want to work?

Re:A more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

'prosperity' You the whole western world has been brain-washed, this prosperity thing, it has another name - mindless consumerism and it's this mindless consumerism,

(cough) China (cough)

Re:A more basic question

[Cinnamon Beige]

The more money you give to people for free, the less work they'll do.

Interestingly, previous small-scale experiments have not really shown this; time spent working only decreased a small amount, and was mostly replaced with other useful activities (raising children or education). Do you think the previous experiments did not measure this, or do you think the results will not scale?

My guess is the expectation is that the results will not generalize--I suspect a UBI will work relatively well, as long as the group trying it has as a basic cultural expectation that everybody contributes to society. It'll do pretty well in most of Scandinavia, possibly, since they are one of those cultures and there is the basic social expectation that you of course want to contribute to society. In places where works like Steal This Book would even get published? Well, I suppose it'll be quite good for creating an effective one-party state and ensuring they get the votes to keep it looking like a democracy.

If you want something that will be robust, it might be better to identify those jobs that are not part of what we traditionally think of as work but are of value to society, and start providing a stipend to people who do them. Things like taking care of your family is labor, so why do we not treat it as worthy of being paid in some manner?

Re: A more basic question

[HornWumpus]

You're not supposed to make a career out of a minimum wage job. You prove that you can show up on time and sober for six months, then get a better job.

Re:A more basic question

[kqs]

First, UBI studies have been done in the United States, with similar results. So I'm not sure why you wouldn't think they wouldn't generalize, unless you have never looked at those studies and just assumed.

Also: "one of those cultures and there is the basic social expectation that you of course want to contribute to society" sounds like the usual "anyone on welfare is lazy and deserves to be poor" whining I hear a lot. Folks in conservative states regularly do studies to show that most people on welfare are gaming the system. Have you ever heard of those studies? Likely not, because they always show that the fraud rate on welfare is quite low. "Improper payments" is about 10% of welfare funds, and that doesn't mean 10% fraud, that means 10% of funds are over- or under-paid; the percentage of money paid to lazy people gaming the system is far lower.

Oddly, the fraud rate for poor people on welfare is pretty similar for the fraud rate of rich doctors scamming medicare. Poor lazy people have the same fraud rate as smart rich doctors; do you put doctors in the "don't want to contribute to society" category too?

Re:A more basic question

[pixelpusher220]

not sure you meant to reply to me but....there's a new paradigm at work now. Automation, once the realm only of large scale manufacturing, is going to move into simple small to mid level businesses. That's going to displace a whole lot of people who are currently working low skill jobs.

As the fast food baron said, it's perilously close to a tipping point with a burger flipping machine replacing the cooks. Ordering kiosks could already replace the people taking the orders. That hasn't happened yet mostly due to inertia, but its coming.

What are we going to do with an ever growing population without the jobs that used to exist? In a fast growing world, you can keep people employed with scaled growth, but population will level off before too long and then there simply isn't the growth potential to soak up the jobs.

Those 2 factors require massive change. It will come whether we try to address it or not.

Re:A more basic question

[Cinnamon Beige]

First: Never make such claims without citations, because amazingly enough not everybody reads every scientific publication ever and has access to all the databases. (You gotta pay for that, and I've got bills.) Second: If you think the US is a singular, unified culture, I'm not sure where to start on the problems here, aside from maybe "Your social science skills are bad." You're also assuming interesting things about my beliefs, which are actually very, very wrong. In fact, if you want to argue that cultural tolerance of fraud exists--finding the rates among presumably high SES individuals is not distinctly different among a low SES sample is actually more likely to support the basic theory that the behavior is more tolerated culturally.

Re: A more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone forgot to tell the corporations.

Are labor unions to ose out

[Anonymous Coward]

if the base income thing is successful? yes, likely. are we seeing some evidence, or at least some theory as to what will go wrong? nope. then please allow me to ignore this as yet another political jab and wait for the results, thanks.

Trade union fighting for survival

[r1348]

If people become indifferent to unemployment, trade unions have no reason to exist anymore.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[Anonymous Coward]

People will not become "indifferent to employment", and their rights in the workplace will still matter. Basic income is a replacement of social welfare, not of the workplace.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[Wisp]

Yep. True.

I seriously don't get the moralizing about 'jerbs!'... usually after bitching about pay disparity.

Re:Trade union fighting for survival

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't need a reason to exist, and I don't need other people to validate my self worth, you motherfucking asshole. Fuck you!

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[skids]

Money is simply a fabricated conduit. Trying to understand social matters by focusing on accounting is like trying to understand a microprocessor by focusing on electricity.

What matters is whether those capable of feeding/clothing/sheltering/etc the world's population are willing to do that, and secondarily whether any practical path to transition (through any resource constraints) to a system those people find satisfactory exists. This depends on a number of factors, many of which transcend economics, and even rationality.

So whether UBI "computes" under various economic models, or not, does not tell us much about whether it will succeed... on the one hand the machinery of the economy could change drastically to accommodate (and pernicious automation is certainly a potential agent for drastic change), on the other, even if it worked out beautifully on paper it could easily be derailed by emotionally charged politics.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[Vitus Wagner]

Basic income is automation itself. It cuts lots of jobs. With current welfare you'll need a lot of clerks to evaluate conditions of those who apply for welfare and make a decisions. And even if those who apply are too poor to bribe officials, these officials can exersize power over them and feel theirselves significant.

With basic income you' ll need only one computer which would send checks around based on census data.

Re:Trade union fighting for survival

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no reasons to give you anything if you have nothing to give to me, that is basically it.

Your opinion doesn't matter. I don't need to be of any value to you or anyone, as the government will take what it wants/needs from you to pay me because I support those in power. If you refuse they'll throw you in prison and force you to make me free shoes, pants, and other clothing or shoot you dead, and probably your dog and maybe a family member or two as well, if you resist arrest/imprisonment. There's a reason why almost every federal agency/dept. has a SWAT team, automatic weapons, and millions of rounds of hollow-point ammo (which is illegal under international law to use militarily) and it ain't because they're training for the Olympics.

The free ride is coming to an end, it's time to pay back society for all that you've stolen.

Re:Trade union fighting for survival

[gravewax]

As much as I hate Trade Unions I think there point is this is just a wealth redistribution program and in the end those that will have to pay for it is the average worker with higher taxes.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[MightyMartian]

Ever heard of corporate taxes? Sales taxes? Excise taxes?

Re:Trade union fighting for survival

[Anne Thwacks]

the average robot with higher taxes.

FTFY

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[gweihir]

At this time yes. In the not so distant future, no. Most jobs will go away and will not be replaced.

Re:Trade union fighting for survival

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems these people don't know what an experiment is. They want to conclude prematurely in their self-interest, but that's political, not science.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[Anonymous Coward]

one computer which would send checks around based on census data.

"Checks" - how quaint... If only the US banking system could be dragged (no doubt kicking and screaming) even into the 20th century...

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[tlhIngan]

People will not become "indifferent to employment", and their rights in the workplace will still matter. Basic income is a replacement of social welfare, not of the workplace.

Exactly. People think a lot of people will suddenly become lazy. In fact, they won't - a lot of people LIKE their current lifestyle.

Basic income provides a roof, three square meals and some safe environment. It doesn't mean you'll get a single family home, a private apartment, or even a room by yourself! The most basic of housing can be barracks style living where everything is shared except maybe a private locker for your personal stuff. The vast majority will want to pursue work, if nothing more than to have a private room or apartment with their own (non-shared) bathroom.

The problem might be a trade union that provides for people at the very bottom - if they didn't have to work for housing, then it's possible the union might lose a good chunk of its membership. Perhaps they've been fighting for people to stay in their jobs who really don't want to be in those jobs (and are thus terrible), but in it just to live, in which cease the union is more about welfare and the poor industry than really helping people out.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[Memnos]

Not to ruin your day, but if you are spending time learning investing, and monitoring and allocating your investments, you are working. Granted, you're getting to choose the type of work and how much of it you wish to do, but you're working.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[Kjella]

With basic income you' ll need only one computer which would send checks around based on census data.

Well, collecting extra child support (particularly migrants that "loan" children) and pensions of dead people depend on messing with census data in the first place. Unemployment benefit fraud generally depends on income tax fraud, which will probably be more popular with the much higher gross tax rate of UBI. So the biggest area you could eliminate is disability fraud, but I honestly don't think we'll force someone who was in a major traffic accident at 20 to live 50+ years on UBI with no hope of improvement.

I'll tell you the future because I think I'm living it here in Norway. First of all 90% of the population now use online banking. Between 98 and 99% of the population have payment cards, 91% prefer paying with card and 81% say they prefer it even for amounts less than 50 NOK ($6). In volume 97.3% is now paid electronically. Part of this is because we have a national standard for a no-frills debit card (BankAxept) that costs merchants a few cents per transaction, it's used in 90%+ of all card transactions which translates to 2 billion times at 100k+ sites in a population of 5 million.

Of course average people don't have card terminals, so it's been either online banking or cash. But now consumer to consumer mobile paying has taking off like crazy through a service called "Vipps", essentially for registered users it takes a cell phone number (which is tied to a unique person, no anonymous phones) and turns it into a bank account. It has gone to zero from 2.2 million users in no time and is now the de facto standard for settling debts between friends and colleagues. I suspect that the 81% who always prefers cards will now live totally cashless, short of malfunctions.

Where am I going with this? Well I'm already liable if I pay above 10000 NOK ($1200) to someone in cash and they cheat on their taxes. There is talk of doing away with the requirement that shops take cash, there's talk of requiring businesses to take electronic payment and there's talk of banning cash altogether and to be honest I don't think the 19%/9%/1-2% who remain will have the market power to resist. Even if they can't kill it completely I suspect all that take out or deposit cash will come under scrutiny. Once they're done I don't think it'll be the census computer, it'll be the all-seeing IRS computer.

Re:Trade union fighting for survival

[Cederic]

Sure. Except that right now robots pay no taxes, their owners are fucking amazing at avoiding paying tax (due to transfer pricing and other 'legal' dodges) and the people that do pay tax are.. oh. People that actually fucking work for a living.

Forgive me if I share the fear that UBI would be paid for by the idiots that continue to actually work.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[religionofpeas]

Corporate tax can be easily avoided by moving to a different country that doesn't have UBI. Sales tax can be avoided by smuggling in stuff from the same country.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[drinkypoo]

The most basic of housing can be barracks style living where everything is shared except maybe a private locker for your personal stuff.

UBI is meant to provide a living wage, not a poverty wage. If all it does is put a lot of people in poverty, it's a failure.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[markdavis]

Yep. Exactly the same reason for a flat tax (one level, no loopholes, no exemptions, no deductions). It would pretty much close down the IRS, all the tax lawyers- many thousands of useless, non-productive jobs (adds nothing to the GDP). Tax would be super simple and possibly even require no tax returns. The country could save billions of dollars a year.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[r1348]

Rights in the workplace will still matter, but won't need trade unions to protect them anymore. Treat me like a slave? Meh, I quit the job, live on universal income for a while, see if something better pops out. Once your entire workforce adopts this mentality, guess who will become the nicest employer to ever exist?

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[religionofpeas]

A flat tax would move a lot of money from the middle class to the people above.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[c]

Exactly. People think a lot of people will suddenly become lazy. In fact, they won't - a lot of people LIKE their current lifestyle.

The problem for unions is that if people become indifferent to "regular" jobs and start to prefer more flexible, casual arrangements that are based as much around convenience as pay or work environment then the power of unions will wane quickly. The power of modern unions is heavily rooted in fear, and when that sense of "without this job I can't feed my family" is gone then so is the core incentive for members to fight hard for whatever agenda the union is pushing.

Now, that's not a bad thing... unions were formed to fight employers who exploited that fear and while better than that alternative, they're just the lesser evil; they use that same fear to manipulate and ultimately exploit workers.

In other words, taking away the need for unions entirely means that the balance has tipped firmly towards workers rights. That's not a bad thing, unless you're a union or a corporation.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, like it happened when French women were thrown out of work by the loom. Or is it different this time?

Re:Trade union fighting for survival

[epine]

wealth redistribution program

The patent and copyright systems are also wealth redistribution programs.

If we get right down to it—say half as reductive as Dawkin's The Selfish Gene—any societal agreement is a wealth redistribution program. The politics of human reproduction are definitely wealth redistribution programs—probably the very pinnacle of the wealth redistribution pyramid. But that's okay, because morality.

The main difference between my wider version and the ordinary use of the term is that the wealth under redistribution is abstract enough that the bloodymindedness of loss-aversion politics reaches a lower grade of fever. The highest grade of fever is reserved for any dollar bill that has actually been in your wallet at any point in time while the full accounts were settled.

Go into any casino and ask random people how much they have won or lost, on that evening, or in any aggregate period. Be prepared to enjoy some very interesting narrative math. The narrative math won't, in most cases, have the slightest resemblance to bottom line math, from a more objective vantage point, e.g. a person engaged in a Martingale betting algorithm faces but a single outcome, almost surely, whatever character the ride appears to have for the uncertain duration. Perhaps there was a high point where the bedazzled schlep felt able to afford some drinks and hookers.

"Redistribution" is a term of narrative art.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[markdavis]

>"A flat tax would move a lot of money from the middle class to the people above."

Not necessarily. The rich find ways to hide their money and income... it is precisely because we have an insane, out-of-control, impossible to understand tax code with so many zillions of deductions and rules and lawyers and accountants that they can take advantage of the system. With a properly implemented flat tax, all those rules and loopholes evaporate. Many people believe they would pay considerably more than they do now.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[JeffOwl]

They won't suddenly become lazy. They already are lazy, but the fear of starving and freezing to death keep them at work. I can keep my current lifestyle and quit my job if you give me something like this + free healthcare. And I would. And so would a lot of people. It won't be everyone, but it will be a significant number. It will be people like me who have a decent income but don't spend it all every month and so have a decent source of investment income and a modest lifestyle - a philosophy that has me on track to very early retirement. It will also be people like my cousin who will not work at all and become surf (ski, skydive, mountain bike) bums.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[Anonymous Coward]

Your simile is apt, but unfortunately proves the opposite point. To understand a microprocessor you must focus on electricity. You must understand electron movement and holes, semiconductors and junctions, and a whole raft of other fundamental physical electrical concepts. If you don't understand those concepts you will build a microprocessor that doesn't work.

The same holds true for determine whether a social policy will work. You must understand the means of production, distribution, and consumption of wealth (much like the source to sink model of electron flow in processors). If the policy doesn't "compute", that is--it doesn't generate enough resources and move them to meet peoples' needs, then no amount of other factors matter.

Re:Trade union fighting for survival

[LostMyBeaver]

I think that this is a very short sighted opinion on their behalf. First of all, we're all facing a market where there will be too many people and too few jobs. In a circumstance like that, we need to be prepared with and organized method of supporting the people while trying to identify alternative sources of jobs.

In America, they faced this problem and GWB and Obama provided a work solution where instead of reeducating people and producing real jobs, they employed 3 million American's directly in military (over a million), the TSA (over 1.2 million) and the DHS and other agencies. In addition, they employed many more indirectly since for every employee you employ, a series of support employees will be needed. They paid their employees large enough sums to redistribute the wealth a few levels and create many Walmart and McDonalds jobs. In addition, the government took on the burden of covering a substantial portion of employee salaries for large job makers. For example, Walmart pays minimum wage but provides support to their employees to help them register for government benefits such as welfare and food stamps... all while Walmart pays dividends roughly equal to what the government is paying to support their employees.

The truth is, America has proven what happens when you have a very large unskilled workforce with very little education. But they decided that instead of basic income which could provide these people the opportunity to study and improve themselves, they would instead give them jobs which would be better than just having people laying around doing nothing. Instead, now they stand around doing nothing while wearing uniforms. A very large part of the money the TSA and DHS consumes can be recovered by taxing people using the airports and immigration systems. Currently, over 70% of the cost of a coach plane ticket to the U.S. is to cover TSA and DHS USCIS fees.

Finland is trying an alternative method. Instead of dooming people to an existence of nothingness where their only value to the world is to wear a uniform that makes you look like a prison inmate at airports, they are trying to see if they can motivate people to do more than just keep a sofa from floating away by providing enough money to scrape by on to the truly unambitious while hoping the people will use it as an opportunity to do something more.

Many of the people could use this opportunity to start "work from home" businesses or can afford to help someone else start a company doing something. As a programmer, I would welcome a government stipend that would support me and my family long enough to develop a product that would take 2-3 years to make but wouldn't ever be made if I had to earn money to feed myself while doing it. I could make far better products if I wasn't desperate to meet certain deadlines like "mortgage must be paid".

There's also the issue that I on average pay about 12 times as much tax as the average person. I actually pay about 6 full middle class salaries worth of tax each year. I would like some of that money to be paid to intelligent and creative people who want to start businesses but can't because they can't feed themselves while they're getting started.

This program is just an alternative to what the American's did. GWB and Obama on behalf of America chose to implement a form of communism (almost Soviet style) to solve the problem of too many people and not enough jobs. They made a lot of shit jobs for stupid people and locked them into them by paying them more than they were worth and guaranteeing they couldn't leave as no one would pay them as much.

Finland is hoping that instead of ruining their population by beating them down into a greater depth of stupidity, they can provide them the means to have an opportunity to be creative and hopefully create new business that wouldn't be as easily susceptible to being replaced by outsourcing or automation. That could be more services, it could be more careers related to arts or vanity. There are endless opportunities, but with

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry: I have every confidence in the ability of well-intentioned special-interest groups to add complications to basic income, until it becomes as complex as the welfare systems it's replacing. Those clerks' jobs will be safe.

(Start with different levels of basic income based on whether you're in a relationship, and whether you have children, just so that the state can keep sticking its nose into your personal life. Then add different levels of basic income for different regions of the country - because, of course, some are more expensive than others - and investigatory boards to see if you're actually spending enough of your time in your claimed locality, and application procedures to change your residential address, with waiting lists for the more popular areas...)

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[Anonymous Coward]

having lived all over the place and speaking 5 languages, the only places that don't use checks are ex-soviet shitholes and places with no real banking system. as far as banking systems are concerned, the US leads the way times over, as it always has. You - you are a moron. The ability to use a pen does not mean we don't have computers. A shitty copycat banking system that skipped the pen and went straight to a keyboard is not "in the 20th century." It's simply incomplete and inept.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[gweihir]

If you even have to ask, then you are blind and stupid.

Re:Trade union fighting for survival

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm - No. You believe the reason for people to exist is to be productive for the purpose of others? My reason to exist is to enjoy myself, travel every fucking where, entertain myself by laughing at moron nerd losers like you contemplating life for society as a whole despite being too ugly to be a part of it.

income and work has nothing to do at all with my reason to exist. I do feel however that what you think you are saying and what you are saying are completely different things. This comes from you being a socially inept loser reject. A backseat driver at life, too fucking ugly to be let up front.

Any more theories there sherlock?

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[dryeo]

So basically the future is one where the banks and telecommunication companies skim all our money.
I'm in Canada, the banks are expensive to deal with, as much of their income comes from user fees that are forever increasing. They also don't like giving out accounts to the poor.
The telecoms are horribly expensive, especially for data, from $1 for 20MBs a day to $30 a GB (text messages are $0.15) are the prices that I see for a pay as you go costumer, and not much better with monthly billing. Similar to the banks, the cell companies raise their prices regularly and in lockstep.
Then there is the matter of reception, fine if you live in town but I'm 70 kms out of the 3rd largest city in Canada and don't have reception. Most of Canada is much more rural.
America isn't much different, cheaper cell, lots of rural areas, banks that don't like dealing with poor people and a population that won't even give up their penny that has no buying power.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[skids]

Well, to pick nits, you really do not need to understand anything much below the logic level to usefully "understand" a CPU. Whether it's made of gears, BJTs, FETs, spintronics, or optical mechanisms, as long as it isn't utilizing quantum or analog behaviors, you just need the gate layout.

I'm not saying monetary-based economics are invalid, just that they confine you to thinking inside the monetary system. Sort of like not being able to think beyond logic into quantum applications.

It may not actually be possible to determine whether economic policies will work. The effectiveness of practical application of economics is a little more touch and go than economists like to think (which is partially why they are always arguing with each other.) So what then? Do we confine ourselves to only making moves that have good odds of producing predictable results? That seems rater too risk averse to be a competitive strategy.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to mention how electronic money leaves a complete record of where everyone goes, what they buy, how much they spend, their preferences, their patterns of behavior, and what they believe in based on their donations to charity. This is nothing short of mass surveillance of everything everybody does.

You cannot get away with that in a free country. I don't expect you to think of freedom and privacy as important, given that you live in a monarchy. However, in America the government is supposed to respect the rights, freedoms, and privacy of her citizens.

I used the phrase "is supposed to" to highlight the recent failures of nearly every American presidential administration since the Apollo project to respect anything. Unfortunately, there is a difference between the state America is in right now and the ideals and values the country was founded on. Many people living in this country are excited about the prospect of returning to those values. Whether Trump actually delivers remains to be seen.

Back to the topic at hand, you cannot expect a free people to give up so much freedom and privacy. Holding your citizens liable for the behavior of others (cheating on their taxes) is ridiculous; laws like that are illegal in America.

Finally, you haven't addressed the technological issues. Cash doesn't require any electricity or internet connections. You just hand it to the merchant and buy your stuff. What happens to your precious cashless surveillance-based economy when a natural disaster strikes? How will people buy things in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina or Sandy while the power is out and people are desperate for food, supplies, or transportation away from the crisis?

Because it preserves freedom and privacy, and because of its practicality, cash will never go away. You, your government, and my current government can take your all-seeing IRS computers, your census computers, and all your other methods of conducting mass surveillance on an innocent people and shove them right up your ass.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[Kjella]

You forgot to mention how electronic money leaves a complete record of where everyone goes, what they buy, how much they spend, their preferences, their patterns of behavior, and what they believe in based on their donations to charity. This is nothing short of mass surveillance of everything everybody does. You cannot get away with that in a free country. I don't expect you to think of freedom and privacy as important, given that you live in a monarchy. However, in America the government is supposed to respect the rights, freedoms, and privacy of her citizens.

Snowden has already proved that the government will get away with it, in fact many applaud it. The king has no actual part in the political process and we lead the Democracy Index.

Holding your citizens liable for the behavior of others (cheating on their taxes) is ridiculous; laws like that are illegal in America.

In the US the government can rob you blind if a crime is committed with or from your property, see civil forfeiture. And parallel construction means you can wipe your ass with the constitution because they'll lie about how it happened.

Finally, you haven't addressed the technological issues. Cash doesn't require any electricity or internet connections. You just hand it to the merchant and buy your stuff. What happens to your precious cashless surveillance-based economy when a natural disaster strikes? How will people buy things in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina or Sandy while the power is out and people are desperate for food, supplies, or transportation away from the crisis?

Cards have an offline backup system, the merchant can accept your card number and signature if they want. It's just their liability if they get defrauded so most will refuse to take it unless their own systems are out or it's an actual emergency.

Because it preserves freedom and privacy, and because of its practicality, cash will never go away.

I'm telling you that it has been and is rapidly disappearing. With cell phones they know where you are at all times, very soon it'll be the same with money. Convenience beats privacy for 99% of the population. For example cash tickets on public transport is almost gone because you pay ~30% more than an electronic ticket. Automatic toll roads track your license plates, there is no cash lane you just get the bill in the mail.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[Cinnamon Beige]

Knowing how the government tends to work, you'll get both, and still be needing to hire more clerks for other departments' backups to be taken care of because Reasons.

Firing the unneeded clerks or reassigning them, giving them whatever training they need to do their new task, will be deemed Silly. Some of these clerical jobs may even remain once the person holding them at the time of the switch quits, with the new holder of the job being a relative of some highly-placed official or donor.

Bureaucracies are worse than cockroach infestations.

Re: Trade union fighting for survival

[variaatio]

People will not become indifferent to employment, but their negotiation position is much stronger even without the Union.

You see Union has power, because a) employees need them b) employers can't bypass them.

If employees don't need union anymore to have leverage over employer, then that also means employees don't need union as much. aka "I will quit and just live on UBI until I find more reasonable employer", If employees don't needs unions as much, unions won't have as much power over them. Also if workers and employers start negotiation directly with UBI as employees leverage (rather than union), then employers don't need to deal with union

ergo unions are not needed and can be side stepped under UBI, meaning thus they aren't as relevant aka they will lose power. In picture comes the "law" of organizational survival. Any large enough organization and bureaucracies main goal will morph into the organizations own existence and thus it's employment of it's bureaucracy. Thus SAK managerial staff is scared shitless, UBI will be adopted, SAK will lose power and thus will down size and it's higher ups will lose their position of power. ERGO SAK (and their bed fellow party SDP) are vehemently against UBI, simply because it threatens the organizations themselves.

Useless? That article.

[RyanFenton]

Here's the thing - basic income CAN theoretically not work out... but some an economist with a stake or two against it working is NOT evidence that this version of it hasn't panned out. Especially when it's posted on fricken Bloomburg news!

That's what the experiment is for. Instead, it's to see if the money spend on THIS style of program is as effective as the several other programs it can replace, and whether that replacement will be practical. It's money that will be spent in any case! You need experimental comparison to judge the merit of the approach.

Again though - until RESULTS are in, hearing some talking head berate the idea of it as not to his liking isn't helpful.

It's like folks who dismiss needle exchange programs to reduce communicable disease, without actually bothering to look at the numbers, and what the studies actually account for.

Ryan Fenton

Translation:

[thesupraman]

I think the original has been improperly translated.
I think a more accurate translation may be:

'How dare someone try a system that treats everyone equally, and isnt controlled by US!
Our research shows that the best trade union members are poor and unhappy, we need more people like that!
The LAST thing we want is a feeling of happiness and satisfaction for our members, they they may not need us,
and if they dont need us, then how will we be able to take their money so we can live the high life?
No, UBI is a terrible, horrible idea, bad for everyone who matters, which are the leaders of our trade union movement!'

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Either that or we forcibly take it. Gun rights baby! Your choice amigo.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I'm sure the same tired old "work or die" rhetoric will really win people over. That's what the traditional system is: force people to work for the money to live, or go homeless and basically die. People call it "earning a living". It's a hamster wheel meant to get every last ounce of labor from you, so you won't have the energy or the health to enjoy retirement. That way, you can die early and they keep all the money you paid into things.

When automation renders 50% or more of the workforce redundant, governments will have quite a situation on their hands: either give these people something to live with and stimulate the economy, or deal with the rioting of hungry, disenfranchised families.

But Europe's supposed to be more civilized than us Americans, so hopefully they make better decisions than we did with this turd of a country.

Re:Translation:

[thesupraman]

and let me translate yours:

'I am a kneejerk right winger without much clue, I dont actually realize that UBI systems are actually a right wing concept, and instead
think they are just more socialism. What I have missed is that they remove a whole pile of corrupt and broken welfare systems, and
instead replace them with a single, simple, and balanced system that benefits people who actually work more than people who dont,
and therefore is generally attacked by socialists, who hate such systems and want the status quo, I damage the very cause I claim
to represent'

So no sir, it is you who is the uninformed moron. You should go and learn a little more instead of believing rhetoric from public figures.

Re:Translation:

[ThomasBHardy]

This is the sort of one sided rhetoric that demeans us as a nation. I'm a "lefty" that worked hard and made something of himself. I believe in doing my fair share and at the same time I understand that it's harder for some folks to make their way. We are ALL standing on the shoulders of those that came before us. There is a penultimate point at which we all worked hard before we managed to get ahead. What I reject is the notion that it somehow makes us better than others. We all should be working to help every one of us do better. The divisiveness of politics today is our greatest weakness as a nation. We work as a team, we succeed as a team. That is the lesson lost in the current wave of righteous indignation and self-reinforced politics. We are all Americans and we should spend more time working to help our fellows than casting stones over the differences which from the outside are minuscule. We spend our time attacking our neighbor for their beliefs than in trying to find common ground. Politics is the new racism.We would rather find fault in our neighbor than actually think about what all of these actions mean to us as a people. It is easier to attack than to think.

The great American Experiment in a way of life is losing it's momentum as more become focused on their personal issues than the society as a whole and I find myself greatly saddened by the direction we are choosing.

I beg of you all, please stop being angry and start thinking about us as a people.

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll deal with the rioters, it's easier. What are starving families, badly armed or not armed at all, untrained and desperate going to do against armed drones, attack helicopters and microwave "pain" beams that can be dialed up to literally kill you with pain? Europe is already prepared what with EURGENDFOR being equipped with tanks and gunships. The dispossessed masses can choose: go gently into that good night or be chopped to pieces.

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Because its simple maths.
There are not enough troops and police etc for them to defend everything that they would like to protect.
While one force is out putting down one group of civilians,another group of civilians is burning their fuel supplies,garages,bases etc etc.
Troops and police have families,they will also come under attack,so who is going to protect all the vips and infrastructure that these forces need to put down an uprising if more than 30/40% of the population decide to fight back ?
No country in the northern hemisphere has enough troops and police to take on a large percentage of its own population..

Re:Translation:

[DNS-and-BIND]

I tried that, I got this in response. So don't talk about uniting us. You'd have to support racists and then you'd rather lose than do that.

People who voted for Trump are either 100% behind his bigotry, or they are 100% okay with it; there is no effective difference between the two. Apathy is just as dangerous as active hatred.

Yes, actually, if Hillary had said something so blatantly abusive, had run on a platform of racism, sexism, Islamaphobia, classism, ableism, and basically further disenfranchisement for anyone who isn't a white Christian straight cisgender male - yes, I'd feel exactly the same way about her and anyone who voted for her (and probably be looking for a bridge to jump off, if both of our candidates were so uniformly awful). Because it doesn't matter who does it, it's equally as crappy. It's not about championing a particular issue, it's about not championing the administration who literally wants to institute policies that will kill people.

It hit me so hard because no matter how much I gave dire warnings to the people who handwaved Trump's chances away, I never truly expected him to win. I never, ever, in my heart of hearts, believed that so many people in my country believed in his racist, sexist, ableist, vile rhetoric.

The US is much more racist and backward than we ever thought.

Re:Translation:

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Wasn't it actually Adam Smith who came up with the idea in the first place?

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

To describe UBI as a "right-wing concept" is a little like describing Obamacare as a "right-wing concept". While there were indeed right wing people who came up with and advocated them, the entire right wing is not on board with them and some of the left wing is and it's quite possible that the left wing will actually implement the idea before the right, and it's possible such implementation will destroy the parts of it which the right wing found attractive.

Indeed, today one can see the claim that Obamacare was somehow right-wing or Republican is basically a zero-validity bludgeon that idiots on Facebook or the Vox comments section just try to beat down their political critics with.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you, you fucking liar. This basic income shit will never work in the long term and all smart people know that. This has nothing to do with right-wing versus left-wing, only with realism versus misplaced idealism.

Re:Translation:

[king neckbeard]

The appropriate framing of Obamacare was it was the Republican plan to stall against the inevitability of single payer. Single payer is the adult, responsible choice the rest of the world makes.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

and let me translate yours:

'I am a kneejerk right winger without much clue, I dont actually realize that UBI systems are actually a right wing concept, and instead
think they are just more socialism. What I have missed is that they remove a whole pile of corrupt and broken welfare systems, and
instead replace them with a single, simple, and balanced system that benefits people who actually work more than people who dont,
and therefore is generally attacked by socialists, who hate such systems and want the status quo, I damage the very cause I claim
to represent'

So no sir, it is you who is the uninformed moron. You should go and learn a little more instead of believing rhetoric from public figures.

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. There isn't a single right-winger supporting UBI, because not a one believes the answer to more welfare programs is a bigger welfare program. UBI doubles down on the things people on the right hate about welfare: it disincentivizes people to work and participate in the economy.

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

You're under the assumption that those people would ever work or contribute to begin with. We need to accept that there will always be a small segment that just flat-out reject normal society no matter how hard you try to force them to.

Re: Translation:

[ezdiy]

Gee, why not automate that - robo cops and soldiers to the rescue! Democratic order good, anarchy bad, citizen.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

I notice that nobody has bothered to try to rebut your statement, apparently they only want to suppress it. They have reasons for doing that, of course. The main one being, you're absolutely right.

The Diversity Tax

Re:Translation:

[roman_mir]

A person that is not a family member is only of use to me if they can produce something that I can trade for with my productive output. Once you are not producing, you are of 0 use to me and your nationality is of 0 interest to me as well.

Re: Translation:

[mark-t]

No... he is under the assumption that while such a segment of the population exists, it should not be an acceptable burden that those who are wanting to contribute productively should have to bear, since while it may be a minority, it is a sufficiently large one that the remainder of society would not be able to usefully uphold it over the long run without adversely affecting their own lifestyles as well.

Re:Translation:

[HanzoSpam]

Given that you propose that we're going to be looking at 50% unemployment as it is, why are we importing even more unskilled workers who will certainly be inflating that number?

Re: Translation:

[HanzoSpam]

Tell that to China. IIRC, there was a little something called "the Cultural Revolution" a few decades age where literally millions of people starved to death, but somehow the same government remains in power to this day.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't call UBI a right wing concept, it's just that the right and left are attracted to different effects of the idea, or the same effects but for different reasons. But why do we need to bring the political spectrum into this at all? Why should we even expect a one-dimensional political spectrum to represent the full range of political views that a population can have?

Everyone I've talked to about UBI in detail, regardless of political position, has been of the opinion that something similar to it will be required eventually. At a minimum, everyone seems to agree that automation is going to replace a large fraction of the work force faster, at least temporarily, than the workers can be retrained for whatever new jobs may appear. It's more a matter of if we're at that point yet or not.

Re:Translation:

[dywolf]

To describe UBI as a "right-wing concept" is a little like describing Obamacare as a "right-wing concept".

IE, 100% accurate.

