Slashdot Mirror
Finland Basic Income Trial Left People 'Happier But Jobless' (bbc.com)
Giving jobless people in Finland a basic income for two years did not lead them to find work, researchers said. From a report: From January 2017 until December 2018, 2,000 unemployed Finns got a monthly flat payment of $685. The aim was to see if a guaranteed safety net would help people find jobs, and support them if they had to take insecure gig economy work. While employment levels did not improve, participants said they felt happier and less stressed. When it launched the pilot scheme back in 2017, Finland became the first European country to test out the idea of an unconditional basic income. It was run by the Social Insurance Institution (Kela), a Finnish government agency, and involved 2,000 randomly-selected people on unemployment benefits. It immediately attracted international interest - but these results have now raised questions about the effectiveness of such schemes.
Give people a basic income thats not dependent on whether they bother to look for work or not and ... they don't bother! Well, I for one never saw that coming! No no , not in a million years!
Is there anything dumber in this world (that are still recognisable human) than socialists?
fixes benefit cliffs that make it better to not work
It did not reduce unemployment, but it reduced the stress of that situation for people. That social impact of that cannot be ignored. In addition, this was only 2,000 random people out of 400,000. That is not enough to determine the economic impact on any sort of measurable scale.
This experiment it is a starting point, not a failure.
I know people on welfare that get small checks like this each month. The only reason they don't try to work is because they will loose their free money, so instead they just find creative ways to live off what they are given. The last thing they would ever consider doing is finding a job.
I do not belong to the church of the lowercase 'i'
Isn't a 2 year UBI pilot used in this way just simply longer lasting unemployment benefits?
it's so obvious and self-evident that I don't think anybody ever wrote it down in a book. But it should be in every school textbook.
That law is, you tend to get more of what you reward. Conversely, you get less of what you punish.
You want people to smoke less, you put higher taxes on cigarettes.
You want more joblessness, you give out rewards (in the form of cash payment) for being jobless.
The results from experiments with a random selection of 2000 people cannot be extrapolated to a hypothetical situation of Universal Basic Income. Job dynamics when everybody has a guaranteed source of income would be... interesting.
People weren't meant for that... you suggesting that this would make them happy.
[($)]
What sort of self fulfillment happens when your sent a check for doing nothing? I believe they tried something similar in Canada and it also failed. Its a cop out to expect others to pay for your life if you have any ability to work and support yourself. Its much more satisfying to do something for a paycheck, then get a handout.
A lot of people like to point out that basic income will not motivate people to work, yet we're subsidizing that laziness, and that's certainly true. However, the mistake is assuming that we aren't paying for it already. I would rather use a basic income to replace all of the existing social programs that we spend billions of dollars on per year. It's far better solution in that it's more adaptive (food stamps are useless if you need to repair your car to get to a job) and less expensive to administer since it's a single program.
But it's also necessary to look at it in terms of other costs it might help prevent. People without money or any way to obtain it aren't going to sit and starve. More often than not they turn to some form of crime. It costs a lot of money to hire a police force necessary to deal with that crime and to incarcerate the criminals who perpetuate it. If $700 a month stops us from having to pay almost four times that amount to lock that person up in jail, we're recognizing cost savings there as well.
I think that large scale government wealth redistribution schemes are folly, but a basic income is the best way to go about doing it. From a utilitarian point of view, we're already spending massive amounts of money on these types of programs. I think it's a good compromise because the left gets their government program and the right gets a smaller government.
I'm sad that so much time is wasted every generation relearning basic human nature. Imagine how much better we might be as a species if our lifespan was longer.
"Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it"
"Those who do study history are doomed to watch others repeat it"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Boy - that's a very surprising result.
Who pays for this benefit when there are not enough people working to generate the taxes necessary to fund this program?
Who pays for this benefit when no one works?
so the millionaire business owner decided not work anymore, the well educated couple making 100k a year quit. the single guy living on 40k a year quit who spends a ton on his hobbies also quite. or could it be that the test only gave money to already low income people who didn't work in the first place. Hard to believe that people who didn't work continue to not work when you give them free money.
Have you considered the stress that people experience when they need to pony up the money when taxes are being paid? Lack of empathy, cruel and cold immorality is so typical among the socialists.
$659 isn't a lot of money.
If a man does not work, neither should he eat.
Is there anything dumber in this world (that are still recognisable human) than socialists?
Yes. Trump supporters. Though the ones in the KKK and the nazis are hard to recognize as human.
More seriously, it was an experiment. Relax. Yes the outcome was fairly predictable but sometimes what seems obvious actually isn't correct. So you run an experiment to find out. It was possible we'd find out something unexpected. This sort of data is why I think people who talk nonsense about a "post scarcity society" are talking complete nonsense because most people don't want to work if they don't have to.
If you want people to work low-end jobs, subsidize wages so employers can take useful advantage of that labor pool.
Everyone wins.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
As a civilization, is the goal employment or happiness? Is employment of every capable individual necessary for the happiness of society or can happiness be achieved without exhaustive employment. As efficiencies increase and fewer human labor hours are necessary for the same output, perhaps we should start looking to happiness as a measure of a successful society rather than a fully employed population.
Does seeing your neighbor get by on public assistance make you more happy or less happy than seeing a person that is homeless on the corner begging for money? Personally, I would prefer the public assistance neighbor to the person struggling on the street corner.
A few things:
1 - They did not get employment more than their counterparts (it doesn't help 'em find jobs).
2 - They did not get employment less than their counterparts (they don't take the money and slack off).
3 - They were collecting this instead of unemployment or other benefits (which may have different bureaucratic ramifications one way or another depending on program implementation overhead).
4 - They were happier.
5 - This is a successful experiment - it produced data in a controlled manner which can likely be replicated.
There are a few narratives left to be explored. Here are some samples of such stories:
(PRO) "UBI, as implemented, costs less than the collection of unemployment, food stamps, housing assistance, and other assorted benefits. Giving poor people money through a unified program decreases administration costs and allows for individual choice regulation in the marketplace without affecting employment outcomes."
(debatable-PRO) "UBI, as implemented, is more expensive than unemployment costs in implementation, but results in happier and less stressful citizens."
(neutral) "UBI, as implemented, did not result in people just sitting about the house."
(debatable-CON) "UBI did not result in additional risk-taking, business-starting, or other activities, as hypothesized."
(CON) "UBI cost the taxpayer money to pay people to be happier while they sat at home doing nothing productive."
I want to know how many used the money constructively vs doing nothing good with it. How many went back to school? How many used the money to send the kid to daycare while they looked for work? Help a dependent? Improve home life for a family that has one working individual already?
The study is deeply flawed if the only desired outcome was for people to find employment. The entire point of UBI is that people will spend it in ways that they need, instead of ways that the government *thinks* they need.
Happier because they are in a special group of 2000 who gets extra free money.
If you make it the status quo for the country, you just redefine what being poor is, and there is nothing to be happy about.
"Give a man a fish and he will piss and moan you didn't give him caviar"
I fail to see how on Earth free money would help someone find a job. Can someone please explain how free money is supposed to alleviate joblessness? I am just not seeing the connection.
Not that the be-tas drawn to this site would know, but the idea of 'basic income' is as old as the first major Empire.
Take Rome. Those that lived in Rome itself were guaranteed access to everything needed for life- paid for by the riches of Empire. Same in Britain during the height of the British Empire.
But one can take from this that the ISSUE of 'basic income' is that it will never apply to general populations, only narrow pivileged populations during specific moments in history. And what then is 'basic income' even trying to achieve?
Theire is a CONFLATION with 'trust fund' babies- or the infamous wasters of the late 19th/early 20th century who lived of 'bond' incomes. WW1 marked the beginning of the end of this class.
There was story in yesterday's British press about two twins of 52 who hanged themselves in a dual suicide. They had spend the last 4 years living off the 40,000 pound inheritance from their Mom's estate, and when that cash finally ran out, they could not bear the idea of the humiliation that is applying for 'benefits' in 2019 Britain. So they neatly arranged their affairs and killed themselves.
A non-means tested basic income would have saved them, but if you think any of the experimental basic income programs are designed for people like these, you are living in cloud cookoo land. Basic income programs are coming from the same monsters who backed the wahhabi terror programs in Syria, and who give 100 support to the twin demonic horrors of Iz-real and saudi arabia. Just more fabian social manipulation that seeks to perfect the road to global warfare.
You really shouldn't live like you are. To say you can't change that is a lie you tell yourself. Cut one minor expense or two a month and you can have thousands saved over years of working. Take serious stock of your expenses and you can save many thousands. To say you can't do that is an idiotic lie you tell yourself.
My household income is >$200k but my cable, movie and video entertainment bill is literally $0 out of habits formed when my income was not this high. I go to the library and check out TV shows and movies and watch youtube. I had netflix once until they decided to make it all about minorities. Now I have an extra $120 a year to save. Over 30 years, cancelling netflix alone is $3,600 without accounting for investment earnings.
Socialism is the perfect solution. It just has not been done right.
Reduced stress.... good
Happier... good
Don't have to find a shit job.... good
I should note that all of the people selected for the experiment were jobless at the start. Is it a surprise that they were jobless at the end? Some of them did find work in spite of being paid not to work.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
You cheap bastard.
Granted, I live paycheck to paycheck and have a small savings to take care of minor emergencies. But nothing to cover a single month of expenses.
Why the hell are you doing that? It seems like you recognize the folly, but yet you choose to continue to do so.
I thought that one of the big benefits of UBI is that it replaces a bunch of other complex, difficult-to-manage and costly programs. TFA does not state if they saw any cost savings from running the program. People who want to work are going to eventually find jobs. People who want to abuse the system are going to abuse the system. The question is if UBI is easier and cheaper to manage than supposed programs to encourage people to go back to work.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
The strength of UBI is that it allows people to take risks. People who have mortgages, children, etc and feel they cant afford to start a new business, go freelance, or develop something new. UBI, it's hoped, could drive innovation and creativity by reducing the strain of earning. Of course this will be a far less effective strategy amongst the long term unemployed who dont have the commitment of earning.
No one says that UBI makes people work more, just that it is not an impediment to people working. I'd say the result they found is completely what would be expected for a successful test.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Completely dismantle globalization, no international trade at all.
I would say the goal should be healthiness and fitness for work, which is closely related to hapiness.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I can't believe UBI is a subject worth investigating. It's like people haven't ever met other people. It's the "give a man a fish" proverb gone backwards. If you give him a fish every day, he's never going to learn how to fish.
Did you see the Gov. of VA in a KKK hood (or was he the guy next to the KKK member? lol)? I did.
Did you notice the DNC, or you calling for him to resign? I didn't.
Whoops, looks like you are the ACTUALL KKK supporter. Congratulations you bigot.
I am loving this new DNC. They support the KKK, support rapists, and tell you that eating steak or flying airplanes will be illegal in 10 years and you are evil if you even think of doing either. Yep, the DNC thinks bigots/racists are perfectly fine, but you eat a steak and you are evil.
LOLS
Free money makes people happy? This is what they learned? Who would have ever guessed?
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
So, if I understand what you're saying, handing out free benefits to people (instead of them earning them) makes them feel better but essentially doesn't improve their condition so you're left with a largely dependent group of people who cannot fend for themselves?
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/cat...
Who'd a thunk it?
-Styopa
We don't advocate feeding wild animals since it introduces long-term, bad behaviors such as a lack of foraging skills, attracting too many animals to an area, and increased reproduction rates due to an abundance of food. It also increases the risk of a disease outbreak due to more animals in the area. So why do we promote basic-income programs for younger, healthy people?
It takes a while for people to start a new job, if the idea is that they'd create anew venture. It takes a while for people who have been unemployed for a while to become employed again: employers see a lot of CVs and anyone out of work for some time will be less liable, since the employer may worry that their skills are getting rusty.
And it takes a lot of people to show any effects in this short amount of time.
So no new jobs for those trial people is indicative of nothing, it needed to be a lot longer or a hell of a lot more people.
Actually you haven't demonstrated that ANYONE believes that. You're just a lying faggot.
EVEN if they don't do anything but sit at home and drink beer and watch porn all day, they are spending that money and that money goes to people who are by definition productive (else they'd produce nothing that is sold), and the companies would want more people or keep them on in face of pressure to fire them, to satisfy this higher demand.
Remember that bullshit about "trickle down economics" that you used to blather on and on about? Never worked. Trickle up works. The poorest spend all their money, so every dollar spend on them from government handout is part of the economy almost instantly, unlike the cash of the wealthy, which is hoarded instead.
The poor also can't afford to avoid taxes, so that is another reason why the poor are a better target for government handout than the wealthy.
This has nothing to do with Socialism. Nobody is giving free money under Socialism. Think of this as streamlined unemployment benefits with less overhead for bureaucracy regulating how to distribute them. Every Capitalist country has unemployment benefits, while places like China do not.
That's what you do. If you invest it, then it is surplus money, so why should you get paid for having spare money? YOU DID NOT EARN THAT EXTRA. Usury should be banned. If you have savings and put it to some use by loaning it, then you will get your money back. If you are guaranteed your money back, then you should get no value other than the original sum. If you are not guaranteed your money, then you could ask for some insured risk to pay back on the case that it does fall through.
If you loan your money to someone and they make it double by their efforts, then what makes you deserving of any of that extra? If you wanted it, YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE THE WORK.
If you did not, or could not, then you should get nothing. It wasn't money you were using.
I would say the goal should be healthiness and fitness for work, which is closely related to hapiness.
I (and I suspect others as well) have a fundamental disagreement with this argument. My happiness in life is, at best, tenuously related to my work. I have a job that pays quite well, has an acceptable level of stress to me, and whose activities I find rewarding and engaging. Despite all this, the happiest times in my life are, without question, not related to my work. They're spending time with my wife, my family, and my friends. Or pursuing my hobbies. Or traveling. Or exploring new interests. I work where I do, doing what I do because it is the optimal way the society I exist in will allow me to enjoy those things the way I want to. I am at peace with how this has worked out for me, but I am not willing to concede that the situation cannot be improved for both myself and society at the same time.
I accept that the ability to perform work is what you believe will end up bringing people happiness. And, for you, maybe that is indeed true. Maybe for you work is intrinsically rewarding and a goal in and of itself. For me, it is not.
than social services handing stuff out?
You really shouldn't live like you are. To say you can't change that is a lie you tell yourself. Cut one minor expense or two a month and you can have thousands saved over years of working. Take serious stock of your expenses and you can save many thousands. To say you can't do that is an idiotic lie you tell yourself.