Re:Translation:

[Lehk228]

It IS "work or die"

either on a narrow scale or on a wide scale. if you subsidize shiftlessness eventually nobody works and everybody dies.

Re:Translation:

[Nostalgia4Infinity]

"But Europe's supposed to be more civilized than us Americans" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Ok.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Communism is an utopia because communism assumes as its existential condition the creation of a 'new human' with force-modeled psycho-social traits as a majority to replace the human majority exhibiting psycho-social traits as resulting from the environment driven processes of natural evolution and adaptation. Communism assumes a 'new human' can be socio-engineered on a time line spanning a human life vs the time line of natural evolution and adaptation. I think any rational mind can observe the fallacies of these ludicrous assumptions. All extreme socio-political doctrines (right and left fascism) assume the super-fast transformation and creation of a 'new human' as the condition of them succeeding so by their own definition *they can't exist and function* in the real world driven freely by the processes of natural evolution and adaptation. Both right and left fascism assume that a very small percentage of the human population - the elites, the neo aristocrats can overtake and replace the natural social forming processes with the processes they envision. The truth is, these elites/the neo aristocrats will always emerge into an fascist oligarchy which will try to use their socio-forming powers in their own, very restricted interest which will lead to the establishment of a neo feudal system of lords and serfs.

Re:Translation:

[cptdondo]

Those personal choices - and the luxury of demeaning others - rely on the functioning of the underlying system. The people who are at this moment foaming at the mouth about how all those leeches are sucking at the public teat can only do that precisely because they have a well-functioning society that all of us pay for.

For those of us who have raised children so much of the hyperbolic rhetoric today is much like a toddler screaming NO while relying on mom & dad to keep them safe and fed and housed.

You can only focus on your personal choices when society takes care of all your other needs.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, since the dawn of time you either work and contribute to society or die simple as that. I'm certainly going to vote always against paying lazy slobs to sit on their ass all day so they can enjoy a cushy life. Talk about lazy. You must live in your mom and dads basement.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet you play Powerball and other lotteries.

Maybe you are too dumb to realize that betting on people's future has a positive return.

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to mention that medical innovation and top notch healthcare are a U.S. Specialty. The most recent medical innovation from the U.K. was that vaccines cause autism, which led to a resurgence of mumps. That is hardly an adult or civilized system.

Re:Translation:

[roman_mir]

I don't play powerball, but are you telling me that the chances of having a positive outcome with UBI are similar to chances winning in powerball? I agree.

Re:Translation:

[ThomasBHardy]

Hatred cannot cure hatred. Words like "we", "us" and "together" are the only way to break down hatred.

Participating in the hatred against those you blame for being hateful isn't a solution, it's growing the problem.

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Calling the American political spectrum one-dimensional is actually pretty generous. Brand loyalty has reduced it to a handful of points, at best.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like someone who has a job, a future, vacations, the ability to marry and have children is jealous of someone who likely has none of the above.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

The Democrats turned their backs on the working class in the 60s. It might of taken 50 years, but its finally bitten them in a the ass. Maybe this will be the jolt they need.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

You're bad at math, you're severely shortsighted to the point where you can't see past the end of your own nose (let alone the ramifications of actions decades down the road), and you're selfish to the point where so long as you 'get yours', you couldn't care less if it wrecks an entire nations' economy or not. Furthermore I suspect you're lazy, fat, and unhealthy, and just want to sit on your ass all day every day, play video games, shitpost on the internet, and eat shit food that, seeing as you'll move even less than you do now, will eventually make you so fat that the coroner will have to knock a wall out of your house and lift your corpse out with a crane.

Get used to it, fatfuck: you will be working THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, and there is NOTHING you can do about it. So go cry into your pillow, and punch it, and scream like the little bitch you are, because you have to WORK like the rest of us. You are not a special snowflake, you're the same piece of crap that the rest of us are, more so in fact, and as such you do not get any special privileges. The so-called 'UBI' is GARBAGE, the experts in this story are RIGHT, you are WRONG, and you need to SHUT THE FUCK UP, just like the rest of you fat lazy slobs who want a free handout. For fuck's sake there are chronic welfare mothers with 6 kids from 6 different men who I have more respect for than you fuckers, at least they DO some sort of work every day, taking care of kids. YOU are just a useless white asshole who doesn't want to do SHIT. Stop voting, STFU, and GO AWAY.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

There isn't a single right-winger supporting UBI, because not a one believes the answer to more welfare programs is a bigger welfare program

There should be because a UBI system is much lighter than a traditional need based system. Less government for you, if I may.

things people on the right hate about welfare: it disincentivizes people to work and participate in the economy.

People hate welfare because part of the taxes they pay go to people who annoy them and help the annoying people to be even more annoying. Very few are thinking about the greater good, or consequences of lack of action. People on the right also want equanimous or non-progressive tax system. They drive for things like welfare checks which let the people receiving them to buy the private medical services they prefer. In that sense, UBI would fit in the picture rather well.

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because something was true in the past does not mean it has to be true in the future. From the dawn of time you mostly died of simple infectious diseases, violence, it childbirth, but we've moved on from that. Whilst it might be reasonable to object to UBI, an argument based on ancient history is not persuasive.

Re:Translation:

[djconsultingmeister]

nicely done!

Re:Translation:

[djconsultingmeister]

Thank you for this. We are all "Human".

Re:Translation:

[ArmoredDragon]

It IS "work or die"

either on a narrow scale or on a wide scale. if you subsidize shiftlessness eventually nobody works and everybody dies.

This bears repeating. At some point I'm wondering if the goal of all of this is just to make it so that nobody has to do anything to sustain themselves, as if they have the right to make somebody else do it for them. We did do this in the past, and it was called slavery.

Besides, this whole UBI concept won't even work anyways. You're just going to move the store of value from one place (sitting in somebody's bank account or investment portfolio) and to the pockets of everybody else. That doesn't do anything to alter the allocation of material goods. I explained this pretty well a few days ago:

https://slashdot.org/comments....
https://slashdot.org/comments....
https://slashdot.org/comments....

I'll be throwing a big "I told you so" when its observed that UBI only temporarily solves some problems while providing no long-term benefit and creating additional long-term problems.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

You are thinking about the the old right wing.

These days right wing appears to be "Figure out what movie villains are like and copy that, we are now textbook evil."

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

News at 11:00. Life is not fair. Always has been and always will be. Hard work rules the day.

Re: Translation:

[valnar]

And I can care less if they all drop dead. Whatever happened to Darwinism? If people want to be lazy, fat, get sick and die, who are we to prop them up to stop nature from taking its course?

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

A person that is not a family member is only of use to me if they can produce something that I can trade for with my productive output. Once you are not producing, you are of 0 use to me and your nationality is of 0 interest to me as well.

Well, there you have it, folks. In case you had any doubt that roman_mir was completely lacking in empathy and compassion for other humans, they have now stated so explicitly. I recommend bookmarking this post and rereading before attempting to argue with roman_mir in the future.

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe there are not enough troops, but they have enough bullets...

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you in favor of forcible sterilization of the poor (possibly reversible)? Because if not, how will you handle the execution of a couple hundred million Americans (to start)?

Some of us would rather fight with and arm the poor and be the new leaders than take our chances with the current rich. The good thing is we only need to burn out a few hundred fun collector's homes to get thousands of weapons. We can pick off the evacuees as they exit.

Or, you know, rob a few dozen Walmarts.

How do you plan to stop someone who can just kill you while you go to work, or plans to knock your satellite dish out of alignment then shoot you when you climb out to fix it. We're not all "darkies" you can spot at a glance.

Ya twit.

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

The main point is true though. If you voted for Trump, that means you think... well thought, what he did was suitable behavior for an aspiring American President.

Where are those taxes?
What is the current unemployment rate as of him taking office? I'm curious what he thinks the "real" figures are since the good ones Obama had were all lies according to Trump.
Where is the day one ACA/Obamacare replacement ?

How about that anti nuclear deal stance?

How much will we spend investigating voted fraud. Is it infinitely more than we will spend on investigating Russia?

How about we make Russia pay for the Mexican wall? That's an easy win for him if he's not bought and paid for by Russia.

Re:Translation:

[Brett Buck]

Only on Slahsdot (and DU) does such claptrap, with endless examples of how it fails miserably throughout the world, be marked insightful. See also: NHS

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the traditional system is that you are responsible for yourself and your children and to not be a parasite. If you want to be a parasite on me, you can die.

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a merely thug and those of us who are now taking back the country will dispose of you. No one needs you, and no one needs the spawn of welfare queens that have been breeding like maggots for decades.

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong, it's better to let the annoying ones die out. We don't need them. Those who produce have the right to survive. Parasites should be exterminated not fed and allowed to fester.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

I am neither leftist nor rightist, but believe this old political divide is being abused today. Media and politicians love to keep up the appearance of this political divide. It means more pressing political issues can be swept under the carpet, while the "left" and "right" publicly discuss issues they do not really disagree about. This is an abuse of democracy.

As for this "useless" comment by a trade union economist, I suggest you follow the money.

The main income source of unions in Finland is people who need insurance in case they loose their job. But if they know they would have a basic income they could survive on if they lost their job they would be a lot less likely to keep on paying the unions.

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it is heartless to pay and reward women to breed criminals into ghetto hellholes. Let's stop that social experiment, it failed. People being responsible for themselves is the only sustainable way forward.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Robots have no feelings. They cannot be "enslaved". Racism isn't the same when you can't see the tears is it?

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep acting like it wasn't RomneyCare but when the black guy suggests it--- SOHSHIALIZZZM

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

There are of course ways to get around these problems - concentration camps (British in South Africa), safety zones for the privileged, retaliatory mass executions or bombings, coopting of opposition leaders through fear or corruption. The question is whether the ones in power can stomach the utilization of these methods.

In the end, even if the uprising is successful you will not be able to tell the pigs from the humans..

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Canada came up with a cure for Ebola, and we have a single payer system.

Re: Translation:

[ChrisMaple]

How marvelously you twist words!

People proud to work don't try to force lazy strangers to work, workers just want the non-workers not to steal and not to have the government steal for them. Stealing is forcing rightful owners to give up their own property. Letting people who refuse to work die of starvation does not involve force. Justice in action.

Re:Translation:

[ChrisMaple]

Words like "we", "us" and "together" are the only way to break down hatred.

"Together", "we" can kill those bastards. Join "us" in breaking them down.

Re:Translation:

[ChrisMaple]

Politics is the new racism.

Stringing together words does not necessarily make sense.

Moral behavior consists of doing good things. A person who consistently does good things is better than a person who consistently does nothing, who in turn is better than a person who consistently does bad things. Good is better than bad. A person who does good things is better than a person who does bad things. It's so obvious that it's almost a tautology.

..

If working solely for the benefit of somebody else makes you good, that makes the person receiving the fruits of your labor bad by comparison (furthermore, since you can't read his mind, you don't know that he actually wants what you're doing for him or that it actually helps him.) Restating that in fewer words, being good by working only for the benefit of another both creates badness and is ineffective. The basis of your whole moral system is self-contradictory.

Working for your own benefit is the surest way to get what you want; freely trading your surplus with the surplus of another worker further benefits you, and has the additional but morally less significant benefit of making the other guy's life better also.

Re: Translation:

[presidenteloco]

Unfortunately, in the near future, even if you want a job, you won't be as cost-effective at doing it as an AI or an automated system.

So unless we decide how to distribute means of living, and also figure out a different reason why humans exist other than to work for "the man", we're all in for an awful lot of rampaging attacks by desperate parasites, including you.

Re:Translation:

[serviscope_minor]

Only on Slahsdot (and DU) does such claptrap, with endless examples of how it fails miserably throughout the world, be marked insightful. See also: NHS

The NHS is a failure? The outcomes are similar to the US (worse in some cases, especially cancer, better in other cases, especially neonatal) but we spend less than half the GDP per capita on healthcare as you do.

Same quality for half the price is the oddest definition of failure I think I've eve heard.

Re: Translation:

[stridebird]

Great post. Chapeau. But are you sure that "No country in the northern hemisphere has enough troops and police OR ROBOTS OR AUTOMATED GUN TURRETS OR DRONE SWARMS UNDER AI / AUTONOMOUS ALGORITHMIC CONTROL to take on a large percentage of its own population.." will hold true forever?

Re:Translation:

[Maritz]

why are we importing even more unskilled workers

Who's "we"? Are you Finnish? This isn't about immigration, you realise that, right? Oh let me guess - everything is about immigration.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably aren't going to convince many people with your attitude. Patronising to say the least.

Re:Translation:

[dcw3]

As a "righty", let me say bravo sir.

Re:Translation:

[dcw3]

So, you're going to let the comments of some color your view of everyone on the other side of the political spectrum? That's just flat out stupid. There are plenty of assholes (on both sides). Please don't be one of them.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

wrong. the unfortunate truth is that money rules the day. Money has always ruled the day... but for now you can work hard and make a lot of money.

in the future, due in no small part to automation, that may not be the case... and the overlords may see the need to cull the herd, so to speak.

if you do not want that to be the future then we need to figure this out.

Re: Translation:

[Dripdry]

The foundation of your argument is flawed.
What is good and what is bad, vs. what is "nothing"?

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Pro birth, anti life. Gotta love it.

Re:Translation:

[dddux]

Translation is: for every person on UBI there will be at least one robot doing the work for him, kinda. So no person will work instead of a jobless person. It will be a robot. Are we already contemplating robot's rights and call them people?

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

You're under the assumption that those people would ever work or contribute to begin with.

No, theissue is that once given an 'unlivable' UBI people will have two choices, work hard to earn more OR lobby politicians to increase the UBI payment.

History is replete with examples of the latter, not the former.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Slavery? Really? Making enslaved, terrorized workers work for whatever the master wants to give them in food and shelter is equivalent to progressive taxation? Huh. New one on me.

Re:Translation:

[EmptyHead]

That sounds nice, but seems to forget that enabling some groups with enough comfort in a culture that will never prepare them to be successful will simply trap them there. Look at what the ANC is doing in South Africa. Look at what the Democratic party is doing to minorities and the poor in the U.S.

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

This is innaccurate. Following the cultural Revolution, the Liberalization faction within the party led by Deng Xiaoping rose to power, bringing a close to the Maoist era. It wasn't Nixon's doing. Promise.

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Work for yourself, proletariat dumbass.

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir, are a divisive, ignorant, and criminal ball sack full of shit. Come at me bro.

Re:Translation:

[HornWumpus]

Go for it. Do hold your gun sideways, like all the cool kids?

Re: Translation:

[HornWumpus]

The Chinese government has changed some policies, but the 'Communist Party' * remains the only legal one.

Does the USA still have the same government as when Nixon was president?

* yes, yes we know, not a true Scotsman.

Re: Translation:

[HornWumpus]

You think the Civilians will all be on one side?

Hint: Which side of the political spectrum is better armed? Has stronger gunfu? If it comes to civil war, it will be a short one.

Re:Translation:

[HornWumpus]

Just for future reference: France, Germany and Japan all require you to buy health insurance. I'm sure there are more. But one example is sufficient to show you are full of shit.

Re:Translation:

[HornWumpus]

Massachusetts republicans, aren't. Like Minnesota, the Rs are Ds and the Ds are reds..

Re:Translation:

[HornWumpus]

I'm pretty right wing (not a thumper though, fuck them). I'd support UBI on two conditions.

1. All the other programs it's supposed to replace are cancelled and defunded by the same legislation. 'Workers' are all fired, not assigned to do nothing jobs. No new money required is the promise, that has to be built into the law.

2. You can sign up for UBI or to vote, but not both. So they can never get to 51% of the population and vote themselves Cadillacs.

Re: Translation:

[HornWumpus]

I'm in favor of legal 75th trimester abortions. At the request of ether parent (after the first 3).

They would just drop a tweet to the school counselor and the brat doesn't come home.

Re:Translation:

[HornWumpus]

Too soon.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

The appropriate framing of Obamacare was it was the Republican plan to stall against the inevitability of single payer. Single payer is the adult, responsible choice the rest of the world makes.

FALSE! Switzerland has a capitalist system that has health insurance companies, and it is NOT a single payer system.

They spend LESS money (as a fraction of GDP) than the USA on health care, and cover almost everybody, with very high satisfaction rates, and BETTER results on all the important health care metrics than the USA gets.

Further, the average Swiss family spend less on health care than the average US family, on a yearly basis - and FAR less once one takes into account the thousands of dollars a typical US employer puts into a family health care plan on a per-employee basis.

The Swiss achieve this by heavily regulating the health insurance industry. Every citizen gets to vote on these issues, so there's little opportunity for special interest groups to bribe the politicians - unlike the USA. Doctors in Switzerland make 30% less than the counterparts in the USA - still a great salary, especially considering they aren't paying outrageous medical school loans - and health insurance companies are also making a lot less (but are still profitable).

The USA has a corrupt political system, and a (largely) unethical legal profession, and the doctors and the medical schools and the health insurance companies and the lawyers all take FULL advantage of this. As a result, the US health system sucks.

Worse, the games the health insurance companies play in the USA make it almost impossible to exercise public oversight over their operations, with indecipherable billing codes and inscrutable polices and decisions.

Worse - even for those people on state sponsored health care in the US (such as Medicare), the system still sucks. US doctors hate taking Medicare because it can take a year and a half to get paid. It's not just corruption that screws things up in the USA, it's also bureaucratic incompetence (in part, that's another consequence of the legal problems in the USA).

Re:Translation:

[ArmoredDragon]

Translation is: for every person on UBI there will be at least one robot doing the work for him, kinda. So no person will work instead of a jobless person. It will be a robot. Are we already contemplating robot's rights and call them people?

No, you're missing the point. Unless you can just go down the street and ask for a free burger and everybody from the farm to the restaurant is completely automatic, (which it isn't) then you're essentially asking that somebody, somewhere along the supply chain to do their job for free. That is the slavery part.

As for the bigger picture; does automation cost a job somewhere? In the long term it's not likely, and so far, there hasn't ever been a long-term loss in jobs as a result of it. The scale that we automate some things often means either it's somehow automated, or it just doesn't get done. For example, the word "computer" used to refer to a person, not a machine, whereas now it's universally in reference to a machine. Do you think everybody that owns a computer would hire a personal assistant? Of course not. Either they'd do the work manually, or just not have it done at all. The otherwise manual work also has the side effect of giving you more free time, and more free time means you're more likely to do or want other things, which often means spending money on other things that you otherwise wouldn't (i.e. entertainment,) which means the economy grows in a way that it couldn't before. In addition to that, when you're able to do things that are otherwise impractical, you're also building value for the economy by creating things that are otherwise impractical. This also scales to business entities in addition to individuals, and it's why overall when a job is eliminated due to technology, we end up with more jobs somewhere else at a later date.

Will that continue indefinitely? Who knows; nobody has a crystal ball. But so far, there isn't any kind of proof or hard evidence (mathematical or otherwise) that this is going to end any time soon, rather just a lot of conjecture and hypothetical scenarios. (Likewise, UBI is trying to solve a problem that nobody is sure will ever happen.) When somebody loses a job due to a technology change, we call that frictional unemployment, and it's nothing new. We might see more frictional unemployment now than in the past, but there are reasons for that (for example, there's a lot of disruption in the tech sector as of the last two decades.)

And sure, if it's your thing, you can argue all you want about how economists' predictions are always wrong and all of that, (as is common on slashdot) but if you do, then there's really no point in discussing UBI to begin with because you'd be making the same kind of prediction that economists do.

Re:Translation:

[dddux]

Yes, it will be all automatic some day. How can you even argue about it? Your points are terrible.

Re:Translation:

[ArmoredDragon]

Yes, it will be all automatic some day. How can you even argue about it? Your points are terrible.

Ah; so the future is certain, so sayeth your crystal ball.

Carry on then.

Re:Translation:

[king neckbeard]

They all have what would be widely considered a "universal" health care system. They wouldn't be considered truly single payer, and there are probably some other exception that wouldn't be even be classified as universal systems, but the underlying point is that the US health care system differs from most of the rest of the world, and those differences fuck the American people in the ass. That's why we pay about double what other countries with comparable economies pay.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

It is fucking hilarious hearing un-fucking-informed Americans tell me how bad my single payer health care system is while I am loving every fucking minute of it.

In addition to the easy access to regular doctor appointments I recent went from chest pains to stent in less the a month. Fuck you and your waiting list death panel rationing lies.

As the previous poster said, grow the fuck up and recognize that single-payer just makes sense.

Remember single payer means public insurance NOT public doctors. every doctor here is an independent business owner. UK NHS might be different idk.

Re:Translation:

[werepants]

You're setting up a strawman: specifically, conflating UBI with an economy in which no human ever does labor, and then you are arguing against such a system. The thing is, though, there is still plenty of incentive to work under UBI - the idea of the policy is that it will provide just enough money to prevent dire poverty, but not enough to have much disposable income. So, while some people will be content to live only on the basic income, many people will continue to work, either for status, disposable income, personal fulfillment, or any of the other non-monetary reasons that people work.

There is no slavery inherent in UBI.

work less

[phantomfive]

I haven't seen anyone come up with a good reason people wouldn't use basic income to work less and be lazy. I can tell you, if I had guaranteed income for life, I would probably not ever work again.

Re:work less

[queazocotal]

Guaranteed subsistence level income.
Then there is the thorny issue of if you're willing to sit on your ass for a small income, and do nothing productive, what are the chances that you were less than productive at work, and a drag on your coworkers.

Imagine some employers without those who are simply pretending to work.

Re:work less

[Daemonik]

The question is, however, define "work". Would you labor for someone else? Probably not. But you likely wouldn't sit on your butt all day doing nothing either. Maybe you join a club, start a band, discover an aptitude for art, start your own business.. who knows?

The inescapable fact, however, is that what you conceive of as "work", going to a building someone else owns and laboring for them, is going to decline as automation, AI and robots improve, so something has to be put in it's place that's better than "labor a robot won't do".

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you join a club, start a band, discover an aptitude for art, start your own business.. who knows?

lol. Keep dreaming.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be happy with a subsistence level income? You sound like a fucking loser.

Re:work less

[Imrik]

If you have enough money to live on, but not enough to pay for entertainment, what will you do with your time?

Re:work less

[thinkwaitfast]

I own my house free and clear. Taxes and monthly expenses are very small and can live very nice on little money. A basic income would be enough for me to buy another rental property increasing my small income.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

The inescapable fact, however, is that what you conceive of as "work", going to a building someone else owns and laboring for them, is going to decline as automation, AI and robots improve,,

When? When is the magic decline in jobs going to start happening? Because unemployment rates are really low right now.

Re:work less

[sjames]

Have you considered that that says more about you than it does about the basic income?

As for evidence against your couch potato theory, I present to you Linux, volunteers in all sorts of charitable organizations, various community projects, and retired people I have known who took part time jobs to relieve boredom and be with people.

The latter showed me some of the reasons the capital class fears the basic income. Though the retirees didn't really bargain that hard for maximum pay, they absolutely had to be treated with civility and respect or they would walk out on the spot and never return.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

You'd be happy with a subsistence level income? You sound like a fucking loser.

Yeap. Fortunately, I'm also immune to peer pressure, so I can live with myself.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

Most likely hitch-hike around the world.

Re:work less

[dgatwood]

Because unemployment rates are really low right now.

Only if you leave out all the people who have given up searching for work. The actual labor participation rate is still much lower than it was at the end of the Clinton administration. It fell a bit under Bush, and even more under Obama.

Re:work less

[mx b]

The inescapable fact, however, is that what you conceive of as "work", going to a building someone else owns and laboring for them, is going to decline as automation, AI and robots improve,,

When? When is the magic decline in jobs going to start happening? Because unemployment rates are really low right now.

For me, it's not necessarily a matter of declining jobs, but declining wages. Unemployment can be really low, but if most of the employment is in low-paying service jobs, we have trouble. Robots have ALREADY taken over most manufacturing jobs, Amazon's warehouses are now almost entirely automated, and soon Uber will be driving our trucks. You can bet that as service workers demand livable wages, the calculation for when to introduce robots tips toward "soon". When that happens, with other sectors automated, where will they go?

I don't think it's ethical to let people starve, and honestly, letting them waste their lives as fry cook or paper pusher in an office isn't much healthier or better. If we can all have robots to meet our basic needs, why not? Let the robots do the work, and let humans compete over creative works, creating their own businesses and styles to compete with each other for fame or other society acknowledgements of worth. I think the age of arbitrary numbers written on scraps of crushed dead wood pulp is coming to an end, we need to adjust for a new concept of "money" based on cultural contributions to society rather than simply your required 40 hours a day wasting your life away because "that's how we always did it".

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

Only if you leave out all the people who have given up searching for work.

No, even U6 is really low right now.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't seen anyone come up with a good reason people wouldn't use basic income to work less and be lazy. I can tell you, if I had guaranteed income for life, I would probably not ever work again.

The point is that in the coming era of automation, that's exactly what needs to happen. There will NOT be enough jobs for everyone, and all of the economy's wealth is going to accumulate amongst a smaller and smaller population of people who own the means of production - robotic factories. So we either work out a way to redistribute that wealth in some kind of equitable manner, or else we condemn 95% of the population to lives of poverty. When all the jobs are claimed by robots (and they will be), what do you think people are going to live on if not some kind of universal basic income? And so long as the economy itself doesn't shrink, there will be plenty of money available to fund it, though it is certainly going to come directly out of the pockets of the billionaires who own everything. If they want to remain billionaires who own everything, however, they are probably going to have to get on board with supporting everyone else. Either that, or oppressing them, and that's probably not going to work out so well for them in the long term.

You can't sell stuff if there's no one around to buy it. All the manufacturing and service robots in the world are useless without customers with cash in their pockets.

So yes, universal income will allow you to chase creative and academic pursuits, rather than purely economically productive ones. You probably won't ever 'work' again, but you don't know much about human nature if you think you'll just end up sitting in front of a TV for 18 hours per day, 7 days per week. The definition of 'work' is going to change, not the amount of it that you do.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

Linux is the fun stuff. Talk to me when you get someone doing Peoplesoft templates for fun.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

and retired people I have known who took part time jobs to relieve boredom and be with people.

This is evidence against basic income: the vast majority of retired people don't work.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

No, you're wrong, as more automation has happened, productivity has increased, and compensation per hour worked has also increased. The only way we can collectively get an increase in standard of living is by improved automation (or other productivity increases, like the invention of a plow, which isn't really automation).

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

The point is that in the coming era of automation, that's exactly what needs to happen. There will NOT be enough jobs for everyone

Yeah, people have been beating that drum for over a century. When is the drop in employment coming? When do you predict it will happen? Make a testable prediction, and we'll see if you're right.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

Find ways to be creative with that money, or look for ways to enrich myself, like learning a language, pursuing music, build a video game...

There's a ton of life out there and never enough time to enjoy it. With 30-40 hours a week cleared up, I'd have a ton of time to do fun stuff and actually *live*.

The first country to do basic income correctly (read: sustainably) will likely experience the next Renaissance... after a year or two of people taking a break from the years of work they've put in.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

Entertainment is free. If you're not pirating, you're an idiot. If you're paying for internet access, you're a fool.

Re:work less

[sjames]

And then they take part time jobs or volunteer in church, babysit the grandkids, provide peace of mind to parents in the neighborhood, etc etc.

The ones who actually do nothing are the ones who die within a couple of years of retirement.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

Or we could look at stopping the rampant theft of our productivity gains by entities like government and banks through debt financing and inflation. That might improve our standard of living as well.

Re:work less

[sjames]

It may well be the fun stuff, but it has contributed billions of dollars to the economy. Take some of that savings and use it to pay people to work on Peoplesoft templates.

I note your attempt to sidestep the point that people can and will do useful things in their free time.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

or volunteer in church, babysit the grandkids,

Like, once or twice a week......

Re:work less

[MightyYar]

You obviously haven't met my dad. Took to retirement like a fish to water - moves his trailer from campground to campground and only comes back when the weather gets warmer. Rough life.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy. If I could do ANYTHING in the world without regard for what I was doing... I'd work part time selling video games (I did it for years at GameStop (Software Etc. before they bought FuncoLand) and I really enjoyed it... the rest of the time I'd teach part time at the Univ. (I'm close to my PhD) and code Open Source Software projects in my spare time, when not playing video games, etc.)

Yes, I'd work 'total' less... but that would be fine... Universal Basic Income is an idea to -counter- when -human- work isn't needed to provide all the basic living necessities required. It isn't meant for -right now- but for _possible_ near future.

Imagine if everyone had 24 hours off work, with same level of pay.... I'm sure I'd be more productive my 2 days a week working. And that is the point....

Re: work less

[RCourtney]

I have a feeling that the vast majority of people still want to attract a mate and to do that usually requires doing something more than getting the barest minimum amount of money to survive.

Also, I cannot help but wonder how many more people would take a chance and start small businesses knowing that if they fail they would still have a UBI to feed and house themselves.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

That sounds so wonderful.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

The first country to do basic income correctly (read: sustainably) will likely experience the next Renaissance

See, this is the sort of unsupported optimism I see.......why do you think that would happen instead of everyone spending all their time watching Netflix or going to the beach?

Re: work less

[Anonymous Coward]

So, where's the problem?

It's not exactly like every job out there needs to be made. I'm fact, there are whole useless industries and job types that the world could cope without (movies, entertainment, most of investment and banking) or even be better off without (marketing, lobbying).

Some would work. I love what I'm doing for a living, so I would, but less. I'd use more of my time to do arts, learn to play an instrument properly... you know, *live* actuall, Instead of helping my boss get even richer. (He doesn't need all that money, he's long past the point where he and his kids wouldn't ever have to work again to survive.)

Re:work less

[roman_mir]

Have you considered that your idealized vision of humans may be skewed by you buying into your own propaganda? Most people will not work if they can get away with it, so most people on the dole will not work. Idle hands are the tool of the devil though, my prediction is the opposite of that of your collectivist cohorts. I think if everybody had their life paid for, most people would spend their lives in search of entertainment but because basic income is 'basic', they wouldn't have too much cash to play with, but plenty of entertainment can be had by setting up a gang, an underground casino, where the UBI would be gambled away cheapest drugs, cheapest booze, cheapest everything, that is not bad in itself, I am not moralizing. My point is:give people free food and free shelter and they will entertain themselves and I think in most cases this entertainment will not be pretty, it will be underground, violent, it will gamble with the money and with lives. Not that those lives would be worth much more than the monthly check... I expect racketeering, turf wars, people trafficking, slavery actually. That would be poetic justice though, wouldn't it? Turn the productive population into your slaves to satisfy your claim to their productivity but then become a slave in the system you set up to enslave others. As you can see I am of a very low impression of the population in general (and of you as its fairly accurate representative specifically).

I think you are salivating at the mouth at the prospect of ruling those who can produce to gain the power through those, who are hoping to allow the system to enslave the productive population. Statistically speaking you are unlikely to be the slave owner in your new paradise though that means you as will be a slave. A slave who wants to enslave, the most dispeakable slave.

Re: work less

[phantomfive]

I'm 90% sure I can find a woman who is also willing to subsist on the minimum. We'll have plenty of time to do.......other stuff.

Re:work less

[Waffle Iron]

That's because machines have historically never had control systems that rival the power of the human brain. The main advantage of automation up to now been just dumb speed and power; you still needed human intelligence to ultimately manage the work.

That's changing quickly. As computing power increases, the realm of activity of more classes of jobs can be managed by a computer more efficiently than a human, and with very little need for supervision.

Sometimes things in this world are nonlinear, and in those cases, making the same old arguments based on past observations doesn't work.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

Oh, I fully admit that people can and will do useful things in their free time. That's not what I was casting doubt on, though.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument is that only the well-off with high levels of net worth would become lazy. Well lets not give it to you then and give more to the guy that washes your car and cuts your lawn.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

U6 was 6-8% under Clinton's second term and is now about 9-10%.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

I notice you completely failed to answer the question, merely beating the same drum again. When is it going to happen? Do you have an answer?

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

Buying rental properties and leasing them out isn't "never doing anything again" as far as any economist is concerned. Also, it's nice for you that you already have significant assets, but most don't have that by default.

Re:work less

[skam240]

Because I've met way too many retired people who go nuts and become depressed with "nothing to do". If having "nothing to do", day to day, was fulfilling there wouldn't be the rates of depression among the retired that we have

Re:work less

[skam240]

I'm glad your dad live such a life. I've met way too many retired folks whose lives are boredom to believe his life is the norm though.

Re:work less

[Waffle Iron]

It's already happening. Within 20 years, you'll probably have to be above average to be able find a job that you could make a living at.

The one beating the same drum is you, pulling out the old argument "Automation has always created jobs!". As I pointed out, this time it's different.

Re:work less

[skids]

As someone who has made some (very minor) open source contributions, I can tell you it's not all "fun stuff"... you plug through the tedious parts because you want to help. There's a certain satisfaction psychologically to that, yes, but it isn't "fun." Many hobbyists do a lot of tedious, painful, and dangerous things just for love of their hobby.

(Personally I've never seen PeopleSoft do much but create a huge mess you need to pay PeopleSoft extra to clean up, so it is true, that is unlikely to deliver much satisfaction.)

Your point that, left to their own devices, people would only work on "fun" things is valid, but expressed too pessimistically. It would be better to say that, without proper public expression of the needs if society, voluntary resources will not be psychologically motivated to step up.

Re:work less

[skam240]

Would you if it meant living without a car, a nice computer, a home you owned, or a variety of other luxuries? Personally I'd rather have at the very least a part time job so I could have material possessions to enjoy and was able to travel.

Re:work less

[Tom]

Talk to long-time unemployed people and ask them if they would work given the chance. Most of them will answer in the positive. Sitting around being lazy is wonderful if you are a working person, because it is a change from your usual routine. Once it becomes your routine you absolutely want to work again.

Of course there are exceptions. Many of them have other problems (alcohol, drugs, etc.) that are unrelated to UBI.

Re:work less

[religionofpeas]

The question is, however, define "work". Would you labor for someone else? Probably not. But you likely wouldn't sit on your butt all day doing nothing either.

Even assuming you are right, if the work you choose to do is valuable, someone would be willing to pay for it. If you only do stuff that others aren't interested in, it's not adding much to the economy.

Re:work less

[gweihir]

And where have you missed that this is precisely the intent? The UBI is the currently only known solution for a society to survive the loss of most jobs without replacement. It is intended to keep people fed and able to buy things in the absence of jobs they can do in order to prevent collapse of the market and the social order.

If that extreme and permanent job shortage does not materialize, fine, no need for an UBI. But it looks pretty much unavoidable now.

Re:work less

[sjames]

The productive population was enslaved long ago by the idle rich. Knowing that come what may food, clothing, and shelter (and these days healthcare) are covered represents a greatly expanded freedom known to few today..

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

That's a reasonable point, that if we have full automation, people won't need to work anyway. However:

But it looks pretty much unavoidable now.

This is a questionable premise. People have been saying that "any day now......." for over a century. Right now, unemployment is getting lower. When do you see that day arriving?

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

I would work, but I'd do it on my own terms. I'd research what I want rather than forever chasing grant money. I'd program on projects I thought worthwhile for as long as I liked rather than some of the pointless shit I have done for various jobs. I'd work in fields that matter rather than fields that have enough buzzwords to attract short-term financing.

Actually I think that's what scares the "elites" (hate that word, but in want of a better one) when it comes to UBI: if people stop having to give their all to survive they will have the power to direct their own effort where they want or feel is important, rather than being directed by the necessity of earning a living into whatever the boss feels will make them (the boss, not the workers) richest. What you and I might call an overdue correction of the balance between work/life they see as a very real threat to their dominance.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

I own my house free and clear. Taxes and monthly expenses are very small and can live very nice on little money. A basic income would be enough for me to buy another rental property increasing my small income.

Maybe so, but could you have gotten to this position if you started out a zero out of school and then relied only on UBI?
The desire to have and do things - your own place to live and do as you want, toys, hobbies, travel, experiences etc could all be reasons for working despite UBI

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

Talk to long-time unemployed people and ask them if they would work given the chance. Most of them will answer in the positive.

Sounds like you are promoting a jobs program, not a BI program.

Re:work less

[Tom]

No, I was answering to one specific point in one specific comment. Try to see the context of things.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

As someone who has made some (very minor) open source contributions, I can tell you it's not all "fun stuff"

You got Linux running on an HP Printer...........not only is that very cool, it also sounds like tons of fun.

Re:work less

[Gussington]

I haven't seen anyone come up with a good reason people wouldn't use basic income to work less and be lazy. I can tell you, if I had guaranteed income for life, I would probably not ever work again.

The goal of this program is not to make you personally less lazy, so I'm unsure of the value of your contribution to the discussion.
But since I started, I'll assume you are questioning the rationale behind basic income which has already been discussed in here lots of times. Since you are lazy I'll help you out...
http://bfy.tw/A2eo

Re:work less

[Gussington]

Because unemployment rates are really low right now.

Only if you leave out all the people who have given up searching for work. The actual labor participation rate is still much lower than it was at the end of the Clinton administration. It fell a bit under Bush, and even more under Obama.

Yes, yes we've heard this fluff before. Post your methodology for determining 'real' unemployment and then we'll compare yours with the BLS.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

You brought up an example, people who are not working, to show that people will work. That is definitely not a convincing argument, but I do like our idea of looking in other areas to see how people would act under basic income. Another good place might be to look at the old Roman bread welfare system, since it essentially was a basic income.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

>Maybe you join a club, start a band, discover an aptitude for art, start your own business..
Or do drugs all day every day or fap to animu characters all day or paly vidya all day or...

Re:work less

[lorinc]

I haven't seen anyone come up with a good reason people wouldn't use basic income to work less and be lazy. I can tell you, if I had guaranteed income for life, I would probably not ever work again.

And then natural selection kicks in. If you sit on your butt all day watching dumbing down tv while eating greasy food, you're likely to die very early. Good riddance! UBI is actually a way to get rid of all the lazy useless assholes while indeed committing no crime. I think it's priceless.

To be even more effective, I think we should double the amount of UBI if you opt in for sterilization.

Re: work less

[Dog-Cow]

It's even better. The largest percentage of income is spent on room (rent or mortgage). Living with someone else gives you each an effective increase of half that cost. As other costs, such as utilities, increase at a marginal rate with additional people, those costs will also effectively decrease. So two people together will have more money to spend than either would on their own.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

But someone has to pay for the basic income. For someone rich enough to own a house, but not much more it might well be that the additional income received from basic income will mostly go into paying more tax.

Philipp

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at the old soviet union, it failed miserably using a communist/socialist economy. China only survives because the world sends it so much money for the cheap labor it offers. But internally its economy is a mess.

Economics is NOT a science. There are no 'laws' only principles at best.

Society will have to make a huge 180 in it fundamental values of 'work hard/earn a good living' mantra when everyone can at least live (with a house, car, cell phone, internet, food, healthcare etc) and not have to get out of bed for any of it. I mean the most basic question is "Why would you want to get up and work 8-10-12 hours a day and not get a reward substantially better than the fat slow who sleeps all day, jerky off to pornhub and still lives at the same standard as you?"

Re: work less

[phantomfive]

Good point. Polyamory ftw!!

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

Economics is NOT a science. There are no 'laws' only principles at best.

What about MV = PQ ? That seems a lot like a law.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

If having "nothing to do", day to day, was fulfilling there wouldn't be the rates of depression among the retired that we have

Maybe. Getting old and close to death seems to be rather terrifying when you approach it, actually.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

It's already happening

No, unemployment is dropping. Compensation is increasing.

Within 20 years, you'll probably have to be above average to be able find a job that you could make a living at.

I give you credit here, you make a concrete prediction, which is more than what most people do. I think it's a dumb prediction, but you're above the crowd so well done.

Re:work less

[thegarbz]

I can tell you, if I had guaranteed income for life, I would probably not ever work again.

You may want to have a look at how little that guaranteed income will get you. You get to live.

In a shithole barely making rent
Eating the cheapest shit you can find
No car, you can't afford that. Use your feet like a homeless person.
Cloths? That 10 year old jumper is keeping you warm.
TV? What do you need that for, it's a luxury item.
$700 smartphone? hahahahahh

I think your biggest problem is that you didn't read what you wrote so let me highlight the critical part for you:

basic income

Most people don't settle for basic. This is not going to uphold the American dream, this will ensure that you don't die in a ditch, nothing more.

Re: work less

[lucasnate1]

I think that sex is not really that interesting, and at some point you would look for other things to do. If you're not careful, you may search for a job just to fill the emptiness.

Re:work less

[Ozoner]

You haven't looked very hard. One of the fundamental aims of the UBI is to remove the tax threshold which makes it so hard for many to move of welfare.

If you do a bit of work, you get more money in your hand. So the system is encouraging you to work, unlike the present system.

Re:work less

[religionofpeas]

So, you're suggesting UBI will be similar to welfare programs we already have. No need to chance anything then.

Re:work less

[religionofpeas]

And then natural selection kicks in. If you sit on your butt all day watching dumbing down tv while eating greasy food,

... and fucking all day, ending up with a dozen children that somebody else ends up paying for.

Re:work less

[dunkelfalke]

Simply because the basic income is very low. 560 Euros won't go far in Finland, which is a very expensive country to live in. You seriously won't work ever again if you get a basic income of $400 or so? My unemployment benefits were thrice as much about a decade ago and I live in Germany where the cost of living is way lower than in Finland, but still I have looked for a new job (and found it and am still employed there). I used to live on what amounts to a Finnish basic income as a student and it wasn't fun at all. Never again.

Re:work less

[dunkelfalke]

It is similar to current welfare programs, just with far less bureaucracy and humiliation attached to it, that's all.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

Many of them have other problems (alcohol, drugs, etc.)

The ironic thing being that these interests are usually forced on poor people due to being quick, simple activities that get them away from the absolute shit life they live every day.
Then starts the cycle of working to kill yourself every week.
Many of these people, given the chance, WANT to improve their lives and get out the shit rut of a life they have.

Even more, awful trade unions keep people in these positions whereas UBI has the potential to force employers to make working conditions good or lose employees in large numbers.
No wonder a trade union is against it. UBI is automated trade unions. It makes the entire concept redundant.

Re:work less

[religionofpeas]

If you get the same lousy circumstances, there's the same humiliation. And because everybody has different needs and circumstances, you either get a bureaucracy to determine exactly what someone should get, or you give everybody so much that the most needy person has enough, which means that a lot of other people end up getting more than they need, wasting money.

Re:work less

[Imrik]

Both pursuing music and building a video game could be considered work. The difference being that it's work that actually interests you instead of whatever you can find that will get you paid.

Re:work less

[dunkelfalke]

Read TFA carefully. The basic income is set at one single precise amount for everyone and with no strings attached. That is what a universal basic income is.

Re:work less

[religionofpeas]

That's what I meant when I said "or you give everybody so much that the most needy person has enough" That means you'll waste a lot of money giving UBI to people who are not in need of it, and who are not currently getting welfare. They'll end up with much more than a minimum basic income.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the fuck cares about who works or not when everything becomes automated and resources become abundant? Idiots like you with your useless fucking principles for the sake of principles are the reason we're about a thousand years behind where we should be.

Re:work less

[Daemonik]

It's already started, you haven't noticed because you're just looking at metrics like unemployment. People are being down-shifted into lower paying service jobs by automation already. Stock Brokers are leading the charge, then there's automated legal offices who've done away with paralegals, automated warehouses...

The real tipping point will be self driving cars. Say goodbye to hundreds of thousands of taxi driver and delivery jobs once they've proven that technology is efficient and safe. Then hundreds of thousands of semi drivers will be forced out. Then all the services that cater to those jobs will go under, etc.

Re:work less

[thegarbz]

So, you're suggesting UBI will be similar to welfare programs we already have.

I'm not just suggesting it. It IS. The fact you don't know this means you should probably do some reading before continuing to talk about why you think UBI won't work.

No need to chance anything then.

And that's because you don't understand the point or the arguments for UBI. The point is that by removing the many 10s of thousands of conditions, requirements, different levels and outcomes, and purposes of welfare we cut down on departments that manage them, reduce overheads, and rather than waste taxpayer money on red tape give the money back to the taxpayers. The benefit of UBI is that people are able to support their most basic needs without locking themselves into something that would otherwise stifle an idea they want to pursue. i.e. one can be an artist during the day and actually sleep at night instead of being an artist during the day and sleeping in their car at a 7/11 while waiting for their Uber app to ping that there's a new pickup.

A society that isn't locked into an economic death spiral is generally more productive overall, even if you don't take into account the lost efficiency of the current welfare system.

Re:work less

[thegarbz]

getting more than they need

I've already put the word "basic" for you in bold before. So far all your arguments are ignoring 33% of the acronym UBI.

Re:work less

[kqs]

A basic income also means that your renters will be able to afford renting your property, leading to fewer cases of forced evictions (which are a landlords nightmare, trust me). Win-win.

A basic income means that we can weaken labor protection laws, since nobody starves if they get fired. Actually we can weaken lots of regulations if the human cost is less of a problem. Seems fine to me; liberals like me want intelligent regulations because they protect people. Nobody actually likes regulations for their own sake!

I'm still not convinced that the economics will work out, but it seems worth investigating. We know the effects of "tax cuts for the rich"; maybe we if we want different results we should try something different.

Re:work less

[thegarbz]

Even assuming you are right, if the work you choose to do is valuable, someone would be willing to pay for it.

The vast majority of businesses are marred with failure and stories of people who risk everything and living out of their cars to start something. The key problem with your argument is you assume a market with perfect knowledge of your product. There are people willing to pay for pretty much everything. You can decide to make a living of pissing in someone's mouth, there are people out there who will be willing to pay for it.

The problem is connecting those people with the product you're providing. This introduces a build up delay. 9/10 businesses fail within a year. Of those that do, the majority fail because they are unable to connect the people who want a product with the people who produce the product. This places incredible stress on the ability to connect a product and a customer quickly and businesses fold because it can no longer be supported in its infancy period by the owner. UBI alleviates that stress.

Re:work less

[thegarbz]

Holy shit you are thick. I mean in every single reply on this topic you have missed the point, taken something out of context, or just plain not understood what was said.

I would say english is your second language but that would imply you learnt it at some point.

Re:work less

[religionofpeas]

The problem is that living just on the edge of poverty, as you suggested, requires a different amount of money for different persons living in different circumstances. You can't have universal and basic at the same time.

Re:work less

[religionofpeas]

The point is that by removing the many 10s of thousands of conditions, requirements, different levels and outcomes, and purposes of welfare we cut down on departments that manage them, reduce overheads, and rather than waste taxpayer money on red tape give the money back to the taxpayers

You are arguing that it's cheaper to give welfare money to everybody, rather than checking who really needs it. That sounds very improbable. I'm pretty sure that one civil servant can check on more than 2 or 3 people per month.

Re:work less

[religionofpeas]

A basic income also means that your renters will be able to afford renting your property

Until the prices go up, that is.

Re:work less

[religionofpeas]

You don't need to start a business in order to get paid for doing valuable work.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

But we provide basic income for them (social security), so why are they so bored and depressed? Why aren't we seeing a Renaissance among our retirees?

Re:work less

[esonik]

Thanks to the internet today it's easier (and cheaper) than ever before to let people know about your product - you just need to be smart about it.
Just start a blog or a YT channel about pissing in people's mouth and build up the community, you'll succeed eventually if there is indeed a market.

Doesn't mean you are guaranteed to be successful with every stupid idea - you still need a working product and people willing to pay for it.
I'm skeptic about your proposed pissing business. I don't doubt you could achieve satisfactory quality of service but there could be a problem finding people willing to pay.

Re:work less

[esonik]

That's fine. Most people get bored of lazing around sooner or later. Maybe you'd create great art. Being immune to peer pressure is a great predisposition to that end. I'm optimistic.

Re:work less

[ezdiy]

Interesting graph. Yes productivity grows, for 200 years now. Now, can you produce one of median earner - the ones with torches and pitchforks, instead of aggregate economy output?

Indeed as you correctly argue, there was a huge dip and rebound in employment before in history - during the start of industrial revolution - all these people had a hard time for a while when they suddenly didn't have to spend all the time on a farm. Instead, they did the same in factories. I agree, it was a step up. But what's the next "factories" in the current event? Making youtube videos and serving lattes?

The current level of underemployment is unprecedented. There are other solutions than UBI. Shorten hours to 5 a day. Not enough? People born on odd days work only on odd days, people born on even days work only on even days. It could go on...

Also, back of envelope math says that robots need to do at least 90% of (tangible goods) output, as well their output be taxed by that much for UBI to be feasible. That's still quite a long way. As for service sector - that is completely market priced, and will always exist in separate universe (perhaps gravitating towards elite). It will be vastly disconnected from robot produced commodities market - want to watch kenye west live? You better pony up, kid, because there's no robot replacing him.

Re:work less

[esonik]

If anything the graphs you cite actually support Waffle Iron's point: Output grew faster than Compensation in the last couple of years. Increased automation is likely the reason.

The graph doesn't make any statement about unemployment though. Compensation increases due to higher wages for same amount of working hours.

Re:work less

[cytg.net]

Hardly that simple.
In a society where there is not enough work for everyone where most tasks is automated you could
1. Accumulate all wealth at the top of megacorporations and let the unemployed scum die of starvation or
2. Distribute the wealth, make education at all ages free and targeted science, give additional wealth for those who choose to persue sustainable sciences, robotics, programming, math and psycics, social studies.
There would also need to be a controlled program for birthing, cant flood the populus with uneducated stupid redo a Trump disaster.

Re:work less

[Whorhay]

I'm not sure about that. I think Boston Dynamics is likely very close to being able to build a robot that could jump up on stage and snatch a microphone from a human while bleating out a drunken rant about who should have earned an award.

That said I agree that there will always be people who will pay extra to have another human do something for them instead of a robot.

Re: work less

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone working in sales and marketing I doubt the world would be better without these jobs. Most companies (and in turn all their employees) would suffer without sales and marketing.

You need to be aware that marketing is much more than just market communication aka ads and spam. Marketing starts with thinking about what product could be successful and doing market research, to see who the customers could be and what exactly they want.

Turns out, most engineers are really bad at putting themselves into the shoes of a customer and figuring out what they want (or just asking them). So if engineers are in charge you get products like Linux - stuff that most people don't want or simply cannot use. Whereas if marketing is in charge you get stuff like the iPhone - products that people pay unreasonable amounts to own.
If you let engineering define a product (I know because I saw it happen) you get a product that has too many features ("knobs"), therefore difficult to use, but still lacks key features (because difficult to implement), and is often unreliable (because improving reliability is hard work and it's much more rewarding to create new features (too many features, sounds familiar?) than to test and improve reliability).

Re:work less

[GeekBoy]

I think most of the people will just spend the time playing games. If someone paid me enough money to cover my living expenses I'd only work as much as necessary to have the entertainment I want and no more. This is a pipe dream that's just a recycled flavour of communism. We all know how well that worked out in *every* instance in which it was tried.

Re:work less

[dunkelfalke]

Not really, because the untaxed amount of wages is usually coupled to the existence minimum, which is coupled to the standard welfare amount, which is - wait for it - the same amount of money that is the basic income. So, for the employed nothing changes, but unemployed and underemployed get their welfare money with no additional hassle and the cities need fewer civil servants to process all this. It also means that studens can concentrate on the studies instead of getting a part time job, finishing faster, which, in a country with a right to an education, actually might save money.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you're wrong. It's arbitrary numbers written on scraps of cut-up and processed plants, you nincompoop.

Re:work less

[Solandri]

Maybe you join a club, start a band, discover an aptitude for art, start your own business.. who knows?

The problem is not all "work" is equal. The value of the work you do is how much useful economic productivity you generate - how useful what you produce is to other people. The market modulates this by overvaluing productivity which is in short supply (STEM workers), and devaluing productivity which is oversupplied (musicians, artists). This differential pricing then encourages people to "work" in the more productive jobs like STEM, rather than the less productive but more fun jobs like joining a club, starting a band, discovering an aptitude for art (these things are often so unproductive that people have to pay to be able to do them, rather than be paid).

That's the big problem with a UBI. The market prices labor to encourage people to do jobs that are needed, rather than jobs that are fun. A UBI encourages people to do what they find fun rather than what's needed. At first glance, layering a market economy on top of this seems like it would work (i.e. you can still get paid extra on top of a UBI for doing a STEM job). But if you crunch through the math, the pricing for the STEM job then leads to non-UBI income following a divergent series.

Basically, the UBI doesn't make market pricing of wages go away. All it does is fix the low-income point at a non-zero level. The market wants to make the ratio between a STEM wage (productive worker wage) and UBI wage infinite. It wants to make the UBI (the low-income point) zero to reflect the fact that the "worker" is generating no productivity needed by the economy. But since it can't achieve this ratio directly by setting that wage to zero, it does the next best thing. It devalues the currency while simultaneously inflating the wages of the STEM worker (people doing productive jobs) so that the ratio of STEM wage to UBI wage is infinite. e.g. The first year the $500/mo UBI is enough to buy basic living expenses for the month, and the STEM worker makes (say) $5000/mo. After a few years, the $500/mo UBI is enough to buy a carton of milk and the STEM worker is making $500,000/mo because the market has devalued the currency. Meanwhile, milk still costs the same to the STEM worker. It used to cost $5 when they made $5000/mo (0.1% of their monthly income). It now costs $500, but they now make $500,000/mo (0.1% of their monthly income).

The best solution I was able to come up with is to decouple the UBI from the regular economy. Don't pay everyone a $500/mo stipend. Given everyone vouchers which entitle them to pick up certain staple goods (enough food for the month, generic clothing) from a government warehouse every month. The vouchers need to have zero cash value - steps must be taken to prevent people from selling them for cash - some sort of ID verification when picking up the UBI goods to prevent someone from turning in multiple vouchers each month. You'll still have some leakage via people selling the goods after they've received them. But hopefully it'll be small enough that the inflationary pressure it has on prices is minimal (or even substitutes as the slight inflation you want with a fiat currency).

Housing is a little trickier since it's not fungible like tomatoes or blue jeans.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me get this straight. You think that UBI will result in an empire of slavers...because people get bored. I'm not sure whether I should ask what drugs you take to avoid them or horde them.

Re:work less

[MightyYar]

I think it has to do with cash. Without enough money to run around the country with a trailer it would be a lot less fun. Vegging out in front of the TV isn't much of a hobby.

Re:work less

[Daemonik]

Maybe you join a club, start a band, discover an aptitude for art, start your own business.. who knows?

The problem is not all "work" is equal. The value of the work you do is how much useful economic productivity you generate - how useful what you produce is to other people. The market modulates this by overvaluing productivity which is in short supply (STEM workers), and devaluing productivity which is oversupplied (musicians, artists). This differential pricing then encourages people to "work" in the more productive jobs like STEM, rather than the less productive but more fun jobs like joining a club, starting a band, discovering an aptitude for art (these things are often so unproductive that people have to pay to be able to do them, rather than be paid).

That's the big problem with a UBI. The market prices labor to encourage people to do jobs that are needed, rather than jobs that are fun. A UBI encourages people to do what they find fun rather than what's needed. At first glance, layering a market economy on top of this seems like it would work (i.e. you can still get paid extra on top of a UBI for doing a STEM job). But if you crunch through the math, the pricing for the STEM job then leads to non-UBI income following a divergent series.

Considering how much of what you call "useful" economic productivity is generated by "fun" jobs like art and music, your entire premise feels backwards, especially as it does not consider there is a very real drive to push "useful" economic productivity towards zero cost with ever increasing automation.

A small group of artists at Marvel has become an economic juggernaut as armies of artists and artisans translate the comic page into movies and then toys and other banal products for the, as you call them "useful" economic producers to manufacture. A couple of musicians messing around in a garage share their sound and it catches on with clothes, jewelry, etc. geared to the people who want to be part of that scene. Again, giving the, as you call them "useful" economic producers something to take to market.

Yes, a lot of artists are overlooked and underpaid, but that's attributable more to how they are disadvantaged by people who are inclined towards business rather than their true economic potential. Most creative people aren't good at promoting themselves or taking charge of their works and the businessmen who control what you call "useful" economic productivity take full advantage of that. You need look no further for a prime example than the music industry and how a typical record contract is structured to see how artists receive a fraction of the real economic reward their works generate.

The rest of your argument just reads like the typical "Get a STEM job!" mythos you always see on Slashdot that devalues any form of liberal art.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually... a rundown shack with secondhand clothes would be fine with me, but I'd die of boredom unless I could do some research or fishing.

Re:work less

[thinkwaitfast]

Yes, I'm sure a basic income would benefit me greatly.

Re:work less

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Why isn't it a good thing if people work less? I mean, they're not dying sooner, so they'll do something to make their life better. Maybe they'll be a shitty painter. Maybe they'll go hiking a lot. Who knows. That sounds like a really good outcome to me.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

You are atypical, and most people just entering working age do not share you condition.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

Within 60 years.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you're wrong. That had been the pattern, but it stopped in the '80s. It is left to the reader to figure out what major economic change in the '80s led to this.

Re:work less

[ChrisMaple]

There are some forms of work that UBI people are likely to do. Rioting for a larger UBI is one, Making babies is another. Trying to find drugs to give meaning to an empty life is a third.

Re:work less

[ChrisMaple]

You observe that these retired people become depressed from having "nothing to do", but somehow you don't notice that the one thing that could solve their problem, doing something, is the very thing that they choose not to do.

Re:work less

[ChrisMaple]

The UBI is the currently only known solution for a society to survive the loss of most jobs without replacement.

Growing gills is the only solution to losing a gaseous atmosphere.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

Your premise is stupid and wrong.

Re:work less

[ChrisMaple]

in a country with a right to an education

Rights are something you have as an innocent human being. They do not vary with location. Governments can recognize, codify, support, and defend rights, but governments cannot create or destroy rights.

An education is not a right. It is a responsibility, the responsibility of a parent to educate or buy an education for the child.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

Holy shit you are thick.

Thanks, you're dumb as a brick.

I mean in every single reply on this topic you have missed the point, taken something out of context, or just plain not understood what was said.

Lies.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

In a society where there is not enough work for everyone where most tasks is automated you could

That's a hypothetical society, we don't live there.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

If anything the graphs you cite actually support Waffle Iron's point: Output grew faster than Compensation in the last couple of years. Increased automation is likely the reason.

The last few years aren't outside natural variability.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

The current level of underemployment is unprecedented

No it's not, even U6 is low these days.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

Less work gets done.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

The real tipping point will be self driving cars. Say goodbye to hundreds of thousands of taxi driver and delivery jobs once they've proven that technology is efficient and safe.

You're lucky Level 5 autonomy won't be here in the next few decades, then. Level 4 probably won't be here, either.

Re: work less

[phantomfive]

I know a lot of people who literally find homelessness preferable to going to work.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

That would definitely be a better way to structure the program.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

Wait, Finland is expensive to you? Where is cheaper? What part of Germany?

Re:work less

[skids]

Not all of it was fun, though that was one of my more fun endeavors for sure. Also nobody in the hobbyist scene cared, they have more fun soldering their own rather than recycling old printers, apparently. So lacking any users, the satisfaction went away.

Re:work less

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Maybe. Or maybe more people do less work each. UBI is predicated on the idea that thanks to automation/productivity increasing machines, there isn't a need for the work output of 40hrs/week/adult.

Unless we go to makework, but I see zero value in that.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

To be fair, someone had to do it.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

"Need for work" is kind of a flexible concept.......do we really need people to cut our toenails? And yet plenty of people pay for pedicures.

Re:work less

[Tom]

All of that has been done extensively already.

I know how I would act under basic income. Work as much in my sphere as I enjoy, and spend more time on side-projects that I enjoy a lot (writing, making games) but that bring in less money.

Also, I would work better hours. A lot of shops would have different opening times because a lot of people would say "sure I can be here at 6 - but not for this money".

Re: work less

[lucasnate1]

How old are they? Where do they live? I knew people like that too, they were mostly young and either living on friend's houses or hippie festivals. I think it gets more difficult when you grow old. Then again, I am from a poor country, maybe in richer countries it is easier.

Re:work less

[Cro Magnon]

Many elderly people have health problems, that would interfere with "doing something". They also may have limited money, which also makes it harder to "do something".

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

compensation per hour worked has also increased.

Citation needed.

This (using Census Bureau data) suggests that for most families, inflation-adjusted incomes have been declining for most families since the year 2000.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is you haven't found a reason why _people like yourself_ wouldn't use basic income to work less and be lazy. The truth is that most people aren't like the average /.er. Most people in any given country are not educated to that level, and most people in the world are unlike the people in any given country.

I'm not saying other people are bad or good, just that the mental mold "we" are (and thus also the people we surround ourselves with--spouse, friends, online discussion forums we visit) is not representative of the rest of the country or world.

Re: work less

[phantomfive]

All ages, mostly over 30, though. Once you get in the habit, it's hard to break.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

ok, so you confirm my point: you would also work less under basic income.

Re: work less

[lucasnate1]

Surprising, with people that I know it's the opposite, work becomes the habit. Young people are usually those who are free enough to escape the "self fulfillment = job" programming that society gives you. Where are you from?

Re: work less

[phantomfive]

Yeah, usually whatever you do becomes a habit. Occasionally you'll find an older guy who just gives up, but usually after a bad life experience: breaking up with a wife or something. I live in California.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

Basically, the UBI doesn't make market pricing of wages go away. All it does is fix the low-income point at a non-zero level. The market wants to make the ratio between a STEM wage (productive worker wage) and UBI wage infinite. It wants to make the UBI (the low-income point) zero to reflect the fact that the "worker" is generating no productivity needed by the economy. But since it can't achieve this ratio directly by setting that wage to zero, it does the next best thing. It devalues the currency while simultaneously inflating the wages of the STEM worker (people doing productive jobs) so that the ratio of STEM wage to UBI wage is infinite. e.g. The first year the $500/mo UBI is enough to buy basic living expenses for the month, and the STEM worker makes (say) $5000/mo. After a few years, the $500/mo UBI is enough to buy a carton of milk and the STEM worker is making $500,000/mo because the market has devalued the currency. Meanwhile, milk still costs the same to the STEM worker. It used to cost $5 when they made $5000/mo (0.1% of their monthly income). It now costs $500, but they now make $500,000/mo (0.1% of their monthly income).

Oh, that's actually a really interesting thought.

Housing is a little trickier since it's not fungible like tomatoes or blue jeans.

Housing costs go down when supply increases.

Re:work less

[Actually, I do RTFA]

And the nice thing about UBI is it lets people opt into luxury items, e.g. the pedicure world. If you do work like that, you get more money, which can pay for work like that. If you just want to hike alone, well, you don't have to make more money to pay for that lifestyle.

But yes, all in all the "need for work" is fairly elastic - but removing the "do a job or die of starvation" motivation should help tune the amount of work done to a more socially optimal level.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

And the nice thing about UBI is it lets people opt into luxury items, e.g. the pedicure world. If you do work like that, you get more money, which can pay for work like that. If you just want to hike alone, well, you don't have to make more money to pay for that lifestyle.

Of course, there are plenty of things about UBI that are really nice. In fact, it would be better to just give everyone $100k every month. That's not practical, though.

but removing the "do a job or die of starvation" motivation should help tune the amount of work done to a more socially optimal level.

Most likely it will just turn into "bread and circuses" like when Rome tried basic income.

Re:work less

[dddux]

Why would you have to work since there is a robot filling your place? Why wouldn't you live a life of comfort and enjoy yourself? Finally we have the tech so people can stop being slaves to work.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

Why would you have to work since there is a robot filling your place?

That's a really big hypothetical situation.

Re:work less

[Quirkz]

I've got all kinds of things I'd be doing/attempting if I didn't have to "work". Other than a few unfortunate windows I've had a day job for most of my adult life, and in those 20 years I've started 3 or 4 side businesses, created a computer game that I eventually had to sell due to lack of time, and wrote a couple of novels. If I had those 40,000 hours of day job back, I can't even imagine what I might have accomplished.

Re:work less

[dddux]

It's not hypothetical. It is happening. The business owners looking for more profit will employ robots instead because employing even people from 3rd world countries doesn't bring enough profit for their greedy souls. In a way they are contributing to their own demise with their greediness.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

Of course, but that's just bog standard automation, and it's happened for a couple hundred years.

Re:work less

[Tom]

You desperately need to pick up the skill of reading comprehension.

I would most likely work more - but spread it out into different areas. Your overly narrow definition of "work" is false-to-facts as well as stupid. I worked as a freelancer for some years, and many of my friends have turned their hobbies into their profession, and in either case the line between "work" and "spare time" begins to blur and the narrow definition of "work" as being the time between punching in and punching out at the company clock disappears.

Re:work less

[goose-incarnated]

Maybe you join a club, start a band, discover an aptitude for art, start your own business.. who knows?

The problem is not all "work" is equal. The value of the work you do is how much useful economic productivity you generate - how useful what you produce is to other people. The market modulates this by overvaluing productivity which is in short supply (STEM workers), and devaluing productivity which is oversupplied (musicians, artists). This differential pricing then encourages people to "work" in the more productive jobs like STEM, rather than the less productive but more fun jobs like joining a club, starting a band, discovering an aptitude for art (these things are often so unproductive that people have to pay to be able to do them, rather than be paid).

That's the big problem with a UBI. The market prices labor to encourage people to do jobs that are needed, rather than jobs that are fun. A UBI encourages people to do what they find fun rather than what's needed. At first glance, layering a market economy on top of this seems like it would work (i.e. you can still get paid extra on top of a UBI for doing a STEM job). But if you crunch through the math, the pricing for the STEM job then leads to non-UBI income following a divergent series.

Considering how much of what you call "useful" economic productivity is generated by "fun" jobs like art and music,

What do you mean "much"? Very little anything is generated by the fun jobs when you divide the demand by the supply. The market does not reward anything, it's simply the supply/demand curve that determines the price of something, labour included. Due to the supply of artists being so large compared to the demand for art, artists are priced extremely low, and their products are priced just as low to reflect the demand.

your entire premise feels backwards, especially as it does not consider there is a very real drive to push "useful" economic productivity towards zero cost with ever increasing automation.

A small group of artists at Marvel has become an economic juggernaut as armies of artists and artisans translate the comic page into movies and then toys and other banal products for the, as you call them "useful" economic producers to manufacture.

Outliers do not an argument make. The large majority (9999 out of 10000) of "small group of artists" produce works that are worth almost nothing.

A couple of musicians messing around in a garage share their sound and it catches on with clothes, jewelry, etc. geared to the people who want to be part of that scene. Again, giving the, as you call them "useful" economic producers something to take to market.

Yes, a lot of artists are overlooked and underpaid, but that's attributable more to how they are disadvantaged by people who are inclined towards business rather than their true economic potential.

Their true economic potential is close to zero. The markets accurately reflect this. You want a jingle for a radio ad? Almost the entire population can supply you with one. You want designs for a bridge that won't fall down? Only a fraction of the population can give you one.

It's not hard to then say that one class of producer is worth more than the other class of producer. Even with UBI, if everyone can live without needing a job and the majority go on to produce works of art, their value is still considerably less than the minority who use the UBI benefits to learn bridge-design.

UBI won't make artists more valuable than they are now; on the contrary they'll make artists less valuable as the supply of artists will greatly increase (and the supply of bridge-designers will greatly decrease).

Re:work less

[werepants]

I haven't seen anyone come up with a good reason people wouldn't use basic income to work less and be lazy.