My household income is >$200k but my cable, movie and video entertainment bill is literally $0 out of habits formed when my income was not this high. I go to the library and check out TV shows and movies and watch youtube. I had netflix once until they decided to make it all about minorities. Now I have an extra $120 a year to save. Over 30 years, cancelling netflix alone is $3,600 without accounting for investment earnings.
The only thing (in bold) I got out of your entire post is that you're a racist scumbag.
all lotto winners and the outcomes 5-10 years later. Maybe that is the best raw data there is for what happens when an individual becomes financially secure.
;)
Will we learn that individuals who are unemployed/not financially secure are that way because of the life choices they make.
Just wondering?
Just my 2 cents
Yea, other than Robert Byrd, KKK Leader and 60 year celebrated DNC senator from WV who was THE GUY who filibustered the civil rights act. When did he finally leave the DNC? A few years ago when he finally died. He was Hillary's "mentor" and "idol". Yep, Hillary Clinton followed a KKK leader.
Oh yea, don't forget Northam, Gov of VA. He was photographed in a KKK hood and the DNC is hoping he can hold onto his position.
Meanwhile the "New Green Deal" plans on making flying aircraft or eating steak illegal.
DNC supports KKK members (and rapists) and tells you that eating steak will make you a criminal soon.
Fuck you and your KKK party.
Known fact that a 1%er eats with two spoons at a time !!! Damn parasites....
It's not always about choice. Try having a malicious ex-wife who is alienating your children and has made multiple false claims of child abuse and domestic violence. 100k and counting in legal fees in just shy of 3 years. I'd love to not live pay check to pay check.
Were they still happier after they were jobless?
We already have that system. I work really hard. I made a lot of money. I have no debts, a big beautiful house in a nice area, an expensive sports car and everything else I could possibly desire.
If I didnt work then I starve and live in a card board box I found in a back alley.
Why would we possibly support people who do not contribute to society who are capable of it?
The so called extra energy in the system you are talking about is my taxes. If my taxes were lower because I didnt have to support useless people then I would be happier and work less and have the same life but better because I have more free time. Why is my life being spent to support useless trash to sit around all day smoking hash and watching YouTube and making the next generation of useless people my useful and productive children will have to support?
I am not your slave. I do not owe anyone a free life at any level.
If you want stuff, go fucking work for it. If you are hungry, work. If you are cold, work. Get a fucking job or starve. I not only do not have a morale obligation to support other lazy but able bodied people. I have a moral obligation to not do so as they are destructive to society and the environment using up limited resources but providin6nothing in return.
The able bodied non-working wannabe UBI types are nothing but locusts. They should be squashed not given free stuff from the pockets and lives of the hard working.
They sort of did give money, indirectly. They forced us/you to show up for a job. Some shitty job where everybody slacked off as much as possible and you got a paycheck. Thing is there was not much to buy with the money. This was here in europe.
This may work with a small populace. Expand it to where there are large numbers of transient people and it gets harder to manage.
It is a bad idea.
A way to make it worse. OPEN BORDERS!
Now add in anyone from anywhere that wants some easy money.
Sweden is having troubles.
Imagine all of South America, India and China wanting to get in on your benefits.
Wow! Thousands over years! Wowee! Being a wage slave with a joyless life sure is the best!
Thanks, billionaires!
fucking moron.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How dare you assume the minorities he is talking about are a different race than him ? How dare you sir !!
So, all the good advice he gave just woosh by, and the one thing you saw was something about minority movies being lame. And also, you have a weak definition of rasism, for example mine is someone calling you *to your face subhuman worthy of soap-making*.
> I had netflix once until they decided to make it all about minorities.
Found the racist
Stress about unemployment can be a harmful driver of keeping your fragile backside in a toxic job in which you deliver far less value to yourself/family/industry/society (and consume more medical support) than if your career was managed proactively with less fear.
But many just inherently love the genre of pointy stick incentive porn, especially when when discussing a group of presumptively characterized as even more fat and lazy than yours truly.
Psychology 101: That's how we generally deal with our own self-loathing: by projecting it onto a group even less deserving. Go into any prison. You'll never find anyone tougher on crime than the white collar criminal who defrauded little old ladies into destitution seething with vanity twenty paces farther up the corridor from the filthy puke who stalked underage girls.
These small trials are just the tip of the iceberg.
Check out Architect of Prosperity: Sir John Cowperthwaite and the Making of Hong Kong (2017) about how Hong Kong established a unique cultural heritage of low-taxation social safety nets.
This took a very smart man twenty years to accomplish (circa 1950 to 1970). He had scored several firsts back in the homeland in Latin and Greek, and thoroughly believed that excess government spending drained venture capital away from projects that drive the long-term growth rate.
But then when the private sector borked things over (far too many people were dying in preventable housing fires) he waded into the mess and established a government program in low-cost housing that didn't kill people for no good reason.
I was watching Erik Weinstein the other day, explaining the IDW (which began as an in-joke BTW). He sensibly explained that no intelligent person believes in completely open borders; and conversely, that no intelligent person believes in completely closed borders (these being memes that society's elite institutions—operating on both the left and right—above the MSM layer, use to keep the masses uselessly preoccupied with ridiculously polarized bun fights).
A complex world always has two sides.
UBI is not a panacea, but it could turn out as well as Hong Kong, depending on how we move forward.
The text continues, quoting from Milton Friedman:
Neil Monnery on Hong Kong and the Architect of Prosperity — 8 October 2018
Of course, leaving people to burn to death in substandard housing does indeed motivate them to get off their fat asses and move up in the class structu
I'm not sure how Finland handles secondary education but it would be interesting to see if any of those selected decided to enroll in furthering their education. The article does a great job of not speaking on education basically at all.
What sort of fucktard posts this. If someone has been barely earning enough to survive for the last 30 years, what other option did you suggest? Robbing banks? Giving up and living off welfare? Living on the streets while somehow saving money?
Imbecile.
The bulk of the homeless, maybe even the majority, are mentally ill. Reagan shut down the mental hospitals (aka insane asylums) in the 1980s with the idea that the states should fund them like they did every other medial expense except Medicare. The states never picked up the tab, so they closed down, and all those people got dumped on the streets.
A lot of the rest are probably like you (I assume, since you don't give any financial details). Smart, well-educated, and capable of doing a decent job at work. But financially illiterate. I worked for a couple years at a job making $30k. I was shocked by how many of my co-workers at the same salary range lived paycheck-to-paycheck. Their MO seemed to be to deposit their paycheck in their bank account, and pay their monthly bills. After those were covered, they'd use money for impulse buys until the ATM said their bank account was empty, Then they'd hunker down and try to make it until the next paycheck. "The ATM says I don't have any more money" was a phrase I heard all too often. I never understood how those paycheck advance loan places stayed in business until I saw how common this lifestyle was. And it explained why so many people go into credit card debt (I pay mine off every month and thought everyone else did too, until I saw how my co-workers lived).