Because many millionaires and CEOs continue to work when their financial security is completely assured? Because many people hold jobs in retirement just to keep themselves busy and buy stuff for the grandkids? Because volunteer-based organizations continue to exist all over the world?

From what I can tell, the idea that people only work for money and will become totally unproductive on UBI is an unsubstantiated myth - we've got lots of evidence to the contrary.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

From what I can tell, the idea that people only work for money and will become totally unproductive on UBI is an unsubstantiated myth - we've got lots of evidence to the contrary.

How many people hold jobs in retirement? What is the percentage? Go look it up: most of them don't. Your own data proves you wrong. Lousy confirmation bias.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

You said, and I quote, "Also, I would work better hours." Presumably that would mean you would work less.

Re:work less

[werepants]

How many people hold jobs in retirement? What is the percentage? Go look it up: most of them don't. Your own data proves you wrong. Lousy confirmation bias.

Ha! Talk about confirmation bias - in the face of trivially obvious examples, you're holding to your contention that people work only for money because that's how you personally feel... pot, meet kettle.

This labor report says that >25% of U.S. people 65 and older (eligible for Social Security) continue to work: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2...

That number is higher than I expected, actually. I never said that all retirees work, and it isn't really central to my point. Retirement wasn't my only example - we also have the working rich, and volunteer organizations that demonstrate the existence of a human tendency to do useful work for reasons other than monetary compensation.

Some people will choose not to work under UBI, but that's actually desirable to some extent because paying work will be in short supply as automation becomes increasingly sophisticated. Other people will continue to work for money because they want disposable income. Yet others will work because of status, altruistic tendencies, or boredom. The idea that people work solely for money is objectively wrong, and in fact, there's some evidence that compensation causes people to do worse work than they would otherwise do. There's a book called Drive by Daniel Pink that explores this pretty thoroughly, and is actually based on scientific evidence.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

yet you are unable to refute a very logical and concise assertion..... except to say its crazy... thats no refutation, actually, if you cant come up with a more logical alternative, by debate rules, you lose.

making YOU the thick turd.

Re:work less

[skam240]

That most deffinitly plays a part. On the other hand, the only happy seniors I've met are the ones that find new ways to bring meaning to how their lives are spent. The ones who dont figure that riddle out are typically the depressed ones.

Re:work less

[skam240]

And many retired people do. Many of them are more active than many non retired people I know. And guess what, they're usually the happy ones.

Also, many arent choosing to retire, many are merely accepting the fact that they cant physically or mentally do what they spent half their lives doing. Living just off Social Security aint easy and many only choose to do so because they feel they have to. It's much harder to recreate yourself at that age then it is when you're young.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

Do you understand that 25% is a small percentage of people who normally work? Do you understand that means most people are not working?

we also have the working rich, and volunteer organizations that demonstrate the existence of a human tendency to do useful work for reasons other than monetary compensation.

What percentage? Do you have numbers, or are you 'guessing?'

paying work will be in short supply as automation becomes increasingly sophisticated.

This is the other dream that UBI advocates have......that automation will make it so they don't have to work. It's a nice dream, I'll agree to that.

Re:work less

[Tom]

Only if you are intentionally trying to read something into it. The example I put immediately behind it should make it clear. Many people - myself included - do not like to get up early. I would rather work from 10 till 6 than from 8 till 4. Same hours, but better hours for me. Other people want to be home to their families early. They might prefer a 5 till 3 shift.

With UBI, you do not have to work in order to not starve. That gives you a tremendeous amount of negotiation power. Not just about salaries, but also about working conditions.

Re:work less

[werepants]

Do you understand that 25% is a small percentage of people who normally work? Do you understand that means most people are not working?

Of course I do - it's a feature, not a bug. But I think it's undeniable that a significant portion of humans will continue to do productive work even if their basic financial needs are met.

This is the other dream that UBI advocates have......that automation will make it so they don't have to work. It's a nice dream, I'll agree to that.

The thing is, unemployment numbers are low, but workforce participation is also very low. We've already got a big trend towards less of the population working, partly due to the retirement of boomers, partly due to people who lost jobs in the recession and just gave up. And isn't it possible that some of it is due to the progression in automation? There's a rate at which jobs are being lost to automation. There's also a rate at which jobs are being created, either by expansion of existing sectors or creation of new sectors. There's no physical law that says one rate must match another, and there's a lot of evidence to suggest that automation is outpacing the economy's capability to create new jobs.

There's also the reality that robotics will eventually get to the point where it will be cheaper on a per-hour basis and offer higher quality output than all unskilled human labor. It's just inevitable, because humans have essentially static capabilities but technology advances continually - the only question is when, and recent trends suggest it will be sooner rather than later.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

ok, now you're going through two different things........first you admit that people mostly aren't going to work as much, which was my original assertion. So we're agreed on that point, good. Just to be clear, I will also state that some people will continue to still working.

Now the second point, you're saying that automation is going to take everyone's job. That's a completely different topic altogether...........

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

Working hours are set because of synergy......when everyone else is working from 9-5, it's convenient for customer support reps to work 9-5 too, for example. All the jobs that allow flexible hours (like programmers) already tend to be flexible about when to work. It might be more expensive to get someone to work the late shift, that is true, but I don't really see basic income changing that.

Re:work less

[Tom]

Synergy in business context is another word for "efficiency", which is another word for "profit". If you pay me enough, I will work whatever hours you want. Since I'm an expert in my field, I do have that negotiation power. But when I see minimum wage people working crazy hours, I ask myself which unfortunate life conditions force them to do so. UBI would allow these people the same negotiation power.

Re:work less

[werepants]

My original intent was to refute the sweeping generalization that no human will ever work an hour in their life if UBI is available. That doesn't reflect the actuality that lots of people continue to work even if they don't need to to meet their basic needs. On the other hand, I agree with you that there are definitely some people who will stop working. On the whole of it, it is hard to say exactly where it will come down, because some people will stop working, some people will work less, some people will work exactly the same amount (that's what I would do if UBI were implemented today), and some people will have the financial security to do more productive, interesting work than they would've otherwise - I know lots of artsy, creative types who would probably produce some incredible things if they weren't stuck making minimum wage as a barista or whatever. Same thing will apply to entrepreneurs and technical people who will now be able to get their startups off the ground without worrying about starving to death.

On the second point, I agree it is a different discussion, but it's inherently tied to the UBI argument. If you think that automation is going to be taking over jobs faster than they can be replaced, it means we will either have massive unemployment and social unrest or need to come up with a new economic model. If you think that our current revolution in automation is yet another variation on the industrial revolution, and that it's just a transition that won't change anything fundamental about the economy, then there's much less urgency to consider something novel like the UBI.

Re:work less

[phantomfive]

My original intent was to refute the sweeping generalization that no human will ever work an hour in their life if UBI is available.

Oh. That's a stronger claim than was intended. If other people thought the same as you, no wonder they came back with such strange comments. I will have to be more clear next time.

Re:work less

[Anonymous Coward]

"buy another rental property increasing my small income"

So you will still work. Managing a rental property doesn't happen on it's own, someone has to do it. You just prooved the point of UBI.

Too low

[manu0601]

UBI is very different when the sum is enough to live or not.

If it is too low (and at 560 euro/month it is certainly too low to pay housing and food), then people still have to accept any job to live, and employer can pay less because decent living costs are already partially covered by UBI. In such a situation, UBI acts as a social support to employer without taking any power from them.

OTOH, with a UBI high enough to cover basic needs, things change a lot. Employers need to convince people to enroll them instead of the other way around, while people can also choose to start businesses that have social benefit without being profitable.

Of course that consideration do not cover the huge question: how to find the money for high UBI? Some specialists consider a high UBI possible if all national labor costs are socialized: Instead of paying employees, employers contribute to a labor fund which in turn pays UBI to people. I have no idea if this is workable or not

Re:Too low

[Anonymous Coward]

if you live in your mum's basement, 560 euro covers cell phone, groceries, broadband, bus ticket and beer, with some left over to help mum with the rent. No reason at all to leave the basement.

Another challenge with such programs is that no government welfare program has ever died; they just keep multiplying. No politician, beyond the american buffoon, is willing to cut a program, so this won't replace, but supplement other programs.

Re:Too low

[Anonymous Coward]

... all national labor costs are socialized ...

The government pays for education/training, healthcare, welfare, roads & water, police; so that is already true in most countries.

... employers contribute to a labor fund which in turn pays UBI to people.

As tax-paying employees are replaced by slave robots, it will be necessary for the government to levy businesses directly. Then there's the fact that those unemployed people haven't disappeared, requiring a labour policy that encourages part-time employment. The world has gone from looking forward to a 3-day week (in the 1960s), to the unsustainable belief that individuals not contributing to the GDP will destroy society.

... incite laboriousness or laziness ...

These people are already unemployed: There may not be room for them in the full-time labour market, or they may not be job-ready by normal criteria. So the likelihood of a good number of these people getting full-time or permanent jobs is very low. This experiment allows them to admit that they can't get a job by "trying harder". The question becomes, will their time be beneficial to the community? Which it can be by assisting friends, family and volunteer services.

Re:Too low

[Tom]

560 is low, but it is higher than social security in most European countries. And it isn't far away from a reasonable sum. During some times when I was a freelancer, I lived for about 1000 Euros a month, without cutting much into my lifestyle. Granted, no holidays or weekend trips were included, and I was already set up with a home, computer, etc. etc. so I didn't need any major purchases. I also know people who manage with much less, who would be perfectly ok with 560.

How to find the money is trivial. Right now western economies are bleeding crazy amounts of money into tax havens, casino^H^H^H financial market investments and into the pockets of super-rich and multinational corporations. These profits are the results of automation, international trade, economy of scale, etc. etc. - basically, all the profit that these recent developments in trade and economy have generated are distributed unfairly. Distribute them fairly and you will find you have a lot of surplus money.

Re:Too low

[dbIII]

Personally I think the entire idea is a very naive "reward" view of welfare money from the less sane reaches of the far right of politics.
Why do I think that? Because they fail to take into account that people who work are going to be contributing in taxes and getting some back with some administration losses in the middle. It drives up taxes leaving the people who are employed worse off on average than if they were not getting a universal income. The only way to avoid that is to cut back on government services somewhere else.
For people who don't work, fine, it keeps them alive, deters crime and gives them enough resources to make it into the workplace some day (transport, appropriate clothing etc). The obvious solution is to only give it to the people that actually need help.

Re:Too low

[gweihir]

Only an UBI that covers living decently makes sense. The primary purpose of the UBI is to reduce the number of people that work and to reduce hours worked because jobs become increasingly unavailable and the remaining jobs will be out of reach skill-wise for most people. We critically need a way to stop people from working in the nos-so-distant future and the only way to do that (besides shooting them) is to make it unnecessary to work.

Re:Too low

[religionofpeas]

How to find the money is trivial.

Well, before we decide to implement UBI, let's get that money! Everybody would love some trivially easy source of money.

Re:Too low

[Anonymous Coward]

https://apple.slashdot.org/sto...

Re:Too low

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, Finland here.

Some clarification is needed as the thread contains a lot of speculation without facts.

If it is too low (and at 560 euro/month it is certainly too low to pay housing and food), then people still have to accept any job to live

The 560 eur / month is in addition to housing benefits, ie. government paid rent for those that are entitled to it. Actually this 560 eur is the same as the minimun unemployment benefit is right now (after taxes).

The whole test was laid out so that those partcipating does not loose or gain any income. What they did was pick out a group with the same monetary benefits (560 eur + possible rent) from the present social security program. From that group a random selection of 2000 people was picked for the (compulsory) test. In addition a control group (on the same wellfare amount) of 173 000 persons was selected.

The only significante difference between the test group and the control group is that the test group would not loose their benefits if the took a job as the control group does. Ie. the test group can keep the UBI and the salary (with some rare exceptions).

The case for / against UBI is pretty much focused on whether people will work more, the same or less with a basic income. That is why the study is simplified and only deals with people unemployed on a very simple benefit structure. It should therefore show quite clearly if UBI affects employment or not. According to the test papers, a 5% change in employment is significant. Ie if employment increases or decreases at least 5%, the UBI have an effect.

Re:Too low

[Anonymous Coward]

The obvious solution is to only give it to the people that actually need help.

That's the current system in most countries. Unless it is very well funded, it works poorly due to the welfare trap and just generally the need to prove you "need" help is inhumane (I have a poor/disabled friend who does not have support from a partner or their family and who is incredibly thrifty... following the rules of US welfare to the letter would literally require them to die of exposure/starvation before they would be able to actually get benefits; they were told by the government workers to lie about their savings because the rules were stupid)

With UBI, it's way cheaper to administer (of course, more than made up for by how much more money you're giving to people). But it's unclear that you'll be losing money because (1) police/prison is less expensive when people aren't desperate and starving and (2) people who were previously on welfare are now able to be productive without worrying about losing their benefits and starving. There's also (3) as a society we may be willing to each individually do with a bit less to live in a more humane society (with some selfish benefits like not having homeless people/beggars around). That is, in the "taxes buy civilization view", I feel like I'm getting a pretty bad deal on that "civilization" if it less people die on the streets.

Re:Too low

[ChrisMaple]

basically, all the profit that these recent developments in trade and economy have generated are distributed unfairly.

<sarcasm> Well, sure, it isn't fair that the people who earned the profits get the profits. </sarcasm>

Re:Too low

[Tom]

I wasn't aware that robots were invented by bank CEOs. Or computers. They certainly did invent cutting away the social security systems that held society stable.

If you think that only the owner of a company deserves the profits that the company makes, you just busted the top end of the idiot scale. Trade unions should go on strike more often to remind those owners who is actually generating the profits of the company.

You are right, the people who earn the profits should get them. That means the sales clerks and the bank tellers, the pilots and the stewardesses, the guys on the factory floor, the repairmen and the driver, the nurse and the doctor.

Re:Too low

[Tom]

No, that would be stupid. Whenever politicians suddenly get a lot of money somewhere, they immediately squander it on some stupid prestige project.

As with water pipes, you should set up both ends before you turn on the water.

Re:Too low

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is too low (and at 560 euro/month it is certainly too low to pay housing and food), then people still have to accept any job to live, and employer can pay less because decent living costs are already partially covered by UBI. In such a situation, UBI acts as a social support to employer without taking any power from them.

You misunderstand basic economics. You're making the same mistake that was made by so many people in the days of mercantilism. Economics is NOT a zero sum game: you're not somehow aiding employers or providing them with social support by helping the poor in a way that still allows or encourages the poor to work.

Rather, with UBI employers have lots of opportunities to do things that they simply CAN NOT afford to do: the cost outweighs the benefits. Take away minimum wage - a necessary part of UBI - and those actions become possible, and will happen - because at those prices they are profitable. Not hugely profitable, usually, but enough to justify the hassles and lost time.

For example, lots of people are unemployable at minimum wage - but most of those people had jobs in the old days.

Also, employers are more willing to help people develop their "human capital" when it doesn't cost them a lot to do that - think of the old apprenticeship system. Low level employees who showed promise used to be encouraged by their employers to develop their skills - that's how so many rags to riches stories happened in the old days. Today, thanks to minimum wage, a lot fewer people will get that kind of support.

Similarly, employers used to partner a lot more with schools - but can't do that as much these days. The students got real world work experience for their resumes - and a little extra cash - and the employers got the chance to see how people worked in their environment without having to wade through tons of inflated resumes and all the lies associated with interviews.

Another classic problem with minimum wage is the loss of working hours: it might have been feasible to hire people before the minimum wage was imposed (or the rate raised), but after, it's no longer possible to pay them for as many work hours. That's a huge problem, because it means the part-time workers now have to deal with the lost time and extra cost of a second or even third commute - that's time taken away from their families, additional crowding of the transportation system, and an additional environmental cost. Those extra working hours can come back with UBI - and everybody benefits.

If you want to go after the wealthy, then support a truly progressive income tax - also progressive on investments after inflation - with special provisions for taxing "gifts" to the wealthy - and with a progressive tax on transfers of money overseas. A lot can be done here: but even then - there are real limits on how much you can tax before bad things start to happen to the economy. Even Sweden has it's share of billionaires.

Re:I can tell you

[hackwrench]

Well, if none of what you do earns any income, people will say it isn't work.

Perspective

[_xanthus_47]

So one month into a two-year program, it has been declared to be unworkable? That is 1 out of 24. That is ~ 4%. Really?

Re:Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

So how about the last 60 years of welfare in the USA? When we started, 5% of the country was getting assistance. Now it's 40. Are there people on welfare starting their own successful businesses, or contributing great works of art, literature or science? Every once in a long while you see one on the news, but evidence shows the other 99% of them do not. They happily live their entire lives on the government, contributing nothing.

Re:Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

"Are there people on welfare starting their own successful businesses"

Actually, yes.

Re:The problem

[hackwrench]

The problem is as I said above. How do we measure the economy of any of this? The current system has money be the measure. It's nowhere near perfect, but once you start giving money out, it seems to me that something is going unmeasured.

And what, pray tell, is the alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

If that can't work out, what then? "You'd have a job if you simply looked hard enough" combined with "you don't deserve to be paid a living wage for this work no matter how long your hours are" will lead to starvation and violent rebellion. It can't *not* lead to that; if everyone's being tossed out on the streets because they at best can't keep up with inflation and at worst are entirely without income.

Banks will stop agreeing to finance any individual whatsoever once they can't even get their money back due to no buyers for foreclosed homes. Theft will skyrocket, because the law stops mattering if your choice is between obeying it and not dying. Sure, those in the upper crust of the .1% are thinking "that'll take care of the population problem", but there comes a point where even their private armies will turn against them.

Of course it's probably around that time that they'll have replaced it all by far more loyal drones...

Finland needs to quaduple it

[thinkwaitfast]

an give it to everyone to really see how it will pan out. Then maybe we can stop wasting so much energy debating hypotheticals.

Re:Finland needs to quaduple it

[Wisp]

Tots, I wish that all the VC-backed 'futurists' who have nation-state levels of cash would finally put their money where their mouth is...

Re:Finland needs to quaduple it

[thinkwaitfast]

I'm sure it's good for their karma. Awwwwww look, they care.

A very good more basic question

[Okian Warrior]

How do we measure the economics of the situation?

That's a very good basic question to ask.

Too many times people get up on the soapbox of the world and give their opinion about this or that policy, and one can never figure out whether they are experts speaking from experience or just political hacks.

People giving an opinion in public is just noise, and people bolstering their opinion with rationalization and/or analogy is noise masquerading as signal.

We shouldn't give any credence to anyone who tries to sway our opinions about, well... anything, unless they can back it up with facts that are suggestive or studies that can be examined in detail.

I'm especially suspect of the "it will only encourage some people to work less" comment, as if that is a bad thing. It might be perfectly acceptable for some part of society to have to work less, or perhaps not to have to work at all. There's a parallel and opposite rationalization that holds that people will accomplish great things when given enough leisure.

Making that statement ("some people" is an obvious attempt at being divisive, as in "you know the type of people I mean") in the way that he made it is simple emotional manipulation. Also from the article are such gems as "We think it takes social policy in the wrong direction", meaning basically "I don't like it, in an unspecified and indeterminate way".

He's not claiming that it doesn't work, he's claiming that he doesn't like it (and neither should you).

Re:A very good more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not claiming that it doesn't work, he's claiming that he doesn't like it (and neither should you).

The money quote from the article is this one

The labor group says the results of the two-year pilot program will fail to sway its opposition

In other words you are 100% right. He doesn't care if it works or not; he's set to oppose it no matter what.

Re:A very good more basic question

[johannesg]

Too many times people get up on the soapbox of the world and give their opinion about this or that policy, and one can never figure out whether they are experts speaking from experience or just political hacks.

They can also simply be citizens of this world, who might be impacted by such far-reaching changes to society, and who therefore justifiably want to have their say. I don't believe that's an unreasonable position. If someone wants to run an 8-lane road right next to my house I'm entitled to an opinion, even without a study backing me up. Similarly, if someone wants to change the entire system of incentives and capital allocation, to such an extent as presented here, I do believe I should be allowed to comment since it will impact my life as well.

People giving an opinion in public is just noise, and people bolstering their opinion with rationalization and/or analogy is noise masquerading as signal.

Public debate is actually the basis of democracy. If you want people to hold that debate in an informed manner, you should really provide them with sober facts, rather than opinion, handwaving, shouting, and threats. Just because presenting facts has gone out of style so spectacularly, is not at all an excuse to now also disqualify people from voicing their opinion.

I'm especially suspect of the "it will only encourage some people to work less" comment, as if that is a bad thing. It might be perfectly acceptable for some part of society to have to work less, or perhaps not to have to work at all.

This argument has two parts. The first is that nobody might be inclined to do any of the unpleasant jobs anymore. One could argue that society should simply pay more, then, but that assumes (as does UBI itself) that money grows on trees. The second part is the fear that we might find ourselves with too few people willing to work to keep society running _at all_. No police, no firemen, no teachers, no civil servants, no doctors - how would we end up? Some kind of Detroit where society slowly decays and gangs rule the streets? The assumption of UBI is always that people freed from financial concern will automatically proceed to either freely create value for others, or at least not bother anyone. That's a beautiful sentiment, but I'm not convinced it's automatically true.

As far as the facts go, the total cost of a nation-wide UBI program is the number of people times the amount each receives. This cost is invariably either much higher than the total cost (including overhead) of existing social security programs, or the amount received is far below what's needed to make a living.

An additional problem is that currently, social programs are tailored towards those who need it. Quite a few people simply don't need additional support, and any money given to them is unavailable to those who do need it. Are we supposed to think of this as 'fair'?

One might also wonder if money were created for free, whether cost (of everything) would remain the same, or rise to meet the levels of available money. In other words, the program might be undone by rampant inflation.

And I do believe it is a valid concern that politicians might very well attempt to subvert the system with all sorts of special benefits designed for their own constituents. It's what they do, after all - but as soon as you do this, the major benefit ("simplicity") goes down the drain.

Re:A very good more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact in the Netherlands they encourage us to work less by allowing us to work 34 hours instead of 40 hour weeks, I think companies of a certain size must let employees decide if they want to work 34 hours.

If enough people do, then other people need to be hired and it increases the amount of job opportunities.

I even work 32 hours, which the boss needs to approve, but according to the law 32 hours is still full-time employment which means a bank for example can no deny me a loan because I don't work a full 40 hour week.

Re:A very good more basic question

[mr_jrt]

One important factor you've neglected to factor in is the cost of administering the current means-tested systems. You have to:
a) have rules
b) enforce those rules
c) maintain those rules as loopholes and variables change ...all of which cost money as well. Give everyone a flat amount that's enough to live on and you don't need the legions of mandarins and all the associated resources (buildings, pensions, consumables, etc) administering the system.

Re:A very good more basic question

[Mashiki]

I even work 32 hours, which the boss needs to approve, but according to the law 32 hours is still full-time employment which means a bank for example can no deny me a loan because I don't work a full 40 hour week.

Things would have to fundamentally change here in Canada for instance, especially in big cities and surrounding areas. There are places like Toronto, Vancouver, etc where working 50-60hrs/week at two jobs@$14-19/hr($10-14eur/$8-12GBP) is just barely scraping by. I'm sure someone will say well why don't they just move to a smaller town, or commute or something. It's because in many cases those smaller towns and cities have no jobs. The commuting system either doesn't exist, or is so cost-prohibitive that you'd actually be making less money. For some people to make it they'd have to commute over 150km every day, and pay $100/day or more in just transit/parking/etc. Round that out with the costs of energy going through the roof, more companies packing up and leaving? Now you've got problems. And now dealing with governments like those in Ontario and BC which are fundamentally broken, but supported by the big cities because of what those governments hand them.

To explain to people in Europe: All of Europe votes for MEP's, all areas have their own interests. But Berlin has a higher concentration of people so the EU simply caters completely to Berlin. Now they ignore the rest of the EU but raises taxes, add more fees, energy prices go through the roof directly due to government polices(60% increase in less then a decade), cut transfer payments, and people in Berlin don't get why "you simply don't move" or "suck it up." For Americans: The house, and the senate are voted on by every state. But only except NY and CA get hand outs, the rest are ignored or get token handouts just before an election. Or to put it simply, that's why you have an electoral college to break electoral power. No such system exists here.

Re:A very good more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

"People giving an opinion in public is just noise, and people bolstering their opinion with rationalization and/or analogy is noise masquerading as signal."

johannesq, this is you. The things you suggest as no better than what you reply to, but you sound much more fearful.
"Dogs and cats...living together! Mass hysteria!!!!

Re:A very good more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright, i spelled your handle wrong. It's late.
johannesg

Re: A very good more basic question

[Corbets]

You transparently understand neither the American nor the EU system, which leaves the rest of your argument in question.

For the record, California is a net *contributor* to the US federal pot, so no, they don't get handouts.

Re:A very good more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

Not insightful at all. It is entirely legitimate to comment that an experiment is flawed to the point that any conclusions drawn from the flawed experiment are left unsupported. This is in no way a new or improper approach to assessing experiments even before the experiment occurs. In fact for those in the habit of experimentation it is a common and repeated process. The term for this process is called "evaluation."

Re:A very good more basic question

[esonik]

but that assumes (as does UBI itself) that money grows on trees.

You are apparently not aware of this but money (almost) does grow on trees. Ever wondered where the money that is around came from? It was printed by a central bank. And it still is. Just google Mario Draghi and what he's doing with the Euro lately.

citing from The Article:

Not only does SAK say that the system may reduce the labor force -- for instance by tempting mothers of small children or those close to retirement to take more time off -- but the union also suggests that making it easier to refuse unpleasant jobs may create inflationary bottlenecks.

Having people work less - but voluntarily - is one of the benefits of UBI. Many people suffer involuntary unemployment due to automation. So we end up with a part of the workforce without ANY job and the other part with full jobs. It would be smarter to distribute jobs more evenly. But the present system drives everybody to try and get a fully paid job, as a matter of risk management: it could be anytime you lose that job and without a (substantial) financial buffer you'd be in deep trouble. UBI takes away that fear of existential threat - it gives you peace of mind and makes you less clingy to the job you have. It significantly improves your negotiating position towards (potential) employers.
UBI can also significanlty reduced the size of financial buffer necessary to quit working entirely (freeing your position for someone who actually needs the salary). It's a feature, not a bug!

One might also wonder if money were created for free, whether cost (of everything) would remain the same, or rise to meet the levels of available money. In other words, the program might be undone by rampant inflation.

Yes, there will be inflation. FYI the European Central Bank is desperately trying to increase inflation (my above comment regarding Mario Draghi)

The reason why the union SKA is against UBI is pretty obvious once you think about it: Their main reason for existence is to give workers a more negotiating power against employers. UBI would provide that power naturally, making unions obsolete to some extent. The UBI is an existential threat for trade unions, THAT's why they are against it. Instead of going on strike to fight for better compensation people could just quit and look for a better job on the market.

Re:A very good more basic question

[esonik]

Mashiki, many people don't sit down and do the math of what it costs them to live and work in a metropolis. I did and figured that living in a certain well-known major city I'd have to ask a salary that the market would not provide. Working and living in a small town however looked entirely different on the financial side: _much_ lower living costs, commuting with the bike (costs = zero).
Of course you have to look a little bit and wait for the opportunity (job opening) to come around - but it really pays to do the math and figure out what your living costs are.

My list of fixed costs includes:
rent for apartment, health insurance, internet, electricity, heating, cell phone plan, commuting, insurance, subscriptions (professional magazines/associations). Also taxes, I subtract those first.
The remainder is kind of disposable income, I categorize into: food, eating out, clothes, health (what's not covered by insurance), cosmetics, household (e.g. kitchenware), furniture, hobby, travel, media (magazines), electronics, gifts, education, culture (e.g. cinema).

Now when comparing places you need to research what each category will cost you. This is much easier now with internet. If you know you major cost areas concentrate on those, make educated guess for the others.
For example, rent, health insurance, electricity and heating are the biggest ones for me. But surprisingly things like gyms can have dramatically different prices: one place I'd have to spend >$1000/yr the other more like $240. Also commuting costs can be quite different (hint: live close to work).
For the others, food, eating out, health and travel are the major ones. Of course, if you are struggling, travel and eating out can be reduced to about zero.

Anyway, it really pays to
a) know your expense structure (how much you typically pay for what, per month and year)
b) compare places when looking for a job
If you're young and don't have a mate yet, also look into the demographics.

Re: A very good more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

I think _you_ didn't get that he was making an example of what would be the equivalent for Europe or the US to the Canadian reality.

Re:A very good more basic question

[johannesg]

I have yet to see any proponent of UBI come up with a figure for their supposed overhead, but that doesn't matter anyway: the cost of a UBI program is greater than the entire current government budget (including social programs, defense, healthcare, etc.).

The US federal budget is 3.8 trillion. There are 320 million people in the US. That works out to about $12000/person/year, which I suspect most people in the US would consider to be far too low to actually live on. And again, this is with zero spending on anything else: no defense, no healthcare, no education, no infrastructure, etc.

Re:A very good more basic question

[johannesg]

You are apparently not aware of this but money (almost) does grow on trees. Ever wondered where the money that is around came from? It was printed by a central bank. And it still is. Just google Mario Draghi and what he's doing with the Euro lately.

citing from The Article:

No, it doesn't. Money is not by itself a resource. Instead it is a means of measuring value. If you create money without also creating value, all you do is dilute the supply of money. This works out great if you are the one making the money since you end up with a bigger share of the pie, but for everybody else it means their fixed amount has just become less valuable. Inflation is in a very real sense a wealth transfer from the poor (who don't own much, and have much of their capital in cash) to the rich (who have the ability to buy actual resources, rather than just money).

Throughout history, experiments have been run by very smart people with creating money from thin air. In France, rampant inflation led to the French revolution. In Germany, it led to WW2. In Zimbabwe, it has turned a fertile agricultural country into a desert that must import food. And in Venezuela, it has led an oil-rich country to not even be able to provide toilet paper to its citizens.

Having people work less - but voluntarily - is one of the benefits of UBI. Many people suffer involuntary unemployment due to automation. So we end up with a part of the workforce without ANY job and the other part with full jobs. It would be smarter to distribute jobs more evenly. But the present system drives everybody to try and get a fully paid job, as a matter of risk management: it could be anytime you lose that job and without a (substantial) financial buffer you'd be in deep trouble. UBI takes away that fear of existential threat - it gives you peace of mind and makes you less clingy to the job you have. It significantly improves your negotiating position towards (potential) employers.

It's a lovely sentiment. Like Star Trek, with everybody contributing, for free, to the best of their ability. Or like communism, with everybody taking and nobody giving. Hint: one of those is fiction.

One might also wonder if money were created for free, whether cost (of everything) would remain the same, or rise to meet the levels of available money. In other words, the program might be undone by rampant inflation.

Yes, there will be inflation. FYI the European Central Bank is desperately trying to increase inflation (my above comment regarding Mario Draghi)

I know. Do you know why he wants that? It's because he hopes to get rid of rampant government debt by obliterating the value of the currency. It's not because inflation is such a positive force, as you seem to believe. Oh, and there is this whole "wealth transfer to the rich" part as well, of course.

Re:A very good more basic question

[CrashNBrn]

You mean like Slashdot posting a CS Professor's opinion on H1B and Silicon Valley... yeah that.

Re:A very good more basic question

[cbeaudry]

Check your math. In 2013 there whre 242 million adults in the USA.

You don't pay UBI to children.

Re:A very good more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

You forget there are still taxes, so more than half of that comes back in taxes. So if half of the budget comes back as entitlements, then yes, thats in the ballpark with today's SS & Medicare spending.

Re:A very good more basic question

[GerryGilmore]

Just a thought, but perhaps a small, left-leaning country could launch a trial program, using randomized participants, and then we perform a longitudinal study on those recipients for a period of, say, 3-5 years to measure its efficacy and cost-effectiveness. Oh, wait...

Re:A very good more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

Such claim needs to be supported by complete, solid proof of the flaws to be valid.

Yes, you can point out 'your statistical sample is biased. You choose your test subjects among [group] which has a significant correlation with [effect] significantly different from the general populace [study link quote], therefore your results will not be valid for the general populace." And this effectively invalidates an ongoing experiment even before results are published.

But if you claim "some people will still claim black is white even if you present them with a peer-reviewed spectrum analysis, therefore your proof that black is black is worthless" is bullshit. Opinions don't constitute facts. Negative opinions don't invalidate solid results. And your comment that you don't like given experiment is absolutely no proof the experiment is invalid.

Example?

"God doesn't play dice" -- Albert Einstein. False. It was not a proof, it was a hunch and his personal feeling, going against his intuition. And so, it didn't invalidate quantum physics.

Re:A very good more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike this one though, that one points out specific loopholes and how they are being exploited to go against the spirit of the law. He doesn't dispute existence of H1B visas, he disputes how they are used. This is a thing for regulators to look into, analyze and fix, if factual.

With UBI a certain amount of abuse is expected; the system is built to accept, tolerate and absorb it with no major adverse effects. OTOH, H1B serves a specific purpose, and using it for going directly against that purpose is abuse that system was never meant to handle. In one of these cases spotting the abuse is a cause for alarm. In the other, it's nothing but pointless grumbling.

Re:A very good more basic question

[ArmoredDragon]

That's still $2.9 trillion.

Re:A very good more basic question

[cbeaudry]

Indeed. I just wanted the math checked :)

Re:A very good more basic question

[esonik]

I didn't say that money is a resource, merely replying to your statement implying that there is a shortage of money (as you agree, there isn't).

You are right, if there is a mismatch between goods and money circulating it will lead to inflation or deflation - undesirable at excessive levels - the level of about 1-2% inflation seems to lead to the most stable economy.
By all means, if there is a shortage of goods / services (i.e. the historic examples you cite) do not implement UBI - that would be foolish. However assuming that we have heavily automated production and services there is no shortage of goods - in fact there is overabundance of goods which leads to shortage of labor and decline of prices (what we begin see today). In that case UBI might be a solution that takes away pressure on the labor market (oversupply) and provides more demand. Of course it has to be balanced well with the economic power of the country in question. Obviously, you can't give everybody one million dollar (not today, when we still need doctors and firemen). It has to be a small amount so achievers are still motivated to work but big enough such that people left behind are not totally extracted from the economy (which may collapse the economy).

Since it's difficult to reason what amount exactly is right the Finnish experiment is so important. I think it's a very difficult transition to go from the goods-scarcity economy to the post-scarcity economy. It might be a transition where we fail the first few times we try (i.e. social unrest, dark ages) - but I hope we at least give it our best shot.

Re: A very good more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's far, far less. Employment sits at about 50â... of the total population. You need to take out those who are retired as well, and the million people in prison, etc. You also need to subtract taxes returned, and someone making enough money will have a lot of their ubi clawed back. Then there's the various cpnsimtion taxes that people on ubi will pay (eg. sales taxes). The actual cost is well under 2 trillion.

Re:A very good more basic question

[serviscope_minor]

To explain to people in Europe: All of Europe votes for MEP's, all areas have their own interests. But Berlin has a higher concentration of people so the EU simply caters completely to Berlin. Now they ignore the rest of the EU but raises taxes, add more fees, energy prices go through the roof directly due to government polices(60% increase in less then a decade), cut transfer payments, and people in Berlin don't get why "you simply don't move" or "suck it up."

There's a phrase we use to describe this; it's called making shit up.

I look forward to a "refutation" involving nothing but irrelevant links to weird blogs.

Re:A very good more basic question

[dryeo]

You seem to be arguing that the tyranny of the minority is superiour to the minority of the majority, which I guess depends on whether you're in the majority or minority.
Unluckily a few of your arguments are flawed. The BC Liberal Party, who have no relationship with the federal Liberal party and are actually a center to right wing party, gets much of its support from the rural population, whose individual votes are worth more then the urban voters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Overall in Canada, the electorate has been willing to throw out both sides, the PCs went from the biggest majority in history to 3 seats and the Liberals also got devastated after abusing their power. As well in Canada, 3rd parties can gain traction. Look at the Reform Party, a mostly rural party that eventually joined with what was left of the PCs and formed the Federal government for a decade.
The main thing is to be able to change government at least once a decade as all governments seem to get complacent and corrupt after about 8-10 years of governing, a problem here in BC where government has been in power for way to long.
Another problem with our Parliamentary system is the lack of checks on a majority government. This has worsened with the concentration of power in the PMO, which perhaps really started with Trudeau the elder and was taken to eleven by Harper. At one time the various Ministries actually had some autonomy.
You're perfectly right about the costs of living in the biggest cities.

Re: A very good more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

"God doesn't play dice" means whatever you want it to mean. Maybe God is perfect and doesn't leave it to chance. Maybe he doesn't play because he doesn't exist.

"I'm as certain of it as the sun will rise in the West"
The sun may have exploded eight minutes ago. So I'm not certain. Which means probability of between 0% to under 100%.

Re: A very good more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

So you say UBI would fail because... People can't move to small towns where there are no jobs? UBI would allow people to move back to small towns and innovate without fear of immediate starvation. The reason they can't move their NOW is because they don't have an INCOME lined up.

Re:A very good more basic question

[ChrisMaple]

It might be perfectly acceptable for some part of society to have to work less, or perhaps not to have to work at all.

The measure of a person's value is what they produce. A person who does not ever work is literally worthless. Worse, a person who never works is a burden on everyone else. At the very least, every human has a moral responsibility to try not to be a net burden on others. Failing in that effort is sad, but it's not evil. What is evil is forcing workers to support the worthless people who refuse to work.

Re:A very good more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

You've made a few basic errors:
1) there are around 240 million adults in the US
2) the total government spending was around $7B in 2016
3) yes, GROSS taxes would have to go up on earned income to pay for UBI. NET taxes would be down for 80-90% of the population. (Horribly over simplified: if you currently earn 80k and pay 20% taxes, then getting 20k UBI and paying 40% taxes on earned income is a 4k net positive for you.)
4) UBI should not be set to provide a comfortable standard of living. It should provide a basic standard of living, augmented by earned income and/or used as a backup/safety net. You should be able to live on UBI, but aspire to more.

Furthermore, the common ideological responses to UBI aren't supported by the current data:
The knee-jerk "I don't want to pay tax for someone else to be lazy" argument is understandable, but you should note that you already are paying those taxes at the moment. The only difference is that under UBI, the "lazy" people get rewarded for working, rather than penalised as they do under the current benefits system.

And as for the argument of overhead: how much do you think it costs to administer means-tested benefits compared to ones that you pay everyone? Just look at the overheads for e.g. unemployment benefits (~10%) vs retirement benefits (~1%). Currently, 49% of US households receive some form of benefits, so you'd actually see a large reduction in overhead from what we have now,

The idea of small government is one I support as well, but it's more important that it's small in terms of complexity than in terms of $ value. UBI makes benefits and taxation more transparent and equitable, vastly reducing the complexity of government. That the numbers in their budgets are larger isn't as important as the fact that they can scrap 90% of those programmes (and their associated waste).

Re:A very good more basic question

[serviscope_minor]

the cost of a UBI program is greater than the entire current government budget

No, it's really not. In order to run UBI, you also tweak the taxes. If you do it right, then the majority of people will receive *exactly* the same net pay that they currently receive.

The only people for whom it's different are the ones vey much on the bottom end of the salary scale. The UBI version where the system stays as-is and you simply dump a bunch of extra money in in a straw man.

Re:A very good more basic question

[Mashiki]

There's a phrase we use to describe this; it's called making shit up.

I look forward to a "refutation" involving nothing but irrelevant links to weird blogs.

The word you're looking for is "allegory" and when you come to Canada -- and if you actually have the marketable skills that allow you to work here. You'll understand what I'm talking about in 8 seconds.

Re: A very good more basic question

[Mashiki]

You transparently understand neither the American nor the EU system, which leaves the rest of your argument in question.

No, I get the system perfectly fine. *You* don't understand that I was making a point of what the system here in Canada is like if applied to the rest of the world. I'll wait for you to catch up.

Re:A very good more basic question

[Mashiki]

Mashiki, many people don't sit down and do the math of what it costs them to live and work in a metropolis. I did and figured that living in a certain well-known major city I'd have to ask a salary that the market would not provide. Working and living in a small town however looked entirely different on the financial side: _much_ lower living costs, commuting with the bike (costs = zero).

Most people don't sit down and do the costs of pretty much anything. But let's take your commuting costs from say SW Ontario. Unless you're in great shape, you're not going to be biking 40km one-way every day for work. That's the average commute here. A lot of people don't understand the actual differences or just how uniquely different living and working is in Canada. The only other place comparable really is parts of Japan and Australia.

Re:A very good more basic question

[Mashiki]

Well let's knock out the first myth that the BC Liberal Party is right-of-center. That's not true in the least, it's left of center. And in many cases it's further left of center then the federal liberal party. The only saving grace for BC right now is that the liberals there pander headily enough to the rural voters to ensure power, which isn't happening in Ontario. Now let's talk about the Reform party, which effectively split the vote which is why they gained power. They went from a rural party to a "populist" party for a reason. This isn't hard to figure out, it's also the same reason why we're seeing what we are in the US.

The governments of BC and Ontario have both been in power over a decade, the problem is that the liberals in both provinces were able to successfully pander to cities in their last round of elections and hold to the majority status. It should also be noted when looking at BC, that the liberal government also backed out of what they had promised to rural ridings after they had won the election. Something that didn't happen in Ontario at all. Rather the ON Liberals pandered directly to the cities while the vast majority of the province went PC -- the goodies promised to cities won out. FYI it wasn't worsened by Harper. It was worsened by Chretien. Harper simply used what was already in place, the media simply painted him as the "new big meanie" because the Liberals had lost. This is the same reason why they're falling all over him, and fainting at the mere sight of him even though he's accomplished nothing worthwhile and actually degraded freedoms and speech in Canada.

Re: A very good more basic question

[Mashiki]

No I'm saying that UBI would fail because government polices have taken a path of gutting taxable income to the point where UBI would be unsustainable. If average people are already pressed to the point where they can't afford basic necessities now, and businesses have already packed up and left for elsewhere. Where does a government get the money to implement such a system without fundamentally breaking society.

Re:A very good more basic question

[johannesg]

My _math_ is fine. And why wouldn't children get UBI? Do you believe there is no cost involved in raising a child? Clothes, food, education, hobbies, ...? Should all this money automatically come from the parents' income? Given that we are replacing _all_ benefit programs (including those for children) with UBI, shouldn't they also be receiving UBI?

Re: A very good more basic question

[johannesg]

That's just normal wellfare, then. The whole point of UBI, the very thing that sets it apart from wellfare, is that _everyone_ receives it, no matter what. Its proponents frequently claim it will eliminate the 'giant overhead' of checking whether people are illegible.

As for taxes returned, sure, by all means subtract them. But please do keep in mind that this will eat into the $12000 I calculated earlier - and that was already too low to live on.

Re:A very good more basic question

[johannesg]

Children are also people, they cost a shitload of money, and social programs aimed at them will also get replaced by UBI. Why on earth would you exclude them?

Your figure includes local and state level taxes. Not that it matters all that much. You might end up with "just enough to live on", but that would still be without all the other things like defense, healthcare, education, infrastructure, etc. If you want to get a realistic view of cost, try finding the current cost of social programs alone. Some quick searching suggests around $360 billion is what you're currently spending on that. The equivalent value in UBI would be $1125/person/year.

Ok, let's be silly here and exclude children and people we don't like. Now it's $1800/person/year.

Oh hey, we can recover that money by having them pay taxes! Let's put that at 40% (as you did). Now it's $1080/person/year. Can you survive on that? How about if you have children (since they don't get their own UBI)?

Re:A very good more basic question

[cbeaudry]

There is a cost to raising children, I know, trust me.
The money, usually DOES come from the parents income. What planet are you from?
Parents get some tax brakes, but that assumes you dont make much money (this all depends on which country you are in though).

You're right, there might be something of a child surplus given to the parents for the children. But the children do not need the full UBI. They do not and cannot contribute to society... yet.

For the same reason the tax cuts parents get when they have children do not equal a full adults salary.

Re:A very good more basic question

[dryeo]

Well if you think that the BC Liberal Party is left of center, it really makes me wonder what you consider right wing. To quote from the BC Liberals web site, https://www.bcliberals.com/

Who We Are

As BC Liberals, we’re proud of our diversity – and united by the free enterprise values shared by the majority of British Columbians. We’re focused on making BC even stronger, more prosperous, and more sustainable.

which given the traditional left, for the workers or regular people, right for the factory owners or rich, seems weird. The problem is that it is very hard to simplify things down to a 2 dimensional line when it comes to politics or actually human nature.

Re:A very good more basic question

[shutdown -p now]

I've calculated what kind of taxation it would take to provide UBI to the same amount as current federal minimum wage - $30,160 per household - to all adults in the USA, assuming the existing income distribution. If we're talking about a flat tax, with the UBI part of the income not taxed (which translates to an effective progressive tax on total income including UBI), we'd be talking about a 55% tax rate on non-UBI portion.

The effective total rate would range from 0% at the very bottom to 48% for people earning $200k, with a linear increase in between (my model assumes that there's no incomes above $200k, because I didn't find readily accessible information on income distribution above that number). All people getting ~$50k or less would receive more from the system than they'd be paying into it. Those earning $75k would see ~$12k of that taken by the system.

Re:A very good more basic question

[catprog]

Except California is a net payer to the federal government. The biggest handouts(based on how much the states pay) are the red states (excluding Texas)

Re:A very good more basic question

[Pfhorrest]

You are overlooking the fact that the same people being paid that money are also being taxed to pay for it, so it cancels out for more people near the mean income.

That $12k/year is close to 25% the mean income, so a 25% tax per person to pay for it would mean someone at the mean income pays nothing and gets nothing, someone at half the mean income gets only 12.5% the mean income (around $500/mo) in UBI-minus-tax, etc. It doesn't take 25% of the GDP away; it just shuffles it around some. To places where it will get spent more quickly actually, effectively taking less out of circulation than would have been if you had done nothing.

Re:A very good more basic question

[Anonymous Coward]

Except California is a net payer to the federal government. The biggest handouts(based on how much the states pay) are the red states (excluding Texas)

That's a myth. It's been debunked many times. The vast majority of federal spending ends up benefiting the large city populations - which primarily vote blue - even if the money seems like it's being spent in other places (possibly red places).

California imports huge amounts of wheat, and corn, and water, and lumber, and many other things - and it does so at a far lower cost than a free market would require, because of federal funds spent in other states (farming subsidies, transportation infrastructure, farming research, biomedical monitoring, and so forth). Californians can concentrate on the things they do well. Economics call this "comparative advantage".

Californians are able to retire to less expensive states - and thus spend their medicare and social security in those places - which means they don't have to save as much for retirement, and can contribute money to California during the working portion of their lives (whether in the form of taxes, or purchases).

Californians can spend a lot less on welfare because the military - mostly based in other places - provides a great exit path from poverty for many people, as well as giving them skills (less money spent on schools).

The result of hundred of similar considerations are that California is NOT a net payer to the federal government - because huge amounts of federal funds being spend elsewhere are being spent to the benefit of California. Given the huge political influence of the state, it's probably a net recipient when everything is taken into account.

This issue has been debunked so many times that it really should be embarrassing to be still repeating these myths. US politicians like to use divide-and-conquer tactics to prevent reform: don't make yourself part of the problem, when you can instead be part of the solution.

Re:A very good more basic question

[Sabriel]

Hmm. US "federal" budget. You're using the 2015 estimate, checking states budgets... total states spending estimate of 1.83 trillion in 2015, minus 0.59 trillion federal contribution. So combined budget of the USA as a nation in 2015 estimate 5 trillion. Divide by 240 million adult citizens, 20k/y each.

However: UBI would not be giving 20k to every adult citizen. A sensible UBI would be set to the poverty threshold, which 2015 estimate is 12k (averaged, will vary by state). So actually a little over half the US federal and states combined budget should _at most_ go to UBI. Note that current US federal budget spending on SS/unemployment/labor in 2015 already 33%.

A further requirement for UBI to be implementable in the US would necessarily be economic reform to ensure that those who have no need of the UBI (a wild hypothetical appears: those with more than median household income) would return their UBI and fund others to the government via the usual higher-income taxation methods. This would further reduce the budgetary impact.

Inb4 "state vs federal": UBI by definition only works if it is embraced "universally". Given the way the US operates its spending, for UBI to be implementable in any given state, that state's government will have to come to an arrangement with the federal government on how to fund it. This means UBI may not happen in (part of) the US, but that's a political problem not an economic one.

Inb4 "my taxes": you are _already_ paying. And you pay not just in taxes but in the levels of crime, health and liberty you are prepared to accept or surrender.

UBI reduces crime by reducing poverty (indeed, effectively eliminating the latter barring acute/outlier circumstances, and less crime means less taxes you need to pay to combat crime and heal those injured - directly and indirectly - by crime and poverty).

UBI increases liberty by reducing government power (e.g. its ability to control and micromanage distribution, of the taxes you provide for the common welfare, to favor special interest groups).

I hope this helps clear up misconceptions about UBI at least a little.

Re:A very good more basic question

[werepants]

Try crunching the numbers yourself sometime before you make such declarations. A new tax policy is inherently part of implementing UBI. A lot of conservatives and libertarians are proponents of a flat tax, because they believe a progressive tax is unfair. So let's assume a flat tax of 25%, and only income beyond your $12k basic income is taxed.

Based on 2015 numbers from the IRS, that would constitute a tax decrease for some, and a tax increase for others. People below $70k a year would end up with more takehome pay (obviously, the difference will be most dramatic for those with 0 earnings, who now have $12k). People with incomes above $70k a year will end up paying more, because as a group, their real tax rates today end up being somewhat less than 25%.

This also has the virtue of being a progressive tax and flat tax at the same time - since someone making $48k a year from a job ends up paying $12k of that into taxes, so they end up paying every dollar of the UBI back but have an effective tax rate of 0%. People below that level have a negative tax rate, because they are getting more from UBI than they put in. People above have a tax rate that climbs gradually, asymptotically approaching 25% (and is basically there at about $3M in annual earnings).

Finally, assume that this gets rid of entitlement spending. If I assume $500B in entitlement spending (some would say it is far more - depends on what programs you include) then this program actually ends up saving money versus our current budget.

UBI is affordable, unless you make gross simplifications that misrepresent how it would work. The information is freely available from the IRS to do the math for yourself.

Re:The problem

[queazocotal]

You do it by trialling it in selected groups.
One obvious way is to take ten thousand people, who are possible candidates, and flip a coin ten thousand times to see if they're enrolled or not.

This lets you fairly robustly measure how much more or less the people work, and other costs.

For example, if you have a 'normal' benefits system, you have costs in the system about investigating if people are working while claiming benefit, prosecuting them, making sure they're looking for work, penalising them if they're not, advising them on what they must do to get into work or face sanctions, ...

In UBI, some or all of these costs go away.
Ideally, it would also try to count productivity of people who are working, with or without UBI.

Re:The problem

[thesupraman]

So, you think sickness benefits, unemployment benefits, state pensions, etc are somehow not 'giving money out'? They are somehow 'measured'?

The whole point of a (properly designed) UBI is to replace ALL of that, with a single right of income.
The advantages include removal of the huge amount of bureaucracy, management costs, corruption, and fraud.
Basically it means everyone gets treated EQUALLY, and you would be amazed how many people hate that idea.
Usually because THEY want to be the ones deciding who is 'worthy' of support.

The cost is self-adjusting, because basically all countries have graduated income taxes, and UBI is also taxed, so people with large incomes
just end up repaying most of it in tax anyway. A country should use a combination of personal tax, and savings from the scrapping of all the broken
other forms of social benefits to fund it.
Of course that is putting it simplistically, however that is the formula of a true UBI, which many haters (usually those who currently profit from control
of existing welfare schemes) work very hard to ignore.
UBI is not 'free money for all', it is an acceptance that welfare is a sensible right in society, so we should remove the broken and inequitable systems
that current exist, covered in bandaids, and replace them with a simple single system that treats everyone equally, is low cost to manage, and almost
by definition free of corruption and fraud, because it is so simple..

Here's a good reason for you

[Okian Warrior]

I haven't seen anyone come up with a good reason people wouldn't use basic income to work less and be lazy. I can tell you, if I had guaranteed income for life, I would probably not ever work again.

Here you go.

You have to realize that "work" may not be going out and doing a 9-to-5 job in the traditional sense. Newton made a bunch of his discoveries while on forced leave from Cambridge due to the plague, and there are many historical examples of well-to-do scientists and explorers and artists who made great discoveries because they had the leisure and means to do so.

Stephen King was dirt poor for much of his early life, but he still wrote because he loved writing. Imaging how much more he could have contributed to popular literature if he didn't have to take back-breaking jobs as a young man to make ends meet.

Not everyone will be Newton or King, but anyone who takes up a hobby or minor occupation and becomes really good at it might extend the frontiers of that area. All of this has the potential to enrich our society and further our scientific knowledge.

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[phantomfive]

Not everyone will be Newton or King

No, no one is going to be Newton or King. Your theory sucks, and your argument sucks as well: because you start with one point, give good, concrete examples supporting it, then fully admit that it is unrealistic to expect that people are going to live up to your examples. Then you follow up with a second example, for which you present not evidence whatsoever. You didn't even try!

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[sjames]

He said not everyone would be. Are you claiming that the entire thing is an utter failure if "that guy" actually veges out on the couch until his circulatory system collapses?

Consider that Rowling has brought enough money into the UK's economy to cover a few hundred thousand person years of the dole.

Others might make somewhat lesser contributions, but probably not zero.

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[religionofpeas]

Others might make somewhat lesser contributions, but probably not zero

I see a lot of people on welfare making negative contributions. They break things out of boredom, or they ruin their health by smoking, eating, and drinking, and require fixing up with expensive medical treatments.

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[Dagger2]

Some people may be like that, but I see two problems with that observation.

Short term: current welfare strongly encourages people to not get a job, because when you get a job you automatically lose the welfare. Let's say you get offered $1100/mo to work a 30h/week job, but your welfare gives you $1000/mo. Essentially you're being offered $100/mo for 30 hours of work per week. Would you take that offer? With a UBI, suddenly the same job would be paying 11x as much for your time, and I suspect that would make you more likely to say "yes". In other words, a UBI would remove the boredom for many people, and thus improve the situation.

Long term: between automation and AIs, jobs are going away. There's just not going to be enough work out there for humans to do (and this probably isn't a very far future either, because AI research is moving really damn fast). Having lots of people with no work to do is something we're going to have to deal with whether or not we do a UBI, so it doesn't constitute a reason not to do a UBI. Also, without a UBI, those people are either going to be on welfare (with its associated high per-person administration overhead), or they aren't -- in which case they won't be bored, they'll be bored and desparate. I'd say that wouldn't be an improvement.

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[religionofpeas]

With a UBI, suddenly the same job would be paying 11x as much for your time, and I suspect that would make you more likely to say "yes".

With UBI, the employer would offer you $100/mo for the job, because apparently that's the current market value.

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[Dagger2]

Or not. Would you take the offer I described?

You're right that they wouldn't offer the same amount, but surely you see the advantage of not having a big trap around welfare that encourages people to not take a job once they're on it.

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[religionofpeas]

The employer only needs one person desperate enough to take the job. You can change all the money flows, but in the end people will end up similarly desperate as they are now. Basic supply and demand.

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[scottpig]

Stephen King was dirt poor for much of his early life, but he still wrote because he loved writing. Imaging how much more he could have contributed to popular literature if he didn't have to take back-breaking jobs as a young man to make ends meet.

Arguing that the guy who's written something like 800 books could have written another hundred or two if only he didn't have work a day job in his early years really doesn't seem like the most compelling argument you could make.

just saying.

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[kqs]

I see a lot of people on welfare making negative contributions. They break things out of boredom, or they ruin their health by smoking, eating, and drinking, and require fixing up with expensive medical treatments.

And I see a lot of people NOT on welfare doing the same thing. I see lots of people on welfare taking shitty part-time jobs with back-breaking, health-destroying labor, and buying shitty food because they cannot afford healthy food nor the time needed to prepare healthy meals.

So... many people will do stupid unhealthy things whether they work or not. But many underemployed people do stupid unhealthy things because they cannot afford anything else. May as well let them afford healthy things; it will save us all money in health care down the road (and is more moral if you care about such things).

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[serviscope_minor]

Sure, it the employer didn't want the job done.

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[religionofpeas]

In the example under the current system, they can pay $1100 to hire someone with a $1000 welfare check, which they will lose. In the new system, they'd pay $100 to hire the same person who gets to keep their $1000 check. For the employee, it makes no difference, so they'd be just as likely to take the job as they do now.

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[dywolf]

i seriously doubt you actually know anyone on welfare.
the majority of people on welfare work more than than the standard 40hr week.

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[Dagger2]

I'll take that as a "no" then.

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[Anonymous Coward]

Stephen King was dirt poor for much of his early life, but he still wrote because he loved writing. Imaging how much more he could have contributed to popular literature

He is not a great example, but I mostly like your argument.

The problem is, you don't want to defend it by a lucky flare-up who will be rare among the UBI recipients, because they're rare among all people not because UBI recipients are stupider. And you miss most of the social benefit of the program if you can only recognize the same value that capitalist society already recognizes by heaping monetary rewards on King late in his life. There's more benefit than what you can see by focusing on cases of personal fame.

I know a lot of theatre people in NYC and am annoyed by the silly jobs they have to do when they could be making theatre instead. There are two social-level problems with this:

  - There are a lot of people doing excellent work that's loved by an audience too small and poor to sustain them. There is a larger, richer audience, but it's served with less work, and often but not always lower-quality work. If that weren't true, I wouldn't know these people. Their work is better. The story of artist's economic lives people have in their heads is something like, (1) poor mediocre artist, (2) perfects their craft, (3) gets a larger audience, (4) lives comfortably. The actual story is, (1) poor mediocre artist perfects their craft, (1a) an arbitrary amount of time passes, (2) artist gets lucky, (3) artist compromises and does some lower-quality populist work, (4) artist gets paid about $1000/wk, no travel expenses, living with "host families," to do the same show over and over again for six months, and 2/3 of the time they are looking for work for $0/wk. Stephen King is a great example for part of that because his work is lower quality than many writers who can't live off their writing, and he got lucky with Carrie. but of course he gets more than $1000/wk sporadic, which is what a Broadway lead gets.

  - It's awkward to be around them because I have the sort of job their fathers had, one with a 401k and enough money to give children the lifestyle they had themselves. Both of us are always thinking about the choice of marrying another artist vs. someone like me. I'm stuck wishing people I care about would make a choice I wouldn't wish on them. I'd rather need to produce some art to be interesting, or at least know that, if I didn't and someone wanted me for a partner anyway, I'd be appreciated as something unique not an unspoken defeated compromise. I will never know that, not for certain even if it were true, because of the social strain on our forming families. If these problems could be socialized away enough that the choice they faced were a different one, were between art on one hand, and truly discretionary things like "travel" or fancy unnecessary cars from Munich on the other, with our childrens' opportunities factored out of the adults' choice, this strain would be removed because even I can see that art is worth more to me in that hypothetical world, and I'm the one who chose against it.

It spirals into darker areas. It's a sexist issue because both men and women face the same problem, but in the standard case the woman gets to spend her whole life making art while the man gets to watch, which is not fair. In the exceptional case the men are risking so much more than the women and suffer all kinds of negative stereotyping that they must learn to shrug off while the woman are perceived as "normal." Since this whole thing is on everyone's mind all the time, there's an unconscious attempt to balance this sexism toward some optimistic fantasy-world through progressive pressure that makes everything much worse: an unconscious victim-blaming rage-disgust directed at people like me simply for what we are not what we have chosen, and woman-to-woman shaming attacks on the social status of women who make non-reckless life choices.

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you would bomb the GRE. 2/10 written argumentative analytical skills and use equivocation and no true Scotsman to refute a rhetorical argument that is cogent.

You appear to be on the lower side of dunning-kruger. Idiots don't have the intelligence to know that they are idiots.

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[Anonymous Coward]

And no one would take $100/mo for 30 hours a week, and that employer would be crushed under businesses that offer a more enticing wage. The UBI would allow workers to walk out on exploitation by employers, since they would have a choice beyond accepting unfair pay or being homeless.

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[Anonymous Coward]

They would get no takers for the $100 job, because workers won't be desperate enough to take it.

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[sjames]

The problem with welfare goes deeper. Let's say you get offered $900 a month. If you take it, you lose welfare so you paid $100/month for the job. When the job craps out 3 months later (not unlikely if it's seasonal work), it'll take several months to get back on welfare.

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[sjames]

No. They will offer enough to convince a non-crazy person it's worth showing up for. That will be more than $100.

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[sjames]

Not really, no. Fear of ending up on the street with no food is a special level of desperation that won't exist under UBI. There will be plenty of people who really want more than the basics and will happily work for that, but they won't be truly desperate.

You're not just shifting the flow of money, you're greatly increasing income security. In addition, with the employer only providing a portion of the income, they'll have to treat the employees with respect or they will walk.

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[ChrisMaple]

There's just not going to be enough work out there for humans to do

Yet another person who's never heard of Parkinson's Law.

Re:Here's a good reason for you

[Dagger2]

This?

However, in current understanding, Parkinson's law is a reference to the self-satisfying uncontrolled growth of the bureaucratic apparatus in an organization.

You're missing the point. The point isn't that there won't be anything that needs doing. The point is that AIs will be able to do all of it. It doesn't matter how much bureaucracy you create; if it can all be handled by AIs then there won't be anything for humans to do.

The situation in entertainment

[hackwrench]

So, similar to the first part of Tim Minchin's "Cont(ext)": https://www.youtube.com/result...

Re:The problem

[Dog-Cow]

Unless all participants are grouped together geographically, your experiment will be invalid. For example, one criticism is that UBI will lead to price inflation. You can't measure that when the number of participants in the experiment is dwarfed by the rest of the population several (dozens or hundred) times over.

Re:The problem

[Dog-Cow]

Most of those you listed are things an employee pays for from their gross income. At least in the places in the US with which I am familiar.

Re:I can tell you

[Wisp]

Yep, true.

I live in a place where most of my friends who do things like art, medial care, science, are barely getting by. I would dive into that research project that may never pay if I didn't have to choose between that the cheap food payed for by change scraped out of the couch.

Amusing

[JimSadler]

Frankly i find it amusing that anyone thinks there is any option other than a basic income for all people. I under stand that there is a huge pile of beliefs and platitudes that will put many minds in opposition to a free income. But when human labor, either intellectual or physical is no longer needed there is very little choice. We can list a bunch of vital issues that relate to simple miseries or fears that are caused by poverty. Alcoholism, mental illness, sexual crimes, drug addictions, mad bombing such as the Oklahoma City Court House, armed robberies, economic crimes and many more all are related to people simply being unhappy. There is a huge tax issue due to these unhappy or frightened people acting out. Now imagine a system in which more and more people are in fear of sleeping on the streets, going hungry, or needing medical care that they can not get. That creates a climate of a brewing and ultra violent revolution and also opens paths for our enemies to take over our nation. Today truck drivers know full well that their trade is quickly ending as do taxi drivers and delivery people. Construction people are still cloudy on the notion that their trade will vanish. Factory workers have already been sort of slaughtered. Retraining is a dead end. The new trade will vanish all too soon. Teachers are now being eliminated by computer led class rooms. In some cases lawyers are also already being replaced by computers. Surgeries are now done by robotic means. No trade is exempt and unemployment will soar. In real poverty the poor become dangerous and will not silently starve to death in some dark corner.

Re:Amusing

[lazy genes]

The automation of politicians will finally solve the problem.

Re:Amusing

[jcr]

Frankly i find it amusing that anyone thinks there is any option other than a basic income for all people.

Frankly, I find your snotty condescension towards people who are smarter then you quite tedious.

-jcr

Everyone wants a slave

[lazy genes]

Every living thing on this planet is working as hard as they can. In payment we get the ability to ignore reality.

Re:Scale

[hackwrench]

Those things are done on a much smaller scale than a proper UBI system would do. I don't believe that people should be treated equally. It has the same problems as attempting to decide who is worthy of support. One idea is that there should be plenty of opportunities for people to create their own inequalities. Getting ahead is becoming unequal.
Striving for equality results in people not getting what they could have because it results in inequality. Resources get squandered.
I believe that we are currently measuring the wrong things. In transitioning to a new economic reality, we have the opportunity to start measuring the right things, but we still need to figure out what those are.

The most logical argument yet.

[Gravis Zero]

"If you do not have basic security you cannot be rational,"

Exactly.

Not only does SAK say that the system may reduce the labor force -- for instance by tempting mothers of small children or those close to retirement to take more time off -- but the union also suggests that making it easier to refuse unpleasant jobs may create inflationary bottlenecks.

We have automation so that we didn't have to perform unpleasant of dangerous jobs! Not enough workers? AUTOMATE IT! Can't automate it? Pay people what the job is actually worth!

This is how the future should work.

Re:The most logical argument yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pay people what the job is actually worth!

In a world of globalization, that figure drops rapidly to whatever a migrant is willing to do to stay in our beautiful country.

Re:The most logical argument yet.

[ThomasBHardy]

Pay people what the job is actually worth!

In a world of globalization, that figure drops rapidly to whatever a migrant is willing to do to stay in our beautiful country.

Shortened that for you:
STFY:
Pay the most desperate worker available what the job is worth to them.

Re:The most logical argument yet.

[serviscope_minor]

Without UBI, there may well be a shortage of desperate workers, compared to the system of work or starve. Do we really want to drive the economy on desperation?

Re:The most logical argument yet.

[ChrisMaple]

Do we really want to run the economy on legalized theft?

Re:The most logical argument yet.

[serviscope_minor]

Are you too cowardly to give a straight answer to my question?

Do we really want to run the economy on legalized theft?

Taxes are not legalised theft. The only way to run a society is by levying taxes. If you truly believe taxes are theft, then move to the Libertarian Paradise of the Congo and let us all know how wonderful it is. If you think it's too violent and dangerous or even just too crappy compared to the US: congratulations that's your tax dollars at work and you're being hypocritical by using them every single day but refusing to acknowledge thir worth.

A welfare state is an entirely reasonable way to run a country. Having hordes of starving people doesn't do anyone any good: you're going to wind up paying either way, either in terms of welfare or in terms of prisons and police.

Re:Useless? That article.

[Gravis Zero]

Here's the thing - basic income CAN theoretically not work out... but some an economist with a stake or two against it working is NOT evidence that this version of it hasn't panned out.

Business folk (the type that like exploiting cheap labor) are terrified they are going to lose their leverage on people so they are summarily declaring it a failure. It could have been the single most successful thing on day one and they still would have declared it a failure because it's a threat to their way of life. That is to say that their way of life is exploiting people's food/housing insecurity, the modern form of slavery.

Basic Income

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's fairly likely that automation will make it increasingly hard to justify 40+ hour workweeks for the majority of citizens of developed countries. However, that hasn't happened yet.

The countries that are early adopters may regret it because it's easy for a population to turn into pleasure-loving layabouts. Look at the heirs of Sam Walton - has any one of them, with all the money and education thrown at them, had a significant positive impact on society, other than than to fund art museums and that sort of thing? That's the reason why billionaires like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates say that they'd rather give their wealth away to charity than pass it along to their children and grandchildren.

So I think we (USA) should sit back and watch what happens to other country's experiments.

Re:Useless? That article.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody heard of Google search?

Finland is no where near "automated" so the money is coming from someone else. Dream on socialist utopians.