In the meantime, I (on the same salary mind you) was scrupulous, maybe even paranoid, to save what money I could. I didn't go to movie theaters, preferring to rent a video with friends so we could all watch it together. I rarely ate out, taking the time to prepare most of my own meals, and tried to encourage my friends to hold potluck-style get-togethers instead of eating out. When I did eat out, I always drank water instead of ordering a $2 soda or coffee. Speaking of which I never paid more than $1 for a beverage, and the first time I walked into a Starbucks and saw the prices, I was so shocked it almost ruined the date. On road trips I'd always try to arrange as many people as we could squeeze into the car to go along so we could share fuel, entrance, and parking expenses. All while paying for my own health and dental insurance (paranoia helped there). By the end of the year I'd saved up enough to buy myself a couple thousand dollars worth of new photo equipment as a Christmas present to myself, which still retaining a savings buffer big enough to cover almost 6 months of expenses.
I look back on my high school education, and what was missing, what's badly needed, was a semester-long course on financial management. How to balance your monthly expenses (used to be balancing your checkbook). The importance of creating a monthly budget (which is trivial now that you can run a spreadsheet on your phone for free). What the interest rate on your savings account means long-term. How those little maintenance and late fees build up over a year to eat a sizeable chunk of your savings. The power of compounding interest, and why it's better to save up and wait to buy a big ticket item, rather than take a loan to get it immediately. How insurance works and when it is/isn't a good idea to use it (if you can't afford to pay for a failure, you need to buy insurance). The difference between gambling, insurance, and investing in stocks (yes there's a difference - if you think there isn't then count yourself among the financially illiterate). Taxes, how to file them, the different options (standard deduction vs itemized), common deductions and exemptions so you know what kinds of spending are encouraged by our tax code, heck, what the difference is between a deduction and exemption and credit. And a brief tutorial on investing, so you know how to compare all the different options like a savings account vs CD vs money market fund vs mutual fund vs stocks vs municipal bonds. Your credit report, what helps you get good credit, what gives you bad credit, and how you can detect and expunge wrong info from your report. What all those terms and conditions mean when taking out a loan/mort
Well, actually, the Trump spent a lot of time doing stuff. He was on the order of 60 hours a week, probably more if you consider that all of his socializing was networking.
I'm not saying you have to be happy at your work. I'm saying you will be happier working and more productive on average if you are healthier. Under UBI you won't have to work unless you want more than UBI can afford to be happy in your personal life.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
fixes benefit cliffs that make it better to not work
That is by far the strongest appeal of a system like this. It all removes the inefficient black markets that foodstamps create. If I could ever believe this would be done instead of all the existing welfare programs and EITC, I'd be all for it.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You really shouldn't live like you are.
This person gave no information about their income level or expenses, but you saw fit to judge them. You automatically assumed, based on the fact that they are living paycheck-to-paycheck, that this is All Their Fault and there MUST, MUST be some way they can fix it that they just haven't thought of.
My household income is >$200k
itt: A high income individual telling an individual with little disposable income what they Should Be Doing With Their Monday. It's the embodiment of the American spirit.
Take serious stock of your expenses and you can save many thousands. To say you can't do that is an idiotic lie you tell yourself.
This is true for some people, and completely NOT true for others. Do you not really have any idea what it's like to not have money?
My household income is >$200k
Uh huh. Thought so. So you're saying that.. gee if you make well into a 6 figure salary you can save thousands of dollars. Duh. Yes, I understand how people like yourself piss away money on stupid crap like $150/month cable bills. There's plenty of people that make maybe 30 grand/year, or some that live on 15-20, and no, there's just no way they can "cut out a few expenses" like Cable... because they already don't pay cable, or Netflix!
But, what do you do with the significant number of people that, rather than spend their UBI on food, shelter and other necessities of life....they BLOW it on drugs or other bad choices?
What if they do this for 2-6 months or more in a stretch?
Do you then let them starve on the street? What about their kids, these people fuck too you know.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
My wife and I have a household income of right about $200K, and we live in a 3-bedroom house within city limits, on a mortgage payment of $12K/year (I.e. not expensively). I am almost 50 and she is 43.
If the govt guaranteed us $100K/year free and clear of taxes for the rest of our lives, we would quit our jobs instantly and never look back.
We would gladly give up money for time to fuck off.
They are untaxed, or government subsidized?
Combine UBI with low cost drugs and people can party until they are dead if you so desire.
Set up dmz'd party zones for those sorts of people to live in. It helps keep your undesirables out of desirable areas unless they are contributing, and it lowers distribution costs for the vices so your UBI costs don't have to go up.
Most of America's problems are in fact caused by *LACK* of free market economics, particularly in driving down costs of items that are either considered prestigious, or moral affronts to an influential or vocal part of society. Knock a few of those legs out and all of a sudden the costs on a variety of resources tumble and all of society is better off for it, even if some minority of society doesn't get to make money hand over fist thanks to artificial or regulated scarcity.
UBI by itself won't fix things, but UBI combined with careful deregulation and 'sacrificial zones' will.
Hell, just zone San Francisco, regions of Los Angeles, and boroughs of New York as the party zones and all should be fine in the world. Any bad/party people not already there, give them free one way transport there. Most of your problems just self resolved and in spite of the upfront costs, the ongoing costs will nosedive dramatically.
Children feel happier and less stressed if they have parents.
God it's simple long term unemployed people are very unlikely to ever serve a function in society it becomes a mentality. I live in Scandinavia and I know this mentality it's like an never ending complain, my comment is get the f...ck of your ass and start work, and no this is not the same as animals survive without money, people do to but you got to work to get food, firewood etc.. to survive, but if you can just be lazy and the fruit falls in your hand why not and this is what basic income does. Why do you think there is immigrating a gazillion Somalis where uneployment among this group is in the 90% range, well because Scandinavia is heaven you just need to sit on your ass and not work and you still get food on the table and as a "poor" refugee you even get a starter pack with nice furniture and tv and so on... and soon you know how to complain and demand to get even more perks without ever working... I worked my whole life and I hate lazy ass idiots, there is always work if you want to work!!!
Do you know that there was no unemployment in the countries you cite here? And something like this was pretty much impossible as well. Article 209.1 of the USSR penal code pretty much meant that you either have a job or you go to prison.
"He who does not work shall not eat", a quote Lenin quite blatantly lifted from the bible. Just in case anyone here thought that Communism and Christianity are completely incompatible, at least their seedy underbelly looks quite the same.
I guess you really would have liked the USSR. Or a theocracy, it's all good.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And that's different to the beautiful capitalist world we're in now in what way exactly?
In Communism, you had people giving not even half a shit about their job, do a half-assed job if that, with nobody, not even the kolkhoz- or factory foremen giving a shit because they, too, didn't care jack shit about it.
In Capitalism, you have pretty much the same, everyone working just enough to not getting fired with those on top not giving any more of a shit beyond what's necessary to ensure their bonus payments, and since they're basically a given, they don't give a shit either.
And since we're in a completely hire-and-fire economy anyway, and since more than minimum wage is but a wet dream (unless you happen to have a skill that is in higher demand than supply), nobody questions why you're on your fourth job in 5 years and nobody bothers to "climb the corporate ladder" anymore either because it doesn't happen anyway.
Seriously, the only times I have seen a considerable change in my paycheck was when I switched companies, and I have not seen any in-house promotions in at least the last 6 years.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Not only a conservative but a racist one too. That quote is a dog whistle or a virtue signal as they like to call it. All I know is racists gonna race and American racists are the dumbest. Doesn't he know that providing abortions would actually make fewer minorities? Minorities, because they get shitty educations, use abortion services more than white people. I thought the racists wanted less black people? If they weren't so fucking stupid, the racists would be opening up clinics in every town. Racists can't even race right.