Has anyone thought about the implications of large numbers of people not working? It's call unnecessary excess, i.e. disposable human beings. Now that's a real problem. Maybe the "elites" will want to "clean" up the planet. Try these for starters (and there's much more out there):

https://mishtalk.com/2017/01/09/living-wage-idiocy/#more-43272
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-17/dangers-universal-basic-income
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-10-27/my-second-thoughts-about-universal-basic-income

You don't say!

[Opportunist]

An organization whose only reason to exist hinges on people being unable to tell their boss "Stuff it, slaver, I quit!" when he makes unreasonable demands is against something that enables people to just get up and leave jobs with insane employers?

That's unpossible!

Re:Useless? That article.

[Plus1Entropy]

Must be a trade union for psychics:

The labor group says the results of the two-year pilot program will fail to sway its opposition to [Universal Basic Income]

Good thing they warned the Finnish government before they wasted time and money on that pilot program.

Re:Business folk

[hackwrench]

Most business folk are not the ones most keen to take improper advantage of people. Sure they make a business decision to move where the labor is cheaper, but what Trump is doing with Tariffs and such is no real skin off their nose, just telling them where it is most economical to redeploy. When my brother was in the military he sold books online that were discarded by other military people as they were deployed elsewhere. It bothered him not at all to completely refund someone who was not satisfied with a book's condition. My brother's LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oc...

Why is this news?

[locater16]

Why is this news? Why is it here? This sentence makes even reporting this entirely pointless "The labor group says the results of the two-year pilot program will fail to sway its opposition to a welfare-policy idea that's gaining traction among those looking for an alternative in the post-industrial age."
It's exactly like reporting neo-nazis don't like Jews much. Angrily shouting "Reality won't sway my opinion one way or another!" is the same as stating "I am a non sentient rock!" What, exactly, is the point of reporting, listening to, or acknowleding such an opinion beyond "oh look, a talking rock!"

Re:Why is this news?

[hackwrench]

The problem is that there are a lot of talking rocks. This problem is what makes any given talking rock news.

Re:Just being a contrarian

[hackwrench]

Not an argument.

Needle exchange makes sense

[rsilvergun]

when you've decided not to abandon drug users to their fate. Basic income is an attempt to work around that issue by giving it to everyone so folks can't complain about what's 'fair'. That's pretty much what shoots social welfare down over and over again, folks don't think it's fair that you don't have to suffer. I've had nerd friends who felt angry & upset that kids today don't have to go through what they did (the bullying and what have you) post Columbine. I've pointed it out to them and they agree it's ridiculous but they can't shake it. Bottom line: People want to see other people punished for their mistakes the same way they were. Smart people get over that, but there's a lot of not-so-smart folks...

Re:Needle exchange makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Want to know what becomes of people who are not punished for their mistakes? See the SJW snowflakes for a real-world example.

Re:Needle exchange makes sense

[MrMr]

There may be a reason for the attitude, or perhaps your nerd friends are chimps? http://www.livescience.com/262...

Re:Needle exchange makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the point of WHERE the government gets the money from to GIVE it to everyone.
To give people money for nothing you have to take it from others that earned it... punishing them for being productive.

Re:Needle exchange makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps they're just angry that 'geek' is being handled as a fashion label. I know I get pissed when people think reading tweets from 'I Fucking Love Science' translates into any actual interest in science. Not because I want scientific literacy to be some secret club; quite the opposite, which is why I despise scientific literacy being turned into a fashionable identity label, keeping the trappings of it (I'm smart and quirky!) while throwing out all meaningful substance (...because I do a lot of hard studying and don't take up hobbies based on their popularity.)

Sigh...that's due to baby boomers retiring.

[Brannon]

It's not Barack Obama's fault that a lot of people were born about 65 years ago. That's why retirees (and children, btw) are excluded from the labor statistics that functional adults use (U4, U5, U6--all of which look pretty good by historical standards)--and why the Breitbart set has to manufacture some misleading metric to placate their mouthbreathing outrage junkies.

Re:Sigh...that's due to baby boomers retiring.

[Anne Thwacks]

t's not Barack Obama's fault that a lot of people were born about 65 years ago.

Of course it is. Don't you have Twitter where you come from?

Re:Sigh...that's due to baby boomers retiring.

[dgatwood]

It's not Barack Obama's fault that a lot of people were born about 65 years ago. That's why retirees (and children, btw) are excluded from the labor statistics that functional adults use (U4, U5, U6--all of which look pretty good by historical standards)--and why the Breitbart set has to manufacture some misleading metric to placate their mouthbreathing outrage junkies.

I was actually looking at U6. There are almost half again more people unemployed by that metric than there were at the end of the Clinton administration. I would not call that "really low". It isn't dire or anything, but it isn't great, either.

Re:Business folk

[Gravis Zero]

Most business folk are not the ones most keen to take improper advantage of people. Sure they make a business decision to move where the labor is cheaper

And you have contradicted yourself.

Re:Unemployment rates

[hackwrench]

What figures are you using? Worldwide? Are the jobs as good now as the jobs that used to be around? My mom is a 64 year old Uber driver.

The problem with your argument...

[Brannon]

is that it conflicts with all of human history.

There is ample evidence of social & economic collapse under communal economic systems (and you're kidding yourself if you don't think that's what UBI is, because the only way to pay for it is to tax wealth so much that it becomes de-facto communism)--and there is basically no evidence to support the theory that society cannot replace the jobs lost to technological automation. People have been predicting the latter ever since the loom and they've been wrong every time (including *right now* BTW, where the unemployment rate in the US is quite low). I'm going to predict it will never happen, and at most I'll only be wrong once.

Re:The problem with your argument...

[dbIII]

communal economic systems

It's not that, it's something even worse. People who don't need the income still get it to jack up their total income, but to support the lossy system of them being taxed to pay themselves they end up losing more than they get. A safety net of welfare for people who need it is several times more sane and would be vastly cheaper.

Re:The problem with your argument...

[Anonymous Coward]

First you should learn what Communism is compared to Socialism. Your thinking might become more worthwhile if you learned the terms you employ. Communism is communal ownership of the means of production with limits on personal ownership. Socialism instead only asserts public ownership in special cases defined by the public interest. In socialism there is plenty of personal ownership of both wealth and the means of production. UBI is on its face socialism rather than communism. Among advocates of UBI in the US are owners of businesses that wish to end the minimum wage. Basically it would be these businesses that live on the public dole by having the government subsidize their labor.

    Socialist countries in the world have the highst standard of living and greatest citizen satisfaction as has been determined by measurement.

Re:The problem with your argument...

[Major Blud]

FFS, someone who actually gets it. Thanks you sir.

basic income is morally outrageous

[Anonymous Coward]

Sell your soul to Elon Musk!

Re:Unemployment rates

[phantomfive]

What figures are you using?

U6.

My mom is a 64 year old Uber driver.

If your mom is underemployed (not working full time, for example), then she counts as unemployed in the U6 statistics.

Re:Business folk

[hackwrench]

No, I haven't. Key words are improper advantage, and keen. Business people in general have to compete with other businesses. If the costs are the same, they have no complaints with things like Trump's tariffs that make the labor in other countries more expensive. There is an article about the GoDaddy CEO saying that the American education system isn't up to snuff, so he needs H1B visa people. He is not most business people. If he gets his way, other business people will follow suit, but they aren't all fired up about him getting his way and wouldn't mind fixing the system and getting Americans up to snuff.
https://slashdot.org/submissio...

Re:Unemployment rates

[hackwrench]

https://www.bing.com/search?q=...
The first link is to: http://unemploymentdata.com/cu... which links to: http://unemploymentdata.com/un... which says "I find it hard to believe that we are at full employment." Also these are apparently U.S. figures and not worldwide figures.

Of course unions oppose it.

[bistromath007]

The entire reason UBI is going to become a necessity is because much of the world will soon be post-labor. Automation will make the vast majority of humans unemployable, probably by 2030, and no later than 2050.

The unions will argue that the appropriate response to this is to outlaw automation, to hamstring its progress by demanding that it adhere to ludicrous regulations where it is used, and to otherwise do everything in their power to keep their power, just like any other political entity. Most unions haven't served their members more than they serve themselves for decades. They are terrified of being irrelevant.

Re:Of course unions oppose it.

[ChrisMaple]

There will never be no work available for someone who wants to work, provided that the government doesn't make working illegal. People want goods and services, and that is a job opportunity for a potential worker. When machines make every routine thing, human-produced goods will be premium-priced objects.

Please get it out of your head that there will ever be a society where no jobs are available. This is a scam, perpetuated by fools and originated by people who want to control you by making you feel useless and helpless.

Re:Of course unions oppose it.

[bistromath007]

When I look at the quality of handcrafted stuff today, I feel even more certain that the labor market will soon disappear. There's a reason very few people in the US make a living by making things: doing it well is difficult, expensive, difficult and expensive to learn, and a machine can absolutely always do it better and faster, period.

5% is really not that bad

[Crashmarik]

The U.S. spends 1.27 Trillion on Social Security Unemployment and Labor

https://www.google.com/imgres?...

That's just at the federal level and at a guesstimate is close to 8% of the economy. It would be great to eliminate that and get the number down to 5%

Re:5% is really not that bad

[BlueStrat]

That's just at the federal level and at a guesstimate is close to 8% of the economy. It would be great to eliminate that and get the number down to 5%

In the US? Ha!

I guarantee you a UBI would be in addition to SS/unemployment insurance/etc. They can't even eliminate the mortgage deduction from federal taxes nor restructure social security so it doesn't go broke, what makes you think that politicians would even attempt to touch those 'third rails' of "Social Security Unemployment and Labor"?

The US would be in extreme danger of defaulting on interest payments on the national debt, and taxes for anyone actually working/producing would necessarily skyrocket, so those people will eventually cease to create value/wealth and then the system will collapse when it runs out of other people's money (or, if the Fed loans itself even more trillions to cover it, when people lose faith in the US dollar and the currency tanks).

Strat

Re:5% is really not that bad

[Crashmarik]

That's why it would be great to get that number down to 5%

Re:Unemployment rates

[phantomfive]

I'm not sure what you point is here, but in any of the graphs you linked to, there is no appearance of automation taking everyone's jobs. Which is the topic under discussion.

Re:Unemployment rates

[hackwrench]

You made the point that "unemployment is low". I'm not sure what "low" is, so I depended on the articles to express some indication. The articles seem to indicate that unemployment isn't low. Furthermore, US unemployment is insufficient to determine whether there is a worldwide shortage of work, especially since Trump is doing things to make the US more attractive for businesses to employ people here as opposed to elsewhere.

Re:Unemployment rates

[phantomfive]

Furthermore, US unemployment is insufficient to determine whether there is a worldwide shortage of work,

What numbers would you suggest using?

Why should you see a rise in income?

[hackwrench]

Sure money is a unit of measurement, but I have yet to see an analysis that what it measures is what anyone thinks it is measuring or that what it is measuring is the right thing to measure.

Re:Why should you see a rise in income?

[Anonymous Coward]

Using money as a means of determining quality of life is like using lines of code to determine the quality of a developer. Zero is universally considered bad, but once you get past a threshold, increasing the number may very well make things worse.

Re: Why should you see a rise in income?

[Anonymous Coward]

Very interesting line of thought. Start promoting happy, healthy lives by having fewer zeros in the bank account. Give philanthropists more face time than celebraties so everybody wants to be one when they grow up.

Re:Why should you see a rise in income?

[CrashNBrn]

Money measures power. The affluent do not want to redistribute their deserved power.

Re:Why should you see a rise in income?

[Anne Thwacks]

Money measures power. The affluent do not want to redistribute their deserved power.

The affluent are affluent because we have structured society that enables them to so be. The roles are made by public consent (that is what democracy means). If the public withdraws its consent, you get what happened in the French Revolution, ISIS and Boko Haram. Angry people supporting mindless violence.

There is a good change it will happen in America if the economic system is not fixed. The concept of "deserved" in this context is laughable. It is "deserved - according to half-baked rules cooked up by a bunch of clowns, mostly on the take".

Surely it is obvious that the value of things is determined by peoples' perception. And peoples perceptions are mostly determined by the advertising industry.

"Before killing the lawyers, you might want to start on advertising execs" - Shakespeare's spiritual descendants.

Re:Why should you see a rise in income?

[ChrisMaple]

Power comes in two varieties: violence and threatening violence. Power is not measured by money, power is measured by injury and death.

Money is a store of value, traded for production in order to be able to later trade it for different production. Money measures production; money measures wealth. Money is the reward for the virtue of production.

Re:Why should you see a rise in income?

[mujadaddy]

No, money is a unit of suffering: "Do I willingly suffer now for benefit later?"

That is why economic actors can find middle ground where they both benefit: their incentive is to make themselves suffer the least; textbooks frame this as "seeking the most benefit".

Re:Unemployment rates

[hackwrench]

Some worldwide employment measure. I don't know that the figure exists, nor am I confident in existing measuring methods, but I'll take what I can get as having potential for being better than nothing, but the more evidence to that fact, the better.

Re:Reason to exist

[hackwrench]

I determine for myself my reason to exist. https://www.youtube.com/result...

You pay people to do fuck-all...

[jcr]

and a lot of them will do exactly that. Your economy loses whatever productivity they might have contributed, socialists get more dependent voters to re-elect looters, and their kids grow up believing the world owes them a living.

You have only to look at the effects of multi-gerneration welfare dependents in the USA and the UK to know how destructive this is.

-jcr

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[gweihir]

You seem to somehow have missed that most jobs will go away and not be replaced with others. Hence your statements make no sense. Nobody is really advocating for an UBI if enough jobs stay available and need to be done.

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, so what do you do? Like "for reals" as the kids call it. NOTE: Reading and commenting on /. doesn't count!

Chances are that you're not necessary at all, and your company could survive just fine if you left and they didn't hire anyone to replace you.
(In other words you're already on corporate welfare, so shut the fuck up.)

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[Dog-Cow]

I have an alternate prediction: people will find things to do that other people will want done. That is the basis of every economy in history, and it's not going to change because a robot can serve me pizza.

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[religionofpeas]

Most jobs will stay, simply because people can do the work cheaper than robots.

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[Dagger2]

You're being short-sighted. A robot that can serve you pizza won't change much, no. But what about a robot that can do all of the things we're currently doing, and all of those "things to do that other people will want done"?

Our automation for physical tasks is improving, but we're also rapidly approaching the point of having AIs that can do cognitive or creative tasks as well as we can. It's easy to say "we'll come up with something", but there's not going to be a whole lot of things left that humans can do better than some combination of robot and AI can.

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[gweihir]

And that is exactly not what is going to happen. Robots are already cheaper than factory workers in Asia. That is pretty much as low as it gets for somewhat skilled labor.

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[gweihir]

Actually, there are mainly two things humans can do better: 1. Prop up other human's egos by serving them and 2. Creativity and insight. The latter is out of reach for most people as basis of a job and the former does not furnish that many jobs. It does not even need strong AI (which we are not getting any time soon), weak AI (i.e. "automation") is quite enough.

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[religionofpeas]

But not all the work is in a factory. Look at a job of cutting someone's hair. It involves talking to the customer to find out what they would like, make suggestions, chit-chat about their kids, and actually cutting and modelling the hair. And the extra resources that the human hairdresser needs compared to sitting on a couch is minimal. There's no way that a robot could do that cheaper.

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that 60% of the US population is already "unemployed" loafers, right? Your productivity losses will be marginal. Those who are okay living with their lot on no or others income are already dragging "your" economy into the shitter. This just streamlines the processes.

Not that it's workable in the US. Without universal healthcare, the system breaks down as the cash payments are insufficient to cover such services.

Personally, I look forward to the day when we stop subsidizing all the fucking Christians having baby after baby and assholes who overbuy starter mansions and then claim rebates on their taxes, effectively raising my rates to cover their handouts.

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[Dagger2]

I wouldn't be so sure about creativity and insight either. Check out this sketch, colored by an AI neural network based on just a few squiggled hints. You can hardly argue that coloring isn't creative, and that's an AI that exists right now -- the tech is only improving as time goes on.

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't support the poster you are addressing. I will just comment on you final sentence. In fact UBI is strongly supported by business owners who pay very low wages. They wish to end minimum wage. Basically these businesses want to live on the government's dole by having much of their labor costs shifted to taxpayers via the UBI. If not for this there would be no significant impetus to have UBI in the US. A big clue is that the UBI will be unlivable. It will only be used as a supplement for wages of those who work for exploitive businesses.

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[bluegutang]

I don't think so. "Other people" will always want things done, but at the cheapest possible cost. If a robot has skills equal to a person, "other people" will probably prefer to hire it over a person, due to being cheaper.

Most human skills boil down to a few basic categories: vision, object manipulation, understanding speech. Computer science is making rapid progress in all these areas. And computer programs are cheap - you write the program once, and billions of people can use it worldwide.

There was massive employment for horses until machines were developed that could do their main skill (pulling/carrying heavy loads) better. Now, only a few horses are employed (for recreation, police, etc). The level of human employment could drop just as drastically.

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[esonik]

Coloring isn't creative.

Come on, that's just a slightly more advanced version of Paint's fill bucket. A task that can be done by anyone with a few simple instructions isn't creative. It's probably boring work that was begging to become automated.

For a better example of computer creativity look here https://www.wired.com/2016/03/...

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to somehow have missed that most jobs will go away and not be replaced with others.

A few hundred years ago, most jobs (i.e. farming) went away. Imagine if we had instituted a UBI then, so that they weren't replaced with others? Today we might be supporting 95% of the population in a life of leisure, albeit at an 18th century standard of living.

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[gweihir]

There is no "computer creativity" at this time, and possibly not ever. All we have is weak AI and the best it can do is filter things from random searches. Of course, the results of random searches can look creative, but they are not.

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[ChrisMaple]

most jobs will go away and not be replaced with others

False and without basis.

Nobody is really advocating for an UBI if enough jobs stay available and need to be done.

False. Leftists and even some deluded conservatives have been advocating that for longer than I've been alive. One example that just popped into my mind is the science fiction author Mack Reynolds.

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[ChrisMaple]

Do you want a beautiful Valentine's day card produced by Hallmark, or a grubby crayon-and-construction-paper Valentine's day card handed to you by your 5-year-old daughter? Which one will you cherish 20 years from now?

Doing it "better" is not always what people want.

Have you no pride?

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[Dagger2]

By that argument, there's likely no human creativity either. "Filter things from random searches" is probably a pretty good description of how creativity works in human brains too. We're aren't special; I don't buy that our brain does something that computers can't.

...but that ultimately doesn't even matter. If an AI can emulate the output of a human brain, and it can do so cheaper than a human can, then it doesn't matter if the AI works in the same way a brain does or not. It can still act as a replacement.

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[jcr]

You seem to somehow have missed that most jobs will go away and not be replaced with others.

Bullshit.

In 1900, 80% of Americans worked on farms. Today, it's around 4%. This did not result in 76% unemployment. Any job that can be performed by a machine, should be performed by a machine. This drops the cost of goods and services, to everyone's benefit, but most of all to those with the lowest earning ability.

We can't know what kind of work people will be doing a century from now, any more than people could guess in 1900, but there is no reason to believe that there will be no use for human labor.

-jcr

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[jcr]

Marx used to claim that a single shoe factory could supply all the people of the world with shoes if only greedy capitalists got out of the way.

Marx was a thoroughly deluded idiot, and it's no surprise that state dependency with another coat of paint on it is being pushed by his brain-dead followers.

-jcr

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[gweihir]

If you are a physicalist, you are already ignoring things like consciousness and free will (there are no known physical mechanism for them after all and claiming them to be "emergent properties of complexity" is just mystical bullshit) and there really is no reason to discuss this any further. Physicalism is belief (i.e. "religion"), not scientific fact. Science makes no claims that humans are purely physical at this time and it does not make any claims that they are not either. The scientific start-of-the-art is "we have no clue". I do understand that some people, especially in the US, try to use physicalism as a counter-point to religion, but I think that is misguided and ultimately a failure as you end up with a quite similar dogmatism.

There are some scientific indicators though that there may be more to the human mind than physics as known, for example the constant long-term failure to create general ("strong") AI even on the level of an utter moron. It seems this is either excessively hard or impossible.

You are right insofar that many things that were thought to require actual intelligence can in fact be done with weak AI ("automation") almost as well and sometimes even better, as they do not really require insight or understanding. Doing them with understanding and insight is just one possible strategy of several. Add to that that many people cannot go much beyond that level (and the unfortunate fact is that the average human being goes through live without understanding anything even a bit complicated) and most jobs will be accessible to automation. The remaining people (the independent and creative thinkers) make maybe 10-15% of all humans and they may not get replaced, ever, but having jobs for 10-15% of the population (assuming all independent thinkers are needed, which is unlikely) is not going to keep the current society-models going.

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[Anonymous Coward]

go sell your baby boomer bootstrap bromide bullshit to idiots who buy it.

nothing but a "demolican" two sides of the same coin...a minority ruining the rest of the country and the world

all either side wants is to exterminate.... the rhetoric from democrats is that you dont deserve to exist if you dont think the way we do... unspecified, unscientific warm and fuzzy progressives...

the rhetoric from repugnanticans is that if you cant work you should die.

allying themselves with machines, regular work for regular wages and the technological wars of the past 300 plus years.

jumped up working class wage slaves that get all daffy duck with a little nest egg and are stupid enough to buy into the rhetoric that taxes are evil.

you deserve all pity available... for the continued manipulation of your humanity and contribution to the misery of the world

just go and flush your head down a toilet please...it would make you smell better

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[goose-incarnated]

I wouldn't be so sure about creativity and insight either. Check out this sketch, colored by an AI neural network based on just a few squiggled hints. You can hardly argue that coloring isn't creative, and that's an AI that exists right now -- the tech is only improving as time goes on.

That doesn't look too impressive - a better bucket-fill basically. The shading is random, after all, not based on depth and lighting.

Re:You pay people to do fuck-all...

[Dagger2]

I think we can be fairly sure there's nothing non-physical going on in our brains. Nothing else the universe does works like that, our brains are constructed out of perfectly normal matter and thus appear to run on normal physics, and it would make human brains magically special which is crazy. None of that means we're not conscious, it just means that consciousness is something boring and repeatable once you know how to do it.

Prove otherwise and I won't refuse to believe you, but I'm not going to expect that to happen.

There are some scientific indicators though that there may be more to the human mind than physics as known, for example the constant long-term failure to create general ("strong") AI even on the level of an utter moron. It seems this is either excessively hard or impossible.

I have mostly the opposite impression. We know the brain uses neural networks, and we've only really figured neural networks out in the past few years. And in the past few years we've made massive advances in AI everything. Since neural networks are our only real avenue of attack on AGI (our only example is the human brain, and that uses them), I see the current situation as demonstrating less that AGI is hard and more that neural networks were hard. And our ability to do with software many of the things that were previously human-only definitely demonstrates that those parts of the human brain are reproducible.

AGI might still be hard, but it might also simply turn out to be a matter of combining existing neural networks in the right way. Certainly every other AI problem has had people going "oh, but that's just X" or "that's just Y" (exactly like you did). Why not this one?

Note that "we have no idea how the brain works" doesn't mean we can't reproduce it. The neural networks involved in AlphaGo, for instance, are completely inscrutable; we have no idea how they work or why they evaluate any given move they way they do. Yet they demonstrably work just fine for playing Go.

[...] but having jobs for 10-15% of the population is not going to keep the current society-models going.

Yeah. None of these attempts to predict exactly where the limits of AI are will change anything when the limits are clearly high enough that we've got a problem.

Re:Expectations

[hackwrench]

There are people however that do need other people to give them a reason to exist. I will feed off them.

I short-circuit the argument

[hackwrench]

I don't care what's fair. I want people to get as much good as possible. When you start asking questions about what is fair and what is equal, you pull people down, not raise them up.

Re:I short-circuit the argument

[religionofpeas]

I want people to get as much good as possible. When you start asking questions about what is fair and what is equal, you pull people down, not raise them up.

You had me until the point where you expect me to pay for it.

Re:I short-circuit the argument

[Cinnamon Beige]

I want people to get as much good as possible. When you start asking questions about what is fair and what is equal, you pull people down, not raise them up.

You had me until the point where you expect me to pay for it.

Oh, come now, let's not forget the strong implication that the person is expecting other people to pay for it. I'm honestly skeptical that the math for a UBI will work out, and some of the psychological issues are going to go unaddressed. It might be better to just go for a long-term version of the WPA--provide the UBI in the form of employment, with some jobs being just plain "get, maintain, and teach these skills that are considered of social (if not economic value), you can do whatever you want with the rest of your time."

Re:Reason to exist

[roman_mir]

Yours is the second reply to my comment that displays the same fallacy. My point is not that you need others to define your reason to exist, my point is that without being useful to others you are of no use *to them as well*, which also implies you shouldn't expect them to carry you. There is no issue with you existing, there is an issue if you expect something from others for nothing from you.

2 year pilot program?

[Hrrrg]

The goal of projects such as these is to see how people would act if they had a guaranteed income for life. However, the flaw in this pilot (and all similar projects that I have heard of) is that it is only temporary stipend... I would act very differently if I had guaranteed income for 2 years vs for life.

If it was a 2 year income, I would pocket the money and keep working.
If it was guaranteed life-long income, I might stop working (depending on how much money it was).

The results of this pilot will be more or less useless.

An experiment, can we agree on criteria?

[raymorris]

Some people think it will work very well, some people think it'll be a total failure, and of course some people are in-between.

For anyone here in EITHER of the first two groups, you both think the results would be pretty clear cut - the result won't be ambiguous. Here we have an actual experiment to test it, and there are other similar experiments being done or planned. Here's a chance to prove that you're right, and possibly in a measureable way such that those who disagreed have to admit their prediction was wrong.

Are you smart enough, and do you understand the issues well enough, to come up with some fair criteria by which to judge the outcome of these experiments? Can you mark a goal line and say "the experiment will show that UBI does A by x%, without doing B by y%"?

Since you understand the issues, that means of course that you understand the opposing viewpoint, you understand what their concerns are. Since you're pretty sure you are very much right, you should be able to be a bit generous in marking the goal lines. If anyone can come up with some fair measures we can later use to see who is right and wrong, I'll post my prediction and if I turn out to be wrong I'll freely admit it.

That would be really cool if we could do that. I don't have too much hope - I think a lot of people shooting their mouth off don't understand at all what people who disagree are saying, and have no interest in understanding anything other than their own guess. The ad hominem attacks which are already so prevalent on very page strongly suggest that some commenters haven't a clue what the other group is trying to warn them about, and don't care to know.

Anyway, there are experiments in progress. Anyone have an idea of some fair to generous criteria by which to judge the results when it's done, can you set a goal line which those who disagree might think is a fair goal line that captures their concerns?

Re:An experiment, can we agree on criteria?

[mikael]

If you are unemployed because of a lack of skills, then a maintenance wage which simply covers food and rent would be enough. You need more money to buy equipment, take retraining courses. Or even relocate - which can sometimes involve weeks in a hotel while you look for somewhere to rent.

Re:An experiment, can we agree on criteria?

[Mr D from 63]

I think the experiment will tell us nothing. Since the amount is not nearly enough to live off of, it will not change who works and who doesn't. If so, some might use that result to claim that UBI does not decrease the desire to work, but that claim will be baseless because of the amount suggested. Furthermore, this UBI is not guaranteed permanently, so nobody in the experimental pool can count on it long term, which would also impact life decisions.

It may allow some to retire early, otherwise I think that everyone who gets free money will like getting it and we'll learn nothing.

Re: An experiment, can we agree on criteria?

[Anonymous Coward]

A UBI means you can move to a location that has more jobs and spend a year there looking without being homeless.

It also means they can spend the day at a library, online YouTube class or whatever. It also means there is no need for a minimum wage. Which means you can make $2/hr extra doing something you like and someone else doesn't, but won't pay $8/hr for.

Re:An experiment, can we agree on criteria?

[Anonymous Coward]

The actions of the people involved also depends on the society around them. If enough of the people around the subjects have their desires and aspirations based on working full-time, the people in the experiment might take a similar course of action as soon as they can. And if the opposite environment exists, the people in the experiment might act the same as their family, friends and acquaintances. And since the social environment is likely to change significantly when the proportion of people receiving the UBI changes, the results of the short-term experiment might not be adequately predictive.

Re:An experiment, can we agree on criteria?

[ChrisMaple]

In the unlikely event that this experiment succeeds by some reasonable measure, there are many reasons why it would fail on a larger scale. One of those reasons is identity fraud. People getting money on multiple EBT accounts is commonplace today, and will only become a greater problem as bureaucrats expand their realms by deliberately not checking for fraud among "new" applicants.

Re:An experiment, can we agree on criteria?

[dcw3]

Pretty much in agreement with the parent here...

I'd like to suggest that people not jump to conclusions. My own knee-jerk reaction was that it's a silly idea. But, as you suggest, I think it's a good idea for us to try and experiment with it. We'll certainly need to do something for future generations. Also, there are several ways to implement this experiment, so we shouldn't necessarily jump to conclusions if the first attempt doesn't prove successful.

Five Thirty Eight did a good article on this a while back.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/fea...

Re:An experiment, can we agree on criteria?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think a wage (or money) should be given out. Instead, I think it should be a basic level of housing and food (maybe some bare necessities like clothing, toiletries, etc. too). That way everyone has a basic level of living. You can then choose to live with what you've been given or you can then choose to work for money which you can then exchange for the things you want above the basics of living. At least it leaves a little more incentive and doesn't open up the money to abuse of things like drugs and alcohol.

SAK is a worker union stuck in 1970's

[hkultala]

I live in Finland, so few comments about the SAK.

SAK is worker union that has jammed to 1970's.

There are only 2 things SAK is capable of doing:

1) Shouting "bigger pays of we will go to strike"
2) Shouting "you may not do any improvements for more flexible work contracts, or we will go to strike".

Absolutely no understanding that the world economy has changed since 1970's, and absolutely no understanding od thet fact that finland has been belonginf to EU for over 20 years should make things very different than things were in 1970s.

Also absolutely no understanding of the fact that Nokia was holding Finnish economy high and now when Nokia is no longer making mobile phones, Finnish economy is doing much worse and they cannot require so high wages anymore.

In Finland the worker unions are way too strong, they have some rights (or actually wrongs) worker unions in other countries do not have:

1) The worker unions also decide how much is paid to employers that are not members of the union.
2) You get tax rebates for belonging to worker union.
3) In order to get better unemployment benefits you HAVE to belong to some unemployment fund, even though only about 1% of the unemployment compensation money comes from the unemployment fund, 99% comes directly from the goverment. Most of these unemployment funds are ran by the worker unions. (fortunately there is also one private on, "YTK", "common unemployment fund", but many people do not know it exists)

Re:SAK is a worker union stuck in 1970's

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the 4. Workers unions get to negotiate with the government and the employers unions for centrally agreed policies related to salaries, related budgets and such. That has to be the most alien practice to most US readers. The tax rebates and unemployment compensation funds are likely already normal for many countries.

eh...

[XSportSeeker]

While I don't really think that universal basic income will be a solution for all the problems, nor think it wouldn't have some very detrimental side effects, the opinion of a trade union economist will quite obviously be incredibly biased towards painting it in an extremely bad light. People living on universal basic income won't be paying unions, even if they continue having a side-job or something.

Here's the thing though: lots of people are thinking of an universal basic income not because they WANT to be unemployed... it's more because of the risk of BEING FORCED not to be employed due to lack of jobs. I don't think AI will take all jobs anytime soon, but there's definitely a tendency for a huge shift that will take some sectors that employ a lot of people by surprise.

This is only a personal opinion, but honestly, I don't think that many people would outright stop working just because of it.
Ultimately, universal basic income won't be enough to attend most peoples' needs. And like it or not, people in absolute poverty that can't get a job are already living with the help of some sort of financial support that's either coming from public or private companies.

It might not be a bad idea to pick all the mess of social support programs, NGO work, among several other stuff, unify it into an universal basic income, and work from there upwards. It ultimately also achieves and attends the basics of human rights that governments in general should be providing to it's populace.

I might be wrong and things could turn to all hell, but I personally think we have to at least try. I'm no socialist myself, but if this could be one way to lessen the social gap, it's at least worth trying. The current reality for several countries is of complete abandonment to entire parts of the population, and there's a whole lot of public sectors that fails in providing the very basic needs for part of the population that is in most need. The human cost of all this might be way worse than most people imagine.

Will there be people using this universal income in the worst way possible? No doubts about that. Not only they won't be using that for their basic needs, it could be just spent on booze, drugs and whatnot. Could people take that as a way to just laze around and not work on anything for the rest of their lives? I guess so, though I think most people don't realize how much they depend on work to keep their sanity in check.
But it's as naive to think universal basic income will be all bad without benefits, just as it is thinking it'll be the perfect solution for all the problems.

Ask the Longshoremen about basic income!

[ErichTheRed]

A perfect example of basic income working is the longshoremen's unions in the US. Before containerized freight and automated cargo terminals, thousands of men would stand on the stones every morning and work a back-breaking job hauling loose cargo off ships with hooks. After containerization, instantly, there was no more work for the vast majority of these people. Since most of them were completely unskilled, and not capable of retraining into any other job that paid the same or better, they could have been in danger of seing the same fate we assign to the unemployed today -- eventual destitution. However, the longshoremen's unions implemented what amounts to a tax on cargo handled through these automated terminals that goes towards paying "retired" longshoremen a basic income. This is one example, and let's just say the union has a lot of muscle behind it that helped this get passed, but it does show a way to help the unemployable -- and make no mistake, that's going to be 90+% of us sometime before I'm dead (in the next 50 years or so.)

I guess my problem with people who argue against a basic income is that they don't have a better alternative in mind. Sometime in the near future, the vast majority of low level service jobs will be automated. At the same time, the use of intelligent systems will come and cannibalize the top end of the spectrum too. Think about doctors for a second -- they're smart enough to have a regulated profession and should be fine because of that. But what if they didn't? Medical education is basically academic hazing, from the MCAT to the preclinical firehose to 100 hour weeks as an intern. Med schools select for people with photographic memories and perfect grades because that's basically the only way to survive the training as it is today. Well, thanks to Google we don't need photographic memories anymore, so the only skill left will be synthesis of all the stored knowledge. This is why IBM basically sold off their entire business and are building Watson and other AI-type systems. Soon as these algorithms get good enough, most work that requires intuition is toast. Hospitals won't have to pay doctors when they can feed test results and live observations of patients into a machine and get a diagnosis.

I think basic income is the only reasonable transition vehicle to move the world away from traditional employment. Imagine telling everyone who's about to retire that people entering the workforce now won't have to save. Or, tell people who define themselves by their work that they've all been made redundant at the same time. Or, try to divide up the accumulated property among people when money stops being critical -- who determines where the renters go, or who gets to keep the houses they own? All of these are too much stress for the economy to bear all at once and will lead to a mess. Phase in a low-employment world over time with controls, and it makes the shift easier.

Re:Ask the Longshoremen about basic income!

[dbIII]

Basic income for the unemployed - fine IMHO.
Basic income for the employed who are already earning a decent amount - now that's where I think things have gone to the far side of crazy. The only people who will come out ahead on a lossy scheme of being taxed to get it paid back to them are the tax evaders. Welfare is not a "reward" with some stupid every kiddie gets a prize thing, it's to help out people who need it.

Maybe it's meant to be a clever end run around those folks who think homeless people don't deserve any help because their personal Jesus hates the poor (prosperity doctrine weirdness - if God loves you he makes you rich but if you stay poor God hates you and "Christians" should hate you too). Giving money to everyone will help those homeless people too, but giving it to everyone is an incredibly wasteful way to go about it especially if you are being taxed to pay yourself back. It's going to drive up taxation and/or result in a lot of cuts in government services. Personally I think it's better to tell those people who hate the poor to fuck off and help people when they are down - it's a fuck of a lot cheaper than giving money to everyone.

Re:Ask the Longshoremen about basic income!

[Ozoner]

You need to study the UBI proposals a lot more.

For employed people there is a soft cut-off as their pay rises. The important thing is that at no point are they better off by not working, which is definitely the situation at present.

At some (quite low) point in their progress up the pay scale, they begin paying sufficient tax to balance their UBI.

The only thing which really changes is the threshold where paying net tax begins.

Re:Ask the Longshoremen about basic income!

[zemeetra]

If nobody works (cannot collect taxes because there's no income) and companies need to sell (possible collect taxes), then companies will pay 100% of their product just for people to consume their products. If the companies pay 100% of the value of their product, well, that's impossible and no possible way to the Government to tax income = End Game.

Transition vehicle... possible but I'm afraid that it will be worst than the reward system that we have in place. If people work, they get money. UBI is just to lower Government costs. The rest is shenanigans.

If scientists don't get paid, they use XX% amount of their time just trying to get food and water... and that's what nobody wants! We want them to think and come up with great useful "stuff" for the rest of mankind! People that don't have a job still have to eat food and drink water!

If you give UBI to people and take away healthcare, some people will die because they just spent their money on tobacco or alcohol. We Humans have flaws and usually logic isn't 100% perfect at predicting what Humans will do.

When we have an unlimited supply of resources for the minimal conditions to support life, then things start to change (and we're not so far to achieve that!).

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
~ Albert Einstein

Re:Ask the Longshoremen about basic income!

[roman_mir]

Racketeering is racketeering. Longshoreman that were displaced by containers and automation should not have been allowed to claim that tax and that welfare, it only further displays the actual lack of American values - using collectivism to destroy private property rights of the people running the businesses (in case of shipping, the businesses of transportation). It is as if a formerly profitable business that was displaced by better rivals forced everybody to pay them to keep existing without learning to provide their customers with some other, newer, better, cheaper products. AFAIC there is no difference in these examples, people or businesses, everybody has to be useful to others to make their daily bread. Force and oppression are the opposite values to the idea of America, the idea that brought immigrants to its shore, the idea of individual liberty from some oppressive and tyrannical government. No taxation without representation, right?

Re:Ask the Longshoremen about basic income!

[misexistentialist]

Self-correcting, longshoreman was often a family trade, and their birthrate no doubt dropped below replacement level. UBI could be a stopgap, though non-working females will need to be sterilized and polygamy reintroduced for elite workers

Re:Ask the Longshoremen about basic income!

[dbIII]

You need to study the UBI proposals a lot more.

What is there to study? It's simplistic drivel that would reward tax evaders and punish ever other person with an income. All just to fuel a fucking stupid "every child gets a prize" mentality.

Re:Ask the Longshoremen about basic income!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the current systems are the ones that reward tax evaders. For someone on the dole with limited skills, it's a lot easier to get extra income by barter, taking odd jobs, etc. The 'employee' avoids paying taxes or having his/her welfare cut off, and 'employer' finds it cheaper to pay under the table - trading off expense deductions against paying lower salaries, avoiding the payment of social-security taxes, and avoiding a lot of government regulation.

Re:Ask the Longshoremen about basic income!

[argStyopa]

Hilarious example, since it's the longshoremen's union(s) that have acted as a significant brake on the US economy for decades.

People are currently paid north of $90,000 to perform an utterly replaceable job (crane operator) with boutique medical and pension plans. Cross the picket lines when they strike, and you're lucky if you only escape with a smashed car or burnt-down house.

Los Angeles, the US's biggest port, runs on little more than clipboards and notecards. Computers? NEVER - to implement them would cost jobs. In terms of port productivity, it takes HOURS in Los Angeles to complete the loading/unloading of a container that in the more-highly-automated ports of the Eastern Pacific or Europe complete in tens of minutes.

The longshoremens' unions are an example of the WORST

Re:Ask the Longshoremen about basic income!

[dbIII]

Actually, the current systems are the ones that reward tax evaders

Yes, but a UBI increases that reward.
IMHO it's a scam so that the tax avoiding top end of town can get more money at the expense of taxpayers under the excuse designed to fool liberals of "it will help the homeless". If the the purpose is to help the homeless why not just do that without everyone getting a prize (that is going to be a lot less than the honest pay per person directly into the scheme), it's a fuck of a lot cheaper.
The far right, which is where this idea comes from, want to leech off us (99% of the people with an income) with the camoflage of it all being "for the children".

Re:Ask the Longshoremen about basic income!

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting as AC for reasons.

At the initial invention of container royalties, they made sense. However, they still exist almost 80 years later. Phased out employees do not get that money, current employees get it as a "Christmas bonus" at the end of each year based on their hours. So, the haves get more and the have-nots get less. On contract negotations with the longshoreman, they have publicly stated they consider these royalties to be part of their standard income at this point, not the supplemental for the reduced workforce they originally were.

Interesting fact: there are more longshoreman employed now than there were prior to containerization because of the growth and cost reductions in trade.
Interesting fact #2: labor costs for longshoreman in the US are higher than every other country in the world by an order of magnitude, including Europe, due to their labor monopoly and prevention of automation/improvements done in other countries.

If they had a phase-out period for the royalties of 30 years or tied it to the actual reduction in workforce, you could have had a point, but longshore royalties are one of the best examples of greed and unions-run-amok the US has to offer.

Re:Ask the Longshoremen about basic income!

[dddux]

Your post is so spot on. Thanks. Great post!

Re:Ask the Longshoremen about basic income!

[dddux]

Another one who thinks UBI is welfare. Get over it. It's not welfare.

Re:Ask the Longshoremen about basic income!

[dbIII]

Another one who thinks UBI is welfare. Get over it. It's not welfare.

That's the entire problem.
It's a money funnel to both the top and bottom end of town from the diminishing number of taxpayers in the middle. Welfare has a good purpose. The purpose of UBI is just to fuck over everyone that has too small an income to afford a very good accountant.

Re:increased standard of living

[hackwrench]

No one is arguing that automation isn't the route to increased standard of living. The question is how to get that increased standard to all takers. Overall productivity has increased, but not everyone has experienced this increased productivity. Overall compensation may have increased but for many, compensation has decreased.
Global warming is another example of bad analysis of statistics. From my experience summer hasn't been all that much warmer, but we have been having mild winters and the less observant among us saw a small amount of exceptionally harsh weather as contradicting global warming.

National tax base

[AHuxley]

Any ability to means test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... as with existing support plans is lost.
Has anyone done the math on giving everyone a payment in most nations with a limited areas of tax collection?
The very wealthy and multinationals only pay very limited tax in their own nations as they can afford the best tax advice.
Can the amount of tax payers in the middle class support their own UBI payments and cover the rest of a nation?
Would the amount saved on bureaucrats cover giving everyone a % of a national wage?
Would tax collected on the unemployed, underemployed and unemployable around a nation help cover the UBI?
With a slight jump in tax a UBI would fall behind as a usable payment to cover rent, food, transport for people on traditional gov support.
What would go in the USA? Social Security, food stamps, housing subsidies? The loss of Medicare, Medicaid?
No minimum wage?
That UBI would have to be indexed to a lot of real prices so it would allow people to survive on the UBI without layers of extra payments.

Re:National tax base

[dddux]

You would tax the unemployed, underemployed, and unemployable? Smart. Kinda like getting the water from a dessert. Great thinking.

Re:National tax base

[AHuxley]

Think of a new Value Added Tax on every sale to unemployed, underemployed, and unemployable as they swipe their UBI card.
Food, clothing, transport, medicine, utility bills, buy any new used appliance. As later versions of a UBI get paid digitally, most of the poor and unskilled can really only spend funds locally and the digital sale would ensure any tax is collected.
If they ever get a part time job, find any other hours of work, create an app, more tax is collected.

Re:Making a point

[hackwrench]

Asking a question is a poor way to make a point. And your question was wouldn't they have no reason to exist, not wouldn't they have no way to provide for their existence or some such.

Re:Useless? That article.

[religionofpeas]

Business folk must love UBI, because they can now get people for much lower wages, realizing that the part of the income is government subsidized.

Re:You have to make someone ask?

[hackwrench]

Alright then, what was it you were attempting to cast doubt on?

An example from Obama

[raymorris]

As example of the general kind of thing I'm asking for, early in his first term Obama said something like "if unemployment isn't below 5% by 2012, you shouldn't vote for ... well you should think real hard about who to vote for."

It was fairly obvious he has started to say "if unemployment isn't below 5% by 2012, you shouldn't vote for me for re-election", then decided halfway through the sentence to change his words slightly. Anyway, he gave a clear, objective number by which to judge his performance. Many Republicans would probably have agreed that 5% unemployment was one reasonable, somewhat fair, standard to judge his economic policies by. Can anyone come up with a similarly fair and objective measure by which we will be able to judge the results of these UBI experiments, a pass/fail mark both sides might agree on?

* I don't remember the exact number Obama said - 4%, 5%, or 6%. The point is, he did specify a number by which his policies could later be judged.

Re:An example from Obama

[Anonymous Coward]

He who controls how that number is calculated rules the world. There are many numbers associate with unemployment, which one do you use?

Re:The problem

[religionofpeas]

The advantages include removal of the huge amount of bureaucracy, management costs, corruption, and fraud.

Which also means that with UBI, a lot more money will be spend on people that don't really need it, and didn't qualify for subsidies or welfare programs in the old system.

Re:Statistics are beside the point

[hackwrench]

It's what you do that where you end up in the statistics depends upon. As for slaves, I watch people play Super Mario Maker for entertainment, so one could argue they are my slaves in this bargain, but they seem to be entertaining themselves doing it. Things are not as simple as you suggest. I am depressed though and have other medical issues, so the doctors are my slaves, I guess? On being depressed, once I get that addressed I will be more productive on my GitHub repositories. If anyone makes use of them, does that make me their slave?

They seem to misunderstand the idea...

[gweihir]

How other could they see "it may encourage some people to work less" as a problem, when that is precisely the intent? The problem tackled by an UBI is primarily the scarcity of work, nothing else.

Re:They seem to misunderstand the idea...

[jezwel]

As a workers union, the less workers in the union, the less power the union has - and the less money flowing into the union to pay them. UBI might send these people onto the UBI, along with a lot of other bureaucrats currently working in welfare & related organisations.

Re:The problem

[Anne Thwacks]

At least in the places in the US with which I am familiar.

The rest of the world bears no resemblance to the US - particularly not Europe, where the French Revolution has left clear evidence of what happens if you leave most of the population in abject poverty, and then publicly say "I'm all right, Jack".

Trump and his mates may tell you you can avoid problems by telling the general public they are worthless scum, but the evidence is against this being the case.

I should add

[dbIII]

I should add that UBI also looks very good to people who evade tax completely but have an income. Take a close look at some of the people pushing it for examples. Other suckers like us are expected to get taxed out the backside to add to their income.
Welfare should be something to keep people alive if they don't have enough income not some "every child gets a prize" bullshit.

Re:I should add

[Anonymous Coward]

UBI will fail, because it fails to observe the living condition of the recipient (On the street, malnourished - or doing well in the parents home?).
Parents and relatives will prop up family mostly. The exceptions, edge cases or the most impoverished without savings or any support - then yes UBI has a place.
Now do we exclude serial drug addicts?

Society should expect ONLY the most needy get it, where there is no other assistance. Paperwork is not a good indicator. Fit them with GPS trackers, and the most needy will be easy to determine.

Re:I should add

[kqs]

I should add that UBI also looks very good to people who evade tax completely but have an income.

Actually, I'm pretty sure the US president is NOT a UBI supporter. Nor are most large multinational companies who play shell games with money in various havens. So I'm not sure who you are talking about.

I'm a supporter of UBI (assuming the economics work), and I can assure you I pay lots of taxes. I make enough to pay lots, but not enough to use most of the tax breaks. I assume that the direct benefit I get from UBI will be eaten up by the extra taxes it will cost, but that's fine. If more people in my area can afford to buy things, then my business will prosper and I'll make more money to buy more things for myself (and to pay more taxes).

We've tried cutting taxes on the rich (effectively giving money to the rich). That doesn't work well for anyone but the already-rich. So maybe we should try giving money to the folks who need money, and as a side benefit remove most of the regulations around it.

Re:I should add

[dbIII]

So maybe we should try giving money to the folks who need money

That's the sane way to do things but not what UBI is about. It's about hitting taxpayers for extra cash just to give some back to them and those who don't pay tax - a huge burden compared with trying to give money to the folks who need money. Can the vanishing middle class really pay enough for a handout to everyone who does not pay tax? Why should a bus driver take an extra hit to give money to millionaires who have arranged their finances so that they do not pay tax?

Re:The problem

[dbIII]

The advantages include removal of the huge amount of bureaucracy, management costs, corruption, and fraud

Increasing the number of people on welfare is going to reduce the amount of bureaucracy? Seriously?

Premature call

[Tablizer]

It's an experiment. Let experiments run.

I don't have an all seeing eye

[hackwrench]

I don't have an all-seeing eye like you apparently do so what are the effects and how destructive are they?

Re:I don't have an all seeing eye

[DNS-and-BIND]

You don't remember after Katrina? They discovered people there that had been on welfare for three generations. None of them ever had a job or wanted a job . Hopelessly dependent, as deserving of our pity as opioid addicts.

Re:I don't have an all seeing eye

[hackwrench]

No, I don't know after Katrina. As far as I know you're just making stuff up.

I am too dumb to get it

[dschiptsov]

How does a tiny random sampled "experiment" could tell anything at all about what would happen when a majority, leave alone whole population will start to receive free money? These are completely different dynamics. This sample group has no impact on the economy at all, while there will be inflationary impact when majority kicks in. Hipster's statistics-based "science". They even call it "experiment".

I think everyone is missing the point of UBI

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of UBI isn't that people who work and people who don't work will be living equal life-styles. In fact it is quite the opposite. The people only collecting UBI will have access to a basic set of resources of which they can prioritize their spending on. However, there money will still be competing with the money of people earning a living plus UBI! So moving into a big apartment in a trendy neighborhood will be impossible due to other people who have good jobs wanting to live there. As a matter of fact if you live only on UBI you will probably only be able to do so in the less desirable neighborhoods or cities.
I believe that UBI is an idea worth trying. Due to many issues with means tested welfare. Means tested welfare is very expensive to administrate and often fraught with fraud while people who in needed or who deserve to better taken care of do not take advantage of what is available to them. For a variety of Socio-economic reasons. It also can create "ladders" that are very difficult to climb out of. For example, a low income person may receive benefits valuing around $30,000 dollars a year however those benefits are only available if they earn less then $15,000 which means getting an entry level job would actually be a step down in living standard. However, if you continue to receive your UBI getting an entry level job will give you money that you can use to increase your Socio-Econmic position. The question isn't will people work more or less but at what level of UBI are people encouraged enough to work that basic products and services will be affordable which will change as products require less and less human labor. For example, if the UBI is too high you will grocery prices will sky rocket due to very high prices stores and farmers will have to pay for basic labor. However, this in theory becomes may become more or less self balancing with UBI representing a basic level of consumption that society is able to afford. I believe that UBI should be tied to a consumption based tax like VAT. So that if economic output declines so should UBI in order to increase economic output.

Re:I think everyone is missing the point of UBI

[Anonymous Coward]

The main sticking point for most people, I think, is the issue of 'fairness'. Is it fair that someone who gets up every morning before dawn when the alarm clock goes off, has his or her breakfast and coffee, and trots off to some probably boring job should be subsidizing a bunch of non-workers who can stay up to the early hours of the morning doing nothing and sleep in until 11:00 or noon? This is despite the reality that decent-paying jobs are going away, and despite the fact that their living conditions would be much better than those subsisting on UBI (a car, vacation and travel, nicer furniture, having hobbies, etc), and despite the likelihood of an even better set of circumstances in the future if they keep working until retirement age. Basically, they have made the trade-off of going to work (to a possibly unfulfilling job) versus having an unfulfilling, subsistence lifestyle on UBI alone.

will or has

[Anonymous Coward]

will encourage... will fall...

Let's wait for has/hasn't encourage... has/hasn't fall.

That's what experiments are for, aren't they?

Such affirmations when the experiment has just begun, instead of waiting to the end show two facts:

a) They want that the experiment fails

b) They suspect that the experiment will work

Oh Jesus...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all we need, more bands like we need a hole in the head.

UBI in India

[Anonymous Coward]

The Economist (Feb 4-10, p. 8) had an article on UBI (universal basic income) in India. According to it, India's current welfare schemes "soak up 5% of GDP", while a UBI would cost 6-7% of GDP. So I don't see that a scheme costing "5% of Finland's entire gross domestic product" is "impossibly expensive".

The arguments for UBI are a bit different in India than in Europe: people are more concerned about welfare expenditure being lost through corruption than with robots taking all the jobs.

Re:UBI in India

[PPH]

One problem, particularly in India, is that the 900 or so welfare programs that a UBI would replace currently support a huge constituency of clerks and administrators. Graft and theft aside, too many people make a livelihood managing these plans and doling out benefits. Even with a UBI system that included a means test (they want to limit the Indian UBI to the bottom 75% of the population), very simple screens requiring few administrators could accomplish this.

Another problem, particularly in countries like India, is that it is difficult to evaluate the benefits of any kind of welfare system when a large part of your population live outside of the main stream of modern economies. How poor are they really? They have been living for thousands of years in agricultural communities based on barter within villages. Only recently have the armies of tax collectors, iPhone salesmen and utility companies become concerned with the fact that these people have no money with which to participate in modern markets. So we are going into panic mode to get them some cash. Just so they can pay it back to the tax collector for the bartering they used to do throughout history. Measuring the efficacy of UBI (or any welfare system) is much easier in modern economies like Finland than in older indigenous communities that still prevail in India.

It's a kind of magic

[Anonymous Coward]

There are too many fundamental errors in Finland's UBI experiment to summarize in a comment.
Starting from the sample of 2000 individuals being perhaps statistically significant enough, except for that reality doesn't scale well.
If the idea is experiment how unemployed people are willing to get part-time jobs when not being withdrawn of benefits, one has to take account the ratio of unemployment vs. number of open jobs. In Finland that's about 10:1. Jobs don't magically arise for the next 298000 or so, especially when truly universal UBI would create a deficit of 5 to 15 billion (1e9) will ruin the economic power of households and enterprises to create the jobs.

Of course one of the (un)spoken premises in UBI has been, that the "workforce" collectively pays / redistributes the payroll equally among the workers and non-workers -- companies don't have to participate. That's perhaps why UBI has support over the whole spectrum of Finnish leftwing parties (the rightwing parties favour government managed economy that concentrates on the profit-security of companies).

Most fundamental question, however, is what is the nature of rights. Is there a right for income, or a right for a job, that others are forced to support, or should the concept of rights be separated from the concept of entitlement or privilege. An universal privilege is a contradiction of terms.

An honest conclusion is that UBI would help getting an income without bureaucracy or shame, but it's ability to create jobs equates to the ability of any demand to generate supply -- [see 'It's raining men' by Weather Report' -- demand for a good husband doesn't create one, and the same principle holds for economy as well.]

Think about the children!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just concerned that in a world with UBI, people will produce more children. If that'd be the case; in addition to the additional strain on our beloved planet, I believe that the income/UBI-cost ratio will go out of hand after a few generations.

This is obviously not based on facts or any statistics and I truly hope that my beliefs are wrong as I'd really like for UBI (or a similar system) to work towards making the world a better place.

Re:Useless? That article.

[jandersen]

Exactly! It is a test, and we need to wait and see what the data say. Another thing that is worth testing (and I think that is probably part of a scheme that involves a basic income), is whether a scheme where you provide social security without spending much effort on ensuring that nobody cheats, is actually more or less expensive than one where you go to great lenghts to stop cheating and abuses. I have some personal experience with the two methods in a limited way: One of my children has diabetes. In UK, you go to your doctor, he says 'You don't need to pay for medicine' and you immediately start getting your medicine without paying. There are no checks, but you may get punished severely if you get caught. In Denmark, on the other hand, you have to first go through intense scrutiny by overburdened, social workers, and the whole process can take months, literally. In the meantime, you simply have to fend for yourself. Apart from the injustice in treating seriously ill people this way, it also seems to me that the overheads of all the checking and decisions in councils and committees must add up to a higher cost than the losses from those who might cheat.

Re: I can tell you

[Anonymous Coward]

You could take some classes and learn to spell. K thx by

Per Kurowski

[Anonymous Coward]

This is another example of redistribution profiteers’ natural defense of the value of their franchise

http://myubi.blogspot.com/2017/02/warning-redistribution-profiteers-rps.html

Reduce work time

[Anonymous Coward]

Very true.

In any case, regardless if UBI is enough to cover basic needs or not, it will have perverse effect on wages.

In order for a proper balance between capital and labor to be (re-)established, one should rather look at reducing work time progressively, until full employment is achieved. At this "optimum" point, people work as little as socially possible.

This most likely will result in salary increase, and therefore loss of competitivity as margins get smaller.
Therefore, these policies should be accompanied with (international) trade measures, to guarantee that all players play by the same rules.

It is also likely that such a measure would reduce inequalitites.

I am puzzled as to why this is not pushed forward much more by progressives all over the planet. Work time reduction should be #1 topic on the political agenda.

I, for one, would believe in the EU as a valid social economic construction when it imposes a 24 hours work week, decreasing by 1 hour every year until full employment is achieved.

Re:Reduce work time

[manu0601]

I, for one, would believe in the EU as a valid social economic construction when it imposes a 24 hours work week, decreasing by 1 hour every year until full employment is achieved.

I fear you missed the whole point of the EU project: the designers wanted an optimum currency area, and think that the fastest way to achieve it was to destroy any regulation and welfare system.

Re:Reduce work time

[Ferretman]

I, for one, would believe in the EU as a valid social economic construction when it imposes a 24 hours work week, decreasing by 1 hour every year until full employment is achieved.

With an equivalent reduction in pay, or with the same pay?

I suspect you mean with no reduction in pay, which begs the question where does that money come from?

Ferret

Re:Reduce work time

[manu0601]

where does that money come from?

Profits! Nowadays, low worker's income makes goods and service demand too weak. As a result, investments in real economy have low returns, and investors prefer to invest profits in speculative financial products. But without enough demand from real economy, these investments will bubble and burst, causing yet another financial crisis.

Wealth production is always somehow shared between labor and capital, and if one side takes to much to the other, things go bad. For 30 years, we went too far toward increasing capital's share. See for instance OECD report

Re:The problem

[Dagger2]

A UBI is very simple to administrate and requires very little bureaucracy. Our current collection of welfare systems are not. The reduction in bureaucracy won't come from increasing the number of people on welfare, but by reducing the per-person administration overhead.

I have absolutely no idea how you managed to misunderstand that from the GP's post.

Re:The problem

[Dog-Cow]

I currently live in Israel, and it's the same here. My salary has deductions for pension, health care and disability. I doubt Israel is unique on this side of the world. Where else could the money come from?

Re:You have to make someone ask?

[phantomfive]

That the amount of work they'll do is anywhere near the amount of work they'd do if they didn't have BI.

Re:The problem

[religionofpeas]

Current bureaucracy serves a purpose of getting every welfare recipient close to what they need, depending on personal circumstances. Someone who's disabled may need a modified home and car for extra cost. Two people living together in the same house need less. If you have children, you need more. If the children go to college, you need even more. If the children can work, you need less. If you live in an expensive neighborhood, you need more. Getting rid of all the bureaucracy means reduced efficiency in allocating funds, which means you'll need to hand out more money to make sure everybody's getting enough.

Re:The problem

[Dagger2]

People who are earning a lot will end up giving their UBI back in taxes, so in net terms we won't end up spending much money on them.

Economist?

[taylorius]

The big news here is that trade unions employ economists. I bet they make him wear a court jester's outfit when presenting his latest findings.

In order to understand the Finnish system..

[Anonymous Coward]

Finland has unemployment coverage, and quite good social support. You can live on those. The problem with unemployment coverage is that you can lose it very easily - basically if you have any income, you will lose it, no matter how small your income is. And this can go back in time; set up a web shop, try if you can build an income on something you sell, find out 6 months later that you can actually just about support yourself. Inform the officials that you no longer need the support, they find out how you did it and poof - you suddenly owe them every penny with interest for the previous 6 months you had your web shop. Even helping someone out with no salary can be counted as a reason to stop the payment.

The current system is full of traps like this; you can live, but if you get employed with too small salary or very small initial income, you lose big. Same goes for short term jobs. The basic income experiment tackles this built in problem - and is very likely a lot cheaper to run than the current "yes, I was unemployed on Monday as well, just like the previous 250 days" that is quite heavy on bureaucracy.

The results of this experiment do not transfer directly to other kinds of systems.

Re:Useless? That article.

[Anonymous Coward]

In the USA, they call those areas "ghettoes".

Re:The problem

[Dagger2]

And it costs a bunch of money to handle all that.

I think a lot of your examples aren't really cases that would justify getting more or less money though. For example, living in an expensive neighborhood? The UBI is a universal basic income, it's supposed to cover basic needs. Not "I want to live in a big house in a posh neighborhood". If you want the extra money for that, then work.

Similarly, two people living together in the same house saves resources, and it's only appropriate that they can spend the saved money elsewhere (perhaps on the children that often accompany living together).

Trade Unions afraid of irrelevance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't a universal income act quite strongly to make trade unions less necessary?

Re:The problem

[religionofpeas]

I'm not talking about people that earn a lot. If one UBI is enough to rent a house, then two (or more) people living together in the same house will get more than they need.

Re:The problem

[Dagger2]

Perhaps one UBI should only be enough to rent an apartment, then.

Re:Business folk

[Cederic]

Really? How is it taking advantage of people to locate your factory somewhere with a low cost of living and pay people a wage that gives them a great quality of life rather than locate it somewhere expensive and pay people even more yet still only give them a subsistence lifestyle?

I'm not seeing the contradiction there at all.

Re:The problem

[religionofpeas]

But then the "huge amount of bureaucracy, management costs, corruption, and fraud" will come back.

Re:The problem

[religionofpeas]

My example was not about someone choosing to live in a posh neighborhood, but rather someone trapped in a city that just happens to be more expensive. Or do you intend to force people out of LA, and move them to a small town in Iowa where it's cheaper to live ?

Similarly, two people living together in the same house saves resources, and it's only appropriate that they can spend the saved money elsewhere

You may consider it appropriate, but that's not how welfare programs work. If you don't have a job, but you're married to a spouse with a nice income, you don't get welfare benefits. So, getting rid of all the management and bureaucracies and giving everybody the same independent of circumstances means throwing away more money.

Re:Useless? That article.

[drinkypoo]

It's like folks who dismiss needle exchange programs to reduce communicable disease, without actually bothering to look at the numbers, and what the studies actually account for.

That's at least in part because of so-called needle exchanges that simply give away needles, like they do in scruz. You don't have to exchange! Then they complain about needles on the beaches.

$600 is too much

[Anonymous Coward]

$600 is the average Eastern European salary. Not the minimum, the average. You can make a good living on that.

Re:Making a point

[roman_mir]

You are taking the comment out of the context of the story and of this thread for some reason then.

other side of the coin

[Anonymous Coward]

ref: 37 years old ZHC worker. i make a living, but have to deal with this regardless.

the actual clusterfuck lies in the amount of bureaucracy you have to swim through in order to keep your papers clear, so to speak. everyone and their mother acts like they know what's best for us, yet we - the regular joes of Finland have not seen a single reduction of bureaucracy over the years. i personally fear that we will not see one.. ever.

you know how bad it is? if you're on benefits, you actually have inform your landlord if you get employed. after a long term unemployment, having a job means that everything is settled retroactively. at worst, you're not having a single dime for 1,5 months. at best, it's a week's delay.

current scheme considers short term jobs as a crime of sort, and you have to endure a bureaucratic assrape every single time you accept a short gig that pays well, but is like one doubleshift.

nothing to do with money.

Re:Useless? That article.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I understand your post correctly, it can be summed up as "so the trade union says it will cost 5% of the GDP. But how much is the program it will replace costing now?". Which is exactly what I was wondering as well.

Re:The problem

[dbIII]

A UBI is very simple to administrate and requires very little bureaucracy

I don't think I misunderstand at all. I think you do not understand that checking far more recipients for fraud is going to be be harder than checking a few. I don't think you understand the implications of identity theft in this situation. Perhaps look up the bodies in barrels welfare fraud in Snowtown for one of the extremes to watch for.

Re:Useless? That article.

[serviscope_minor]

If you're already earning a basic living wage, why would you take a miserable job for peanuts?

Some jobs will certainly exist with very low pay and some people will do them. But it's unclear how it will pan out.

Also, you seem to be unaware that the government is already subsidising those jobs, but in a way which is not good for the people in those jobs.

Re:Useless? That article.

[Major Blud]

It could have been the single most successful thing on day one and they still would have declared it a failure .

In all fairness, it could also be a colossal failure on day one, and the other side would declare it a success.

Re:The problem

[Dagger2]

They shouldn't. Setting the payment at $1000 vs $1500 (or whatever) shouldn't change the administration overhead.

what's the point bashing a pilot program?

[Anonymous Coward]

So this is a two-year pilot program that has been running for less than 1.5 months, and we have a bunch of whiners making a fuss because they "think" it is not right. Why don't they STFU already and wait for the pilot to finish? Or, if they are *that good* in economic predictions, pursue a career in investment banking.

Re:The problem

[serviscope_minor]

That's why in many formulations, taxes are bumped up so those people's tax-ubi is equal to their tax without ubi. IOW, if you're far from the bottom income brackets there is no net change.

Re:The problem

[kqs]

Well, yes, the whole point of UBI is that everyone gets the money whether they need it or not. Unless you think that paying for complicated regulations, means-testing, enforcement etc is a better idea?

Besides, I find that most anti-UBI people are convinced that 90% of people on welfare don't need it, so if that's the case we're ALREADY paying people who don't really need it; how would UBI be worse? Unless you're one of those folks who love regulations for the sake of more regulations?

I'm not claiming that UBI will solve all problems, or even that the economics will work out, but declaring it unworkable without trying it seems weird. The small-scale experiments have worked well so far; let's scale the experiments up.

Re:Business folk

[lenski]

From your response to Gravis Zero:

Business people in general have to compete with other businesses.

True for small businesses and individuals engaging in economic activity where the market tends to be far larger than the entities participating in it. A serious problem arises when a marketplace experiences consolidation in one side of the buyer/seller populations: I claim that conditions (where a single entity or a small number of entities gain control of one side of the market) attracts people who absolutely take improper advantage of people.

Several examples in our current economy:

• Health insurance (rates increasing between 3 and 8 times core inflation)
• College (faster than inflation, though I don't have specific numbers. In the '70's students could work part-time and in summer to cover the year's expenses; that is flatly impossible now.)
• Lifesaving medical treatments (not the expensive new ones, I'm thinking of the ones off patent for years but still egregiously priced)
• Laborer excess, such as in coal mining, where equipment and technology have decimated need for human labor while preserving margins for the owners

My wife and I have a rental house, which we think approximates a "dividend stock" requiring a lot of yard maintenance :-) but returning about 4-6% ROI depending on maintenance requirements in any given year.. The home rental market has not (yet) consolidated so badly that we get to compete with lots of other small-time owners in a market with lots of renters. It works well.

Then there's the energy market, the communication (ISP) market, the hospital system market in most cities, the health insurance market, manufacturing big ticket items, etc. Those large organizations are run by executives who know exactly how much market power they have, and they use it relentlessly.

Re:Useless? That article.

[religionofpeas]

If you're already earning a basic living wage, why would you take a miserable job for peanuts?

For the same reason a person currently on welfare would get a miserable job that only pays a bit more.