"involved 2,000 randomly-selected people on unemployment benefits."
That's like dipping your toe in the swimming pool and calling that a study about "Survival rate of castaways in the Antarctic".
It was known to be only of a limited time so there was still a huge motivator to get off unemployment. This was simply extended unemployment benefits.
It was only offered on people on unemployment so it didn't apply to employed people who may want to find a way to end up unemployed or just quit if the rules for UBI benefits allows.
There was nothing UNIVERSAL (key word here) about it. It was an absolutely worthless study in regards to UBI. Only a full scale implementation can be a representative sample of UBI.
That was a study about "What if we extend and raise unemployment benefits".
Nothing is ever enough for the greedy fucks. They eat with 2 forks, too. Heaven forbid they get a little salad dressing in their entree.
Well if they get high enough they might eat the kids. It's a win-win!
That is probably right if we have a sophisticated concept of work as something beyond simply pushing up GDP. Taking care of a long term sick family member is work, too, it just does not generate pay check. Being a stay at home parent that keeps the home running and the children looked after is work, too, it just does not generate a pay check.
It suits me at least. I'd much rather do things I like (which aren't very expensive, luckily) than waste my life in an office doing a job I hate. There's a point where hard-working crosses over into plain stupid.
I don't have a huge ego, but if there's anything I take pride in, it's my work: my open source stuff, my music, etc. Having lots of money or expensive stuff by itself doesn't impress me, and if anyone else would judge me for it, I couldn't care less.
When you think about how much the US pays soldiers to basically burn calories for no purpose and how much the equipment costs, this is pretty good.
That makes sense. Healthy workers are generally more productive. After seeing the way you phrased that, I realize I may have misinterpreted your earlier comment. Sorry about that.
The statement wasn't necessarily racist in itself. That's why you can't parse it. It was a dog whistle and you came running. GOOD BOY! Dogs can't parse what we say either but they come a running when we call. Massa Cheap Rich Bastard needed protection from us wolves and he hollerred for help. You came running. You nurture racism in your heart. It takes tricks like dog whistles to get you to show it, but it's there. If it stays there, it can be tolerated, but once you let your actions become driven by it, well, society has a problem that your final solution can't fix. So IOW, keep your racist mouth shut and you can hate all day long. Start going to clan rallies when your massa's call and things are gonna get ugly.
PS: OP's drivel was not "good advice" either.
They starve to death and cease being a problem? If a person has the means to survive and chooses a drug-addled death instead, I don't see how that's anyone else's business. These sorts of programs are generally conceived to alleviate the gross inequalities of capitalism and bad luck, not make unfortunate adults into wards of the state who are denied the right to exercise free will. And I would imagine that begging would become *far* less effective (and thus appealing) when everyone knows that you had plenty of money for food and shelter but chose to blow it all on other things instead.
There's also already a range of voluntary boarding homes available for people incapable of taking care of themselves - an honest one would automatically deduct food and housing expenses from your monthly stipend on the day it was deposited and leave the rest of your money alone, or dole it out as a daily or weekly allowance to avoid major shortage problems toward the end of the month.
For kids - free meals at school is an extremely effective solution once they reach school age. Infants and toddlers are a trickier problem, but one that can fairly effectively be attacked from the opposite end of the age spectrum by making free birth control available to everyone - in my experience most junkies don't actually want kids, they just can't be bothered to avoid them. So, free IUDs or implants for women, and free Vasogel or similar for men (once it's approved) - you don't want to use something that they can easily mess up, nor anything permanent that they might choose to avoid. That also has the added benefit of largely preventing children from being born with drug-related problems.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
UBI clearly and objectively will not work for an entire population under ANY circumstances. There's cautionary tales about it in any number of novels and it makes it clear: not only does taking away any incentive to do something productive with your life make people lazy, not only does taking away that incentive give them no reason to learn anything that might make them productive people, thus enslaving them to government dole, it will inevitably bankrupt any government foolhardy enough to try something like this. I do not see where any debate is necessary and I am embarassed that anyone would seriously consider running a country this way. Luckily there are still enough clear-headed people in positions to make decisions about things that I have no fear of it ever happening; all that is left is to shush the people who somehow still believe such nonsense could actually work.
Oh and by the way: I am a registered Democrat, allegedly a so-called 'liberal', and I am saying so-called 'UBI' is utter and complete nonsense. Stick that in your pipes and smoke it, 'Conservatives'; just blew your preconceived notions out of the water.
They never starve to death, they will commit a crime long before that.
The sample was not random, but preselected based on being unemployed in the first place. This significantly negatively impact applicability to the general population : employed, unemployed, not working but supported by other/spouse source,
I received $960/mo ($6.00/hr equivalent) on unemployment when I was laid off and that wasn't enough without making drastic cuts. ..." are the same people that protest that less that $15 / hr is not a livable wage.
$685 / 128 (32 hours per week) = $4.95 / hr , $685 / 160 (40 hours per week) = $3.96 / hr
The same people who say "This is a triump for humanity and should be replicated everywhere
even the drugs they take are to cope with mental illness.
In most societies just putting a roof over your head isn't much of a battle. Even during the 2008 market crash folks kicked out of their houses by banks didn't stay homeless for long. Assuming your brain doesn't go you'd get back on your feet in about a month tops.
Homeless people don't "prefer the lifestyle". That's something the media tells you to alleviate guilt over not paying to eliminate homelessness. Nobody chooses to live without shelter. The elements take a huge toll on the human body. You can look at just about any long term homeless person and see that. But if you're not all there in mind and body good luck holding down a job.
You're right about one thing, you can't give a mentally disturbed person money and expect them to manage it. This is why we used to have insane asylums. Reagan shut them down, which is where the modern homeless crisis came from. He used the fact that they were not nice places as an excuse (along with talk like your post about "they prefer it this way"). The right thing to do would be to remove the problems and abuses, but America's all about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Especially if you have to raise tax dollars to pay for that baby.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You're a slashdotter. The problem is you. If the claims were false, they would have been dismissed already. Anything can be child abuse and domestic violence these days. Out of the thousands of people who get divorced yearly, you pushed those boundaries of abuse enough to raise those flags. You did something and you know you did. You've had 3 years to clear the record but haven't. The ex has had 3 years to prove it, but hasn't. This just means there's a lack of hard evidence to either direction. That means everyone in the legal chain knows something occurred but they just can't prove what it is so you've stalemated. You reap what you sow and if you'll gaze upon these fields of comments, you'll know why I have this generalization. This site attracts a certain type of person, myself included.
Seems like I can hardly go anywhere without reading these fucking horror stories about the American health insurance system. Fuck it to bits.
People don't work if they don't have to, news at 11. I mean, this is common sense, no? Easily 9 in 10 people wouldn't lift a finger if they could have shelter, food, and healthcare without lifting a finger. I would, but there's no way I'd work on anything I'm not interested in.
And yet, they still didn't work, which just proves that the "benefit cliff" isn't actually what's keeping these people out of the labour market.
And this study proved that aspect to be worthless as the people didn't suddenly get jobs now that the benefit cliff argument was negated. So if the strongest argument for UBI is now disproven, even without actually trialling an actual UBI, when do we finally give up on this horrible idea?
No they(we) don't. That's a bullshit narrative pulled right out of a republican's ass like "open borders", "post birth abortion", and "the gay agenda". Who are these "many" Democrats? Did you even find one? Did you find one that actually supports UBI and says that? Cause if you ask someone like Pelosi about it, she'd probably say something like that because she doesn't want UBI. UBI proponents, like the Justice Democrats, want it to replace all the other programs and be given equally to everyone- including the rich fuckers who don't even need a measly $1000/mo. If you're not being malicious, you've swallowed the rich man's bullshit and liked it.
You really should look into answers to your own questions as there is a great deal of accessible literature devoted to exactly this problem...unless of course you just want to bash UBI programs. If that is your intention, well done!
A UBI is not intended to fix drug addiction issues. If you want to address that problem, you should be looking at policies intended to do just that. The best policies I'm aware of are legalization of all recreational drugs and prescribing drugs as part of a universal healthcare system.
Most of the issues surrounding addiction are made much worse by current laws and enforcement strategies. The social costs to users and the people they victimize are almost completely eliminated through legalization by both prescribing and providing them with appropriate and safe drugs, including the very narcotics they are addicted to, as part of a treatment program.
Most primates will casually kill their young. Clearly a great model ... well, I guess the progressives believe that killing babies is fine, as long as they aren't cute. Nevermind that argument.
1) He's clearly conservative/libertarian which means he's a hypocrite so he projects.
2) He told you "It's human nature not to work". These guilty dogs bark, so he does not want to work either.
3) Conservatives think everything is zero sum, so if he doesn't want to work, then you have to.
4) He will rent-seek to get that money you make. He told you "I would too. Supplement my income. Take my cake and eat it too." Don't think that's just referring to UBI. He takes legal tax breaks, subsidies, and every other thing the governemnt offers, which is ok since it's legal until...
5) He's gonna bitch about having to give one damned cent back to the source of where his prosperity came from. He'll scream the whole time it was his "hard work" (investing tires me out too) and everyone else is "stealing" from him forgetting that the only reason he was able to make that money was at the grace of the government which, luckily, is civil these days. He wouldn't have enjoyed a King much, I suspect.
6) To your point, it has nothing to do with it. He is misrepresenting the issue as current system + UBI when all current proposals I've read said it is a replacement, at least the ones here in America.
"...unless of course you just want to bash UBI programs"
I'd say that, in order to bash UBI programs... you need to focus on UBI program!
"2017, Finland became the first European country to test out the idea of an unconditional basic income. It was run by the Social Insurance Institution (Kela), a Finnish government agency, and involved 2,000 randomly-selected people on unemployment benefits. "
This looks like stupid politicians doing their stupid things at their best (because, frankly, it works).
So, in order to study how "unconditional basic income works" you experiment focus on a very conditionally chosen target? WTF!!!???
The reason for means tested social programs is that a) you make it harder to get and therefor lower potential taxes to the rich and b) it puts the poor and working class in an antagonistic position where the poor get something the working class does not (and at least partially pays for).
This is exactly why Joe Biden supports means testing for Social Security.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
How many jobs were there that were available? If none/few this result is obvious.
You shouldn't be giving money away to charities if you are living paycheck to paycheck. Take care of yourself first, then help others.
The reason is simple: one more bad break and you become a liability, and whatever charity you've provided is likely wiped out. By all means, throw a drowning man a life ring, but don't risk yourself to save others.
If you work for about 26 calendar weeks, you get 400 days of approximately 60% of their salary in Finland for each day of unemployment. This consists of 705 EUR "base daily payment" (peruspäiväraha) and earned part (ansio-osa) determined by salary while working. Additionally if recepient has children, base daily payment is increased by 5,29EUR/day for one child, 7,77EUR for two and 10,02EUR for three or more.
Note that even the base payment rate is higher than this particular UBI test run.
Source:
https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If you don't meet the requirement, you fall to base unemployment benefits, which are approximately 702EUR/month, paid weekly. You can earn up to 300EUR on top of that in salary without it impacting these benefits, and you can also earn additional 4,74EUR per day if you participate in activity "which improves your chances of getting employment".
https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
UBI was paid on top of these social benefits (among others, these are far from the only social benefits unemployed person is entitled to), and its primary stated goal was to amortize against the often small difference of gaining salary but losing unemployment benefits. Result show the test run to be an abysmal failure, as test group scored marginally lower on finding employment than control group that didn't get the extra money on top of their unemployment benefits.
Some build space ships. But most just spend their wealth on bending lawmakers so that laws are kept suitable for the owning class to keep owning everything. That and of course, huge houses, lavish travel and expensive food. And trophy wives/husbands.
The "owning class" is a parasitic class that we have let get out of control. The answer: tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, tax!
Taxing the rich is the only way to deal with the crippling wealth inequality we face today. Relying on them to more or less accidentally doing something societally useful is just stupid.
Certainly a good option for when there are no jobs due to AI doing it all....I think a negative income tax is best for now though. Milton Friedman was a huge proponent of this.
Yes, it is morally acceptable. Absolutely.
If you want to give it a right wing spin, call it a "crime reduction" fee. If you want to give it a left wing spin, call it a "social equity" fee.
Either way, giving support to those who have nothing helps society and is worth forceably taking money from people to achieve. Everyone is gaining enormously from living in a stable society and that tax money is worth paying, even if you don't understand that.
> But, what do you do with the significant number of people that, rather than spend their UBI on food, shelter and other necessities of life....they BLOW it on drugs or other bad choices?
But ... that's their problem, not yours. It's not the job of other citizens to morally police how other people spend their money.
If that is true then the opposite is also true which is what you think you just debunked.
Your argument: They were no more likely to find jobs.
Our argument: They we no more likely to quit jobs.
Both are and can be correct using the info we currently have. We all pick the argument that makes us sound right. You obviously don't want UBI. I do. When it gets to that point, the only logical thing to do is put it up for a vote. You scared or the vote's results?
There is a different way to look at this data. It's not a coherent argument to just say that UBI recipients didn't get jobs, when those recipients are drawn from a pool of people already receiving long-term unemployment benefits. First, those people aren't really a representative cross-section of society, since in a nation with full emploment ,only a couple of % of all people are going to be on long-term unemployment benefits (aged or single-parent pensions, and the like, are different).
So, since these are long-term unemployed, it only makes sense to compare how they fared vs other long-term unemployed that you didn't include in the trial (a control group).
Here's the thing: making job seekers jump through hoops requires a large and complex bureaucracy just for that. And the Finland data shows that people who go through that are no more likely to get off long-term unemployment benefits than the UBI recipients are. This proves the current programs are a costly waste of time. Additionally, lower stress almost certainly means lower future health costs, and these save money for the taxpayer too.
UBI isn't going to make long-term unemployed magically get jobs, but it is a hell of a lot cheaper just to give out a payment and leave people alone than the current overly bureaucratic and expensive methods, which plainly don't work.
Well guees what? This isn't SE Asia. If it were, you wouldn't be getting $695/mo. UBI is for basics. If basics in Vietnam only cost $100/mo, then the gov isn't gonna give you one cent over that. Stop being disingenuous. You can't handle being proved wrong can ya? Care to double down on your derp?
When you will need it, society, you will give it.
Basic Income is about hordes of unemployed people that need to be fed and entertained.