Flattening out the Welfare bump

[FeelGood314]

Here in Canada people can get stuck on welfare because taking job will reduce their benefits by more than the job pays. If you also add in the fact that it costs something to go to work (transportation, clothing, less time to shop), then these people will find it impossible to get back into the work force.

Re:The problem

[roman_mir]

Since when is having money handed to you is a 'right'? It is an entitlement for some and an obligation for others. An entitlement for those who receive it and an obligation upon those who pay it. Having obligations imposed upon people by the collectivist system that uses entitlements to stay in power is the exact opposite of rights, it is oppression and slavery, oppression and slavery is quite unlike having rights.

what are the odds?

[wes33]

This is NOT a report, it is a kind of prediction ...

by an economist

think about their track record

Trade Union

[zifn4b]

Of course a "Trade Union" would say this. A trade union is the opposite of a labor union, for example the US Chamber of Commerce. Guaranteed Universal income means people are less compelled to find as much labor opportunity which is a direct conflict of interest with a trade union.

Re:Trade Union

[Anonymous Coward]

Not according to Wikipedia.

Re:Trade Union

[zifn4b]

Not according to Wikipedia.

Perhaps Trade Union has been bastardized to mean something different today? The US Chamber of Commerce pretty much only represents corporate self interest in America and it refers to itself as a "trade union".

Re:Useless? That article.

[Whorhay]

The way the current system works taking that job won't necessarily mean losing all of the welfare benefits so it can actually improve quality of life a lot. And most people on welfare aren't the mythical welfare queen and will actually try pretty hard to get off welfare.

I can honestly see the wage thing going both ways, possibly even at the same time. For a crazy example say the basic income was crazy high, such that it could support my family in our middle class lifestyle without me having to work. You can be damned sure I'd stay home all day and pursue my leisure entertainment hobbies. At that point it would take a pretty significant salary offer to get me out of my house and being responsible for some work load. However I have coworkers right now that would probably still jump at the opportunity to keep working even for only a small salary because they have higher aspirations for what they want to achieve so far as lifestyle. If I was single and childless again I'd likely be happy to live out life as a couch potato if the BI was even as high as $18,000 a year.

Basically I would expect that we'd see pay scales become more extreme in their variation. Employers might have to offer a significantly higher proportional wage to bring in workers for work that people hate doing, whether it is low skill or not.

Will the experiment give useful information?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether or not I believe that UBI would actually improve society, I question whether the Finnish experiment would provide any useful information about whether or not such a system would work. I'm not sure how they intend to measure the results, but I don't think that the information acquired would do anything more than fuel the flames of controversy. To provide valid results, I think that the experiment would need to be larger scale to see what effect UBI actually has on societal attitudes towards work. It also needs to runover a longer time scale in order to see how much of a work ethic is passed on from generation to generation, and to see what effects UBI has on immigration (would a UBI project become untenable because of large-scale immigration from other areas, or would it flourish because of the increased dynamicism of the immigrants)? I think that a small-scale experiment like the one in Finland is completely pointless, as it would be next to impossible to extend the results to a country-wide scale, especially in areas with difficult-to-control immigration.

I don't know what price scales in Finland are like, but I know that in the places where I currently reside (sometimes Southern California, sometimes Minneapolis) that $1000 per month is only enough person sharing an apartment to live on if they don't have to pay health insurance and don't own a car (although in the US a car would be needed in any place where rent is low enough for someone to get by on just the UBI). There are a lot of people in the US who are currently living on that level of income (I suspect mostly due to lack of jobs and/or some sort of disability), but that is a pretty miserable existence. I don't think that the existence of UBI in the US would result in a better life for most - it would not make it any easier for the people currently living a hand-to-mouth existence to find jobs (the jobs are going away due to AI and other automation, and the remaining jobs require non-existent skills).

Re:The problem

[Dagger2]

Hardly "force". If you want to live somewhere that's more expensive than your UBI can cover, then get a job for the extra money, or move in with some friends.

(Note that a big reason that people live in big cities is because that's where all the jobs are. With a UBI, living where all the jobs are becomes less critical, and you'd probably find quite a few people who'd be more than happy to move out to more rural areas. If that happens, it would lower the cost of living in cities.)

I don't think a UBI should be set high enough to cover, by itself, living alone in one of the most expensive cities in the US (but likewise, it shouldn't be set so low that the only place you can afford with it is in the middle of nowhere with eight housemates).

You may consider it appropriate, but that's not how welfare programs work. If you don't have a job, but you're married to a spouse with a nice income, you don't get welfare benefits. So, getting rid of all the management and bureaucracies and giving everybody the same independent of circumstances means throwing away more money.

And yet doing so independent of circumstances is one of the key points of a UBI, for reasons which have been explained many times over by people who are much better at doing so than I.

Basic income will address this somewhat...

[Anonymous Coward]

Correlations is not causation.

It many instances, welfare pays more than the minimum wage. People on welfare literally have to work under the table if they want more money working than welfare can provide. With basic income, there is no disincentive to work and less incentive for people to stay idle and make negative contributions.

Second, some working people also make negative contributions - the common thread there is lack of education. Lack of education also correlates with welfare. Fixing the education system (which is a different problem) should address that more so than welfare.

Re:The problem

[manu0601]

In UBI, some or all of these costs go away.

You miss an important point: UBI enable people to work on projects that make no or little money, at least not enough to live without UBI's help. And such project can benefit the whole society. For instance, someone could work full time on writing free software.

Minor logical error

[Anonymous Coward]

Today, welfare pays more than the minimum wage in some states -- creating a disincentive to work is destructive. Set up a UBI, do away with minimum wage and create a rational market.

Re:The problem

[dinfinity]

It's not as if that 'extra' money suddenly leaves the economy. Given the subsistence levels of cash we're talking about, it is pretty much guaranteed that all of it will be spent quickly.

This is a point that is often lost on a lot of people. People who have little money are fantastic at spending it. From an economics point of view they are the ideal consumers: if they happen to save money it is almost guaranteed to be for a specific larger purchase in the near future. Otherwise they are going to spend all their money locally (no fancy imported Russian caviar or trips to remote countries) and soon.

There have been and are projects in Africa that specifically just give money to poor families and it seems to be working very well. See for instance:
https://www.givedirectly.org/r...

Barring emotional arguments such as 'but Western poor people are different' the fear for giving poor people (marginally) too much money is simply unfounded.

Re:The problem

[manu0601]

The rest of the world bears no resemblance to the US - particularly not Europe

I am sorry to call you wrong: in most European countries (at least in France, since you cite it), social welfare is funded from employee gross salary. The contribution is mandatory and directly paid by the employer.

Fishing

[Anonymous Coward]

It strikes me that UBI will not provide enough income to afford to go fishing at good lakes not over-run with meth-heads, so people will still need to work.

Few errors in your logic

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Wealth is just a number. There is always a game to be played which allows some people to have more and others to have less. The first version of the game involves physical force - caveman vs. caveman. The next evolution of the game involves physical force and charisma - get cavemen to pay tribute to one person. The third evolution of the game involves a hierarchy of force and charisma - get the people at the bottom to provide food and items for the people at the top. The last evolution of the game involves skimming off credits and the physical force is enforced by a third party (institutionalized security). But the game is the same - lock up available opportunities (patents, regulations created by incumbents, etc.), force people to generate money for the incumbents and win.
2. Communism is a bad example because it is disempowering and not a meritocracy. We need a system that combines a livable safety net for children, the disabled and the elderly while simultaneously rewarding for value creation. Also, communism is often accompanied by a dictatorship, where the benefits of the system accrue to the top faster than democratic systems. Often times when people talk about the collapse of communal economic systems, when it is not the communal system that is breaking apart, but rather the dictatorship. Take Cuba, for example. I bet people would like to keep the cheap, high quality healthcare, and still have representative government.

Re: redundants

[slashrio]

When automation renders 50% or more of the workforce redundant, governments will have quite a situation on their hands: either give these people something to live with and stimulate the economy, or deal with the rioting of hungry, disenfranchised families.

OR: kill them. I guess that's the option they'll go for.

Re:Measuring work

[hackwrench]

It doesn't make sense to measure work like that. Currently work is measured by how much money someone will pay for it.

Re:You have to make someone ask?

[sjames]

Considering that the issue is that due to automation, there's less work to be done, I fail to see the problem.

intentional

[bussdriver]

Opposition promotes policies which create that situation in order to undermine it and give them more standing in attacking it. If you can't win, sabotage. These are complex problems with multiple facets which must be adjusted after implementation as well as dynamically adjusted with changing times. Competent leaders could probably find the balance and over time find enough of a pattern to perfect the balancing process for others to learn but there are constant roadblocks as well as incompetence. Including the public who's culture has shifted away from being able to tackle complexity and continues to do so as reality becomes just another perception to manage.

Take the USA, with their "obamacare" which people hate but most people like the ACA which is the same thing by another name. The system is so broken only half measures which skirt out real issues are possible and then don't last because any flaws in those can not be patched. Progress is minimal and temporary at best; it's all perception management - like the corporations who hire PR firms and lawyers instead of recalls... even if the recall might be cost the same (got to keep up your image!) I would argue that a 70% improvement could be managed into being negligible to the majority of the voting public. In the USA, it's so bad I bed about 30% wouldn't acknowledge a 100% perfect solution. Given how half vote... that 30% can be an electoral majority. Remember people act more out of opposition than out of support.

earn: Not synonymous with productivity

[fyngyrz]

I have a question for you, not being snarky or mean:

Say you receive UBI, and it is sufficient for you to not have to go out and earn additional income. This is the circumstance that matches your "I wouldn't work again" idea best, I think, yes? In that case, what do you think you would do with your time, energy and income?

No answer is wrong here, or will result in a nasty from me (although I can't speak for others on that one, this is slashdot, after all.) I'm just curious. Sometimes it isn't "earning money" that is a benefit to society, either. There are lots of things people might do that would be beneficial in one way or another.

Re:earn: Not synonymous with productivity

[phantomfive]

Someone else asked that in this thread, and I suggested I would hitchhike around the world.

Here is the only real solution

[Anonymous Coward]

It is illegal to be unemployed. The government provides unlimited make-work positions to anyone who needs one and pays at some flat rate. You're fired Tuesday, you show up at the work center on Wednesday morning at 8:00. Fail to do so and a warrant is issued for your arrest. After N strikes you are eligible for the death penalty.

Everybody works. Trump works. The severely mentally disabled work. Think public school, but every day until you die.

What the government makes, or lets, you do doesn't matter, provided you are creating goals and making progress toward them. Somebody wants to try their hand at making art, hey, go for it. Sell it, and keep whatever's left after deducting your wages. Simple.

People have to work, even if the work is bullshit. Otherwise, people who do work and people who don't will always hate each other and society will always inevitably collapse.

Such conflict is not a decent predictor

[fyngyrz]

The problem with your argument is that it conflicts with all of human history.

So do the facts that we have computers, rocket ships, radio, television, the Internet, nuclear weapons, robot vacuum cleaners, satellites, space telescopes, solar power, drones, artificial meat just coming online, yay), supertankers, aircraft, plastics, fracking, nuclear reactors, heart surgery, brain surgery, dialysis, antibiotics, cellphones, overnight delivery across thousands of miles, food and other necessities distributed in plenty to areas are otherwise unlivable... you get the idea.

Things do change, and they can change a lot. So I'm not buying the "history shows..." argument.

Automation is both being more widely implemented on a constant basis, and becoming more sophisticated every day. Unless you can explain how it is likely that there is a hard limit to that process, I'm going to remain pretty confident that the end game will not be "earn or starve." At some point, warm bodies won't be needed to produce things; that's pretty clearly on the way.

The flaw in the idea

[cjonslashdot]

A universal basic income would have to be at a subsistence level - so it is only relevant for young college students (no house, no kids) and those who are destitute. E.g., if an IT worker were out of work, a basic income would likely be too low to even make a dent in their expenses. If the basic income were at a higher (non-subsistence) level, then most people, if they actually did not have to work to live decently, would pursue activities that they enjoy but that have little economic value. It is an idyllic vision, but unfortunately is not practical - not unless we implement communist-like control of all infrastructure and manufacturing - but we saw how well that worked.

Re:The problem

[Anonymous Coward]

UBI is not 'free money for all'

Bullshit. I am generally in favor of a UBI, but this is exactly what it is.

Misunderstood: socialism IS everywhere

[bussdriver]

Capitalism claims to benefit the most people overall than other systems which is a socialist argument!
Socialism is actually used to justify capitalism. The problem is that so much propagandizing has been done that people see it only in extreme examples; and unfortunately people don't explore things in depth regardless of it's importance.

Making people suffer, starve, and die because they refuse to work is foolish as well as inhumane. Those people will cause hardships and increase costs to society. While some people will be criminals anyway, everybody will become a criminal if you make life bad enough for them.

The REASON for UBI is that it is more adaptable to whatever comes in the future and it eliminates a huge about of overhead managing a that area of the welfare system. The political flaws and human societal flaws probably make implementing and managing a good welfare system for much time impossible. So, designing a system which avoids human and political weakness should be priority. UBI is such a system-- it's simplistic so even a voter can understand it and it's harder to propagandize against. The more overhead and corruption the better UBI does. It is not perfect but what is?

Most people I find against UBI should actually be for it. Instead of mindless government policies and systems to baby hopeless people; hand them an income and it's their own fault if they mess up. Every welfare system has a hard time balancing so that it does not become a TRAP which punishes those trying to get out of it.

Human flaws will always have the top protecting their ASSets feeling entitled as well and putting themselves above others. The middle class is always a hybrid of both the poor and the upper classes; afraid to rock the boat except when it may take away from their earned entitlements and often they will defend the rich because they may move upward someday. The better society does the bigger the middle class will be and in turn the more they will neglect proper management of the system if not accelerate it towards despotism (the inevitable death of all democracies.) Therefore, systems should be designed around the human flaws of a successful society.

Re:Misunderstood: socialism IS everywhere

[FreedomFirstThenPeac]

Once you use labels like "socialism" you immediately give up your ability to be heard by the very people you whose minds you might want to change. As a Republican working with the Citizens Climate Lobby I am constantly being reminded how to open minds and doors with civil, non-threatening discourse. Compare with approach against the usual rant-and-chant mobs blocking doors.

Re:Misunderstood: socialism IS everywhere

[FreedomFirstThenPeac]

By the way, my post is agreeing with the parent post.

Re:Misunderstood: socialism IS everywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

"Making people suffer, starve, and die because they refuse to work is foolish as well as inhumane"

No. No it isn't.

First off, nobody is "making people suffer, starve, and die" except the people who themselves refuse the work. What you are doing is lying. This is a lie you created by your statements.

  - "By not providing UBI, those that do work are causing people to "suffer, starve and die."

That is incorrect and is a lie.

It is not the responsibility on those that do work to save people who don't work from the results of their decision. The freedom to make your own choices does not mean the freedom to choose your own consequences of those choices.

More people need to take responsibility for their own actions. What you are trying to do is take responsibility away from people. That is a terrible plan. Everything you say if flat out wrong!

"UBI is such a system-- it's simplistic so even a voter can understand it and it's harder to propagandize against."

Simplistic? Are you freaking kidding me? What are the economic impacts of UBI? What are the crime rate impacts. Idleness is one of the number 1 causes of crime and UBI increases idleness so it suggests. Is the rate of idleness vs the crime rate simple to figure out? What are the tax rate impacts to those who do work? Are all those impacts simplistic?

"Most people I find against UBI should actually be for it"

I call bull shit. Cash handouts have shown time and time again to be the worst way to help people out. The most successful way to help someone out has been proven over and over again to be "putting someone to work." Any system that doesn't put someone to work is going to fail. Only those who have taken zero time to study the overwhelming negative effects of free handouts would be foolish enough to suggest UBI as a solution to anything.

Socialism doesn't mean handouts. It means everyone works and everyone works the same amount. Everyone! For kids, school and preparing themselves is work. For adults, they have to work. For mothers, raising their kids is considered working. For the old, they keep working until they can't and then those that can take care of them. If a person can work but doesn't work, in a true socialist society, that person is removed from the society. So basically, socialism means "people suffer, starve, and die" if they refuse to work.

So take your terrible lies and arguments somewhere else. Because nobody is buying them.

Re:Useless? That article.

[admin7087]

Ironically, the 1% richest of any country already have their basic income for sure and it seems to work out fine for them. Maybe some of them work less (Richard Branson?), but I've never heard some billionaire call out his fellow billionaires that they are just lazy and don't contribute enough to society, and most of them seem to work no less than anyone else.

Wow that was a quick study

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wait, its not over yet and this is about some random guy shooting out his opinion.

Re:Some subtext of 'reason'

[hackwrench]

You seem to have a different subtext of the word reason then.

Re:Fine then

[hackwrench]

Because the alternative involves you having less to go around for you. You can insist that you don't want to pay for things that have no obvious benefit to you directly but that results in you having less things that do benefit you directly.

Re:House/apartment

[hackwrench]

The two of you seem to have an odd definition of what an apartment and a house is. The main criteria of an apartment is that it is part of an apartment building and can be larger than a given house.

People said the same thing about looms & tract

[Brannon]

The automation of farming was a much bigger impact to the labor market than everything else you listed. I know it's hard for you to believe because nobody has been tweeting about.

At some point, somebody very much like you said, "pretty soon warm bodies won't be needed to produce food". And they were right, but we still found plenty of jobs in manufacturing and the service industry--leading to people working fewer hours at a higher quality of life. Now you are saying "pretty soon warm bodies won't be needed to produce things"--and you're right, but warm bodies will get redistributed into other jobs, where they will work fewer hours at a higher quality of life. Many of those jobs probably sound ridiculous right now (like "life coach"), just like many of today's jobs would sound ridiculous to somebody from the agricultural economy of 1890.

There is a pretty serious problem of finding unskilled labor jobs, and managing the transition for those displaced by automation. The answer for the former almost certainly involves subsidized training/education. We don't have an answer for the latter (at least not for the bulk of people who are unwilling or unable to retrain for a different career).

It's a splittest goddammit

[Anonymous Coward]

How can someone object to that at such an early stage? o.O

Totally not the same thing

[fyngyrz]

At some point, somebody very much like you said, "pretty soon warm bodies won't be needed to produce food".

No. They were not saying anything even remotely similar to what I am saying. Your imagination has failed you.

This isn't automation of one thing, or a few things, that is coming down the pike. This will be automation of everything.

You watch. This will do to our "earning" economy what innoculation did to polio.

loan sharks

[bugs2squash]

Don't the loan sharks simply swoop, wait until either someone gets desperate and then accepts their UBI for the remainder of their days in return for a lump sum.

In an age of ai automation

[Anonymous Coward]

A solution has to be found as the middle class and poor are further reduced in an age of ai cognition and robotic automation. This is an attempt to correct the inbalance that the coming decades will produce. If we continue with the system we have in place currently we will have no true middle class with any purchasing power which would lead to a breakdown of our society. Automation is about to start decimating the workforce over the next two decades. Automated driving is just the start and even this rather simplistic ai use will have massive effects on the workforce

Why bother posting

[Ulfilas2000]

I would be happy to post the actual solution to this problem but why bother? I get a basic income whether I give you the answer or not. Pound sand.

Hardly a new experiment

[hawk]

Just for openers, the city of Rome once it got established in the business of conquering her neighbors and extracting tribute.

The keywords are "bread and circuses".

Citizens were entitled to their regular allotments of grain, etc.

It didn't work that well . . .

hawk

elasticities

[hawk]

That depends *entirely* on the price elastic of demand--the decrease can be either less *or* more than 1%. And in the (bizarre and hypothetical) case of the "Giffen good", demand could actually *increase* (but no-one has ever shown an example of such a good.)

hawk, now taking his economist hat back off

Major differences

[s.petry]

Norway has a population of 5.2 million people, or .1% of the population of the US. The Government is much smaller than larger countries which reduces the amount of bureaucratic layers that can be corrupted. While I would agree that the US Government is much larger than it should be, it's also larger by necessity due to population and landmass differences. In other words, what you can do in Norway does not translate to what you can do in any other Government larger or smaller.

The majority of the corruption in the US does not come because individual people are dishonest, it comes because politicians and bureaucrats are dishonest. The people in Government allow the system to be gamed because they benefit from the arrangement. People on Welfare of all types are dependent on the Government for sustenance, and will continue to vote for people who give them stuff. Sadly this is not really a parasite and host situation, it's two parasites with the host being everyone else in society. As an easy example, we should be able to simplify our taxes to a few lines. Look at the reaction when people say "you can't take away _my_ individual tax credit" when ever it has been tried. IRS agents and politicians are happy, lawyers are happy, the people who complain feel like they get something back from the system, and a very large number of people see it for what it is. Government bloat which we could do without.

The Welfare system has in turn created a different problem, which is that countless people living on the system no longer have opportunity to get off the system. Factories, Shops, and stores all closed up from lack of employees. Given the early choice of "welfare or work" large numbers of people went to welfare so those places had to close . No workers, no fluid cash in that area, no way to run a business. Now that the money is drying up we have major problems in densely populated areas because people can't work. Making things worse, we have no money to spend on Welfare (US Debt is 20Trillion cash and 220Trillion in entitlements).

I'm also not sure Finland has done the same thing with money set aside for pensions like the US has. US Social Security is an empty vault full of IOUs for the general fund instead of being saved and interest compounded for the people who put money into the system as it was sold to the American people.

At any rate, you can't say that Finland should be the model for the world because Finland has considerable problems even though they are a very small country. In some ways better than the US, but I know and work with people from Finland who moved to the US because Finland has high unemployment and little chance for economic mobility. A 60% income tax rate ensures that fact.

Re: Major differences

[aussie_a]

I call Bullshit. Citation needed on any significant number of businesses closing due to lack of employees.

Re:Major differences

[rapu]

A 60% income tax rate ensures that fact.

Posting from Finland. I think a flat 60% tax rate is only applied if you haven't submitted any sort of tax card (and nowadays employers' HR departments get it automatically from the Finnish IRS with default values). Otherwise, income tax is determined progressively. More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re: Major differences

[s.petry]

Typical leftist bullshit. Go to Detroit, Chicago, Flint, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Toledo, or any other place with high welfare rates and low job opportunities. Not that you want to do any actual work that would harm your ideology, but the facts are plain as day. Oh, and while in Detroit or Chicago perhaps you will get shot due to the overwhelming economic opportunities Democratic (Leftists) have given those once great cities.

Re:Major differences

[s.petry]

60% is what your Government publishes as the average for all taxes, not the restriction you placed on just earned income. Add in your retirement taxes, property tax, sales tax, pension fees, dividend and capital gains taxes, and the _average_ tax rate is 60%. Some estimates put it at 55%, and I did find another article which shows 51%, but it is still one of the highest rates in the World.

Re:Major differences

[werepants]

People on Welfare of all types are dependent on the Government for sustenance, and will continue to vote for people who give them stuff.

Citation needed. There's considerable evidence that people don't reliably vote in their economic best interests - there are wealthy people who vote for higher marginal tax rates, and people living on food stamps and welfare who vote for candidates that want to abolish said programs.

Re: Major differences

[aussie_a]

Citation needed and these places closing down due to a lack of workers and not due to their jobs getting offshored because the CEO wanted a bigger bonus.

I know a Finnish woman on the scheme

[UpnAtom]

It's only a sample of one but basic income has enabled her to become an alcoholic. Needless to say, this result will not be recorded.

She also doesn't live in Finland, but of course doesn't tell the authorities that.

Re:Business folk

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, typically the part after "locate your factory somewhere with a low cost of living" is charge people in expensive places significantly greater prices than it cost to produce your factory and profit greatly off of the "cost of living" arbitrage. There's also usually the whole lack of worker and environmental protection situation in these low cost of living places, so your profiting comes at the direct or indirect cost of human life.

But hey, you'll get yours... so what's a little sophistry to make it easy to sleep at night?

Re:The problem

[dbIII]

Oh yes I forgot - no crime or dishonesty in a libertarian world.
You would of course be correct given a perfect society full of perfect people.

Since UBI would disproportionately reward tax evasion and identity theft it's going to cost a bit to run it in less than a perfect world unless it's run as nothing but a rort for the 1% to keep on hammering the rest of the income earners (which IMHO is why this idea comes from the "right" in the first place).

Universal Basic Income Prediction

[b783719]

Other than the Trade Union Economist are called research 'Useless' by being 'Useless'.

Finland's Universal Basic Income research will very like reflect the Hierarchy of Needs like some commenters noted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
except it will have more in between ranks.

Basically if the UBI is high enough, a lot of people that found out their Physiological needs and maybe Safety needs are met will be looking for a higher need. This is the part where we get maybe 75% of the test population will be lazy and look forward to do lazy things, watch tv, gaming, entertainment, relationship, etc. 25% of the test population look for an even higher need with variety of goals with just maybe less than 10% will move forward to something better (higher pay, new researches, volunteer, etc).

In fact, teenagers and the retired will be a good reflection on the research result. They rarely think about food, water or shelter and watch what they do when they're free. Most do lazy things, very few go for a higher needs.

The only drawback is that when they are looking for lazy things, we will need a lot of entertainment contents (like what we see in today's world), otherwise some will be doing a lot of unexpected/ unwanted things. Before when everyone is focus on getting a job, we have focus on sustaining and everything around money. With UBI, everyone will get bored. We will need to focus more on entertainment to get their boredom away. (are we in a matrix?)

Overall UBI will resolve only a part of the issue, while we will need another solution for the other issue to constantly ease humans need and another solution if we want to promote more innovation.

Re:You have to make someone ask?

[phantomfive]

There's always more work, there are more jobs now than ever before.

Re:Measuring work

[phantomfive]

I'm willing to accept that there are alternate ways to measure work. How would you measure work?

Re:The problem

[Dagger2]

Good point, but it should be a lot easier to verify someone's identity than to verify their identity and do means-testing for the zillions of separate welfare-related programs we have at the moment. (Not to mention that we're ploughing full speed ahead into a future where humans can't really compete for jobs at all, so the difference between "number of people without a job" and "number of people" is going to start getting smaller and smaller anyway.)

Re:Useless? That article.

[Anonymous Coward]

They won't need or want human slaves when they have cheaper and more efficient robot slaves. So they aren't afraid of losing leverage. They'll have ALL the leverage. Is it even called leverage when you are powerful enough to move a mountain without a lever?

Re:You have to make someone ask?

[sjames]

I'm going to need to see some evidence for that. Employment participation is down and pay is stagnant. Those suggest the opposite. If demand was really outstripping supply, wouldn't cost (pay) be rising faster than inflation?

Re:You have to make someone ask?

[phantomfive]

Here you go. We recently outgrew the dip caused by the Bush recession.

Re:The problem

[jezwel]

I think you do not understand that checking far more recipients for fraud is going to be be harder than checking a few.

A UBI would be payable at the same rate to all eligible persons. Eligibility should be as simplistic as possible so that data matching can be accomplished:

* US citizen
* alive
* reached a certain age

Your government already has this information scattered across numerous data sources.

Re:You have to make someone ask?

[sjames]

Now, overlay the population of the U.S. (count H1-B). Further, switch from the binary of employed or not to inflation adjusted pay. According to those stats, if 1000 highly skilled engineers get laid off and are forced to take 10 hour a week jobs at McDs, there is no change in employment. If a high school kid also gets one of those jobs, things are looking up according to them.

Re:Measuring work

[hackwrench]

Perhaps by surveys that ask people how happy they are with it.

Re:You have to make someone ask?

[phantomfive]

Further, switch from the binary of employed or not to inflation adjusted pay.

That's a bad statistic, you'd be better looking at 'total compensation per hour.'

Trade Union economics are suspect.

[Anonymous Coward]

In the article, they even say that no amount of evidence as to the outcome can sway their opinion, as they've always been against the idea. Anyone who takes such a closed-minded position cannot be trusted as a commentator. Trade Unions actually have a vested interest in keeping worker's desperate, as that is what drives membership in Trade Unions.

Subsistence Farming

[QlooQl]

People keep bring up comments like "I wouldn't work". That's not what I'm worried about. I live in the South. Here, if you gave people a UBI, they would just farm in their backyards and smoke meth...which is what they already do, but I digress. I would love to be able to subsistence farm, eat everything I grow and still collect a UBI to pay my mortgage. What is supposed to inspire me to grow more than I need and sell it? Selling sounds like a pain. I'll work (for myself), but what makes me actually participate in the larger economy? Would you tell people they can't just grow their own wheat, brew their own beer and consume it all while collecting UBI?

basic free income FINLAND

[Anonymous Coward]

The "LEFT" wants control and obedience, nothing less.

Dennis Morrisseau
US Army Officer [Vietnam era] ANTI-WAR
--FOR TRUMP--
Lieutenant Morrisseau's Rebellion
FIRECONGRESS.org
Second Vermont Republic
POB 177, W. Pawlet, VT USA 05775
dmorso1@netzero.net
802 645 9727

Re:The problem

[dbIII]

verify their identity and do means-testing

Since UBI rewards tax evaders that means testing step can't be avoided entirely either - unless it's all done as a trick to take from the middle and reward the wealthy, which I think is what some UBI proponents want.
Without something like means-testing to discourage tax evasion and punish outright illegal tax avoidance UBI would collapse as a diminishing number of taxpayers not only have to fund the bottom end of town but the top end of town as well.

Re:The problem

[dbIII]

Google identity theft and tax evasion to get some idea of what of was referring to.
Expecting a small pool of taxpayers to fund payments to everyone (including wastefully to themselves) is the core problem with UBI, but it's a greed driven idea from people who are already well off but want a "prize" from others while paying less tax than the "prize".
IMHO it's a sign of both amoral greed and being so out of touch that welfare is seen as a "prize" instead of something that stops people starving on the streets of your community.

Re:Useless? That article.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with basic income is that humans are for some reason silly about how they treat something they've earned vs something they've been given.

Sorry I can't hear you over the lights

[Anonymous Coward]

The labor group says the results of the two-year pilot program will fail to sway its opposition to a welfare-policy idea that's gaining traction among those looking for an alternative in the post-industrial age.

It's great to see that at least they went in with an open mind.

They would hope that in later years, when only 1% of the population offer any suitable skillset over our robotic overlords, whoever decides policy (human, fuzzy logic, random.random) would take all variables into account when dealing with attempting to increase/maintain the standard of life.

Kudos

[Tenebrousedge]

We disagree vehemently on a number of subjects; you're on my foes list for a number of good reasons. However, I feel that makes it the more incumbent on me to give you credit where it is due, so I'd just like to say that I often find your comments to be valuable and insightful. I freely admit that I do not like you, but I do respect you, and Slashdot would be a worse place without you.

U6: 7.2% vs. 9.2% unemployment

[Brannon]

I'm not sure where you are getting "half again more people unemployed"--unless you are doing something really silly like comparing absolute numbers of people instead of rates.

> It fell a bit under Bush, and even more under Obama.

If you're talking about labor participation as measured by (1 - U6), then this is where you parted from reality. That number went from 92.8% when Clinton left office to the [much worse] 83.5% when George W Bush left office, and then *recovered* under Obama to the current 90.8%. It did not "fall *a bit*" under W and then "a bit more" under Obama.

The U6 data reflects macro-economic trends, the difference between good & bad Presidents, and boom/bust cycles (also emblematic of poor economic policy)--but there's very little trend here to extract any signal at all about the effect of automation on employment.

Re:U6: 7.2% vs. 9.2% unemployment

[dgatwood]

I'm not sure where you are getting "half again more people unemployed"--unless you are doing something really silly like comparing absolute numbers of people instead of rates.

Almost half again larger percentage of people unemployed. My bad. The total population has grown, so in absolute numbers, more than half again more people are unemployed now than then.

If you're talking about labor participation as measured by (1 - U6), then this is where you parted from reality. That number went from 92.8% when Clinton left office to the [much worse] 83.5% when George W Bush left office, and then *recovered* under Obama to the current 90.8%. It did not "fall *a bit*" under W and then "a bit more" under Obama.

Look again. The U6 rate started increasing in the last year of Pres. George W. Bush's administration, but it did not actually peak until November of 2009, almost a year into Pres. Obama's presidency. I'm not saying Pres. Obama caused that, mind you; it was very solidly headed in that direction as a result of brain-damaged deregulation of the banking industry under Pres. Clinton that triggered a crash late in the younger Pres. Bush's term.

More Communist/Leftist Crap

[s.petry]

Look at voting trends in urban areas which vote almost 99% democratic over the last 50 years. Your claim for citation is delusional at best, dishonest at worst.

Re:More Communist/Leftist Crap

[werepants]

Look at voting trends in urban areas which vote almost 99% democratic over the last 50 years. Your claim for citation is delusional at best, dishonest at worst.

Here's a little known fact among Republicans: blue states, generally, are not net recipients of federal aid. California and New York pump far more revenue into the country via taxation (because of their massive, healthy economies) than they get back in the form of federal handouts and benefits. The parasites on the system, sucking more out of the country than they put in, are the red, rural states. The rural republicans want to end handouts from the feds, but if we really did that, the economies of red states would be much worse off and the economies of blue states would be much better off.

If you disagree, I would love for you to prove me wrong with some factual evidence. However, since you objected so strongly to a simple request for a citation, I suspect that facts play very little role in your ideology. I hope to be pleasantly surprised.

Re:The problem

[Dagger2]

It's "universal" so by definition receiving it doesn't depend on how much money you earn or how much tax you pay (although there's probably a "for working age adults" proviso in there...). Stopping tax evasion is orthogonal to that.

No, it's not done as a trick to take from the middle and reward the wealthy. It's done as a trick to make sure that everybody can feed, clothe and house themselves. I personally don't think that's a bad thing to do.

5%of Finland's entire gross domestic?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The trade union argues this UBI program would cost 5% of Finland's entire gross domestic product, making it "impossibly expensive."

So what is the alternative (the current welfare system) costing? Including all the administrative overhead?