When it comes, it comes. No need for experiments now.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
And a significant portion of them will do just that...if not less...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Unemployment + more free money. You just incentivized people to not work.
So, nothing was built,nothing accomplished, no work done. Just everyone sitting in their homes rabbiting, watching TV, and playing games. What kind of a life is that? Oh, wait, they want to the nearest coffee shop or pub. Wow! What a life. LOL.
LOSERS as they never accomplish a single thing of value in their time on the dole. So who is going to work and support the lazy turds?
I'll play.
Gambling is bad because of negative expectation. Investing is good because of positive expectation. Insurance is negative expectation but it can still be good because any reasonable monetary utility function is going to decrease the value of more money.
Chris Mesterharm
Negative. Begging will never stop being a problem. It's not about the beggar, it's about the person giving the money. To some people giving money to beggars *feels good*. You're not going to stop those people from feeling good. Beggars are selling a product, and that product is the approval of your own conscience.
I love how you argue against making adults wards of the state, and then two paragraphs down tell us they neglect their children and it's the state's job to feed them.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
You shouldn't be giving money away to charities if you are living paycheck to paycheck.,,
This is a prime tenet of the Gospel of Self-Reliance, and while it is not without merit, it fails to address the vagaries of fortune, and it fails to recognize the interdependence of people and institutions. Anyone experiencing a sufficiently unlucky sequence of events can wake up homeless one day, irrespective of how self-reliantly he may live. All of us can come up short in a pinch.
Charity is akin to insurance in that, should that day arrive, there will be people and institutions available to provide assistance. Also, if all men are brothers, which one of them could sleep warm and safe knowing that his brother was hungry and cold on the street, except that he had first made a provision for the care of him? And yes, you are the keeper of your brother. There is a further, rather esoteric principal, in this regard that I shall state without proof: It all comes back to you. Go figure.
Reading between the lines of GP's posts, he lives paycheck to paycheck, but has a comfortable life and would actually be prospering if USA healthcare were actually sanely arranged. Even so, he is meeting his obligations, giving to charity and is content in his choices. Personally, I would commend him for balancing life well, and recommend only that every once in a while he forgo a meal and set those funds aside as alms for the seventy-year old man he will be one day. Insofar as a trickle becomes a stream becomes a river which fills a lake, that old man will be content on the shores of that lake.
Which winds back to self-reliance of a sort, which is not without merit. The difference is that he may also rely on others (on a bad day) and others may rely on him, and maybe everybody can sleep safe and warm.
Indeed, you learn a lot about a man by finding who or what he relies on.
Why would they try if they were getting it for free?
Firstly "you need a job to live" is actually a cultural thingy mostly made up by rich people to fight the laziness of their serf/slave/peon. There is NO REASON whatsoever if there is enough wealth to force people working. None. The question you should ask yourself, is , if automation rise a lot more, does the cultural shitty "you need to work" still make sense ? IMO it does not. Furthermore I am betting that by forcing people to work for a living, we are undercutting ourselves culturally and intellectually. Let me explain : I know a few of people which (like me) would prefer to concentrate on a better pursuit intellectually be it writing, painting and in my case coding and QM research. But by the time the day job is ended, people are SPENT and thus cannot really concentrate on their hobbit without deleterious effect. How many games, open source software, great painting, great music and so forth are lost like tears in the rain because the of the stupid "you gotta workkkkkK ! Not working is not allowed !!!!! economy MUST be capitalist with rich getting richer and poor getting crushed eleventy !" ? Maybe not that many.... Or maybe a lot. Who knows. Such a scheme on the long term would show it. And if there is enough automation, frankly then we will HAVE to have such a scheme, or live in a dystopian future of a few mega rich with robot dropping a few crumbs to the poor living in ruins outside.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
That's called tax , something all society even the US accepted a long time ago, and in many case societal communal program are a great success. Education, fire protection, police etc.... But I guess you are one of those childless person which get an hissy fit when they hear THEIR money is getting spent on school stuff ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Interesting questing question. Probably most homeless are not motivated by greed and status. Makes them in some sense better people than the rest.
Now imagine that nobody could fall to homelessness and nobody had to resort do crime to make a living. Personally, I would only work on things that interest me in that situation. May still be a 50% full-time workload, admittedly.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Morally acceptable, you write. I think it's safe to assume that the morals you refer to are based on the idea that more effort should result in larger rewards, and perhaps more talent should too. UBI would imply that people get something for nothing while others get to do the work to subsidize that.
But how much of the money you earn can you attribute to what you are doing? Imagine working just as hard in a primitive society. Would you earn just as much? Would you enjoy the same level of luxury in a society where a lot of the stuff you take for granted isn't available? Your prosperity is a function of not just your own effort and talent but also of the environment you live in. That is true within a society too. Someone who is born from parents with a good network in the right places in most cases gets much further than someone without it, regardless of talent and effort. Social mobility is on the decline in the US, the American dream is a fantasy. If you are entitled to benefit from just being lucky to be born in a good place and time --- which isn't your personal accomplishment, it just happened to you --- then why shouldn't everyone be entitled to benefit from it? UBI doesn't stop you from earing more by working harder for it.
The median houshold income hasn't kept up with the GDP for decades, which corresponds with a small group of ultra-rich getting richer and richer. That clearly shows that work and income don't correlate too well in practice. Someone with an income that is 100 times yours doesn't work 100 times as hard and s/he isn't 100 times as talented either. You're both part of a system that exaggerates differences to a ridiculous level and in which sheer luck is a large factor too.
This means that you're already subsidizing people. These people no doubt work hard in many cases, but they manage to get an enormous reward for their effort. I read somewhere recently (I forgot where) that this subsidy a median US houshold pays to the ultra-rich currently amounts to $15000 per year, based on what the income would be had incomes kept up with the GDP growth since (I think) the 1970's. How morally acceptable is that?
The money for UBI should be taken from those who get a much larger share of the GDP than can be attributed to their effort and talent.
Begone Satan spawn.
Your rationalism holds no sway over my flavor of Gods today!
Your sig here!
And then we can safely lock them away. You see? Society has a way of taking care of problems.
But it is their problem to give them money, then? Why do you draw the line at exactly that point?
Either people are responsible for themselves, and they get no money or anything else. Or others are responsible for their well-being, in which case it is eminently reasonable to also demand these people take care of themselves.
Asking for money but being unwilling to do the least thing in return is extremely unreasonable. The people donating the money are not their slaves.
Wth are you on about clan rallies and dogs whistling, i'm from europe. And btw the dog calling is rasist because my ancestors worshiped wolfs, may I point you to wikipedia.
And no you are *not* a wolf, trust me on this. Wolfs are family-centric animals, brave, very self reliant, and love to roam free and independent. 5 euros says you like none of those things. I mean without the Party's written permission in triplicate, of course.
Isn't your net income zero?
And that's different to the beautiful capitalist world we're in now in what way exactly?
answer:
Seriously, the only times I have seen a considerable change in my paycheck was when I switched companies
You answered your own question. The galactic-size difference is that we didn't have this option. There simply was NO OTHER COMPANY. There was the state, and the state. How is it possible to not grap the difference between 0 and non-zero ?
You simply don't know the feeling of looking into the shopkeeper's eyes when asking for 1 bread because it's totally up to his whim if he sells it to you or not (there were no walk-in supermarkets like now).
You are saying basically: capitalism sucks, the only good thing happens when i use capitalism.
According to this article
http://biaj.de/archiv-kurzmitt...
the german unemployment help cost 36,954 billion â in 2018 while administrative costs have been labeled as 4,555 billion â, thats around 11%. It provides several services for around 6 million of 82 million people. I have no idea why people think that the administrative costs were so high that removing them would enable you to extend services to everyone.
Yes because they get the money without going to work. This result is obvious and was predicted. Jobless != Nothing to do. They can do whatever they want. Paid for by other people!!
-making $30k. I was shocked by how many of my co-workers at the same salary range lived paycheck-to-paycheck. Their MO seemed to be to deposit their paycheck in their bank account, and pay their monthly bills. After those were covered, they'd use money for impulse buys until the ATM said their bank account was empty,
This always reminds me of when I worked a warehouse job after losing a contract. I figured I could work my way into the office and took the job right away. We were making $12/hr working 40 days a week. There was a group that hit the nearby bar every Friday and kept inviting me. I started going with them and it was pretty eye opening on why they seemed to have such worse money problems. I'd go to the bar and spend maybe $8-12. The others would buy rounds of shots and/or expensive drinks, then leave with a $75+ bill.
Then there was this lady named Jenn who worked 2 jobs. 40 hours with us and around 30 hours 3rd shift with UPS. She never had money. But she had seemingly 1,000 sets of clothing and 100 different make ups to color match to them all. Almost weekly she was having to ask people for $20-30 because she was out of money and gas and couldn't fill her tank and wouldn't be able to get to either of her jobs. Finally we got 2 weeks of overtime and she had some extra money. We told her not to go to the bar, told her not to buy people drinks, etc..... Then she went and bought everyone a round of drinks along with 2 appetizers and also got herself a dessert to take home.
A very big +1 to a financial management course for everyone.
That doesn't sound like much of a solution for anything.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Just because you're not a ward of the state, doesn't mean that you can do whatever you want to your children - they're not your property, they're citizens in their own right.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
So, should it or should it not be the state's responsibility to care for children? You're arguing against yourself. And losing.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
For a good reason that if you let people starve there will be more crime. It makes business sense to make sure everyone has a basic standard.
Also, from the viewpoint of other workers, if there are more desperate people out there, that will drive your wage-value down. Spending some of your tax dollars to ensure that there is a basic safety net ends up increasing your own bargaining power.
Main points:
1) you need income support for the poor, or things go to bad to "Calcutta bad"
2) it costs a lot to make people jump through useless hoops - often double to triple the actual amount of money that's being given to them
If you cut (1) then you end up using PRISON to house a lot of the dirt poor people who suddenly have no money for food or rent. And putting one person in prison cost about 10 times as much as UBI would.
You can cut (2) (bullshit compliance bureaucracy) because those are policies that only make politicians look good, actually cost far more to administer than they payments alone, and they're proven time and time again to have virtually zero effect on unemployment rates. Axe the failed programs, and what you're left with is basically UBI.
So you think we give out money for subsistence, but we don't adopt even social norms that it should be used for that, for the benefit of reducing crime, which won't be reduced when people spend their money on drugs and alcohol and knives and guns and more bullets instead of food and shelter...
I think maybe the hardest thing about UBI is that people don't even agree how it should work. It can't just be giving out money, there also have to be other related changes to how other things work.
People competing for CTO positions aren't going away because of UBI ... So I'm not getting any additional bargaining power. And I am interested in reducing crime and taking care of people who had some bad luck. But you're not convincing me about this UBI thing.
How about we take all that tax money and give it to Mexico so they can pay for our wall? Oh wait, we know what would happen. They'd take the money and do what the fuck they want with it.
It's like news outlets don't have any brain on their own, with everybody repeating that the UBI didn't reduce unemployment among the unemployed and implying that the experiment was a failure. That's utter bullshit! Who would expect a UBI to reduce unemployment?
The actual news is that that the bullying of the unemployed doesn't lead to lower unemployment in comparison to a UBI, and all the bureaucracy and tormenting associated with it is pointless!
The problem is that the study didn't fit the neoliberal (in US speak: conservative) agenda of the new government so they decided to drop the second part of the study which included employee participants.
And the interpretation of the results of the first part suffers from the very same agenda: Normally you would expect that removing pressure to find a new job would cause the rate of participants that find a new job to shrink, but it didn't.
But as that result doesn't fit the agenda they emphasize the fact that the unemployment rate didn't fall so it sounds like the experiment failed!
Finnish officials have primary source in english: https://www.kela.fi/web/en/the-basic-income-experiment-will-end
Always go to the source and not secondhand. (Even if it is BBC)
You really shouldn't live like you are.
How, exactly, is he living? Or did you just make an assumption convenient for confirming your ideology?
Try re-reading. I said the goal was not to make nominally competent *adults* into wards of the state. However, the state could reasonably be considered to have a responsibility to protect children from starvation, just as it strives to protect all citizens from most other forms of violence.
It also has a long-term interest in making sure all children are adequately fed, as childhood malnourishment leads to significantly lower IQ as an adult, which is a much more expensive problem to address.
To those ends, free school meals is an extremely cost effective and minimally invasive solution, with a well-proven track record around the world.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
But, what do you do with the significant number of people that, rather than spend their UBI on food, shelter and other necessities of life....they BLOW it on drugs or other bad choices?
Firstly, the most fundamental freedom is the freedom of self-destructive behavior. Secondly, you can't stop this behavior, you can only create an inefficient black market. What the state can (and should) do is be very responsive and supportive when someone hits bottom and asks for help.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
No, it really didn't prove much, beyond "UBI is not a magic pill". I see no evidence that it's actually worse than other forms of government charity, and with no cliff to punish those who do seek work, it's at least slightly better than some alternatives.
The real benefit, though, would be administrative simplicity. That's why it's only worth doing if it replaced multiple other programs. Otherwise, there's no clear advantage.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
and with no cliff to punish those who do seek work, it's at least slightly better than some alternatives.
Did you even read the summary? This study proves that the "cliff" didn't affect anything. They removed it, and no more people got jobs than they would have with the cliff in place.
The real benefit, though, would be administrative simplicity. That's why it's only worth doing if it replaced multiple other programs. Otherwise, there's no clear advantage.
And while administrative simplicity was the original purpose of UBI, I have never heard any of the recent proponents talk about a plan that would do that. All of them are means tested in some way, which quals all that administrative overhead that UBI is supposed to avoid.
One small study can provide evidence towards a claim, but it can't "prove" anything. Their methodology seems dubious. But that's sort of a side note: there's no benefit to be had either way from "yet another government charity".
All of them are means tested in some way, which quals all that administrative overhead that UBI is supposed to avoid.
Yup, it's not even UBI a that point. All government organizations eventually divert from their charter, but to do so before the program even begins is something special.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Every one should have a Job.
I don't have a "real" job by most peoples standards and I probably helped more people in one second than most people on their complete lives!
So not having a "real" job by others standards doesn't mean anything about the real value of the person... but people should work because that is good for their own self estim... no one really likes to feel it worths nothing... and work helps on that... while work it self doesn't mean that the person is good or bad... most people work, and will never reach the eternal spiritual paradise... and most not working also won't reach it... so work is just part of the person real job on the Creation but more is required.